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The Indian government has welcomed biofuels with open arms. Faced with a rapidly growing economy, the world’s second-largest population and an eye-watering fuel import bill, finding a renewable domestic power source has become a top priority.

The country’s recently-revised national biofuel policy, announced in September 2008, sets out the government’s intentions in black-and-white: to produce 20 per cent of the country’s diesel from crops by 2017, primarily from plantations of jatropha (Jatropha curcas). This means that the oilseed-bearing shrub, already introduced in some states, needs to be planted on an additional 14 million hectares of the country’s so-called ‘wasteland’. This has ignited fierce debate: supporters see the move as the solution to the fuel-versus-food conundrum, while critics are fearful that millions of peasants, who rely on these lands, will lose out.

Wasteland – a misnomer

A far cry from the post-industrial ‘brown field’ sites familiar to planners in the developed world, India’s wastelands have historical resonance. Classified in colonial times as areas that could not be cultivated and which were, therefore, unable to produce revenue, everything from forests to semi-jungle to wetlands fell into the category of ‘wasteland’. But, quite unlike the idea of a barren wilderness, these vast areas – comprising about 25 percent of India’s landmass – are more appropriately described as marginal lands, and have supported millions of the country’s poorest people for centuries.

‘Wastelands’ are a vital source of fodder for poor rural livestock keepers. (Photo: WREN Media)

Traditionally, local communities have looked after these lands as common resources, coming to depend on them for food, fodder, fuel wood and medicine. In terms of their day-to-day importance, the figures speak for themselves: around 20 percent of poor households’ income and over 60 percent of their fuel wood come from common property resources. In the mixed farming systems of the country’s semi-arid regions, some three-quarters of people depend on the commons for grazing. Nationwide, the India-based NGO Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) estimates that the commons contribute up to US$5 billion to poor rural households. And, with investment and proper management, the organisation believes the commons could supply a quarter of the country’s fodder needs. These commons also perform important ecological functions, providing habitats for wildlife, harbouring rainwater and absorbing greenhouse gases.

For whose benefit?

India’s common lands have been under threat for at least the past half-century, with between 25-50 per cent already lost due to population pressure and increasing degradation. Little wonder the proposed jatropha plantations are contentious. “By pursuing the energy security of the few – the middle classes and the rich – we are compromising the livelihood security of the poor,” laments Subrata Singh of FES.

The government has tried to find a win-win solution. In an attempt to help the poor share the rewards of the country’s anticipated biofuel boom, the expansion of jatropha production is taking place through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). Under proposed plans, local communities will be paid to plant, tend and harvest the crop on common land. But critics argue that once jatropha is in the ground, livelihoods will become irrevocably tied to the productivity of the crop and the stability of its market price.

While jatropha supporters point to the crop’s near-magical ability to tolerate harsh, drought-like conditions, others have suggested that official estimates of its productivity on suboptimal land have been exaggerated. If the crop fails to live up to expectations the poor will have traded access to precious land in return for neither food, fodder, fuel, medicine – nor a source of income. “Eventually, planting these areas with biofuels might force people from the land,” continues Singh. “We are concerned they might become ecological refugees and migrate to urban areas for their livelihoods.”

Jatropha farming on common land has begun in Andhra Pradesh. (Photo: WREN Media)

FES has been working with state governments to help communities achieve legal recognition for the wasteland commons. It has already assisted communities in six states to establish long-term leases over the areas they depend on and is promoting investment in land restoration through the NREGS. The organisation is also working with the South Asia Pro-Poor Livestock Programme to document the value of the commons to poor livestock keepers, to protect the land and to help other communities diversify into animal husbandry.

Despite progress in these areas, India is simply too large for FES to protect all the affected communities and jatropha plantations have already swallowed-up pockets of common land. Significantly, in the same month that the government unveiled its new biofuels target, state-run refinery Bharat Petroleum announced plans to invest US$480 million in jatropha production. The race for ‘wasteland’ is well underway.

This report originally appeared on the website of The New Agriculturalist and is republished here with permission.

Absent a rigorous examination of statistics, meaningful dialogue about environmental issues is impossible. This is particularly challenging now that environmentalism is generally recognized to be inextricably linked not only with the endlessly complex science of ecology, but with the dismal science of economics as well. To try to quantify the rational basis for a legitimate ideology of environmentalism is not easy.

One way to productively further the dialogue of rational environmentalism is to publish online interactive calculator of hopefully instructive simplicity, quantitatively presenting options in terms of costs and benefits for environmental issues management. To this end, we have recently added two new online interactive calculators, Wind Energy per Area and Solar Energy per Area.

In both cases the user may calculate the area required to set up solar fields or wind farms that will generate meaningful quantities of electricity – power sufficient to electricify entire cities, if not the entire world – in this dawning electric age. Because solar and wind power are intermittant, users are provided the input “yield” (constant percent of maximum output) in order to come up with the unit termed “constant gigawatts,” which refers to the average continuous output into the grid from a solar or wind generating source. For example, an entire year of 1.0 constant gigawatt output would constitute one gigawatt-year, or 8.8 billion kilowatt-hours.

