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Going down with the ship

Lee Raymond, chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil, has decided that global warming is bunk and that his company is not going to waste time or money funding renewable energy.

Openly and unapologetically, the world's No. 1 oil company disputes the notion that fossil fuels are the main cause of global warming. Along with the Bush administration, Exxon opposes the Kyoto accord and the very idea of capping global-warming emissions. Congress is debating an energy bill that may be amended to include a cap, but the administration and Exxon say the costs would be huge and the benefits uncertain. Exxon also contributes money to think tanks and other groups that agree with its stance.

You kinda have to admire the guy:

"We're not playing the issue. I'm not sure I can say that about others," Lee Raymond, Exxon's chairman and chief executive, said in a recent interview at Exxon headquarters in Irving, Texas. "I get this question a lot of times: 'Why don't you just go spend $50 million on solar cells? Charge it off to the public-affairs budget and just say it's like another dry hole?' The answer is: That's not the way we do things."

At least he's not fudging.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Jerk

An environmentalist takes “enviroliberalism” to task, gets yelled at Jeremy Carl, a longtime environmentalist now working on sustainability issues in India, thinks that environmentalism should look in the mirror to find the source of its troubles. The problem, he says, is the dominance of “enviroliberalism,” a parochial sort of green thinking that ignores international issues […]

Beyond Blunderdome

Secret plan would put U.K. nuke waste in “interim” domes for 1,000 years The U.K.’s government-owned British Nuclear Fuels has developed an innovative solution to the nuclear-waste problem: procrastinate! The company wants to dump waste from nuclear power plants into giant domes designed to last up to 1,000 years — at which point, presumably, future […]

The Rapture of Capture

Brits want to store carbon dioxide under North Sea The British government announced today that it will invest about $45 million in technology to capture carbon dioxide and store it under the North Sea — part of a $72 million commitment to combat global warming via energy efficiency, renewables, and new technologies. Keeping CO2 out […]

Amending Fences

Energy bill goes to Senate floor amidst bipartisan hopes With the public up in arms about gas prices and President Bush breathing down its neck, today the Senate begins consideration — again — of the Moby Dick of modern-day politics: the energy bill. The House already passed a version, attacked by greens and fiscal conservatives […]

GOP starting to face up to climate challenge

More signs that the tipping point on climate has arrived:

In a Christian Science Monitor article today: "The ground is shifting on the politics of climate change faster than I would have thought," said Alex Flint, GOP staff director of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, at a press breakfast sponsored by The Energy Daily and BP America on Friday.

And as The Boston Globe reports: "The chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, Pete V. Domenici, is considering whether to team up with a fellow New Mexican, Senator Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat, on [a] proposal that would cap [greenhouse-gas] emissions but allow companies to buy their way out if the cost of reducing emissions proves to be prohibitively high." (More on Bingaman's plan here.)

"We're thrilled at the interest being shown by Republicans at doing something that's achievable and doable," said Bill Wicker, a Bingaman spokesman.

U.S. mayors unanimously endorse climate-protection resolution

The nation's mayors have thrown their weight behind Kyoto (and thereby thumbed their noses at Dubyah). At the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Chicago yesterday, municipal leaders unanimously endorsed a resolution calling on U.S. cities to meet or beat the protocol's emissions-reduction targets. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels spearheaded the resolution, as well as a more specific campaign that's gotten 164 cities (so far) to commit to taking steps to protect the climate. Grist's Amanda Griscom Little tracked Nickels down amidst all the hubbub this morning for an interview, which we'll publish later this week. Stay tuned.

As Eric pointed out yesterday, we're at a tipping point on climate change (finally, jeez). Can Bush possibly hold out for another 3.5 years doing nothing on this issue? I'm betting he cannot.

Update [2005-6-20 10:34:49 by Lisa Hymas]: Check out Amanda's interview with Nickels.

Chicago Climate Exchange paves the way for U.S. emissions trading

Forget the feds — we’ll make our own deals. The Oakland airport seems perfectly situated. Unlike many urban airports, which require an expensive taxi trip or hour-long train ride to reach the city where you thought you’d just arrived, downtown lies mere minutes away. Such convenience is possible because the runways sit on a former […]

One of my concerns about cities.

If it isn't already abundantly clear, I am a big fan of cities. If there's one thing that gets me a little concerned about them, though, it's the fact that they turn over so fast. According to Stewart Brand's recent lecture, cities replace at least 2-3 percent of their fabric every year, so every forty years or so they have been completely remade. Where does all that sheer mass go? And where do we get all that sheer mass? Regardless of where it goes, this doesn't strike me as a particularly sustainable way to go about things. The suburbs probably aren't much better in this department, but this is an issue that a good urban planner should have on her radar.

It's a minor quibble, really. I'll be back to the regularly scheduled praising of all things urban by tomorrow, most likely. And the Stewart Brand talk is just packed with great stuff; more on that surely to come as well.

Greenwashing at GE.

While we are on the MSM watch (which I just learned stands for "mainstream media"), in Sunday's New York Times, Ned Sullivan and Rich Schiafo of Scenic Hudson accuse GE of "dragging its feet" on the cleanup of the PCBs that it has dumped in the Hudson River. This is the same GE that recently started its "Ecomagination" campaign, giving Sullivan and Schiafo this powerful one-liner:

Only after G.E. uses its ecomagination to rid the nation's waterways of its contamination will these words ring true. Until then, its green campaign is nothing more than an eco smoke screen.