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New server farm projected to use 103 MW of power

Interesting feature in the March issue of Harper's if you missed it: Google's server farms use a heckuva lot of energy. A planned server farm in The Dalles, Ore. will probably use 103 megawatts of mega-hydro electrons, enough to power 82,000 homes, according to the author, Ginger Strand. Server farms used more power than TVs in the U.S. in 2006, and this may increase as other search firms gear up to battle Google. Of course, the proliferation of flat-screen energy hogs since then may level that playing field ...

But the point here is that internet search isn't impact-free, and Google's good efforts to develop the renewable industry through grants and investments might be better viewed as more of an offset for its own impacts.

Our third annual list of the year’s goodies, oddities, and inanities

It’s Earth Day time once again, and we are delighted to present the Third-Ever List of Grist Superlatives — our take on the good, the bad, and the weird of the past year. Think we missed something? Add your cleverest contributions in comments below. (And check out our lists for 2007 and 2006.) Our sweet […]

Peter Barnes sprints through cap-and-dividend

Peter Barnes was given exactly five minutes (!) to explain cap-and-dividend to the audience. Everybody’s so tired and frazzled that I don’t think it sank in very much. However, I talked with Barnes for a good while outside, before the session, and I came out of it far more convinced of the wisdom of the […]

Test driving a fully electric car

As I reported earlier today, electric automaker Think — in partnership with a couple of venture capital firms — will be opening a North American branch next year. I just got back from test driving the crash-tested, highway-ready (70 mph top speed) Think two-seater. Pretty damn sweet! Feels and handles exactly like a normal car […]

An unusually interesting discussion of ‘clean coal’

Earlier today I attended a small roundtable discussion about clean coal. Most of the people there were basically pro-clean coal: people from NRG energy, railroad companies, venture capital firms, and David Hawkins from NRDC. Some other folks were uncommitted. In the anti column were me and Mike Brune from Rainforest Action Network. Also in attendance: […]

Private equity firm buys rights to rainforest reserve’s environmental services

This picture of what appears to be an insect with rainbows flying out its butt was taken in Guyana.

There are untold, untapped, unknown chemistries created by millions of years of evolution harbored in what remains of the planet's biodiversity. This is a vast storehouse of information, which would provide humanity with centuries of medicines and other benefits if we can just find ways to preserve it.

We can't let our biodiversity disappear -- one interesting (and gross) example of its importance is in this video I found on YouTube, documenting one of the unending evolutionary struggles between lifeforms. We are also locked in an evolutionary struggle with microbes. Many of today's most important medicines got their start in nature. Penicillin and its derivatives, for example, came from a mold.

Mongabay has a hopeful article about an equity firm betting on the future:

"How can it be that Google's services are worth billions, but those from all the world's rainforests amount to nothing?"

Snippets from the news

• Crocodile attacks illegal logger. • Oakland cannot go forward with a plastic-bag ban until it reviews the environmental effect of paper bags. • Hybrids are a tough sell in China. • We can reduce carbon on the cheap, says Environmental Defense Fund. • Anchorage mayor will try to topple 40-year Sen. Ted Stevens.

Food vs. fuel debate, German edition

Defending her country’s biofuel mandates in a time of global food crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently denied that turning food crops into car fuel affects prices. Those looking for reasons behind the recent spike in food prices shouldn’t blame ethanol and biodiesel makers, she argued. Instead, look at how people are eating in the […]

PETA offers $1 million for commercially viable test-tube meat

PETA thinks the idea of test-tube meat looks like a million bucks. Literally. The outspoken animal-rights group is offering a cool one mil to the “first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.” The idea caused “a near civil war in […]

Growing your own food is fine, but governmental action is needed, and soon

I like Michael Pollan -- really, I do -- which is why it was frustrating to see his wilted-salad-green entreaty to act on climate change in yesterday's paper:

The climate-change crisis is at its very bottom a crisis of lifestyle -- of character, even. The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us (consumer spending represents 70 percent of our economy), and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences.

For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we're living our lives suggests we're not really serious about changing -- something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do. Indeed, to look to leaders and experts, to laws and money and grand schemes, to save us from our predicament represents precisely the sort of thinking -- passive, delegated, dependent for solutions on specialists -- that helped get us into this mess in the first place. It's hard to believe that the same sort of thinking could now get us out of it.

Pollan's grand solution? Plant a vegetable garden!