Founder of the Earth Policy Institute, Lester Brown, has been saying for years that the global economy is being hobbled by man-made environmental trends: “shrinking forests, expanding deserts, falling water tables, eroding soils, collapsing fisheries, rising temperatures, melting ice, rising seas, and increasingly destructive storms.” In his book, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, Brown looks at the way the growth of the developing world will vastly accelerate these trends.

President Bush has selected his nominee to head the Department of Interior, which manages about one-fifth of all the land in the United States and determines which portions of it should be available for resource extraction. As promised, he “looked to the West” and plucked Republican governor of Idaho and former Senator Dirk Kempthorne. The nominee is somewhat less controversial than others who were in the running for this position, and widely expected to be swiftly confirmed. But greens are hardly jumping for joy: Kempthorne is also widely expected to stay the course of the agency's industry-friendly policies under Bush.