Green Options

NASA director (at the Goddard Space Flight Center) and top climate scientist James Hansen criticizes all ‘cap and trade’ strategies as doing “little to slow global warming or reduce our dependence on fossil fuels…[and which] allows polluters and Wall Street traders to fleece the public out of billions of dollars..” Hansen then offers an alternative, consumer-driven strategy (and a more radical one) that he calls ‘fee and dividend’.

The Czech President has once again questioned if the phenomenon of global warming is real but it’s time that we stop arguing and start acting to improve our environment as acting now would have multiple benefits not only for the environment but for us as well.

The United States has good reason to take pride in its recent green technology achievements. A look at world-wide wind energy production alone should give Americans cause to brake into the famous “We’re number one!” chant. However, there are a number of truly remarkable, environmentally-friendly technologies that have so far, at least for the most part, passed the US by.

#1: High-speed trains

America, this is what a train should look like. These streamlined vehicles rocket between destinations at around 190 MPH (300 km/h) in at least eighteen countries outside the US. And they’re getting even faster. This week, Kawasaki made headlines with plans for a new 217 MPH (350 km/h) train in Japan. High-speed trains make long-distance travel fast, comfortable, and more hassle-free than flying. You sit back with a book, a beer, or a sandwich and relax, watching the scenery whiz past. Seriously, what’s a red-blooded nation like the US doing without a form of transportation that actually encourages beer drinking?

Although there is not currently a nation-wide high-speed train system in the US, things are looking up. In 2000, Amtrak opened the Acela Express, a 150 MPH (240 km/h) train serving Boston and Washington DC. More exciting yet, Californians will get to vote this November on whether to build a 220 MPH high-speed train connecting Sacramento and San Francisco in the north with Los Angeles and San Diego in the South.

Some ideas for greening the planet are so-spot on yet so ground-breaking, they make you say, “Of course! Why didn’t anybody think of that sooner?”

That pretty much sums up my reaction upon discovering Eco-Patent Commons.

Launched at the beginning of 2008, Eco-Patent Commons makes available royalty-free, patented technologies for reducing pollution and waste, curbing greenhouse gases and meeting demand for clean, renewable energy. It’s the green-invention equivalent of Wikipedia.