mimblr.com

Is it over?
The question seems unavoidable as you top off the tank and the pump readout, in a moment you surely shall remember well into old age, enters triple-digit territory for the first time in your life.
Have we lost the ability to escape?
You can’t help but ask it when you juggle the pieces of your life in an ongoing math computation. The balls in the air: Your stagnant or declining income. The cost of getting to that favorite getaway that lays five hours away, on the coast, near that lake, below that mountain — places, you like to think, that define who you are. And the many increasing costs of living. (Suddenly, no longer defined as the trappings of living, like the size of justifiably affordable memory on one’s iPod, but the cost of basic living: sustenance, shelter, security.)
Dizzy, you squeeze your eyes shut, all the balls bounce on the ground, and you go back to the Jumbleword and leave it for another day.
Are we now stuck in place?
For a society raised on the notion that mobility is to freedom what liquidity is to water, it’s the worst nightmare come true. It’s tempting to add the adjective “unexpected” to any reference of said nightmare, but we’d be kidding ourselves. Did anyone really think the free ride of cheap oil would endure forever?
Well, no. But raise your hand — and be honest — if you thought, selfishly, privately, in the deepest recesses of the me-first cortex of the brain, that the ability to get where you want, when you want, without serious sacrifice would hold out at least until after you personally had slipped the surly bonds of Earth and moved on.
Does that mean — honestly, does it mean — that the best times are all behind us?

seattletimes.nwsource.com

The first round of tax incentive checks will be mailed out beginning Monday. If you signed up for direct deposit for your regular tax refund, your rebate money could be deposited into your account on Monday.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says the government is ahead of schedule. The rebate checks are supposed to be an incentive for Americans to spend the money and pump $50 billion into the economy.
To receive your tax incentive check on time, you must have filed your income tax return no later than April 15. If you filed for an extension, you must file your tax return by October 15. Eligible people will receive up to $600 ($1,200 for married couples), and parents will receive an additional $300 for each eligible child younger than 17.
Here is the IRS’s schedule for mailing out paper checks:

wspa.com

There is a debate, subdued at times, between various approaches toward changing the planet to the better. In many ways, my viewpoint (on the optimist side) tends toward the ‘enviro-capitalist’, thinking that we can work to structure the economy to make the right choice, the easy (and preferred) choice. There is a challenge between using financial mechanisms as a tool to move toward a A Prosperous, Climate-Friendly Society and going overboard.
The line can be thin … or thick.
While not necessarily in full agreement with these 60, they make me think (and think hard).
Amid all the Earth Day/Week greenwashing, with all the green packaging in the stores, it is worth thinking about the difference between greening our choices (and fostering a more sustainable lifestyle/economy) and using Green as an excuse for ever more consumption.
This is an important point with a lot of truth to it.
When we talk about dealing with Global Warming as “good for the economy”, we risk falling into this trap. There are many economic values for ways to deal with Global Warming (such as increasing energy efficiency reducing waste) that will improve economic performance. The traditional economic measures (metrics) all emphasize increased consumption. If we were, suddenly, to have exactly the same life-style (albeit with far less pollution) using half the energy, formal economic measures would show a worsened economy (since there would be fewer dollars going into Exxon’s bank accounts). Dollars spent wastefully “count” just the same as those spent effectively. The real way that dealing with Global Warming will be “good” for the economy is when we are able to be more holistic in our understanding of “economy”, to understand that people’s health and well-being “count” as well, that having a sustainable environment for future generations counts as well, that there is no legitimacy for “external” costs in our accounting any longer.

huffingtonpost.com