Conservation Value Notes

Pondering The Possibilities of Swappable Electric Vehicle Batteries

2011-10-28T10:52:00.000-07:00

Readers of Conservation Value Notes know that I'm an enthusiast of Better Place electric vehicle battery systems. Running low on charge? Instead of having to plug in my electric vehicle (EV) for hours to recharge, I can simply pull into a battery swap station. In minutes, I'm driving out with a fully-charged battery!

I can envision how battery swapping capability might offer ways around the range limitation of electric vehicles, a key factor holding back peoples' trust in them as everyday cars. Let's say I need to drive to Tahoe for a ski weekend in my Better Place-powered EV. If my limited-range spare battery (which I keep in the trunk) is not enough to get me there, I simply rent an extra battery or two (and maybe a portable overnight charger), and I'm good to go! There's another a business opportunity (and an entire service sector) that could come out of the EV industry -- in the emerging paradigm detailed in Lisa Ganskey's The Mesh.

Even better? How about if my house is powered by a solar electric system and Better Place offers a home back-up power supply in which the batteries are compatible with my EV? They can therefore double as extra batteries for road trips! Heading out of town for a camping trip in a wilderness up near Mt. Shasta? I simply pull one or two of the batteries out of my Better Place-compatible home back-up power supply and toss them in the trunk.

Granted, I have no idea how near or far Better Place actually might be from this vision. I'm just pondering the possibilities of swappable EV battery technology.

What do you think -- which battery system is going to win in the emerging world of electric vehicles?

America's Powergrid is an Embarrassingly Inefficient Eyesore

2011-10-26T06:11:00.000-07:00

Have you ever walked down the street and gotten just a little bit disgusted by the sheer ugliness of the power grid? Powerlines dangling everywhere, trees hacked away to make room for dangling wires that inefficiently connect our homes to a power plant that is often tens or even hundreds of miles away.

This is one of many reasons my eyes brighten at the thought of mass deployment of distributed energy -- putting a solar electric and hot water system on every house and building. As I like to say, "empty roofs = wasted space."

Just think of the tens if not hundreds of millions of acres of empty roof tops out there waiting to be tapped for their energy potential, from homes and apartment buildings, to office buildings, shopping malls and Wal-Marts.

The power grid in America is also so outdated, it makes those tawdry Cadillacs from the '70's look like modern marvels of innovation. As this piece from Green Tech media reports, it is obscenely wasteful compared to what we're seeing from our clean tech competitors (the boldfacing is mine):

China has the world's fastest supercomputer, the fastest high speed trains and is leading the world in building nuclear plants. One of its more remarkable achievements has been modernizing the grid. The country has developed a 1 million AC volt transmission line that loses only 8 percent of its power on a 1,200 mile journey from the power plant in western China to the cities in the east.

An equivalent U.S. line, with only 760 kilovolts, would lose 80 percent of its power.

That's just embarrassing.

So we destroy ecosystems to mine and smelt megatons of copper to manufacture powerlines that do their job so inefficiently that the majority of fossil fuel used to generate electricity goes to waste. In effect, we're creating much of our heat-trapping and lung-sickening pollution for nothing, and are wasting untold $$billions in the process.

How might we view this glass as half-FULL?

Where there is waste (in the form of pollution), there is an opportunity to improve efficiencies of resource and energy use, cut costs and straight-up make things better. It's time to bring America's electricity generation system into the 21st century, not only via a massive deployment of clean energy infrastructure, but with a complete overhaul of our power grid.

Props to Energy Star's 'Most Efficient' Label

2011-10-24T06:11:00.000-07:00

Do you know, off the top of your head, how much more efficient EnergyStar-certified appliances and electronics are compared to their conventional counterparts?

Would you be disappointed to learn that on average, it only means about 20% more efficient?

How can you find the most efficient Energy Star products - the ones that will help you obliterate your home energy bills and carbon footprint alike?

Fortunately, Energy Star has now made it easier for us by launching the 'Most Efficient' Label, reports GreenBiz:

"The Most Efficient standards for refrigerator/freezers require them to be about 30 percent more efficient than standard models and the TV requirements call for 80 percent more efficiency than common products on the market, the EPA said.

The lure of slapping "Most Efficient" on products is also intended to act as an incentive to companies to step up the efficiency of their products to make them stand out from the crowd.

Out of the 1,800-plus refrigerators and freezers that carry the Energy Star label, only 15 are considered Most Efficient. And 18 televisions out of the 1,400 Energy Star TVs are called Most Efficient.

Props to EnergyStar for making it nice and simple to access the "A List" of products it certifies to be energy efficient. The quicker and easier it becomes to find this money-saving information and to tell your friends how to find it, the more people will do so. Simplicity is, after all, one of the key pillars of "sticky" ideas.

Click here to find the absolutely most efficient Energy Star-certified washers, refrigerators, televisions and heating/cooling systems.
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Tropical Resorts Missing Out On Lucrative Wind+Solar Business Opportunities

2011-10-17T06:22:00.000-07:00

A few years ago when I visited Caye Caulker in Belize, I was appalled to learn that the island burns dirty diesel fuel to generate its electricity when the weather is either sunny or windy or both almost all of the time.

I just got back from Cabo San Lucas at the southern tip of Baja, Mexico and I'm sorry to report the same type of gripe with this resort community (though I don't know whether they generate electricity specifically via diesel fuel or via Mexico's other mostly dirty or land-altering sources).

In Cabo's hot climate, resorts have air conditioning blasting in virtually every occupied room 24/7. Yet there is nary a solar panel or wind turbine to be seen (aside from one isolated green housing community that a hotel manager told me about when I asked her why they don't use solar). What a waste of expensive, dirty fossil fuels that generate huge amounts of heat-trapping carbon pollution.

Could there be a significant missed business opportunity here -- both for Cabo's resorts to cut their long-term energy costs and for major solar companies to secure lucrative qualified sales leads?

One that comes to mind stems from resort owners' aggressive sales of time shares to pretty much all vacationers. For example, we hadn't even left the lobby after checking in before a time share salesperson stopped us, offering the "all inclusive" meal/drinks plan for $40/day instead of the normal $77.

After talking it over with my wife, we decided to take them up to secure the savings they were offering. For good measure, I also negotiated in a 50 minute massage for my wife and one for myself, and another $50 in benefits. All we needed to do to secure these perks was visit another resort (which we wanted to check out anyway) and take the 1.5 hour time share tour with their sales associate, who we knew would offer an aggressive sales pitch to buy in. We took the tour with a very nice Canadian gentleman, enjoyed our free private taxi rides and Mexican breakfast buffet, declined the timeshare pitch, and walked away with $500+ in perks. From the standpoint of a conservation scientist, I was more than happy to let a $billionaire real estate developer subsidize our vacation.

That said, what if the sales associate also offered us a major discount on a home solar installation -- one that was almost too good to turn down? What if in exchange for resorts marketing a solar company's services to vacationers, the solar company would provide them with rooftop and on-site solar electricity and/or hot water installations? This type of arrangement could dramatically cut resorts' huge electricity costs and carbon footprints. Another way the resort industry could approach this type of clean energy program is to generate qualified sales leads that it could then sell to vacationers' local solar providers in exchange for money or services. Certainly there are ways to refine this idea, but you get the gist.

What do you think -- why should all these tropical resorts, located in hot, sunny climates in windy coastal locations, NOT be getting their electricity from local solar and/or wind installations?

Note to Traditional Media: Healthy Environment = Healthy Economy

2011-10-07T06:11:00.000-07:00

It seems that almost anytime a traditional media story covers an "environmental" issue, the environmental solution is framed as "VERSUS" the economy.

We hear statements such as, "environmental issues are the last thing the public is thinking about during a difficult economy." Or "policy solutions for a healthier environment face increasing political resistance in Washington as leaders from both parties focus on ways to create jobs."

It's as if these people are stuck in a 20th Century bubble.

Fortunately, with prominent credible health organizations like the American Lung Association now getting it, the dominant media framing of environmental issues is poised to change. As a recent press release from this esteemed organization stated:

“The Road to Clean Air” is a new report by the American Lung Association in California showing that California could avoid $7.2 billion in health and societal costs and reduce all major air pollution-related health impacts by 70 percent if the state adopts a strong set of new passenger vehicle standards, which are being drafted now.

That's just in California.

At the national level, a 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences titled "The Hidden Costs of Energy" estimated that dirty energy costs Americans $120 billion per year in largely health costs alone. Another study explored effects of air pollution on worker productivity and concluded that:

We find robust evidence that ozone levels well below federal air quality standards have a significant impact on productivity: a 10 ppb decrease in ozone concentrations increases worker productivity by 4.2 percent.

More and more, we are realizing that the solutions to our environmental problems are also solutions to the great economic, health and quality of life challenges of our times.

It's Time to Jump Off the Sinking Ship That Is the Fossil Fuel Economy

2011-10-05T06:11:00.000-07:00

Could our energy choices moving forward be any clearer? Fossil fuel prices are climbing. They are uncertain. It's really no fun having our transport system stuck on oil. It's increasingly scary, actually.

In contrast, clean energy technologies like solar are experiencing rapid price declines, as this piece notes:

The truth is that in addition to cutting pollution and reducing our dependence on oil imports, renewable energy has a major advantage over fossil fuels: sharply declining prices over time. The price of solar energy production, for example, has fallen dramatically as the industry has gained new economies of scale. A recent request for proposals by Southern California Edison (one of the largest investor-owned utilities in the country) found that solar power is already among the cheapest ways for them to generate new electricity.

America's economy is chained to the sinking ship that is the 20th Century fossil fuel economy. Do we really want to stay on the sinking ship of dependence on oil and coal?

Or do we want to break free from these shackles and jump on to the rescue ship -- the 21st Century Clean Energy Economy -- that will take us to the destination we all want: the next great era of prosperity..?

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What we know -- and don't know -- about the safety of eating GMOs

2011-10-03T06:11:00.000-07:00

As a conservationist first and foremost, I'm all in favor of agricultural advances that help stem the devastating impacts of farming and ranching on biodiversity and ecosystem services. We badly need to deploy new farming methods and crop strains that enable humanity to produce more food on less land, using much lower inputs of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Importantly, some of the most intriguing approaches I've learned of, such as The Rodale Institute's 30-year farm system trial and The Land Institute's work toward perennial crop varieties, also boost the resilience of our agricultural system to climate change.

When it comes to genetically modified crops, however, my sense as a scientist is that we don't know enough about GMOs' long-term health or environmental impacts to know whether these things are really ready for prime time yet.

This piece by Grist's Tom Philpott sums up a bit of what worries me about GMO's:

What we do know is that GMOs are not acutely toxic to eat. That is, we know that if you dine on a burger made from cows gorged on GM corn and soy, French fries cooked in oil from GM cottonseed, and soda laced with high-fructose syrup from GM corn, you're not likely to keel over in agony. Tens of millions of people do it every day.

But what about more subtle, long-term effects -- problems that public-health professionals call "chronic"? Here we enter less certain territory. With our highly processed diets largely deficient in fruits and vegetables, Americans have high and rising rates of chronic diseases like obesity and heart disease. Meanwhile, food allergies, autism, and non-alcohol-related liver disease have rocketed. It's highly plausible that GMOs, which have existed in our diets for less than a generation, have emerged as another of many contributors to such long-term conditions.

So GMOs could theoretically be unsafe to eat. What does science tell us about the matter? Unfortunately, not much.

It seems that the body of research in this area lacks depth of credibility due to the intense secrecy of GMO makers. That is, the literature is dominated by findings of agricultural industry-funded scientists, and needs more contributions from independent scientists (who I'm sure would be glad to sign fairly worded non-disclosure agreements or "NDA's").

What is trickling out seems to indicate that there is "smoke" around this issue (and where there's smoke...):

So where does all of this leave us? Obviously, in need of much more independent research. In April, a bit more trickled out from Quebec, Canada -- and again, the results are unsettling. The study, published in the journal Reproductive Toxicology, focused on corn engineered to possess a trait from the bacteria Bt, which is toxic to a range of insects. So-called Bt corn is extremely common in the United States; according to the USDA, upwards of 60 percent of corn planted here has it. Since its introduction in the '90s, its maker, Monsanto, has insisted that Bt corn must be safe, because the toxin embedded in it cannot survive the human digestive system.

The Quebec study (here's the abstract) casts serious doubt on that bedrock assumption. Researchers checked blood samples of 39 pregnant women and 30 non-pregnant women for the presence of the toxin. None were exposed directly to Bt, but all had conventional diets. The results: The Bt toxin showed up in 93 percent of pregnant women and 80 percent of their fetuses. It was also present in 69 percent of non-pregnant women in the study.

So, 15 years after the introduction of GMOs, we know that they pose no threat of immediate, spectacular harm. That is, they won't kill us suddenly. Whether they're killing us slowly -- contributing to long-term, chronic maladies -- remains anyone's guess.

Well that certainly doesn't sound like a crop technology that is ready to be approved for our food supply, does it? My wife is pregnant with our second daughter, and these kinds of findings indicate to me that our Food Safety regulatory system is dropping the ball in a big way here. Or at the very least is jumping the gun on GMO safety, likely due to intensive political pressures influenced by the Monsanto's of the world.

I hope, for the safety of our children and ourselves, that we aren't looking at a very expensive agricultural, health and environmental catastrophe in the making.

What are your thoughts on GMO safety? What's the best way to grow more food on less land, using lower inputs of synthetic chemicals and fertilizers?

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Don't Let the Naysayers Get You Down

2011-09-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

As you put in the hard work to drive the innovations needed to advance conservation and sustainability, it's inevitable that you'll hear resistance from those who are not comfortable with change -- who like things the way they've always been done. Let's see how their record looks in this brief historical timeline:

What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches? - The Quarterly Review, England (March 1825)

Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean. - Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1838) Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College, London

The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it. . . . Knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient. - Dr. Alfred Velpeau (1839) French surgeon

[W]hen the Paris Exhibition closes electric light will close with it and no more be heard of. - Erasmus Wilson (1878) Professor at Oxford University

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. - Lord Kelvin, ca. 1895, British mathematician and physicist

Radio has no future. - Lord Kelvin, ca. 1897.

That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced. - Scientific American, Jan. 2, 1909

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

There is no need for any individual to have a computer in their home. - Ken Olson, 1977, President, Digital Equipment Corp.

Clearly, even your smartest, most accomplished detractors aren't always right.

If the inventors of the game-changing technologies described above succumbed to their doubters, we'd still be riding horses to work and sailing to Europe!

Think carefully about what this means for where we're headed on clean energy, clean transport and sustainability as a whole. We ARE going to make this happen.

Remember: as you strive to intelligently and strategically innovate, burning the midnight oil to bring your visions to reality, don't let the naysayers get you down.

Joining the Heavy Hitters in Re-Imagining Your Inputs

2011-09-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, the new green business trend was just getting off the ground.

Having recently completed my Ph.D. qualifying exams at UC Davis' Graduate Group in Ecology, I'd have laughed in your face if you'd have told me what more and more major corporations would be doing in 2011 to green their products and services.

Why is it so important when corporations like Ford, Coca Cola and Wal-Mart green their supply chains? It's not just that their huge purchasing power can quickly influence a supplier to change to greener materials and practices -- sometimes with dramatic measurable reductions in environmental and health impacts.

It's also, as this piece by Ford's Director of Sustainable Business Strategies notes, the power of peer influence: "if a 109-year-old car company with one of the most expansive and established global supply chains in the world can re-imagine its design process, any company can."

The author advises:

"The next time you're faced with supporting an option between a traditional process and a more sustainable and innovative alternative, know that by making the more eco-friendly choice, you're not only making an immediate impact, you're sending the message that you recognize the importance of environmental considerations in the design process -- from a product's development until the end of its life. And your employees and customers will support you for it."

Why shouldn't your company aim to join Ford in realizing these important business benefits?

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'Climate Change' ... and 'Global Warming'? What Next in Climate Communication?

2011-09-26T09:19:00.000-07:00

Right now it seems that in Washington D.C., at least, nobody wants to talk about 'climate change' and 'global warming'.

This post from the Yale Form on Climate Change & The Media asks if these are the new dirty words, and "if so...what then"?

Most of those interviewed for this Yale Forum discussion focus on the importance of communicating the economic and health benefits of clean energy technologies. For example, attorney Jim Marston of Environmental Defense states that:

"In the short-term, I think we're focusing more on heath and more on clean energy solutions -- things that get us off fossil fuels, things that get us more efficiency, things that take advantage of the fact that Americans are in love with gadgets coming out of the high-tech sector."

As I relayed in this post -- penned after a successful encounter with a couple of climate change deniers -- energy, economy, national security and patriotism can all be leveraged to offer identity-based arguments that enable bi-partisan consensus. Why should we send billions of our energy dollars to foreign countries when we can produce our energy from the sun and wind right here in America, and support American companies and jobs?!

As far as I'm concerned, it's not HOW we get to solutions, it's THAT we get to solutions. That's fine, and to be expected.

However, after this spring and summer's record-setting tornados like the one that leveled Joplin, MO, the historic Mississippi River floods, the ongoing hellish Texas wildfires, and catastrophic Hurricane Irene, I'll bet that more people are wondering whether it might be a good idea to take steps to re-stabilize the climate for climate-focused reasons.

It seems more and more people are waking up to the fact that our climate is doing weird (and record-setting) things old timers don't remember it doing, and it's getting more and more dangerous every year. As more people talk, social forces like peer influence will likely take hold, generating support for the climate change and clean energy solutions that would also be huge boons to our economic recovery and national security.

