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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said at today’s Capitol Climate Action rally that Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship “should be in jail… for all of eternity.”

Kennedy also said that coal companies Massey Energy, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal are “criminal enterprises.”

It’s hard to believe that Kennedy is a lawyer… but then again, it’s hard to believe that Roland Freisler was one, too.

Kennedy also invoked the memory of his father’s 1968 campaign tour through Appalachia — the same route followed by John F. Kennedy during his successful 1960 West Virginia campaign.

But if Kennedy wants to oppose coal while honoring his father, perhaps he ought to adopt RFK’s pro-nuclear stance. According to a March 21, 1967 New York Times article, RFK proposed that the New York State Power Authority be permitted to develop nuclear power pants and that private investment in nuclear power be encouraged.

The Boston Globe reported this morning that,

In the same month that Logan International Airport hiked its parking rates by $1, Governor Deval Patrick is asking for another $2 parking “carbon fee” as part of his transportation overhaul filed this week.

The carbon fee, described on page 137 of Patrick’s 141-page bill, would that mean a 20- or 30-minute trip to pick up a relative at Logan could cost $6 in parking alone, not including tunnel tolls, which could rise to as much as $7 if legislators fail to pass Patrick’s other proposal to raise the gas tax. Three hours in a Logan garage would cost $18; all-day parking in a garage would run $26…

“It makes me never want to park here,” said Pam Nagy of Sutton, who was hauling luggage into Logan on Friday.

Patrick’s transportation secretary, James A. Aloisi Jr., said he will be glad if people stop parking at the airport and use public transportation to get there, a sentiment that has led several environmental groups to endorse the parking fee.

“It should not be inexpensive to park at convenient facilities in the middle of Logan Airport,” Aloisi said. “We need people to understand that there are better ways to get to Logan.”

He wants the parking fee – which requires approval from the Legislature – to be used for improvements to airport-related transit projects, including a proposal to build a new tunnel under South Boston to speed up the Logan-bound Silver Line bus service, and the initial phases of a long-term plan to build a transit loop around the city. Based on Logan’s most recent parking figures, the new fee would probably raise about $5.4 million per year.

But many who travel to the airport come with bulky luggage or young children, making public transit a harder sell, if not an impossibility.

Ben Kaplan pulling a cart piled high with luggage and accompanied by his wife and two young sons, said taking public transit would be tough for his family. “We’d be more likely to take a cab,” he said…

Will Gov. Patrick be taking public transit or will he continue to be driven in his $51,000 taxpayer-provided, CO2-spewing SUV?

The Washington Post again editorialized today in favor of taxing us by the mile driven instead of by the gallon of gas purchased.

Appearing near the Post editorial is a letter from Gerry Rosenthal of Great Falls, Virgina:

Perhaps there should be a tax on every editorial you write. Then you would feel the pain of being charged just for doing your job. I drive to visit my clients regularly, to generate income. The last thing I need is to be penalized for getting out there to support my family.

Your focus is misguided. The auto manufacturers’ lack of ingenuity should be the target, not me.

A further thought. Many people get their copies of the Washington Post by home delivery, which inevitably involves somene driving a car. Leave it to the liberal media to advocate a tax that would hurt its own employees and business. No wonder newspapers are dying.

The Washington Post reported today that

The U.S. House of Representatives has abandoned a plan to make its offices “carbon neutral,” a sign that Congress is wrestling with a pledge to become more green even as it crafts sweeping legislation on climate change.

The promise that the House would effectively reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero was a centerpiece of the Green the Capitol program in which the new Democratic leadership sought to use Capitol Hill as a kind of a national demonstration project.

But last week, a spokesman for the House’s chief administrative officer said the chamber’s leadership had dropped an essential part of the plan, the purchase of “carbon offsets” to cancel out emissions from its buildings. Offsets are a controversial commodity that promises that a certain amount of pollution was captured or avoided elsewhere.

“Right now, there is no plan to purchase more offsets,” spokesman Jeff Ventura said. The House paid $89,000 for offsets to cover the last session, in 2007 and 2008.

The decision comes as legislators also struggle with the future of the Capitol Power Plant: Hundreds of demonstrators with Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network and other groups will protest tomorrow against the plant’s continued use of coal.

Nancy Pelosi’s message seems to be, “green for thee but not for me.”

As part of the ongoing green attack on our potty habits, The Guardian (UK) has this quote from Allen Hershkowitz, a “senior scientist” with the Natural Resources Defense Council:

“Future generations are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the greatest excesses of our age. Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution… People just don’t understand that softness equals ecological destruction.”

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Wallypop, purveyor of goods “supporting a natural lifestyle” is selling cloth toilet wipes. Wallypop says:

Using cloth toilet wipes actually has many advantages. For one, it’s a lot more comfortable and soft on your most delicate body parts. It’s also more economical, uses less paper, and saves you those late-night trips to the store.

Here’s how you use them, according to Wallypop:

Using cloth wipes for urine-only visits to the bathroom is so simple it’s hardly worth mentioning. Go, wipe, and then toss the wipe into whatever container you prefer.

Using cloth wipes for other toilet visits is not any more difficult, but there is a certain ick factor involved. Consider how much waste you’re willing to leave on your children’s diapers or wipes when you toss them in the pail. Use the same standards for yourself. Shake, scrape, swish, or squirt off anything you don’t want in your laundry, and then toss the wipe into the pail or container. (Personally speaking, we just wipe and toss in the pail. Our wipes have minimal staining.)

As Andrew Bolt commented,

Surely it’s time global warming believers marked their houses with some sign, a green pentangle or something, as a warning to visitors to enter at their own risk.

My column at FoxNews.com today…

President Obama wants to pay you to support global warming regulation. What he isn’t saying, however, is that his enticement won’t come close to covering what the regulations will cost you.

You can read the full column at FoxNews.com.

Rose George opined in today’s New York Times that we should recycle urine.

IN the far reaches of Shaanxi Province in northern China, in an apple-producing village named Ganquanfang, I recently visited a house belonging to two cheery primary-school teachers, Zhang Min Shu and his wife, Wu Zhaoxian. Their house wasn’t exceptional — a spacious yard, several rooms — except for the bathroom. There, up a few steps on a tiled platform, sat a toilet unlike any I’d seen. Its pan was divided in two: solid waste went in the back, and the front compartment collected urine. The liquids and solids can, after a decent period of storage and composting, be applied to the fields as pathogen-free, expense-free fertilizer.

From being unsure of wanting a toilet near the house in the first place — which is why the bathroom is at the far end of their courtyard — the couple had become so delighted with it that they regretted not putting it next to the kitchen after all.

What does this have to do with you? Mr. Zhang and Ms. Wu’s weird toilet — known as a “urine diversion,” or NoMix (after a Swedish brand), toilet — may have things to teach us all.

Though George advocates urine diversion toilets, she acknowledges there could be a problem with them:

Then there’s the sitting problem: in most urine-diversion toilets, a man must empty his bladder sitting down. This wouldn’t be a problem in some countries — Germany recently introduced a toilet-seat alarm that admonishes standers to sit — but it has been in others. Professor Jenssen was flummoxed by one participant at a training workshop in Cuba who said firmly, “If a man sits, he is homosexual.”

First, the greens came for our 3.5 gallon flush toilets. Now they want our flush toilets. What’s next? Just hold it?