We don't need no stinkin' green badges

Big businesses appear to be having second thoughts about whether green is their color, and the state of Texas is going to court against the EPA butting into our state business.

Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, just had a pr firm send out an e-mailed comment from him about BP America, Conoco Phillips and Caterpillar dropping out of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.

I don't know that he's right, but at least the Twitter world is abuzz with the "news."

Anyway, Myron's take is this on the big businesses.

They “are recognizing that cap-and-trade legislation is dead in the U. S. Congress and that global warming alarmism is collapsing rapidly. We hope that other major corporations will soon see the light and drop their support for cap-and-trade and other energy-rationing legislation,” Ebell said.

Not being tied into an industry mouthpiece group like Ebell, I can’t swear by all that, but the hits keep coming.

According to another industry group, the CLEAR Act that advocates a cap and dividend program in which greenhouse gasses are controlled but there’s no trading of carbon credits in a marketplace that could involve speculation by those Wall Street types is generating a huge buzz of lobbying in Washington.

Really? I wouldn’t have dreamed.

And then there’s the EPA opposition by the state of Texas. The good governor, attorney general and ag commissioner announced today they will lay siege on the U.S. Court of Appeals to challenge the EPA finding that greenhouse gasses are a danger, and we need federal regulations to curb them.

Of course, Texas’ argument is the same as the industry groups’ – money matters more. (Let the kids fend for themselves. We’ve got an empire to defend.)

Rick Perry, according to a news release, said this: “The EPA’s misguided plan paints a big target on the backs of Texas agriculture and energy producers and the hundreds of thousands of Texans they employ. This legal action is being taken to protect the Texas economy and the jobs that go with it, as well as defend Texas’ freedom to continue our successful environmental strategies free from federal overreach.”

Besides, Perry doesn't look good in green. He's more of a red-white-and-blue man.

But to be fair, the Texans at least offer a compromise to “just say no.” They want to continue developing alternative energy production with tax credits to multi-national companies.

Seems this could be another momentum switch as the carbon-laden winds blow another direction. Doesn’t mean we will see a resolution, just a shift in who thinks they’re winning the hearts and minds.

There’s billions of dollars involved, so the dancers should continue to swirl and twirl.

How will carbon screw up your life?

Don't worry, the feds are on the case.

Yeah, it kind of makes sense investors would like to know if too much methane is going to break them, but now federal regulators will be watching to make sure they know.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission gave publicly traded companies “interpretive guidance” on Wednesday, telling the businesses they will have to disclose to investors how climate change might affect their bottom line. I don't know how much pain and suffering comes if you're a violator, but it sounds bad.

But investors don’t have enough to worry about, oh, like losing all their money because of greedy, arrogant risk takers or borderline criminals. Now they need the enforcers to look out for cow farts raising ocean levels and flooding the condo they invested in or whether the coal-fired utility they have shares in will get big-time fines for pumping out too much carbon.

The guidance is the first economy-wide climate risk disclosure requirement in the world, according to a group of environmentalists like green-minded investors at Ceres and the Environmental Defense Fund.

“The lack of specific guidance until now has resulted in weak and inconsistent climate-related disclosure by public companies” they said in a news release.

“Today’s vote is a clarion call about the vast risks and opportunities climate change poses for US companies and the urgency for integrating them into investment decision making,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres and director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk, a network of 80 institutional investors with $8 trillion in collective assets. “The business risks of climate change cannot be ignored. With this guidance investors can make more sound decisions based on better information – and businesses will have a level-playing field with clear standards and expectations for disclosure.”

Feel better?

I'd rather eat boogers?

It’s must be hard to rhyme with sugar because Campbell Soup has underwritten a book called “Who Grew My Soup” that quotes the curious youngster lead character Phineas Quinn as saying, ”I like stuff that’s deep-fried and loaded with sugar. But vegetable soup? Yikes! I’d rather eat boogers!"

But it’s all for the good cause of getting kids to make better food choices like eating more vegetables, presumably in the form of soup from you know who.

Apparently, Phineas didn’t like veggies and hatched a plan to avoid eating them. One argument he hatchs is that you never know where they’d been. Maybe they were grown in Timbuctoofar, he argues.

What illustrations I’ve seen are pretty cool and the few rhymes available in preview are kind of fun if you’re a kid.

The book was written by New York ad agency veteran Tom Darbyshire who, you guessed it, was working on an ad campaign to tell the story of Campbell’s “100-year commitment to using only the highest ingredients.” The book’s illustrator was C.F. Payne.

