What happens when a group’s position statement does not reflect its members accurately?

A while back, I blogged on the huge number of scientific organizations that had put out position statements supporting the mainstream theory of human-induced global warming.

Many commenters on my post and around the internet have suggested that one can't trust a statement put out by a professional organization. They argue that these statements are not voted on by the membership, but generally drafted by an ad hoc committee and adopted by the organization's leadership.

If this small clique of members turned out to be advocates, the hypothesis goes, then the resulting statement will not reflect the overall views of the organization.

It occurred to me, however, that this is a testable hypothesis. How do we test it, you ask? We have a professional organization try to put out a statement that its members don't agree with. What would happen?

Enviros file supreme suit to stop border wall

Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife have filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging elements of the REAL ID act, which gives Secretary of Homeland Security the power to waive any environmental laws that would get in the way of the 700-mile-long double-layered concrete wall Congress authorized for the U.S.-Mexico border.

From the press release announcing the lawsuit:

By granting one government official the absolute power to pick and choose which laws apply to border wall construction, the REAL ID Act proves itself to be both inherently dangerous and profoundly un-American. The issue here is not security vs. wildlife, but whether wildlife, sensitive environmental values, and communities along the border will be given fair consideration in the decisions the government makes," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. "We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will take up this case in order to protect the fundamental separation of powers principles enshrined in the United States Constitution."

The lawsuit seems to have some legs; a government official familiar with it said it had some chance of success.

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What will London’s new mayor, Boris Johnson, do for the environment?

Ben Tuxworth, communications director at Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe.

Boris Johnson is mayor of London. It's pretty surprising to many of us here, including a fair number of political commentators and, I'd be willing to bet, even a number of the people who voted for him. It's hard to imagine an American equivalent. George Bush as president has some of the connotations, but lacks the class overtones (Johnson is an old Etonian) that we find so irresistible in Britain.

Johnson's trademarks thus far in his political career have been saying what he thinks (sounds great, but includes occasionally referring to black people as "picaninnies"), being posh and funny, and having blond hair. Despite being a senior member of the Conservative team, in his media appearances he is charmingly off-message, with a self-deprecating gag to deflect any serious questions. He's become a sort of mascot for English love of wit but hatred of the intellectual.

So far so good, but compared to the previous mayor, Ken Livingstone, who battled Maggie Thatcher for the soul of London in the '80s and who defined the new office of London mayor, Johnson seems almost willfully lightweight, with no policy record and no real policies, particularly on the environment. Beyond the knee-jerk stuff -- fight crime! get rid of bendy buses! affordable housing for all! -- Johnson's campaign has been very short on specifics. "This guy is just fumbling around," Arnold Schwarzenegger said after seeing him speak at a conference last year.

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Lessons the United States can learn from the drought in Australia

The brutal drought has ended over large parts of Australia -- and consumers are obsessively reducing their demand for water -- and yet water "prices are set to double in the next five to 10 years," Water Services Association Australia executive officer Ross Young told a drought briefing in Canberra.

The focus on water conservation has never been higher:

Water is a dinner table topic. People are quite passionate about water and they are quite concerned about water in the context of climate change.

And the results are impressive:

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