The National Park Service REALLY can't be trusted

The history of Olympic National Park and the National Park Service not wanting to run that park (and instead the Forest Service keeping it, as it already ran Olympic National Monument, the precursor), then not wanting a "big Olympic," then letting logging continue in the park for more than a decade after being forced to accept a big Olympic, all documented by Carsten Lien, per my extended review of "Olympic Battleground," has shown that, in the past, the National Park Service can't really be trusted to be an environmental-minded agency, and only looks well within the federal government when compared to the Forest Service, BLM, and Fish and Wildlife.

Well, past is prologue.

And, as shown at Point Reyes, with the Park Service breaking the original agreement, and extending the leases to cow-shitting, cow-farting, climate change inducing, tule elk harassing (and possibly killing) and indirectly, plover-killing ranches inside the national seashore, shows that with the NPS, the past is prologue to a possibly even more corrupt present.

And, since the NPS has no director at this time, though Sleepy Joe Biden had nominated an acting director before this deal with the devil was made, this means that NPS career staff (and by silence, at a minimum, Point Reyes staff) made this deal, not some political flunky.

Speaking of political flunkies? Pseudo-environmental Congresscritter Jared Huffman has his fingerprints all over this, even to the point of bamboozling Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, possibly, unless she was a willing self-gaslighter.

It's people like him, and the lauding he gets from mainstream environmental groups, that disgust me about today's Democratic Party and its mainstream environmentalist apparatchiks. The California and Bay Area Sierra Clubs, for example, say NOTHING about getting people to comment on Interior's comment process, which ended Sept. 13, per that link above. They say NOTHING bad about Huffman.

And, I have personal experience, at least possibly, with this issue.

I may have almost hit a tule (if it wasn't a blacktail) two months ago on vacation, in that very area. It was dark, the last full day of vacation, and I was cutting over from Point Reyes back to the 101 at Olema ... just west of Fairfax, either a tule or a blacktail jumped out and crossed the road. It was really too dark for me to tell for sure, moonless night, and the relative closeness of it, plus me in a rental after driving the Surfside Highway a full day, had my nerves a bit jangled. 

If it WAS a tule, I blame the Park Service and or the ranchers for hazing it as part of why it jumped in front of me.

I also, per point 7 of the leases link, saw the beaches closed or restricted in access to protect snowy plover habitat; as Counterpunch notes, the cows attract ravens, which feed on plover eggs when not feeding on anything cow-associated.

So, fuck Jared Huffman in his hypocritical ass and the same for the Sierra Club.

Greenwashing Joe Biden

Trees and other plants may already be past their peak on their ability to absorb carbon dioxide. As Status Quo Joe gives little indication he'll even sign off on "the Squad's" weak tea Green Party-ripoff version of a Green New Deal, let alone what's really needed, this is serious.

So is the likes of a Mark Hertsgaard greenwashing Biden when he knows it ain't so. Or, if he doesn't, even for non-public consumption, know it ain't so, it's scary on his part.

As I Tweeted him: There is NOT "a climate realist now in the White House." Nor (which I missed originally) did Biden "dramatically strengthen his climate proposals" during last year's presidential campaign.

"We" who know such things know that his climate "plan" didn't even directly address fracking.

The rest of the piece, the non-Biden stuff, is decent.

But, we don't need to be greenwashing Joe Biden.

At least Hertsgaard didn't try to tell me the Paris Accords are real and not their actual Jell-o.

Ben Ehrenreich tells the truth, noting that Biden had issued drilling permits before the pause on them, and taken many other half-steps. It's in the larger framework of analyzing a paper co-written by 17 scientists about just how self-screwed we're getting. More in a separate post.

Update: That said, a new study from the Journal of Environmental Psychology says that people who have strong "national narcissism" (ie, big time American exceptionalism, Polish exceptionalism, etc.) are likely to believe greenwashing by/about their political leaders. A TL/DR summary is at Psy Post. The survey focused on Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative populist claiming to be an environmentalist, hence my use of "Polish exceptionalism." But, it did reference Trump twice, in indicating Duda is like him in some ways in general, and on this issue.

But, many neoliberal Dems (as in Dear Leader's new memoir) ALSO believe in American exceptionalism. And, with Obama, and now with Status Quo Joe, they tribally believe that their Dem leaders are great gunz on environmentalism.

My semi-personal connection to the Wyly Brothers

Now that they've been convicted (well, one of them, the other being dead) of tax evasion, let me explain.

A Midlothian, Texas-based antipollution group called Downwinders at Risk has long fought against TXI and other cement makers in that area, and against the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, for cleaner air in southern exurban Dallas.

As a fundraising mechanism, at least years and years ago, they got a small cut of the money from each person they signed up to use renewable electric energy source Green Mountain. Green Mountain was founded by Sam Wyly, and owned by him, Charles, other relatives and third parties until he sold it, at least the Wyly share, to NRG Energy for $350 million in 2010. 

I more than once asked Katie Hubener of Downwinders if she didn't think they were dancing with the devil, and she said no, even knowing (whether beforehand or from my pointing it out) the Wyly background of stronglyconservative politics and donations. 

