Big Sur Bohemian Club

Last Blog Entry

Bohemian — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:30:43 -0500

If we choose to reduce our carbon fooprints individually now, then we have a very good chance of mitigating the severity of global climate change and the survival of humanity. If we choose not to reduce our carbon footprints, then the future of humanity looks grim.

To become an "Official" member of the Big Sur Bohemian Club, go here:

http://manicarver.multiply.com/journal/item/567

Best wishes,

Steve

Big Sur Bohemian Club

America produces a great deal of waste.

Bohemian — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 03:33:39 -0500

Zero Waste America brings solutions to solving our waste problems.

http://www.zerowasteamerica.org/

Big Sur Bohemian Club

With all of the first rate Universities in the world...

Bohemian — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 03:13:29 -0500

Why can't we stop fighting wars over oil, and develop renewable energies to support our economies?

Big Sur Bohemian Club

Summer Events for the Big Sur Bohemian Club (also known as the Henry Miller Library)

Bohemian — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:41:41 -0500

Stay in Touch: Sign Up!

Upcoming Events:

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June 22
Big Sur International
Invitational Ping Pong Championship!

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Friday June 27 @ 7.30PM
Rob Schneider!!!
in a benefit party for HML!

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Saturday, June 28
@ 3:00 PM
Where is Big Sur?
Come find out.

Followed by:

"To Kindness!"
A special BIG SUR
community event.
Alisa Fineman and
Kimball Hurd w/ special guest: author, musician and photographer
Don Usner.

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Saturday and Sunday
July 12 and 13
West Coast Poetry Slam
Championship.

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Saturday, July 19
@ 2pm -11pm
(((folkYEAH!))) and Arthur Magazine presents:
Beachwood Sparks
Howlin Rain
and more..

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Rizidence!
July 20 - July 27
All-strings roots-music camp!
Ages 12 and up.

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July 25 @ 7.30 PM
CJ Boyd
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Sunday, July 20 @ 3PM
John Doe in Concert!

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July 26 @ 7.30 PM
Blame Sally

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Saturday, August 2
@ 8 PM
Conspiracy of Beards

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Friday, August 15
@ 8 PM in a benefit
performance
Paul D. Miller/DJ Spooky
That Subliminal Kid!

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Sunday, August 24 @ 3 PM
Peter Case and
Chuck Prophet

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Sunday, September 21 @ 3 PM
Bill Frisell and
Nels Cline

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Saturday
September 27 @ 3 PM
Ramblin' Jack Elliott

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The 12th annual-2008
Big Sur Children's Writing Workshop

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SONGWRITING RETREAT, JANUARY, 2009

Add your name to e-mail list.

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Open Mic
Sing a song, speak your mind, juggle your balls.
8-11PM every Wednesday night.
Food served courtesy
Maiden Publick

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Your own party here?

Read about local events in
Monterey County Weekly

Support your public radio station!

Stay in Touch: Sign Up!

Welcome to The Henry Miller Library Website.

Latest News!

June 27 Rob Schneider!!! in a benefit party for HML!
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Big Sur Short Film Screening Series 2008. Program Selection is Finished.
Check out the film selections and schedule here.

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West Coast Poetry Slam Championship
Now open for registration and tickets.

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The 12th annual-2008
Big Sur Children's (and Young Adult) Writing Workshop
Now open for registration. (Register early to save on tuition and fees).

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Library opening hours: Every day 11 AM - 6 PM, closed Tuesdays.

When you're traveling up or down Highway 1 through Big Sur, stop by the Library. You will find us a quarter mile south of Nepenthe Restaurant, in a redwood grove on the mountain side of the road. It is easy – just drive, enjoy the incredible vistas, you will not miss us...

See Events Page for daily schedules. Highlight!
LIVE! ON STAGE JONATHAN RICHMAN featuring TOMMY LARKINS on the drums! June 15!
Get your tickets early, book your hotels and campgrounds,
come to the Library for one or more of our shows!
If you'd like us to e-mail you updates click here: Sign Up!
Please e-mail with any questions or concerns.
Phone (no fax) 831-667-2574
During these hours we offer free Internet Access, coffee and tea.

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NEW RELEASE:

“These Are My Flowers: Raising a Family on the Big Sur Coast --- Letters of Nancy Hopkins”
is based on letters Nancy wrote to her parents in Berkeley after she married Sam Hopkins and moved into their new home on Partington Ridge in 1948. As such, it offers a “slice of life” view of living in Big Sur in the 1950s, one woman’s view of her world and her time. Henry Miller and his wife Lepska, the children, Valentine and Tony, and later Henry's fourth wife Eve, were close neigbors of whom Nancy writes. More here.

Buy the book! Books ship every Wednesday. Thanks to a very generous arrangement w/ the publisher/editor we are able to sell this for only $ 24.95. The book is very well put together, high quality paper, photos etc.

Domestic customers here:

International address (outside continental US) please add $ 14.00 shipping:

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The Literary Magazine of the Henry Miller Library
Submissions welcome!

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Publishing News!

Magnus Toren interviewed by Bob Edwards of XMPR Satellite Radio

Esselen Indians of The Big Sur Country - The Land and the People

Jaime De Angulo - The Old Coyote of Big Sur by Gui Mayo

Big Sur by Jeff Norman

Fashionbeaver interview with Magnus Torén, HM Library Director

Randy Chase's blog

Recently published on the Web:

Valentine Miller, Henry Miller's daughter, has recently published her own site dedicated to her Father.
Please check here: http://www.henrymiller.info/

Bob Nash, Henry Miller's neighbor and close friend passed away on February 10, 2008.
His website including examples of his unique "line poems." http://www.bobnashbigsur.com/

Now available: "Emil White of Big Sur" w/ a foreword by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

The Henry Miller Library is located in Big Sur, California, USA.
Three hours drive south from San Francisco. From LA, going north, the total drive time is about 6 1/2 hours.
See Map here. or here : Big Sur Map (quest)

Stay in touch - sign up to our e-mail list!

Coming here for an event? Need a ride? Can you offer a ride?
Join here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/millerlibrary/

How do I get to the Library? (and get 25% discount on books?)

Contact Information
Mail to: Henry Miller Library, Highway One, Big Sur, CA 93920
Phone: 831-667-2574
e-mail: click here

Note: Occasionally we rent the Library for private parties so if you want to make sure to see the Library check on Events or call 831-667-2574. You can also e-mailus for an appointment.

All of the web www.henrymiller.org

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How do I get to the Library? Well, most people drive, some people drive large vehicles, others drive small. We like the people who take along three or more people in each car; our favorite people are the ones who take the bus! That's why we're offering a whoopin' 25% discount - it's like, just like...a mini...mall!) on all book purchases in our bookstore. All you need is a proof of having come down the coast by bus. Public transportation is a matter of politics here on the West and we'd like to show where we think the cupboard should be placed. We also think you'd enjoy the ride. Bus schedule here! Click on "Big Sur Service"

(The Library is only ten minutes walk past the end station at Nepenthe)

View from below Miller's house on Partington Ridge photo: Magnus Torén

Big Sur's Rosalia Byrne at the Henry Miller Library, it's at night. photo: Magnus Torén

Support the Henry Miller Library!

Extra special thanks to Apple INC. for recently donating some great equipment to us. Archives, public internet access, ping•pong, short film, music...A lot of what we do involves Apple! THANKS!

"I like Henry Miller. I think he's the greatest American writer."
Bob Dylan

Matmos and Zeena
Highlight Event of 2007!

Pegi Young
Highlight Event of 2007!!

Henry Rollins
The Event of 2006!!

Laurie Anderson
The Event of 2005!!

Patti Smith
The Event of 2004!!

List of performers from the past.

GOING HIKING?
It's a good idea.
Good site here.

New Book About Big Sur

Jaime De Angulo - The Old Coyote.

