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Dairy producers’ alliance responds to Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm

This essay is the latest installment in a debate between Ed Maltby and Gary Hirshberg, CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm. Maltby opened the debate with this post; Hirshberg responded here; Maltby's response follows below. We are airing the debate at length because we think our readers should know that our organic dairy farmers have reached a crisis point -- squeezed by production costs that are rising much faster than the price they receive in the market.

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I want to thank Gary Hirshberg for replying so quickly to some of the points that we have been raising for the last six months. Gary and Nancy Hirshberg and the many employees of Stonyfield have been pioneers in the organic movement, along with folks like George Siemon of Organic Valley and Mark Retzloff of Aurora Organic Dairy.

Gary has long been a leader of the organic community and has helped shape the way in which the industry has expanded. In answering some of Gary's points, I'd like to widen the discussion and move away from sound bites and platitudes that are the bane of our society, and share some of the difficulties of organic dairy that we all struggle with day after day.

Mainstream journalism on green issues tends to bash do-gooders and give the PTB a pass

The formula is pretty simple: Green is hot right now in U.S. culture, particularly among influencers. Anything that’s hot attracts advertising dollars. Media wants to attract those dollars, so it runs green content. (See here for a look at how this is playing out in TV.) However, content that involves complicated or controversial issues of […]

Monday linkfest

My browser’s getting crowded. Time for a link dump! Yes! magazine has an entire issue devoted to climate change. There’s tons to see, with good pieces from Bill McKibben and Peter Barnes, but I particularly liked this hopeful rundown of solutions. It’s odd that I love reading about solutions but I don’t write about them […]

Inquiry made into delayed polar bear decision, green groups sue

Let’s check in on the latest polar bear shenanigans, shall we? Two months after deadline, the Interior Department still has made no decision on whether Ursus maritimus should be listed as a threatened species. Spurred by a critical letter from environmental groups, the agency’s inspector general has begun preliminary inquiries into why the decision is […]

E.U. report warns of increased security threats due to climate change

A new report from the European Union’s two top foreign-policy officials warns of a wide range of security threats that will be caused or exacerbated by climate change. The report echoes the concerns of earlier U.S. and U.K. reports, warning of “significant potential conflicts” over energy resources, climate-related mass migration, economic instability, and more. A […]

Southern Baptist leaders urge action on climate change

Photo: iStockphoto Over 40 prominent Southern Baptist leaders released a statement Monday urging action against climate change, asserting that “the time for timidity regarding God’s creation is no more.” The declaration is a notable departure from a statement released after the denomination’s 2007 annual meeting that questioned human impacts on climate change. “We believe our […]

Notable quotable

“I learned that God reveals himself through Scripture and in general through his creation, and when we destroy God’s creation, it’s similar to ripping pages from the Bible.” — Rev. James Merritt Jonathan Merritt, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention spokesman for the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative and signatory to the just-released […]

Rising cost of oil pushes value of the dollar down

Bloomberg reports:

Crude oil may reach a record $130 a barrel this year because pension funds are investing more in commodities, said Pierre Andurand, the chief investment officer of BlueGold Capital Management LLP, a hedge fund ... "Next year, oil may rise even further to $150 a barrel."

Okay, this is a hedge fund guy who is betting the ranch on oil and probably doing his part to drive up prices. But at the end of the day, this is an issue of fundamentals -- supply and demand:

Oil companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc are finding it tougher to replace their findings and are drilling for harder-to-reach deposits while energy demand and crude prices surge to records.

Another little-discussed factor in the run-up of oil prices is the run-down of the dollar, and with it, U.S. living standards compared to the rest of the world. Thank you so much, President Bush!

Drawing actual conclusions about the international challenge

Here's something novel: a well-informed and honest article from a significant British magazine (Prospect) that looks hard at the core political challenges of global climate stabilization and then draws some conclusions. And it's written by Simon Retallack, who knows his way around both the climate policy debate and the climate movement.

Car plant cuts energy costs $627,000 with two-month payback — with DOE help

Economic models greatly overestimate the cost of carbon mitigation, in large part because economists simply don't believe (and hence don't model) that the economy has lots of high-return energy efficiency opportunities. In their theory, the economy is always operating near efficiency. Reality is very different than economic models.

I have never visited a factory or commercial buildings that didn't have huge energy-saving opportunities, many of which also increase productivity. I wrote a book several years ago with a hundred real-world case studies: Cool Companies: How the Best Businesses Boost Profits and Productivity by Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Studies that model such real-world savings, like the 2007 McKinsey & Co. report, find deep emissions reductions are possible at low net cost to the U.S. (and world) economy.

Government has an important role in enabling these energy savings. The office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, which I used to run, has lots of (underfunded) programs that deliver savings every day. One typical example showed up in my inbox yesterday, from the Industrial Technologies Program: