Biden Likes Railroads

24Aug08

Well, that helps explain Obama’s pick of Joe Biden for his Vice-President. MissLaura at DailyKos, and Atrios both report that Biden is a passionate supporter and user of Amtrak.
Support for the train system fits right in with Obama’s economic program. An important part of that program involves creating jobs by re-investing in the national infrastructure, [...]

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Obama and Oil Drilling

04Aug08

I think that Obama is making the right call about compromising on oil drilling in order to get renewable energy tax credits passed.
Here’s my thinking:

In order to make any serious progress on reducing oil burning, we have to develop renewable energy sources in quantities sufficient to replace the energy we get from oil.
An absolute, necessary [...]

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How to Write a Letter to the Editor

04Aug08

Nice little article full of tips from someone who often gets his letters published. My favorite quote is:
A letter is not the place to ramble on. Choose your strongest point and make that point in clear language. You can support your point with a few different bits of evidence, but don’t make multiple arguments.
Sounds like [...]

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Reactions to Pickens’ Plan

01Aug08

Right now, we get about 20% of our electricity from burning natural gas. If we started getting that electricity from renewable sources instead, then we could take the natural gas we would save and use it to run our cars (or a lot of them) and thereby reduce our use of planet-warming, atmosphere-polluting oil. This [...]

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Krugman on Oil Drilling and McCain

01Aug08

Paul Krugman gives a nice synopsis of the problems with McCain’s push for oil drilling as a solution to higher gas prices. The money quote:
… the U.S. government’s own Energy Information Administration says that removing restrictions on offshore drilling wouldn’t lead to any additional domestic oil production until 2017, and that even at its peak [...]

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