For anyone interested in the fuel efficiency for various transportation types used to move PEOPLE (not freight) here is a great chart.

http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/trans0209gettingaroundrev.html

The bicycle is the most efficient, even better than walking. The least efficient is an SUV followed by a cruise ship followed by the car. For mass transit the bus is best followed closely by the train then the airplane.

Sailing ships would be more fuel efficient, or ships equipped with vertical wind turbines.

So, most people will have to trek on foot to the ocean port to catch their sail-cruise?

"Klein says the issue has galvanized young people the same way the anti-corporate movement did 10 years ago." Yea that did a bunch of good. Corporate power is stronger than ever. I think Naomi Klein is the best watch dog in this country but the investor class has overpowered any type of dialog for a better world for everyone and is only interested in power and control. So who out there can really disagree with Howard for some other outcome?

Absolutely correct. Like the Wall Street meltdown the mantra will be "Who could have known"?

I agree. 'Cap-n-trade' is a fraud. We need a broad based direct tax on all carbon dioxide emitting fuel sources. This is the most effective way back to reduce our consumption of such fuels and to foster the transition to renewable energy and conservation. I was hoping Obama would use his considerable charisma and oratory skills to advocate for this, but so far he hasn't. Kudos to reporters like Naomi Klein for challenging the status quo.

and the cost to the consumer

mujeriego - if you were in a theatre, and someone noticed that a fire had erupted, would you not want them to alert everyone that there is a fire? Would you turn on them and berate them for complaining? Would you call them a hypocrite for using fire in the furnace at home while calling an uncontrolled fire in a building full of people a problem?
Not a great analogy since Naomi DOES offer steps to address the problems she writes about - but i am hopeful that you get my point.
Without doubt Naomi Klein, like most people deeply aware of the mechanisms of our self-destruction, does what she can to live in a concious way and minimize her own negative ecological footprint. Living in the current system it is impossible to have zero negative impact, but please do what you can and don't put down those who are trying to help. It's a cheap shot.

You ARE an idiot.
If every person in the world had as much
1) knowledge,
2) true desire to improve the atmospheric conditions, and
3) dedication to teaching others about it
as Naomi Klein, then the world's environment would be in great shape.
You, however are too stupid to know this.
Find something else to do with your time, rather than post ridiculous comments here.

Screw the CBC. I cannot watch the FIFTH ESTATE anymore because "it cannot be streamed outside Canada"

Not just young environmentalists are calling for fossil fuels to be left in the ground, James Lovelock did it in 2006 in his book "Revenge of Gaia". James Hansen has called for the shutting down of all coal fired electric plants as a starter.

The Dec., 2009 issue of National Geographic states that nature can process about 5 billion tons of CO2 per year. The USGS reports that humans generate about 30 billion tons of CO2 per year. MSNBC in a planet report, reported that the calcareous shells of antartic plankton have thinned 50% in the past few years due to ocean acidification. Another source predicts the sterilization of the oceans of organisms with calcareous skeletons within 20 to 30 years. We must not just stop exceeding Earth's CO2 processing capacity, we must lower our CO2 footprint to below Earth's carrying capacity or we'll be extinct as a species. Again Lovelock writes that our numbers will be no more than 1 billion by the end of this century if we are lucky.

As Hildegaard of Bingen said over 900 years ago, "Nature will not be mocked". When we exceed our carrying capacity as we are when we produce more CO2 than nature can process, we are mocking nature and nature will make a correction. Peter Ward has written about the corrections that nature has repeatedly made when CO2 levels have gotten high in the past. Most mass extinction events have been greenhouse gas induced. In the past volcanic activity at a faster rate than nature can safely process the CO2 released has been the trigger. Today we have every car, plane, ship, coal fired electric plant, and cement making plant functioning as little volcanoes. The result is going to be the same. Venus here we come.

The more straightforward and most honest of the 3 most obvious answers is this: "No."

Certainly there exists in some sense a Naomi Klein "brand" that one may wish to qualify as some subset of Brand Alt. However, the contradiction apparent in this is almost completely superficial.

So, for instance, like you-all, I recognize Ms. Klein's name from NO LOGO, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, and from lectures, podcasts, interviews, and so on. I read here that she will release another book, and I will probably pick up a copy and read it the month it comes out. I assume that I have some idea what the content and style of the book will be like, and I want it. The fact that she is attractive and personable probably does play into it in a way that is relevant to branding.

