BP is preparing a “junk shot” for the end of next week that would inject tire pieces and golf balls, followed by mud and cement, to plug the leaking well. It also is drilling a relief well that could permanently plug the leak, an effort that began May 2 and will take 90 days to complete.

via BP Trying to Insert Tube Into Leaking Gulf Oil Pipe (Update2) – Bloomberg.com.

If stuffing crap down the well is all it takes to shut it down, why the fiasco with the cap that failed last week?

This is an article I wrote for WorldChanging Canada on a Manitoba startup that aimed to convert ag waste and landfill biomass into fuel that could replace coal. The story ends with the company being shut down, but its a fascinating tale nonetheless.

A few months ago, I sat down for coffee with Winnipeg entrepreneur and business magnate Ken Bicknell. Ken had a story to tell about pellet fuel and his own pellet fuel start up, BioCube. Pellet fuel, I thought, was a fascinating topic; the only settings I had ever seen it in were of a rustic nature—yurts, backcountry cabins, and the occasional garage workshop. With Ken’s business background, I figured he and BioCube might have an interesting take on a cottage industry—and I was not disappointed.

WorldChanging.com – Can pellet fuel make coal plants green?

These gelatinous masses may not be much to look at, but the world would be a less interesting place without them, probably, so let’s hope the Australian’s don’t kill them off.

via Blobfish- world’s most miserable-looking and ugliest animal? | Metro.co.uk.

Uber Creepy Tour: Abandoned Six Flags New Orleans [69 Pics] | Design + Ideas on WU.

Manitoba’s cloying clay mud is as malevolent a force as nature has been able to come up with, as many truckers are apparently discovering with the early disintegration of Manitoba’s northern Winter Road system. At least the bugs aren’t out yet to torment the stranded truckers…

Wrong Lake is part of the province’s 2,200-kilometre winter road system to northern and remote communities.

The roads cross frozen muskeg, lakes, rivers and creeks to temporarily connect those regions with the rest of the province. The temporary ground transportation enables communities to stock up on a year's worth of supplies, such as food, fuel and construction materials.

via CBC News – Manitoba – RCMP attempt rescue in remote Manitoba.

Indeed, 90 percent of the world’s wheat has little or no protection against the Ug99 race of P. graminis. If nothing is done to slow the pathogen, famines could soon become the norm — from the Red Sea to the Mongolian steppe — as Ug99 annihilates a crop that provides a third of our calories.

via Red Menace: Stop the Ug99 Fungus Before Its Spores Bring Starvation | Magazine.

President Obama is announcing funding to break ground on the first new nuclear power plant in nearly three decades. In Lanham, Maryland Tuesday morning, Mr. Obama will announce the first loan guarantee for the construction and operation of two new nuclear reactors at a Southern Company plant in Burke, Georgia. Southern Company says approximately 3,000 onsite construction jobs and approximately 850 permanent operations jobs will be created and the facility will power 550,000 homes.

via President Obama Announces Loan for Nuclear Power Plant « Row 2, Seat 4.

“…try naming a U.S. city whose air quality is even remotely as bad as Beijing’s, or an American river as polluted as the Han: You can’t. America, the richer and more industrialized country, is also by far the cleaner one.

People who live in Third-World countries—like Mexico, where I grew up—tend to understand this, even if First-World environmentalists do not. People who live in oppressive Third World countries, like China, also understand that it isn’t just greater wealth that leads to a better environment, but greater freedom, too.” [WSJ]

So then, according to Bret Stephens, rational climate change policy would focus not on emission-capping third world nations (incensing their people and slowing their development) – but in fact on the opposite: trying to push those countries along the development industrialization curve as fast as possible.

I agree with the spirit of his point, but would argue that there is a middle ground to be found. While America may be clean and green today (tip: its not), the past century has seen its share of environmental atrocities, premature deaths from air pollution, etc. Many of those disasters – personal and environmental – could have been avoided without appreciably slowing the pace of development had the people of the time had access the technologies and knowledge that exists today.

It strikes me then that climate change policy should focus on building a green incentive framework that speeds development in the right directions – not a ham-fisted cap system that pitches east against west in the minds of the poor, and not the free-for-all regulatory vacuum that America has spent the last 50 years patching itself up from.

I’m thoroughly against the nanny state. But – I’m aslo for effective, lightweight policy making to achieve meaningful social goals that the market might otherwise disregard.

The bottom line is that the to-the-consumer cost of bottled water will never adequately reflect the externalities that stem from its production, transportation, and disposal of waste – thus an opportunity for policy. Similar situation with catalytic converters on cars, or low flow shower heads.

I know that policy-making that restricts choice doesn’t comfortably fit into small-c conservative ideology, but as I’ve noted elsewhere, I’d argue that were at the juncture where “conservatism” needs to replace small government with smart government that serves conservative goals better in the longer term.

That is to say, I see something like banning bottled water as inherently conservative because it uses a simple policy tweak today to offset a future policy nightmare (environmental degradation).

[RodEdwards.ca]