She said no.

And responded like she didn't even get the ethics issues involved.

Katie Hubener ... interesting, at least.

Now Sam may have believed in renewables as a tech-libertarian, or as an entrepreneur, or both. But, with Downwinders at Risk, he also clearly believed in greenwashing. And, given his political stances otherwise, he did NOT believe in the reality of global warming and climate change.

New energy plan, old energy ideas

Lisa Murkowski and a bunch of other Western states senators want to kill more salmon, make energy efficiency upgrades market-driven, not required, and ship liquid natural gas anywhere.

In exchange, the Western states' electric grid is supposed to be updated, with details perhaps a big vague.

And, climate control measures get ignored. As does improved conservation efforts.

Yes, the bill is supposed to get a lot of "markups" to change it. But, it sounds like a pretty bad starting point.

Indeed, the "hydroelectric = clean" part of the bill comes off as a step backward.

We can do better. We need to do better.

As it is, more dams won't be "green," as almost extinct Rio Grande minnows show.

#EarthDay at 45

Earth Day Flag by John McConnell / Wikipedia

It's hard to believe, indeed, that Earth Day is 45 years old.

And, the limited knowledge we had then about just what all needed protecting. The Cuyahoga River catching fire seemed like big stuff. It was big enough, but it wasn't that big.

We didn't know about the ozone holes at both poles, threatening to let more and more of Earth be hit with ever-higher amounts of cancer-causing ultraviolet radiation.

Nor did we know that one of the replacements for the chlorofluorocarbons causing the ozone hole, hydrofluorcarbons, would turn out to be global warming gases — and potent ones. And, we're just now learning that carbon dioxide driving global warming may intensify ozone depletion.

Of course, we didn't know about anything about the reality of global warming in 1970. We didn't realize that, short of carbon scrubbing equipment that isn't likely realistic for decades, if at all, we need to stop using fossil fuels as much as possible and as quickly as possible. (And, even the alarmists are probably overselling what that will do; a 2C temperature hike is almost certainly already cooked into our climate.)

We know that, now. We also know that renewable energy is become more and more cost-competitive all the time. But, we still don't know if it's as readily storable as we might wish, and just what the carbon impact of massive storage systems might be themselves.

In short, we've learned a lot about just how little we know about Planet Earth. Not just in what most people think about environmentalism, but basic ecology issues, like the discovery of a new species of grass frog.

And, per the Wikipedia link, we know that "green" is a powerful word, especially when corporations combine "green" with "green." We're learning that, while it's not bad for corporations to have a true environmental consciousness, that many corporations will greenwash themselves all they can. (See friend Perry for a roundup of Earth Day op-ed cartoons on this and other subjects.)

So, look at a nonprofit site like EarthDay.org to commemorate Earth Day correctly and non-capitalistically. Note that, despite Gaylord Nelson latching on to it, and pushing it, the first Earth Day had no politicians connected to it, either. Click the link in the Earth Day Flag caption for John McConnell for more information on that front.

NOT NEEDED

As noted above, we don't need politicians claiming undue credit for the environmental movement. But, we can salute them, even if, like Richard Nixon, the Clean Air and Clean Water acts were not only his personal conviction, but were part of trying to "steal" white suburbanites from the Democrats.

Nor do we need badly written blog posts trying to "privilege" something like "Presbyterian environmentalism."

Mark Stoll's claim that because John Muir and Ed Abbey were raised Presbyterian, thus that influenced them as adults, is bad enough. As an adult, Abbey was a secularist of some sort and Muir would best be labeled as a Spinozan pantheist, I think. (Even Stoll, while writing precisely, notes that the adult Muir was NOT anywhere near a conventional Presbyterian.) Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau were in the same general ballpark as Muir, of course. Some of other things are worse. And, not knowing, or else ignoring, that Abbey rejected the word "environmentalist" to describe himself? Sounds like an author working with a shoehorn.

Based on all this, if/when I see the author's book, if I read it, it will be with a very critical eye. Did "people of faith" have an influence on environmentalism because of their faith? Yes. But, I just listed four people above who weren't conventional Christians. I'll give you a fifth: Stewart Udall, Interior Secretary for Kennedy and Johnson.

And, I'll give you a sixth. William Howard Taft, whom myth still presents as somehow anti-environmentalist as compared to Teddy Roosevelt, was no such thing. And religiously? He was our nation's sole, to date, Unitarian president — again, not a conventional Christian.

So, while Mark Stoll is right about "people of faith" and environmentalism (and I have no problems recognizing that), his idea of specific denominational influences seems forced and overblown.

Nor do we need the likes of John Horgan continuing his bromance with the neoliberal, tech-driven Environmentalism 2.0 of Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus and the rest of Breakthrough Institute.

We've seen what Net 2.0 is already doing to the political world — dragging neoliberals into ever-more libertarian-leaning technology-based ideas to attempt to solve poverty, unemployment, etc. It's a variation on what Evgeny Morozov calls "solutionism," and we don't need to get environmentalism running down that road.

