Wednesday, 30 Nov 2005

Leggo My Negotiation

U.S. gums up works at Montreal climate talks

Representatives of the world's governments are currently gathered in Montreal for a historic summit on the most pressing problem facing civilization: global warming. And the U.S.? "The United States is opposed to any such discussions," says Harlan Watson, who bears the somewhat misleading title of "chief U.S. climate negotiator." Watson is quite open about the fact that he's in Montreal to prevent negotiation. Instead, he argues that "there's more than one way to approach climate change," though the only alternative he's mentioned is ... can't you just guess? ... more research and technology. Other summit participants are putting on a brave face, hoping to, as the head of the British delegation puts it, "start a dialogue," but behind the scenes it's widely acknowledged that no real progress is possible without the participation of the U.S., and the U.S. isn't going to participate under the Bush administration. Until 2009, meaningful global efforts to fight climate change would seem to be at a stalemate.


Let's face it, none of us would be here today if it weren't for the magic of the female reproductive system. Yet few of us enjoy talking about that magic, because it's considered, well, gross. Today, a bold reader surmounts the gross to ask if her feminine products are compostable, and advice maven Umbra Fisk doesn't skirt the issue.

Steamroll on Columbia

Idaho senator axes funding for agency that studies endangered salmon

Well, that's one way to deal with scientific findings you don't like! Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) has wiped out funding for the Fish Passage Center, a 12-person, $1.3 million agency widely respected by salmon-conservation experts. The center has documented shrinking fish numbers in the Columbia River system, and last summer a federal judge, citing the center's data and analysis, ordered water spilled over Snake River dams to help salmon survive. That didn't sit well with the region's electric utilities, which happen to be major donors to Craig's election campaigns. Soon after, Craig -- the National Hydropower Association's "legislator of the year" -- maligned the center's work as "false science" and inserted language into an appropriations bill that zeroed out its funding. "We are biologists and computer scientists, and what we do is just math," said center manager and fish biologist Michele DeHart. "Math can't hurt you." Apparently, however, it can get you hurt.


Until recently, the life of an eco-manufacturer hasn't been easy: "Here's this product we made! It looks a little funny, but it's good for the planet! And it -- hey, come back!" But with prominent companies jumping on the green bandwagon and technologies improving, sustainability is getting, dare we say it, hot. (Well, warmish anyhow.) This means all kinds of opportunities for growth, says a Vancouver-based ad agency founder -- if only the industry can figure out how to sex it up a notch.

What, Too Busy Screwing Up New Orleans?

EPA abandons big cleanup plans near New York City's Ground Zero

The U.S. EPA is ditching ambitious cleanup plans for post-9/11 lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, disbanding a panel of scientists, community leaders, and local officials that has met for 20 months on the matter. The panel's efforts -- to devise a comprehensive decontamination plan for homes and businesses in the path of dust and debris from the collapse of the World Trade Center towers -- stalled last month, after experts rejected as unreliable a government proposal to use insulation material as a marker for establishing that Twin Towers dust was present. EPA now says it will simply repeat past efforts to clean apartments in lower Manhattan only -- excluding businesses, and Brooklyn. Catherine McVay Hughes, a community liaison to the panel, is unimpressed, saying, "It looks like the EPA is giving residents a second chance at a plan that was neither comprehensive nor acceptable in the first place."

Let It BP

BP making big boost to clean-energy spending

Oil giant BP plans to invest up to $8 billion of its oil-and-gas profits into clean energy technologies and greenhouse-gas abatement projects over the next 10 years. An $8 billion investment would represent an eightfold increase over the company's clean-energy outlay in the past decade, says CEO John Browne. BP expects an eventual 15 percent return on the funding, and anticipates hiring several hundred staffers for a new business unit, which will consolidate the company's projects in solar, wind, hydrogen, carbon sequestration, and ultra-efficient gas-fired power generation. This will be one of the biggest clean-energy investments yet by a Big Oil firm, though it's just a sliver of BP's yearly $14 billion to $16 billion capital spending program. Environmentalists greeted the announcement with cautious enthusiasm -- the only kind they have left.