What is quite interesting in the case of wind and solar energy is that using these calculators, wind farms and solar fields appear to require about the same amount of area to produce a given amount of electricity. If you assume a wind farm consists of 2.5 megawatt, 25% yield turbines on towers 125 meters high and 250 meters apart, you will find, using our spreadsheet, that a constant output of 1.0 gigawatts of wind energy will require a wind farm 100 square kilometers in area. Similarly, our solar calculator indicates that for a solar field to generate a constant energy output of 1.0 gigawatts, an area of 99 square kilometers would be required. This virtually equivalent area is based on assuming a 1.0 square mile solar field putting out 150 megawatts in full sun – a reasonable expectation – with a yield of 17.5%.

The world’s first 5.0 megawatt wind turbine, operating since 2004 on the southwest coast of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. (Photo: RE Power)

Using this reasoning, when you compare the area of the planet required to replace conventional fuels with solar fields vs. wind farms, wind and solar become interchangeable variables. So how much area of solar fields (or wind farms) would be required for their output to fulfill 100% of the world’s current energy requirements? In our online spreadsheet “Global Energy 100% Solar,” we cite as the default assumption a total annual global energy consumption of 500 quad BTU – (500 quadrillion “British Thermal Units,” the amount of energy required to heat one cubic centimeter of water 1.0 degrees centigrade – 1,400 BTUs = 1.0 kilowatt-hour, 125,000 BTUs = 1.0 gallon gasoline). In reality, as within fifty years when human population begins to decline from some maximum total of well fewer than 10.0 billion people, human energy consumption will probably also max at around 1,000 quad BTUs. If you input 1,000 quad BTUs and 5 watts per square foot – (the utility scale wind and solar energy production density), then using wind/solar for 100% of future total world energy production (roughly 2x today’s) would only require an area of about 40,000 square miles (a square area only 200 miles on a side), or 100,000 square kilometers!

When you consider biofuel, using our “Global Energy 100% Biofuel” online spreadsheet, inputting the relatively generous 100,000 BTUs per gallon and 25,000 barrels per square mile per year (42 gallons per barrel), at 1,000 quad BTU (2x current global energy production), you will see that this amount of annual energy harvest will require a land area of 9.5 million square miles (24.6 million square kilometers). Don’t write off biofuel – land is abundant, and biofuel can be plentiful, cost effective, and sustainable. In most cases to-date, far lower capital investment is required for biofuel compared to wind or solar. Nonetheless, we welcome anyone verifying these figures – did we drop three digits again?

Our favorite new online spreadsheet is “Bulk Water Lift – Energy Required,” which assists users to calculate the costs and benefits of interbasin water transfers. We have reported on this in our articles including “Interbasin Water Transfers,” and Refill the Aral Sea. Other areas where interbasin water transfers could be quite environmentally helpful include north from the Ubangi River to Lake Chad in Africa. And of course the fine example of California, struggling to upgrade what is already the biggest and most modernized bulk water transfer system in the world, where, among other things, about 6.0 km3 of fresh water runoff from the north flows 500 miles south and over a 1,500 foot lift to nourish the Los Angeles basin. And along with this new spreadsheet, by all means investigate our already posted “Desalination – Cost per Household.” You will note the energy required to desalinate water is actually less than the energy required to lift it 1,500 feet!

Quantitative Environmentalism, often surprisingly, can help reveal realms of innovative and green possibilities in all their competitive and compelling feasibility. Perhaps the most productive quality of all is the ongoing and consistently credible, plausible, positive and optimistic oeuvre of prognoses that may issue from the perspective of quantitative environmentalism.

Bio-based alternatives have increased, growing in volume as private industries and government agencies converse the opportunities and the challenges. Development of innovative uses for soy products and processes continues. With national attention more focused on self-reliance and strategic interests, momentum has increased for more concerted effort by federal agencies to incorporate bio-energy and bio-based products within the federal government’s sphere.

From a historical perception, bio-based products have been in the general marketplace for quite some time.

Distributors should consider adding a line of bio-based products to their inventory. Not only will they help local economies, but they’ll also offer an alternative for those customers who wish to increase their Green product usage.

The demand for Green products in the marketplace is rising; bio-based products are quickly filling a niche area. Soy products have really been gaining more mainstream recognition. Much of that has to do with the broader range of products that have been offered such as graffiti removers, paint removers and heavy degreasers. Of particular interest are wood preservative/creosote substitutes and metalworking fluids.

Currently used in core janitorial applications such as schools, nursing homes, hospitals and governmental related facilities, bio-based products are being used more often and the driving factors behind the usage are numerous.

It is successfully continuing to be established that soy industrial products as viable contenders, and that the movement towards bio-based replacement products is just beginning.

Photovoltaic (PV) systems convert sunlight into electricity. The photovoltaic effect is the basic physical process through which this happens. Sunlight is composed of photons, or particles of solar energy. These photons contain various amounts of energy corresponding to the different wavelengths of the solar spectrum. When photons strike a PV cell, they may be reflected or absorbed, or they may pass right through. Only the absorbed photons generate electricity. When this happens, the energy of the photon is transferred to an electron in an atom of the cell (which is actually a semiconductor). With its newfound energy, the electron is able to escape from its normal position associated with that atom to become part of the current in an electrical circuit. By leaving this position, the electron causes a “hole” to form. Special electrical properties of the PV cell provide the voltage needed to drive the current through an external load (such as a light bulb).

