Well, it's finally here - the day when thousands of us are leaving our cars at home in favor of bikes, feet, and that great love of mine, public transit.

As many of you know, Drive Nowhere Day was set up to recognize our over-dependence on oil. Today marks the day when we as a nation have consumed as much oil as we will produce domestically for all of 2008, and the simple truth of the matter is that the U.S. will not be able to drill its way to energy independence.

We've come up with three solutions for ending our dependence on oil.

- First, make sure the oil we do use is used as efficiently as possible. Since 2/3 of our oil consumption is used to move goods and people around the country, this means we need to go further on a gallon of gas. Our campaign over the last year to double the gas mileage standard has been very successful, with two current presidential candidates embracing the policy.

- Secondly, make sure our federal government is investing more in clean fuel technologies. On this front, we've been working to get Congress to invest more subsidies into renewable energies, and less into fossil fuel sources.

- Thirdly, we need to make public transit more available and more attractive to, the average person. Currently, public transit suffers from a pretty bad stigma. People don't believe it is convenient or reliable - so we need our state and federal governments to put more funding into expanding lines and increasing ridership.

We're excited that thousands of people are taking part in Drive Nowhere Day, and believe it's just the beginning. This will allow us to send a message to our elected officials, and hopefully will turn tons of folks onto the ease of public transit.

So, if you haven't pledged to drive nowhere today, it's not too late, add your name here, and please invite friends and family to get on the bus today.

Well I'm pretty excited. Myra Reece, the chief of the state Department of Health and Environmental Control's Bureau of Air Quality is calling on all South Carolinians to take part in Drive Nowhere Day.

Kudos, South Carolina!

You can read the article here, and I'm thankful that the state has picked up on the campaign's environmental side, and not just on the 'save some money by taking public transit' side.

Today we set up our member survey, and I'd invite you to take it. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to complete, and will help give us a better sense of who our supporters are, and how we're doing in your eyes.

If you've got a couple minutes, and a couple things to say, click here to take the survey and let us know more about you, and our relationship.

There has already been a ton of coverage on McCain's global warming plan, so I'll just trust that you're reading the Grist coverage of it.

I'd like to chat about something completely different. Or maybe not so much. The Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE), founded in the 40's to combat racial injustice, was long considered a leader in the grassroots movement. Whether it's lunch counter sit-ins or the Freedom Rides, CORE was there.

But, this week, CORE chair Roy Innis said that if the polar bear is listed under the Endangered Species Act, CORE will sue the Bush Administration because, "such a listing will drive up energy prices and hurt America's working poor more than any other element of society."

I'll set aside the mounds of research that shows how terribly the working poor will be impacted by the effects of global warming - the food shortages, the increase in communicable disease, and the literally millions of global warming refugees we'll see - all of which will more negatively impact the poor than anyone else.

Let's for a second ask why CORE is making such a big deal out of the polar bear. Could it be the hundred of thousands of dollars ExxonMobil has contributed to CORE's work (and in particular their global warming work) over the years?

In fact, between 2003 and 2005, ExxonMobil donated $250,000 to CORE. Since CORE's operating budget is $2 million a year, this represents over 4% of their total operating costs - a pretty significant amount.

In his release, Innis states, ""Onshore and offshore public lands could hold enough oil to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years, and enough natural gas to heat 60 million homes for 160 years."

And I'll accept those numbers as true, but I'd like to point out that there are currently 113,146,000 homes in the United States, and we have 247,421,120 cars on the road. This means Innis is suggesting we heat 22% of the homes for 60 years and let the rest lie cold - and oh yeah, any new homes built for 60 years also get no heat.

Similarly, his estimate means that we'll put gas in the tanks of 24% of our cars for six decades, and let the rest rust - and again, no new cars.

So really, what he's saying is we can power our cars and heat our homes for fifteen years using domestic fuel sources. My question is, what do we do in 2023 when we've tapped every last drop of fuel?

Also, he's not really offering any actual solutions to the spectre of global warming. So, yet again, we see ExxonMobil pushing money to an organization to act as their mouthpiece, who then acts as if nothing is wrong, and somehow a solution will magically appear in a decade in a half.

It saddens me that a group known for standing up for the rights of the poor and the downtrodden is so easily co opted by those who seek to benefit financially from trashing those they work to protect.

The Pew Research Center just released results of a new poll about global warming, and I have to confess, I'm thoroughly confused.

The chief finding is that, sadly, beliefs about and concern over global warming is becoming a deeply partisan issue. For instance, 27% of the Republicans polled believe GW is caused by human activity, as opposed to 58% of Democrats. Similarly, 22% of Republicans view GW as a 'serious problem' as opposed to 57% of Democrats.

