If you ask Jim Hansen to name the single most important thing required to avert catastrophic climate change, he’ll say this: don’t burn all the coal (nor unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar sands and oil shales). Ideally, we would also prefer to leave some of the oil, and much of the natural gas, in the ground — or at least use it for other purpose that didn’t require combusting it, such as for chemical feedstocks and lubricants. But the latter is, alas, unlikely.

As Described in Storms of Our Grandchildren (and elsewhere), if we accept that all the proven reserves of oil/gas will be burned (i.e., consumed up to the dashed line in the figure above), and yet also required that all coal combustion be phased out by the year 2030, then the level of atmospheric CO2 would likely peak at about 425 ppm. At that point, improved forestry, soil carbon sequestration and potentially geoengineering, could be used to gradually draw CO2 back down to levels of around 350 ppm — a value necessary to restore the Earth’s present energy imbalance of ~0.75 W/m2. In short, we’d have overshoot, but have a decent chance of recovering the climate system to a near-Holocene state before amplifying ...

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Ocean acidification has been getting more attention in the last few months, but far less than is appropriate, in m opinion. After all, we’re messing with the chemistry of the waters that provide an enormous amount of food for human beings around the world, and we’re doing it by indirectly pumping tens of billions of tons of CO2 into it every year. What could possibly go wrong with that scenario?

Ocean acidification: another path to EPA rules on carbon emissions?:

Move over global warming. Ocean acidification is getting its day in court.

Nearly three years after the US Supreme Court found that carbon dioxide was a pollutant that fell under the purview of the Clean Air Act, the US Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to explore approaches for tightening its regulations dealing with ocean acidification under the Clean Water Act.

Ocean acidification results from the ocean’s uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Maine scientists have become increasingly concerned about the effect industrial emissions of CO2 are having on the chemistry of the world’s oceans and about the fallout for many species of marine animals.

The oceans take up as much as half the CO2 ...

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Over the coming months as the energy and climate discussion plays out in Congress there will doubtless be much discussion regarding the appropriate emission reduction target for the USA. Setting the scene for this, besides the bill itself, will be the US pledge under the Copenhagen Accord to reduce emissions by 17% from 2005 by 2020 – which in turn was the 2020 cap under Waxman-Markey.

 With this pledge as a basis for analysis, it is possible to do some simple “back of the envelope” calculations to gauge the scale of change that will be required over the coming ten years, assuming a rise in population to 340 million and that the USA does this on the basis of domestic action only. The land use / forestry emissions position (currently an annual drawdown) remains unchanged. The starting point is International Energy Agency (IEA) and US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data for the USA for 2007/2008. The US picture is shown below.

In 2008 the USA GHG emissions (excluding land use) were 7.1 Gt, down from 7.2 Gt in 2005. That means a reduction to 6.0 Gt by 2020, or 15.5% from 2008 levels. Total primary energy use was 97 EJ.

 To achieve a reduction in ... read more >>

I got this a few days after the release, but this rural energy savings program (introduced by my new favorite Senator Jeff Merkley) compliments nicely with the Building Star and Home Star energy efficiency programs that have been unveiled.  Now can we pass one of these?  Press release below March 10, 2010 WASHINGTON, D.C. – Oregon’s Senator [...] read more >>

Environmental groups file multiple legal challenges

This blog post is an edited version of an article published in Fuel Cycle Week, V9:N366, March 3, 2010, by International Nuclear Associates, Washington, DC.

The Sheep Mountain Alliance (SMA), a Telluride, Colo., environmental group, and its legal counsel, the Energy Minerals Law Center (EMLC), located in Durango, Colo, have taken a two-pronged approach to try to stop the development of the Pinion Ridge uranium mill. The 500 ton/day facility is being developed by Energy Fuels (TSE:EFR) and will be located in Naturita, Colo., about 50 miles northwest of Telluride.

The most significant legal action is a lawsuit filed in Montrose County District Court which alleges the County Commissioners erred by issuing a special use permit for industrial operations in an agricultural zone.

Travis Stills, attorney for the Sheep Mountain Alliance, told FCW the claim is a uranium mill is not an allowed use in an agricultural zone and that the county should have re-zone the site to industrial uses before issuing the special use permit.

Mediation may not work

For now a judge has told the county and the Sheep Mountain Alliance to develop a . ... read more >>

As a sworn defender of the Constitution of the United States, I believe in the importance of making decisions at the right level. Our Constitution does a wonderful job of assigning limited powers to the federal government while reserving the remaining powers to states and individuals. There is healthy tension there and room for debate and discussion on the boundaries.

One of the primary strengths of the Constitution and the union of states that it governs is the recognition that state boundaries are not absolute. The drafters recognized that taxation or other inhibitions of commerce among the various states would prevent achieving many of the benefits associated with being part of a larger, unified country. That is why Article 1, Section 8 gives the Congress of the federal government the right to regulate commerce among the various states and to ensure that "duties, imposts and excises" (i. e. taxes imposed by the federal government) are uniform among the states.

I question the constitutionality of the assertion by the Vermont state legislature that they have the right to determine whether or not Vermont Yankee should be issued a certificate of public good. Shouldn't the ... read more >>

Last week's GoodCompany Ventures event at the TriBeCa, NY, offices of Green Spaces brought together some of the top minds in early stage and patient capital investing, including Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Jacob Gray from Murex Investments, Roger Ehrenberg of IA Venture Strategies, and Jacqueline Novogratz of the Acumen Fund, along with yours truly as the "un-moderator."

A great dialogue on our "un-panel" ranged from balancing long-term impact with maximizing returns to the need for solid metrics for social return.

[Hoping to have a link to video of the panel here next week.]


Four GoodCompanys  from the inaugural class of 2009 presented, including Black Gold Biofuels, Couchange, CalendarFly, and PublicStuff.

Roger Ehrenberg wrote a thoughtful post on his Information Arbitrage blog about the need for a new model for investing in "social" impacts and Jason Keramidas wrote a recap on the GoodCompany blog.

Applications for the 2010 Incubator are being accepted here.

(Disclosure: I am on the Advisory Board of GoodCompany Ventures.)
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This post was prompted by my reading Fred Turner's book "From Counterculture To Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism", which looks at the influence Bucky Fuller had on a range of people, in particular Stewart Brand, who helped create first the hippie counterculture and the back to the land movement of the sixties and seventies, then later the cyberculture that grew up around the San Francisco bay area.

I won't try to review the book myself as I wouldn't do it justice - but I highly recommend it if you have any interest in this particular piece of history.



Stewart Brand

Turner has some great excerpts from his book at "EDGE" magazine - STEWART BRAND MEETS THE CYBERNETIC COUNTERCULTURE.

As they came of age, Stewart Brand and others of his generation faced two questions: How could they keep the world from being destroyed by nuclear weapons or by the large-scale, hierarchical governmental and industrial bureaucracies that had built and used them? And how could they assert and preserve their own holistic individuality in the face of such a world?

As he sought to answer those questions, Brand turned first to the study ...

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