GreenerPolitics

By Tom Engelhardt, tomdispatch.com

Can there be any question that, since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has been unraveling? And here’s the curious thing: Despite a lack of decent information and analysis on crucial aspects of the Iraqi catastrophe, despite the way much of the Iraq story fell off newspaper front pages and out of the TV news in the last year, despite so many reports on the “success” of the President’s surge strategy, Americans sense this perfectly well. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, 56% of Americans “say the United States should withdraw its military forces to avoid further casualties” and this has, as the Post notes, been a majority position since January 2007, the month that the surge was first announced. Imagine what might happen if the American public knew more about the actual state of affairs in Iraq — and of thinking in Washington. So, here, in an attempt to unravel the situation in ever-unraveling Iraq are twelve answers to questions which should be asked far more often in this country:

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by Clayton B. Cornell, Gas 2.0

This could be it: the Th!nk City electric car, a four-seater with 110 mile range and top speed of 65 mph, priced under $25,000, made from 95% recyclable materials, and available in the U.S. in 2009.

The Th!nk City electric car is the product of Norwegian firm Th!nk Global, an auto manufacturer backed by Silicon Valley funding who has plans to assemble the cars in Southern California. In contrast to Tesla’s limited release of 300 cars per year, the Th!nk City is designed for mass production to the tune of 30-50,000 units within a few years. Th!nk already produces about 10,000 of these cars in Europe annually.

As an interesting aside, Ford Motor Company originally developed the vehicle, but (in a move they may soon regret), sold it to Norwegian investors in 2003. Why is it so cool? Because most of us don’t drive more than 40 miles in a day, and small electric cars are optimally suited for congested city driving. The benefits are pretty obvious, but if you’re worried about getting out for the weekend with the Th!nk City, don’t. Use it for city driving and keep that gas-guzzling SUV for forays into the mountains. You’ll still come out ahead.

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by Lisa Margonelli, The Atlantic

Forty years ago, the steel mills and factories south of Chicago were known for their sooty smokestacks, plumes of steam, and throngs of workers. Clean-air laws have since gotten rid of the smoke, and labor-productivity initiatives have eliminated most of the workers. What remains is the steam, billowing up into the sky day after day, just as it did a generation ago.

The U.S. economy wastes 55 percent of the energy it consumes, and while American companies have ruthlessly wrung out other forms of inefficiency, that figure hasn’t changed much in recent decades. The amount lost by electric utilities alone could power all of Japan.

A 2005 report by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that U.S. industry could profitably recycle enough waste energy—including steam, furnace gases, heat, and pressure—to reduce the country’s fossil-fuel use (and greenhouse-gas emissions) by nearly a fifth. A 2007 study by the Mc­Kinsey Global Institute sounded largely the same note; it concluded that domestic industry could use 19 percent less energy than it does today—and make more money as a result.

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This video, I think, really lays it on the line about what the underlying theme of the democratic leadership race is all about. Still, as political satires go, this is pretty funny.

By Helen Briggs, BBC News

An important step has been taken in the quest to create a synthetic lifeform.

A US team reports in Science magazine how it built the entire DNA code of a common bacterium in the laboratory using blocks of genetic material.

The group hopes eventually to use engineered genomes to make organisms that can produce clean fuels and take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Publication of the research gives others the chance to scrutinise it. Some have ethical concerns.

It sets the stage for what we hope is going to be a new approach to engineering organisms.

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