I first turn the thing on, and much to my surprise I see Amy Goodman and "Democracy Now".  Holy crap - that program is televised??  I have heard it on the radio, but I am not often in the car when it is on, so I don't listen very often.  But on LinkTV, it comes on at 6PM Eastern, so I no longer have to watch Fucker Carlson while waiting for Keith to come on.

I have watched quite a bit over the past week to get a sense what it is all about.  For one thing, no commercials.  Not one.  Nada.  Nothing.   Entirely viewer supported - sort of along the model of how PBS used to be before they got bought out by major corporate donors.   This does mean that instead of commercials they beg for money every so often - I do not yet know whether this is something they do all the time, or I just caught them in the middle of a pledge drive.  It isn't as annoying as on PBS though - a minor annoyance in my eyes.

They tend to have lots of documentaries.  They had one on Valentines day describing the working conditions of the workers who grow the roses that we all buy.   And then the working conditions of the workers who grow the cocoa that goes into the chocolate that we eat, and finally a program about blood diamonds.  There have been numerous documentaries about global warming and the environment.   And there are other news programs as well.

No mention of Anna-Nichole that I have seen so far.  If you had only watched LinkTV, you probably wouldn't even be aware that she was dead.

Anyways, I figured that since I had never heard of this, many of the rest of you never have either, so I would mention it, and let others check it out.  On DirectTV it is channel 375, on Dish it is 9410.  There are a handful of cable outfits that also carry it, but not many.

Update: Their website is www.linktv.org. And the pledging isn't all the time. And here is an interview with the station manager: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/15904547.htm

Sustainability and resource exhaustion is also an interesting topic - the question of oil depletion is one that comes up frequently under the heading "peak oil".   We have choices in terms of how we deal with this issue - some options will help with global warming, others will probably make it worse.

The question I have had for some time though is whether Peak Oil will force us to act before it is too late to begin action on global warming.   In theory, oil scarcity and the higher prices that seem inevitable may have the side effect of reducing carbon emissions, but will it be enough??

It was with these questions in mind that I attended the "Sustainable Energy Forum 2006" conference a few weeks ago.  There were a number of speakers that many of you have heard of.  Governor Brian Schweitzer spoke on energy issues and coal liquefaction.   James Hansen (NASA scientist who has studied global climate change) spoke on the very question of whether or not peak oil will help force us to solve global warming, and Lester Brown (World Watch Institute) spoke about the need to restructure the global economy.

Many of these talks are now available for MP3 download, as are PDF files that contain the powerpoint slides (for those speakers that used them).

More after the flip....

There may be some here for whom the anti-war protests yesterday were their first.  In my case I was at the ellipse in Washington DC, but this march was not the first for me however.  My first goes back a long way, and today's march brought back a lot of memories..  Step with me into the wayback machine....