Schaller offered the example of Gaviotas, a model city east of the Andes mountains in Colombia in what was once a desert. The first act of the pioneering community was to plant pine trees to change the climate. After moisture was restored, seeds from at least 40 plant species dormant for thousands of years began to sprout, reproducing the ancient forest and attracting populations of deer and other animals. In the altered climate and with the help of greenhouses erected everywhere - including the interior of the new hospital powered with methane and wind mills - Gaviotans began producing and sharing their own food.

"I wish that ethanol and biodiesel would save us," Pimentel said at a conference entitled "Peak Oil and the Environment" held in Washington, D. C. recently. Unfortunately, green plants collect relatively little solar energy, he explained. Less that 0.1 percent of the sunlight that falls on plants gets converted into usable energy. That compares with about a 20 percent conversion of sunlight to energy by photovoltaic cells... ...According to Pimentel's work it takes 25,000 kilocalories of energy to produce one gallon of corn ethanol which contains 19,400 kilocalories of energy. That's a loss of more than 22 percent (dividing the loss of 5,600 kilocalories by the 25,000 kilocalories of inputs). Other studies which claim to show an energy gain for ethanol leave out many inputs such as the energy used to create farm and processing machinery, the energy used to irrigate and the costs of the environmental impacts, he said.

Finally we have the big question. As America is going through 500 million gallons of motor fuel per day, how much of this can safely be replaced by sharing our food with our fuel tanks? A few days after the Post story, the answer came with a thundering crash when Canada 's National Union of Farmers issued a report on the world grain situation. The first sentence says it all: "The world is now eating more food than farmers grow, pushing global grain stocks to their lowest level in 30 years". If the first sentence didn't get your attention, the second one says: "Rising population, water shortages, climate change, and growing costs of fossil fuel-based fertilizers point to a calamitous shortfall in the world's supplies in the near future."

The US, the world's largest exporter of corn, will use as much or more of the grain for conversion to ethanol in 2007 than it will sell abroad, according to estimates by the Department of Agriculture (USDA). As gasoline prices rise, farmers are diverting more of their output to producing fuel rather than food or feedstock for animals. The new estimate highlights the growing competition between food and fuel that could push up the price of food globally. The USDA says that about 55m tonnes of corn will be converted into ethanol, compared with exports averaging 40m-50m tonnes over the past 15 years. This would be up from an estimated 41m tonnes last year - a quantity of corn that could feed 131m people for a year. The US accounts for 70 per cent of world corn exports.

There was a Flood outside the Paul Street shop today So I rang the Corporation [the local city hall]... Me: "There is a problem on Paul Street Blah Blah Blah" She listens attentively then comes out with "Well Sir, It's due to stop raining soon".......

But the real culprits won't be punished. There are two damn many of them. It's not just Bush and Cheney and the rest of the madmen who conjured up this war, it's the Democratic hawks that enabled them. It's Kerry and Lieberman and all the rest and, yes, even Jack Murtha. And it's the cowardly scumbags who spun their glorious war narrative and convinced a whole bunch of ordinary citizens to jump on board. It's the Tom Friedmans and the Peter Beinarts -- and even some on this very site -- who only realized this war was a mistake when it proved to be as disastrous as every other "war of choice." We told them that war is bloody hell and they called us "pacifists" and "appeasers." Well there's your fucking war. It's not a video game and it's not glowing green explosions on CNN; it's "a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead." And there's a lot more mothers and young children waiting for you maniacs in Iran.

If the market were to succeed -- or if Iran simply demanded payment for its oil in euros -- commodities experts said it could lead central bankers around the world to convert some dollar reserves into euros, possibly causing a decline in the dollar's value. Oil is currently denominated in dollars around the globe, whether through direct sales between producers and consumers or in trades made on markets in New York and London, but Chavez said that he would be willing to seek an alternative. "So what the president of Iran says is recognizing the power of Europe. They have succeeded in integrating and have a single currency competing with the dollar, and Venezuela might also consider that," said Chavez, president of the world's fifth largest oil exporter.