Big Sur Information
Camping, Lodging, Things To Do etc.

Donate Books to us!

Support your local radio station! In Big Sur we listen to KUSP 105.9 FM

Stay in Touch!

Going On:

Every day free wi-fi on the lawn
and inside the Library.

Buy Henry Miller's
titles as e-books!

Open Mic - 8 PM Every Wednesday

Sign up to our e-mail list!

Connecting through the WWW
Public Internet access is available at the Henry Miller Library, thanks to our dialup ISP Monterey Bay Internet.

Also special thanks to Big Sur Internetwww.bigsurinternet.com/ for their help with this website.

Things we need

Foundation and small business support

Big Sur Bohemian Club

Working model of car that uses water as fuel source.

Bohemian — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:10:53 -0500

Here's a working model of a car that runs on water : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrxfMz2eDME

Maybe...but extraordinary claims, demand extraordinary proof. This car sounds like a scam at this point.

Big Sur Bohemian Club

Stuff..

Bohemian — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:06:34 -0500

A video following our consumption of "stuff" to waste: http://ecowellness.multiply.com/journal/item/266/YOU_SHOULD_KNOW_THIS

Big Sur Bohemian Club

Will Barack Obama become a member of the San Francisco Bohemian Club if elected President?

Bohemian — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:14:10 -0500

When I was a Petroleum Geologist, I visited the San Francisco Bohemian Club on business. It is more of a business club for the world's elite, than a place where Bohemians gather:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ruling_Elites/SF...

Before I vote for Obama or the Green Party candidate for President in November, I asked the Obama people if Obama planned on joining the San Francisco Bohemian Club if elected. Here's the link to the question:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/mani...

I look forward to the answer.

Big Sur Bohemian Club

350

Bohemian — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:53:01 -0500

Here's a new website created to help cap global CO2's at 350 ppm. This is the maximum limit for a sustainable climate future. I recommend you check it out and pass it on to your friends:

http://www.350.org/

Big Sur Bohemian Club

World Watch Institute: Jim Hansen on Climate Change, Environmental Skeptics are Overwhelmingly Politicized

Bohemian — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:16:44 -0500

Latest Newscourtesy Worldwatch InstituteWorld Watch Magazine: Jim Hansen on Climate Change

Editor's Note: If any single event can be said to have put climate change on the world's policy radar, it was the testimony of NASA scientist James Hansen before Senator Tim Wirth's committee in Congress on June 23, 1988. On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of that event, World Watch's Ben Block talked with Hansen about its impact. Hansen will be honored at a Worldwatch Institute sponsored symposium in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 2008. For more information, go to www.worldwatch.org/events/hansenhearing.

World Watch: What led you to your 1988 testimony?

James Hansen: This was the culmination of years of work, going back at least to three papers between 1981 and 1982, [discussing] carbon dioxide and climate change in the journal Science, other trace gases in Geophysical Research Letters, and sea level, also published in Science. What was different in 1988 was that I had a more comprehensive paper completed and in press at Journal of Geographical Research, which was the attachment to my 1988 testimony.

WW: What did you expect the impact of your testimony would be?

JH: Well, the intention was to get some public exposure. Rafe Pomerance [founder of the Climate Policy Center, who was then aWorld Resources Institute senior fellow] visited me after reading our 1981 Science paper [on carbon dioxide] and encouraged me to testify to Congress, which I did a few times in the 1980s without much effect. The hope was to get more attention this time, which seemed possible given the extreme U.S. climate [hot weather] in 1988.

WW: Looking back, how did it go?

JH: It certainly got the desired attention. My regret, shortly thereafter, was that I had not discussed the impact of global warming on the hydrologic cycle in a more general way. Global warming means more moisture in the atmosphere, so heavy rain events and floods will increase. But, at times and places when it is dry, drought intensity will increase. Because of the emphasis on drought in 1988, I decided to testify again in 1989. That testimony got a lot of attention also, because I complained about [the White House's Office of Management and Budget] changing my testimony, but that hullabaloo caused the message about the hydrologic cycle to be lost.

WW: When many scientists responded to the '88 testimony that you were "ahead of the science," how did you react?

JH: I was not too concerned about that, I knew that within not many years it would become obvious whether or not I was right. Since I was very confident that I was, I thought there was some value of, in effect,making a prediction.

WW: Since you told the press that your climate-change observations were being censored by the Bush administration around 2005, how did it change your role in shaping the public discourse on climate change?

JH: It probably has given more attention to the matter. The New York Times press coverage did not do a good job of tracking the censorship to its source, instead attributing it to a 24-yearold renegade. Mark Bowen's book, Censoring Science, tracks the problem to the top.

WW: Over the past 20 years, what developments in science, policy, or public perceptions-or lack thereof-have surprised you the most?

JH: I have to admit that I am surprised and disappointed at the lack of substantial action to mitigate climate change. I am impressed by many of the people, senators et cetera, that I met in Washington, yet Washington seems to be under the heavy thumb of special interests, especially fossil fuel special interests. Clearly they have not succeeded in doing what is best for the people; rather they are doing what is best for big business.

WW: How often do you think the government is attempting to distort results of scientific research?

JH: Almost all scientists in the Environmental Protection Agency say that they cannot say what they believe if it goes against the [Bush] administration's preference. In NASA it was the same (if policy-relevance was involved) until the administrator gave a green light. My impression is that things have improved, but they are still not good. My information is based on hearsay from a small number of scientists, but also on broader studies such as the last one conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists. This attitude of the administration is idiotic, not just because it violates basic principles of democracy, but because it leads to lousy policymaking. Why do you need advice of scientists, if you know that you are only going to accept results that fit predetermined policy decisions?

WW: Numerous governments and NGOs around the world are calling to limit the atmosphere's temperature increase to 2 degrees C. Do you believe this to be a safe limit, and do you think this target is achievable?

JH: That target is easily achievable with sensible policies. Unfortunately, warming that large is a guarantee of global disasters. We are already within a fraction of one degree of the warmest interglacial periods. Two degrees C would put us into the range of the Middle Pliocene [the last period of geological time, 3.5 to 2.5 million years ago, of greater global warmth]. Unfortunately, based on polar temperature maxima, we overestimated the warmth of prior interglacial periods.

WW: Some scientists have argued that we have already reached tipping points in some regions of the world. Do you agree? If so, what are they and can we avoid them?

JH: We need to distinguish tipping level and the point of no return, as explained in our new "Target CO2" paper. The tipping level is the level of greenhouse gases that will lead to large, undesirable, even disastrous, effects. We have reached the tipping level for several important effects. That is why we must go back in CO2 amounts at least to 350 ppm and possibly lower. The point of no return is when the dynamics of the process take over and it is out of our control, we cannot stop it, e.g., the ice sheet from disintegrating, because of positive feedback and warming in the pipeline. Some phenomena have enough inertia that we can afford some overshoot of the safe CO2 level, provided that we get back to a lower amount fast enough. The ice sheets and sea level may be in that category. Unfortunately, Arctic sea ice has reached the point where we are going to lose all of the warm season ice within the next few decades.

WW: Often the more you know about the hard realities of climate change, the more depressing it becomes.What inspires you to be hopeful?

JH: It becomes readily solvable if we do just a few things that make enormous sense for other reasons. By far the most important is a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants (unless they capture CO2) and a phase-out over the next two decades of existing ones.We will also need a high enough price on carbon emissions to avert substantial use of unconventional fossil fuels (tar shale, tar sands). Moving beyond fossil fuels sooner (we would have to do it within several decades anyhow) makes enormous sense for many reasons (cleaner air and water, energy independence, et cetera) for everybody except a handful of fossil fuel executives, but, unfortunately, they wield enormous power in our governments, and not just in the United States. I still believe that our democracy can work, but it requires overcoming the undue influence of money in politics.

WW: You have repeatedly called for a moratorium on coal power plants and have even written to leaders of U.S. states and countries that are considering new coal plants.What reactions have you received to these letters?

JH: Perhaps it helped in the United Kingdom, but it remains to be seen. At least the opposition leader has come out with a position in favor of a moratorium. But [a conventional coal-fired power plant in] Kingsnorth [Kent, UK] is still up in the air. Germany [is] unclear. I have been invited to come over and talk with the minister of the environment. The governor of Nevada is in the hip pocket of the coal industry. I am afraid that the same is true in Minnesota (despite the greenwashing of him) and Virginia. Perhaps utility CEOs are more important. [International investor] Jim Rogers has been greenwashing, but maybe he is open minded. I am having dinner with him soon. I had a very good meeting with the CEO of [energy service company] Public Service Enterprise Group.

WW: After a long career of achievements, what would you like to accomplish before you leave NASA?

JH: There are several papers that I am working on that I believe to be significant. And, somehow, I need to be able to write more clearly, so that the implications are understood and believed.

Purchase a PDF of the entire July/August issue of World Watch, or subscribe or renew to World Watch Magazine. Current subscribers, log in and download this issue, and past issues of World Watch.

Environmental Skeptics Are Overwhelmingly Politicized, Study SaysA review of environmental skepticism literature from the past 30 years has found that the vast majority of skeptics, often identified as independent, are directly linked to politically oriented, conservative think tanks.

The study, published in this month's issue of Environmental Politics, analyzed books written between 1972 and 2005 that deny the authenticity of environmental problems. The researchers found that more than 92 percent of the skeptical authors were in some way affiliated to conservative think tanks - non-profit research and advocacy organizations that promote core conservative ideals.

While many environmental skeptics are known to work for these think tanks, the study is the first to provide a quantitative analysis of the relationship. The popular media often regard environmental skeptics as independent experts, despite their connection to industry-funded campaigns that seek to de-legitimize sound environmental science reports, especially on climate change, says lead author Peter Jacques, an environmental politics professor at the University of Central Florida.

"A lot of skeptics might say they are independent voices, but it's clear there is an organization behind the skeptical discourse," Jacques said. "If not for conservative think tanks, we wouldn't be having this same discussion; we wouldn't be hung up on whether climate change is real."

The review analyzed 141 books, which the authors consider the largest compilation of the environmental skepticism genre and the majority of all English-language skepticism books. An author was "affiliated" to a think tank if the organization published the book or if the author ever - before or after the book was published - held a position with the organization, wrote for an organization's publications, or delivered lectures sponsored by the organization.

The U.S. conservative movement has lead opposition to international environmental regulation since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. In the years since, the movement has succeeded in undermining the credibility of many environmental issues, said Riley Dunlap, a sociology professor at Oklahoma State University, who co-authored the study. "From the [political] right, there's no longer a sense of neutral, objective science - only liberal or conservative - and that's an unfortunate trend," Dunlap said.

Many skeptics say that they form their opinion despite their affiliation to think tanks or industry. For instance, Ronald Bailey, a correspondent for the ExxonMobil-funded Reason Foundation and former fellow for the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, recently reversed his stance as a climate change denier. His original skepticism was the result of inconsistent temperature datasets. He was not "passing along misinformation supplied to me during expensive lunches," he wrote in the article Confessions of an Alleged ExxonMobil Whore.

The authors say skeptics like Bailey have every right to voice their opinion. But the statements of a few think tank-supported experts should not be regarded as equal to scientific findings that have been vetted through an intense peer-review process, they say. "We want to allow a cacophony of voices in public policy," Jacques said. "Where we get into problems is where we fail to evaluate the voices; we fail to evaluate the merit of the claim."

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

All-Consuming Question: Is Population or Human Behavior the Problem?

This entry was originally posted to the Island Press blog, Island Interactive, at www.islandpress.org/blog. Robert will post periodic updates on population as he promotes his new book, More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want.

Talking to reporters and others about my new book, More: Population, Nature, and What Women, I'm sometimes asked where consumption fits into the population picture. A review in the intriguingly named magazine Bitch, for example,criticized the book for "failing to adequately distinguish between the individuals who are overpopulating the world and the individuals who are responsible for the type of overconsumption that causes environmental deterioration."

Well, the book actually doesn't identify any individuals who are "overpopulating the world." I explain on the book's second page why I don't like the word overpopulation. And for many years I chaired the board of the Center for a New American Dream, which works to make North American consumption a sustainable model for the world. I see More as being in one sense all about consumption, because it is through what we use, consume, and discard that human beings affect the environment.

Unfortunately for open discussions, consumption is often placed in opposition to population, as the Bitch review does - as if one part of the world has no population and only consumes, while another has no consumption and only populates. That's not how the world works. Population and consumption multiply each other everywhere, in rich countries and poor, even though the dynamics and magnitude of each force vary widely across and within countries.

One obvious connection between the two is that if populations had never grown large, the consumption levels of individuals wouldn't have much impact on the environment. We worry about consumption precisely because there are so many of us affecting nature and natural resources.

A second point, which I explore in More (p. 230), is that population growth itself has historically driven people to innovate in ways that often boost individual consumption. The exhaustion of forests as European populations kept growing drove people in the 16th century to use coal, long considered a dirty fuel inferior to wood. Improvements in coal mining made possible the Industrial Revolution, which in turn facilitated the hazardous alteration of the Earth's atmosphere today. In modern industrialized nations, sprawl and the great distances many people drive have a lot to do with high population densities.

As More makes clear, we're not going to solve human-induced climate change or most other serious environmental problems through any one policy change, technological breakthrough, or change in individual behavior. It's going to take action on every level, and even then we'll be adapting to a rapidly changing environment for generations to come. A world of 6.7 billion people can't easily change its behavior to leave no imprint on the Earth.

What's attractive about addressing population is that it will stop growing, for the best of reasons, if we can satisfy the wants of women everywhere for reproductive choice. A stable or gradually declining world population offers the best demographic platform for a sustainable future, one in which consumption is environmentally safe and meets the needs and reasonable wants of people everywhere.

European Union Poised to Increase RecyclingThe European Union is currently debating waste management targets that could significantly increase recycling rates throughout Europe.

Legislators on the European Parliament's Environment Committee overwhelmingly supported reforms earlier this year that would halt the steady rise in the region's garbage. By 2012, waste production would have to stabilize at 2009 levels, the committee recommended.

To reduce the amount of trash deposited into landfills, EU member states would have to increase recycling rates across all sectors. The policy proposal is a reaction to the growing burden of municipal waste across Europe, although countries that are new to the union may struggle to meet the challenge.

The Environment Committee called for recycling rates to more than double by 2020. Households would have to reuse or recycle at least 50 percent of their waste. Construction, demolition, manufacturing, and industry would be required to meet a 70 percent target. Parliament will vote on the recycling targets on June 16.

The ambitious recycling rates were quickly rejected by the Council of the European Union, however, which called the targets unattainable due to "recycling imbalances" among member states. Instead, the council recommends recycling targets that are about 5 percent more lenient for each sector.

If an agreement is reached, it appears likely that overall recycling rates will have to increase. According to the Parliament's Environment Committee, 49 percent of EU municipal waste goes to landfills, 18 percent is incinerated, and 27 percent is recycled or composted. The amount of municipal waste is expected to grow 25 percent between 2005 and 2020.

Big Sur Bohemian Club

World Watch News: China's Wind Power, Aquaculture

Bohemian — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 08:24:31 -0500

Latest News courtesy Worldwatch Institute OPINION: China’s Wind Power Development Exceeds ExpectationsA recent boom in Chinese wind power development has surpassed the government's original target and forced policymakers to set a new goal that might still be too modest.

