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Sat, Jan 14, 2012
from Grist:
Lexicon of Sustainability: Biodiversity vs. monoculture
Industrial agriculture = monoculture.
Small farms = biodiversity.
Small, organic farms like Rick Knoll's are able to eliminate their reliance on petrochemical-based fertilizers and pesticides. The results are fewer pollutants, less environmental degradation, and cleaner air. And by using cover cropping and other soil fertilization principles they are able to sequester carbon and keep topsoil -- which is carbon heavy -- from being lost into the atmosphere (the latter also contributes to climate change). ...
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Next you'll be telling me this approach is sustainable, for, like, years.
ApocaDoc
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Fri, Jul 15, 2011
from Bloomberg:
Clean Energy Investment Up 22 Percent on Solar Boom, New Energy Says
New investment in clean energy rose 22 percent from a year ago to $41.7 billion in the second quarter following a jump in funding for solar thermal power plants, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said.
The figure was 27 percent higher than in the first quarter and the third-highest on record, the London-based researcher said. BrightSource Energy Inc. raised $2.2 billion for its 392- megawatt project in the U.S. while funds also flowed to Nextera Energy Resources LLC and Eskom Holdings Ltd.
The findings contrast with a 13 percent slump during the quarter for the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index, which tracks 93 clean energy companies. The Standard & Poor's 500 index of leading U.S. shares was little changed in the period.
"The explanation is partly to do with ongoing investor worries, perhaps overdone, about future policy support, and partly to do with the fact that this is a highly competitive sector, in which costs are falling and high manufacturer margins are hard to sustain," said Michael Liebreich, chief executive officer of New Energy Finance, said in a statement released today. ...
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That may track with rising ice loss, weather disruptions, resource wars, and other energy-sector indicators.
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Wed, Mar 2, 2011
from BusinessGreen:
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp goes carbon neutral
A memo from chief executive Rupert Murdoch to employees outlined the financial benefits of the company's four-year initiative to reduce carbon emissions from its facilities and operations. He talked up News Corp's ongoing commitment to becoming more environmentally friendly, tying in the upside for shareholders.
"The company's global data center consolidation strategy alone will save approximately $20m per year and reduce data centre emissions by almost 15 per cent when completed later in 2011," said Murdoch in a statement.
The company also set out goals for 2015, which included reducing absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent and investing in clean energy equal to 20 per cent of the firm's electricity usage. It is also reaching out to 100 of its largest suppliers to have them make a difference in their environmental impacts. ...
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I'm sure it's true. After all, I heard it on FOX.
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Tue, Dec 7, 2010
from New York Times:
Britain Aims for Radical Power Market Reform in Push for Low-Carbon Energy
The U.K. power market is about to face the most radical reform in decades as it becomes increasingly clear that progress toward decarbonizing its energy system in the face of climate change is moving at a snail's pace when it really needs to move like the wind, experts say. Next week, the government will produce a consultation paper on what needs to be done to bring forward the new low-carbon power plants the country urgently needs as many old ones face closure and with emission reduction targets that ministers say, with increasing signs of desperation, are seriously challenging.
Today, the Committee on Climate Change -- set up under the 2008 Climate Change Act to monitor government progress toward the 80 percent carbon emission cut from 1990 levels by 2050 stipulated in the legislation -- issued its most urgent call for action to date.... Fuel poverty is defined as a household's having to spend 10 percent or more of its income on power. The government is known to favor a full system of feed-in tariffs for low-carbon energy, extending the current household scheme that came in nine months ago to cover utilities, as well, offering an attractive price for producing electricity to the grid, but at the same time pushing up prices for consumption. There is no ducking the dilemma. ...
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Here in the States, we're champeen dilemma-duckers.
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Mon, Nov 15, 2010
from Agence France-Press:
Hong Kong's first green jail sparks controversy
Hong Kong's first environmentally-friendly prison has stirred up a debate in one of the world's most densely populated cities where many live in dingy and overcrowded high-rise flats.
Billed as the jail of the future, the sprawling 1.5 billion Hong Kong dollar (200 million US) facility was built based on a sustainable concept that promotes open space with green and energy-efficient features.
Authorities said the Lo Wu prison, the newest of the city's 16 prisons, which opened in August, aims to provide more humane living conditions for some 1,400 female inmates as the city moves to ease prison overcrowding.
The prison boasts advanced features such as a "green" roof to lower temperature, rooftop solar panels, a natural lighting system, high-headroom spaces and large dormitory blocks to enhance natural ventilation. ...
