The Urban Pantheist

China Subsidy for Rat-Proof Refrigerators Feeds Appliance Boom

I feel bad for the millions of people of China who up until now had to deal with rats getting into their refrigerators. I guess they mostly didn't have refrigerators before, but now they will. I wonder what hundreds of thousands of new appliances will do to China's energy demands? On the one hand, no one wants rats in their food. On the other hand, someone is going to need some more oil and coal for their power plants.

Is the United States the only nation where large numbers of literate people don't believe in man-made climate change? I believe in man-made disbelief of science, which is almost as scary as large-scale famine caused by droughts and floods. I did meet a nice Australian lady on my trip to Greenland who had her doubts about man-made climate change, and I wondered if the fact that her husband worked for the mining industry had informed those doubts.

If we are the only country that has a large influential population of climate change deniers, I think a little national shame is in order.

Speaking of which, human rights watchers may raise an eyebrow at Denmark, which has passed laws essentially allowing the arrest and detention of protesters who LOOK like they might start trouble.

I got an email recently from someone who discovered my 365 urban species entry on silver maple.  He goes into a quite a bit of detail wondering about the usefulness of the tree, trying to use everything but the oink, so to speak.  I'm not sure if you'd file this under permaculture, wild edibles, a combination, or a whole new obsession.  What do you make of this?

The government should do something about these gas prices!

(namely: add a two-dollar per gallon tax to them)