Ban on plastic bags makes HP clean
Shimla, Jan 19: The hills are looking clean again. Once an eyesore, littering the verdant mountain slopes, choking drains and scarring the environment, plastic pollution has come down dramatically in Shimla and other parts of Himachal Pradesh, four years after this north Indian state banned the use of small polythene bags.
"Before the implementation of the ban, polythene pollution was a major problem in the state," R.K. Sood, joint member- secretary of the Himachal State Council for Science, Technology and Environment, told.
Describing the scene before the ban was imposed, he said: "Plastic bags littered the hillsides. During the monsoon, the rain water brought along heaps of polythene bags and other non-biodegradable material that choked most of the municipal drains. Now, the problem has been solved to a great extent."
Himachal Pradesh was the first state in India to ban the production, storage, use, sale and distribution of small polythene bags in June 2004.
Under the Himachal Pradesh Non-Biodegradable Garbage (Control) Act of 1995, any violator trespassing faced a fine up to Rs.25,000. The minimum fine was fixed at Rs.500.
"The ban on use of coloured polythene bags manufactured from recycled plastic was initially imposed on Jan 1, 1999. Later in 2004, the ban was imposed under Section 7(h) of the State Non-Biodegradable Garbage (Control) Rules on the use of polythene bags having thickness less than 70 microns and size less than 18"x12"," Sood said. As a result, paper and jute bags are now back in the state.
Sanjay Verma, project officer with the state Department of Environment Science and Technology, said: "Initially, it was a herculean task to enforce the ban. Special sensitisation drives were launched across the state to educate the common man about the ecological hazards and about which type of bags were exempted from the ban and which were not."
About 20 government officials were empowered at the district and sub-divisional level to ensure effective implementation of the ban."Still, 25 to 30 people are fined on an average every month in the state," Verma said. He said the problem is still acute in areas located along neighbouring Punjab and Haryana.
"The use of polythene continues in the border areas of the state. The problem can be checked when the neighbouring states enforce the ban too. Moreover, tourists generate more plastic during the peak season than the locals during the entire year," he said.
To dispose of Shimla's polythene waste, private firm Gujarat Ambuja Cements Ltd(GACL) joined hands with the city's municipal corporation in July last year as part of corporate social responsibility.
"As part of the understanding, we (GACL) are regularly getting truckloads of polythene waste that is scientifically burnt at our Darlaghat unit in Solan district," GACL official Sandeep Kapoor said.Around 1.5 to 2 quintals of polythene waste is collected daily in Shimla alone.
State Forest Minister J.P. Nadda said the state would soon have its environmental master plan to tackle critical areas of environmental degradation. "The master plan will include a baseline study of the environmental vulnerabilities and details of measures to tackle problems mainly related to urban solid waste, industrial pollution and ecological degradation caused by hydropower projects," he said.
IANS
resource: http://www.zeenews.com/sci-tech/eco-news/2009-01-19/499827news.html
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Showing posts with label Do you know??. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Do you know??. Show all posts
Thursday, January 22, 2009
still want to use plastic?
SANGAM (ALLAHABAD): If you are still carrying foodstuff or essential commodities in polythene bags on the bank of the Ganga or the Yamuna during
Magh Mela, you run the risk of being penalised.
In fact, vigilant mela officials are on prowl on the entire campus to catch defaulters and initiate strict measures against them accordingly. Perhaps, this would be the first time in the history of Magh Mela in last one decade when usage of polythene or polybags was completely banned on the mela campus. Even the owners of shops of essential commodities and grocery, who have set up their business establishments in and around the campus, were not allowed to keep polythene bags with them to serve the customers.
The mela administration has assigned the special task to administrative teams of carrying out frequent raids at shops and punish the errant shop owners or carriers. The motive of banning polythene bags, according to insiders, could be an effective tool in reducing pollution in river Ganga and the Mela administration has been urging visitors to discard the use of polythene bags.
Till date, preventive action was initiated against 200 persons who had carried away polythene bags into mela campus due to ignorance or being of neighbouring district\state visitors.
District magistrate Rajeev Aggarwal said that the ban was put in place since the first day and would be effective till February 23. He added the orders covers all market areas, eating joints and hospitals.
He further stressed that there was an urgent need to educate and aware people about the disadvantages of using polythene bags. He, however, admitted that the usage of polythene bags has certainly declined in mela campus this year as the administrative teams had already seized polythene bags and related materials in the same regard.
Aggarwal also maintained that the mela administration has also sought the support of pilgrims and visitors, apprising them about the disadvantage of polythene made material and visitors have also assured them to keep them away from its usage. He added that preventive actions were being initiated against the defaulters and they were also given oral warnings.
Recently, a group of 15 visitors from Madhya Pradesh became so much impressed over the mela administration approach of banning polythene usage, claiming that it could reduce the pollution level of river ganga little a bit that they promised the concerned authorities to minimise its usage in their routine life too.
Resource: News
In fact, vigilant mela officials are on prowl on the entire campus to catch defaulters and initiate strict measures against them accordingly. Perhaps, this would be the first time in the history of Magh Mela in last one decade when usage of polythene or polybags was completely banned on the mela campus. Even the owners of shops of essential commodities and grocery, who have set up their business establishments in and around the campus, were not allowed to keep polythene bags with them to serve the customers.
The mela administration has assigned the special task to administrative teams of carrying out frequent raids at shops and punish the errant shop owners or carriers. The motive of banning polythene bags, according to insiders, could be an effective tool in reducing pollution in river Ganga and the Mela administration has been urging visitors to discard the use of polythene bags.
Till date, preventive action was initiated against 200 persons who had carried away polythene bags into mela campus due to ignorance or being of neighbouring district\state visitors.
District magistrate Rajeev Aggarwal said that the ban was put in place since the first day and would be effective till February 23. He added the orders covers all market areas, eating joints and hospitals.
He further stressed that there was an urgent need to educate and aware people about the disadvantages of using polythene bags. He, however, admitted that the usage of polythene bags has certainly declined in mela campus this year as the administrative teams had already seized polythene bags and related materials in the same regard.
Aggarwal also maintained that the mela administration has also sought the support of pilgrims and visitors, apprising them about the disadvantage of polythene made material and visitors have also assured them to keep them away from its usage. He added that preventive actions were being initiated against the defaulters and they were also given oral warnings.
Recently, a group of 15 visitors from Madhya Pradesh became so much impressed over the mela administration approach of banning polythene usage, claiming that it could reduce the pollution level of river ganga little a bit that they promised the concerned authorities to minimise its usage in their routine life too.
Resource: News
Monday, December 15, 2008
Obama left with little time to curb global warming
Obama left with little time to curb global warming
WASHINGTON – When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid.
Since Clinton's inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton's second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it.
"The time for delay is over; the time for denial is over," he said on Tuesday after meeting with former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. "We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way."
But there are powerful political and economic realities that must be quickly overcome for Obama to succeed. Despite the urgency he expresses, it's not at all clear that he and Congress will agree on an approach during a worldwide financial crisis in time to meet some of the more crucial deadlines.
Obama is pushing changes in the way Americans use energy, and produce greenhouse gases, as part of what will be a massive economic stimulus. He called it an opportunity "to re-power America."
After years of inaction on global warming, 2009 might be different. Obama replaces a president who opposed mandatory cuts of greenhouse gas pollution and it appears he will have a willing Congress. Also, next year, diplomats will try to agree on a major new international treaty to curb the gases that promote global warming.
"We need to start in January making significant changes," Gore said in a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press. "This year coming up is the most important opportunity the world has ever had to make progress in really solving the climate crisis."
Scientists are increasingly anxious, talking more often and more urgently about exceeding "tipping points."
"We're out of time," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. "Things are going extinct."
U.S. emissions have increased by 20 percent since 1992. China has more than doubled its carbon dioxide pollution in that time. World carbon dioxide emissions have grown faster than scientists' worst-case scenarios. Methane, the next most potent greenhouse gas, suddenly is on the rise again and scientists fear that vast amounts of the trapped gas will escape from thawing Arctic permafrost.
