The South Africans have a saying that gives one a sense of what the Arizona legislature is all about. The saying is, The Baboons are in the kitchen. Out in the bush if you don’t lock the kitchen door Baboons will get in and tear the place up, strewing food around, breaking dishes, and generally tearing the place apart. If you ever have a raccoon come into your house, it’s that kind of wanton chaos.

The Arizona legislature seems to have a wellspring of stupidity from which they regularly drink, ranging from allowing concealed carry of unregistered weaponry anywhere in the state, including State Parks, University Buildings and restaurants, to unfunding education, women’s health, children’s health, and too many other idiotic ideas to mention. The most recent stupid idea was a bill to prevent the state from endorsing or implementing the United Nations Agenda 21 Principles of Sustainable development. Their reasoning was that it was anti-business and a UN communist plot to take over this country. These principles were a list of 27 non-binding principles adopted by countries of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, meant to guide policies to eradicate poverty and combat climate change, among other environmental threats.

News flash.Housing collapse, gasoline prices spur migration into cities. Duh! There are other factors like young singles delaying marriage and the greying of America whose populations may prefer being closer to walkable urban centers. The latest census shows a great many urban areas are gaining population. 

In a recent campaign speech on Meet the Press Rick Santorum stated that President Obama's policies promote the ideas of "radical environmentalists" who oppose the greater use of the nation's natural resources. This refers to the proposed new oil pipeline. Painting all environmentalists as radicals is disingenuous. Spills from this pipeline could cause irreparable damage by polluting our ground water. Santorum states that the earth is here to serve man, not the other way around.

The Senate voted down a bill which would have removed the tax subsidy on ethanol this week. You would think the Tea Baggers would have embraced this bill. Even John McCain and Jon Kyle, Arizona's two raging right wingers, voted for it. The bill referred to ending the tax credits for blenders of ethanol and gasoline. Adding ethanol to gasoline is desirable as it reduces our need for imported oil. The only problem is where most of our ethanol comes from.  Here in the United States ethanol is made from corn. Corn is a poor material from which to make fuel. Making it requires a horrendous amounts of water, our most precious resource,  and uses more fuel to make than it produces. If it weren't subsidized it would never become economically viable. Why do we do this? It was part of George W. Bush's gift in his last election to the Iowa corn farmers along with a tariff on imported ethanol from Brazil. Brazil uses a lot of ethanol as a fuel for cars.

Running on Empty was submitted to the 18th Annual Writer's Digest Self Publishing Book Awards. While it didn't win an award it did receive a good rating. The reviewer thought the cover needed improvements  but overall the book got high marks. The following is excerpted from the review. No name was given for the reviewer.

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning "poor" and 5 meaning "excellent," Running on Empty was rated 5 for structure and organization and 5 for grammar. The cover was rated 2.

Comment: This book is extremely timely, and I'm glad the author has decided to strike while the iron is hot. There's never been a bigger market for original and incisive material in the fields of energy and energy conservation. I urge the author to continue to retool and market Running on Empty to get the notice it deserves. Greene is obviously a master of the material, and I felt in capable hands all the way through. The writing is clear and punchy (though a bit technical at times for a general readership), and thanks to great organizational tools the text is easy to follow. This book has the best table of contents I've encountered among this year's entries, and that's carried through with excellent non-narrative elements including ample subheadings, accessible illustrations, and a fat glossary. Overall, a strong entry that would benefit from a little update of appearance. Best wishes!

I have been reading comments of people arguing on blog sites today. You know the type. They sign in to a blog, no matter what the subject and proceed to argue back an forth as to the meaning of something the original article writer said and what they believe to be true or not. Today the subject was sustainability and what the term meant or implied. One side said that it was a bogus term meaning absolutely nothing…

This morning I read an Op-Ed piece in the NY Times by Seth Shostak, an astronomer with the SETI Institute, those folks who look for extra- terrestrial beings in outer space. The point of his thesis was that the kind of space exploration done on Mars, namely sending robots and cameras, made more sense than sending people to outer space due to the cost and energy it would consume. His term for sending humans into deep space to explore was “a pipe dream.”

The technology, not yet developed, and the cost of fuel required, estimated at...