Green Options

181 of the world’s largest investors say that the climate agreement in Copenhagen needs to be strong and binding.

This is from companies managing over $13 trillion and is the largest such statement to date. Their proposals are even stronger than what most activist organizations are asking for.

The United Nations stated a couple weeks ago that developed (rich) countries need to provide developing countries with about $500-600 billion a year to control global warming. This was a big increase from other predictions.

Big portions of these funds need to go to India, a large developing country that includes about one sixth of the world’s population. A new study shows what is needed to significantly cut growth in greenhouse gases in this top country.

Even a year gone since the failure of Lehman, fundamental questions remain regarding the core underlying assumptions of our financial system. Though currently derivatives trading and black boxes appear out of favour, what will replace them in terms of helpful and productive uses of capital still has yet to be determined. This question was what the Conference on Social Capital Market’s, or SoCap09 tried to give some structure to; while the trend towards sustainable investments and long-term ROI seems to have taken the place of actively managed funds seeking 20x returns.

Even a year gone since the failure of Lehman, fundamental questions remain regarding the core underlying assumptions of our financial system. Though currently derivatives trading and black boxes appear out of favour, what will replace them in terms of helpful and productive uses of capital still has yet to be determined. This question was what the Conference on Social Capital Market’s, or SoCap09 tried to give some structure to; while [...]

By most accounts, the Obama administration’s “Cash for Clunkers” program is a resounding success.

One quarter billion dollars is a lot. An awful lot. Most people will never even come near that amount of money, but that’s what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Americans saved this past year by switching over to energy efficient homes.

By Stacy Feldman, originally published June 24, 2009, at SolveClimate.com

Washington is starting to wake up to something that’s been obvious to marine scientists for years. The winds blowing off U.S. waters could be a key to a national clean energy and green jobs revolution.

On Tuesday, the federal government awarded five leases to three companies that want to develop wind turbines off the New Jersey and Delaware coasts for the production of renewable energy.

They’re the first such leases the Department of Interior has ever issued for the Outer Continental Shelf. If this official statement is any indication, they won’t be the last:

“We made the development of offshore wind energy a top priority for Interior. The technology is proven, effective and available and can create new jobs for Americans while reducing our expensive and dangerous dependence on foreign oil.”

The declaration comes as the U.S. Congress is in the midst of a debate over a proposal that would create a costly long-distance “transmission highway” to carry land-based wind energy (among other clean and dirty sources) from the Great Plains to the power-hungry cities of the American East.

By Lester R. Brown

Elevated global temperatures bring a number of threats, including rising seas and more crop-withering heat waves. Higher surface water temperatures in the tropical oceans also provide more energy to drive tropical storm systems, leading to more-destructive hurricanes and typhoons. The combination of rising seas, more powerful storms, and stronger storm surges can be devastating.

As noted in my most recent book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, just how devastating this combination can be became evident in late August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina came onshore on the U.S. Gulf Coast near New Orleans. In some Gulf Coast towns, Katrina’s powerful 28-foot-high storm surge did not leave a single structure standing. New Orleans survived the initial hit but was flooded when the inland levees were breached and water covered everything in large parts of the city except for the rooftops, where thousands of people were stranded. Even in August 2006, a year after the storm had passed, the most damaged areas of the city remained without water, power, sewage disposal, garbage collection, or telecommunications.

With advance warning of the storm and official urging to evacuate coastal areas, 1 million or so evacuees fled northward into Louisiana or to neighboring states of Texas and Arkansas. Of this total, more than 200,000 have not yet returned home and will likely never do so. These storm evacuees are the world’s first large wave of climate refugees.

Katrina was the most financially destructive hurricane ever to make landfall anywhere. It was one of eight hurricanes that hit the southeastern United States in 2004 and 2005. As a result of the unprecedented damage, insurance premiums have doubled, tripled, and even in some especially vulnerable situations gone up 10-fold. This enormous jump in insurance costs is lowering coastal real estate values and driving people and businesses out of highly exposed states like Florida.

When the headlines told us that the global warming debate was over, it seemed like we environmentalists could breathe a collective sigh of relief. The United States elected a cap-and-trade-sympathetic administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency says it is going to exert some of the “P” in its acronym after it formally labeled carbon dioxide a pollutant last month. So now that the debate is over, has the discussion ended?

Much of what I assumed to be climate consensus has been turned on its head since I moved to the Midwest from New York. Meaning, there a lot of people here in the Middle who care about environmental issues but are not convinced climate change is related to human activities and/or is as dire as predicted. I believe it is. . .and I also believe that in order to get buy-in from such diverse constituents, it’s imperative that we engage in dialog with those who hold differing opinions.

Editor’s Note: The is a guest contribution by Ian Rogoff, Chairman of the Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization, and Chairman and CEO of The Helio Group (parent company to HelioPower). This is the sixth post in a series from the CEO’s of major solar companies. You can follow the complete series here.

There is a long overdue debate underway in industry and political circles regarding the merits [...]

San Francisco’s zany Bay to Breakers race brings out not only world class runners but crazy costumes as well. Some companies took advantage of the crazy and healthy atmosphere to promote various items (energy drinks, anti pain patches) but we had to question the Foster Farms “Say No to Plumping” race team.

Sure, everyone seemed to enjoy having their photo taken with the plump Foster Farms chickens but the brightly colored 16-person Foster Farms race team seemed bent on raising awareness of a little-known food fact: “plumped” or saltwater-injected chicken that costs consumers their health and money.