Green Options

Well, it has been a long time coming, but the US is finally putting some money into high-speed rail (HSR)!

Obama put a strong focus on this in his State of the Union speech last night — “From the first railroads to the interstate highway system, our nation has always been built to compete. There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains…. Tomorrow, I’ll visit Tampa, Florida, where workers will soon break ground on a new high-speed railroad funded by the Recovery Act. There are projects like that all across this country that will create jobs and help our nation move goods, services, and information.”

Now, the White House has just announced the 12 rail lines that will receive billions of dollars for HSR in the very near future. If these HSR projects come to fruition, the US may finally be level with Europe and China.

Will this be the start we need to transform our transportation system in the US?

Anyone who has ever had to wait in line at most DMVs can attest that the government isn’t always exactly… efficient. It is full of red tape and bureaucracy and filling out form after form after form after form. Ever wonder where all of those forms go? Probably not files, not in today’s computerized world. No, they probably end up in the circular file.

Imagine if all of that paper waste could be turned into fuel? Well two vehicles, a Chevy HHR and a Ford F-150, have been converted by a company called Novozymes to use recycled waste-paper as fuel.

General Motors has been accused of a lot of things in the past year, and personally, I feel like that horse is dead, beaten, and buried. For all intents and purposes, it is a new company now. Or at least that is what we are being told.

One very important aspect of the new GM is its commitment to electric vehicles. The Chevy Volt is due out later this year, and the Cadillac Converj is also on the table. Today GM has announced that it was launching a program to start building its own electric motors in house, improving quality while cutting costs. And even better, GM says that the first vehicle to get a GM electric motor will come in 2013, and will be rear-wheel drive.

An amazingly high percentage of people who live down the Mid-Atlantic Seaboard from New York to Virginia want wind turbines off their coast.

Even if they can be seen from the shoreline, 67% support off-shore wind power, according to a new poll of coastal residents of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia .

If the turbines are out of sight, the level of support goes up to an astounding 82%.

A full 25% of the population of the US lives in the nine Atlantic states from Massachusetts to North Carolina. The potential is staggering.  So it is very fortunate that so many people in the middle of part of the region with such great potential for wind power feel this way.

Off-shore wind power off the Atlantic could take one third of the US population off the fossil grid.

There is a controversial decision to be made in Maryland soon regarding a nuclear reactor that might be built there. Similar to reactors being built in Finland that British and Finnish regulators are finding problems with, this reactor would be built largely by a French nuclear technocratic elite who are operating in a questionable and risky way.

The project in Maryland is a 4.5 billion dollar deal that is trying to skirt public service regulation. Thanks in part to a regional coalition, the Chesapeake Safe Energy Coalition (CSEC), and their ability to get 650 petition signatures sent to the Public Service Commission (PSC), the nuclear business elite are running into responsible and practical decision-making that will give more public accountability.

An in-depth report of the history of nuclear technology in France that leads into the situation today was completed by international nuclear expert and consultant Mycle Schneider in May of this year. There are many issues put forth in this paper that are discussed in great detail and with appropriate connection to various global issues (i.e. issues regarding political conflict and the environment). Six key points from the report are introduced below:

Last week, we took a look at San Diego’s revolutionary solar plan, which will allow residents to pay for solar panels through property tax bills over a 20 year period. But don’t pack your bags for Southern California just yet. Annapolis, MD has a similar plan , dubbed the Annapolis (EZ) Energy Zone Program.

A team of US and Korean scientists have announced a major breakthrough in energy storage that could pave the way to a new generation of ultra-efficient electric cars, mobile phones and laptops.

The prototype capacitor, much more powerful than exisiting batteries, is capable of storing power at the same massive density as a supercapacitor (an incredible 10 billion tiny capacitors in every square centimetre), but releasing it as quickly as the fastest electrostatic capacitors.

Speaking about the invention, Gary Rubloff of the University of Maryland said, “Our primary target [for this technology] is as part of a hybrid battery-capacitor system for electric cars, but there are many [potential] small scale applications, [including] better electrical storage systems for cellphones or laptops.”

The Maryland Department of the Environment is reporting a coal ash spill, this time on the Potomac River.

[Creative Commons photo by Mikko Itälahti]

How many spills does this make in the past few months alone? There was the devastating TVA spill in Tennessee, the January spill in Alabama, and now this. Three spills in three months is a pretty terrible track record that underscores our need to move beyond coal as a primary fuel source.

The Maryland Department of the Environment press release said:

While national policies have left a lot to be desired regarding food safety, states have taken a lot of steps forward to combat food issues. Consider the state and city bans on transfats, New York’s mandate for calorie labeling on fast food menus. Even as the FDA and USDA fail, for many reasons, to step up to protect consumers, individual states are taking action and leading the charge.

Maryland is the next notable state taking action. Two bills have currently been proposed to ban the use of controversial food dyes in the wake of two British studies (PDF) that show some of the dyes may be linked to hyperactivity and behavior problems in children. One of the bills would mandate labeling on the food packages that contain the dyes, and give industry until 2012 to stop using them. The other bill specifically prohibits schools from purchasing, providing and serving any food item that contains the dyes by 2010.

Learn where you can lookup common foods to see which have these dyes after the jump.

Rob Gilchrist, a former activist, had spied on 9 different peaceful environment and animal welfare groups over the past 10 years before his girlfriend discovered suspicious emails, New Zealand’s Sunday Star-Times reported in a 3,200-word expose today.

“Protests are part of a healthy democracy,” said Rochelle Rees, Gilchrist’s girlfriend. “The police are supposed to be protecting that but instead they are inhibiting it. It’s foolish of them since stomping on peaceful protest is the best way to make people more extreme and push them underground.”

The harvest of soft shell and peeler blue crabs in Chesapeake Bay has been declared a commercial fishery failure by U.S. Government. The federal declaration is an important step in providing economic assistance to the communities reliant upon crab production.