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Huh?

There's a good interview with Christie Whitman over on Environmental Science & Technology. I go back and forth about Whitman, but she definitely puts her best -- and by "best," of course I mean, "most sympathetic to my own views" -- foot forward in this interview.

I found this a bit bizarre though. When asked about climate change, she says:

In fairness, I think we can do more. I think we can get a cap on carbon that would give utilities time to reach it without so dislocating the industry that it will drive the costs of energy out of sight. And I think, ultimately, we will have a cap on carbon. But you also have the studies, I think two years ago, from NASA showing the impacts of land change.

So there are still scientific differences on where to focus the dollars. The president has acknowledged that climate change is occurring. But then Michael Crichton, who is enormously popular, writes a book [State of Fear] saying that it's not happening. And that sets you back. So it is not as widely accepted as it should be.

Michael Crichton: single-handedly thwarting the social consensus on climate change that President Bush so desperately wants.

And then later:

It’s not just a partisan issue. I haven’t read the book, but Michael Crichton cites studies that show climate change is natural and that we are not in immediate danger. Then you have that movie, The Day After Tomorrow, where the world is coming to an end immediately if we don't do something tomorrow. When you have those two images in the popular media, it's hard for the people to figure out what's right. That's one of the reasons the administration hasn't been that engaged, and why they haven't felt any pressure.

Hm ... what do they call it when an administration champions an issue of great import that isn't receiving enough public attention ... oh, right!

Leadership.

Models and rock bands are overrated.

A while back I drew attention to Gil Friend's "Sustainable Business: A Declaratin of Leadership," a handy (and colorful!) capsule summary of what sustainable biz is all about. Now that much-blogged-about document has its very own website, where you can download a poster-sized version. Put it on the wall of your dorm room!

None of the sub-pages work yet, but I'm assuming Gil is all over that.

L.A. tries to get itself out of its sprawled mess.

Well, from the LA Times, at least. 

The paper's had a series of guest editorials about traffic, transit and urban planning -- specifically, how sprawling, congested LA can get itself out of the fix it's put itself into over the last 60 years or so.  The LA area is surprisingly dense, but the population is spread out fairly uniformly over a large area -- which makes it very hard to service the region cost-effectively using transit.  At the same time, building new roads has become both exhorbitantly expensive and politically unpalatable.

Sounds a little like much of the rest of urban America, no?

To summarize...

Ubiquity Is the Mother of Reinvention

Labeling and certification move beyond organic in U.S. With the U.S. organics industry going mainstream, a coterie of anti-The-Man farmers are getting out, eschewing federally regulated “organic” certification and creating terms and systems of their own to address eco-friendly agricultural practices not covered by the federal regs. The Food Alliance has created a certification process […]

Read Chris Mooney’s two recent columns on climate-change skeptics.

Chris Mooney is on a roll lately. I finally got around to his piece in the latest issue of Mother Jones, and it's an absolute must-read. Lots of people have the vague impression that there's a sort of climate-skeptic cottage industry out there, funded largely by a few large financial interests, particularly ExxonMobil. Well, they're right -- check out this chart.

There's nothing wrong, of course, with industries trying to advance their views on economic and policy issues, but this is a coordinated attempt to "do science," or rather, create the illusion of scientific controversy around an issue on which there is in fact overwhelming scientific consensus.

Also check out Mooney's latest column in the American Prospect, which highlights some of the more obvious absurdities in James Inhofe's recent speeches on "Four Pillars of Climate Alarmism." In particular, Inhofe is cherry-picking from a report that draws heavily on another report he hated so much he tried to sue to block its release.

Inhofe faces this predicament because of his, and the right's, cavalier treatment of serious scientific documents. If climate-science reports are deemed too "alarmist," as the "National Assessment" was, they are viciously denounced. If the reports are subtle and contain plenty of language about scientific uncertainty that can be quoted out of context, they are misrepresented as throwing the scientific consensus into question.

Clown town.

Update [2005-4-19 12:41:23 by Dave Roberts]: If you get tired of seeing the same old oft-debunked climate-skeptic arguments used again and again, stay entertained with Deltoid's Global Warming Skeptic Bingo! Fun for the whole family.

Good news and bad

A day late, but never a dollar short: Mike's week in review.

A panel discussion on China’s environmental woes

Heads up:

An African wildlife reserve is saved, thanks to Corneille Ewango

Corneille Ewango. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. In the vast Democratic Republic of the Congo, dense equatorial rainforests line the sprawling basin of the Congo River. Corneille E.N. Ewango, a Congolese botanist, has a particular appreciation for these lush stands, which represent about half of the continent’s tropical forests. To him, they are a scientific puzzle, […]

Forgive Me, Gaia, for I Have Sinned

The secret sins of environmentalists Environmentalists have a reputation for being self-righteous, holier-than-thou prigs. And yeah, well, they frequently are. So in the spirit of humanizing and soul-cleansing and all that, we’ve asked a few greens, including writers Bill McKibben and Terry Tempest Williams, to confess their environmental sins. And we’re asking you to do […]

New York Times identifies broad coalition for smart energy policy

The New York Times gets it:

Step outside the White House and Congress, and one hears a chorus of voices begging for something far more robust and forward-looking than the trivialities of this energy bill. It is a strikingly bipartisan chorus, too, embracing environmentalists, foreign policy hawks and other unlikely allies. Last month, for instance, a group of military and intelligence experts who cut their teeth on the cold war - among them Robert McFarlane, James Woolsey and Frank Gaffney Jr. - implored Mr. Bush as a matter of national security to undertake a crash program to reduce the consumption of oil in the United States.

The consensus on the need for a more stable energy future is matched by an emerging consensus on how to get there. In the last two years, there have been three major reports remarkable for their clarity and convergence, from the Energy Future Coalition, a group of officials from the Clinton and the first Bush administrations; the Rocky Mountain Institute, which concerns itself with energy efficiency; and, most recently, the National Commission on Energy Policy, a group of heavyweights from academia, business and labor.

Homage is paid to stronger fuel economy standards, which Congress has steadfastly resisted. But all three reports also call for major tax subsidies and loan guarantees to help Detroit develop a new generation of vehicles, as well as an aggressive bio-fuels program to develop substitutes for gasoline.

One could quibble here with this detail or that, and one could wonder whether what the struggling General Motors needs most in order to compete is not a direct subsidy but rather relief on the health care front, but the Times, over all, understands the importance of coalitions. Good for them.