With the spike in oil prices earlier this year, many businesses opened up increased opportunities to work from home for their cash-strapped employees.  As fuel prices continued to increase, the measures proved even more successful than anticipated, saving employees money and time spent commuting, although the biggest benefits of reduced office time turned out to be environmental.

Now, even with oil prices falling in the face of a worldwide economic decline, the benefits of the home office environment have many wondering, can the traditional workplace be saved?

Once thought of as a necessity for a productive workforce, modern communications tools have all but rendered the traditional full-time office an expensive vestige of the past. Video conferencing, email, voice-over-IP, instant messaging and a bevy of other technologies that have entered the office in the past decade allow real-time, face-to-face interactions from any location.

While the business power of a live-flesh handshake during negotiations still carries weight, the need for workers to all be present in the office most days is evaporating.

This is especially true in light of the environmental benefits of letting workers toil from home through virtual office applications.

The expense of lighting, heating or cooling a central office, can be eliminated on some days with proper building management, as well as the fossil fuels normally burned delivering employees. Shared office space and flexible working hours also also the cost per square foot of human capital to go down.

Gridlock, which strikes countries regardless of economic status, furthers the damage caused by auto emissions, and like so many other problems associated with traditional offices, creates a massive economic sink as well. 

For those companies that are scaling back or eliminating work hubs, companies can resell or recycle your unneeded furniture and other office equipment.  British moving company Robinson's, which specializes in moving for the business sector, has initiated a new program called Di-Vert, aiming to ensure that equipment that has become unnecessary —including old office furniture—ends up in landfills.  With discarded furniture from offices alone taking up 500,000 tons in UK landfills alone, improving current moving systems could make a serious dent in office-related consumption.

At the other end of the product cycle, American company Citron is working to set up and supply the most efficient, environmentally friendly office environments possible.  Aside from sales of sustainable office furniture, Citron also offer services to plan out of your office to make the best possible use of space, natural light. And like Robinson's, it has a program in place to collect and recycle old furniture.

So is the conventional central office still doomed? I've got to say I doubt it. With services like those provided by Robinson's and Citron, employers will be able to make considerable reductions in the amount of energy consumed and waste produced in their central office spaces. While it's almost impossible for offices to meet the environmental efficiencies of working from home hour for hour,  moderate increases in efficiency could equalize the overall impact.

 

 

 

Diesel engines – including freight and commuter trains, big rigs, and vehicles large and small –  drive economies worldwide. Most diesel engines can accept mixtures of diesel fuel and biodiesel without significant modification, further reducing their environmental impact.

Although the biodiesel industry has rapidly expanded in recent years, many vehicle operators may find the nearest refueling supply  too far away to make shipping the fuel in worthwhile. Additionally, while the biodiesel industry denies that a major shortage is a possibility, small-scale shortfalls in supply have been widely reported.

Furthermore, biomass sources for biodiesel production have been stressed by increased demand for food; even non-food stock biodiesel bases, such as used cooking grease, have been growing progressively harder to come by.

A new generation of smaller biodiesel production units may help to overcome many of these problems, by enabling creation of the fuel in more locations.  Products like Cavitation Technology's BioForce 9000 Reactor Skid System brings viable biofuel creation to a unit roughly the size of a small car, and capable of producing between 10 and 40 gallons of biodiesel per hour.  The unit can also utilize a variety of biofuel stocks, including degummed soybean oil, canola oil, tallow, yellow grease and coconut oil, at free fatty acid levels sometimes as high as 6%.

The breakthrough that enables production  in such a small physical spaces is the use of pressure-based nano-cavitation in improving the speed and efficiency of the stock-material to biodiesel conversion process. According to the company, the use of fluctuating pressures, instead of traditional agitation methods increases efficiency by more than 40%, while limiting the number of moving parts involved in the process. The end result is a smaller apparatus—the core unit of the BioForce 9000 can fit in the palm of your hand—and less energy lost during the biodiesel creation process.

Aside from saving energy, smaller units enable businesses of nearly any size to add onsite biodiesel creation capacity, eliminating the cost and environmental impacts of having biodiesel shipped to them. The technology, which is also being implemented in larger scale production facilities, introduces flexibility to the size of centralized biofuel production facilities, enabling them to scale production to meet fluctuating levels of supply and demand.

All told, these advances could increase the efficiency  and availability of biodiesel at a lower cost while combating climate change.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Vinod Khosla at the California Public Utilities Commission building in San Francisco. He shared his visions about clean technologies in a world where the dramatic reduction of carbon emissions is necessary to combat climate change.

Khosla began by shaking up the audience and explaining that the reason some forecasts (oil prices, food prices) are wrong is because the fundamental set of assumptions used to make them are wrong. In short, we shouldn't trust forecasts too much.

Khosla's plan of attack is to address manageable material problems, not a change in human behavior. We must focus on our efficiency of coal, oil, steel, cement use because they are 75-80% of the problem in carbon emissions. Khosla says we need clean power generation and clean transportation; if we don't achieve this quickly, we're in trouble.

For several reasons, Khosla believes we need unsubsidized competitiveness in clean technology. He argues that subsidies (such as Germany's feed-in tariffs) give no incentive to reduce costs, therefore allowing widespread use of inefficient technology. Instead, Khosla would like to see renewable energy prices lowered due to competition for the price a utility like PG&E would pay per kWh.

A point that was reiterated is that trajectory matters. It is absolutely necessary to have declining cost with scale; otherwise, a clean tech product will never be cost competitive in developing countries, which is where energy needs are quickly rising. Khosla calls this the "Chindia" test.

Also cited was the importance of short innovation cycles. In a time of economic strain, Khosla argues that capital will flock to short cycle investments. It is much less likely that 20 year projects will receive support.

In global carbon reduction, Khosla thinks a cap and trade system must be effective, moral, pragmatic, and dynamic. It should not only meet global CO2 reduction targets, but also be fair while achieving the broadest possible acceptance worldwide. The system must also be dynamic, should global emissions targets change according to updated research.

Khosla pointed out that 80% per capita carbon emission reductions are not reasonable across the board. For example, Eritreans emit 0.1 ton/year, whereas Americans emit 20 tons/year. Why should Eritrea have to sacrifice economic growth when Americans contribute significantly to the problem? If developing countries are allowed to operate under Annex 1, there is a much better chance they'll agree to fight climate change because they will be given reasonable targets that allow for economic growth.

Vinod Khosla may make waves in voicing controversial points. However much one may disagree, it is refreshing to see challenges through Khosla's eyes, especially when he advocates making smart, high-impact moves in the areas that matter most. I'm sure no one supports policies that spend public money unwisely, or enable inefficiency. For a man who believes there is such a thing as too much green, Khosla seems to have his reasoning worked out.

AFS Trinity Power Corporation is pulling out of the LA Auto Show over a dispute about floor space and how it can advertise its vehicle.

According to the Bellevue, Washington company, show managers offered a basement exhibit space in conjunction with billboard locations throughout the hall to drive traffic downstairs. However, AFS Trinity claims its ads were rejected because they say that the XH-150 SUV gets 150 miles per gallon.

The prototype SUV has not been tested by the EPA as yet. When vehicles are offered for sale they are only allowed to display EPA-approved numbers. But AFS Trinity says because it is not a production vehicle, it should be able to claim the MPG it has observed during internal testing.

AFS says the Greater Los Angeles New Car Dealers Association, which operates the LA Auto Show, made its decision about the billboards because it wants to protect Detroit automakers.

"The suppression by the automakers of information about technologies such as this raises serious questions about the judgment, vision, intentions and capabilities of the leadership of these companies," said Edward W. Furia, Chairman and CEO of AFS Trinity, in a press release.

The company say it will buy an exhibit space elsewhere in LA during the auto show.

Instead of relying on lithium ion batteries like its Detroit competitors, AFS Trinity's plug-in SUV will use ultracapacitors to store energy. AFS Trinity says it has offered to license its technology to automakers, but they have not received any response.

AFS Trinity's claims of censorship may be sour grapes over its lack of success in convincing automakers to license its technology and create the volume production to bring down the cost of ultracapacitors, which has been several times that of batteries.

In one of the more double-take inducing headlines I've seen in a while, the head of state for the world's biggest carbon polluter told the rich nations of the world that they must change their unsustainable lifestyles.

"Developed countries shoulder the duty and responsibility to tackle climate change and should alter their unsustainable lifestyle," said Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, speaking at the beginning of a meeting to call for a rapid expansion in the exportation of clean energy technologies from the developed world to countries like China.

I am a fan of helping to pay the costs of climate change for poorer countries—which do face disproportionate burdens from global warming while being responsible for very little of the cause—through improved infrastructure and energy-efficient technologies. I'm also of the opinion that Americans and others in the developed world should attempt to lessen the demands that they place on the planet's finite resources with their current lifestyles.

But neither of these causes is advanced by a combative attitude, especially from a country that produces more carbon than anywhere else in the world (even if it also does have the largest population and only recently surpassed the U.S. in emissions), in addition to a tarnished record on the environment. Mutually beneficial arrangements will prove a far more effective tool than lopsided mandates.

If you had to characterize the economic conditions of 2008 with a single word, it would have to be "instability". A steady stock market slide, then sudden free-fall in October. Banks long thought to be immovable pillars of the national economy collapsing left and right. Plummeting housing values. Bailouts. At least, after the sky-high prices of earlier this year, we can count on cheap gas, right?

Not so, says the International Energy Agency. Saying the current dip in oil costs is a mere indicator of rough financial times, the report cites a steady 9% decline in production across the world's oil fields, with an ever-growing amount of demand. According to the report, we should expect triple-digit per barrel prices again as soon as the financial system recovers, definite shortages by 2015, and $200+ a barrel by 2030.

Honestly, that's fine with me. Anything that increases the penalty for fuel consumption is a good thing in my book. High energy prices correspond to greater use of mass transit, more cyclists, larger investments in clean energy, and overall less wear-and-tear on the planet by human beings. $200 a barrel? I say bring it on.

A few weeks ago, I described climate change as the political third rail of the last presidential debate. This observation got me to thinking: what other sustainability third rails are out there? What other topics are taboo?

A brief mental scan produced four such no-no's. And so: prepare the brickbats. I'm about to speak the unspeakable.

Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of the Icons. Every movement has its pecking order, and at the very apex of the pecking order are the heros. The sustainability movement is no different. The folks up there are the greenerati, our very own celebrities.

Sometimes they've got great ideas, sometimes they've got great speaking skills, and sometimes they're just great at self-promotion. Whatever their strengths, they attract lots of attention, both positive and negative. They are the object of gossip and adulation, which is, I suppose, the fate of all celebrities. Their personal failings get bruited about with much delight. We can do only so much looking upward contentedly, it seems: we need our heros to have clay feet.

One thing, however, tends not to get discussed: their professional failures. This is because we badly need them to succeed. Their projects are what give us hope and inspiration, and these are the things that keep us going. When a greenerati's endeavor turns out to be badly flawed, it's not just their problem, or the project's problem. It's a failure that deflates us all.

And so we continue to give public lip service to their brilliance while occasionally whispering to a carefully selected few how "Project X," don't tell anyone!, bombed.

Sometimes it's not just single projects that are called into question. There are also entire sub-movements. Some people, for instance, believe that the entire corporate social responsibility movement is a dud. This is not the sort of thing people are comfortable discussing publicly, though.

The sustainability house is built on hope, and frankly it's kind of rickety. The greenerati's work helps keep the house standing. And so we don't speak ill of their undertakings, even when they're shot through with holes. We put aside our integrity for the sake of The Cause. We lie for the good of the movement. We worship false idols because, if we don't, the center will not hold.

We let the truth play second fiddle so the sustainability house won't burn.

(Note to the reader: I'll be discussing the other three taboo subjects in future posts.)

Riding perhaps the same unprecedented wave of voter participation that swept Barack Obama into the Presidency, votes on clean energy statutes across the country came out in favor of the sustainability-conscious. "Greener" candidates such as Colorado's Mark Udall also had success in many regional elections as well.  But by far the most encouraging was Missouri's Proposition C, which brought a renewable energy standard to a battleground state, virtually unopposed.

Much to their own detriment, issues concerning global warming and harmful climate change have been dragged into the culture war that ravaged American politics during this election. Especially in the interior sections of the country, calls for increased production of domestic oil, and additional investments into so-called "clean coal" technology for outweighed interest in green, renewable energy.

But Missouri's Prop C, which promised an impressive array of job-creating, revenue-generating measures proved extremely popular with voters, netting over 65% of the vote. Aiming to have 2% of all energy produced by renewable sources by 2011, and 15% by 2021, the proposition wasn't simply a nod to global warming concerns, and to have such a wide margin of victory in such a tightly contested state could bode well for depoliticizing the renewable energy issue in the near future.

In San Francisco, Proposition H, which would have charged city commissioners to consider taking over the local power companies, failed as nearly 60 percent of voters opposed it.

They've inspired a successful video game, and provided people around the world with a new word for suicidally-enthusiastic crowd-followers, but new research from Norway indicates that the venerable lemming may be in serious trouble from the effects of climate change.

Though best known for charging en masse into the sea, lemmings instead spend their lives in a layer of space between the ground and the first, drier layers of snowfall. Only in particularly dry winters, when lemmings numbers swelled beyond what their habitats could support, did the fuzzy little rodents leap into the sea in search of more land.

But now, heavier, wetter snows are leading to smaller, less stable spaces between the snow and the ground, keeping lemming numbers down. While climate change impacting larger, more-slowly-growing species is nothing new, the lemming problem could represent the beginning of a disturbing trend. Furthermore, the population impacts could spread across the larger Arctic ecosystem, as lemmings provide a valuable food source for a range of predators, from birds of prey to foxes.

On the first day of the Barack Obama era, rumors are flying that Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy Jr. will be appointed to head up the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

If Kennedy is appointed EPA Administrator, he'll be the first all-out treehugger and die-hard liberal to run the Agency. As the head of Riverkeeper, a Hudson River environmental group, Kennedy has earned a reputation as a staunch opponent of corporate interests and protector of the environment. He has also hosted a talk show on the Air America Radio Network and been a leader in warning against possible vote fraud by the right.

According to Politico, the "selection of Kennedy would be a shrewd early move for the new presidential team. Obama advisers said the nomination would please both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). It also would raise the profile of the EPA, which would help endear Obama to liberals who may be disappointed on other issues important to the Democratic left because of budget restrictions."

The rumor is newsworthy for two reasons.

First, Kennedy's appointment would mean a dramatic turnabout for the Agency, which despite its name has rarely been a truly ferocious defender of the environment, and at times more despoiler than protector.

Second, and this goes to the emotional impact of the rumor, for going on two years people have been listening to Obama's soaring "change" rhetoric. It's developed its own rhythm and place in our collective psyche. With the abruptness of a jolt of caffeine, this morning-after rumor has re-arranged the tune. What only yesterday felt unlikely and ethereal has become grounded and substantial. Love it or loathe it, Barack Obama's Big Idea is about to become reality. That distant horizon is here, now.

Does Indiana have a mini-Dick (as in Cheney) holding high office?

In 2001, Vice-President Cheney's energy task force secretly met with representatives from Big Oil, despite denials by industry officials testifying before Congress. The obvious conclusion: the Administration was playing favorites, big-time.

Now it appears that something similar may be unfolding in Indiana, where three prominent non-profits have gone on record charging the administration of Governor Mitch Daniels (R) with having an excessively cozy and secretive relationship with Duke Energy, the North Carolina-based energy giant with over $15B in annual revenue.

Last week, the Sierra Club (Hoosier Chapter), Indiana's Citizens Action Coalition, and Valley Watch filed a public disclosure request to compel the production of all documents and other records detailing the "actions, public or non-public, that Governor Daniels and his Administration may have taken" to promote a new Duke Energy coal gasification plant in the village of Edwardsport in western Indiana.

Essentially, the groups contend that there appears to be an unhealthy three-way relationship among the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC), the Daniels Administration, and Duke Energy. In the words of Greg Smith, executive director of Citizens Action Coalition, "Public statements make it appear the IURC may be acting as an advocate for the Governor's energy plan, which itself appears to be tied to advancing Duke Energy's business plan."

It is probably no coincidence that these accusations were levied a week before the gubernatorial election, which pits Daniels against challenger Jill Long Thompson. A heavy favorite, the Republican achieved modest national notoriety when he somehow missed three Sarah Palin rallies in his battleground state within twelve days, but did manage to spend an hour chatting up voters in the parking lot at one of her events.

The unhappy non-profits have two issues here. One involves the relationship between the Daniels Administration and Duke Energy. The other involves the proposed power plant itself. According to Smith, "Investments in coal and nuclear power are the Countrywide Financial subprime mortgages of the energy world … It makes no sense to make 50-year investments in new coal-fired power plants. Energy efficiency and renewable technologies already have overtaken, in many instances, or will soon overtake, in other instances, coal-fired power in terms of direct cost and are far superior in terms of financial risk, economic benefit, and the ability to address global warming."

I write this at 5:30 PM Eastern Time on Election Day, 2008. Though the final outcome isn't clear, we appear to be on the cusp of a dramatic change in the status quo. There is more than a little talk of a green New Deal. Are the days of covert collusion between government and industry numbered? Is the era of Big Dick and mini-Dick coming to an end? That may be too much to hope for.

But hey: here's to hoping.

PS. Filed the morning after: Governor Daniels won a double-digit victory in his bid for re-election.

 

The creation and continued expansion of the Interstate Highway System brought unparalleled prosperity to the economy of the United States. Goods and people could now be moved from location to location on single vehicles without the interference of railroad schedules or the hazards of poor road conditions.

But with this convenience came massive environmental costs, along with gridlock, rapidly rising infrastructure costs and associated highway tax bills, and over-dependence on foreign, non-renewable energy sources. But as energy costs have increased, a very different type of thoroughfare has come back into prominence.

"Sixty percent of the people I meet have no idea the Erie Canal is even still functioning" Tim Dufel, an assistant engineer on an Erie Canal tugboat recently told The New York Times. And if you take quick drive down Interstate 90 in New York, which parallels the canal for the eastern third of its journey, it's not hard to see why; towns full of empty, old brick factories and warehouses dot the waterway, since bypassed by the railroad, the interstate, and eventually, the St. Lawrence Seaway.

While the area isn't exactly slated for a return to its boomtown days of old, traffic on the canal has nearly tripled this year, and that's with nearly two weeks left in the shipping season. While rail carrier CSX claims it can move one ton of freight 422 miles on a gallon of fuel, real-world figures place that distance a hair over 200 miles. But floating on the canal, a barge can go 514 miles on that same gallon of fuel—quite some distance, and roughly nine times better than a comparable truck.

Efficiency isn't the only advantage the canal boasts. Barge capacities can range as high as 3,000 tons, and accommodate oddly-shaped loads too large for traditional shipping containers. A new biofuel plant in Fulton, NY, recently shipped a set of tanks that would have otherwise required reassembly along the waterway, and the canal remains the most direct water route between the East Coast and the Great Lakes waterway.

The major knock on the waterway is speed; at seven knots, the 338 mile trek takes around two days. But with resurgent, sustainability-focused growth returning to the Rust Belt region, the canal may only increase in popularity, even as oil prices fall, and the economy slows down. With a bikeway planned for the area and clean energy developments springing up left and right in the region, you can bet the Erie Canal is perfectly located for a clean, efficient, and low-carbon future.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The pace of technology these days is daunting. Sometimes it feels like the second you take your new gadget of the box, you see an ad for a better one on TV. And the second that new product comes out, you can forget about any chance selling off the old one for anything even close to what you paid for it. But with a bevy of toxic chemicals in batteries, displays, and circuit boards, trashing your gadget simply isn't an option. What's an eco-conscious geek to do?

Why, take advantage of Radio Shack's new buyback policy, that's what. Hot on the heels of similar efforts from Best Buy and Apple, Radio Shack has announced a system where customers can appraise their old electronics online and exchange them for entirely reasonable prices ($42 for a 5-year-old iPod!). Of course, it's still only for store credit, but Radio Shack sells a whole lot of different things. Hopefully Radio Shack is reselling or recycling as much of the product as possible.

Now, as a lifelong New Englander, I'll exploit every half-baked hack and trick I can find to keep my electronic gizmos running just a day longer. From a environmental standpoint, that's generally the best way to deal with electronics, but for the less obsessive, this buyback program provides a fantastic second option. It's great to see Best Buy's recycling initiative spread to other retailers.

Today's solar cells have two major barriers. They only absorb about 67% of sunlight and can only work at specific angles. But now, researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have made breakthroughs on both problems with a new antireflective coating that increases that number to a stunning 96%.

"To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun’s position in the sky," said Shawn-Yu Lin, the professor of physics at Rensselaer who led the research project.  "Our new antireflective coating makes this possible." The research is detailed in an article in the journal Optics Letters.

Researchers on the project created a 7-layer cake of 50-100 nanometer coatings that allows the cell to absorb all wavelengths of light from all angles. The team believes their sun sponge could render mechanized solar panels - which follow the sun to maximize energy - simply unnecessary.

I'm not sure how these gains translate into actual solar cell efficiency, but to me this sounds like the kind of technology that could make widespread rooftop PV a reality.

What do frustrated consumers and environmentalists have in common—other than faith in the power of sustainability sector jobs to give the economy a shot in the arm, that is? A decided distaste for excessive, indestructible packaging. But now, one of the world's largest retailers, Internet superstore Amazon, has finally decided to do something about it.

A problem striking Americans from the average Joe Six-Pack to the loftiest CEO, modern packaging has been optimized for effectiveness and bottom-line savings, not ease of access or environmental friendliness. While some progress has been made in cleaning up the materials involved, the fact remains that packaging creates tons of landfill waste and sends thousands of Americans to the hospital with cuts each year.

This is a great decision on Amazon's part. Up until now, green packaging has been relegated to niche, sustainability-market products, but with this much buying power now throwing its weight behind sensible packaging, the rest of the world will be quick to notice. Amazon's best sellers have already gone frustration free, and hopes at some point to offer all of its products with reduced packaging.

By Andrew Mambondiyani

The tarred road from Chimanimani Resort Village in Zimbabwe meandered down to the Haroni River, then broke into a dirt path. Red dust billowed as hundreds of haggard, barefoot illegal diamond miners marched in single file, carrying hoes, picks, and shovels. Women, schoolchildren, young and old men waded across the river to the eastern bank. There they cut trees, overturned rocks, and pushed the debris into the Haroni, choking it with mud. The staccato sound of hammers drowned out the rush of the river.

The Haroni is fast here, driven by gravity where it emerges from the imposing Chimanimani Mountains, which form Zimbabwe’s eastern border with Mozambique. Until recently, the river ran clear. Now it was brown and murky. Until recently, this was coffee, tea, and cattle country, filled with well-tended plantations. Now the landscape had turned to a ghostly panorama of ravaged fields, trees ripped up by their roots and left to rot, gaping holes and tailings, forest cut and burned.

This scene — already familiar in central and western Zimbabwe, where a 19th-century-style gold rush has been taking place since 1990s — has become even more common since 2006, when diamonds were discovered in the country’s eastern areas.  Displaced from farm work and spurred by Zimbabwe’s disastrous economy and an astronomical annual inflation rate of 231 million percent, hundreds of thousands of desperately poor people have ventured into illegal mining, leaving a trail of environmental destruction that is alarming farmers, environmentalists, and traditional leaders.

All of Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces bear evidence of the damage. Rivers are filled with silt, harming ecosystems as well as farming, fishing, and drinking water. Miners cut and burn wood indiscriminately to fuel their makeshift camps. Panners use mercury and cyanide to separate gold from the ore, and then flush the toxins into the rivers.

A visibly disturbed deputy environment and tourism minister, Andrew Langa, toured the devastated Chiadzwa diamond fields in the eastern Manicaland province last year. “The cost of reclaiming this land is beyond our means,” he said. “If illegal mining continues at such an alarming rate, Chiadzwa area will be left without a tree or even grass.”

Environment and Tourism Minister Francis Nhema went a step further, telling reporters, “If the illegal mining is not stopped, it could turn the whole country to rubble in the next few years.”

King Solomon’s Mines

The Haroni River is a valuable resource not only for the Chimanimani region of Zimbabwe but also for neighboring Mozambique, as it provides fish and other foods to the people. The river also provides water for hundreds of settlements along the river in both countries. In addition, the Chimanimani region is home to a Zimbabwe national park that is described by the conservation group BirdLife International as “one of the richest ecological complexes in Zimbabwe.”

Illegal miners began flooding into the Chimanimani area in late September 2007, following the discovery of a diamond belt along the Haroni. The miners, who had long hoped for such news — according to myth, the Chimanimani Mountains were the location of King Solomon’s fabulous mines — traveled from as far as Bulawayo, hundreds of miles away in western Zimbabwe.

Barely a day after the diamond belt’s discovery, up to 2,000 illegal miners invaded Charleswood Farm, just across the Haroni River.

 

Formerly a productive farm owned by opposition party treasurer Roy Bennett, Charleswood was expropriated eight years ago by Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF government and opened up to resettlement under the land reform program. Private ownership of farms had meant strict environmental management. But the new farmers at Charleswood have removed the coffee crop, making way for a meager crop of maize — and lots of illegal mining and poaching.

On the western side of the Chimanimani area, meanwhile, a vicious war erupted between the police and illegal miners following the discovery of yet another belt of diamonds. The miners, operating from the top of the sacred Dziike Mountain, rolled stones down the mountain to scare off police officers who had been sent to evict them.

The High Cost of Gold

The scramble for mineral wealth is damaging not only Zimbabwe’s ecology, but also its struggling economic efforts, experts warn.

Even before the diamond rush began, renowned environmentalist James C. Murombedzi wrote in a 2005 study that “unsustainable gold panning activities are directly leading to the decline in water for irrigation, reducing agricultural output, destroying fisheries, and ultimately threatening the country’s water resources.”

The practice “causes massive damage to river systems through channel and riverbank erosion and the discharge of pollutants (mercury and human waste) into the water, leading to sedimentation and siltation,” reported Murombedzi, formerly the Southern Africa regional director of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Murombedzi noted that gold panning expanded most rapidly after the government —responding to pressure from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund — implemented Zimbabwe’s Economic Structural Adjustment Program in the early 1990s. The program of privatization, deregulation, and reduced export subsidies caused dramatic job losses and poverty, leaving many workers scrambling for an informal livelihood.

Panning was “a significant source of income” for an estimated 600,000 Zimbabweans, accounting for about a quarter of the country’s total gold output, Murombedzi reported in his 2005 study. But “the cost of environmental damage caused by gold panning is borne by society at large, while the benefits are appropriated by the panners themselves. As such, there are no real incentives for the panners to engage in sustainable methods of panning.”

The University of Zimbabwe’s Institute of Mining Research had previously reported that illegal panning was prevalent along most of the country’s major rivers.

“Mercury is used especially by alluvial gold panners, and it finds its way into the river systems and the atmosphere since there is no process in use for its recovery and use of cyanide for gold recovery is also prevalent in Zimbabwe,” the institute’s report noted.

One of the most affected river systems is the Save (or Sabi) River, which supplies water to the Middle Sabi and Chisumbanje farming areas in Manicaland province, in the east. Panning for gold and diamonds is rampant along the river’s tributaries, creating silting that has reduced the once mighty river to a trickle.

The Middle Sabi produces more than 25 percent of Zimbabwe’s wheat.

One farmer, Blessing Dube, said in early August that silt had choked his region’s nine giant irrigation pumps for the past two weeks, threatening the entire Middle Sabi farming area — nearly 20,000 acres. “The pumps, the canal, as well as the overnight storage dams, all have been clogged,” he said. “We currently have about 1,830 hectares [more than 4,500 acres] of wheat in various stages of growth and, had it not been for the poor water supply, we were expecting up to 5,400 tons of wheat this season.”

Little Enforcement

After the diamond rush began last year, Environment and Tourism Minister Nhema — who also chairs the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development — said it had become necessary to put an immediate stop to illegal mining throughout the country.

“We have collectively come to the conclusion that the environmental costs emanating from the panning activities far outweigh the benefits accruing to the panners,” Nhema told journalists.

Nhema said panning had caused chemical contamination of water bodies, indiscriminate cutting down of trees, and destruction of fragile habitats. The mining also eroded any gains from the land reform program as agricultural land was riddled with holes, he said. The minister added that the country’s economic success hinged on economically viable and environmentally sustainable policies.

As pressure mounted from environmentalists last year, Zimbabwe President Mugabe assented to legislation that imposes a sentence of at least five years on anyone convicted of illegally dealing in or possessing precious stones. Early this fall, police announced that they had arrested 9,656 diamond panners and recovered 1,912 diamonds worth quadrillions of inflated Zimbabwean dollars in the Chiadzwa area since January.

But those figures are misleading. According to court records, no panner has been convicted of illegal possession of precious minerals since the penalty was increased. Convictions have come only for prospecting without a license, a minor offense.

And Manicaland’s new governor, Chris Mushohwe, says illegal mining continues unabated.

“As I speak now,” he told a gathering of church leaders in September, “there are over 20,000 illegal panners hiding in the mountains around Chiadzwa area. I need your support to eradicate this problem.”

San Francisco's Proposition H measure, which goes before voters on November 4, is a complicated measure that requires careful consideration. The arguments for and against it are both strong and convoluted. The impetus for Prop H is likely a global climate change crisis combined with San Francisco's reputation as a progressive city that is willing to make aggressive if controversial moves.

Let's start by exploring the basis of Prop H. It is known and heartily endorsed by the SF Bay Guardian as the "SF Clean Energy Act." "Proposition H is a Charter Amendment that would: require the public utilities commission to evaluate making the city the primary provider of electric power in San Francisco, including a comprehensive study of options for providing clean, secure, cost-effective electricity; mandate deadlines for the City to meet its energy needs through clean, renewable power sources; and allow the Board of Supervisors to approve the issuance of revenue bonds to pay for any public utility facilities without voter approval." The city would be mandated by Prop H to meet these deadlines: by 2012, at least 107 megawatts; by 2017, at least 51% of the City's electricity needs; by 2030, at least 75%; by 2040, 100%. Note that nuclear power is excluded from the definition of 'clean and renewable energy sources.'

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi recently spoke in favor of Proposition H at a "Yes on H" fundraiser. He gave an inspirational speech, calling upon voters to help San Francisco "put something on the road map of history of winning against a behemoth like PG&E" and "have a seat at the table to chart its own energy future."  Mirkarimi tackled the statement that Prop H is a "takeover," saying that it is a "feasability study," done "so we can really determine what the true path is for charting our own energy independence... It's our gateway to finding answers that are blessed by the City's constitution, so it's meaningful, and it has teeth, and it's binding and it's obligatory."

Beyond the study, Prop H is a Charter Amendment because it seeks to re-evaluate the relationship PG&E has with the City and grant the power to break ties if deemed appropriate and feasible. Although Mirkarimi cites that "we're doing what Sacramento did 55 years ago," it is helpful to understand that the move to shut down a nuclear power plant owned by SMUD and provide cleaner, cheaper energy was done with considerable federal assistance.

The city jumped at the chance a lifetime ago as their costs for acquiring facilities and building infrastructure were quite low compared to what San Franciscans could face in a similar operation today.

Also, those familiar with LA's Department of Water and Power may argue that being an electrical municipality doesn't necessarily make you cleaner than utilities like PG&E. Therefore, Prop H may start with a feasibility study, but the power it grants to the Board of Supervisors as a charter amendment is no small consideration.

If Prop H wasn't a charter amendment, the folks at PG&E might not strongly oppose it. In fact, it appears that PG&E is trying to attain clean energy in accordance with its customers' wishes; for example, the California Public Utilities Commission recently rejected a PG&E contract for wave-energy technology, saying that it would be too expensive and that it is "in a nascent stage."

What remains a thorn in Prop H's side, however, is that it is asking voters to give up their say in revenue bonding. By majority vote, the Board of Supervisors could issue revenue bonding without ever seeking public approval. This could be used to acquire PG&E's San Francisco facilities (although not limited to energy facilities) or construct new ones, with cost estimated "likely in the billions of dollars," according to City Controller Ben Rosenfield.

Personally, I can see several reasons for this significant amendment. One, it could streamline the process by removing the need to consult with voters on smaller decisions. Two, if you believe that we must move to renewable energy as soon as possible because we are in a climate change crisis, Prop H would facilitate swift action. Three, Prop H would give the City the power to purchase facilities that are not for sale, which is a bold and uncommon move.

So is the SFPUC ready to manage our electricity in addition to our water? Yes, it is true that San Francisco enjoys some of the cleanest tap water in the nation. However, the water is pristine at its origin and therefore "exempted from costly water filtration requirements" by the federal government. I previously had the idea that the SFPUC was praised for turning brown water into tasty, clear droplets, but perhaps my imagination bolted with the chance to glorify public works.

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors may already have the power to issue revenue bonding without voter approval, but the absence of a costly filtration system likely keeps cost comparatively low. We should consider that the Board and SFPUC, although not a band of superheroes, has not abused this ability in the past.

The San Francisco Republican Party voices their concern in this election's voter guide, saying, "If Proposition H passes the City would lose the more than $20 million a year that PG&E pays in taxes and fees. That means our taxes would need to go up to pay for this lost revenue or basic services, like libraries, police and fire services would need to be cut."

But is that really true? Consider how much consumers could be saving if SF were to run its own electrical facilities. Isn't the cost of taxes paid by PG&E passed on to the consumer? We could lose $20 million in taxes and fees, yes, but would your cost per kWh be reduced under SF municipal electricity?

The folks at SF Clean Energy sure seem to think so. I am concerned that the cost of purchasing necessary facilities and augmenting an aggressive renewable energy portfolio may easily run into the billions of dollars before taxpayers see relief.

Barack Obama wants to spend $15 billion a year on renewable energy over the next decade. If elected, how much funding can San Francisco hope to win? Can voters really count this chick before the highly controversial hatching process is finalized on Tuesday?

As I have become acquainted with Prop H over time, my opinion on whether to support it or oppose it has changed. In the past, I have heavily supported renewable energy at almost any cost, given my understanding of global climate change. However, in making our decisions we shouldn't forget that we can achieve the same goals via many different pathways.

In this case, my bone of contention is in revenue bonding authority; perhaps if Prop H gave San Franciscans the right to be involved in major funding decisions, I would back the measure 100%. (Simply mandating a feasibility study by the PUC and putting in place clean energy goals do not require a charter amendment.) In addition, I think that maybe a partnership between public and private entities should be emphasized and sought as a way to involve many capable players.

In the thick of political campaigns, enemies are perhaps made of otherwise beneficial partners. All things considered, I am currently undecided, and I'll use every last minute to weigh the risks and benefits before making my choice.

 

A rule proposed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to promote greener taxis suffered a breakdown on Friday. A federal district court judge struck down the rule because it attempts to set fuel efficiency standards, something the judge says only the federal government can do.

Specifically, the rule would have sought to require all of the city's 13,237 cabs to achieve a 25 MPG average by 2012, which would essentially mandate hybrid vehicles.

The Mayor's office offered a terse response saying, "The sad irony here is the laws being relied on by the plaintiff, the Clean Air Act and the Energy Policy and Conservation Act were designed to reduce air pollution and reduce our dependence on foreign oil - which is exactly what moving to fuel efficient cabs will do." The press release also promised to have the Taxi and Limousine Commission draft a new rule using incentives and disincentives to encourage hybrids, rather than efficiency requirements.

The Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, one of the lawsuit's filers, argues that available hybrids aren't robust enough for the rigors of city life and that they're less safe than the ubiquitous Crown Victoria.

This first issue sounds legit. The Crown Vic became the industry standard for NYC's yellow army because it's spacious and reliable, not for its race car looks. But I'm not buying the safety argument, especially when the seatbelt usage rate of most passengers is likely under 5%.

Still, I think it is well worth it to make the apple greener and this setback doesn't look to be a fatal one.

Source: New York Times

Photo by Flickr user Phillie Casablanca

Plug-in hybrids and smart grid technology independently and jointly have great potential to reduce emissions, eliminate foreign oil dependency and create business opportunities (and local jobs).

The Rocky Mountain Institute is leading the charge to make sure that these benefits are maximized and has been rounding up the top players through its "smart garage" initiative.

In October about 80 of us got together to discuss the challenges and opportunities for vehicle-to-grid integration, and RMI has released a document summarizing what was learned and how to move forward. The organization is following the open source philosophy and welcomes input from everyone affected -- from the auto industry, to EV enthusiasts, to communities and utilities.

The big challenges identified are as follows:

• Uncertain consumer demand hampers ability to start building xEVs in significant volumes
• Who will pay for the charging infrastructure?
• High battery costs/ uncertainty for key parameters
• How do we support consistency in utility regulation?
• Communications, billing, and charge management services/structures don’t exist

RMI, along with industry and interested players, is starting projects to address each of these challenges. The Smart Garage website has forums where anyone can participate in shaping the future of transportation, and welcomes participation from organization and individuals.

So if you believe in energy independence, clean jobs, peak oil, energy security, renewable energy, and the need to upgrade the grid, join in the discussion. It will be interesting to see how many other non-government organizations (eg. Plug-in America, the Apollo Alliance, etc.) also get involved.

After nearly a month of financial bloodletting, world financial markets finally showed some signs of recovery last week. While the rallies began with bargain-hunting investors, there's no question that the arrival of the first waves of some $3.3 trillion dollars pledged by world governments to stem the crisis played a role, as well. Along with relief for shell-shocked bankers and investors, these relief funds also contain significant sums earmarked for clean energy firms and renewable power sources.

Certainly, there's no question in my mind that additional government intervention on behalf of greener energy is a good thing. Favorable state subsidies have long been one of the major drivers of private investment in companies focusing on clean energy production. Similarly, taxing dirty and carbon-heavy fuels, or forcing companies to pay to offset the amount of particulate or heat-trapping emissions they create also makes clean energy a very attractive buy.

That having been said, I think the clean energy sector should have significant concerns about embracing government handouts to build their businesses. Economists and scientists alike have argued that clean energy's higher face value costs are more than offset by the environmental damage it prevents. Carbon emissions caps, by assigning a monetary value to a major aspect of the damage fossil fuel sources create, make it easier to compare the true price of each energy source. Fines for exceeding emissions limits can easily be reinvested to repair this damage, and to stimulate new growth in cleaner energy producing practices.

Government subsidies for clean-energy producing companies, or for consumers of business that buy energy from clean sources, also provide a means of holistic cost comparison between clean and non-renewable fuel sources. However, subsidies generally create this balance at taxpayer expense, and without developing a source of revenue that can be reinvested in further research the way a carbon credits system does. They may also lead to clean energy companies factoring subsidies into their business plans, creating corporations that may not be sustainable should the political winds blow in a different direction.

Handouts from the government, while they may look appealing, are often the worst possible option. The pressures of the free market are an extremely effective means of maximizing efficiency. While it may lead to a higher rate of failure among clean energy start-ups, the companies that do survive boast a balance sheet as free of waste as the energy produced. Aside from being more appealing to investors, self-sufficient clean energy producers also help refute popular opinion that 100% clean energy is an unrealistic goal, dependent on taxpayer support.

After the most recent bailout bill failed to pass the House of Representatives on its first attempt, it had to be piled high with so-called "sweeteners"—you might also call them "pork". While the current financial crisis has many legislators turning a blind eye to the additional costs of these measures, it's all but certain as the pendulum comes back the other way, that a good portion of these programs will be cut. When that day comes, it's in the best interests of taxpayers, the clean energy sector, and the world as a whole, for clean energy producers to be as self-reliant as possible.

DHL announced yesterday that the company will eliminate one third of the invoices it uses in its European shipping within the next two years. That translates to 6 million paper invoices that will be saved annually. In order to make a switch to an electronic billing system, DHL teamed with Accountis. The company worked with DHL for two years to create an electronic billing system, which will save nearly 2,400 trees per year and eliminate the emission of 600 tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Accountis markets its electronic invoicing programs as a way for organizations to meet their sustainability requirements: making the switch reduces not only paper needed, but end waste, energy for the manufacture and delivery of bills and all the associated paperwork for billing — purchase orders, statements, remittances and all the necessary details can be andled online just as easily as invoicing.

DHL has committed itself to improving its own carbon efficiency, as well as that of its subcontractors by 30 percent by 2020. It seems likely that the new system could also eliminate a huge cost for DHL — especially if the electronic billing system is expanded to handle all 18 million invoices the company issues in Europe annually.

Photo — DHL

I live in the District of Columbia and recently I got a booklet from the Department of Public Works detailing an expanded recycling program. DC residents already recycle more than the national average for many products and the new standards should only boost this number.

The new list of recyclables includes shopping bags, lawn furniture, plastic toys and I-really-hate-to-throw-this-away items like high number (#1-7!) plastics and yogurt containers. No word on kitchen sinks. About the only common containers you can't slip in the iconic blue bins are those made of Styrofoam.

Our nation's capital is also tackling e-waste by offering drop-off locations for defunct computers, TVs and other electronics. The district offers free paper shredding -- and I'm sure there's no connection between this service and the evidence-destroying needs of our upstanding politicians.

I'm a big believer that personal action can only do so much, that governments and grand efforts are required to save our planet. Still, as greentech continues to make an increasing share of the headlines with 5 gigawatt wind projects and Google's clean energy appetite, it's easy to miss the small steps toward sustainability.

There's no clearer sign of this type of little progress than not having to '# check' plastics anymore and watching our house recycling corner overflow with non-landfill bound stuff.

We live in a world that's defined by limits. A person can only live so long; a pitcher can only throw the ball so hard; a college student can only drink so much.

There are planetary limits too—which is precisely why we have a sustainability problem. If you put deer on an island (a small planet, as it were), they'll do fine until there are more deer than there is food to sustain them. At this point overshoot is reached, and in due course the system crashes. This is a gentle way of saying that the deer die off and the environment gets to regenerate.

The human population is now in planetary overshoot. The signs are everywhere as fisheries collapse, rainforests shrink, and so on. Yet overshoot is not only demographic, not only a function of too many people consuming too much. It also has an internal dimension. Not only are we living beyond our means as a species, we are also doing so as individuals, and in part this is because we have a wrongheaded, or perhaps the better word is "overshot," notion of what we're entitled to. We want things we can't really afford, whether it's our own house or his-and-hers cars. The American dream has taught us we can have it all; a spiritually challenged variation on the theme tells us we can have it all now; and the result is a pervasive cultural perception that financial overshoot is not just okay, it's right and proper and indeed the American Way.

In short, the financial crisis has an ecological dimension. We are in financial overshoot, and the reason we're in financial overshoot is because, with apologies to Billy Joel, we've got An Overshoot State of Mind.

Who's to blame? Since the global financial crisis broke, commentators on the right have tended to blame all those greedy poor people whose reach exceeded their grasp. That's a cheap and easy out, and in fact there's a word for it: scapegoating. At the end of the day, the blame lies elsewhere. Predatory mortgage lenders, greedy credit card companies, a broken health care system, runaway college tuition, and, yes, a certain soon-to-be ex-president who invited us to display our patriotism by shopping: these are just a few of the many culprits. And yes, many of us should have known better, only … our friends were doing it … and the whole country was doing it … and there was a massive Times Square ticker scrolling across the vast brow of the nation, from sea to shining sea, which read: Financial Overshoot Is Okay. Just Do It!

Hey: it can't be wrong, or even dumb, if everybody's doing it.

Only ... there are these laws about limits.

Welcome to System Crash Central.

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There's good news to be found in this mess.

Like it or not, our unsustainable habits will have to change. It's not like we have a choice about it: we'll have to start living within our means.

The adjustment will be wrenching, and to many it will feel cataclysmic. And no wonder: it's never easy to let go of a dream. We're going to have to learn to make do with less, and to be happy with less.

We're going to have to start finding happiness in things that you can't get by going into debt, like community and caring. We'll have to go back to basics and get in touch with some deep and basic truths. Like, love and gratitude are free.

I don't know about you, but this feels good to me. It feels like an opportunity.

And inevitable, too ... part of a grand ecological pattern: after overshoot, renewal.