great video from sea studios about business getting ahead of government on climate change. inspiring and gives one a sense of hope in an increasingly frightening confluence of data points (glacier reversal, heat cycle, oil depletion and so on).

Canada's Toxic Sands: The Most Destructive Project on Earth

O! Canada!

why?

tar sands oil from western canada--tied with monstrous new coal plants in china for the coveted "world's most devastatingly deadly idea" trophy.

canadians are just as bad as americans when it comes to lacking forward-thinking leadership, and this cements that fact.

Time is up for coal: environmental analyst | Environment | Reuters

goodbye, coal world.

don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

maybe, just maybe, we can a) save appalachia while b) stopping some of the effects of global warming while c) promoting other energy technologies and efficiencies while d) paving the way for china and india to find alternative sources of energy.

or we can kill ourselves, pretty much.

tough choice. to paraphrase bill hicks: "anyone here work in the coal industry? (applause) great--go kill yourself. seriously. now."

An animal lover in the lion's den - Los Angeles Times

factory farming of meat. is. evil.

read this one and weep.

watch this from theo jansen, clearly an extremely brilliant man.

wow.

if these people are right, there is no other topic of import to discuss other than global warming. maybe dr. james hansen is a crank. or maybe he's just so smart we can't keep up. i suspect the latter. his suppositions and theories about where we stand re the earth's temperature and how much carbon we can continue to put out are frightening. and how we respond, or rather what paradigm of human social interaction we use in order to literally save our skins--all of them--that becomes the key question. probably the key question in all of modern human history.

it's...food for thought, though maybe not my cup of tea.

"I'm an optimist," he says. "I think that after the warming sets in and the survivors have settled in near the Arctic, they will find a way to adjust. It will be a tough life enlivened by excitement and fear."

and that is the optimistic view of our life 20 years or so from now, per James Lovelock, pre-eminent scientist in the UK.

time to buy a place north of the hudson bay, i think.