God Is Light  

BLDG BLOG is pondering reports that the Vatican is going solar powered.

As if tapping into a rival spiritual tradition, Pope Benedict XVI will soon become "the first pontiff to harness solar power to provide energy for the Vatican," according to the BBC. "The deteriorating cement roof tiles of the Paul VI auditorium will be replaced next year with photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight into electricity."

The BBC's all too short news item goes on to report that the Vatican "is considering placing solar panels on other buildings although St Peter's Basilica and other historical landmarks will not be touched."

But why not touch them ? Solar-powered cathedrals lining the bombed-out fields of Europe! How much more spiritually energizing can you get than plugging directly into that ongoing hydro-helium reaction in space? Teaching theology by the contained light of solar flares – astral disasters captured flashing, as power surges down consecrated halls of painted saints. Frescoes gleam. Christianity meets Mithraism in architectural form.

John 8:12 – I am the Light of the World – taken literally. In fact, the whole book of John is arguably about the solar power industry.

In any case, are solar panels the new stained glass windows?

The Australian reports that the Dalai Lama is calling for climate change action

THE Dalai Lama has called on Australians to help reduce the gap between rich and poor and make environmental consciousness a part of their daily lives. Tenzin Gyato, the 14th Dalai Lama, was speaking in Perth at the start of his 11-day tour of Australia, where he addressed a forum on sustainability and spirituality.

The exiled Tibetan leader told the crowd of several thousand people that humans wrongly think they can control nature when in fact humanity and the environment are interdependent. The very survival of the earth depended on mankind taking care of the planet, he said.

"Taking care of the environment should be part of our daily life," the Dalai Lama said. "Using cars, or using electricity, your water, every moment, keep in mind the preservation of energy and resources."

The Buddhist leader said the world's resources must be preserved for future generations. "The present generation has the moral responsibility to keep sufficient resources for future generations," the exiled Tibetan leader told the crowd of several thousand.

The Dalai Lama called on the media help raise public awareness of environmental issues, saying political leaders would then follow.

The Age has an article on "The Thunderous Sounds of Arctic Warming".

ATOP Greenland's Suicide Cliff, from which old Inuit women used to hurl themselves when they felt they had become a burden to their community, a crack and a thud like thunder pierce the air. "We don't have thunder here. But I know it from movies," says Ilulissat nurse Vilhelmina Nathanielsen, while walking through the melting snow. "It's the ice cracking inside the icebergs. If we're lucky we might see one break apart."

It's too early in the year to see icebergs crumple regularly, but the sound is a reminder. As politicians squabble over how to act on climate change, Greenland's icecap is melting faster than scientists had thought possible.

A new island in East Greenland is a clear sign of how the place is changing. It was dubbed Warming Island by US explorer Dennis Schmitt when he found in 2005 that it had emerged from beneath the ice.

If the icecap melts entirely, oceans would rise by seven metres. A total meltdown would take centuries, but global warming — which climate experts blame mainly on human use of fossil fuels — is heating the Arctic faster than anywhere else on Earth. Greenland, the world's largest island, is mostly covered by an icecap of about 2.6 million cubic kilometres which accounts for a 10th of all the fresh water in the world.

Over the past 30 years, its melt zone has expanded by 30 per cent. Now the cap loses 100 to 150 cubic kilometres of ice every year — more than all the ice in the Alps. "Some people are scared to discover the process is running faster than the models," said Konrad Steffen, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Greenland expert who serves on a US Government advisory committee on abrupt climate change.

In the past 15 years, winter temperatures have risen about five degrees on the cap, while spring and autumn temperatures increased about three degrees. ...

The SMH has a look at the Blackout threat to the eastern states.

EASTERN Australia could face blackouts because of the Howard Government's decision to hold off carbon trading until 2012, warns a sustainability investment specialist. Amanda McCluskey, a fund manager at Portfolio Partners and deputy chair of the Investor Group on Climate Change, said carbon trading needed to be introduced by 2010 at the latest to head off blackouts. Portfolio Partners has about $9 billion invested in Australian shares, including holdings in power generators Origin Energy and Babcock & Brown Wind, and other energy companies such as Woodside Petroleum.


Australia's electricity grid was already close to breaking point and climate change was starting to have an impact on the system. Australians simply could not afford to wait until 2012, Ms McCluskey said."The electricity grid is very stretched and the physical impacts of climate change are already starting to be felt as well," Ms McCluskey said. "With a lack of water, it means that many of the coal-fired power stations cannot run at full capacity and when we had the fires in Victoria, we saw the damage of infrastructure." Those physical impacts of climate change are starting to occur."

She said delaying emissions trading until 2012 would create even more investor uncertainty. "The longer you drag it out, even if it is only two years, it just further increases that uncertainty by the investors in power generation. Delaying it for two years doesn't make sense," Ms McCluskey said.

Oil price swings have tending to only be reflected in local petrol prices when they go up (peak oil or not, price action in recent years is very reminiscent of the oil and petrol price manipulations of the 1970's by the oil cartel) - the local regulator has finally gotten fed up and told the oil majors to drop petrol prices or else.

Petrol companies face naming, shaming, a likely community backlash and possibly tougher government regulation if they persist in keeping petrol prices too high, Australia's competition regulator said today.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chairman Graeme Samuel said there was near overwhelming community outrage at high prices in the lead-up to the long weekend. He said the ACCC would move to shame fuel companies into meeting their own prices benchmark. "If they don't do it, then they cannot be at all surprised if governments around the country say we had better subject them to tougher, more stringent, more costly regulation," he told ABC radio. "The petrol companies themselves would not be oblivious to the fact that there is ... almost an overwhelming community concern."

The ACCC yesterday said the international price benchmark for Singapore Mogas 95 unleaded petrol had declined significantly in late May. Wholesale prices had dropped as a result, but the retail price at the bowser stayed high, reaching 143 cents a litre in some cities this week.

Mr Samuel said the companies insisted they were bound by international prices. He said the ACCC had told them their prices in Australia should go down when those in Singapore fell, but that had not been happening. "Lo and behold, we find that while the Singapore price has been declining significantly over the past week or so, guess what? The Australian price has not been declining at anything like the same rate," he said.

We've had some winter rain, though as usual, not in the dams.

Up to 68 millimetres of rain has already fallen on Sydney's upper North Shore over the last 24 hours. However, most of the storms are currently over the the Hunter region, but the Bureau of Meteorology said they will move south, dumping up to 100mm of rain in some areas. "We are expecting some good falls over the next couple of days," Bureau weather services manager Deryn Griffiths said. "I wouldn't be surprised if we were getting 100mm over the three-day period."

Little rain has fallen over the Warragamba catchment area, however, which supplies Sydney's water, but some is expected over the next two days.

A spokeswoman for the Sydney Catchment Authority said: "We've had less than one mil, but the rain is now moving in over the catchment. "We're expecting more rainfall over this weekend. If that's the case, any rain today will wet the catchment, and help with the inflows for further rain. Also, with Sunday being watering day, people won't need to water if rain continues this weekend.''

Jeremy Faludi at WorldChanging has a report from the BALLE Conference.

This past weekend I went to the 5th annual BALLE conference--that's the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. They're a network of groups throughout the US and Canada that works to promote local, socially responsible, and environmentally responsible businesses. I wasn't previously familiar with them, but one of the speakers described how big they are: they have over 15,000 member businesses worth over $30 billion--that's twice the market cap of Nike and Apple combined. We usually think of local businesses as small players on the economic stage, because the companies themselves are small and scattered; but organizations like BALLE can start to bring them together to exert a strategic influence on the market. They've certainly caused local economies to thrive where they've formed active chapters.

