"I am a 45-year-old who has done his fair share of air travel. Having witnessed undeniable climate change (due, in part, to airplanes), I have sworn them off..."

"... and encourage others to do the same. My dear cousin plans to send her young son to Paris by plane to participate in a summer camp. May I encourage her not to?"

So goes a letter to the NYT social etiquette adviser. 

This is an issue so many people — people who love to think of themselves as hawkish on climate-change — desperately seek to avoid. The letter writer has gone very far into vigilance. He's not flying at all anymore, AND he wants to pressure others to adopt his form of austerity.

Recycling your turkey-frying oil in Madison, Wisconsin for the greater good of America and the world.

A City of Madison news release:

"We know that there are many people who have lots of oil left over after frying their Thanksgiving turkey," Madison recycling coordinator George Dreckmann said. "We are very excited to be able to offer them a chance to turn that old cooking oil into fuel for cars and trucks in our area."

Dreckmann — a euonym! The Oxford English Dictionary defines "dreck" — from Yiddish drek (German dreck) filth, dregs, dung — as "Rubbish, trash, worthless debris":

1922 J. Joyce Ulysses ii. 491 Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck!
1947 Horizon Feb. 90 The anonymous countryside littered with heterogeneous dreck.
1965 E. Lacy Double Trouble v. 58 Drek your dolls are!.. I wouldn't stick my customers with such junk!...

Back to the press release:

"Every year thousands of gallons of old cooking oil is tossed in the landfill or flushed down the drain. Since we began our cooking oil program we have recovered over thousands [sic] of cooking oil" Dreckmann said. "Now we can recover this resource and use it to reduce our reliance on foreign oil and cut air pollution."

Cooking oil must be brought to the 1501 W. Badger Rd. or 4602 Sycamore Av....

So hundreds/thousands of citizens with their gallon jugs of used oil will get in their cars and drive to the oil collection site and then various unseen processes will be applied to convert that stuff into something useful. Is there a net benefit to the environment and to the American economy? I don't know, but think how wonderful it is that the nice people of Madison can feel good about themselves (after they went ahead and deep-fried the turkey instead of just roasting it).

Oh, Althouse, why are you so cynical?!  I'm sorry. Let me paint a different picture. The turkey-frying Madisonian hangs gallon jugs of used oil on his handlebars and bikes down South Park Street to Badger Road.

"Wind farms have been 'peppered' across Britain without enough consideration for the countryside and people’s homes..."

"... a senior Conservative energy minister admitted last night as he warned 'enough is enough.'"

John Hayes said that we can “no longer have wind turbines imposed on communities” and added that it “seems extraordinary” they have allowed to spread so much throughout the country.

The energy minister said he had ordered a new analysis of the case for onshore wind power which would form the basis of future government policy, rather than “a bourgeois Left article of faith based on some academic perspective.”...

“We can no longer have wind turbines imposed on communities. I can’t single-handedly build a new Jerusalem but I can protect our green and pleasant land.”

That last sentence is a reference to the poem by William Blake.

The poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that a young Jesus, accompanied by his uncle Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, travelled to what is now England and visited Glastonbury during Jesus' lost years. The legend is linked to an idea in the Book of Revelation.... describing a Second Coming, wherein Jesus establishes a new Jerusalem. The Christian Church in general, and the English Church in particular, used Jerusalem as a metaphor for Heaven, a place of universal love and peace.

Are there wind turbines in Heaven?

"Less than a month after reopening, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is full of algae, a sea of green overshadowing the nearly two-year, $34 million renovation of the famous site."

"This is a direct consequence of the fact that this is a green project,” said spokeswoman Carol Johnson. “The conditions are pretty good for algae, once it gets in there.”

Visitors to the pool described it as similar to “split pea soup,” “muddy,” like the “surface of the moon” and “icky-looking.”

“It doesn’t look like a $34 million circulation job,” Jim Carroll, 85, of Wisconsin said as he looked out over the pool....

“It doesn’t reflect well on the city at all,” Carolyn Rossinsky, 49, of Miami said as she sat near the pool.

“It looks like green fluff,” she added.

You wanted green... and you got it.

"When people think about environmental sustainability, they immediately focus on population."

"Actually, when it comes down to it — it's not how many mouths there are to feed, it's how much flesh there is on the planet."

It's sort of creepy to think of the planet as giant, collected mass of flesh, but... [t]he more you weigh, the more calories you need to move around and the more resources you use up in general. So, in that respect, the fatter you are, the more you tax the planet....

