+ 3 - 0 | § ¶the ecology of commerce

by paul hawken, 1994.  my recent reading has often quoted hawken so i though i'd finally read the source.  one nifty number off the top: every day we burn the equivalent of 27 years worth of stored solar energy.  in other words, we are consuming energy at 10,000 times the rate it is arriving on earth.

+ 2 - 3 | § ¶half empty? half full?

i've begun asking people whether they are familiar with the debate over "peak oil".  not surprisingly, most are not.

the controversy regards how an initially ridiculed, yet ultimately accurate, 1956 prediction of a 1970 peak in US oil production might be applied to world oil production.

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+ 3 - 3 | § ¶clear skies and healthy forests

Asked during the second presidential debate about his performance on the environment, George Bush pointed to his administration's "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" initiatives.

"I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land," Bush remarked.

Since first hearing about these proposals, I had eagerly waited for the moment when someone could publicly confront the president on these ghastly misnomers.  Kerry seized the opening.  Sort of.

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+ 2 - 3 | § ¶day one

once upon a time, we painted stories on the rock inside caves.  arctic peoples left inukshuk which became guides for those who came later.  are blogs the twenty first century equivalent?  some sort of digital graffitti on the walls of the internet?  i don't expect they will have quite the same staying power.

regardless, welcome to the lemony fresh and facelifted chrismonster.com.  this part is where i get to rattle on about this and that, in an unabashedly self-indulgent way, but, gosh, isn't that what having your own website is about?