In 2007, cumulative wind installations in China exceeded 5 gigawatts (GW), the goal originally set for 2010 by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner. The Commission had set the target in its 2006 mid- and long-term development plan for renewable energy. The plan's target for 2020 was 30 GW, a level that is now projected to be reached by 2012, eight years ahead of schedule.

Big Sur Bohemian Club

Fuel Economy: Consumer Reports

Bohemian — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 12:40:35 -0500

Fuel Economy: Save Money on Gas

Consumer Reports' tests show how to get the best gas mileage.

Dodge Ram 1500 Sport

The best way to burn less fuel is to buy a car that gets better gas mileage. But our tests with a Toyota Camry and other vehicles show there are ways to minimize what you spend at the pump with your current car.

Drive at a moderate speed. This is the biggest factor. You may have to be a little patient, but driving at 55 mph instead of 65 or 75 will save you money. When we increased theCamry's highway cruising speed from 55 mph to 65, the car's fuel economy dropped from 40 mpg to 35. Speeding up to 75 mph cost the car another 5 mpg. One reason is that aerodynamic drag increases exponentially the faster you drive; it simply takes more fuel to power the car through the air.

Drive smoothly. Avoid hard acceleration and braking whenever possible. In our tests, frequent bursts of acceleration and braking reduced the Camry's mileage by 2 to 3 mpg. Once up to speed on the highway, maintain a steady pace in top gear. Smooth acceleration, cornering, and braking also extend the life of the engine, transmission, brakes, and tires.

Reduce unnecessary drag. At highway speeds, more than 50 percent of engine power goes to overcoming aerodynamic drag. So don't carry things on top of your vehicle when you don't have to. Installing a large Thule Cascade 1700 car-top carrier on our Camry dropped its gas mileage from 35 mpg to 29 at 65 mph. Even driving with empty racks on the car reduces its fuel economy.

Don't use premium fuel if you don't have to. If your car specifies regular fuel, don't buy premium under the mistaken belief that your engine will run better. The only difference you'll see is about 20 cents more per gallon. Most cars are designed to run just fine on regular gasoline. Even many cars for which premium is recommended will run well on regular. We have found that the differences are imperceptible during normal driving. Check your owner's manual to find out if your engine really requires premium or if you can run on other grades.

Minimize driving with a cold engine. Engines run most efficiently when they're warm. In our city-driving tests, making multiple short trips and starting the engine from cold each time reduced fuel economy by almost 4 mpg. Engines also produce more pollution and wear faster when they're cold. When possible, combine several short trips into one so that the engine stays warm.

Keep tires properly inflated. The Camry experienced a 1.3 mpg loss in highway fuel economy when the tires were underinflated by 10 psi. More important, underinflated tires compromise handling and braking, and wear faster. And they run much hotter, which can lead to tire failure. Check the pressure of your vehicle's tires at least once a month with a tire gauge. The owner's manual explains how to do it.

Buy tires with lower rolling resistance. A tire's rolling resistance can add or detract another 1 or 2 mpg. In our tire ratings, look for high-rated tires with low rolling resistance. They generally won't cost more, and replacing a worn tire could save you more than $100 a year in fuel.

Avoid idling for long periods. Think of it this way: When you're idling, your car is getting zero miles per gallon. When we let a Buick Lucerne, with a V8, idle for 10 minutes while warming up, it burned about an eighth of a gallon of gas. A smaller engine would probably burn less, but idling still adds up over time. As a rule, turn off your engine if you expect to sit for more than about 30 seconds. An engine warms up faster as it's driven anyway.

For more information on saving fuel and alternative fuel vehicles, see our Green car guide.

MYTH BUSTERS

Morning fill-ups. A common tip is to buy gasoline in the morning, when the air is cool, rather than in the heat of the day. The theory is that the cooler gasoline will be denser, so you will get more for your money. But the temperature of the gasoline coming out of the fuel nozzle changes very little, if at all, during any 24-hour stretch. Any extra gas you get will be negligible.

Air conditioning vs. opening windows. Some people advise you not to run the air conditioner because it puts more of a load on the engine, which can decrease fuel economy. But others say that opening the windows at highway speeds can affect gas mileage even more by disrupting the vehicle's aerodynamics. Our tests show that neither makes enough of a difference to worry about. Using air conditioning while driving at 65 mph reduced the Camry's gas mileage by about 1 mpg. The effect of opening the windows at 65 mph was not even measurable.

A dirty air filter. Our tests show that driving with a dirty air filter no longer has any impact on fuel economy, as it did with older engines. That's because modern engines use computers to precisely control the air/fuel ratio, depending on the amount of air coming in through the filter. Reducing airflow causes the engine to automatically reduce the amount of fuel being used. Fuel economy didn't change, but the Camry accelerated much more slowly with a dirty filter.

Big Sur Bohemian Club

Energy Conservation: Wikipedia

Bohemian — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:27:04 -0500

Energy conservation From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia • Interested in contributing to Wikipedia? • This article is about decreasing energy consumption. For the law of conservation of energy in physics, see Conservation of energy. The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.
Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Energy conservation is the practice of decreasing the quantity of energy used. It may be achieved through efficient energy use, in which case energy use is decreased while achieving a similar outcome, or by reduced consumption of energy services. Energy conservation may result in increase of financial capital, environmental value, national security, personal security, and human comfort. Individuals and organizations that are direct consumers of energy may want to conserve energy in order to reduce energy costs and promote economic security. Industrial and commercial users may want to increase efficiency and thus maximize profit.

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World Watch: Conserve Water Through Food Efficiency, U.S. Postal Service Begins E-Waste Recycling and more.

Bohemian — Sat, 24 May 2008 23:18:37 -0500

Latest News courtesy Worldwatch Institute Conserve Water Through Food Efficiency, Report SaysAs food prices escalate and water scarcity extends worldwide, the best solution to both issues would be a global reduction in wasted food, a new international report says.

Inefficient harvesting, transportation, storage, and packaging ruin 50 percent of food, according to the report, which was released last week by the Stockholm International Water Institute, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and the International Water Management Institute. Add up how much food consumers simply throw away, especially in developed nations, and a whole lot of water is being wasted as well.

If government, industry, and civil society worked together to improve efficiency, wasted food could be cut in half by 2025, the report says. Water conservation recommendations included advanced technologies to capture more rainwater for agriculture, incentives for consumers to waste less food, and benchmark standards for industry to reduce water use in the entire food chain.

The water experts decided to target the food sector because agriculture requires 80 percent of the world's water resources. With populations set to grow in the coming years, and as developing nations eat more meat and dairy, water demand is expected to also surge. "It's likely we'll need two times the water by 2050 than what we need today. The challenge is to reduce the amount of water we need today," said David Molden, research director at Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute, in a press conference.

In the developing world, wasted food is mostly attributed to harsh climate conditions and crop-eating pests or organisms. Agricultural productivity could double, the report says, if farmers adopt existing water conservation technologies, such as small dams that supply rainwater run-off during times of drought.

Post-harvest food losses, which in Africa range from 25 to 50 percent, can be reduced through proper storage and transfer facilities, the report states. In addition to investments in silos, "processing of the products, to add value and keep freshness," would better preserve food resources, says Virginia-based Millennium Institute president Hans Herren, who is a World Food Prize laureate, when commenting on the report.

The report called for businesses to minimize wasted water during food processing and transportation by setting benchmark standards. Industry should also create labels that state how much water each product requires, said Molden, a report lead author. "If industry can demand a banana has a certain shape or a tomato has a certain color, why not say something about how much water it takes for farmers to produce those crops?" he said.

As the world suffers a burgeoning food crisis-grain prices rose 80 percent between 2005 and 2008-more attention is being dedicated to food waste. Waste in the developed world is particularly high. According to a 2001 study by the University of Arizona, Americans were throwing away three times as much food then as they were 20 years prior. A study released this month by the U.K. government said more food is being wasted there, too, costing the country 10 billion pounds ($19.6 billion) each year.

