Phil Gutis's Blog: Curbing Pollution

Best of Green! NRDC Chosen "Best Political Watchdog" by TreeHugger!

2010-04-08T22:55:45Z

On behalf of all of NRDC -- our Board, our Members, supporters and activists and, of course, our staff -- a huge thank you to the editors and readers of TreeHugger. This afternoon, the NRDC family learned that NRDC was chosen as the “Best Political Watchdog” as part of TreeHugger's annual Best of Green competition.

Particularly gratifying was that NRDC was the choice of both the TreeHugger editors and its readers. Also gratifying were the very nice words that accompanied the selection:

The green movement equally needs people storming the barricades and walking the halls of power and working the lobbies in Washington, and there is no better example of doing the latter successfully than the NRDC. As environmental crusader and friend-of-TreeHugger Ed Begley Jr put it, "NRDC has been our tireless architects of change for decades. No one group does more for the environment than them."

What more could we say?

Unchopping a Tree: Videos from Maya Lin

2009-12-11T20:09:58Z

NRDC Trustee Maya Lin has a remarkable mind. The art and memorials that she's created have moved millions of people and left many of them speechless with emotion.

This afternoon CNN will air a story about one of her newest projects, a memorial titled What is Missing, which will be launched in several phases over the next several years. The CNN story this afternoon will preview a new video called "What is Missing: Unchopping a Tree," which will have its unveiling at the Copenhagen climate conference next week. It's aim is to stop the rapid deforestation of the planet.

You can see the video here:

Maya says that What is Missing will be her last memorial. It aims to motivate us about climate change and pollution in the way that only Maya can. You can watch the dedication ceremony for What is Missing at the California Academy of Science here:

We're proud to have Maya as an NRDC Trustee and I personally have tremendously enjoyed getting to know her and to see her mind at work as she tackles some of the world's most difficult issues.

Let us know what you think of her latest work in the comments section below. No promises, but I bet I can get her to respond to some of your thoughts or questions.

Why We Need a Good Obama Speech and Soon

2008-12-17T15:10:33Z

Call me a masochist. I've been doing some reading of Jimmy Carter's speeches lately and I'm struck by two points: he called for all the right stuff when it came to energy policy, but, and most importantly, he fell completely flat in inspiring us as a nation to rally and cut our energy use and our dependence on foreign oil.

I heard last night from an influential environmentalist and NRDC trustee. She wondered if NRDC is truly pleased with the environment and energy officials chosen by President-elect Barack Obama and said: "I just don't feel the urgency from this group....where is the fire?"

A very valid question and one that should give us great pause. The Blogojevich pay for play investigation, the continuing fallout of the various financial scandals and the bailouts are dominating the news.

But we also haven't heard much inspiration from Obama lately.

Now to be fair, this is a time for putting together a team, for the endless news conferences with soon-to-be government officials who tend to -- appropriately? -- seem rather scared and sober about the responsibilities they are soon to take on. And as Obama himself has noted, we only have one President at a time.

But I wonder -- worry? -- if governing will strip Obama of his ability to inspire. I know I could use a good Obama speech right about now, one like he delivered election night. One like he gave at the Democratic convention. Hell, I'll even take a version of his standard stump speech.

I do believe that the President-elect is picking an excellent team to lead. And I hope that he won't be so lost in the nuances and challenges of government that he'll lose his ability to inspire.

I can't even begin to say how tragic it would be for Obama to turn into Jimmy Carter 2.0. Right on the policy yet so lacking on the inspiration.

San Francisco to Detroit: Drop Dead?

2008-11-23T00:53:30Z

On the same day that congressional leaders threw in the towel on a bailout for the auto industry, three Bay Area mayors joined an innovative startup in backing a $1 billion plan to create the modern day Detroit.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, the startup Better Place pledged to build the "re-charging infrastructure that must be in place before most consumers would consider buying or leasing an electric car."

The report continued:

Better Place, headed by former high-tech executive Shai Agassi, plans to install about 250,000 charging ports, 200 battery-exchange stations and a control center to service Bay Area electric car drivers. The goal is to have most of the system in place by 2012.

"We need to put together a new industry, and it needs to scale very fast," Agassi said at a press conference in San Francisco. He was flanked by San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed as well as Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Perhaps the timing of the collapse of the talks in auto bailout Washington and the announcement from Better Place was simply a coincidence. Or perhaps the press conference with the three mayors was quickly pulled together as it became clear that the congressional talks were going to fail.

Either way, the message is pretty clear: Bay Area innovators are once again ascendant and what's left of the Big Three and a good portion of the Michigan economy is in the bullseye. Anyone willing to bet that Silicon Valley will miss? Not I.

Yes We Can

2008-11-05T14:54:03Z

I'm not much of a party guy so my husband, our laptops and assorted dogs spent last night sprawled around our family room watching the election returns. We'd often speak over the drone of the talking heads to blurt out an interesting statistic from some website or another or to remark on how the evening was going.

But when Barack Obama spoke around midnight, we quietly watched the Democratic candidate transformed into the President-elect of the United States. And when Obama began his "yes we can," I found myself silently chanting along.

I chanted not because NRDC had endorsed the President-elect. As a non-partisan organization, we cannot -- and do not -- endorse candidates for political office. Instead my "yes we can" was aimed primarily at the thought that we now would have the leadership necessary to meet our energy and climate challenges, at building a clean energy economy by manufacturing plug-in hybrid cars, growing dedicated fuel crops and developing clean power sources like wind, solar and geothermal.

I thought yes we can unleash American ingenuity and regain our national competitive edge in this global economy. I thought that yes we can find the solutions to what President-elect Obama called a "planet in peril."

We can do all this through responsible governing and smart planning and by encouraging our new leaders to express an inspiring vision of a better American economy based not on elaborate financial transactions but on the production of cutting edge technology and the delivery of high value services.

And finally, I thought yes we can because I remembered the mailing we received from Rep. Patrick Murphy, our local first-term member of Congress who won wide re-election last night. His mailing featured a huge picture of a wind turbine under construction at a former U.S. Steel site in nearby Fairless Hills in Bucks County, PA. "Quickly," Murphy writes, the abandoned factory "has become a green energy hub, supplying the area with jobs that were lost when U.S. Steel stopped manufacturing at the site."

Over the summer, when chants of "drill baby drill" echoed around the country, many environmentalists were near tears. Being a glass half full kind of guy, I tried to remind my colleagues (or anyone else that would listen) of the often soaring rhetoric we heard from politicians of both political parties about transforming our national infrastructre for the clean energy economy.

Last night, as I closed the laptop and headed off to bed, it felt absolutely wonderful to know that the voters had put into office those who spoke most passionately about seizing the energy and climate opportunities before us. And then I smiled and thought, yes, we can.

Oily, Day Two

2008-09-18T15:30:00Z

Day two and the feeling of being dunked in oil hasn't lifted. In fact, given the financial news rocking Wall Street and the soaring price of oil futures, I'm left feeling greasier than ever.

The latest reports from Washington find the Senate not sure what to do about the House energy bill and the many proposals rising on that side of the Capitol. And unlikely voices are getting louder. This morning's Washington Post has an opinion article from Henry Kissenger and Martin Feldstein:

"The tripling in the price of oil from $30 a barrel in 2001 to around $100 today represents the largest transfer of wealth in human history. The 13 OPEC members alone are expected to earn more than $1 trillion this year from oil sales. Inevitably, this will bring with it major political consequences. Not the least significant aspect of this political and economic earthquake is that it is being exacted upon the world's most powerful nations by some of the world's weakest. Yet the victims stand by impotently as if the price of oil were some natural event determined by a competitive economic market that is not and cannot be influenced by political forces."

In some ways, the solution is quite simple. We need to end our dependence on Big Oil, invest our petrodollars instead in rebuilding our infrastructure. The jobs -- blue, white and green -- that would be created could never been outsourced and would result in real American wealth, not the fantasy Monopoly money that much of Wall Street seemed to be built upon.

NRDC's new friend, Oily, is making his latest appearance on the website of Politico. This time, he's more animated about his message to Washington: Big oil corrupts our government, pollutes our oceans and beaches and leads to national insecurity.

The alternative: clean energy alternatives and efficiency. Tom Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded is an instant bible for those of us who believe we can do much economic good -- and reverse global warming -- by improving our energy policies. In the interestingly titled chapter, "If It Isn't Boring, It Isn't Green," Friedman quotes Rick Duke, the Director of NRDC's new Center for Market Innovation.

"If we do enough to scale energy efficiency, the money we save would be enough to pay to clean up -- to decarbonize -- the remaining supply of electrons and fuels so we could power our economy in a way that is consistent with containing climate change," Duke says.

There's much more to explore on this topic and in Friedman's book. But as we await an awakening from our political leadership, I wonder what day three will bring.

Oily

2008-09-17T15:30:09Z

I woke up feeling more than a bit greasy this morning. It was almost as if I someone had snuck into my bedroom and dumped a barrel or two of oil on me. And my shower didn't help all that much.

Why? Last night, the House passed an energy bill that the Los Angeles Times termed a "stunning political turnabout ... aimed at rebutting Republican election-year attacks that the Democratic majority wasn't doing enough to try to ease the public's pain at the pump."

To be fair, there is much good in the House bill. Tax incentives for renewable energy and efficiency and a requirement that utilities to generate 15 percent of their electricity by 2020 from cleaner sources, such as the sun and wind.

But the drilling provisions represent another huge giveaway to Big Oil, as NRDC says in an advertisement featuring our new friend "Oily" that are running this morning in the print version of Politico, Congress Daily AM and Congressional Quarterly Today. And they represent the culmination of a campaign designed to dupe the American public into believing that new domestic drilling will do anything to end spiraling energy prices.

The truth is that drilling offshore our coasts will only make things worse. Offshore rigs have a long history of oil spills and there's no guarantee that any oil found on our coasts will be funneled to Americans. We don't need to risk permanent damage to our beaches so the oil companies can make even more profit selling oil to China and India.

Increased drilling only prolongs our dependence on oil and will not lower gas prices. Instead of trying to drill our way out of this problem, we need to act now to become less dependent on oil.

We need to improve energy efficiency as well as invest in renewable energy and new energy technology. We need more choices for energy efficient cars, and ways to make our houses and offices more energy efficient. Where it will work, we need more choices for ways to get around, like buses and trains. We need to build our communities so people have more transportation choices.

Interestingly enough, the few paragraphs above represent not just NRDC policy. They are drawn from the words of voters -- moderates and those more liberal, low and moderate income, from representative communities in the midwest and east coast -- from focus groups in recent weeks.

These voters were quite angry and resigned to the fact that Washington seemed unable to break its addiction to oil.

They believed, as do I, that the American people are resourceful and innovative and that we can build a new energy economy and in the process create a new energy economy with good, well-paying jobs that cannot be shipped overseas.

Let's hope that yesterday's vote in the House marked a low point in the ongoing energy debate and that a new Congress and administration will finally begin to break our addiction to a finite resource that the world is consuming at a rapidly increasing rate.

For the real facts on energy policy and gas prices, see this collection of NRDC materials. They make for a good read, hopefully we can persuade more policy makers in Washington to give them at least a cursory review.

Where Do I Sign?

2008-09-12T18:32:34Z

If your husband is a tennis fanatic like mine then your television is going to be commandeered for much of early September as the world’s tennis superstars slam their way through the U.S. Open. And this year, in addition to some really great tennis, we saw a barrage of advertising from IBM promoting its green server business. (We also saw a healthy dose of the US Open itself going green -- thanks to some excellent work by my NRDC colleagues and Billie Jean King, but I'll leave that for another post.)

Now it is true -- as noted on the Green Data Center blog -- that the IBM ads are marketing material through and through, but I have to say that it is some of the best marketing material I've ever seen. The ads (see below for an example) make a strong financial argument that we all need to hear.

The concept is simple: a young woman brings an energy efficiency plan involving the firm's data centers to her boss who all but ridicules her as a tree-hugging, granola-eating idiot. When the boss asks why in the world he should sign off on her plan, she calmly responds: "This plan could cut our energy costs by 40 percent and we spent $18 million on energy last year."

Mr. Bluster can't sign the papers fast enough.

Luckily business leadership is listening and turning marketing material like the IBM ads into reality. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that big computer makers are spotting a trend.

"Rising electricity prices, coupled with new computer servers that run hotter and require more power, has corporate technology buyers looking for ways to cut back," the article by William Bulkeley says. "Power use in data centers -- the large, climate-controlled rooms that house a company's computer servers, storage devices and communications switches -- doubled from 2000 to 2006 and now accounts for about 1.5% of U.S. electricity consumption, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. A recent McKinsey & Co. report says that world-wide, the centers' carbon emissions exceed those of Argentina."

And growing quickly. Forbes.com today has a story about Cisco and its plans for worldwide data center domination. "The giants of the Internet--Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Amazon--plus fast-moving Chinese upstarts like Baidu and TenCent, are building more of these giant centers. Microsoft figures it will expand its network of data centers 64-fold over the next few years, just to handle some 200 services, including Xbox online gaming, video and corporate software rented over the Web."

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: Congress will adopt global warming legislation once enough states and big business interests see the "green" light. Until then, sound energy policy will too often be ridiculed as nothing more than good PR.

Hurray for Home Depot!

2008-06-24T15:36:27Z

This weekend, the husband and I stopped by Home Depot to see if we could find shelves to house my out-of-control Kidrobot collection. We got our shelves -- at a huge discount in fact -- but still walked out a couple thousand dollars poorer.

How? Well, we finally bought a new refrigerator, replacing our ancient grumbling sweating box with a sleek French door model from LG. Most importantly, it was an Energy Star model and from I could tell from comparison shopping, it operates at the lowest end of the energy consumption scale.

So what transformed a simple trip for cheap shelving into a major investment in home appliances? Home Depot was offering a gift card worth as much as $250 for buying an Energy Star appliance. Combine that with a 10 percent sale and free delivery and removal of the existing refrigerator and I figure we saved about $600. That's real money and we're not even talking about the energy savings.

After our credit card failed to melt at checkout, I felt good about the purchase and about Home Depot for offering the $250 gift card as an incentive to switch to Energy Star. I recognize that it is their enlightened self interest to help sell refrigerators and other appliances but it also educates -- and prods -- folks like us who knew our refrigerator was a energy monster to make the shift.

And then this morning, while flipping through The New York Times, I saw the prominent news that Home Depot has started a recycling program for compact fluorescent light bulbs. Home Depot -- the nation's second largest retailer -- will announce today that it will take back CFLs at all of its 1,973 stores in the United States, a move that the Times says will create "the nation's most widespread recycling program for the bulbs."

CFLs carry a very small amount of mercury -- roughly equivalent in size to the tip of a ballpoint pen -- and, according to an excellent NRDC fact sheet, it is sealed within the glass tubing.

I've previously applauded Home Depot for starting, among other programs, a new line of environmentally friendly paints and for actively encouraging the purchase of energy saving bulbs.

"We're trying to do the right thing," Ron Jarvis, Home Depot's senior vice president for environmental innovation, told the Times. "Some of the things we do are for the community and not for the bottom line."

The cynical journalist in me finds that really hard to swallow, but in this case I'm prepared to let go and believe. It feels good to do that every once in a while.

It'll Cost You

2008-06-18T17:45:36Z

Couldn't resist this nugget from the front page of today's USA Today: "Speeders to Pay Extra for Police Fuel."

According to the paper, the City Council of suburban Holly Springs, GA, decided to help cover the spiraling cost of gasoline by charging speeders an extra $12 "fuel surcharge."

Holly Spring Police Chief Ken Ball tells the paper:

"I was hearing that Delta, pizza deliverers, florists were adding fuel charges to their services and I thought, why not police departments."

Why not indeed. In some ways this seems to be the perfect response to high gas prices because in addition to being against the law speeding cuts your gas mileage.

In fact, the Alliance to Save Energy says that road rage activities such as "speeding, rapid acceleration and rapid braking can lower gas mileage by 33 percent at highway speeds." My colleague Deron Lovaas writes often about these issues on his Switchboard blog. His posts are well worth reading.

Apparently the Atlanta city council has already passed a similar surcharge and Chief Ball says he is being inundated with calls from other government officials around the country eager to follow his lead.

As Holly Springs Mayor tells USA Today: "This is a self-taxing system. If you don't break the law, you don't pay the tax."

Nega Whats?

2008-06-18T17:05:51Z

When we purchased our slice of paradise near New Hope, PA, we knew the house had not received much tender loving care. But we did not realize at the time, however, that it hadn't really been touched in the 30 years since it was built by a guy who apparently did not know what he was doing.

So step by step, we're tearing the place apart and slowly but surely, we'll end up building a new house where the old one stands. A few weeks ago, for example, we sadly decided to get rid of the greenhouse that stretched the length of the back of the house. Broken seals and a heating system that stopped working a long time ago meant the greenhouse was little more than a heat bomb in the summer and a refrigerator in the winter. Trying to heat it or keep it cool drove our electricity bills ever northward and our plants never really stood a chance.

And now it is time -- finally -- to get rid of the refrigerator, oven and stove. We're not certain, but it seems like they were original to the house which means that they were manufactured long before Energy Star was even on the drawing board. Oh yeah, and there's the central air conditioner that hasn't been doing much of late as the East Coast suffered through an early summer heat wave.

All of this to say that I'm really getting into energy efficiency. I've long found it a fascinating topic but more on a theoretical level. But now as a homeowner of an energy disaster, I'm really diving in. And luckily for me, my day job also requires that I do a lot of thinking about energy efficiency.

My most recent find was an excellent authoritative briefing from the editors of the Economist, one of my favorite magazines that I rarely have a chance to read when it comes out. This weekend, I had a chance to catch up on reading (and recycling) and found a deep dive on Energy Efficiency. Titled "The Elusive Negawatt," the article quotes many energy efficiency experts such as NRDC's own MacArthur Award winning genius David Goldstein and Art Rosenfeld, the subject of a long article in NRDC's OnEarth magazine a while back.

The crux of the article -- as well as NRDC's advocacy on the topic -- is that energy efficiency has long been known as the best method of curbing the world's increasing demand for energy. And that the term "negawatt" is quickly becoming the preferred shorthand term for energy efficiency.

There is so much in this article to reflect on that that I'll be returning to it in future posts. But the bottom line, according to the Economist, is that "big investments in energy efficiency would more than pay for themselves, and fairly fast ... Moreover, with ample profits to be made, financing should be easy to attract." The amount that needs to be invested, the Economist reports, is in the tune of $170 billion a year until 2020, a staggeringly large number but only 1.6 percent of global annual investment in bricks and mortar and other fixed capital.

I'm persuaded that my home infrastructure investments will provide a speedy return on my dollar. Luckily for our survival on the planet, it seems like business and government are beginning to see the opportunities too.

San Francisco Does it Better

2007-11-19T18:14:17Z

When you are deep in home renovation land, there are few places you visit more often than Home Depot and Lowes. Most weekends involve at least once visit and sometimes we actually end up going on both Saturday and Sunday.

Yesterday, we stopped by Home Depot to pick up some stuff and I was delighted to see that they too were offering branded reusable cloth bags. (I wasn't so delighted when I tried to buy one and use it at the checkout counter and the staff could not figure out how to open it; in fact, in trying to open the bag, they broke it and we just carried our few items out to the car.)

Scenes like this (without breakage, I hope) are increasingly common across the United States where more and more stores are selling reusable bags. And starting tomorrow in San Francisco, the retail scene will be changing even more dramatically.

That's when, as the San Francisco Chronicle writes today, "plastic grocery store bags are going, going, gone."

"The 180 million plastic bags city officials estimate are handed out in the city each year end up as litter on city streets, clog storm drains, harm wildlife, and contaminate and jam machines used in recycling," the paper writes. "And then there is the giant patch of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean that scientists are monitoring, estimated to weigh 3 million tons and cover an area twice the size of Texas. The patch is about 1,000 miles west of San Francisco, but plastic dumped in the ocean here can end up there."

Even better, San Francisco is requiring that paper bags must be made of at least 40 percent high-grade recycled paper and Jack Macy, commercial recycling coordinator for the SF Department of the Environment, told the paper that many stores are using bags made from 100 percent recycled paper.

That makes the most sense. While there are some creative re-uses of plastic bags emerging these days, I think its better that we as a society switch back to paper while we train ourselves to bring our own.

And since we can't probably rely completely on business to do this on its own, I think the San Francisco model makes the most sense. Forward looking local governments can often do it better.

My name is Phil and ...

2007-09-16T17:46:17Z

I'll admit it. I'm an addict. I'm completely addicted to Diet Coke in all of its many varieties. Regular, with Lime and now even Diet Coke plus with minerals and vitamins added. (I do giggle when I buy those; the absurdity of thinking that I'm getting healthy while getting my daily fix is almost too silly to comprehend.)

Thankfully, I'm also addicted to recycling so I can justify all of those empty soldiers lined up on my desk awaiting the trip to the recycling bin. (My husband never knows what he'll find when he opens my suitcase after a long business trip. Often there are more empty bottles than I'd like to admit stuffed into every nook and cranny.)

All of this is why I was delighted to hear the other morning that the Coca-Cola Co. is building a new recycling facility in Spartanburg, SC. The company's long-term goal is to see each and every one of its bottles shredded -- yes 100 percent -- and returned to the PET supply stream. An admirable goal even if the timeline for achieving the 100 percent nirvana was somewhat squishy. You can read more about it here in an appropriately skeptical story from Cox News Service.

One great factoid from the Cox story: "Currently, all of the PET that can be recovered through bottle reclamation efforts is gobbled up by an avid recycling industry that uses the material for a variety of products, including apparel and carpeting."

One not so great fact that nearly sent me off the side of the road (warning: listening to NPR while driving to work can be dangerous!) was the kicker to the story. Only about less than 20 percent of PET containers are currently being recycled around the country. Twenty percent? I thought recycling by now was an American as American pie.

But later that day, while on the phone with some folks in Knoxville, Tennessee, I learned that their communities do not yet offer curbside recycling. Not of bottles, not of newspapers, not of anything. Those who care enough about the environment to want to recycle have to lug stuff to a neighborhood recycling center. And we can just imagine how often that happens.

I often hear the question about what people who care about global warming can do once they've changed their light bulbs to compact fluorescents.The answer is typically a somewhat less-than-satisfying "urge Congress to get serious about global warming legislation."

Hearing that NPR report and from those folks in Knoxville has planted another thought in my mind. If we are serious about protecting the environment, maybe we need to return to our roots and adopt an aggressive campaign to force 100 percent of American communities to adopt curbside recycling. Anybody want to sign up for that campaign with me?

An Invitation to PETA

2007-09-11T14:29:14Z

NRDC hasn’t been visited by any chickens driving hummers, but we did get a letter from PETA earlier this summer asking about our policies regarding global warming and factory farming and vegetarianism. Our response to PETA just went out the electronic door and I thought it might spark some interesting conversation.