A PV system comprises several components. The basic building block of a PV panel is the PV cell, which is a solid state, or non-mechanical, device. A solar system uses a number of PV panels, each made of silicon, plus boron and phosphorous. The output of a single cell under direct sunlight is about one watt. To increase their effectiveness, dozens of individual cells are interconnected together in a sealed, weatherproof glass package called a module. Modules come in a range of wattages, and their nature allows for great flexibility in designing systems that meet a variety of electrical needs.

Since PV modules are only capable of producing direct current (DC) electricity, an inverter is required to convert the direct current (DC) output produced by the PV array into alternating current (AC) power. AC electricity is needed to run computers, refrigerators and other appliances, and lighting.

A utility PV system, such as those installed under the Sun4Schools project, generate electricity which is supplemented by the energy provided by the existing utility grid. A PV system requires neither battery storage nor an emergency back-up system since it is connected directly to the utility grid, which is used as the storage medium. Systems that are not connected to the utility grid use batteries to store energy for use when the sun is not shining.

A well-designed and properly installed PV system with a consistent maintenance schedule will operate for more than 20 years. The PV module, which has no moving parts, has an expected lifetime of more than 30 years.

In the past 30 years, the photovoltaic industry maintained a growth rate of 20 percent on the average, while in the last five years, with an average annual growth rate of as high as 35 percent. As of 2007, the global PV power installed capacity is 9.1 million kilowatts, the growth rate go up to 33 percent. in 2007, capacity of 2.2 million kilowatts is installed, and the growth rate is 40%.

On the optimistic view , in the next 30 years ,the photovoltaic industry will maintain a growth rate of more than 25 percent, while the pessimistic view is that this opinion is not based on reality.

Optimistic faction believes that as the technological progress and industrial expansion, solar panel power generation costs will be quickly reduced, thereby it bring a fundamental demand for the expansion, the process will run through the entire century. The latter part of the growth rate will decline because the base PV will be huge.

Pessimistic view is base on the biggest obstacles for photovoltaic industry is the high cost. In the Western developed countries, they mainly go through various kinds of financial subsidies to support the development of the industry, such as United States allow advance photovoltaic project with the financial and tax incentives, and support the Internet price of photovoltaic for 21.29 cents / unit.

According to our opinion, base on the cost of solar module, the next three to five years, in some time and some areas, photovoltaic will have cost advantage. U.S. Environmental Co-op non-profit organization says, the cost of solar power will be equal with the traditional fossil energy for power generation costs. With the decline of the cost for solar power, while coal, natural gas and the rising cost of nuclear power, United States will come to the intersection by 2015. From Comprehensive opinion, the photovoltaic industry will have a high growth period.

An apartment with a view is coveted property. After a hard day at work, sitting down in front of a panoramic window while sipping a glass of wine is a wonderful way to unwind.

A decent view is hard to come by. Not only that, but when actually given options, it may be hard to decide between the ocean view, city view, west side, or east side facing apartments. The answer: Individual rotating floors. Just make a choice and viola! The apartment slowly turns to face whatever you are in the mood to see that day.

Dubai, home to 1/3 of the world’s cranes, is constantly expanding. High rise buildings, hotels and skyscrapers are popping up like daisies. The latest technology and newest ideas are often used in the building process here, so it is no wonder that the revolutionary, rotating Dynamic Tower, designed by architect Dr. David Fisher, will break ground in Dubai.

The 420 meter (1,380) high tower will be constructed of 80 individual floors, which are divided into luxury apartments, small villas, offices and a hotel. Each section will rotate at various speeds, depending on the owners specifications. This amazing building will take on a life of its own as the individual sections slowly turn next to one another, constantly revolving and never looking exactly the same.

The Rotating Dynamic Tower (Image: Rotating Tower Technology International Ltd.)

This skyscraper isn’t just going to look pretty, either: It is meant to generate electricity thanks to the wind turbines that will spin between each floor.

The construction technique is yet another feat in itself, making the complicated design amazingly quick to build. Fisher explains that the Dynamic Tower will be “the first skyscraper to be built entirely from prefabricated parts that are custom made in a workshop, resulting in fast construction and substantial cost savings. This approach, known as the Fisher Method, also requires far less workers on the construction site. [To put things into perspective, 2000 workers are typically needed on sites as big as this, but only 80 technicians are required for the tower].” In the end, it only takes 7 days to complete each floor!

Dynamic Tower should be opening its doors as soon as 2010.

Sandia’s Rajat Sapra examines assays for the screening of engineered enzymes. (Photo: Sandia National Labs)

Rugged microbes equipped with a unique set of survival skills find high-temperature and acidic conditions a welcome home. And scientists have a peculiar fondness for these “extremophiles,” freaks of nature that live outside the boundaries of normal existence. These are bugs that can grow in the harshest of conditions, from sulphuric acid to high-salt environments.

Part of the reason scientists are interested is extremophiles potential to be put to work to produce next-generation cellulosic-based biofuels.

