Serious Money is starting to cluster around Carbon reduction

Inhabitat reported on their blog about the World Wildlife Fund building a new Carbon Nuetral Headquarter. Inhabitat is an architectural blog that follows sustainable design for buildings. The design is news in and of itself, but the money going in to carbon reduction is the real story here. I'm sure an eco-giant like World Wildlife Fund has been wanting to do this for years. Now that the world is more aware of the danger of unregulated carbon, ( or at least those who believe in Science ) the money to do such projects is starting to move in this direction. This should bring a smile to every eco warrior. 

Jeffrey Sachs: Love him or Hate him- his new book

Here is a video of him talking about his new book. Some hiss at him others sing his praise. He was instrumental is spreading the "shock therapy" in Bolivia and Russia. You can read about him on Wikipedia. He also is much spoken about in Daniel Yergin's book/PBS series, "Commanding Heights." In layman's terms: Jeffrey Sachs use to promote on a global stage the Milton Friedman, neo-liberal, free markets will solve all problems if left alone by governments doctrine, etc. He was a true believer. I don't know if he still believes parts of this ideology, but he is definitely taking a different stance now and seems to favor a modified approach to solving our world's problems. He now has become an eco-economic advocate for government interventions that will stop us from destroying our habitat and our planet. He is practical, not an alarmist, but looking for solutions.

I just ordered his book from Amazon, so I'm looking forward to reading it, understanding that there are many critics of Mr. Sachs. Should be an interesting read though.

Here are his points in his video: What we need to do as soon as Bush is out of office and he prays McCain will not be elected.

1. Get out of Iraq $200 billion
2. End Bush tax cuts $250 billion dollars
3.Invest in sustainable technology- New National Institute for Sustainable Technology $30 billion: battery, biomass, solar, food supply needs R & D
4. Global Commons: Need a cooperative framework
Ratify: Kyoto reach agreement on post Kyoto framework
Ratify: Convention on Biological Diversity
Ratify: UN Convention of the Law of the Sea
5. Honor: Geneva Convention
6. Stop corn to ethanol program - $6 to $7 billion No corn based ethanol. Corn needs to be used for food. It makes not sense because it still produces green house gases and it drives up food price. It is a profound blunder. $6.5 billion dollars wasted
7. Invite world leaders of Dry-land regions to a world conference and discuss water conservation.
8. Reinstate giving money to United Nations’ population fund to help control world growth.
9. Rebuild competence in Washington: cabinet level-Department for Sustainable Development. Interlink climate, food, water production—Cabinet Level Department
10. The Millennium Development Goals put into practice in policy.

Shareholders of major corporations willing to bite the hand that feeds them if necessary to protect future investments from Climate Change

Photo Source: Click here

Investor Network on Climate Risk reported on their website that

as of March 6, 2008, leading U.S. investors have filed a record 54 global warming shareholder resolutions with U.S. companies that face far-reaching business impacts from climate change. The resolutions are nearly double the number filed just two years ago.

This is sugnificant because the shareholders include were filed by some of the nation's largest public pension funds, as well as labor, foundation, religious and other institutional investors.

They have not been happy with the "business as usual" approach that the American companies have been conducting and are ready to bite the hand that feeds them if necessary.

The Eco-Echo Chamber

I have been using goole alerts to follow some of the green topics emerging in the market place. What I see happening is an eco-echo chamber. One important story or report comes out and then everyone passes that information along. The story is repeated over and over again. Sometimes, like today, I feel like I'm just a an echo in this eco-echo chamber and. The Mckinsey Global Institute released a report on Monday that is making it's way through the green eco-echo. It is a big deal but not really that new. I read China Inc. last summer and the author said the same things that are in this report: "giant super cities in China were on the way." The book was several years old when I read it. No one really paid that much attention to it. But now that people are waking up to the potential for resource scarcity and carbon limits, this news has taken on a new dimension.

If you Google “population of China”, here is what you get: 1,321,851,888. Another report, reporting on the McKinsey report says that China will produce 15 "super cities" with an average population of 25 million by 2030. Stop and imagine living in a city with 25 million people. I live in the Orlando area and according to one state report, this Metro area has a total of 1,645,000 people. Let's round that off to 1.5 million people. The traffic here is horrendous. The quality of life in suburbia American is questionable. We live in a very nice neighborhood, but really don't know our neighbors. Discussing suburb life in America will wait for another post, but can you imagine living with 25 million people in one city? What would that look like? How can you make that sustainable and have any quality of life beyond living like rats in a cage? How would you deal with sanitation issues?

How high would you have to make the buildings; how small the living space; did I mention food to feed that many people? Where will they work? Where will they play? How do you do that?

I'm glad there are people like William McDonough and Ed Mazria out there working on finding a green, sustainable solution to a greener future. But we also need another Albert Einstein to figure out how to fix the energy needs for cities with 25, 000, 000 people… Wow!

NPR's A+ cartoon series that explains CO2 and Global Warming

This is a five part series produced by NPR showing in a non scary way what is causing Global Warming. This by the way, is a carbon atom, the star of the cartoon movie. Outstanding job guys and girls.

Understanding Carbon Makets

Found a good (and simple ) explaination about the differing proposals out there to reduce CO2. Carbon Credits, Carbon Trade, Carbon Caps, etc.

3C CEO's talk about their roadmap for carbon reduction

See video

Artic Net

There are some amazing photos of the artic on this site.

Photo Gallery

Keeping tabs: Climate Clock Blog

A blog that lets you keep tabs on how many ppb of CO2 is in the atmosphere. The tipping point is 500 ppm. That's when things will get ugly according to experts.

Is congress moving toward a carbon cap?

According to the New York Times, congress is looking hard at a cabron recuction economy and how to cut carbon emissions. This is why we neeed to look carefully at who we elect. We need those who will move us in this direction, not back to the 20th century, where it didn't matter.