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NYC will get sustainability commission

So, as forecast in this earlier post, NYC Mayor Bloomberg this afternoon announced some big sustainability stuff. Read about the details on StreetsBlog.

Funny

In which, as a follow-up to his "Climate Change Technology Program Strategic Plan," he tells us pretty much all we need to know about what he thinks.

It’s rampant

The ethical abyss at the Department of Interior has been much in the news lately, with the dept's Inspector General testifying to Congress that "short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior."

Now the NYT reports that Interior's own investigators are in open rebellion; in a series of lawsuits, they "contend that they were blocked by their bosses from pursuing more than $30 million in fraudulent underpayments of royalties for oil produced in publicly owned waters in the Gulf of Mexico." Political sops to oil companies? Say it ain't so!

In a set of follow-up posts, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) blog offers links to many of the lawsuit documents and complaints (see also here).

What a mess.

Rumor has it

Don't miss this post on StreetsBlog:

A set of principles we can all agree on

The following is a guest essay from Bill Becker, Organizer for the National Leadership Summits for a Sustainable America in Golden, Colo.

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What would happen if all of the people concerned about the federal government's lack of leadership on climate change began to sing from the same song sheet? Would the chorus grow so loud that the administration would finally hear it? Would this year's congressional candidates join in?

These are not unimportant questions. While the Bush administration's lackluster leadership on global warming has produced a silver lining -- the hundreds of grassroots organizations, local governments, and businesses rising to fill the leadership void -- it also has produced fragmented effort and the impression among the American people that perhaps global warming isn't so serious after all. And while local action is essential, some of us have concluded that stabilizing the climate is so large a job with so urgent a timetable that the nation's response cannot be sufficient without the feds.

Last June, 40 leaders committed to climate action gathered in Wisconsin and asked the song-sheet questions. Their answer is a document called the "Wingspread Principles on the U.S. Response to Global Warming" -- 12 short statements, calm and reasoned, on what the underpinnings should be for serious national climate policy.

"Great nations rise to great challenges," the document begins. "Today, no challenge is more critical than global climate change. It reaches to the core of humanity's relationship with the Earth. It tests our capacity to make intelligent changes in our economy, policies, and behaviors in the interest of all people and all generations."

The document, named after the conference center where the leaders met, includes these statements:

The Roadless Rule Is Dead! Long Live the Roadless Rule!

Judge puts Clinton’s roadless policy back in action In a Three Stooges-esque poke to the eyes of the Bush administration (nyuk nyuk!), U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte yesterday reinstated a Clinton-era ban on road construction, logging, mining, and other development in roadless national forest areas. In May 2005, the Bushies replaced Clinton’s “roadless rule” — […]

How much science can money buy?

A final bit of superb reporting from Paul D. Thacker at Environmental Science & Technology before he heads to a new job.

It's about conflicts of interest in the science publishing world:

As environmental journals publish more controversial papers on topics such as human health and global warming, they are beginning to face a serious issue that medical journals have long been dealing with -- conflict of interest. Although disclosure policies are standard in the medical community, publishers of environmental research have been slow to adopt such guidelines.

There are some truly eye-opening case studies in the piece. It's a little unsettling that the scientific process is as much subject to big-money gaming as politics. Perhaps science is becoming a continuation of politics by other means. Or is it the other way around?

This one is a must-read.

That’s a lot

British business titan Richard Branson has pledged $3 billion in the fight against climate change. He made the announcement on the second day of Bill Clinton's Global Initiative conference.

Small fish used to detect toxins

Evildoers beware -- a new soldier's been drafted into the war on terror. If our color-coded charts and duct tape sent chills up your spine, wait until you get a load of our bluegills.

San Francisco, New York, Washington and other big cities are using bluegills -- aka sunfish or bream -- to safeguard their drinking water. These fish are highly attuned to chemical disturbances in their environment, and could be able to detect chemical warfare before traditional detection means. When the fish are exposed to toxins, they flex their gills in the same way a human would cough.

Sadly, there are plenty of toxins that could make these freshwater fish "flex their gills," and Osama didn't put them there.

Carbon must be made expensive

From the minority desk at the Senate Environment Committee: