Green Options

That takes my breath away. In one of the biggest renewable energy deals in the history of the world, a Korean consortium led by Samsung* has agreed to build 2,500 megawatts of wind and solar power capacity in the Canadian province of Ontario.

Samsung C&T and the Ontario government signed the deal on Thursday, January 21^st. The agreement will bring thousands of jobs and clean energy for more than half a million homes to Ontario.

Building off of this new deal, Korean trade officials plan to make Ontario their base of operations for all of North American.

A scientific team from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, led by Jacquelin L. Gill, chose to analyze fossilized dung samples (known as coprolites) to detect the presence of spores from a dung fungus called Sporormiella. The fungus requires ingestion by animals (herbivores and some birds) as part of its life cycle. The resulting digestion leaves fungal spores in the animals’ dung. The spores are also found in lake sediments where, it has been determined, they end up via [...]

According to a 2008 study (Jelks et al), nearly 40% of freshwater species in North America are either at risk of disappearing or have already vanished. Representing some 761 distinct species, 230 are deemed “vulnerable”, 190 are threatened, 280 are endangered, and 61 are extinct (or extinct in the wild). These numbers represent a 90+% increase over a 1989 assessment of freshwater species. And these trends are consistent with assessments in Europe.

With commercial trade prohibited for Asian bears, poachers are now turning to the North American black bear for the harvesting of their gallbladders.

In an effort to protect North American black bears, a proposed bill hopes to prevent a dramatic decline in black bear populations by banning any import, export, or interstate commerce in U.S. bear organs and fluids. The Bear Protection Act has been reintroduced by U.S. Representatives Raul M. Grijalva, Democrat from Arizona, and John Campbell, Republican from California. An earlier law in 2000 and 2001 - similar to the new act - passed the U.S. Senate, but did not pass the House.

This legislation is meant to counteract the inconsistent laws that currently make illegal trade in bear parts relatively easy by creating loopholes for would-be entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on the lucrative Chinese market for bear gallbladders and other parts.

LEED, for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, has become the alpha acronym when referring to green, or eco-friendly, buildings. The standard, from the U.S. Green Building Council, recently went 3.0.

Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, is taking the green diploma to an even higher degree. University officials are betting a new Living Learning Center will meet the Living Building Challenge, the world’s most stringent green building rating system from the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, a chapter of the USGBC and its Canadian counterpart.

Italian car company Tazzari has announced plans to launch its Tazzari Zero all-electric vehicle in the North American market next year.

The all-electric 2 door super mini (video) weighs in at a tiny 542 kilograms (around 1,200 lbs), leaving it capable of achieving 100 km/h (62 mph) in a nimble 5 seconds, with a top speed of 80 km/h (50mph) (more pics after the jump).

A new U.S. organics education and marketing campaign is aimed at families with young children.  The Organic Agriculture and Products Education Institute (Organic Institute) has launched ‘Organic. It’s worth it’, its first national consumer campaign.

“The mission of this campaign is to answer consumer questions about organic with the clear message that organic is worth it in every way from health care and economics to farming and the environment. It will increase consumer trust, knowledge and purchase of organic products,” says Christine Bushway, president of the Organic Institute and executive director of the Organic Trade Association (OTA), the campaign sponsor.

Fox News’ Carl Cameron reports that a McCain-Palin rift began to develop, and was due in no small part to Gov. Palin’s lack of knowledge of basic civics, politics, and geography - and her unwillingness to prepare more thoroughly in light of those those deficiencies.

Chinese car maker Changan announced today that it will launch electric cars in Canada before the end of 2008. The cars, developed jointly with Canadian company Electrovaya, could be the first sold by a Chinese company in North America.

The fleet of 30 electric vehicles (EVs) have been under development since May, and are based on one of Changan’s exisiting compact models, the BenBen, fitted with an Electrovaya powertrain. For the time being, the cars will be assembled and distributed in Canada, but in the long term Changan intends to develop the EVs entirely in China, before shipping to North America.

[photo by Tiffany]

When you picture a farm, you probably imagine rolling green pastures with happy cows grazing on grass and chickens doing their funny chicken walk in a big green field. That’s not quite the way that most farm animals live. The bulk of today’s meat comes from factory farms where animals live under terrible conditions. The factory farm’s main objective is efficiency: producing the most meat at the lowest cost. If that means the animals are pumped full of hormones and antibiotics and crammed into spaces where they can barely move, so be it.

A new study has shed light on the possible dangers being kept intact by the Arctic cold. According to the study, published in the British journal Nature Geoscience, climate change’s warming of the Arctic ice could end up releasing massive stores of carbon dioxide from the Arctic soil. In fact, the carbon stores have been severely misrepresented, and could be as much as 60% more than previously estimated.

Needless to say, the warming caused by carbon dioxide, that would release more carbon dioxide, is not a helpful turn of events.

What’s worse, according to one commentary on the research which was published this past Sunday, is that the current models predicting future climate change currently do not take in to account the possible release of these stores of carbon.