Some good news from California's Central Valley: A small rural school district that made the switch to a $5 million solar power system is saving enough green to reinstate the music program it had to cut back in 2009.
How did Firebaugh-Las Deltas, a 2,300-student district, swing a deal like this?
The district got help from a consulting firm to figure out if its payments on the loan would be less than the cost of its utility bills.
As cities become more attractive places for middle- and upper-class Americans to move and housing prices continue to climb, the poorer among us are forced into the suburbs -- away from public transportation and toward car-dependence. Cities are growing in every way, except in terms of their social good and attainability.
Alex Steffen, responding to a quote in a piece by Grist's Claire Thompson, slaps down the anti-urbanist myth that density makes this problem worse.
[W]e have to go back to supply and demand. As long as there is more demand than supply, prices rise. There is no way around that fundamental fact of capitalism. That means, if we wish to moderate housing prices to limit displacement of lower-income citizens, we have two options: reduce demand, or increase supply ...
Ikea plans to get 100 percent of its power from clean sources by 2020, part of a big, new sustainability plan backed by a $2.4 billion investment.
From solar and wind farms to delivery trucks and products on the shelves, this is a strategy the Swedish home furnishing company started years ago, but will now be ramping up.
The Guardian reports: "The People and Planet Positive plan is designed to protect the company from price shocks and tap into customers' desire for a greener lifestyle."
I'm really happy for you, Ikea, and I'ma let you finish, but promoting cheap particleboard furniture that falls apart is not a big-picture sustainable business strategy, even if that particleboard comes from renewable sources.
Organic, babies! The American Academy of Pediatrics is weighing in for the first time on the conventional vs. organic debate.
Its verdict? An "extensive analysis of scientific evidence," it says, suggests that kids who eat organic produce, dairy, and meat "have lower pesticide levels, which may be significant for children."
The pediatricians are worried because babies of female farm workers in California showed small but significant developmental and motor delays when their mothers were exposed to pesticides at levels similar to those deemed acceptable in conventionally grown produce while pregnant.
Yesterday, we noted that oil production was spiking -- perhaps on track for a record this year.
Little did we know. From the Associated Press:
U.S. oil output is surging so fast that the United States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest producer.
Driven by high prices and new drilling methods, U.S. production of crude and other liquid hydrocarbons is on track to rise 7 percent this year to an average of 10.9 million barrels per day. This will be the fourth straight year of crude increases and the biggest single-year gain since 1951. …
The Energy Department forecasts that U.S. production of crude and other liquid hydrocarbons, which includes biofuels, will average 11.4 million barrels per day next year. That would be a record for the U.S. and just below Saudi Arabia's output of 11.6 million barrels. Citibank forecasts U.S. production could reach 13 million to 15 million barrels per day by 2020, helping to make North America "the new Middle East."
There's a lot of remarkable stuff in those few short sentences. Among other things, it completely eviscerates the argument that oil production is somehow being hampered by the government.
In Yinggehai, China, 1,000 people resumed a series of protests last week aimed at halting construction of a nearby coal plant.
From The Guardian:
People protesting against the building of a coal-fired power plant in a southern Chinese town threw bricks at police who fired volleys of teargas and detained dozens in the country's latest environmental dispute, residents say. …
In Yinggehai, a round of protests took place in April when the plant project was first announced. Authorities then moved the project to another Hainan town, but it drew strong opposition there and officials returned to their original plan ...
A Hong Kong-based rights group, the Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, said 50 people had been arrested and almost 100 injured in the protests over the 3.9bn renminbi [$624 million] plant.
As its economy has expanded, China has needed to rapidly expand energy production. Coal has consistently been the cheapest way to do so. As we reported last week, the best source of cheap coal is the United States -- and we're on track to set a new record for the amount of coal we export.
The moderator of Monday night's debate, Bob Schieffer, gave an interview to Politico today. And guess what?
Schieffer said he had 200 questions in his binder when he stepped on stage last night, informed by five weeks of extensive conversations with foreign policy experts. He only had time to ask six, and if there is a criticism of his performance, it is that he focused too much on the greater Middle East and ignored other issues ranging from climate change and the Eurozone crisis.
"Obviously there are only so many you can get to," he said. "I had questions about climate change to talk about. I had a question in there about the Eurozone. I had a question about the fiscal cliff. I was hoping we would have more of a discussion on how we manage our relationship with China. I wish there had been a way to talk about those because they're all extremely important."
(Please note: This is basically the same thing Candy Crowley said, but less condescendingly.)
Anyway, "they're all extremely important." China (raised in each of the prior two debates) and the fiscal cliff (components of which had come up previously) were equally important to cover as a discussion of climate change.
Got bad news for you, America: We may have another real estate bubble. Farmland.
This morning, The New York Times reported on the continuing growth of sales prices for farmland across the country.
Across the nation’s Corn Belt, even as the worst drought in more than 50 years has destroyed what was expected to be a record corn crop and reduced yields to their lowest level in 17 years, farmland prices have continued to rise. From Nebraska to Illinois, farmers seeking more land to plant and outside investors looking for a better long-term investment than stocks and bonds continue to buy farmland, taking advantage of low interest rates.
And despite a few warnings from bankers, the farmland boom shows no signs of slowing. Almost every year since 2005, except during the start of the recession in 2008, agriculture land prices have posted double-digit gains. In the same period, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has had double-digit gains in only three of those years.
The Times isn't alone in sounding the alarm. A search for "farmland bubble" on Google News returns hundreds of results dating back months.
Upwards of 4,500 protesters of the coalition group Defend Our Coast convened on the British Columbia legislature yesterday to advocate against further development of oil-sands pipelines.
From Environmental News Service:
The demonstrators are objecting to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline that would carry diluted bitumen from the tar sands of northern Alberta to a proposed tanker port at Kitimat on the central British Columbia coast.
Kinder Morgan has proposed a $4.1-billion Trans Mountain project that would expand an existing pipeline from Alberta to Vancouver and bring tankers at the rate of about one a day through the already busy Vancouver Harbour.
When my wife left for work this morning, she grabbed her jacket, expecting to be part of a staff photo.
It turns out she was headed for a very different event. My wife, China, works at the Central Park Conservancy. And this morning, she was on hand when the park announced that it would be the recipient of $100 million to the park's endowment -- believed to be the largest gift to a public park in history.
From The New York Times:
At at press conference at Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain on Tuesday morning, Mayor Bloomberg and the Central Park Conservancy announced that John A. Paulson, the hedge fund billionaire, along with the Paulson Family Foundation were giving $100 million to the Central Park Conservancy. …
Macklemore credits Seattle parks with launching his rap career 
What the frack do we know? (Not much) 
Holland is better than we are at everything 
