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USDA chief made $100k from an Iowa power company

From an AP report:

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's income included $300,000 from the law and lobbying firm Dorsey and Whitney in Des Moines, Iowa; $100,000 consulting for MidAmerican Energy; $63,000 from Iowa State University; and $55,000 from other sources, including honoraria, a fellowship, a director's fee and consulting. In addition, he and his wife have $500,000 to $1 million in farmland that yielded $15,000 to $50,000 in rent, plus $7,552 from a U.S. Agriculture Department Conservation Reserve Program.

I've mentioned before that Vilsack recently stepped down from a partner role at Dorsey & Whitney, a corporate law firm that has represented Cargill, ConAgra, and other agribiz giants.

Some folks want to make a big deal about Vilsack making $7,552 from the Conservation Reserve Program. Not me. I'd rather see him idle land under CRP than drench it with agrichemicals to grow industrial corn.

The $63,000 from Iowa State University must be a reference to his role at that institution's Biosafety Institute for Genetically Modified Agricultural Products, where until recently he sat on the advisory board with representatives of Monsanto, Dupont's Pioneer Hi-Bred, and the World Bank. But I already knew about that.

What gets me is the $100K in consulting for MidAmerican Energy. MidAmerican Energy Holdings describes itself like this:

Taking a moment to appreciate Obama's words

In the wake of President Barack Obama's speech on Monday, the media -- including our own Kate and Sarah -- have scurried to report on the implications, ramifications, and other -ications of the emissions issue. Good stuff, and important. But could we take a step back for just a moment?

Consider what your president said:

U.N. climate official clarifies remarks about near-term summit

Monday, U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer sounded an awful lot like he was making a major announcement about a newly planned international summit on climate change. As the Financial Times reported, the U.N.'s top climate official said a meeting was necessary to lay groundwork before the international climate conference in Copenhagen this December. De Boer's remarks indicated that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon felt the same way and was looking to call a summit in February or March.

But the secretary-general's office was mum on the matter when contacted by Grist yesterday. Today, de Boer's office confirmed that nothing is planned as of yet.

"The Secretary General is planning to organize a High Level Event with Heads of State and Government for all Members States in the margins of the General Assembly in September," John Hay, a spokesperson for de Boer, wrote in an e-mail. "He is also exploring other avenues to galvanize Heads of State and Government and support high level political engagement throughout the next 11 months. No specifics, however, are confirmed at this time."

The possibility of 30 to 40 heads of state meeting as early as February or March was a "personal hope" on de Boer's part, not a concrete plan, Hay said. One of the newest heads of state, President Barack Obama, is likely to have a big say in the timing.

"Obviously, this is designed to get the U.S. back in play," said John Anthony, communications director for climate and energy for the United Nations Foundation. "[But] just look at what's happening domestically. It's a real crowded calendar on many fronts."

Reuters has more on what de Boer wants to accomplish before Copenhagen.

Reducing regulatory interference and barriers to clean energy — all at once

Creating a 21st century electrical grid is finally a priority and the possibilities seem enormous. Despite the grand potential, though, many of the most important decisions will involve painstaking regulatory and tax reform rather than sweeping mandates. What's politically intriguing about these reforms is that at least in principle they ought to appeal across ideological lines: Conservatives like less regulation and more rational tax policy, and progressives like removing barriers to renewable energy, so this seems like fertile territory for odd bedfellows.

In that vein I recommend two pieces, both adapted from reports from the conservative Manhattan Institute.

The first is "Growing NYC's Grid," an excellent piece in the New York Post from Hope Cohen of MI's Center for Rethinking Development. It notes a simple barrier to expanding the city's grid: transformers, the facilities that take high-voltage juice from transmission lines and convert it to lower-voltage juice for distribution lines, can only be built on industrially zoned property, which is increasingly rare and expensive in urban areas.

But today's transformers are smaller, quieter, and cleaner than they were when zoning regs were passed, and can be integrated into the urban landscape. (There's one in the base of 7 World Trade Center.) A simple regulatory change -- allowing transformers in commercially zoned areas -- can boost the reliability and efficiency of NYC's power. Imagine how many more rules and laws there are like this across the country.

For more on this, see Cohen's full report, "The Neighborly Substation: Electricity, Zoning, and Urban Design."

To make the most of this recession, we will need an economic expansion that restores our climate

Cross-posted at the NDN Blog.

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As the economic recovery and investment package backed by the administration works its way through Congress, and more evidence about the nature of this recession surfaces, an interesting exercise is to think about how we want to emerge once it is over. In the midst of current economic turmoil, it may seem difficult to imagine the post-recovery world, let alone accurately predict it. Nonetheless, starting with an outcome and working backwards to a policy prescription is far preferable to policy based purely on the passions of the moment. Following are my thoughts on the world I would like to see in 2012 and the resulting implications for current policy.

