Eideard

Oil prices reaching nearly $140 a barrel are transforming the economics of the global plastics industry as producers start to pour billions of dollars into plant-based alternatives.

Already considered a growth sector because of increased consumer concerns about the environment, some of the world’s largest chemical companies, including DuPont, Dow Chemical, Cargill and Braskem, are now accelerating their production of bio-plastics made from crops including sugarcane, corn and maize.

Dow, the world’s largest producer of conventional plastics, is investing $500 million (£253 million) in a new factory in Brazil that will produce polyethylene, one of the most commonly used forms of plastic, from ethanol made from sugarcane. It is due to open in 2011 and will employ about 3,000 people, producing 350,000 tonnes of the material a year…

“The growth of bio-plastics is all being driven by the cost of feedstocks,” said Adrian Higson, of the National Non-food Crops Centre, who estimates that the industry is enjoying growth rates of nearly 20 per cent per year.

“As oil goes up, petrochemical costs [which form the conventional raw material for plastic] have risen too, whereas the cost of sugarcane, for example, has not changed substantially.”

There will continue to be a certain quantity of whining over this. Market forces are uneven enough to cause erratic pricing in greenstock. But, the critical portion of the whole equation is inevitably positive:

We’re discussing renewable raw materials – not finite reserves. Long term, this is a boon for agri-business and rural workers as well as anyone sophisticated enough [intellectually honest enough?] to come down on the ecological side of the economics.

Frankly, bright people have been cutting back on sugar consumption, anyway! This starts out by dealing with the existing surplus.

Police in Australia have charged a man for drink driving in a motorized wheelchair after he was found to be six times over the legal alcohol limit, local media reported on Monday.

Police in the tropical northern Queensland city of Cairns said the man had a blood alcohol reading of 0.31, and was so drunk he was asleep at the controls of his motorized wheelchair in a turning lane of a major highway.

“It beggars belief,” Police Inspector Bob Walters told the Cairns Post newspaper…

Other motorists on the four-lane highway had to swerve to avoid the wheelchair, police said.

Ain’t nothing like equal opportunity to do something stupid.

Google’s ambitions in the mobile industry have suffered a setback after it was reported a new handset powered by the search giant’s software is now unlikely to appear until the end of the year.

The so-called ‘Gphone‘ – a handset powered by an operating system Google has helped design – had been slated for release in the second half of the year, but Google now says it will more likely appear in the fourth quarter.

Or something like that.

A director of mobile platforms at Google told the Wall Street Journal that the development of the Gphone, which requires the involvement of handset manufacturers as well as mobile operators, was taking its time. “This is where the pain happens – we’re very, very close,” he said…

T-Mobile USA is hoping it will be able to deliver an Android-powered phone in the fourth quarter, but that release is taking up so much of Google attention and Sprint Nextel – another Android partner – will not be able to put out a device until next year, according to reports.

Uh-huh.

WASHINGTON, DC – Mayor Adrian M. Fenty is the new owner of a fuel-sipping Smart car.

The European style two-seater made famous by high gas prices and celebrities like George Clooney arrived Thursday at the District of Columbia’s city hall. The 1,800-pound car gets 33 miles per gallon in the city and 41 miles per gallon on the highway.

Fenty, who routinely drives himself around D.C., says he made the switch because he wanted to lead by example. And, he notes, it’s easy to park the 8-foot, 8-inch convertible.

Because he’s the mayor, Fenty’s Smart car has one option that most cars lack – flashing lights and a siren.

I would love to have the flashing lights. Well, I’d love to have a Smart Car, too.

The number of personal computers in use around the world has surpassed 1 billion, with strong growth in emerging markets set to double the number of PCs by early 2014, says research firm Gartner.

Mature markets accounted for 58 percent of the first billion installed PCs, but would only account for about 30 percent of the next billion, Gartner said.

“Rapid penetration in emerging markets is being driven by the explosive expansion of broadband and wireless connectivity, the continuing fall in PC average selling prices, and the general realization that PCs are an indispensable tool for advancement,” George Shiffler, research director at Gartner, said.

I wonder how many are corporate hardware treated strictly the same as telephones or copying machines?

A looming battle in Washington state over efforts to create a right-to-die law for the terminally ill is a personal one for two men leading it, both of whom are ill. Fighting for the measure is a former governor who wants the freedom to exercise such a right; fighting against it is a former press secretary who can’t imagine anyone wanting to.

Proponents are wrapping up a petition drive to put Initiative 1000, the proposed Washington Death With Dignity Act, on the November ballot.

The initiative would let a doctor prescribe lethal drugs to patients given less than six months to live. Oregon is the only state with such a law, which the Supreme Court upheld in 2006.

Booth Gardner, 71, who served two terms as a Democratic governor in Washington, has Parkinson’s disease and has declared this his “final campaign.”

“There are people like me everywhere who are coping with pain — they know that their next step is death,” Gardner said in an e-mail interview. “When death is inevitable, we shouldn’t force people to endure agonizing suffering if we don’t have to…”

“We have all made tough decisions throughout our lives, and we should be trusted to make tough decisions about the end of life,” he said. “It’s about autonomy, personal choice and respect. I was in control of my life. I should be allowed to be in control of my death.”

As usual, those who confuse ethics with morality, counter science with superstition – march in lockstep with their culture of divine death versus an individual’s right to choose to order their own life. Or death.

Police dogs in Norway are finally getting the respect they deserve. The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that they are are public servants, making an assault on a police dog as serious as an attack on any police officer.

The precedent-setting case centered on a police dog named Casper, who was attacked for doing his duty.

In May 2007, in the western city of Bergen, a 29-year-old man was caught breaking into an apartment. When police tried to arrest him, the man fled. But Casper gave chase — and collared the suspect.

In his effort to escape, the suspect, whose name was not reported, began kicking and punching the dog. Casper did his duty, though, and succeeded in holding the man until human officers handcuffed him. The man was charged not only for the break-in, but also with assaulting a police officer — in this case, Casper.

Two lower courts dismissed the assault charge, saying the offense only applied to human officers.

But – “The supreme court finds that the concept of assault must also be used to cover assault on a police dog that is being used to help the police,” said court ruled. “An attack on a police dog must be judged on the same basis as an attack on a public servant.”

I agree…