It's not just about the polar bears
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, people from every political persuasion have addressed the “lessons” to be learned from the horrors of the storm. While the most tragic costs were the personal ones sustained by the citizens of the New Orleans area, the tremendous blow to the Gulf Coast oil supply was felt nationwide. Yet the timing of the disaster could have further tragic repercussions next week, as Congress prepares to vote on a budget that would allow for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Proponents of drilling have used the hurricane’s economic impact as evidence that we need oil from wherever we can get it, even in one of the last truly wild places in Alaska. After all, with gasoline prices shooting past the three-dollar mark, it seems hard to argue that the U.S. should shy away from securing any additional oil.
However, one needs only to step back and look at the bigger picture to see the inherent problem with this reasoning. An economy less wedded to fossil fuels would not have taken such a hard hit when its pipelines and refineries were ravaged by the hurricane. The economic damage wrought by Katrina does not demonstrate the need for more oil sources; rather, it glaringly reveals our country’s dependence on oil and the dangerous effects thereof.
From this perspective, opening the Arctic Refuge up to drilling could not be further from the right response. The oil we could obtain from the refuge – a mere six months’ worth by National Geological Survey estimations – would not repair the havoc wreaked by Katrina. It would decimate the Porcupine caribou herd, displace hundreds of migratory birds, ruin one of the last habitats where polar bears can den, and disrupt the subsistence lifestyle of the Gwichin people. Most importantly, though, opening up the Arctic would set a precedent for allowing drilling in virtually any formerly protected area, further spoiling the landscape and increasing our country’s addiction to oil. As the devastation of the past few weeks demonstrates, this dependence is a major weakness of our economy.
Many have argued that the U.S. government should have been better prepared to adequately respond to the hurricane. While we can’t change the way Katrina was handled, we can take steps now to ensure better preparedness for future disasters. The truly appropriate response to Katrina – and the best safeguard against similar crises – is a new energy policy based not on fossil fuels, but on renewable sources that are cleaner, safer, and ultimately cheaper. Drilling in the Arctic Refuge thus represents a major step backward not only environmentally, but also economically.

I must stop neglecting this blog!
Mood:  cool
Yes, as our seemingly-three-headed dragon friend over at Fafblog did two weeks ago, I have taken a weeklong break where no break was warranted. But The Medium Gibnir has made up for it, and so shall I, albeit not as funnily.

By the way, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you clearly need to get on the Fafblog bus. Like right now, friends. With this blog linked to my facebook.com profile, I never know who's reading it these days.

Anyway. For fear of sounding too much like a LiveJournal, I'll make a few points on the real world before launching into a boring documentation of my own marginally interesting life.

1. Hurricane Katrina. I missed the boat on slamming Bush's response to the crisis. I think it was actually my dad who noted that an evacuation plan that involves getting in the car and driving yourself out of town is not an evacuation plan. Not to mention the socioeconomic and racial inequalities the disaster so harrowingly exposed. Well this Friday there will be benefit dinners and concerts and the like. We're also accepting about 25 students whose colleges have closed to study here. Good job Yale.

2. The California statelegislature passed a bill legalizing gay marriage! It's only of secondary importance that Arnold's going to terminate the bill; the landmark has been made. Yeah, that's my state! Unfortunately for the fruits, the nuts are in charge this time.

3. RIP Rehnquist. And John Roberts...eh, as long as Scalia's not chief justice, things could still get worse. I think.

4. And now from the Department of Bad Timing: The Bush budget gets voted on the week of September 20th, and if passed the Arctic Refuge will get the axe, setting a precedent for opening up pretty much any place imaginable for drilling. So four busloads of Yalies are joining students from all over in what might become the biggest environmental rally in history. Unfortunately, with headlines like "Gas Supply Falls to Lowest Point in Five Years," it might be a hard sell.

So it goes.

Like I said: middle of story. Good things coming. Like maybe in a few decades.

Right?

As the world came crashing down..
There is nothing to say about the events of this week that hasn't already been said. Surely Hurricane Katrina is one of the greatest disasters we have ever faced in this country, but what saddens me even more was the stampede in Iraq that killed narly a thousand, just because it was so preventable.

