The title of James Howard Kunstler's Sunday piece in the Washington Post is an eye-opening attention-grabber: Wake Up, America. We're Driving Toward Disaster. He starts off with a major kick to the pants:

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Everywhere I go these days, talking about the global energy predicament on the college lecture circuit or at environmental conferences, I hear an increasingly shrill cry for "solutions." This is just another symptom of the delusional thinking that now grips the nation, especially among the educated and well-intentioned.

I say this because I detect in this strident plea the desperate wish to keep our "Happy Motoring" utopia running by means other than oil and its byproducts. But the truth is that no combination of solar, wind and nuclear power, ethanol, biodiesel, tar sands and used French-fry oil will allow us to power Wal-Mart, Disney World and the interstate highway system -- or even a fraction of these things -- in the future. We have to make other arrangements.

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What's he getting at? Read the article. It's two pages -- you can get a really good idea of the concept, however, if you take a look at rba's morning blurb called Bring 'em on down the road.

Here's a hint: there's a degree of psychological greenwashing going on around here. We need to truly revamp our systems if we are to achieve true advancement, understanding and mastery of our fate, which is ultimately tied to how we live, conduct business, treat our environment and each other.

It's a cradle-to-cradle sort of thinking.

Mishima's Saturday World News is up.

This is an Open Thread.

-- originally posted 2008-02-17 05:09:16 - bumped

On January 12, 2008, I posted a piece titled Smarter Parts: Improving Efficient Energy Use and Demand? that touched upon an experimental program sponsored out of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The essence of the program was to create a home energy system that could respond to changing prices and peak demand loads by dialing back energy consumption. The system would be accessible via the internet so homeowners could make changes in absentia. An update to the story included another article indicating that in 2009, California regulators may have direct access to homeowner thermostats via radio-controlled devices in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages -- a plan cooked up by the California Energy Commission (CEC).

I opened a discussion thread for the piece in a few places, including several Delphi forums. In one thread,¹ some energy and water efficiency ideas came up. One in particular spawned the short poll that you're about to see. Please read on, and take the poll; results will be published at the end of next week and included in another piece that I will cross-post in all areas where this appears.

An article by Magnifico today included the following:

The Age reports Vital facts 'deleted' from UN report on climate change. "A major United Nations report on climate change has been watered down as a result of influence from government officials from countries opposed to taking radical action, conservation group WWF claims...