But first some background: In a much-noted story in the New York Times, PETA said it would begin to target the “headquarters of environmental groups, if they don't start shaping up.”

PETA apparently has written to more than 700 environmental groups, asking them to promote vegetarianism. NRDC received its copy of the form letter in mid-July and we’ve had an interesting internal conversation about it over the summer.

The facts are, in fact, fairly clear cut. The energy that goes into raising, transporting, processing and distributing livestock and livestock-related food products has a huge impact on the Earth’s atmosphere. According to a recent United Nations report, livestock activities overall are responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Much of the carbon dioxide emissions attributable to livestock come from the deforestation caused by the expansion of pastures and arable land for livestock feed crops, particularly in developing countries.

And two of the greenhouse gases emitted by livestock have a far higher potential to warm the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. The unique digestive process of some livestock is responsible for 37 percent of anthropogenic methane, which has 23 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. Livestock manure also emits 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. (Livestock are also responsible for almost two-thirds of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems.)

Consequently, reducing meat consumption would indeed help to reduce livestock contributions to global warming, as well as to local and regional air pollution. And there are other benefits as well. Deforestation could be limited, more lands could be made available to crow crops for people food and/or biofuels. (Thanks to my NRDC colleague Bill Dornbos for the research effort.)

NRDC’s internal policies, which we’ve recently strengthened, is to limit the amount of beef and other meats served at NRDC events and to offer a wide range of vegetarian options. We’re also looking into how we can best advise our offices about which fish options to offer given the devastating impact over-fishing is having on the global fisheries.

So PETA is correct in its assumption that eating less meat will help the global warming situation. And a pretty hard-core vegetarian myself and a former member of PETA (at least I think my membership has lapsed), I can’t even fault them for their chicken-driving tactics. For the most part, I love the way PETA makes a point and that’s why I joined and will probably re-up at some point.

As usual, PETA has approached this issue with -- to put it nicely -- a laser-like focus. But there’s more than one solution to this enormous problem and we’ve made an offer to the folks at PETA that I sincerely hope they will take up.

We’ve invited PETA to give us a buzz so we can talk with them about their offices and transportation.

NRDC has focused a great deal of energy over the years in making sure that our operations are as green as possible from an energy perspective and we’d love to make our expertise in this area available to PETA. (Our Santa Monica office, for example, was at one point, the greenest building in the country and still holds a platinum LEED rating.)

I’ll let you know if they respond to our offer. It may be the most interesting indication of just how serious PETA is about solving global warming.

Text of NRDC’s letter to PETA follows:
September 10, 2007
Bruce Friedrich
Vice President, PETA
501 Front Street
Norfolk, VA 23510
Dear Mr. Friedrich:
Thank you for your letter of July 16th in which you raised a concern about NRDC’s approach to global warming and food choices.
We share the urgency of your concern about all sources of global warming, and the impact that many types of agricultural practices -- including the raising of livestock -- can have on the problem. NRDC has in fact been very involved in the fight against factory farms and the air and water pollution they generate.
On the global warming front, NRDC is leading the fight to cut emissions from power generation and transportation at the state, federal and international levels and with corporations around the world. We will continue to make that a priority by advocating numerous specific policies and economy-wide carbon (and equivalent) limits.
With those priorities in mind, we have worked hard to green our offices and offset our business travels. We have an extraordinary level of expertise in these areas and are very interested in talking with PETA about ways you could address power and transportation issues with your organization.
NRDC also believes that personal choices and behavior can make a real difference in fighting global warming and reflects that belief on our websites and other educational materials. We will over time add more information on our consumer-focused materials about the important environmental benefits of dietary choices. (Our own internal organizational policy is to limit beef and other meats served at NRDC events and to offer a wide range of vegetarian options.)
Thank you again for your letter and interest in fighting global warming. If you are interested in pursuing opportunities to green your offices and travels, please let me know.
Sincerely,
Phil Gutis
Director of Communications

Why I Have Hope

2007-09-02T15:06:39Z

MIT's Technology Review (free registration required) just published its list of young innovators under 35, those scientists who the editors say have the most exciting inventions and research. "Their work -- spanning medicine, computing, communications, electronics, nanotechnology and more -- is changing our world," the Technology Review says.