How? These microbes can perform feats that bioengineers till now only dreamed of. They offer, perhaps, the best hope to tear down rigid plant material without using specialized chemicals or high amounts of energy and, perhaps, one day to create new fuels to power autos and trucks. Scientists and engineers at Sandia National Labs are taking the lead in the effort.

“We are looking at extremophiles that can thrive in high temperature and acidic conditions,” said Rajat Sapra, staff scientist and engineer with Sandia National Labs.

“Bugs that can grow in sulphuric acid are of great importance because nature has already done all of the genetic customization and adaption. It saves scientists trying to create superbugs with these modified capabilities.”

Over the course of the next few years, Sandia scientists are planning on working with the three different parts of the cellulosic biofuel process, which include deconstruction technologies for breaking down cellulosic materials and engineering extremophiles for pretreatment processes.

“What we look at in terms of processes is trying to streamline these extremophiles. If you look at stonewashed jeans, that process is achieved through the use of a bacterial extremophile,” says Sapra.

The world of biofuels and cellulosic ethanol comes down to a pretty simple equation. Cellulosic sugars are based on six carbon sugars, which is common among plants. The longer the length of the carbon chains, the more energy density is stored inside the plant material. The researchers explain energy density with a simple equation of one gallon of ethanol having the same energy density as 0.6 gallons of gasoline.

Trouble is all of that energy density is locked up pretty snugly in the cellulose and lignin materials of plant, which means you have to pay an energy or chemical cost to break it down to get at the rich density of energy. It isn’t the challenge of converting sugars to ethanol, it is how to break down the plant material into a mulch that can then provide sugars.

Sometimes missing from the big discussions about biofuel processing is the energy cost of getting the foodstuffs to the place where the fuel is going to be refined. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, for example, to transport large volumes of poplar trees from one region to another by truck.

That’s why scientists like Sapra are clear about the real Achilles’ heel for making biofuels economic and scalable. It comes down to looking at the entire process as an integrated one. And the key focus is taking into account the enormous scale of the process.

At the end of the day, the real answer for sustainable, economically viable biofuels resides in grasses and woody plants, instead of food crops. Agricultural waste is a starting point. Growing and extracting for corn stover and rice straw is all about converting waste plant material that would otherwise be burned into a high-energy-density material from which ethanol can be processed and refined.

There are three basic steps in biofuel production:

1. Take the biomass and break it down.
2. Deconstruct the material into polymers.
3. Convert the sugars into fuels.

Researchers and engineers are focused on the goal of taking the entire conversion of biomass material into sugars and ethanol and doing it in one large vat or container. This is called consolidated bioprocessing and has obvious advantages over other approaches in both economics and efficiency.

Even though second-generation biofuels are still years off, the ability to harness the mysterious ways by which nature has solved extremophiles’ problems of survival is surely going to be a boon to efficient fuel production.

The essense of New Suburbanism is to support a clean, but wider human footprint – which is anathema to much of conventional environmentalist wisdom. In many parts of the world, such as within the state of California, there is abundant open space. California, especially within its vast interior, has hundreds upon thousands of virtually vacant square miles of rolling foothills, rangeland, forests, farms and fields. The Golden State is a whopping 158,000 square miles in size, with only 36 million people, most of them already crammed quite amicably within reasonably dense urban areas. California will always have plenty of available land, and the mantra that the personal residences of humans must be consigned to ever higher densities is not natural law or indisputably moral. A wider human footprint is not necessarily anathema to the health of the environment.
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Low density communities can spread along roads and highways, with small scale commercial agriculture and wildlife corridors, independent of expensive utility scale energy, water, or information infrastructure. (Photo: EcoWorld)

New Suburbanism, despite this emphasis on treating land as abundant, does not have to be in conflict with the ideals of New Urbanism. The roots of New Urbanism are to promote architectural and urban designs that create a sense of place in new communities; its roots are are not in environmentalism or open space movements – New Urbanism is a movement of architects and urban planners with an aesthetic focus.

For this reason, New Urbanism, at least in terms of its origins, does not necessarily require a focus on high-density development. But today, the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) promotes themselves as “the leading organization promoting walkable, neighborhood-based development as an alternative to sprawl.” Another group, NewUrbanism.org, has adopted the following eight fundamental principles:

“Principles of New Urbanism“:
1 – Walkability,
2 – Connectivity,
3 – Mixed-Use & Diversity,
4 – Mixed Housing,
5 – Quality Architecture & Urban Design,
6 – Traditional Neighborhood Structure,
7 – Increased Density, and
8 – Smart Transportation.

New Urbanism today promotes ultra high density human habitation as an accepted priority. As New Suburbanists, we would claim this bias is often counterproductively applied. We believe NewUrbanism.org’s, principle #6, increased density, is being given excessive weight by New Urbanists. Their principle #7, smart transportation, in practice means mandating light rail and/or streetcars, and ultra high-density housing concentrated along these corridors. These principles, and others courtesy of New Urbanism, such as “mixed housing,” and “mixed use and diversity” now inform civic subsidies and other zoning policies. But are they always cost effective – and equally important – is this really where the New Urbanists wanted to go, when they began promoting a return to aesthetically conscious civic architecture and design?

