energy soapbox

It’s been sometime since I’ve had the opportunity to post here. In my absence, a number of things have happened; the most notable being my move from Clovis, California to Fort Collins, Colorado. Since the move, I’ve continued to support renewable energy and have recently written a letter on the subject to various newspapers across [...]

I got the following response from Toyota fairly quickly:

We want to thank you for taking the time to write us here at Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc.
We are sorry you heard of the inaccurate assertion that we are actively lobbying against increased fuel economy standards, and we want you to be aware of our company’s [...]

Thomas Friedman in the New York Times today set off a stink bomb when he claimed that Toyota has been backing American automakers in resisting higher fuel economy standards. The Union of Concerned Scientists responded with a campaign almost immediately - below is the text of my submission for that campaign. The first [...]

It seems like people miss the point entirely when they worry that companies selling bottled water don’t make it clear where that water comes from. The problem isn’t really the source - the problem is that they’re selling bottled water in the first place. There’s a huge difference between water bottles that are [...]

You can likely expect some sort of coherent write-up on some of the following articles of recent interest to me:

Make This Earth Day Your Last! (originally posted in April)
eco-ratings for cars: all things (finally) considered (originally posted in May)
From the March 3, 2007 edition of the Seattle Times: First, we educate all the lawyers

I see [...]

In sort of a screwball way, an article in today’s Seattle Times follows up on one of the questions I asked when writing "Diversity in the Energy Market":

[. . .]wouldn’t it be interesting if tomorrow morning, the likes of Shell or BP stood up and said they wanted to eliminate all coal-fired power plants from [...]

CNN’s Special Investigative Unit presents tonight a disaster scenario in which the availability of oil drops drastically, triggering an international crisis. "We Were Warned: Out of Gas" is on now, 5PM Pacific/8PM Eastern, rebroadcasting at 8PM Pacific/11PM Eastern on CNN.

Seth Godin’s blog has an article on what he calls "Sheepwalking", which Godin defines as "the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a braindead job and enough fear to keep them in line." He then proceeds to give several examples of what sheepwalking looks like and [...]

2006 was a banner year in increasing awareness about sustainability, the importance and significant impact of energy policy, and increasing governmental support for sustainable approaches to living. Actually, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times beat me to calling 2006 the year of green:
“. . . I think the most important thing to happen [...]

Apparently, the process intended to curb global warming by eliminating chloroflourocarbons (otherwise known as CFCs) wasn’t quite as easy as it first looked. Replacing CFCs have caused some unanticipated consequences, namely making the global warming problem worse. CFCs, commonly found in older refrigerators and aerosol canisters, are used as propellants and fire suppressants, [...]