Challenging conventional wisdom in Kansas and Louisiana

Hello friends of the urban wilderness. I've been silent for a couple weeks, away from my computer - in Nicaragua. I recommend taking a computer-free vacation now and then. It's very relaxing.

I haven't had time to write anything new, but I'm catching up on two weeks of old news. Apparently Nicaragua isn't the only hot place in our hemisphere! Check out this story from the NY Times on doing without air conditioning, even in the heat: No Air-Conditioning, and Happy.

The only air conditioning I felt for the last two weeks was in the vehicles that I rode in - and not all of them! So, I can relate very well to that story. I can't help recalling my youth, when we had no air conditioning. Somehow we survived. Of course, fewer people lived year round in Florida or Arizona back then for that very reason.

The other story that caught my attention is about challenging conventional wisdom regarding events in the gulf, which don't seem to have changed much in the weeks since I left. This one is also from the NY Times: Daring to Pose a Challenge to the Oil Culture. This is a topic I reflected on myself in an earlier post.

Coal & Dirty Jobs win, clean jobs & environment lose

Predictably, the politicians caved in to Bucyrus in the face of the prospect of lost jobs. Read my previous post on this by clicking here. Today’s story in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is all about the great effort made by the Bucyrus CEO, Tim Sullivan, in his successful effort to save his company from the loss of a contract to build coal mining equipment for India. Sadly, there is no attempt by the newspaper to question the larger issues of coal production and use that are at stake here, nor any suggestion that dirty jobs in the coal industry can be (let alone should be) replaced with clean jobs in renewable energy.

For a very thorough and eye-opening analysis of this critically important issue, however, it is worth revisiting an excellent story that was published in Milwaukee Magazine last fall: King Coal.