July 27, 2009
Unless you spent last week celebrating Apollo 11’s fortieth anniversary cut off from the world in your backyard model of the lunar module, you are no doubt familiar with the story of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s arrest two weeks ago, the “race in America” sturm and drang that surrounded the story last week, and the headline-grabbing role President Obama stumbled into at the end of his prime time presser.
An “American” story of race and class, the arrest and aftermath narrative now seems to have settled comfortably into a hackneyed old gender stereotype; namely, that there is no better way for three “guys” to sort things out than over a beer. We know what the chatter will be about, and Cambridge’s local reports that it will be conducted over Blue Moon if Sergeant Crowley does the choosing, which leads me to ask:
What’s on the agenda for your beer with Obama?
I’ll post my top three items below, but I’m most interested in your comments. You can tell me what you would be drinking if you like, but I’m more interested in your talking points. What are the two or three key messages you would deliver to the White House on energy and environmental policy?
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July 27, 2009
How badly do we want to make progress on climate change? According to today’s Boston Globe, the answer for some in New England is: not badly enough.
Beth Daley writes about the “hard look” that proposed biomass facilities – and biomass technology itself – are getting from area environmentalists and regulators. Add that to the “hard look” many regulators, environmental groups and local NIMBY opponents are giving wind (especially commercial-scale) and transmission lines (needed to interconnect any new renewable capacity) and you are left with: business as usual. Now that is a goal Americans, our politicians and business interests can all get behind – just look at health care reform.
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