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| EcoWorld Magazine 2007 |
Sikkim's Teesta River
- Avilash Roul, 12-31-07 The Teesta River system is one of the most beautiful watersheds of wild river left in the world. It is an unspoiled treasure of surpassing beauty. These wild rivers of Sikkim are about to be tamed, fresh water will be harvested and stored, and they will generate hydro-electric energy. Should we store water? What will we do if summer ice melt is gone? But what sort of green dam engineering could be put to work in Sikkim? To simply build a dam, a powerhouse and a reservoir on every river, inundating every valley, every village, eliminating every white water haven... |
Decentralized Water Treatment
- Tom Bartlett, 12-21-07 Because of recent technological advances, spanning the gamut from affordable photovoltaics to nano-tech water filtration membranes, decentralized solutions to energy and water supply are better than ever. This belies the conventional wisdom that we are entering an age of resource scarcity, as energy and water is being harvested and reused more efficiently than ever. This also changes the game of development and public infrastructure (ref. photo). With green cars and off-grid energy and water solutions, appropriate developments don't necessarily have to be within the footprint of existing cities, or within existing centralized public infrastructure. Whether it is the electric power grid or underground pipes that deliver water and remove sewage, the more decentralized solutions there are, the more the public infrastructure can be downsized... |
35 Inconvenient Truths
- Chris Monckton, 12-15-07 Without CO2 plants could not have photosynthesis, which is necessary for plants to grow and generates oxygen for humans to breath. Plants cannot breath without CO2. For such a fundamental misconception to enter into law via the U.S. Supreme Court ought to alert anyone to the fact something is wrong here. Let the gardens of private land and the gardens of public discourse adapt and benefit from this truth; CO2 is life, and airborne toxic molecules and particulates are something else altogether. In that spirit, on with the story.... |
EcoWorld InterviewDr. Roger Pielke, Sr. - Ed Ring, 12-3-07 As delegates to the UN Climate Change Conference gather in Indonesia this week, the burning rainforests of Borneo - to name just one heartbreaking example - cast a plume of smoke that is visible from space. Burning to make room for oil palm plantations, subsidized by European carbon offset payments, they are the latest evidence of how large scale land use changes could be affecting global climate more than anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr., an atmospheric scientist from Colorado, rejects the notion that elevated CO2 levels are the sole culprits in climate change. In his recent scientific conference focusing on the role of land use changes as a first order climate forcing mechanism... |
Cleaning Up China
- Sam Goffman & Terry Wang, 11-29-07 China is projected to increase polysilicon production for photovoltaic cells from 230 tons per year in 2006 to 12,660 tons per year by 2011. This means that unless the Chinese export most of their raw polysilicon, by 2011 they will be manufacturing in excess of 2.5 gigawatts of crystaline photovoltaic capacity every year. And given the very recent viability of thin film photovoltaic manufacturing technologies which don't require polysilicon, the ratio of gigawatt capacity to tons of polysilicon feedstock will not be nearly as relevant in the future as it is today, since thin film only accounted for about 6% of global photovoltaic production in 2005. Moreover, utility scale solar thermal power has just become economically competitive with conventional electricity generation. The near-term potential of solar power in China may well be underestimated by several orders of magnitude... |
Glacial Acceleration
- Paul Brown, 11-27-07 We only want a revitalized and reasoned debate regarding the extent and the causes of climate change - and what to do about it. We recommend the CO2 alarmists turn some of their wonderful and well-intentioned passion to stopping the catastrophe unfolding as we decimate the rainforests of the Americas, Africa and Asia to grow fuel. If Greenland's icecap does melt someday soon - perhaps it will be because within a few short decades we dried and heated the millions of square miles of equatorial land mass, because we cut down the tree canopy for biofuel plantations, because someone thought that would actually reduce CO2 emissions... |
EcoWorld's 2007 Clean Dozen
- Ed Ring, 11-19-07 The promise this green iteration of high technology makes is that we will achieve resource abundance. Because of high-tech green innovation, we will soon have abundant land thanks to high-rise farms, abundant energy via solar energy, and abundant water from desalination. Smart growth policies that are based on conditions of scarcity are short sighted. Spot shortages of energy and water - as well as perceived shortages of land - may last a few more decades but will then be swept away in a wave of global prosperity and abundance... |
Optimizing Biofuel
- Louis Strydom, 11-2-07 The vast canyons that run in for hundreds of miles off the Caribbean and Atlantic coastlines of South America, whose rivers run northwards to the ocean, could be deforested, their verdant rises filled with massive terraced plantations of genetically engineered super high-yield biofuel plants. Would this fuel the world, or would the rains stop coming in from the sea? And what of the savanna in Africa, so vast and verdant its extent is almost incomprehensible to a Westerner - savanna that sweeps across a continent nearly as large as Asia, with only one billion people living there... |
China's Eco-Challenge
- Gordon Feller, 10-24-07 China and India are now able to turn energy into wealth more efficiently than the USA. While the USA has logged a commendable achievement in the last decade, improving its energy intensity by 44%, China has improved its energy intensity by 86%, and India's has improved by 85%. The numbers are almost unbelievable: China's BTU's per US$ of GNP have plummeted from 46,666 to 6,608, and India's have dropped from 30,759 to 4,541. This incredible achievement should encourage anyone who hopes global energy production can level off quickly enough to allow clean energy technologies to catch up. Yet challenges are remain daunting as these massive nations transform themselves at breathtaking speed. With a real growth rate of over 11% per year, China, whose GNP has increased nearly 14x in the last ten years, is poised to have a larger economy than the USA by 2009... |
India's Hydro Power
- Avilash Roul, 10-17-07 For India to produce half as much energy per capita as members of the European Community, its overall energy production will need to quadruple. India needs more energy now in order for its energy infrastructure to keep pace with its burgeoning and world class scientific and technology community, and to give those communities the raw materials they need to lift India to the higher standard of living their innovations promise. This is the challenge India faces - to balance democratic dialogue, which require delays and compromise, with the need to fulfill urgent economic imperatives. To lose too much democracy or to forfeit too many innovations are both unacceptable outcomes... |
The French Nuclear Debate
- Therese Delfel, 10-12-07 Is nuclear power green? The green vs. not-so-green characteristics of nuclear power need to be debated with reasoned analysis and ongoing dialogue. Nuclear power, rainforest preservation, global warming, "smart growth," political ideology - and the competing positions on countless other vital issues demand constant skepticism, constant dialogue, freedom of speech that is not only free, but nurtured and encouraged. So restore debate, restore balance, restore scientific and journalistic skepticism, and let all credible positions have their say. Debate is the crucible of truth... |
Markets Solve Scarcity
- Terry Anderson, 9-6-07 The Property & Environment Research Center is one of the founders of free market environmentalism. They tackle a complex and less emotionally accessible ideology, compared with today's conventional wisdom which relies on big government. How do you explain property ownership promotes environmental stewardship, when big government advocates can rhetorically claim private property nurtures greed? How do you argue that lower taxes and takings will create wealth and require less government for more quality of life for everyone, when big government can point to every poor person, every fouled property, and demand laws and regulations and more taxes for them to fix it... |
India's Water Consciousness
- Brook & Gaurav Bhagat, 9-3-07 When it comes to access to raw solar energy and raw rainfall volume, India is a resource rich nation. India also has world class technology, with an industrial base as well as a high-tech and scientific community that is deep and broad. India is a healthy democracy, where green innovations gain a much better hearing. From these perspectives, India has a bright future, with many ways to collectively realize the overall goal of energy and water abundance. Reforesting is possibly the most critical challenge for India, insofar as tropical forests increase the amount of regional rain as well as the ability of the land to naturally collect and store rain... |
Electric Cars 2007
- Ed Ring, 8-11-07 The message the electric vehicle ("EV") industry is sending the world in 2007 is "electric vehicles are here to stay." Nothing is ever going to be the same. Among the samples to follow, every vehicle relies exclusively on an electric motor for traction. Every one has a battery-only range that permits various uses. Electric motors deliver better horsepower per pound than gasoline engines, and they are far more efficient delivering this energy at variable RPM. They also have a superior RPM range, with over 10,000 RPM of variation possible within a single gear... |
 Free Market Environmentalism- Matt Ridley, 6-29-07 The idea to harness the forces of the free market to pursue environmentalist objectives is initially counterintuitive - after all, isn't the free market to blame for all environmental misery? Isn't government intervention necessary to keep rapacious profiteers in check? The first step to recognizing the need to embrace market principles in order to further environmental objectives is to examine the opposite case. Communist societies, where all property belongs to the government, are demonstrably the worst stewards of the environment. In the Soviet Bloc, during the years between World War II and the liberation of 1989, environmental destruction was far worse than in the capitalist western nations... |
 Biofuel's Mixed Blessings- Dr. Marianne Moscoso-Osterkorn, 6-22-07 Over the past few years our take on biofuels has continuously evolved - from initial enthusiasm at the notion a crop could fight desertification, stablize soil, survive in an arid climate, AND provide fuel, to horror at the absolute and ongoing biofueled devastation of our last remaining tropical rainforests to grow oil palms and sugar cane. And as this article authored by Dr. Marianne Osterkorn makes clear, the environmental impacts of biofuel production need to be fully understood. Our concern, well documented, is that even if biofuel is certified by all reputable participants from growers to refineries to distributors, the decentralized and often low-tech nature of this industry guarantees where certification ends, a robust black market begins... |
