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Let’s

Variety's special package on the greening of Hollywood is pretty good. Joel Makower has a nice rundown.

Joel says one thing I'd like to follow up on:

... the last thing the environmental movement -- always struggling for relevance as a mainstream force in America and elsewhere -- needs is a closer alliance with the left-leaning Hollywood elite.

He doesn't make too much of this, but it's a common sentiment, so it's worth addressing.

What a jerk

Parody? Sadly, no:

Proposals by congressional Democrats to eliminate oil industry tax breaks and subsidies would set a bad example overseas and discourage new industry investments, Exxon Mobil's top executive said Thursday.

Rex W. Tillerson said moves suggested by leaders of the incoming Democratic congressional majority would encourage similar steps by governments abroad, where Exxon Mobil Corp. generates the bulk of its profit.

"I think the bigger concern I have is not so much the economic direct effect of the fact that they want to take a tax break off here or there. But it's the message it sends the rest of the world that you don't have to provide stable (regulatory) frameworks," Tillerson told reporters after a speech to the Boston College Chief Executives' Club.

"And if that happens, none of us are going to be able to take the risk in this business."

If they can't rely on coddling and favorable treatment from the world's governments -- all of whom look to U.S. Democrats to set their regulatory course, mind you -- U.S. oil companies, the most profitable corporate enterprises in history, will cease investing in their central product.

What can you even say?

Bush tacitly acknowledges he’s lost on the environment

The GOP has figured out that its defiantly retrograde stance on the environment -- including energy and climate issues -- has become an electoral liability. How can you tell?

Here's how:

Johnson goes flaccid on TRI

It's not the sexiest news in the world, but it's good: EPA head honcho Stephen Johnson has abandoned his effort to relax the requirements of the Toxics Release Inventory, one of the most unambiguously successful federal regulations of the post-war era.

Thanks, New Political Climate!

Life’s a REACH, and Then You Dye

E.U. politicians agree to disagree on chemical-regulations law Late last night, over croissants and Grolsch, E.U. member states and the European Parliament reached a deal on a controversial rule regulating 30,000 chemicals produced in or imported to Europe. The Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals directive, known as REACH, has caused strain between governments, industry, […]

New Year’s Solutions

Next year is gonna totally be the best ever — but only with your help Now that December’s here, it’s time to think about … January! We’re already planning our “New Year’s Solutions” coverage for 2007: realistic and revealing reports about climate solutions and sustainable successes. But we can’t get it done without your help. […]

Damn he’s smart

The Rocky Mountain Institute's Amory Lovins appeared on PBS's Charlie Rose Show on Tuesday. He was, as usual, brilliant and absurdly quotable. The guy's a human pull-quote generator. Charlie Rose is kind of dippy though. Here's the full video:

The boring green-building stuff is the best

Moises Velasquez-Manoff of the Christian Science Monitor gets this exactly right:

What kind of rhetoric creates social change?

In the course of questioning James Lovelock's apocaphilia, Jon Lebkowsky says this:

A solution to the problem of global warming begins with a cautious, balanced, and rational approach, and getting there is as much about our psychological and social frameworks than our ability to analyze and predict.

The latter half of that statement seems obviously true. But why should we believe that, among our many "psychological and social frameworks," the "cautious, balanced, and rational approach" is the most important or the most effective one?

A good interview

Worldchanging has a great interview with Andy Revkin, science/environment report for The New York Times. Here he makes a point similar one Andrew recently made:

Ultimately, the choices that confront us are values choices. The question of avoiding dangerous climate change revolves around the word dangerous, and the word dangerous is fundamentally a values-laden word. It's not a scientifically delineated term. We've been in this bollix since 1990. The negotiations leading to the Framework Conventional on Climate Change never defined the word dangerous because no one wants to touch it. The politicians know that it's too dangerous for them to define it. They toss it off to the scientists and the scientists say, "that's not our decision. We just tell you how much warming is going to happen, how much sea level will rise, and you figure out what level is unacceptable." So it goes round and round, until society really gets a clearer sense of what this boils down to: a decision about what is our responsibility to the next generation and what is our responsibility to our neighbor.

And as a special bonus, here's some footage of Revkin singing his soon-to-be-Top-40 smash, "Liberate Carbon":