In the forecourt of Euston station sits a tractor-sized sculpture called Piscator. “Silvery and enigmatic”, said the Telegraph in its obituary of Sir Eduardo Paolozzi. He’d crafted the piece in honour of Erwin Piscator, the German exponent of so-called “epic theatre”.

I pondered Piscator during a break at a Quaker conference on the “zero-growth economy” ”“ linking climate change and the credit crunch. Piscator just brooded, stolid and squat. But the scene shifted. In some epic theatre of my own mind he became an old-fashioned locomotive ”¦ elemental, unstoppable, stoked by fires of the human predicament.

Green fixes seek to reconcile economy with ecology. But the harsh truth is that many don’t add up when ripped from their contexts of honest-to-God simplicity and forced to serve industrial frenzy.

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Representatives from various faith traditions, gathered this week in conjunction with United Nations meetings on climate change, urged political leaders to adopt “strong, binding targets” for the reduction of greenhouse gases.

The Sept. 21 statement by religious leaders called upon industrialized nations “to act responsibly in mitigation efforts, by making the largest cuts in carbon emissions”¦ (and) showing leadership in their ethical behavior.”

However, they also said all people are responsible for turning “the human-earth community into a global culture of ecological responsibility.”

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Yes, China’s leaders have decided to go green ”” out of necessity because too many of their people can’t breathe, can’t swim, can’t fish, can’t farm and can’t drink thanks to pollution from its coal- and oil-based manufacturing growth engine. And, therefore, unless China powers its development with cleaner energy systems, and more knowledge-intensive businesses without smokestacks, China will die of its own development.

What do we know about necessity? It is the mother of invention. And when China decides it has to go green out of necessity, watch out. You will not just be buying your toys from China. You will buy your next electric car, solar panels, batteries and energy-efficiency software from China.

I believe this Chinese decision to go green is the 21st-century equivalent of the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik ”” the world’s first Earth-orbiting satellite. That launch stunned us, convinced President Eisenhower that the U.S. was falling behind in missile technology and spurred America to make massive investments in science, education, infrastructure and networking ”” one eventual byproduct of which was the Internet.

Well, folks. Sputnik just went up again: China’s going clean-tech. The view of China in the U.S. Congress ”” that China is going to try to leapfrog us by out-polluting us ”” is out of date. It’s going to try to out-green us.

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As Christians we are called to love God, follow the path of Christ and love our neighbour as ourselves. From these aspects of Christian vocation and witness we derive an ethic and practice of care for God’s creation and action for justice and peace in safeguarding the environment on which all depend, which belongs to God, and which is in our care as faithful stewards and servants of God.

As a Church we recognise the gravity of the ecological problems facing our world and the need to deal with them in ways that offer justice, hope and sustainable livelihood to the poor of the earth. We are committed in the spirit of the Christian faith to work with others, especially those of other faiths, for sustainable development ”“ development that brings justice and decent living standards to the poor and marginalised, that uses wisely the resources of the earth, that safeguards the richness of God’s good Earth for future generations.

With less than four months to go before the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, in December 2009, this year’s Time for Creation provides an obvious occasion for the Church to join with others across Europe in prayerful reflection on those political decisions that need to be taken by governments to safeguard the integrity of God’s creation.

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I caught the PBS preview show also–it looks like it will be fantastic. Watch the whole segment.

Love the comment about the parks–watch it all.

In rich countries, more than a third of all energy is used to heat, cool and light buildings, or used within buildings, efficiently or not. Climate change demands we slash that consumption.

That’s one reason why President Obama is hosting this week’s G-20 summit at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens — two buildings that are “gold” certified for their energy-efficiency design characteristics by the U.S. Green Buildings Council.

The venues are part of the message: investments in renovation and energy-aware construction can be a big part of a green jobs strategy. If the United States is to be a global competitor in green building technology, it needs to learn from some of the other countries that will be at the table in Pittsburgh.

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(Please note that the headline above is the one found in the print edition–KSH)

The oil industry has been on a hot streak this year, thanks to a series of major discoveries that have rekindled a sense of excitement across the petroleum sector, despite falling prices and a tough economy.

These discoveries, spanning five continents, are the result of hefty investments that began earlier in the decade when oil prices rose, and of new technologies that allow explorers to drill at greater depths and break tougher rocks.

“That’s the wonderful thing about price signals in a free market ”” it puts people in a better position to take more exploration risk,” said James T. Hackett, chairman and chief executive of Anadarko Petroleum.

More than 200 discoveries have been reported so far this year in dozens of countries, including northern Iraq’s Kurdish region, Australia, Israel, Iran, Brazil, Norway, Ghana and Russia. They have been made by international giants, like Exxon Mobil, but also by industry minnows, like Tullow Oil.

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China pledged today to slow the growth of its carbon emissions despite the rapid growth of its economy.

President Hu Jintao told nearly 100 leaders at a UN summit on climate change that the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases would cut carbon dioxide emissions by a “notable margin per unit of GDP” by 2020. “We have taken and will continue to take determined and practical steps to tackle this challenge,” he said.

Mr Hu said that China, now overwhelmingly dependent on coal, would “vigorously develop” renewable and nuclear energy and try to increase the share of non-fossil fuels to 15 per cent by 2020. He added that the country would plant 40 million hectares of forest to absorb carbon emissions.

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Leaders from the world’s 19 largest economies plus the European Union will be in Pittsburgh on September 24th and 25th. When the White House press corps heard the G20 was to be hosted by Pittsburgh, many sniggered. Usually such meetings are held in capitals like Beijing or London, not rustbelt cities. But, as Barack Obama said on September 8th, Pittsburgh has “transformed itself from the city of steel to a centre for high-tech innovation””including green technology, education and training, and research and development.”

Today, its main industries, health care and education, are thriving. Pittsburgh’s health-services business has almost tripled in size since 1979, creating more than 100,000 jobs. More than 70,000 work in research and development in the metro area’s 35 universities (Jonas Salk produced the polio vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh in 1955) and 100 corporate research centres, such as that of Bayer usa, a pharmaceuticals company. Greg Babe, its head, says six jobs rely on one Bayer job.

Pittsburgh has changed itself physically too. The waterfront, once lined with factories, has been given over to parks. The building hosting the G20 is the world’s first and largest LEED-certified (meaning green) convention centre and sits on the city’s former red-light district. Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, which provides investment and advice to the region’s bioscience firms, is housed on a redeveloped brownfield, the former site of a strip-mill. SouthSide Works is a 123-acre (50-hectare) development made up of shops, offices, hotels and apartments that sits on the former site of an LTV Steel plant. Manufacturing continues to employ 8% of the workforce and the city is still home to US Steel. It is also a centre for innovation in robotics, electronics and nanotechnology.

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According to the energy economist Phil Verleger, a $1 tax on gasoline and diesel fuel would raise about $140 billion a year. If I had that money, I’d devote 45 cents of each dollar to pay down the deficit and satisfy the debt hawks, 45 cents to pay for new health care and 10 cents to cushion the burden of such a tax on the poor and on those who need to drive long distances.

Such a tax would make our economy healthier by reducing the deficit, by stimulating the renewable energy industry, by strengthening the dollar through shrinking oil imports and by helping to shift the burden of health care away from business to government so our companies can compete better globally. Such a tax would make our population healthier by expanding health care and reducing emissions. Such a tax would make our national-security healthier by shrinking our dependence on oil from countries that have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs and by increasing our leverage over petro-dictators, like those in Iran, Russia and Venezuela, through shrinking their oil incomes.

In sum, we would be physically healthier, economically healthier and strategically healthier. And yet, amazingly, even talking about such a tax is “off the table” in Washington. You can’t mention it. But sending your neighbor’s son or daughter to risk their lives in Afghanistan? No problem. Talk away. Pound your chest.

I am not sure what the right troop number is for Afghanistan; I need to hear more. But I sure know this: There is something wrong when our country is willing to consider spending more lives and treasure in Afghanistan, where winning is highly uncertain, but can’t even talk about a gasoline tax, which is win, win, win, win, win ”” with no uncertainty at all.

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Applied Materials is one of the most important U.S. companies you’ve probably never heard of. It makes the machines that make the microchips that go inside your computer. The chip business, though, is volatile, so in 2004 Mike Splinter, Applied Materials’ CEO, decided to add a new business line to take advantage of the company’s nanotechnology capabilities ”” making the machines that make solar panels. The other day, Splinter gave me a tour of the company’s Silicon Valley facility, culminating with a visit to its “war room,” where Applied maintains a real-time global interaction with all 14 solar panel factories it’s built around the world in the past two years. I could only laugh because crying would have been too embarrassing.

Not a single one is in America.

Let’s see: Five are in Germany, four are in China, one is in Spain, one is in India, one is in Italy, one is in Taiwan, and one is even in Abu Dhabi. I suggested a new company motto for Applied Materials’ solar business: “Invented here, sold there.”

The reason that all these other countries are building solar-panel industries today is because most of their governments have put in place the three perquisites for growing a renewable energy industry: 1) Any business or homeowner can generate solar energy; 2) if they decide to do so, the power utility has to connect them to the grid; and 3) the utility has to buy the power for a predictable period at a price that is a no-brainer good deal for the family or business putting the solar panels on their rooftop.

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In a city filled with shadows, it can be tough to find the light.

Of course, some of us are more proficient than others, as the Sisters of Loretto will ably demonstrate today on the roof of their downtown residence for female university students.

The nuns, whose work is steeped in 400 years of Catholic tradition, will pull back the veil on an anything-but-traditional green retrofit of the Residence of Loretto College. The improvements, part of an $8-million renovation of the 50-year-old building, include 40 rooftop solar panels, energy-efficient boilers, water-saving plumbing and high-efficiency lighting.

The upgrades will no doubt reduce the sisters’ upkeep costs for the five-storey building on St. Mary Street, which serves as a dorm for 100 female students of the University of St. Michael’s College, and will house 18 nuns once renovations are complete.

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Two weeks ago, I visited the Arctic. I saw the remains of a glacier that just a few years ago was a majestic mass of ice. It had collapsed. Not slowly melted ”” collapsed. I traveled nine hours by ship from the world’s northernmost settlement to reach the polar ice rim. In just a few years, the same ship may be able to sail unimpeded all the way to the North Pole. The Arctic could be virtually ice-free by 2030.

Scientists told me their sobering findings. The Arctic is our canary in the coal mine for climate impacts that will affect us all.

I was alarmed by the rapid pace of change there. Worse still, changes in the Arctic are now accelerating global warming. Thawing permafrost is releasing methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Melting ice in Greenland threatens to raise sea levels.

Meanwhile, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.

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A devastating drought is sweeping across Kenya, killing livestock, crops and children. It is stirring up tensions in the ramshackle slums where the water taps have run dry, and spawning ethnic conflict in the hinterland as communities fight over the last remaining pieces of fertile grazing land.

The twin hearts of Kenya’s economy, agriculture and tourism, are especially imperiled. The fabled game animals that safari-goers fly thousands of miles to see are keeling over from hunger and the picturesque savanna is now littered with an unusually large number of sun-bleached bones.

Ethiopia. Sudan. Somalia. Maybe even Niger and Chad. These countries have become almost synonymous with drought and famine. But Kenya? This nation is one of the most developed in Africa, home to a typically robust economy, countless United Nations offices and thousands of aid workers.

The aid community here has been predicting a disaster for months, saying that the rains had failed once again and that this could be the worst drought in more than a decade. But the Kenyan government, paralyzed by infighting and political maneuvering, seemed to shrug off the warnings.

I caught this one coming home last night on the plane. Read it all and look at that remarkable picture.

For all the grumbling you do about your weekly grocery bill, the fact is you’ve never had it so good, at least in terms of what you pay for every calorie you eat. According to the USDA, Americans spend less than 10% of their incomes on food, down from 18% in 1966. Those savings begin with the remarkable success of one crop: corn. Corn is king on the American farm, with production passing 12 billion bu. annually, up from 4 billion bu. as recently as 1970. When we eat a cheeseburger, a Chicken McNugget, or drink soda, we’re eating the corn that grows on vast, monocrop fields in Midwestern states like Iowa.

But cheap food is not free food, and corn comes with hidden costs. The crop is heavily fertilized ”” both with chemicals like nitrogen and with subsidies from Washington. Over the past decade, the Federal Government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop ”” at least until corn ethanol skewed the market ”” artificially low. That’s why McDonald’s can sell you a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for around $5 ”” a bargain, given that the meal contains nearly 1,200 calories, more than half the daily recommended requirement for adults. “Taxpayer subsidies basically underwrite cheap grain, and that’s what the factory-farming system for meat is entirely dependent on,” says Gurian-Sherman. (See the 10 worst fast food meals.)

So what’s wrong with cheap food and cheap meat ”” especially in a world in which more than 1 billion people go hungry? A lot. For one thing, not all food is equally inexpensive; fruits and vegetables don’t receive the same price supports as grains. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit. With the backing of the government, farmers are producing more calories ”” some 500 more per person per day since the 1970s ”” but too many are unhealthy calories. Given that, it’s no surprise we’re so fat; it simply costs too much to be thin.

Our expanding girth is just one consequence of mainstream farming. Another is chemicals.

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From 1984 to 1991 she held various positions with the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., dealing with water use and water quality. She assisted in drafting legislation and worked on the 1991 reauthorization of the Clean Water Act.

Kirkpatrick returned to Maine in 1991 to become director of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureaus of Land and Water Quality. In 1999 she was appointed DEP Commissioner during the administration of Gov. Angus King, a post she held until 2003.

In changing her career path to enter the ministry, Kirkpatrick has not forsaken her environmental ethos. Her master’s thesis at Harvard was on “incarnational ecology,” a growing field of theological scholarship. A revised version of her study is published in the current issue of the Anglican Theological Review, in which she addresses planetary crisis as a challenge to the church, moving from scripture and received tradition toward an ethics of common cause.

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Long-term climate records from the Arctic provide strong new evidence that human-caused global warming can override Earth’s natural heating and cooling cycles, U.S. researchers reported this week in the journal Science.

For more than 2,000 years, a natural wobble in Earth’s axis has caused the Arctic region to move farther away from the sun during the region’s summer, reducing the amount of solar radiation it receives. The Arctic is now 600,000 miles farther from the sun than it was in AD 1, and temperatures there should have fallen a little more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since then.

Instead, the region has warmed 2.2 degrees since 1900 alone, and the decade from 1998 to 2008 was the warmest in two millenniums, according to a team headed by climatologist Darrell S. Kaufman of Northern Arizona University.

Not only was the last half-century the warmest of the last 2,000 years, “but it reversed the long-term, millennial-scale trend toward cooler temperatures,” Kaufman said.

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Giant engineering schemes to reflect sunlight or suck carbon dioxide from the air could be the only way to save the Earth from runaway global warming, according to a group of leading scientists. But they say that these schemes could have their own catastrophic consequences, such as disrupting rainfall patterns, and should be deployed only as a last resort if attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions fail.

The Royal Society, a fellowship of 1,400 of the world’s most eminent scientists, published a report yesterday on the feasibility and possible dangers of technologies for cooling down the Earth, known as geoengineering. The ideas include artificial trees that draw CO2 from the air and mimicking volcanoes by spraying sulphate particles a few miles above the Earth to deflect the Sun’s rays. The most far-fetched would would be to launch trillions of small mirrors into space to act as a sunshield.

A far cheaper solution would be a fleet of 1,500 ships that would suck up seawater and spray it out of tall funnels to create sun-reflecting clouds. However, the report said that these clouds could disrupt rainfall patterns and result in mass starvation in countries dependent on the monsoon.

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XUNLIGHT CORPORATION, a small manufacturer of solar panels, sits on a quiet street in Toledo. It has a professor as its president, about 100 employees on its payroll””and a lot of bigwig visitors. In October 2008 Sarah Palin, then the Republican vice-presidential candidate, used Xunlight as the setting for a speech on energy policy. Other guests have included Ohio’s governor, two senators and a congresswoman. And no wonder: the firm provided evidence to support a seductive hope, that the green economy can help to revive the suffering rustbelt.

As the battle over a cap-and-trade bill continues in Congress, the industrial Midwest finds itself playing an awkward role. The climate bill offers two big opportunities, to reduce global warming and boost the green economy in the process. And nowhere are green jobs more loudly promoted than in the rustbelt. On August 5th Barack Obama and Joe Biden, his vice-president, travelled to Indiana and Michigan, two ailing swing states, to announce new grants to develop electric cars. But hopes for those new green jobs are matched by fears that traditional ones will be lost. With the Senate due to debate a cap-and-trade bill next month, the rustbelt and its politicians are at the heart of the battle.

The industrial Midwest has long been in need of a renaissance….

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The nascent recovery in global economic activity could yet be derailed by rising oil prices, with Brent crude hitting $76 a barrel last week, its highest levels of the year to date.

In a blunt warning last week, Goldman Sachs called for a co-ordinated policy response to resolve the problems of commodity shortages, noting: “Although the financial crisis had been addressed, the commodity crisis has not.”

Francisco Blanch, commodity strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, says that just as the rise in oil prices last year was an under-appreciated cause of the recession, this year’s collapse for crude prices has been an under-appreciated source of stimulus.

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The extreme volatility that has gripped oil markets for the last 18 months has shown no signs of slowing down, with oil prices more than doubling since the beginning of the year despite an exceptionally weak economy.

The instability of oil and gas prices is puzzling government officials and policy analysts, who fear it could jeopardize a global recovery. It is also hobbling businesses and consumers, who are already facing the effects of a stinging recession, as they try in vain to guess where prices will be a year from now ”” or even next month.

A wild run on the oil markets has occurred in the last 12 months. Last summer, prices surged to a record high above $145 a barrel, driving up gasoline prices to well over $4 a gallon. As the global economy faltered, oil tumbled to $33 a barrel in December. But oil has risen 55 percent since the beginning of the year, to $70 a barrel, pushing gas prices up again to $2.60 a gallon, according to AAA, the automobile club.

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We should be taking advantage. Now is when we should be stapling a green card to the diploma of any foreign student who earns an advanced degree at any U.S. university, and we should be ending all H-1B visa restrictions on knowledge workers who want to come here. They would invent many more jobs than they would supplant. The world’s best brains are on sale. Let’s buy more!

Barrett argues that we should also use this crisis to: 1) require every state to benchmark their education standards against the best in the world, not the state next door; 2) double the budgets for basic scientific research at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology; 3) lower the corporate tax rate; 4) revamp Sarbanes-Oxley so that it is easier to start a small business; 5) find a cost-effective way to extend health care to every American.

We need to do all we can now to get more brains connected to more capital to spawn more new companies faster. As Jeff Immelt, the chief of General Electric, put it in a speech on Friday, this moment is “an opportunity to turn financial adversity into national advantage, to launch innovations of lasting value to our country.”

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Democrats narrowly passed historic climate and energy legislation Friday evening that would transform the country’s economy and industrial landscape.

But the all-hands-on-deck effort to protect politically vulnerable Democrats by corralling the minimum number of votes to pass the bill, 219-212, proves that there are limits to President Barack Obama’s ability to use his popularity to push through his legislative agenda. Forty-four Democrats voted against the bill, while just eight Republicans crossed the aisle to back it.

Despite the tough path to passage, the legislation is a significant win for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) and the bill’s two main sponsors ”“ House Energy and Commerce committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-Ca.) and Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey (D) ”“ who modified the bill again and again to get skeptical members from the Rust Belt, the oil-producing southeast and rural Midwest to back the legislation.

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Dialogue and speeches drive the plot, giving Mr Glass the opportunity to create a presidential hero (along with his plain-speaking wife, intelligent daughter and troubled son) who even in his darkest hour is eloquent and unflinching. “I stand before you, I think, as a president who bears the gravest burden a president has ever borne.” Mr Glass, who has worked in America and with human-rights groups, is familiar with the corridors and committee-rooms of power. He is good at portraying diplomatic brinkmanship and political in-fighting, and knows how policy gets made, all areas that a clumsier writer might have struggled to bring to life. This is a novel for politician and non-politician alike. And the ending is brilliant.

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They don’t buy Styrofoam. They recycle religiously. Even their Vacation Bible School has become environmentally friendly. First Christian Church in West Ashley is going green.

“It’s a very gradual process, but everybody is being committed, and they know what we are doing,” said Youth Director Robin Smith.

The women’s group, the Disciples Women, has purchased washable and reusable linens and prefers using china and crystal over plastic for small church functions. Even the congregation’s youths are getting involved. The church has revamped its VBS curriculum to focus on environmental stewardship.

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Thomas Berry articulated a vision of an approaching “Ecozoic Era” in which human societies would live in a sustainable and mutually beneficial manner with the natural world. The Center for Ecozoic Studies in Chapel Hill plans to publish a tribute to Berry this year.

“It’s a big loss,” said Nelson Stover, a Greensboro resident and Berry follower. “One of the great minds of the 20th century is not with us anymore. At the same time, there’s no question that his legacy will continue.”

Born William Nathan Berry, the third child of Elizabeth and William Berry, he took the name Thomas as a young adult in honor of the Catholic saint and philosopher Thomas Aquinas.

Nearly since that time, he was a student of the earth and the human condition.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury is urging churches to use Environment Sunday (June 7) to pray for the planet and campaign for climate change in the run up to the important UN talks later this year in Copenhagen.

Dr Williams said it was vital for Christians and people of all faiths to take a lead in praying and campaigning for action. A new deal at the UN summit could directly improve the lives of the world’s poor whose living conditions are affected by climate change. (see full text below)

World Environment Day marks the third anniversary of the Church of England’s environmental campaign Shrinking the Footprint which is being marked by a national event at Lambeth Palace on June 11 where new toolkits and other resources will be unveiled to help churches, cathedrals and other buildings reduce their energy footprint. The next phase of the campaign focusing on water and biodiversity will also be unveiled.

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To change the bulbs in the 60-foot-high ceiling lights of Buckingham Palace’s grand stairwell, workers had to erect scaffolding and cover precious portraits of royal forebears.

So when a lighting designer two years ago proposed installing light emitting diodes or LEDs, an emerging lighting technology, the royal family readily assented. The new lights, the designer said, would last more than 22 years and enormously reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions ”” a big plus for Prince Charles, an ardent environmentalist. Since then, the palace has installed the lighting in chandeliers and on the exterior, where illuminating the entire facade uses less electricity than running an electric teakettle.

In shifting to LED lighting, the palace is part of a small but fast-growing trend that is redefining the century-old conception of lighting, replacing energy-wasting disposable bulbs with efficient fixtures that are often semi-permanent, like those used in plumbing.

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