Wanna go green? Witold Rybczynski says you gotta get back to the concrete jungle:
Architectural journals and the Sunday supplements tout newfangled houses tricked out with rainwater-collection systems, solar arrays, and bamboo flooring. Yet any detached single-family house has more external walls and roof—and hence more heating loads in winter and cooling loads in summer—than a […]

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In five parts, actually.
Slate.com been running a veddy interesting series this week on how the U.S. might come to an end, if the U.S. were to come to an end. Part 1 was environmental catastrophe; yesterday’s bit was secession; today’s bit is totalitarian rule. What particularly piqued my interest was Josh Levin’s invocation of American […]

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Yeesh. And here I just had some bisque from Market for lunch:
Professor Boris Worm of Dalhousie University published a detailed study in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Nature saying that at the current rate, all global fish populations will have collapsed by 2048. He says: “This isn’t some horror scenario, it’s a real possibility. It’s not […]

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Via Atrios, Steve Benen over at the Washington Monthly comments on McCain’s shortcut approach when it comes to nuclear power:
“You know, the other night in the debate with Senator Obama, I said his eloquence is admirable, but pay attention to his words,” McCain said. “We talk about offshore drilling and he said he would quote, […]

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You know, we might as well do this, because ultimately we’re going to do it anyway:
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist tells Buzz that he loves Sen. John McCain’s idea to lift the federal moratorium on off-shore drilling and let individual states decide whether to allow oil and gas exploration. He also said he wouldn’t rule out […]

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…so goes the nation, often. Occasionally a bad thing; this, on the other hand, might actually help move the ball down the field a bit:
In a lofty address that at times resembled a campaign speech, the chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores, H. Lee Scott Jr., said that “we live in a time when people are […]

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The news of the fires was mesmerizing most of the week, I wrote about it for this week’s print edition, but there were other things, at first glance not related but, the longer you looked, the more you realized they were of a piece.

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Al Gore wins (or co-wins) the Nobel Peace Prize and somehow, Drudge isn’t making fun of him. That’ll last, like, five minutes or so.
The release from the Nobel committee, linked on Drudge, is interesting:
Indications of changes in the earth’s future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in […]

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Because I play guitar and often - or at least, too often for my wife - buy guitar-related things, I get several catalogs from music retailers. Basically, you buy one thing from these companies and you’re on their mailing list forever, as they hope you buy some more.

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Spinal Tap reunites for Live Earth, plays new single “Warmer than Hell,” detailing the Devil’s trip to Britain where he remarks how sweltering it is due to global warming.

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