Wow, Google is clearly taking a stand on global warming. Man, aside from their business with the CCP, Google is the coolest company ever. I mean, look at the Google Transit System. Now that's what I call a sweet company perk.

I'm watching the Al Gore Senate Hearing on C-SPAN online right now. Sen. Inhofe (R-Okla.) is making his opening statements, and so far he's said "The Antarctica" not once, not twice, but thrice. Seriously, what's up with some Republicans and putting "the" in front of the wrong words or in the wrong context?

And these are the same people who want to make English the official language.

Maybe I should stop watching this video 'cause it's clogging up the series of pipes and tubes on the Internets.

Update: Why the hell are you going against carbon cap and trade, especially when your business buddies are for it? Inhofe is such a moron. This is the same guy who cited a fiction novel as good reason for doubting global warming.

The front page of today's Financial Times shows corporations realize that being green means getting more green in return. And the way that they're doing it is very unconventional. They want more regulation in terms of carbon caps and trading.

Leading US investors joined some of America’s biggest companies yesterday to urge Washington to follow European plans to set mandatory targets to cut carbon emissions.

Together they constitute the biggest array of US private sector leaders that has so far come together to call for radical action on global warming.

The group, which represents more than $4,000bn worth of investor capital, including funds managed by Merrill Lynch, Calpers, Allianz and Calvert, said Washington should end investor uncertainty by establishing “sizeable, sensible long-term cuts” to US carbon emissions.

Investors and Business for US Climate Action – which includes the chief executives of Alcoa, BP America, DuPont, Sun Microsystems and PG&E Corp – said Congress should also establish an economy-wide carbon price to stimulate the creation of a US “cap and trade” regime.

It urged the US Securities and Exchange Commission to issue guidelines on the level of detail that businesses should disclose about climate change risk in their financial reports.

“In the absence of strong federal leadership there is a risk that US businesses may get left behind, losing ground against competitors in the rapidly growing global market for low-carbon solutions,” it said in a statement. “By establishing a national policy rather than leaving leadership to the courts and state governments, it would remove unnecessary risk in asset management and corporate governance and help to regularise an increasingly complex regulatory environment.”

Ever since I've started to learn more about climate change, I've noticed that those who would be most negatively affected by global warming are already the worst off in the world. Look at how Hurricane Katrina affected the Gulf Coast, then multiply that numerous times to reflect how those types of storms become more of the norm.

The feeling heightened after reading about the results of the IPCC report in the news, where some scientists predicted that all the islands of Indonesia would disappear from rising oceans by the end of this century. I became ever more convinced after reading a couple articles in The Atlantic Monthly, one focusing on the winners and losers of global warming, and the other which points to global warming as one of the root causes of genocide in Darfur.

My theory is now crystallized as environmental imperialism: the intended and unintended behaviors and policies in industrialized nations that change environmental conditions, resulting in increased economic capital for these nations at the expense of all forms of capital--economic, environmental, and social--in developing nations.

This doesn't mean that we're consciously spewing carbon dioxide into the air in order to maintain and expand our hegemony over the rest of the world. China's air pollution, for example, makes up a significant amount of toxic material in the air over the Pacific Northwest.

Nobody consciously goes around wanting to add more detritus to the world by purchasing an iPod, nor do corporations consciously do the same by selling cool widgets to consumers. Everyone wants the lowest transaction costs. When costs to the environment and to society aren't internalized, you aren't even aware of your impact. It isn't until you multiply the impact by 88 million times (number of iPods sold) that the impact is really tangible.

The geopolitical patterns of environmental imperialism remain the same. The northern (hemisphere) dominates the south. To illustrate the effects in the example of Darfur, Stephen Faris writes:

Until the rains began to fail, the sheikh’s people lived amicably with the settled farmers. The nomads were welcome passers-through, grazing their camels on the rocky hillsides that separated the fertile plots. The farmers would share their wells, and the herders would feed their stock on the leavings from the harvest. But with the drought, the farmers began to fence off their land—even fallow land—for fear it would be ruined by passing herds. A few tribes drifted elsewhere or took up farming, but the Arab herders stuck to their fraying livelihoods—nomadic herding was central to their cultural identity. (The distinction between “Arab” and “African” in Darfur is defined more by lifestyle than any physical difference: Arabs are generally herders, Africans typically farmers. The two groups are not racially distinct.)

The name Darfur means “Land of the Fur” (the largest single tribe of farmers in Darfur), but the vast region holds the tribal lands—the dars—of many tribes. In the late 1980s, landless and increasingly desperate Arabs began banding together to wrest their own dar from the black farmers. In 1987, they published a manifesto of racial superiority, and clashes broke out between Arabs and Fur. About 3,000 people, mostly Fur, were killed, and hundreds of villages and nomadic camps were burned before a peace agreement was signed in 1989. More fighting in the 1990s entrenched the divisions between Arabs and non-Arabs, pitting the Arab pastoralists against the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit farmers. In these disputes, Sudan’s central government, seated in Khartoum, often supported the Arabs politically and sometimes provided arms.

In Nicaragua, Green Empowerment, in partnership with a local NGO, installed solar panels to power water pumps in villages that didn't need them before. Why? These villages that depend on freshwater from nearby snowpack are scooping up mud instead of water from their wells, while industrialized nations can afford to pump water. The inequality will only widen as energy costs increase.

Yes, this is a bleak picture... only if you care about human life. After all, most of your own lives won't be affected as much as fishermen on the Indian Ocean.

But if you don't care about them, go ahead and keep on driving your SUVs. Keep the global economy moving by purchasing cheap products from halfway around the world instead of things made in the US. The corporations--no, the United States and all of the people of the industrialized world including you--depend on that.

If you do care about your impact upon other inhabitants on our planet, I urge you to think about and analyze how you live. Read the news, go out and vote, change a lightbulb, and be the change.

Surely you'd expect that I'd be glad that the International Panel on Climate Change is finally squashing the debate on global warming. However, I find myself rather angry. Angry that it has taken so long for something like this to happen. Angry that there was even a debate about this at all, thanks to the warm folks at Phillip Morris Exxon Mobil. Instead, the debate should have centered on things like this.

What does it take to bring people to their senses? One of the most interesting parts of Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" presentation was a "viewgraph" presented by the Bush 41 administration to show how on top of environmental matters they were. I'll let Gore's words describe it:

Now here is the choice we have to make according to this group. We have here [are] scales that balances two different things. On one side, we have gold bars! Mmm mmm! Mmm! Don't they look good? I'd just like to have some of those gold bars! Mm mmm! On the other side of the scales... THE ENTIRE PLANET! Hmm...

I think this is a false choice for two reasons. Number one, if we don't have a planet... The other reason is that if we do the right thing, then we're going to create a lot of wealth and we're going to create a lot of jobs because doing the right thing moves us forward."

Seriously, it's all about the push reel (more like real) mowers. Sometimes too much tech wizardry just gets in the way...

Lawn-Mower Recall Is Expanded

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
August 17, 2006; Page D2

Black & Decker Corp. expanded a recall to include 160,000 cordless electric lawn mowers after the company received 10 new reports of electrical components overheating, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said.

The commission said the reports received by the Towson, Md., maker of power tools and home-improvement products involved one case of a fire that extended beyond the mower. The mowers were sold nationwide under the Black & Decker and Craftsman brands, the commission said.

The recall includes Black & Decker mowers with the model numbers CMM1000 or CMM1000R -- Types One through Four -- sold between February 1996 and December 2005. Craftsman-brand mowers with the model number 900.370520, sold at Sears and Orchard Supply Hardware stores between January 1998 and December 2000, also were recalled.

The original recall, covering 140,000 cordless, electric mowers in September 2002, came after the company received 11 reports of electrical components overheating, including one instance in which a user suffered a minor hand burn, the commission said.

Shortsighted American industries are at it again. In a repeat of Detroit's opposition to catalytic convertors in the 1970's, lawn mower engine manufacturers are opposing California's plan to require CCs to be installed on all new lawn mowers:

Patricia Hanz, an assistant general counsel for Briggs & Stratton, said, "We acknowledge that there's an air quality problem in California." But she added that Briggs engines were 70 percent cleaner than they were than 15 years ago, before regulation.

To meet the new standards, she said, would require a minimum 30 percent price increase "across our product line."

Ms. Hanz did not explain the components of this projected price increase. The E.P.A. estimates that a catalytic converter and new hoses would cost a company about $20 to $25 per machine, on average. California regulators estimate the price increase at 18 percent for the smallest machines, those costing about $150 to $200.

In Alpharetta, Heidi Ramaekers said she would be willing to pay $25 more for a model like her current $175 mower "if it would make things better."

These folks need to start thinking outside the box. And it's not even a big stretch of the imagination. People are willing to pay a little extra to reduce emissions from one of the dirtiest little sources of particulates out there-- 2-cycle engines.

Imagine a new Briggs & Stratton marketing campaign based on being greener than its competitors. Like Toyota's Prius (sans R&D costs; but their early start has put it light-years ahead of the Big 2, plus they get to license the technology), Briggs & Stratton can improve their bottom line through a small initial investment.

Asked if she thought [Sen. Christopher S.] Bond (R-Mo.) might try again to delay the standards' scheduled 2007 implementation, [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein (D-Calif.) said: "We made a deal. In the Senate, your word is your bond." She added: "My comment to Briggs & Stratton is: You can learn from the dinosaur. Mutate or you're gone."

Briggs & Stratton has another idea: another study. It is helping pay for a $650,000 safety review by a Swedish government institute at the behest of the relatively new nonprofit group, the International Consortium for Fire Safety, Health and the Environment.

Here's what you should do to help clean our air, reduce dependence on foreign oil, and apply the natural selection process to companies like Briggs & Stratton: Check out push reel mowers like the Scotts 2000-20 20" Push Reel Mower.

I have one, so I know firsthand that it's lighter, more maneuverable, and easier to maintain than a heavy gas mower. The cutting method is better for the lawn, and leaving mulch behind also improves the health of the lawn. Don't worry, the mulch doesn't clump up like the type that bagless powered motors leave behind. And it's only $119.99 at stores like Fred Meyer, Target, and Amazon.