Dispatches from Life

Update: now cross-posted at It’s Getting Hot in Here.

At Grist Magazine, they like to refer to coal as the Enemy of the Human Race. And, while that’s a bit of a rhetorical flourish, it’s true that coal is unavoidably one of the dirtiest ways possible to produce energy. If you’re interested in finding out more about the entire process of using coal for energy, I encourage you to read Big Coal, by Jeff Goodell.

But what I want to write about today is inspired by a Huffington Post article by Jesse Jenkins, of The Breakthrough Institute and It’s Getting Hot in Here. I’m generally pretty skeptical of Shellenberger & Nordhaus’ thinktank, but I met Jesse at Powershift, and this article is pretty good. Its overall message is the same as everything out of their thinktank; in order to be successful, environmental messages need to be framed around things that people care about more, like jobs and the economy. Specifically, the article runs down what it dubs the “Technology Fifteen”, i.e. fifteen “moderate” senators from the interior of the country who have banded together to have a voice on climate issues.

So, I thought I’d look a little further into specifically the geography of coal as it relates to politics. I put up a Google Docs spreadsheet with my data. All my data’s from the Energy Information Administration, the government office whose job it is to make public this sort of stuff.

Essentially, I ranked all the states by 1. Percentage of energy supply that comes from coal, 2. Number of people in the state employed by the coal industry, and 3. Coal production. Theoretically, members of congress from these states would be less inclined to support legislation aimed to breaking America’s coal addiction. This metric is likely even a more significant factor than their ideology. Anyways, here is the list of states:

1. West Virginia
2. Wyoming
3. Kentucky
4. Pennsylvania
5. Virginia
6. Illinois
7. Texas
8. Indiana
9. North Dakota
10. Montana
11. Utah
12. Colorado
13. Alabama
14. New Mexico
15. Ohio

So which senators represent these states who might be of interest? Well, a few of the states are represented by very conservative senators, and we can be pretty sure how they’ll vote on energy legislation already. Some others have a League of Conservation score of 100% for 2008, so we can be fairly sure that they will vote well. And what do you know, taking out those two bunches leaves us with just fifteen senators. Here they are, starting with those from the coal-iest state, West Virginia:

1. Byrd (D)
2. Rockefeller (D)
3. Dorgan (D)
4. Conrad (D)
5. Specter (R)
6. Webb (D)
7. Warner (D)
8. Burris (D)
9. Lugar (R)
10. Bayh (D)
11. Udall (D)
12. Bennet (D)
13. Udall (D)
14. Voinovich (R)
15. Brown (D)

Burris and Bennet have not heald a seat in congress before, so LCV has no rankings for them. Otherwise, these senators are ranked by coal-iness and then by LCV ranking.

So what does this mean? Well, Obama and Senate Democrats are looking for moderate Republicans to vote with them in order to break filibusters. Voinovich, Lugar, and Specter are identified by Nate Silver as in the top five prospects for this, along with the two Maine senators. I would suggest that the three of them might be less likely to flip on anti-coal legislation than they might be otherwise.

On the other side, Nate recognizes Dorgan, Conrad, Baucus, Tester, Byrd, and Webb as potential problems for Obama, but not as big problems as four conservative Democrats from non-coal states.

So, we’ll see. Keep an eye on these senators when energy bills come to the senate.

Today we got the surprising news from my boss that he’s leaving for another job in about two months. This sucks. Not only is he the most encouraging, grateful, humorous, relaxed, level-headed boss I could hope for, he’s also taken the station to new heights in development. We busted through past records during our October drive, and have generally (word is) emerged from the dark ages into an efficient, productive department, capable of sufficiently supporting the wonderful service we offer to western New England. I have seen this a little bit in the short three months I’ve been here, and Jerry was around for almost two years before that as well. I’m happy his talent is being given its financial due by the foundation he’s going to, but I will miss him greatly.