I've been on this topic for years, actually. Read my classic post: "If you really believed in global warming, you would turn off your air conditioning," which has a list of things people would do if they were serious about the environmentalism they preach. #1 is "Your weight should be at the low end of normal, indicating that you are not overconsuming the products of agriculture."

Is a mobile fresh-fruits-and-veggies vendor in a city's so-called "food desert" a good idea?

Madison is full of grocery stores, but it has a neighborhood that that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has labeled a "food desert," because there's no grocery store within walking distance. There was one, but it closed, for whatever reason. I'd imagine most people drove to that one anyway, but now the people in the area have to drive (or bike?) to do their grocery shopping. So now the owner of a campus area grocery story comes up with the idea of "a grocery store on wheels called the Freshmobile."

Something like this...



... but with a jaunty instrumental version of this. And you can just picture the desert dwellers running after it waving dollar bills, can't you?

Ald. Brian Solomon, 10th District, represents the Allied Drive neighborhood [says] “I know a lot of people in Allied that want to eat healthy food, they just don’t have access to it"...

According to Mayor Paul Soglin, the city’s vending ordinances are “not designed to encourage this kind of activity.”

But they're changing the ordinances. And the Freshmobile guy (Jeff Mauer) has "raised most of the $125,000 needed to buy the trailer, truck and equipment thanks to grants from local foundations and donations." So Mauer has all this free publicity for his downtown grocery store, people are changing laws for him, and giving him thousands of dollars to tool around town in a mobile billboard for his business... which will presumably make it all the more unfeasible for a real grocery store to want to open in the area where the old one closed.

[Mauer] said the nonprofit Freshmobile Initiative can provide low overhead costs that would help keep food prices low.

You have to know how to work the "green" liberal minds of Madison, Wisconsin. Throw enough buzzwords at them — nonprofit, under-served, affordable, access — and no one will think about your carbon footprint.

"It’s totally maddening... They’re just doing it to make all the green people happy."

Whole Foods will no longer sell "red rated fish."

"I try never to buy organic food because plowing the earth releases tons of greenhouse gases.

"In fact, I never buy anything at all. I stay at home and burn as few calories as possible so I won't have to eat more than a few acorns per day and on holidays, a squirrel or rabbit I catch in the yard and eat raw. I never turn on my furnace or air conditioner. No lights. No TV. For music, I hum quietly to myself. It cheers me up and, hopefully, it doesn't cause noise pollution. I stay away from programs such as Green Madison because I don't want to be lulled into believing I'm a good person when I know I'm not."

What are you doing about anthropogenic global warming?

"Greener than green, I'm saving the planet/Just like my friends Daryl, Sean, Toby and Janet."

"No greenhouse gas, a tiny carbon footprint up your ass/I'm on a motherfucking bike/Sharing my aggression is what that I do/Every day I'm riding the 'Tour de Fuck You'/Banging on hoods and kicking in fenders/a right-of-way-aholic on a permanent bender..."



Yes, that is exactly what it is like out there!

ADDED: Move!

What is the carbon footprint of the 340-ton rock transported on a 196-wheel vehicle on an 11-day journey to an art museum in L.A.?

And why doesn't The New York Times, celebrating the project on its website front page, question the environmentalism of this project?

It's art precisely because it has no practical use. Meanwhile, driving a mid-sized car or turning on an incandescent lightbulb is an environmental sin, characteristic of our ordinary lives, for which the NYT never tires of shaming us.

***

We talked about this art work last month: here.

Here's the rock's Twitter feed: "I'm going to sleep like a rock tonight..." etc. etc.

"I fought this road tooth and nail so that you’d be forced to ride the bus."

A proposal for billboards along U.S. 12, attacking Governor Walker's likely adversary in the likely recall election here in Wisconsin.

The dark side of wind turbines.

Meade (via Mead) showed me this, knowing it's why I'm afraid to buy a tiny dream house in what looks to be an idyllic country landscape.

"The left-right coalition against corn ethanol has been growing for some time..."

... and Congress just adjourned "without extending the $6 billion annual tax subsidy for blending corn ethanol into gasoline and the steep import tariffs on the industry's foreign competitors."

What accounts for the change? I would have guessed that neither party is worried too much about what people in Iowa want right now, but the linked article cites the growing evidence showing that ethanol can't compete in the market "without mandates, subsidies, tax exemptions, and tariffs" and it's not even green — it increases net carbon emissions.

SunPower.

Worse than Solyndra?

"Milwaukee recognized for urban farms, aquaponics."

