Laura Bush Touts Eco-Friendly House

Or ranch, I guess, as in the Crawford Ranch. Hosting the third hour of the Today Show yesterday, Mrs. Bush won a sandwich-making contest, listened politely to advice about raising twins - her own, Jenna and Barbara, were on hand to cheer on their mom - and interviewed author R.L. Stine. And:

...in a pre-taped tour of the family’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, Bush touted green aspects of the home, which is partially heated with geothermal power. “We could and we’ve discussed putting one wind mill out here because, as you can tell, we have enough wind to generate electricity” she said as the wind tousled her hair.

With President Bush ever so slowly acknowledging climate change issues, it was nice of the First Lady to move things along a bit in an audience-friendly way. Bush has become a bit detached from eco-unfriendly movement conservatives as his presidency moves into its final months, and it has allowed him to strike out in some new directions. It'll be interesting to see how, or if, he and Mrs. Bush pursue these interests further in their post-White House life.

The Crawford Ranch is quite attractive. I'd always imagined it to be like the big house on the hill in Giant, with Laura Bush as Elizabeth Taylor taking a few days to cross the living room to greet Karl Rove as James Dean soaked in oil. But then, I'd imagined President Clinton as John Cassavetes living in the Rosemary's Baby apartment in New York City, with swank friends stopping by for swank parties and odd recorder music piping in from the next-door neighbors' place. So what do I know?

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A Design Team Pictures the Future of Nuclear Energy

For more than 100 years, the shape and location of human settlements has been defined in large part by energy and water. Cities grew up near natural resources like hydropower, and near water for agricultural, industrial and household use.

So what would the world look like with a new generation of small nuclear reactors that could provide abundant, clean energy for electricity, water pumping and desalination and industrial processes?

Hard to say with precision, but Third Way, the non-partisan think tank, asked the design team at the Washington, D.C. office of Gensler & Associates, an architecture and interior design firm that specializes in sustainable projects like a complex that houses the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. The talented designers saw a blooming desert and a cozy arctic village, an old urban mill re-purposed as an energy producer, a data center that integrates solar panels on its sprawling flat roofs, a naval base and a humming transit hub.

In the converted mill, high temperat…

Sneak Peek

There's an invisible force powering and propelling our way of life.
It's all around us. You can't feel it. Smell it. Or taste it.
But it's there all the same. And if you look close enough, you can see all the amazing and wondrous things it does.
It not only powers our cities and towns.
And all the high-tech things we love.
It gives us the power to invent.
To explore.
To discover.
To create advanced technologies.
This invisible force creates jobs out of thin air.
It adds billions to our economy.
It's on even when we're not.
And stays on no matter what Mother Nature throws at it.
This invisible force takes us to the outer reaches of outer space.
And to the very depths of our oceans.
It brings us together. And it makes us better.
And most importantly, it has the power to do all this in our lifetime while barely leaving a trace.
Some people might say it's kind of unbelievable.
They wonder, what is this new power that does all these extraordinary things?

Seeing the Light on Nuclear Energy

If you think that there is plenty of electricity, that the air is clean enough and that nuclear power is a just one among many options for meeting human needs, then you are probably over-focused on the United States or Western Europe. Even then, you’d be wrong.

That’s the idea at the heart of a new book, “Seeing the Light: The Case for Nuclear Power in the 21st Century,” by Scott L. Montgomery, a geoscientist and energy expert, and Thomas Graham Jr., a retired ambassador and arms control expert.

Billions of people live in energy poverty, they write, and even those who don’t, those who live in places where there is always an electric outlet or a light switch handy, we need to unmake the last 200 years of energy history, and move to non-carbon sources. Energy is integral to our lives but the authors cite a World Health Organization estimate that more than 6.5 million people die each year from air pollution. In addition, they say, the global climate is heading for ruinous instability. E…

NEI Nuclear Notes

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