He will be missed.

Concern about high oil prices led Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest producer, to call a weekend summit between oil producers and oil consumers to address the issue before high prices can permanently damage demand.

Um, correct me if I’m wrong, but is “permanently damaging demand” exactly what everyone in America is so intensely desperate to do, now that they realize that 99 cent/gallon gas is little more than a fantasy? On one hand, we get told every day that wind and solar and biofuels are great, but there’s no way we can ever get away from gas… But if that’s true, why are major oil producers calling summits about the danger that such a thing might happen?

If I’m reading this wrong, correct me in the comments. I just feel like the disconnect between normal people and the industrialists we depend on is growing wider and wider with each passing day…

From CNN Money

The gathered crowd, led by local members of the nonprofit watchdog AmazonWatch, was primarily protesting Chevron’s escapades in Ecuador. When the company bought Texaco, they inherited a $15 Billion toxic waste problem in the country that they’ve been fighting a legal and PR battle to keep from cleaning up. This, on $30 Billion in profits over the same period.

According to Paul, one of the lead AmazonWatch protesters, Chevron knew it would lose in US courts, and pushed to move to Ecuadorian courts, which they thought would be easier to strongarm. Now that they’re losing in the Ecuadorian courts as well, Chevron has decided not to honor their previous commitment to the decision by local authorities.

To learn more, visit ChevronToxico.com… After all, even if you don’t have time for activism on a daily basis, you can make Earth Day be the day you make time.

See also:

Green Options: Ecuador to Leave Oil — and Revenue — in the Ground

Gas 2.0: Chevron Backs Solazyme’s Algae Biodiesel Production Process

I won’t go into the details of the tour, the PowerPoint, the partnership, the process that Coskata uses, the partnership that Coskata announced on the 6th with one of the largest ethanol refinery builders, (under embargo–we can expect details of partnerships like this to literally leak out consistently over the next year, similar to the strategy that GM is using to re-release all of its SUV lines as hybrids) or anything else, because they’ve all been covered so well here:

GroovyGreen’s coverage of the tour and PowerPoint

GM Announces Biofuel Partnership: Cheap, Green Ethanol?

Economic Conditions Shifting in Favor of Ethanol

Coskata partnerhship with ICM Announcement

Update: EcoGeek has a post up too, but they don’t link to any of ours.

Now that you’ve read all that, I’m going to muse a little bit on the takeaways from this partnership and what to look out for.

In case you didn’t read all that, here’s the short version. Coskata was born out of research at OU, OSU, and BYU on ethanol-producing anaerobic (oxygen = bad) bacteria dug out of swamp-like areas and bred selectively to maximize their slime-ahol productivity.

The company’s R&D chief compared them to thoroughbred racehorses… repeatedly. But, we saw the little guys work in the lab, and gosh darnit, they make ethanol. He claimed they’ve achieved a 50x increase in productivity since the lab opened last June. Last June?!

The advantage their process has is that the bacteria’s food is any gasified organic matter. It only relies on gasification, which is a mature and commercialized process. I think someone said if wood were used to gasify wood, about 7% of the mass per capita would be used to heat the gasification. They’re pretty efficient. I thought, why not use renewables to generate the power? But then again, why not just use plasma?

What’s next?

The company plans to have a demo plant operational this year that will produce 40,000 gallons of renewable ethanol by the end of next year to be tested at GM’s nearby proving grounds.

After that, the company has aggressive plans to both build their own plants (likely through a close strategic partnership like the one just announced with distillery-builder ICM; Wes Bolson, Coskata’s VP of Biz Dev came to them via ICM) and license their “Coskata Process” to other builders in roughly a 5:1 license:build ratio. It sounds like they plan to build next to all low-hanging fruit first, and then sit back and reap the licensing fees once the market scales sufficiently and margins start to fall.

What is the low-hanging fruit?

Coskata execs envision a country with each state containing two or more facilities generating enough ethanol from local resources to virtually eliminate our oil dependence. They can achieve local production because anywhere they can buy organic matter for less than $50/dry ton, with it they can produce 100 gallons of ethanol that’s 50 cents cheaper than gas. This includes wood, storm debris, switchgrass, (sorted) garbage, tires…

And coal. As Steven Balogh of GroovyGreen asked pointedly, “Wouldn’t it be cheaper to make ethanol with coal?” (subtext: I cannot fall for it, your altruism stinks of a ruse.)

Coskata execs looked around nervously and emphasized that while coal would (at least, initially) be quite a bit cheaper than waste streams and sustainably-produced feedstocks, it doesn’t stack up all the other metrics of success. (subtext: We need environmentalist support to get this off the ground. Yes, coal will be used for a while until other waste streams can be commodified and taken advantage of to actually get them to consumers well below the price of gas, but if I tell you that now you’ll never support me, it’s for your own good, so trust my ‘fib’ and settle down.)

When I pressed them on the difference in price point, they–strangely–said they knew the answer to that but weren’t going to share.

