About 30 years ago, after some prodding from environmental groups, Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the roof of the White House. He gave a ringing speech at the time, hoping that this gesture would help build a solar revolution. He established a Solar Energy Research Institute and put Denis Hayes, the director of the first and subsequent Earth Days in charge.

Several years later, Ronald Reagan ordered the panels taken down, having belittled Carter for worrying so much about the energy crisis. He replaced Hayes with a dentist, and SERI was soon abolished. If Carter's bold move had succeeded who knows how much better off we'd be now, but there's no point bemoaning the failures of the past.

Turns out the panels were donated to Unity College in Maine where they've been doing their bit to help the climate problem for most of three decades. Now Bill McKibben and his colleagues at the wonderful 350.org are returning a symbolic panel to where it started. They put one of the panels on a biodiesel-powered truck the day after Labor Day and will deliver it to the White House on Friday, September 10, after stopping for rallies in Boston and New York.

I'm just back from vacation and came across a clipping I've been carting around for a month. It's a column by Jack Hart that appeared in the Oregonian newspaper on Aug. 1. It is titled, "The fallacy of growth in a finite world."

Mr. Hart, by the way, is no shrieking greenie, he's a former managing editor of the Oregonian, now an author, teacher and writing coach. A cynical, hard-bitten newsman, in other words.

In one sense, Mr. Hart's thesis is a truism: Perpetual economic growth is impossible. Eventually the planet will run out of oil, clean air, potable water, natural gas, or a hundred other resources--or the ability to absorb pollution. The popular mantra of the moment--sustainable growth--is an oxymoron if there ever was one.

But challenging the idea of growth is only rarely spoken in public. Heretical, impractical, political suicide. But someone's got to do it, and I tip my hat to Mr. Hart, a brave man. I hope this piece gets circulated far and wide.

A few months back we reported on a campaign led in North America by Richard Cellarius of the Sierra Club to discourage the new conservative government in New Zealand to back away from a plan it had floated to open some of its national parks to mining, for coal and other minerals.

Well, sometimes you win one.

Today (July 20) comes news from Dr. Cellarius that the Kiwi government caved. It will not move to open any of the parks to mining. Many international groups and individuals weighed in to oppose the scheme (including a few of you, perhaps), along with a reported 37,000 New Zealanders. Bravo!

The indispensable Earth Policy Institute reports that emissions of carbon dioxide by wealthy countries including the United States fell a tiny fraction in the last year, which is welcome news. While China passed the U.S. as the biggest emitter of CO₂ a couple of years ago, a recent study out of Stanford calculated that if you take into account the fraction of China's emissions that are the result of manufacturing various items for export to the U.S. and add those to the U.S.'s total, this country still wins first prize for overall carbon emissions.

The latest EPI report confirms that the oceans, soils, and trees absorb more than half of the CO₂ emitted world-wide, but the volume of CO₂ is such that the oceans are becoming more and more acidic, which reduces their ability to absorb CO₂. At the same time, the razing of tropical forests continues apace, thus reducing their ability to absorb CO₂.

Besides the slight drop in CO₂ emissions, one other bright spot is the growth of alternative energy systems (wind-farm electricity capacity grew by 30 percent from 2007 to 2009) and the decline of coal (down by 13 percent during this period).

I wondered what was up when this press release popped up in my in box. It's head reads "Bottled Water Companies Applaud Virginia Governor for Reversing Ban on Commonwealth’s Purchase of Bottled Water for Official Functions," and goes on to outline how many people are employed in the bottled water industry in the commonwealth.

Many studies recently have indicated convincingly that tap water in most places is as safe as and tastes every bit as good as bottled water, and the number of plastic water bottles thrown away each year is simply staggering—upwards of thirty billion bottles a year in the U.S. alone. My guru on all things water is Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute. His recent book, Bottled and Sold, lays it all out in simple and compelling terms. Putting water in plastic bottles creates jobs, sure, and enriches the people behind the International Bottled Water Association. But mining and burning coal creates jobs, as does cleaning up oil spills. Job creation is important, but the kind of jobs created is pretty important as well.

Sec. Ken Salazar

The Obama administration, having been thwarted in its attempts to declare a six-month moratorium on new deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday issued a new moratorium order, citing new information on the causes of the recent well blowout and other matters. According to a question-and-answer news release from the department:

"What are the differences between the May 28 deepwater drilling moratorium and the new deepwater drilling suspension?

"Like the deepwater drilling moratorium lifted by the District Court on June 22, the deepwater drilling suspensions ordered today apply to most deepwater drilling activities and could last through November 30. The suspensions ordered today, however, are the product of a new decision by the Secretary and new evidence regarding safety concerns, blowout containment shortcomings within the industry, and spill response capabilities that are strained by the BP oil spill.

Wes Jackson, a plain-spoken Kansan, has been preaching agriculture reform for at least 30 years—and not only preaching but also doing ground-breaking (pardon) research at his Land Institute near Salina. Wes's basic observation is that a system such as ours, heavily reliant on wheat and corn and other grains, which requires plowing and starting from seed every year, needs fixing. It requires heavy doses of pesticides, which contaminate water and sicken field workers. It squanders topsoil, losing it to erosion and the wind.

James Gustave Speth, new professor at Vermont Law School

Ed Abbey, never one to mince words, once observed, "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

Gus Speth, a founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute; one-time head of the United Nations Development Program; former dean of the Yale graduate environment program; and soon-to-be professor at Vermont Law is a little less strident but no less tough: "Economic growth may be the world’s secular religion, but for much of the world it is a god that is failing—underperforming for most of the world’s people and, for those in affluent societies, now creating more problems than it is solving."

The quote comes from a long piece in Solutions magazine that ought to be read and pondered by every policymaker, every politician, every economist, and every voter in the world. Will it be? Of course not. Secular religions are rarely challenged, but this one has to be, and soon.

One more quote. Dave Brower had his own spin, "economic growth is a sophisticated way of stealing from future generations."

If we have any hope of reversing global warming and breaking our addiction to fossil fuels, we will need to find and pay attention to geniuses who can discard traditional thinking and biases and find a way through the current mess to a future energy economy based on efficiency and renewables.

Oh wait. We've had one such person around for nearly 40 years, and his contributions are already legion. He is Amory Lovins and his Rocky Mountain Institute. They have been advising businesses and governments for years, to great effect. Now it's time to take the message global, and fast. To that end, the institute has just released a new six-minute video called "Reinventing Fire" that outlines the beginning of the vision. There's much work to do, but this little movie makes a compelling case that a solution is possible. Take a look.

Natural gas rig in Canada

In 1970, just in time for the first Earth Day, Friends of the Earth and Ballantine Books published The Environmental Handbook, which eventually sold more than a million copies. I had a short chapter in there titled Ecopornography, or How to Spot an Ecological Phony. The idea was to try to help people recognize what we might call greenwashing--image ads from big companies that gloss over, lie about, downplay, or otherwise sweep their environmental crimes under the rug.

All I can say is that I hope it worked, because there's more ecoporn being spread around now than ever before. Much is by energy companies arguing, for example, that coal is good for you and me, ditto nuclear power, and so on. A relatively minor one caught my eye last night.

A good looking fellow in jeans and t-shirt--clearly a union kind of guy--says that's he's buy-American all the way. His car is American, and his appliances, everything. So imagine how pleased he was to learn that virtually all the natural gas used in the U.S. "comes from under our feet." Later, he or the voiceover says that almost all the gas we use comes from North America, which isn't all in the U.S. last time I looked. In fact, the U.S. gets 14 percent of its gas from Canada, which accounts for about half Canada's production.