The conference had your usual slew of keynotes and break-out sessions, but here are a few highlights:

Van Jones, co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights was an amazing speaker. I can't remember the last time I was at a conference where the entire audience leapt to their feet in a standing ovation. He gave, as he put it, "the speech Al Gore would give if he were black," combining the oratory of a Baptist preacher with the rigor of a public intellectual. He works to bring together poverty-fighting groups and environmental groups to kill two birds with the same stone. He talked about how 2007 will be known as the tipping-point year, where the US returns to the hope of the 1960's; but now the hard part begins, because those who have been green "when green was freak, not chic" have to ramp up. It's easy to be on the margins and say you'd fix everything if you were in charge, but now that this movement is going from the fringe toward the center, we have the challenge of actually being in charge, and we need to use the opportunity to get things done. One of the challenges of rising to power is you have to decide who you bring with you and who you leave behind. Jones wants to make sure that no races or economic classes will be left behind, avoiding "eco-apartheid", not only because of the morality issues, but because a system like that won't work. As he put it, "an economy that is green for the top ten percent is just a speed bump on the road to disaster." Van Jones is a man to watch.

Our own Gil Friend moderated a panel on embedding sustainability and local-economy concerns in manufacturing firms. The fair-trade textile company Indigenous Designs described their challenges in getting adequate quality-control and scheduling for US markets by scattered fair-trade artisans in Ecuador, and some difficulties sourcing sustainable materials local to the artisans. The organic food company Nature's Path described their eco-industrial network aimed at achieving zero waste by closing resource loops within the local area, partnering with other businesses to find uses for waste streams. (e.g. food spills becoming cattle feed, food waste becoming parts of dog biscuits, etc.) Eco-paper seller New Leaf Paper (on whose paper the Worldchanging book was printed) talked about being in an industry that is fundamentally non-local, high-volume, low-margin, and trying to turn it into a greener, more local industry. They are shifting the paper industry not by owning paper mills themselves (which requires enormous capital), but by steering existing manufacturers to produce greener paper. The final audience question was notable in that it stumped the panel--how to get businesses to not have zero environmental impact, but to have positive environmental impact. The panelists speculated that although they don't have good answers now, hopefully once the things they are pioneering are status quo, there will be new ideas and ways of making that happen.

Don Shafter, executive director of BALLE, talked about the emerging concept of a "B-corporation": a category of company (like a "C-corporation" or an "S-corporation") that is private enterprise for public benefit (the "B" is for benefit). This is basically a way of formalizing what it means to be a social entrepreneur. As he said, 70% of the US economy is private enterprise, so if we want to make change effective, we need to repurpose the corporation. The motivation for the creation of the "B-corp" classification is threefold: First, though many socially responsible companies have been created in recent years, there is no market clarity--no definition to distinguish a truly socially & environmentally responsible company from a greenwashing one. Second, current corporate law almost prohibits a company from doing anything other than blindly maximizing shareholder profit; social and environmental returns do not have the same legal protection, much less a mandate; a different set of rules must be created that responsible companies will operate by. Third, the businesses that do prioritize social and eco-responsibility should join together as a market sector, so they can have more clout in the economy, both by acting together and being measured together.

Michelle Long of Sustainable Connections (the Bellingham, Washington chapter of BALLE) described the transformation they caused in their region: In just a few years, 3/5 of the people in the city have changed their spending habits to prefer local goods and businesses, Bellingham city government buildings are running on 100% renewable power, and the city as a whole has switched to 11% renewable power. (Especially good, considering their goal was 2%.) What's more, there has been a 40% reduction in the price of green energy because of the greater usage. One point she made is that local economy movements can be a great laboratory for global change. It's both difficult and risky to make deep systemic changes to an enormous system like the global economy, but it is easy to change smaller-scale systems, and when a successful one emerges you can use its lessons on the larger scale.

One panel was on "Sustainable biodiesel", which I was happy to see, because it shows that alternative fuels are starting to become successful enough that we can take the next step and examine the true sustainability of them, and delineate the differences between bio-fuels that may not benefit people and the planet compared to those that will. For instance, the moderator was not a proponent of burning straight vegetable oil in cars because it has two problematic factors: it leaves a residue on the inside of engines (which damages the vehicle over time), and its emissions include burned glycerin whose chemical composition is similar to a pesticide. They mentioned that a certification standard is being developed by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy that will measure the sustainability of a biofuel, similar to LEED or FSC certification. It would give biofuel producers a score based on the energy return of the crop, the greenhouse emissions, not clearing virgin land to farm feedstock, local ownership of refineries, and other factors.