Here's the list of scientist who gave me hope that we can innovate our way out of the global warming mess. I can't say that I always understood what they were trying to do, but I trust those smart folks at MIT ...

Dave Berry -- Renewable Petroleum from microbes. If Vinod Khosla thinks it is worth investing money in, I'd bet on it too.

"Since receiving his bachelor's degree from MIT in 2000, Berry has helped develop a way to treat stroke, thought up a new approach to cancer therapy, and, most recently, created a system to genetically engineer microbes to produce biofuels. He has 21 patent applications pending, and his intellectual curiosity touches on therapeutic medicine, diagnostic devices, and now, most notably, alternative energy technologies. His innovations in energy form the conceptual basis of LS9, a California-based renewable-petroleum company that has received $5 million in venture funding from Flagship and Khosla Ventures in California (see "Better Biofuels," July/August 2007)."

Javier García-Martínez -- New zeolites for cracking petroleum. This one really stretches my brain cells, but I think the editors are suggesting that García-Martínez's work will make refining petroleum more efficient. And efficiency when it comes to fuel can only be a good thing, nu?

"Increasing the pore size of the zeolites would allow a larger fraction of crude oil to be converted into useful products. Companies have spent three decades and millions of dollars trying to increase pore size, without much success."

Rachel Segalman -- Cheap electricity from heat. Wasted energy is bad no matter how you look at it. And if Segalman can get my laptop and I across the country on one battery charge, well, I'd love her forever!

"Most of the energy in fuels is wasted as heat. But much of that heat could be converted to electricity by "thermoelectric" materials--if they were cheaper and more efficient. Now Rachel Segalman, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, has discovered that cheap organic molecules can be used to generate electricity from heat. So far, the voltage produced is small, but Segalman and colleagues are modifying the molecules and inventing new devices to harness them. Such devices could harvest heat in, say, computers, to extend laptop battery life."

Xudong Wang -- Powering the nanoworld. This is another brain stretcher, but it seems like a brilliant idea (once you get past concerns regarding nanotechnology.)

When Xudong Wang finished his PhD in materials science at Georgia Tech at the end of 2005, he knew he had a good thing going. He opted to stay put in the lab of Zhong Lin Wang (no relation), sure that he and his lab mates were close to creating a new nanotech-based generator--an invention they felt could change the future of nanotechnology. His risk paid off earlier this year when Science published a paper he coauthored, describing a novel device that converts ultrasonic waves--high-frequency mechanical vibrations--into electricity. The tiny device turns out a steady 0.5 nanoamperes of current that engineers may one day be able use to power implantable biosensors, remote environmental monitors, and more. "It's a very cool concept," says Peidong Yang, a nanowire researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. "Vibrational energy is everywhere." If Wang's devices can harness it cheaply, "the impact could be big," Yang says."

Neil Renninger -- Hacking microbes for energy. The Gates Foundation thinks this guy is onto something. Another voice I'm willing to trust when it comes to innovation.

He began by identifying molecules that would work well as fuels and were compatible with existing engines and delivery infrastructures; then he found a way to combine biological and chemical processes to manufacture them. So far, Amyris has created microbes that can produce candidate replacements for biodiesel, jet fuel, and gasoline. "Now we need to tinker with the bug to squeeze out the last bit of metabolic flux that turns something from interesting to cheap enough to burn," he says.

That's a lot of hope to garner from one magazine. And multiply these individuals by the tens of thousands (or more) scientists working on these problems and you do begin to think we can smart our way out of our messes.