Let's see...

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A Lehman-Style Environmental Collapse or An Unprecedented Opportunity for Civilization?

2011-09-23T06:39:00.000-07:00

"In order to exploit the natural world, we have rigged accounting rules and ignored the financial and ecological value of intact ecosystems, biological diversity, clean water, and many other forms of the planet's natural capital. This has actually worked for some decades and created Western wealth as we know it.

But the Ponzi scheme of hyper-consumerism is approaching the equivalent of the Lehman collapse of 2008."

Read more>>

Note: Here at CV Notes, we choose to channel our awareness of these types of scary -- and very real -- risks into developing solutions. We like the flip side of the Collapse coin: there is unprecedented opportunity to restore lives and ecosystems alike by protecting our children from having to face these types of risks.
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Global Weirding: Nature Can't Save Us From Ourselves

2011-09-22T06:22:00.000-07:00

Some who refuse to accept that that heat-trapping carbon pollution poses significant risks to human well-being, not to mention ecosystems and biodiversity, claim that more CO2 will be good for us. Plants will grow more, it will be warmer, and more plants in a warmer climate will absorb more CO2, helping to stem heating.

Is this true?

Huffington post reports on a new study from Northern Arizona University, published in the esteemed journal, Nature, which throws some surprising cold water on to that idea:

The study -- a meta-analysis of dozens of separate studies of soil emissions in variety of ecosystems, including forests, farmland, rice paddies, grasslands and wetlands in North America, Europe and Asia -- found that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide causes soil to release methane and nitrous oxide in amounts significant and sustained enough to reduce the overall cooling effect of increased biomass by nearly 20 percent.

What's going on? Organisms in soil, it seems, thrive on both nitrate and carbon dioxide. These microbes also produce methane and nitrous oxide, which are, respectively, about 25 times and 300 times more effective at trapping heat than even CO2. As humans pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, these organisms pump out more N2O and methane.

The body of literature on this effect suggested that it varied in degree from one ecosystem to another. This variation made it difficult to determine whether, on the whole, its impact on the global climate was significant or merely a wash. Yet the new study provides a clear answer: the effect is significant.

Climate scientist, Ken Caldiera, summed up the implications of this study quite concretely:

"To solve the carbon-climate problem, we need to transform our energy system into one that does not dump its waste into the sky," Caldeira said. "Land plants help. It looks like they won't help quite as much as we thought they would. Clearly, we can't expect nature to solve our problems for us."

The bottom line: as much as scientists know about how human activities are heating the ecosystems that sustain civilization as we know it, untold numbers of surprises await us if we continue to mess with the stability of our climate.

Do we really want to find out what's behind those doors?

Or do we want to choose the door that we KNOW what's behind: a clean energy technology revolution that creates exciting new industries, creates millions of new jobs, saves the public $billions per year in health costs of dirty energy-caused air pollution, cuts off the flow of oil money to terrorists, and gives America the morale boost that our economically hurting citizens so badly need?

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Businesses Getting into the Ecosystem Services Game

2011-09-21T06:11:00.000-07:00

Following up on yesterday's post about Asia's lessons on the value of ecosystems, how are businesses getting involved in protecting and restoring ecosystem services? And why should they?

This excellent piece on The EcoInnovator provides some answers, noting that:

"a growing number of leadership minded companies are realizing that correctly pricing nature can inform smarter financial decisions and lead to real business opportunities. This is why Dow has chosen to invest $10M with The Nature Conservancy to incorporate the value of ecosystem serices into the company's decision making; specifically starting with three of Dow's manufacturing sites. Similarly 14 leading companies chose to road test the World Business Council for Sustainable Development's Guide to Corproate Ecosystem Valuation. It is worth noting that these companies are not waiting for a top-down governmental mandate but instead (are) leading the way to a world where business decisions are aligned wit the laws of nature."

"So how does an individual company get started?" the authors ask.

A good first step, they say, is to assess which parts of your business are materially impacted by or dependent upon ecosystem services. Is your business or supply chain prone to drought? Are critical inputs dependent on pollinators?

They emphasize a business case for ecosystem services that we'll be hearing more and more of as our civilization increasingly bumps up against "Peak Everything": Focus on benefit to your company. How might more sustainable practices help you increase resource and energy efficiency, boost your brand's reputation and sales, and reduce business risks -- including those increasingly associated with global weirding (e.g., floods, droughts, wildfire, severe storms, insect infestations)?

If companies such as Coca Cola and McDonalds are realizing the benefits of asking these questions, why shouldn't your's?

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New Research: Protecting Forests Will Deliver Economic Boom for Southeast Asia

2011-09-20T06:19:00.000-07:00

Are forests more valuable to humanity left standing or for what's produced when they're cut?

More and more, we are learning just how much value healthy, intact and sustainably managed forests provide to society.

According to this post on Mongabay.com, for example, this lesson is being realized in Southeast Asia, where tropical rainforests face a range of threats, including conversion to palm oil and rubber plantations, illegal logging and poaching, and slash and burn agriculture. It turns out that ecologically unsustainable practices are proving to be economically ruinous:

The Rajawali Institute for Asia at the Harvard Kennedy School of government estimates that by eliminating its natural capital for negligible gains, deforestation caused losses of $150 billion to Indonesia between 1990 and 2007
An investigation by a task force set up by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono found that clear-cutting and conversion of forests to palm oil is so widespread that it's drastically reduced the availability of wood to be cut, costing the Jambai province, alone, 76,000 jobs in the sector.
"According to the Rand Corporation, particularly intense forest fires in Indonesia and Malaysia have increased deaths by 22 percent. Bad air quality can also send people to the hospital and increase asthma attacks, lowering productivity. One of Southeast Asia's challenges is attracting global companies to locate high-level executive headquarters in the region, in part because of the intense air pollution exacerbated by forest fires."

Clearly, the economic impacts of "unsustainability" reach far beyond agriculture and forestry sectors, influencing public health, safety and economic competitiveness.

Conversely, more sustainable practices are being found to confer wide-ranging socio-economic benefits:

Studies have shown that coastal mangrove forests can reduce tsunami flow by as much as 90 percent. During the infamous 2004 tsunami, villages that had cut down their mangroves were often wiped out while those that maintained them fared much better.

So how do we incorporate the conservation value of intact forests, such as the mangroves described above, into our economic system?

In most cases, the only option for landowners to earn income and feed their families is still extractive: clearing, logging, farming, grazing, mining or otherwise converting their forest plots. The Natural Capital Project, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) and The Partnership for Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem services (WAVES) are among those making progress developing systems for valuing ecosystem services and compensating landowners whose property provides them.

But at a time of increasing financial hardship and budgetary constraints, will we be able to deploy these new payments for ecosystem services systems quickly enough to restore and protect the world's remaining hot spots of biodiversity?

If there were ever a time for the emerging field of sustainable business to help conservationists entrepreneurially innovate, this is it.

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Prescription: One Weekly Meditative Hike

2011-09-19T06:11:00.000-07:00

Did you spend any time in Nature this weekend?

Do you have a favorite open space where you go to escape the stressful noise of our go go go society – to find the quiet that you need to hear the guiding voice of your heart whispering into your soul whatdirection to take next?

If not, try it next weekend. See if your work week isn't surprisingly productive - and if that's just one of many ways your week goes better...

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Counting What Counts in the World of Sustainable Business

2011-09-16T06:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I talked about the benefits to consumers offered by the radical transparency tool, Good Guide.

In the world of sustainable business, "radical transparency" -- being forthright about the health and environmental impacts of your products -- is, a rising trend as well.

No doubt, the hard work that enables transparency is important for fostering customer support for products that are healthier for ourselves and the ecosystems that human well-being depends upon. It's definitely helping Conservation Value, Inc. client, Spaldin Sleep Systems, build trust with its customers.

What else can businesses do with all this information to boost their profits and productivity?

The important thing to remember, says Jim Hartzfeld in this insightful post, is that "putting your primary efforts where they can have the best environmental or social impact will have much more impact in the long run. Sustainability reporting has an important role in guiding your strategic decisions, but you have to count what counts."

What does that mean?

In Hartzfeld's words:

The general perception is that “You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” which is absolutely appropriate in day-to-day management decisions. But just because you can count something doesn’t mean it counts. As Robert F. Kennedy once said about the gross national product, it “measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” And in strategic decision-making, intangibles like innovation and employee and stakeholder engagement factor very much into your success.

The MIT Sloan School of Management and Boston Consulting Group’s 2011 report “Sustainability: The ‘Embracers’ Seize Advantage” (http://bit.ly/gxUsJo) offered seven practices to learn from “embracers,” those aggressively implementing sustainability-driven strategies. The report highlights this seeming contradiction in leading companies who seek to measure everything (and if ways of measuring something don’t exist, start inventing them) and the ability to value intangible benefits seriously.

Then focus on the things that really make a difference to get ahead.

Once you have established a baseline and used the gritty detail to chart your course, prioritize only the aspects that will create the most material changes and focus your energy there.

The results, as more and more companies are learning, include improvements in energy and resource efficiency (and thus reduced costs), reduced risks, and boosts to brand reputation and sales.

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"Upgrading" to Greener Products

2011-09-15T06:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I posted about the health and environmental benefits of green clothing. Of course, clothing is just one area in which more and more people are concerned about the health and environmental impacts of the products that they buy.

But how can you find safer products? Is there a way to quickly and easily evaluate the health and environmental risks posed by your everyday products?

The wonderful web site, Good Guide, makes it easy for you by giving the everyday products you buy a simple score of 1-10 in health, environmental and social categories. With a single click you can view alternatives with better scores. There are your replacements.

If you download the Good Guide mobile app (FREE), you can use it to scan bar codes of products while you shop. People might look at you funny, but it's a simple way to vote with your everyday choices to protect the health of your family and our environment.

Since I started Good Guide, I've upgraded my deodorant, sun screen, tooth paste, mouth wash, moisturizer and shampoo, among other products.

Funny, I just used the word "upgraded" when talking about changing to a greener option. Too many people still don't think of "greener" as an "upgrade". Yet...

If the product does its job in a way that's healthier for me and healthier for the Earth, then it is, in fact, better, right?
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I'll Take Clothing Without Toxic Chemicals, Please

2011-09-14T06:25:00.000-07:00

GreenPeace Image from Grist.org

I don't know about you, but if I found out that there were toxic chemical residues in my clothing, I'd be worried about what's touching my skin all day.

A recent GreenPeace study tested products made by 14 top clothing manufacturers and found traces of toxic chemicals harmful to the environment and human health.

The chemicals found, known as nonylphenol ethoxylates, break down into substances with "toxic, persistent and hormone-disrupting properties." Would you want to wear that?

How about impacts to water quality? When GreenPeace looked at the wasterwater from two factories that makes clothing for these brands, they found that:

"Eight samples of wastewater from two factories in the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas, identified as suppliers for the brands, contained "a cocktail of hazardous chemicals.'"

Do you think the executives of those factories would let their children swim in the water near these factories? Maybe that would be a good water quality test to implement...

If you want to support companies that offer solutions to this mess, how can you find them? Is organic really clothing better?

Clothing made from organic fibers (organically-farmed; e.g., USDA organic-certified) means that the crops (e.g., cotton) were grown without the use of synthetic pesticides. Since still more chemicals are used to process raw fibers into a textile, USDA organic certification of fibers is not enough to protect you from the types of chemicals found by GreenPeace.

For full protection, you need to look for organic textiles - those certified by the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) to be made with (1) organically grown raw fibers AND (2) organic fibers that have been processed into a textile without harmful chemicals.

I talk a bit about this subject in my posts for Triple Pundit about how to purchase a green mattress.

It's great that GreenPeace is publicizing the importance of green clothing, which is clearly the better choice for the health of people and ecosystems alike.

New Climate Communication Study: Polar Bears Don't Work

2011-09-13T06:07:00.000-07:00

How can we get past America's uber-partisan divide on climate change to foster political support for bold policy solutions?

According to a new study, images of distant polar bears and melting ice sheets not only don't cut it, messaging-wise, but actually make the problem worse. As reported by Big Think:

Climate change campaigns in the United States that focus on the risks to people in foreign countries or even other regions of the U.S. are likely to inadvertently increase polarization among Americans rather than build consensus and support for policy action.

Fortunately, the researchers found a way to build support for climate policy solutions: to use local stories that make the benefits of action immediately relevant to the community:

Research shows that individuals are more likely to support action on a problem when those threatened or at risk are perceived as more socially similar. Conversely, when those affected are perceived as more socially distant, support for action is likely to be less.

That certainly makes sense...

Memo to those working to more effectively communicate the need for climate change solutions: use locally relevant pictures and stories. Enough with the remote images already (in themselves, at least). How does the problem (including as illustrated by stunning remote imagery) really impact the lives of, say, Wal-Mart shoppers? How are the solutions going to protect local communities and improve lives where I live?

These types of messaging improvements are opportunities that Seth Godin talked about back in 2006, but that the climate action community still hasn't fully figured out how to implement.

This new study provides important clues on how to get the important job done of maximizing influence across the political spectrum.

Read more>>
...

The Forest (Ecosystem Service) Companies of the Future

2011-09-12T06:11:00.000-07:00

As efforts grow to better align our economy with our ecology (due to very real biophysical limits of natural resource availability), businesses and landowners are exploring how to generate income via the valuable ecosystem services produced by their property.

The Guardian reports on how forest companies are making the transition from solely extractive-based revenues to diversified revenue streams that capitalize on conservation value:

Climate change, population growth, and soaring demand for food, energy, water and other resources are changing the way the world sees and values forests. A vision is emerging of a new kind of company – the forest services company.

Our vision is being propelled by new markets that are emerging for forest services such as carbon storage, wildlife preservation, recreational facilities and watershed protection. This trend is creating huge business opportunities for forest companies with the foresight to reinvent themselves and look beyond the traditional equation of forests equal timber.

Forest companies of the future will expand their business model beyond delivering products to providing an array of crucial services to communities. Timber revenue will still be important, but successful companies will have supplemented their income from the fast-growing new markets that emerge from the increasing scarcity of ecosystem services.

Sounds rosy. But is this just more unrealized happy talk about the future potential of ecosystem services markets? I was pleased to find some real-world examples of these types of changes actually happening now -- both at home and abroad:

Sveaskog, Sweden's largest forest company, is doing exactly that. Approximately 15% of annual net sales comes from biomass for energy and non-timber services such as windfarm leases and hunting and fishing licences. In addition, Sveaskog is managing one-fifth of its land for conservation and promotion of biodiversity. The company is also experimenting with ways to maximise carbon uptake through different forest management measures and plans to sell the additional uptake to carbon markets. In 20 years, Sveaskog expects its current sales share of 15% from biomass and different kinds of non-timber services to have doubled.

Other major companies are similarly shifting focus to incorporate services. Plum Creek, the largest US private landowner, has about a third of the company's 7m acres of timber lands under revenue-generating conservation and wildlife protection agreements. Mondi, a leading international paper and packaging group, recently identified opportunities to tap into growing markets for biomass and ecotourism through a review of ecosystem services at three of its South African plantations.

The shifting nature of forest companies is a win-win opportunity for governments as well, creating new jobs in struggling rural areas and improving the quality of life for urbanites.

One question I'd love to explore: are these ecosystem services-oriented revenue streams being designed in conjunction with neighboring landowners as part of regional-scale conservation planning efforts?

Read more>>
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Imagining a Different Response to 9/11

2011-09-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

"For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil,
there is one striking at the root."

- Henry David Thoreau

Imagine the president had invested all of our post-9/11 war money ($trillions) into a bold transition to clean energy and transport. The goal would have been to strike at the root of the terrorism problem, while also strengthening America's economic and national security, revolutionizing our aging infrastructure, and creating millions of 21st century jobs.

How different do you think our economy, jobs crisis, deficit and national morale would be right now?

Not to mention our progress -- domestically and globally -- toward solving Americans' growing concern that our climate is doing weird and increasingly dangerous things...

So then, what do you think we should do NOW to strike at the root of the terrorism problem..?
...

Our Economy Depends on Our Ecology

2011-09-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

Following yesterday's post, it make sense that a healthier environment not only means healthier people, but also a healthier economy and society.

Ecosystem Marketplace's Steve Zwick sums it up well in this piece:

Neither party really gets it right, because they both -- at best -- see environmental protection as something we should do -- like a bit of housekeeping, akin to trimming the bushes -- as opposed to something we must do -- like shoring up the foundation, which is what it is.

Both parties, in short, seem oblivious to the fact that our economy depends on our ecology, and that everything we buy, sell, eat, and produce is derived from nature. If we destroy nature, we destroy our own livelihoods -- as people living along the Mississippi River and its tributaries learned all too clearly this past Spring, when decades of poor wetland management exacerbated flooding and cost us billions.

This idea was similarly expressed by a 2009 National Academy of Sciences report, The Hidden Costs of Energy: dirty energy (e.g., especially that produced by burning oil and coal) inflicts a devastating $120 billion in "primarily health damages" alone on our economy.

If we want to reduce our skyrocketing health care and health insurance costs, a good place for America to start is by investing in a clean energy revolution.

Read more>>
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We Are Everything

2011-09-08T06:04:00.000-07:00

We are what we eat. Literally. And of course, that means that every molecule that makes up our bodies today was once part of not only a plant or animal, but also a river, an ocean, a forest, a rock, a pinch of sand, an insect, and yes, even another person.

The healthier our surroundings, the healthier we are too.