Paul Hawken talked about his new book, Blessed Unrest, a history of the environmental and social-justice movement which argues that this is the largest social movement in the history of humanity. He talked about how many people are waiting for a leader, like the Dalai Lama or Martin Luther King, to make the movement happen, but really the movement is already here, and we should be grateful that it is a movement with no one in charge. He said that of the million-plus organizations he's cataloged, 99% are about diffusing power rather than consolidating it, and are creating solutions rather than decrying problems. He sketched a history of the social justice movement over the last 70 years, and how many of the big names and big events we remember (like MLK) rose on the shoulders of smaller names and organizations you're never heard of. What he did not mention, but should have, is that a movement without leaders is far more robust than a movement with them--like the internet, killing or isolating a few nodes does not bring the whole network down. We should not even look for heroes, he said -- we should connect and collaborate with each other. Today.

EcoGeek has a post on "Uber-Eco-Towers: The Top Ten Green Skyscrapers.

Green skyscrapers offer so much for the average EcoGeek to drool over. Each one can contain hundreds of innovations that make the world a cleaner place, they build up, rather than out, and many of them are frikkin gorgeous.

Lucky for us, more and more eco-towers are popping up all the time. In fact, a symposium about greenscrapers called Mixed Greens: An International Survey of State-of-the-Art Sustainable Skyscraper Design just wrapped up last month in NYC.

Lucky for us, Jon Schroeder is on the case, and is bringing us the top ten green skyscrapers.

TreeHugger reports that Dirty Snow may be just as Bad as Greenhouse Gases in terms of causing global warming. As usual, the solution remains the same - switch to clean energy sources...

We may have been a little too hasty in laying all the blame for global warming squarely at the feet of greenhouse gases: UC Irvine scientists have discovered that dirty snow could account for over a third of the Arctic warming typically attributed to them.

“A one-third change in concentration is huge, yet the Earth has only warmed about .8 degrees because the effect is distributed globally,” said Charlie Zender, an associate professor of Earth system science at UCI and co-author of the study, which appears in the Journal of Geophysical Research. “A small amount of snow impurities in the Arctic have caused a significant temperature response there.”

Dirty snow arises from the soot that escapes from tailpipes, smoke stacks and forest fires to enter the atmosphere and then falls to the ground. While clean, white snow tends to reflect back heat into space and cause cooling, the dark surface of dirty snow causes it to absorb sunlight and thus results in warming.

“When we inject dirty particles into the atmosphere and they fall onto snow, the net effect is we warm the polar latitudes,” Zender said. “Dark soot can heat up quickly. It’s like placing tiny toaster ovens into the snow pack.”

According to Zender and his colleagues, dirty snow likely caused the planet's temperature to rise .1 to .15 degree over the past 200 years, accounting for close to 19% of the total warming experienced (.8 degree Celsius) during that time. Throughout that same period, the Arctic warmed by approximately 1.6 degrees, with some estimates showing dirty snow contributing as little as .5 to as much as 1.5 degrees (or up to 94% of the observed increase). The degree to which dirty snow caused increases in temperature was directly related to the number of forest fires every year.

The effect is even worse in some polar areas where impurities in the snow have led to enough melting to expose the underlying sea ice or soil that is much darker and thus more apt to absorb sunlight. This has resulted in polar temperatures rising by as much as 3 degrees Celsius during certain seasons. “Once the snow is gone, the soot that caused the snow to melt continues to have an effect because the ground surface is darker and retains more heat,” Zender said.

Zender thinks policymakers should approach this problem by focusing on reducing industrial soot emissions and switching over to cleaner fuels. Making new snow purer by cutting out impurities would cause an immediate cooling in temperatures.

TreeHugger also has a post on battery developments for GM's "Volt" car. Technology Review also has a post on the topic.

GM has awarded two contracts for the development of li-ion batteries for its E-Flex System. 13 companies submitted bids for the project, which is the basis for the Chevy Volt concept that caused quite a stir a while ago. From previous TH coverage;

“There are two things that make the Volt’s E-flex drive train noteworthy. First, it is a series hybrid, which means power is fed directly to the motor, not the battery. It can be plugged into a household electric socket and charged fully within about six hours. Completely charged it can drive roughly 40 miles on electricity alone. According to GM, more than 75 percent of Americans live within 20 miles of where they work, meaning the Volt would get them to the office and back on 100% electricity with no direct emissions.” ...

It’s clear that this is not a production deal, but more an R&D exercise. Denise Gray, GMs director of hybrid energy storage devices, said, ‘This technology is developing rapidly. These contracts are an opportunity to deeply understand the differing battery technologies before making a production decision.’

Rick Wagoner, Chairman and CEO of GM, said, ‘The signing of these battery development contracts is an important next step on the path to bring the Volt closer to reality. Given the huge potential that the Volt and its E-Flex system offers to lower oil consumption, lower oil imports, and reduce carbon emissions, this is a top priority program for GM.’

It's not a sign that Chevy Volt cars are to start emerging from factories - that's unlikely to happen in any real numbers until 2011. It is a good sign though. The money that GM is spending is likely to improve the quality of batteries that will be available for the vehicle. Even if GM doesn’t go ahead with production (which is unlikely considering all the positive press that the Volt concept created), then that knowledge will still be out there, enabling other manufacturers to go ahead with their own projects.

Reuters has a report on the disruptions caused by Cyclone Gonu in Oman.

Cyclone Gonu pummeled Oman on Wednesday, halting oil and gas exports for a second day and forcing thousands to flee the coast, but weakened as it moved through the Arabian Sea, a major route for Gulf oil shipments. ...

Cyclone Gonu disrupted shipping, pushing oil prices toward $71 a barrel on Wednesday, their highest in nearly two weeks.

An Oman-based shipper said Mina al Fahal, the only export outlet for the country’s 650,000 barrels per day of crude oil, remained shut for the second day on Wednesday as did the Sur terminal, which handles 10 million tonnes per year of liquefied natural gas exports. “Everything is shut down. The terminals will be shut at least until tomorrow,” the shipper told Reuters. “At around 4 p.m. (1200 GMT) it will get very severe in Muscat.”

Lieutenant Commander Marn Balolong, meteorologist and oceanographer on the USS Nimitz, which is in the Gulf, said it would be unsafe for ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz for the next 48 hours but predicted that they would probably speed up after that to get back on schedule.

The Union Of Concerned Scientists has a pragmatic assessment of Nuclear Power and Global Warming.

To address global warming, we need a profound transformation of the ways in which we generate and consume energy. The urgency of this situation demands that we be willing to consider all possible options for coping with climate change. In examining each option we must take into account its impact on public health, safety, and security, the time required for large scale deployment, and its costs.

While there are currently some global warming emissions associated with the nuclear fuel cycle and plant construction, when nuclear plants operate they do not produce carbon dioxide. This fact is used to support proposals for a large-scale expansion of nuclear power both in the United States and around the world.

It must be borne in mind that a large-scale expansion of nuclear power in the United States or worldwide under existing conditions would be accompanied by an increased risk of catastrophic events-a risk not associated with any of the non-nuclear means for reducing global warming. These catastrophic events include a massive release of radiation due to a power plant meltdown or terrorist attack, or the death of tens of thousands due to the detonation of a nuclear weapon made with materials obtained from a civilian-most likely non-U.S.-nuclear power system. Expansion of nuclear power would also produce large amounts of radioactive waste that would pose a serious hazard as long as there remain no facilities for safe long-term disposal.

In this context, the Union of Concerned Scientists contends that:

1. Prudence dictates that we develop as many options to reduce global warming emissions as possible, and begin by deploying those that achieve the largest reductions most quickly and with the lowest costs and risk. Nuclear power today does not meet these criteria.

2. Nuclear power is not the silver bullet for "solving" the global warming problem. Many other technologies will be needed to address global warming even if a major expansion of nuclear power were to occur.

3. A major expansion of nuclear power in the United States is not feasible in the near term. Even under an ambitious deployment scenario, new plants could not make a substantial contribution to reducing U.S. global warming emissions for at least two decades.

4. Until long-standing problems regarding the security of nuclear plants-from accidents and acts of terrorism-are fixed, the potential of nuclear power to play a significant role in addressing global warming will be held hostage to the industry's worst performers.

5. An expansion of nuclear power under effective regulations and an appropriate level of oversight should be considered as a longer-term option if other climate-neutral means for producing electricity prove inadequate. Nuclear energy research and development (R&D) should therefore continue, with a focus on enhancing safety, security, and waste disposal.

Open Democracy has an article on "Decoding nuclear nonsense" in the UK.

The argument over nuclear power in relation to Britain's future energy needs is set to intensify with the government's announcement of a five-month "consultation" on the issue on 23 May 2007 to accompany the publication of its white paper on energy policy. To avoid this consultation becoming the sort where the conclusions and the practical outcomes are decided by the host in advance, it is essential to begin by clearing away some of the myths that encrust the issue.

Here then is a provisional list of seven elements of the pro-nuclear case, which can be expected to have a full airing in the weeks ahead, along with their antidote: evidence and argument based on economic, political and environmental reality.

The first element in the nuclear myth-complex is the observation that the generators must be allowed to build new nuclear-power stations. This is an intentionally misleading statement. There is nothing to prevent anyone who wishes to build a nuclear-power station from doing so today. Except, that is, the economics. The reason no one is applying to build new nuclear-power stations is that there is no pressing need to do so at the moment. ..

Iraq's oil unions are striking in an attempt to influence the proposed laws handing over Iraq's oil reserves to foreign companies.

Iraqi oil workers, marginalized while a law to govern the oil is drafted and debated, are firing a warning shot by going on strike.

The Iraqi Pipelines Union released a statement Monday that it shut down two 14-inch oil and gas products pipelines inside the country in protest against the law and working conditions they want changed. The statement, released by a number of ally groups outside the country, said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki needs to make good on an agreement on the demands reached May 16 or face more work stoppage.

The Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, an umbrella group of more than 26,000 oil-sector workers, including the Basra-based IPU, is demanding better working conditions, salaries, land promised them and lower fuel prices. And most importantly, they want to join the debate over the law that will govern Iraq's vast oil reserves ...

Craig at Celsias has some comments on the lead up to the G8 meeting in Germany.

We stand on the eve of the 33rd Group of Eight summit meeting (formally known as the Group of Seven before Russia subscribed in 1997). Although this year’s Group of Eight (G8) summit in Heiligendamm, Germany has yet to begin, the last week’s pre-emptive strikes from protesters in nearby Rostock have caused it to hit the headlines already. Some question whether the inability of international leaders to listen doesn’t provoke violent outbursts, and yet others say the provocation of violence by security forces is part of a plan to marginalise legitimate gripes.

Whether the protests have any effect on putting pressure on the world leaders or not, recent scientific studies certainly should. This last month has seen a few alarming scientific reports come to the fore:

* Southern Ocean Nears CO2 Saturation Point
* Global warming ‘is three times faster than worst predictions’
* Arctic melt worse than predictions

Presently, world governments are, at the very best, struggling to come to a united course of action to tackle the low to mid-range forcasts of this year’s IPCC reports - reports that have, themselves, been softened and ‘tweaked’ by political interventions. The scientific reports above give some evidence that perhaps even the IPCC’s high water mark, as it were, has been underestimated - or, at least, under-reported….

The Guardian has a look at the foolishness that is reviving the cold war. Well - foolish for those who don't make money out of arms races and wars anyway...

Will history tell us we were fools? We worried about the wrong war and made the wrong enemies. In the first decade of the 21st century the leaders of America and Britain allowed themselves to be distracted by a few Islamist bombers and took easy refuge in the politics of fear. They concocted a "war on terror" and went off to fight little nations that offered quick wins.

Meanwhile these leaders neglected the great strategic challenge of the aftermath of cold war: the fate of Russia and its mighty arsenals, its soul tormented by military and political collapse, its pride undimmed. They danced on Moscow's grave and hurled abuse at its shortcomings. They drove its leaders to assert a new energy-based hegemony and find new allies to the south and east. The result was a new arms race and, after a Kremlin coup, a new war. Is that the path we are treading?

When Keynes returned from Versailles in 1919 he wrote an attack on the treaty that ended the first world war. In The Economic Consequences of the Peace he warned that punishing Germany and demanding crippling reparations would jeopardise Europe's stability and the building of German democracy. He confronted politicians, on both sides of the Atlantic, puffed up with the vanity of victory and convinced that the German menace had been laid to rest. He was right and they were wrong.

For the past six years Washington's whirling dervishes have reduced Anglo-American foreign policy to a frenzy of bullying hatred of anyone to whom they take a dislike. One half of this neoconservative agenda is heading for the rocks, American dominance in the Middle East following a stunning victory over a Muslim state. But the other half is alive and well, pushing ahead with the missile defence system bequeathed by the Reagan administration.

This so-called star wars is militarily unproven and, with the end of the cold war, of no apparent urgency. But it is astronomically expensive and, as such, has powerful support within America's industry-led defence community. When Dick Cheney was finding George Bush a defence secretary in 2000, Donald Rumsfeld's chief qualification was his enthusiasm for space-based defence. Hence America's 2002 renunciation of the anti-ballistic missile treaty. Hence the installation of defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, in defiance of what was promised to Russia at the end of the cold war. Hence Rumsfeld's frequent jibes against old Europe in favour of "new".

Vladimir Putin's reactive threat this week to retarget his missiles at west Europe was reckless and stupid. Just when nuclear disarmament is again a live issue and his old enemy, Nato, faces defeat in Afghanistan, he tossed red meat to the Pentagon (and Whitehall) hawks. He strengthened the case for a new British Trident and encouraged an arms race that he knows his own country can ill afford, just as it can ill afford to send Europe frantically seeking alternative energy supplies.

Yet nations do not always act rationally, especially those with authoritarian rulers. Putin's belligerence was the predictable outcome of a western diplomacy towards Russia whose ineptitude would amaze even Keynes. Nato's dismissal of Moscow's approach for membership, like the EU's similar cold shoulder, wholly misunderstood Russian psychology. The loss of its east European satellites was not just a loss of empire but revived age-old border insecurity. The pretence that Rumsfeld's installations, which could be placed anywhere, were aimed at "rogue states such as North Korea" was so ludicrous that only Tony Blair believed it.

There was a moment after 1990 when Russia was weak, immature and unstable, and longed for the embrace of friendship. Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, even Blair in his pre-poodle phase, understood this. Neither side had an interest in reviving the cold war. Under Bush this has been replaced by an assumption that he should somehow dictate the terms of Russia's conversion to capitalism and democracy, even as western leaders cringingly paid court to the dictators of Beijing. This undermined Moscow's internationalists and played into the hands of Putin's hard-liners. It was repeated in Bush's speech in Germany yesterday.

Putin is throwing down a gauntlet not to the west so much as to his own Kremlin successors. He is warning them never to trust the west. To him it remains incorrigibly imperialist, hypocritical in its global morality and unreliable in its treaties. So he is telling them to cause mischief with oil and gas. Deny help over Iran and Kosovo. Stay armed and on guard.

And some raw links to finish off with:

SMH - Labor To Test Firms' Carbon Offset Claims
SMH - Good oil On Carbon trading Needed Now
SMH - Coke To Cut Water Use
SMH G8 Protestors Make Their Point
The Age - Attack Of The Killer Bees
The Oil Drum - Cyclone Gonu Thread 3
The Oil Drum - Relocalization: A Strategic Response to Climate Change and Peak Oil
Energy Bulletin - The peak oil crisis: Twin problems
Our Finite World - Corn-based ethanol: Is this a solution?
TreeHugger - You Got Bacteria in My Gas: Engineering Microbes to Make Hydrocarbons
WorldChanging - Eye on Mali: Jatropha Oil Lights Up Villages
Philadelphia Inquirer - Give blood and maybe win a supply of fuel
Cryptogon - Morgan Stanley’s 3-Alarm Sell Signal (and Congratulations are due)
Cryptogon - OPEC Squirms on Biofuel Threat
Cryptogon - Los Angeles: Driest Ever
Bangor Daily News - US Failing To Support Our Soldiers
The Liberty Papers - Ron Paul On Tucker Carlson
The Spoof - ExxonMobil to buy US Military for $100 Million-trillion
Word of the day (from ESPN) - nerdcore.