Green Options

I love going fast, and I make no apologies for it.

Ok that’s a lie. Sometimes, I feel guilty about going fast, guzzling gas, drooling over 5 mile per gallon muscle cars. I know the world is in a bad way, mostly because of cars. Yet I still love them, especially fast ones, because in my opinion life is too short for a 0-60 mph time of 7 seconds or more.

Still though, the easiest way to increase fuel efficiency is to make everyone go a lot slower. Instead of pursuing billions of dollars in new technologies, if everyone would just let off the accelerator, we would save a lot of gas every year. One such way would be to (again) lower the interstate speed limit 55 mph. Yet that didn’t work too well the first time around. What if we went even further, what if new cars were capped at 200 horsepower, and had a top speed of only 60 mph?

Depending on who you ask, Cash for Clunkers was either a spectacular success, or a spectacular failure.

These are the facts though. Cash for Clunkers helped sell 690,000 car sales in 30 days, at the cost $3 billion to taxpayers. While overall auto sales are down in 2009 compared to 2008, December was a strong finish for almost every brand. In the four months since the program, car sales have also been up as a whole. Chrysler and General Motors are out of bankruptcy. 2010 is looking like a much better year for car buyers.

Still, the question lingers. Are we going to get a second round of Cash for Clunkers?

The 3,000 members of the Jemez Pueblo tribe in New Mexico are looking to build the first utility-scale solar power plant on tribal land. They are also looking to make some money on it.

It is no secret that Native American tribes are more likely to be poverty-stricken and they generally have more than twice the unemployment rate of the United States. Former Jemez Pueblo governor James Roger Magdalena says, “We don’t have any revenue coming in except for a little convenience store.”

It is estimated this solar power plant could generate $25 million over the next quarter century and help create a sustainable revenue for his tribe.

4 million fewer vehicles. This is the first year there was such a large decline in automobile ownership since the US Department of Transportation (DOT) began modern recordkeeping in 1960.

How did this come about? What were the main causes?

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) just released a comprehensive global report, and the first country by country ranking, of clean energy technology sales.

The clean energy sector is on the verge of becoming the third largest sector in the world now. The report — Clean Economy, Living Planet - Building Strong Clean Energy Technology Industries — finds that Denmark is currently the leading country in clean energy sales (relative to GDP), Brazil is second and Germany is third (the top three in absolute terms are Germany, the US and Japan).

With the sector booming, there is much opportunity for growth in these countries and others now. The report delves into how the countries currently leading the world got to the top and makes a short list of best practices.

Clean energy technology sales were about $921 billion in 2007 (€630 billion), but are expected to become about $2339 billion per year (€1600 billion) in 2020. At that volume, the sector is expected to only be behind automobiles and electronics in global sales. This is even without a strong, binding deal in Copenhagen.

Kim Carstensen, leader of WWF’s global climate initiative, says: “This is the clean economy growth happening now with only a partial Kyoto protocol international framework supporting clean energy development, patchy national support for green energy and huge subsidies to fossil fuel use.”

I think the growth in the future is liable to skyrocket with more and more countries getting serious about stopping human-induced catastrophic climate change. Plus, clean energy is an economic benefit for countries as it creates more jobs for the countries’ citizens.

Donald Pols, Head of the Climate Programme at WWF-Netherlands, says: “Clearly, from a national perspective there is much to gain and nothing to lose from investing in clean energy.”

Where do the US and the UK fit into this matter? And what are their and other countries’ best chances for becoming industry leaders?

Asia is investing hundreds of billions of dollars more than the US in clean technology, according to a new report by two research institutions. In the future, the US may be importing trillions of dollars of needed clean technology (and losing countless jobs to Asia) as a result.

In total, the report showed that China, Japan, and South Korea will invest about $509 billion in clean tech over the next 5 years, whereas the US (with our greenest President in decades, maybe ever) is only expected to invest $172 billion (about 3 times less) — this is assuming the climate and energy legislation in Congress passes.

If the US were to invest the same percentage of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as South Korea, it would invest almost $140 billion per year ($700 billion over this five year period)! Compared to China, the anticipated per-GDP investment ratio is 1:4 (US to China).

In 2008, Japan almost matched US R&D spending on energy and achieved almost the same number of international clean energy patents despite having dramatically lower GDP.

The financial investment is not the only thing giving these countries a major advantage in this field, though.

A new report, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), attempts to bring to the world’s attention the truly great economic value of ecosystems and biodiversity, as well as the benefits of taking these into account when making policies.

The value of the world’s natural ecosystems and biodiversity is something lacking in most economic analyses. Lack of value for what is truly priceless doesn’t just hurt the environment, however. It is also a sort of economic suicide. This new report, hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme and supported by key EU, UK, German, Swedish, Dutch, and Norwegian bodies, attempts to bring all of this to our attention more and show some positive case studies of how taking the environment into consideration can actually save us money.

As the report says: “the failure of markets to adequately consider the value of ecosystem services is of concern not only to environment, development and climate change ministries but also to finance, economics and business ministries.”

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about China’s new policy to focus on buying (almost entirely) “China-grown” wind turbines and wind turbine technologies with Chinese patents. That policy wasn’t a big hit internationally and China is back-tracking.

However, is it changing its stance out of international moral pressure or a major financial incentive (recent deal) in the US? And who is to benefit the most from this shift?

Life, Money and Illuision is not about the magical arts or wizardry, though it does demystify money and Wall Street’s greedy aspirations abetted by the global push for more growth and consumption (and jobs).

Life, Money and Illuision: Living on Earth as if we want to stay (New Society, 2009) by Mike Nickerson is a driving tome that reconciles how our economy operates in relationship to the ecological and social systems on which we all depend.

In this second revised edition of Life, Money and Illusion, Nickerson explains that “Life” refers to the biological processes by which living things maintain themselves over time. “Money” represents our economic ideology that claims that as long as the volume of money changing hands increases, all will be well. “Illusion” refers to the fact that these two perspectives are directly opposed in terms of how they would solve current problems.

As one might imagine, a book of this stature and ambition — if providing meaningful analysis and argumentation (which it does superbly) — is not a cursory or a casual read. Running 448 pages, Life, Money and Illusion is meticulously fashioned in easy-to-understand language that makes Nickerson’s arguments and ideas both compelling and provocative. It draws from numerous fields, including ecology, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and, of course, economics.

Chaired by President M. Nasheed, the Government of Maldives recently concluded the world’s first ever underwater cabinet meeting. The small island nation of Maldives will perhaps be the first country to go under water, if predictions based on climate change models come true.

The underwater meeting was called to raise this concern and put pressure on the West to act NOW, and for a fair deal at COP in Copenhagen this December. A day after the event, extensively covered by the media (View on: CNN | BBC), the Government of India has announced the setting up of a National institute for long-term research on climate change.

Years before he was a well-respected United States Senator, Minnesota native and satirist Al Franken was also “Supply Side Jesus“. He gives voice to this witty and sardonic animated allegory, “The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus”.  Franken is quite effective as the overtly capitalist Christ who embraces supply side economics above all else; indeed Jesus and Franken are both Jewish. This five minute cartoon manages to

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