Gristmill

More no-nukeness

The kick-off of Kyoto, new reports on the dangers of global warming, and a flurry of Congressional activity have created a cultural moment ripe with potential. While environmental organizations are largely blowing it, the nuclear industry sees it for what it is: a huge opportunity. They have begun a PR push to position nuclear as the "eco-friendly" alternative to oil and gas, and they have no shortage of apologists -- some in the executive branch -- helping them along. Those greens who think nuclear is a poor choice for the future had better get their shit together and start a counter-PR push of their own, quick. (On that note, see this post.)

Anyway, speaking of nuclear boosterism, Joel Makower takes a few well-aimed swipes at this almost comically credulous, gee-whiz Wired article on how wonderfully awesometastic nuclear power is. Worth a read.

Not so black and white on Kyoto

This BBC story on the French love affair with nuclear power makes the somewhat surprising point that even with 78% of its power generated by its 58 nuclear plants, France is not on pace to meet its 2008 greenhouse gas emissions reductions as mandated by the Kyoto Protocol. In fact, only the U.K. and Sweden among E.U. signatories are on target to meet the 8% reduction in emmissions by 2010.

This unsettling situation makes at least two things quite clear:

1. Transport (not fueled by nuclear power) must be responsible for a very large portion of greenhouse emissions;
2. the Europeans are in danger of their words speaking louder than their actions when it comes to meeting the reductions mandated by Kyoto.

It is no excuse for American inaction, but failure to meet these commitments may have the effect of undermining the case for the multilateral environmental mechanism while reinforcing the image of Europeans as aspirational rather than serious about meeting targets and timetables.    

That’s just crazy talk

On the CNN home page this morning, a headline quietly announced what scientists and environmentalists have been shrieking about for a while now: Experts: Earth getting warmer, people to blame. The article, reporting on the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting, quotes Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography: "The debate over whether or not there is a global warming signal is now over, at least for rational people."

Rational, you say? I popped on over to Fox News to see how they were handling the story. Hmm, no mention of global warming amidst the Jacko reports on the home page. Let's see what a search on the term brings up. Ah, yes: there's the chilling report of "Manufacturers Stymied by Air Pollution Controls." And then, in "Kyoto Count-Up," we learn that Wednesday was the day the Kyoto Protocol -- aka the "global economic suicide pact" -- went into effect around the world, "but, fortunately, not in the U.S. and Australia."

It's good to find some level heads in these crazy times.

The future

Over on Worldchanging, Vinay Gupta asks: What will environmental policy in the 22nd century look like? His answers are pretty heady stuff.

Uprisings down under

Who says there are no good protests anymore? Australian environmentalists used ice sculptures yesterday to protest their country's refusal to jump on the Kyoto wagon. Maybe frozen icons are just what the U.S. needs! (Insert hackneyed Al Gore joke here.)

Spoiling organic milk?

The Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute has just filed a complaint with the USDA against two dairy farms in Idaho and California. It alleges that massive factory farms are labeling their products organic even though their thousands of cows are not pasture-fed, as required by USDA guidelines. Last month the institute -- which is devoted to "the fight for economic justice for the family-scale farming community" (and also taking pictures out the car window) -- filed a complaint against a similar operation in Colorado. This led the USDA to start ruminating on what "access to pasture" really means, anyway.

While the folks at Cornucopia are doing their best to help the little guys get herd -- er, heard -- larger-scale farmers say they're doing right by cows and consumers. "Our reason for doing it is we'd like to see agriculture change," Mark Retzloff, who runs the Colorado farm, told the Chicago Tribune. "If we're really going to change agriculture, we have to do it on all scales."

Pension funds

If you were intrigued by this blurb in Daily Grist on CalPERS, check out the in-depth story by William Greider in The Nation on the increasing power of public pension funds to affect social and environmental change.

In the wake of Enron-style corporate scandals, in which public pension funds lost more than $300 billion, some of the leading funds have restyled themselves as more aggressive reformers. They are picking fights with Wall Street orthodoxy they long accepted, like the obsessive maximizing of short-term gains. More important, they are broadening their definition of fiduciary obligations to retirees by trying to enforce corporate responsibilities to serve society's long-term prospects. Instead of adhering passively to market dogma, the activist funds now regularly accuse corporate managements and major financial houses of negligently or willfully injuring the long-term interests of pension-fund investors, therefore injuring the economy and society, too. Pension-fund wealth is thus being mobilized as financial leverage to break up the narrow-minded thinking of finance capital and to confront the antisocial behavior of corporations.

Interesting stuff.

Conspiracy theories

In a piece discussing the import of today's kick-off of the Kyoto Protocol, Chris Mooney makes a point I also tried to make in my review of Crichton's book, and again in this post.

Those who remain in denial about the seriousness of global climate change must now defend a truly ludicrous position. They must argue that the rest of the world is suffering from a mass delusion, a fantasy so powerful that over a hundred nations have independently fallen for the same alarmist myth; and furthermore that the 35 developed nations facing binding commitments under Kyoto have voluntarily agreed to measures that would severely damage their economies all for nothing. When we hear someone like Senator James Inhofe speak of a climate change "hoax," it's pretty clear that he has a conspiracy theory along these lines in mind.

Except for the part about "severely damage their economies," which I think is far from certain, Yes. Crichton tries to portray climate skeptics as a brave band of level heads battling a wave of alarmism. But think about it. What are the chances that virtually the entire scientific establishment, along with hundreds of self-interested politicians, have been duped, and this group of (conservative) people in the U.S. has seen through the facade? I mean, sure, it's possible. As the skeptics are fond of saying, the scientific consensus has been proven wrong before.

Exactly

Sacramento County plans to join the green building revolution, but it's not necessarily a high-minded ethical decision.

It's about on dollars and cents. Specifically, how to stretch them farther.

Music to my ears.