Blue Olives

The following essay is a work in progress. I invite all readers to give me criticism and direction. --------------------------------------------------------------- Recently, the ABC show, Good Morning America , ran a segment interviewing columnist and author Stephen Dubner (co-author of the book Freakonomics ) on whether recycling works. You can watch it by clicking here . While Dubner's basic argument about recycling turns on the idea of market economics (which is sensible), he also says some really weird things that drew me back into the good old early 1990s when bashing recycling was the sport of kings. In particular, Dubner says that plastic water bottle recycling doesn't make sense because it costs more to recycle water bottles (they aren't as valuable as aluminum cans) than it does to make new ones. He also says that old newspapers have such a low value that cities often simply landfill them after they go to the recycling center. He doesn't really provide us with...

A version of "Freezing Our Asses Off at the Feet of Al Gore" has been posted at GetUnderground.com . Watch out for the indie music that plays at will when you go to the site, but listen to it anyway. I've found some great stuff there. Also, if you've got a second, go check out The Formality of Occurrence for my poem on September 11th called "The New World."

The last time we went out on a date was back in 1990--before $3.00 gallons of gasoline; before the Prius; before the iPod; before the World Wide Web; before frickin' Harry Potter. We saw Darkman , and Marion was so disgusted by the opening scene where the bad guy cuts off Darkman's finger with a cigar trimmer she walked out of the packed theater (I got her to come back and there were no more problems; it was a bad movie--very dark, but that's about it). Last Friday night, sixteen years later--one boy off in Maine, one in Florida, and the youngest at his friend Charlie's for an overnight--we decided it was time to rekindle our pre-child relationship. There was only one movie to see: An Inconvenient Truth. We're so happy we went, even if it cost $19.00 to get in, the popcorn line was insanely long (we went without), and we felt lost in the Big Box suburbs of Philadelphia. The movie is fascinating, disarming, and important for everyone in this great country of ours to...

First of all, there's hope for the world. The photo to the left is me with my oldest son Sam at his high school graduation earlier this summer. I believe in the future. I believe in Sam and his generation. I hope you do too. Now, to the business at hand: Gregg Easterbrook has a well argued commentary piece in the September Atlantic Monthly , entitled, "Some Convenient Truths" (you may need to register with The Atlantic to read his piece) which asks why global warming has such a negative aura surrounding it. At one point in the piece he writes: "Yet a paralyzing negativism dominates global-warming politics. Environmentalists depict climate change as nearly unstoppable; skeptics speak of the problem as either imaginary (the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated,” in the words of Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate’s environment committee) or ruinously expensive to address." Easterbrook points out that there is ample evidence that numerous environmental me...

The April 3, 2006 issue of Time Magazine is out just as oil prices begin to rise again . It is a special report on global warming with its cover proclaiming: "Be Worried. Be Very Worried: Climate change isn't some vague future problem--it's already damaging the planet at an alarming pace. Here's how it affects you, your kids and their kids as well." For anyone not really following this issue closely, the articles in this McDonald's of periodicals offer a great, fairly simple foray into some of the main issues surrounding climate change and global warming. For those of us who think we know everything (which, in this field, is impossible), reading each of these admittedly short, sound-bite-like pieces is essential. The problem of global warming is still in the "convince-the-voter-that-it's-real" phase. Reading these Time pieces will give you a good feel for what is currently being digested by lay-people. Going further, the journalists who wrote...

The National Ad Council has teamed up with the Environmental Defense Fund to produce and air a public service campaign to educate the public about the realities of global warming and climate change. By now you should have read about this in your local paper. If you haven't, you can just Google "Ad Council Global Warming" or you can go right to the Ad Council or EDF for more information and to see the ads. I don't like the "Tick" clip, it just doesn't work--a bit heavy on the guilt-trip- through-cute-kid syndrome. But the "Train" clip is quite effective. You still get the cute kid in your face, but it says a helluva lot in 30 seconds. There are two radio pieces as well. Like "Tick," they play to a suburban sense of guilt, but the message gets across. "There's still time. Go to fightglobalwarming.com ." One very important thing to note, however, is that both radio ads refer to "greenhouse gas pollution." CO2, ...

Pay close attention to those piles of computers on your loading docks and in storage rooms at work, and in your garage, attics, and sheds at home. A number of proposals are popping up again about a national e-waste recycling policy. Maybe you'll be able to get rid of them (or the next batch) and feel confident they are being handled properly. The groundswell may in part be a result of Washington state's recent passage of legislation requiring the industry to implement a statewide electronics collection and recycling program beginning in 2009. The legislation establishes the Washington Materials Management and Financing Authority . Washington joins Massachusetts, California, Maryland, and Maine with such a mandate. State mandates are what happens when the federal government does not take the lead on solving problems of national scale. If a few more states get out in front on these issues the computer industry is going to begin to taste the fruits of their indecision and allegia...