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from Long Island Climate Solutions Network
Green Drinks:
Social Networking Gathering for those interested Environmentalism, Green Business, Energy Policy, etc.
When: Thursday, January 10th at 5:30 PM
Where: Cirella’s Restaurant & Bar, 14 Broadhollow Road , Melville
www.cirellasrestaurant.com/live/cirellas110main.html
Cost: $5.00 Includes Drink Specials and Hot Buffet
Climate Articles
· New Home Building Technologies
· Google backs solar power
· San Francisco – First City Carbon Offset Program
· Huntington Boy – Climate Businessman!
· Bush to Sign new Energy bill
· Thomas Friedman – Why the Energy Bill isn’t enough
New Home Building Technologies
Enertia http://enertia.com/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx
House About Saving a Planet http://www.asaphouse.com/
Project Greenhouse Hamptons http://www.newsday.com/business/local/ny-bzgreen29-story,0,2851644.story?track=rss
Google backs solar power. Now it appears that Google is already shaking things up. The latest announcement is that one of the companies they have backed has developed a technology that produces solar panels that are more durable, faster to churn out, and far cheaper than any solar panels produced before. In fact, the claim is that they will create energy at a lower cost than the “gold” standard when it comes to cost, namely, coal. http://www.planetthoughts.org/?pg=pt/Whole&qid=1743
San Francisco Adopts Carbon Offset Plan. By Adam Tanner, Reuters, December 18, 2007. ” San Francisco will become the first U.S. city to offer a program to offset the impact of global warming by funding local green activities, the mayor said in an interview on Monday. Under the program to be announced on Tuesday, city officials would calculate the carbon cost of their travels and contribute to one of several city programs aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions — or forego the travel altogether. ‘What we are trying to do by this is to set high standards to show carbon offset programs that work,’ Gavin Newsom told Reuters, adding he was wary of offsets with little accountability that promise action in distant lands. For official travel, that means a round-trip flight from San Francisco to New York would cost an additional $80 to $90, officials say, to be paid into the city’s offset programs such as converting restaurant grease into fuel, installing solar energy devices or investing in energy conservation. The program will not cost additional funds, which means city departments would cut out some travel to pay for other trips with carbon offsets, Newsom said. A second phase of the program would also allow residents to buy offsets… In 2004, Newsom set a goal of cutting the city’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by 2.5 million tons by 2012, a 20-percent reduction below 1990 emissions.”
Boy turns passion for recycling into a business. By Carrie Mason-Draffen carrie.mason-draffen@newsday.com December 19, 2007. Newsday.com www.newsday.com/news/local/suffolk/ny-bzlunch195507032dec19,0,7396483.story. A lot of people are worried about the effects of global warming. Hunter Gross, a middle school student from Dix Hills, decided to do something about it. With his parents’ help, the West Hollow Middle School student started Project Kool Inc., a company that designs and sells reusable canvas lunch bags as part of Hunter’s campaign to eliminate plastic and paper lunch bags from elementary schools nationwide. He is the chief executive and his dad, Jeff, and mom, Stacy, are co-presidents. So far the 4-month-old company has sold 4,000 bags, primarily through PTA fundraising events, Jeff Gross said. PTAs have sold the bags at the Chestnut Hill, Sunquam and Forest Park elementary schools in the Half Hollow Hills School District and the Willits Elementary School in Syosset, Gross said. The bags also sell at some local specialty retail stores, such as Lester’s in Huntington , Greenvale and Manhattan . Hunter, 12, began to obsess about global warming after a science class discussion about it in May, toward the end of the last school year. “He kept talking about it,” his mom said. “The only way to stop him from talking about it was to sit down and come up with something that helps.” Global-warming activist Laurie David, ex-wife of writer and actor Larry David, has agreed to post a mention of the company on her Web site, Stacy Gross said. And after Project Kool sent company information to former Vice President Al Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize this year for calling attention to global warming, he ordered about 20 lunch bags to give out as holiday gifts in his office. (edited from original)
Bush to Sign Bill to Boost Auto Mileage. By H. JOSEF HEBERT. December 19, 2007. www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-bush-fuel-economy,0,1290550.story President Bush, who has said he doesn’t believe the government should set arbitrary automobile mileage standards, is signing into law a requirement that motor vehicles meet an average 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The bill requires the industry to achieve an average of 35 miles per gallon for all vehicles, including SUVs and small trucks, by 2020, about a 10 mpg increase from what these vehicles get today. While all vehicles from small sedans to large SUVS must make some improvement in fuel economy, the required improvements may vary among vehicle classes as long as the overall industry average is 35 mpg.
The bill also calls for:
* A sixfold increase in ethanol use to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, a boon to farmers. Of that, 21 billion gallons will have to be from feedstock other than corn such as prairie grasses or wood chips.
* Improved energy efficiency of appliances such as refrigerators, freezers and dishwashers, and a 70 percent increase in the efficiency of light bulbs.
* Energy efficiency improvements in federal building and new efficiency standards for construction of new commercial buildings with an aim that they produce as much electricity as they use.The new lighting standards alone are projected to lower consumers’ annual electricity bills by $13 billion in 2020, remove the need for 60 mid-size power plants and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, by 100 million tons a year, said the advocacy group Alliance to Save Energy.Democrats said the fuel economy requirements will save motorists $700 to $1,000 a year in fuel costs and reduce oil demand by 1.1 million barrels a day when the fuel-stingy vehicles are widely on the road.The overall bill including more ethanol use and various efficiency requirements and incentives, will cut U.S. oil demand by 4 million barrels a day by 2030, more than twice the current daily imports from the volatile Persian Gulf, Democrats said. (edited from the original)
December 19, 2007 – What Was That All About? (edited)
Bali, Indonesia. There was a revealing encounter here Thursday between the U.S. negotiating team and environmentalists that was worthy of pay-per-view. The American team was giving its big briefing. The room was packed with activists from around the world. They came loaded to carve up the Americans, who, it was just assumed, had to be stupid because they represented the Bush administration.
And then something unexpected happened. For 90 minutes, Andy Karsner, who runs the Department of Energy’s renewable energy programs, James Connaughton, who heads White House climate policy, and their colleagues put on a PowerPoint performance that was riveting in its understanding of the climate problem and the technologies needed to solve it. Their mastery of the subject was so impressive that it left the room full of global activists emotionally confused: On the one hand, it was obvious that these U.S. officials really knew their stuff, yet on the other, I’d bet not a single person there believed they reflected the true Bush policy.
As if reading the minds of everyone there, Malini Mehra, the chief executive of the Centre for Social Markets, an Indian activist group, took the microphone and, in so many words, asked the Bush aides: Who are you and what planet did you come from? It could not possibly be from planet Bush. “Anyone who has been listening to the news on climate change knows that there has been one message from this administration — that any serious action on climate change threatens the U.S. economy and our way of life,” Ms. Mehra said to me later. So to now hear these American technocrats “present what was a thoughtful analysis that made sense, flies in the face of what we have come to know about this administration,” she added.
A lot of this is the price America is paying for the gratuitous way President Bush trashed the Kyoto treaty in 2001, without presenting any alternative for six years. Message to world: “Get lost. We only care about ourselves.” So now, when both Mr. Bush and Congress have moved a little, few people believe even that is for real. As Irwandi Yusuf, the governor of Indonesia ’s Aceh Province , bluntly said to me: “We don’t believe the Americans in this administration.” The other reason we can’t be a model is that whatever the U.S. is now doing to address the global warming challenge, it is not transformational. It is an incremental approach to a scale problem that can only be solved by triggering massive innovation in clean power. And without a price signal — a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system — to make it profitable to invest enormous sums, long term, in new clean technologies, it will not happen at scale.
The Bush team loves new technologies, but not the price signals needed to initiate them. By the way, finance or energy ministers who deal with price signals weren’t even at the Bali convention, which was dominated by environmental regulators. “This is a problem of economic transformation, not environmental regulation,” said Glenn Prickett, senior vice president at Conservation International. (Disclosure: My wife is on its board.) “The transformation needed will require far more than just passing one law or signing one treaty. It will require the same level of focus and initiative that the Bush administration is devoting to the war on terror. No political leader in the U.S. is approaching this issue yet with anywhere near the seriousness required.” So I still don’t know what Bali was about, but I do know that it was incremental, not transformational — and incrementalism, when it comes to clean energy, is just a hobby.
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