There, I'll end an Earth Day blog post with noting the interesting twist of having Evgeny Morozov mentioned in it.

Goodbye, #TXU, #Luminant, #EFH, whoever the hell you are

Well, the old TXU, or at least the post-deregulation power-generating portion of it, Energy Future Holdings, or EFH, is officially in bankruptcy.

The Wall Street Journal summarizes why, as most of us know — badly gambling wrong on fracking.

That said, that's not the whole story.

Behind that decision stands the separation of the old TXU, and other old electric utilities, into different arms for generation, transmission and other things as part of Texas' electric deregulation.

Even at the time it was being done, it was being questioned.

And, between that and the wrongly-placed bet, this has been a time bomb waiting to detonate, oh, for about four years.

To a large degree, the prospects of Energy Future Holdings hinge on something it and its owners can’t control: the price of natural gas. While it has insulated itself somewhat, through financial hedges that protect it from price swings, it still needs the prices to rise sharply to have any hope of paying off its staggering debt load. 

Indeed, while the company met its roughly $3.6 billion in interest payments on its debt last year, it still faces a $20 billion balloon payment coming due in 2014.

And, the backstory to that is that greed can be a powerful motivator, even to the point of making even a Saint Warren of Buffett wrong, wrong, wrong, on some decision-making:

Investors who bought $40 billion of TXU’s bonds and loans — including legendary wise men like Warren E. Buffett — have seen huge losses as most of the bonds trade between 70 and 80 cents on the dollar. The other $8 billion used to finance the buyout came from the private equity investors themselves, along with banks like JPMorgan and Citigroup and large institutional investors like the Canadian Pension Plan. Several analysts and energy bankers say that this latter stake currently has little value. 

The whole NYT story linked above is worth a good read.

Next question is: what does this mean? The story at top says the restructuring will take about 11 months. But, especially since Oncor, the transmission arm, isn't involved, there's not a lot of jobs to be slashed, as is often the case in such filings. Per federal safety regulations, you have to have X number of people running your power plants, for example. And, given that your wrong bet on natural gas got you in this pickle, you  can't raise rates. Indeed, EFH/TXU has been peddling longer-term contracts up to the last minutes before bankruptcy, including to my place of work.

As for transmission issues? The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the folks that oversee transmission issues, say there should be no problem. But, we're expecting another hotter-than-normal summer here. (Or, maybe I should say, in light of global warming, we're expecting another "new normal" summer here.) Combine that with any questions about power generation, and how much of that can reasonably done from older coal-fired plants given today's Supreme Court ruling (see below) and I hope ERCOT, while being sanguine for public consumption, is nonetheless doing careful planning in private. That's doubly true since, contra GOP legislative and gubernatorial "geniuses" in Austin, deregulation has given Texas residents higher electric rates than before, ones that are, overall, considered to be above the national average.

At the same time, this could be good news for the environment. Luminant, EFH's electric generation arm, had four of the five worst power plants in the country for mercury emissions as of a couple of years ago. If the bankruptcy finally forces it to finish writing off its older power plants, and its use of much of the dirty lignite from here in the state, there's a benefit right there.

And, they'll probably have to do that write-off. Today's Supreme Court ruling on EPA power plant regulation authority is not good for coal-fired power plants in general, and certainly not for older ones, especially if they use dirtier coal. Besides, since that underscores, if indirectly, EPA authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, it's another good reason for Luminant to cut its losses. It will hurt some small towns near some of its power plants, but this is a call that needed to be made at some point anyway.

But, the bankruptcy filing didn't stipulate any plans for that, leaving state-level leaders of environmental groups a bit frustrated:

Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, said trying to retrofit plants like Big Brown would be like spending thousands of dollars to fix up a junk car, and Luminant would be better off investing in wind and natural gas plants.

To me, it's a no-brainer in light of the SCOTUS ruling. That said, will its creditors buy on? There's other issues in the filing, per the link above, that could have environmental ramifications. And, speaking of "Big Brown"?

No wonder, based on the mercury link above, and its shaky bottom line, that TXU/EFH/Luminant was among the corporations suing the EPA. So, too, of course was our "sue Obama" attorney general, Greg Abbott. Guess what, Greg? You lost. Ain't the first time. Remember last October, when you lost two out of three? No wonder you're our state's top money-waster.

(By the way, does anybody also notice how Abbott gets as quiet as a church mouse whenever he loses as the SCOTUS level?)

As for details of that bankruptcy? It's a bit complicated, as the Dallas Morning News explains. Will it work? Spinning off the competitive, deregulated Texas Competitive Electric Holdings, in essence, what most of us saw as TXU before deregulation, isn't likely to thrill all creditors. And, a lot of junior creditors may get bupkis. I somehow am skeptical of the 11-month timeline to emerge from this bankruptcy. Every other financial claim by EFH in three-plus years has been wrong, at least to some degree. Why should we believe it now?

Also, any chance that some of the financial speculators behind EFH ask for some socialistic relief from the state? Stay tuned on that one. So far, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs, the three speculative buyers, have resisted spending their own money more than absolutely necessary.

