In the wake of Phil Woolas’ absurd proclamation that all laws are wrong and that the burden of proof now lies with the defendent (imagine how that would pan out following a bruising Saturday night), Lord Smith of Finsbury has decided that it’s time to speak out about the UK Government’s recent torrent of greenwash.

Ostensibly speaking to The Independent about the need to make a tactical retreat in the light of rising sea levels and increasing storminess, he also took some fierce swipes at the government’s two-faced attitude to environmental issues:

*Building a third runaway at Heathrow Airport would be a “mistake” because of pollution and aircraft noise;

*Plans for a new generation of coal-fired electric power stations should be abandoned until the Government is certain they will not pump out harmful gases;

*The proposed Severn barrage will destroy fish stocks and wreck bird habitats.

This, of course, means that Lord Smith will shortly be out of a job, but for the time being The Unsuitablog salutes him for daring to stand up to UK Business Champions PLC (a.k.a. the UK Government) at such a crucial time. No wonder they are so keen to scrap the House of Lords — too many free thinkers for comfort…

Imagine the scene: you walk into a bar and someone immediately faces you up, brandishing their fists, red with pent-up aggression clearly eager to send you on to the floor or worse. He screams into your face, spittle flecks flying across your nose and lips, “Prove to me that you deserve not to be punched repeatedly in the face!”

Doesn’t sound very reasonable, does it? Especially considering that you have never met the person and, to your knowledge, haven’t done anything except mind your own business and just get on with the job of living for most of your life. Yet, here is a situation where the aggressor is asking you to explain to them why they should not hit you. Surely, in all that is logical and moral, it should be the aggressor explaining the reasons for wanting to hit you.

And yet, the aggressor seemingly now has the moral upper hand as far as the UK Government are concerned. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Environment Minister Phil Woolas made the following extraordinary response to Prince Charles regarding the use of genetically modified crops:

“It’s easy for those of us with plentiful food supplies to ignore the issue, but we have a responsibility to use science to help the less well off where we can. I’m asking to see the evidence. If it has been a disaster, then please provide the evidence.”

Prince Charles, for his part had stated that the current use of genetically modified crops had been an environmental disaster which, if you have any concern for the irreversible genetic changes seeping into wild plant varieties or the green deserts that accompany the large scale planting of GMOs, or even the completely unknown congenital effects of inserting alien genes into a natural organism, you couldn’t reasonably argue with. In fact Prince Charles is being extremely far-sighted: he knows the power that corporations have over governments, a power that is far in excess of any power previously known since the dawn of humanity, so is right to predict a future in which any pretence of environmental concern by the greenwashing business lobby will be completely washed away by their irrepressible hunger for more and more money.

The logical about face by the UK government does not reflect genuine concern for world hunger; it reflects a massive business opportunity for the GMO companies in finally getting the big break they have lobbied for over the last 20 years. As with the Canadian and Russian submarines currently cruising the widening Arctic waters to protect their potential oil and gas reserves, the GMO corporations are cruising the government lobbies of the world as the people of the world become ever more addicted to a meat rich diet that requires an inordinate amount of grain to sustain, an oil rich life that is cutting into global food supplies and a changing climate that is catching farmers around the world by surprise.

All of these changes have been initiated by corporations and their slavishly obedient government servants. The slavishly obedient government servants only have to change the way we think about evidence, and the GM experiment will finally be rolled out to the farms of the world. An unstoppable, irreversible cancer that was allowed to happen all because we trusted politicians.

My inbox has been overflowing with love and best wishes to the planet from all sorts of people recently — one of them is no less than Tony Blair, that great peacekeeper¹, climate saviour² and lover of human rights³ is pushing his big plan (yes, another one) to return the planet to its former health. It’s called “Breaking The Climate Deadlock” and you can read the latest report here⁴.

The e-mail from Tony (well, there were three kisses at the bottom, so it must be personal) said:

TOKYO - Tony Blair today (Friday) published the first report from the ‘Breaking the Climate Deadlock’ initiative which will set out the framework for a new global deal for a low carbon future.

Mr Blair presented Prime Minister Fukuda with a copy of the report in his role as host of the G8 summit this year. The report has been drawn together with a group of recognised climate change experts, under the direction of the former British Prime Minister. It answers a series of practical questions about how the world can move to a low carbon economy.

