Tag Archives: Recycling

Land dispute may delay Fairbanks alternative energy project

From the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner on Monday, February 2, 2009:

Businessman Bernie Karl said he’s ready to move ahead with a prototype power system: A small-scale energy plant he’d link to indoor food production and biofuel cultivation.

The project — which he said he started eyeing a few years ago — has drawn recent interest from public officials and researchers looking to ride Karl’s coattails.

The original plan — for a 400 kilowatt, carbon-neutral, co-generation, vegetation and waste-paper-fed energy plant between Fairbanks and North Pole — carries the prospect of benefitting from a proposed agriculture project on 600 acres nearby.

Click here to read the whole article.

One Green Year

From www.thegreenguide.com (sponsored by the National Geographic Society), retrieved on Monday, January 26, 2009. A day-by-day guide to “greening” your life:

You could decide to lose weight—again—or this year you could resolve to lighten the load you leave on the planet. To help, we’ve outlined a series of small changes that add up to big results and divvied them up by time frame—tasks you can complete today, in the next week, during the next month and over the course of the next year. Breaking your efforts into smaller, more manageable tasks isn’t a cop-out: By following this plan, each small step adds up to changes that will benefit the health of the planet—and, yes, even your own health—immediately and in years to come.

Click here to see the whole guide.

Where's the wood? Logless "log" homes

NO TREES DIED The logs in this Montana house, which look real but are made of concrete, are by EverLog. Photo by Janie Osborne for the New York Times.

From the New York Times on Wednesday, January 21, 2009:

In the snowy woods of a valley west of this college town [Missoula, Mont.], John and Mary Beth Cook have taken up a version of mountain living amended for the modern world. Last year, they completed and moved into a house that looks like many others here in Big Sky Country, with exterior walls formed by logs stripped of their bark. Except that in their case, the logs are made from precast concrete shaped and painted to look like the real thing.

“We like the look and feel of logs because they look like the forest, they look like they belong,” said Mr. Cook, a historian, teacher and outdoorsman who also installed a climbing wall on his rock chimney. “But we didn’t want the maintenance.”

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China and US in climate change 'suicide pact' — Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

From The Hill, published in May, 2008, and retrieved on Monday, January 11, 2009:

Together, China and the United States produce 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Their actions to curb or expand energy consumption will determine whether efforts to stop global climate change succeed or fail. If these two nations act to curb emissions, the rest of the world can more easily coalesce on a global plan. If either fails to act, the mitigation strategies adopted by the rest of the world will fall far short of averting disaster for large parts of the earth.

These two nations are now joined in what energy analyst Joe Romm has aptly called “a mutual suicide pact.” American leaders point to emissions growth in China and demand that Chinese leaders take responsibility for climate change. Chinese leaders counter that American per capita greenhouse gas emissions are five times theirs and say, “You created this problem, you do something about it.”

Click here to read the whole report.

Nominated Energy Secretary Chu at Senate confirmation hearing

From the Washington Post on Tuesday, January 121, 2009:

President-elect Barrack Obama’s nominee for Energy secretary, Steven Chu, walked a fine line today between his strong views on the need to combat climate change and the concern of some senators about Chu’s past criticism of coal use, endorsement of gasoline taxes and tepid embrace of a cap-and-trade system for limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

Chu, who appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was asked about a comment he once made that “coal is my worst nightmare.” Chu told the committee that “if the world continues to use coal the way it is using it today, not only in the United States but in Russia, India and China, it is a pretty bad dream.” But he added that he does not favor a moratorium on coal and said he would seek and fund research on technologies so that the United States could continue to tap its abundant coal reserves.

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USGBC offers Obama green building suggestions

From usgbc.org, retrieved on Wednesday, January 14, 2009:

In ongoing talks with the transition’s energy and environment team since November, the U.S. Green Building Council has advanced vital green building policy priorities that will simultaneously create millions of green-collar jobs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and advance proven opportunities to deliver greener, more energy-efficient buildings.

Already, the President-Elect issued a recent commitment to make the U.S. a global leader in green, energy-efficient government facilities, calling for an overhaul of 75% of federal buildings in an effort to save $2 billion through energy efficiency alone. On schools, the President-Elect has said repeatedly that green school funding will be another priority in the economic package.

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Green inaugural balls set

There are two “green” inaugural balls being hosted during Barack Obama’s big party next week.

Al Gore is hosting The Green Ball, which, according to the website, will celebrate “the expanding network of diverse organizations, companies, and individuals committed to advancing our clean economy to create shared prosperity for all.” It is invitation only.

Another organization is hosting The Green Inaugural Ball, which, according to organizers, will be wind-powered. All the food to be served will be organic and, to the extent possible, locally grown. You can go to this one — for $500 per person or more.

Neither event will be hosted by — or even attended by — the Obamas. But the concept does fit with Mr. Obama’s major policy theme.

Obama would double alternative energy in three years

From the Washington Post on Friday, January 9, 2009:

President-elect Barack Obama said yesterday that he wanted to double the production of alternative energy over the next three years, a goal that will probably require a new set of government incentives for the capital-intensive solar and wind industries.

Six months ago, some of the biggest names in solar- and wind-project finance were firms such as Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, GE Capital, Wells Fargo and Municipal Mortgage & Equity. But many of those firms are mired in their own financial crises, and existing tax benefits for renewable energy projects are now unattractive to them. A technical aspect of the bank bailout has even made renewable tax incentives useless for some profitable banks.

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Eating like it matters — with recipes

From slate.com, retrieved on Wednesday, January 7, 2009:

… Now Bittman has waded even further into the fray by publishing “Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating With More Than 75 Recipes,” an unusual blend of manifesto, self-help manual and cookbook designed to convince people that they can drastically improve their diets with relatively little discomfort. Not only that, but in doing so, Bittman avows, they can also save the planet and relieve some of the pressure on their pocketbooks. As promises go, that’s a whopper, a super-trifecta encompassing the major obsessions of the current moment: weight loss, environmentalism and penny-pinching.

The formula is very simple (Bittman is the Minimalist, after all): “Eat less of certain foods, specifically animal products, refined carbs, and junk food; and more of others, specifically plants, in close to their natural state.” It is a recommendation that owes much (as Bittman repeatedly acknowledges) to the work of Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food”; the spirit of Pollan presides over this book like the Virgin Mary over a Catholic Church. In fact, you could describe “Food Matters” as “applied Pollan,” because Pollan, for all his endlessly inventive, inquisitive and adventurous writings on American eating and food production, lacks Bittman’s pragmatic touch.

Click here to read the whole review.

Obama's "green jobs" plan — retrofitting homes to be a major component

From the LA Times on Sunday, January 4, 2009:

Jones said Obama’s proposal to weatherize homes would pay for itself through energy savings while putting legions of unemployed construction workers back on the job. A $100-billion investment in a green recovery could create 2 million jobs within two years, a good chunk of them in retrofitting, according to a recent University of Massachusetts study.

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