And yet in our ivory tower, no one is talking about the devastation. How can we? It's the kind of week you really can't think about without crying. We're talking about the classes we're starting, the summers we had, how great the renovations look. And so we go about our lives in hollow awareness, reading without feeling, pushing back the outside horrors as they burn up against our consciousness.

You run out of words in times like these.

FOOT Fetishing
I'm. So. Psyched. For. FOOT.

My co-leader Alexander finally arrived last night. He's going to be great! We've done a little bit of planning this morning and will go out to eat together tonight to bond before the arrival of the froshstorm.

I facebook searched all my FOOTies online. They sound really cool, seriously. I think I'm in love with them as a collective. Two are in D-port. I can't pick favorites...that's the hard part.

Our route is very nice. It's moderately hard - we summit two peaks including Bear Mountain, the highest in CT, but we hardly do any hiking the first day at all. Unfortunately, we have to hike down a steep and confusing trail in the dark on the last morning to make it to our bus pickup on time. Supposedly we have some very nice views and waterfalls.

Six day trips are arriving today. The chaos begins...praying for dry weather.

The annual I Love Yale/FOOT/New Haven entry
I love Yale!

I love FOOT!

I love New Haven!

Note to self: read this again in December. Laugh bitterly.


But seriously. I forgot how green it gets here! The weather is great; though rain is coming, it's scheduled to miss the two arrival days of the freshmen. Which I can't wait for!!!! All the preparation has been pretty fun, too. These people are just awesome, and I have my own little room in Bingham with a beautiful windowsill to sit in. I am so psyched for the trip and meeting all the frosh! I'm also dying to start classes. I looked at my textbooks in the store and want them now.

I'm so glad I'm here. So so so glad...

No! Not Peru!!!
Rumsfeld's smuggled his dirty little self into my beloved Peru, which I believed safe from all things Bushist, says the NYT.

I'm sure his face was in their newspaper, besmirching its once pure pages. Oh woe.

I still want a Prius...
Apparently, it is possible to modify these cars yourself, adding enough battery power to hit 250 mpg. That's just plain brilliant. I'd probably have to go to a gas station about four times a year.
Read more about it here.

The Must-Read Op-Ed of the Month
Forget your summer reading for English class, kids. Frank Rich's piece in today's NYT should be required reading for all Americans. I give you the last two paragraphs:

WHAT lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom we'll then throw to the wolves. Such an outcome may lead to even greater disaster, but this administration long ago squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central.

Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes." The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We're outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made us more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month.

The Curse of the Moral High Ground
The worst thing about being on the morally responsible side of the culture wars is that while you operate within certain ethical constraints, your opponents will stop at nothing to win. For all the smear campaigns the Bushocons have put on over the past ten years -- with considerable success -- there was always some satisfaction in knowing that at least the Democrats, for all their failings, never stooped to such shameless lows.

Unfortunately, sometimes the temptation to resort to enemy tactics is too strong, as the gorup NARAL Pro-Choice America found out. In a TV ad, the group tried to portray John Roberts as a supporter of violent pro-life protesters, such as those that blew up an abortion clinic in 1998. However, it was later pointed out that this "support" was a Supreme Court brief that Roberts wrote in 1991, way before the attack. The brief actually limited the federal help available to abortion clinic owners seeking to stop blockades by protesters. Not nice, certainly, but not exactly advocating violence, either. The god of humor Jon Stewart put in best: if you bought the Thriller album in 1983, you're supporting child molestation.

I'd like to see as many anti-Roberts ads out there as can be genreated , providing they're true.

My Favorite Americans, Part II
From Reuters:

A U.S. Air Force colonel has been charged with painting obscenities on parked cars bearing pro-President Bush bumper stickers, police said on Wednesday.

Lt. Col. Alexis Fecteau, who supervises 41 full-time and part-time reservists at the National Security Space Institute in Colorado Springs, Colo., is suspected of vandalizing 12 cars at Denver International Airport over a six-month period...

"Lieutenant Colonel Fecteau has been charged with one count of felony mischief and six misdemeanor counts related to the vandalism," Jackson said.
...

Police set up a bait car with a pro-Bush bumper sticker, parked it at the airport with a surveillance camera, and waited. On July 1, the camera recorded a man spray-painting over the bumper sticker with an expletive.

The full story can be read here.