Despite the potential for tomfoolery from the likes of coal, I have to say: I’ll take it. Yes, global warming sucks and is going to suck a lot worse in the future. But right now, we need to get our energy economy and infrastructure together in the next ten years if we’re going to have any chance of avoiding all hell breaking loose when an energy crisis hits. Coal schmoal, as long as it’s going to a good cause: bridging the gap to sustainable energy independence.

In the early days of our little startup, it was sometimes hard to tell exactly where we were going. We knew that Treehugger had built a successful content model by catering to the significant number of people who self-identify with that term. We wondered if it was possible to do the same, but with a brand and content focus that would help draw ordinary people towards a more conscious mindset, by meeting them where they are.

With that in mind and no funding secured, I attended the 2006 SF Green Festival as just another festival-goer, passing out user surveys to help nail down our demographics. Without a booth, I was quickly asked to stop or leave, but I vowed to be back next year, with both a booth and a greater sense of purpose.

The intervening year was one of constant development. We launched GO 1.0 in February, added Planetsave.com to our portfolio in June, launched a redesigned homepage in July (thanks to Noel of eight6.com for all of his great work), and set plans in motion to build the next major iteration of the Green Options content model through the Fall.

On of the big lessons of our first eight months was that while there are some people who want all the green info they can handle in one single site (ala Treehugger and many of the green-themed sites that pop up daily), that just isn’t the way most people get involved in sustainability. Real, busy, normal people tend to become engaged when one ‘green’ issue strikes close to home, and don’t want to be bothered by everything else until they’ve had a good experience ‘testing the waters’ with that issue.

Although our writers covered their areas of expertise brilliantly from day one, we needed to build on our content model to help them get a foot in the door of an audience broader than that which green online media has traditionally reached. Noel and our self-proclaimed bit-herder, Chris, whipped up (on an astounding deadline) the technical infrastructure to build a network of blogs, both home-grown and imported, that would allow our team to focus on making particular issues accessible to a more mainstream audience through discrete channels.

By November 2007, I was back at the Green Festival in SF, with a booth (as I had promised a year earlier), and an amazing team (which I could not have imagined a year earlier). Greenfest marked the first public display of Green Options Media, and the first three sites of the new network. At the same time, we re-engineered GreenOptions.com as community portal. To date, we’ve focused on building out the network of blogs, but we have good things planned in addition to user journals.

So, what does the future hold?

Since mid-2007, we’ve had a hardcore programmer with a finance degree building a simple web app that gives people the power to assess the feasibility of solar panels for their own home, and then turn that assessment into bids from installers. It’s in private beta, and will be launching to the public when the sun comes out this spring.

In the meantime, GO Media will be expanding on its current stable of 10 properties. We’ll be releasing our take on a green technology blog and a good ol’ local American counterpart to our popular international green news report, EcoWorldly, and we have a few other cool features in the pipe as well.

Essentially, we’ve created a playground for our writers. These are the people on the ground in the environmental movement. Our writers are composed of green professionals who are out to find practical solutions. We know that environmentalism is a complex game; I’m not the only staff member who has family members who are coal miners.

But the more you read, the more our writers dig into the topics they live and breathe anyway; we just provide the platform to increase the amount of information in the market, direct from the people who are closest to the issues that matter.

The past year has flown, and we’re excited about the ones to come. Thank you for being here, and being a part of the first chapter of the Green Options story.

While cleanup continues, thousands of consumers and anti-consumers will get back mingling and browsing around the hundreds of socially conscious businesses exhibiting at the ‘fest. It stuck me as a particular irony that such a tragedy should befall the only area of the US where the environment is a big enough deal that the idea of a plastic bag monster doesn’t seem all that strange. (The PBM stopped by our booth yesterday as well–strange, he has a French accent)

Anyway, one more short day (and some team meetings on Monday), and it’s back to working ‘in’ our business here at Green Options Media, rather than ‘on’ it. Although we successfully launched the infrastructure for our network of blogs in time to make our booth eminently worthwhile, we’ve still got a lot of details to polish, broken links from the old system to fix up, and green professionals to hire on to share their expertise and experience via the blogs in our network.

So, come contribute to our community, and keep an eye on us as we grow! (sustainably, of course)

First, credit where credit's due: GM is one of the few major public corporations (and the first I've seen in the auto industry) to realize that social media, and the blogosphere in particular, doesn't take kindly to being treated like any old marketing mechanism. On-message spin doesn't work online because bloggers are people who take pride in peering through the fog, and distilling information for their readers. Conversations on the web are not one-way, and information can't be controlled in the ways executives are used to. They are learning that the blogosphere is never afraid to call "bullshit" when it sees it, and the possibility of instant feedback ensures that all viewpoints can be heard, immediately.

I recognize all the benefits of green building, but, as I've never owned any kind of building, I've never explored a homeowner's eco-friendly options in much depth, or been to a conference targeted at the industry.

Right from the opening plenary, visionaries (led in prominence by Steve Wozniak) hammered home the feeling that the green building industry is really at a tipping point where a cascade of exponential growth is possible. In this respect, I didn't feel too out of place. I had heard a similar message at every niche conference I'd been to since starting Green Options. Indeed, the implications of a true transition to a sustainable economy are the same for green pioneers in every industry. If you can provide any product or service in a more environmentally responsible way, and do it as cheap or cheaper than the old way, you are the future.

EcoGeek’s Ransom Riggs sat next to me at the morning press briefing featuring Sen. Tom Daschle, head of conference sponsor AWEA, Randall Swisher, and other energy big-wigs. Ransom's writeup provides a good overview of conclusions coming out of the briefing and the message of the conference in general, so we asked the EcoGeek if we could feature Ransom’s overview in addition to my thoughts and analysis.

To celebrate a smooth and successful operation and an enthusiastic response from consumers, we're ejoying some locally-brewed 312 beer before we disperse back across the country and return to our virtual workplaces on Monday.

All in all, a great weekend and an inspiring Earth Day. The green movement appears to be flowing into the public consciousness rather than nipping at the margins, and Earth Day is finally becoming a day for all of us. At Green Options, we're going to do our part to help this process continue...

So I have 4+ pages of unformatted notes on Van's speech (inspiring, even for a cynic... hopefully that will come through in my post), but haven't had a chance even yet to put it into publishable format. As you can imagine, time to sit, think, and type has been scarce today, but I'll get it up as soon as possible.

As for Jeff's post, we decided that Hightower's speech, while incisive and entertaining at the same time, weren't necessarily the best content for our site's generally non-partisan focus. However, Liam confirms that he will be posting about Bill McKibben's speech before the weekend is out.

We might not be able to make you feel like you're here at GreenFest with us, but hopefully, we can give you a glimpse of some of the highlights. Also, requests for specific coverage are welcome by comments or email. Although we can't guarantee all of them will be fulfilled, we'd love to hear what YOU want to hear about the action at GreenFest Chicago.

Although they might not appeal directly to your average 'lite green' consumer in the same way that much of our other content does, Clayton's posts are always well-read, and tend to draw thoughtful, thorough responses from readers, which make for long comments, but also make for a real dialogue on issues that a growing segment of society has a real desire to understand.

First off, I was impressed with the format Global Exchange came up with for the event. A short summary of McKibben's book, Deep Economy, a long, lively conversation between the two authors, and then a well-organized Q&A. Maximum variety, maximum information. Other book tours/speakers series take note. As such, I have a hunch that my paraphrased notes will give you more information, quicker, than me writing prose about the subjects these two covered. So, here goes:

Phoenix Motorcars is doing its part. Last night, the company held a major event to celebrate the launch of its first line, an all-electric sport utility truck (SUT)--appropriately enough--at LA's famed Peterson Automotive Museum.

Thursday I attended the birth of what sponsors Yahoo! and AC Nielsen hope will be a grassroots movement to upgrade incandescent light bulbs to a new generation of CFL bulbs on a national scale, saving billions of dollars in the process. A grassroots campaign with corporate sponsors? Weird.

GO Contributor Michael d’Estries (who moonlights with us from Ecorazzi and GroovyGreen) was Johnny on the spot with a Thursday morning post about the launch and features of the website itself, but I thought the event for the launch deserved a little more coverage, so I put together a play by play run-down of the action, with my thoughts added in. If you were there, chime in with a comment with anything I forgot. If you weren't, share your reactions. More after the jump…

If you have been following politics on TV since last November, there’s a good chance you’ve watched Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) using an imaginary middle-class family as a rhetorical device to unify the Democratic message around this crucial target market. (note: if you object to comparing politics to marketing, keep in mind that Republicans have been using micro-niche issue targeting and other staple techniques from the marketing world for years, with great success)

At Green Options, when we build services and features, we hold ourselves to a similar standard: can my mother use this? Of course, I don’t expect my mom to get linked to our site through Digg and then add our RSS feed to her news aggregator (indeed, she’s never heard of Netvibes), but we try to make sure that all of the information we provide is accessible to not only the less green-savvy, but the less tech-savvy as well. At the same time, we do our best to make sure those users have the tools to understand terms like RSS and Web 2.0.

No, what you're feeling is a rush of information getting unleashed into the public sphere of cyberspace. For the past month, Green Options has been in private beta mode; only a select few have had the chance to watch our media machine gear up for launch. But today, February 5th, 2007, as of 10:00 am PST/1:00 pm EST, it's all open to the public!

I'm incredibly excited to let you all in to peruse the content our writers have worked hard to build up over the last month. In fact, anyone who reads it all in one sitting and proves it to me gets a crisp 5 dollar bill! I'm prepared to offer that hefty sum because I know it can't be done.

Green Options is a labor of love, and we're proud of the site's design and content, but we're also pretty sure it's not perfect yet. We'll constantly be making improvements and adding features, so general feedback of any kind is always welcome. If you find a specific bug as you're browsing around, you can always click on the ladybug in the bottom lefthand corner of the screen to report it in our Tech Support Forum. If you have praise or congratulations to heap on us, just add a comment to this post, so everyone can see!