The Olympic torch on its journey to Beijing is leaving a historic trail of CO2 emissions.
Slate.com, tracking the emissions of the torch, reports that… Through Thursday’s stop in Canberra, the relay has traveled an estimated 40,875 miles, burned 220,725 gallons of jet fuel, and released 5,270,913 pounds of CO2.
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Green Light New Orleans Recently reached a milestone: 60,000 compact fluorescent bulbs installed for free in local homes since October 2006. The headline-making 60,000th CFL was installed earlier this month at the Jeannette Street home of Irene Green.
Established in 2006 after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Green Light New Orleans is the brainchild of Swiss-born musician Andi Hoffmann, who’s now a resident of the Big Easy. Hoffman started the program first as a way to offset the greenhouse gas pollution he and his band b-goes generated during their tours to Europe. It’s since taken on a greater goal: to reduce New Orleanians’ energy costs and help fight climate change.
Meet Beatrice Ahimbisibwe. She’s a widowed single mother and a school-teacher in Uganda. Plus she creates 5.7 tons worth of carbon offsetting credits annually for TetraPak UK, a company intent on reducing its carbon footprint.
Ahimbisibwe owns a little plot of land on which she grows some of the trees involved in TetraPak’s contract to produce fresh air for all the pollution caused by its production processes. A case study of the carbon sequestration project on EcoSystemMarketplace.com reveals interesting insights into the practices of an emissions offsetting program.
“The U.S. could nearly eliminate our dependence on coal, oil and gas for electricity and transportation, drastically slashing global warming pollution without increasing costs for energy,” said David Mills, chief scientific officer and founder of Ausra.
You may be wondering, how will we have electricity at night or during cloudy weather?
Will we use large banks of batteries or burn candles?
The ability to utilize solar thermal technology after the sun sets is made possible by a storage system that is up to 93% efficient, according to Ausra’s executive vice president John O’Donnell.
In a day and age where the word recession is being thrown around like a football, when asked to make financial sacrifices you’re more likely to get a kick in the crotch then a handshake. But unlike what the critics would have us believe, cutting carbon emissions could actually economically help the US, and similarly other countries in the same position.
A theoretical US policy to cut carbon emissions by up to 40% over a 20 year period could still result in increased economic growth; this, according to an interactive website created by the Yale School of Foresty and Environmental Studies.
Not one to ever stay out of the news for one reason or another, Wal-Mart this week unveiled what it calls its most energy-efficient U.S. store yet: the HE.5 prototype.
The store, located in Las Vegas, is said to use up to 45 percent less energy than your basic Supercenter. It’s also designed specifically for the Southwest’s typical climate conditions.
The EU issues an ultimatum to US airlines.
US airlines must pay for their carbon dioxide emissions or face a curb on flights to the European Union, the EU transport commissioner warned yesterday.
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Editor’s note: Welcome to “Tangled Up in Green,” Red, Green and Blue’s weekly debate over the hot issues in environmental politics. Each week, writers Ranjit Arab and Adam Bowman will “throw down the glove” on current events involving environmental policy, legislation and citizen action. Adam and Ranjit are both graduate students in journalism at the University of Kansas, and currently enrolled in Professor Simran Sethi’s “Media and the Environment” course.
Does the town of Holcomb, Kansas sound familiar?
I’m sure it does if you’ve read “In Cold Blood,” or seen the movies based on the book and its author Truman Capote.
In a perverted way that negative association has been somewhat of a godsend. People remember Holcomb; they immediately recall it as the place where a senseless and unspeakable crime was committed.
Unfortunately, it looks like Holcomb may be preparing for a sequel, featuring yet another heinous act. This time it involves the attempts of Sunflower Electric Corp.—along with several lawmakers—to force an expansion of the power company’s Holcomb facilities, which would include two hazardous coal-burning electric plants.
Pretty neat: a device called “Carbon Hero” uses satellite navigation data to calculate your personal, daily carbon footprint with almost no manual input required. Carbon Hero, which was a prize-winner in the 2007 European Satellite Navigation Competition, is the size of a key ring and sends your carbon data for display on a cellphone.
Princeton University’s new Sustainability Plan calls for the campus to reduce its carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
Under the plan, all new construction at Princeton will have to use half as much energy as is required under current building codes. The plan also aims to reduce campus car traffic by 10 percent by 2020.
“We feel that we have an obligation as an institution to create an environment where students, faculty and staff can see the institution trying out new technologies … or trying to change behavior,” said Mark Burstein, Princeton’s executive vice president.
Dr. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic, Jr. have proposed a concept to synthesize gasoline from carbon dioxide emissions, and have dubbed their idea “Green Freedom.” “The idea is simple,” (a sure bet that it’s anything but) says Kenneth Chang in the New York Times:
Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide [which] would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions
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