Preparing For Battle: Next
month the Senate is scheduled to
take up legislation aimed at capping
greenhouse gas emissions. The
Washington Post
reports
that the oil and coal industries
have ramped up their efforts to
fight the climate-change bill with
ad campaigns, rallies, concerts and
speeches. Conversely, the
environmental lobby seems to be
sputtering, unsure of what approach
to take to help get the bill passed:
"It seems that
environmentalists are struggling in
a fight they have spent years
setting up. They are making slow
progress adapting a movement built
for other goals -- building alarm
over climate change, encouraging
people to īgreenī their lives --
into a political hammer, pushing a
complex proposal the last mile
through a skeptical Senate.
"Even now, these groups differ on
whether to scare the public with
predictions of heat waves or woo it
with promises of green jobs. And
they are facing an opposition with
tycoon money and a gift for
political stagecraft."
A Worldwide First: Reuters
reports
that a Japanese company, Nippon
Mining & Metals Co., has announced
plans to open a plant that will
extract lithium and manganese from
used lithium-ion batteries on a
commercial scale:
"The company, which belongs to
the Nippon Mining Holdings Inc.
group, said it would launch a test
plant to extract the two metals
along with cobalt and nickel before
beginning commercial operations in
2011. Demand for lithium-ion
batteries is widely expected to grow
due to their use in electric cars,
as well as mobile phones and laptop
computers."
Comestible Two-Piece: The
Kansas City Star reports that People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
is
offering
the city of Topeka $6,000 to put an
ad on the side of a county recycling
truck urging people to become
vegetarians. The ad would depict a
blonde woman wearing a bikini made
of lettuce leaves.
Pete
Fehrenbach is managing
editor of Waste & Recycling News.
Past installments of this column are
collected in
the Inbox
archive.