After all, it was bribery lobbying in Austin that let this takeover happen in the first place. Again, per that long NYT piece:

To that end (of getting state OK for the takeover), the K.K.R. group spent at least $17 million on lobbying (including 2,400 breakfast tacos on the Legislature’s opening day and San Antonio Spurs tickets for certain state representatives), according to Texans for Public Justice, a watchdog group. According to the group and others, the lobbying money was used to win over opponents in the Texas Legislature and fend off legislation that would have given regulators power to veto the deal.

Don't you sleep on this idea of Round Two of bribery lobbying in Austin being on the 2015 agenda of the Lege. That's especially true since the original round was bipartisan, including Democrats such as then-Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk. Electric issues had already been popping up at the edges of some primary races earlier this year.

That said, the buyout also personified the ugliness of "greenwashing":

Other advisers for the buyout team approached environmentalists, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and James D. Marston and Fred Krupp, two leaders of the Environmental Defense Fund, to support the deal. The buyout team offered to cut the number of proposed coal-fueled plants to 3 from 11.  

And, that's why I loathe "Gang Green" environmental groups.

Good effing doorknob: The Wyly Bros have written a "book"

Well, one of the two, Sam, with his son Andrew, has published a piece of Texas exceptionalism dreck called " Texas Got It Right."

And, Walter Isaacson, who I always thought was a puffball interviewer and literary poseur, went down even further in my book by writing the forward for this "thing" that I got at my office yesterday.

This is why, when I lived in south suburban Dallas, I told Downwinders at Risk representatives like the stubbornly semi-vacuous Katy Hubener their group was sleeping with the devil by selling people on Wyly-founded Green Mountain Energy, rather than promoting a "green" electric plan from Oncor.

Does Scientific American have a ScienceBlogs problem?

Updated at bottom with addition information that, in my opinion, makes Scientific American look even worse.

A few months back, ScienceBlogs was in full revolt over Pepsi being asked, by SciBlogs' top brass, to sponsor a health blog. Well, what's up with SciAm having Chevy Volt sponsor a special section on electric cars?

Add in the fact that the stories linked off the online cover page of the special section are a mix of SciAm-reported stories and Chevy PR, and it really doesn't look good.

Also, not good? SciAm's stories all talk about "electric cars" when the Chevy Volt isn't. It's a hybrid, and Chevy has finally admitted that. In short, it's bad PR, bad journalism, and if we're counting tech as science, bad science, too.

And, no, it's not the deal that this was "sneaky" like the Pepsi/SciBlogs deal. Sorry, @BoraZ. (That said, depending on who in Scientific American's editorial hierarchy knew about this, and who didn't, and when, it may well be sneaky, for all I know.)

That wasn't the only thing wrong with the Pepsi issue at ScienceBlogs, although it was the first problem and the first-visible one. There was also the question about Pepsi, rather than, say, FiberOne, sponsoring a health-related blog.

So, in line with that, if Scientific American was going to sell itself out for sponsorship from an electric car, then why didn't it get an actual electric car, i.e., the Nissan Leaf, and not the Chevy Volt, which is a hybrid? Right there is an indication of how the "sponsorship" has affected the reporting.

Since the Volt isn't a pure electric ... I'd have to say this is a version of greenwash. It also, besides ethics, makes me wonder just how intelligent about auto tech some SciAm editors are.

I hadn't originally intended to name Bora, former ScienceBlogs blogger of "A Blog around the Clock" and now at Scientific American. BUT ... he just either doesn't get it, or is being defensive about Scientific American. An exchange of several Twitters over more than 24 hours leads me to believe that while it may be primarily the former, it could well be in part the latter.

If it is, Bora, you need to talk to other people at Scientific American rather than being defensive.

After all, you left SciBlogs in part over the Pepsi fiasco. I quote from your post about your leaving:

What is relevant is that a corporation paid to have a seat at the table with us. And that Seed made that happen.

What is relevant is that this event severely undermined the reputation of all of us. Who can trust anything we say in the future?

Even if you already know me and trust me, can people arriving here by random searches trust me? Once they look around the site and see that Pepsi has a blog here, why would they believe I am not exactly the same, some kind of shill for some kind of industry?

At the end, you said Seed's image is permanently damaged.

Well didn't Volt, in this case, also pay "to have a seat at the table"? Doesn't that affect SciAm's reputation?

Answers? Yes and yes.

Update, Dec. 28:/ Apparently, I've gotten a bit under Bora's skin, as he thinks I am just pot stirring. In his last Tweet on the subject though, he adds one more point that makes SciAm look even worse, in my book.
He notes that the special project from August! I usually don't read the mag stem-to-stern online or off, but for it to be still promoted 4 months later? And, after GM brass officially admitted the Volt is a hybrid, to STILL, with the side-by-side presentation and the content of the articles, to STILL leave standing the implication that SciAm believes the Volt is an electric car, not a hybrid, AND that Volt could buy such favorable coverage in general.

