Green Options

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There has been talk recently of boycotting the 2008 Beijing Olympics for any number of valid reasons. Whether it is for the freedom of Tibet, the atrocities in Darfur, or China’s environmental policies.

However, what would be achieved by boycotting the Olympics? Is China going to step back and say, “Whoa… the United States is right. We are all messed up and need to change.” Probably not.

And who are we to tell another country that they aren’t perfect? If the Olympics were here, who would be boycotting our games?

As a child I was led to believe that the Olympics were a coming together of different cultures and nations for the sake of sport and international cooperation. And in fact that WAS part of the basis for reinventing the Olympics in the first place. As the father of modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin once said,

“May joy and good fellowship reign, and in this manner, may the Olympic torch pursue its way through ages, increasing friendly understanding among nations, for the good of a humanity always more enthusiastic, more courageous and more pure.”

Of course, I grew up and found that most of my dreams and fantasies taught to me by society were pure poppycock. But do all of our childhood misconceptions about the world have to be disproved? I mean, Santa Claus is a given, but what about the concept of peace on earth and goodwill towards man?

As I start to stockpile bourbon (it’s made from at least 50% corn) as an investment strategy, I wonder why we are doing this to ourselves.

You practically can’t read a newspaper or news magazine without someone condemning the use of corn as an alternative fuel source these days. And who wouldn’t. The ethanol boom has driven the price of corn up, which in turn makes everything that uses corn go up in price. Corn is in a lot of products.

Why are we investing so much in corn-based fuel?

I think the answer is fear. Fear of rising oil prices. Fear of global warming. Fear of our dependency on foreign oil.

Five years have gone by. The U.S. casualty toll is now 4,000. It is estimated that some 80,000 plus Iraqi civilians have lost their lives in the war.

Photo Courtesy of Luke Plunkett @ Kotaku.com

There isn’t a body count for wildlife, native plants, or eco-systems that have been killed in the struggle.

War takes a priceless toll on everything natural. Yet, nature may be the last thing that nations go to […]

Presidential election campaign 2008 is well underway. And already the grade school politics are brought to the election playground.
In recent news, both Democratic front runners, in an attempt to woo voters, called for renegotiations of NAFTA. They also threatened to pull out of the trade agreement if U.S. demands aren’t met. Clearly a case of, “do what I want because our economic and military might can beat up your economic and military might.”

The North American Free Trade Agreement, has been under scrutiny since its inception.

Thankfully we have Republican Candidate John McCain to defend this groundbreaking trade agreement.

NAFTA isn’t perfect. It was the first time a free trade agreement existed among such economically disparate countries. It was definitely a great experiment, and a lot has been learned from the results. There is no denying that there have been significant advances in a globally sustainable market that was enabled by NAFTA.

Editor’s note: Welcome to “Tangled Up in Green,” Red, Green and Blue’s weekly debate over the hot issues in environmental politics. Each week, writers Ranjit Arab and Adam Bowman will “throw down the glove” on current events involving environmental policy, legislation and citizen action. Adam and Ranjit are both graduate students in journalism at the University of Kansas, and currently enrolled in Professor Simran Sethi’s “Media and the Environment” course.

In Holcomb, Kansas, there rages a battle over energy, jobs, and economy.

The Sunflower Electric Company has a plan to build two coal-fired power plants that would produce 1400 megawatts of power. And until the Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), Roderick L. Bremby, denied the application for an air quality permit, they probably would be breaking ground right now.

People in the more populated Eastern part of Kansas, (which is pretty much all powered by coal), want to abandon the coal for sustainable wind energy. For Kansas, wind makes a lot of sense. Wind maps show that we are sitting in a very productive wind energy area. Basically any state in the Great Plains has an abundance of wind at their disposal. And the good news is, there isn’t any waste emissions or land ruining strip mining to harvest this energy.

But what about Eastern and Western States that aren’t sitting on a wind gold mine?