First Takes: Waste Mgmt's Nat-Gas Milestone, Green Bulbs Evade a Ban, and More...

• Green Light Bulb Ban Bites the Dust: As symbolic efforts go, House Republicans' BULB Act was sort of a dim bulb from the get-go. But yesterday not even all Republicans got behind a bill to repeal energy-efficiency lighting standards, and it failed, 233 to 193.

• What does Climate Change Really Cost? Two reports published this week, one from the World Resources Institute and one from the Economics for Equity and the Environment Network, find that the government's estimated costs of greenhouse gas emissions is grossly understated. The government uses $21 per ton of emissions as its cost benchmark for implementing emissions-cutting regulations, while the two groups argue that the real costs are more like $900 per ton. Should that figure be widely accepted -- or even if the government ups its own cost estimate -- it will open the door to justifying much broader, and more urgent, efforts to reduce emissions.

• WM Hits 1K LNG: Waste Management today rolled out its 1000th natural gas vehicle, part of the company's larger green fleet efforts. The waste hauler is able to run its natural gas fleet on captured methane from its landfills, a tidy way of closing the loop on an otherwise potent greenhouse gas.

• Hybrids are Getting Less Green: Well, some hybrids are. Like the Chevy Silverado 2WD hybrid, which gets a stunningly poor 21 miles per gallon. Or the BMW ActiveHybrid X6, which does even worse: 18 MPG. Those are among the findings of a hybrid scorecard developed by the Union of Concerned Scientists to show that not all gas-electric hybrids are greener. I remember that being a concern seven or eight years ago, when the Prius and Insight first hit the streets and some automakers proposed using the rapid-start electric motor in hybrid engines to boost performance rather than fuel efficiency, but these hybrid SUVs seem to fail in even more ways: Many of them are sold bundled with premium features, further jacking up the price, and they give the sheen of environmental responsibility while actually doing very little to reduce emissions or pollution. The good news, I suppose, is that they're not very popular...

• The Green Angle on the News Corp. Scandal? Our colleague James Murray over at BusinessGreen offers what he admits is a tenuous green link to the massive scandal embroiling News Corp. in the U.K.:

"Once the dust has settled we are likely to end up with a new approach to press standards that can only benefit green businesses, climate scientists and the wider low-carbon economy.

"For years, climate scientists in particular, but also green campaigners, investors and business leaders, have got a raw deal from our predominantly right wing press.... a more robust yet voluntary press standards body could help ensure climate scientists and green businesses get both a fairer hearing and some form of recourse when they are misrepresented by Fleet Street's less than finest."

Tenuous though his link may be, I hope Murray's right.

_{Photo CC-licensed by GTD Aquitaine.}