I'm finding Mikhail Capone's weekly updates quite useful. As an obsessive blogger I've usually seen most of it, but it's a nice way of seeing a week's developments in one place. I must take umbrage, however, at today's identification of "Queer Eye for the Green Guy" as a "very good column at Alternet." It is, in fact, a very good column at Grist.

How can we get corporations to operate more sustainably? Lefties often characterize corporations as ruthless automata like the Terminator, grinding toward a goal -- short-term profits -- with no consideration of social or environmental consequences. I don't think that is quite accurate, at least not in all cases. Though there is structural bias toward short-term thinking in the very nature of incorporation (exacerbated by the requirement in the U.S. to report profits every quarter), corporations are in fact composed of people. People, though often misguided, are rarely sociopaths. People within corporations who struggle to make them more humane and green …

I'm a huge fan of Fareed Zakaria, who's both one of the most insightful political commentators around and one of the best repeat guests on the Daily Show. I don't find his column on hybrid cars to be his best work, but it does fall within this blog's purview, so I'm gonna link it anyway. Basically, Zakaria says that we could, with concerted effort, exceed Kyoto CO2 emissions targets and break our dependence on foreign oil purely through hybrids (not today's hybrids, of course, but future plug-in hybrids that also accept biofuels). Pretty bold, and also, I suspect, a little …

From reader MF: Thanks for your newsletter. It would be funny, if it weren't so serious, that [Sen. Richard] Pombo's name, with the addition of just an 'i' after the P, becomes Piombo, which is Italian for Lead. There's a town on the otherwise idyllic coast of Tuscany called Piombino which has mined and shipped lead and other metals since Etruscan times and I can tell you that driving through it - which is all one would ever want to do unless you are one of the poor devils who has to live there - is one of the few …

Today's nomination of Steve Johnson to head the U.S. EPA has been met with a resounding "Uh... who?" Nobody seems to know much about the guy, other than the fact that he's a scientist and has been with the agency for 24 years. ENS's story seems as substantial as any I've seen yet. And, in a sign of grim things to come, Judith Lewis has this ominous tidbit.

The other problem with all this hooey is that [The Reapers] look at the bunch of suits we got in San Francisco and Washington DC and say, "This is the movement." It's like the blind tourist who touches the elephant's ass and decides the elephant is rather like stale doughnut. That is one of many priceless lines from "Is Environmentalism Dead, Or Are You Just Stupid?" by Mike Roselle. If the title alone doesn't make it obvious: You should read it.

I have been hard on climate-change skeptics on this blog, as I think is entirely appropriate -- most of them have a political ax to grind, and if they want to grind it they should just grind it, without distorting science in the process. But. Those of us who would like to see a broad shift toward sustainability should also be wary of trying to use climate science as a magic wand to get what we want. While the basic fact of anthropogenic climate change is fairly well established, there remains considerable uncertainty about the how much's and the when's …

The National Parks Conservation Association has launched a new campaign called "Faded Glory: Top Ten Reasons to Reinvest in America's National Park Heritage." Reading the top ten list is eye-opening, if somewhat depressing: Funding shortfalls are hurting education efforts, historical preservation, the war on invasive species and poaching, routine maintenance, the list goes on. Give it a look and then follow their directions to take action.

Readers who found our interview with John Mackey, founder and CEO of Whole Foods, interesting, may also be interested in this Forbes story on Whole Foods, which focuses on the "food-as-porn" marketing and business strategy of the growing (mostly) organic giant. (Via Green Life)

It's a dirty secret in the blog world that occasionally bloggers will recommend that their readers read something that they themselves have not read. (Gasp.) But not this blog! At least, not any more! Or rather, at least not this time! Yesterday I was going to recommend "Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate" (PDF), a new paper by Roger Pielke Jr. and Daniel Sarewitz (found via their excellent Prometheus science blog). But then I realized that it's a PDF, it's wonky, it's written in dry academic language, and y'all would never read it. And really, how could I expect …