It identifies the actions and questions that need to be resolved by political and business leaders over the next 18 months to achieve a successful outcome to the UN climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009. The report contains a warning for the world to get on this path now or face irreversible damage and much more cost later. But the report also contains a message of optimism that success is possible and the technologies, the capabilities, the resources, and the ingenuity and entrepreneurship of people around the world exists to create a new low-carbon future.

Tony Blair said this report is all about trying to unite the scientists and experts with the political leaders and decision-makers.

Interesting. Uniting who with who? Didn’t mention “businesses” did he?

So who is running Mr Blair’s show at the moment?

Tony Blair came under heavy fire today for accepting a lucrative job with a Wall Street bank.

Mr Blair, who quit as prime minister in July, is to become a part-time adviser to JPMorgan on a salary rumoured to be at least £500,000 a year. It puts him on course to become the richest former premier in recent history.

He also revealed he expected to take a “small handful” of similar jobs with other companies in the near future.

So, between his various jobs providing expert advice about how to dodge and weave your way around the political system and negotiate great deals with foreign nations, former Prime Minister Blair is intent on saving the world. So long as it’s on his terms: like ensuring he goes everywhere by private jet…

“those wishing to book him on the international lecture circuit are routinely told that providing Mr Blair with his own airliner is a non-negotiable requirement.”

Clearly a man not prepared to budge his principles, nor one who is prepared to see others budge on theirs, considering he famously stated that he didn’t think it “realistic” that people should stop flying on holiday. A dose of realism — like perhaps the Arctic ice caps being free of ice this year; or increasing regional food shortages caused by extreme weather; or the sudden drop in the ability of tropical soils to absorb carbon dioxide — seems to be in order here. But we are talking about a man that fervantly refused to ever place the UK business lobby into an uncomfortable position, preferring instead to demonstrate the power of the free market in regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

And what a dismal failure that has been. It was bound to be — he did it because Blair is a corporate man, through-and-through. Read the report I mentioned earlier, and for which the e-mail was so lovingly sent to me, and you will see the truth:

Just as there is a large body of evidence on the risks of climate change, there is also a large body of evidence on what we can do about it. There is a growing consensus that emissions can be reduced without damaging prosperity in either the developed or developing world. Reducing emissions will require a transformation of our economies, but not giving up on growth.

And there’s the rub: protecting the planet, but not at the expense of economic growth. Continued growth, which keeps the corporations happy, so they keep offering Tony his lucrative jobs; increased “prosperity” which makes people believe they are going to get a better life, despite the definition of “prosperity” having little to do with the Declaration of Human Rights, and everything to do with the acquisition of material goods. Let’s make it clear — economic growth is NOT SUSTAINABLE. It never has been, and never will be. In order to grow an economy, you need to use resources at an increasing rate.

But let’s just duck that small issue, while there is still money to be made. Just remember, Mr Blair, your cash will be of no use to you at all when you have to scrape a living from the remnants of the planet you pretended to care about. Fancy changing your mind about economic growth?

No, thought not. Moron.

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Notes:

1) Need I mention Iraq? Thought not.
2) Oversaw the UK actually increasing its carbon emissions despite the rhetoric of global leadership.
3) Opposed the setting up of Collective Tribal Rights under the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
4) From The Climate Group; more about their sponsors later.

“Ok, guys, we’ve spent billions of dollars clearing out anyone who might have got in your way — just as you asked. We couldn’t really afford it but the arms guys needed a big battle to clear out the warehouses, and we know how persuasive they can be — if you know what I mean. The police are nearly trained up and if it wasn’t for all those big bombs going up in the towns we could pretend everything was alright. Trust us, the oil fields are protected.”

“What do you mean you want more help? Ok, we know which side our bread’s buttered — tell us what you want us to do…”

A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.

The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism.

In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said. [link]

“No, we’re not going to do your greenwashing for you: you’ve shown how good you are at that already — even Exxon are making out they’re saving the world. If I didn’t know how many shades of bullshit makes up your logos I might even have been taken in.”

At a time of spiraling oil prices, the no-bid contracts, in a country with some of the world’s largest untapped fields and potential for vast profits, are a rare prize to the industry. The contracts are expected to be awarded Monday to Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron, as well as to several smaller oil companies. [link]

“Give it a rest, guys, we’re working as fast as we can. You’ve got your profits; we’ve got a nice little earner going — hell, the voters still think they’re going to change things: where do you think Mugabe got all his best tricks from? I know you think Canada are doing a better job, but how were we to know they would try and f*ck up the entire planet themselves digging sand out of the ground?”

“Ok, just one more, and that’s it. Two years, alright? We’ll send you a map of Tehran when we’ve finished bombing the shit out of it.”

Tim Henman, erstwhile British tennis hero, is on the rampage, as only a tiger can be (ok, I’m stretching the truth slightly) — but something must be up when a former mild-mannered sports personality takes to the streets protesting about a development. In fact these developments, all ten of them in the final list, are supposed to be the very kinds of things that we should have been protesting to have more of. As the UK Government web site states:

At the beginning of the 21st Century our greatest environmental challenge is from climate change. As housing accounts for 27 per cent of carbon emissions, we need to substantially cut emissions from new homes and work towards zero carbon housing and development.

It also says:

We have seen strong support across the private sector, local government and local communities for building more affordable homes alongside higher environmental standards. Now we want local areas to come forward with ideas on how to put these principles and ambitions into practice – with a new generation of eco-towns.

Now why, I wonder, would the strongest support have come from the private sector? Tristram Hunt of The Guardian, takes up the story:

All too predictably, Britain’s leading developers are using the eco-town template to dust off long-rejected proposals and re-submit shoddy housing schemes. It is up to housing minister Caroline Flint to save this Brownite policy from descending into another predictable fight between Nimbys and developers.

Unfortunately, the response of the housebuilding industry has been a series of cunning attempts to revive planning permission for previously rejected projects. In Micheldever, Eagle Star Insurance has been trying to develop a London-Basingstoke commuter settlement since the mid-1970s. But with a sprinkling of “sustainable development” and “carbon-neutral” buzzwords, the bog-standard scheme for 12,500 homes on a pristine, greenfield site has magically transformed itself into an “eco-town”.

The private companies get their developments, the government gets their eco-credentials, and the councils — who ultimately make sure everything is done in the right way — get a few nice back-handers, just as all councils have done since time immemorial.

It’s not looking good for anyone who actually wants to find a better place to live, according to The Daily Telegraph:

An official report on eco-towns will today find that only “two or three will have real eco credentials” and most of the 15 proposals are “just housing estates in the countryside with a green label attached”.

The report by a panel of leading experts in town planning, house building, transport and environment issues will send most of the proposals back to planners with a “must do better note”.

A source on the panel told The Daily Telegraph: “No more than two or three will really be eco-towns. But pressure from ministers will demand 10 [be built] even if some do not meet the environmentally friendly criteria.”

Why do we need “eco towns” anyways? Here’s a list of things the development enthusiasts in governments, private companies and councils of the world will never contemplate, because there’s nothing in it to fill their pockets:

1) Refurbishment of existing housing stock – refurbishment has far lower “embodied energy” simply because new construction materials aren’t required. Construction materials in new homes take decades of “zero carbon” occupation to offset.

2) Redevelopment of unwanted or obsolete commercial buildings – again, lower embodied energy, and also a far greater potential for communal / community living.

3) Opting out of conventional housing completely – whether it’s in a roundhouse, a yurt or something else off-grid and rewilded, this requires a reconnection with the real world: something civilization simply will not tolerate.

It’s no surprise that India is becoming a hotbead of greenwashing, with the market-friendly government and some of the richest people on Earth starting to understand the power and wealth that can be gained by brainwashing a population of a billion people into the way of industrial civilization.

For alerting me to the blatant Astroturf that is the CSCCC I have Manu Sharma to thank:

Two days ago (Apr 1, 2008) Hindustan Times carried an article titled Climate change not as big a problem: report. Lest anyone should think it as an April Fool’s joke, it was a completely serious piece based on real events. Today (Apr 3, 2008), the same correspondent published a report titled: ‘Sun too causes global warming.’

Both articles are highly misleading, contain factual inaccuracies and at the very least deliberately hide widely known facts that counter its argument to paint a biased picture. In the following paragraphs, I will attempt to highlight the key issues raised by each of the stories.

Climate change not as big a problem: report [1]
by Chetan Chauhan | Page 14, HT New Delhi, Apr 1, 2008 | 353 words

Opening excerpt:

“An international civil society report has debunked the claims of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying there is no evidence available to show loss of human life directly due to climate change.
The report of the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change [CSCCC], to be released in India on Tuesday, says there is no evidence to suggest climate change has caused an increase in diseases.”