Also, Bora, this is NOT about "investigative journalism." I know, because, I've actually DONE investigative journalism.

And, do you really think knowing the difference between a hybrid-drive vehicle and a truly electric is "too geeky" for Scientific American?

Wowsa.

Methinks thee doth indeed protest too much. Talk to the hand, Bora, on this one. Better yet? Seriously? Talk to some Scientific American editorial management, as I said when I first wrote this post, before updating it.

And, if this is pot stirring, I take that as a compliment.

AND, per the "lifting up" of new media? Or new-type media venues? The medium is NOT the message, contra McLuhan. New media faces the same ethical responsibilities and issues as old media.

In this case, in fact, since this is an easy issue to address, even solve, online, it's arguably worse than in the pre-Internet age. If I'm going to be in for a pot-stirring penny, I'm in for a pot-stirring pound. My forthrightness in not swooning over new media is probably why Jay Rosens and others don't like what I say on the subject either.

UPdate, Oct. 3, 2011:  The Leaf is beating the sales pants off the Volt.

Sierra Club, hoist by its own green building petard

HAH!

The Sierra Club does NOT have rooftop solar panels at its HQ and gets busted.

But, wait, that's not all.

A Sierra Club staffer, in a comment to the blog post linked above. then notes the building is rented.

But, wait, that's not all, you Gang Green employee shill.

OK, prod the landlord, then. Or do what the Natural Resources Defense Council, a slightly more enlightened Gang Greener, did:

NRDC, down in Southern California, moved into its own new Western Regional HQ in 2003 that has solar panels, water recapture, energy conservation, etc., all adding up to an LEED Platinum certification.

More on the NRDC facility here:

NRDC's new headquarters, however, uses 60 to 75 percent less energy than a conventional building of its size, gets 100 percent of its energy from carbon-free renewables, and consumes 60 percent less drinking water. As (NRDC senior scientist Robert) Watson estimated, "If all commercial buildings in the U.S. were as efficient as ours, the country would achieve 70 percent of its Kyoto Protocol obligation."

So, why won't Sierra either pressure its landlord, or else build its own HQ? Hell, it's got all that Clorox greenwash money. It's surely also saving money from suspending the Florida chapter's leadership for protesting over that.

So, Sierra Club? Put up, or STFU.

Hey, Downwinders at Risk ...

Note to one Katy Hubener (and friends of hers):

Now that the Wyly E. Coyote bros' financial deceitfulness stands exposed, will you and Downwinders at Risk continue to sacrifice ethics in the name of alleged green benefits by taking money from these folks?

I don't care if these folks are allegedly that "green," by supporting nobody but GOP candidates, the Wyly brothers aren't green at all, but you, on the other hand, are a sucker for corporate greenwashing.

(Note to other readers: I've actually talked to the actual Katy Hubener about this, and she stoutly defended accepting the Wylys' tainted money.)

Duke Energy lies about being green

In the past couple of years, Duke Energy has appeared to be a leader in concerns about global warming, especially amongst its brethren in the utilities business.

Well, per Hastings Group, here's the quite different reality.


. February 5, 2009 NC/Duke Energy News Advisory ...

At 11:30 a.m. Eastern time Thursday, Feb. 5, five North Carolina groups will release a major new report detailing the statewide candidates and elected officials who have benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions in North Carolina by Duke Energy's political action committee (PAC) and its top executives.

The North Carolina organizations joining together to release the report are: NC WARN (North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, Durham, NC); The Canary Coalition (Sylva, NC); Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (Asheville, N.C., office); Southern Energy Network (Chapel Hill, N.C.); and Mountain Voices Alliance (Asheville, N.C.) The report is a comprehensive analysis of State Board of Elections data covering the period January 2005-November 2008.

The new report reveals multiple donations from Chairman/CEO Jim Rogers and about two thirds of Duke's senior executive team. The contributions were made as Duke Energy sought favorable state action on a host of fiercely debated energy matters, including approvals for a new Cliffside coal fired power plant; approval of Senate Bill 3, which shifted much of the risk of building new power plants to the consumer; a possible nuclear plant just across the border in South Carolina; and the "Save-a-Watt" scheme the company touts as a tool to promote energy efficiency but which critics call a consumer rip-off that does very little to reduce demand for electricity.

TO PARTICIPATE: You can join this live, phone-based North Carolina/Duke Energy news conference (with full, two-way Q&A) at 11:30 a.m. ET on February 5, 2009 by dialing 800-860-2442. Ask for the "North Carolina/Duke Political Contributions" news event.

CAN'T PARTICIPATE?: A streaming audio recording of the news event will be available on the Web as of 6 p.m. ET on February 5, 2009.

CONTACT: Leslie Anderson, 703-276-3256 or landerson@hastingsgroup.com.

Geo-engineering not the answer to climate change

Even though former climate change skeptics, such as some American big businesses, want it to be the answer, geo-engineering our atmosphere is not the proper solution to climate change, even though it may well provide some relief.

First, it represents the typical American desire to find a quick fix for a not-so-quickly-caused problem, what I call “salvific technologism,” and should be viewed skeptically for that reason alone.

