Carpool Now

Not that kind.

It’s going to be the boringest, most plausible solutions that save us, part the infinity.

No tech/some tech/even with tech, the radical ideas are already here, sitting… waiting. In a discussion with colleagues about the twin scourges of traffic congestion and parking strife permanently visiting our otherwise sleepy little burg, the needless importation of already-existing strategies (get it?) eludes us in favor of trying to think of different ways to evade the problem. We’re not doing that, precisely, but trying to think of ways to incentive the creation of more surface parking instead of how to have less cars is a different kind of plague. Fortunately, we already have a rested and ready vaccine: the carpool.

It’s a word for when more than 1 person rides/drives together from/to like destinations like work or school.

We then ask our eternal question: is there an app for that?

I kid you not.

The car sharing system merges several new people into one car, which leads to meeting new people in one car, and reduces air pollution and noise pollution. The car sharing system saves the economy of each person as they share their rides and also share the cost with the other member by car. This will stop spending endless money on travel. The growth of the global carpooling market is mainly driven by the growing demand for time and cost-saving transportation facilities. A government initiative to promote carpooling due to increasing road congestion is expected to boost market growth.

But I am serious about this. Make it a game, a competition. Give people money, time off, commemorative sweatshirts, rock show tickets, whatever. Just help get us out of cars.

Misleading Investors

gas-pump-climate-changeI guess if that’s how we’re going to see things. But it would be better to state at the outset that every instance of disbelieving, climate change skepticism rises from the deliberate misinformation campaign devised by fossil fuel extraction companies when their own research began to tell them that the delicious smell from the kitchen was their own bacon frying:

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman released the results of an investigation that found one of the world’s largest coal companies had misled the public and its shareholders about the risks climate change could pose to its bottom line.

After several years of investigations, Schneiderman reached an agreement with Peabody Energy that won’t require the company to admit it broke the law and does not entail a fine or other penalty. Instead, Peabody must file revised shareholder disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission with new language acknowledging that “concerns about the environmental impacts of coal combustion…could significantly affect demand for our products or our securities.”

The agreement comes just days after Schneiderman issued a subpoena to ExxonMobil, kicking off an investigation into whether the oil giant has misled investors and the public about the basic science of climate change for decades. Exxon has denied any wrongdoing. While the two investigations have some similarities, Exxon could face tougher penalties than Peabody, said Andrew Logan, director of oil and gas programs at Ceres, an investor advocacy group. The allegations against Exxon stretch back much further in time and could potentially be more serious, so the attorney general could pursue more aggressive action against the company, Logan said.

The Exxon practice is the actual real story here, one that goes back to the late seventies. The companies were no fools; they invested their own money in real research because they wanted to know the truth. They just decided that it was more important that you didn’t know. And that you questioned any attempts by the government to reign in your freedom. They even gave you a few things you could say.

Framing the practice of climate deception as ‘no duty’ to be truthful with investors may make it seem like a victimless crime, we’re all adults here and all’s fair in love n’ bidness, but c’mon.

March 20, 2003

Today was the day. There is no greater crime than to make war based on lies and deception. So many are complicit, but I’ll focus here on the gatekeepers – the bored media that became intoxicated with the idea of war, helped to gin up support in the public and then kept blood off the evening news. But there was blood.

Iraq

Image from Dependable Renegade.

Money to Buy Mediocre Lies

Not even the best money can buy, but kinda middling ones.

The extent to which lying is an operative political strategy in your lifetime, of your government, by your representatives, cannot be overstated or stated often enough. Even if you think you know this, You don’t. And if you don’t know Frank Lutz is, John Chait reminds you:

Luntz’s latest memo advising Republicans on how to fight financial reform,obtained by Sam Stein, is a classic of the genre. The unstated argument of the memo is that, being determined to oppose legislation that most Americans support, Republicans should simply pretend they are arguing against something completely different. Luntz makes it clear that the public demands reform. “You must be on the side on change,” he writes. “Always.” (There is no pretense anywhere in Luntz’s paper that Republicans do, or even should, have a reform plan of their own.)

He likewise insists Republicans never call the reform bill “reform”: “It’s not ‘reform.’ This is not a reform bill. It is the ‘Stop the Big Bank Bailout bill.” Of course, Luntz does not try to explain why the reform bill is not reform. Indeed, his paper is entitled, “The Language of Financial Reform.” It calls to mind the French absurdist Rene Magritte’s painting of a pipe, labeled, “This is not a pipe.”

And we’ve been there before, of course. But then again, we thought we remembered about lying.