Anna:
Chris Mooney takes a stab at just why the presidential debate organizers failed to mention the C-word (you know, that climate thing) even once in the 2012 season.
Good ol’ Bernie Sanders on Romney’s energy policy (Spoiler: He calls it a relic from the 19th C.).
And if, like me, you’ve had enough of vapid horse race election coverage, read Eric Alterman’s critique of the mainstream media’s “trivial pursuit” of political stories:
For despite the participation of tens of thousands of journalists spending tens of millions of dollars using a dizzying array of communications technology devoted to covering the campaign, the system ultimately fails to justify itself in its most essential purpose: to ensure accountability for citizens and their leaders and to offer the kind of information necessary to help voters make an educated choice for the future of their country.
Finally, Jill Lapore in the New Yorker on the future of Planned Parenthood.
Clark:
Do you just throw the yellow pages away? You’re not alone!
Yes, it’s really true: the pace of life is faster in big cities. Well, at least, it is in Portugal: an analysis of cell phone data from Portuguese cities shows that city slickers have more social interactions than folks from small towns. More details here.
New software from Arizona State University models urban greenhouse gas emissions. I can’t vouch for it, but this video is pretty nifty!
The New York Times covers two new studies that have found that sitting is bad for your health:
[T]he findings were sobering: Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8 minutes. By comparison, smoking a single cigarette reduces life expectancy by about 11 minutes, the authors said.
So if you’re going to smoke, make sure you do it standing up! (JK.)
Alan:
Ezra Klein sums up the presidential debates: No discussion of the biggest environmental, economic, and health-care issues facing the United States.
An update on filibuster busters.
David Roberts names the real barrier to climate solutions.
A beluga whale talks human.
Eric dP:
By far my top recommendation this week is Dominic Holden’s righteous piece about marijuana legalization. Dominic takes up racial justice dimensions of drug enforcement to make the civil rights case for Washington voting yes on 502. To wit:
…blacks in Washington State smoke less pot than white people—I repeat, they use less pot than white people—yet are arrested at 2.9 times the rate of white people. In this state, the pot possession arrest rate nearly tripled from 4,000 in 1986 to 11,000 in 2010, meaning the rate of pot busts has outpaced state population growth sixfold.
Why are we doing this?
I was captivated by this NY Times account of the island where people forget to die. Is there something we can learn from the long-lived Greeks who inhabit Ikaria?
The piece is definitely worth a read, though I think Matthew Yglesias may ultimately have the right take on it:
If you have a few hundred islands, then one of them is going to be the island where the people live the longest and there isn’t necessarily going to be any particularly deep reason that’s the case.
At the Everett Herald, Bill Sheets has an excellent piece on the funding obstacles to improving train crossings, particularly in cities like Edmonds. It’s a huge problem for traffic management, development, and even for public safety. And it’s a problem that can only get worse—much, much worse actually—if large numbers of coal trains materialize. The real kicker, though, is that neither the coal companies nor the railroad will be paying for overpasses or safety features. That’s on you, my friend.
The Portland Monthly has a bizarre infographic that somehow manages to take an anemic 33 percent public support for expanding the city’s growth boundary and frame it up as overwhelming support for the idea.
I enjoyed this profile of Chris Kluwe.
Lastly, proof positive that Canada is ahead of the United States: national politicians threw down in a celebrity boxing match earlier this year. (Sorry for the delay in reporting this; I only just learned about it while on a recent trip to Canada.) I’m not sure whether to encourage this kind of thing, but I did take some measure of satisfaction in learning that the Liberal defeated the Conservative in a third-round TKO. Anyone in comments care to put odds on an Inslee v. McKenna match-up?
