Archive for the 'environmental' Category
IN 25 YEARS OUR EARTH COULD HAVE TEMPERATURE INCREASES OF 10 DEGREES. THIS WOULD TOTALLY CHANGE THE LANDSCAPE AND LIVE-A-BILITY FOR ALL LIVING THINGS.
GLOBAL DIMMING PART 1
GLOBAL DIMMING PART 2
WHY ARE WE LIVING SO DAMN STUPID AND SO DAMN SELFISH? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH US? WE ARE LIKE SOME FUCKING DISEASE!!!
Friday, July 18, 2008
(07-18) 04:00 PDT Washington –
Former Vice President Al Gore, seeking to shake up an energy debate that is focused mostly on drilling, challenged the United States to shift its entire electricity sector to carbon-free wind, solar and geothermal power within 10 years, and use that power to fuel a new fleet of electric vehicles.
The goal is the most ambitious energy plan by a major U.S. political figure - and one many energy experts say is unrealistic. Gore insists the only real obstacle is the reluctance of America’s leaders to seek bold solutions to high energy prices and global warming. He likened his challenge to President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 call to put a man on the moon.
“This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative,” Gore told more than 1,000 cheering supporters at the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall in Washington. “It represents a challenge to all Americans in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers and to every citizen.”
Gore is seeking to pressure the presidential candidates and Congress, which is in the middle of a fierce debate on energy policy. He said he has spoken to both Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama about his ideas. Obama issued a statement Thursday saying he strongly agrees with Gore’s goal.
New jobs, safer world
“It’s a strategy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced, and one that will leave our children a world that is cleaner and safer,” Obama said.
McCain said that while he and Gore might disagree on some aspects of climate change, he supports the goals Gore outlined for developing wind and solar. “If the vice president says it’s doable, I believe it’s doable,” McCain said.
Gore’s challenge would require a massive restructuring of America’s electricity sector. The country currently relies on coal for about half of its electric power - 49 percent - followed by natural gas (22 percent) nuclear (19 percent) and hydropower (6 percent), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Renewable power accounts for 2.5 percent, although it’s growing rapidly in many states, especially California.
Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities that produce 70 percent of the nation’s power, said his group supports Gore’s call for more electric vehicles and a major increase in wind, solar and geothermal. But Owen said there’s no way renewables could meet all the country’s energy needs in 10 years.
“We cannot do the job with renewables and energy efficiency alone,” he said. “We have to have a balanced energy portfolio that includes all those things in even higher percentages, but also has to include nuclear. And we frankly think that nuclear should be increased.”
Gore, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and 2000 Democratic presidential candidate, presented his challenge as a solution to three overlapping crises: an economic crisis fueled by rising energy prices; a global climate crisis; and a national security crisis fed by instability in the Middle East, the largest source of the world’s oil supply.
“We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet,” he said. “Every bit of that’s got to change.”
Gore said as the prices of oil and coal have increased, wind and solar have become more economically competitive. He noted that the price of the specialized silicon used to make solar cells fell from $300 per kilogram to as low as $50 per kilogram recently.
But Gore acknowledged that there are barriers to reaching his goal. The nation’s electric grid is still not sufficiently developed to move solar power from sunny states out West or wind power from windy states to power-hungry markets, he said.
A centerpiece of Gore’s plan would be to help beleaguered U.S. automakers produce a new national fleet of plug-in electric vehicles. Foreign competitors, especially Toyota, have taken a lead in selling fuel-efficient hybrids. Gore said U.S. automakers could regain their edge with new electric cars that can be plugged in at night - saving consumers money while reducing air pollution and U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
Gore isn’t the only one touting a new energy plan focused on renewables. T. Boone Pickens, a Texas oilman who has recently invested heavily in wind, is pushing a plan to use wind power for about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity needs, and then use the natural gas that would have gone to power plants for new fuels for cars and trucks.
Gore has previously supported cap-and-trade schemes, which could raise revenue to subsidize renewable projects. But he said Thursday he also likes the idea of cutting the payroll tax and creating a new tax on carbon emissions, which would give a leg up to low-carbon sources.
Cheers against drilling
Gore drew his loudest cheers from a crowd packed with environmentalists when he denounced efforts, backed by President Bush, McCain and congressional Republicans, to boost oil drilling. Gore said, “It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil 10 years from now.”
Environmentalists have been disappointed at the recent energy debate, where even some Democrats have backed more drilling as an answer to $4-per-gallon gasoline. Gore’s speech could convince Democrats to take a different approach, they said.
“It’s a very aggressive, bold, comprehensive proposal and it’s great to challenge the politicians to go where they need to go,” said League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski.
Throwing down the green gauntlet
Former Vice President Al Gore challenged the United States to produce all its electricity from carbon-free renewable sources such as wind, solar and geothermal within 10 years. His speech sparked strong reactions from all sides:
Gore: “Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the Earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year. And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of U.S. electricity demand.”
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, Democratic presidential candidate: “I strongly agree with Vice President Gore that we cannot drill our way to energy independence, but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power and advanced biofuels, and those are the investments I will make as president.”
Arizona Sen. John McCain, Republican presidential candidate, on Gore’s goals for more wind and solar power: “There may be some aspects of climate change that he and I are in disagreement (on),” but “if the vice president says it’s doable, I believe it’s doable.”
T. Boone Pickens, Texas oilman and wind-power booster: “Former Vice President Al Gore put forward a framework of a plan that is focused on global warming and climate issues. … My plan is aimed squarely at breaking the stranglehold that foreign oil has on our country. We import 70 percent of our oil, and that number is growing larger every year. Vice President Gore’s plan does not address this enormous problem.”
Jim Owen, spokesman for Edison Electric Institute: “We cannot do the job with renewables and energy efficiency alone. We have to have a balanced energy portfolio that includes all those things in even higher percentages, but also has to include nuclear. And we frankly think that nuclear should be increased.”
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.: “The vice president’s main effort is to mobilize the American people behind meaningful action and less talk about global warming.”
Gene Karpinski, League of Conservation Voters president: “It’s a very aggressive, bold, comprehensive proposal, and it’s great to challenge the politicians to go where they need to go.”
Former Rep. Bob Barr, Libertarian presidential candidate: “None of us can walk away from this issue without agreeing with him that we do have a very serious problem, and it’s only going to get worse unless we do something about it. … I hope to be a part of that, and I would like to see the free market take the lead, not the government.”
Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.: “It pointed out that the only way we have a chance to drive down oil prices is if we become free of the slavery of oil. If we can give Americans choices of electrical cars or … biodiesel cars, then and only then do we have a chance of dealing with this cost issue. That is why $4-a-gallon gas is not an enemy of action, it’s an ally of action.”
E-mail Zachary Coile at zcoile@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Bush lifts drilling ban, oil execs leer, nation cringes, Obama sighs
Friday, July 18, 2008
I admit to bafflement. I admit to a bit of total confusion mixed with a certain level of stupefied awe and teeth-rattling frustration as to why anyone with the mental acuity of more than a housefly would think that stabbing more holes into Alaska and the eastern seaboard in the search for a few remaining precious drops of oil is a good idea, would solve anything at all, is anything more than the equivalent of hurling matches at the devil.
Perhaps I’m missing something. Perhaps there’s some dark, secret genius behind President Bush’s otherwise absolutely imbecilic and dangerous corporate-whore move to lift the federal ban on offshore drilling, a ban placed there by his own father, as Dubya actually stood there with a straight face and tried to imply that this insidious move was meant to impart something good and helpful for a gas-stunned nation, that he was “doing all he could” to help with prices at the pump, when you could actually see the oil dripping from his shivery bones and the giant hand of Exxon shoved up his weak little spine, making his mouth move.
Oh, I fully understand the corporate arguments, even the political ones. Asking why the oil companies are eager as rabbits on meth to gouge further into the planet is a bit like asking a surgeon why she wants to operate, or a lawyer why he wants to sue, or a snake why he wants to sink his fangs into a nice juicy rat and swallow it whole and smile for a week. It is, quite simply, what they do.
And politicos, well, they’re of course generally terrified of their own shadows, merely following what the people scream, and enough misinformed people scream about high gas prices and demand some sort of relief and, well, politicos from both sides of the aisle will say just about anything to mollify and deflect and pretend to care, even if it means lying, even if it means feigning total ignorance and blaming the oil speculators, even (or rather, especially) if it means an utter and complete shunning of the facts at hand.
And those facts sure seem irrefutable. All signs and every bit of data we have point to the glaring fact that, even if we sucked every available drop of oil from ANWR and the outer shelf and from every junior high school student in America, it would only be enough to satisfy our country’s rapacious needs for a matter of months. It would have no effect on overall demand. It would do zilch at the gas pumps. Prius owners would still be quietly snickering at every SUV from here to Atlanta.
But none of that even matters, because given the time it would take for exploration and to build the various pipelines and infrastructures, we wouldn’t even see a drop of that oil (or natural gas) for upwards of 10 or 20 years, at which point, if all scientific prognostications are correct — and they very much are — we’ll be well into the apocalypse. Or maybe just dead. Whichever.
So then, this sighing imponderable: How obvious can it be that drilling for more oil in the United States is pointless, pollutive, idiotic, will have zero effect on current gas prices, only benefits the oil magnates, Republicans, Bush himself, is overall a move in exactly the wrong direction?
I wouldn’t bother to ask, were it not for the voluminous comments and e-mails I still receive — and those I’ll surely get in response to this very column — those who snicker and whine and say hey, you know who’s really at fault for high oil and gas prices? You damn liberals! You’re holding us back! You and your communist environmental concerns won’t let good American capitalism drill for more!
Isn’t that sweet? Would that I had such power.
I can only reply: Yes, gosh, you are so right — what’s actually preventing us from solving the energy crunch are all those all-powerful hippies and their refusal to let the sweet, Christian oil titans maul the planet like a blind butcher hacks at a piece of veal. Oh, those poor oil companies and their $155 billion in staggering profits(.pdf) last year, the huge billion-dollar corporate tax breaks they enjoy, and which John McCain wants to continue. So unfair.
It all ends up in another big, throbbing, perhaps hugely rhetorical question: Is there some sort of line? Some sort of threshold where what seems brutally obvious to anyone who does even the tiniest modicum of research (or possesses that most rare of American traits, common sense), crosses over into common knowledge?
Where is the tipping point, that line where the mass populace begins to dial in, when even the most cold-hearted lib-loathing conservative — like those who are, right now, hating on poor little “Wall-E,” sneering that Pixar’s sweet little movie is nothing more than a typical liberal fascist fantasy of overconsumption and gluttony — even they begin to say, you know what? We might have this energy thing all wrong.
Maybe it’s actually not liberal claptrap to want to move toward alternative, sustainable, less pollutive energy sources, to upend the ultimately fatal petroleum economy. Maybe it can be profitable and sound and reasonable and even slightly healthy to disallow Shell and Exxon and the rest from slashing into remote wildlife preserves for no valid reason other than the usual: power, cash, distortion, a brand of outmoded gluttony that shames the world’s spiritual core. You think?
Yes, I realize what I’m asking is sort of futile, that trying to cut and paste a paragraph of logic and common sense and humanity into a bloody, violent book consisting solely of power and greed and deeply ingrained, world-class deceit is a fool’s game. The thoughtful utopian in you can sprinkle all the fairy dust of hope it wants, but the devil just laughs and keeps right on drilling.
Then again, if we don’t ask, if the media doesn’t investigate, if we just sit back and hope market forces take care of everything and let the economy choose our path out of our own self-made disaster, well, do we not merely invite more corruption, a deeply deformed sense of who we are and where we want to go? Or, to put it more technically, are we not just thoroughly fÑed?
Thoughts about this column? E-mail Mark.
Mark Morford’s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing.
Mark’s column also has an RSS feed and an archive of past columns, which includes another small photo of Mark potentially sufficient for you to recognize him in the street and give him gifts. He also has a raw Facebo
today i did NOT participate in the genocide of innocent turkeys.
my employer even supplied several for a thanksgiving feast for us, their employees. a nice gesture… but one i easily refrained from. i still enjoyed QUITE a feast with many wonderful casserole dishes, yams, pumpkin pies, etc.
this picture caught my attention because when i was young, on the farm, i had a pet turkey named HENRIETTA. i loved her dearly. she would often come for affection and hugs. when she was small i’d walk around with her on my shoulder. hehe… when she grew up that could no longer happen! i did, when i could get away with it, sneak her into the house and she would sit on the back of my chair and watch TV with me.
today… i remember her and i miss her.
here is a website that has a great concept: MEATLESS MONDAY
even if you will not try to be a vegetarian… we ALL know that the reduction of meat in our diet is VERY good for us. this site’s concept is simply… no meat on monday!
crazy about turkeys like i am? ADOPT A TURKEY!
they YOU TOO can have your own precious “henrietta.”
What is World Overshoot Day?
Beginning on October 9th and continuing through the end of the year, the world will be living beyond its ecological means. Ecological Footprint accounting shows that, as of October 9th, humanity will have already consumed the total amount of new resources nature will produce this year.
Each year Global Footprint Network calculates humanity’s Ecological Footprint (its demand on cropland, pasture, forests and fisheries) and compares it with global biocapacity (the ability of these ecosystems to generate resources and absorb wastes). Ecological Footprint accounting can be used to determine the exact date we, as a global community, begin running our annual ecological deficit. Designated “World Overshoot Day,” this year demand begins outstripping supply on October 9.
Overshoot has been called ‘the biggest issue you’ve never heard of.’ Yet despite its lack of publicity, its causes and effects are as simple as they are significant.In any given year, if trees are cut down faster than they grow back, then forests become smaller than the year before. If more fish are caught each year than spawn, there will be fewer fish in the sea. The consequences of our accumulating ecological debt also include global climate change, species extinction, insecure energy supplies, water shortages, and crop failure.
As humanity’s consumption of resources increases, World Overshoot Day creeps earlier on the calendar. Humanity’s first Overshoot Day was December 19, 1987. By 1995 it had jumped back a month to 21 November. Today, with Overshoot Day on October 9, humanity’s Ecological Footprint is almost thirty per cent larger than the planet’s biocapacity this year. In other words, it now takes more than one year and three months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a single year.
What is Overshoot?
Today, humanity uses about 30% more in one year than nature can regenerate in that same year. This is called “overshoot”. An ecological overshoot of 30% means that it takes one year and about three months for the Earth to regenerate what is being used by people in one year, creating an ecological deficit.
We currently maintain this overshoot by liquidating the planet’s natural resources. For example we can cut trees faster than they re-grow, and catch fish at a rate faster than they repopulate. While this can be done for a short while, overshoot ultimately leads to the depletion of resources on which our economy depends.
Overshoot is like ecological overspending. Just as any business that does not keep financial books will go bankrupt over time, we must document whether we’re living within our ecological budget or running an ecological deficit that will eventually deplete our renewable assets.
How is Overshoot Day Calculated?
[ world biocapacity / world Ecological Footprint ] x 365 = Overshoot Day
Put simply, Overshoot day shows the day on which our total Ecological Footprint (measured in global hectares) is equal to the biocapacity (also measured in global hectares) that nature can regenerate in that year. For the rest of the year, we are accumulating debt by depleting our natural capital and letting waste accumulate.
The day of the year on which humanity enters into overshoot is calculated by calculating the ratio of global available biocapacity to global Ecological Footprint and multiplying by 365. From this, we find the number of days of demand that the biosphere could supply, and the number of days we operate in overshoot.
This ratio shows that in just 282 days, we demand the biosphere’s entire capacity for the year 2006. The 282nd day of the year is October 9th.
If you have further questions about the Ecological Footprint and Overshoot calculations, there are a number of resources available through our website to learn more: See the Living Planet Report for definitions, data and further information about overshoot. You can also read our methodology paper for a more technical overview of our calculation methods, and visit our glossary page for definitions of terms, or read more about it in our newsletter. If you have further inquiries about World Overshoot Day please contact Brooking Gatewood.
Watch “Big Ideas for a Small Planet” on the Sundance Channel tomorrow, Tuesday July 3rd at 9:00 pm ET
Global Footprint Network will be featured on “Big Ideas For A Small Planet,” a documentary series presenting the forward-thinking designers, products and processes that are on the leading edge of a new green world. Each episode revolves around a different green theme as it spotlights a specific innovator or innovation that has the potential to transform our everyday lives. Tomorrow’s show is focused on sustainability in the workplace.In “Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Work,” Global Footprint Network’s Mathis Wackernagel and Susan Burns audit the office of Yu-Strandberg Engineering, an Oakland-based structural engineering company, in an effort to show them how to reduce the office’s Ecological Footprint. Joel Makower, Executive Editor of Greener World Media and founder of GreenBiz.com, and Ray Anderson, CEO of the pioneering carpet company Interface, Inc., offer commentary. Additionally the show features Kim Jordan and Jeff Lebesch, the founders of New Belgium Brewing Company, demonstrating their dedication to the environment and to their employees by creating an ideal working environment; and David Hertz, founder and president of Syndesis Inc., introduces the office of the future.
“Big Ideas For A Small Planet” airs as part of THE GREEN, Robert Redford’s weekly primetime cable destination airing Tuesdays on Sundance Channel that focuses on environmental topics.
Join us for a screening party!
Global Footprint Network, Joel Makower, and Yu-Strandberg Engineering will be hosting a party and screening of the thirty minute show on the evening of Thursday, July 12th in Oakland. Click here for more information on the event.
