Sustainable graphic design is the focus of a book due out at the end of November. The author of Green Graphic Design, Brian Dougherty, covers such topics as how to find paper made with sustainable technology, environmentally friendly printing and techniques for using new materials.

By focusing on the environmental concerns associated with just one area — selecting the best paper for a design job — Dougherty covers a lot of ground: sustainable forestry, water conservation, energy use in manufacturing and concerns about the chemicals in paper production. And that's before he even gets to the design constraints inherent in using sustainable paper.

Throughout his book, Dougherty highlights simple changes that graphic designers can make that don't require designers to learn new skills or work with new materials. His tips on paper, printing, binding, shipping, packaging and budgeting increase awareness of the environmental concerns in the field and help designers find a new approach to their projects. Occasionally, his advice even makes the process more affordable.

Dougherty is a founding member of the board of advisors for the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design. He practices green design as a member of the Celery Design Collective. The book can be pre-ordered on Amazon.

You knew your $2-a-gallon gas couldn't last forever, right? Reacting to the precipitous decline in oil prices over the past few months, OPEC announced today that it would cut back on daily oil production by 1.5 million barrels a day. The cartel, which controls approximately 35.6 percent of the world's petroleum, said it was reacting to keep prices stable during the current recession.

The recent economic meltdown has prompted a complete about-face in the oil market, with record prices hovering just below $150 earlier this year plummeting to a mere $64 dollars. The price slide continued through today, even as word of OPEC's decision reached traders. From an environmental standpoint, this isn't especially good news.

Cheaper oil means fewer financial incentives for companies to develop carbon-free alternatives, and less reason for consumers to bike to the grocery store instead of driving. OPEC has also shown at least a passing interest in developing clean energy sources, donating $750 million to the cause last November.

Many restaurants want to serve sushi, but when fish have to be frozen and delivered long distance, the ingredients aren't exactly local. And many sushi seafood favorites are caught using fishing practices that would make a conservationist shudder.

Bon Appetit is trying to remedy that, coming up with sushi that customers can eat with good conscience. The company's chefs have found local solutions for key ingredients even in landlocked states.

The sushi served at Oracle Corporation in Redwood Shores, California, is especially noteworthy. The chefs there use alternative ingredients, relying more on Asian vegetables than fish. Using traditional sushi techniques, Oracle's chefs prepare meals with local, sustainable ingredients. How does grilled eggplant with miso sound? Or a roll made with Chinese long beans grown by a local farmer, paired with fried tofu made from California-grown soybeans.

Bon Appetit is working with Blue Ocean Institute, Environmental Defense Fund and Monterey Bay Aquarium to produce guides that educate customers about sustainable sushi.

Image — Bon Appetit

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Duke Energy has decided to cut its $100 million distributed solar program in North Carolina. According to Earth2Tech, the reasoning isn't cost or even technology: the change was required by the North Carolina Utility Commission after a lengthy review of Duke's proposal.

During the review process, both the Solar Alliance and the Vote Solar Initiative argued that Duke's plan would create a monopoly on solar power in the state of North Carolina Owen Smith, the managing director of regulated renewable energy and carbon strategy at Duke, gave testimony to the Utility Commission stating that the distributed solar program was key to Duke's ability to meet that requirement.

One specific area of concern for the Vote Solar Initiative is that between the distributed solar project and Duke's power purchase agreement with Sun Edison, the company would have enough RECs within a few years to satisfy its legal obligations regarding renewable energy for years to come.

While these are valid concerns, it seems like Duke is being penalized for meeting a new obligation with good business sense. The company was handed legislation requiring it to make very expensive changes to its infrastructure: rather than trying to find ways around it, Duke found a solution that would allow it to go beyond the actual requirements of the legislation and avoid similar upgrades for several years after the projected completion date. This problem, in part is created by the nature of utility regulations — simply put, adding renewable energy generation to a utility operating in a regulated market is so complex that most companies do not even attempt it. Southern California Edison and PG&E have both announced that they would like to move into solar power generation, but both utilities are waiting for regulatory changes.

Despite the recent economic downturn and drop in oil prices, the skies are still sunny for solar energy. Solyndra, a California-based thin-film solar panel producer, has a staggering $1.2 billion worth of upcoming contracts, and it recently announced another monster deal with panel-installing firm GeckoLogic for $250 million.

Thin-film photovoltaics have been a hot prospect for generating carbon-free energy, thanks to the wide variety of situations where they can be used. Buildings, ships, cars and even iPods could potentially benefit from the technology. Some of the most notable solar firms, such as First Solar, have gained impressive profits from the technology.

Solyndra's success, along good returns from other solar companies, reflects continued interest in the clean energy sector from investors and from increasingly cash-strapped consumers. It's reassuring news, especially in the wake of predictions that decreased prosperity would snuff much of the current interest in sustainability across the developed world.

Welcome to couch potato heaven.

Husqvarna, the world's largest producer of lawn mowers, chainsaws and portable gas-powered garden equipment, has launched a robotic lawn mower in the U.S. The Automower™ Solar Hybrid will keep up to an acre of lawn neatly trimmed without the owner having to do anything other than occasional maintenance. For no extra charge, you can even watch the little darling do its thing while you're parked in front of your TV, assuming you have an appropriately situated window. Having your own gardener would probably be more gratifying, but hey, it's a beginning.

The Automower™ is battery-powered, with onboard solar cells that enable the mower to extend its cutting periods before requiring a recharge. It is fully programmable—it will cut 24/7 if you want it to—and it is smart enough to know when to return to its base to be charged. It retails at $2,295 or $2,595, depending on whether you want the half-acre or full-acre version.

The machine conjures up images from Woody Allen's classic movie Sleeper, a futuristic comedy peopled (or, rather, robot-ed) with machines that serve canapés, mop the floor, and so on. The Automower's™ range of travel is determined by a wire that's laid down around the lawn's perimeter. The on-board navigation system monitors its position relative to the wire, keeping it in the area to be mowed. If there are sizable things sticking out of the lawn—like, say, a tree—the mower, announces a press release, "gently bumps into it, reverses, and starts off in another direction." This is very impressive, sort of: it makes the Automower™ about as smart as your average drunk.

Chris McManus is an authorized Automower™ dealer based in Mendham, NJ. You might think he'd be in the garden products business, but no, he's in the computer business. It makes sense for him to be selling the Automower™, he says, because "it's more a computer than a lawnmower." He's sold eight machines since the summer and has about a dozen orders in hand for next summer.

McManus is bullish on the Automower™, and I can see why. Why do more when you can do less?

This is how we couch potatoes think. Now if Husqvarna would just introduce the Autoblogger™.

Despite the blistering pace of technological innovation, the fact remains that much of the underdeveloped world struggles to eat on a regular basis.

For decades, economically advanced nations have attempted to remedy this situation through the use of improved farming techniques, higher-yield crop strains, and other agricultural technologies. But now, debate is raging over which farming methods have the most potential gain for developing nations. 

Advanced genetic technologies developed in the latter part of the 20th century led to the growing of genetically modified foods, and to a growing controversy. Political figures such as England's Prince Charles have criticized genetically modified foods, saying they could create an "environmental disaster."

Studies frequently cited by organic food advocates have found that GM foods increase use of pesticides, and, indeed, most genetically modified crops have been altered not for drought-resistance or increased productivity, but for resilience against chemicals used in industrial farming.

That having been said, genetically modified foods still show tremendous promise. The so-called “golden rice” provides developing communities all over the world with a healthier and more complete diet, without any additional time or resource investment.

Crops modified to create pharmaceuticals could drastically reduce the price of vaccines and antibiotics, improving health care in the developing world. While there are risks, it’s clear that the potential benefits are too large to simply dismiss the technology out of hand.

But purely in terms of feeding people, it may be more efficient and  beneficial to focus on improving crop yields through organic agriculture techniques. While commonly thought of as a niche consumer market in modern economies, organic foods can actually create longer-term sustainability by maintaining soil fertility and reducing the energy involved in crop production. It can also limit expenses by eliminating the need to invest in mechanization and other costly forms of infrastructure. 

Further proving the worth of these organic practices, the Independent recently reported that "an analysis of 114 projects in 24 African countries found that yields had more than doubled where organic, or near-organic, practices had been used. That increase in yield jumped to 128 per cent in east Africa."

In the end, the best solution to the problems of world agriculture may be a combination of both genetically engineered foods and improved organic farming techniques. Strains of staple crops engineered to make up important dietary deficiencies could be raised organically, reducing chemical runoff into local water supplies, while ensuring higher yields and longer-term food supply sustainability

Fifteen of California's 23 state university campuses will power up using solar energy. The state's Department of General Services partnered with the university system and a regional solar power supplier to kickstart the system that will partially power 15 colleges.

 

SunEdison will build and operate solar facilities on the campuses selected to be part of the program. Using 8 megawatts of power generated from solar panels, SunEdison expects to provide 12 million kilowatt hours at below retail rates during the first year of operation alone.

Solar panels on rooftops, parking structures and ground locations are expected to replace 5 percent of CSU's traditional energy consumption.

“California is going green and we are doing it first and we are doing it fast," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger during Tuesday's announcment of the deal. "We are seeing more tangible results and more followthrough in reducing our state’s carbon footprint. This partnership is a good deal for the state, the planet and our economy -- all at no cost to taxpayers.”

What could be better?

The CSU campuses that will participate in the pilot program are Bakersfield, Channel Islands, Chico, Fullerton, Humboldt, Los Angeles, Monterey Bay, Pomona, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Bernardino Palm Desert, San Francisco, San Marcos, and Stanislaus. The CA Maritime Academy and the CSU chancellor's office in Long Beach will also install the systems.

Despite demolition's long history as a means to dismantle an outdated structure, with more and more regularity, reuse winning out in the deconstruction industry. In the province of Alberta where only 10 percent of materials are reused, companies will have to pay if they don't recycle demoltion waste.

Because of its ability to reduce carbon footprint, cut into resource use, and to halve the bottom line, reuse of construction materials has rapidly overcome the throwaway culture among American contractors. Reuse of concrete, wood, glass and other materials has long provided contractors a source of income outside the invoices they hand their employers.

But by modernizing their means of destruction, these companies are not only able to save dollars that would have otherwise been spent on rubble, but also to preserve existing infrastructure. While newer technologies promise decreased resource use, the fact remains that employing currently existing infrastructure saves time and money for contractors. As high-end technology trickles down, the gains will only increase over time.

Recent market fluctuations not withstanding, I've always been a fan of the free market. Too bad GM never saw it the same way: Their EV1, the first widely distributed electric vehicle, has long been a highly coveted item among collectors.

Sadly, market restrictions limited the groundbreaking auto to being a lease-only model. In 2008 dollars, a leased EV1 would cost around $80,000—well below the intro cost of new, highly touted Chevy Volt. But unlike the game-changing Volt, GM's aging EV1 requires no gasoline. What price would you put on that difference? $20,000? $40,000?

Try $400,000. Implausible though it may seem, a 1998 EV1 sold just yesterday on the Western Canadian purchase site for $465,000. Not too shabby for a tiny, limited range vehicle that the GM brass claimed "nobody wanted."

America is finally moving very literally into the geothermal frontier. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has announced that it will open 190 million acres of public lands to geothermal leasing in 12 western states.

The plan, called the Final Geothermal Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, has the potential to produce 5,540 megawatts of new electric generating capacity by 2015 and a total 12,000 MW by 2025, enough to power 12 million homes.

Geothermal energy will play a key role in powering America's energy future," Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne said, "and 90% of our nation's geothermal resources are found on Federal lands."

About 118 million acres would be on BLM-managed land, with 79 million acres on National Forest System lands. Leasing revenues and royalties for a given site would be split up among the state (50%), the county (25%), and a fund to be invested in further geothermal development (25%).

This scenario has a fascinating paradox that could have pro-renewables and pro-wilderness groups taking different sides. Geothermal production on public lands will bring much of the associated noise, people, and equipment as other energy exploration activity. How would you feel about a big geothermal well in the middle of Yellowstone (which is not included on the current BLM list)?

Nobody ever said - or should have said - that the green revolution would be a completely benign activity. The days of simple pro- and anti- environment may be giving way to a more complex world in which the question becomes, "would you rather preserve America's last natural places or replace carbon-rich oil with clean renewables?".

Photo by Flickr user Tanakawho

Toys R Us has launched the holiday shopping season for American kids with eco-friendly toys.

The toy retailer said in a press release Oct. 20 that products made using environmentally conscious materials are expected to be big sellers this holiday season.

Toys R Us will sell Planet Pixies by I Love My Planet Toys, a line of “plush dolls” made from 100 percent recycled consumer waste. The dolls also provide educational tags with information about endangered habitats as well as ways kids and their families can help stop habitat destruction.

Toys R Us’ own line of building blocks, made from sustainably harvested wood, will be sold in stores. Manufactured by Natural Wood Alphabet Blocks Wagon, the blocks are free of harsh chemicals that would otherwise be emitted as children play.

There's more. Laura C. Martin’s Nature’s Art Box is crammed with arts and crafts material that encourages kids to make their paints, dyes and inks from flowers and plant products. Recycled plastic milk jugs are made into Green Toys’ cooking ware. The cooking and dining set comes with 27 pieces, just like mom has, with the added benefit of eliminating thousands of milk jugs from winding up in landfills.

And finally, Toys R Us will send parents home with these eco-toys in reusable shopping bags so that parents can share in the holiday magic of environmental stewardship.

 

Coming soon to San Francisco: a conference discussing the transit-oriented developments (TODs) and other Smart Growth principles. Smart Growth is gaining traction as an urban planning strategy (and antidote to suburban sprawl). The Rail-Volution conference October 26-30,will be hosted by the San Francisco Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG).

 

Rail-Volution is a conference for urban planners and transit officials focusing on the expansion of that link land use and transit planning together as joint opportunities for urban communities. The conference consists of workshops that offer hands-on experience, tools for planning, case studies and explores issues facing the rail and urban planning industries today.

 

TODs are designed to offer everything a consumer, resident, and community member needs within a reasonable walkable area or a quick transit ride. For example, a suburban neighborhood maybe built up around a grocery store, an electric train transit station, restaurants and other services providing both leisure and work opportunities.

 

Each building is designed to be within a 20-minute walk or bike ride, be located near a transit stop, provide bike racks and offer a community feel so that residents and consumers do not have to hop in the car, drive across town to shop and/or work

 

TODs provide many social benefits and environmental benefits including saving air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the decrease in vehicle miles traveled; increased compact land use that limits habitat damage, and often, an increase in open and/or public space.

 

Transit riders eager to learn more about urban planning and transit decisions can listen to TODcasts, free to download audio segments that discuss how to design a transit/pedestrian friendly area. 

 

TODcasts come complete with maps that reference sample TOD sites and include reference sites throughout the San Francisco Bay Area such as locations in the cities of Hayward, San Francisco, San Jose, San Pablo, and Redwood City.

Comfort may be king, but at this California resort the environment will be served, too.

The new Terranea Resort, currently under construction for Destination Hotels & Resorts in Palos Verdes, has been designed not only to provide fresh towels for guests but to blend with the local landscape and minimize the development's impact on the environment.

The design and materials for Terranea take into account what is already available in the area: The design minimizes changes to the area and uses local and recycled materials. There are a number of abandoned buildings in Palos Verdes, and 40 percent of the materials from those abandoned structures are being reused in the construction of the new resort.

Even the rock excavated to allow for the construction of the building is being used in the process — it has been crushed and will be reborn in nearby roads and walkways.

Besides the land the company bought for Terranea, it purchased an additional 631,800 square feet of surrounding real estate that will be used to protect native habitat areas.

The resort has also made efforts to improve water sustainability, along with quality. Wet ponds, Bioswales and storm filters will be used to protect local water from pollutants. The pools at Terranea will use salt water instead of chlorine for purification.

The operators at Terranea are taking other steps to improve the resort's sustainability performance, including working towards an ultimate goal of zero waste. If plans pan out, within three years only 30 percent of the generated waste will go to a landfill. Food served at Terranea will be FLOSS: fresh, local, organic, seasonal and sustainable. Even Terranea staff will have sustainable uniforms, made from bamboo cotton or chemical-free organic cotton, wool or hemp.

As more hotels and resorts choose sustainable paths, that very sustainability is likely to become a marketing tool. Handling sustainability concerns for guests will be just another part of hospitality.

Until then, however, sustainability remains at something of a premium — Terranea is certainly a luxury resort. Room rates start at $300, and the impressive efforts Destination Hotels & Resorts have made towards sustainability are part of that luxury price. But is sustainability a luxury? Or is it actually a move towards a better-performing hospitality industry?

Image — Terranea Resort

In keeping with the search giant's commitment to sustainability, Google is offering a free Halloween-themed calculator to help cut energy use. The calculator asks what you're haunted by: ghosts (eerie moans from open flue dampers), vampires (game consoles that use electricity when not in use) and other energy-wasting monsters in your home. It also offers up solutions, and calculates how much you can save on your energy bill by fighting these bogeymen.

The solutions Google offers aren't out of the ordinary: Programmable thermostats and CFLs both make the list. But the calculator does point to an advanced tips list that walks readers through a fairly extensive list of ideas on saving energy and cutting energy bills.

Google also goes into depth, explaining how particular actions can save you money — and how the calculator comes to a particular number.

On flue dampers, for instance, Google's site offers this: "The California Energy Commission, through its Energy Quest website, estimates that leaving the fireplace flue damper open can waste 8 percent of the average heating bill - which averages $1000/year. Daliceux and Nicolas found that leaving the flue open can waste 30 percent of the heating and cooling energy from a well-insulated house. We took the median of these 2 data points and estimate that leaving the fireplace flue open increases heating and cooling costs by 19 percent or $190/year."

Image — Google

Exxon Mobil is working with Air Products, a regional energy company, to construct a steam methane reforming hydrogen production facility in Louisiana. The project is a long-term contract, built as part of Air Products’ Louisiana Hydrogen Pipeline Network and meant to service Exxon Mobil’s Baton Rouge refinery. Air Products will also use the facility to serve other customers in the region. The production facility is slated for completion in March 2010.

The Louisiana project is not the first time that Exxon Mobil has teamed up with Air Products: The two companies have worked together on hydrogen facilities in both Baytown, Texas and Joliet, Illinois. The continuing partnership has been beneficial to both companies. Air Products has the largest hydrogen pipeline in the Gulf Coast region, supplying more than 50 refineries with cleaner burning fuels — while it doesn't match Exxon Mobil's size, Air Products has had significant regional successes.

"We are very pleased to expand our global business relationship with Exxon Mobil,” said Alex Masetti, the vice president of Air Products' North America Tonnage Gases, according to a post on gas2.0. "Air Products takes great pride in its production facilities and hydrogen supply reliability, and the project will enable us to demonstrate the added value of our expanded Louisiana Hydrogen Pipeline Network."

Photo — Whatatravisty

In recent months, something of a backlash against the clean energy movement has taken shape. Chants of "drill, baby, drill" at political rallies and reports in the press question the ability of renewable energy to meet the needs of a developed nation. But a recent decision by the British government to further develop wind energy makes an important public vote of confidence in the new technologies.

The major opposition to plans for widespread energy adoption, like Al Gore's ten year challenge, are generally based on the perceived inability of existing emissions-free technology to produce enough energy to support a developed nation. Recent reports—albeit funded by industrialists who stand to lose significant amounts of money upgrading their facilities—have stated that non-nuclear clean energy is simply not an option if widespread economic growth is to continue. But as the old expression runs, where there's a will, there's a way—having a government backing that will doesn't hurt, either.

Between now and 2009, the British government announced it would increase wind production by 25%, adding a full gigawatt to existing power generating capacities and sending the message that London remains committed to its goal of having 15% of the UK's power generated from renewable sources by 2020. This renewed funding will encourage further development of advanced clean energy technologies in the form of potentially lucrative government subsidies, and demonstrate to the public that clean energy is not a passing political fad.

Already, many on the island nation, which is far less stricken by the culture wars dividing opinions on clean energy production in America, have come to embrace the idea that lowered carbon emissions are no longer a luxury. Indeed, analysts worldwide have stated that increased government spending in clean energy infrastructure could help kick-start the worldwide economy out of its current anemic slump; energy-saving actions taken by an involved and conscientious public could help further this turnaround.

Existing coal, petrochemical, and nuclear energy resources will no doubt continue to play an important role throughout the next decade. Highly publicized investments from the government and from private sector sources -- including extremely successful businessmen -- will be paramount to increasing overall awareness of resource use. Look for these investments to result in additional technological advances and a cleaner, more sustainable future.

McDonald's named Smithfield Foods as its first-ever Supplier Sustainability Award winner during the company's 2008 Supplier Summit in Oak Brook, Illinois. The honor is intended to be an annual recognition of the supplier that best exemplifies the McDonald's vision, principles and values for sustainable supply.

McDonald's recognized Smithfields Foods for its programs meant to ensure the health and humane treatment of animals, protect the environment, educate employees and communities on environmental topics and ensure the safety of its personnel.

"We are absolutely honored to be recognized by McDonald's for our company's sustainability achievements," said C. Larry Pope, president and chief executive officer of Smithfield Foods, which supplies pork to McDonald's restaurants.

Suppliers were asked to self-nominate, explaining the programs and results of their efforts to create a sustainable supply chain. Those programs also played a significant role in McDonald's 'scorecards' — environmental ratings for each supplier developed by McDonald's in conjunction with Conservation International — which the company uses to improve its relationships with sustainable suppliers.

Image — McDonald's

FedEx broke ground this week on its first international solar energy installation, located near the Cologne, Germany airport. The new installation will be a 1.4 megawatt system that will be FedEx's largest on-site solar energy facility, providing the equivalent of the annual energy consumption of 370 homes. It will also double the amount of electricity FedEx generates for itself with solar installations. The new system is expected to be completed by 2010. It will include over 16,000 square meters of solar panels fitted to the building's roof. The Cologne facility is an entirely new FedEx hub — the company is building it from the ground up to serve as a main hub for European shipping.

In 2005, FedEx claimed the title of the largest rooftop solar panel installation in California with a system that provided 20 percent of the electrical needs of its Oakland hub. Since then, FedEx has added solar power systems to its facilities in Whittier and Fontana, California. Those three facilities together offset 2.9 million pounds of carbon emissions every year. The company has been moving to renewable energy sources whenever it has the opportunity, including using a geothermal system to heat and cool its facility in Geneva, Switzerland.

Image — FedEx

The TogetherGreen Initiative, created by Audobon and supported by Toyota, announced the first winners of the TogetherGreen Conservation Innovation Grants. The first round of grants totals $1.4 million and will aid 41 projects in 24 states.

TogetherGreen winners were selected from more than 120 applicants across the U.S. and share the common quality of an innovate approach to handling environmental problems. The projects receiving funding include:
 

• Engaging low-income students in middle schools to devise and implement energy saving plans (Denver, Colorado)
• Constructing gardens to stem storm water overflows that carry pollutants and disease-laden sewage into homes and waterways (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
• Involving the public in hands-on strategies for restoring vanishing wetlands vital to flood control (coastal Louisiana)
• Reducing bird fatalities caused by their attraction to the lights in high-rise buildings (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

A full list of projects receiving funding is available from the TogetherGreen website. Projects that provide solutions for inner-city and non-English speaking communities received special attention; the TogetherGreen Initiative has committed itself to funding initiatives for groups that are underserved by most environmental resources. Grant recipients were selected by a committee made up of leaders from academic, environmental and non-profit communities.

"Our biggest environmental problems can't be solved unless we engage people from every ethnic, racial and economic community that makes up America and help them realize their power to make a difference in their own communities," said John Flicker, Audobon's president, in a press release. "These TogetherGreen Innovation Grants help local groups to engage people and to start achieving tangible conservation results at the same time."

The projects selected by TogetherGreen will receive grants ranging from $5,000 to $68,000 — with lower amounts earmarked for promising proposals that will need additional support in the future. The grants also leveraged approximately $4.5 million in matching and in-kind support. Audobon will be teaming a local chapter or unit of its national network with each winning organization in order to better use the resources of both groups for its objectives of public engagement and environmental enhancement.

Audobon and Toyota launched the TogetherGreen Initiative earlier this year. The plan is a five-year commitment to provide conservation projects with funding, train leaders for environmental initiatives and create volunteer opportunities on environmental projects. Beyond its series of grants, TogetherGreen has already created community volunteer days in over 40 cities. Toyota provided a $20 million gift to Audobon to fund the program — the largest such gift in Audobon's two century-history.

Image — TogtherGreen

California legislators have proposed a $10 billion bond measure known as Proposition 10 that would provide incentives for moving vehicles toward cleaner fuel. While some alternative fuel advocates are for it, others such as Plug In America say it is a corporate giveaway that subsidizes industries not in need.

The reasons to vote yeah include:

-- It moves California towards its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Using natural gas to power vehicles and generate electricity is a net carbon reduction compared to oil or coal.

-- Incentives are included for buying electric or plug-in electric vehicles. California will be the largest market for these vehicles, and increasing consumer demand will assure automakers to go ahead with production.

-- Natural gas trucks are cleaner than diesels, which need to be replaced by something.

-- Provides additional funding for clean wind and solar power.

-- Increasing the number of natural gas cars will force petroleum producers to be more competitive in pricing gasoline.

Reasons to oppose the measure include:

-- Natural gas prices for consumers have gone up by 50 percent during the past 4 years, according to the Energy Information Administration. Increasing demand from cars would only send prices higher.

-- Spending $10 billion (including interest) over 30 years is fiscally irresponsible in today's economic climate. -- Building new natural gas trucks will be more costly and less efficient than using the existing diesel trains and rail lines

-- Most of the vehicle incentives would go towards "higher mileage" vehicles that don't need the help of government funds -- The U.S. already imports approximately 20 percent of its natural gas (although mostly from friendly nations like Mexico and Canada) so it really wouldn't enable energy independence but shift the money going out of our economy to different nations

With so much bailout money being thrown around and mixed benefits at best, the measure may not pass.

Californians, how will you vote?

In a fantastic example of clean tech trickle-down, a recent technology show in Japan debuted a variety of fuel-cell wheelchairs aimed at the elderly and those with limited mobility. Battery powered wheelchairs are limited by shorter range, long charge times, and the eventual death of the battery, which can strand chair users in a potentially hazardous situation.

But fuel cell and fuel cell-electric hybrids overcome many of these issues, extending range to some 10 hours of use, or some 37 miles of travel, allowing chair users to keep up with all but the fittest able-bodied companions. Hybrid designs, again revealing some technological trickle-down, allow efficient electricity to power devices at low speeds, before turning to hydrogen power as range increases.

Though the technologies employed in these new chairs have been available for nearly a decade, it took the continued aging of Japan's population to create the economic incentive for these new products to be created. As demands and market pressures change, more and more niche green technologies will find their way into mass market products.

(Image and hat tip: TreeHugger)

In a technical milestone for the world's largest democracy, India launched an unmanned moon mission today. But but by joining the very few nations that have taken this leap, India severely undermines its claim to be a "rising nation," and thus subject to lighter burdens for emissions reduction than other developed nations.

While it may be easy to view tougher carbon emission reduction targets as an unfair burden on a nation that still struggles to keep social services up to speed with its economic growth, escaping the Earth's atmosphere and going to the moon open tremendous opportunities for clean energy production. The space race led to massive developments in fuel cell technologies during the 1950s, while orbital power plants offer dramatic increases in the reliability and amount of energy produced by solar.

Additionally, future expansions in India's manned space flights will allow refinements in technologies for sustaining life and creature comforts with a minimum of power consumption. The lessons learned outside the atmosphere can be transferred to ensure life below it remains possible.

In prehistory hominids started off on all fours and eventually started walking on two. This was one of our great evolutionary leaps. It meant people could do things with their front legs (now known as arms), like carry a spear and kill things.

A similar transition is starting to occur on college campuses as more and more universities encourage their students to stop using four-wheeled cars and use two-wheeled bicycles instead.

Okay, the analogy to classical Darwinian evolution may be a bit strained. Still, the reality is that bicycles are better adapted to campus life than automobiles. They're silent and non-polluting. They also deliver people door to door, instead of requiring them to schlep that last mile (or however far from the parking lot). They're very affordable, no small matter for students on a tight budget. Last but not least, they can shrink the transportation footprint dramatically, with bike paths instead of roads and bike parking racks replacing parking lots.

At Ripon College in Wisconsin, incoming freshmen who pledge to leave their cars at home receive free bicycles. About 180 students signed up for the program.

The University of New England in Biddeford, Maine launched a similar program and only 25% of incoming freshmen brought cars with them, compared to about 75% previously.

At Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, fifty bikes can be rented for free at six campus locations. The university has also teamed with a local bike store enabling students to buy bicycles at a discount and receive essential accessories like a lock and helmet for free from the university.

Programs are also going high-tech. St. Xavier University in Chicago is launching a computer-controlled bike-sharing system. Students use their ID card to unlock the bikes. The first fifteen minutes are free and students are billed at $0.60 per fifteen minutes thereafter. A GPS-like system tracks the bicycles’ location, making thievery a really bad idea.

The New York Times quotes Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education: “It seems like every week we hear about a new bike sharing or bike rental program.”

Shea Homes, one of the largest housing builders in the United States is making energy efficiency affordable by including solar-power systems in homes. Typically, solar-power systems are add-ons to new houses, but Shea is adding solar energy resources as a standard feature in their houses, teaming up with BP Solar.

All of Shea’s Trilogy Active Lifestyle Communities will have homes installed with BP’s solar tiles that generate electricity for each house. The EnergyTile and Integra system is designed for would-be flat, asphalt or shingle roofs and tiles are shaped to mimic the style and structure of a typical flat, concrete roof.

These communities are Shea-built neighborhoods with houses that incorporate energy efficiency with such features as dual-pane windows, saving homeowners on energy consumption and thus money, as well as cutting their home’s carbon footprint. Other standard features include attic fans operated by solar power, Energy Star-certified home appliances, insulation made from recycled products like cellulose, sustainably harvested woods, measures that reduce the amount of infrastructure needed per home, insulated window and doors seals, weather-controlled landscape irrigation and motion sensors for lighting.

 

Dunkin’ Donuts, the pastry chain, is working on greening its operations. It's building new stores that use Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, hoping to achieve certification, while making their everyday operational processes better for the environment.

The first LEED-certified store is open in St. Petersburg, Florida. It features insulated concrete foam walls that will reduce air conditioning use, the company projects by roughly 40 percent.

A press release mentions energy-efficient lighting (motion sensors for restrooms and offices), water-efficient plumbing fixtures, low-flush toilets and well water for irrigation.

The store uses an 80-pound worm tank running on solar power to process the store’s waste. The Earthworm Casting is a joint effort between Mother’s Organics, a local Florida farm that collects “tree trimmings, grass, leaves and other clean wood material” for composting and then converts it to humus, a mulch-like product.

Together, they created the worm tank to foster organic decomposition of coffee grounds and paper materials like coffee cups and napkins. Eighty pounds of small, red earthworms will feast on store leftovers and their waste will be collected and used as fertilizer for nearby farms.

Like other coffee chains, Dunkin’ Donuts will continue encouraging customers to bring in a reusable coffee mug or thermos for a discount on their morning java. If you forget your reusable cup at home or at the office, Dunkin’ Donuts will serve coffee in “paper cups made from renewable resources.”

The store will continue donating unsold pastries and other products to St. Petersburg’s food bank, America’s Second Harvest. And finally, the store will use cleaning products that are environmentally safe, free of the harsh chemicals (and corresponding odors) that affect indoor air quality and can cause respiratory reactions. The choice of cleaning products conform to both LEED’s and the California Air Resources Board safety specifications.

Dunkin' Donuts will use the St. Petersburg store as the prototype for future LEED stores among the 7,900 outlets it operates nationwide.

Sustainability is rapidly becoming a key component for companies building their brand.

A number of well-known brands, including PepsiCo and Wal-Mart, participate in the Sustainable Brands International (SBi) conference to disuss that very subject. The conference is the first of its kind dedicated entirely to exploring innovations in sustainable products and brands. It will be held in Miami Beach, Florida, from Dec. 9-11.

SBi is being organized by Sustainable Life Media, the producer of the Sustainable Brands '08 Conference. Besides marketers from PepsiCo, Wal-Mart and other big names, representatives from smaller companies known for their sustainability will also be present.

According to a press release, there will be a heavy emphasis on comparing various international marketing strategies. There will also be discussions on "varying consumer sentiments, unfolding changes in regulatory environments and opportunities for environmentally and socially preferable supply chain partnerships across continents."

KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz, Sustainable Life Media's CEO, noted that many companies have taken a "wait and see" approach to sustainability during the current economic crunch. However, Vikoren Skrzyniarz said that sustainability is necessary for companies to continue growing.

Image — SBi

Hess Corporation's C-Neutral carbon offsets program has been certified by the Center for Resource Solutions. Hess, an East Coast energy company, is the largest provider of natural gas, fuel oil and electricity to both commercial and industrial customers in that region.

The program demonstrates Hess' move into the renewable energy arena. The carbon offset projects used for the company's C-Neutral program are a combination of landfill gas projects (certified by the Voluntary Carbon Standard) and renewable energy projects (certified by the Green-e Climate Protocol for Renewable Energy). The purchase of C-Neutral offsets against fossil fuel purchases will fund future projects, as well as supporting currently available renewable resources.

Gene Kutcher, the company's vice president of sales, acknowledged that customer demand is high.

"Hess is in a unique position to be able to offer our customers a comprehensive and flexible energy solution like C-Neutral," Kutcher said in a press release. "That's particularly important when you consider that [consumer and industrial] sectors are responsible for almost half of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions."

 

Image — Hess

Nau, the environmentally-aware clothing line that closed in May, has reopened. The company closed its doors unexpectedly when it was unable to secure late-round financing in the face of the credit crunch. Horny Toad, another California-based clothing company committed to sustainability, bought Nau's remaining assets and made an effort to keep some of the key players involved.

"We saw in Nau an innovative brand—representing the perfect blend of outdoor, urban fashion sensibility with an unwavering commitment to sustainability," said Gordon Seabury, the CEO of Horny Toad, in a press release. "The relationship between Nau and Horny Toad has been highly synergistic: Nau benefits from Horny Toad's status as an established business while Nau's creativity and commitment to overturning traditional business norms continually challenges us to grow as a company."

In its first iteration, Nau focused on selling sustainable outdoor apparel online and supporting positive change through its Partners for Change program. These commitments remain in the new version of Nau, but have been modified. Prior to closing, Nau donated five percent of its sales through Partners for Change. With the relaunch of the company, Nau will give two percent of its sales to Partners for Change. Despite the reduction, Nau's giving remains 28 times higher than the national average for corporate philanthropy when considered as a percentage of sales.

Nau's approach to sales has also changed. Previously, the company relied mostly on online sales along with a few of its own brick-and-mortar retail establishments. While Nau will still rely heavily on web-based sales, the company will also be partnering with a number of retailers to sell its lines — Paragon in New York City, Uncle Dan's in Chicago and Lizard Lounge in Portland, Oregon are the first — rather than operating its own stores. This eliminates one of the largest costs that the older version of Nau faced, and instead allows established partners to handle retail sales.

The company's Fall 2008 apparel line has just launched, along with a brand new website. The line will begin appearing in partnering stores in November. Ian Yolles, Nau's head of marketing, expects this launch to be just one of many: "We anticipate this will be but the first in a long line of successful product launches. With our retooled business plan, Horny Toad's support, and our commitment to social and environmental justice, we believe the sky's the limit. This time, it's for keeps."

Image — Nau

By James Gustave Speth

A specter is haunting American environmentalism – the specter of failure.

All of us who have been part of the environmental movement in the United States must now face up to a deeply troubling paradox: Our environmental organizations have grown in strength and sophistication, but the environment has continued to go downhill, to the point that the prospect of a ruined planet is now very real. How could this have happened?

Before addressing this question and what can be done to correct it, two points must be made. First, one shudders to think what the world would look like today without the efforts of environmental groups and their hard-won victories in recent decades. However serious our environmental challenges, they would be much more so had not these people taken a stand in countless ways. And second, despite their limitations, the approaches of modern-day environmentalism remain essential: Right now, they are the tools readily at hand with which to address many pressing problems, including global warming and climate disruption. Despite the critique of American environmentalism that follows, these points remain valid.

Lost Ground

The need for appraisal would not be so urgent if environmental conditions were not so dire. The mounting threats point to an emerging environmental tragedy of unprecedented proportions.

Half the world’s tropical and temperate forests are now gone. The rate of deforestation in the tropics continues at about an acre a second, and has for decades. Half the planet’s wetlands are gone. An estimated 90 percent of the large predator fish are gone, and 75 percent of marine fisheries are now overfished or fished to capacity. Almost half of the corals are gone or are seriously threatened. Species are disappearing at rates about 1,000 times faster than normal. The planet has not seen such a spasm of extinction in 65 million years, since the dinosaurs disappeared. Desertification claims a Nebraska-sized area of productive capacity each year globally. Persistent toxic chemicals can now be found by the dozens in essentially each and every one of us.

The earth’s stratospheric ozone layer was severely depleted before its loss was discovered. Human activities have pushed atmospheric carbon dioxide up by more than a third and have started in earnest the most dangerous change of all — planetary warming and climate disruption. Everywhere, earth’s ice fields are melting. Industrial processes are fixing nitrogen, making it biologically active, at a rate equal to nature’s; one result is the development of hundreds of documented dead zones in the oceans due to overfertilization. Freshwater withdrawals are now over half of accessible runoff, and water shortages are multiplying here and abroad.

The United States, of course, is deeply complicit in these global trends, including our responsibility for about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide added thus far to the atmosphere. But even within the United States itself, four decades of environmental effort have not stemmed the tide of environmental decline. The country is losing 6,000 acres of open space every day, and 100,000 acres of wetlands every year. About a third of U.S. plant and animal species are threatened with extinction. Half of U.S. lakes and a third of its rivers still fail to meet the standards that by law should have been met by 1983. And we have done little to curb our wasteful energy habits or our huge population growth.

Here is one measure of the problem: All we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and biota and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today, with no growth in human population or the world economy. Just continue to generate greenhouse gases at current rates, just continue to impoverish ecosystems and release toxic chemicals at current rates, and the world in the latter part of this century won’t be fit to live in. But human activities are not holding at current levels – they are accelerating, dramatically.

The size of the world economy has more than quadrupled since 1960 and is projected to quadruple again by mid-century. It took all of human history to grow the $7 trillion world economy of 1950. We now grow by that amount in a decade.

The escalating processes of climate disruption, biotic impoverishment, and toxification, which continue despite decades of warnings and earnest effort, constitute a severe indictment of the system of political economy in which we live and work. The pillars of today’s capitalism, as they are now constituted, work together to produce an economic and political reality that is highly destructive environmentally. An unquestioning society-wide commitment to economic growth at any cost; powerful corporate interests whose overriding objective is to grow by generating profit (including profit from avoiding the environmental costs their companies create, amassing deep subsidies and benefits from government, and continued deployment of technologies originally designed with little or no regard for the environment); markets that systematically fail to recognize environmental costs unless corrected by government; government that is subservient to corporate interests and the growth imperative; rampant consumerism spurred by sophisticated advertising and marketing; economic activity now so large in scale that its impacts alter the fundamental biophysical operations of the planet — all combine to deliver an ever-growing world economy that is undermining the ability of the earth to sustain life.

Are Environmentalists To Blame?

In assigning responsibility for environmental failure, there are many places to lay blame: the rise of the modern, anti-government right in American politics; a negligent media; the deadening complexity of today’s environmental issues and programs, to mention the most notable. But a number of observers have placed much of the blame for failure on the leading environmental organizations themselves.

For example, Mark Dowie in his 1995 book Losing Ground notes that the national environmental organizations crafted an agenda and pursued a strategy based on the civil authority and good faith of the federal government. “Therein,” he believes, “lies the inherent weakness and vulnerability of the environmental movement. Civil authority and good faith regarding the environment have proven to be chimeras in Washington.” Dowie argues that the national environmental groups also “misread and underestimate[d] the fury of their antagonists.”

The mainstream environmental organizations were challenged again in 2004 in the now-famous The Death of Environmentalism. In it, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus write that America’s mainstream environmentalists are not “articulating a vision of the future commensurate with the magnitude of the crisis. Instead they are promoting technical policy fixes like pollution controls and higher vehicle mileage standards — proposals that provide neither the popular inspiration nor the political alliances the community needs to deal with the problem.” Shellenberger and Nordhaus believe environmentalists don’t recognize that they are in a culture war — a war over core values and a vision for the future.

These criticisms and others stem from the fundamental decision of today’s environmentalism to work within the system. This core decision grew out of the successes of the environmental community in the 1970s, which seemed to confirm the correctness of that approach. Our failure to execute a dramatic mid-course correction when circumstances changed can be seen in hindsight as a major blunder.

Here is what I mean by working within the system. When today’s environmentalism recognizes a problem, it believes it can solve that problem by calling public attention to it, framing policy and program responses for government and industry, lobbying for those actions, and litigating for their enforcement. It believes in the efficacy of environmental advocacy and government action. It believes that good-faith compliance with the law will be the norm, and that corporations can be made to behave and will increasingly weave environmental objectives into their business strategies.

Today’s environmentalism tends to be pragmatic and incrementalist — its actions are aimed at solving problems and often doing so one at a time. It is more comfortable proposing innovative policy solutions than framing inspirational messages. These characteristics are closely allied to a tendency to deal with effects rather than underlying causes. Most of our major environmental laws and treaties, for example, address the resulting environmental ills much more than their causes. In the end, environmentalism accepts compromises as part of the process. It takes what it can get.

Today’s environmentalism also believes that problems can be solved at acceptable economic costs — and often with net economic benefit — without significant lifestyle changes or threats to economic growth. It will not hesitate to strike out at an environmentally damaging facility or development, but it sees itself, on balance, as a positive economic force.

Environmentalists see solutions coming largely from within the environmental sector. They may worry about the flaws in and corruption of our politics, for example, but that is not their professional concern. That’s what Common Cause or other groups do. Similarly, environmentalists know that the prices for many things need to be higher, and they are aware that environmentally honest prices would create a huge burden on the half of American families that just get by. But universal health care and other government action needed to address America’s gaping economic injustices are not seen as part of the environmental agenda.

Today’s environmentalism is also not focused strongly on political activity or organizing a grassroots movement. Electoral politics and mobilizing a green political movement have played second fiddle to lobbying, litigating, and working with government agencies and corporations.

A central precept, in short, is that the system can be made to work for the environment. In this frame of action, scant attention is paid to the corporate dominance of economic and political life, to transcending our growth fetish, to promoting major lifestyle changes and challenging the materialistic values that dominate our society, to addressing the constraints on environmental action stemming from America’s vast social insecurity and hobbled democracy, to framing a new American story, or to building a new environmental politics.

Not everything, of course, fits within these patterns. There have been exceptions from the start, and recent trends reflect a broadening in approaches. Greenpeace has certainly worked outside the system, The League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club have had a sustained political presence, groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund have developed effective networks of activists around the country, the World Resources Institute has augmented its policy work with on-the-ground sustainable development projects, and environmental justice concerns and the emerging climate crisis have spurred the proliferation of grassroots efforts, student organizing, and community and state initiatives.

But organizations that were built to litigate and lobby for environmental causes or to do sophisticated policy studies are not necessarily the best ones to mobilize a grassroots movement or build a force for electoral politics or motivate the public with social marketing campaigns. These things need to be done, and to get them done it may be necessary to launch new organizations and initiatives with special strengths in these areas.

The methods and style of today’s environmentalism are not wrongheaded, just far, far too restricted as an overall approach. The problem has been the absence of a huge, complementary investment of time, energy, and money in other, deeper approaches to change. And here, the leading environmental organizations must be faulted for not doing nearly enough to ensure these investments were made.

America has run a 40-year experiment on whether this mainstream environmentalism can succeed, and the results are now in. The full burden of managing accumulating environmental threats has fallen to the environmental community, both those in government and outside. But that burden is too great. The system of modern capitalism as it operates today will continue to grow in size and complexity and will generate ever-larger environmental consequences, outstripping efforts to cope with them. Indeed, the system will seek to undermine those efforts and constrain them within narrow limits. Working only within the system will, in the end, not succeed — what is needed is transformative change in the system itself.

A New Environmental Politics

Environmental protection requires a new politics.

This new politics must, first of all, ensure that environmental concern and advocacy extend to the full range of relevant issues. The environmental agenda should expand to embrace a profound challenge to consumerism and commercialism and the lifestyles they offer, a healthy skepticism of growthmania and a redefinition of what society should be striving to grow, a challenge to corporate dominance and a redefinition of the corporation and its goals, a commitment to deep change in both the functioning and the reach of the market, and a powerful assault on the anthropocentric and contempocentric values that currently dominate.

Environmentalists must also join with social progressives in addressing the crisis of inequality now unraveling America’s social fabric and undermining its democracy. It is a crisis of soaring executive pay, huge incomes, and increasingly concentrated wealth for a small minority, occurring simultaneously with poverty near a 30-year high, stagnant wages despite rising productivity, declining social mobility and opportunity, record levels of people without health insurance, failing schools, increased job insecurity, swelling jails, shrinking safety nets, and the longest work hours among the rich countries. In an America with such vast social insecurity, economic arguments, even misleading ones, will routinely trump environmental goals.

Similarly, environmentalists must join with those seeking to reform politics and strengthen democracy. What we are seeing in the United States is the emergence of a vicious circle: Income disparities shift political access and influence to wealthy constituencies and large businesses, which further imperils the potential of the democratic process to act to correct the growing income disparities. Corporations have been the principal economic actors for a long time; now they are the principal political actors as well. Neither environment nor society fares well under corporatocracy. Environmentalists need to embrace public financing of elections, regulation of lobbying, nonpartisan Congressional redistricting, and other political reform measures as core to their agenda. Today’s politics will never deliver environmental sustainability.

The current financial crisis and, at this writing, the response to it, reveal a system of political economy that is profoundly committed to profits and growth and profoundly indifferent to people and society. This system is at least as indifferent to its impacts on nature. Left uncorrected, it is inherently ruthless and rapacious, and it is up to citizens, acting mainly through government, to inject values of fairness and sustainability into the system. But this effort commonly fails because progressive politics are too enfeebled and Washington is increasingly in the hands of powerful corporate interests and concentrations of great wealth. The best hope for real change in America is a fusion of those concerned about environment, social justice, and strong democracy into one powerful progressive force.

The new environmentalism must work with this progressive coalition to build a mighty force in electoral politics. This will require major efforts at grassroots organizing; strengthening groups working at the state and community levels; and developing motivational messages and appeals — indeed, writing a new American story, as Bill Moyers has urged. Our environmental discourse has thus far been dominated by lawyers, scientists, and economists. Now, we need to hear a lot more from the poets, preachers, philosophers, and psychologists.

Above all, the new environmental politics must be broadly inclusive, reaching out to embrace union members and working families, minorities and people of color, religious organizations, the women’s movement, and other communities of complementary interest and shared fate. It is unfortunate but true that stronger alliances are still needed to overcome the “silo effect” that separates the environmental community from those working on domestic political reforms, a progressive social agenda, human rights, international peace, consumer issues, world health and population concerns, and world poverty and underdevelopment.

The final watchword of the new environmental politics must be, “Build the movement.” We have had movements against slavery and many have participated in movements for civil rights and against apartheid and the Vietnam War. Environmentalists are often said to be part of “the environmental movement.” We need a real one — networked together, protesting, demanding action and accountability from governments and corporations, and taking steps as consumers and communities to realize sustainability and social justice in everyday life.

Can one see the beginnings of a new social movement in America? Perhaps I am letting my hopes get the better of me, but I think we can. Its green side is visible, I think, in the surge of campus organizing and student mobilization occurring today, much of it coordinated by the student-led Energy Action Coalition and by Power Vote. It’s visible also in the increasing activism of religious organizations, including many evangelical groups under the banner of Creation Care, and in the rapid proliferation of community-based environmental initiatives. It’s there in the joining together of organized labor, environmental groups, and progressive businesses in the Apollo Alliance and there in the Sierra Club’s collaboration with the United Steelworkers, the largest industrial union in the United States. It’s visible too in the outpouring of effort to build on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and in the grassroots organizing of 1Sky and others around climate change. It is visible in the green consumer movement and in the consumer support for the efforts of the Rainforest Action Network to green the policies of the major U.S. banks. It’s there in the increasing number of teach-ins, demonstrations, marches, and protests, including the 1,400 events across the United States in 2007 inspired by Bill McKibben’s “Step It Up!” campaign to stop global warming. It is there in the constituency-building work of minority environmental leaders and in the efforts of groups like Green for All to link social and environmental goals. It’s just beginning, but it’s there, and it will grow.

The welcome news is that the environmental community writ large is moving in some of these directions. Local and state environmental groups have grown in strength and number. There is more political engagement through the League of Conservation Voters and a few other groups, and more work to reach out to voters with overtly political messages. The major national organizations have strengthened their links to local and state groups and established activist networks to support their lobbying activities. Still, there is a long, long way to go to build a new and vital environmental politics in America.

American politics today is failing not only the environment but also the American people and the world. As Richard Falk reminds us, only an unremitting struggle will drive the changes that can sustain people and nature. If there is a model within American memory for what must be done, it is the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. It had grievances, it knew what was causing them, and it also knew that the existing order had no legitimacy and that, acting together, people could redress those grievances. It was confrontational and disobedient, but it was nonviolent. It had a dream. And it had Martin Luther King Jr.

It is amazing what can be accomplished if citizens are ready to march, in the footsteps of Dr. King. It is again time to give the world a sense of hope.

Reprinted from Yale Environment 360.

Merrill Lynch, the global financial service firm, recently released its regular quarterly analysis of the solar industry’s near-term prospects. It weighed the pros and cons and came out hedging its bets — hardly a surprise given the precarious global economic situation. A representative pair of sentences: “(W)ith this many headwinds, it’s easy to make a sell case on the sector. However, we believe there are also many positives for solar …”

Positives cited by the report include:

•    “The subsidy revision cycle is more or less over … In a major upside surprise that was largely ignored by the market, the U.S. extended the investment tax credits on solar by 8 years and also removed the $2,000 tax credit cap on solar residential installations (it’s now 30 percent of the system cost).”

•    “2009 price erosion appears benign for now.”

•    “New markets ramping … (O)fficial 2009 forecasts from the respective governments were for 1,500MW in Germany, 300MW in Spain, 300MW in Italy, 400MW in Japan, 300MW in South Korea and 100MW in Greece. That’s about 3GW in total to which we need to add some other markets such as the US, China, Australia, etc.”

•    “Utility interest in PV appears to be increasing … (W)e expect U.S. utility demand for solar to accelerate over the next few years as utilities try to meet state imposed renewable portfolio standards.”

Among the negatives: tightening credit and lower oil prices.

The Merrill Lynch report suggests that access to the capital markets may be closing for solar. However, it views this as a positive. “We believe that there are simply too many vendors targeting the solar market ... With capital barriers now increasing, a healthier industry structure could emerge.”

In assessing the report, it’s important to bear in mind that the analysis focuses on the wisdom of investing or divesting at this particular point in time. It does not look at the prospects of the solar industry writ large – and by any reasonable measure these continue to be excellent.

According to an attendee at the recent 23rd European Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition in Valencia, Spain, participants in a CEO panel there estimated that the European market alone for solar in 2020 would total 350-400GW. That’s a mighty impressive number, considering that the current total worldwide installed base is about 12GW. Merrill’s market-driven cautiousness notwithstanding, solar is a skyrocketing industry.

GreenPoint Rated System has been chosen the model program for voluntary green building policies by the Building Industry Association of Central California. The BIACC's board of directors voted unanimously to recommend the system, after the association's Green Building Task Force reviewed a number of programs currently available to home builders.

A few of the characteristics of the GreenPoint Rated System particularly convinced board members:

• Third-party verification of compliance
• Accessibility
• Cost-effectiveness

“The recognition that the program is already being used throughout California and is the dominant program being used by Bay Area government jurisdictions was an important consideration in our decision," said Stephen Madison, executive vice president of BIACC, in a press release. "An equally important factor was the availability of training for both members and jurisdictions that adopt the program.”

BIACC will promote voluntary adoption of the GreenPoint Rated System by local governments, in order to make the program more attractive to its members. According to Build It Green, a nonprofit organization responsible for developing and maintaining the GreenPoint Rated System, 70 local governments have already adopted the system or referenced it in their policies.

It has also received endorsements from the California Energy Commission, the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Home Builders Association of Northern California.

Image — GreenPoint Rated

Lennox Industries has introduced an integrated solar-assisted residential heating and cooling system. The SunSource system will be available for purchase in 2009.

Designed for residential needs, the patent-pending technique is meant to reduce peak demand on residential heating and cooling systems, and increase energy efficiency while keeping homeowners comfortable. SunSource relies on a single 190-watt solar panel to power a fan motor that moves air across an outdoor coil. The system still requires more power than is available from the solar panel, at least during peak hours, but has significantly reduced the total energy needed to cool or heat a home.

A future iteration of the SunSource system will integrate solar power into other components of a house's heating and cooling system, such as indoor motors, compressors, indoor air-quality products and thermostats.

SunSource was unveiled at the Association of Energy Services Professionals' 4th Technology Symposium in Long Beach, California.

Image — Lennox