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In a wonderfully silly update of the (Canadian newspaper the) National Post’s campaign of climate change denial, columnist Lorne Gunther (picked up here in the Edmonton Journal) argues that global warming has ended - and to prove it, he imagines the earth as an out-of-control Toyota which he decides has run out of gas.

What good fortune that might be (running out of gas in time to stop before you hit the cliff). But how can we think that our careering planetary heating system - which appears to have it its top speed and has been holding steady for more than a decade - is “out of gas” when we’re pumping the stuff into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate?

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Apple became the fourth company in recent days to completely sever ties with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the business lobby’s backwards stance on climate change.

In a letter to the Chamber obtained by the New York Times, http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business/apple-chamber.pdf " target="_blank">Apple states [PDF]:

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As the old saying goes: “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Or in the case of Toyota: “You can’t have your green and fight it too.”

With a well-earned reputation as a leader in the development of fuel efficient cars it boggles my mind that Toyota continues to be a supporter of the US Chamber of Commerce - an organization that is leading the charge against President Obama’s clean energy agenda.

Other big supporters of the Chamber of Commerce have been distancing themselves from the organization over their archaic standpoint on the issue of climate change.

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The exodus continues.  Nike announced today that the company simply cannot stand by and watch the Chamber of Commerce continue its campaign to derail much-needed action to address climate change.  So Nike Just Did It.

Here is Nike’s statement [PDF copy courtesy of NRDC here]:

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The Obama administration recently granted California the right to enforce its first-in-the-nation greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks, after announcing plans in May to boost federal fuel efficiency standards.  Thirteen other states will also implement the California emissions standard until 2012 when the U.S. government will adopt the California standards as federal law. 

The move will collectively slash emissions by 30 percent in 2016.

But California’s long overdue victory on emissions standards didn’t come without a protracted legal and public relations effort by the auto industry, which spent untold millions (billions?) trying to derail the California Clean Car program that would reduce global warming pollution from cars and trucks.

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The Canadian government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is reported to be on the verge of giving $200 million from a "green initiatives fund" to Ford and General Motors - to help those failing companies continue to build really big (and increasingly unpopular) cars and trucks.

Ford, which lost $8.7 billion in the second-quarter of this year as its truck-dominated fleet crashed into oily reality, is advertising its latest Ontario production facility as "green" because it features a "more fuel-efficient V8 engine." And Stephen Harper, in a pre-election vote-buying frenzy, is using taxpayers money to prop up this stupidity.