Q. Dear Umbra,

Recently I’ve been growing more concerned about the rainforest deforestation associated with the palm oil in trans-fat-free margarines. Are there any trans-fat-free and rainforest-deforestation-free butter substitute options for when I’m accommodating my vegan friends (and that I could suggest they use instead)?

Paul
Bar Harbor, Maine

Photo by Angelica.

A. Dearest Paul,

Your question is quite pertinent this week, when our besotted peers are loading up on 58 million pounds of chocolate for their sweeties, much of it packed with palm oil. (Look, here is one guide [PDF] to candy with and without this controversial substance.)

You are accommodating indeed, to be giving so much thought to the edible-spread needs of your vegan friends. Your query leads us down a greasy hillside of deforestation, pollution, human-rights infringements, hydrogenation, and marketing shtick. As a side bonus, however, we get a shamelessly cute video of baby orangutans, and a few promising recipes for homemade vegan “butter.” Yum.

Efficiency standards for residential clothes washers are among the many that await approval.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama stated that the administration would “not walk away from the promise of clean energy.” The president also recognized that, especially in these tough economic times, “the easiest way to save money is to waste less energy.”

Obama’s speech brings to mind a pledge he made on the campaign trail, where he promised to reduce electricity demand 15 percent by 2020, saving American consumers $130 billion.

The administration has made good on parts of this pledge.

On our way through Atlanta, we stopped at a very diverse community garden run by Friends of Refugees. It's home to the vegetable patches of several Iraqi, Burmese, and Nepalese families, as well as a lovely Bhutanese family. We surprised them by inviting ourselves over for a home-cooked Bhutanese meal and learned a bit about their path to the U.S. http://vimeo.com/36220762

An oil-shale drilling operation in Australia. (Photo by SkyTruth.)

Earlier this month, the Obama administration and the Republican-dominated House Natural Resources Committee took diametrically opposed steps regarding development of oil shale across the West. Not surprisingly, House Republicans are attaching the by-now-meaningless labels of “job creator” to its bill, and “job killing” to the Department of Interior’s action. Also not surprisingly, House Republicans’ views are not tethered to reality.

On Feb. 1, the House Natural Resources Committee approved a three-headed monster of an energy bill: drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, drilling off the California coast, and expansion of oil shale drilling. But hey, the bill has the magic word “jobs” in the label, so it’s all good! The committee’s press release trumpets the quantity of oil shale lurking deep under the Green River formation (Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming), and the need for job creators’ certainty.

The committee doesn’t bother with the thirsty facts of oil shale mining.

This thing isn't going anywhere. Photo by tcb613.

In what The Wall Street Journal calls “a move that carries political risks,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) plans to bring his behemoth, car-centric, 1950s-style transportation bill to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives early next week. Why is it risky? Because it’s a complete piece of junk.

The bill, which is soaked in suburban identity politics, would cut all designated funding for bike and pedestrian infrastructure, the Safe Routes to School program, and grants that have encouraged “complete streets” projects. If Boehner has his way, it would kill a longstanding rule that sets aside a portion of the gas tax to fund trains and buses and other public transportation systems. And to add insult to injury, it is loaded up with a long list of provisions that would pave the way for oil drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

So while an increasingly nervous-looking Boehner pushes this jalopy down the road, the rest of America is having a grand time making fun of him.

Cross-posted from Climate Progress.

Take a deep breath, because what I’m about to tell you may be shocking: Loan guarantees for energy have been successful, cost-effective investments.

That’s the message from Herb Allison, former national finance chairman for John McCain, who led a team of accountants and auditors in conducting an independent analysis of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Guarantee Program. Allison and his team found that, despite the hysteria around Solyndra, this program will cost $2 billion less than initially expected.

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.

Any morally acceptable pathway to prevent catastrophic global warming includes broad access to affordable birth control for the world's women. The conservative war on birth control is a war on women’s rights, and thus on the rights of us all. Human-made global warming is one of the most troubling symptoms of economic and social injustice around the planet, and the "countries in the developing world least responsible for the growing emissions are likely to experience the heaviest impact of climate change, with women bearing the greatest toll." Researchers have found that empowering women to reduce unplanned pregnancies is one of the most cost-effective ways to combat greenhouse pollution, as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson discussed at the Durban climate conference last December:

The Seattle area is pioneering a new way to track CO2 emissions -- and it's more exciting than it sounds! (Photo by James Arnott)

As long as the U.S. federal government remains a basket case on climate change, most progress is going to take place at the sub-national level, in states and cities. It's difficult to find a state or metro area of any size that does not have plans (or at least aspirations) to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. That's true in "red" parts of the country as well as "blue."

What has become clear over the last few years, however, is that cities, in particular, do not necessarily have the tools they need to do the job. In part that's because they're subject to forces governed at the state or federal level. But it's also because the task is new enough that many tools just haven't yet been invented.

One of the biggest gaps is also one of the simplest: measurement. It turns out there's no comprehensive, standardized way for cities to track their carbon pollution. This lack of shared metrics is an invitation to empty rhetoric and symbolic gestures. What gets measured gets solved, etc. etc.

Growing up in Park Slope, Brooklyn, I used the subway to get around the city. Cabs -- or car services, since in those days (the 1990s) taxis were often impossible to find in my part of town -- were saved for special circumstances: It was very late, it was pouring rain, or your subway line wasn’t running. Only some Uptown kids, with more money than me, seemed to use cabs as their main mode of transportation, the same way suburbanites drive everywhere. They often seemed to have an only passing familiarity with the subway system.

So it was with considerable amusement that I heard that Newt Gingrich inveighed again last Friday against “elites” in Manhattan who live in high rises and “ride the subway.” As every New Yorker knows, the measure of true privilege is being centrally located and flush enough that you never have to depend on the loud, dirty, unreliable mass transit system. If you live in an outer borough, it can be difficult to find a cab, or one that is willing to take you where you want to go. And the cost of cabbing everywhere would be ruinous for all but the very wealthy.

Of course, many people who are objectively rich and arguably elite take the subway in New York. But while Gingrich views this as a sign of moral decrepitude, it is part of what makes the city so great. The kind of elites Gingrich prefers -- the sort who live in suburban Atlanta and get into an Escalade every time they leave the house -- rarely come into contact with the less fortunate. If you live on Park Avenue, on the other hand, riding the subway is the great equalizer of your life experience. No matter how rich you are, you will suffer the delays and indignities of the subway just like the middle-class and poor riders from the Bronx and Harlem sitting next to you.

The Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act is one of two bills sustainable ag advocates will be rallying around this spring. (Photo by fieldsbh.)

Now that we're beyond all the intrigue and behind-closed-doors shenanigans of the failed Secret Farm Bill, the good food movement is tasked with something even more daunting: staying awake and engaged as the 2012 Farm Bill moves through a more traditional process of hearings, committees, and amendments. I have my party hat on -- do you?

The clock is ticking

Because we’re in an election year, the bill would essentially have to be ready to go by the beginning of this summer for it to pass before the 2008 bill expires in September. And while Tom Laskawy and others think that’s unlikely, it’s not impossible, either. In a recent, super-in-depth rundown of the logistical and political factors effecting the process, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) wrote:

… The Food, Energy, and Conservation Act of 2008 was, in fact, passed in the presidential election year of 2008.  But unlike the current situation, both the House and the Senate had already passed their versions of a farm bill in 2007. The work in 2008 was focused on reconciling the differences in the two bills through a conference committee and then passing the compromise.