Americans have been led to believe that they can’t make a significant difference in much of anything once corporate and governmental interests are involved. Big oil and big automakers have historically counted on the false belief that we as American citizens cannot impact our transportation future. Plug In America, www.pluginamerica.org, a non-profit coalition of plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) advocates, proves just how incorrect that assumption actually is.
Photo courtesy Linda Nicholes
PIA was born in 2005 when a grass-roots gathering of actual and hopeful electric vehicle drivers came together in an attempt to halt the destruction of approximately 5,000 production electric vehicles as portrayed in the film documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? PIA actually managed to save 1,000 zero emission vehicles from the crusher, most of which remain on the road today. Since that time, PIA has metaphorically zoomed from zero to 60 in record time, evolving from a grassroots group to a well-respected, game-changing organization with 23,000 supporters. Today PIA helps shape corporate and legislative automotive policy. We demonstrate that when average Americans join forces to influence vested power and vested interests, the results can be truly electrifying. Continue Reading
For the nine in ten Americans who know next to nothing about nanotechnology (NT), there is little time to waste in getting up to speed because, ready or not, the NT revolution is well underway with new nano-engineered consumer products entering the market weekly.
Multi-walled carbon nanotubes exhibit unique properties. Photo courtesy of PEN.
Another reason, as voiced by consumer protection, health, and environmental organizations, is that NT products are being sold without adequate safety testing and government oversight.
The actual number of NT products in commerce is unknown because there is no labeling or reporting requirement, but over 800 have been tabulated by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN), an online inventory of manufacturer-identified NT goods funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
In 2007, at least $147 billion in global manufactured goods incorporated NT, encompassing such varied products as cosmetics, clothing, food, food packaging, and dietary supplements. PEN estimates that figure will reach $2.6 trillion by 2014. Continue Reading
It’s not much of a stretch to liken America’s relationship with cells phones to a once sizzling romance that ends in good bye.
Given all the environmental costs of cell phones, certainly the most eco-friendly cell is the one you already own.
Fated love affairs typically begin with blind infatuation and fiery passion before reality sets in, cooling the embers enough to allow more guarded, sometimes less attractive aspects of the self to surface. Interest wanes until the love object is abandoned or replaced by an alluring new one.
Americans relate to cell phones in much the same way. An old phone, with once novel features that drew fascination, is discarded with hardly a thought when an updated model makes it seem obsolete.
That consumers replace cell phones about every two years–with Californians purchasing in a single year nearly one new cell for every two state residents–makes this analogy seem less silly.
A parallel can be drawn too between the innards of a cell phone and what is revealed when one person lets another peek inside: it’s not all pretty. Some nasty materials lurk behind the bright shiny casing, making cell phone disposal a knotty environmental issue, analogous to ending, with minimal damages, a relationship gone sour. Continue Reading
Surfing might seem like an earth-friendly sport, but a closer look reveals that the environmental impact may be more than you realize. Photo c1967 at Old Man’s Beach, San Clemente, California.
At first glance, surfing might seem like an inherently earth-friendly sport. Surfers paddle out and catch waves by sheer force of will and muscle. No need for fossil fuel-burning speed boats to get around. And, surfers have a reputation for caring about ocean pollution.
But a closer look reveals that, like most human activities, the environmental impact is far from nil and, consequently, there’s a nascent movement within the surfing industry to clean up it its act.
The Essentials
The bare necessities of surfing are surfboard, wetsuit, good waves and wheels to and fro. The waves are courtesy of Mother Nature, but the choices surfers make to otherwise outfit themselves determine the toll on the environment.
Lightweight polyurethane (PU) boards swathed in fiberglass cloth and polyester resin have been the industry mainstay since heavy wood boards were ditched in the 1950s. Because both PU and polyester are petrochemicals, the enviro impact starts with environmental degradation during petroleum extraction.
Then there’s the emission of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) during PU synthesis from two petrochemicals-a ’polyol’ plus a highly volatile and toxic compound called TID. The foam molding stage eats up plenty of energy and more air polluting VOCs are given off when the board is glassed. Continue Reading
Huntington Beach City Councilmember Don Hansen reassured the public. “I’m actually pretty comfortable having a private company potentially evaluate the dedication of a source for our future water supply,” he said.
The Tampa Bay, Florida desalination plant: A series of failures and costly delays. Photo: www.treehuggers.org
That was three years ago at a city council meeting when Hansen and three other council members, Cathy Green, Gil Coerper and Keith Bohr (now Mayor Bohr) voted to allow Poseidon Resources Inc. to build a desalination plant at the corner of Newland and Beach avenues in southeast Huntington Beach.
If all goes according to plan, the facility would convert 127 million gallons of seawater into 50 million gallons of fresh drinking water every day of the year. The city would have the option of buying up to 3.5 million gallons of that water at a discount compared to the cost of imported water (two-thirds of the city’s water comes from ground wells, its cheapest source of water). The rest would be distributed throughout the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC), in theory, to provide a guaranteed water source to help offset drought conditions in the state.
The plant still needs approval from the State Lands Commission and the California Coastal Commission and Poseidon still lacks the private and public financing needed to build and operate, although Poseidon officials say that all are forthcoming (see Part 1).
No matter if the Huntington Beach desalination plant fails, Bohr said, because the burden will be strictly Poseidon’s. “We’re not hiring Poseidon, so there’s no risk,” he told hundreds of people packed tightly into the city council chambers. “If it fails, it doesn’t cost us anything.”
But Poseidon’s facility in Tampa Bay, Florida, it’s first (and failed) attempt to build and operate a desalination plant, is used by opponents to argue against building the Huntington Beach desalination plant.
The Tampa Bay desalination plant, about half the size of the one planned for Huntington Beach, has operated improperly if at all since it opened in 2003. Continue Reading
IMPACTS OF SEA-LEVEL RISE THREATEN CALIFORNIA COAST:
New Report Assesses Risks to 480,000 People
OAKLAND, CALIF. – March 11, 2009 - In an analysis prepared for three California state agencies, the Pacific Institute estimates that 480,000 people; a wide range of critical infrastructure, such as roads, hospitals, schools, and emergency facilities; vast areas of wetlands and other natural ecosystems; and nearly $100 billion in property along the California coast are at increased risk from flooding from a 1.4-meter
Newport Beach affected areas
sea-level rise – if no adaptation actions are taken. Commissioned by the Ocean Protection Council, the Public Interest Research Program of the California Energy Commission, and the California Department of Transportation, this comprehensive assessment of the impacts of sea-level rise puts California in the lead in trying to understand and adapt to the possible consequences of climate change.
Over the past century, mean sea level has risen nearly eight inches at the Golden Gate in San Francisco according to NOAA oceanographers, and under a medium-to-medium-high greenhouse-gas emissions scenario, mean sea level is projected to rise from 1.0 to 1.4 meters (or 4-5 feet) by the year 2100.
The Pacific Institute report, The Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on the California Coast, concludes that sea-level rise will inevitably change the character of the California coast, and that adaptation strategies must be evaluated, tested, and implemented if the risks identified in the report are to be reduced or avoided. Continue Reading
