• Customers are demanding that manufacturers replace HFCS with sugar
• Scientists generally agree that HFCS is no healthier than sugar
• Sugar costs 40% more than HFCS
• Companies are tired of the complaints so they’re trying to rename HFCS as “corn syrup” to make it sound more natural

Personally, I’m inclined to agree that HFCS is no better or worse for you than sugar. Chemically, they’re basically the same. That said, the desire to use less HFCS makes a lot of sense, but for environmental reasons, not health ones.

The existence of HFCS is the result of America over-producing and over-subsidizing corn, and thus looking for new, innovative ways to package and sell it. The fact that sugar costs more should be considered a feature, not a bug. It should cost more, because then we’ll consume less of it and we’ll all be healthier.

So, while I’m not sure the anti-HFCS crowd has dietary science on their side, I think their overall goals are absolutely correct. The environmental costs of using so much corn are quite high. Long before oil started spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, the area has been an ecological dead zone, due to the runoff from nitrogen-based fertilizers in the Midwest and Great Plains that are used to grow, well… more corn.

All of this is ignored in the article. And while I understand you have to limit the scope of your inquiry in any given article, to not even discuss the environmental history of HFCS seems like a big miss.

Still, I figured that the plan was to make sure than any expanded drilling came with enough bureaucratic costs that it would surely get so bogged down in process that no oil company in its right mind would ever even conceive of a serious attempt to drill for the pathetic amount of oil actually available. And so I supported the President’s announcement – very savvy, especially following the passage of the health care legislation.

And now we have an epic disaster on our hands. The benighted Gulf coast, still recovering from Katrina, now faces an ecological disaster that will capture imaginations for a generation, the Cuyahoga fire or Valdez wreck for the Twitter set. Will it change minds? Can Palin ever again utter her drilling mantra without irony, shame, or – at least – qualification? I doubt it, or at least I hope not.

The bigger question to me now is, how does this change the debate around energy policy? If Rahm Emanuel were Karl Rove, I’d almost say he’d blown up the oil rig himself, given the timing. I’m looking forward to the debate between the Red State fisherman and shrimpers along with the Red State property developers and the Red State governors and legislators versus the Red State oil interests. Talk about a wedge issue!

I’d say it would be fun to watch, but it’s a shame that it takes a tangible disaster like this for people to reconsider misguided opinion.

Be that as it may, the political argument seems to have legs. And the last thing we need is for a bunch of hypocritical Republicans using this issue as a way to express faux solidarity with the working man (remember “Drill, baby, drill!”?). So the issue is how do you increase the costs of carbon without it looking regressive.

Needless to say, Barack Obama has an answer:

Mr. Obama will also propose in the budget outline he releases on Thursday to use revenues from the centerpiece of his environmental policy — a plan under which companies will have to purchase permits to exceed pollution emission caps — to pay for an extension of a two-year tax credit that benefits low and middle-income people.
The combined effect of the two proposals, on top of Mr. Obama’s existing plan to roll back the Bush-era income tax reductions on upper-income households, would be a pronounced move to redistribute wealth and reimpose a substantially larger share of the tax burden on the most affluent taxpayers.

Well played, sir.

Al-Zawahri spoke on a wide range of topics in Tuesday’s message. . . .

. . .

Al-Zawahri even addressed global warming, saying it showed “how criminal, brutal and greedy the Western Crusader world is, with America at the top.”

He predicted global warming would “would make the world more sympathetic to and understanding of the Muslims’ jihad (holy war) against the aggressor America.”

Richard Dyer, Friends of the Earth’s transport campaigner said: “Flying virtually empty planes is an obscene waste of fuel. Through no fault of their own , each passenger’s carbon footprint for this flight is about 45 times what it would have been if the plane had been full.

“Governments must stop granting the aviation industry the unfair privileges that allow this to happen by taxing aviation fuel and including emissions from aviation in international agreements to tackle climate change.”

It just goes to show how policies — or even the hint of policies — can shape our energy future. It’s not hopeless.

Yesterday, the bill got the yay vote out of committee and the green light from leadership to get it into Rules (the last stop before it goes to the floor.) That sounds like good news, but I say keep your eye on this one. There is heavy opposition from business.

I think part of the reason it was nudged out of committee (some sly Dem opponents on the committee reportedly gave it the thumbs up) is because it’s easier to mug things in the crowded Rules Committee where bills die all the time without the spotlight of contentious policy committee votes.

Downside? Well, it will make it that much harder to find out how much blow you all used last weekend (so maybe that’s an upside, actually?).

In Oakland, Fruitvale Village demonstrates how infill development, where new land uses are created on sites previously used for another purpose such as manufacturing, can encourage economic revitalization and the use of mass transit. Built on former Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) parking lots next to the Fruitvale BART station, the transit village combines dozens of mixed-income homes, shops and restaurants, office space and community services such as a library, clinic and senior center. The resulting neighborhood allows residents to walk or use public transit for their regular recreation-, work- or school-related commutes. Ultimately, that creates less reliance on automobiles and reduces greenhouse-gas emissions.

It seems logical, but the bureaucratic impediiments are incredibly strong. There’s also a huge asymmetry invloved: the effects of climate change are felt globally, but land use is usually done hyper-locally. I’m not sure how you get these to line up. Federal incentives for communities that adopt smart growth plans, maybe? More federal funding for infill and transit?

There’s no easy pill we can swallow to fix global warming. It’s little bureaucratic changes like this, which will have big impacts in how we live, that will make the difference.

The High Efficiency stores use technology tested and developed in two experimental green stores Wal-Mart opened in 2005 in McKinney, Texas, and Aurora, Colorado, including a white roof that deflects the sun’s heat.

The latest generation takes the energy savings built into the HE.1 last year and adds new conservation measures focused on the refrigeration system and water heating and cooling, Wal-Mart said in a release.

Earlier innovations in the first-generation store included heating and cooling systems that recycle heat from refrigerators and freezer cases, higher-efficiency LED lights and sensors that turn off those lights when no customers are around.

Energy costs are rising, and W-M doesn’t want to have to raise prices. So it’s not altruism (although I’ve long believed that W-M’s PR “green” strategy is a way of blunting criticism about their labor practices). But this is exactly what’s supposed to happen in any effort to halt global warming. A carbon tax or cap-and-trade system increases the cost of consuming energy, and so business adapts accordingly. Yay, capitalism!

Of course, virtually no Wal-Marts are located within walking distance of anything, so any efficiency gains have to be weighed against the fleet of Chevy Suburbans glistening in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Fortunately, we have solutions for storm runoff: Bioswales. There are a few scattered throughout Seattle as test projects. This is one problem that we can solve. Swales can cut this down by 99 percent.

From: Norwegian Nobel Committee

Re: You

_________

Dear Red America,

Eff you.

Sincerely,

Norwegian Nobel Committee

How can any sane individual with a conscience deny that some kind of human-caused climate change is well underway?  Boggles the mind.