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The Shawshank Recyclables
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Thu, Aug 12, 2010
from Marketplace:
A green way to dispose human remains
...Cutting carbon emissions, greenhouse gasses, has become a goal that reaches into every corner of life. And now, it seems, death. Six states in this country have approved a new, low-carbon way to dispose of human remains. Resomation is being offered as an alternative to cremation -- reducing the body to a mixture of liquid and minerals...The process was developed by a Scottish firm. With zero carbon emissions and using seven times less energy than cremation, this... would make for the greenest of funerals...but many people recoil from it for other reasons. Resomation produces a kind of powder, which can be tastefully placed in an urn and given to the bereaved. But it also leaves a fluid -- and that, it has been suggested, might be washed down the drain. ...
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Being washed down the drain seems fitting somehow.
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Tue, May 4, 2010
from Purdue, via EurekAlert:
NASA, Purdue study offers recipe for global warming-free industrial materials
Let a bunch of fluorine atoms get together in the molecules of a chemical compound, and they're like a heavy metal band at a chamber music festival. They tend to dominate the proceedings and not always for the better.
That's particularly true where the global warming potential of the chemicals is concerned, says a new study by NASA and Purdue University researchers.
The study offers at least a partial recipe that industrial chemists could use in developing alternatives with less global warming potential than materials commonly used today.... "What we're hoping is that these additional requirements for minimizing global warming will be used by industry as design constraints for making materials that have, perhaps, the most green chemistry," says Joseph Francisco, a Purdue chemistry and earth and atmospheric sciences professor. The classes of chemicals examined in the study are widely used in air conditioning and the manufacturing of electronics, appliances and carpets. Other uses range from applications as a blood substitute to tracking leaks in natural gas lines.... ...
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Hope may be the triumph of imagination over reality!
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Sat, Feb 13, 2010
from TED, via Mongabay:
Bill Gates: ban coal and invest in clean energy technology
The planet needs "energy miracles" to overcome the dual challenges of meeting energy demand and addressing climate change, said Microsoft founder Bill Gates during a speech Friday at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California.
"What we're going to have to do at a global scale is create a new system," Gates said. "So we need energy miracles."... Gates said the world needs to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050 and suggested researchers spent the next 20 years developing new technologies and the following 20 years implementing them. He said coal and natural gas should be phased out by 2050 and touted carbon capture and storage technology and wind, solar photovoltaic and solar thermal, and nuclear power. According to CNN Gates focused on reprocessing reactor waste into clean energy. ...
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Let's make that "10 and 10," and zero by 2020, shall we?
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Mon, Nov 9, 2009
from Agence France-Presse:
Copenhagen failure would be 'suicide': Maldives
The president of the Maldives has warned that a failure to agree a deal on limiting greenhouse gas emissions in Copenhagen next month would be an act of "collective suicide".
"At the moment every country arrives at climate negotiations seeking to keep their own emissions as high as possible," President Mohamed Nasheed said here. "This is the logic of the madhouse, a recipe for collective suicide.
"We don't want a global suicide pact. We want a global survival pact."... Nasheed opened a two-day forum for 11 countries considered the most vulnerable to climate change, urging them to go carbon neutral to show the rich world the way forward. ...
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One world leader seems to be flying over this crazy cuckoo's nest.
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Sun, Sep 13, 2009
from New Scientist:
Better world: Tax carbon and give the money to the people
A universal carbon tax could be far simpler. NASA climatologist James Hansen is a vocal proponent, favouring a variant in which fossil fuels are taxed at source or at a country's port of entry. The most polluting fuels in terms of carbon emissions, such as coal or tar-sand-derived oil, could be taxed more heavily than others. Consumers would not pay the tax directly, but its effect would permeate through to everything from the price of gas to the price of food: the more carbon-intensive goods or services are, the more heavily they will be hit.
That doesn't mean that consumers need be out of pocket. As Hansen envisages the scheme, the proceeds of the tax should not be kept by the government, but instead distributed equally among all citizens in the form of payments into their bank accounts. Those who make greener choices -- flying less, insulating their home, running a more energy-efficient car -- will make a net profit from the tax.... "A carbon tax is honest. It takes one page rather than 1400," [Hansen] says. "That doesn't go down too well in Washington." ...
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Simple and sensible leaves too little room for opportunism.
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Wed, Dec 10, 2008
from Guardian (UK):
Europe pledges strict emissions cut to tempt China and India into climate deal
European officials have offered to make the continent virtually zero-carbon in an attempt to lure China and other developing countries into a new global climate deal to replace the Kyoto protocol.
Stavros Dimas, European commissioner for the environment, told the Guardian that the EU could aim for a 80-95 percent reduction in greenhouse gas pollution by 2050 in exchange for greater efforts by developing nations to limit their emissions.
Dimas said the pledge has "already been put on the table" and that he was awaiting responses. In return, Europe would ask developing countries to reduce their forecasted carbon pollution growth by 15-30 percent over the next decade. "We haven't got any reaction, so they're floating somewhere," he said. ...
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Apart from how disconnected that is from our real needs (2050? Try 2015...), this is good news!
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Tue, Dec 9, 2008
from Scientific American:
Chicago's Plans to Go Green
...In September, Chicago unveiled an action plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to one quarter below 1990 levels by 2020, followed by reductions through 2050 that would slash emissions by 80 percent. Up to 400,000 homes and 9,200 skyscrapers and factories would require energy-efficient retrofits in the next 12 years. All 21 coal-burning power plants throughout Illinois would need to be refurbished, too, requiring statewide cooperation. Another 450,000 riders would have to wedge themselves into elevated trains and buses every day—a 30 percent increase—rather than commute by car. “I don’t know of another municipal plan that is this ambitious or comprehensive,” says Rebecca Stanfield, a senior energy advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council... ...
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Now, if they could just produce a World Series winner...
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Tue, Oct 21, 2008
from Christian Science Monitor:
Wood heat rises again
But as people polish their stoves and admire their woodpiles, environmentalists and health officials are expressing concern that burning wood in old or poorly designed stoves could add significantly to air pollution. And although wood represents a local and renewable fuel source, its credentials as a "carbon neutral" fuel -- not adding to global warming -- are hazy at best.... "I like to call it '75 percent carbon neutral,'" Mr. Gulland says. While wood burning does release carbon dioxide and methane, advocates argue that the trees would do that anyway in the forest as they die, fall over, and decompose.... "On a scale of carbon neutrality, it's better than burning a fossil fuel, but it's not the same as wind or solar," Rector says. "It's a very complicated question," she says. "We still need to let the scientists figure it out." ...
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It's a knotty problem, but I'll go out on a limb....
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Want more context?
Try reading our book FREE online:
Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies!
More fun than a barrel of jellyfish!
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Wed, Aug 20, 2008
from Guardian (UK):
Japan to launch carbon footprint labelling scheme
Japan is to carry carbon footprint labels on food packaging and other products in an ambitious scheme to persuade companies and consumers to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
The labels, to appear on dozens of items including food and drink, detergents and electrical appliances from next spring, will go further than similar labels already in use elsewhere.
They will provide detailed breakdowns of each product's carbon footprint under a government-approved calculation and labeling system now being discussed by the trade ministry and around 30 firms.
The labels will show how much carbon dioxide is emitted during the manufacture, distribution and disposal of each product, the ministry said.
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This quip's production required 6 ounces of CO2, distribution 2 pounds of CO2, and disposal: just more hot air.
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Sat, Jul 12, 2008
from BBC:
Living in a world without waste
"The Mayor of Kamikatsu, a small community in the hills of eastern Japan, has urged politicians around the world to follow his lead and make their towns "Zero Waste"... Kamikatsu may be a backwater in the wooded hills and rice terraces of south-eastern Japan but it's become a world leader on waste policy.
There are no waste collections from households at all. People have to take full responsibility for everything they throw away. ...
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I see trees of green... red roses too... folks take care of their waste... how 'bout you?...And I think to myself... what a wonderful world...
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Wed, Apr 16, 2008
from The Guardian:
Tesco labels will show products
"...The UK's biggest supermarket ... Tesco is to test putting "carbon labels" on its own-brand products next month in a move to enable consumers to choose products which are less damaging to the environment. The retailer will put carbon-count labels on varieties of orange juice, potatoes, energy-efficient light bulbs and washing detergent, stating the quantity in grammes of CO2 equivalent put into the atmosphere by their manufacture and distribution.
Chief executive Sir Terry Leahy said: "We will give the carbon content of the product and the category average." The labels should eventually allow shoppers to compare carbon costs in the same way they can now compare salt and calorie content." ...
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After we get used to our products being labeled, we can label our cars and houses and bodies!
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Sat, Mar 8, 2008
from Los Angeles Times:
Edison to launch big wind project
"Southern California Edison said Friday that it was about to begin construction on a desert wind farm that could provide power for upward of 3 million homes by 2013, predicting that it would be the largest wind transmission project in the country...Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, said the project would create the largest block of wind energy in the country." ...
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Clearly, this is a win-win-wind situation.
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