I always wondered how recognizable a much lauded "paradigm shift" would be while it was actually underway. Would one be able to sense the tides of public opinion reverse? Would some kind of collective mass exhalation be audible one the shift was complete? "Oh, we've evolved again. Sigh." I need wonder no more. Reading the New York Times magazine this week, I personally met a paradigm shift today over lunch, and, as you'll see, it's testament to my own shifting paradigms that I didn't lose my lunch upon reading the article. The article deployed a cute little euphemism -- "indirect...

Tonight the Goldman Environmental Prize winners for 2008 were announced (summaries cribbed from the Goldmanprize.org website): North America: Jesús León Santos, Mexico: In Oaxaca, where unsustainable land-use practices have made it one of the world’s most highly-eroded areas, León initiated a land renewal program that employs ancient indigenous practices to transform depleted soil into arable land. Africa: Feliciano dos Santos, Mozambique: Using traditional music, grassroots outreach and innovative technology to bring sanitation to the most remote corners of Mozambique, Santos empowered villagers to participate in sustainable development and rise up from poverty. South & Central America: Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and...

Though most people expect the Bush administration to do little to pass climate change legislation during its final year in office, there is still a tremendous amount of work being done in Congress. The Lieberman-Warner bill appears to be most likely to get 60+ support in the Senate this year according to Lieberman himself. But what would be the political impact of such a bill? Does it remove global warming legislation from the federal agenda? Or will it just create a not-as-good substitute for legislation that might pass in 2009 or 2010 with one of the current presidential candidates? If...

Last Friday, the Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative (BERC) held its 2nd annual Energy Symposium at the MLK Student Union. The purpose of the symposium is to bring together students, researches, and professor from UC-Berkeley with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, state officials, and other business people. The symposium was an all day event consisting welcoming remarks by Paul Wright (director of CITRIS) and a taped address by Barbara Boxer. The morning keynote by David Sandalow of the Brookings Institute was followed by breakout sessions on carbon capture & sequestration, transportation sector solutions, future of nuclear energy, and carbon neutral technologies. The...

By accepting a donation of about $130,000 in carbon offsets from the publicity-starved – and San Francisco based! – Planktos International, the Vatican this summer became the world’s first “carbon neutral” nation. The offsets will go toward planting trees in Hungary and will no doubt have a beneficial, but tiny and temporary, impact on the area’s economy. Hmmm… Not wholly unlike the effort’s impact upon climate change which, as we’ve recently been told, is unavoidable and will be, by any measure, catastrophic. However, as tempting as it is to… • deprecate Planktos’ flagrant PR-mongering • dismiss their primary business model...

The California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) today released its Proposed Decision on Issues Relating to Future Savings Goals and Program Planning for 2009-2011 Energy Efficiency and Beyond. The Decision lays out recommendations (many of which will likely turn into rules) on how to move into the future with California's already effective Demand-Side Management and End-Use Energy Efficiency programs. California has been in the energy efficiency game longer than most governments, and in the past 30 years California policy has severely curtailed per-capita energy demand growth. The state's efforts serve as a models for other states and nations implementing their own...

I thought this was an interesting example of unintended policy consequences. . . New Jacobson study on potential increased smog fatalities from ethanol Ethanol is widely touted as an eco-friendly, clean-burning fuel. But if every vehicle in the United States ran on fuel made primarily from ethanol instead of pure gasoline, the number of respiratory-related deaths and hospitalizations likely would increase, according to a new study by Stanford University atmospheric scientist Mark Z. Jacobson. His findings are published in the April 18 online edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T). "Ethanol is being promoted as a clean and...

A 2003 study from Germany's Landau University may provide some clues to the mystery behind our nation's disappearing honeybee population. Landau's Jochen Kuhn placed the receivers to cellular phones within honeybee hives, exposing the bees to the radiation that the phones give off. Kuhn found that as many as 70% of the bees would refuse to come back to the hive, speculating that it somehow effected the waggle dance which bees use to communicate foraging information with one another. Researchers studying Colony Collapse Disorder, now familiar with Kuhn's work, believe this same radiation may effect a honeybee's natural navigation, which...

The Supreme Court today handed down its judgment on Massachusetts v EPA, the first case the Court has heard regarding climate change. At issue in the case is the EPA's role in monitoring and regulating automobile emissions. Section 202(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. § 7521(a)(1), requires the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA ") to set emission standards or "any air pollutant" from motor vehicles or motor vehicle engines "which in his judgment cause[s], or contribute[s] to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." The EPA and the Bush Administration,...

An alarming, potentially disastrous agricultural mystery has unfolded quietly over the past few months. Honeybees – the United States chief pollinator – have been leaving their hives in droves, never to return. Beekeepers across the country have declared up to 70% losses in their colonies, and there is currently no clear answer as to why. Honeybees – a rare example of a non-native species which has proven itself useful – account for up to 100% of the pollination of some crops. Almonds, for example, are pollinated entirely by honeybees – and California, where the vast majority of the US almond...

Five international interests working to protect and more stringently regulate the world’s Bluefin Tuna stocks [meet this week] in Kobe, Japan to agree on strategies which they hope will lead to more sustainable fishing practices. Blue Fin Tuna has long been popular in Japan as an ingredient in sushi and sashimi, and consumption of the fish has risen of late in the United States and Europe as “healthy diet” habits have become more prevalent.

A North Dakota farmer serving in the North Dakota state legislature as a Republican has submitted the paperwork needed to make himself the nation's first industrial hemp producer. Rep. David Monson (R-Osnabrock) filed an application with the state's Agriculture Department to cultivate about 10 acres of the crop. Included in his application were his fingerprints, and $37 to cover the cost of a criminal background check.

Advocates of industrial hemp production laud the crop for its wide-ranging industrial applicability - which ranges from nutrition to paper products to textiles - as well as the relatively low environmental impact

Ethanol, the characteristic solvent for social distance and shellac, is also a motor fuel with attractive characteristics: it's made of sunshine and exactly the CO2 we like to take out of the atmosphere, it increases gasoline octane as an additive, it's environmentally quite benign in spills and such, and it's not imported from places with fractious and prickly governments. However, it doesn't just dribble out of corn plants: to get ethanol requires growing plants (fertilizer, tractor fuel...), hauling corn to a distillery, smooshing it up with yeast and keeping it warm (more fuel), distilling the alcohol out of the mush...