Second, note again people who are backing this idea. Former “skeptics” who may still be denialists-lite on climate change. If they’re still soft-pedaling the degree of the problem, they’re going to short-change the degree of solution offered.

Third, by analogy from bio-engineering, geo-engineering is likely to have all sorts of unexpected consequences. Any frequent hiker of deserts of the western United States is familiar with saltcedar (tamarisk), and with why saltcedar was imported here. That’s but the most glaring example of how are less-than-omnipotent vision has backfired on us in the past. It’s also why genetic engineering is not to be cavalierly trusted.

Fourth, let’s take a look at some of the “solutions” being offered.

Sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere? It works; particulate pollutants of various sorts have kept today’s level of global warming from being even worse. But, note that it’s called “particulate pollutants.” Note also there’s not guarantee it can’t “fall down” to lower levels of the atmosphere, where it would cause … acid rain. Scratch Crutzen’s idea; being a Nobel laureate, even in a closely related subject of award, is no guarantee of genius.

Sowing the oceans with iron dust? Sure, the plankton would grow, die and — presumably — sink. But, for how long would the extra carbon stay trapped? Our oceans are starting to have problems with increased acidification as we speak.

Creating massive mechanical shields and sending them aloft? The cost, not just in dollars, but carbon expended to create, erect and maintain them wasn’t mentioned.

Finally, don’t forget that many former denialists in the Big Biz world are probably seeking some PR-friendly greenwash, too.

With all of these, the American hunger for a “painless” technological quick fix is indeed priceless.

NYT greenwashes Bill Ford

It's nice to know that William Ford Jr.'s company, unlike GM and Chrysler, is not in imminent danger of bankruptcy. (It's not that far from the CCU area, though.)

But, claiming he's an environmental wunderkind, even by Detroit standards, is a bit over the top:

Even when Ford was living off profits from its big sport utility vehicles, he was pushing to take the company in a greener direction. Ford was the first automaker to bring to market a hybrid version of an S.U.V., the Ford Escape, and it is introducing a new line of Ecoboost engines next year that will cut fuel consumption by up to 20 percent.

Let's unpack that a bit.

Ford bought the Escape technology from Tokyo.

Bill Ford has noticeably NOT pushed the company's 65mpg diesel hybrid that debuted at auto shows two years ago.

The Ecoboost, described here?

Nice, but note the weasely "up to" 20 percent. 10 percent is more like it. Yes, it has a quick recoup time on its costs, but that's because you don't "recoup" all that much.

And, it's worth noting that Ford is flogging the engine for its increased horsepower as much as for its fuel savings.

And THAT is why Bill Ford ain't touting a 65mph diesel hybrid.

McCain-Palin campaign-debate watch

Palin-McCain is right; McCain ‘friends watch’; Mad Jack at debates?

Gail Collins has this great get:

The Republicans have discovered that McCain can’t draw a crowd without Palin, and the dangers of letting her float off by herself are apparent. So the two are manacled together these days like Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in that old escape-from-a-chain-gang movie.

And, every day she remains on ice, undergoing forced cramming for her Veep debate or whatever, is another day Schmuck Talk Express™ is out there on an island.

And, given McCain’s own growing propensity to shoot from the hip, it must be bad if Steve Schmidt thinks Palin needs to be put on ice.

SnowJob SquareGlasses — I like it. It’s going in my Palin nickname lexicon.

Friends watch: Uhh, Big John? If you’re going to be this close with mentally unstable Gordon Liddy, you have zero business commenting on ANY friends of Obama’s this side of Joe Stalin.

Friends watch part 2: John McCain and Jim Inhofe — Buddies in alt-fuel opposition.

Which John McCain will show up for the debates? Unfortunately, Obama doesn’t strike me as a button-pusher, so a mid-debate explosion from Mad Jack is (sadly) highly unlikely.

Sierra Club stupidity-sellout on Boone Pickens

For Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, I guess drinking the Kool-Aid Clorox this spring wasn’t enough.

Now, via e-mail, he’s officially signing off on T. Boone Pickens’ self-serving idea to take wind-generated electricity’s natural gas savings to use natural gas as a motor fuel.

Worse yet, in the e-mail, the alleged “action.sierraclub.org” hyperlink actually goes to a “pickensplan.com” URL as a mirror link.

So, here’s what I e-mailed back:

First, I AM a newspaper editor, and hell, no, I won't send myself a letter, or write a column about Boone Pickens' largely self-serving plan.

This is Sierra's stupidest thing since the Clorox “greenwash” debacle, which is why I'm not renewing my membership, a decision, as well as commentary on the Clorox greenwash, I have blogged.

Second, I don’t like that your alleged "action.sierraclub.org" hyperlink in your e-mail is actually a ghost link to a pickensplan.com webpage.

Third, other environmentalists and environmental bloggers better than me have pointed out the details of how Pickens' plan has a LARGE self-serving element.

Fourth, this is the man who financed the Swift Boating of John Kerry in 2004, then welshed on paying up on a challenge when people proved that the Swift Boating attack had demonstrable falsehoods in it.

