Thursday, 15 Feb 2007

I'm Rich, Beach

Oil lobbyist, former U.S. officials combat rumors of unethical real-estate deal

We would never engage in idle speculation about the allegedly unethical relationship between a ConocoPhillips oil lobbyist, a former U.S. Interior top dog, and the Justice Department's freshly resigned lead eco-prosecutor. But the big boys would, and we consider it our duty to share. The big boys are wondering why these three bought a $980,000 beach house together, just a few months before the prosecutor signed decrees giving the oil company more time to pay clean-up fees and to meet pollution requirements at some of its refineries. "What exactly is wrong with three close personal friends sharing a vacation/rental home?" huffed the attorney for former Interior deputy J. Steven Griles, who -- did we mention? -- is also a target in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. And is now an oil lobbyist himself. And lives with the eco-prosecutor, Sue Ellen Wooldridge. Juicy! Both Conoco and the Justice Department said the parties got ethics clearance before buying the house. Nothing to see here, folks.

It Takes a Vilsack to Raise Our Hopes

Presidential candidate Tom Vilsack outlines bold energy and climate plan

If Democratic presidential long-shot Tom Vilsack had his way, the U.S. would embrace a mandatory cap-and-trade system to slash greenhouse-gas emissions 75 percent by 2050, break its oil addiction, and create hundreds of thousands of clean-energy jobs. This week, the former Iowa governor became the first presidential hopeful to outline a detailed energy policy. Just picture it: new power plants carbon-free by 2020; fuel providers reducing carbon emissions 1 percent a year for a decade; a 25-cent-per-gallon federal tax credit for cellulosic ethanol production; a nigh-unto-petroleum-free transportation system by 2040; and the Energy Department -- now "an advocate for fossil-based fuel providers" -- renamed the Department of Energy Security. Ballsy! Vilsack even pledged to green his stumping by offsetting his travel and office electricity use. "[O]ur nation's destiny truly hangs in the balance," he said. While he checks "become proficient in hyperbole" off his to-do list, feel free to salivate.


Mahatma Gandhi once said that you must be the change you wish to see in the world. But if you're too busy to be the change yourself, can you buy the change you want to see? Megacorporations are increasingly saying yes -- and clamoring to be the ones doing the selling. What's an activist to do? Cheer? Jeer? Buy more green gewgaws? Jason Mark and Kevin Danaher of human-rights group Global Exchange weigh the ups and downs of the big biz move toward sustainability, in Soapbox.

Get Out of Jail Fee

Dutch company pays nearly $200 million to help resolve Ivory Coast mess

Six months after toxic sludge was pumped from a ship and dumped in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, leading to 10 deaths and thousands of poisonings, the company responsible will pay the country nearly $200 million. Oops, did we say responsible? Trafigura, the Dutch-based company that chartered the ship o' death, says the fee is not an admission of guilt. In fact, part of the settlement will go toward an "independent" investigation of who's at fault. The money -- which secured the release of three Trafigura executives held prisoner in the Ivory Coast since September, when they arrived "on a mission to help the people of Abidjan," said one -- will also fund a hospital and waste disposal facility. Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo called the deal "a good agreement that will allow the state to compensate the victims," but others weren't so sure. "It does not do justice to the facts," said Helen Perivier of Greenpeace International, "because the full liability and the damages have yet to be assessed."


Maybe you think a cookbook is just a place to find out how many teaspoons of vanilla go into a batch of chocolate chip cookies. But to farmer and food-lover Tom Philpott, it's something more. Thumbing through old tomes by the likes of James Peterson, Julia Child, and Richard Olney, Philpott found a revolution in disguise. How have cookbook writers helped Americans buck the burden of industrial food, and what does a perfect chocolate eclair have to do with it? Philpott explains in today's Victual Reality.