Here’s a follow-up on my post from last week in which I argued that CEO John Mackey of Whole Foods Market ought to think twice about whether the worthies at the Wall Street Journal editorial board really are his friends, their solicitude for his opinions about health-care reform notwithstanding. When Mackey is not looking, his erstwhile friends are belittling his entire business model.

This week’s Earth Day observations provided the occasion for a screed on “Environmentalism as Religion,” by Paul H. Rubin, an economist at Emory University. “As the world becomes less religious, people can define themselves as being Green…. Consider some of the ways in which environmental behaviors echo religious behaviors and thus provide meaningful rituals for Greens…. There are food taboos. Instead of eating fish on Friday, or avoiding pork, Greens now eat organic foods and many are moving towards eating only locally grown foods.”

I hope John Mackey will take notice.  These people will resort to any rhetorical device whatsoever to belittle his customer base….

John M. Broder reports in the New York Times that the environmental movement has cooled on Barack Obama, who embraced nuclear power and “clean coal” in his recent State of the Union address. The president of the Natural Resources Defense Council subsequently blogged: “N.R.D.C. knows there is no such thing as ‘clean coal’….”

Indeed the coal and nuclear industries have their lobbyists, and there are states and regions that are dependent on coal mining economically. But if climate change is an urgent matter in the short to intermediate term, it may make sense to embrace it while investing R&D funds in the long-term problem of waste disposal.  In the meantime, the world is overwhelmingly dependent on coal, not just in the developed world but especially in the rapidly developing but poor nations of India and China.  If it is going to be burned, why not endeavor to burn it more cleanly?

We have to have a natural environment, but the way we live renders it inevitable that we will consume resources and do some environmental damage.  Environmental protection likely will be a matter of more or less, not all or nothing.  Nothing we can do will turn out to be utterly benign….

Rare-earth minerals used to manufacture environmentally-friendly products such as wind turbines “come almost entirely from China, from some of the most environmentally damaging mines in the country, in an industry dominated by criminal gangs,” Keith Bradsher reports from China for the New York Times.

It just goes to show that little if anything we can do will turn out to be absolutely environmentally benign. Practically every such thing involves an intervention into the natural environment that does environmental damage. “Going green” will be a matter of more or less, rather than all or nothing….

Here’s a story that’s been developing over the past 48 hours or so (as of Saturday evening) — we’ll have to wait and see what kind of “legs” it has. Hackers penetrated a server at the University of East Anglia in the UK — and recovered communications from some of that institution’s climate researchers, speaking “out of school.” Andrew Revkin of the New York Times notes that the e-mails contain “references to journalists, including this reporter….”

A blogger on the London Telegraph’s website, James Delingpole, who is described as a “writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything” — with “right” carrying a doublemeaning — declares that the “conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth … has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed….” That is representative of much of the reporting that has been appearing on the subject recently in this paper, true to its right-of-center reputation.

At Outside the Beltway, James Joyner stipulates that the kind of “conspiracy” claimed by Delingpole “involving hundreds of people over several decades [is] next to impossible to pull off.” Joyner, who allows as that the specialized literature on the matter is extremely difficult to follow, “tend[s] to believe the vast preponderance of scientists who say the climate is changing and that human technology is a significant variable in said change,” although he “tend[s] to be skeptical of radical government-mandated fixes.” Joyner (citing Revkin) notes that whatever controversy that follows upon this episode is liable to turn upon the interpretation of the word “trick” in one of the hacked e-mails.

Joyner’s post contains a number of links to posts from commentators of various persuasions. Michelle Malkin is already calling it the “global warming scandal of the century.” Ronald Bailey at the Reason magazine site is more circumspect. There is an extensive post at RealClimate, which Joyner surmises was written by Gavin Schmidt of NASA.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress is not backing down. My problem with Romm’s posts is that he may be allowing himself to be lured into an exchange in which he will come off looking like a partisan. Perhaps that cannot be helped. Romm does link to this article on the matter in Wired.

I don’t know how much all this amounts to, except that it will provide grist for the mill for those who are determined to hold skeptical views about climate change. In the meantime,  it looks like we’re sure to be hearing more about this….

Earlier this month I blogged on a column by Nicholas Kristof on the dangers of chemical compound found in many household products — bisphenol A. “The stuff may indeed be dangerous,” I wrote the time, although I noted that I was not quite   prepared to throw out all the plastic cups and bottles in my kitchen.

Now, Harper’s Magazine, in its December issue, (in a piece that may be available only to subscribers, for the moment) has dredged up a memo from the BPA Joint Trade Association — BPA being an abbreviation for bisphenol A. The material comes from minutes of  an association meeting in May. A summary notes that member firms “need to be more proactive in communications to media, legislators, and the general public to protect industries that use BPA” and “put risks from chemicals in proper perspective.” It was noted that attendees “suggested using fear tactics” (”Do you want to have access to baby food anymore?” or “You have a choice: the more expensive product that is frozen or fresh, or foods packaged in cans”).

It’s the sort of thing with which our whole system is shot through. Pundits like George Will, who come down on the side of absolutely unlimited corporate prerogative, do everything they can do to enable it. I recall running across an article by somebody who put it this way; If the epidemiologists discover dangers insecondhand smoke, they belittle the epidemiologists; if the climatologists detect climate change, they slander the climatologists.

I have in my possession a consumer-protection newsletter, unavailable on the Internet, which in its most recent issue mentions that cell phones have been determined to be safe — according to studies “funded by the telecommunications industry.” The author, a PhD in environmental studies, warned nevertheless against holding the things against your cranium for very long.

Think carefully, gentle reader, before you acquiesce in allowing the foxes to guard the chicken coop….

As an investor, Al Gore has bought into some of the same causes that he promotes as a public figure. Does this make him a “green profiteer”? John M. Broder reports for the New York Times; you be the judge.

The story cites the views of a climate-change skeptic associated with Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK). Is this story a product of  NYT editor Bill Keller’s recently announced plans to monitor “opinion media”?

For responses from the blogosphere, click here….

I blogged recently on an op-ed by “skeptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg that I found somewhat exasperating.  I concluded: “If he agrees that global warming is a “serious challenge,” what would be seriously interesting to see him do on the Wall Street Journal editorial page is to challenge the editorial board’s climate-change skepticism — or to describe a serious proposal to make a serious financial commitment to research and development in alternative energy….”

It turns out that he already had a proposal on the public record — in an article in the August issue of Esquire magazine that has just come to my attention. “Every country should agree to spend 0.05 percent of its GDP on low-carbon energy R&D. The total global cost would be ten times greater than current spending on this research, yet ten times less than the cost of the Kyoto Protocol. Such an agreement could be the new Kyoto treaty for the world — only this protocol would actually make a difference.”

The Wall Street Journal letters page has gotten some pushback against a recent op-ed opposing subsidies for wind energy, about which I blogged at the time.  My point was that the fossil-fuel economy has not been devoid of subsidy, although much of this goes far enough back in time that effectively it is hidden.

Here are today’s comments from a correspondent in Boston: “… suggesting that wind energy should eschew government subsidy and stand on its own in the marketplace is in direct contrast to how every other energy market operates. How much drilling and exploration would energy companies do without government tax incentives? We wouldn’t have any nuclear power plants if the government hadn’t spent billions on nuclear research and development.”

“If wind and solar energy were to be allotted the same amount of money that nuclear energy has gotten, we would be energy independent in a very short time. Up until now, green energy has received a fraction of what nuclear energy has received.”

“Oddly, conservative business and political interests bemoan government intervention while chances are they would be taking advantage of it. Without our government we wouldn’t have highways, railroads or airports. I can only imagine how our food supplies would be threatened without agriculture subsidies to the farm industry. The Internet was invented and developed by the government. The list of where government intervention has succeeded is long.”

“Bring on government intervention and we will all make money and be better off.”

My only reservation would be that, instead of farm subsidies, this correspondent would have done better to emphasize the R&D provided to the agribusiness sector by the land-grant colleges and universities….

A Chinese firm has landed a contract to supply wind turbines to a huge project in West Texas, reports Rebecca Smith for the Wall Street Journal.

According to the report, “U.S. officials and domestic suppliers have been concerned that the U.S. wouldn’t reap the full benefit of the country’s rapid expansion in renewable energy. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D., N.M.) has voiced concern that the U.S. has outsourced much of its clean-energy manufacturing capacity. As part of the stimulus bill earlier this year, he earmarked a $2.3 billion tax credit for domestic producers of clean-energy equipment.”

The Wall Street Journal reports on “Five Technologies That Could Change Everything” in the energy sector. They include space-based solar power, new car-battery technologies, improved grid storage for wind and solar power, carbon capture and storage to enable “clean coal,” and a new generation of biofuels, especially algae-based fuels.