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GM fights back via … Google?

Tucked away in this little USA Today story on the resurgence of electric cars is this interesting tidbit, about GM's reaction to Who Killed the Electric Car?:

Small Colorado coal burner pays big bucks to climate change denier

According to ABC News, a small rural electric cooperative in Colorado paid a notorious climate change denier $100,000 without first informing or asking its members.

"It's outrageous," Ron Binz, a public utility consultant formerly with the state of Colorado, told ABC. "It's an abuse of authority. The customers are member-owners. [General Manager] Stan Lewandowski is basically spending other people's money."

Inhofe chides EPA investigators for investigating

Smog is bad in Denver in these dog days of summer -- not an unusual situation for the city.

Recently, EPA investigators took a tour of oil and gas facilities northeast of Denver armed with infrared cameras, which can record smog-forming emissions that are invisible to the naked eye.

Aiming the camera at pipelines, valves and hatches atop storage tanks, the EPA regulators found numerous sources of "fugitive emissions" -- those leaking from various areas of the facility -- during a two-hour drive-by of the region last week.

Nice job, EPA investigators! I mean, right? Seeking out sources of pollution? Enforcing laws? Yippee?

Turns out not everyone approves:

Small-mart

For all you die-hard Wal-Mart haters nauseated by my earlier post, check out Joel Makower's review of Michael Shuman's new book, The Small-Mart Revolution. Shuman, says Makower ...

... paints a compelling portrait of how small, local business networks can work and succeed. In Shuman's Small-Mart Nation, many of your neighbors run their own businesses, you spend more of your money on locally produced, high-quality goods and services, some of your savings sit in a local bank or credit union, and communities don't bend over backwards -- financially or otherwise -- to lure global companies to set up shop nearby. It's not that they don't want automobile factories, big-box stores, and other manifestations of globalization in the 'hood. It's just that these entities will have to compete on a level playing field when it comes to zoning, taxes, schools, policing, and other government services. If they succeed, they're welcome.

Sounds good to me.

Sinks a lot?

A quick vacation to Washington's Olympic Peninsula reminded me of two things. First -- dang, those trees are huge!

And second -- dang, there's a lot of clearcut coastal forestland that's still just basically sitting there: no trees, just scrub and piles of decaying stumps.

Which got me to thinking: How much CO2 could the clearcut land store if returned to its full rainforest glory? Enough to take a serious bite out of our climate-warming emissions?

Bob Edwards special on mountaintop removal mining

Tomorrow, beloved ex-NPR host Bob Edwards -- who now has a show on XM satellite radio -- will be doing an hour-long special on mountaintop removal mining. (A weekend version is also distributed by PRI, so check your local public-radio listings.)

I chatted with Mr. Edwards about the program yesterday, and asked him what drew him to the subject. He said:

Some inconvenient truths

With the release of Al Gore's movie, global warming awareness has gone mainstream and the consensus among environmentalists is that now is the time for drastic action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. On Gristmill, we are witnessing calls to turn combating global warming into a "moral crusade" in order to enlist religious-minded folks and to elevate the issue to a debate about right and wrong conduct. Unfortunately, I think many environmentalists are repeating the mistakes of past environmental campaigns.

XONSUX update

For all of you worried sick about it, I'm happy to report that the State of Alaska has withdrawn its attempt to revoke the personal license plate of Annette Nelson-Wright: XONSUX. (Background on the case here.) To quote from the decision:

I find that the combination XONSUX is not used in the common vernacular to describe a sexual act or is vulgar in any way. I find that a person of reasonable sensibilities would not be offended by the license plate XONSUX, thought provoking yes, but not offensive.

The tide is turning, friends!

Break in Doha talks leaves fate of fisheries uncertain

One of this week's dramas on the world stage was the news from Geneva that the World Trade Organization was forced to break off the trade negotiations known as the Doha Development Round. Key players had reached an impasse on ever-prickly agriculture tariffs and farm subsidies, and it was clear a breakthrough was not in sight. So the Director-General of the WTO recommended the move, which he later likened to a "time out" at a sporting event.

We can only hope that this is merely a time out. That's because the Doha Round contains what is in our view the single biggest thing that could be done right now to save world fisheries from irreversible collapse: eliminating government subsidies that build overcapacity and drive overfishing around the globe.

The Air of Their Ways

EPA falling short on clean-air protection, GAO says The Government Accountability Office is on the U.S. EPA’s case again, reporting that the agency has, and we quote, “not reduced human health risks from air toxics to the extent and in the time frames envisioned in the [Clean Air] Act.” The EPA has largely failed to […]