Get the 32-page hardcover here.

The circle of life or something

This is a new one on me - "upcycle."

An Oregon winery, COWHORN, is promoting not only its early releases, but recycle, upcycle, whatever programs. It's sent its first shipment of 1,000 used wine bottles to be "upcycled" into "heirloom goblets, pitchers, tumblers, vases and votives," according to a news release.

Don't ask me why they spell their name in all caps, but they do.

COWHORN is also partnering with Ashland Food Co-op to covert used corks into compostable wine packs.

On top of that, literally, "At COWHORN, even the soft metal bottle cap covering the cork gets a new life through Rogue Recycling."

And then there's talk of nature flowing in cycles, etc. But the Biodynamic winery seems to be trying. And the end products look pretty nice.

The only rub is they tout their wines as pleasing the James Beard Foundation and people in the Oregon eco-culinary scene.

"Among the new estate’s early accolades is a 90-point rating from Wine Spectator for its 2007 Viognier, now sold out. In their annual round up of most memorable wines, the San Francisco Chronicle featured COWHORN’s 2007 Marsanne Roussanne, also sold out, as one of the year’s top 20 'unexpected pleasures.'”

Please note, two sold outs mean we'll never know how good they might be. Frustrating.

Cap and trade is so passé

There’s a push on to cut those nasty Wall Street people out of climate control in the U.S. It’s called cap and dividend as in there are still permits for businesses to belch global warming gasses, but the income generated through sales of the permits mostly go back to the public. They wouldn't be traded in the Chicago marketplace specially established for that and patterned after the Mercantile Exchange there.

Every energy conference I’ve been to has provoked questions about how to curb financial speculators in the market for carbon credits. You know, those people who like to make money for nothing. (I wish I hadn’t said that because the MTV song is in my head now, probably for hours.)

Continuing. The supporters of the proposal say while energy prices will go up under any cap system, especially as the permits shrink, allowing fewer emissions. The key is consumers under the dividend version get – dividends. They would amount to about 75 percent of the income the government gets for the permits. The rest of the green would go to environmental research.

The bad news is both the passed House version of climate legislation and the proposed Senate version are cap and trade. The good news is the new proposal would limit a business’ ability to use offsets, like planting trees in Sri Lanka, to make their emission quota. And then there's that limited trading of greenhouse gas permits.

The cap and dividend proposal has a Republican, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, as a co-sponsor, so maybe it would have some momentum since Republicans who support cap and trade are an endangered or extinct species. However, even if the Senate passes a dividend plan, they would have to negotiate with those House people who make those Wall Street people look like school kids.

Ouch

Warning, due to my extended absence, I thought I'd make a senselessly rude return.

Well, it might not be senseless, depending on your point of view. It probably depends on what side of the global warming debate you fall on. But it might also depend on how strong your stomach is and how much you think of polar bears as cuddly teddys, only bigger.

And stinkier from all those seals they eat.

But I digress.

The media battles just keep heating up. This one is an ouch! Like a two-by-four over the head ouch.

It's from the London-based group Plane Stupid that is all upset about how people are stupid about planes. Their catch phrase is "Bringing the aviation industry back down to earth."

In this case, "It's really not about polar bears anymore." We just fly too much.

Now the science cited in the video may be questionable, but don't let the kids watch.

Those zany Brits.

Make up your mind

New Pew Research Center survey shows Americans are less hot under the collar about global warming - much less.

In a recent Pew poll, 57 percent of respondents said there is "solid evidence" the average temperature on Eargh is getting warmer. In April 2008, 71 percent said that and in 2006 and 2007, that opinion hit 77 percent.

What gives? Is solid not solid? Is squishy the new solid?

Pew opines the sucking sound of the economy is to blame. The center cites drops of about 10 percent in people saying immigration, health care and crime are top priorities for the president and Congress, as signs people are more focused on jobs and pay checks.

Pew says even Gallup and Fox News have seen similar results in polls.

What could this sort of sentiment do to the cap-and-trade train that is just aching to be fueled up with government dollars to get it out of the station?

What do you think? You can e-mail me at kevin.welch@amarillo.com.

Carbonated Conversations

Just back from a somewhat steamy Columbus, Ohio, and the McCormick Energy Solutions Conference.

It was a jam-packed three days on the future of energy with a constant background glow thanks to global warming. The panelists were by and large true believers and basically activists for the kill-carbon-before-it-kills-us point of view. Most were more temperate than Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress and blog author, but who isn't?

Anyway, it was thought provoking, even with a grain of salt or two. The shift in scientific thinking puts all the blame for excess carbon on human activity, and that makes more and more sense as the data comes in. But one word of caution from former astronaut, and role model for skyward-looking kids of a certain graying age, John Glenn. He said he still has scientist friends passing on the idea that the jury isn't totally out on whether global warming is part of nature's cycles. And that raises the questions of who or what's spewing the carbon dioxide many blame as the leader of the Greenhouse Gas Gang.

But then he came back with this: "If we screw it up, there's no going back...No matter what's happening in the cycles, we have to clean up the environment."

He described Earth's atmosphere as a "thin film" rather than the chunk of air in school textbooks, painting an image of something fragile and at risk.

What a guy. He and his wife since 1943 are still vital and involved and were then off to a national climate something or other.

I'll be writing here and in the Globe-News in a hopefully more coherent way about what's happening here on the High Plains in relation to the topics the experts discussed at the conference. The common thread was the quickest, easiest ways to reduce carbon are conservation and efficiency.

On that topic, a smarter grid is one way experts propose to burn less fuels that release carbon. I'm working on an update on efforts to make our stupid grid smarter here at home for my first story. The next one may be a look at how school districts are faring on the 2007 mandate to reduce energy consumption 5 percent per year.

By the way, the hospitality on the Ohio State University campus was fantastic, although I was dragging a bit from the pace by the time I got home at midnight last night. The organizers of the McCormick Energy Solutions Conference and especially the staff of the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism and the John Glenn School of Public Affairs know their stuff.

And it was a little eerie looking out my hotel window on the Woody Hayes Boulevard towards the solid, gray memorial to his legacy, the holy stadium where he did his thing that is even lit at night.

Chicken? Egg? Wind?

What has to come first to cover our horizon with wind turbines? This photo was taken near Palm Springs and shows part of an installation of 4,000 turbines.

I have mixed feelings about how much wind would be good for the Panhandle - not really at the wild-eyed chamber of commerce level, but not totally against it like the grumpy old man people accuse me of being.

The American Wind Energy Association recently released its second quarter market report, saying wind installations nationally went against expectations, beating the 2008 first half total. The industry installed 4,000 megawatts in 2009 versus 2,900 MW last year.

In another segment of the business, orders for parts are slowing as is the manufacture of turbines.

AWEA's CEO, Denise Bode, says what we need is a stronger push by the federal government via a robust national renewable fuel requirement.

And what can't the federal government make better? Nevertheless, in the shortrun, that probably won't help the Panhandle.

Walt Hornaday, head of Cielo Wind, knows about the wind business here. His company finished the Wildorado Wind Ranch in Oldham County a couple of years ago and has developed numerous other projects in Texas.

While people continue to say "if only the transmission lines would get here to take our power to the neon lights of Dallas, we could start building wind farms," there might be something else hitting the brakes.

According to Hornaday, The financial sector would not step up and fund that building right now. With projects costing about $2 million per megawatt, that's a lot of missing financing when you think about the Wildorado installation being rated at 161 MW capacity.

The AWEA report has some other interesting information, especially if you're a wind geek. For example, Missouri led the country in second quarter growth at 146 MW added while Texas doesn't even make the top 10 with 454 MW added. I know that's because Texas already has a lot of wind farms, so the 454 is a smaller percentage, but it looks weird to get beat by Missouri.

Your life in a box

It's like a land rush, but not.

An excited news release came my way recently, positively vibrating with the news that Facebookers can now be virtual farmers with virtual green thumbs making piles of virtual money and doing it all with their virtual friends.

“Zygna, the No. 1 social gaming companion the Web, is opening up millions of acres of virtual farmland with the launch of its new FarmVille,” the release reads.

First, a disclaimer, they said No. 1, not me.

Players can “run a profitable farm while also enjoying the social aspect of a rural community. They can select neighbors, exchange gifts and even chat amongst each other in real time,” the release continues.

Does anyone want to volunteer to go to the local coffee shop in Spearman or Dimmitt and poll the farmers on this? Players, with no idea where bread comes from, can build their bank accounts if they tend their farms diligently. And they can "share the social aspect of a rural community" from the safety of their bedroom in the suburbs.

And I can’t even go to "chat amongst themselves." It’s personal, but "amongst" and "atop" should never be seen outside Southern Living magazine.

And the best thing is, you can bank on this game being authentic because Zygna says it is building on its success with other games like Mafia War and Texas Hold'Em.

Okay, my assessment is at its heart unfair because I can’t even remember how to get on Facebook to be with all my fans and test FarmVille for myself. Guess I won’t get to earn my virtual green thumb.

I'll just go sweat in my dirty little garden.

Mayhem on Main Street - The controller from outer space

The city of Amarillo is giving rebates up to $50 per water customer to people who buy controllers that turn their sprinkler system off when it's raining or near freezing, but Tom Ash thinks that's a "baby step."

Ash is the director of conservation for HydroPoint, a company that offers more than just a puny rain/freeze controller. They can input what plants you're growing, the slope of the yard, how much exposure to the sun there is, the soil type. Then the controller crunches the data to calculate the most efficient irrigation schedule for you.

But wait. There's more.

Just picture all the information flying through space from Earth to satellite to Earth to satellite to Earth as HydroPoint constantly collects information from the National Weather Service, other government weather observatories and private weather stations. They do some kind of way-too-complicated number work and figure out the evaporation and transpiration rates in the "micro zone" your yard is in. (That means how much water vapor is going back into the air and how much the plants are releasing in the surrounding half square mile.)

All that figuring goes into tweaking the irrigation schedule that is transmitted by satellite to the controller.

There is a monthly fee for all this high-tech aid, but Ash says you save water, but also energy to pump the water. Then there's the carbon dioxide that would have been created by the Harrington Power Station while Xcel Energy to makes the electricity to power the pumps that move the water for the house that Jack built.

Let's see, that's a win, win, lose...well, good thing I'm not doing all this high-concept calculating.

I don't know if it works, but it is an interesting idea.

Oh yeah, and you can wire a "baby-step" rain sensor in for an extra charge.

I'm a victim. Really

They've driven me to dream of mass murder.

I don't mind prying a tomato worm or two off my plants and stomping them into bug heaven. Okay, don't stomp because they're really juicy. But the grasshoppers are making me a little crazy.

Crazy enough to load up with Sevin dust and start sprinkling plants that haven't seen any herbicides or insecticides all season. You can walk across the lawn and stir up clouds of hoppers like puffs of dust. Walk near the wrong plant, and you can hear them fleeing, thumping off other plants or walls.

And speaking of dust, I had been hoping that if it was going to be in the 100s and dry, maybe it should stay that way long enough to drive them off to Kansas or somewhere. But no, it starts raining. That makes them happy to stay and washes off the Sevin.

I'm no organic zealot, but I try. I used insecticidal soap until my pump-pressing finger wanted to fall off.

And there's some plants that they find less than tasty, like salvia, coreopsis, Russian Sage, hyssop, rosemary and Mexican marigolds. But somebody has to save the pitiful zinnias, and one butterfly bush (another one is untouched in the same yard).

I would have chosen more hopper resistant plants, but these are not normal times.

The ultimate insult, or maybe payback, was the daddy grasshopper that landed on my glasses this weekend. It was massive and just grabbed hold of one lens like it was going to throw me to the ground or something.

Maybe this is all karma. I admit I bought compost this year instead of making it. And remember, my plants are sequestering carbon for the good of the globe. I'll turn my life around. Just free me from this plague.

All in the family

The Center for Public Integrity reports Podesta One and Podesta Two are going head on.

Seems John Podesta, formerly known as co-chair of the Obama transition and Clinton chief of staff, is head of the Center for American Progress, and they really don’t like the term “clean coal.” In fact, they accuse the coal industry of using it to mislead in the debate about energy production, greenhouse gases and air pollution.

Then there’s lesser-known but equally well-connected Tony Podesta. The Center for Public Integrity describes him as “one of Washington’s most successful lobbyists." He's also John's brother. One of his clients? The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. The coalition paid his Podesta Group lobbying firm $50,000 in the second quarter to make its case during the climate debate in the House.

One of the policy papers by the Center for American Progress lambasts ACCCE as a group of coal and utility companies just stalling on making clean coal mean something. The report says the companies made a combined profit of $57 billion in 2007 but invested only a "paltry" $3.5 billion in clean coal research over several years.

Now I could be wrong, but $3.5 billion isn't extremely paltry in my checkbook, but I get the center's point.

