Green Options

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.

Dr. Norman Borlaug passed away this weekend at 95.  He left behind an amazing legacy of contribution to humanity.  It is likely that he saved more human lives than any other person in history.  He did it by developing far more productive wheat than had ever been grown.  His “short stature” wheat had shorter, thicker stems so that it could hold bigger heads of grain that would otherwise “lodge” (collapse over on to the ground where it can’t be harvested).  It was also resistant to the devastating wheat disease called “Stem Rust.”  This wheat ended up feeding millions of people around the world, particularly in Pakistan and India in the 1960s.  Borlaug’s breakthrough was a key part of the “Green Revolution” and it did much to address the hunger and poverty issues of the time.  For this, and his life-time of additional work Bourlag recieved the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Metal .  Only Martin Luther King, Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa have received all of these commendations.  He was also awarded the National Medal of Science and a host of other awards from around the world.  There is an excellent article about the life and career of this remarkable man in the Des Moines Register.

Dr. Woodrow Clark is a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Prize, along with former Vice President Al Gore, for his work as a co-author and co-editor of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Report. He was also the first Research Director for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, establishing the economic and technical basis for renewable energy technologies to be commercialized in developing nations.

He currently manages Clark Strategic Partners and consults with the Los Angeles Community College District helping their nine college campuses become energy independent and carbon neutral. I caught up with Dr. Clark to talk about renewable energy, energy policy, bicycle lanes and why it all matters.

Leslie Berliant: How did you become involved in co-authoring the report from the UN IPCC that ultimately made you a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize?

Woody Clark At the time, I was at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. At that time, it was part of the UC (University of California) system and funded by the US Department of Energy. The lb itself was named after Ernest Lawrence, the Nobel prize winner in Physics. For 50 years after World War II, it was all part of the UC system. That’s no longer the case, which is a shame. Anyway, I became aware of the work the UN was starting to do in this area and while I was full time at Lawrence Livermore labs, I asked if I could participate in the panels. They said I had to do it on my own time and at my own expense so I did. I found some money and paid for my travel and took time off from work because I thought it was an important topic to pursue. I was a participant in the panels throughout the 90’s. As a result, I was asked to be the first research director for one of the areas of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; I was to look at environmentally sound technologies like solar, wind, and others and see how they could be transferred from developed countries to developing countries. I had 6 co-authors covering things like wind from Denmark and solar from Japan. It was a landmark study. My involvement with the IPCC went on for about 4 or 5 years but after a while I changed jobs and went to work in Denmark as a visiting professor and wasn’t able to participate anymore. Another interesting twist is that I was the co-author on the chapter on economic and finance and the co-editor on the chapter on legal and contract agreements. Those are two areas that I’m very much involved in today. In fact, it’s what I do professionally with the colleges.

Former President Bush to win Goldman Prize, the environmental nobel prize (april fool’s)

Why isn’t Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman the Secretary of the Treasury? More and more people are starting to ask that question. Jonathan Mann, the creator of Rock Cookie Bottom, writes a song every single day; last week he wrote this catchy and moving plea to NY Times columnist Krugman to come to the aid of our nation’s scorched and pillaged economy .

Some days my hope wavers that this polarized American society can get anywhere meaningful. The communication gap is so wide and prickly. That goes for environmental issues, political ones, cultural ones and any other kinds of ones. Sometimes it just seems hopeless to me. Or at least very fatiguing.

Consider my most recent sustainablog post — NASA Maps Global CO2 Patterns; Produces More Science for Nonbelievers to Dispute.

I showed some exasperation in that post, too. I wondered how science, a system based on factual discovery as means of proving (or disproving) a hypothesis, is so controversial as it relates to environmental matters. I wondered — and continue to wonder — how two people can look at facts of science and pick and choose what to believe and then vehemently disagree with each other.

Two Americans, and one Japanese scientist, (Martin Chalfie, Roger Tsien and Osamu Shimomura) recently won a share of the Chemistry Nobel Prize for “borrowing” the glowing jellyfish trait and putting it to use.

Well, we’re at it again, “borrowing” the magical and bizarre wonders offered up by the natural world, and using these wonders to make humans healthier and happier.  This time, we’ve isolated that strange trait that makes jellyfish glow in dark waters, and we’re using this trait for everything from cancer research to GMO’s.

They call it green fluorescent protein or GFP. Scientists can use what makes jellyfish glow, to show how brain cells develop or how cancer spreads.  The glowing trait has also become important in biological engineering.  When scientists are trying to change an animal or a plant, oftentimes they will use the gene responsible for GFP as part of the change.  The “glow” will let them know whether the change has been successfully incorporated into the organism or not.

Former Vice-President Al Gore says we cannot wait until 2050 to curtail our carbon emissions.  In Washington this week Gore made his case for eliminating petroleum from the United States economy by the year 2018.  Is his goal too ambitious?

Editor’s Note: This is Anthony’s first post as a contributor to Gas 2.0. Anthony works on sugar-based biofuels at the Raines Lab of Petroleum Alternatives, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I have a lot of admiration for Al Gore.  I was in the 7th grade when he lost his bid for the presidency, and even then I could feel that something awful was upon us.  Fast forward eight years and we find ourselves in a world where Al Gore is running a campaign to help mankind in a much more focused manner.  Instead of defecting to the private sector, Gore remains a public servant dedicated to the environment.  Recently, he called for the United States to lead the way to stop global warming, and now he is calling for the United States to be off of carbon based fuels by the year 2018.

Gore’s battle cry could not have come at a better time.

Expo 2008, the international exposition on water and sustainable development, opened its doors to the world on Saturday in the Spanish city of Zaragoza.

Situated along Spain’s largest River, the Ebro, the 62-acre expo aims to inform people on global water issues and serve as a discussion forum for advocates and international policy makers. A goal of the expo is to produce a “Zaragoza Charter” which will detail recommendations to address such issues as access to clean water, water scarcity, water wars, and water conservation.