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Fred Thompson, CEO of Jane Goodall Institute, answers questions

Fred Thompson. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I’m president and CEO of the Jane Goodall Institute. What does your organization do? What, in a perfect world, would constitute “mission accomplished”? Our mission is to inspire and empower people to take informed, compassionate action to make the world a better place for people, animals, […]

Green quid pro quo for Liberia

William Powers has an intriguing editorial in the New York Times today arguing that Bush should help Liberia institute a sort of "Peace for Nature swap, based on the Debt for Nature model in which third world countries receive debt relief for conserving their natural heritage." The idea is that Liberia has something lots of folks want -- intact rain forest -- and they desperately need something we can help provide: stability. In exchange for setting its rain forest aside as a United Nations biosphere reserve, Liberia would receive U.N. peacekeeping, electricity and water, and training in new jobs based around ecotourism and limited logging. I think enviros should be skeptical about these schemes, vigilant against their historical tendency to value the rain forest over the long-term health and development of indigenous populations, but this sounds like an excellent plan to me, particularly given the grim alternatives Powers describes. An example of economic development driven by preservation of natural resources rather than exploitation thereof, sitting in the heart of Africa, would be, as Martha Stewart says, a good thing.

Deconstructing Inhofe

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Ok.) is the chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. He thinks global warming is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." He recently gave a speech on the floor of the Senate summarizing new science that he says supports his position. Chris Mooney utterly dismantles it.

UPDATE: Ah, yet another dismantling, more technical in nature, from the folks at RealClimate.

2004 climate change and energy wrap-up

An interesting summary of climate change and energy news from 2004 over on EDIE. (See also their contaminated land news round-up.)

UPDATE: A similar round-up of clean energy news from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Happy Monday!

A Somalian mother has to choose which of her children to save. Meanwhile, Americans knowingly and deliberately poison their children.

The North knows best?

DDT is very effective at killing the mosquitoes that carry malaria.  Malaria kills 2 to 3 million people a year.  These people, the bulk of whom are children and the elderly, live in the global South, the tropics of the developing world.

DDT doesn't just hurt mosquitoes. The United States and most Northern countries have banned its usage because of its threat to animal and human health.  These bans are extended to the foreign assistance that flows North to South.

Is the ban the "best" thing for those facing the imminent threat of malaria in developing countries?

Rocky Road-Widening

Tragic accident pits Virginia town against strip mine The small town of Appalachia, Va., in the heart of coal country, seemed an unlikely spot for an outbreak of public opposition to strip mining. But that changed in the dark early-morning hours of Aug. 20, 2004, when a bulldozer widening a road to a strip mine […]

Sage Fright

Western sage grouse will not be protected under ESA The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that the sage grouse, a large game bird with the unlucky habit of residing on top of large natural-gas deposits, will not be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Never mind that the species’ numbers have […]

More shadowboxing

Oh lordy, here's another one. Writing in the Seattle Times today, Collin Levey lobs the by-now-familiar accusation that enviros are pinning the tsunamis on climate change.

Similar talk has been heard from other eco groups, though they always clarify that they don't mean the earthquake in the Indian Ocean was caused by global warming, er, exactly.

Note that all the rhetorical work here is done by the "er, exactly," which is packed with insinuation that Levey does not unpack, because she can't, because of course "eco groups" really don't mean that the earthquake was cause by global warming.

After the usual round of accusation by way of dark innuendo, Levey gets to her point: Environmentalists, she says, oppose economic development, especially for poor nations. Their message:

Poor countries are unwise to aspire to join the industrialized world, and their "natural" disasters are a comeuppance for buying into the desirability of economic progress.

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, horseshit. While there are greenies who oppose development as such, they are on the fringe. (There are fewer of them than there are of, say, right wingers planning to visit the Museum of Creation.)

It is retrograde types like Levey who see environmental protection and development as opposing forces. Mainstream environmentalism -- and even moreso cutting edge green thinking -- supports ecologically responsible development. They support leapfrogging, whereby developing countries use emerging technologies to bypass the grinding, earth-screwing, wealth-concentrating stages of industrialization whereby the developed world reached its current state of prosperity.

Thinking greens recognize that economic development is crucial to protecting the earth, but they realize that there's development and then there's development. We like the kind that benefits the poor and the earth, not just elites and industry oligarchs.

That Levey can play on this outmoded opposition in a major newspaper is not only her failing -- it is a failure of environmentalists to be more consistent and vocal in their message of hope and progress.

New metrics

I meant to link to this a few days ago: Over on Renewable Energy Access, Scott Sklar argues for the development of new economic metrics by which to assess the viability of renewable energy.

By accepting the traditional measures of viability (cents per kWh, for instance) PV and other renewables always come out poorly.

Another economic "metric" needs to be crafted and effort initiated to build support for it (such as dollars per immediate used, levelized cost, non-interruptable energy). When you take these modifiers in account, biomass, free-flow hydropower, geothermal, photovoltaics, solar thermal, wind, and waste heat/cogeneration along with other clean distributed generation and energy efficiency come out quite well.