Also at work today, I tried chopping out a CSS dropdown menu that would work in IE 6 & 7 as well as Firefox. I haven’t even looked at Safari compatibility yet, but that’s only about 7% of our visitors, so it’s a lower priority. Anyways, Internet Explorer sucks. They’ve got their own rules for how to display things, which means web developers have to dance around, applying multiple frameworks to our web design. Total bummer. I eventually felt a little productive after digging a little into the fundamentals of how the different browsers apply CSS differently. We’ll see if I can build something up from scratch tomorrow.

Inspired by this post by Paul Krugman about the economic platitudes in Obama’s inaugural address, I had a thought about conventional wisdom.

Krugman suggests that waiting for conventional wisdom (it’s assumed by wonky types that that refers specifically to the DC political establishment & the media) to arrive at the truth is a recipe for ineffective government. I agree. Instead, what should be done is to mold the conventional wisdom toward where one wants it to be. I think the political right has been working toward this goal for years now, training young conservatives to be “pundits”, appearing on talk shows all over the media spectrum in order to forward their worldview more than anyone else, and thus have the largest influence on conventional wisdom.

I think the Obama administration can counter this by utilizing the ideal of transparency to send lots of White House spokespeople out to make efforts. The problem with that, though, is the seeming independence of conservative pundits, compared to the obvious and unavoidable spokesmanship of the White House representatives. Hmm.

Regardless, the main point still stands. Obama cannot hope to succeed in his grand necessities while following conventional wisdom. He must lead the conventional wisdom.

Barack Obama’s inauguration as our next president is a cause for great celebration. Three decades of conservative dominance, not to mention eight years of corruption and abuse of power, have finally been voted out by the American people. Our first black president will be the most popular president to enter office in the history of our country.

But, as Obama reminds us, there is a vast amount of work to do, an enormous weight of problems to solve. He will get panicked advice from all quarters about economic, energy, and foreign policy issues. Even though I believe Obama himself is a genuinely pragmatic progressive, we have to raise our own voices to make sure that the most repeated, loudest advice he receives points him toward effective, progressive solutions to our country’s problems, rather than the same overcautious corporate payoffs the political establishment is so fond of.

This is no time for relinquishing our political agency. Tuesday, January 20th is a day for celebration. Wednesday, January 21st, is the beginning of a new era, one in which we must help our beloved new president guide this teetering country toward stability. In the words of Barack Obama himself: we know the battle ahead will be long, but remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.

Let me tell you a little story about the peculiar and fantastic encounter I had tonight. Read on for the full story. (more…)

I’m listening to the Inauguration “We Are One” concert on the NPR website. Tears have come to my eyes several times, including during the singing of the national anthem. There are lots of actors speaking words, and I recognize their voices: Denzel Washington, Laura Linney, Steve Carrell, Tom Hanks.

The contradances the past two nights were spectacular. Tonight (Swallowtail) will hopefully be just as wonderful. The best moment last night was during the last dance, the band was playing fantastic music through the whole dance, then they broke into Brenda Stubberts’ for the end of it. One of the best sets of music I’ve ever danced to.

Lost starts again on Wednesday. I’m somewhat excited about that.

Hope you all are having as good a week as I am.

1. Apparently a plane crashed in New York Harbour. I mean, I know it’s evocative of September 11th, but c’mon. It wasn’t even that slow a news day! Glad everyone’s safe, but really, it’s not that big a deal. And why is no one lamenting the lives of the geese that the plain thoughtlessly ran into? Heartless anthropocentrists. Also, who’s reminded of Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?
2. Israel bombed UN headquarters in Gaza. I’m sure that’s going to make their citizens safer. They also killed the Minister of the Interior of the Hamas government today. I suppose that’s good, because at least it provides lower-level Hamas members with more room for career advancement than many American workers have.
3. It’s marginally perplexing to me that Natalie Dylan’s breasts look enormous in one picture, and teensy in another. Also, I think it’s a double-testament to our country’s ridiculous and sickening attitude toward sex, that A) having sex with a virgin is so appealing that people offer millions of dollars for her, and B) someone so (purportedly) sexually inexperienced is interested in selling her body in such a way. I mean, she’s the same age as me, and it’s clearly lucrative for her, but seriously; it just smells rather self-exploitative to me.
4. Eric Holder believes that “waterboarding is torture“. Um…duh? The fact that this is so obvious reminds me how disgusting our country is for letting people get away with crimes against humanity.
5. Does Sarah Palin remind anyone else of Cruella de Vil?

