apple juice

No fluke: new survey finds $4 gas is the tipping point: “The survey found that if gas were to shoot to over $4 a gallon again, 40 percent of car shoppers would ‘consider purchasing a new fuel-efficient car right away.’ About the same amount, 41 percent, said that $4 gas would make them choose a ‘more efficient car the next time they were ready to buy a car.’ Even at $3.75, 29 percent of car shoppers thought buying a more efficient car ‘right away’ was the right move. Takeaway point: when gas prices go up, people will want to have greener cars. The question is what kinds of vehicles will be available then the inevitable happens. “

(Via AutoblogGreen.)

i’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We need a gas tax that establishes a price floor for a gallon of gas.

A Plea To President Obama: End Mountaintop Coal Mining by James Hansen: “Mountaintop removal, which provides a mere 7 percent of the nation’s coal, is done by clear-cutting forests, blowing the tops off of mountains, and then dumping the debris into streambeds — an undeniably catastrophic way of mining. This technique has buried more than 800 miles of Appalachian streams in mining debris and by 2012 will have serious damaged or destroyed an area larger than Delaware. Mountaintop removal also poisons water supplies and pollutes the air with coal and rock dust. Coal ash piles are so toxic and unstable that the Department of Homeland Security has declared that the location of the nation’s 44 most hazardous coal ash sites must be kept secret. They fear terrorists will find ways to spill the toxic substances. But storms and heavy rain can do the same. A recent collapse in Tennessee released 100 times more hazardous material than the Exxon-Valdez oil spill.”

(Via WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future.)

One thing you can do is call Xcel and ask to be on the 100% windsource program. Also, call or email your legislator and ask them to support policies that would end the process.

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

via In Poll, Wide Support for Government-Run Health – NYTimes.com.

BOOM!

Make it happen!

This article is essential reading if you are interested in the future of health care in this country.

Our country’s health care is by far the most expensive in the world. In Washington, the aim of health-care reform is not just to extend medical coverage to everybody but also to bring costs under control. Spending on doctors, hospitals, drugs, and the like now consumes more than one of every six dollars we earn. The financial burden has damaged the global competitiveness of American businesses and bankrupted millions of families, even those with insurance. It’s also devouring our government. “The greatest threat to America’s fiscal health is not Social Security,” President Barack Obama said in a March speech at the White House. “It’s not the investments that we’ve made to rescue our economy during this crisis. By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. It’s not even close.”

via Annals of Medicine: The Cost Conundrum: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker.

a young woman stopped by before dinner with a clipboard. we have many clipboard people in our neighborhood. she was from Take Action MN.

I listened to her pitch, and as soon as I heard “ensure a public option”, I got out the checkbook. along with cable, internet, and cell phones, health care is the market we’ve most mangled with our capitalist system. (ask me why sometime…)

anyway, just found another good article in slate magazine, The Isolationism of Health Reform if you’re interested…

Every day Washington’s leaders tell us that we live in an interdependent world with a globalized economy. A butterfly beats its wings in Guangdong province and four Wal Marts materialize in Duluth. The peso plunges and 30 Honda workers get laid off in Marysville. A coal-fired power plant belches carbon dioxide in Prague and Lohachara Island sinks into the Bay of Bengal.

But change the subject to reform of the health care system, and the community of nations abruptly vanishes. No France, no Canada, no Germany, no Japan. Let there be no mention of any industrialized democracy save that of the United States, which is proud to claim 37th place in the World Health Organization’s rankings of the world’s health systems and 15th in the Commonwealth Fund’s ranking by avoidable mortality of 19 industrialized countries (the highest rank indicates the fewest such deaths). To achieve a better score would be unpatriotic!

I love how stubbornly we refuse to take the best ideas from around the world and use them in our country.

great article about the california high-speed rail project in the new york times magazine over the weekend: Getting Up to Speed

it’s going to require a political will that is practically unheard of… I can’t even imagine all of the backyards they’re going to have to criss-cross to make it work.

Apart from the breathtaking price tag, commentators often focus on the projected velocity of the California trains, on how they will reach an astounding 220 m.p.h. in some stretches near Bakersfield and will cover the distance from L.A. to the Bay Area at an average speed approaching 175 m.p.h. As someone who never understood the zealotry of hard-core train enthusiasts, I found the project’s other selling points more compelling: center city to center city in a few hours without airport lines or onerous security checks. No bus connections. No traffic. And no counting on luck. Which is to say that high-speed trains are obviously about going fast, but when you think about it, they’re just as much about time as speed.

I’m still hoping for the Minneapolis to Chicago connection. We just flew down there, to Midway airport, and it’s just so much more of a production than it needs to be.

It’s about 400 miles, doable in 2 hours and 15 minutes at an average of 175mph (as discussed in the article). I don’t know what the recommended lead time for boarding a train is, but let’s call it 30 minutes.

By plane, it takes 1 hour and 15 minutes. Add an hour for the check-in security lead time. And now add in additional travel time. Instead of arriving in downtown chicago, you’re arriving out at midway or o’hare. Add another 30 minutes.

We’re right at the same point. Except that a train can do this for 500 passengers, while each plane is only carrying ~150 passengers.

Well, anyways. Enough of that…

we had a great weekend in chicago!