Things have been looking up as of late.

I sent an email to the King County Department of Transportation a couple months ago about enforcing gas mileage minimums on taxis. They basically responded by saying it wasn't their jurisdiction, so then I wrote in to Ask the Mayor, mainly about taxis deadheading. Seattle's Mayor Nickels responded on his show by saying they were looking into fixing the situation. Well anyway, while it's unclear from this article whether it includes STITA taxis, Nickels has actually proposed that all Seattle taxi's get at least 30 mpg! We'll have to wait and see how long it takes before it really happens, if ever, but it's still good news.

In other good news, people outside of the world of science and statistics are starting to see that only certain biofuels have any chance of becoming long-term solutions. Even Boeing and Continental seem to be wising up.

Housing prices are finally coming down from ridiculous heights. This means that I (and other middle-class folks like me) could afford a decent house in Seattle some day (maybe). But what's even better is that lending companies are finally cutting back on terrible loans that they thought would only hurt the borrower, but are now coming back to bit them in the sit bones. If the U.S. didn't already have the largest proportion of its population in prisons, I might spend some time arguing that those involved in purposely ruining the borrowers' lives should go to prison, particularly those who cheated the system. But I digress.

Last but not least, the economy is crashing! This isn't good news for those who have lost their jobs or soon will, but for the future of the world it's great. A crashing economy will surely result in:

• lower consumption, which is obviously key to sustaining life on Earth
• more realistic (i.e. higher) commodity prices that reflect the cost of unsustainable practices
• more realistic (i.e. lower) stock prices for companies that don't care about the cost of unsustainable practices

There is of course bad news with this.

• Savers get hurt by the Fed.
• As companies and people have less disposable income, they're less likely to be green if it's more expensive (wave goodbye to research and development).
• The really annoying bad news is that instead of liquidating corporations who can no longer stay afloat due primarily to their own faults (probably their stock was overvalued in the first place if you consider their donation to the wealth gap and use their ethics as part of their valuation) and making sure the little guy doesn't lose his savings, the Fed and the government are making sure the executives get their millions while the largest corporations gobble up the smaller ones and taxpayers end up paying the bill when megacorps eat up the assets but magically shave off the debts.

I'd like to acquire some stuff, where's my $30 billion?