"International team recognizes Milwaukee's 'high potential' to improve access to healthy food, revitalize neighbor hoods and create jobs."

Many cities, including Milwaukee, have "food deserts," or large areas without traditional grocery stores because poverty is high, and supermarkets choose not to operate there. As a result, residents have less access to affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. Neighborhood corner stores and convenience stores typically don't offer quality fresh produce....

Hence, "high potential" for urban farms and aquaponics. I sense high potential for boondoggle-ponics. There aren't enough grocery stores, so you want people in the city to farm? You want the poor to become farm workers... subsistence farmer workers? Is that really a good use of city space and human labor? Who benefits?

By the way, inserting a space in the word "neighborhoods" — see above — creates the wrong impression.

EcoKat backlash.

What's the matter with Kansas?  (Via Instapundit.)

Kansas State University recently introduced EcoKat, a special mascot to promote environmental causes -- and the fans are not thrilled. The Kansas City Star reported that, on Twitter, the #ecokat hashtag suggests considerable dislike, and that a #fakeecokat has also emerged on Twitter. Among recent tweets: "#EcoKat makes me want to leave my porch light on 24hours and drive two blocks to the gas station for a pack of gum," "EcoKat: The worst idea since the Power Towel" and from a University of Kansas fan "MY GOD. What is #kstate thinking? And you ask why you get made fun of ... #EcoKat. Please never change."

Oh, how bad can it be? Aaaah!

Sorry, I was totally distracted by the cat head. But that's Willie the Wildcat, which is apparently the school's regular sports mascot, their Bucky Badger, if you will. EcoKat is the lady: "played by a K-State student who auditioned for the role... outfitted in a costume made of 90 percent repurposed materials." They say her outfit is "sustainable." But it is not sustainable! Because people will not stand for it.... or wait. Is this a trick? So bad it's good? So bad it gets people to tweet and blog about how bad it is? Kind of like the Burger King king? But the Burger King king is passé. He's ousted. Dethroned. Get with it Kansas! Creepily bad is not somehow cool. Not anymore.

The schoolgirls have "meltdowns" when mom packs the lunch in ziploc bags.

Because the girls "don't want to be shamed" at school.

Because enviromentalism is the religion taught in public schools, and it's the kind of religion done with shaming young people.

But also:

1. Some people wash and reuse ziploc bags. So don't presume you know that the ziploc-user is an enviro-sinner.

2. Kiddies, if you are old enough to understand environmentalism and to pressure your mother with it, you are old enough to pack your own lunch. And if you're so hot on being saintly, start helping your mother, not making her life any harder.

"You will never see a Ferrari electric because I don't believe in electric cars..."

"... because I don't think they represent an important step forward for pollution or CO2 or the environment."

"Walker proposed ending state-mandated community recycling, which was signed into law by Gov. Tommy Thompson in 1990, as well as elimination of the grants that help local governments pay for recycling."

Good! Right? If recycling is worth doing, it should be paying for itself without a state government subsidy, or, if not, let local communities decide if they want to cough up the money to do it anyway. It's time for decentralization, efficiency, realism... not fluffy-headed idealism. Saving money is the morality we need, not posing as good people by doing something if it actually makes no sense. I'm for pragmatism, not narcissism.

[George Dreckmann, Madison's recycling coordinator,] said it costs nearly $6 million to run the city's recycling programs and Madison receives about $1.1 million from a state recycling grant. He sees few other ways to replace the money other than cutting back the recycling program. One possibility, he said, might be to no longer recycle glass, which is expensive to process. 

Exactly. Do that. Why should the state waste money incentivizing something that shouldn't be done? Why should Madison folk get to stoke their feeling of self-goodness with money from non-Madison Wisconsin?

Why, oh, why did the "green" roof collapse? You'd think it would have been "sustainable."

Isn't nature sympathetic to our efforts to be good people?

A 700-by-50 foot section of a roof over a parking area buckled on Feb. 13 at a garden pond construction and supply company in St. Charles, Ill., west of Chicago. No one was injured in the collapse, which occurred on a Sunday afternoon when few people were working at the company, Aquascape Inc.

Nearly a week later, investigators were still waiting to try to determine why the roof collapsed,  said Ed Beaulieu, a company vice president...

“The collapse happened right at the beginning of the thaw,” he said, leading to speculation that ice on the roof might have prevented meltwater from draining off. “But right now no one really knows.”

If you don't know the answer to a question like that, you shouldn't be putting tons of water absorbing dirt on top of a gigantic roof.