Though it’s over a year old, I just came across a post where Phil Greenspun asks Philip Greenspun’s Weblog » Why can’t we buy a Chinese house at Walmart?
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Popularity: 15% [?]

National Geographic has some interesting news on the Global Warming feedback loop, that is to say that as the climate warms, it promotes the production of methane, which is belched into the atmosphere (in the article, particularly by Siberian lakes that were being studied). Since methane is a greenhouse gas, it causes more warming. How much more warming? During the Cold War, we used to talk about bombing people back to the Stone Age, but in fact it looks like we’ll be gassing ourselves back to the Dinosaur Age as CO2 levels rise to their highest levels in 25 million years. Meanwhile, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma thinks that global warming is a huge hoax and many think that his pollution bill is an attempt to punish California for it’s recent anti-global warming legislation. Three guess which party he belongs to?

Popularity: 15% [?]

I was looking over a brochure for decking material (you know that stuff you put on porches instead of floorboards – so old school) by a company called Certainteed. It’s made from a material called EcoTech. Must be friendly, right? You bet it is. This is made, as they brag, with “maple wood flour” and the finest PVC. PVC! Okay, so not only does EcoTech decking contain one of the most toxic materials known, with one of the most damaging manufacturing processes known (short of say, a nuclear fission plant), it also creates one of these completely non-reusable hybrid bio-industrial products that can never be reused or recycled, but goes straight in the ground. This is one of the least eco-friendly products you could imagine, as if the design spec said to create decking that was as harmful as possible. I guess if you spin it enough, you can make people believe anything. Screw them.

Why do I care? Because this just absolutely burns me because I know people who think that this is a responsible product (save trees and last a long time and that’s good, right?). No, lasting a long time is not good when the product is poisonous to produce, use and destroy and by “a long time” you mean 10,000 years. I think this is as deceptive if not more so than the tobacco industry tactics with filter cigarettes. Anyway, so I wrote to Certainteed and asked them to change the product name and I am urging everyone else to do the same.

Contact the sons of bitches (no offense to puppies intended):

• Certainteed’s contact form for consumers
• Certainteed’s contact form for construction professionals

In the comments on the contact form, make a note like this: “As a consumer, I am deeply disappointed that Certainteed has named its ecological irresponsible PVC decking material EcoTech. I consider this deceptive and request that Certainteed change the name or, better yet, change to a product that is in fact eco-friendly.

Read up on PVC:

• PVC: A Health Hazard From Production through Disposal by Paul Goettlich
• Polyvinyl chloride – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• PVC: Recycling Killer, Public Health Menace

Popularity: 10% [?]

Every so often I come across a book that makes it onto my “must read” list. It’s been a while, but William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the way we make things is one of those books. For people unfamiliar with McDonough’s work, he is an environmentalist, architect and designer who has designed a factory for Herman Miller, is designing housing in China, and has consulted with Ford, Nike, Dell and others. He has also designed products like eco-friendly textiles and McDonough wants us to fundamentally rethink the way we make things and what we think it means to be environmentally responsible.
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Popularity: 15% [?]

According to the latest buzz, the future of American energy lies with biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel. According to the Archer Daniels Midlands (ADM) commercial, somewhere in Kansas a farmer is rising at 5:00am to plant the corn that ADM will turn into ethanol and the soy that they will turn into biodiesel that will save the environment and get us out of Iraq. Biofuels can be produced domestically and they are net carbon zero fuels, meaning that they sequester as much CO2 during production as they give off when burned, so they don’t make a net contribution to greenhouse gasses. In addition, they burn relatively cleanly so they should have a postive impact on air quality. In the case of biodiesel, furthermore, it can be made from cast off vegetable oil, so the jillions of gallons of deep fry oil from MacDonald’s can find a second life powering Willie Nelson’s bus rather than just going into the waste stream. Reduce, reuse and recycle, right? What’s not to love? Several things actually.
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Among the absolutely stupidest ideas to come out of Detroit in who knows how long: if you buy a gas guzzler like Chevy Tahoe, Suburban or Impala or a GMC Yukon, General Motors will give you a credit each month to cap your gas costs at $1.99 per gallon. Of course, it’s only for the first year and you will have to pay $16.95 and sign up for OnStar so that GM can monitor how many miles you drive and adjust your rebate based on stated mileage for the vehicle in question, miles driven and average gas price in your state (available only in CA and FL). Nevertheless, it still amounts to an incentive to drive more miles in less efficient vehicles. Way to go GM! That sure makes a lot more sense than building cars that people would actually buy in a climate of high prices.
GM incentive: A gas price cap | Chicago Tribune

Popularity: 5% [?]

Maybe my pessimistic comments about SUV sales were premature. According to numbers out more recently, Ford has seen hybrid sales go up 55%, while sales of SUVs have declined significantly among most US automakers. That said, Honda saw its SUV and truck sales go up, but not nearly as much as sales of Civics and the new subcompact Fit. For more info, see the Forbes.com article, Toyota, Honda Sales in U.S. Climb in May

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[edit: see the update on this in my post OK, Maybe Not]
There is a common myth floating around lately that SUV sales have tanked. In fact, it just isn’t true and Americans it seems are still unwilling to give up their large cars or to buy the hybrid versions of those large cars.
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Popularity: 6% [?]

Everyone is familiar with Ivan Pavlov’s experiments whereby Pavlov noticed that dogs begin to salivate before the food actually reaches their mouths. He then conducted a long series of experiments manipulating the salivary action of dogs and established the basic laws for what he called “conditional reflexes” (see also Ivan Pavlov, Wikipedia). Through extensive observations of my own, I have uncovered similar conditional reflexes in national park tourists. It has been proven that tourists in an unfamiliar location begin to purchase useless crap before any need for said useless crap is established. The law that governs this behavior is as follows: “If you haven’t bought something, you didn’t go there.” This obligates tourists to buy one or more item from every location visited, no matter how useless those items are. I call it the First Law of Tourism and expect that in the future, it will make me famous just like Newton’s Third Law made him famous (okay, he might have been famous without the laws of motion because apparently he did some other stuff too).
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Republicans are scrambling to do something about the high cost of petroleum. Let’s suggest one obvious solution: I propose that we invade Iraq, topple the dictatorship there and then use the massive oil revenues to rebuild the country and increase supply in the United States. Oh wait, George Bush already tried that. Let’s see, without reading any news on it, what might Republicans come up with based on past proposals? Could it be…. drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Yes for 100 points to the red team!!
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Popularity: 15% [?]