What are you doing today to help make your surroundings -- and you -- healthier?

Carbon Nation: The Surprising (and Common Sense) Benefits of Cutting Heat Trapping Carbon Pollution

2011-09-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

Would well-designed legislation to stabilize our increasingly weird climate and free America from our dangerous oil dependence really wreck the economy, as media pundits and GOP policy positions warn?

Fortunately, as America seeks ways to create millions of jobs and revitalize our national morale and qualify of life, the answer is a resounding "no!" The story of why is told in the new documentary, "Carbon Nation", according to GreenBiz.

The movie's directors paint a wonderfully positive and non-partisan picture of the promise offered by 21st century technologies and practices that are already helping companies thrive. They tell the story of how:

"We learned that Dow Chemical had spent just under $2 billion on energy-efficient programs since 1994 and had saved nearly $10 billion so far."

In another story, based in Texas, farmers banded together to form a cooperative that allowed them to establish new income streams via wind energy:

Now, farmers who were solely dependent on their hit-or-miss cotton crops had a steady source of income, derived from the turbines: a royalty that ranged from $3,000 to $15,000 per year, per turbine. This changed lives.

Who wouldn't be happy with this kind of financial boost? On top of the money, of course, these good Americans get bragging rights: they're helping lead America's way off of our dependence on dirty energy like oil and coal. I'm sure their friends are proud of them!

This is the kind of morale boost America reads right now - and a majority of Americans are ready. As Carbon Nation's director states:

We know, from hundreds of conversations across the nation, that we are not a polarized country. Especially when it comes to energy efficiency, national and energy security, and even clean energy. There is great agreement for healthy solutions in the middle. It’s just that we’re constantly being told we’re a polarized country, mainly because our political leaders are polarized and TV networks make more money selling the idea of a polarized country. And good people are believing this stuff, and acting as if we are polarized. The old self-fulfilling prophecy.

But when you get down to it, listen to people, respect their opinion, and be open-minded, you will find, as I have, that the middle 60% of the U.S. would be on board if they were hearing the right stories. We’ve been lucky enough to find the right stories while making “Carbon Nation.” The folks in our film are heroes. If enough people hear from them, see them in action, then we can achieve our biggest aspirations: to have this movie influence lawmaking, to inspire companies to tie life-cycle costs to all purchases, and to push clean energy so that it simply becomes cheaper than coal. That would be huge.

Cheers to the folks who have brought us Carbon Nation -- the more folks hear these types of stories, the more the movement to revitalize our economy via a job-creating clean energy revolution will gain momentum.

Read more>>
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Ceres: Fuel Efficiency Standards Benefit the Economy

2011-09-06T06:30:00.000-07:00

"Our report makes clear that the stronger the (fuel efficiency) standards, the greater the economic benefits." - CERES

As I emphasize time and again, the less money people and businesses have to spend on gasoline because their cars are more efficient, the more money they have to spend on everything else. That's broad economic stimulus.

Climate Change Threatens Mental Health (As Many In Eastern U.S. Can Attest After Irene)

2011-09-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

After Hurricane Irene last weekend, my parents in New York had no electricity for days, and had to:

purchase a generator (which wouldn't be necessary if they had solar electricity and hot water - they'd be sitting much prettier right now)
purchase ice bags a couple of times per day to keep their extra fridge and freezer cool and prevent spoilage
pay to have several fallen trees removed from their property. One fell on the roof above where they were sleeping, but thankfully caused little damage
have a leaky roof fixed.

They were not happy campers, and it took a great deal of mental strength to remind themselves that it could have been a lot worse, and they have much to be grateful for. I'm sure that across the eastern U.S., they're among millions who are having a very rough time right now. It's emotionally exhausting, if not depressing, to have to deal with extreme weather.

Indeed, a new study from the University of Sydney's Brain and Mind Institute finds that extreme weather, on the increase due to humanity's unsustainable emissions of heat-trapping carbon pollution, "threatens mental health."

Here are a couple of choice quotes from the researchers:

"Recent experience shows extreme weather events also pose a serious risk to public health, including mental health and wellbeing, with serious flow-on consequences for the economy and wider society."

"The emerging burden of climate-related impacts on community morale and mental health - bereavement, depression, post-event stress disorders, and the tragedy of self-harm - is large."

In the case of Irene, which has left millions without power, just think how much happier folks with solar roofs are right now, compared to their neighbors who remain entirely dependent on America's aging electricity grid.

Why not include a big Solar America push in the upcoming jobs plan that President Obama plans to announce this week? As I like to say, empty roofs = wasted space. Perhaps start with schools, but also include low-cost financing programs for homeowners who are tired of the increasing unreliability of the grid and are ready to move their home's energy source into the 21st century.

The result will be to create untold thousands of jobs and make a lot of people happier.

Timberland Documentary About the Conservation Value of Urban Forests - Dig It

2011-06-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

I'm proud to share a clip from my first documentary film appearance. The film is named "Dig It" -- about the valuable benefits that urban forests provide to people and biodiversity alike.

Huge props to Danny Clinch, Tim Donnelly and crew for an exceptional job on this, and special thanks to Timberland for their support.

Enjoy...

Spring Course at UC Berkeley Extension: Principles of Green Purchasing and Sustainability

2011-01-27T23:24:00.000-08:00

What's really 'Green'?

What does the latest science say about the real benefits -- to our environment, economy, health and quality of life -- of green products and services?

How are people and businesses improving their personal and financial health by using green products?

How can you know which 'green' products you can trust to provide such claimed benefits as:

reduces emissions of the heat-trapping carbon pollution that causes climate change
protects our natural heritage and its wondrous biological diversity
reduces toxic pollution and waste (and helps protect YOU from toxic chemicals)
protects our health and the safety of our children
supports green jobs and our transition to a more secure clean energy economy
reduces our dependence on oil and other dirty energy sources
improves our national security

Find out the answers to these questions and more this spring at UC Berkeley Extension, where I'll be teaching a weekly evening course titled 'Principles of Green Purchasing and Sustainability". It runs from Tuesday March 29 - Tuesday May 31 2011 at the San Francisco campus.

Spanning multiple product categories, this course pulls together years of my research -- as both a conservation scientist and sustainability expert -- to help you and your company gain a foundational understanding in green purchasing. The course description reads as follows:

A good understanding of the principles of green purchasing is important to limit the impact that businesses, governments and corporations have on natural resources, ecosystems and human well-being. This course is intended to provide sustainable business enthusiasts with an important foundational overview of the environmental information underlying sustainable purchasing. You will learn how to access, understand and evaluate the information that you need for green procurement. Evaluate business cases that illustrate how companies can boost profits and productivity by using and selling sustainable products.

Many problems with sustainable business reflect a need for managers to become better versed in the technical environmental information underlying sustainability. Each week, you will explore a new aspect of green procurement and learn how to distinguish those products that credibly limit impacts on the environment – and people too. You will become well versed in the environmental information underlying sustainable business, and learn how to distinguish between different green certifications and identify those that are credible.

Click here to sign up now to gain valuable expertise in green purchasing. Tell your friends and peers about this class (use the 'share' button below). Thank you so much -- you're the best!

***

FREE COURSE PREVIEW -- A SPECIAL INVITATION

Advancing the Green Economy: Achieving Impact from the Office to the Ecosystem

Thursday March 17, 2011, 6:30–8 pm
UC Berkeley Extension: Golden Bear Center

1995 University Ave, Berkeley, CA

Join scientist and sustainability expert Jonathan L. Gelbard, Ph.D., as he explores the connections between choices made in the office and the health of ecosystems and people. Hear stories about how businesses are learning to boost profits and productivity by using and selling green products. Gain valuable tips on how to identify the products, partners, and certifications that can help your company achieve measurable positive impacts and advance the green economy.

Jonathan L. Gelbard, Ph.D., principal at Conservation Value, Inc., is a researcher, writer, speaker, and educator. He has taught at the World Wildlife Fund’s Climate Camp workshops; appeared in the 2009 urban forest documentary, Dig It; and served as an educational producer for some of America’s largest green music festivals.

EDP 426320
1 meeting
Reserve Your Place Now
extension.berkeley.edu/enroll

New Line of Green Beds Inspired by Nature: An Interview with Oscar Valdemoros of Spaldin Sleep Systems

2010-10-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

I recently interviewed Oscar Valdemoros, who is the Managing Director of the Spanish company, Industrias Tobia, and the CEO of its North American subsidiary, Spaldin Sleep Systems.

The slogan of Spaldin’s new line of mattresses, now available in Sleepy’s stores and at Sleepy’s.com is European Designed Luxury, Inspired by Nature:

Uniting certified green materials with the most advanced European technology and design, Spaldin offers a luxurious mattress collection that is truly remarkable. These durable plant-based foam mattresses are designed to adapt and support your body contours comfortably to minimize movement while you sleep. They feature a Nature-inspired open-cell structure that eliminates heat and moisture with better air circulation.

The materials used in Spaldin mattresses have been certified as Oeko-tex 100 Class I: to contain no harmful chemicals and be safe enough “for babies”. When you purchase a Spaldin, you receive a perfect combination of heavenly comfort and high-tech eco-friendly materials – safeguarding your health and the health of our environment.

While his native tongue is Spanish, Valdemoros answered my questions in English far better than I’d be able to answer his the other way around (I thoroughly enjoy speaking Spanish, but my skills are pretty rusty right now).

JLG: How did you become interested in working for a company that makes safe, healthy, chemical-free sleep systems? For example, was it concern for the health impacts of chemicals? Concern for environmental impacts of harmful chemicals such as flame retardants, which have a history of use by furniture-makers?

“We do not sell mattresses, we sell sleep experiences.”

OV: Spaldin is more than a company for me. This company was started by my grandfather more than 50 years ago and since I was born it has been part of my life. I only joined the company in 2004, when our partner, Metzeler, started to introduce in Europe the new eco-friendly foams. I immediately saw the fit between the two companies, with very similar business conceptions of innovation and care for what we do. We both aim to make products as if they would be used by us, by our families, and therefore would be human and ecologically respectful. It is something that goes in the philosophy of our company, of our family, not anything that we looked to do for any strategic or commercial reason.

JLG: It’s refreshing to hear that kind of family company-based tradition and personal values reflected in your products. Tell us about the new line of Spaldin mattresses. What is remarkable about them?

OV: As I said, we care about what we do and that is why we do not only look to save dollars in the materials we use to make our products. We strongly believe in people and that is why we partner with the best companies to source our materials, which are bought based on features, not on price. The result is a premium line of mattresses with the most strict certifications of being healthy and safe from harmful chemicals (Oeko-tex 100, Class I – “safe for babies and small children”), and with the most innovative technology to serve the comfort and well-being of our customers. We do not sell mattresses, we sell sleep experiences.

This new Spaldin line of mattresses has a slogan “European designed luxury, inspired by Nature”. Nothing is more perfect than Nature to provide the inspiration for a product. Selected green materials and the greatest sleep system engineering and design combine to create a premium and luxury line of mattresses with something to offer everybody – with choices of firmness, feel and cost. Among them I would highlight Tubes, “the mattress that breathes”, a worldwide patented technology that makes this mattress probably the best mattress in existence.

The inspiration for Tubes came from appreciation of biomimicry. As a bee, one of the best engineers in Nature, uses natural resources to make the honey comb – one of the most extraordinary designs created by any creature – our best German engineers designed Tubes. Using green materials and a unique hive-like design, they created a perfect structure that supports and gives the best breathability features of all mattresses.

JLG: That’s quite a claim, and it sounds exciting. But helping lead the advance toward a more sustainable furniture marketplace can’t be easy. Tell us a little bit about the challenges you’ve faced. What’s been easy? What’s not come as easily?

OV: The challenges we have to face deal mainly in communication and moving people to understand and believe in what we do, so they do not see this as just a niche market. The main challenge is therefore to reach this vast audience of consumers who state that they would buy green products so long as they do not have to pay more for them. This requires communication and of course a big effort in our side to design products that meet the criteria even though we pay more money, as I said, for the raw materials. We want people to see that our products are great products for all kinds of people, and that they have been conceived in a way that offers them a luxurious sleep experience, plus contributes to a better world for our children and the children of our children.

JLG: Tell us a little bit about the sustainability of Spaldin and/or Tobia’s everyday operations. For example, what green products and practices do you use in your facilities and offices, or even your shipping? What business benefits have you realized by using them?

OV: It would be difficult to sort out all our daily operations in terms of the sustainability, since as I said this is something I think each one of the persons that belongs to this company and particularly the management team have inside (their values). They range from the use of recycled paper to the use of recycled iron and PEFC-certified wood for making our beds, to the energy-efficient machinery we employ, to the payment to specialized companies to recycle our waste plastic, cardboard and foam that we separate into special containers at our facilities.

JLG: What’s your vision for the future sustainability of the furniture business in general – for how it can contribute to society’s greater efforts to protect the health of both people and the ecosystems that sustain our well-being?

OV: I think this is a trend nobody can stop. More and more people are aware that we have to take care of the natural heritage we have received if we want our children and the children of our children enjoy of it. This trend, with the help of smart policies and investments by governments, is seriously pushing us towards a sustainable economy. I hope that in a few years, being sustainable will mean nothing special, but will just be the normal practices in our daily and business lives. This is what we have to push forward and hopefully we at Spaldin and Industrias Tobia are doing our small part towards that dreamed goal.

JLG: Thanks so much, Oscar, for sharing your inspiration and experience in the sustainable furniture business with our readers.

You can find Spaldin mattresses in Sleepy’s Stores throughout the northeast and Midwestern U.S. You can also purchase them online at Sleepys.com.

Social Media: Join Spaldin on FaceBook and Twitter for news of discounts, upcoming events and product updates.

Upcoming Events: Bay Area readers can visit Spaldin’s booth at the upcoming Green Festival in San Francisco on November 6-7, 2010 to try a mattress and receive a special coupon.

Jonathan L. Gelbard, Ph.D., Principal at Conservation Value, Inc., is a rare combination of conservation scientist, sustainability expert and communication specialist. He is a remarkable researcher, writer, speaker and problem-solver who excels at serving as a bridge applying the science underlying sustainability to develop cutting-edge solutions. He is currently serving as a sustainability consultant for Spaldin.

Fall Course: The Ecology and Credibility of Green Products (aka: What's really 'Green'?!)

2010-07-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

What's really 'Green'?

What does the latest science say about the real benefits -- to our environment, economy, health and quality of life -- of green products and services?

How are people and businesses improving their personal and financial health by using green products?

How can you know which 'green' products you can trust to provide such claimed benefits as:

reduces emissions of the heat-trapping carbon pollution that causes climate change
protects our natural heritage and its wondrous biological diversity
reduces toxic pollution and waste
protects our health and the safety of our children
supports green jobs and our transition to a more secure clean energy economy
reduces our dependence on oil and other dirty energy sources
improves our national security

Find out the answers to these questions and more this fall at UC Berkeley Extension, where I'll be teaching a weekly evening course titled 'Green Purchasing for Sustainable Business Management". It runs from September 13 - November 15.

Spanning multiple product categories, this course pulls together years of my research -- as both a conservation scientist and sustainability expert -- to help you and your company gain a foundational understanding in green purchasing. The course description reads as follows:

A good understanding of the principles of green purchasing is important to limit the impact that businesses, governments and corporations have on natural resources, ecosystems and human well-being. This course is intended to provide sustainable business enthusiasts with an important foundational overview of the environmental information underlying sustainable purchasing. You will learn how to access, understand and evaluate the information that you need for green procurement. Evaluate business cases that illustrate how companies can boost profits and productivity by using and selling sustainable products.

Many problems with sustainable business reflect a need for managers to become better versed in the technical environmental information underlying sustainability. Each week, you will explore a new aspect of green procurement and learn how to distinguish those products that credibly limit impacts on the environment – and people too. You will become well versed in the environmental information underlying sustainable business, and learn how to distinguish between different green certifications and identify those that are credible.

Click here to sign up now. Tell your friends and peers about this class (use the 'share' button below). Thank you so much -- you're the best!
...

If Global CO2 Emissions Were Black Smoke Coming From a Giant Broken Pipe in Texas

2010-06-07T13:30:00.000-07:00

Watching the video of the BP oil gusher bleeding into the Gulf of Mexico, I got thinking about how this imagery (and all the heart-wrenching photos of oiled wildlife) makes the problem so real and easy to comprehend. We get it, and it makes us sick.

One of the widely-discussed problems with the public's acceptance of the science underlying global weirding is that the heat-trapping gases that are disrupting the climate are invisible. Plus, these heat-trapping pollutants come from so many different places -- cars, trucks, buses, inefficient homes and buildings, industrial processes, deforestation, landfills, you name it -- that their flow into the atmosphere and their impact on the earth's climate and people is hard to "see".

Which leads me to a question: if all the Earth's heat-trapping pollution was colored black and came from a giant broken pipe in the middle of, say, Dallas, (1) how big in diameter would the pipe have to be, and (2) how long would it take for the plume of black smoke to spread from Dallas to other major metropolitan areas around the world?

If somebody with graphic design skills could put together this kind of computerized imagery, it would be powerful stuff...
...

Packaging That Grows Native Trees: Sustainable Brands 2010

2010-05-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

Packing products in boxes and shipping them long distances gets a big rap as "unsustainable" because of its triple whammy of using cardboard that comes from trees, generating heat-trapping carbon emissions via shipping, and generating waste if the cardboard isn't recycled or composted properly.

The Life Box™ offers companies and consumers alike a sustainable solution to all three of the above problems. Best of all, you know it's a solution you can trust because it was invented by mycologist, author and founder of Fungi Perfecti®, LLC, Paul Stamets, along with co-conspirators David Censi and Katie Birkhauser. As an environmental scientist, Stamets knows what it takes for products to offer credible reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and waste. According to the company's web site:

The Life Box™ suite of products builds upon the synergy of fungi and plants by infusing spores and seeds together inside of packaging materials that can be planted.

How does it work, and how do Life Boxes address shipping's triple-whammy of unsustainability?

First, each box comes from 100% recycled paper, and is therefore tree-free to produce. Second, to offset the heat-trapping carbon pollution generated by shipping, each box contains 200-400 different seeds of 10 different tree species, which are dusted with mycorrhizal fungi -- symbiotic organisms that boost the young tree's ability to take up nutrients and water in exchange for carbohydrates (produced by CO2-absorbing photosynthesis) provided by the tree.

To eliminate the waste created by improper disposal of cardboard boxes, you can literally plant the box to create trees! When you're done with the box, you have two options. The easiest is the "let nature take its course" option: between October and January, simply tear up the box into approximately 6x6" bits, moisten them to stimulate the seeds to germinate, plant them, and let nature take its course. Keep the seeds watered and you should start to see seedlings after a couple of months. The other is a bit more complicated, but is also more fun since you get to watch your planted Life Box seeds germinate in a tray during their first year and transfer them into individual pots for their second year. After two years, simply transfer the potted trees to the place of your choice -- for example near your office, in your yard, or in a neighborhood park.

To track the beneficial impacts of Life Box™ trees, the company asks users for their email addresses and locations:

When you plant your trees outside in their permanent home, send us an email with the address—or better yet, the GPS coordinates—of your planted Life Box™. We will collect this data and eventually post the locations on a map of the United States. In the future, we hope to create an interactive Web site so customers can share their experiences. Stay tuned!

How do you know the trees won't become ecologically harmful invasive species? To start, the company chose a continental mix of tree species that is acceptable to all Departments of Agriculture in every state in the U.S. (for now, Life Box™ products are only available in the continental U.S. -- not yet Hawaii) The introductory seed mix includes white birch and sweetgum from the eastern U.S.; lodgepole pine, water birch, sycamore and blue spruce native to the Rocky Mountains; mountain hemlock native to the Pacific Northwest; and northern white cedar (arborvitae) native to Europe. If the company can grow the business to a sufficient level, Life Box™ plans for its products to become zip code-specific -- to provide customers with trees that are native to their bioregion. For example, if you're in the New York City area, your Life Box™ products may contain familiar species such as red and sugar maple, eastern hemlock and white birch. However, customers in the Bay Area of California might receive giant redwood, coast live oak, and bay laurel.

No matter where you are located, each tree that grows to be 30 years old will suck an average of 1 ton of CO2 from the atmosphere during its lifetime (more on moist and fertile soils, less on dry, rocky or otherwise infertile soils):

Each Tree Life Box™ may some day qualify for up to one ton of carbon credits!

Why?

We estimate that 1 tree in 100 will survive to 30 years. On average, a 30-year-old tree can sequester 1 ton of carbon.

Still more exciting: Life Box™ plans not only cardboard products for shipping (click here to view currently available boxes, which come in three sizes). The technology is also being used to make tree-generating custom wine boxes, CD and DVD covers, pizza boxes and sleeves for coffee cups -- all coming soon. Don't live in a place with a lot of native trees? Planned future Life Box™ products will contain native grassland and meadow wildflower species. Don't live in the continental U.S., but want Life Box™ products? The company is working to offer products world-wide.

If you'd like to learn more about Life Box™ products, come to their break-out event: the upcoming Sustainable Brands 2010 Conference, happening June 7-10 in Monterey, CA. Founder, Paul Stamets, will be on hand for a presentation titled, "Rethinking the Box". Stamets' lecture is just one of literally dozens of presentations by a superb line-up of sustainability innovators who are advancing business practices that benefit both the earth and their bottom line.

Please join me in beautiful Monterey (where I'll definitely sneak off one evening for a hike to visit the otters, sea lions and seals at Pt. Lobos State Natural Reserve). I'll be at Sustainable Brands 2010 as both an ecologist and a sustainable business maven, excited to learn more about emerging products and practices that help stop climate change and reverse the destruction of our natural heritage.

The Sustainable Brands 2010 Conference is hosted by Sustainable Life Media. It is located in Monterey, California this year and will run from June 7th -10th. To register for the Conference, please visit the Sustainable Life Media website.

After the Three Mile Island of the Oil Industry, Time for a Solid Plan for Freedom From Oil

2010-05-17T15:56:00.000-07:00

As I continue to watch BP and Halliburton's Gulf of Mexico oil disaster unfold, I am doing my best to focus constructively on the question of "What next?"

What I keep coming back to is the feeling that, as people like Jerome Ringo are saying, this catastrophe absolutely must serve as a catalyst that helps accelerate our transition to clean energy. Coming from the Gulf Coast, himself, Ringo writes eloquently of the lesson before us, which can become a silver lining to the darkening cloud of oil spreading across the Gulf:

Now, as more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil pour into the Gulf of Mexico each day, I see the jobs that will be lost, the families and communities that will suffer and the impending devastation of our $2 billion seafood industry.

Think about the fishermen, the truck drivers, the restaurant owners and so many others who depend on this industry. Think also about the fish, birds, sea turtles and other marine life whose ecosystem has just been turned on its head.

There is a better way: clean energy.

While many countries have already embraced clean energy and adopted national policies to increase energy efficiency and the use of renewables, the United States continues to suffer from a reactive, outdated energy strategy. It’s been nearly a year since the U.S. House of Representatives passed its energy and climate bill (the American Clean Energy and Security Act), but the Senate has yet to begin serious debate on its own legislation.

Our policymakers are fiddling while Rome burns – or rather, while oil rigs burn and pollute our oceans and coasts.

Not only is America’s refusal to embrace clean energy endangering human health and wildlife, it is also costing us jobs, which are precious commodities in this time of economic hardship. Several energy companies, including GE and BP Solar, recently announced plans to invest millions of dollars to develop and expand clean energy facilities – not in the United States, where such investments and the jobs they bring are desperately needed – but in Europe and China. We need incentives for green energy jobs here at home.

Now is the time for the Senate to act. With photos of the oil spill on the front pages of newspapers across the country, Americans are starting to grasp the dangers of our country’s dependence on oil and other dirty sources of energy, and this awareness is being transformed into support for a new energy direction for our country.

While our unfortunate energy reality right now is that we need to continue to drill for oil, including to power our transition to renewable energy, we need to do so in a manner guided by a bold, long-term plan to achieve freedom from oil.

Between the high costs of our oil dependence (which we are reminded of daily by updates on the underwater oil volcano that BP and Halliburton have created) and the looming threat of Peak Oil, we must get a move on before we are forced to get a move on.

We have a choice.

Perhaps, it's the most urgent choice that humanity has ever faced, as the transport and food supplies of billions hang in the balance if we don't start acting with focused, inspired urgency to transition to clean energy and vehicles.

Climate Progress offered a good update on the Peak Oil situation this past weekend:

A storm is quickly approaching, and the world is not ready for it.

The permanent end of the era of cheap oil is coming as soon as next year, according to a raft of official reports that have made their way into energy media over the last few months. Governments are now beginning to acknowledge the looming crisis. Yet, perhaps because they waited too long to prevent it, leaders are not yet alerting the public.

The entire world economy is built on cheap oil, A permanent oil production shortage will thus lead to The End of The World (As We Know It).  What will come on the other side of this — will it be good or bad?

Public Unaware. Except for a few stories in financial pages such as London’s Financial Times, this earth-shaking news has yet to reach the Mainstream Media.  While “Peak Oil” researchers have long warned of approaching oil shortages, the difference now is these dire warnings are being validated by the highest government and oil company officials. Yet, no political leader has had the courage to make a major announcement to prepare the public for what lies ahead.

This public blindness is tantamount to the isolationism that gripped the U.S. in the years preceding WWII. While the highest government leaders did their best to prepare for inevitable war, they were hamstrung by the resistance of a public unable to accept what really lay ahead. Similar to today, some politicians advanced their own careers by feeding on the public’s desire to believe no coming storm could ever reach them. Yet, the storm came anyway.

The Limits of Oil. The looming crisis we now face is often referred to as “Peak Oil” — a status where global oil production will reach a plateau, then begin its irreversible decline.

We Can Do It. Though Americans resisted the recognition that WWII was coming, once it came they rose valiantly to the call to action. A similar can-do spirit is needed now for the transition to a post-oil world.

This crisis is coming soon.  It is too late to prevent it, so we simply need to get used to it.  Peak Oil is happening.

We will need to adapt – but we can do that.

The good news, which I emphasize on this blog time and again, is that the solutions to Peak Oil and climate change overlap in many ways, and both overlap with the solutions to our economic crisis, jobs crisis, and crisis of skyrocketing health care costs.

It is time for us to rise up as citizens and inspire Congress and the President to take bold action by passing an American Power Act that incorporates the lessons we are learning each and every day as we watch this Gulf of Mexico oil disaster unfold. Click here for a fun way to write to your Senators, President Obama, and even your local newspaper.

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Will the BP/Halliburton Oil Spill be a Game Changing Event in Our Energy History?

2010-05-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

The more I read about the BP/Halliburton Oil Spill, the more I think about how absurd it is that we put untold $billions of business and government investment dollars into drilling for a toxic liquid that's so scarce at this point that we need to drill in 5,000-foot-deep water in the middle of the ocean to get it.

I mean, we can put people on the moon, but we're this slow in developing the political willpower to ramp up clean renewable energy and save our economy, health, security and environment from our addiction to this evil black slime of an energy source?

Watching events unfold, I'm speechless that BP not only wasn't prepared for something like this, but fought off government regulators' efforts to make sure they had all systems in place for making 100% sure they could shut off the spigot if something like this happened. I'm even more speechless that regulators didn't spine up and force BP to invest in the spill prevention equipment that would, as we speak, be providing the company with a humongous return on investment. And I've completely had it with taking risks like this just to get at dirty energy and the many (very costly) ills that it inflicts upon society. At this point, the risks we take for our dirty energy fix are akin to those that a heroin junky takes. It's both immensely frustrating and pathetic that a society as advanced as ours can't be bolder in doing what is clearly right on energy.

As both a scientist and a human being, I can't believe that not only is there an uncontrolled pipe spewing oil 5,000 feet down at the bottom of the ocean, but that the company responsible is being allowed to spray and pump millions of gallons of toxic dispersants into the spill to make it less visible. On top of that, we really don't know what kind of impact such a massive quantity of toxic dispersants is going to have on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem and its people alike. Well, we do have an idea, and it's not pretty:

Chemically dispersing oil spills “solves the political problem of visible oil but not the environmental problem,” Robert Brulle, a 20-year Coast Guard veteran and an affiliate professor of public health at Drexel University, told me. These dispersants “do not actually reduce the total amount of oil entering the environment,” as a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report on the subject put it.

In short: out of sight, out of mind. But not out of the body of marine life.

Dispersants decrease the amount of oil that directly reaches the shores or the creatures that live on the shores or sea surface. But they increase the exposure to oil by creatures that live in the water or on the sea floor — like, say, shrimp or oysters.

I spoke to Carys Mitchelmore, one of the writers of the toxicity chapter for the NAS report. She explained that dispersants are “a molecule that looks like a snake. The head part likes water and the tail part likes oil.” The dispersant “pulls the oil into the water in the form of tiny droplets.”

And that means subsurface creatures — from oysters to coral to larval eggs — that might never have had significant exposure to the oil are now going to get a double whammy, getting hit by the oil and by the dispersants. Worse, the oil droplets are now in a form that looks like food (e.g., the same size as algae) to filter feeders like oysters, which otherwise may only have been exposed to the far lower levels of dissolved oil components found under a typical oil slick. The droplets can also clog up fish gills.

Mitchelmore noted that “oil contains a whole suite of toxic chemicals, including known carcinogens.” The dispersants can lead to far greater accumulation in living organisms of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) — oil-derived toxic compounds that were found in mussels 19 months after one spill in which dispersants were used. After the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, a study found PAHs had an impact on the developing hearts of both Pacific herring and pink salmon embryos.

Pretty eye-opening, ain't it? So then, what's going to happen to the people and their families and fishing boats and businesses (from fish wholesalers to retailers to restaurants to recreational fishing and tourism businesses) that depend on a healthy Gulf of Mexico? What's going to happen to the shrimp and the oysters and the fish -- how long until we can really eat them safely once again? What's going to happen to the sharks and rays and turtles that help hold the ecosystem together? What's going to happen to the dolphins and the whales and the seabirds? How long is this spill going to be a literal cancer on the Gulf of Mexico's communities and ecosystems alike?

Are BP, Halliburton and Transocean going to step up and do what's right by footing the bill to cure this cancer? Are voters going to hold the government accountable and make sure our politicians learn the lessons on energy that are clearly being taught here?

For politicians who so strongly hang hats on slogans like "Pro-life" and "Pro-choice", how can we tolerate allowing even one more oil catastrophe like this to be inflicted upon our fellow citizens, our cherished natural heritage, and the wondrous diversity of life we share the earth with? How can we continue to choose dirty oil when our clean energy alternatives offer a far better future for our environment, economy, health and security alike?

Our rapid transition to a clean energy economy, which will also help solve climate change and slow biodiversity loss, is my #1 voting issue. Who's joining me in holding our politicians accountable for getting the job done?
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Photo by Gary Braasch

New Battery Charger Could 'Fill 'er up!' in 3 Minutes

2010-05-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

With all the talk of the unfolding BP-Halliburton oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, I'm happy to relay news of a technological advance in electric vehicles, which are on the verge of transporting millions of us from place to place sans petroleum.

The Triple Pundit reports:

A Japanese company is refining a technology that charges the battery pack in electric cars 50 percent full in three minutes, according to Green Car Advisor.

The system, which is about the size of a gasoline pump, could be a boon for the electric vehicle market, where long charge times for vehicle battery packs are a major obstacle to widespread adoption of EVs.

On that note, I'm going to head out for a spin on my electric-assisted bicycle, which is a blast to ride. I can't wait to own my first electric car, and to be able to charge it via my home solar system...

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UN Report Warns of Economic Impact of Biodiversity Loss

2010-05-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

The UN today issued a new report that warned of the economic impact of biodiversity loss:

The relationship between nature loss and economic harm is much more than just figurative, the UN believes.
An ongoing project known as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) is attempting to quantify the monetary value of various services that nature provides for us.
These services include purifying water and air, protecting coasts from storms and maintaining wildlife for ecotourism.
The rationale is that when such services disappear or are degraded, they have to be replaced out of society's coffers.
Loss of coral reefs will reduce humanity's supply of seafood
TEEB has already calculated the annual loss of forests at $2-5 trillion, dwarfing costs of the banking crisis.
"Many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other lifeforms and their role in healthy and functioning ecosystems," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (Unep).
"Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity, or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world.
"The truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050."
The more that ecosystems become degraded, the UN says, the greater the risk that they will be pushed "over the edge" into a new stable state of much less utility to humankind.
For example, freshwater systems polluted with excess agricultural fertiliser will suffocate with algae, killing off fish and making water unfit for human consumption.

The main question that I keep coming back to is how we go about enacting land use plans that simultaneously protect biodiversity and human well-being without ticking a lot of people off.

How can we make conservation both possible and profitable, and transform the public's perception of biodiversity conservation from a threat to their economic well being to a new revenue opportunity? It comes down to creating smart land management and policy solutions that reward property owners for the conservation value that their lands provide to society -- perhaps via some form of payments for ecosystem services system.

The bottom line is that humanity is still working on management and policy solutions for making conservation an economically viable alternative to extractive uses. We're getting there in some places, but in many others, we've got real work to do.

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20-Year Veteran of Coast Guard Comments on BP's Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

2010-05-03T01:40:00.000-07:00

Catching up on reading about the oil spill tonight, I enjoyed this post at ClimateProgress by sociologist and Coast Guard Veteran, Dr. Robert J. Brulle:

So now what? I had hoped that we were beyond this sort of event. But evidently we aren’t.

In the face of global climate change, and now massive catastrophic oil spills, why can’t we figure out that the fossil fuel era needs to come to an end, for our survival, and for the survival of the rest of the species with which we share this planet? That we have much better alternatives than to continuing to “drill baby drill” – which has now turned into “spill baby spill.” That we cannot drill our way to energy independence, and that every gallon of gas we burn brings the prospect of further ecological calamities from global warming closer.

We need a real commitment to renewable energy, and to stop investing in the polluting fuels of the past. The sooner we get on with it, the less chance our children will have to face future disasters.

Indeed...

Some are now saying oil could rise to over $100/barrel this summer due to the heating economy and possible speculation in the oil market stemming from this spill.

I say bring it on.

It's probably exactly what the doctor ordered for Congress to pass climate change and clean energy legislation that is bolder and more effective than the yawner of a bill put forth by Senators Lieberman, Graham, and Kerry.

Of course, $100 doesn't even come close to reflecting the true cost of a barrel of oil...(this link is to an article by an Iraq war veteran)

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Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Catastrophe: This Doesn't Happen With Clean Energy

2010-04-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

As I've watched the Gulf of Mexico oil spill unfold over the last few days, a few thought have come to mind.

First, a note to God-fearing opponents of the bold climate change and clean energy legislation that will also help us deal with the looming Peak Oil crisis: watching the recent deadly coal mine disaster, quickly followed by this catastrophically costly, headline-grabbing (likely for weeks to come) offshore oil drilling disaster, does it seem kinda like The Lord is pissed about our dirty energy use?

It hasn't been a very good month for those raping Mother Earth for the dirty energy sources that are destabilizing the global climate system, threatening humanity's food and water supplies.

Second, how ironic that this oil spill catastrophe is going to hit the hardest economically in the deep southern U.S., the heart of political support for "Drill Baby Drill!"

The good news, especially given that the Senate is about to start debate on Climate Change and Clean Energy legislation: this type of disaster just doesn't happen with solar or wind power.

Sure, it's going to take a LOT of work and energy (and even fossil fuel use) to transition to clean energy. But we CAN have energy without these deadly, catastrophically costly, economically destabilizing and toxic risks posed by fossil fuels.

Best of all, the building, installation, sales, administration, transport, you name it of all this clean energy infrastructure is going to create the millions of new jobs our economy badly needs. They are good jobs that will make people proud -- coming with the badge of honor that they have joined the clean energy revolution that is freeing America from our addiction to dirty oil and other fossil fuels.

Now it's up to Congress to make it happen and unleash the tsunami of clean energy technology investment that's been waiting on the sidelines for the rules of the game to be established.

Let's play ball, and play to win.
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Major Investment Bank Completes Uber-Green Renovation Project

2010-04-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

When mighty, mega-rich investment banks start going with LEED-Platinum investments to renovate their corporate headquarters, heads turn.

Mine sure did -- here's the good news from The Triple Pundit about Deutsche Bank's newly (and sustainably) renovated headquarters:

Deutsche bank has spent upwards of €20 Million on a complete multi-year renovation project which will earn the company a LEED platinum rating for the million-plus square foot building–a rarity for a large skyscraper and arguably one of the “greenest” corporate headquarters in the world.

A few facts on the renovation:

+ The thermal concrete mass of the old building is re-used to collect and store heat. This is just the way it was done in ancient times (see your local adobe for more information).

+ Electrical usage will be cut by over 50%. Lighting only comes on when needed and a fascinating intelligent elevator system (the subject of another post) that optimizes routing keeps usage low.

+ Heating energy cut by 2/3. Triple paned windows and excellent insulation combined with a heat exchanger that allows the sun’s energy on the hot side of the building to be transferred to areas of the building that are in the shade. Not only that, but most water will be heated by solar thermal panels.

+ Water use cut by almost 75%. A full greywater system will be in place for the toilets as well as rain catchment.

+ The new building will be 100% hydro powered. (By an agreement with a utility in Austria.)

+ LCD readouts in the elevators will show progress of each floor on meeting goals of energy use. This is especially fun because it allows for poor performing departments to be “called out,” creating informal competition between ares of the bank to use the least resources.

+ Operable windows to charm a banker’s heart. Remember the days when office buildings had operable windows? They’re back. Not only that, but these can be automated from central control if carelessly left open.

+ CO2 reduction will be cut by almost 90%. At the end of the day, an astonishing reduction on CO2 emissions is realized.

As for the payback on the bank’s investment, Noack told us it was definitely sound, but spared us the details on exactly how long the payback might be. That got me thinking that the payback for such an investment is a lot more than purely financial.

Clearly the rest of the return is about image.

There’s a lot of brand value in Deutsche Bank’s twin towers. Selling them and moving – even though Noack mentioned it would have actually been much cheaper to do so – would have resulted in considerable loss to the company’s image and mystique. The company board also saw considerable value in the cachet of being the bank that people might point to and say, “That’s the bank with the green building.” Evidently the value more than justifies €200 Million.

But so what? At the end of the day, one of Germany’s major corporate icons is offering the entire green building movement a huge publicity boost on the back of their own. It represents a great investment in engineering firms, design firms, and construction firms who have now been exposed to greener practices. It’s a real savings of resources and energy, and legitimizes green building in the eyes of the traditionally conservative banking and corporate sectors. Finally, knowing the ego of banks, they’ve issued a challenge for others to follow suit. Will we see Chase and Citibank greening their towers next? Time will tell.

That's my bold-facing above, since one of the most powerful motivating forces encouraging the spread of sustainable practices is seeing others doing it. I sure hope this high-profile green building turns heads, attracts attention, and generates some copy-cats...

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Climate Change Water Shortages Emerging: Bolivian Villagers Forced to Relocate as Glaciers, Water Supplies Disappear

2010-04-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a preview of an impact of climate disruption that we can expect to see become far more common in the years to come:

For the Incas, and most of the Andean civilisations, snow-capped mountains were divinities to be honoured, as they supplied water.

But now it seems those gods are losing their powers. Researchers say that the glaciers are in dramatic retreat across the Andes due to rising temperatures.

We are very worried because we have no water. Half the people of this community have already left. Those who remain are struggling with the lack of water," says Max, an elderly Aymara Indian who chews coca leaves as he speaks in heavily-accented Spanish.

For the indigenous people of Khapi everything depends on the streams flowing through their land. The waters, which they consider sacred, keep their animals alive and allow their crops to flourish.

But over the past 10 or 15 years, changing weather patterns have led to irregular water flows - the streams become torrents or dwindle to just trickles.

"The weather has drastically changed and it is now two or three times hotter than it was. We cannot water our crops and the sun and the heat are very strong. Our crops are dry now, our animals are dying; we want to cry," Max says, before asking their Andean goddess, Pachamama or Mother Earth, for help.

It won't be long before we start seeing things like this happen in the U.S. and other developed countries. Do we really want to wait until we "get it" -- painfully -- before we take action?

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Scientists Call for Research on Climate Link to Geological Hazards

2010-04-20T11:04:00.000-07:00

I've blogged about this highly speculative, yet eye-opening area of research before -- most recently after the Haiti earthquake.

Now, interestingly, top scientists are calling for further research:

Richard Betts, a climate modeller at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, said: "This is a new area of academic research with potentially interesting implications. It was previously assumed there was no link at all between climate change and these events, but it is possible to speculate that climate change might make some more likely. If we do get large amounts of climate change in the long term then we might see some impacts."

He said there was no evidence that current levels of global warming were influencing events such as last week's earthquake in China that killed hundreds of people and the volcanic eruption in Iceland that grounded flights across Europe.

Experts say global warming could affect geological hazards such as earthquakes because of the way it can move large amounts of mass around on the Earth's surface. Melting glaciers and rising sea levels shift the distribution of huge amounts of water, which release and increase pressures through the ground.

These pressure changes could make ruptures and seismic shifts more likely. Research from Germany suggests that the Earth's crust can sometimes be so close to failure that tiny changes in surface pressure brought on my heavy rain can trigger quakes. Tropical storms, snowfall and shifting tides have all been linked to shifts in seismic activity.

Wow -- fascinating. Certainly can't hurt to learn more about how these processes and triggers might work as the world warms...

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Food For Thought: Organic Food Worth Buying

2010-04-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

The organic industry is running into some growing pains, reports this AOL piece -- especially when it comes to compliance monitoring (e.g., making sure that foods are being randomly tested and violators' products are immediately pulled from shelves). Does that mean that one shouldn't buy organic?

Consider one recent study that demonstrated the potentially significant health benefits of organics -- avoiding what's NOT in them.

And at least one peer-reviewed study has shown that organic foods offer a potential benefit in what they don't contain.

It was conducted in 2008 by Chensheng Lu, then a professor at Emory University's School of Public Health and a leading authority on pesticides and children, who took as his subjects a group of children living on Mercer Island, a wealthy suburb of Seattle.

Over the course of a year, Lu, now at Harvard, fed 21 children ages 3 to 11 conventional fruits, vegetables and juices from nearby grocery stores for five days at a time. Then the kids were switched to organic foods.

Twice daily on multiple days in each of the four growing seasons, he tested their urine and saliva. When the children ate conventional food, markers of organophosphates -- the family of pesticides spawned by the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II -- appeared in the biological samples. None was found when the children were eating organic.

"The transformation is extremely rapid. Within eight to 36 hours of the children switching to organic food, the pesticides were no longer detected," Lu said at the time.

"Once you switch from conventional food to organic, the pesticides (malathion and chlorpyrifos) that we can measure in the urine disappears. The level returns immediately when you go back to the conventional diets."

Lu is repeating the study in two different communities. The exposure levels observed in Lu's study were lower than the levels that the Environmental Protection Agency regards as safe. But many public health experts and advocates believe those levels are in fact not safe, especially for children.

That's pretty striking. In addition to the peace of mind I get from avoiding nasty pesticides (and doing my part to help keep them out of the environment), I also find many organic products taste better. Furthermore, I have seen research detailing how they contain greater levels of several important vitamins, including powerful anti-oxidants. A new book details many of these benefits, which are also summarized in this Planet Green piece...

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More on the subject from Planet Green>>
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Google Climate Chief: Price on Carbon Will Be Economic Bright Spot

2010-04-19T10:17:00.000-07:00

In about a week, the new Senate climate change and clean energy bill is apparently going to be released by Senators Graham, Kerry and Lieberman. You can be as certain as the sun's rise and set that we'll immediately hear a chorus of such blather as "it's going to wreck the economy" and "we can't pass an environmental bill like this during an economic downturn -- it will cost too much."

Nonsense, says Google's climate change and clean energy chief, Dan Reicher, in this Grist article:

Google is thinking about the big global picture. Reicher told me that, "in general terms, a carbon price will do a lot to advance the competitiveness of these technologies that offer serious climate reductions, help for our energy security, increase our domestic fuels, and can create all sorts of jobs."

But the search-engine-plus is also thinking about its own bottom line. It's already got products on the market that help consumers save electricity.

As Reicher puts it, "putting a serious price of carbon will both get us closer to the serious energy reductions we need to make, but also accelerate the domestic development and adoption of these technologies." It's that last part that's good for business. When government holds up its side of the "triangle of technology, policy, and finance" that Reicher says is essential for green development, it spurs the private investment and innovation that keeps businesses strong.

That's where Congress comes in. The most important policy is carbon pricing. That's what will change the economic fundamentals, augmented by other programs -- like energy efficiency standards and government revolving loans to bring new ideas to the market. The technology and finance sides are ready and able; but we've been waiting for too long for the policy piece that can complete the puzzle.

Google hopes the Senate will act quickly to jumpstart what it thinks will be an economic bright spot in the current downturn.

Again, if you're against the Senate's climate change and clean energy bill, what are you for? More drilling and continued dependence on oil? Good luck with that one -- talk to me in 2-3 years when gas is $5-10/gallon, and I drive by you smiling in my plug-in hybrid or electric vehicle, which I've charged via my home solar system. I see what's coming in our energy future and I'm preparing. It will, of course, get cheaper and easier to prepare with the right incentives in place, such as the ones that will be in this bill.

The bill's supporters in the Senate are going to have to step up, though, and make a strong case about why passing it is going to make our lives and businesses better, and benefit our environment, economy, health, security and quality of life alike. Let's hope they've learned how to do it by now...

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Chemical Reform Safety Gains Momentum In Congress

2010-04-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

After having read articles such as this National Geographic expose about the chemicals building up in human bodies, would you be scared to be tested yourself?

I would. I'm seriously afraid to find out what kinds of toxic chemicals have built up in my body, and what their impacts on my health might be. Hopefully, though, the answers could be used to help protect me from related health threats.

Fortunately, reports Science, Chemical Safety Reform is gaining momentum in Congress:

Two bills in Congress would dramatically strengthen the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) ability to regulate chemicals. The bills shift the burden of proof to industry, which would have to demonstrate the safety of existing and new chemicals. That's a major change from the existing system, in which EPA must prove that chemicals are harmful before it can regulate them.

"This is a monumental sea change," says Richard Denison of the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, D.C.

The bill also...directs EPA to create a green chemistry research grant program and establish a network of at least four research centers to help find safer alternatives to dangerous chemicals.

Strong Chemical Safety Reform is not only important for safeguarding our environment, but like Climate Change and Clean Energy legislation (and it's humongous associated health benefits), it is another crucial component of Health Care Reform. After all, the build-up of chemicals in human bodies is another example of how chemical producers are profiting by deferring the costs of their products on to people -- and our health care providers and insurance companies.

Clearly, passing a strong Chemical Safety Reform bill will offer broad benefits to our environment, health, safety and economy alike. Health Insurance Companies should be lining up to support it.

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U.S. Military Warns Oil Output May Dip, Causing Massive Shortages By 2015

2010-04-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

We officially now have the U.S. Military issuing dire warnings about the imminent dangers of Peak Oil, reports The Guardian (where oh where are U.S. newspapers on this critical economic and national security issue?!)

The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact.

"By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day," says the report, which has a foreword by a senior commander, General James N Mattis.

It adds: "While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China and India."

The US military says its views cannot be taken as US government policy but admits they are meant to provide the Joint Forces with "an intellectual foundation upon which we will construct the concept to guide out future force developments."

This report adds a whole new angle of urgency to the need for the U.S. Senate to pass bold climate change and clean energy legislation, and for The House to support a far bolder bill than the one it passed last summer. Whether you accept the facts on climate change or not, America needs to get our butts in gear in weaning ourselves from oil, or we'll be forced to do it the hard (and very painful and scary) way...

The good news -- the solutions to the Peak Oil crisis are also the solutions to our economic, jobs, energy, and climate crises all packaged into one. Let's do this, people -- let me know how I can be of assistance.

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Conservation Group Hands Out Native Plant Seed Bombs to Citizens

2010-04-07T18:57:00.000-07:00

Now this is an idea I'd consider for helping to restore California's natural flora in our heavily invaded landscapes:

The Conservation Council of New Brunswick is hoping a new tool it's using to encourage the growth of native plants and species will take off with a bang.

The environmental group will be handing out so-called seed bombs at Fredericton's farmers market in the coming months.

People will be encouraged to throw the little balls of soil, nutrients and New Brunswick wildflower seeds into vacant lots, backyards and other places that need greening, spokeswoman Tracy Glynn said.

"It's needed. Our biodiversity is at threat and I think we need something to protect our native biodiversity," she said.

"We were trying to do something about the problem of the disappearing bumblebees, so we wanted to encourage biodiversity in urban areas, so we thought by planting pollinator-friendly vegetation like New Brunswick wildflowers, it would also help the bumblebees that are in trouble," she added.

When I was reading this article, I got the image of needing to do this by dropping giant seed bombs from helicopters here in California. But it wouldn't be easy. Many of our native grasses and wildflowers have been gone from the bulk of our grasslands and oak savannas for decades. As a result, there is no longer a seed source for them to return. On top of that, a thick mat of highly competitive weedy non-native annuals inhibits native seedlings from establishing. So even if we dropped cruise missile-sized native seed bombs from helicopters, they'd only take hold if the exotics were beaten back by either properly-timed grazing or burning. So maybe we'd need Apache helicopter gun ships... ;-)

That said, it would be a fun exercise to see how this works in local communities, to at least get our native flora re-established in the landscaping of our parks, school grounds, vacant lots and yards. I've been doing this very thing little by little over the last few years, and it's fun to watch the colorful natives bloom each spring.

Disease Threatens Douglas Firs of the Pacific Northwest

2010-04-07T18:30:00.000-07:00

Scientists have seen this coming for years, and climate change seems to have accelerated the vulnerability of Pacific Northwest forests to disease caused by unwise forest management and tree planting practices. As the Oregonian reports:

A fungal disease attacking Douglas-fir trees along the Pacific Northwest coast is intensifying and may be linked to a warmer climate and extensive planting of Douglas-fir on logged tracts, new Oregon State University research suggests.

The epidemic of Swiss needle cast stunts growth in both older and younger trees and appears to be unprecedented over at least the past 100 years, OSU researchers Bryan Black, David Shaw, and Jeffrey Stone concluded.

Swiss needle cast, which originated in Europe, has spread sharply since 1996. It affects hundreds of thousands of acres in Oregon and Washington, costing tens of millions a year in lost growth. It rarely kills trees but causes discoloration and loss of needles and stunts growth.

The disease has now been identified at varying levels of severity in western Oregon on more than 300,000 acres in each of the past four years, peaking at 376,000 acres in 2008, the researchers said in a paper published in the journal "Forest Ecology and Management."

Prior to this four-year period, it had affected as much as 300,000 acres only once in the 14-year history of aerial detection surveys, they said.

It could ultimately affect up to two million acres of forests near the Oregon coast, OSU said, and change the face of forestry in a huge region.

The new study concluded that warmer conditions, especially from March through August, are associated with significantly reduced growth in diseased trees, which may reflect earlier fruiting of the fungus. Wet, drizzly conditions in May through July are also important.

The warm, wet conditions within 20 miles or so of the Pacific Ocean make those areas a hotspot of disease in coastal Oregon and Washington.

Another key suspect, scientists say, is the planting for decades of a monoculture of Douglas-fir in replacement of coastal forests, which previously had trees of varying ages and different species.

When Douglas-fir was a small component of these forests, it appears the disease was relatively insignificant. Even-aged stands of Douglas-fir allow the fungus to build up, releasing spores that spread with the wind.

It's text book conservation biology that something like this would happen to the Pacific Northwest's forests -- scientists have been warning of the dangers of poor forest management and planting monocultures of Douglas Fir for years. Now the timber industry's ignoring of scientific advice has the potential to become very very costly for the region's economy and the local communities that depend on sustainable forest management. It's really too bad, because the problem could have been avoided.

Read more>>
Read a different article on the subject -- from The Science Blog>>
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Why Buy Local?

2010-04-07T16:33:00.000-07:00

Local isn't just about sustainability, reflects the author of this post from The Triple Pundit. It's about a whole range of benefits tied to community and happiness. Here are a few of my favorites:

Local is more choices. Endless choices, all with unique stories, people and artisanship.

Local is buying from friends. Just as it used to be, I know companies right here in the Bay Area who love to invite people to their factory for a tour, or even to their homes for a meal. When was the last time you were invited to fly in the private Boeing 787s of a company that you buy from or even invest in?

Local is learning and knowing more. I want to know where my food comes from, appreciating the subtle differences and varieties as we often do wine (rather than by brand). I don’t want to have to watch a documentary or read breaking news to find out what is hidden from my view.

Local is about relationships. I don’t know about you, but I’m not comfortable being considered a “consumer.” I am not a consumer, I am a person and I believe that our central role on our society is a hell of a lot more than to consume stuff.

Local is about slowing down and discovering our talents again. In our world of hyper productivity and endless information, is the goal to work every waking hour? A friend of mine, actually a successful CEO, has no TVs in his home, only music instruments and a garden. Perhaps we’ve lost something by having everything we could possibly want available to us in shopping aisles. Our parents or grandparents probably preserved their own jams, pickled their own pickles, and received more in return than just something for their sandwiches.

Local is making less of an impact. We all know that we are destroying our natural resources and that this can’t keep up. We’ve done a really good job at hiding the truth from ourselves, of the resources we are consuming and the endless waste we are creating. Yet, when you can look a local company owner in the eyes and ask them about the impact they (and we) are making, everything changes. We need to get back to that.

Local is reusing more. Nearly everything we buy is mostly packaging and a little of what we actually need or use. But when we buy local milk from Straus Family Creamery, for example, or local preserves from Happy Girl Kitchen, we can return the container, no waste, no recycling (as environmentalists will tell you, recycling isn’t nearly as effective as reuse).

Local is more delicious. When it comes to food, eating local means more variety and fresher food. Isn’t life about variety, not a burger that tastes exactly the same, made with exactly the same ingredients? A diet that changes with the seasons sounds fantastic to me, perhaps even a reminder that I’m still alive!

Want to know where to buy local? Click here to search for your neighborhood farmers market.

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Energy Crops Impact Environmental Quality

2010-04-07T14:34:00.000-07:00

A new review explores alternative approaches for providing the carbon-rich material used to create cellulosic ethanol. While some have touted use of crop waste for conversion to fuels, this review touts important environmental benefits provided by crop residues, and suggests alternative crops for fuel production:

In the March-April 2010 issue of Agronomy Journal, published by the American Society of Agronomy, Dr. Humberto Blanco reviewed the impacts of crop residue removal, warm season grasses, and short-rotation woody crops on critical soil properties, carbon sequestration, and water quality as well as the performance of energy crops in marginal lands. The review found that crop residue removal from corn, wheat,and grain sorghumcan adversely impact soil and environmental quality. Removal of more than 50% of crop residue can have negative consequences for soil structure, reduce soil organic carbon sequestration, increase water erosion, and reduce nutrient cycling and crop production, particularly in erodible and sloping soils.

"Crop residue removal can make no-till soils a source rather than a sink of atmospheric carbon," says Blanco, even at rates lower than 50%. Residue removal at rates of less than 25% can cause loss of sediment in runoff relative to soils without residue removal. To avoid the negative impacts on soil, perhaps only a small fraction of residue might be available for removal. This small amount of crop residues is not economically feasible nor logistically possible. Blanco recomends developing other alternative biomass feedstock sources for cellulosic ethanol production.

An alternative to crop residue removal is growing warm season grasses and short-rotation woody crops as dedicated energy crops. These crops can provide a wide of range of ecosystems services over crop residue removal. Available data indicate that herbaceous and woody plants can improve soil characteristics, reduce soil water and wind erosion, filter pollutants in runoff, sequester soil organic carbon, reduce net emissions of greenhouse gases, and improve wildlife habitat and diversity.

Whereas crop residue removal reduces carbon concentration, dedicated energy crops can increase soil organic carbon concentration while providing biofuel feedstock. Because of their deep root systems, warm season grasses also promote long-term carbon sequestration in deeper soil profile unlike row crops.

I've been watching the development of biofuels for years now, and there always seems to end up being a problem with each candidate. Hopefully we can find a solution sooner than later that is both effective and safe for helping wean us from our oil addiction.

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New Book Touts "Shocking" Reasons to Eat Organic

2010-04-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

A new book describes the many environmental, health and safety benefits of organic foods. As reported on The Early Show:

Matt Bean, a senior editor of the magazine, spelled out many of those benefits on "The Early Show" Tuesday.

Although organic food is more expensive than conventional food, Bean says making organics a part of your diet can have a big impact on your health and that of your family.

From the book, Bean says, "We discovered ... some pretty shocking and convincing arguments" for going that route.

Health Benefits of Organic Foods:

• More Nutrients: Studies show that organic foods may have increased levels of nutrients like antioxidants than conventionally grown foods

• Fertility Health: Pesticides found in conventionally grown foods have been shown to reduce fertility

• Immune System Protection: The chemicals in non-organic foods may also harm your immune system, leaving you more susceptible to illness and some forms of cancer

• Hormones and weight gain: New research has shown that some agricultural chemicals could actually be making you fat by interfering with your hormone levels.

• Unknown effects of GMOs: Many people are concerned about genetically modified foods, especially since many of them have never been tested on humans. Organic foods are never genetically modified.

Given findings like this out there, there's also an element of 'peace of mind' that comes with eating organic -- especially when grown in our own garden (I'm proud of the food I grow, and it tastes great!) and purchased at local farmers' markets (supporting our local organic growers and green economy).

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Climate Change and Clean Energy Next? (Or Wait Until It Gets Really Hot?)

2010-03-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

Now that a Historic, yet still inadequate Health Insurance Reform bill has passed Congress (incomplete because premium cost controls still need to be strengthened, as Senator Feinstein is trying to do, and as competition from a fairly-priced Public Plan would do), people are starting to talk about passing climate change and clean energy legislation.

David Roberts penned a good one here.

I personally think that the Senate should strategically wait until the weather gets a bit warmer, and the painful Memorial Day weekend gas price spike is felt across America, before taking up the legislation. It's silly, but it's smart. People are more likely to support the legislation if they're sweating and gas prices are rising, which they will be in June and July.

I also like Joe Romm's new piece a lot, especially the parts about messaging -- on both health care and climate/energy. Says Romm:

No serious messaging strategy can possibly be built around the phrase “healthcare reform.” Why? First, “reform” is a process, not an outcome. No one serious about moving public opinion talks about process over and over again. They talk about the benefits that reform brings, outcomes the public cares about. Second, most of the public likes their healthcare, so the phrase “healthcare reform” is not intrinsically positive and, in fact, is probably negative for much of the public given the more effective conservative messaging.

If you spend half your scarce messaging time talking about “healthcare reform,” while your opponent spends all of their time messaging on negative outcomes that the public worries about, you are fighting with one hand tied behind your back.

Here's a quiz:
1) What’s worse from a messaging perspective, “the public option” or “cap-and-trade”? Hint: Both are process.
2) Tell me in one sentence what team Obama says is the benefit of passing a health care reform bill.
3) Tell me in one sentence what team Obama says happens if we fail to pass the climate and clean energy bill.

On health care, no simple, repeated core message exists, so the whole effort is a muddle.

Like the 99% of people who aren’t expert on health care reform, only very recently — 12 months too late — have I begun to develop a clear idea of what this plan is or what it would actually do. The problem is, many if not most people could probably care less about the uninsured — they just don’t want to join that group — and while people may say they want cost containment, in fact they don’t want their own costs “contained,” they only want their premiums lower. They do want security about their healthcare.

Again, the single phrase that the Democrats repeat most often is “healthcare reform” whereas the single phrase that Republicans repeat most often is “government takeover.” Is it any surprise the polling on this bill is so bad?

That's certainly a thought-provoking analysis. Romm thinks Health Care Security would have been a much better frame for messaging, and I agree. Here's what he proposes:

A vote for this bill is a vote for healthcare security. You get to keep your healthcare coverage if you like what you have — and they can’t throw you off of it if you get some expensive disease or get fired. And you get access to health care coverage if you don’t have it, and they can’t keep it away from you if you have a pre-existing condition. And this bill keeps whatever healthcare you have or get affordable, so you don’t have to compromise your health to pay for other necessities.

Fortunately, we're doing better on climate change and clean energy, and there's far more bi-partisan support for passage of a strong bill, even if it tends to be for different reasons for Democrats (environmental, health reasons, green jobs) than for Republicans (economic, security reasons).

But we're going to have to leverage the types of lessons Romm emphasizes above to convey to Americans why our lives will be much better once Congress passes this legislation and President Obama signs it.

With Peak Oil also looming bigger and bigger (second link) right around the corner in 2014, you don't even need to think about climate change to realize that if we're to have a robust economic recovery that is also resilient, we've got to get our asses in gear on weaning America off of our dangerous dependence on oil.

It's a wonderful thing when environmental, economic, energy, security and health care solutions of this magnitude are all linked. Now let's emphasize these linkages and pass bold climate change and clean energy legislation. It will help unleash the Glacial Lake Missoula-level flood of pubic and private investment needed to transition America to a more secure, robust, and stable clean energy-powered economy.
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Banning Sales of Invasive Species -- A Money-Saving Win for Taxpayers

2010-03-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I made trips to a couple of stores to purchase crops and soil amendments for our spring/early summer garden. I was dismayed to find that damaging invasive species are for sale in both OSH and Home Depot.

Shame on OSH for selling the invasive shrub, Scotch Broom, and shame on Home Depot for selling the invasive weed, Japanese Honeysuckle (I'm guessing there were others, but I didn't have time to check). Both species are on the noxious weed lists of many states and conservation organizations across America.

What are OSH and Home Depot doing wrong here? These species are or have been classified in many states as "Noxious weeds", which were defined by the 1974 Federal Noxious Weed Act as:

Noxious Weed means any living stage, such as seeds and reproductive parts, of any parasitic or other plant of a kind, which is of foreign origin, is new to or not widely prevalent in the United States, and can directly or indirectly injure crops, other useful plants, livestock, or poultry or other interests of agriculture, including irrigation, or navigation, or the fish or wildlife resources of the United States or the public health.

These plants are injurious and economically harmful! So why on earth are they for sale, for people to buy and plant in their yards or otherwise on their property? Is the ability to sell noxious weeds really that important to the horticultural industry and the sales of stores like Home Depot and OSH that such species can't be banned? Really?

Is it too much to ask for the horticultural industry to show some level of moral responsibility to society and stop selling noxious weeds to typically unsuspecting customers who think they just look pretty?

The result of noxious weeds like this being commercially available to consumers who've probably never even heard of "noxious weeds" is undoubtedly that some plantings escape and become expensive, time-consuming, environmentally-damaging problems for state and federal agencies, environmental NGO's and private landowners. Even worse, they probably often result in pest control officials using pesticides of questionable or even harmful levels of toxicity to eradicate the infestations.

Why should horticultural companies and stores like Home Depot and OSH get to profit off the sales of harmful invasive weeds at the expense of taxpayers?

This just can't be too hard of a problem to fix in today's day and age of uber-tight agency and NGO budgets. It's time to ban commercial sales of species legally classified as invasive or noxious. This is no-brainer conservation action that will save consumers, agencies and NGO's money, protect the public health from pesticide use that can be avoided, and benefit the health of ecosystems and biodiversity.
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Deforestation's Impacts in Africa: "The rains stopped, and banana groves and corn stalks died"

2010-03-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of pictures and stories of the benefits that healthy ecosystems provide to humanity. As I drove up toward Redwood Regional Park for my weekly meditative hike on Saturday, I was glad to find Living On Earth airing on NPR.

This quote got me -- a story about a reforestation project in Uganda, where the locals talk about what happened after the government cut down their forests:

HOFFMAN: Jerome Byesigwa chairs the group and explains how it started. In 2003, he says, the weather in the area suddenly changed when the government cut down much of the nearby Central Forest Reserve for timber. The rains stopped, and banana groves and corn stalks died.

[BYESIGWA SPEAKING] VOICEOVER: As soon as it had been harvested we realized there was a change in the weather. Just even ordinary people would tell you that the problems we were experiencing were because our forests there had been harvested.

The fact that these folks are getting carbon credits for planting highly invasive, water-hungry non-native tree species is just wrong. It's great to see the World Bank funding reforestation projects like this, but it would be nice if they would help the local people by selecting native species, adapted to local environmental conditions (especially water needs) that help to replace the ecosystem services that have been lost to deforestation.

Clearly, we've got a ways to go to better integrate the science of sustainability into the planning of Uganda and the World Bank.

Read more>>
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Autism and Toxins - Living On Earth

2010-03-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

This week's Living on Earth has a fascinating story about the role of environmental toxins in explaining the recent spike in cases of autism. Here's an excerpt of LOE host Jeff Young's conversation with Dr. Philip Landrigan of Mount Sinai School of Medicine:

YOUNG: The Centers for Disease Control estimate six out of every thousand U.S. children are diagnosed with some form of autism. The apparent increase in autism has alarmed parents and stymied scientists searching for a cause. Dr. Philip Landrigan argues in a medical journal that we should look to our environment for answers on autism. He's a professor of pediatrics and community and preventative medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Dr. Landrigan thinks a sustained focus on chemical exposures in the womb could tell us more than genetic studies have.

LANDRIGAN: I'll begin by pointing out that there has been some very elegant genetic research done over the past five or ten years that has very successfully identified a number of genes and gene mutations that are responsible for a certain number of cases of autism. All together these genetic causes are responsible for something like 20 or 25 percent of cases. Well, that's very important work and it's very important to know that there are genetic causes, but at the same time those findings leave the causation of something like 75 percent of cases of autism unexplained.

YOUNG: So, genetics alone can't explain this, what evidence do we have that environmental exposures might be a cause here?

LANDRIGAN: We know from other research on toxic chemicals that the developing human brain is very vulnerable to environmental toxins, we know about lead, we know about mercury, we know about PCBs, we know about certain pesticides, and for each of those chemicals we know that if the developing brain is exposed to the chemical early in development, especially in the early months of pregnancy, that the potential is very high for injury to the developing brain.
The second line of evidence I would call proof of principle. And this is the finding that there is a short list of chemicals that have been directly found to be linked to autism. The fact that early life exposure to these drugs can cause autism in certain children says to me that it's possible other drugs, other environmental chemicals might also be responsible for some cases of autism

I heard this story on the radio yesterday, and was excited to share it, as I've seen the impact that having an autistic child has had on the lives of friends. I find it infuriating that companies out there are profiting from business processes that put these kinds of toxins out into our environment.

I'm glad to see that high-level people, including experts at esteemed institutions like Mt Sinai School of Medicine, are taking notice. Hopefully we soon see the kind of progress toward banning these chemicals that has resulted in victories from the the phase-out of lead from gasoline to the recent phase out of BPA from common household products.

Listen to the story>>
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The Evolution of Innovative Green Brands

2010-03-14T21:58:00.000-07:00

Start off your week with a bit of food for thought from GreenBiz.com -- on how Wal-Mart has changed the game in the Green Products marketplace:

Walmart, being the sensible world-dominating company it is, saw a new twist on green that other brands (both the traditional and uber ethical) had missed. In short, green equalled efficient, and efficient equalled money saving.

From lowering energy consumption to "encouraging" suppliers to cut down their packaging, Walmart introduced innovations in products, services and business models that truly broke new ground.

More than any other entity, Walmart convinced shell-shocked traditional brands that they had to get with this green innovation thing.

Today, we are starting to see the results.

There's still plenty not to like about the mega-retailer's impact on the availability of well-paying jobs in the communities where they displace smaller/family-owned shops (among other things). But backed by Satchi and Satchi S, they seem to be leveraging their buying power to really make a difference up and down their supply chain. I actually have it high on my priority list to dig deeper into what they're doing (and I'll report, from an ecological perspective, as soon as I have time)...

One thing I don't see them doing is offering many products that are old-school durable, helping us get a better bang for our buck, reducing our resource use and waste over time, and saving us time and money buying and replacing our stuff. So many common consumer products today -- from computers to cell phones to coolers -- start malfunctioning or otherwise fall apart after a year or two, it's pathetic. Then we have to recycle them -- if they can be recycled -- and most people then burn fossil fuels to go to the store (or to place an order that needs to be shipped from thousands of miles away) to get a new version of that thing from Wal-Mart that's fallen to pieces after just a couple of years.

What are you going to do about that, Wal-Mart?

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The Benefits of Biodiversity: Even Bacteria Do Wonders for Humanity

2010-03-12T11:18:00.000-08:00

It's not just charismatic megafauna like bears, wolves, lions and monkeys that should come to mind when you think about the wonders of biological diversity. And it's beyond the beauty and healing power of plants.

According to this article from Science Daily, humans should be thanking even some types of bacteria for making our lives better, in this case by providing a possible cure for Alzheimer's Disease:

Rapamycin, a drug that keeps the immune system from attacking transplanted organs, may have another exciting use: fighting Alzheimer's disease. The drug -- a bacterial product first isolated in soil from Easter Island -- rescued learning and memory deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's, a team from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio reported on Feb. 23.

The study, in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, offers the first evidence that the drug is able to reverse Alzheimer's-like deficits in an animal model, said the senior author, Salvatore Oddo, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Physiology of the UT Health Science Center San Antonio.

Could climate change and/or sea level rise threaten the existence of similar bacteria out there in remote locations? Who knows.

This may be yet another instance of a highly isolated endemic species (one that occurs in only one place) that is discovered to be incredibly valuable to humanity. How many such species -- that contain a compound found to cure a crippling diseases or otherwise provide a life-changing solution -- are on the verge of being lost forever due to rainforest destruction or other human environmental impacts? The best way to not worry about that is for us to support and foster sustainability whenever we can -- both in the voting booth and when we vote with our wallets.

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Get Those Plug-In Hybrids Ready: New Study Predicts Peak Oil In 2014

2010-03-11T10:41:00.000-08:00

For those of you interested in Peak Oil -- the other big reason in addition to climate change that we need to wean ourselves from our oil addiction ASAP -- here's a new scientific study on the matter. It was conducted by Kuwaiti mathematical modelers, and they predict Peak Oil by 2014:

Even though forecasting should be handled with extreme caution, it is always desirable to look ahead as far as possible to make an intellectual judgment on the future supplies of crude oil. Over the years, accurate prediction of oil production was confronted by fluctuating ecological, economical, and political factors, which imposed many restrictions on its exploration, transportation, and supply and demand. The objective of this study is to develop a forecasting model to predict world crude oil supply with better accuracy than the existing models. Even though our approach originates from Hubbert model, it overcomes the limitations and restrictions associated with the original Hubbert model. As opposed to Hubbert single-cycle model, our model has more than one cycle depending on the historical oil production trend and known oil reserves. The presented method is a viable tool to predict the peak oil production rate and time. The model is simple, accurate, and totally data driven, which allows a continuous updating once new data are available. The analysis of 47 major oil producing countries estimates the world’s ultimate crude oil reserve by 2140 BSTB and the remaining recoverable oil by 1161 BSTB. The world production is estimated to peak in 2014 at a rate of 79 MMSTB/D.

I can't wait to get me a plug-in hybrid or electric vehicle, and to be able to charge it off my home solar system. But that's just my preparedness. We're going to need lots and lots of them -- and lots and lots of rail to transport goods affordably -- ready as close to 2014 as possible if we're to avoid a highly undesirable energy crisis... Let's get a move on, U.S. government!

Thanks to Chris Nelder for the Tweet...

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The Pyramid of Energy Conservation

2010-03-11T01:34:00.000-08:00

A lot of people ask me where to get started in making their homes more energy efficient. Thanks to Chris Nelder and Twitter for this interesting graphical set of "instructions:

It's late, so I've got to ponder this energy pyramid a little before I reflect on it. Check back at this post for some comments, coming as soon as I have some time to give it a good thinkover...

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America's Costly Nitrogen Dilemma and What We Can Do About It

2010-03-10T10:29:00.000-08:00

Did you know that overapplication of fertilizer is one of humanity's greatest environmental challenges? Grist's Tom Philpott does a bang-up job explaining the problems it causes and exploring potential solutions. He interviews experts including Stanford biogeochemistry guru, Peter Vitousek:

According to Peter Vitousek, a professor of biology at Stanford and a leading scholar on the nitrogen cycle, under optimum conditions and using best practices, plants take up only "50 or at best 60 percent" of the nitrogen laid on by farmers. So if so much of their fertilizer is going to waste, why do farmers apply so much? Vitousek explained that plants take up different amounts of nitrogen at different points in the growing cycle. To ensure that crops have sufficient N when they need it most, farmers essentially have to over-apply.

Globally, "about two-thirds of the nearly $100 billion of nitrogen fertilizer spread on fields each year is wasted," estimates The Economist. That's a lot of cash down the drain and a lot of nitrogen bleeding out of fields in various forms, wreaking all manner of havoc: Exhibit A, the 8,000-square-mile dead zone that blooms every year in the Gulf of Mexico, as Krysta Hozyash covered in this series.

Fortunately, this is yet another environmental problem where the solution will save money: greater efficiency of Nitrogen fertilizer use will cut farmers' costs while improving the health of our soils, waterways and even the air we breathe.

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A Green Jobs Revolution

2010-03-09T12:05:00.000-08:00

Here's a fun read from Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo:

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt explain why retooling our carbon-based energy sector for clean growth can spur the kind of investment and job growth that we saw in the telecom industry after the market opening of the early 1990s.

Congressman Markey and FCC Chairman Hundt compare the benefits we can achieve now from passing bold climate change and clean energy legislation to the benefits America reaped from passing 1990's legislation that lead to revolutions in telecom products and services:

In the ten years that followed the spectrum auctions that created competition in digital cellular and the regulatory framework that opened Internet access to competition and the telephone network to innovation - 1997 to 2007 - investors, according to McKinsey and Company, poured more than $850 billion in new capital into mobile, data, and expanded cable networks in the United States.

This investment drove job creation beyond any economist's prediction. Unemployment fell to 4 percent by the end of 1990s, and nearly 65 percent of the population was employed. That's a remarkable contrast to the numbers today: 9.7 percent of Americans are unemployed and only 58 percent of people are employed. The job growth led to national income growth and increased tax revenue, so that the federal budget, contrary to every estimate at the beginning of the 90s, was balanced by 1998.

We can get the same upside surprises if we pass a law that retools the carbon-based energy sector of the last century and encourages private investment in a 21st century energy economy built on alternatives such as wind, sun, biomass and geothermal. That's the purpose of the Waxman-Markey bill, which passed the House of Representatives last June.

Reform in communications stimulated creative destruction. For example, the old long distance industry charged ten cents a minute for a call when we passed the Telecommunications Act. Now people are not even aware that there used to be a long distance charge when they use their phones to call anywhere.

The replacement of the old networks with the new led to waves of innovation. Our reforms permitted everyone to unplug the phone line from the back of the telephone and stick it into the back of the computer. That connection was the first pathway to the World Wide Web - in large part because we did not permit the telephone company to charge extra money for all that extra and unpredicted use. The new demand for data connections drove telephone companies to buy routers and switches, to build data centers, and to upgrade lines. Cable companies were driven to respond by switching some of their capacity from one-way video programs to high speed two-way internet access, giving rise to broadband. In response, the phone companies are now installing fiber, taking broadband to new levels of speed and lower price per bit.

Similarly, in the energy sector we need to retool the existing generation and distribution networks with cleaner forms of generation, open markets to innovators who will build power lines that lose fewer electrons and connect new sources of clean power to users, and reward investors for installing more efficient ways of using electricity. Creating the right framework for our communications networks led investors to commit about $850 billion to rebuild those networks. With the right set of policies, it is reasonable expect a similar explosion of private sector investment in the energy sector. This will result in consumers paying less for heating, cooling and lighting, and America's energy sector will be firmly based on abundant, cheap and clean fuels. Nothing will pull innovation into the energy sector more than wind farms demanding better storage technology, solar farms demanding better ways of capturing and converting sunlight into electricity, and appliances and electric vehicles that can talk to the grid if it is smart enough.

There are other areas of the economy where Americans can and should find new jobs. In the energy sector we not only will need millions of employees, but we also know that those millions will help us achieve independence from foreign oil and an end to the pollution of the environment from carbon emissions. The trifecta of huge employment, national security, and protection of the environment is a winning ticket for America. We have found that winning formula before in hard times that proved to be the dawn of economic growth; we can turn the dark days of the present into sunny optimism about our future once again.

Superb piece -- they've clearly got their messaging down on the importance of passing bold climate change and clean energy legislation. Note to the Senate: let's make it happen, already!

Kudos for TMP for bringing us this kind of high quality content, which is worthy of the op-ed pages of the world's finest newspapers.

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Is the Push for New Nuclear Power Plants a Gigantic Waste of Time and Money?

2010-03-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

I'm anything but convinced that new nuclear power plants are a practical, cost-effective and safe solution to our climate disruption and Peak Oil problems. This article, titled "No New Version of Nuclear Power", provides some up-to-date information, including links to recent reports, about why this is my current take on Nuclear Power.

Amory Lovins writes: "Every new reactor in history has been costlier, slower, and harder than projected." He continues: "IFRs (integrated fast reactors) might in principle offer some safety advantages over today's light-water reactors, but create different safety concerns, including the sodium coolant's chemical reactivity (sodium catches fire if exposed to airand explodes if exposed to water) and radioactivity."

Also from the report:

“2009 was the seventh year of the so-called “Nuclear Renaissance,” but it looks a lot like the US nuclear industry of the 1980s, a decade of no new orders, multiple delays and cancellations, hefty defaults, and emerging cheaper alternatives.” (Mark Cooper, Institute for Energy and the Environment, December 2009)

Right now, we really need to be investing our time and funding into low-carbon energy solutions that are cost-effective and can be deployed relatively quickly (like starting now, and up and running starting within the next 5 years). I'd love for nuclear to work as an addition to our energy mix that really helps our transition off of the 20th Century sinking ship that is fossil fuels -- I really would. Show me the numbers, the new plants that are being built quickly and cost effectively. You can't!

Thus, this article certainly doesn't do anything to convince me that we should be investing billions of precious taxpayer dollars in nuclear right now, as President Obama seems to be approving of to achieve "bipartisan" support of climate change and clean energy legislation in the Senate.

At a time when we need to get as many kWh of low-carbon energy sources in place as soon as possible, it's painful to watch as "bipartisanship" takes priority over "likelihood of success". I don't give a whale's armpit if policy solutions are Democratic, Republican, bipartisan, or friggin Martian. I just want them to successfully achieve our climate change and clean energy transition goals.

It boggles the mind how plumb dumb the politics of our transition to clean energy can be sometimes.

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Pacific Northwest Forests Act As Massive Carbon Storage Banks

2010-03-08T10:39:00.000-08:00

A new report by The Wilderness Society identifies 10 Pacific Northwest National Forests as the most prolific for storing carbon in our national forest system.

These forests are my favorite in the U.S. -- unbelievably vibrant, and remaining old growth stands are magically cathedralesque...

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Climate Disruption Concern: Methane from Melting Arctic Ocean Permafrost

2010-03-08T10:33:00.000-08:00

Here's a bit of a climate disruption eye-opener for you:

Based on a series of expeditions to the margins of the Arctic Ocean by ship and helicopter, University of Alaska researcher Natalia Shakhova and her colleagues report that methane, a greenhouse gas that is 30 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, is bubbling up from the continental shelf and leaking into the atmosphere. The estimated total: 8 teragrams — that's 8 trillion grams — per year. (See pictures of the effects of global warming.)

Exactly what this means for climate change, however, isn't at all certain. Eight teragrams of anything, let alone a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, sounds dangerous, but as Martin Heimann of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, points out, the newly discovered methane leak represents a small piece of the overall global total of methane emissions — about 500 teragrams annually — from wetlands, termites and agriculture (including belching cows, rotting manure and rice paddies).

The number itself isn't what worries people, though: it's whether this newly identified methane source is part of an ominous trend. Climate scientists have long worried about the enormous amount of methane locked in Arctic permafrost, the thick layer of soil just beneath the surface that remains frozen all year. The methane was originally deposited there through decomposition of organic matter in ancient wetlands, and as long as it stays put, it can't contribute to climate change.

But as the planet warms and the permafrost thaws, methane could begin to escape into the atmosphere, where it would trap more heat and melt more permafrost — one of the many positive feedback mechanisms that could accelerate the climate change that is already under way.

The methane question is something readers of this blog will know that I am keeping a wary eye on. I'm glad that the amount of methane that these researchers measured doesn't amount to much in relation to the global methane budget. But reading an article like this worries me in a big big way -- are we just now starting to detect the tip of the iceberg of the methane time bomb starting to go off? I sure hope not...

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Myths and Realities of Cap and Trade

2010-03-07T11:55:00.000-08:00

For those of you who'd like to read a quick primer about the Myths and Realities of Cap and Trade, here's a nice simple one.

It's a good response to the confusion out there -- even among those in Congress -- about climate policy.

Enjoy...
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President Obama Proposes $3,000 Rebates for Energy-Saving Home Improvements

2010-03-07T11:48:00.000-08:00

Well, this is some good news for both job creation and those who want to save some money via home energy efficiency. Big help dealing with costs:

Obama called on Congress to enact an administration proposal dubbed "Homestar," which would offer rebates of up to $3,000 for energy-saving home renovations. The idea is based on the popular "Cash for Clunkers" program last year, which offered incentives to trade in older vehicles for more energy-efficient ones, providing a boost to auto sales.

If passed by lawmakers, the latter program is expected to cost about $6 billion and entice as many as 3 million homeowners to initiate the renovations.

Obama said the program would achieve multiple goals at once: lowering energy bills for consumers, creating jobs and reducing the nation's dependence on foreign energy sources.

"This is not a Democratic idea or a Republican idea," Obama said. "It is a common-sense approach that will help jump-start job creation while making our economy stronger."

Let's hope that this program gets rolled out quickly, bringing badly needed economic stimulus via emissions-reducing energy efficiency retrofit work that saves citizens money and creates jobs.

I've had enough of the excuses for these smart programs getting bogged down in bureaucracy during implementation and not having an impact as quickly as hoped. It's time to get a move on, D.C. folks -- make it happen!

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Bloom Box's PR Coup: Showing Just How Thirsty the Public Is For a Clean Energy Revolution

2010-03-02T01:36:00.000-08:00

I've been following the big stir caused by 60 Minutes' coverage of the fuel cell company, Bloom Box. I don't necessarily buy the hype, and Chris Nelder will tell you why. I sure am rooting for the rise of fuel cell technologies though!

Perhaps more interesting than the technology itself is the huge public reaction -- the curiosity, the buzz, the hope for that holy grail of energy independence. Nick over at The Triple Pundit nails it on the head:

Despite the legitimate questions above, the cleantech world and the public at large remain captivated by the gee-whiz possibilities of fuel cells and the Jetson’s-like fantasy of limitless, magical power.

Indeed, by giving a company or a home complete control of their electricity generation, in a relatively green way (after all, end users could still supplement the bloom box with wind or solar), there’s a secondary appeal that emerges beyond price – independence. In terms of the general public, I think it’s this “off the grid” mentality that’s really driving enthusiasm, and which played so perfectly into the product’s launch hype. Generating electricity off the grid may ultimately be more efficient, but it’s also potentially safer – think about the east coast black-out a few years back. Especially in the United States, the quest for independence (whether fantasy or real) remains a bigger psychological driver than limiting one’s carbon footprint.

Whether or not Bloom can live up to the hype that’s been built remains to be seen, but even if they don’t, the excitement that’s been generated around fuel cells and even the criticism that’s been levied are proof of the public’s thirst for something new. People are very much ready for new energy technology, for greater efficiency, and for a greater feeling of independence – whether they’re particularly ‘green minded’ or not.

Let's hope the Senate gets this message and passes a bold climate change and clean energy bill that helps give the public the transition to clean energy technologies that we're hungry for. Why should so many countries be so far ahead of us in high speed rail, clean energy policies and vehicle fuel efficiency? Why can't other countries envy America's clean tech leadership in driving the transition to a clean energy economy? It's time for you and me to help the Senate make it happen.

To write your Senator in support of bold climate change and clean energy legislation (and get some free music for doing so), check out HeadCount and NRDC's new Music for Action campaign. I wrote up their climate change information page.

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Amory Lovins: Favoring Bold Emissions Reductions Should Not Depend on Your Views on Climate Change

2010-02-23T10:54:00.000-08:00

Amory Lovins has a new outstanding piece out that does a superb job articulating a point that I repeat on this blog time and again: you don't need to accept the science of climate change to be in favor of the solutions to climate change. Says Lovins:

your opinions about climate science shouldn’t change what you should do about energy. Whether you care most about national security, or jobs and prosperity, or climate and environment, exactly the same energy actions make sense and make money regardless.

Thus, if we focus on outcomes, not motives, we can build a wide and rapid consensus on what to do, even if we differ about why to do it.

Exactly. And if you're against bold investments in clean energy and efficiency, then what are you FOR?

Do you have an alternative set of energy solutions that will actually work to reduce our dependence on oil and other expensively polluting fossil fuels, which cost the U.S. economy an estimated $160 billion per year in health costs alone? (Lovins didn't mention "health" benefits in the above quote, so I wanted to be sure to add it, given the presence of health insurance reform on America's agenda this week)

Anybody who opposes bold climate change and clean energy legislation should be asked to propose an alternative that will actually work.

"Drill Baby Drill!", you say?! Sorry, our own Department of Energy says drilling in Alaska and offshore will reduce gas prices by maybe 2 cents by 2030. Not even close.

Not to mention that global oil supplies are a sinking ship and staying on board will lead only to more economic, security, health and environmental instability and, likely, disaster. Clean energy and transport is the rescue ship -- the one to jump on to if you want to join us on our ride to the next great industrial revolution.

Thanks to LauraLu for passing the Lovins piece along...

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Soccer and Energy Policy: We Need to Approach Energy Like a Well-Coached Team, Not Little Leaguers

2010-02-21T23:11:00.000-08:00

Our current lack of a coherent strategic energy policy looks pathetically akin to the chaos of a pee-wee league soccer game, says Chris Nelder over at GetRealList.

What we really need is to approach energy more like the way a winning professional sports team approaches a playoff game:

A Playbook for Team America
It’s time for us to grow up and learn to play this game for real.

We need to gather in the locker room to watch some films of older, more mature players and try to copy their moves.

We’d take note of China’s long-term rail construction plan, instead of arguing that an abortion like Amtrak doesn’t pay for itself right this minute.

We’d plan to manage our resources for the long term health of our society, like Norway and Saudi Arabia do.

We might form an Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security like the UK has, to advise and prepare industry and policymakers for the decline of oil, instead of writing sunny official reports that completely fail to recognize reality.

We’d copy the proven successes of long-lived, stable feed-in tariffs in Germany and Japan instead of inventing complex, corruptible mechanisms like cap and trade.

We’d formulate and then execute 20- and 30-year plans to reduce our need for fossil fuels, instead of watching incentives come and go with every turnover of a Congressional seat.

Our playbook would begin with some rough milestones:

Oil has peaked. Supply will be flattish for the next 2-4 years, then begin a long decline.
We will lose 25% of our oil supply in 25 years, 50% in 50 years, and 100% in 100 years.
To compensate for the decline of oil with renewables, the world would need to build the equivalent of all the world’s existing renewable energy capacity, every year.
Since that is impossible, efficiency and energy transition must make up the shortfall.
We will also see the peaks of natural gas and coal in the next 20 years. Hydropower and nuclear will do little more than hold their current market share.
The days of economic growth may be gone forever for import-dependent developed countries like the U.S.
The least painful path is to downsize, economize, and relocalize.
By the end of the century, nearly everything will have to be powered by renewably-generated electricity, not liquids or gases.

Then we might draw up some plays, and practice them.

Well done -- a fun, yet jarringly effective analogy. Getting our acts together on climate and energy policy is the most important bold step that America can take right now to address so many of our other societal problems -- from the economy to health care to terrorism and global warming.

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New Study: Clean Vehicles Will Slash Health Care Costs

2010-02-16T10:30:00.000-08:00

I've heard some in the media say that Congress can't take on solving the problem of our skyrocketing health care/insurance costs at the same time as it takes on the urgent need to transition America to clean energy and solve climate change.

It's lazy thinking, considering how climate change and clean energy solutions will also help to slash our nation's health care costs.

Take for example this new study that found that vehicle pollution can cause heart disease and strokes:

Los Angeles residents living near freeways experience a hardening of the arteries that leads to heart disease and strokes at twice the rate of those who live farther away, a study has found.

The paper is the first to link automobile and truck exhaust to the progression of atherosclerosis -- the thickening of artery walls -- in humans. The study was conducted by researchers from USC and UC Berkeley, along with colleagues in Spain and Switzerland, and published this week in the journal PloS ONE.

How is it that elected officials in Congress can't make these connections and see how climate change and clean energy solutions will actually help drive down health care costs, and thus health insurance costs? After all, our own National Academy of Sciences found that dirty energy inflicts $120 billion per year in health costs on our economy. Opponents of Health Insurance Reform in Congress are blinded by the need for money to fuel their re-election bids, I assume...

Again, this is why real campaign finance reform -- getting money out of politics and giving each candidate an equal public budget to run a campaign -- is crucial for making our system effective at devising policy solutions that improve lives and businesses. Let merit and ideas decide who wins elections, not (what's essentially and sure looks like) bribery.

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New Report: Biofuels Harming Food Production in Developing Countries

2010-02-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

A new report provides further evidence of the urgent need to rethink our approach to biofuel choices and production systems:

EU companies have taken millions of acres of land out of food production in Africa, central America and Asia to grow biofuels for transport, according to development campaigners. The consequences of European biofuel targets, said the report by ActionAid, could be up to 100 million more hungry people, increased food prices and landlessness.

The report says the 2008 decision by EU countries to obtain 10% of all transport fuels from biofuels by 2020 is proving disastrous for poor countries. Developing countries are expected to grow nearly two-thirds of the jatropha, sugar cane and palm oil crops that are mostly used for biofuels.

"To meet the EU 10% target, the total land area directly required to grow industrial biofuels in developing countries could reach 17.5m hectares, over half the size of Italy. Additional land will also be required in developed nations, displacing food and animal feed crops onto land in new areas, often in developing countries," says the report.

Biofuels are estimated by the IMF to have been responsible for 20-30% of the global food price spike in 2008 when 125m tonnes of cereals were diverted into biofuel production. The amount of biofuels in Europe's car fuels is expected to quadruple in the next decade.

This article doesn't even get into the pollution impacts of biofuel production beyond greenhouse gas emissions (where forests are cleared to grow biofuels, leading to a spike in emissions). How about the ecological and human impacts of excessive fertilizer and pesticides use, both of which pollute soils, fresh water sources and people alike..? In the U.S., for example, excessive fertilizer use creates a huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the region's fishing industry (among other problems it causes).

Ultimately, there will be a place for sustainable biofuels, and a right way, place and set of crops for getting the job done. I love systems that turn waste into fuel, be it via cellulosic ethanol or algae systems that use CO2 from power plants to grow algae. Even for these systems, however, it's critical to make sure the species being used to create the fuel aren't potential invasive species catastrophes in the making...

The bottom line is that we've really got to do a better job of thinking these things through, and then actually responding when we see the problems they cause. The fact that the U.S. is still stuck on corn ethanol after the food supply problems (and tortilla rebellion) it caused in the summer of 2008 makes us look pretty silly, if you ask me.

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Bill Gates Predicts Zero Emissions

2010-02-15T19:39:00.000-08:00

I'm getting caught up on email and news after a couple of days of skiing with family at Alpine Meadows. Little 5.5 month-old Sonora is really coming to life as a conscious being -- gleefully holding my menu in the restaurant last night as I ordered. It's truly amazing raising a baby -- they seem to discover and do something new and unexpected almost every day, and each time, it brings no less of a smile to Suzanne and I's faces.

Having conquered the President's Day traffic on the ride home (which at times left me yearning for the days when I lived in Portland and Boulder), I grew wide-eyed to read about Bill Gates' TED talk, in which he called for Zero Emissions. As reported from WorldChanging:

On Friday, the world's most successful businessperson and most powerful philanthropist did something outstandingly bold, that went almost unremarked: Bill Gates announced that his top priority is getting the world to zero climate emissions.

Now, I'm not a member of the Cult of Bill myself (I'm typing this on a MacBook), but you don't have to believe that Gates has superhuman powers of prediction to know that his predictions have enormous power. People who will never listen to Al Gore, much to less someone like me, hang on Gates' every utterance.

And Friday, Gates predicted extraordinary climate action: zero. Not small steps, not incremental progress, not doing less bad: zero. In fact, he stood in front of a slide with nothing but the planet Earth and the number zero. That moment was the most important thing that has happened at TED.

What, exactly, did he say, and why is it so important?

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Check out Joe Romm's rebuttal -- arguing that it isn't R & D energy technology miracles that we need (as Gates says), but mass deployment of existing technologies.

My take is 'why not both?' -- energy is a very different animal than getting computers, and then better computers, into every office and home. But there's certainly a model in the proliferation of computers that can be tweeked to apply to the proliferation of clean energy technologies. What do you think?
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Survey: Leveraging Sustainability to Boost Employee Engagement Also Boosts Profits

2010-02-13T00:18:00.000-08:00

One of the key perks from corporate sustainability initiatives comes when the initiative is well-carried out in a way that improves employee engagement in company success. So reports The Triple Pundit, digging into a new Brighter Planet study:

Brighter Planet just released a study on its findings from an internet survey it conducted, to which 1055 people responded. Big businesses can use it. Small businesses can use it. Employees are happier and more productive when they do. The report is brilliantly written, so I’ll let it do the talking for a bit here:

A Gallup study estimates that more than $300 billion in productivity is squandered within the U.S. workforce due to disengaged employees. Furthermore, the same Gallup study indicates that organizations with an engaged workforce have 2.6 times the earnings per share growth rate compared to organizations in the same industry with a less-engaged workforce.

Makes sense to me...

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The Jobs are in The Trees

2010-02-08T10:20:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading an interesting piece about how investments in green job creation -- in fields such as conservation and restoration, efficiency retrofits, clean energy and mass transit construction -- provide far greater employment returns than investing in dirty energy or nuclear jobs:

With Congress and the White House considering spending scarce dollars to jump-start employment, they’ll need to get the biggest jobs bang for the buck to give Americans confidence that they’re spending our money wisely. Probably the biggest jobs generator of all, and one of the least recognized, is investing in forest and land restoration and sustainable management, with conservation, watershed projects, and park investment coming close behind.

Heidi Garrett-Peltier and Robert Pollin at The Political Economy and Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts report the following numbers for jobs created per dollar of investment.

To summarize, reforestation and restoration outperforms even the second-most jobs-intense activity analyzed by 74 percent, and conservation exceeds other major jobs alternatives, including especially new highway construction, Wall Street, and conventional energy sources like oil and nuclear.

This is further justification for the bold investments needed to transition America to a clean energy economy, which will also solve climate change.

Recently, I co-authored a policy brief on green job creation to combat the spread of invasive species -- a key area of conservation that will also save agencies and landowners on control costs while benefiting the health of ecosystems and their native species diversity. Efforts to stem the spread of invasive weeds and other costly pest species are currently plagued by a lack of personnel and resources. Job creation in this area will both put people to work and help solve a major threat to the health of both ecosystems and human well-being.

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Biodiversity Loss Threatens Our Health and Safety and Communication is Crucial

2010-02-08T10:14:00.000-08:00

Scientists and the media need to step up efforts to communicate the importance of solving the biodiversity crisis, says this article in SciDev.net:

Both (climate change and biodiversity loss) face formidable challenges in persuading political leaders and the public of the urgent need to take action. The reasons are complex. But at root is the conflict between the need to radically change our use of natural resources and the desire to maintain current forms of economic growth in both developed and developing countries.

The solutions are equally complicated. Part of the answer, in each case, lies in enhancing the media's ability to communicate messages emerging from the underlying science, so that these accurately reflect both the urgency of the situation, and how ordinary people's lives may be affected.

Getting these messages across is no easy task. And so far, in the case of biodiversity, efforts have largely failed.

As delegates to the London conference and other meetings held to launch the Year of Biodiversity have freely admitted, this failure to act partly results from shortcomings in communication. The scientific community has not been able to effectively communicate its concerns to decision-makers — at least not in a way that sufficiently prioritises biodiversity conservation within a political agenda predominantly concerned with employment and economic growth.

(N)ew (conservation) targets must not only be more realistic and concrete, but must also be accompanied by a more sophisticated communications strategy.

This is where I've always thought the ecosystem services paradigm has potential to make a difference in improving the public's understanding of the importance of biodiversity and health ecosystems. Except we need to rename these critical benefits that ecosystems provide to society something other than "ecosystem services."

Any ideas?

Even the word "biodiversity" is ineffective for helping the public get the problem, says the article:

Even the term 'biodiversity' suffers from this weakness, lacking the concreteness of concepts such as sea level rise. Some media advisers even suggest avoiding the term wherever possible for that very reason — not very promising to those trying to create a global campaign around the same word.

Too much media coverage of biodiversity fails to connect with the issues directly affecting people's lives. Even concepts such as 'the web of life', used to emphasise the interrelatedness of living systems, does not immediately explain why we should be worried about the declining number of insects or plants in distant locations.

So how do we motivate the public and decisionmakers to support conservation of "biodiversity"? What do you think is a good term that reflects its value to human well being and can be as catchy, concrete and emotive as "ancient forests"?

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Is There Enough Food Out There for 9 Billion People

2010-02-08T10:09:00.000-08:00

The New Republic reports on a paper last week from the esteemed journal, Science, proposing how humanity can feed 9 billion people in 2050:

A new paper published this week in Science, written by Britain's chief scientific adviser John Beddington along with nine other experts, outlines a way this could actually be done. The catch? Doing so would require "radical" changes to the current global food system. The paper's a great synthesis of a wide range of different food issues, and I'll just pull out the main ideas:

Boosting crop yields: If the supply of farmland is ultimately finite, then boosting yields is the only way we'll get more food.

Stop tossing out so much food: The study estimates that 30 percent to 40 percent of the world's food is thrown out each year.

Fewer hamburgers: Can't imagine this one will go over well, but the authors do suggest that people will probably have to reduce their meat consumption slightly to feed nine billion people. This doesn't mean going vegetarian.

A slew of green technical stuff: Of course, all those other measures will only go so far. There are also some serious threats to the long-term sustainability of agriculture lurking out there. Global warming's a big one. But then also water shortages due to over-extraction. Soil degradation due to poor farming techniques. Loss of biodiversity due poor management. The fact that fisheries are being ravaged (so something like a cap-and-trade system for fish could help here). A lot of the fixes here are dry and technical, and they tend to get discussed as wonky enviro ideas that might be nice to do but aren't essential. Except that, as the Science study makes clear, they really are crucial—at least if all those nine billion people want enough to eat.

Not Food Crops and Farmland to Fuel Vehicles: It's probably going to be hard to find enough food for nine billion people if we're still diverting vast swaths of farmland for crop-based ethanol. (Though maybe by then we'll have moved on to algae fuels or electric cars or some other fancy technology.)

It's a fascinating, crucial topic -- one with that tie directly into humanity's other top crises: climate, biodiversity, fresh water. We sure live in interesting times...

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Americans Support Strong Climate Change and Clean Energy Policies

2010-02-07T10:56:00.000-08:00

Here's more evidence that even while Americans' concern about climate change may be declining, they remain overwhelmingly in favor of solutions like a transition to a clean energy economy. The latest from Yale:

Despite a sharp drop in public concern over global warming, Americans—regardless of political affiliation—support the passage of federal climate and energy policies, according to the results of a national survey released today by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities.

The survey found support for:

Funding more research on renewable energy, such as solar and wind power (85 percent)
Tax rebates for people buying fuel-efficient vehicles or solar panels (82 percent)
Establishing programs to teach Americans how to save energy (72 percent)
Regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant (71 percent)
School curricula to teach children about the causes, consequences and potential solutions to global warming (70 percent)
Signing an international treaty that requires the United States to cut emissions of carbon dioxide 90 percent by the year 2050 (61 percent)
Establishing programs to teach Americans about global warming (60 percent)

Here's a mindblowing part:

Sixty percent of Americans, however, said they have heard “nothing at all” about the cap-and-trade legislation currently being considered by Congress. Only 12 percent had heard “a lot.”

When cap and trade is explained, 58 percent support the policy, but this support drops to approximately 40 percent if household energy costs increase by $15 a month, or 50 cents a day. Sixty-six percent support cap and trade, however, if every household were to receive a yearly bonus of $180 to offset higher energy costs. In addition, 59 percent of Americans said they would likely spend the bonus on home energy efficiency improvements. This increases to 71 percent if the government offered to double the bonus if it was spent on energy efficiency improvements.

What's also interesting is that these results come from the same respondents who said they weren't nearly as concerned about global warming as they were a few years ago. Says the study's lead author:

It may at first glance seem strange that public support for many of these policies remains high, despite the drops in public belief and concern about global warming we reported last week. These results are from the same survey respondents, however, and it is important to remember that different people support these policies for different reasons. For example, some do so because they want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, others because they want to strengthen national security, or make the US less dependent on foreign sources of energy.

Exactly. It's getting the solutions in place that matters -- not how we get them in place. Whatever it takes to build the broad public support needed to make it happen...

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Pentagon: Climate Change, Energy Security and Economic Stability Are Inextricably Linked

2010-02-05T00:28:00.000-08:00

The military and intelligence communities are getting serious about climate change -- preparing for the problem and advancing the solutions.

The QDR notes that climate change affects the Department of Defense “in two broad ways:” first, global warming impacts and disasters will “act as an accelerant of instability or conflict,” and second, military installations and forces around the globe will have to adapt to rising seas, increased extreme weather, and other effects of global warming:

Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration. While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world.

The military is working on not just responding to the impacts of global warming, but also mitigating the threat by reducing global warming emissions. Increased use of renewable energy and energy efficiency not only lessens the military’s enormous carbon footprint, but also delivers immediate security benefits:

Energy efficiency can serve as a force multiplier, because it increases the range and endurance of forces in the field and can reduce the number of combat forces diverted to protect energy supply lines, which are vulnerable to both asymmetric and conventional attacks and disruptions.

It's very very good news to see the military and intelligence communities getting behind efforts to deal with climate change and advance green economy solutions. There's a ton of power there, and this should really help move things forward. As well as provide the types of evidence that denialists need to see to realize that we've got a very real problem to solve here...

That said, it also makes the opponents of climate change and clean energy solutions look that much more like Ostriches -- with small brains and their heads in the ground.

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Green Practices Helping Businesses Survive Lean Times

2010-02-04T23:32:00.000-08:00

This year's State of Green Business report is out, and it bears some good news:

The report, launched today as a precursor to two State of Green Business Forums -- one happening in San Francisco on Thursday, Feb. 4, and one happening in Chicago on Tuesday, Feb. 9 -- shows that environmental improvements and innovations became a means of surviving lean times, and being more competitive once things rebound.

"The green economy is alive and well, even during tough times," said (report lead author and GreenBiz founder, Joel) Makower, who has been covering green business since the 1980s. "There are encouraging signs that innovation and clean technologies, as well as more efficient business operations, can help the U.S. emerge more competitive as the economy recovers."

I'm looking forward to digging into the report -- not only from a people perspective, but from an ecological perspective: what its findings mean for emissions, climate change and the health of ecosystem services and biodiversity.

It's great to see efficiencies increasing across the board -- the more we can get out of the resources we've already extracted, the less pollution, habitat destruction and other ills humanity will cause.

Obviously, we still have a long way to go. But just to have a report like this coming out to huge fanfare every year is leaps and bounds ahead of where we were a decade ago.

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