The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere has already pushed past what some scientists say is the safe level.
In the early 1990s, many scientists figured that the world was about a century away from a truly dangerous amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, said Mike MacCracken, who was a top climate scientist in the Clinton administration. But as they studied the greenhouse effect further, scientists realized that harmful changes kick in at far lower levels of carbon dioxide than they thought. Now some scientists, but not all, say the safe carbon dioxide level for Earth is about 10 percent below what it is now.
Gore called the situation "the equivalent of a five-alarm fire that has to be addressed immediately."
Scientists fear that what's happening with Arctic ice melt will be amplified so that ominous sea level rise will occur sooner than they expected. They predict Arctic waters could be ice-free in summers, perhaps by 2013, decades earlier than they thought only a few years ago.
In December 2009, diplomats are charged with forging a new treaty replacing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set limits on greenhouse gases, and which the United States didn't ratify. This time European officials have high expectations for the U.S. to take the lead. But many experts don't see Congress passing a climate bill in time because of pressing economic and war issues.
"The reality is, it may take more than the first year to get it all done," Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said recently.
Complicating everything is the worldwide financial meltdown. Frank Maisano, a Washington energy specialist and spokesman who represents coal-fired utilities and refineries, sees the poor economy as "a huge factor" that could stop everything. That's because global warming efforts are aimed at restricting coal power, which is cheap. That would likely mean higher utility bills and more damage to ailing economies that depend on coal production, he said.
Obama is stacking his Cabinet and inner circle with advocates who have pushed for deep mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas pollution and even with government officials who have achieved results at the local level.
The President-elect has said that one of the first things he will do when he gets to Washington is grant California and other states permission to control car tailpipe emissions, something the Bush administration denied.
And though congressional action may take time, the incoming Congress will be more inclined to act on global warming. In the House, liberal California Democrat Henry Waxman's unseating of Michigan Rep. John Dingell — a staunch defender of Detroit automakers — as head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was a sign that global warming will be on the fast track.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., vowed to push two global warming bills starting in January: one to promote energy efficiency as an economic stimulus and the other to create a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from utilities. "The time is now," she wrote in a Dec. 8 letter to Obama.
Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious to the federal government's machinations. Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.
The average global temperature in 2008 is likely to wind up slightly under 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit, about a tenth of a degree cooler than last year. When Clinton was inaugurated, 57.9 easily would have been the warmest year on record. Now, that temperature would qualify as the ninth warmest year.
___
Associated Press writer Dina Cappiello contributed to this report.
source : http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081214/ap_on_sc/global_warming_obama/print
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Christmas gift
Today has already 10th of December,
Christmas's eve will be left with another 14 days!!!!
Have you bought gifts to your love ones, family and friends???
Expensive and big budget to spend?
NO!
why don't look for something GREEN and eco-friendly????
I found a website just now, look nice and affordable ;)
check it out!
http://www.greenchristmasmarket.blogspot.com/
Maybe you can DIY DO.It.YOURSELF to show your love ones that you CARE and LOVE them!!!
check this :
http://christmasgiftsnow.net/handmade-christmas-gifts.htm
Christmas's cookies always the best serve and homemade gift
http://www.christmas-cookies.com/
posted by : Elly See
Christmas's eve will be left with another 14 days!!!!
Have you bought gifts to your love ones, family and friends???
Expensive and big budget to spend?
NO!
why don't look for something GREEN and eco-friendly????
I found a website just now, look nice and affordable ;)
check it out!
http://www.greenchristmasmarket.blogspot.com/
Maybe you can DIY DO.It.YOURSELF to show your love ones that you CARE and LOVE them!!!
check this :
http://christmasgiftsnow.net/handmade-christmas-gifts.htm
Christmas's cookies always the best serve and homemade gift
http://www.christmas-cookies.com/
posted by : Elly See
Monday, October 20, 2008
News From Times : How to win the war on Global warming
Wednesday, Apr. 16, 2008
How to Win the War on Global Warming
By Bryan Walsh
Americans don't like to lose wars—which makes sense, since we have so little practice with it. Of course, a lot depends on how you define just what a war is. There are shooting wars—the kind that test our mettle and our patriotism and our resourcefulness and our courage—and those are the kind at which we excel. But other struggles test those qualities too. What else was the Great Depression or the space race or the construction of the railroads or the eradication of polio but a massive, often frightening challenge that we decided as a culture we ought to rise up and face? If we indulge in a bit of chest-thumping and flag-waving when the job is done, well, we earned it.
We are now faced with a similarly momentous challenge: global warming. The steady deterioration of the very climate of our very planet is becoming a war of the first order, and by any measure, the U.S. is losing. Indeed, if we're fighting at all—and by most accounts, we're not—we're fighting on the wrong side. The U.S. produces nearly a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases each year and has stubbornly made it clear that it doesn't intend to do a whole lot about it. Although 174 nations ratified the admittedly flawed Kyoto accords to reduce carbon levels, the U.S. walked away from them. While even developing China has boosted its mileage standards to 35�m.p.g., the U.S. remains the land of the Hummer. Oh, there are vague promises of manufacturing fuel from switchgrass or powering cars with hydrogen—someday. But for a country that rightly cites patriotism as one of its core values, we're taking a pass on what might be the most patriotic struggle of all. It's hard to imagine a bigger fight than one for the survival of the country's coasts and farms, the health of its people and the stability of its economy—and for those of the world at large as well.
The rub is, if the vast majority of people increasingly agree that climate change is a global emergency, there's far less consensus on how to fix it. Industry offers its plans, which too often would fix little. Environmentalists offer theirs, which too often amount to naive wish lists that could cripple America's growth. But let's assume that those interested parties and others will always be at the table and will always—sensibly—demand that their voices be heard and that their needs be addressed. What would an aggressive, ambitious, effective plan look like—one that would leave us both environmentally safe and economically sound?
Forget precedents like the Manhattan Project, which developed the atom bomb, or the Apollo program that put men on the moon—single-focus programs both, however hard they were to pull off. Think instead of the overnight conversion of the World War II�era industrial sector into a vast machine capable of churning out 60,000 tanks and 300,000 planes, an effort that not only didn't bankrupt the nation but instead made it rich and powerful beyond its imagining and—oh, yes—won the war in the process.
Halting climate change will be far harder than even that. One of the more conservative plans for addressing the problem, by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala of Princeton University, calls for a reduction of 25�billion tons of carbon emissions over the next 50 years—the equivalent of erasing nearly four years of global emissions at today's rates. And yet by devising a coherent strategy that mixes short-term solutions with farsighted goals, combines government activism with private-sector enterprise and blends pragmatism with ambition, the U.S. can, without major damage to the economy, help halt the worst effects of climate change and ensure the survival of our way of life for future generations. Money will get us part of the way there, but what's needed most is will. "I'm not saying the challenge isn't almost overwhelming," says Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund and co-author of the new book Earth: The Sequel. "But this is America, and America has risen to these challenges before."
No one yet has a comprehensive plan for how we could do so again, but everyone agrees on what the biggest parts of the plan would be. Here's our blueprint for how America can fight—and win—the war on global warming.
First, Price the Sky
The most important part of a blueprint to contain climate change is to put a charge on carbon emissions. As long as the sky is free, renewable energy will never beat fossil fuels. But put a price on carbon, and suddenly the alternatives look a lot better. The most feasible way to do this is through a cap-and-trade system that sets ceilings for carbon output and lets companies that come in under the limit sell credits to those that don't, allowing them to keep polluting—a little. The effect is that overall carbon levels fall, and there is even money to be made by being greener than the next guy. That drives investment and research dollars into renewable energy and efficiency. "Cap and trade changes everything," says Krupp.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol was an early attempt at such a system, with the aim of having developed nations reduce their carbon emissions an average of 5% below 1990 levels by 2012. The accords were meant to drive cuts in greenhouse gases and promote investment in clean tech in developing nations through carbon trading. What probably doomed Kyoto was the absence of some key players. Large developing nations like China, India and Indonesia were excused from the treaty, since limiting their emissions was seen as likely to limit their burgeoning economies. The U.S., whose participation was necessary if the treaty was going to succeed, cited this perceived favoritism when it abandoned Kyoto altogether in 2001.
