"We Have Built America in a Way That is Fundamentally Unhealthy"

Opponents of climate action pointed to estimates that it may have slowed economic growth by 1 to 3.5% by 2050 as reason to maintain our status quo on energy, transportation & community design. But as a new PBS series details, the cost of sprawling communities that are unhealthy for either people or the planet may already be at least that high:

“We have built America in a way that is, I believe, is fundamentally unhealthy,” Dr. Richard Jackson says. “It prevents us from walking. It inhibits us from socializing. It removes trees and the things that make our air quality better. We could not have designed an environment that is more difficult for people’s well being at this point.”

He adds: “Two percent of the United States’ gross domestic product goes to the treatment of diabetes. This is a crushing economic impact.”

And that's only a fraction of the cost, from higher taxes to pay for more & wider roads, billions of dollars sent overseas to buy foreign oil for gas & home heating, and countless hours wasted in traffic that could've been spent at work or with family.

Here in the DC area, WETA will air the series in its entirety on Saturday (2/4) starting at 1pm. Learn more and find listings in your community at DesigningHealthyCommunities.org:

Episode 1: Retrofitting Suburbia (preview all episodes here) from MPC on Vimeo.

Your Digestive System is No Match for Industrial "Food" Made to Survive Armageddon

Learn more about Stefani Bardin's work at PetrifiedUnrest.net:

Will DC's TV Forecasters Acknowledge Climate's Contribution to Warm January Weather?

The DC area's forecast for Friday calls for temperatures near 60 degrees with thunderstorms. In January.

But you won't catch our television weather presenters attributing the bizarre forecast to global warming loading the dice for extreme weather! No, sir! Expect to hear lots of things like, "Wow, tropical weather in January. Uh ... weird!"

If they mentioned our changing climate, they might get angry calls from viewers who find climate reality doesn't fit in with their political views. Here in the DC area, unless your name is Bob Ryan, you're likely to figure it's better to keep quiet about the facts than risk standing up for inconvenient truths. Or maybe, like Topper Shutt, you're a climate science denier yourself.

Learn more about why some TV weathermen aren't straight with their viewers about climate science at ForecastTheFacts.org.

Want to Win in November? Support Clean Energy.

A must-read piece today from Grist's David Roberts on why clean energy is a huge political winner:

With the Wall Street Journal editorial page beating its chest, Politico making sweet, sweet love to the Solyndra non-scandal, and the Chamber of Commerce dumping money into attack ads, Democrats have gotten unduly spooked. They’ve started believing John Boehner’s trash talk, that energy is a wedge to divide unions from greens.

It’s an empty threat. The fact is, overwhelming majorities of Americans — across party, age, and regional lines — support clean, modern energy. A poll conducted by ORC International in November found that 77 percent of Americans, including 65 percent of Republicans, believe that “the U.S. needs to be a clean energy technology leader and it should invest in the research and domestic manufacturing of wind, solar, and energy efficiency technologies.” Last February, a Gallup poll offered a list of actions Congress might take. The most popular option, with an incredible 83 percent support, was “an energy bill that provides incentives for using solar and other alternative energy resources.” [...]

Clean energy isolates the Republican base from the broad mass of American opinion and, in particular, from swing-state independents. It’s a wedge issue and an electoral winner for Democrats if they can quit playing defense and go on the attack. The appropriate response to threats from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a well-administered ass kicking.

Next time you hear a Democrat waffling on support for clean energy, kick them in the shins. I am not making this up: Some focus group testing this week showed clean energy is almost as popular with swing voters as killing Osama bin Laden (although who gives killing the mastermind of 9/11 a B minus?). Plus, we all know how much voters love candidates apologizing for what they believe in.

And if you want to support great work like David's and have a few bucks burning a hole in your pocket, go donate to Grist.

Petition Protests "The Lorax" Movie's Watered-Down Message

As I've pointed out in the past, the new movie based on inspired by with the same name as the Dr. Seuss book The Lorax looks like it will downplay the book's ecological lessons. Kate Sheppard reports at the Mother Jones Blue Marble blog that some elementary school students have started a Change.org petition protesting the movie's commercialized storyline. The Green Miles is especially proud since the students are from Brookline, MA, where I went to high school. Here's the link to the petition.

Obama's 2012 State of the Union Disappoints on Conservation

Overall, it felt like a clumsy attempt to co-opt Occupy Wall Street's message with little policy substance to back it up. Only a fleeting mention of global warming despite a record year for extreme weather disasters in 2011. And as ThinkProgress Green's Brad Johnson points out, President Obama blamed Congress for climate inaction while himself proposing more oil and gas drilling.

But hey, at least he had Mitch Daniels to follow him, who combined George W. Bush's disastrous policy prescriptions with Dick Cheney's reptilian demeanor.

What did you think?

A Visual Demonstration of Why LED Lights Save You Money

Incandescent light bulbs are terribly inefficient at turning electricity into light, wasting most of the energy they use as heat. Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) waste very little energy as heat, meaning they'll rapidly pay back their higher cost & much more by saving you money on your electricity bill.

I got a demonstration of their efficiency after this weekend's snow & ice thanks to a string of LED Christmas lights still up on my fence. While incandescent Christmas lights quickly melt a cone into the snow & ice around them, I plugged in the LEDs and hours later, they were still frozen firmly in place:

Paula Deen, Keystone XL & America's Gluttonous Side

This week, we learned famed culinary fat food-pusher Paula Deen has diabetes, but only revealed it 3 years late to protect her cooking empire and is now hawking diabetes drugs winking that - for a price - maybe you don't have to do all those hard diet & exercise changes.

And then former oil company consultant Newt Gingrich blasted President Obama for rejecting Congress' efforts to force him to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline before TransCanada has even determined a safe route, even though it would kill jobs and raise gas prices.

Last night I was in Harris Teeter and spotted this combo package of DiGiorno Pepperoni Pizza/Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies and wondered ... isn't gluttony #2 on the list of deadly sins? And doesn't America claim to be three-quarters Christian? Talk about cafeteria Christianity.

But come on - there's no money to be made in hard choices. How could Paula Deen keep making money by the pudgy fistful by telling people to stop shoving cheese, salted meat, chocolate & dough into their gaping maws & go for a walk? How could Newt Gingrich keep the oil money flowing by telling people the only real way to save on gas is to drive less or pay more for an efficient vehicle?

Much easier to tell people to have a second helping of pizza & cookies and take their magic snake oil pill, and tell people it's not our conspicuous consumption but the gays that are the cause of our moral decay.