"Mother Nature's Son," Sir Paul McCartney, recently expressed his disappointment with environmental NGOs for not putting greater emphasis on reducing meat consumption -- along with driving less and replacing standard light bulbs with CFLs -- as ways to fight climate change.

Paul's been a vegetarian and animal-rights activist since he and his family realized the cute sheep in the meadow in their backyard were the lamb chops on their plates (You may remember his guest appearance, with the late Linda McCartney, on one of the best Simpsons episodes of all time, "Lisa The Vegetarian." But we digress.)

Sir Paul said he's surprised that environmental groups rarely list vegetarianism as a top priority, given the huge swaths of land and billions of gallons of water used by the meat industry.

McCartney's recent pleas make more sense than ever, especially given the soaring food around the world. Most of the blame has been put on biofuels, as more farmers are growing corn for ethanol since it's so lucrative, therefore reducing the supply of other important staples. Plus, the rising cost of energy to transport food, and the reduced crop harvests in places like Australia have all combined to create a perfect storm for rising food prices.

We think we're happy about the the Governors' Declaration on Climate Change, signed last Friday at a Yale University conference, but the the pledge is almost as vague as President's Bush's Rose Garden climate speech last week.

For all the hype, only the governors of Connecticut, California, Kansas and New Jersey showed up in person to sign the declaration, which is founded on three principles: federal-state partnerships are critical to combating climate change; state-based climate action plans deserve continued support; and rewarding and encouraging mandatory state and federal action is important to addressing the problem.

See what we mean? A few targets would have been nice. We are pleased to see that 14 other governors either signed the declaration before the conference or sent proxies to Connecticut to do it for them. Together those 18 states make up over half the U.S. population. Coming less than three days after President Bush made it clear that state and regional policies and regulations are "the wrong way" to fight climate change, it was nice to see the states fire back so quickly.

You're going to be surprised to hear this, but Republic of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger attended and spoke at the conference. "It's so big, it's so powerful, what we do has consequences," said Schwarzenegger, in what we think was a reference to his state.

Schwarzenegger added that even though he has endorsed John McCain, he believes any of the three remaining presidential will be able to break "the deadlock" on setting national climate change policy, including mandatory emissions targets.

Air quality regulators in the San Francisco Bay Area are expected to approve a new fee for businesses next month that is tied to greenhouse gas emissions. If the measure passes, the fee assessment of 4.4 cents per ton of carbon dioxide emitted would be the first of its kind by any government nationwide.

They mine as well just call it the President Bush "regulatory trainwreck" nightmare fee.

But we think it's a pretty good idea, and a great example of local officials taking the initiative with addressing climate change. However, we also think the measure will be largely symbolic, as the fee is small enough that it is unlikely to have any impact on overall emissions.

Under the proposal by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, most businesses would pay less than $100 per year. A gas station, for example, would be assessed the hefty fee of about $1. The top 10 companies would pay more than $820,000 per year, or about 70 percent of the $1.2 million total that officials expect to collect. The largest Bay Area emitter -- a Shell oil refinery -- would have to pay $195,355 based on its 2005 emissions of 4.4 million metric tons.

The relatively small fee hasn't stopped the oil and gas industry from making its displeasure known. A spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association told the San Francisco Chronicle that "programs and taxes like this district's amount to a balkanization of the process at a time when we've not yet really determined the best strategies."

Sounds like someone was listening to Bush's "let's keep emitting for 17 more years" climate change speech last week.

Wednesday was a big day for President Bush. Not only did he welcome the Pope to the United States, but he also delivered a rare speech on climate change. We expected to be underwhelmed --which explains the drinking game that we created -- and in the end, the speech essentially lived up to our low expectations.

But there is still lots to discuss about Bush's remarks, and so on Thursday evening, three of EnviroWonk's writers met online for the first official chat in the short history of this blog. We hope it will be the first of many. Here's what transpired:

Dave: What surprised you guys most about yesterday’s speech?

Rob: you mean beyond how poorly it was written?

Dave: Well, they can't make W sound too smart ... people wouldn't believe it.

Samantha: I was surprised with the way we've been hemorrhaging jobs he didn't do more, or anything, to stress the job creation aspect

Rob: I was a bit surprised that he took such an obvious shot at his environmental agencies when he said "Decisions with such far-reaching impact should not be left to unelected regulators and judges. Such decisions should be opened -- debated openly; such decisions should be made by the elected representatives of the people they affect. The American people deserve an honest assessment of the costs, benefits and feasibility of any proposed solution."

Three things came to mind upon seeing the cover of the new issue of Time, which hits newsstands today.

1. Whoa, green border.

2. Nice headline.

3. Ridiculous photo manipulation.

Let's start with the good. Time continues with its impressive brand of advocacy journalism when it comes to climate change. It seems like the magazine has always been one step ahead of its competitors when it comes to environmental reporting, going all the way back to 1989, when it named "Endangered Earth" as its Planet of the Year.

The magazine has stepped up its coverage in recent years, especially around Earth Day. Remember the polar bear issue from two years ago with the "Be Worried. Be Very Worried" headline? Last year's issue featured a penguin for its "Global Warming Survival Guide" cover.

Which brings us to this week's issue. The article by Bryan Walsh is a good one, and in light of President Bush's climate change speech two days ago, quite timely. He outlines a plan of attack that includes a national cap-and-trade system, tougher energy-efficiency mandates, as well as significant public and private investment in green technologies that will "lead us to a postcarbon world."

And so it's a real shame that such a strong story will be largely ignored, thanks to the stupid -- and some might argue offensive -- cover photo. Look, we get the war metaphor. There's no need to slam it over our heads by replacing the American flag with a tree in the most famous war photo of all time. It made us cringe, so how do you think veterans -- including the few surviving men who actually fought at Iwo Jima -- are going to react?

We didn't expect President Bush's climate change speech to win him any new friends in Europe, but yesterday's Rose Garden address is going over even worse than we imagined at the Major Economies Meeting in Paris.

How bad is it? Well, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel issued a statement with the headline "Bush's Neanderthal Speech." It didn't get much better, with Gabriel saying that the speech "showed not leadership but losership." And based on the reaction of other officials, it appears that all niceties are off the table at the U.S.-led ministerial-level meeting of the world's major carbon emitters:

• South African Environment and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk: "There is no way whatsoever that we can agree to what the US is proposing."
• Anonymous European official: "This is disappointing, but Bush will be leaving office soon. What he says doesn't matter so much any more."
• France's chief climate negotiator, Brice Lalonde: "The current American administration is just beginning to wake up, a bit late," to the dangers of global warming.
• More from Gabriel: "We are glad that there are also other voices in the United States."

In fact, the only non-critical response that we could find from Paris came from chief U.N. climate change official Yvo de Boer, who kind of has to be diplomatic. "I see it as an offer on the table," he said. Ouch.

Well, that was fun, wasn't it? President Bush delivered a 2,500-word speech on the administration's climate change strategy earlier today, a Rose Garden address that included some rather optimistic goals on capping greenhouse gas emissions, along with a lot of familiar rhetoric.

We'll get to the analysis of Bush's remarks in a subsequent post, but right now let's go over the all-important results from the Bush Drinking Game: Climate Change Edition. There were a few surprises, as well as a few key words and phrases that we somehow forgot to include -- "energy", "greenhouse gases" and "market" are three of the most glaring omissions.

Overall though, the EnviroWonk team did a pretty good job of predicting the key buzzwords. Check out the statistics after the jump.

We were so excited to hear President Bush's climate change speech today that we tuned into C-SPAN early and caught the end of a press conference with Jim Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Connaughton essentially talked about what Bush would be be talking about, followed by a question-and-answer session. Just for reference, phrases "in quotations" are what Jimmy said verbatim, while the italics are our interpretation/translation of the answers that we couldn't write down fast enough. The questions are all real.

If any of you lucky readers caught the speech, you'll know we didn't even have to try to be snarky -- the reporters and Connaughton really did all the work for us.

Q: Since Bush a lame duck, isn't it true that the rest of the world doesn't care what he has to say?

A: The President is responsible for ridding the world of ozone depleting substances, which trap more heat than natural GHGs; other nations were so impressed with his courage that they followed suit, including India and China. The entire world is looking to what the US is doing, how we are setting and meeting our goals. [Us -- really? We thought we lost our hegemony roughly around March/April 2003]