Walmart Goes Green July 31, 2006January 15, 2017 But first . . . THE OTHER SIDE Osborne Lytle: ‘I agree with you about Global warming, but I expect better from our side (liberals). When you say that you will give ‘the other side’ and quote Peter Doran as agreeing with you it sounds false and rather Republican.’ ☞ Well, yes, but that was sort of the point: there really is no credible other side – and the folks who are cited as representing it, like Peter Doran, are being misrepresented. If it seems extreme to suggest ‘there really is no credible other side,’ you may find this interesting. One man’s impressive effort to find out. The whole thing is worth reading, but here are a few key paragraphs: . . . What I expected to find was a brou-ha-ha. I thought that Hansen, employed by NASA, would tell me in the nicest terms how those folks at NOAA had it wrong. Or vice versa. What I found is that the scientific fight over global warming turns out to be a gross mismatch. While I don’t know the exact proportions, to say that there are one thousand scientists on one side for every one on the other would appear a close approximation. The side on which “our” five scientists fall says that Global Warming is real, is mostly man-made, is accelerating, and is the cause for climate changes already observable. This consensus also holds that, in the main, Al Gore’s movie has it about right. Associated Press science reporter Seth Borenstein made the front page in newspapers all over the country this week in covering that point in Scientists OK Gore’s Movie for Accuracy. . . . I note that the U.S. Surgeon General released an assessment this week concluding there are no safe levels of secondhand smoke. I also note that some of the websites and scientists upholding the minority view on global warming also held the view that secondhand smoke is not an environmental health problem. It becomes clearer to me that a blending of science and industrial advocacy dominates one side of these debates. But this does not stop those who’ve already made up their minds on global warming to continue to believe as they have. In response to our Lavender Room exercise one of our forum regulars had the courage to write, “I have made up my mind that global warming is bullshit regardless of what data is presented to me.” Alarming to me is that this posture appears to extend to high offices of government. . . . If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have. SHINE SUNLIGHT ON SUNSET There is a move afoot to create a Sunset Commission, by which federal programs and regulations – but not corporate tax breaks! – could be terminated by a Presidentially-appointed panel unless Congress took specific action to continue them. Last year, Rolling Stone reported on three sentences buried in the President’s 2,000-page budget requesting this. Now come bills in the House and Senate designed to enact it. Consider this analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . . . (‘Successful commissions traditionally are formed to operate in a bipartisan fashion. The pending sunset-commission proposals, in contrast, would make it possible for program terminations and cuts to be implemented on a strictly partisan basis, even if they do not have enough support to be enacted under normal procedures.’) . . . and click here if you are concerned it may be a bad idea. And now . . . SOME GOOD NEWS FOR A CHANGE: WALMART GOES GREEN An engrossing and highly encouraging business story. As both a passenger of Spaceship Earth and a shareholder of WMT, I’m encouraged! Gee, if the Walmarts of the world put their minds to it . . . Tomorrow (which you can click today): Lebanon