Stoke-on-Trent Goes Green!

As many of you know, I spent a good hunk of my spring/summer as a fallow at the David Bruce Centre for American Studies at the University of Kent in England. The nearest town to the self-contained university is Stoke-on-Trent. I'm pleased to report that Stoke-on-Trent is set to become the first city to sign up to the country's "10:10" pledge to cut its carbon emissions by 10% during 2010 and thus in a way to become Britain's first "Green City."

Know Nothings on Parade

During the 2008 Presidential campaign conservatives mocked Barack Obama for asserting that we could save on gas mileage by making sure our tires are properly inflated, despite the fact that it was true. (And always in the service of inane policies to drill for more oil at home, "Drill, Baby, Drill!" being good bumper sticker sloganeering even if it is asinine policy given the tiny percentage of oil reserves available within the United States.) More recently the know-nothings on the right ridiculed assertions coming from the administration (particularly Nobel Prize winning physicist and Obama's Secretary of Energy Steven Chu) that we could save on energy costs by painting our the roofs of our houses (and businesses, or what have you) white. Of course that turns out to be true as well. Some advice: If Obama's loudest critics tell you it is going to be a nice day, bring an umbrella.

Hip to Be Square Watch (Alumni Edition)

What, is Stuart Scott coming up with Homecoming ideas for Ohio University? Get Your Green On seems like the sort of three-years-out-of-date, quasi-urban-hip reference that Scott would toss out. The reference is a double entendre intended to promote both the school's colors and aa deep and abiding (read: recent) commitment to the environment.

Oh well. Go Bobcats! Beat VMI! And enjoy the attention you'll get when you travel up to Columbus to take on Ohio State at the Horseshoe on September 6. I'll be hoping for the best for you.

Wind Power

T. Boone Pickens, Texas oilman extraordinaire, uber-booster of Oklahoma State University, and the seeming embodiment of voracious speculative capitalist has also become something else, something quite unexpected in recent years: a voice for, for lack of a better term, going green. One of his latest schemes is to harness something that Texas, and especially West Texas, has in abundance: wind.

Texas already does more with wind power than any state in the nation. Driving from Odessa to San Antonio we cover about 80 miles on state highways that take us through the small town of Crane and the tiny town of McCamey. Just South of McCamey, high up on mesas that jut up on both sides of the highway, are hundreds of enormous windmills. If Pickens sees the prospect for helping us wean ourselves from the very commodity that has made him rich, surely there is something to it.

I am at best a soft environmentalist. I've no doubt about global warming and that we as humans contribute to it. But I am not crusader on environmentalism, and although it is blasphemy to say as much among the true green crowd, the environment does not rank in my top five, meybe top ten political or policy concerns. But we are blind if we do not start thinking of other ways to heat our homes and run our cars and dispose of our junk. The wind, the sun, and water are powerful forces, and are elements that are as yet largely untapped for power. Yes, right now mosty of them are inefficient, but my belief in progress is such that I would imagine that we can fine ways better to harness them and in so doing to make a transition from oil dependency to a world in which oil is part of, but not the brunt of, the equation.

McCain's Energy Follies

In recent weeks John McCain has been misrepresenting and obfuscating both his and Barack Obama's record and views on energy policy. Newsweek and Factcheck.org are on the case.