Carl, back to my hyperlink.

I think your leadership gets worse all the time, and I won't renew my Sierra membership until Sierra's board of directors non-renews your contract.

Eff you, Carl Pope. AND the Sierra board of directors you rode into town on.

If you want to sound off to him, even though you didn’t get an e-mail from him, here you go.

Update:Oh, for the idiot commentors who think Carl Pope is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or, worse yet, that Boone Pickens is, here’s the High Country News lowdown on Pickens’ right wing suckupitis.

This HCN line is classic:

He's the Republican oil billionaire who recently saw the light on the need for alternative energy and has sponsored a flood of windmill-porn TV ads to make sure the rest of America gets the message.

Doesn’t get much clearer than that, now, does it?

Well, unfortunately, for King Carl Pope (nice back-pun, eh?) it’s still “clear as mud” as to Pickens’ ultimate angle on all this.

Another Bush greenwash lie

Two years after announcing the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument off the northwest Hawaiian Islands, President Bush has cut its cleanup budget 80 percent. Meanwhile, as you can clearly see, the oceanic trash that he won’t pay to clean up (let alone push for tougher international standards to combat) continues to pile up.

And, it’s only getting worse. Ocean currents bring an estimated 57 tons of garbage and discarded fishing gear to the 10 islands and the waters surrounding them each year.

Meanwhile, debris removal has fallen to 35 tons a year since the islands became a monument, about a third of the 102 tons that boats and divers collected on average before that, including junk that was already there, according to the story.

So, Bush’s touted ownership society was actually doing the right thing until he came along and made it all fubar for a greenwash image before the 2006 midterms.

Did Armando of Kos fame help Sierra-Clorox deal?

Even if the infamous Armando Lloréns Sar, formerly of Clorox-representing McConnell Valdés, is no longer there, I wonder if he has any connection to Sierra’s greenwash deal with Clorox.

First is Armando’s own history with Clorox.

Second is the Sierra Club’s (indirect) history from 2006 in in greenwash, this time with Wal-Mart hiring former Sierra president and “death of environmentalism” prophet Adam Werbach.

And, per Armando’s Wiki post, Wal-Mart is among his current clients.

So, did he have any role in the Sierra-Clorox hookup? Possible.

Kool and the Gang now Coal and the Gang

How sad is it for these aging soulsters to be doing sellout songs for Big Coal? Oh, probably no sadder than Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to be doing sellout pandering for Big Coal.


Oh, and doesn’t the Big Coal billboard look like one of those sex machines or a dildo or something? “Big Coal = Screwing Pennsylvania’s Air.” The clouds are courtesy Salon, as the web caption notes. Why?

Two images you also will never see in a pro-coal commercial are pictures of coal plants or smokestacks. If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, then the coal industry is positively in love with the environmental movement. Blue skies with fluffy white clouds and greenery abound in pro-coal commercials.

Meanwhile, the budget for Big Coal’s leading greenwash PR group has gone from $8 mil to $45 mil in just three years.

As for cost? Besides the Greenpiece analysis that I blogged about earlier today, the New York Times says some people compare the clean-coal effort to the expense and difficulty of the Apollo project.

Oh, and the pandering bottom line? Unlike James Hanson (remember, politicians trot out scientists only when they agree with them), neither Clinton nor Obama will commit to a moratorium on coal-fired power plants.

Carbon-capture coal or climate-crashing cheat?

Via DeSmog Blog, here’s the lowdown from Greenpeace on the eco-failure carbon capture could well be.

Here’s the summary:

CCS cannot deliver in time to avoid dangerous climate change.
The earliest possibility for deployment of CCS at utility scale is not expected before 2030. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not expect CCS to be commercially viable until at least 2050.

CCS wastes energy
The technology uses between 10-40 percent of the energy produced by a power station. Wide-scale adoption of CCS is expected to erase the efficiency gains of the last 50 years and increase energy consumption by one-third.

CCS is expensive
It could lead to the doubling of plant costs.

“Capture Ready” coal plants are greenwash
CCS is being used as an excuse by power companies and utilities to push ahead with plans to build new coal-fired power plants branding them as “capture ready.” Promises to retrofit are unlikely to be kept. Retrofits are very expensive and can carry such high efficiency losses that the plants become uneconomical.
Storing carbon underground can have unintended consequences
The world has no experience in the long term storage of anything, let alone CO2. In Cameroon, a sudden release of trapped, naturally generated CO2 from the bottom of Lake Nyos killed 1,700 people by suffocation in 1986.

You know the financial side is bad when, despite the opportunity for all the greenwash, electric companies still won’t actually touch carbon-capture coal-fired power plants.

Sierra Club defends Clorox suck-up

I got a PR e-mail from the Sierra Club today, boasting about the impending rollout of the GreenWorks deal with Clorox. I immediately e-mailed back to the membership services addy, saying I woudn’t be renewing my Sierra membership over that and Project Leadership, as well as the disenfranchising of the board of the Florida Chapter of Sierra.