So, strictly, what is this process?

It seems to work like so:

I cannot carry forward into future decisions the entire experience of Ms. Klein's books, nor sort it fully among full appraisals of books in general or consumables in general, so I reduce it to a significantly but incompletely representative concept that hinges on a signifier -- the letters N A O M I K L E I N, the sounds when these are pronounced, a somewhat variable set of associated impressions.

I decide to purchase the book based on this somewhat distorted distillation-amalgam.

It is worth noting that I do something similar with an item that we do not usually think of as "branded" when I use a word for it: say a tree. They're all similar, all different, but I tend to partially conflate them in thought insofar as I consider them categorically.

Now, Ms. Klein is going to have some trouble addressing us without engaging such processes, is she not? One may qualify a Yes or Maybe, saying that "Everyone must brand to speak symbolically, to even speak."

But that overlooks most of the distinctions played out in depth in NO LOGO.

Nike-esque companies trademark identical products to sell the branding itself. That is different than a book that is different than another because it is written by a different author to a different end by different means. What one desires from the purchase has less to do with the commonality of pulp and binding than with distinctions of idea and syntax.

Now, one could argue rightly that those who buy trademark buy not the commonality of construction nor the functionality of foot covering or even style, but the social stamp of brand-recognition.

This is substantially different than buying a book for its ideas. One could buy NO LOGO to be cool, of course: "Hey, look at me! I got that radicaller-than-thou book by the Siren of inSurgency, Naomi Klein. Think of me, O Judge of Lecteurs, as among the Elect."

I dunno. Maybe it's just me. But so far, if anyone has primped or puffed for me bearing a seductively displayed NO LOGO, I have been disappointingly numb to it.

Have any of you more attractive lumpenproles noticed this as a widespread phenomenon?

Until then, I will take this kind of inversion as clever and useful in some contexts, but no refutation.

Flying is the least efficient and the airlines don't pay the fuel tax imposed at the pump. If the tax was applied to them, no one would fly.

Yes, trains, even diesel ones, are more efficient than even much-improved fuel efficient airliners. but, those AMTRAK cross-country trains with the huge double-deck sleeper cars are probably not so efficient because the density of passengers is so low.

Speed certainly is a factor. Drag force and energy needed per unit of distance increase as the square of speed, everything else being equal.

The main point I wanted to make is how electric propulsion is far, more energy efficient than IC engines and emit much less carbon even with the current mix of fossil-generated electricity. For example my electric scooters using the typical current eastern US generation mix get the carbon-equivalent of 225 mpg. But I buy wind-energy generation offsets, so it actually is much better than that.

Your comment is not entirely acurate The Vatican is actually the world's only sovereign state that can lay claim to being carbon-neutral. Last summer the city-state's ancient buildings were outfitted with solar panels intended to be a key source of electricity, and an eco-restoration firm donated enough trees in a Hungarian national park to nullify all carbon emitted from Vatican City, which takes up one-fifth of a square mile.

Both moves were embraced by Pope Benedict XVI, who not only oversees the global church, he serves as the chief administrator of the operation of the Vatican. And in both religious and secular circles Benedict has earned the title of "green pope." In addition to boosting efforts to make Vatican City more environmentally efficient, he also uses Roman Catholic doctrine to emphasize humanity's responsibility to care for the planet.

Benedict is not the first pope to address the issue of environmental degradation. His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, once described environmental concerns as a "moral issue" and noted as far back as 1990 that people have "a grave responsibility to preserve [the earth's] order for the well-being of future generations." However, the new pontiff has made being green a central part of his teachings and policy-making. Just months after being elected pope, Benedict stated in his first homily as pontiff that "the earth's treasures have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction" and called on Catholics to be better stewards of God's creation. Last spring at a Vatican conference devoted to climate change, Benedict announced that global citizens have to "focus on the needs of sustainable development." That message was taken a step further when the church last month announced seven new sins that now require repentance. Number four on the list was "polluting the environment." Among the others were "causing social injustice" and "becoming obscenely wealthy," which are also both linked to taking care of the earth, says a Vatican spokesman.

Brilliant!!!

I'd love to hear you recite it in person.