Climate Technology

But Kermit Said …

Japan rules, U.S. drools in new list of greenest vehicles An annual list of the world’s greenest cars placed the top American car at an impressive, uh, No. 10, while Japanese cars took all of the top five spots. (But American cars dominated the Totally Un-Gay Testostero-Manly Mean Machine list!) The American Council for an […]

Monsanto’s move into veggie seeds shakes up small organic farmers.

Here at Maverick Farms, a foot-thick blanket of snow swaths the cover crops and garlic beds, insulating them from sub-freezing temperatures. In the depths of the field, a big compost pile smolders. As at small farms all over the country, we've been been flipping through seed catalogs as we plan what to plant this coming season.

At this time of year, optimism burns bright, sparked by the glowing prose of the seed catalogs. Here is my favorite catalog, Fedco, engaging in a bit of beet poetry:

The genius of Alan Kapuler at work, this [root grex beet] is an interbreeding mix of Yellow Intermediate heirloom, Crosby Purple Egyptian heirloom and Lutz Saladleaf heirloom. It absolutely wowed me in my 2004 trial and aroused considerable interest at our Common Ground Fair booth display last fall. The term "grex" is commonly used in orchid breeding. There are 3 distinct colors in this gene pool: a pinkish red with some orange in it, a bright gold and a beautiful iridescent orange. We were impressed by the unusual vigor, glowing colors and length of these gradually tapered elongated roots.

Farmers have to work hard to avoid way overbuying seeds, with tempting descriptions like that dominating the catalogs.

This year, however, a new statement confronts us throughout the Fedco book: "This is the last year we will be offering this Seminis variety." Many venerable varieties bear this unhappy statement. Last year, Monsanto bought Seminis, the world's largest vegetable-seed purveyor, shaking up the small-scale organic farming world. (Here is an analysis of that deal I posted a while back.) Fedco, responding to outrage among its growers, decided to stop buying seeds from Seminis/Monsanto. And that means many varieties people have come to love in their CSA boxes and at the farmers market won't be available for much longer.

Kicking Toyota out of the country

Let's say you're threatened by hybrids. Let's say you're particularly threatened by hybrids coming into the U.S. from another country, and proving mighty popular. What might be a creative way to fix the problem?

Oh, how about suing for patent infringement? "If the International Trade Commission agrees with Solomon, [Toyota] could be banned from importing the systems and the Prius and Highlander hybrid models that they power." Stay tuned.

Coal companies sue feds for letting them slack on safety

After the Sago coal mine disaster killed 12 West Virginia miners last month, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) came under widespread criticism for failing to adequately regulate the coal industry and protect mine workers. Critics blamed the Bush administration for stocking the agency with coal industry cronies who wanted a more "cooperative" approach to safety regulations rather than serious enforcement. Now, one more group has joined the chorus of MSHA critics: the very coal companies that worked to gut the agency in the first place.

Read the rest of this weird, wacky tale.

EPA program offers carrots to polluters and takes away sticks, enviros say

A U.S. EPA program that’s supposed to give recognition and flexibility to companies that are good environmental citizens may in fact be giving a free pass to some firms that are heavy polluters and even lawbreakers, according to a coalition of environmentalists. Come and get it! Photo: Clipart. The agency’s voluntary Performance Track program — […]

ADM is doing for soil what Exxon has done to air

Amid all the hoopla over President Bush's State of the Union address, Archer Daniels Midland's quarterly report (PDF), released Tuesday, got little attention outside of Wall Street -- where it drew cheers, sending ADM's share price to an all-time high.

At the company's conference call with analysts, the Wall Street Journal reports, John M. McMillin of Prudential Securities "likened [Archer Daniels Midland] to Exxon Mobil Corp., which just announced its own record-breaking profit and jokingly suggested the company might be called upon to explain its profits."

Actually, McMillin's comparison isn't all that comical. Just as ExxonMobil clawed its way to the top of the corporate heap by peddling an environmentally ruinous commodity whose real costs don't burden its balance sheet, ADM's "blowout" profits can be traced directly to government largesse. Oh yeah, and both companies owe much of their surging profitability to making fuel for cars.

Taking the wrinkles out of paper recycling

Recycling paper at your company? How’s it going? If you answered “yes” to the first question and “not so good” to the second, you’re in fine company. After years of trying, an astonishing number of outfits both large and small are having trouble accomplishing this seemingly simple task. At least, that’s my conclusion after talking […]

Big profits, little ethics

Exxon Mobil Corp., you may have heard, just ended the most profitable year ever, for any American corporation. Ever. To the tune of $34 billion.

That means Exxon pulled down about $1,110 a second last year.

Nonetheless, as Carl Pope extensively documents, the company remains one of the biggest deadbeats in the world, still digging in its heels about paying victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill (2,000 of which are dead -- and their surviving family members have no standing in the case, and will never receive anything). Then there's the matter of oil and gas royalties, which -- despite the skyrocketing cost of oil and gas, and subsequent industry profits -- have remained level over the past few years. All that profit is going directly into corporate coffers.

"Without a shadow of a doubt, Exxon has the best management in the oil industry,"' said Doug Leggate, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in New York.

Yeah, I guess you could say that. If you were a soulless fuckwit.

Anyhoo, the point of all this is that ExxposeExxon has a new video up lampooning Exxon, and it's kinda funny.

(Also, here's my tribute to departing Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, from August '05.)

Wal-Mart boss gets some tips from the Prince of Wales

Here is a story about Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott seeking greenie advice from the Prince of Wales. Any attempt on my part to summarize the tale wouldn't be nearly as good as the article itself, so I offer you the best tidbits of blunt British reporting. I love me some British.

The Times on Wal-Mart:

Mr Scott is desperate to transform the image of the monolithic retail organisation, which has a history of building huge superstores on the edge of towns on greenfield sites and squashing competition with an aggressive pricing policy.

The Times on the Prince of Wales:

[A] champion of green causes whose own lavish lifestyle often comes in for criticism.

The Times on Charles' twitterpation with Scott:

The Prince, who is acutely aware of the bad public relations profile of Wal-Mart, decided to go ahead with the meeting because it was a rare chance to meet the head of such a large company.

The Times on why the Prince shouldn't have been so twitterpated:

When Wal-Mart took over Asda [the second-biggest retailer in Britain] in 1999 it withdrew from Business in the Community, which is headed by the Prince and which seeks to introduce good corporate practice in all sizes of companies.

Apparently Scott and the Prince just talked and made out and stuff. No word on what tidbits of wisdom the Prince actually provided -- if you know what I mean. Incidentally, Wal-Mart, while making steps in the environment department, still sucks at taking care of its workers.

Two Prongs Make a Right

New coalition lobbies Big Auto to build plug-in hybrid cars Plug-In Partners is not, as the name might indicate, a swingers’ club. Rather, it’s a diverse national campaign — encompassing cities, electric utilities, national-security hawks, and others — pushing for plug-in hybrids: gas-electric vehicles with batteries that can be recharged via a regular wall socket. […]