 Reforesting the Tropics- Steve & Debbie Legg, 6-20-07 By the mid-1990's, thanks to tireless efforts of groups such as the Rainforest Action Network, the World Wildlife Fund, and countless others, headway was being made in the battle to reverse tropical deforestation. But that was then. About ten years ago, starting in Europe, enthusiasm for biofuel began to grow, and this quickly spread to the tropics where entrepreneurs began to raze the forests to grow oil palms and sugar cane. The momentum picked up as global warming alarm somehow translated itself into the notion that biofuel was better than petroleum - with most of the well-intentioned proponents of this notion completely unaware of the havoc they were encouraging in the tropics... |
 China's Energy Demand- Gordon Feller, 5-19-07 According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, China relies on coal for 70% of their energy needs. EIA projections indicate that consumption of coal in China will nearly double in the next twenty years, and that if anything, the percentage of energy usage represented by coal in China is going to increase. Anti-CO2 activists who want to shut down American industry need to remember two things: Over 90% of the fuel currently consumed in the world requires combustion (over 90% of the rest is nuclear or hydro-electric), and the Chinese (and many other nations) are not going to shut down their industries just because we want them to... |
 India's Solar Power- Avilash Roul, 5-15-07 Using sunlight to create electrical and thermal energy remains the most promising source of clean renewable energy, and projections as to how quickly solar power takes off could be grossly understated. Costs for photovoltaic electricity, for example, have dropped by an order of magnitude in the last 30 years. But in 2006, according to the International Energy Agency, 80.3% of the world's energy came from fossil fuels: oil (34.3%), coal (25.1%), and gas (20.9%). Fully 90.9% of the world's energy comes from combustion, because alongside these fossil fuels in 4th place are "combustible renewables," mostly wood (10.6%). Include nuclear power (6.5%) and hydro-electric power (2.2%), and you have accounted for 99.5% of the world's energy... |
 Our Endangered Oceans- Daniela Muhawi, 4-23-07 One of the most compelling reasons to report on the oceans is because it is here that sweeping changes are happening now, not in 50-100 years. The final destruction of the major ocean reef habitats as well as the collapse of major fish populations is well underway. As of 2007, both could be destroyed beyond repair within a few years. The encouraging news is this doesn't have to happen. Where coral reefs have been protected from destructive fishing practices, they have often began to show signs of revitalization within a few years. If overfishing were stopped with some strong international agreements, within a few years many fisheries would again begin to yield sustainable harvests larger than today's unsustainable harvests... |
 India's Green Future- Ed Ring, 3-17-07 Addressing India's future energy and water needs requires servicing five interrelated industrial sectors; agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, buildings and shelter, and waste management. In all these areas, green technology and high technology, working together, will provide answers. Solutions will embrace traditional practices as much as adopt scientific breakthroughs, and working synergistically within all these dimensions is necessary to quicken progress. It should be a source of inspiration that India can complete the process of industrialization today, leapfrogging obsolete legacy technologies that often hamper innovation in the west... |
 Global Warming Priorities- Ed Wheeler, 3-15-07 What if anthropogenic CO2 has little or nothing to do with global warming? Regulating CO2 will crush many small businesses while awarding lucrative "mitigation" government contracts to large businesses, raise taxes and create new bureaucracies, and undermine our freedom to use energy as we choose. Overall, overproducing energy will spawn innovation and prosperity, and underproducing energy will spawn rationing and tyranny. In fighting a phantom that may not even exist, do we want to swindle ourselves, unthinking, out of a glowing future of private enterprise and personal freedom... |
 CO2 Taxes - The Great Windfall- Ed Ring, 2-3-07 To discuss intentionally increasing atmospheric aerosol deposition is not madness nor a reckless compromise, rather it is to believe in the need to solve global warming, not just do anything for the cause. CO2 taxes will fund watering the world, reforesting the world, greening the cities of the world, and indeed they may reverse or help manage global warming. Through taxing one's carbon footprint, or their net CO2 emissions, the nations of the world can unite to cool and green the planet without rationing Hummers, or banning incandescent lights - profligate or inefficient resource uses can still be clean and green and carbon positive and profitable and should not be discouraged... |
 China's Renewable Energy- Gordon Feller, 1-31-07 China intends to derive 15% of her energy from renewable sources by 2020, but 15% isn't very much, this includes hydroelectric power, and the 15% target may be ambitious. If one correlates energy production to GNP, even assuming China achieves western levels of energy intensity (units of energy per dollar of GNP), to approach the per capita income of western industrialized nations, they will have to increase energy production from 50 quadrillion BTU's per year to over 250 quads. While production of renewable energy in China is set to increase by staggering amounts, the amount of fossil fuel derived energy consumption in China, in absolute terms, is going to quintuple in the next few decades... |
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