Not Bad

I just finished watching the President’s State of the Union Address. I’m certainly not a Bush fan, but I have to admit that it was pretty good. I don’t think I’ve actually watched the State of the Union in the last few years, but I’ve seen several of Bush’s other speeches, and I think this was the best showing I’ve seen from him

My personal Top 10 highlights from the speech (in order of occurrence):

1. I loved how Congress members stood to applaud Bush’s proposal to cut earmarks in half by the end of the current Congressional session as if they weren’t the ones placing the earmarks on legislation in the first place. Gotta love politicians.

2. Proposal to reduce gasoline use in the United States by 20% in the next 10 years, which, he argues, will result in a cut of our total imports by ¾ of the amount that we import from the Middle East.

3. Bush has been pushing this guest worker program for the last year. I don’t really know much about immigration, but sounds like it could potentially be a good program. It very well might not be, but I think it’s an interesting enough idea to be debated in Congress.

4. His argument to stay the course in Iraq was really quite good. Not to say that he was right, but it was argued well. I’m still torn as to whether it makes more sense for US troops to stay in Iraq or to cut our losses (see entry "An Unlikely Alternative"). His admonition that if the US were to pull out now, it would result in greater turmoil in the region as other actors that are currently deterred by the presence of US forces would enter the region is pretty much the basis of my uncertainty.

5. Civilian military core to supply highly specialized civilians to support military operations when necessary sounds like a good idea to me, assuming it’s completely voluntary, which I assume it would be.

6. Yet another mention of Darfur, but as far as I can see, nothing significant has been done by the administration on this issue in the last 6-12 months, especially since Zoellick left the State Department for Goldman Sachs last summer.

7. I’d be interested to see whether his request for $15 billion to fight malaria in Africa gains any traction. It’s a much needed and long overdue initiative, but it’s also the kind of program that often gets announced in high-profile situations and then is never mentioned again. And that’s not a critique that’s unique to President Bush. It’s a statement that I think applies to politicians in general.

8. Dikembe Mutombo and a shot out to Georgetown: I love it! But the best part was the juxtaposition of him and the little Asian woman seated next to him in the balcony. He was literally twice her size!

9. Wesley Autrey: Milk it for all it’s worth! It was like the guy just won the Heisman or something.

10. What was with the lady molesting the President as he was leaving the House chambers? Did anybody catch that? She had her hand chillin’ on his shoulder or caressing his back for I know a good 5 minutes… on national television. That is definitely not ok!

10: Part Deux. Watching Bush work the crowd as he was leaving the chambers was very impressive. He’s good. Maybe almost as good as Clinton.

The Rebirth of the Electric Car??

Last year's documentary by Chris Paine entitled Who Killed the Electric Car? told the story of the ill-fated EV1, the fully electric car introduced by GM in California in the mid-90s. Although I definitely recommend checking out the film, you don't need to actually watch it know that the EV1 is no longer around. The film explores various causes for the automobile's demise, but, unsurprisingly, big auto and politics were the chief culprits.

However, in a move that I believe caught many people by surprise, GM unveiled at the recent Detroit Auto Show the Chevy Volt , an electric-gasoline hybrid that could be available as early as 2010. Of course, the Prius has been around since 2000, so what makes this hybrid any different? Well, unlike the Prius or other hybrids currently on the market, the Chevy Volt could potentially run forever without using a single drop of gasoline. After charging the battery at home for 6 hours, the Volt can go 40 miles on battery power alone. GM asserts that the majority of Americans live within 20 miles of work, so if that's the case, a normal weekday commute could be done completely using battery-powered electricity. When in fact a person needs to drive more than 40 miles without re-charging the battery, a three-cylinder engine kicks in to burn fuel to recharge the battery, potentially boosting fuel economy to 150 miles per gallon! Furthermore, the engine is equipped to burn E85, which is 85/15 ethanol/gasoline mix. The use of E85, they claim, would mean that the car could go over 525 miles per gallon of petroleum. While there are still some concerns surrounding the efficiency of ethanol production in the US, I imagine that if the ethanol technology in the US isn't able to meet demand at an acceptable price, we could potentially import ethanol from more efficient (and friendlier) nations, such as Brazil, until we could rely solely on domestic production.

Given the decades of neglect and self-interest in terms of environmental sustainability, I hope that 2007 will see a growing trend towards greener business, the likes of which we first began seeing on a significant scale in 2006.

Oceanic Carbon Sequestration

Current Temperature in New York City: 59 degrees
Expected High Tomorrow: 66 degrees

While I am definitely enjoying the very mild winter here in New York this year, I can't shake this sinking feeling that 5 or 10 years from now science and society will look back at this winter as a major point in the progression of global warming. Columbia University economist and director of the Earth Institute Jeffrey Sachs argues that the global ecosystem acts as a "step function". In much the same way that a bathtub can continue to accept water without any ill effects until suddenly the water reaches the top and begins to overflow onto the floor below, the earth's ecosystem can accept continuous environmental stress until one day it reaches its limit and begins to rapidly deteriorate. I worry that this winter of near record-breaking warm temperatures here in the northeast is signaling that the bathtub has begun to overflow.

Fortunately, however, there are some very intelligent people out there working on some very new ways of turning back the clock on global warming. One interesting path of research is carbon sequestration -- pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and burying it deep underground. While scientists are still working on ways to actually make that a reality, one economist/inventor, Philip Kithil, thinks he has a way to sequester carbon in our oceans to the ocean floor. As reported in the Guardian , there is a "barrel-shaped type of plankton called salps, which feed on algae and excrete dense pellets of carbon that sink to the ocean floor." By using a system of plastic tubes installed throughout the ocean, Kithil argues that colder, nutrient-rich water can be pulled from the deep ocean and brought closer to the surface to promote a suitable environment for algae. With the abundance of algae, the salp plankton will begin to flourish and through their biological processes, naturally sequestering carbon from the surface down to the ocean floor. Furthermore, Kithil believes that once the systems of tubes are in place, their output could be accelerated in order to further cool the surface water ahead of incoming hurricanes, which strengthen as they move along warm water.

The downside, of course, is that all of this is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but I figure if the US alone can spend over $300 billion on losing a war in Iraq, I think that the global community can scrape together enough money to make innovations like this a reality.

Let's face it: if we mess up this planet, we don't really have anywhere else to go.