Is the United States a laggard in the global environmental movement? Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute in Washington DC, thinks so, but writes in this BBC opinion piece that, with a little more patience from our global partners and some serious work by American officials, the U.S. of A can become a leader in the field.

Lash points to the switch from global-warming-denier Senator James Inhofe (R - OK) to Barbara Boxer (D – CA) in the Senate environmental committed "means that serious discussion of the issue will at least get an airing in the Senate." I hope he's right.

I doubt anyone in the environmental movement has forgotten that the U.S. is not part of the Kyoto Protocol, but how many know that we are part of included the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, the International Partnership for a Hydrogen Economy (IPHE), the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF), and Methane to Markets, a list Nash helpfully includes in his article while noting that even these modest agreements are not given full backing by the political establishment.

I was struck by Nash's statement that "China, despite its relative poverty, has stronger fuel-efficiency standards than the US and has enacted more demanding targets for renewable energy and efficiency." How bad is it that?

Anyway, the entire article is here. Lash doesn't make America's governmental policy look good, but he's not wrong.

[Source: Jonathan Lash / BBC]

It's not cheap, the new Saab 2.3t BioPower, but it is cool. Maybe that's why Sir Richard Branson likes his so much. Branson's been tooling around with his BioPower Saab for a few days now, and the general public in Britain can enjoy Saab's newest low-CO2 emissions ride on Monday, when vehicles with the 2.3t BioPower engine go on sale in the UK. Sure, AutoblogGreen cares about the 70 percent decrease in CO2 emissions, but we don't ignore that the BioPower produces 14 percent more maximum power and 11 percent more torque when burning E85 versus gasoline (Saab didn't offer specifics on E85's lower mileage numbers, but we're not ignoring the idea of them either). Using E85 also decreases the vehicle's zero-to-62 mph from 8.5 seconds with gasoline to 7.9 seconds.

The lowest-priced Saab with the 2.3t BioPower engine (the manual transmission 9-5 Saloon Linear 2.3t BioPower) costs £23,270. I'm pretty sure even this low-end version doesn't come with Saab BioPower stickers all over it.

To coincide with the release of the 2.3t, Saab asked the UK Government on Wednesday to further support domestic biofuel production. As I wrote yesterday, the UK's biofuel industry is growing. Saab Great Britain Limited managing director Jonathon Nash said all of the work done to improve the UK biofuel industry recently is now paying off with ethanol production, E85-capable cars, and E85 pumps now starting to be more regular in the UK. Still, Nash said the government has, "done little to encourage the public into driving cars that can run on eco-friendly fuel sources. [snip] A mere £10 reduction in Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) and a 20 pence per liter tax rebate on biofuels is not enough to stimulate this new market" and needs to support the biofuel industry more.

[Source: Saab]