Franke James posted one of her great art blogs about giving up her SUV back in February. Now she wants to remove her interlock driveway which takes up the entire front of her urban home in North York which is a part of the greater Toronto area. No car, why have a paved yard? It turns out that she is required to have a driveway so she wants to use pavers that have gaps you can grow grass in, offering a greener alternative and helping the paved-over city’s water retention issues. In spite of having a self-proclaimed ‘green’ mayor, the city of North York says no.
Somehow I’m guessing Franke will have her way eventually.
We just had a new asphalt drive put in. I like the idea of the green pavers but our drive is steep and hard to get up in the winter so I don’t think they would work for us. Of course we have a half acre of gardens so its a totally different situation.

Go Franke!

Ordinarily I do not plug the media, especially thick glossy magazines, however the current issue of Vanity Fair is a must read for anyone interested in climate change and global warming. Last year they decided to do a major focus on green issues on an annual basis. What they’ve done is create a current report on the state of the world:
- The politics of denial (really frightening)
- The business of water (people in China are paying up to 25% of their income for water)
- Vehicle technology
- The tipping point for the end of the rainforests
And many more very in-depth articles. Despite a stupid photo series dedicated to green ‘celebrities’, the issue is a tour de force look at the green movement and our very real enemies.
I am off to St.John in the US VI and plan to spend some time reading through the mag (along with the new Einstein bio and my boss’s account of his Everest expedition) so blogging will be light for a week or so. No Internet connection and I’m not taking my laptop…bliss.

These guys showed up in an Adsense ad on this blog. I love these kooky sites, especially that cheesy globe with the hands…

I recently added another category for my posts, Green Business. You can see the categories in the ‘cloud’ in the right hand column. These clouds are a new way of displaying information. Each category’s font size grows as more posts on that subject are added. Green Business is in teeny tiny type right now because its a new category and I have not gone back and tagged old posts with it. I suspect that if I did, it would be one of the most prominent in the cloud.
The cloud fascinates me because it shows how interrelated these subjects are- I almost never have one subject assigned to a post. The cloud also embraces some subjects that are not listed. You don’t see Iraq War as a category, nor do you see Bush Cheney, even though I frequently post on these subjects. That’s because I feel that Energy is a unifying issue in these subjects: We fight in Iraq because of a terrible fear in the executive branch that if we don’t get an oil-rich country for ourselves, we’re screwed. The fact that Bush Cheney both come out of the fossil fuel cloud isn’t lost on anyone at this point.

Walter Reed and War Spin
Perhaps the best example of how things have changed politically since the election is the scandal over treatment of wounded soldiers (they’re not veterans until they are discharged from the military). Every time a Democrat votes to defund the war the right sends the message that they are hurting our troops. Yet the reality uncovered in the Walter Reed scandal is that the neo-conservatives don’t give a damn about the troops- all they care about is pursuing their oil wars. They have made a decision that it is worth paying a price in human suffering to get a foothold in oil country.
Is this too cynical and harsh? Read the stories of how impossible it is to live as a wounded soldier. Now look at the wealth accumulated by the Rumsfelds and Cheneys, not to mention the oil executives and Halliburtons of the world. This is all about short term gains.

Why They Block Innovative Energy Technology and Efficiency Standards
This is simple. The wealth the oil policies generate is so great that the beneficiaries are establishing a ruling class of legacy wealth that will outlive any disasters, wars, climate calamities, etc. Bush is already an example of such a royal clan as are Cheney and Rumsfeld. Their descendants will never have to deal with anything but the best.
If we enforce efficiencies and develop clean, cheap alternative energy sources this destruction of the middle class will fail. Cheap energy is a great democratizing force no matter where you live in the world. Blocking cheap energy and raising prices short term through wars is a way of destroying the middle class and building a world aristocracy.

Don’t get the wrong idea- I’m not a socialist, I’m a capitalist who believes in free markets and a global economy. Free markets cannot exist when a small power group are politically manipulating things to benefit their own agenda. The Democrats need to hit them hard on these points- it’s a winning strategy.