Or, I should say, NASA’s, human mission to mars, since I hope women will be involved. But wow, what a very long way off! I mean, we could do this by 2020, so why wait all the way until 2031? I guess we have lots of problems these days, but we certainly sat on our laurels for the past, oh, thirty years or so, while the sailing was smooth. I recommend, if you are a serious reader interested in what it would take to get to, and survive on Mars, to pick up a copy of Robert Zubrin’s ‘The Case for Mars‘. It goes into lots of technical detail, and yet, he provides a way for lighter readers to skip to the important bits. While you’re reading that, a little fictional Mars adventure might get the old enthusiasm going, and so I recommend the three-volume set, ‘Red Mars‘, ‘Green Mars‘, ‘Blue Mars‘, by Kim Stanley Robinson. It tells a multi-generational, and multi-ethnic tale of the colonization and terraforming of Mars. After that, I say, ‘Get Your Ass to Mars!’!

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The Earth Observatory data, combined with models, has shown that, just as most politics is local, so is most pollution.

• Local Pollution

In keeping up with that idea, here is an article showing that trees are important sinks, and ultimately when they die, sources of
carbon dioxide. Which means, of course, that we have to replant the trees that are lost through storms or through harvesting. It also means that we have to plant the kind of trees that can properly survive in such an environment, such as cypress-tupelo. We also really need to listen to the scientists that have been telling us how important it is to allow the Mississippi to move around again, a process that deposited silt, which in turn created a protective solid and biological barrier to the the destructive forces and tidal surges of the gulf during storms.

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Trains were once the transportation backbone for people and goods in the United States, until the car and truck came along. Of course, the car gave individuals great freedom of movement in time and place, and that is why they are so difficult to leave behind. This car dependence has had a dramatic effect on the development of land in the U.S., with a tremendous amount of sprawl that has tracked the increase in car ownership. There are those of a certain generation, and older, that remember what it used to be like to be able to go for a leisurely drive, with hardly a car in sight on a country road. That was a very nice time, but, I’m afraid it has come to an end, and what about the experience of those who live in large metropolitan areas? Los Angeles has been a traffic nightmare since the late sixties, and pretty much anyone traveling the interstates in the eastern half of the U.S. knows that it is chock-a-block with traffic most days of the week, especially with semi-trailers, and you can forget about holidays altogether!

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Readers now have access to 1.5 million books online through ‘The Million Book Project, which is currently the world’s largest’. So, if between The Million Book Project, Google, and The Internet Archive, you can’t find anything to read, you are one picky person!

• The Million Book Project

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Old MacDonald had a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Julie MacDonald, subject of an earlier Zeitgeistland blog, resigned as deputy assistant secretary from the agency in May, and it has taken until now for damage control to start reversing her political influence over endangered species decisions. I am glad to see that the Bush administration wasn’t allowed to permanently run rough shod over the agency, but I am also sorry to see how easily politicized things can become, in such a short period of time. I’m sure I am not alone on this issue. I thought there might enough of a balance in the government, and enough historical momentum to ensure that decisions were made on the basis of science, most of the time at least.

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