Who buys Wal-Mart's environmental sustainability goals?

Nancy Jackson live-blogged the Governors' Global Climate Summit. She writes:

Hearing the Governors – U.S. and international – at the Climate Summit was certainly encouraging. Many have championed and are implementing ambitious policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while building green economies.

Equally impressive, however, were the large corporations that have led by example.

Wal-Mart, the retail giant that environmentalists love to hate, tops that list. Wal-Mart sent volunteers and materials to Louisiana for Katrina recovery. Experiencing the devastation of that storm led to strong environmental awareness and ambitious new goals for the corporation, including the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to stabilize climate systems.

Wal-Mart’s sustainability goals:
· Be supplied 100% by renewable energy;
· Create zero waste;
· Sell products that sustain natural resources and the environment.

Environmental pledges can act as strategic bids to keep government regulators at bay. Easy to make, easy to break. Wal-Mart's goals remind me of a similar pledge made by Time Magazine -- during the last green fad of the mid-90s. Time pledged to use more recycled paper. The magazine did not honor that pledge, according to BNET:

New York City-based Time Inc., which announced just a year ago in a letter to Time readers that the company would be converting all of its titles to recycled paper, is now backtracking as well. "We have substantially reduced our use of recycled paper," says a Time Inc. executive who does not wish to be identified. "We've had to rethink our plans."

Jackson emphasizes the importance of state-level initiatives for good reason. Much of the progress on environmental issues during the past eight years has no doubt happened at the state level. We saw today that Obama has drawn heavily on the state environmental agencies to fill the ranks of his top environmental policy posts.

Obama Administration appointments for environment and EPA

NY Times reports that

officials said Mr. Obama would name Steven Chu, the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as his energy secretary, and Nancy Sutley, deputy mayor of Los Angeles for energy and environment, as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Mr. Obama also appears ready to name Carol M. Browner, the E.P.A. administrator under President Bill Clinton, as the top White House official on climate and energy policy and Lisa P. Jackson, who until recently was New Jersey’s commissioner of environmental protection, as the head of the E.P.A.

You can check out the Wikipedia biography of Carol M Browner and Lisa P. Jackson. Judging by the resumes, both sound like decent choices.

According to Wiki on Steven Chu:

The laboratory under Chu has been a center of research into biofuels and solar energy technologies. Chu has been a vocal advocate for more research into alternative energy, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combat global warming.

I am concerned that Obama has chosen someone as his energy tsar who's background specialty seems to be biofuels. We should watch that Obama does not focus too much on biofuels. After all, the corn biofuel boondogle was Obama's pet pork project when he served as US Senator for Illinois.

I blogged about Nancy Stutley in a previous post.

Obama's green lady: Nancy Sutley

Reuter's reports:

President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Nancy Sutley, a deputy mayor of Los Angeles, to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, a Democratic official said on Wednesday.

Sutley has a long history in the environmental community. She is currently deputy mayor for energy and environment for Los Angeles and served on the California State Water Resources Control Board earlier this decade. . . .

Sutley has a long background as an environmental policy-maker, serving from 2003 to 2005 on the California State Water Resources Control Board, which is responsible for protecting water quality and resources throughout California.

She also served as former California Gov. Gray Davis' energy adviser, managing state and federal regulatory and financial matters among other duties, and was deputy secretary for policy and intergovernmental relations at the California Environmental Protection Agency.

During the Clinton administration, Sutley was senior policy adviser to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's regional administrator in San Francisco and a special assistant at EPA headquarters in Washington.

California, the most populous U.S. state, has pushed for environmental action under Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, most notably asking the federal government to approve tougher pollution standards for cars and light trucks; the Bush administration denied that request.

Los Angeles, known for its car culture and air pollution, has taken steps to cut its carbon footprint, according to Anna Soellner of the Center for American Progress.

Looks like a good pick to me.

Is it helpful to brand things green?

I've now branded this website thoroughly green. I have done so not without strong reservations about the the whole notion of a "green" as a distinct field or topic. I worry that “green” is too often marketed like some kind of exotic or luxury brand. This may lead people to conclude that society cannot afford to go green.

Sometimes think we might be better off if we didn’t distinguish between green and non-green, but rather just talked about uncosted Vs costed energy. The problem with coal or oil is that the price doesn’t include the real costs — damage to environment, including long term costs such as global warming.

But green sources are nothing other what usually proves the lowest cost energy when all the social costs that are not commonly included in the cost of energy are factored into the price. For example, windmills are usually “green” because what it costs — in total — is generally far less than burning oil or coal actually costs.

There may be times and places when a particular green branded “thing” won’t actually turn out to be lowest cost. But these are exceptions to the rule.

The bigger problem seems to be that people are not yet accustomed to thinking about green as being true-low-cost, and that’s because the prices of the alternatives don’t reflect true-cost. So we have people saying “we can’t afford green” which is tantamount to saying the true-low-cost option is way too expensive!

So what we have is a fundamental pricing problem that creates all these arguments. Since the market does not provide a true pricing mechanism for energy, a useful place to start would be a a carbon tax.

This post is based on some jots I first posed at Rick B.'s Ten Percent blog.

International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)

Embassy Magazine reports:

Some fifty countries have signed up to join a new international organization aimed at spreading renewable energy technology around the world, but for now at least, Canada is sitting on the sidelines.

The decision not to join has left veteran diplomats mystified, while environmentalists and opposition politicians say this is just one more example of the Conservative government's lax environmental policy.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) will be formally established at a founding ceremony in Bonn, Germany on January 26, 2009.

The soon-to-be-founded organization, according to German Ambassador Matthias Höpfner, "aims at becoming the main driving force in promoting a rapid transition towards the widespread and sustainable use of renewable energy on a global scale."

Under Stephan Harper, Canada's environmental record has been dismal. So far, fifty countries have joined IRENA and as for the other laggards, they are the usual suspects:

Among them are many of Canada's traditional, wealthy allies such as the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, New Zealand and many other European countries.

Also present are burgeoning world superpowers and energy consumers India and China, as well as other developing nations such as Pakistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Argentina, Ghana, Egypt, Mexico and Colombia.

Notably absent at the table will be Japan—an important inventor of energy efficient technology —Russia, Australia and the United States.