We might also count a bit on our human bias toward cooperation.

I've been reminded this week of a book I read some time back ... "Cheating Monkeys, Citizen Bees" by Lee Dugatkin.  

Now, we are not cooperative like naked mole rats, probably for reasons Dugatkin describes ... but neither are we quite as independent as the mythical lonesome cowboy (or the mythical economic actor).

but it's buried beneath layer upon layer of histrionics. And I already knew it anyway. There's really very little of any interest, or intelligence, in this piece.

People with money should be supporting people with technology.

And people with money are saying this to people with technology.

Empty words.  What a colossal waste of precious time.

"Never give up": right, BioD, point the way.

As the venerated late-19th-century Oglala Lakota chief Crazy Horse is quoted as having said on the morning before an expected battle, "Today is a good day to die."  Victory may be unlikely; even survival may be unlikely.  But those are worries of secondary importance.  What matters most is whether we shall fight as bravely and perduringly as we can, with never a thought of giving quarter.

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

While reading Friedman's column a few days ago I was thinking about what is driving much of that growth -- the globalization that Friedman has championed to bring the world up to American's living standards.  I think Friedman was an early advocate of our invading Iraq too.  

Interesting suggestion that cellulosic ethanol is "in the pipeline."  How is something that no one is doing commercially "in the pipeline?"  Are personal jetpacks "in the pipeline?"  I saw a film of one once.  And I saw a display about a flying car in the Seattle airport years ago -- is this, too, "in the pipeline?"

Plants spent billions of years evolving to keep their cells intact against invaders and parasites.  Why does anyone think destroying those cells and converting them into alcohol will ever be cheap.

I raise this objection because the belief in the pipeline that will eventually deliver biofuels is what allows politicians and transportation planners to avoid confronting the need to shift away from automobility and carburban planning.

What's all too likely to be in the pipeline before too long, thanks to the ethanomaniacs, is coal-to-liquids--because when the oil prices crunch the unprepared economy, we're going to find out that Americans are quite willing to condemn future generations to Tropical Planet to avoid paying $10/gal (in real dollars -- which might be $25 in nominal dollars at the rate we're going).

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.