And, I got an e-mail press release back, signed by Sierra Club Board President Robert Cox as well as Sierra’s press secretary, David Willett.

I quote from the PR in some detail:

This note is in response to reports about the Sierra Club National Volunteer Board of Directors’' vote to suspend the Florida Chapter volunteer Executive Committee for four years. What has not been clear in some reports is that the action is the result of requests from Sierra Club members in Florida for national volunteers to investigate internal disputes and comes after much dissatisfaction, anger and frustration at the Chapter level and a multi-year process at the state and national level to improve the situation before this action was taken.

While it is a serious step and was a very difficult decision, it was made after much thought and extensive review. The impressive work of Florida 18 groups to protect the environment will continue unaffected by this action. The Sierra Club looks forward to healing this rift and is confident that the Sierra Club in Florida will come out of this situation a stronger organization.

Well, even if there is some fire behind the smoke, a four-year suspension is awfully steep.

Some reports have either explicitly or implicitly connected the suspension decision to opposition to the Sierra Club's recently announced partnership with Clorox Greenworks products or other disagreements over national policies adopted by the volunteer Board of Directors. This is completely false and a spurious connection. In fact, the difficult and exhaustive process to address the dysfunction of the Florida Chapter began long before the partnership with Clorox was announced — to be clear, Sierra Club and Clorox did not even begin initial conversations until July of 2007, with internal review among committees occurring last fall and the public announcement this past January. The process to address conflict in the Florida Chapter that ultimately resulted in suspension began in at least 2006.

Second, I didn’t connect the two in my e-mail to you. I listed Clorox issues first, then Project Renewal (not even addressed by Cox/Willett). I clearly listed them as separate items:

I”m not renewing my Sierra Club membership over the BS "greenwash" with Clorox, about which I have blogged more than once, and Project Renewal, about which I've also blogged.

Dear actual membership services person:

Carl Pope seems to have adopted the idea of the “unitary executive” from George Bush and Dick Cheney. Arbitrarily suspending the Florida board was as unprecedented as the branding deal with Clorox.

Note that I did NOT link the two. (That’s my entire e-mail.)

Cox/Willett finally get to the Clorox issue itself.

On the issue of the Clorox partnership itself: The Green Works products and The Clorox Company were vetted by a broad number of volunteers and staff — including the Toxics Committee, the Energy Committee, and the Environmental Quality Committee. The Corporate Relations Committee also vetted this and approved of the Green Works products and of The Clorox Company, but did not approve the cause-related marketing relationship that would generate revenue for the Club. The Executive Committee of the Board of Directors approved that program because the Board is the decision-making body on cause-related marketing programs such as this one.

Ahh….

First, this gets back to the blog post I had about Sierra governance. OK, I was wrong. The vote wasn’t so small not because the board meeting didn’t have a majority of the board present, but because only the ExCom gets to vote on these issues.

Why?

We know why, Mr. Cox. It’s easier for Executive Director Carl Pope to control just the ExCom than it is the entire board of directors. Nice.

This partnership -- our first cause-related marketing venture involving a widely-distributed consumer product -- was announced the week of January 14 as part of the 2008 launch of the Green Works line of five natural household cleaning products. The Green Works cleaning products are made from coconut-based cleaning agent and essential lemon oils; there is no phosphorus or bleach; they are biodegradable and 99% petrochemical-free; there is no animal testing and they are hypo-allergenic.

All the Clorox corporate PR in this about GreenWorks? (And, please don’t insult my intelligence by pretending Sierra/Willett wrote that entire paragraph without help/word borrowing from Clorox.)

Lots of companies have been putting out products like that for years. Where’s the Sierra partnership? Where’s the Sierra branding?

This is greenwash, and I and plenty of other mad members, or soon-to-be former members, know that.

More greenwash from Clorox in the grafs to follow from Cox/Willett:

The Green Works line will make it easier and more affordable for millions of Americans to buy eco-friendly products and this a huge opportunity for the Sierra Club to influence the buying behavior of millions of people and give a giant kick-start to the market for safe, green, affordable household cleaning products. Up until now, a big stumbling block for families who want to live a greener lifestyle has been the high cost of “green” products and the fact that they are not always easy to find. Green Works’ natural, environmentally-preferable cleaning products are priced at only 20-25 percent higher than conventional cleaning products, which is much lower than other natural cleaning brands, which can be priced 50-100 percent higher. Green Works products will also be easy to find in 24,000 mainstream stores in the United States and Canada.

Bullshit, bullshit and bullshit.

100-percent recycled toilet paper and paper towels have been around for what, a decade or more?

To us, the fact that Green Works is the first new product that Clorox has launched in 20 years is a sign that major companies see the green market maturing and recognize it’s possible to manufacture and sell products that will be good for business and for the planet. Industry has to be a part of the solution and the Sierra Club has the power to influence corporations to move in the right direction. We believe and hope that this will be a selling proposition that other companies will be quick to adopt.

OK, so is Cox more stupid, or more gullible?

Gee, that’s a tough question. I honestly don’t know, based on the last graf.