Also coopted by high-density ideology is the U.S. Green Building Council, who define the the LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) building and urban development standards. But leadership in energy efficiency and design has no intrinsic connection with high density. Instead of developing LEED criteria focused on promoting optimal resource efficiency and zero pollution or toxicity – current LEED standards inordinately emphasize ultra dense housing within a maze of other earth friendly and sustainable criteria, some of them obviously great ideas, and others that appear more ideologically derived.

For example, according to local sources, in California, to get basic LEED certification for a home, you have to earn 45 points. There are plentiful ways to earn points, since the LEED “Platinum” certification requires 90 points. But nothing earns LEED points like high density. A builder can get 4 points by building “high density” housing, and another 10 points are available simply by building a home within a LEED certified neighborhood. The high-density points from just these two criteria earn up to 14 out of the 45 points required for LEED certification for homes, with numerous other criteria driving additional point incentives towards high density. If you refer to the USGBC’s LEED certification for buildings version 2.2 “LEED for New Construction,” you will see their criteria awards points for measures such as not building on farmland, wildlife habitat, or near water. Additional points are earned if developers build near light rail stations, construct plentiful public bike racks, and never build in excess of the mandated minimum parking spaces for automobiles. And of course, the minimum average density of a LEED certified community of residences must be ten homes per acre.

Along with LEED for homes and buildings, as described above, we now have LEED for Neighborhoods, or LEED ND, also emphasizing high density as a fundamental criteria for certification. Review USGBC’s May 2008 draft of LEED ND standards “LEED ND Draft Project Checklist” to see where the big points are scored. Basic LEED ND certification as it is currently proposed requires 40 points, with a “platinum” certification requiring 80 points. There are some good ideas reflected in the LEED ND criteria, such as 5 points for storm water management, or up to 3 points for energy efficiency in buildings. But most of the big point earners in LEED ND simply scream high density: 10 points for “preferred location,” based on proximity to mass transit, 8 points for “reduced automobile dependence,” and 7 points for “compact development” (to get 7 points here you must develop seventy units per acre); if you build an ultra high density development, you have already earned 25 of the 40 necessary points for LEED ND.

About one year ago, we published one of many critiques of the high density bias of conventional environmentalist wisdom, in particular, a critique of new urbanism, making eight claims challenging the principles of new urbanism. The only amendment to these criticisms is that they are leveled more generally against the entire “smart growth” ideology, variously advocated by the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), NewUrbanism.org, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBG), friends of smart growth at the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), and every analyst, activist, academic or policymaker who is convinced that higher density is always better.

Eight Criticisms of Smart Growth Policies:
1 – Artificially and selectively inflate land values, making housing less affordable,
2 – Emphasize public space over private space,
3 – Make war on the car,
4 – Promote high-density infill in low density neighborhoods,
5 – Prefer open space to homes, but not to biofuel crops, solar fields, or wind farms,
6 – Presume that social problems will be alleviated through forcing everyone to live in ultra high density, mixed neighborhoods,
7 – Incorrectly claim there is a shortage of open space and farmland,
8 – Pretend they have the final answer; that their precepts are beyond debate.

Rather than expand yet again upon these criticisms, our intention here is to present an alternative ideology – one that embraces much of new urbanism and LEED concepts, but from an entirely different perspective, one that believes a diversity of privately held, lower density human habitation over wider areas can manage ecosystems as well or better than the tightly managed manifestations of high-density ideology, while furthering property rights, innovation, initiative, and economic pluralism with respect to land development.

So herewith we offer “Principles of New Suburbanism,” not to refute the virtues of high density, which we believe always have and always will effectively emerge, but to extol the virtues of low density. In this philosophy we believe human stewardship and pluralistic private land ownership, combined with 21st century clean technologies, can enable a suburban and exurban landscape that would spread bucolic and utterly clean low density communities across thousands of square miles. And wildlife would flourish, farms would flourish, and homes would tuck into the folds and fissures of the land like the farmhouses of Provence.

PRINCIPLES OF NEW SUBURBANISM

(1) Compatible with New Urbanism: Both of these architectural and urban/exurban planning ideologies place the central emphasis on aesthetic imperatives – both are equally committed to creating a sense of place in new communities. New Suburbanists support high density zoning preferences in the urban core of large cities. New Suburbanists enthusiastically support building 21st century cities, with high-rises and plentiful car-independent transit options and everything else inimical to the central cores of megacities.

(2) Land is Abundant: There is abundant available land for low density suburban and exurban development. New Suburbanists encourage zoning that recognizes the importance of progressively lower density zoning from urban cores, instead of draconican “urban service boundaries” that arbitrarily restrict development, especially low density development.

(3) Car Friendly: Personal transportation devices are tantalizingly close to becoming ultra safe conveyances that can drive on full autopilot and have zero environmental footprint, and we are within a few decades at most of having abundant clean energy. The age of the personal driving machine has just begun.

(4) Road Friendly: Roads are the most versatile of all mass transit corridors since people, bicycles, cars, busses, trolleys, and trucks can all travel on or alongside roads. Commercial areas should be car-friendly as well as bike and pedestrian friendly – fortunately since land is abundant, this is not all that difficult.

