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California passes cap-and-trade bill

And let it begin with California.

California will become the first state in the country to require industries to lower greenhouse gas emissions under a deal struck Wednesday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democrats that could dramatically reshape the state's economy ...

By 2020, when industries would have to lower carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 25 percent, solar panels, alternative fuels, and electric cars could be commonplace, according to advocates of the legislation ...

The legislation will require all businesses, from automakers to cement manufacturers, to reduce emissions beginning as early as 2012 to meet the 2020 cap. The state's 11-member Air Resources Board, which is appointed by the governor, will be charged with developing targets for each industry and for seeing that those targets are met. The board now will embark on a years-long process to fully develop regulations. The board could impose fees on some industries to pay for new programs that could do everything from requiring truckers to use biodiesel fuels to forcing farmers to handle animal waste differently.

The board is likely to set up a trading system that will allow companies to buy and sell emission credits, which would allow a company that made more emission reductions than required to sell credits to another business that hasn't reached its emission goal.

Progress. Once again, state leadership is stepping into the vacuum left by the feds' suicidally blasé approach to global warming.

New bill should spark lots of discussion

The New York Times (and everyone else) reports that California has reached a deal for a cap and trade program on carbon emissions.

California passes Global Warming Solutions Act

After weeks of wrangling over the details, Fabian Núñez and the Democratic Legislature on Wednesday presented Governor Schwarzenegger with a bill he could not refuse (that is, if he wanted to give himself any chance at reelection.)

The new bill -- which I discussed in detail here and here -- will be settled Thursday when the Congressional session ends.

It is indeed a breakthrough piece of legislation, calling for a 25 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 and controls on the largest industrial sectors, including utilities, oil refineries, and cement plants. And soon, California's passage of this bill will cause a domino effect prompting other states, other countries, and -- who knows? -- maybe even the United States government to jump on board.

And a shout out to my own assembly rep., Fran Pavley, who co-sponsored this bill. Proud to be your constituent.

Bill McKibben sends dispatches from a global-warming march

Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature, published in 1989, the first book for a general audience on climate change. A scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, his forthcoming book is titled Deep Economy. He’s participating in a five-day walk calling for action to fight global warming — From the Road Less Traveled: Vermonters […]

Umbra on toxic schools

Dear Umbra, My four-year-old daughter is attending a brand-new preschool program in a brand-new building this fall. Nothing was missed in setting up the school for the best possible education for young minds. Unfortunately, it’s filled with all those toxic “new” smells. When we toured the building, I developed a headache within five minutes. Are […]

The Nation comes out with its first food issue.

"Edible Media" is a biweekly look at interesting or deplorable food journalism on the web.

The left has always had an uneasy relationship with pleasure -- and thus with food. For every freewheeling beatnik or free-loving hippie, there must be 10 dour left-wingers who see personal pleasure as an obscene indulgence in a world wracked by war, hunger, oppression, and environmental ruin.

Yet one of the most powerful critiques of consumer capitalism is that it drains life of vivid pleasure and offers instead "pleasure." A handmade dark-chocolate custard becomes a dull, corn-sweetened "chocolate" shake. Peddling boundless diversity and freedom, mass-market consumerism delivers regimentation, sameness, and mediocrity. As Michael Pollan showed in Omnivore's Dilemma, the dizzying variety arrayed on U.S. supermarket shelves boils down to endless combinations of two ingredients: corn and soybeans.

By treating pleasure and food as beneath responsible discussion, the left cedes too much to the hucksters who run the show. Rather than deride pleasure as a vice of the rich, the left should try to revive it as a principle for all.

That's why I was happy when the left-liberal weekly The Nation came out with its first issue devoted to food this week.

Are there downsides to the retail giant’s efforts to up sales of CFLs?

We've heard scads about Wal-Mart turning over a big, fat green leaf (here and here and here and probably lots of other places, too).

Well, here's another one reported by Fast Company that really left my jaw hanging open:

In the next 12 months, starting with a major push this month, Wal-Mart wants to sell every one of its regular customers -- 100 million in all -- one swirl bulb. In the process, Wal-Mart wants to change energy consumption in the United States, and energy consciousness, too.

Could small farms provide fresh food year-round, even in northern climes?

Is the sustainable-agriculture movement essentially Luddite? It’s a common charge — and a fair enough question. The Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug, perhaps industrial agriculture’s greatest living apologist, deplores at every opportunity the organic movement’s supposedly technophobic ways. Addressing a graduating class a few years ago at Texas A&M — that factory for future big-ag farmers […]

The Visible Hand of the Market

BP under investigation for possible manipulation of oil and gasoline markets Petro-behemoth BP is being investigated by two U.S. agencies for possible manipulation of crude-oil and unleaded-gasoline markets. (These are, of course, in addition to ongoing investigations of BP over a Texas refinery explosion, an Alaska pipeline spill, and alleged manipulation of the U.S. propane […]

An Eden Break

Birds return to Iraq marshes, but long-term recovery in doubt Birds have begun to return to restored wetlands in southern Iraq, the famed marshes rumored to have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden. In decades past, ornithologists recorded more than 250 bird species in the region, including the fun-to-say Iraq babbler and […]