That is all.

Ricardo Montalban died this morning. He was 88. Most people knew him from Fantasy Island or The Wrath of Khan, and I never saw the former and enjoyed the latter, but I really knew him for Leslie Nielsen’s The Naked Gun, which I watched over and over again when I was in high school (”I think anyone…can be anassasseen”). Fantastic slapstic and mildly absurdist humor. And OJ Simpson’s in it to boot. Good stuff.

Anyway he’s dead. There’s an obit in the New York Times today for him. One line bothers me, though; a quote from his friend and publicist David Brokaw:

the actor was ”exactly how you’d imagine him to be” off camera. ”What you saw on the screen and on television and on talk shows, this very courtly, modest, dignified individual, that’s exactly who he was,”

I think that sorta sucks. I mean, yay for being courtly and modest and dignified, all fantastic qualities, but really? He was exactly who you’d imagine him to be? I much prefer regular surprises when I’m finding out who a person is, rather than for them to be exactly how I’d expect. Much more interesting that way.

Anyway, it’s sad when people die, moreso when you have some emotional connection to them or their works. I accept death’s inevitability more than most people, and I had some mild emotional connection to some of Montalban’s work. Hope his kith and kin are managing as well as they can.

I’m surprised that I got to this front page article in the New York Times before either Grist or Climate Progress (I don’t subscribe to info-overload Treehugger anymore). Titled “Gulf Oil States Seeking a Lead in Clean Energy”, there are a few points that need to be touched on:

1. There’s certainly some greenwashing going on here. These nations contribute overwhelmingly to the production of one of the most ubiquitous greenhouse gases. They’d need some pretty big clown shoes to make the huge carbon footprints they’re responsible for. Green investment is stupendous, but that fact can’t be overlooked.
2. However, their enormous investments are completely out of America and Europe’s league. $25 million to one research team? This leaves us Westerners in the dust. The joke will be on us. “Energy independence”? Ha! At this rate, we’ll finally make the transition to clean energy in a couple decades, only to find that all the supplier companies are Saudi.
3. Not wanting to stray to far from the traditional media pack, author Elisabeth Rosenthal makes one statement that I quibble a little bit with:
   

   For the rest of the world, the enormous cash infusion may provide the important boost experts say is needed to get dozens of emerging technologies — like carbon capture, microsolar and low-carbon aluminum — over the development hump to make them cost-effective.

   Yes, having coal plants not emit CO2 would be good. However, carbon capture is just not in the same league of clean tech as Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), more efficient, cheaper, and more sustainable photovoltaic cells, and other really clean technologies.

Anyway, I hope Romm and Roberts pick up on this soon. I’d love to read their commentary.

Devilstower on Daily Kos has a phenomenal (I mean truly amazing) article up today about fly ash in coal, you know, the stuff that spilled in Tennessee recently. Seems like the stuff’s really toxic, and it’s managed about as well as that big scary essay is managed by an over-procrastinating high school student. We’ll just put this over here and deal with it later.

But really, you should go read Devilstower’s article. It’s fantastic. And if you’re interested in learning more about our cheap-as-in-poor-quality energy supply, take a look at Big Coal, by Jeff Goodell, which looks deeply and objectively into every aspect of the coal lifecycle, from mine to train to plant to outlet. Wonderful book.