(5) Decentralized & Off-Grid Friendly: New communities can have neighborhood-scale groundwater extraction and distribution systems, as well as water treatment and irrigation systems, or complete and independent systems for single homes. Using new off-grid technologies, clean and cost-effective water & energy autarky can be achieved at a household or neighborhood basis, often allowing lower taxes through avoiding more expensive public facilities.

(6) Farm & EcoSystem Friendly: Via the economic pluralism fostered by implementing new suburbanist inspired highly flexible and low density residential zoning, i.e., small independently owned, often independently constructed homes on large lots of .5 to 20 acres, with frequently modest interior square footage, you create the potential for a vibrant market in small property leases for specialty farming. Through zoning (or protecting) vast tracts of outer suburb and exurban lands according to new suburbanist precepts where low density home building and road building is encouraged or enforced instead of squelched or abandoned, you create a market for relatively cheap abundant land, making more affordable acquistion of land set-asides for agriculture or nature conservancies.

(7) Aesthetically Committed: By adopting new suburbanist zoning, permitting more diverse, progressively lower density developments based on the distance from existing urban concentrations, many of the excesses of over-regulated, artificially dense, supposedly “green” contemporary suburban developments could be avoided. There is a beauty to simply letting development take its natural course, yielding penumbras of habitation following the roads and the landscape like a life affirming circulation system, instead of something that is malevolent and must be contained.

All the essence of New Urbanism, all of its inspiring call to create the 21st century’s version of cities and buildings that are welcoming spaces are still within New Suburbanism, with none of the stridency and coercion or pork of the powerful high density coalition, without the need to make of us nothing more than punitively taxed, eco-pentinent sardines.

At its heart, New Suburbanism is the necessary counterpart to New Urbanism as it has become, constrained as it is by an imbalanced, unnecessary bias towards high density. New Suburbanism gives back to our cities and towns their freedom; gives us abundant land; gives us affordable homes; gives our cities turned suburbs turned exurbs the unforced, organic, natural and easy transition from dense to sparse. If New Urbanism defines the aesthetic of our new and renewed cities, than New Suburbanism helps define the aesthetic interface between city and country; it gives us back the smooth transition from urban chic to country soul.

The fate of GM, Chrysler and Ford hang in the balance, with widely varying sentiments regarding what can be done, if anything. Both a bailout or a bankruptcy present a set of opportunities as well as negative consequences. If a bailout were structured to include in its terms some of the restructuring benefits that otherwise could only be realized through bankruptcy, however, it would be the preferred option. Indeed, a federal bailout that facilitated fundamental cost cuts for the automakers might set a useful precedent for restructuring other large U.S. institutions that have overpaid workforces and inefficient operations, such as most of our state and local governments.

Using General Motors as an example, since they are the biggest of the big three, and since they have the most challenging set of legacy obligations both in terms of labor costs and leases, it is difficult to isolate numbers for the USA. But there are certain things we can quantify with respect to GM’s costs, so here goes:

GM is currently burning through, worst case, about $2.0 billion per month in cash. Assuming these losses are all from U.S. operations, this means they have to save $24 billion per year. Given much of GM’s problem stems from a 40% slide in auto sales compared to one year ago, one can only hope some of GM’s $24 billion problem will be reversed when auto sales rebound. But how much of this $24 billion can come from restructuring GM’s costs?

GM has about 75,000 hourly employees in the USA, and about 50,000 salaried employees. When UAW President Ron Gettelfinger testified recently in the bailout hearings that the auto workers have already done their part, he stated “new employees at GM are making half what veteran employees make.” This is indeed a dramatic reduction, but the problem is GM’s hourly employees are overwhelmingly veteran workers, and it will take years before the average labor costs at GM descend to the market rates the new workers are earning.

How much can GM save, if instead of declaring bankruptcy, the federal bailout includes an executive order requiring renegotiation of labor rates for veteran hourly workers? According to a CNN report posted earlier this year entitled “GM Offers Buyout to 74,000 Workers,” the average veteran GM employee, including benefits, earns a total hourly compensation of $78 per hour, whereas the new employees are earning a total compensation of $26 per hour. This equates to a labor cost of 156,000 per year for the average veteran worker, compared to a labor cost of $51,000 per year for an incoming worker.

One can only wonder how such a gross disparity can be tolerated – but sticking to the numbers – let’s assume average labor rates at GM were brought down from $150K per year per worker to a still quite decent $75,000 per year? Taking 75,000 hourly workers times a $75K per year savings would save GM $5.6 billion per year.

What about GM’s roughly 50,000 salaried workers in the United States? Here it is even harder to get figures, other than the executive salaries which are public information. But it is likely that most of the salaried employees are paid less on average than the hourly employees, so total possible savings through salary reductions may not be as dramatic. Suggesting cutting top management salaries will make a big difference is a fallacy. According to Yahoo’s GM Profile, the top five executives at GM collected a total of $11.2 million in salary and bonuses last year. Cutting their pay to $500K each, as has been proposed, would only save GM $8.7 million dollars. GM’s problem requires billions in savings, not millions. If one assumes that collectively, through dramatic percentage cuts to top management compensation and a 25% cut to overall salaried employee compensation, another $2.5 billion in costs could be saved per year by GM, that would probably be a stretch. But let’s go with it. This means total savings via pay cuts at GM could reduce their costs by $8.1 billion per year.