The international water report estimates that households in developed nations are wasting as much as a quarter of their food. "Very few people know about the water consumption related to the food that they eat," said Jan Lundqvist, a researcher with the Stockholm International Water Institute. "With increasing competition, increasing prices, it's now a very auspicious moment to try to push this type of message."

But Anders Berntell, the Stockholm International Water Institute's executive director, suggested that a public relations campaign may not suffice. "If a family can afford to throw away 25 percent of the food they eat, maybe the price is too low," he said.

Worldwatch Institute staff writer Ben Block can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

U.S. Postal Service Begins E-Waste Recycling

In an effort to improve electronics recycling in the United States, the U.S. Postal Service is developing a free national collection program for small electronic items.

The program, now in a pilot stage, provides courtesy envelopes with pre-paid postage for patrons to deposit their unwanted digital cameras, printer cartridges, MP3 players, cell phones, and PDAs. International recycling company Clover Technologies Group processes the devices in its U.S. and Mexican facilities and then refurbishes and resells them if possible.

Now limited to select cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, the program may expand nationwide in the fall, and it eventually may accept a wider range of devices. "It doesn't cost us anything because [Clover] is paying for postage on the envelope," said Joanne Veto, a post office spokesperson. "For us, it's a really smart thing to do."

The program would be a de facto national electronic recycling program, the first for the United States. As the only industrialized nation not to ratify the 1989 Basel Convention, which requires its signatories to notify developing nations of incoming hazardous waste shipments, many environmentalists have criticized the country for its lack of action to reduce the international spread of electronic garbage, known as e-waste.

Americans discard at least 2 million tons of household electronics each year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Less than 20 percent of that e-waste is recycled, although state-led initiatives are beginning to improve this recycling rate. Once recycled, however, e-waste is frequently sold to brokers who ship it to the developing world, where it is often dismantled with little regard for worker safety, then burned in the open air or dumped into bodies of water.

The postal service program made it a priority to avoid sending e-waste to developing countries. "Are all these shipped to non-approved third world countries? No. Not at all. That was a big concern of the contract," said Eric Martin, Clover's vice president of sales.

The postal service hired environmental consulting firm MBDC, which is led by "cradle-to-cradle" visionary William McDonough, to oversee Clover's procedures. As part of an audit of the company's environmental and occupational operations, MBDC made a pre-arranged visit to a Clover facility in Mexico where electronics are tested and dismantled. "Lots of people are very concerned about [e-waste], as we are. Everything we saw exceeds traditional global practices for responsible recycling," said Steve Bolton, an MBDC senior consultant. "Worker exposure was not an issue."

If a product is not recycled, it is shipped internationally to smelters that strip the item of its plastics and metals. The remaining waste - in some facilities as little as half of 1 percent of the total collected waste (by weight) - is burned as fuel. But even the best industry practices are incapable of removing all e-waste toxins. A typical cell phone, for example, contains hazardous lead, beryllium, chromium, arsenic, and flame retardants.

While a national program that refurbishes electronics is necessary, Sarah Westervelt, e-waste coordinator with the Basel Action Network, a hazardous waste watchdog group, said she remains critical of a program that encourages guiltless consumption of more electronics. "Consumers need to pay for hazardous waste to be managed," Westervelt said. "Free programs...allow the U.S. to continue externalizing the impacts on human health and the environment by not solving the problem upstream where it has to be solved."

But MBDC's Bolton said that if more electronics are recycled and returned to manufacturers, less electronics would need to be produced. "Ideally what we are trying to do is change design," he said.

While the United States is among the leaders of e-waste production, it is not alone. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, the world produces 50 million tons of e-waste each year. But while the United States has encouraged manufacturers to reduce hazardous waste in their products on a voluntary basis, the European Union has made such reductions mandatory.

Worldwatch Institute staff writer Ben Block can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

Population and Climate Change: Can We Talk?

ISTANBUL-The workshop I've been attending in this ancient city drew 31 people-ranging from a member of the British parliament to a Dutch women's rights advocate to a Hungarian environmentalist-to talk about whether it makes sense to bring population into the global debate on climate change.

Tough question, given that most of the responsibility for human-induced global warming stems from the past behavior of wealthier nations, most of whose populations are now growing relatively slowly or not at all. Workshop participants thus worried that taking on population would risk giving a pass to the disproportionately high carbon consumption these nations enjoy.

Many of these participants work to support a concept known by the unwieldy acronym of SRHR-for sexual and reproductive health and rights. Never heard of it? Neither have most people, and that makes the work of these dedicated professionals all the harder. They are promoting, after all, the right of all people to be sexually active when and as they choose, in safety and health, and to conceive a child only if and when they want. Should be pretty basic, but not much of the world prioritizes SRHR or strongly enough supports the health services needed to make it possible for all.

In More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want, I mildly chide some in the SRHR community for eschewing a potential alliance with environmentalists who see the benefits of the concept in reducing unintended childbearing and thus slowing population growth. Disconcertingly, many on the SRHR side also see population as a purely "Southern"-or developing-country-issue. The reality is that unintended pregnancy is to varying degrees common in all countries, and it elevates the populations even of high-consuming nations above what they would be if all reproduction were intentional. The already populous United States, for example, grows faster demographically than some developing countries do-in part because nearly half of all U.S. pregnancies are unintended.

This workshop, at least, undermined the criticism I expressed in More. Though all my SRHR-focused colleagues worried-justifiably-about making too simplistic a link between population growth and climate change, almost all were prepared to accept that the link is real and important. Much of the debate was over whether or how to use it in advocacy aimed at improving access to reproductive health services in developing countries. Though no common statement emerged-this was merely a workshop to start a fresh dialogue-participants proposed exploring alliances with likeminded environmentalists in Europe. That's a step forward, especially given that concern about population growth has long been less common there than in North America.

The participation of two representatives from sub-Saharan Africa made this meeting even more exciting. Both had much to teach the rest of us about applying the connections between population, health, and the environment in communities. "Why don't we link these at the local level?" asked one participant, whose national government has endorsed the concept. "If we do, we're much more likely to solve the problems of poverty and energy."

I wish I could claim these encouraging outcomes came about because More, which treats the evolution of these linkages from the deep past to the near future, had been assigned reading on the planes to Istanbul. Not quite. But at least I was able to sell a few copies to new friends, whose reactions to the book will mean more to me than I would have predicted when I arrived.

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Study Supports U.S. Wind Expansion

Bohemian — Tue, 20 May 2008 00:59:20 -0500

Latest Newscourtesy Worldwatch InstituteStudy Supports U.S. Wind ExpansionWind energy can supply 20 percent of U.S. electricity needs by 2030 at a "modest" cost difference, a new U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report says.

The analysis predicts that the 20 percent wind scenario would cost about 2 percent more than sticking with the current energy mix, which relies more heavily on traditional fossil fuels.

"The 20 percent wind scenario entails higher initial capital costs (to install wind capacity and associated transmission infrastructure) in many areas, yet offers lower ongoing energy costs than conventional power plants for operations, maintenance, and fuel," said the report, which was written in conjunction with industry and environmental analysts. Under the scenario, 500,000 new jobs would be created.

To reach their goal by 2030, the department said wind energy installation would need to triple from the current rate of 5.2 gigawatts (GW) added in 2007 to more than 16 GW per year by 2018, with that pace continuing through 2030. The total wind energy growth, 290 GW, would displace the projected use of coal for power generation by 18 percent and the use of natural gas by about 50 percent.

Such a dramatic increase in wind capacity would require large-scale expansion of the U.S. electrical transmission grid to access the best wind resources and relieve grid congestion. Power companies would also have to add gas turbine generators to provide back-up electricity when the wind isn't blowing, which ranges from 25 to 45 percent of the day, according to Thomas Key, renewable energy technology leader for the Electric Power Research Institute.

One of the most consistent criticisms of wind is that, due to its intermittent nature, improved electricity storage is necessary. "We don't have many options for electrical energy storage right now," Key said. "We really need some technological advances to find economic advances on this scale."

The study, however, finds that electricity storage is not needed to reach the 20 percent goal. Andy Karsner, the DOE's assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy, said claims of wind power unreliability are false. "Wind is in fact one of our least volatile resources," he said at a press briefing.

Wind energy provides just 1 percent of U.S. electricity today, compared with about 7 percent in Germany where the government has provided steady support for the industry since the early 1990s. State laws that require utilities to purchase wind power have recently revived the U.S. industry, and the country has led the world in wind power installations over the past two years.

The U.S. industry remains dependent on a short-term federal tax credit that will expire at the end of this year unless Congress extends it. "We need to fix the production tax credit uncertainty... as part of a plan to get [20 percent by 2030]," said Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley.

The new study estimates that the increase in wind generation would avoid 7.6 billion cumulative tons of the principal greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, from being emitted - the equivalent of protecting about 48 million acres (19.4 million hectares) of forest from deforestation. This would nearly eliminate the projected increase in emissions from U.S. power plants between now and 2030.

"To dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance our energy security, clean power generation at the gigawatt-scale will be necessary, and will require us to take a comprehensive approach," Karsner said in a prepared statement.

The added wind power would also avoid 4 trillion gallons of water from being consumed for electricity generation, the report estimates. Less coal-fired power results in fewer emissions of mercury and the pollutants that cause acid rain, as well.

As the price of fossil fuels continue to climb, Kammen said wind energy may end up costing less than the additional 2 percent that the report predicts. "It doesn't include the ramp up of fossil fuel prices [which rose significantly since the study's completion]...and we haven't even started talking about what the price of carbon will be," he said. "This looks like the bargain of the century."

"Although the 20 percent wind scenario sounds ambitious, the industry has actually grown faster over the past year than assumed in the study's scenario, says Worldwatch Institute president Christopher Flavin. "Wind power is going to be a huge part of the country's energy future." Worldwatch senior researcher Janet Sawin was a member of the study's steering committee and helped author a policy chapter that was later removed from the report.

Staff writer Ben Blocks reports everything environmental for the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

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Worldwatch Institute: Amazon Environment Leader resigns, Green Jobs finding International Support

Bohemian — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:13:49 -0500

Latest News courtesy Worldwatch Institute Amazon Leader Ends Her Embittered EraBrazil's outspoken environment minister, Marina Silva, resigned Tuesday in a move that was widely expected after years of tension with the country's largely pro-development administration.

In her resignation letter to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Silva omitted specific reasons for her departure. She described her decision as "personal and irrevocable," according to media reports.

Days before Silva resigned, Brazil announced its new sustainable development plan for the Amazon. The plan emphasized the country's right to develop its Amazon resources and for the most part failed to address key issues that Silva has advocated, such as incentives for sustainable forestry or sustainable farming. Brazilian media reports suggest Silva was frustrated that the ministry of strategic planning was selected to oversee the development plan, instead of the environment ministry.

The international environmental community has expressed sadness over the news of Silva's resignation. She is widely considered to be the most influential environment minister in Brazilian history. Her departure is said to be a victory for the agricultural and livestock industries, which opposed her efforts to create national anti-deforestation measures in the Amazon and elsewhere.

"She was key in the doubling of the Amazon protected area network, and she will go down in history as one of the most courageous leaders in the fight against corruption and illegal activities in rainforest regions," said Daniel Nepstad, a Brazil-based ecologist with the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts. "I am deeply saddened by her resignation."

Similar sentiments are being expressed from Brazilians. "Marina was the best minister that we had," said Paulo Moutinho, scientific coordinator of the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM). "Her conviction about the necessity to establish sustainable development in Brazil is unswerving."

Silva retains a position as senator in Brazil's legislature, where she may have greater freedom to criticize the Lula government.

Silva is often considered emblematic of her native home, the Amazon. In the early 1980s, she and fellow rubber-tapper Chico Mendes founded empates, a non-violent grassroots movement against deforestation. Undaunted by Mendes' assassination in 1988 or her many illnesses, including heavy metal contamination, Silva was the first rubber tapper elected to Brazil's federal senate in 1994. When Lula became president in 2002, Silva was one of his first political appointees.

Despite her popularity, Silva has been largely unsuccessful in her political battles with Lula. The president ignored her opposition to two large hydroelectric projects on the Amazon River's largest tributary, the Madeira River. Her efforts to oppose the expansion of BR-163, the so-called "soy highway" that cuts through the Amazon, were to no avail. And after Silva called for a ban against the planting and exportation of genetically modified crops, the ban was later lifted. By allowing the government to relax laws concerning infrastructure licenses, Silva "sets a dangerous precedent," said Roberto Smeraldi, director of Friends of the Earth, Amazonia.

Yet Silva's stances have resulted in several important concessions, such as more-stringent hydroelectricity policies and sustainable development zones that buffer the BR-163 corridor. "Her influence has been to keep those issues in the forefront by arguing the case very cogently and with a lot of authority," said Tim Hirsch, a Brazil-based freelance journalist who authored a recent story on Amazon protection in World Watch magazine. "The profile of environmental policies within the Lula administration is higher than it would have otherwise been."

Brazilian society has become cautious of allowing international interests determine how the country should manage its Amazon resources. Yet Silva has often sided in favor of the wider environmental community to advocate forest conservation and greater action to address climate change.

Her replacement, Carlos Minc, is an environmental advocate from Rio de Janeiro who helped found Brazil's Green Party. He is generally respected within the environmental community, and some are welcoming a minister who is not solely focused on Amazonian issues. "The huge challenge for him is to convince people both inside and outside Brazil that he can have the same influence on policy that Marina Silva did," Hirsch said.

Staff writer Ben Block covers everything environmental with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

Green Jobs Find International SupportSitting in a warm Capitol Hill office building last week, a panel of green-collar job activists attempted to rally support among a room of sleepy Congressional staffers. At the end of the briefing, Van Jones, a civil-rights lawyer-turned-green jobs champion, delivered the message that jolted many audience members out of their afternoon haze. "We are about to enter stagflation," Jones said. "That means people get voted out of office."

Highlighting the connections between lagging employment and the need to address climate change has become a favorite talking point in the U.S. environmental and labor rights communities. It's the common denominator that can uplift the working poor, provide incentive to the corporate rich, and still address the growing threat of catastrophic climate change, they say. Especially as economic markets stumble in the United States and across the world, many activists say that promoting green jobs is the only way to reach an effective international climate agreement.

According to some estimates, including those of former World Bank-economist Sir Nicholas Stern, a "business-as-usual" approach to climate change would damage the global economy more than the adoption of hard-hitting policies to reduce emissions. Plus, such policies would stimulate green jobs, "well-paid, career track jobs that contribute directly to preserving or enhancing environmental quality," according to the Apollo Alliance, a U.S. coalition of business, labor, environmental, and community leaders. More specifically, green jobs are positions in the emerging renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other "green economy" industries.

Although activists have long discussed the potential of green jobs, political leaders have begun to take notice only in the past year or so. U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso, have all promised policies that would create "millions" of green jobs. In December, the United States passed the world's first law that provides funding for green jobs, specifically targeted to citizens who are traditionally economically depressed, such as the unemployed, formerly incarcerated, and at-risk youth.

Green jobs are attracting attention among international negotiators as well. This week, labor officials from the Group of Eight industrialized nations met in Niigata, Japan, in preparation for July's G8 summit, which is themed around climate change. This week's meeting was the first time G8 leaders linked labor issues and environmental policies. In a joint statement, they declared that ignoring the need for green-job stimulation "would entail catastrophic consequences for human society, the global economy, and prospects for sustainable jobs."

The trade union advisory committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a body representing industrialized nations, responded to the G8 address by calling for greater international collaboration. "Employment transition and ‘green job' promotion should become an integral part of intergovernmental agencies' action," the committee said in a prepared statement. Already, the United Nations Environment Programme, International Trade Union Confederation, and the International Labor Organization are collaborating on an unprecedented green jobs initiative.

In the past few months, several U.S. non-governmental organizations have also joined forces in the interest of green jobs. Van Jones' organization, Green For All, launched in September. In January, two-dozen environmental and minority groups formed a unified voice to lobby the federal government for a "Clean Energy Corps." And in April, the Blue-Green Alliance - a hybrid of the United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club - created a new campaign working in conjunction with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"There's no shortage of advocacy, even from government itself. It's not just citizen groups," said Andrea Peart, a national representative of the Canadian Labour Congress, which launched its own green jobs report this week.

Without green jobs advocacy, hope for a climate change agreement will be lost, says Blue-Green Alliance executive director David Foster. "It's critical that the American people see economic opportunity coming out of global warming solutions," he said. "If they don't, it will be extremely difficult to pass effective global warming legislation."

Exactly how many jobs a green economic overhaul would create, or whether many of these jobs are any more lucrative than traditional income sources, remains widely disputed. But many proponents agree that the drive for green jobs has generated a collective enthusiasm that has long been lacking in the climate change movement.

"We want to see a green economy," Jones told the Congressional aides at the recent Washington gathering. "But a green economy that doesn't have any throw away resources, doesn't have any throw away species. It also doesn't have any throw away children, doesn't have any throw away neighborhoods. We want to include everybody."

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute's online news service, Eye on Earth. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

Stay tuned! Worldwatch senior researcher Michael Renner, in collaboration with Cornell University researchers, will release the upcoming report, Green Jobs: Toward Sustainable Work in a Low-Carbon World, later this fall. The report is a joint effort of the United Nations Environment Programme, International Trade Union Confederation, and International Labour Organization.

OPINION: Water Trading in China: A Step Toward SustainabilityIn recent years, scarcity and pollution of water have become the paramount environmental woe in China. Numerous reports and books have exposed China's water crisis, depicting a nation suffering in the face of black-running rivers and dried-up waterways. Nationwide, the per capita availability of fresh water is only one-quarter of the world average.

But a new regulation from the nation's water authority may hold the key to achieving water sustainability in this thirsty country. The Interim Measure for Water Quantity Allocation, which came into effect on February 1, provides a framework for allocating water rights across provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities that are under the direct jurisdiction of the central government. The ruling's 17 stipulations lay out the principles, mechanisms, and practices for water allocation, potentially opening Chinese markets for water trading and enabling the use of market tools to promote conservation.

The need for better delineation of water rights in China has become increasingly urgent. Water demands within shared river basins are frequently at conflict due to industrial expansion and urbanization. During a drought in 2006, Chongqing municipality in western China saw a dramatic decline in flows from the Jialing River, the city's main water source, despite the fact that the river's upper reaches had received plenty of rain. The shortage was triggered by the more than 50 dams upstream from the city, which had retained the water for power generation. Such competing claims are prevalent in nearly all of China's major river basins.

As water demands keep rising, water waste remains pervasive due to the current "open-access" nature of China's water resources. According to statistics, in 2003 China's utilization coefficient for agricultural irrigation water was only 0.4-0.5, compared to 0.7-0.8 in industrial countries. Water use per unit of gross domestic product was as high as 413 cubic meters, four times the world average, while water use per value added of industry was 218 cubic meters, 5 to 10 times the level in industrial countries. China's industrial water-recycling rate was only 50 percent?compared to 85 percent in industrial countries.

The traditional practices of promoting conservation through education, moral suasion, and technological innovation are no longer able to keep up with China's rising water demand. By allocating water rights and introducing market-based tools, the new regulation may accelerate progress toward water saving, protection, and pollution control.

The regulation is a response to several successful trial efforts over the past eight years. In 2000, China saw its first case of water trading between Dongyang City and Yiwu City in Zhejiang province, with the latter buying some 50 million cubic meters of water annually from the former at a price of 4 RMB (US$0.57) per cubic meter. The pact resulted in a win-win situation in early 2005, following a serious drought in Yiwu City. Yiwu avoided the significant cost of having to build its own reservoirs, while Dongyang received funds for maintaining its existing reservoirs and water infrastructure.

Since then, China has launched trial projects in several regions, including Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, and Ganxu in the northwest; Jiangxi and Chongqing in the west; Shanxi in the middle region; and watersheds covering Beijing and Hebei. The projects are either local initiatives spurred by acute water crises, or efforts by the central government to promote water savings.

The success of these projects has given policymakers confidence to explore bolder national schemes, resulting in the recent water-rights regulation. If effectively enforced, the ruling could be as significant as China's widespread land reforms in the 1950s, which freed up rural labor and made it possible to feed the nation's 1.3 billion people. Although much implementation work remains to be done, the regulation is a bold first step toward sound water management in China.

Yingling Liu is manager of the China Program at the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-D.C. based environmental research organization.

OPINION Biofuels 2.0: It’s Time for Congress to ActEfforts to replace oil with biofuels in the United States are at a critical juncture. Double-digit growth in the production of corn-based ethanol has contributed to a sharp increase in grain and soybean prices while failing to deliver the environmental gains that had been hoped for.

It's time to reduce the incentives for food-based biofuels and accelerate the transition to more sustainable alternatives - the so-called "next-generation" cellulosic technologies, which are expected to become viable in the coming years.

In some ways, U.S. biofuels policy has been a stunning success. Production of fuel ethanol soared to nearly 7 billion gallons in 2007 - double the level in 2003. This has pushed the United States ahead of Brazil, which pioneered the fuel ethanol industry in the 1980s. The price of corn has meanwhile nearly tripled to over $6 per bushel, fostering an economic renaissance in the U.S. grain belt and creating thousands of new jobs.

But this is just the beginning. The Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), signed into law in December 2007, requires that biofuels production be raised to 36 billion gallons in 2022. And while it is laudable that 21 billion gallons of that requirement are set aside for advanced biofuels not based on food crops, this would still imply a doubling in current production of corn-based ethanol, which would require fully half of today's annual corn crop.

Increasing biofuels production so dramatically presents an array of environmental risks, including increased nitrogen runoff and the loss of biodiversity as lands are cleared for biofuel crops. And recent studies indicate that corn-based ethanol could actually produce more carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline-due to the oil and coal needed to produce corn and convert it to ethanol and to the fact that as U.S. cropland is planted in biofuel crops, pressures will grow to convert forests and grasslands elsewhere, releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide.

These concerns demand a more measured approach to the production and use of biofuels. They also point to the need to accelerate the transition to second-generation biofuels. These fuels - derived not from food crops but from the fibrous, or cellulosic, material of plants - can be produced from a wide array of agriculture and forestry wastes as well as from fast-growing trees and grasses. The feedstocks can be grown on untilled land and cultivated in ways that improve water quality and wildlife habitat. Under the right conditions, these crops may also be able to draw carbon out of the air and sequester it in the soil.

It is time to reform the large federal subsidies to biofuels. With the price of oil now over $120 a barrel, the generous tax subsidy is no longer needed - it is mainly benefiting the oil companies that receive the subsidy in return for blending ethanol with gasoline. Congress should phase out the tax subsidy for corn-based ethanol and retain it only for advanced biofuels that reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to less than half the emissions from gasoline.

It is also time to relax the renewable fuel standard, slowing the pace of growth of the industry while technologies are developed that will allow biofuels to be produced from agricultural and forestry wastes-eliminating the competition with food and reducing the greenhouse impact of those fuels. And the share that must come from cellulosic biofuels should be increased.

Achieving these changes will not be easy. Biofuels have become the "golden child" of U.S. energy politics, highly popular with conservative and progressive politicians alike. But if biofuel policies are not reformed soon, the growing impact on food prices and the environment will spur a reaction that may prove the industry's undoing.

That would be a shame. The United States desperately needs to diversify its fuel supplies and reduce its dependence on oil. Advanced biofuels technologies could one day be an important part of a low-carbon energy economy, but only if they are developed in a deliberate and responsible way.

Christopher Flavin is president of the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C.

Population, Nature, and What Cats Want

Last Saturday evening my wife and I took our terminally ill cat to an animal hospital, where a veterinarian put him peacefully to sleep as he sat on my lap. I wasn't really a cat lover when we adopted him seven years ago, but this unusually affectionate and communicative kitty cat converted me. I'm surprised how much I'm grieving for the loss of him.

Years before Toby came into my life I wrote a story for newspapers about domestic felines as deadly hunters of migratory songbirds. Several bird species, such as the Cerulean Warbler, are becoming vulnerable to extinction as their tropical-forest habitat disappears. A comparable threat on the other end of their migration is the predatory nature of pet cats, which by scientists' estimates kill hundreds of millions of small animals every year.

So how do I square my concern about animal-killing cats with the affection I feel for one late individual of the species? Shouldn't I be blaming cats for killing songbirds and threatening the survival of species not only of birds but of small mammals, amphibians, and reptiles?

Of course not. Cats do what evolution has programmed them to do. What has gone awry is not cats' wants, which are natural, but their numbers, which are not. Nature is usually balanced in ways that make extinction a rare event - unless mortality levels reach levels that tilt the balance dangerously. That's what has happened with pet cats. The United States alone is home to some 90 million. Most of them spend some time outdoors, and many of them kill. There never could be anywhere near this many domestic cats, obviously, if there weren't even more human beings to care for them, just as my family did ours.

It's a pint-sized example of a point I make in More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want. Environmental unsustainability tends to have much more to do with scale than with any essential aspect of our behavior. Cats aren't bad because they kill birds; they're just cats. But there are so many of them, and with cats, just as with humans, numbers matter. (In an endnote to Chapter 10, I note geographer Vaclav Smil's estimate that livestock weigh 20 times as much as all the planet's wild animals. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a similar comparison between companion and wild animals.)

Since no one would seek a sudden reduction in the population of people - or of their pets - we often focus on modifying individual behavior to reduce environmental risks. In this case, the most important step the world's hundreds of millions of cat owners can take to protect small animals is to keep their cats indoors. Fortunately for me, Toby had no interest in wandering outside, so he never killed anything bigger than the occasional bug that crawled past him on the floor. Our house was his whole world, which is why it feels so empty and sad as I write this post at home.

Are Myanmar’s Storm Victims Suffering Needlessly?As the floodwaters of Cyclone Nargis began to recede from Myanmar's low-lying Irrawaddy Delta this week, at least one regional leader was quick to note that this devastating disaster could have been partially prevented through better coastal management.

Surin Pitsuwan, secretary-general of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), mentioned in an address in Singapore that expanding coastal populations and widespread mangrove degradation played key roles in worsening the cyclone's impact. Much of the damage from the cyclone was caused by storm surge, powerful waves whipped up by the high winds.

"The mangrove forests, which used to serve as buffer between the rising tide, between big waves and storms and the residential area... all those lands have been destroyed," Agence France-Presse reported him saying. "Human beings are now direct victims of such natural forces."

Mangrove forests, salt-tolerant trees and shrubs found mainly in intertidal areas of the tropics, provide critical breeding grounds and habitat for many plants and animals, including several high-value fish species. Ever since the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated parts of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Thailand, mangroves have received greater attention for their potential role in protecting coastlines against storm surges. But their role as coastal guardians - including in places like the Irrawaddy Delta - is still disputed within the scientific community.

Of the 100,000 people who Myanmar officials say have perished or face imminent death if they do not receive humanitarian aid in the wake of the May 2 cyclone, many had lived in areas once covered with mangrove forests. Myanmar is home to some of the largest remaining forested areas in Southeast Asia. However, the government junta often encourages citizens to convert mangrove forests into shrimp aquaculture facilities or rice fields. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that Myanmar lost about 9 percent of its mangrove forests - 48,500 hectares - between 1980 and 2005.

Mangrove roots hold together the shifting silt and other debris that flows down a delta and shapes coastal landscapes. By deterring erosion, mangroves prevent the debris from washing inland and damaging agricultural land. "It's pretty...clear, looking around the world, that it is generally accepted that mangroves help stop erosion and protect coastland," said Mark Spalding, a senior marine scientist with The Nature Conservancy.

Mangrove branches and roots may also reduce the surging energy of a massive storm wave as it approaches inland. "There are lots of structures that add friction to the movement of water through this fringing mangrove forest," said Ivan Valiela, a marine biologist with the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

But to effectively study the role of mangroves in slowing wave action, researchers need to compare a severely damaged mangrove coast with a similar mangrove coast that was not heavily affected. This has proven to be a major limitation and has prevented scientific consensus, said Valiela, editor of the journal Estuarine, Coastal, and Shelf Science.

Finn Danielsen, a senior ecologist with the Nordic Agency for Development and Ecology who researched the protective power of mangroves during the Asian tsunami, said computer simulations have accurately measured the effect of mangroves. "There is no doubt that mangroves could have absorbed some of the energy of Hurricane Nargis," he said. "It is true that other factors also play a role, but this does not mean that the role of coastal tree vegetation is smaller."

Tom Smith, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, considers himself one of the world's few researchers who challenges whether mangroves affect a wave's forces. Data on the subject is "scant and meager," Smith said. He considers studies that have relied upon computer simulations, satellite imagery, and field studies to be flawed.

Smith concedes that many researchers are uncomfortable with his conclusions, due to concerns that this may slow the momentum of ongoing mangrove conservation efforts. But, he said, more emphasis should instead be placed on relocating people farther inland, which would protect them from dangerous oceanic storms and also help preserve mangrove forests.

According to the United Nations, nearly half of the world's population lives within 150 kilometers of a coast, and more are projected to move there in coming years due to population growth and tourism. Myanmar is no exception to this trend. The recent cyclone flooded the city of Yangôn, home to more than 4 million people, as well as several other cities of between 100,000 and 500,000 people. "Poorly constructed homes in low-lying, incredibly exposed areas... It's just set-up for this sort of disaster," Smith said.

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute who covers everything environmental for Eye on Earth. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

Big Sur Bohemian Club

America needs a new myth. The old one has a huge CO2 footprint.

Bohemian — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:37:52 -0500

Documentary film: "The Power of Nightmares"
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PART 1: The Neocons - Ideology and Fantasy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39uAJ05vVM
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PART 2: Rumsfeld's Imaginary War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2yA55wh17Y
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PART 3: Birth of Islamic Extremists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78KXoKH1oxw
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PART 4: Recruiting Christians/Concept of Terror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8M_dBxpJRE
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PART 5: CIA's $1Billion Backs Future Terrorists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yyme3AvQS_8
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PART 6: Ignored Warning of Terrorists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLbzapJ7VwI
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PART 7: Destruction of the Republican Party
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmscOI_lqrQ
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PART 8: Clinton's Blowjob / Extremist Rampage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ekHIdJiDG0
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PART 9: "There's No Al-Qaeda Organization"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD-CSgLRSRk
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PART 10: "We're Gonna Find Those Evil Doers"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB5-0r-SLCc
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PART 11: Hunt for Osama / The Disney Terrorists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2QMXr2AbI0
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PART 12: Godzilla was a Terrorist Mentor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfp_R6tkhx0
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PART 13: Dirty Bomb / Precautionary Principle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG6xdE7-vzs
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PART 14: Fear is the Only Agenda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cer3gsi-AQ4