This Cash for Clunkers idea is very intriguing. You take old, polluting cars off the road, put money in the hands of people who will spend it, and spur demand for new cars.

GM is heading down the right road. Now they just have to deliver:

When one of the world’s mightiest corporations throws everything it’s got at a project, and when it shreds its rule book in the process, the results are likely to be impressive. Still, even for General Motors, the Volt is a reach. If it meets specifications, it will charge up overnight from any standard electrical socket. It will go 40 miles on a charge. Then a small gasoline engine will ignite. The engine’s sole job will be to drive a generator, whose sole job will be to maintain the battery’s charge—not to drive the wheels, which will never see anything but electricity. In generator mode, the car will drive hundreds of miles on a tank of gas, at about 50 miles per gallon. But about three-fourths of Americans commute less than 40 miles a day, so on most days most Volt drivers would use no gas at all.

Looks like our appetite for drugs is screwing up the fish. They are finding traces of pharmaceuticals in the water and it's causing all sorts of problems with fish. Seems exposure to birth control pills is causing fish to become female.

For the good of th planet, perhaps we need to start taking more Viagra to even things out.

I ran across this news at AMERICAblog. Normally, I would probably agree with their take on things. But in this case, "Chris in Paris" doesn't know crap.

They take this move as something bad. Whenever a species recovers enough to make it off the list, this is a great thing.

I lived in Wyoming at the time this was being debated back in the early 90s (just down the road from Big Dick Cheney) and there are a lot of details that are left out of this recent news. The populations of elk and bison in the Yellowstone area were out of control at the time. With no predators other than man and a bunch of new grassland created after the Yellowstone fires, elk populations exploded. Yes, people hunt elk in this area, a lot of them. But they don't kill enough of them to control the population.

Wolves are helping to solve this problem. Inside the park areas, they have an abundant food supply. I can still remember their howls at night the last time I camped in the park.

Yes, pulling them off the Endangered Species List means that some states may be able to create hunting seasons for them. This is something that needs to be fought at the state level.

But in reality, this isn't going to mean a whole lot. Hate to let the Dick Cheneys of the world know that hunting wolves isn't exactly like shooting at planted quail in Texas. Finding wolves and getting close enough to shoot one isn't an easy task. Nor is there any big demand to shoot wolves.

There are already seasons for black bears and cougars in this area, but very few hunters actually go after these. It's just too hard, and you can't eat them. Trophy hunters don't have the patience to actually hunt these species. They would rather have a big elk than a wolf any day.

And notice that there are 1,500 wolves, and the population is growing at 24 percent a year. And this despite the fact that ranchers and poachers have killed 1,500 wolves since they were reintroduced.

With an established base in the save haven of the Yellowstone/Grand Teton park area, there is little danger their population will be endangered again. And with the abundant elk in the area, they will migrate pretty fast despite the hunting pressure.

Don't worry too much about the wolf. He is a pretty canny creature, now that he has a home in the lower Rocky Mountains again.

How many Friedman Units do we have before the Arctic ice is gone? This is pretty scary.

But this author also hits on the same solution Tom Friedman does, that we can do something, and that it holds not just promise for the planet, but the economy, too:

The irony is that we live on a world seething with energy. From the red hot magma beneath our feet over which we majestically glide on rafts of stone, to the mountains of water and continents of air our sun and moon drag around the planet everyday. Even the matter which forms our material world is energy, frozen, condensed, and available for use -- with the right technology. The first nation that figures out how to tap into any of that in a big, commercially viable way, will inherit the new millennium. Those left behind will be heir to a future far less desirable.

Tom Friedman can drive you crazy. His continual refrain that Iraq needs another six months has led to Atrios making fun of him and his Friedman Units (FU).

But on the subject of economy and environment, Friedman is right on. Check out this video:

Two takeaways from this talk: That the U.S. if funding both sides in the War on Terror, and how stupid is that; and that Green Tech will rule this century.