What about a force reduction? If GM has seen total U.S. sales drop by 40%, and if GM expects to get some but not all of those sales back, and they also expect to operate more efficiently, what about a 20% force reduction? At the lower rates of compensation, averaging $75K per year for both the hourly and salaried workerforce, eliminating 20% of GM’s 125,000 U.S. workforce would save $1.9 billion per year. Overall, the combination of pay cuts and force reductions probably could save GM’s U.S. operations about $10 billion per year.
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An automated GM plant in China. In the U.S., GM’s ability to invest in new equipment and research has been hampered by paying over-market costs for labor and property leases. (Photo: General Motors)

Another area where GM is under severe financial stress is because of their contractual obligations to maintain their dealerships. GM has over 6,700 dealerships in the United States, and at least for now, nearly all of them are losing money. GM’s dealership network was established when they had a market share in the United States of about 40%, a share that has shrunk to half that level today. If GM eliminated 50% of their dealerships, they would still have more dealerships per cars sold than their competitors. If one assumes the lower-performing 50% of GM’s dealerships are each costing GM $1.0 million per year in losses, then shutting these down would save GM $3.4 billion per year.

What is daunting, of course, is that just these two steps, both of them dramatic, painful, wrenching sacrifices, would only solve about half of GM’s current financial problem. But neither of these necessary steps can be taken unless GM declares bankruptcy – which allows them to renegotiate all of their contracts – or via an executive order that accompanies a federal bailout that requires all of GM’s contractual obligations to be renegotiated.

It is specious to suggest that GM’s top management has not done their job. Their current management has been pushing relentlessly to restructure their costs and retool their operations. But while foreign automakers have poured money into research and development, for years GM and the other U.S. automakers have been forced to sustain over-market wages and an overbuilt dealer network.

If a bailout to GM of approximately $10 billion is granted along with an executive order that permits them to further renegotiate their labor rates, reduce their salaried employee compensation at the same time, cut their workforce, downsize their dealer network, and renegotiate other leases which might save additional billions, then GM can make it through another year and hopefully regain profitability with just a modest uptick in their auto sales in the U.S. To just throw this money at GM with nothing asked of them other than slashing top management compensation, getting rid of the corporate jets, and building more “green” cars, will be a missed opportunity of historic proportions.

Most of the world’s caverns, rivers and boulders were carved out by glaciers hundreds of thousands of years ago. Massive ice sheets-often 3 kilometers thick-flowed over the earth’s crust, eroding and crushing the land underneath. Animals evolved to deal with the harsh climate, the most famous of which is arguably the woolly mammoth.

This hairy pachyderm roamed the tundra in search of grasses, oblivious to the cold, thanks to a large layer of fat, wool (hence the name) covered in course hair and sebaceous glands that secreted insulating oils through the skin. Eventually though, the ice-age passed and the glaciers melted away, leaving behind only bones as evidence of the animals that once lived in the region.

It is unclear whether hunting, climate change, or disease killed off the animals that flourished during the ice age and this has been the topic of dispute between scientists for decades. Sergey Zimov, Director of the Northeast Science Station, has gone so far as to start a Pleistocene Park in Siberia, to prove his theory that hunting eliminated all wildlife as opposed to a natural disaster being the culprit. Yakutian horses, bison, reindeer and musk ox have been brought into the area. But the biggest surprise is that this park may eventually also be home to a wooly mammoth?!

A frozen mammoth recovered from Siberia has provided researchers at the Pennsylvania State University Genome Project with a genetic sample for recreating the animal’s genome. The result is being compared to the DNA sequence of the closely related African elephant to make sure that everything is order.

The Woolly Mammoth (Photo: Wikipedia)

The project is discussed in detail via press release: “The researchers suspect that the full woolly-mammoth genome is over four-billion DNA bases, which they believe is the size of the modern-day African elephant’s genome. Although their dataset consists of more than four-billion DNA bases, only 3.3 billion of them – a little over the size of the human genome – currently can be assigned to the mammoth genome.

Some of the remaining DNA bases may belong to the mammoth, but others could belong to other organisms, like bacteria and fungi, from the surrounding environment that had contaminated the sample. The team used a draft version of the African elephant’s genome, which currently is being generated by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, to distinguish those sequences that truly belong to the mammoth from possible contaminants.”

Obviously there are still a few kinks that need working out, but the big news is that a woolly mammoth may eventually get born into the 21^st century.

Reintroducing the mammoth species to the world may provide an insight to what causes extinction but not without controversy: The natural process of extinction happens for a reason (and isn’t always caused by the human factor). However, many positive thinkers are wondering if the genome project symbolizes a hope that recently extinct or endangered species may have a chance to survive thanks to the cloning process.

As of right now, the genome project has provided a greater insight to the world of an animal that has fascinated children, adults and scientists since its discovery, and this mammoth task is definitely something to keep an eye on.