''Two tigers cannot share one forest.'' Chinese proverb.

"Go Fuck Yourself." Dick Cheney.

"My first love is the SUV," she says, undeterred as the pump hits $63 filling her V-8-powered Lincoln Aviator midsize SUV in Arlington, Va. "It's just easy with kids. You can throw everything in there," says the human resources manager. Mitchell, 44, drives about 60 miles a day from her home to her two kids' school, then to work and back. In addition to the convenience, she's also reluctant to give up the SUV's "power and the height." Power is also the issue for Howard Sucher, 36, an advertising executive living in Parkland, Fla. He traded his Chrysler 300C, powered by a 340-horsepower Hemi V-8, a few weeks ago for a $63,000 Cadillac Escalade SUV with a 403-hp V-8, "just because I'm used to something that has strong horsepower." It gets 13 to 16 miles per gallon, which he says is fine. He loves the truck and is considering getting one for his wife to replace her Chevrolet Suburban SUV.

Only 46 percent knew that Sudan is an African country, while 20 percent considered it Asian, 10 percent thought it European, and 5 percent placed it in South America. Two percent said that Sudan was in Australia and one percent said it was in the South Pole. This, after demonstrations organized in 15 American cities just days ago to protest the deteriorating human rights situation in Darfur, Western Sudan. American ignorance of the world around them might lead one to believe that they are instead focusing their attention on their own vast country. The study, however, showed their ignorance in this area as well. Half of those asked could not find the State of New York on a map of the United States, nor the State of Hawaii. Forty-eight percent could not find Mississippi, despite the fact that it was struck by Hurricane Katrina at the end of last year and had received extensive coverage by the domestic American press. ...Thirty percent reckoned the population of the United States to be between one and two billion people - while in fact the number does not exceed 300 million.

   

We at the eXile see the writing on the wall. And the writing says this: "Russia is going to conquer and occupy your fucking country." You poor fools have no idea what's about to hit you. If you want an idea, rent Red Dawn, then imagine it without the happy ending. This time, there won't be any jock partisans making trouble for our Russian liberators. That's because this time Russia is going to do it right. They're hiring local puppets to help them run things. And we are just the puppets to do it.

The science fiction of my friends' children will take place in the past. When some of them are old, the omnipresent electric power of this time, and all the wonders that ran on it, will seem like an unfathomable occult force that saturated the world like a spell. They will tell stories about it in the flickering firelight, and their grandchildren will blink in amazement. It's too bad they will never see a Harry Potter movie, with its utterly blase and incessant deployments of magic. These children of the future will be astonished when somebody manages to roast a parsnip.

Well, I don't think it is any secret that Hitchens has for some time had a very serious and debilitating drinking problem. He once showed up drunk to a talk I gave and heckled me. I can only imagine that he was deep in his cups when he wrote, or had some far Rightwing think tank write, his current piece of yellow journalism. I am sorry to witness the ruin of a once-fine journalistic mind. But the other reason for Hitchens's piece may be that he has become a warmonger, and it is possible that he wants a US war against Iran. More on that below.

...I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having "threatened to wipe Israel off the map." I object to this translation of what he said on two grounds. First, it gives the impression that he wants to play Hitler to Israel's Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people. But the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.

...we have found ways to be green that do not involve the least privation, and therefore don't do anything but present exciting marketing opportunities. Forget about your wind-up radio. You want be green? Stop flying and using your car. Quit buying stuff. Turn off all your lights and sit in the dark and don't eat anything. Keep it up. But you and I and David Cameron and Prince Charles are doing the opposite. We're flying more and driving more and buying more rubbish, even as we cycle and recycle more. We're pretending to try and we're making it worse, ... Why bother cutting back on oil, when we know full well that in the end we intend to use every last drop?