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Don’t know much about history…

Just how did we get to this holding pattern on multilateral environmental agreements? What are the political roots of today's international sustainability debates? Didn't attempts to integrate environment and development start with the Brundtland Commission's 1987 Our Common Future?

A new working paper from Harvard's Center for International Development takes the long view and provides critical historical context needed for understanding today's current state of affairs. In "The Quest for Global Sustainability: International Efforts on Linking Environment and Development," scholars Henrik Selin and Bjorn-Ola Linner analyze policy attempts to integrate environment and development in the post-World War II period up until the 1992 Earth Summit. They convincingly maintain that too many of today's sustainability debates occur in an ahistorical vacuum unaware of these earlier efforts.

One take-home message of their investigation is the need for greater recognition of just how much North-South politics drive (or derail) these processes.  As we focus considerable (and needed) attention on the poor health of the transatlantic environmental relationship, we must also keep our eyes on the larger prize (and frankly more difficult gap to bridge) of North-South environmental relations.

And yes even more Verdopolis

When I asked Emily Gertz to cover the Verdopolis confab for Grist, I requested that she focus mainly on what I considered the more weighty topics -- green energy, green urbanism, and green markets. This was, in part, to counter the impression -- found even (gasp) among some Grist staff members -- that the "bright green" movement celebrated by Verdopolis is mainly about a chic lifestyle or a set of consumer products. It is much, much more.

However, it does include a chic lifestyle and consumer products. To wit, Emily's coverage of the last day of Verdopolis over on Worldchanging describes presentations from makers of eco-friendly jeans, furniture, and meat. As excited as I am about reimagining cities and energy grids, I must admit I also look forward to being able to buy a pair of pants with a clean conscience.

Aimee Christensen

An article in the Washington Post last week prompted me to remember the history of our rhetoric on Kyoto, global warming, and developing countries.

Since at least the 1990s, polluting industries and their friends in elected office have argued that until developing countries such as India and China are required to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, the U.S. should not be bound by it. They claimed that this would be unfair, and that our industries would be rendered uncompetitive by the treaty's costs. This disingenuous claim is instead causing us to miss out on global opportunities.

Bill Walsh, founder of the Healthy Building Network, answers questions

Bill Walsh. What work do you do? I’m the founder and national coordinator of the Healthy Building Network. How does it relate to the environment? The Healthy Building Network is the only organization dedicated to linking green building strategies to the specific goals of the environmental-health movement. Our goal is to shift market demand in […]

Ansje Miller sends a dispatch from a conference on transportation and justice

Ansje Miller is a program director for Redefining Progress and staffs the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, a consortium of environmental-justice, religious, and policy groups. Sunday, 20 Feb 2005 LOS ANGELES, Calif. Driving down California’s Interstate 5 from Oakland to Los Angeles, the need for a new vision for the future of transportation was […]

Still more vision talk

The discussion described in this post and this post, about whether there's a need in environmentalism, and progressivism more broadly, for a uniting narrative or Grand Vision is continuing. I don't know if anybody but me is interested or following this, but if there are fellow wonks out there, let me catch you up (start by reading the two posts linked above).

Contest: sustainability for college students

Joel Makower (yes, yes, I know I link to all his posts) has a bit of a contest running. He received this query from a reader:

I am teaching a college course this semester on Sustainable Science and Technology and was wondering if you had any suggestions for a one-hour activity that would engage students to learn and possibly apply some of the fundamentals of sustainability.

He's soliciting ideas and offering a nice prize for the best one. Go brainstorm with him.

The gall of Small

A little over a year ago, federal investigators found that Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lawrence Small's private collection of Amazonian artifacts contained several hundred items (mostly feathers) that violated, among other laws, the Endangered Species Act. He was convicted in Jan. 2004 and sentenced to 100 hours of community service.

He is now arguing that he should be allowed to use those 100 hours to read books on, chat with politicians about, and lobby to change what he calls an "outmoded" law.

U.S. Attorney Frank Whitney told U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Boyle, who is handling the case, that Small shouldn't be allowed "to satisfy his obligations to the community for his criminal conduct by reading and chatting with prominent political figures. To do so would minimize his criminal activities and remove any deterrent value of his sentence."

Allowing Small "to spend time learning about the Endangered Species Act so that he may change the law he violated fails to promote respect for the Endangered Species Act."

You think?

(Via Kevin Drum via Sam Heldman)

Sustainability Sunday

Sustainability Sunday over on Worldchanging is always good reading, but today's is particularly meaty. Don't miss Gil Friend on Kyoto and sustainable business, Mike Millikin on the state of sustainable transportation, and Jamais Cascio on the need for distributed computing systems to run future energy grids:

... distributed energy is currently more costly than centralized power (PDF). Some of that cost comes from managing the complexity of variable power generation, changing usage patterns, and a multiplicity of sources. Distributed energy resources will have to be managed more like a computer network, complete with abundant routers and switches. The success of distributed energy is ultimately dependent upon the increasing availability of computer-enabled power networks, or "smart grids." And smart grids for distributed power, in turn, will increasingly rely upon the availability of distributed computing.

Also, while you're over there, you might as well check out the Jon Lebkowsky post on efforts by telecom corporations to shut down municipal provision of free wireless service, and the larger implications thereof.

Easterbrook’s lies on “Clear Skies”

Ever since his 1995 book A Moment on the Earth I have been disappointed by Gregg Easterbrook's message that because we have made so much progress in cleaning up our environment, we need not remain vigilant in fighting to protect our air, water, and natural places from those who would profit from their destruction. During the Bush administration's tenure, for the first time since our environmental laws were passed, key environmental indicators (such as urban air quality and rate of cleanup of our toxic waste sites) are reversing.

Easterbrook's latest missive, "Clear Skies, No Lies," regurgitates arguments and statistics fabricated by the nation's largest polluters and oft cited by the Bush-Cheney administration in its war on our environmental protections -- particularly when touting its "Clear Skies" bill.