Earlier this month heralded the formal launch of “Carbon Information Management” (CIM) software from Planet Metrics, a Northern California based company that has been brewing this “web-based, multi-dimensional software that helps organizations to create and deploy innovative sustainability strategies” since early 2007.

Unlike Environmental Health and Sustainability (EH&S) software, such as the enterprise wide solutions offered by market leaders in that space such as ESS, CIM software focuses on helping enterprises assess the total carbon footprint of their products and processes. As such, CIM offers an important analytical tool to help companies move towards clean and sustainable operations that is very distinct from EH&S solutions. Like ESS, Planet Metrics appears to be the furthest along towards delivering a comprehensive solution in their space, although they do get competition from products offered by Carbon View and Clear Standards.

What differentiates Planet Metrics, according to CEO Andy Leventhal, is that the competition focuses on helping companies do carbon accounting and data collection, but they don’t have the ability to model carbon data, performing what-ifs, nor do they have the rich database of stored life cycle analysis (LCA) assessments. Also unique with Planet Metrics is how they have integrated over 4,500 LCA’s with an Economic Input/Output (EIO) model they licensed from Carnegie Mellon. With this continuously updated and expanded LCA/EIO engine, Planet Metrics has added a carbon assessment feature, allowing companies using their software to rapidly estimate the carbon impact of their operations.

As Leventhal emphasized, this tool allows companies to look at virtually every facet of their operation from a carbon impact perspective, from the supply chain and product design to the packaging, logistics and waste streams. “We want to help companies understand that carbon is an aspect of everything they do, letting them see ‘what’s inside what’s inside’ [from a carbon perspective]; how they can innovate with their suppliers to reduce their impact.”

Planet Metrics sees their customer base as the global Fortune 5000 companies. In addition to already working with several undisclosed major clients, they recently performed a carbon impact assessment for the massive Consumer Electronics show recently held in Las Vegas, where over 140,000 people attended from all over the world. “We would like to be recognized as the preeminent provider of software to help companies understand the emissions associated with what they’re making and what they’re moving,” said Leventhal, “we want to be used by sustainability teams, supply chain teams, designers; anyone doing deep investigations of where their carbon is being consumed in a carbon constrained environment.”
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PLANET METRICS RAPID CARBON MODELING APPROACH

The Planet Metrics modeling solution leverages a company’s data in combination with their CIM database, including life cycle inventories, Carnegie Mellon’s EIO-LCA data model, governmental statistics, and other studies to generate a customer-specific emissions profile. (Source: Planet Metrics)

The connection between carbon consumption and cost efficiency is not one-to-one, although as long as the cost of fossil fuel remains high the correlation is pretty strong. From that perspective, an analytical tool that can enable a company to identify areas where their carbon consumption efficiency can be improved will pay for itself in short order – regardless of the benefits of managing possible externalities relating to carbon emissions. As their website states: “Reduction of fuel or energy consumption will result in savings regardless of the regulatory status of carbon.”

Now that the price of fossil fuel has returned to earth, at least for a while, the correlation between carbon intensity and cost savings may not be as compelling. Imagine a company deciding whether or not to source a product with a high embodied electricity content (a photovotaic panel, for example). If this company is located somewhere in the intermountain region of the U.S., midway between a supplier in California and a supplier in Kentucky, and the price of the product is tied to the cost of electricity in each of those states, then they may find very little connection between carbon intensity and product cost. Electricity in California, worst case using natural gas, creates about 1.3 pounds of CO2 per kilowatt-hour, and costs on average about $0.115 per kilowatt-hour. Electricity if Kentucky, presumably using coal, creates about 2.0 pounds of CO2 per kilowatt-hour, but only costs $0.046 per kilowatt-hour; 50% more CO2 emissions, but less than 50% the cost. (Sources: For CO2/kWh, ref. this DOE page, table 1, “CO2 Emissions for Electricity in the U.S.,” for $/kWh, ref. the Electricity Costs table from CoalEducation.org.) Because of the recent, rather precipitous correction in the price of conventional fuels, the connection between economic factors and environmental sustainability factors is not as strong as when the price of fossil fuel was dramatically higher than it is today.

Nonetheless, adopting and mastering tools such as the CIM software available from Planet Metrics is in the interests of large companies, since increasing regulations regarding carbon intensity and carbon consumption appear to be inevitable. And inevitably the price for fossil fuels will rise again. Perhaps the biggest challenge to using Planet Metrics software is simply the vast and highly subjective nature of both the underlying data and the connecting logic. Accurately assessing the actual life-cycle carbon intensity of an entire supply chain can, ultimately, requires assessing and selectively connecting an infinite amount of often uncertain data. In this regard, CIM software might be compared to other models that attempt to grapple with infinite and uncertain data, from global climate simulations to hedge fund risk analysis tools to the Black-Scholes stock option pricing models. But in all these cases, the futility of achieving perfect accuracy should not deter the user from recognizing the utility of these models along with their limitations, and hopefully obtaining practical results.

Planet Metrics is backed by angel investors as well as the premier venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and to-date has a total equity investment of $2.3 million.