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Friday, Nov 28th is the last day to voice your opinion on whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should regulate carbon dioxide (CO²) pollution, the primary cause of the climate crisis. This is, how they say, kind of a big deal.

In April 2007, responding to a lawsuit brought by NRDC with states and other environmental groups, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide if it harms public health and welfare. The Court ordered the EPA to decide whether the welfare of the American people was being harmed by CO² emitted by cars and powerplants or to explain why not.

After over a year of delays, the EPA is finally taking public comment before making a ruling. But the window for sending in comments is quickly closing.

Of course, special interests — like the oil and coal lobbies — are working overtime to defeat a positive ruling and have already gotten thousands of comments submitted in opposition.

You can send in your public comment via the Repower America site here. I sent my message in already and I’m looking forward to seeing it on the EPA’s website and being part of the public record.

You can read more about this issue at the following sites:

• Washington Post: EPA Seeks Comment on Emissions Rules, Then Discredits Effort
• Mother Earth News: Comment Before the EPA Rules on Carbon Dioxide
• NRDC: Tell the EPA to act now to help stop global warming
• San Francisco Gate: Go On Record with the EPA
• Houston Chronicle: Texas governor Perry concerned by plans to limit greenhouse gases

My old college roommate and groomsman Ben Williams was recently interviewed for NPR’s Science Friday’s radio program to talk about his new energy-startup, Open Sky Energy. Ben’s company specializes in solar photovoltaic and solar thermal heating and hot water installations. They work closely with customers to design and install solar projects for both homes and businesses. They even guide clients through the regulatory and tax benefits of going extra green. How cool is that.

Click to listen to Ben’s interview on NPR

For more, checkout Ben’s website, Open Sky Energy.

The one thing Ben didn’t mention in the interview was whether they offer “friends and family” discounts on solar panels. I’m going to assume they do.

The idea of a “gas tax holiday” this has been in the news a lot recently because it’s being pushed by 2 presidential candidates and rejected by another. Aside from the merits (or lack thereof) of such a concept, it seemed like political pandering to me. But usually this type of pandering works.

Which is why I was so surprised to hear that, in a recent poll by CBS and the NY Times (warning: PDF), only 45% of Americans think that suspending the gas tax this summer is a good idea, while 49% disapprove of the plan (see page 15, questions 49 and 50). Not only that, but 70% of those polled felt that the candidates had suggested the gas tax holiday only to help themselves politically and not because it will provide real relief from high prices.

It appears that Americans have actually looked at the details and thought about the issue and its consequences. Awesome!

In case you’re still on the fence about the issue, here are some of the reasons economists feel the gas tax holiday is a bad idea:

• It would only shave 18 cents off the price of a gallon of gas which is now about $4/gallon. On average that’s only a $30 savings per person for the summer
• Since refineries cannot increase their supply of gasoline in the space of a few summer months, lower prices will just boost demand and the benefits will flow to oil companies, not consumers. So essentially the price of gas will increase by almost the size of the tax cut.
• The federal Highway Trust Fund, which finances road projects nationwide, is already facing a $3.4 billion shortfall. And the federal transportation department says every $1 billion in highway spending creates 34,779 jobs, which means the a gas tax holiday could cost 300,000 construction jobs.
• To provide households in need with relief it’s more effective to offer a direct rebate instead of gas tax relief. Not all of the tax relief from a gas tax holiday will be passed on to consumers. Some will likely be kept by refiners. And what about families that don’t drive much?
• Eliminating the tax will lead to increased consumption of gasoline. It’s basic economics - reduce the price and people will use more of it. It sends the wrong signal on energy efficiency and is at odds with the need to combat climate change by encouraging lower U.S. carbon emissions.

Doesn’t sound like a good idea once you get all the details, huh?

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about The World Without Us, a book by Alan Weisman which explored a hypothetical world where all humans suddenly disappeared. It described what would happen to everything we’ve built and the environment which we’ve come close to wrecking.

Well now National Geographic has created a new TV show called Aftermath: Population Zero that will bring to life in vivid detail many of the scenarios described by the book. As the website says, “Aftermath: Population Zero investigates what would happen if every single person on Earth simply disappeared. This is the astounding story of a world we will never see.”

Here’s the trailer from the National Geographic website:

I can’t tell if the new TV series is conected with The World Without Us or not, but regardless I expect it will be incredibly interesting (especially in HD)!

Nat Geo recently aired a similar show called Six Degrees. It shows how increases in the global temperature of just a few degrees will utterly change the world we know it. Why they decided to debut it on Valentine’s Day is beyond me. Nothing’s quite as romantic as a show about global devastation, right? But hopefully they’ll re-air it soon.

(Thanks to Brian who brought this to my attention)

Have you ever wished you were the only person on Earth? Maybe while sitting in holiday rush-hour in Tyson’s Corner or when you can’t write a simple book review without a thousand different interruptions? Well, take that and imagine one fewer person. That’s the premise of The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. This book, which was on the NY Times Best Seller List for 14 weeks straight, imagines a planet suddenly devoid of human life. The author explores how the Earth would heal itself and evolve without the pressure of human presence.

Weisman explores many different aspects of a suddenly human-free world. First, he provides some fascinating background on what the world was like before humans arrived. From the time of the dinosaurs until the relatively-recent eras when our early ancestors were spreading out over the globe, he explains how the planet has adapted to the emergence of new creatures, with humans of course being the latest and greatest. The author then moves to the present and describes what would happen to everything we’ve built without anyone around. I was amazed at how quickly New York City would crumble, how forests might quickly spread out across the Great Plains, and what catastrophes might await as nature overtakes our sprawling oil and gas refineries in the South. Weisman really brings to light the power of Mother Nature, the damage we’ve wrecked on her in just a few millennium, and how much of that damage will be around for quite a while. Lastly, the book hypothesizes how our landscapes and the planet would start to self-heal after eons of human-less existence.

I would consider this book to be non-fiction science-fiction, since it is largely a book of hypotheses on what might happen. But Weisman’s hypotheses are based on a large amount of research and numerous interviews with experts across the globe. I wish there was a little more cohesiveness between chapters. Weismann tends to jump between subjects quite abruptly with little to connect the chapters together. But if you treat each chapter as series of loosely-related articles instead of chapters in a novel, you’ll be less annoyed at this lack of continuity. All in all, however, I found The World Without Us to be a fascinating read.

The website, www.worldwithoutus.com/, provides some interesting flash animations of what would happen in a world without us. The book is available on Amazon for around $15.