Just a quick news mashup before I head out for semi-emergency dental work. Keep your molars crossed that the tooth in question can be capped and won’t have to be yanked. I have no idea if I’ll be online later today.

From Energy Efficiency is Fastest, Cheapest, Easiest Way for G8 to Cut Emissions:

Despite the enormous potential of energy efficiency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the planet from dangerous climate change, too many of the existing efficiency policies and measures in the G8 industrialized countries, including the United States, are ineffective according to a new WWF report, Making Energy Efficiency Happen: From Potential To Realization. The report outlines what each of the G8 plus 5 countries can do to save energy and the climate while promoting their energy security with sustainable economic growth.

“There is no one silver bullet to stop dangerous climate change, but energy efficiency is the largest and most affordable solution available to avert the current crisis,” says Hans Verolme, Director of WWF’s Global Climate Change Program. “It shouldn’t take long for the world’s most powerful leaders to realize the immediate pay-off these efficiency measures offer.”

The WWF will get no argument from me on this point.

The problem, of course, is getting people to recognize the problems we face and then take the next huge step to doing something about it and not just be a passive consumer of the news (to the limited extent that many people still consume news). I have no great insight into how we do that, and it’s a problem that I wrestle with literally every day.

The report mentioned above, “Making Energy Efficiency Happen”, is available here (95-page, 801KB PDF).

From ‘Hypermilers’ wring out every last bit of mpg:

The passion that burns in Laurie With isn’t visible until she gets behind the wheel of her Honda Civic hybrid — and drives real slow.

She accelerates gently when the light turns green, and coasts down hills to save gas. On highways, she stays in the right lane and watches the big SUVs zoom past.

…

She is part of a small and extremely dedicated group of drivers around the country who call themselves “hypermilers.” They almost exclusively drive hybrid vehicles, and their goal is simple: squeeze every mile they can out of each drop of gas.

Some of their tips are a matter of common sense and could help any driver, especially now, with gas climbing past $3 a gallon: avoiding jackrabbit starts, using alternate routes to avoid stop-and-go traffic, anticipating lights and driving a bit more slowly.

I do a very mild version of this, and it’s how I get 40MPG in a car that’s rated ar 34 city, 39 highway, even under the old, higher, EPA ratings. It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s safer, because you wind up paying more attention to traffic and lights.

Of course, if your spouse drives with a binary gas pedal (all the way up or all the way down, and nothing in the middle), then you’ll have some “interesting” discussions about how each of you drives. Don’t ask how I know this; it’s not pretty.

But the bigger point is that you can indeed learn a lot from people who are this dedicated to energy efficiency and apply just part of their techniques to reduce your gasoline bill and CO2 emissions if that’s what suits you best.

From Fla. Man Invents Machine To Turn Water Into Fire:

Kanzius said the flame created from his machine reaches a temperature of around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. He said a chemist told him that the immense heat created from the machine breaks down the hydrogen-oxygen bond in the water, igniting the hydrogen.

“You could take plain salt water out of the sea, put it in containers and produce a violent flame that could heat generators that make electricity, or provide other forms of energy,” Kanzius said.

Here we go again.

From States vie with US on emissions rules:

Four months after making headlines with its new program to fight global warming by reducing carbon-dioxide emissions from vehicles, California finds its new plan is stalled – as do 11 other states waiting to do the same.

As the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) holds a public hearing about the plan Wednesday in Sacramento, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and other governors are accusing the federal government of blocking their efforts to institute tougher standards for tailpipe emissions than US regulations require.

They say the Bush administration is dragging its feet on granting California a waiver – formal permission to deviate from federal standards – from the Clean Air Act, the sweeping 37-year-old federal law that regulates air emissions. California has requested 40 waivers since 1977 and received permission for the vast majority.

Until California gets the waiver, no other state that has adopted the same standards may move ahead either. The rules would force automakers to cut exhaust from cars and light trucks by 25 percent and from sport-utility vehicles by 18 percent, beginning with 2009 models. Collectively, the standards would cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 392 million metric tons by 2020 – the equivalent of taking 74 million cars off the road for one year, experts say.

Let me see if I’ve got this straight: The Republicans, who just love state’s rights arguments and the whole “let’s use the whole country as a vast array of experiments to find the right answer” idea are the ones in Washington blocking this. Could it possibly be that they’re terrified of the following scenario: California and other states impose such restrictions, the sky doesn’t fall, and the car companies don’t all fold up, then the whole country suddenly supports such legislation. Even worse, this set of events would prove the most horrible thing imaginable in the mind of the extreme right wingers: the fact that (gasp!) government is capable of doing something right.

How I do love the smell of cowardice and hypocrisy in the morning.