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The week in sustainable _________

Oops, it wouldn't be a Monday unless I linked to Sustainability Sundays over on WorldChanging, which this week included the week in sustainable vehicles from Mike Millikin and a guest shot from Joel Makower.

The essay from Makower is a reprint from his own blog. It's a business primer on Kyoto, and I highly recommend it. It covers many of the issues touched on in Emily Gertz's third dispatch from Verdopolis -- including the business case for action on climate, greenhouse gas reporting, carbon trading, carbon offsets, and carbon neutrality -- in a somewhat more systematic way, with plentiful links to other resources.

Editorials

A couple of big papers weigh in on Bush admin. environmental malfeasance. First, the Washington Post calls the zombie-esque, won't-stay-dead "Clear [cough] Skies" bill, in gentle editorialese, "flawed." They point out that a compromise bill would be easy to hash out, and they blame both parties equally for not doing so. This is fashionable in Beltway media parlance, this "pox on both their houses" high-mindedness, though it makes one wonder if D.C. scribblers have been paying attention for the last four years.

The L.A. Times bashes the Bushies for ignoring the mercury problem. They are, as is their wont, less circumspect than the Post. Discussing an upcoming U.N. meeting on mercury, they drop this juicy 'graph:

Documents submitted by the U.S. government, meanwhile, present no specific goals or steps, reject the idea of a treaty, call vaguely for voluntary partnerships, and offer to teach others about "best practices." That's a curious phrase coming from the nation just criticized by its own Environmental Protection Agency inspector general for violating scientific procedures in order to come up with an industry-friendly regulation of coal plants, probably the biggest source of mercury emissions in this country.

Indeed.

Of course, we all know that because these papers oppose administration policies, they are liberal, and because they are liberal they are biased, and because they are biased there's no need to listen to what they say about administration policies. Handy!

Six Percent Under

Canadian businesses find boon in Kyoto Canadian renewable-energy companies are anxiously awaiting Feb. 16. That’s the day the Kyoto Protocol goes into effect, and with Canada’s target of a 6 percent cut in emissions from 1990 levels by 2010, companies selling green, low-or-no-emissions technology are expecting to see quite a bit of their own green. […]

It’s too late to stop climate change

"At the core of the global warming dilemma is a fact neither side of the debate likes to talk about: It is already too late to prevent global warming and the climate change it sets off," writes environmental author and advocate Mark Hertsgaard in the San Francisco Chronicle.

A valentine

In keeping with the holiday, let me send a valentine out to my one true media love, Knight Ridder environmental correspondent Seth Borenstein, whose lucid, straightforward, BS-free prose -- a virtual miracle in the world of environmental reporting -- are on display in this story on the uncertain effects of Kyoto.

Brazilness as Usual

Amazon forests not doing well If Amazonian rainforests are, as the old saying goes, the lungs of the world, then our respiratory outlook is not good. The forests face a trio of threats. There are fire and logging, as poor farmers, cattle ranchers, and agribusinesses clear land for crops or cattle. Then there’s “dieback,” whereby […]

Umbra on Umbra’s romantic availability

Dear Umbra, I love all your research and cool little notes on Grist. Lots of learning! You must really love your job. I know this sounds weird, but I wish I could see a picture of you. I am intuitive by nature, and I respect what you are doing. I wish you all the best. […]

That’s Trawl, Folks

Bottom-trawling ban proposed for sensitive Alaskan waters Paving the way for the largest fishing ban of its kind, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council voted unanimously last Thursday to ban bottom trawling on more than half a million square miles of ocean near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands — an area more than twice the size of […]

Just plain “green” for me, thanks

Thomas Friedman is doing a public service by pushing his "geo-green" shtick. Any time someone outside the mainstream environmental community, particularly someone as high-profile as Friedman, pushes sensible energy policy, it becomes harder for its industry and administration opponents to dismiss. Frankly, if Paris Hilton wanted to come out and argue that alternative energy improves your sex life, I would praise her to the rafters. Whatever gets the job done.

It is worth, however, keeping our expectations realistic.

A whale of a debate

The longtime Northwest controversy (discussed by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer) over the Makah tribe's whaling is rooted, like so many contemporary Indian issues in the Northwest, in the treaties of 1855, now 150 years old.

I side with the Makah. The five or fewer gray whales they intend to hunt each year are from a now healthy population numbering in the tens of thousands. Aside from sentimentalism about marine mammals, I can't see a single compelling reason to effectively abrogate the Makah's treaty rights by denying their application to resume the hunt.

The notion that recognizing the Makah's right to hunt whales will create a precedent for a widespread return to commercial whaling seems preposterous. The Makah are the only group in North American with an explicit right to whale in their treaty. And they have a 1,500 year history of whaling responsibly.

It seems to me that the Makah whaling issue is controversial primarily because it is a wedge: It separates advocates for sustainability from animal rights activists.

What do you think about Makah whaling? I'm curious where Gristmill readers stand.