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Calling all environmental journalists

Or at least you good ones. You might want to get your name in the running for a new annual prize for top-notch environmental reportage; the winner(s) of the Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment will take home $75,000. Info here.

Small-scale microgrids are more efficient, cheaper, and work just as well

If I were the kind of person who really dug in and learned about subjects in depth instead of a quasi-pundit dilettante who knows just enough about a lot of subjects to be dangerous [takes breath] I would study distributed electrical grids. They are, after all, the new black.

Here's the take-home message: Smaller-scale, distributed electrical generation (solar, wind, etc.), built closer to consumers, run by intelligent grids, is cheaper and more efficient than the big, centralized kind, could be implemented with no loss of quality or service, and would sharply reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. It is, as Martha is wont to say, a good thing. The impediments are not only technical but political, since distributed electrical grids are by nature democratizing.

More below the fold.

Too much time on a bike can impair sexual performance, researchers say

Bummer news for cycling advocates. Word's long been around that spending too much time on a bike seat can impair your performance in the bedroom. Now, researchers in this arena are getting even more adamant in their admonitions.

A New York Times article -- the No. 1 most-emailed on their site for the second day running -- highlights mounting evidence that frequent cycling by men can lead to a damaged perineum, loss of libido, "small calcified masses inside the scrotum," and/or impotence. Women, though less studied than men in this area, are also thought to be at risk.

Dr. Steven Schrader, a reproductive health expert who studies cycling at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said he believed that it was no longer a question of "whether or not bicycle riding on a saddle causes erectile dysfunction."

Instead, he said in an interview, "The question is, What are we going to do about it?"

... The link between bicycle saddles and impotence first received public attention in 1997 when a Boston urologist, Dr. Irwin Goldstein, who had studied the problem, asserted that "there are only two kinds of male cyclists -- those who are impotent and those who will be impotent."

The hope is that better-designed bicycle seats can save the day. Otherwise, all those new bike owners may soon lose their steel steeds, for fear of losing something they care about a whole lot more.

Nobel goes to green chemists

Via WC, check it out: The guys who just won the Nobel Prize for chemistry are green chemists:

It’s Energy Star Change-a-Light Day

So, um, change one.

Info here; feel-good pledge here. (And act quickly, before those cads in Congress eliminate Energy Star altogether.)

Gore on the marketplace of ideas

Do you wonder why public dialogue in the U.S. these days takes place in such an atmosphere of surreal trivia, despite the vitally important challenges facing us? Wonder why global warming, a catastrophe of Biblical proportions, can get on TV only if it's cast as the malevolent face behind a hurricane? Wonder why Americans are so bogglingly ignorant of basic current events?

Al Gore knows. Read his extraordinary speech.

New FOX show pins its plot on clean energy

So I've been watching this show on FOX called Prison Break. It's quite good -- not, you know, Deadwood good, or The Wire good, but fast-paced, fun, and surprisingly cerebral. It's like 24 but not horrible, stilted, and mean-spirited. Oh man, I genuinely hate that show, but don't worry, I won't make you listen to a rant about it. Wait, where was I?

Anyhoo. The plot revolves around this guy who gets himself thrown into prison in order to escape with his brother, who's on death row. His brother is accused of killing the vice president's brother, but supposedly was set up by the Secret Service.

Who really wanted the VP's brother dead? Well, apparently the VP's bro was a big environmentalist and advocate for clean energy. Matter of fact, his company, EcoField, had recently developed a "prototype electric engine." "Sixty dollar barrels of oil would be obsolete if this thing ever made it to the mainstream," says one character. She and a fellow investigator speculate about who might want him out of the way -- oil companies, or perhaps the government of an oil-based economy. "Like the United States," says fellow investigator darkly.

Indeeed ...

Find solar

Via TH, the launch of the very cool FindSolar.com, a site where you can punch in your zip code to find solar installation professionals near you, and find out how much such an installation will cost. Mainstreaming solar: love it.

The Sound and the … Eh

Fisheries Service offers mild plan to preserve Puget Sound orcas The much-beloved and much-beleaguered orcas of Puget Sound in Washington state are the focus of a tepid new National Marine Fisheries Service conservation plan. It emphasizes cleaning up the sound, preventing oil spills, and trying to boost the salmon population — pretty much what the […]

The best idea George Bush never had

Today the feds unveiled a new conservation campaign, complete with energy hog cartoon mascot. Although the New York Times reported this as a shift in energy policy, it seems more like a ... pause.

We came across this transcript of a telephone call between President Bush and Energy Secretary Sam Bodman (who told the Times that "new supplies were still essential but that they were a long-term solution").

Bush: Sam, hey. It's George.

Bodman: Hi George.

Bush: Great. Listen, I been thinking, we need some kinda mascot around this whole energy thing. Some kinda ... bear or something. That mascot thing worked real well when I was at the Rangers. People love to hug. They'd love to hug a bear. They would.

Bodman: A mascot, sir?