Power Plant Protest

Monday, global warming activists will be protesting in front of coal-fired power plant in the nation's capital.

It might seem like the environmental movement doesn't need acts of civil disobedience right now. After all, the president is sensitive to environmental concerns. But Bill McKibben argues this is the perfect time to up the ante.

He says we need a powerful and active movement to give the administration and the Democrats in Congress political space to do what they need to do. Besides, he asks, do you think Dick Cheney would care?

"Consider what has to happen if we're going to deal with global warming in a real way. NASA climate scientist James Hansen -- who has announced he plans to join us and get arrested for trespassing in the action we're planning for March 2 -- has demonstrated two things in recent papers. One, that any concentration of carbon dioxide greater than 350 parts per million in the atmosphere is not compatible with the "planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted." And two, that the world as a whole must stop burning coal by 2030 -- and the developed world well before that -- if we are to have any hope of ever getting the planet back down below that 350 number."

That won't be difficult at all.

McKibben plans to get arrested Monday at the Congressional owned power plant (who knew?) and says you should to (but also cautions that sit-ins aren't the most important tool in the activists' tool box).

I can't get arrested Monday — way too much to do; in fact, I'm getting hives just thinking about it — but I won't stop anyone else from doing so.

Seriously, if anyone goes to this, let me know.

Now that Memphis is done, onto the oceans

For what seemed like a long while, Memphis wasn't available with Google Earth.

Now it is, of course, and Google is ready to "Google Earth" the oceans.

From a story in the NYT:

"On Monday, the oceans will be the most significant of several upgrades to Google Earth, with the new version downloadable free at earth.google.com, according to the company.

Another feature, Historical Imagery, provides the ability to scroll back through decades of satellite images and watch the spread of suburbia or erosion of coasts."

I don't know which is cooler.

Reporter Andrew Revkin recently got a sneak peek at Google's offices, virtually exploring canyons and reefs off the coast of Hawaii and watching, over years of data, as communities near Galveston, Texas, grew and then were washed away after Hurricane Ike.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention a book I just read: Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know.

It was really a fascinating — and, at times, disquieting — look at the company. On the one hand, the business side is pretty interesting. The book makes the case that if the company started a few years earlier or later, it wouldn't have survived.

But the idea that they want to organize all the world's data is even more interesting/disquieting. If you use gmail, you probably know a little bit about what I mean. Like when you send an email to your friend Susie Purse* and the little bar on the right side pops up with all sorts of places where you can buy purses.

I know it's all done by algorithm, and that's how they make their money, but it can be creepy.

*Obviously, a fake name. I can't go around outing my friends on my blog, especially those with product-like last names. That would be an invasion of their privacy. Plus, I can't remember whose name I noticed this feature with.