Energy & Oil Blog Posts | Comedy Central Indecision

Wednesday's Links: Conan Celebrates Soda's 11th-Hour Reprieve

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Mar 13, 2013 05:01 PM by Lisa Beth Johnson | Comments:

* Soda lovers take their victory to the streets.

* It takes a lot of power to get a roller coaster going.

* If all money looked like this, people probably would save more.

* Political dramas are getting too much like real life.

* An alternate reality where Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were Communists.

* Let's have some fun, this beat is sick. I wanna take a ride on your pastoral staff.

* Animals yelling like humans? *Yawn* We've got politicians who yell like animals.

* The Fremont City Council meeting will now come to disorder. [NSFW]

Tags: Catholic Church, Communism, Daily Links, Energy & Oil, England, Howard Dean, Lady Gaga, Money, New York City, Queen Elizabeth II, Rob Delaney, Soda Ban, Vatican O'Brien

Lawmaker Wants to Tax Bicycle Pollution

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Mar 4, 2013 09:29 AM by Ilya Gerner | Comments:

Imagine you're a Seattle cyclist merrily commuting to work on your bike, a thermos of fair trade coffee in hand and a hemp messenger bag slung over your shoulder. You'd think you were Gaea's gift to environmentalism, right?

WRONG! You are a goddamned monstrous eco-villain! So says Rep. Ed Orcutt (R-Kalama), the ranking Republican on Washington State's House Transportation Committee, in a letter to a bicycle store owner:

"If I am not mistaken, a cyclist has an increased heart rate and respiration. That means that the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider. Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride."

This was Rep. Orcutt's explanation for why he'd be supporting a sales tax proposal that would require everyone who buys a bike for more than $500 to pay a $25 fee.

As long as we assume that every cyclist is eating a diet of pure petroleum (and motorists don't eat anything and never burn calories), Orcutt's argument makes sense, but doesn't go nearly far enough. Wait till he learns about running.

Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Tags: Energy & Oil, Environment, State Legislature, Washington

The Hickenlooper: A Fracking Perfect Valentine's Day Cocktail

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Feb 13, 2013 01:05 PM by Ilya Gerner | Comments:

As the founder of a microbrewery, Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) is among our nation's top experts on quirky libations. Which is why it wasn't surprising to find him telling a U.S. Senate committee that he drank a glass of fracking fluid produced by Halliburton:

"You can drink it. We did drink it around the table, almost ritual-like in a funny way," he told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. "It was a demonstration…they've invested millions of dollars in what is a benign fluid in every sense."

Move over bacon-infused bourbon! Some elements of the fluid remain secret, but with the help of Halliburton's public disclosures, you can recreate The Hickenlooper for whomever you're fracking this Valentine's Day: