A Brighter Shade of Green: Rebooting Environmentalism for the 21st Century

This is a longish piece by Ross Robertson that is a very interesting read. I like the idea of Bright Green vs. Dark Green.

Here is a small sample to whet your appetite.

That future will also be significantly more urban. “Manhattanites use fewer resources and less energy than anyone else in America,” writes Steffen—even people living in super-efficient green homes in the country. In fact, urban density is not only one of the best drivers of sustainable consumption but one of the best strategies for preserving wild nature as well. Rejecting the lavish inefficiency of the suburbs and learning how to integrate densely orchestrated urban communities with agricultural greenspace and healthy natural habitats will be essential to building a one-planet society. “The environmentalist aesthetic is to love villages and despise cities,” wrote Stewart Brand in MIT’s Technology Review:

My mind got changed on the subject a few years ago by an Indian acquaintance who told me that in Indian villages the women obeyed their husbands and family elders, pounded grain, and sang. But, the acquaintance explained, when Indian women immigrated to cities, they got jobs, started businesses, and demanded their children be educated. They became more independent, as they became less fundamentalist in their religious beliefs. Urbanization is the most massive and sudden shift of humanity in its history. Environmentalists will be rewarded if they welcome it and get out in front of it.

Everywhere that we see the rural-to-urban demographic swing around the world, Brand ex-plains—about two hundred thousand people a day leave the countryside for life in the city, and the planet just passed the fifty percent urban point this year—birthrates plummet and population growth stabilizes. That’s good news for developing nations being crushed under economic, environmental, and social pressures never before seen on Earth, because hand in hand with the challenges of urbanization comes an unprecedented explosion of opportunity.

Dusting off research: Algae to fuel

Soybeans produce about 50 gallons of oil per acre per year, and canola
produces about 130, LaStella said. Algae, however, produces about 4,000
gallons per acre a year, and he predicted it will go far beyond that.
He said algae require only sunshine and non-drinkable water to grow.
The demonstration pond showed algae will grow even when temperatures
fall below zero. – source here.

I’ve seen an interesting article pointing out that the aglae will grow well on wastewater as a feed source.

Biodiesel Made from Algae in Sewerage Ponds

Interesting article.
Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation has produced its first sample of
homegrown biodiesel fuel using algae sourced from sewerage ponds in its
region of New Zealand.
Check out the wikipedia entry on Biodiesel for more info.

A political rarity; Greg Sorbara compliments Finance Minister Flaherty

I saw this on TV last night and was pleased to actually see and hear one politician recognizing an opposing party’s political work.

“Ontario welcomes the proposed federal Working Income Tax Benefit, which will support people with low incomes. And we are pleased to see Ottawa’s proposal on the Capital Cost Allowance as a way of helping hard-hit manufacturers.” link to source.

All too often the only sound bite that is captured and/or presented is a critical comment that suggests that the budget presented is all crap. This is what the federal Liberals and NDP presented. I think that the federal conservatives have done a couple of good things with this budget including:

• rebates on fuel efficient vehicles *and* penalties on gas guzzling vehicles.
• tax incentives for big pharma to donate medicines to developing countries,
• the working income tax benefit, and
• A National Trust to protect land, buildings and national treasures.

The other item mentioned by Sorbara in the budget is the CCA for the manufacturing to have a two year window to write off new equipment along with the ACCA or accelerated Capital Cost Allowance to move from oil sands to green technology. Unfortunately, neither of these is a benefit to municipal utitilties that are starting to track their investments in capital but do not receive a tax benefit for doing so.

What municipalities need is an capital incentive program that replaces inefficient systems with green technologies for moving and treating water and wastewater.

Nice story

Ottawa picks up some ink on energy saving projects. Full story here.

Grist reports on the effciency of electric vs. combustion fuel cars

But even though the engines are more efficient, that doesn’t mean electric cars are more efficient overall. When you consider the fuel source, the calculations get tricky, because the source of electricity for an electric car can vary quite a bit. In a paper Tesla Motors published [PDF] recently, the company calculates that when the source of electricity is an efficient combined-cycle natural-gas generator, the fuel efficiency of the Roadster, even taking into account the power lost during transmission, is nearly twice that of the Prius. When the actual average energy mix of the U.S. grid was considered, the Roadster still beat all the other gasoline and diesel vehicles (even hybrids), though not by nearly as much. As far as pollution goes, check out this handy lifecycle assessment (hooray) to get a better sense of how different types of power sources affect the CO2 produced by different types of cars.

On the Tesla, you have to like this bit, “let’s look at the new “it” car for greens with means: the 250-mile-range, 0-to-60-in-four-seconds Tesla Roadster.”

Researchers study energy-saving method for small office buildings

Engineers have developed a method for “precooling” small office buildings and reducing energy consumption during times of peak demand, promising not only to save money but also to help prevent power failures during hot summer days. The method has been shown to reduce the cooling-related demand for electricity in small office buildings by 30 percent during hours of peak power consumption in California’s sweltering summer climate.