While President George W. Bush has little environmental cred left after seven years of the least green Administration in modern memory, in this case he had a point. Carbon is a global pollutant, meaning that it has the same impact whether it's emitted from an suv in Boston, a factory in Beijing or a burning forest outside BrasÃlia. Dramatic reductions in U.S. emissions won't bring the intended environmental benefits if emissions by other countries increase at the same time. The problem is, if we don't clean up our own mess because developing giants don't have to, what's the incentive for them to clean up theirs? "If we don't act, China and India will simply hide behind America's skirts of inactions and take no steps of their own," says Senator John Warner of Virginia.
If the U.S. breaks the logjam and adopts a national cap-and-trade program, it may be Warner who will deserve much of the credit. Last December, a bill that the veteran Republican co-sponsored with independent Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut passed out of the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works, giving it the best opportunity of any of the many proposed cap-and-trade bills to become law. Lieberman-Warner, as it's known, calls for cutting carbon from most sources to 2005 levels by 2012 and then 70% below 2005 levels by 2050. Environmentalists would like to see it strengthened, with less wiggle room for polluting industries, but with little else on the table, an attainable good bill may be a lot more attractive than an unattainable perfect one. "The sooner we can get something, the better," says Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
Lieberman-Warner hasn't yet gone to a full vote in the Senate, although it may reach the floor by late spring. It will face opposition from the White House, as well as from many Republicans and some Democrats from coal-dependent states. The principal rap against cap-and-trade proposals is that they would be a drag on the economy. A new study by the National Association of Manufacturers, an industry trade group, estimates that Lieberman-Warner would cost the U.S. up to 4�million jobs by 2030 while eroding gdp by up to $669 billion per year. "The environmental community would have you believe that you can make these changes and not only will there not be negative consequences, there'll be positive consequences," says Republican Representative Joe Barton, ranking minority member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
It's true that there will be costs associated with any carbon-pricing plan; ending climate change won't be free. "You want a clean environment, you have to pay for it," says Peter Fusaro, founder of the green investment group Global Change Associates. But just how high will the tab be? An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study found that gdp would grow just 1% less from 2010 to 2030 under Lieberman-Warner than without it—and that doesn't take into account the potential economic benefits. In an April study, the International Monetary Fund concluded that smart carbon-cutting policies could contain climate change without seriously harming the global economy. And while the U.S. business community will fight hard over the details of any cap-and-trade plan, a growing number of companies are now begging for the certainty that will come from what many see as inevitable legislation. "I believe it will be a challenge, but it's doable," says Peter Darbee, CEO of the West Coast utility PG&E.
Of course, such a challenge is easier for a major utility to face than it is for some consumers. Any carbon cap with teeth will boost electricity and gas prices in the short term, before carbon-free alternatives can be scaled to market, and that will hurt those already struggling to heat their homes and fill their tanks. Here's a solution, courtesy of Peter Barnes, a pioneering green entrepreneur: a cap-and-dividend system that returns the revenue raised by a cap-and-trade system to citizens through a flat rebate, similar to the way Alaskans receive oil-industry dividends from the state government.
Though a federal cap-and-trade system for carbon would largely be a foray into the unknown, we can examine how the idea is working in the states, many of which are far ahead of Washington. At the New York City headquarters of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), organization president Frances Beinecke shows a map that identifies in green those states that have committed to or are considering mandatory carbon caps. A year ago, the map was mostly white, but now it's less than half. Not only are states coming aboard one at a time, but some are joining in groups, as in the West and Northeast, where regional greenhouse-gas trading blocs are being launched. "The momentum that has built up in the states is unbelievable," says Beinecke.
To see why a serious cap-and-trade system doesn't have to come at the expense of economic growth, take a look at California. In 2006, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the most aggressive carbon regulation in the country: California has now implemented law AB�32, which mandates that the state's greenhouse-gas emissions be cut to 1990 levels by 2020, a reduction of about 25%. "There are so many states in the U.S. that have signed on to [carbon cuts]," says Schwarzenegger, a Republican who has bucked the White House and led the way on global warming.
Schwarzenegger's plans have plenty of critics. Cathy Reheis-Boyd, the chief operating officer at the Western States Petroleum Association, worries that if California gets out too far ahead of the rest of the country, local businesses will flee to unregulated states, a phenomenon called "leakage"—which is another reason a national cap is so important. "I think our industry could be effectively pushed out of�California," says Jim Repman, CEO of the California Portland Cement Co.
Past predictions that environmental laws like the Clean Air Act would decimate California's economy, however, proved false, and AB�32 could be no different. A 2006 report by the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that the law would actually boost the state's gdp by $60�billion and create 17,000 jobs by 2020 as the state's entrepreneurial tech culture churns out new companies to meet the need for energy efficiency. While energy-intensive industries like cement-making may indeed be driven out, they could be replaced by clean-tech start-ups like Solarcity, which has become in a couple of years the state's fastest-growing solar installer, employing more than 200 people. Nationwide, the American Solar Energy Society estimates, there are already 8.5�million jobs in the clean-tech sector, which it projects could grow to 40�million by 2030 with the right policies.
Energy by the Sip
The next big piece of a global-warming-control plan involves learning to be more efficient with the fossil fuels we continue to burn. America has long been astoundingly wasteful about energy use, but for years, that mattered little because power and fuel were so cheap. "Until recently, using more energy was a way to get more productive," says Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Materials, a green building company. "That doesn't change until energy costs go substantially up."
Surace has a point. There are a lot of reasons Western Europe and Japan are so far ahead of the U.S. on energy efficiency, but one is that their higher energy costs simply forced their hand. With oil now well over $100 per bbl., that crisis moment may have arrived for the U.S. too. The answer is an "efficiency surge," a crash improvement that can help offset the steady increase in energy prices and so buy time for the development of carbon-free alternatives. "We need to create breathing room," says Rick Duke, director of NRDC's Center for Market Innovation. "But an unguided market won't take care of that alone."
A coherent plan could. Recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) shows that we could slash the projected growth in the world's energy demand by at least half by 2020 just by taking advantage of existing opportunities to cut waste. Think of simple, costless changes like turning off the lights in offices at night—that's "money on the table," in the words of efficiency guru Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute. MGI says annual industry-wide investments of $170�billion per year in efficiency improvements like green buildings and higher-mileage cars could yield an additional $900�billion per year in savings by 2020. More important, the emissions cuts resulting from better efficiency could deliver up to half the carbon reductions needed to keep warming at no more than 2�C hotter than the present—considered to be an upper safe level. "There's so much water pouring out of the bottom of the bucket that it's insane to put more water into it," says Adam Grosser, a partner with Foundation Capital, which has invested heavily in energy-efficiency companies.
Some of that hole-plugging has already begun. Last year's federal energy bill raised corporate average fuel economy (cafe) standards for the first time in three decades, to 35�m.p.g. for cars by 2020. That's not world-beating compared with Europe's average of 40�m.p.g., but it's a good start. Efficiency standards could be put in place for household appliances and lighting as well. Japan's smart Top Runner program takes the best model in the marketplace and sets its performance as the industry requirement. Similar rules could be applied to architecture. Since nearly half of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions channel through buildings, there's a sizable opportunity for savings if we mandate green design rather than simply depend on architects and builders to adopt it voluntarily. And if utilities were able to institute variable pricing—charging customers more for power during periods of peak demand and less during off periods—you'd see enormous efficiency improvements.
California—again the leader—has implemented a pilot program for just such a variable-pricing plan. It uses what are known as smart meters, which provide real-time information about customer energy use and make billing more precise and savings more predictable. Since the project began, energy demand has fallen 13%, giving a taste of the wider savings that could be captured with a more comprehensive, permanent plan. Other efficiency programs have managed to keep per capita energy use in California—already the lowest in the country—essentially flat for the past three decades, even as energy use per person in the U.S. overall jumped 50%. California's pleasant clime plays a role, but efficiency still matters. Darbee of PG&E estimates that the state's green policies have eliminated the need for 24 power plants over the past 30 years—a process called "demand destruction," or cutting carbon before it's even born.
Invent, Invent, Invent
Even an epic surge in efficiency, though, won't by itself solve our energy woes, because demand in the booming developing world will outpace the best productivity measures. Hence the need for the final and most difficult step in the blueprint: the creation of a new energy system, one that doesn't depend on carbon. There's a chasm between where we are and where we need to be—and our current strategy for bridging it is murky at best. "What we need to do over the next 10 to 20 years is redesign our relationship with nature and energy," says Nicholas Parker, chairman of the Cleantech Group, a green research organization.
No problem, right? But the good news is that there are already thousands of very smart people working on alternative energy in what Daniel Yergin, chairman of the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, calls "the great bubbling." Venture-capital funding in the clean-tech sector hit $5.18�billion in 2007, up 44% from the year before. And no surprise, the biggest bubbling is happening in California, specifically Silicon Valley, where a combination of the state's progressive environmental measures, unmatched scientific talent and entrepreneurial culture is giving birth to dozens of start-ups.
Among the new companies is Amyris Biotechnologies in the Bay Area, where Jack Newman and his team are developing ways to genetically modify bacteria to make better biofuels, sidestepping the food-vs.-energy debate that has long dogged the field. With nearly $100�million in venture backing, Amyris is trying to engineer yeast or bacteria that can metabolize biofuel feedstocks like wood chips and dramatically increase the amount of biofuel that can be extracted from them. "There are staggering things that technology can do," says Newman. "But we need to make this happen in as short a time as possible."
That's where government can help. There may be nothing like free enterprise to unleash innovation, but there's nothing like government to put a whip hand to the process. A firm carbon price will accelerate creativity by making alternatives that much more economical. If Washington better allocated its own research-and-development dollars—as it did in the storied Apollo days—it could accelerate things even more. Currently, the Federal Government budgets about $5�billion per year for research and tax incentives for renewables and energy efficiency. With a federal budget of $2.9�trillion in 2008 and the Iraq war alone burning through an estimated $12�billion per month, there is clearly money to be spent if we decide to reprioritize. A plan floated by Democrats to eliminate $18�billion worth of tax breaks for the oil industry and use the money to support research into renewable fuels would be a smart place to start.
There's no shortage of ways to spend whatever money is made available. Photovoltaic solar panels have made significant improvements, but they are still five to 10 years away from achieving economic parity with fossil fuels—at least at current rates of development. More promising are solar thermal power plants, like the one inaugurated this spring in the deserts of Nevada by Spanish clean-energy giant Acciona. The installation—a 300-acre array of 182,000 mirrors, each aligned to catch and concentrate the sun's energy—heats a synthetic oil that runs in a pipeline and produces steam, which drives turbines to generate electricity. Mirrors and turbines are comparatively cheap, and they're hardly the stuff of high technology. The trick is scaling up and pricing down.
Wind power, the most mature renewable technology, is growing fast, but we need to find a way to store electricity when the breeze isn't blowing. Then there are more fringe alternatives like tidal power, geothermal energy and even nuclear fusion—any of which could take off with enough luck and money.
While Washington should flood the zone with research funding, it should refrain from trying to pick a winner. The great biofuel scam—in which government support for corn ethanol choked the market with a fuel that simply creates other problems, such as deforestation and food price spikes—shows that straightforward subsidies can easily be perverted for political reasons. But a national renewable portfolio standard, which would mandate that a certain percentage of the nation's electricity supply must come from renewable sources, can force utilities to adopt alternatives on a wider scale, going with the technologies that are producing the best results. For that to happen, though, the government has to stop providing the fossil-fuel industry with billions of dollars in subsidies, which boost the sector's built-in advantage even more. "How can the oil industry need a dollar in the days of $100 crude oil?" says John Berger, CEO of Standard Renewable Energy.
Finally, there are micropolicies, like tax credits, that can make solar power and green building more economical on a house-by-house basis. Such credits have helped the wind and solar industries grow out of infancy, but the laws establishing them periodically expire if they're not renewed. The solar investment credit, which was part of the 2005 energy bill, provides a 30% tax credit for the purchase of solar power but will cease to exist at the end of the year if it can't move out of the legislative gridlock that is blocking its renewal. Fortunately, Congress seems ready to extend it. "If it expires, it will take out all the good work that's been done on the state and commercial level," says Julie Blunden, vice president of public policy at SunPower, a leading solar manufacturer and installer. "We could watch our business essentially evaporate by the end of the year."
The Long War
If we took all the steps outlined here—a national cap-and-trade system with teeth, coupled with tougher energy-efficiency mandates and significant new public and private investment in green technologies—where would that get us? We'd be a little poorer—a sustained battle against climate change will hit our wallets hard, absorbing perhaps 2% to 3% of gdp a year for some time, according to energy expert Henry Lee at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, though unchecked warming could end global prosperity. But think of it as an investment: that money, if matched by action internationally, can reduce emissions radically over the next half-century, contain warming and lead us to a postcarbon world.
Ultimately, global warming is not a battle that will be fought fiscal year by fiscal year; it's a fight that will occupy us for generations. Our policies have to operate on the same time frame, even if our politics run on election cycles. We've learned from think tanks and war colleges that the outcome of any crisis is usually determined by one dominant global player that has the innovators who can churn out the technology, the financiers who can back it and the diplomatic clout to pull the rest of the planet along. That player, of course, exists, and it is, of course, us. The U.S. has enjoyed an awfully good run since the middle of the 20th century, a sudden ascendancy that no nation before or since has matched. We could give it up in the early years of the 21st, or we could recognize—as we have before—when a leader is needed and step into that breach ourselves. Going green: What could be redder, whiter and bluer than that?
—with reporting by Kristin Kloberdanz/Modesto, Calif., and Massimo Calabresi, Mark Thompson and Adam Zagorin/Washington
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1730759_1731383_1731363,00.html
How to Win the War on Global Warming
By Bryan Walsh
Americans don't like to lose wars—which makes sense, since we have so little practice with it. Of course, a lot depends on how you define just what a war is. There are shooting wars—the kind that test our mettle and our patriotism and our resourcefulness and our courage—and those are the kind at which we excel. But other struggles test those qualities too. What else was the Great Depression or the space race or the construction of the railroads or the eradication of polio but a massive, often frightening challenge that we decided as a culture we ought to rise up and face? If we indulge in a bit of chest-thumping and flag-waving when the job is done, well, we earned it.
We are now faced with a similarly momentous challenge: global warming. The steady deterioration of the very climate of our very planet is becoming a war of the first order, and by any measure, the U.S. is losing. Indeed, if we're fighting at all—and by most accounts, we're not—we're fighting on the wrong side. The U.S. produces nearly a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases each year and has stubbornly made it clear that it doesn't intend to do a whole lot about it. Although 174 nations ratified the admittedly flawed Kyoto accords to reduce carbon levels, the U.S. walked away from them. While even developing China has boosted its mileage standards to 35�m.p.g., the U.S. remains the land of the Hummer. Oh, there are vague promises of manufacturing fuel from switchgrass or powering cars with hydrogen—someday. But for a country that rightly cites patriotism as one of its core values, we're taking a pass on what might be the most patriotic struggle of all. It's hard to imagine a bigger fight than one for the survival of the country's coasts and farms, the health of its people and the stability of its economy—and for those of the world at large as well.
The rub is, if the vast majority of people increasingly agree that climate change is a global emergency, there's far less consensus on how to fix it. Industry offers its plans, which too often would fix little. Environmentalists offer theirs, which too often amount to naive wish lists that could cripple America's growth. But let's assume that those interested parties and others will always be at the table and will always—sensibly—demand that their voices be heard and that their needs be addressed. What would an aggressive, ambitious, effective plan look like—one that would leave us both environmentally safe and economically sound?
Forget precedents like the Manhattan Project, which developed the atom bomb, or the Apollo program that put men on the moon—single-focus programs both, however hard they were to pull off. Think instead of the overnight conversion of the World War II�era industrial sector into a vast machine capable of churning out 60,000 tanks and 300,000 planes, an effort that not only didn't bankrupt the nation but instead made it rich and powerful beyond its imagining and—oh, yes—won the war in the process.
Halting climate change will be far harder than even that. One of the more conservative plans for addressing the problem, by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala of Princeton University, calls for a reduction of 25�billion tons of carbon emissions over the next 50 years—the equivalent of erasing nearly four years of global emissions at today's rates. And yet by devising a coherent strategy that mixes short-term solutions with farsighted goals, combines government activism with private-sector enterprise and blends pragmatism with ambition, the U.S. can, without major damage to the economy, help halt the worst effects of climate change and ensure the survival of our way of life for future generations. Money will get us part of the way there, but what's needed most is will. "I'm not saying the challenge isn't almost overwhelming," says Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund and co-author of the new book Earth: The Sequel. "But this is America, and America has risen to these challenges before."
No one yet has a comprehensive plan for how we could do so again, but everyone agrees on what the biggest parts of the plan would be. Here's our blueprint for how America can fight—and win—the war on global warming.
First, Price the Sky
The most important part of a blueprint to contain climate change is to put a charge on carbon emissions. As long as the sky is free, renewable energy will never beat fossil fuels. But put a price on carbon, and suddenly the alternatives look a lot better. The most feasible way to do this is through a cap-and-trade system that sets ceilings for carbon output and lets companies that come in under the limit sell credits to those that don't, allowing them to keep polluting—a little. The effect is that overall carbon levels fall, and there is even money to be made by being greener than the next guy. That drives investment and research dollars into renewable energy and efficiency. "Cap and trade changes everything," says Krupp.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol was an early attempt at such a system, with the aim of having developed nations reduce their carbon emissions an average of 5% below 1990 levels by 2012. The accords were meant to drive cuts in greenhouse gases and promote investment in clean tech in developing nations through carbon trading. What probably doomed Kyoto was the absence of some key players. Large developing nations like China, India and Indonesia were excused from the treaty, since limiting their emissions was seen as likely to limit their burgeoning economies. The U.S., whose participation was necessary if the treaty was going to succeed, cited this perceived favoritism when it abandoned Kyoto altogether in 2001.
While President George W. Bush has little environmental cred left after seven years of the least green Administration in modern memory, in this case he had a point. Carbon is a global pollutant, meaning that it has the same impact whether it's emitted from an suv in Boston, a factory in Beijing or a burning forest outside BrasÃlia. Dramatic reductions in U.S. emissions won't bring the intended environmental benefits if emissions by other countries increase at the same time. The problem is, if we don't clean up our own mess because developing giants don't have to, what's the incentive for them to clean up theirs? "If we don't act, China and India will simply hide behind America's skirts of inactions and take no steps of their own," says Senator John Warner of Virginia.
If the U.S. breaks the logjam and adopts a national cap-and-trade program, it may be Warner who will deserve much of the credit. Last December, a bill that the veteran Republican co-sponsored with independent Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut passed out of the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works, giving it the best opportunity of any of the many proposed cap-and-trade bills to become law. Lieberman-Warner, as it's known, calls for cutting carbon from most sources to 2005 levels by 2012 and then 70% below 2005 levels by 2050. Environmentalists would like to see it strengthened, with less wiggle room for polluting industries, but with little else on the table, an attainable good bill may be a lot more attractive than an unattainable perfect one. "The sooner we can get something, the better," says Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
Lieberman-Warner hasn't yet gone to a full vote in the Senate, although it may reach the floor by late spring. It will face opposition from the White House, as well as from many Republicans and some Democrats from coal-dependent states. The principal rap against cap-and-trade proposals is that they would be a drag on the economy. A new study by the National Association of Manufacturers, an industry trade group, estimates that Lieberman-Warner would cost the U.S. up to 4�million jobs by 2030 while eroding gdp by up to $669 billion per year. "The environmental community would have you believe that you can make these changes and not only will there not be negative consequences, there'll be positive consequences," says Republican Representative Joe Barton, ranking minority member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
It's true that there will be costs associated with any carbon-pricing plan; ending climate change won't be free. "You want a clean environment, you have to pay for it," says Peter Fusaro, founder of the green investment group Global Change Associates. But just how high will the tab be? An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study found that gdp would grow just 1% less from 2010 to 2030 under Lieberman-Warner than without it—and that doesn't take into account the potential economic benefits. In an April study, the International Monetary Fund concluded that smart carbon-cutting policies could contain climate change without seriously harming the global economy. And while the U.S. business community will fight hard over the details of any cap-and-trade plan, a growing number of companies are now begging for the certainty that will come from what many see as inevitable legislation. "I believe it will be a challenge, but it's doable," says Peter Darbee, CEO of the West Coast utility PG&E.
Of course, such a challenge is easier for a major utility to face than it is for some consumers. Any carbon cap with teeth will boost electricity and gas prices in the short term, before carbon-free alternatives can be scaled to market, and that will hurt those already struggling to heat their homes and fill their tanks. Here's a solution, courtesy of Peter Barnes, a pioneering green entrepreneur: a cap-and-dividend system that returns the revenue raised by a cap-and-trade system to citizens through a flat rebate, similar to the way Alaskans receive oil-industry dividends from the state government.
Though a federal cap-and-trade system for carbon would largely be a foray into the unknown, we can examine how the idea is working in the states, many of which are far ahead of Washington. At the New York City headquarters of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), organization president Frances Beinecke shows a map that identifies in green those states that have committed to or are considering mandatory carbon caps. A year ago, the map was mostly white, but now it's less than half. Not only are states coming aboard one at a time, but some are joining in groups, as in the West and Northeast, where regional greenhouse-gas trading blocs are being launched. "The momentum that has built up in the states is unbelievable," says Beinecke.
To see why a serious cap-and-trade system doesn't have to come at the expense of economic growth, take a look at California. In 2006, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the most aggressive carbon regulation in the country: California has now implemented law AB�32, which mandates that the state's greenhouse-gas emissions be cut to 1990 levels by 2020, a reduction of about 25%. "There are so many states in the U.S. that have signed on to [carbon cuts]," says Schwarzenegger, a Republican who has bucked the White House and led the way on global warming.
Schwarzenegger's plans have plenty of critics. Cathy Reheis-Boyd, the chief operating officer at the Western States Petroleum Association, worries that if California gets out too far ahead of the rest of the country, local businesses will flee to unregulated states, a phenomenon called "leakage"—which is another reason a national cap is so important. "I think our industry could be effectively pushed out of�California," says Jim Repman, CEO of the California Portland Cement Co.
Past predictions that environmental laws like the Clean Air Act would decimate California's economy, however, proved false, and AB�32 could be no different. A 2006 report by the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that the law would actually boost the state's gdp by $60�billion and create 17,000 jobs by 2020 as the state's entrepreneurial tech culture churns out new companies to meet the need for energy efficiency. While energy-intensive industries like cement-making may indeed be driven out, they could be replaced by clean-tech start-ups like Solarcity, which has become in a couple of years the state's fastest-growing solar installer, employing more than 200 people. Nationwide, the American Solar Energy Society estimates, there are already 8.5�million jobs in the clean-tech sector, which it projects could grow to 40�million by 2030 with the right policies.
Energy by the Sip
The next big piece of a global-warming-control plan involves learning to be more efficient with the fossil fuels we continue to burn. America has long been astoundingly wasteful about energy use, but for years, that mattered little because power and fuel were so cheap. "Until recently, using more energy was a way to get more productive," says Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Materials, a green building company. "That doesn't change until energy costs go substantially up."
Surace has a point. There are a lot of reasons Western Europe and Japan are so far ahead of the U.S. on energy efficiency, but one is that their higher energy costs simply forced their hand. With oil now well over $100 per bbl., that crisis moment may have arrived for the U.S. too. The answer is an "efficiency surge," a crash improvement that can help offset the steady increase in energy prices and so buy time for the development of carbon-free alternatives. "We need to create breathing room," says Rick Duke, director of NRDC's Center for Market Innovation. "But an unguided market won't take care of that alone."
A coherent plan could. Recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) shows that we could slash the projected growth in the world's energy demand by at least half by 2020 just by taking advantage of existing opportunities to cut waste. Think of simple, costless changes like turning off the lights in offices at night—that's "money on the table," in the words of efficiency guru Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute. MGI says annual industry-wide investments of $170�billion per year in efficiency improvements like green buildings and higher-mileage cars could yield an additional $900�billion per year in savings by 2020. More important, the emissions cuts resulting from better efficiency could deliver up to half the carbon reductions needed to keep warming at no more than 2�C hotter than the present—considered to be an upper safe level. "There's so much water pouring out of the bottom of the bucket that it's insane to put more water into it," says Adam Grosser, a partner with Foundation Capital, which has invested heavily in energy-efficiency companies.
Some of that hole-plugging has already begun. Last year's federal energy bill raised corporate average fuel economy (cafe) standards for the first time in three decades, to 35�m.p.g. for cars by 2020. That's not world-beating compared with Europe's average of 40�m.p.g., but it's a good start. Efficiency standards could be put in place for household appliances and lighting as well. Japan's smart Top Runner program takes the best model in the marketplace and sets its performance as the industry requirement. Similar rules could be applied to architecture. Since nearly half of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions channel through buildings, there's a sizable opportunity for savings if we mandate green design rather than simply depend on architects and builders to adopt it voluntarily. And if utilities were able to institute variable pricing—charging customers more for power during periods of peak demand and less during off periods—you'd see enormous efficiency improvements.
California—again the leader—has implemented a pilot program for just such a variable-pricing plan. It uses what are known as smart meters, which provide real-time information about customer energy use and make billing more precise and savings more predictable. Since the project began, energy demand has fallen 13%, giving a taste of the wider savings that could be captured with a more comprehensive, permanent plan. Other efficiency programs have managed to keep per capita energy use in California—already the lowest in the country—essentially flat for the past three decades, even as energy use per person in the U.S. overall jumped 50%. California's pleasant clime plays a role, but efficiency still matters. Darbee of PG&E estimates that the state's green policies have eliminated the need for 24 power plants over the past 30 years—a process called "demand destruction," or cutting carbon before it's even born.
Invent, Invent, Invent
Even an epic surge in efficiency, though, won't by itself solve our energy woes, because demand in the booming developing world will outpace the best productivity measures. Hence the need for the final and most difficult step in the blueprint: the creation of a new energy system, one that doesn't depend on carbon. There's a chasm between where we are and where we need to be—and our current strategy for bridging it is murky at best. "What we need to do over the next 10 to 20 years is redesign our relationship with nature and energy," says Nicholas Parker, chairman of the Cleantech Group, a green research organization.
No problem, right? But the good news is that there are already thousands of very smart people working on alternative energy in what Daniel Yergin, chairman of the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, calls "the great bubbling." Venture-capital funding in the clean-tech sector hit $5.18�billion in 2007, up 44% from the year before. And no surprise, the biggest bubbling is happening in California, specifically Silicon Valley, where a combination of the state's progressive environmental measures, unmatched scientific talent and entrepreneurial culture is giving birth to dozens of start-ups.
Among the new companies is Amyris Biotechnologies in the Bay Area, where Jack Newman and his team are developing ways to genetically modify bacteria to make better biofuels, sidestepping the food-vs.-energy debate that has long dogged the field. With nearly $100�million in venture backing, Amyris is trying to engineer yeast or bacteria that can metabolize biofuel feedstocks like wood chips and dramatically increase the amount of biofuel that can be extracted from them. "There are staggering things that technology can do," says Newman. "But we need to make this happen in as short a time as possible."
That's where government can help. There may be nothing like free enterprise to unleash innovation, but there's nothing like government to put a whip hand to the process. A firm carbon price will accelerate creativity by making alternatives that much more economical. If Washington better allocated its own research-and-development dollars—as it did in the storied Apollo days—it could accelerate things even more. Currently, the Federal Government budgets about $5�billion per year for research and tax incentives for renewables and energy efficiency. With a federal budget of $2.9�trillion in 2008 and the Iraq war alone burning through an estimated $12�billion per month, there is clearly money to be spent if we decide to reprioritize. A plan floated by Democrats to eliminate $18�billion worth of tax breaks for the oil industry and use the money to support research into renewable fuels would be a smart place to start.
There's no shortage of ways to spend whatever money is made available. Photovoltaic solar panels have made significant improvements, but they are still five to 10 years away from achieving economic parity with fossil fuels—at least at current rates of development. More promising are solar thermal power plants, like the one inaugurated this spring in the deserts of Nevada by Spanish clean-energy giant Acciona. The installation—a 300-acre array of 182,000 mirrors, each aligned to catch and concentrate the sun's energy—heats a synthetic oil that runs in a pipeline and produces steam, which drives turbines to generate electricity. Mirrors and turbines are comparatively cheap, and they're hardly the stuff of high technology. The trick is scaling up and pricing down.
Wind power, the most mature renewable technology, is growing fast, but we need to find a way to store electricity when the breeze isn't blowing. Then there are more fringe alternatives like tidal power, geothermal energy and even nuclear fusion—any of which could take off with enough luck and money.
While Washington should flood the zone with research funding, it should refrain from trying to pick a winner. The great biofuel scam—in which government support for corn ethanol choked the market with a fuel that simply creates other problems, such as deforestation and food price spikes—shows that straightforward subsidies can easily be perverted for political reasons. But a national renewable portfolio standard, which would mandate that a certain percentage of the nation's electricity supply must come from renewable sources, can force utilities to adopt alternatives on a wider scale, going with the technologies that are producing the best results. For that to happen, though, the government has to stop providing the fossil-fuel industry with billions of dollars in subsidies, which boost the sector's built-in advantage even more. "How can the oil industry need a dollar in the days of $100 crude oil?" says John Berger, CEO of Standard Renewable Energy.
Finally, there are micropolicies, like tax credits, that can make solar power and green building more economical on a house-by-house basis. Such credits have helped the wind and solar industries grow out of infancy, but the laws establishing them periodically expire if they're not renewed. The solar investment credit, which was part of the 2005 energy bill, provides a 30% tax credit for the purchase of solar power but will cease to exist at the end of the year if it can't move out of the legislative gridlock that is blocking its renewal. Fortunately, Congress seems ready to extend it. "If it expires, it will take out all the good work that's been done on the state and commercial level," says Julie Blunden, vice president of public policy at SunPower, a leading solar manufacturer and installer. "We could watch our business essentially evaporate by the end of the year."
The Long War
If we took all the steps outlined here—a national cap-and-trade system with teeth, coupled with tougher energy-efficiency mandates and significant new public and private investment in green technologies—where would that get us? We'd be a little poorer—a sustained battle against climate change will hit our wallets hard, absorbing perhaps 2% to 3% of gdp a year for some time, according to energy expert Henry Lee at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, though unchecked warming could end global prosperity. But think of it as an investment: that money, if matched by action internationally, can reduce emissions radically over the next half-century, contain warming and lead us to a postcarbon world.
Ultimately, global warming is not a battle that will be fought fiscal year by fiscal year; it's a fight that will occupy us for generations. Our policies have to operate on the same time frame, even if our politics run on election cycles. We've learned from think tanks and war colleges that the outcome of any crisis is usually determined by one dominant global player that has the innovators who can churn out the technology, the financiers who can back it and the diplomatic clout to pull the rest of the planet along. That player, of course, exists, and it is, of course, us. The U.S. has enjoyed an awfully good run since the middle of the 20th century, a sudden ascendancy that no nation before or since has matched. We could give it up in the early years of the 21st, or we could recognize—as we have before—when a leader is needed and step into that breach ourselves. Going green: What could be redder, whiter and bluer than that?
—with reporting by Kristin Kloberdanz/Modesto, Calif., and Massimo Calabresi, Mark Thompson and Adam Zagorin/Washington
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1730759_1731383_1731363,00.html
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
IT'S TIME TO STOP AMERICA'S ADDICTION TO FOREIGN OIL
America is in a hole and it's getting deeper every day. We import 70% of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year - four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.
I've been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of. But if we create a new renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil.
Al Gore's challenge tackles the most critical source of greenhouse gas emissions. But directly alongside the threat of global warming is the impending peak of global oil production. In the near future we will launch a plan for replacing oil with solar energy for routine travel without resorting to the tragedy of trashing our soils and water reserves for the sake of hopelessly inadequate biofuels production.
from : Interactive Oil Depletion Atlas from David Strahan, whose new book, The Last Oil Shock, was released in April 2007 and can be obtained in the Americas from Amazon Canada.
"There are currently 98 oil producing countries in the world, of which 64 are thought to have passed their geologically imposed production peak, and of those 60 are in terminal production decline."
New GAO Peak Oil Report Provides Urgent Call to Action: U.S. Vulnerable and the Government Unprepared for Unacceptably High Risks of Oil Supply Shock, by Congressmen Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) and Tom Udall (D-NM), co-chairmen of the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus [2007 March 29]
"This GAO peak oil report is a clarion call for leadership at the highest level of our country to avert an energy crisis unlike any the world has ever before experienced and one that we know could happen at any time. Only the President can rally the country to take the urgent steps necessary. Potential alternatives to oil are extremely limited. Technology won't save us without time and money to develop and scale them up."
GAO Peak Oil Report (Complete), Highlights
"... [B]y 2015 these technologies could displace only the equivalent of 4 percent of projected U.S. annual consumption. Under these circumstances, an imminent peak and sharp decline in oil production could have severe consequences, including a worldwide recession. If the peak comes later, however, these technologies have a greater potential to mitigate the consequences."
Within the energy profession there are groups (e.g., ASPO, ASPO-USA) grappling with the challenge of "Peak Oil." While the efforts of Al Gore and others have raised awareness of the threat of global warming, society is not in any way prepared for the imminent decline in global oil production.
In the near term, declining production will impact certain countries more than others. Cantarell, the largest field in the western hemisphere, is declining rapidly. Over the next couple of years, Mexico's economy will be hard-hit.
Without imports, the USA's domestic oil reserves would be exhausted in three years at the current rate of consumption. The Oil War option is losing favor. Technological breakthroughs will be too slow and voluntary conservation will be too shallow to avert widespread disruption of economic activity, especially transportation and consequently food. Lacking the political will to make conscious, rapid, drastic changes, Americans will be subjected to Mother Nature's adjustments; She did not negotiate with the Mayor of New Orleans; nor will She negotiate the American Way of Life when Saudi Arabia's Ghawar field collapses of its own accord.
Liquid fuel substitutes (tar sands, coal-to-liquids, oil shale, surprisingly even ethanol and biodiesel) are carbon intensive and will only exacerbate global warming. Plus they cannot be scaled up on a timely basis.
It would take one new nuclear power plant every week until 2050 to fill the oil gap. Minor detail, uranium shortages would emerge long before 2050, unless as yet unproven breeder reactors come on line soon.
While it will take time, direct conversion of solar radiation to electricity (photovoltaics and concentrating solar power) can be scaled up. One viable sustainable alternative also exists for repetitive travel (e.g., commuting -- more than half of all urban transport). It is the rapid build-out of solar powered electric vehicles on fixed guideways (the "podcar"). A continuous solar array, well within the width of the guideway, is sufficient to provide 100% of the power required for this efficient form of high capacity transit.
”
From: http://www.energycrisis.org/
Oh dear, if this goes on, i won’t even have a future where i can help people. that could be a good excuse to slack off in my study, no? :P
by: en
Monday, August 18, 2008
Pictures of our surrounding...
Below are the pictures taken by our lovely member, Pei Fen :
Nice scene?
Who led this???
Love to live in this kind of environment?
Next time
please think,
before you throw your rubbish out from your car window
or
perhaps you might just leave it on the ground as what happened on those pictures..........................
Nice scene?
Who led this???
Love to live in this kind of environment?
Next time
please think,
before you throw your rubbish out from your car window
or
perhaps you might just leave it on the ground as what happened on those pictures..........................
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Money
Modern people like us cannot survive or live without money. Human beings have already considered money as an important part of their lives for centuries. Most people think that money is their everything, without money they cannot survive. Money can buy everything we want, what do you think about that? For me, money of course...can get almost everything humans want but the only exceptions are health and happiness.
Humans today can do everything just because because of 'money'. Money is a very common word which has been spoken by everyone of us. It seems like our community today like to apply the notion "no money, no talk!" shopping, clinics or hospital, restaurant or foods even donations all need money. We work hard and study because of money and living.
Money itself sometimes really do create or bring us lots of problems. Because of money, we dare and are forced to hurt our love ones, our family, friends even our earth. Money does lead us to do crime; do you agree? Crimes because of money are widely committed all around the world. The most common examples are kidnapping and drug's trade. Believe it or not, you are able to hire a killer to murder the one you hate! When human come to his or her dead ended road, she/he get no way to go just he/she might think of the fastest and easiest way to gain/earn money because of personal reasons like family's burden, unemployment,foods, educations and others. DO you realize all of these reasons are because of living and self-benefits? Gaining money from criminal/illegal activities are usually betrayed our consciences and make us lost our humanity. Another example which compiled with money and our only home, earth is deforestation. Deforestation means cutting down those big trunks or trees in the forest for selling or trading purposes. THose businessmen and authorities never think of how much would their future generation suffer if our earth has run out of trees! Deforestation has destroyed the habitat of animals and the growing ground for flora and fauna. Extinction of living organisms become active and has increased in this past decades due to the industrial revolution. This has also led to the suddenly increase of greenhouse gases,unstable climates, outbreak of unknown pandemics and others.
Human dare to do everything because of money even we have already know what side complications money will bring us in the future. Politicians and economists usually play a role in business of the earth natural resources. We can use the current issue on the dramatical hike of world fuel's price as an example. As we all know that back to the past years a gallon of fuel only cost around USD 35 but now it has hiked to USD 141 (early July) per gallon which is around 400% from the past price. What is the reason or factor leading to this? We are now demand for more fuels in our daily life. Usage of fuels play an important role in our life due to those dramatically increase of world fuel's price...Normal people like us suffer alots! We need more money to buy fuel for lubricant the thirst of our modern technology fantasy's living. All of these associated with money! Drilling non-renewable resources make our earth at risk of global warming, drilling those resources for money purposes speed up the sinking of our sea-bed down to our earth plate. Why we still practice or doing these? The only reason is just because of MONEY!
As a conclusion, money bring allot of problem to us. Only human is busying and then work/live for money; that is also a reason why human nowadays do something which betrayed their own consciences, religions as well as their humanity. I think this world will be much prettier and harmony if human could let themselves not to be too money faces and understand that happiness and family are everything; so conflictions, crimes and arguments of money's business will become less.
By Elly See (14/July/2008)
Humans today can do everything just because because of 'money'. Money is a very common word which has been spoken by everyone of us. It seems like our community today like to apply the notion "no money, no talk!" shopping, clinics or hospital, restaurant or foods even donations all need money. We work hard and study because of money and living.
Money itself sometimes really do create or bring us lots of problems. Because of money, we dare and are forced to hurt our love ones, our family, friends even our earth. Money does lead us to do crime; do you agree? Crimes because of money are widely committed all around the world. The most common examples are kidnapping and drug's trade. Believe it or not, you are able to hire a killer to murder the one you hate! When human come to his or her dead ended road, she/he get no way to go just he/she might think of the fastest and easiest way to gain/earn money because of personal reasons like family's burden, unemployment,foods, educations and others. DO you realize all of these reasons are because of living and self-benefits? Gaining money from criminal/illegal activities are usually betrayed our consciences and make us lost our humanity. Another example which compiled with money and our only home, earth is deforestation. Deforestation means cutting down those big trunks or trees in the forest for selling or trading purposes. THose businessmen and authorities never think of how much would their future generation suffer if our earth has run out of trees! Deforestation has destroyed the habitat of animals and the growing ground for flora and fauna. Extinction of living organisms become active and has increased in this past decades due to the industrial revolution. This has also led to the suddenly increase of greenhouse gases,unstable climates, outbreak of unknown pandemics and others.
Human dare to do everything because of money even we have already know what side complications money will bring us in the future. Politicians and economists usually play a role in business of the earth natural resources. We can use the current issue on the dramatical hike of world fuel's price as an example. As we all know that back to the past years a gallon of fuel only cost around USD 35 but now it has hiked to USD 141 (early July) per gallon which is around 400% from the past price. What is the reason or factor leading to this? We are now demand for more fuels in our daily life. Usage of fuels play an important role in our life due to those dramatically increase of world fuel's price...Normal people like us suffer alots! We need more money to buy fuel for lubricant the thirst of our modern technology fantasy's living. All of these associated with money! Drilling non-renewable resources make our earth at risk of global warming, drilling those resources for money purposes speed up the sinking of our sea-bed down to our earth plate. Why we still practice or doing these? The only reason is just because of MONEY!
As a conclusion, money bring allot of problem to us. Only human is busying and then work/live for money; that is also a reason why human nowadays do something which betrayed their own consciences, religions as well as their humanity. I think this world will be much prettier and harmony if human could let themselves not to be too money faces and understand that happiness and family are everything; so conflictions, crimes and arguments of money's business will become less.
By Elly See (14/July/2008)
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Arctic is starting to melt
A General Article Related To Global Warming:
On 2nd of February, 2007, the United Nations scientific panel studying climate change declared that the evidence of a warming trend is "unequivocal," and that human activity has "very likely" been the driving force in that change over the last 50 years. The last report by the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2001, had found that humanity had "likely" played a role.
Arctic is starting to melt, due to the increasing temperature of the earth. Scientists are unnerved by the polar ice melt, its implications and their ability to predict it. The melting of Arctic is putting the polar bears and other inhabitants of Arctic into danger. The animals now face another threat: a changing climate.
Several countries and companies had tried to improve the situation. The Ontario provincial government of Canada had said that it would conserve a huge swath of its forest to protect polar bears and other animals and help fight climate change on the 15th of July 2008. On the same day as well, Exelon, the electric company based in Chicago, promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 by an amount larger than its total emissions in 2008.
The sad thing is that while some countries no longer deny the science of climate change, they still insist on putting the concerns of industry over the needs of the planet. If this continues, the planet might continue to experience global warming, and a lot of innocent lives, especially the animals, might be in danger.
We might not be able to stop global warming completely, but at least we can try our best to reduce it. Just remember that while we are reducing global warming, we are increasing our own future comfortableness.
Can you imagine how will the future be like if global warming continues? You can’t, because there will be no future if it continues.
Source from: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html
Article By: Jessyca, Rainbow Society Secretary
On 2nd of February, 2007, the United Nations scientific panel studying climate change declared that the evidence of a warming trend is "unequivocal," and that human activity has "very likely" been the driving force in that change over the last 50 years. The last report by the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2001, had found that humanity had "likely" played a role.
Arctic is starting to melt, due to the increasing temperature of the earth. Scientists are unnerved by the polar ice melt, its implications and their ability to predict it. The melting of Arctic is putting the polar bears and other inhabitants of Arctic into danger. The animals now face another threat: a changing climate.
Several countries and companies had tried to improve the situation. The Ontario provincial government of Canada had said that it would conserve a huge swath of its forest to protect polar bears and other animals and help fight climate change on the 15th of July 2008. On the same day as well, Exelon, the electric company based in Chicago, promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 by an amount larger than its total emissions in 2008.
The sad thing is that while some countries no longer deny the science of climate change, they still insist on putting the concerns of industry over the needs of the planet. If this continues, the planet might continue to experience global warming, and a lot of innocent lives, especially the animals, might be in danger.
We might not be able to stop global warming completely, but at least we can try our best to reduce it. Just remember that while we are reducing global warming, we are increasing our own future comfortableness.
Can you imagine how will the future be like if global warming continues? You can’t, because there will be no future if it continues.
Source from: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html
Article By: Jessyca, Rainbow Society Secretary
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Plastics and styrofoam
Plastics + Styrofoam and bottle drinks~
How many polythene plastic bags have you used today?
How many paper bags have you used today?
How many bottle of drinks have you bought and threw in your life?
How many boxes of Styrofoam have you threw in a month?
Lets have a read the article below.
Do you know??
According to some online references which I read before,
paper bags have the highest global warming impact compared to other types of bags.
There is a fact ..according to the US EPA, 70percent more global warming gasses are emitted making a paper than a plastic bag!!!
They cause 50times more water pollution, as well as deforestation!!!!
Believe or not...
10billion paper shopping bags= 14million trees!!!
Some research make by environmentalist have noted that ..the petroleum used to make 14 plastics bags is enough to drive a car a mile
( THIS MEANs THAT 140 plastics bags can drive for 10miles, oil's prices have hiked to USD 141...)
Americans alone throw away 380billion of plastic bags which mean that they have already thrown the amount of plastics which equal to millions barrels of petroleum. This really contribute to global warming, depleting oil supplies and driving up the costs of petroleum based products.
Styrofoam never break down completely to the ground..
Sea animals like eating this plastic foam and it usually kills them and chemicals in Styrofoam cause global warming
; the manufacturing of Styrofoam involves many polluting chemicals harmful to life. Styrofoam is a notorious environmental pollutant and a non-biodegradable substance.
SO??
You guys still want to use those non-biodegradable products?
By Elly See
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Effects of electronic waste to the environment
E-Waste Poses a Very Real Environmental Threat -Recycling Your Wireless Cell Phones, PDA's, Pagers and Digital Cameras Can Help Protect the Earth
Studies have consistently shown that electronic waste from devices like mobile phones, PDA's and digital cameras contains toxins that are damaging to our environment. That is why recycling charity donations are so important. When you donate your cell phone, you are helping to keep toxic elements out of landfills. Consider the harm you are averting when you donate cell phones to charity:
| Element | Use in Wireless Technology | Harmful Effects |
| Lead | Used primarily in soldering of
| Extremely harmful to the human body; damages both the central and peripheral nervous systems; can cause seizures, retardation, high blood pressure, damage to the kidneys and liver; adversely affects child development |
| Beryllium | Forms significant portions of electrical connectors and
| Long term exposure can be carcinogenic, especially for the lungs. Extreme exposure can lead to a potentially fatal condition known as Acute Beryllium Disease |
| Arsenic | Used in some integrated circuits
| Arsenic is a notoriously potent poison; causes severe damage to the digestive tract |
| Mercury | Can be found to a degree in
| Attacks the central nervous and endocrine systems; harmful to mouth, teeth and gums; poses risk in the neurological development of unborn fetuses |
| Antimony | Used in production of diodes | Toxic to humans in ways similar to arsenic; fatal in large doses |
| Cadmium | Used in soldering, semiconductors and chip resistors | Potentially carcinogenic; Repeated exposure can damage the lungs, kidneys and liver |
The potential dangers are obvious. Recycling for Charities is committed to preventing such hazards from contaminating the environment
from: http://www.recyclingforcharities.com/Environmental-Effects-of-E-Waste.php
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