Bush's speech on climate today generated an enormous amount of activity. If we could just bottle up the energy expended in paying attention to this latest presidential climate non-event, we'd be off Middle East oil in no time.

Just about everybody has issued a statement about what Bush had to say, but in the interest of promoting energy efficiency, I won't summarize any of it.

Instead, I'd like to call your attention to the headline that graced the front page of the Wall Street Journal -- just above the fold even.

When you want to quit smoking, do you call a tobacco company? That in essence is what civil society groups were wondering when they met last week to evaluate the climate-friendly announcements coming out of the World Bank.

World Bank leaders had convened in Washington DC -- abloom with cherry blossoms -- for their annual spring meeting, and announced plans to launch two new climate-change funds. One new pot of Bank money is focused on the development of clean technology, and the other pot earmarked for ‘resilience’—helping countries adapt to rising sea levels, increased intensity of storms, drought, and other economic harms resulting from climate change.

These two new funds are in addition to the Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), launched last year to put a bounty on ‘avoided deforestation’ in tropical rainforest nations.

Sound like good ideas, right? Clean technology, adaptation funds, valuing standing forests—what’s not to like?

Plenty, as it turns out, because the Bank has another face – as an institution that simultaneously exacerbates the problem of global climate change. The Bank, you see, isn’t working to dampen rising temperatures; rather, it’s fanning the flames, despite these latest announcements.

This Saturday night - March 29th, 2008 - at 8 pm local time, turn off your lights for one hour.

It's Earth Hour, organized by the World Wildlife Fund, and millions of people are joining the effort to make a statement of solidarity in support of climate action.

Imagine if the entire earth went off the grid for an hour, returned to a state of primordial humlessness, and it never came back on. 

When the elevator door opens on the sixth floor of a building on New York's upper east side, there it is right in front of you. A work of art called Last Turn - Your Turn by Robert Rauschenberg -- the official picture of the Rio Earth Summit of 1992. And in the renowned artist's own handwriting, here's what it says in the top left corner:

I pledge to make the Earth a secure and hospitable home for present and future generations.

Written in a child-like manner, it puts a lump in your throat -- and an ache in your heart -- when you think about the 16 long years of opportunities that have passed us by since that idea of sustainability was captured in this iconic work of art.

I went to see the piece thanks to a tip from friend, locavore and cyber-maven Holley Atkinson, hoping to see the artist himself at the opening of a show called Robert Rauschenberg and the Environmental Crisis at the Jacobson Howard gallery.

The 10,000 people of Tuvalu live on nine low-lying islands in the South Pacific whose highest point is a mere 13 feet above sea level. One of its nearest neighbors? The island of Samoa - due Southeast about 695 miles across open ocean.

Its environment minister, Tavau Teii, had the honor of delivering the first words to kick off the U.N. General Assembly’s second day of talks on climate change. His message, like that of speaker after speaker from the small nations of the world, was a cry for help directed at the big powers.