Howie Chong

a granny-friend carbon-free transition (photo by roblisameehan)

Earlier this week, BP announced that it has already spent $3 billion on the Gulf Oil cleanup. Along with the $20 billion fund that the company has promised Obama, the total cost of the oil spill is building dramatically.

Most experts say that this is just the beginning. The Exxon Valdez led to a $4 billion settlement but affected a small fraction of the people that the gushing gulf spill will ultimately effect.  The price tag for this cleanup and the subsequent settlement may rise to the point where people have begun to ask whether or not BP might go bankrupt fixing this egregious environmental disaster.

Some of these people include those who administer the pension plans of millions of ageing workers. It turns out that a significant number of private and public pension funds in the US and the UK hold BP stock. It therefore begs the question: how do we decarbonize our economy if entire generations of retirees are dependent on carbon-intensive industries?

Continue reading »

Here’s an interesting series of photos of unsold vehicles just sitting around.

So why aren’t cars being sold?  Conventional thought is that the slowdown in the economy and the tightening of credit is largely to blame, and I’d have to agree that much of the crisis in the car industry has to do with economic conditions.

But here’s another thought:  perhaps the massive re-urbanization of our societies is a much greater, underlying cause.

Continue reading »