NYT gets schooled by readers on efficiency

Last week The New York Times had an editorial singing the praises of energy efficiency. It wasn't bad, nor particularly great -- mixing up conservation with efficiency, focusing too much on oil/transportation, and never giving a decent sense of scale.

On Sunday, however, came a battery of letters in response to the editorial, all of which are excellent and all of which expand the focus in new ways. One of them is from Tom Casten, father of our own Sean and champion of recycled energy. Another emphasizes steady long-term research; several praise solar power's potential; another notes the key role of walkable communities and transit; another mentions meat consumption.

There's a lot of untapped, unaggregated expertise out there on this. I hope the NYT notices the great feedback and pursues the issue further. Imagine how much efficiency we could wring out of our economy if we had the whole culture focused on it.

Can Congress be trusted to get necessary GHG legislation right?

We need an economy-wide greenhouse gas bill that puts a price on GHG emissions and allows reallocation of capital in response. Congress increasingly appears unable to produce such a bill.

First came the fiasco of Lieberman-Warner, wherein it became quite apparent that the route to Congressional approval was paved with district-directed pork, stealing money out of CO2-reduction efforts and distributing it to any number of pet projects. Thankfully, that failed.

Then last week, Speaker Pelosi suggested that the great thing about cap-and-trade is that it gives Congress money to dole out to favored interests:

I believe we have to [implement cap and trade] because we see that as a source of revenue ...

Again, the idea that the purpose of a GHG bill is to reduce CO2 emissions is completely subsumed by salivation over the potential grab bag.

Now comes this, from E&E Daily ($ub. req'd), noting that given the choice between a California waiver and cap-and-trade, legislators from the rust belt prefer cap-and-trade. Why? Because it might give them a chance to throw some money back at their districts:

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), for example, pointed to the large new revenue stream often linked to a cap-and-trade system, saying that the money would help domestic automakers retool their plants to meet a tighter suite of emission standards.

"I think that ultimately this gets addressed in the energy bill to slash cap and trade," Stabenow said. "It's not enough just to talk about the regulations. If we want to have a domestic auto industry, we have to be provided support, particularly in the middle of this global credit crisis where we have to invest massive amounts of money and aren't able to get credit."

Is the purpose of a cap-and-trade bill really to provide bailout dollars to the auto industry?

OIRA chief on making the invisible visible

In a post on Cass Sunstein (new head of OIRA) I mentioned his work with behavioral economics and his book Nudge and wondered, "What other unobtrusive-but-effective green policy tweaks could be made to nudge people toward greener behavior?"

Clearly Sunstein is reading Grist, as he responded a few days later with a piece in the Chicago Tribune: "A gentle prod to go green." After some throat-clearing (and tangential carbon tax shilling) he gets to examples:

Industrially grown produce shows long-term nutritional decline

Talk to old-timers, and they'll often tell you that the tomatoes you find in supermarket produce sections don't taste anything like the ones they had in their childhoods in the '30s and '40s.

Turns out, they're probably not as nutritious, either.

In an article [PDF] published in the February 2009 issue of the HortScience Review, University of Texas researcher Donald R. Davis compiles evidence that points to declines in nutrition in vegetables and (to a lesser extent) fruits over the past few decades.

For example:

[T]hree recent studies of historical food composition data found apparent median declines of 5% to 40% or more in some minerals in groups of vegetables and perhaps fruits; one study also evaluated vitamins and protein with similar results.

He points to another study in which researchers planted low- and high-yielding varieties of broccoli and grain side-by-side. The high-yielding varieties showed less protein and minerals.

The principle seems to be that when plants are nudged to produce as much as possible -- whether through lots of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides or through selective breeding -- they deliver fewer nutrients. It evidently isn't just the flavor that's become diluted in those bland supermarket tomatoes.

This is a fascinating insight. We should reflect that for at least 50 years, the best-funded agricultural researchers are the ones work to maximize yield -- that is, gross output per acre. Even now, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is expending hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to increase yields in Africa.

Rather than isolate and fetishize yield, perhaps ag researchers should learn to take a whole-systems approach: study how communities can develop robust food systems that build healthy soil and produce nutritious food.

(It should also be noted that last year the Organic Center compiled peer-reviewed studies finding that organically grown produce tends to deliver significantly higher nutrient levels than conventional.)

Foodie photogs, rainforest adventures, and more

Every week, we compile a guide to the greenest goings-on in our hometown. We send it by email — sign up here! — and now it’s available in Gristmill. (Not in Seattle? Not a problem — we’ve got the inside scoop for you out-of-towners, too.) —– Combo meal: Elliott Bay Books is serving up a […]