Potato I have

The Economist has an article that illustrates the complicated state of affairs in environmentalism: Texas rancher John Cain Carter is

the driving force behind Aliança da Terra, a new NGO that aims to be a “bridge” between producers and environmentalists, promoting standards of good practice that both sides can live with”

That NGO’s partners “are betting that as Brazilian agriculture becomes more corporate and internationally oriented it can be made to behave more responsibly.”

“What is novel about Mr Carter is that he sees things from the point of view of the producers, and is rooted in ranching—a bigger threat to the Amazon even than soya [or the logging industry].”

Things are bad and not yet getting any better:

In the year to August 2004, according to data released this month, 26,130 square kilometres (10,000 square miles) of Amazon rainforest were destroyed in Brazil, mostly by ranchers, farmers or speculators who cleared land in anticipation of ranchers and farmers coming. That is the second-highest level of destruction on record.

There is a fine photo of Mr Carter, and this is worth a chuckle: “[Carter] indulges in a bit of Texas swagger, as if George Bush had not made it the world’s least fashionable sub-culture.” Heros sometimes come from very curious quarters, maybe this Carter is another of them.

From a story in the Independent:

Global warming is now advancing so swiftly that only a massive expansion of nuclear power as the world’s main energy source can prevent it overwhelming civilisation, the scientist and celebrated Green guru, James Lovelock, says.

One response from an environmentalist:

Climate change and radioactive waste both pose deadly long-term threats, and we have a moral duty to minimise the effects of both, not to choose between them.

Idealism, meet Pragmatism.