Highly Misleading

By pitting CSCCC directly against IPCC, the article creates the impression that both organisations are of similar stature. Nothing could be further from the truth. IPCC is a Noble prize winning United Nations body made up of hundreds of scientists and governmental representatives while CSCCC is merely a coalition of so-called global “think tanks” - corporate lobbyists funded by big oil corporations, the likes of ExxonMobil, to further their interests.

The HT article makes no mention of the background of CSCCC - who comprises the coalition and how are they funded. Unlike IPCC, which was formed two decades ago, CSCCC was only organised a little more than an year back [4] by International Policy Network (IPN) which is a well known recipient of Exxon funding. IPN has received $390,000 from Exxon. Several other members of the coalition have also been a beneficiary.

Paul Reiter, the expert cited in the article, for example, sits on the “Scientific and Economic Advisory Council” of an organization called the “Annapolis Centre.” What is Annapolis Centre? It’s a US based “think tank” that has pocketed $793,575 from ExxonMobil and has been very active in playing down the human contribution to global warming.

Reiter doesn’t have anything too substantiative in his research papers published in scientific peer reviewed journals to back his claims of lack of relationship between disease and climate change. It’s unclear how many other claims of CSCCC report are backed by research in peer reviewed journals.

Yet, here’s a newspaper that reaches out to a country of one billion, publishing unsubstantiated “research” of corporate lobbyists that have a direct financial interest in sensationalising their so-called findings; and pits them against a neutral, highly conservative group of scientists and government representatives whose work is completely based on pure scientific research published in peer-reviewed journals…

I strongly recommend you read the rest of this well-researched article here.

Astroturfs are not new, of course, and they are such powerful tools of business that I have a separate category for them on The Unsuitablog. The CSCC is notable, though, for purporting to be a truly international body, representative of “46 member organisations from 35 countries”. When you did down a little you find that these “46 member organisations” are also astroturfs or even more obvious corporate lobby bodies, making the CSCCC a Super Astroturf.

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Time For A Game 

There’s a fun game you can play, trying to find out why they are members of CSCCC — it’s called “follow the links“.

I picked the very first body on the list, the Alabama Policy Institute.

Go to http://www.alabamapolicy.org/ for the main site, then click on “About Us“. Nothing particularly exciting, except some stuff about wanting to bring religion into politics. Click on “Press and Media” instead, to find out that their President is Gary Palmer. Click on his biography and you find:

“Gary co-founded the Alabama Policy Institute, formerly known as the Alabama Family Alliance, in 1989. Gary was previously employed by Rust International in cost analysis, and prior to that with Combustion Engineering in the environmental systems division.”

A man of business clearly, and also someone who is very fond of religious censorship. But Gary isn’t our main man, it is Vice President Michael Ciamarra :

“a widely published columnist and a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s National Task Force on Tax Policy and The Heritage Foundation Resource Bank. He is an advisor to the National Center for Health Transformation.”

Let’s go to the American Legislative Exchange Council at http://www.alec.org. Here you will find, under ALEC Initiative > Internation Relations :

“Free trade is central to ALEC’s vision of the way nation states should relate to each other. In order to fully realize a broad and deep free market that reaches across the Atlantic, we need to mobilize strong leadership from legislators on both sides, as well as our business communities. Now, more than ever, conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic need to continue their challenge to over-taxing, over-borrowing and over-governing.”

Hmmm, wonder why preventing climate change would be a worry to ALEC then? What about the Heritage Foundation Resource Bank?

With a little digging around…bingo! Here’s a brilliant (well, crap) piece of straw man thinking:

http://theheritagefoundry.org/2008/05/19/the-polar-bears-are-coming/

And there are many more: have a look at this lot.

And finally, the National Center for Health Transformation. Take a look at their members! Clearly it’s the public whose concern is foremost in CHT’s mind — surely nothing to do with ensuring the market economy is vibrant and all powerful.

It’s a great game that all the family can play, and I think I’ll be playing it a lot more in the future.