"Meanwhile, atmospheric greenhouse gas levels grow, ice sheets melt, hurricanes become more ferocious, and the day of reckoning for the Earth looms closer," according to the center's paper.

Even the Podestas' gotta make a buck, but there may be a "day of reckoning" in Podestaland if this climate debate thing keeps going.

Burp control for a cooler planet

Short of using a cork, there have been few answers to how to control the methane emissions from cows, but there may be at least a partial answer.

Stonyfield Farm, a supplier of organic dairy products, says it is having success developing a "Greener Cow." The idea is to alter the bovines' diets to reduce their burps which would mean less methane and less global warming, they say.

The company began feeding cows diets high in natural omega-3 sources like flax last year at Vermont dairies that supply milk to it. This supposedly "re-balances" the cows' main stomachs resulting in not only less methane, as much as 18 percent less, but less saturated fat in their milk.

So the process is good for the planet and good for you. That's right, a win/win. We love win/wins. And if it keeps the EPA off your back, it's a win/win/win. Wow.

Greenerrific

Packed with product

there's never too much green

Who'd of thunk Office Depot, seller of murdered trees by the ream, would be flexing its green muscles?

The company has redesigned its environmental Web site to better shout its credentials. It sports the Depot "global environmental vision" to "Buy Green, Be Green and Sell Green."

Greened out yet? Impossible.

How about the Green Book catalog with 2,200 of Office Depot's greenest products and tips? How about green rankings of its products from light green for refillable pens to dark green for 100 percent recycled content file folders? Well, how about the Greener Office Guide to going from "green starter" to "green leader?"

But check it out. The company's done a lot of work to communicate its position and make a little money to add to its $14.5 billion sales every year.

Too much Huh?

Sometimes, this green stuff is clear as mud. Now I know that's of the Earth, but when something hits the Huh? button too hard, it makes my head hurt.

Sample No. 1 from a recent speech by John Podesta, president and CEO of Center for American Progress in which he proposes the concept of Carbon Cap Equivalents:
"This would entail adding up the full range of supplemental and complimentary proposals to each country’s carbon cap, and converting this into one comparable figure of what these emissions reductions would effectively amount to if they had been the result of a carbon cap alone. While the modeling will be complex, the hoped for Copenhagen treaty needs to create the mechanism through measureable, verifiable, and reportable carbon cap equivalents – representing the full range of their policy profile to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – above and beyond their formal cap."

Sounds simple, Huh?

Sample No. 2 from an e-mailed news release for a product that lets your horse leave lighter hoofprints on the Earth:
Alltech and California-based O.H. Kruse have launched Green Feed, "the animal health and nutrition industry’s first environmentally-friendly equine feed."
"From its bag to its formulation, Green Feed was designed to enable horses to perform at their peak naturally and with less impact on the land they call home:
The bag is made of recyclable materials and is printed with soy-based ink.
Green Feed includes a variety of proven, natural technologies to ensure digestive health, boost immune function, and provide optimal mineral balances.
The formula includes just the right amount of supplements to decrease the nutrient content wasted into the manure and thereby reduce the risk of ground water contamination.
It was also formulated keeping the local availability of ingredients in mind so the carbon footprint and energy waste of transportation is minimized. Grain products are kept to a minimum in the Green Feed to avoid affecting the supply for a hungry world."

Do you think that makes those horses feel a lot better about themselves?

But seriously, they aren't bad ideas. There's just a Huh? factor to reading these descriptions of them.

Making Green Sausage

You may not want to look too closely at this because the making of legislation or sausage can make you queasy.

Up in D.C., they're working on a greenhouse gas bill to curb the production of carbon dioxide, and there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen. In the first quarter of 2009, 140 businesses or interest groups have put lobbyists into action to represent them in the creation of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act. That makes a total of 880 firms or groups with lobbyists involved, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Of course, the power companies and oil and gas interests make up more than half of those. But what the heck? There's also Google, Nike and Starbucks, to name a few of the not-so-usual suspects. Then there's the American Meat Institute ("don't outlaw cow burps"), Levi Strauss and the maker of Segways (transportation without the tailpipes).

Too much?

They would probably say never enough.

There's a lot of money involved when you start talking about selling permits to pollute, better known as cap and trade, or keeping you're friends employed in Washington. The center reports the lobbyists have multiple clients. For example, 10 lobbyist firms represent 100 businesses. That's a lot of former government officials and Capital Hill staffers at work to keep the Earth from getting all crispy.