Crude’s down 28% since its February high. Corn’s down about 17%. Gold’s down 12%.

This slide in commodities, though, is a reaction to slowing economies, which makes for a curious leap of logic when one tries to argue that falling commodity prices will help boost those same economies.

“It makes little sense to expect a fall in the oil price to kick-start global growth if it is weak demand which pushed prices down in the first place,” Capital Economics economist Andrew Kenningham wrote. While cheaper gas prices do act as a transfer of income from oil producers ”“ think Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips ”“ to consumers, it’s likely to have only a small effect on global GDP, “depending on the propensities to spend and save among producers and consumers.”

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More than one hundred international participants, including representatives of churches and civil society, have gathered in Bogor, Indonesia for the Global Forum on Poverty, Wealth and Ecology. On 19 June, they spoke together about poverty eradication and the concepts of economic and ecological justice lying at the heart of Christian ethics.

The forum will continue till 22 June and will conclude the AGAPE (Alternative to Economic Globalization Addressing Peoples and Earth) study process initiated by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 2006 at its 9th Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

The AGAPE studies have focused on the relations between poverty, wealth and ecology, undertaken in Africa in 2007, Latin America and the Caribbean in 2008, Asia and the Pacific in 2009, Europe in 2010 and North America in 2011.

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St. Gregory the Great Episcopal Church now has the ability to harness the sun.

In recent days, the church, located in Southeastern Athens-Clarke County, installed a 7.5-kilowatt solar array that will be used to generate energy that will help to significantly lower the church’s energy costs.

A main purpose of the solar array, though, is to make the church a better steward of the environment. And it also will allow more of the church’s resources to go toward helping those in need instead of toward power bills, said Andrew Lane ”” also known as “Captain Planet” ”” chairman of the Green Guild/Creation Keepers at St. Gregory the Great.

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Governments can, of course, and must, play their part in all this. Governments need to give fiscal incentives to green development. They need to promote programmes that encourage us all to reduce our waste. They need to ”˜green’ our economy, both at home and worldwide. And we, all of us, not least the faith communities, need to collaborate in that and support governments in that vision.

But at root, the question remains the same: what kind of world do we want to hand on? Imagine that you have a child’s or a grandchild’s birthday coming up. You want to give them a present. You want to give them something that will genuinely mean something to them, that will enrich their lives, that will be part of lasting growth and well-being. And that’s what we’re challenged to do here. It’s a challenge that I think will resonate for absolutely everybody across the world. Simply enough: what’s the gift we want to give? The gift of a world that’s more free from pollution, a world whose future is more secure, a world where more people have access to food and clean water and healthcare? Yes. But also a world in which we’re transmitting the wisdom of how to inhabit a world, how to inhabit a limited environment with grace, with freedom, with confidence.

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More than 80 people gathered to view artwork and dance, and to hear poetry and music, as part of “eARTh Night: The Art Around Us” at St. David’s, Austin, on Sunday, April 22. The event celebrated the beauty of the world and the creativity of artists who expressed that beauty in a variety of media.

With almost 100 entries submitted by local writers and artists, the event featured photographs, paintings, felt constructions, jewelry, mosaics and an editorial cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Ben Sargent. Members of Art from the Streets at Trinity Center, which serves downtown homeless neighbors, provided more than a dozen entries.

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Workshop topics will include God’s Creation and poetry, Celtic spirituality, ecology and the eucharist, ethical investments, ecology and the economy, climate change, how to become an eco”“congregation and helping children and young people nurture respect for the earth….

ECI chairperson, Sr Catherine Brennan, looks forward to welcoming a broad section of people to the conference from both north and south of the border. “The stark sign of our time is a planet in peril at our hands and it is poor people who suffer most from environmental impoverishment,” she says. “Commitment to the poor and commitment to the well”“being of life on this planet must go together as two inter”“related dimensions of the one Christian vocation….

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The idealism, ambition, self-assurance and total hubris at the heart of this salmon escapade are all hallmarks of the [Patagonia’s Yvon] Chouinard executive style. His approach to leading a company is perhaps best understood as a sort of performance art””less about the bottom line than about providing a road map for future entrepreneurs. “I never even wanted to be in business,” he says. “But I hang onto Patagonia because it’s my resource to do something good. It’s a way to demonstrate that corporations can lead examined lives.”

That mission is already well under way. Chouinard’s new book, “The Responsible Company,” published this month, offers detailed checklists for making money without inflicting undue societal harm. Even megacorporations are paying attention to him these days.

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In 2009, the Episcopal Church memorialized the Genesis Covenant, which is a national, ecumenical effort by religious communities to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from every facility they maintain by at least 50% within 10 years.
Most congregations find they save money when they implement the Genesis Covenant because they reduce their energy use. But the benefits go far beyond that. Community is built as people work together toward a common goal….

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Israel’s military chief said in an interview published Wednesday that he believes Iran will choose not to build a nuclear bomb, an assessment that contrasted with the gloomier statements of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pointed to differences over the Iran issue at the top levels of Israeli leadership.

The comments by Maj. Gen Benny Gantz, who said international sanctions have begun to show results, could relieve pressure on the Obama administration and undercut efforts by Israeli political leaders to urge the United States to get as tough as possible on Iran.

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For much of this year, Americans’ economic confidence has been threatening to break out of the range seen since Gallup began Daily tracking of economic confidence in January 2008. It actually did so by one percentage point when economic confidence reached a new weekly high of -17 in the week ending March 25. After pulling back in early April, confidence in each of the past two weeks is once again within two points of that previous weekly high.

The continued high confidence seen this past week is likely due, at least in part, to gas prices stabilizing and even showing signs of decline….

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T he discovery this week of a massive light crude oil field in southern Iran adds another layer of complexity to one of the world’s most acute problems. Iran and Israel appear to be heading for war unless something unexpected happens and this week’s discovery will only strengthen the resolve and confidence of Tehran.

For many Australians the name Iran conjures images of bearded and severe Ayatollahs and a wide-eyed President Ahmadinejad occupying the no-man’s land between sanity and fanaticism. We see a persistent stream of refugees who seem to validate the assumption they must be fleeing a toxic regime. Since this country could easily become the biggest, cataclysmic news story of the year, it is worth spending a few minutes trying to understand its pathology….

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Europe threw its weight behind Spain yesterday after a diplomatic war broke out between Madrid and Buenos Aires over Argentina’s decision to take over a multibillion-pound energy company.

In the wake of tensions between Britain and Argentina on the anniversary earlier this month of the Falklands invasion, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner risked further alienation around the world by pushing ahead with the nationalisation of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), in which Repsol, a Spanish energy group, has a majority shareholding.

In response, Spain launched a trade and diplomatic offensive against Argentina, rallying allies in Brussels and the G20 against the move to take over 51 per cent of YPF.

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Take a very careful look–Wow.

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Across the country, the oil and gas industry is vastly increasing production, reversing two decades of decline. Using new technology and spurred by rising oil prices since the mid-2000s, the industry is extracting millions of barrels more a week, from the deepest waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the prairies of North Dakota.

At the same time, Americans are pumping significantly less gasoline. While that is partly a result of the recession and higher gasoline prices, people are also driving fewer miles and replacing older cars with more fuel-efficient vehicles at a greater clip, federal data show.

Taken together, the increasing production and declining consumption have unexpectedly brought the United States markedly closer to a goal that has tantalized presidents since Richard Nixon: independence from foreign energy sources, a milestone that could reconfigure American foreign policy, the economy and more.

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The US, Japan and the European Union have filed a case against China at the World Trade Organization, challenging its restrictions on rare earth exports.

US President Barack Obama accused China of breaking agreed trade rules as he announced the case at the White House.

Beijing has set quotas for exports of rare earths, which are critical to the manufacture of high-tech products from hybrid cars to flat-screen TVs.

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Archbishop Makgoba, who also chairs the Anglican Communion’s Environmental Network (ACEN), stressed the timely nature of this meeting. “We heard for months about COP 17 before it took place, but we have not heard much since. I know that a previous meeting at UCT was oversubscribed so the interest is definitely there. I’m privileged that we have been able to draw together again such an impressive panel. This is not just a scientific concern – it is a deeply moral issue as well.”

The Revd Canon Dr. Rachel Mash, coordinator of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa’s Environmental Network, agrees. “Once we have heard from this well informed panel, we and other members of civil society can begin to plan our ”˜next steps’ leading up to Rio +20 – the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development taking place in Rio in June.”

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Saudi Arabia has raised the price of its flagship Arab Light crude oil for customers in Asia, who buy more than half its crude exports, by $1.25 a barrel for April….

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Rising prices took a toll on Americans’ incomes as the year began, halting a four-month streak of gains and renewing concerns about the consumer’s resilience amid higher gas prices.

That’s according to a report Tuesday that found real median annual household income in the U.S. declined by 1.3% in January from December, to $50,020 from $50,673.

The tick downward follows monthly increases in income from September through the end of 2011, according to the analysis of Census Bureau data conducted by Sentier Research, an Annapolis, Md., firm run by two former Census officials.

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On April 21, the Episcopal Church will sponsor a forum on a critical topic: The Intersection of Poverty and the Environment. Originating from St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Salt Lake City, UT, the two-hour ecumenical forum will be live webcast beginning at 10 am Mountain (9 am Pacific, 11 Central, noon Eastern).

“Through The Intersection of Poverty and the Environment, we will explore the differential effects of environmental degradation and changing climate patterns on the poor ”“ in this country and around the world,” Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said.

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Going somewhere? It’ll cost you even more this week, with the national average price of a gallon of regular fuel now up to nearly $3.70 and rising 26 cents to $4.29 in California.

That’s up 14 cents a gallon from a week ago and a 29-cent increase from a month ago. A gallon is now more than 10% more expensive than the $3.35 it cost this time last year, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report.

But in California, drivers are wishing prices were still that low. The state’s average cost for a gallon is $4.29, compared to $4.03 a week ago. That’s nearly 15% more than the year-ago cost of $3.74 a gallon.

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….Bloomberg News reported last week that “the U.S. is the closest it has been in almost 20 years to achieving energy self-sufficiency. … Domestic oil output is the highest in eight years. The U.S. is producing so much natural gas that, where the government warned four years ago of a critical need to boost imports, it now may approve an export terminal.” As a result, “the U.S. has reversed a two-decade-long decline in energy independence, increasing the proportion of demand met from domestic sources over the last six years to an estimated 81 percent through the first 10 months of 2011.” This transformation could make the U.S. the world’s top energy producer by 2020, raise more tax revenue, free us from worrying about the Middle East, and, if we’re smart, build a bridge to a much cleaner energy future.

All of this is good news, but it will come true at scale only if these oil and gas resources can be extracted in an environmentally sustainable manner. This can be done right, but we need a deal between environmentalists and the oil and gas industry to lock it in ”” now.

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Iran’s government ordered a halt to oil exports to Britain and France on Sunday, in what may be only an initial response to the European Union decision to cut off Iranian oil imports and freeze central bank assets beginning in July.

Britain and France depend little on Iranian oil, however, so their targeting may be a mostly symbolic act, a function of the strong positions Paris and London have taken in trying to halt Iranian nuclear enrichment and bring pressure to bear on Syria, one of Tehran’s closest allies.

Tehran may also be reluctant, when its economy has been damaged by existing sanctions, to deprive itself of revenues from its larger European customers. At the same time, it may be seeking to divide the 27-nation European Union between those who depend on Iranian oil and those who do not

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Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

Another huge winner from Vimeo–watch and listen to it all; KSH.

Iran has said an oil embargo adopted by European Union foreign ministers over the country’s nuclear programme is “unfair” and “doomed to fail”.

The measures would not prevent Iran’s “progress for achieving its basic rights”, foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said.

The sanctions ban all new oil contracts with Iran and freeze the assets of Iran’s central bank in the EU.

The EU currently buys about 20% of Iran’s oil exports.

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We almost hope this was a political call because, on the substance, there should be no question. Without the pipeline, Canada would still export its bitumen ”” with long-term trends in the global market, it’s far too valuable to keep in the ground ”” but it would go to China. And, as a State Department report found, U.S. refineries would still import low-quality crude ”” just from the Middle East. Stopping the pipeline, then, wouldn’t do anything to reduce global warming, but it would almost certainly require more oil to be transported across oceans in tankers.

Environmentalists and Nebraska politicians say that the route TransCanada proposed might threaten the state’s ecologically sensitive Sand Hills region. But TransCanada has been willing to tweak the route, in consultation with Nebraska officials, even though a government analysis last year concluded that the original one would have “limited adverse environmental impacts.” Surely the Obama administration didn’t have to declare the whole project contrary to the national interest ”” that’s the standard State was supposed to apply ”” and force the company to start all over again.

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A shale-driven glut of natural gas has cut electricity prices for the U.S. power industry by 50 percent and reduced investment in costlier sources of energy.

With abundant new supplies of gas making it the cheapest option for new power generation, the largest U.S. wind-energy producer, NextEra Energy Inc. (NEE), has shelved plans for new U.S. wind projects next year and Exelon Corp. (EXC) called off plans to expand two nuclear plants. Michigan utility CMS Energy Corp. (CMS) canceled a $2 billion coal plant after deciding it wasn’t financially viable in a time of “low natural-gas prices linked to expanded shale-gas supplies,” according to a company statement.

Mirroring the gas market, wholesale electricity prices have dropped more than 50 percent on average since 2008, and about 10 percent during the fourth quarter of 2011, according to a Jan. 11 research report by Aneesh Prabhu, a New York-based credit analyst with Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC.

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“Congress’s point of view is that we may be running a risk that this will increase the price of oil but that compared to [the risk of ] Israeli or U.S. military strikes on Iran or a nuclear-armed Iran, the oil market impact of these sanctions will pale in comparison,” says Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Energy analyst Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, says there are no easy answers.

“There are only trade-offs, and many of the trade-offs are difficult ones,” Yergin says.

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