I could understand the partisan divide, given that it's a presidential election year, and the chief spokesperson of the global warming issue is former Democratic candidate Al Gore - except that Mr. Gore has been doing no campaigning for either Democratic contender, and has largely opted to stay out of the race so as to focus on the issue at hand - namely, global warming, and has consistently spoken of global warming as a cross-party problem that we need to solve.

That being said, one of the truly shocking parts of the research comes at the end when you view where people rank global warming in terms of policy priorities :

For Democrats, it ranks 15th, for independents 18th, and for Republicans 21st. This despite that fact that of all people polled, 71% believe global warming exists, and 49% believe it is human-made.

The problem, of course, is that global warming is going to have negative impacts on the economy, energy policies, the environment, health care costs, and the problems of the poor, all issues people are even more concerned about.

It would appear that we really need to do a better job of explaining the problem, and it's many long term ramifications, to other people - including the media.

In Idaho John Hofmeister, the president of Shell Oil, called for more drilling wherever he can get it. "The U.S. prohibits access to its own natural resources..we need more oil and gas, whether it's onshore Alaska, or offshore Alaska."

He then went on to sing the praises of going after Alberta's oil sands and oil shale in Colorado, never mind the fact that oil recovery from shale is highly questionable.

How many times do I have to say this? With less than 2% of the world's remaining supply of oil, the United States will never be able to drill its way to energy independence. It simply cannot happen.

Hofmeister then went on to claim that Shell supports carbon caps federally, and not some 'patchwork' of regulations put into place by the states.

Hey John, here's an idea - why not impose carbon caps yourself? Why wait for some pesky federal legislation that isn't going to come for at least a year, and, I don't know, take the lead yourself?

Last week, close to a thousand of us took the pledge to Drive Nowhere on May 30th. If you haven't pledged yet, please join us! Leaving the car at home is a powerful way to say we want solutions to our nation's dependence on oil. Over the next few weeks, we'll be building momentum for Drive Nowhere Day - and for long term solutions. Today, can you call on your governor to prioritize public transportation?

Imagine a world where you didn't have to worry about traffic, parking, or spending sixty bucks on a tank of gas....where just getting to work didn't make you worry about your carbon footprint. Imagine your state spending on public transit what it does on highway construction. It's time to ask them to make public transit a top priority - Click here to tell send your Governor the message.

I love taking the bus. I get to read books and listen to music, two of my favorite things. But most Americans don't live close enough to public transit to make this kind of morning commute feasible. Every time a city expands its transit, ridership increases - and in turn oil consumption and air pollution decrease. But the crazy truth is most states keep building more roads, instead of investing in more buses and trains.

We need our elected officials to take a stand for public transit - both expanding the lines and increasing ridership, not to mention making sure our buses and light rails are clean-burning and bike-friendly.

So, whether you live in the hip city center, the suburbs, or the middle of nowhere, please take a minute to ask your governor to get on track for great public transit.

Honestly, this just cracked me up this morning.

The State of Alaska is looking to conduct a scientific study. Nothing crazy about that, right? And, it's on polar bear population, which makes sense, since a lot of them are in Alaska. All of this sounds right, except, according to the article, 'The Alaskan government wants to find scientists who will study polar bears to prove they are not threatened by global warming'.

Huh. I'm guessing, and I could be wrong here, but aren't these the type of people who always complain about 'junk science'?

The Alaskan state government as already set aside $2 million for this type of lets-refute-science-science, which equals about $3 for every person currently living in Alaska. Now, play that out - if this were the federal government, they'd be spending over $900 million - about half what the Fish and Wildlife Service is proposed to get next year.

But seriously, how can they be putting aside money for this study, and openly calling for scientists willing to refute current on-the-books science? Added to that, the state has no basis for promoting the study, other than they want to refute any claims the polar bear could be impacted by global warming since the state gets so much funny money from the oil industry.

It was announced today that ExxonMobil was 'disappointed' with only earning $10.9 billion in profits this quarter, and for you lay people, that works out to $119.45 million per day.

But, I guess if I were part of an industry that received $118 billion in subsidies from the federal government, then I might be sad that I'm only making 43 billion and change each year.

Every time someone complains about us 'whack job' environmentalist and how we're to blame for the rising gas prices, I'd like to point out that I'll have to work for 2,986.3 more years to earn what ExxonMobil did in one day last quarter, so maybe, just maybe, we should look at who's profiting from the prices.