Ever get the feeling you’ve been had? It’s an iconic quote from a punk legend, but as with all great sayings, it can be applied in many different places. This is one example: the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an industry talking shop if ever there was one and, like the ineffectual light-green environmental groups who “fight” for changes to government policy and send out gleeful press releases whenever a corporation promises to behave itself, the RSPO are actually making things far worse than if the public were left to their own devices. Sustainable palm oil is simply snake oil in a clever diguise: it doesn’t exist and it never will do.

Here’s how it works.

1) As a group of big businesses whose primary interest is to ensure the expansion of the lucrative palm oil industry – retailers, traders, processors, growers, investors; that sort of thing — set up a shell organisation that claims it is going to make the industry “sustainable”.

2) Call in some gullible (yes, I said “gullible”) NGOs and environmentalists and say that they can have a seat on this august, influential body if they allow business to continue as before — but they will be allowed to suggest changes to the industry providing it doesn’t affect the business model.

3) Repeatedly announce to the world, through member companies such as Sainsburys and Unilever, that agreements are being reached and work is moving on swiftly to make plantations sustainable, but that we have to give them time because this is a tough job, and there are so many products that contain this oil it is just “impossible” to do this any other way.

 4) Do almost nothing for years while counting the massive profit that has been made from cheap oil being grown on recently deforested land using cheap labour.

5) After a few years say that the there are so many plantations that no more deforestation has to take place. Meanwhile the South East Asian rainforest has ceased to exist, carbon levels through wood and peat burning have boosted the greenhouse effect, and people have still not realised they have been well and truly greenwashed.

Alternatively, you could, like Meridian Foods, just take palm oil out of your products until it is sustainably produced. I’m not in the habit of promoting companies, but you have to give them credit as they didn’t even publicise the change.

The RSPO have an impressive roster of members, but it’s the board that matters, so here is their board membership, in full:

President:
Unilever : Jan Kees Vis (massive food multinational)

Vice-President I:
WWF Malaysia : Darrel Arthur Webber (NGO — history of corporate partnerships)
 
Vice-President II:
Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association (GAPKI) : Derom Bangun (growers and producers trade body)
 
Vice-President III:
Malaysian Palm Oil Association : Mamat Salleh (growers and producers trade body)
 
Vice-President IV:
New Britain Palm Oil Limited : Simon Lord (Papua New Guinea’s largest oil palm plantation and milling operator)
 
Treasurer:
Aarhus Karlshamn UK : Ian McIntosh (Palm Oil trade “solutions” company)
 
Members:
 
Federation of Migros Cooperatives : Robert Keller
IOI Group (Malaysia/Netherlands) : Don Grubba
Cadbury Schweppes plc : Tony Lass
WWF-Indonesia : Fitrian Ardiansyah
Oxfam International : Johan Verburg
Sawit Watch : Rudy Lumuru
HSBC Bank Malaysia Berhad : Paul Norton
FELDA : Mohd Nor Kailany
Co-operative Insurance Society : Samantha Lacey

You will notice that there is only one organisation represented on the board management that has any interest in ensuring the palm oil becomes sustainable, and that organisation is one of the most business-friendly NGOs in the world. Overall, NGOs and small growers are outnumbered three to one on the board. They will always lose in voting.

Add to this their pathetic “aspirations” as a body:

RSPO is an association created by organisations carrying out their activities in and around the entire supply chain for palm oil to promote the growth and use of sustainable palm oil through co-operation within the supply chain and open dialogue with its stakeholders.

In other words, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil is an industry body that has absolutely no intention of producing or using sustainable palm oil all the time there is more profit to be made from the type that comprises 100% of all palm oil currently being produced. Clearly they also have no intention of scrapping the use of palm oil all the time it is unsustainable.

Wasn’t it only six short days ago that President Bush stood before the nation and called for the halt of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025? Then why is the federal government, led by the Department of Energy (DOE) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM), planning to power Western cities with a new utility grid that bypasses renewable energy and that incentivizes more coal, oil and natural gas production? 

Called the West-Wide Energy Corridors Process, the reality of this plan is that it’s little more than a scheme to build nearly 6,000 miles of “corridors” through nearly 3 million acres of public lands, including national parks and national monuments. Averaging over 2/3 a mile wide and capable of holding up to 35 natural gas pipelines, these corridors will have massive and long-term effects on public lands.

During a congressional hearing last week, energy experts and county, state, and tribal officials testified against the plan and criticized the DOE for not consulting with local stakeholders when designating the corridors. Representative Raúl Grijalva said that on a map the corridors looked like “giant extension cords to existing coal sources.”

