In an attempt to green up the planet, and its image, General Motors will confirm today plans to make half of its 181 plants worldwide "landfill-free" by the end of 2010. That means nothing from their manufacturing processes would end up in a landfill. "Green has become a hot commodity," says Gary Liss, a zero-waste consultant. "It's something customers are asking about. Employees want to work for companies that are green, and politicians are struggling to be greener than the next politician. It's valued because everyone got the message that we have a global crisis with climate change." Although much of the global warming debate has focused on carbon dioxide emissions, methane gas emitted from landfills actually is about 21 times more potent in causing climate change, Liss says.

At the National Governors Association conference where she first met John McCain, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had other business: making her case to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne against classifying the polar bear as a threatened species.Months later she sued Kempthorne, arguing that the Bush administration didn't use the best science in concluding that without further protection, the polar bear faces eventual extinction because of disappearing sea ice as the result of global warming. ...Environmentalists have nicknamed Palin the ''killa from Wasilla,'' a reference to the small town where she formerly was mayor.''Her philosophy from our perspective is cut, kill, dig and drill,'' said John Toppenberg, director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, maintaining she is ''in the Stone Age of wildlife management and is very opposed to utilizing accepted science.''

Policy positions previously staked out by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

President Bush said yesterday that the relatively little damage suffered by oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico because of Hurricane Gustav should prod Congress to open more coastal areas to offshore oil drilling, sounding a political note in the wake of the storm.

And Then There Was One (NY Times)
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
With his choice of Sarah Palin — the Alaska governor who has advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and does not believe mankind is playing any role in climate change — for vice president, John McCain has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.

In an experiment worth watching, Ecuador will ask voters to decide whether nature has rights.