Snapshot

Nearing the end of its epic journey through every corner of the UK, the Olympic Flame began its 70th and last day of travel at the Hampton Court Palace. 

It's been a bad week for Mitt. Always slightly out of step with the public at large, Romney chose to address the NAACP on Wednesday, drawing jeers from the audience for his remarks. In an interview following the speech, Mitt said he had expected to be booed. 

Matthew Pinsent, the UK's gold-medal rowing champion, bore the Flame onto Her Majesty's rowbarge, which the Queen christened Gloriana during her Diamond Jubilee. 

American sources have expressed concern that Assad's government motives for surrounding the city of Aleppo is to deliberately and systematically wipe out the population in that town. This concern has not driven the US government to act unilaterally, perhaps demonstrating some wisdom gained following the disastrous impact of the American decisions in beginning the Iraq war on international relations. 

Deliberately provocative speech? Ah the good old days of the Republican debates when the candidates were tripping over themselves to woo various groups of Americans. Perhaps Mitt's utter rejection by the Jewish community he brown-nosed so basely during the debates hurt his feelings, and he didn't want to risk it again. 

This stately vessel carried the Flame down the Thames, rowed by 16 proud Britons on the long oars. Seven torchbearers carried the flame while on the Queen's barge. Ending today's journey at the Tower Bridge, the Flame will next be seen when it appears at the Opening Ceremony.

The alternative is even more distasteful on Mitt's part, so we'll leave it at that. Mitt was up for another rejection anyway, as Condoleezaa Rice flatly responded to "leaks" to the Drudge Report that Mitt was eyeing her as a running mate by stating, again, that she has no interest in the VP spot.

The UN chief of human rights, Navi Pillay, has issued a plea to all parties to keep the civilian population out of the conflict. William Hague, the British foreign secretary, is said to be "deeply concerned" over the troop movements of the government forces in Syria, describing the situation in Aleppo as an "utterly unacceptable escalation of the conflict."

Too Big for Survival?

The UN News Center today announced the winners of the 2011 Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development (SEED) Awards. The winners:

• A company in Gambia that transforms ground nut shells into fuel briquettes.
• A company in Kenya where women produce aloe-based skin care products.

The awards recognize projects that promote sustainable development as part of a program that "spotlights new locally driven enterprises that have found creative ways to overcome environmental and developmental problems while also creating economic and social opportunities for their communities."

Tia Jackson, on Brandmaker News, has offered a list of 10 sustainable businesses to watch:

• Wash Cycle Laundry does its laundry pickup and delivery on bikes, uses natural and locally produced detergents, and uses high-efficiency machines.
• Sseko Designs creates footwear that hires college-bound women to make their sandals as part of program that funds their university educations.
• Tropical Traders Specialty Foods offers the first certified carbon neutral food in their Royal Hawaiian Honey, and offers Fair Trade honey from Brazil in their Bee Well Honey line.
• Liberty Bottleworks makes aluminum water bottles entirely from recycled aluminum. They're also the only metal water bottles made in the US.
• Bennu sells clothing and backpacks made from recycled materials, using recyled packaging, working with certified plants that offset carbon emissions.
• SunRidge Farms pays employees to bike to and from work, gives employees cloth bags to encourage them not to use plastic ones, and is investing in solar solutions for their facilities.
• Plywerk uses green techniques for photo mounting and the production of art panels.
• Andean Collection makes jewelry that engages in fair trade practices and engages in alternative use activities in Ecuador.
• Thai-Pepper produces teak cutting boards by harvesting the wood from old teak houses.
• Elizabeta Jewelry works with designers who use recycled or conflict-free diamonds and gemstones.

These are what we call capitalist enterprises; they're not just pipe dreams. It is the position of too many in the United States and other countries that the environment is simply to constricting and expensive to take into serious consideration as a part of doing business.

The US Rep to COP in Durban stated that, "We are making progress toward our target of reducing emissions in the range of 17 percent by 2020 through an array of domestic efforts, including robust new national fuel economy standards that will nearly double our automobile fleet efficiency by 2025 and the more than $90 billion of investments that we have made in clean energy."

Yet Mother Jones reports that a rider has already been inserted into the Interior Department's appropriations bill, section 453, which would prevent the government from either aiding carmakers in meeting those strict new standards or doing anything further to encourage fuel economy.

Why? As Mitt Romney puts it:

The EPA wants to be able to get in and grab more power and basically try and move the whole economy away from oil, gas, coal, nuclear and push it into the renewables. Look, we all like the renewables. But renewables alone are not going to power this economy. And yeah, I would, among other things, I would get the EPA out of its effort to manage carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles and trucks.

Romney's the one who gets criticized in the Republican primaries for being too centrist.

Really? Or perhaps, as stated by Naomi Klein:

I mean, renewable energy, if you compare it with fossil fuels, you know, it's everywhere. That's the point. That's why it is less profitable, because anybody can put a solar panel on their roof and have energy. And that's why there's such momentum against it from corporate America, because they want huge, centralized solutions, because they're way more profitable. Which isn't to say that you can't make a profit, you just can't make a stupid profit.

A thought: Perhaps it's not capitalist enterprises that can't *afford* to go green. Perhaps it's just monstrously large capitalist enterprises that cringe at any impingement on their insatiable need for profit. It was suggested by one of the Republican nominees last week that "when you're too big to fail, you're too big."

Perhaps when you're too big to respect the planet and your fellow human beings, you're too big.