How can we realistically lower greenhouse emissions if we continue to burn coal and other fossil fuels? Lowering emissions requires a serious commitment to the development and sustainability of renewable energy, but the proposed corridors leave renewables without access to the grid. The feds needs to go back and consult with local and tribal officials, provide access to renewable energy and protect our public lands.

This guest article was written for The Unsuitablog by James Navarro of the Wilderness Society.

 

On the day China was announced as the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide* (well, about as official as we can get at the moment) Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK announced that he was going to focus on just one thing – and I’m not surprised considering how important this thing is:

“Next month’s University of California report warns that unless China radically changes its energy policies, its increases in greenhouse gases will be several times larger than the cuts in emissions being made by rich nations under the Kyoto Protocol.”

Sorry? Did I get that wrong? Oh, it isn’t the changing global climate – the event that now guarantees to cause irreversible ecological damage that will affect us dramatically — that Gordon Brown is focusing on; it is the economic climate. Silly me. I do forget sometimes that if we don’t all go to the shops to buy piles of crap, fly off on sunny vacations and keep using more and more natural resources to ensure that the global economy keeps on growing then we are doomed! Doomed to what, exactly?

Here’s what Gordon actually said:

“Every day that I wake up is about keeping this economy moving forward, keeping stability in the economy and keeping growth…we will do everything in our power to keep the economy moving forward”

To everyone who has an inkling of knowledge about both ecology and economics, this statement reeks of a complete disregard for climatic stability, indeed you could just substitute “global warming” for “economy” and you would get a pretty accurate rendition of what all Western governments, and those non-Western governments that have adopted the growth-lust of the West, are doing to the planet:

“The problem is that growth has to come from somewhere, and it can either come from some artificially created value, such as property prices, which could collapse at any time, or some resource, such as oil, coal, cropland, rock or metal, that is continually being used at an increasing rate. In short, if companies do not accelerate their use of resources then the global economy will not be able to carry on as it is. The economy is hell-bent on consuming the Earth’s finite resources in order to survive.”

(from http://earth-blog.bravejournal.com/entry/17630)

Next time you hear Gordon Brown mention the environment, climate change or anything else vaguely green, just ignore him: he is just another cretin who thinks that money is more important than life.

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*This is what I said in 2006: “China has overtaken the USA in absolute numbers of televisions and refrigerators, but with a population 4 times higher, the per capita use is still well below that of the USA for these, pretty representative, items. China’s total carbon emissions have just exceeded (as of 2006) those of the USA.”

Bad Unsuitablog, having a go at the glorious reich, sorry US Air Force. I’m sure there are some good people in there, but it’s leadership that counts, so what is the leadership of the USAF saying about climate change:

“The Air Force will meet the law’s requirements”. That’s Air Force Assistant Secretary William Anderson actually pretending that the Air Force are subject to the law. It’s not exactly a glorious history — observing national, or international law isn’t exactly high on their list of strategic aims — and if you know anything about US law then you will know that the US military are exempt from all clean air legislation. And, anyway, what laws exist in the USA to prevent greenhouse gas emissions?

But I digress, the big thing here is that the US Air Force are planning to convert coal into jet fuel to stave off the need to import oil:

Air Force officials said the plants could help neutralize a national security threat by tapping into the country’s abundant coal reserves. And by offering itself as a partner in the Malmstrom plant, the Air Force hopes to prod Wall Street investors — nervous over coal’s role in climate change — to sink money into similar plants nationwide. “We’re going to be burning fossil fuels for a long time, and there’s three times as much coal in the ground as there are oil reserves,” said Air Force Assistant Secretary William Anderson. “Guess what? We’re going to burn coal.”

(from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080322/ap_on_bi_ge/military_coal)

This, frankly, ludicrous suggestion would be more at home in The Onion, but as with all good satire it’s dangerously close to the truth, despite the best efforts of various scientists and Representatives to make a mockery of it. Bear in mind also that even if coal were used — along with its sky high cost in greenhouse gas emissions — it is going to start to tail off in the next couple of decades.

So what are the US Air Force going to be doing with all that lovely coal-based jet fuel? Probably patrolling the USA shooting at anyone who dares break the marshal law that will be in place when all the fuel runs out…