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Businesses join the chorus on climate change

Dozens of mega-corporations, including Ford, BP, British Airways, and Toyota, are calling on the G8 to set up a system of emissions trading, which they view as "inevitable," at the Gleneagles summit. Representatives from the companies met with British PM Tony Blair yesterday. This is the second group that's called out the G8 regarding climate change; the national science academies of eleven countries threw in their two cents [PDF] earlier this week.

While Tony Blair is indeed the host for the summit, I think the corporations may have picked the wrong world leader with whichto discuss the issue. Hopefully a meeting with Bush will follow.

God and oil

John Brown thinks there's oil in Israel -- the Bible told him so.

Raised Roman Catholic, Brown was a tool-company executive in Michigan and an alcoholic when he became a born-again Christian in 1981. A trip to Israel two years later convinced him that he had a mission: to help Israel counter Arab domination in oil markets by developing its own supply. Brown formed Zion Oil in 2000 and bought rights from the Israeli government to explore a 100,000-acre plot in northern Israel. After raising $7 million, mostly from other evangelicals eager to support the Jewish state, he chose a spot near Kibbutz Maanit to begin the 4,500-yard drill based on his reading of the Old Testament.

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Brown says God won't let him fail. If no oil is found at Maanit by the time he reaches bottom later this month, Brown has plans to drill at least three more holes. That will require more money, which he says evangelical Christians will gladly provide. "Finding oil will give Israel a huge strategic advantage" over its Arab enemies, he says. "It will change the political and economic structure of the region overnight."

Newsweek tells the story.

Ahem.

The week in scandal

Having trouble keeping track of the oughtta-be-but-not-quite scandals of the Republican party this week? Carpetbagger is here to help.

(Via KD.)

Pryor confirmed

William H. Pryor Jr., implacable foe of any and all environmental regulation, was confirmed today by the Senate. That means all three of the wingnut controversial judges protected by the recent filibuster deal -- Owen, Brown, and Pryor -- have been confirmed.

Stay tuned for the coming battle over Bush's Supreme Court nominee. It could get ugly.

Mo’ Mooney, mo’ problems

Chris Mooney points us to the now-notorious memo (PDF) written by science whistleblower Rick Peltz. Turns out the tidbit extracted by Andy Revkin for his NYT piece -- about Philip Cooney making direct edits to science reports -- is just the tip of the iceberg. The politicization of the administration's climate science program goes much deeper -- it's systemic, and pervasive, and irritating as hell. Check out Mooney's summary of Peltz's memo.

Also check out his follow-up on the reports Scott McClellan cited in his press gaggle the other day. Turns out McClellan was rather charitable to the administration in his gloss on the reports. Shocking.

Readers talk back on shaving, Saudis, nappies, and more

  Re: Stubble Trouble Dear Editor: I wanted to thank you for your recent column regarding environmentally responsible shaving. To be honest, straight razors scare the bejeebies out of me. […]

Land Trust but Verify

Congressional investigation leaves fate of land trusts uncertain A recent congressional investigation into doings at The Nature Conservancy, the country’s largest land trust (not to mention the world’s wealthiest environmental […]

Sustainable consumption

As usual, Joel Makower has got the good stuff. The Journal of Industrial Ecology that he points to is, in a word, fascinating. It's full of great articles, all tied together with the theme of "sustainable consumption."

I haven't had time (yet) to read all of the articles, but there is one that jumps out as a real jewel, Tim Jackson's piece, "Live Better by Consuming Less? Is There a Double Dividend in Sustainable Consumption?"

When it comes to sustainability, Jackson notes that

Purely technological approaches fall short of addressing the crucial dimension of human choice in implementing sustainable technologies and changing unsustainable consumption patterns.

With that, Jackson is off and running. I think he's absolutely right. We can have all the technology in the world to make living more and more efficient and low-impact. But it won't do any good if people don't use it.

The two elements of technology and choices, production and consumption, are intertwined, and I think that improvements have been made in both respects. For example:

• I would say that people have shifted values (choices) to place a very high value on order, or organization, or lack of entropy, or whatever term you'd like. Economically speaking, it is now possible to rack up huge amounts of GDP by sitting in front of a computer punching keys if you are doing it in a highly ordered way; society places a high value on, say, a flawless computer program or a sophisticated data model.


• Society also has evolved the infrastructure (technology) necessary for these endeavors to be sustainable; someone can now write the program without commuting at all even though her colleagues are half a world away. So in terms of the impact that someone actually needs to have in order to live, we are quite rapidly minimizing this impact to such an extent that we might be able to fit all 6 billion of us on this planet sustainably.

That may be overly optimistic, and there are reasons to believe that materialistic choices are somewhat necessary and ingrained in human nature, which Jackson discusses in depth. The article is extremely well-researched and just peppered with references.  I challenge anyone to get through it without being taken off on at least one tangent (one of my own tangents resulted in an addition to my list of books to read).

Update [2005-6-11 8:7:2 by Andy Brett]:
Some excellent further reading on the subject, with some surprising answers, courtesy of Jon Christensen:
"Are We Consuming Too Much?" from the Journal of Economic Perspectives, by Paul Ehrlich and others
"Are We Consuming Too Much?" by Jon Christensen

The first paper is somewhat technical, but very worth it. Christensen's article is less technical and has some valuable points about the role and value of "natural" systems such as wetlands.

Subaru’s new line.

Dan Neil, transportation writer for the LA Times, talks with Steve Inskeep of NPR's Marketplace about Subaru's newest model, and the possibility that it might not be more of the same from Subaru. The B9 Tribeca, which Neil reviewed last week, is slightly more "sexy" than previous Subaru lines, and Neil thinks that it might be getting a little bit astray of the traditional Subaru image, which he compares to both Thoreau and the Unitarian church.

C'mon, it's a short interview: Go give it a listen.

Pat Burns writes on the uncertain fate of conservation easements and the millions of acres they prot

One of the developments I've been watching out of the corner of my eye, but not following very closely (or writing about), is the current kerfuffle over land trusts. It's an important issue, though. Land trusts protect an immense amount of land in the U.S., and their very existence has recently been in question.

Luckily, there's an excellent blog -- Nature Noted -- devoted entirely to land trusts. If you want to follow the unfolding developments, that's the place to go.

I invited its proprietor, Pat Burns, to join us here with a rundown on the issue, the recent developments, and what's at stake. His essay follows. (Thanks, Pat.)

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One of the most successful environmental movements of the last fifty years is about to change the way it does business. And if it doesn't do it on its own, the government will step in and force it to change.

That's the headline on the recent investigation of the nation's land trusts by the Senate Finance Committee.

Wednesday, the Finance Committee held hearings ostensibly aimed at tightening the tax code on the use of conservation easements, which have become a prime tool in conserving land from development. It's also become a prime tool for evading taxes. The Finance Committee began its investigation three years ago after a series of embarrassing articles in the Washington Post about the practices of the country's biggest trust, The Nature Conservancy.

The staff released the results of its investigation Tuesday, outlining a series of abuses by TNC, including: