Palm Sunday is going “green.”

This year, more than 2,130 congregations across the USA, including Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians, will use “eco-palms” that are harvested in a more environmentally friendly way, says Dean Current, program director at the Center for Integrated Natural Resources and Agricultural Management at the University of Minnesota.

The number of churches using eco-palms on Palm Sunday ”” which, in the Christian faith, marks Jesus’ triumphant return to Jerusalem before his death and resurrection ”” has grown from a pilot program of 5,000 in 2005 to the 600,000 eco-palms ordered for this year’s March 16 celebration, Current says. He estimates that is about 1.5% of the 35 million to 40 million palms sold annually for Palm Sunday services in the USA but says he expects the growth to continue.

What makes the eco-palms different is the way that they are harvested, says RaeLynn Jones Loss, a research specialist at the University of Minnesota.

More than 50% of the palms are wasted by traditional methods, Jones Loss says. Harvesters in the eco-palm program are trained to be more selective. They cut only the best fronds, which results in only 5% to 10% waste.

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At first, as he adjusted pumps and checked temperatures, Aaron Boucher looked like any technician in the control room of an electrical plant. Then he rushed to the window and scanned the sky, to check his fuel supply.

Mr. Boucher was battling clouds, timing the operations of his power plant to get the most out of patchy sunshine. It is a skill that may soon be in greater demand, for the world appears to be on the verge of a boom in a little-known but promising type of solar power.

It is not the kind that features shiny panels bolted to the roofs of houses. This type involves covering acres of desert with mirrors that focus intense sunlight on a fluid, heating it enough to make steam. The steam turns a turbine and generates electricity.

The technology is not new, but it is suddenly in high demand. As prices rise for fossil fuels and worries grow about their contribution to global warming, solar thermal plants are being viewed as a renewable power source with huge potential.

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The House has approved $18 billion in new taxes on the largest oil companies.

The money collected over 10 years is intended to provide tax breaks for wind, solar and other alternative energy sources and for energy conservation.

The measure passed by the House by a 236-182 vote Wednesday as lawmakers cited record oil prices and rising gasoline costs.

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Gasoline prices, which for months lagged the big run-up in the price of oil, are suddenly rising quickly, with some experts fearing they could hit $4 a gallon by spring. Diesel is hitting new records daily and oil closed at an all-time high on Tuesday of $100.88 a barrel.

The increases could not come at a worse time for the economy. With growth slowing, high energy prices that were once easily absorbed by consumers are now more likely to act as a drag on household budgets, leaving people with less money to spend elsewhere. These costs could exacerbate the nation’s economic woes, piling a fresh energy shock on top of the turmoil in credit and housing.

“The effect of high oil prices today could be the difference between having a recession and not having a recession,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economist.

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The first flight by a commercial airline to be powered partly by biofuel has taken place. A Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet has flown between London’s Heathrow and Amsterdam using fuel derived from a mixture of Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts.

Environmentalists have branded the flight a publicity stunt and claim biofuel cultivation is not sustainable.

Earlier this month, Airbus tested another alternative fuel – a synthetic mix of gas-to-liquid.

Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson said the flight marked a “vital breakthrough” for the entire airline industry.

“This pioneering flight will enable those of us who are serious about reducing our carbon emissions to go on developing the fuels of the future,” he said.

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Oil futures shot higher Tuesday, closing above $100 for the first time as investors bet that crude prices will keep climbing despite evidence of plentiful supplies and falling demand. At the pump, gas prices rose further above $3 a gallon.

There was no single driver behind oil’s sharp price jump; investors seized on an explosion at a 67,000 barrel per day refinery in Texas, the falling dollar, the possibility that OPEC may cut production next month, the threat of new violence in Nigeria and continuing tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela.

The fact that there was no overriding reason for such a price spike could be a bad omen for consumers already bearing the burdens of high heating costs and falling real estate values. Many recent forecasts have said oil demand growth this year will be less than initially expected, yet prices continue to rise. That suggests they may continue rising as the weakening dollar attracts new investors to the futures market.

And rising oil prices mean higher gas prices.

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Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.

These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.

The destruction of natural ecosystems ”” whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America ”” not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces.

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In 1993, Joel J. Kyle and his wife, Juanita, moved just over the Georgia border to Tennessee ”” and Joel Kyle vowed never to cross it again.

Now, some Georgia lawmakers want the border to cross him, in a manner of speaking.

A resolution in Georgia’s legislature proposes to move the Tennessee-Georgia boundary about a mile to the north of where it now lies, which could put Kyle right back into the state he left 15 years ago.

The proposal elicited instant ridicule from residents of the area on Thursday, as well as tongue-in-cheek saber rattling from Tennessee lawmakers.

One state senator offered to settle the issue with a football game. Another suggested floating an armada of University of Tennessee fans down the Tennessee River to defend the state’s territory.

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Slogans, T-shirts, campaign buttons, snacks, pleas for donations and speeches galore dominated a rally in St. George on Super Tuesday ”” but the topic had nothing to do with political candidates.

“The topics we address tonight are very urgent,” the Rt. Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish, Episcopal bishop of Utah, said during remarks she made at the “Love Your Air ”” Stop Toquop” rally held at the St. George Episcopal Church.

“The Episcopal Church has taken a forward effort on sustainability. It is time for us to take a great deal more wisdom and thought into what we do,” she said. “We are the only creatures on Earth that can contemplate the ramifications of our actions.”

The rally, which attracted more than 250 residents, was billed as a way for individuals to voice their opposition to the Toquop Energy Project, a $1.2 billion coal-fired power plant to be constructed on 650 acres about 12 miles northwest of Mesquite. The plant would generate 750-megawatts of electricity for Nevada and Arizona customers, according to Toquop officials.

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There is something missing from this otherwise typical bustling cityscape. There are taxis and buses. There are hip bars and pollution. Every other person is talking into a cellphone. But there are no plastic shopping bags, the ubiquitous symbol of urban life.

In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.

Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable ”” on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.

“When my roommate brings one in the flat it annoys the hell out of me,” said Edel Egan, a photographer, carrying groceries last week in a red backpack.

Drowning in a sea of plastic bags, countries from China to Australia, cities from San Francisco to New York have in the past year adopted a flurry of laws and regulations to address the problem, so far with mixed success. The New York City Council, for example, in the face of stiff resistance from business interests, passed a measure requiring only that stores that hand out plastic bags take them back for recycling.

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But the landscape is changing. Many leading evangelicals have begun to voice concern. Caring for God’s creation is becoming a political issue, especially among younger evangelicals.

In Orlando I took part in a seminar on faith and the environment. The host was Joel Hunter, pastor of a mega-church. It holds 3,500 and they fill it five times on a Sunday. There, defying all prejudice, were the local Catholic bishop, imam and rabbi discovering common ground from their sacred texts about caring for God’s earth.

Evangelicals make up one of the largest voting blocs in the electorate and the Democrats know that they have to get a sizable slice of it if they’re to make it to the White House. All the Democratic candidates have signed up to the climate change agenda. Significantly, it is Mike Huckabee, the surprise candidate among the Republicans, who’s the first to register his interest in this issue.

On Super Tuesday when the voters go to the polls they’ll be sending some of the candidates into the political wilderness. However, it is the outcome of the election in November which will determine whether planet Earth will join them in the desert.

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Rising prices for cooking oil are forcing residents of Asia’s largest slum, in Mumbai, India, to ration every drop. Bakeries in the United States are fretting over higher shortening costs. And here in Malaysia, brand-new factories built to convert vegetable oil into diesel sit idle, their owners unable to afford the raw material.

This is the other oil shock. From India to Indiana, shortages and soaring prices for palm oil, soybean oil and many other types of vegetable oils are the latest, most striking example of a developing global problem: costly food.

The food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, based on export prices for 60 internationally traded foodstuffs, climbed 37 percent last year. That was on top of a 14 percent increase in 2006, and the trend has accelerated this winter.

In some poor countries, desperation is taking hold. Just in the last week, protests have erupted in Pakistan over wheat shortages, and in Indonesia over soybean shortages. Egypt has banned rice exports to keep food at home, and China has put price controls on cooking oil, grain, meat, milk and eggs.

According to the F.A.O., food riots have erupted in recent months in Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

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As people of faith we are called to care for God’s sacred creation and everything therein, which the Lord has described as “good.” We are charged with caring for the poor and vulnerable around the world through alleviation of global poverty. We are faced with a formidable challenge on both fronts – the effects of global warming.

As the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, noted in a recent statement, “The biggest challenge that faces us in terms of global policy at the moment is how we are to find ways of reducing and controlling climate change without eating into the economic aspirations, the proper aspirations of our poorest societies towards prosperity, respect and dignity.”

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Having long experience in oil markets, Saudi Arabia is a rational player. So when OPEC’s new president, Chakib Khelil of Algeria, signaled no interest in hiking production to cut prices because $100 crude “is not necessarily very high,” big producers were effectively saying there’s nothing out on the horizon that could stop them.

As high as oil prices are, they must be thinking, the U.S. is obviously willing to pay them. How else to explain the unwillingness of its politicians and public to increase domestic production, one slam-dunk move that would bring prices down.

OPEC, and Saudi Arabia, which can produce oil very cheaply no matter what the world price, will lower prices if they can raise the comparative costs of offshore drilling to preserve its monopoly. But right now they have no reason to do it.

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To mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it’s 2 raised to the fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.

To understand them, consider our concern with world population. Today, there are more than 6.5 billion people, and that number may grow to around 9 billion within this half-century. Several decades ago, many people considered rising population to be the main challenge facing humanity. Now we realize that it matters only insofar as people consume and produce.

If most of the world’s 6.5 billion people were in cold storage and not metabolizing or consuming, they would create no resource problem. What really matters is total world consumption, the sum of all local consumptions, which is the product of local population times the local per capita consumption rate.

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THE soaring price of oil is altering the wealth and influence of nations and industries.

The surging price of oil, from just over $US10 a barrel a decade ago to $US100 yesterday, is altering the wealth and influence of nations and industries around the world.

These power shifts will only widen if prices keep climbing, as many analysts predict. Costly oil already is forcing sweeping changes in the airline and auto sectors. It is intensifying the politics of climate change and adding urgency to the search both for fresh sources of crude and for oil alternatives once deemed fringe.

The long oil-price boom is posing wrenching challenges for the world’s poorest nations, while enriching and emboldening producers in the Middle East, Russia and Venezuela. Their increasing muscle has a flip side: a decline of US clout in many parts of the world.

Steep gasoline prices also threaten America’s long love affair with the automobile, while putting strains on many lower-income people outside big cities, who must spend an increasing share of their budgets just on fuel to get to work.

Read it all from the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal.

Read it all from the latest Scientific American.

A west Australian medical expert wants families to pay a $5000-plus “baby levy” at birth and an annual carbon tax of up to $800 a child.

Writing in today’s Medical Journal of Australia, Associate Professor Barry Walters said every couple with more than two children should be taxed to pay for enough trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over each child’s lifetime.

Professor Walters, clinical associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia and the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, called for condoms and “greenhouse-friendly” services such as sterilisation procedures to earn carbon credits.

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The economies of many big oil-exporting countries are growing so fast that their need for energy within their borders is crimping how much they can sell abroad, adding new strains to the global oil market.

Experts say the sharp growth, if it continues, means several of the world’s most important suppliers may need to start importing oil within a decade to power all the new cars, houses and businesses they are buying and creating with their oil wealth.

Indonesia has already made this flip. By some projections, the same thing could happen within five years to Mexico, the No. 2 source of foreign oil for the United States, and soon after that to Iran, the world’s fourth-largest exporter. In some cases, the governments of these countries subsidize gasoline heavily for their citizens, selling it for as little as 7 cents a gallon, a practice that industry experts say fosters wasteful habits.

“It is a very serious threat that a lot of major exporters that we count on today for international oil supply are no longer going to be net exporters any more in 5 to 10 years,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an oil analyst at Rice University.

Rising internal demand may offset 40 percent of the increase in Saudi oil production between now and 2010, while more than half the projected decline in Iranian exports will be caused by internal consumption, said a recent report by CIBC World Markets.

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If you thought divorce was bad for the kids, you should see what it does to the environment.

A study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science found that the resource inefficiency of divorced households resulted in an extra 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity use in the U.S. in 2005 — about 7% of total home use.

“Turning on the light uses the same energy whether there are two people or four people in the room,” said lead author Jianguo Liu, an ecologist at Michigan State University.

The extra electricity generation spews more carbon dioxide into the air, exacerbating global warming.

“If you don’t want to get remarried, maybe move in with somebody you like,” said Liu, who just celebrated his 20th wedding anniversary.

Other potential solutions include polygamy, communal living or roommates.

“I’m just a scientist trying to present the facts,” Liu said. “I’m not promoting one way or another.”

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The tall, tan pastor stood at the pulpit of his Baptist church on a recent Sunday morning, cleared his throat, and nervously proclaimed the following: First, he believes in God. And second, he believes in the Bible.

Robert Walker Jr.’s audience, a crowd of about 100 faithful parishioners, shuffled uncomfortably as he spoke. As Walker shifted gears, it became clear why.

“We can embrace God and Scripture and science together,” he said. “And it’s enough to say when they agree – and sometimes they do – we should embrace it. And they agree that our Earth cannot last forever. And that we are charged with the responsibility of taking care of it.”

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End-of-the-world alarmism has been a perpetual feature of human existence for as long as we have recorded history.

Generally, it occurs within a religious framework: Whether it is Apocalypse mania, or a fear that any moment now Ragnarök is going to erupt in earnest, lavish claims of total world destruction have always furnished the necessary motivation for extremist agendas.

The new craze about global warming ought not to surprise us. Christ warned us, in Matthew 24 and Mark 13, that we would hear rumors of war, that there will be famines and earthquakes, that false prophets would arise and lead people astray, and so forth. And what does he say that we are to do?

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez brought his revolutionary zeal to the cartel that controls 40 percent of the world’s oil, urging fellow members at a weekend summit to fight against “imperialism” and “exploitation.”

Chavez used the Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to advance a struggle for the soul of the cartel. Countering him was the conference host, Saudi King Abdullah, who said the organization’s goal was simply to produce prosperity.

Their contrasting visions elbowed aside the usual OPEC talk about production quotas and currency fluctuations. In the short term at least, Abdullah’s vision is likely to prevail, said Ihsan Bu-Hulaiga, who runs a private business consulting firm in Riyadh and advises the Saudi government.

“OPEC has to do with oil; it cannot solve the world’s problems with a political agenda,” he said. “It would be putting its bread and butter at risk.”

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In a gaffe late Friday, a private meeting of ministers from the 12 members of the cartel was mistakenly broadcast to journalists, revealing a spat between Saudi Arabia and anti-US members Iran and Venezuela about the waning US currency.

Journalists witnessed Iran request that the final declaration to be issued by OPEC leaders at the end of the summit on Sunday express the concern of member states about the falling US currency and its impact on oil revenues.

Reacting to the proposal, which was backed by Venezuela, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal warned against mentioning the US currency.

“There are media people outside waiting to catch this point and they will add to it (exaggerate) and we may find that the dollar collapses,” Prince Saud said.

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The Earth is hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace, a Nobel-winning U.N. scientific panel said in a landmark report released Saturday, warning of inevitable human suffering and the threat of extinction for some species.

After five days of sometimes tense negotiations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change adopted its fourth and final report this year, along with a summary, on the science of climate change and the effects of human-produced greenhouse gases.

It lays out blueprints for avoiding the worst catastrophes – and various possible outcomes, depending on how quickly and decisively action is taken.

The document says recent research has heightened concern that the poor and the elderly will suffer most from climate change; that hunger and disease will be more common; that droughts, floods and heat waves will afflict the world’s poorest regions; and that more animal and plant species will vanish.

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Here is one:

To the Editor:

Thomas L. Friedman’s column hits the nail right on the head. For the last 30 years, since Walter F. Mondale suffered a landslide defeat for having the courage to pledge to raise taxes in order to close the budget deficit, our national leaders have refused to show similar courage in addressing any difficult issue ”” from the need for a gasoline tax to cut our dependence on foreign oil to the need to cut benefits or raise taxes to resolve the crisis in the Social Security system.

The politicians’ lack of courage is regrettable but understandable, since they all want to get elected. What is more regrettable and completely incomprehensible is how the voting public and the media allow our leaders to get away with such cowardice. If we continue to allow the candidates in both parties to tell us only what we want to hear instead of the truth that we need to hear, we will deserve the inept leadership that we will get.

Avi Moskowitz
West Hempstead, N.Y., Nov. 15, 2007

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Two dates – two numbers. Read them and weep for what could have, and should have, been. On Sept. 11, 2001, the OPEC basket oil price was $25.50 a barrel. On Nov. 13, 2007, the OPEC basket price was around $90 a barrel.

In the wake of 9/11, some of us pleaded for a “patriot tax” on gasoline of $1 or more a gallon to diminish the transfers of wealth we were making to the very countries who were indirectly financing the ideologies of intolerance that were killing Americans and in order to spur innovation in energy efficiency by U.S. manufacturers.

But no, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had a better idea. And the Democrats went along for the ride. They were all going to let the market work and not let our government shape that market – like OPEC does.

You’d think that one person, just one, running for Congress or the Senate would take a flier and say: “Oh, what the heck. I’m going to lose anyway. Why not tell the truth? I’ll support a gasoline tax.”

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California sued the federal government on Thursday to force a decision about whether the state can impose the nation’s first greenhouse gas emission standards for cars and light trucks.
More than a dozen other states are poised to follow California’s lead if it is granted the waiver from federal law, presenting a challenge to automakers who would have to adapt to a patchwork of regulations.

The state’s lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., was expected after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed last spring to take legal action.

“Our future depends on us taking action on global warming right now,” Schwarzenegger said during a news conference. “There’s no legal basis for Washington to stand in our way.”

At issue is California’s nearly two-year-old request for a waiver under the federal Clean Air Act allowing it to implement a 2002 state anti-pollution law regulating greenhouse gases.

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She spent years as an outspoken antiabortion activist, and that cause remains dear to her. But these days, Karen Swallow Prior has a new passion: animal welfare.

She wasn’t sure, at first, that advocating for God’s four-legged creatures would go over well on the campus of Liberty University, a fundamentalist Baptist institution founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Among the Liberty faculty — and conservative evangelicals in general — the animal-rights movement is often disdained as a secular, liberal cause.

But activists have been working with increasing intensity to shed that image. They’re lecturing in Quaker meetinghouses and Episcopal churches, setting up websites that post Scripture alongside recipes for vegan soup — and using biblical language to promote political initiatives, such as laws mandating bigger cages for pregnant pigs.

On Wednesday, clergy from 20 faith traditions — including Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Pentecostal and Roman Catholic — will sign a statement declaring a moral duty to treat animals with respect. At a ceremony in Washington, they will call on all people of faith to stop wearing fur, reduce meat consumption, and buy only from farms with humane practices. The Best Friends Animal Society, which brought the group together, plans to recruit volunteers to bring that message into at least 2,000 congregations nationwide.

At Liberty University, meanwhile, Prior took a risk: She wrote an editorial for this month’s university journal declaring animal welfare an evangelical concern. She pointed out that the abolitionist William Wilberforce, an evangelical hero of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, pushed for laws to protect animals from human cruelty. And she said there was “ample biblical support” for continuing such activism today.

To Prior’s surprise, she’s gotten plenty of praise on and around Liberty’s campus in Lynchburg, Va. Her pastor has even asked her to lecture on the topic at Bible study.

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“I’m convinced there are young people who are searching for churches which will embrace their passion for caring for the earth. These folks can help the church remember its connection to creation, and the church can give them a sense of wholeness in their lives by relating their passion to Christ,” said the Rev. Pat Watkins, a United Methodist clergy member of the Virginia Annual (regional) Conference and environmental coordinator for the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

The task force joined Muslim, Jewish and Christian clergy for a breakfast to discuss the role of faith communities in caring for creation. The breakfast was co-sponsored by the British Embassy and the Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light.

Speakers included the Right Rev. James Jones, bishop of Liverpool in the Church of England, who described how he called for a “carbon fast” last year for Lent in the Diocese of Liverpool. He said such a fast was more valuable than giving up chocolate or candy or other more typical seasonal sacrifices. “We are caught up in a disease of consumption, and that is what is afflicting the earth,” he said.

Jones said that, by the end of the carbon fast, “people weren’t ready to resume their previous consumption levels; it made them think about their life

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