Green Options

The U.S. Department of the Interior reports that overall water consumption in the United States has declined in the past 25 years, even though the population has increased 30% and use by individual American households has increased.  The statistics were compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey.

What’s the secret?  The 25-year patterns of water consumption revealed in the DOI report provide tantalizing clues about the ability of the U.S. to sustain its legendarily consumer-centric lifestyle while stabilizing and ultimately decreasing its contribution to carbon emissions and other greenhouse gasses.

There has been a lot of discussion over the last few years about biofuels and whether or not they are actually green, especially when produced on a large, global level.

A new study led by Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) senior scientist Jerry Melillo says no, they aren’t green (when it comes to climate change). However, there are still many important factors to keep in mind before claiming this is the end of a long and complicated discussion.

Naked bicyclists, folding bikes, balloon bikes, and more — enjoy this bicycle photo tour of Barcelona.

The third B in a row, Barcelona is next on this list of great bicycle cities (right ahead of Basel, Switzerland and Bogota, Columbia). As a dense city with a wonderful climate, Barcelona is naturally a wonderful place for bicyclists. However, a lot has been done to make it more so. The biggest carrot encouraging bicycling, by far, is Barcelona’s relatively new bike sharing program — Bicing. This is perhaps the best or second best bike sharing program in the world. It is one of a new generation of sophisticated, smart bike sharing programs. Read more about it on page 2.

Beyond Bicing, the city is also working on creating new bicycling routes and bike parking and it hosts fun Bike Week celebrations every year in May. Also, it has been creating better infrastructure for bicyclists due to so many more people bicycling within the past few years. It is transforming itself into a truly world-leading bicycle city.

Looking to create products for the real world as soon as possible, a new research center in the UK is aiming to speed up the development and installment of a variety of low carbon technologies to ensure a greener future for us all.

This new £50 million ($80 million) center hopes to do this through more coordinated and focused efforts from four universities and a regional development agency. The four universities that have teamed up are Hull, Leeds, Sheffield and Yorkshire, and they are working with the regional development agency Yorkshire Forward. The name of the new center is Centre for Low Carbon Futures (CLCF).

Norway committed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2020 this week. This is the most ambitious goal of any rich nation to date.

Norway’s prime minister Jens Stoltenberg (just re-elected) is meeting the requests of many developing nations and environmental NGOs with this commitment.

Following action by Nike, the nation’s leading utility company, and others, Apple resigned from the US Chamber of Commerce this week, and in force.

Water scarcity resulting from climate change is the number one issue the world will have to grapple with in the future, according to chief climate scientist and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri.

On the one hand, we will have more water around us with sea level rising. On the other hand, though, drought caused by climate change will leave possibly billions of people without clean water.

This will cause great health and global security issues. Most of these problems will be caused by water imbalances.

John Rowe, Exelon CEO, said yesterday that climate change legislation is an urgent issue. At the same time, he announced that the nation’s largest utility would not be renewing its membership with the US Chamber of Commerce because of the Chamber of Commerce’s opposition to climate legislation.

A new report ranks ten leading world cities on their greenhouse gas emissions. It also examines how and why the emissions differ.

As the report says, over 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas. Leading cities of the world, global cities, are the places where greenhouse gas emissions really need to be cut. The greenest city from the study is Barcelona and the worst is Denver.

Climate Action Will Pay for Itself, and More.

The United Nations (UN) stated earlier this month that the cost of avoiding climate change was at least 1% of global GDP — $500-600 billion dollars. Despite this major cost, Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the UK, and The Climate Group, presented a report to the UN yesterday saying that a strong climate deal will “boost growth in all major economies & create millions of new jobs.”

Australia has passed the US as the new world leader in CO2 emissions per capita. That is not the only climate change problem in Australia, though.