By Joe Berlinger •
August 24, 2009
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by filmmaker Joe Berlinger, director of Crude. For more information visit the Crude film website.
During the summer of 2005, a charismatic American environmental lawyer named Steven Donziger knocked on my Manhattan office door. He was running a $27 billion class-action lawsuit on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorean inhabitants of the Amazon rainforest and was looking for a filmmaker to tell his clients’ story.
Since I am not known as an environmental filmmaker — my last film, “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster,” was a warts-and-all portrait of a heavy metal band in crisis — I was a little surprised that Donziger had sought me out to me to make his pitch.
The story the lawyer told me was indeed shocking: From the mid-1960s until the early 1990s, Texaco (now Chevron) dumped 18 billion gallons of oil and toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador, creating a 1,700-square-mile “cancer death zone” the size of Rhode Island. The plaintiffs he represented alleged that birth defects, leukemia, miscarriages and other ailments were plaguing the people of the region, and the Amazon itself — one of the few places on Earth to survive the last ice age — was gasping for breath under the strain of oil exploitation.
By Paul O'Callaghan •
August 17, 2009
This post was written by Paul O’Callaghan, founding CEO of the Clean Tech consultancy, O2 Environmental Inc. and lecturer on Sustainable Energy at the BC Institute of Technology.
There was much furore recently surrounding the story ‘Joule Biotech comes out of stealth with sun-powered biofuel’.
The premise is that the technology can take solar energy and use it to convert carbon dioxide directly into fuel. A one stop-shop to soak up carbon dioxide and produce a biofuel.
Having dug into it a little, the conclusion I came to is that it’s not as radical as it sounds. It is basically directed photosynthesis: same principle as oil from algae, or biofuels. The overall efficiencies are likely to be 10 times lower than that from solar PV processes, but, in terms of where biofuels are heading, it is on the right track.
By Ariel Schwartz •
July 31, 2009
Our race to find alternative fuels is critical not only because gasoline-powered vehicles emit lots of CO2–it’s also important because we’re running out of the sticky stuff. But what if the Earth could produce fossil fuels without the fossils?
By Jeff Kart •
July 30, 2009
Pond scum just got an upgrade.
SunEco Energy is working with J.B. Hunt Transport Services, a leading transportation company, to run trucks on biodiesel mixed with algae oil.
SunEco says a blend of 20 percent and 50 percent algae oil with petroleum biodiesel has cut particulate emissions by 82 percent.
By Jennifer Lance •
July 28, 2009
A lot of concern has been expressed about ethanol. From the overuse of antibiotics to watering down Waxman-Markey in support of corn farmers, it is questionable as to whether ethanol is the solution America needs for its foreign oil dependency. Thomas R. Blakeslee of the Clearlight Foundation thinks we are better off using corn for Combined Heat and Power (CHP) biomass power plants to run electric vehicles rather than converting it to ethanol.
By Daniel Hohler •
July 27, 2009
As a pollutant polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (or PAH’s as we call them in the business), are of concern because they have been identified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic (not good things if you were wondering). PAHs are created as a byproduct of the burning of coal, oil, and fossil fuels. Often they are of concern in urban areas where there is a higher carbon footprint, and it forms that nice cloud of yellow smoke you see floating over some of your major cities.
Now, new research out of Columbia University is showing that exposure to PAHs, can reduce neonate’s intelligence. The study performed in New York city where PAHs are in no short demand, showed IQ scores that were 4.31 and 4.67 points lower, respectively than those of less exposed children.
Shortly after winning approval from the California State Senate, a controversial deal that would have allowed the first new offshore oil leases in California state waters in forty years, was rejected by the California State Assembly by a vote of 43-30.
By Susan Kraemer •
July 23, 2009
You’ve seen the headlines:
Cows Operate Power Company as Side Business
Onion Farmer takes $2.5 Million to Bank For Electricity Production
More Carbon Sequestration Needed: Farmers Paid to Not Plant
Every day there’s more news of the alternative energy that farms can make. From cow poop. From crop residues. From onion skins. From chicken feathers. From wind royalties. From solar power.
But you read cleantechnica.
Of course farmers will benefit from the climate bill. HR2434 is designed to make it cheaper to switch to low carbon energy than to keep using fossil fuels that destroy our future.
Farmers; however, are stuck with Fox News and Rush and the Heritage Foundation and CATO. They are told
Your energy cost will soar under socialist Al Gore climate bill!
So they worry. What Fox News and Rush won’t let them know is that…
The break up of the Arctic ice sheet–now at record levels –might make an Arctic crossing much easier for a small group of previously untracked Right Whales. And that’s the problem. The Arctic ice-sheet break up is making the “Northwest Passage” across the Pole much easier for everyone–including commercial fishing ships. If this newly discovered group of whales decides to take this short cut (heading south for the Winter), scientists fear, they could swim headlong into the newly opened shipping [...]
By Rhishja Larson •
July 17, 2009
Disclaimer: 60 days have come and gone, but still no sign of the lawsuit. Chances are Palin has decided not to pursue this after all.
For the second time in less than a year, Palin’s administration has sought legal action against an endangered species in favor of the oil industry. This time, the Cook Inlet Beluga Whale is her target.
In August 2008, it was the Polar Bear. Now Palin has the critically endangered Cook Inlet Beluga Whale in her sights.
The Cook Inlet Beluga Whale (Delphinapterus leucas) is a genetically distinct and geographically isolated population. And that population is only about 375 whales.
But Palin doesn’t believe that qualifies as “endangered.”
The same state budget crisis that could shutter 220 of California’s state parks and beaches, may also open the door for the first new offshore oil leases in state waters in forty years.
