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Public-university researchers get cash for studying GMOs — and the shaft for studying organic ag

The following essay, which first appeared on Alternet, is a lucid, detailed look at what has become of public-university agriculture research in an age of budget austerity.

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I've startled a bug scientist. "Yeah, now I'm nervous," said Mike Hoffmann, a Cornell University entomologist and crop specialist who spends his days with cucumber beetles and small wasps. But he's also in charge of keeping the research funding flowing at Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. What have I done to alarm him? I've drawn his attention to the newly released FY 2009 Presidential Budget.

Like more than a hundred public institutions of higher learning, Cornell is what's known as a "land grant" college. Dotting the United States from Ithaca, N.Y., to Pullman, Wash., such schools were established by a Civil War-era act of Congress to provide universities centered around "the agriculture and mechanic arts." Congress handed each U.S. state a chunk of federal land to be sold for start-up monies, and for the last 150 years, it has funded groundbreaking research on all things agriculture, from dirt to crops to cattle.

The land-grant system has been, in short, a high-yield investment. The scientific research that has come out of land-grant labs and fields has aided millions of farmers and fed millions of Americans. And the land-grant reach doesn't stop at ocean's edge. Oklahoma State, the Sooner State's land grant, says that the public funding of land-grant research "has benefited every man, woman and child in the United States and much of the world."

That was until America's land-grant system met George W. Bush.

P.S.

Obama won Hawaii, with a convincing 75 percent. That’s 10 wins in a row. In response, Clinton is ramping up her attacks.

How to kill coal in 10 years

We know that coal is the enemy of the human race, what with carbon emissions, deadly air pollution, and unsafe and destructive mining practices. The supply of coal is becoming more problematic as well: recently, a Wall Street Journal article described a "coal-price surge," and Richard Heinberg has warned that coal may peak much sooner than most people expect. So what's to like? Not much.

But since coal-fired plants provide almost half of our electricity, we can't get rid of coal unless we find either a way to replace it or a way to reduce the use of electricity. Recently, Gar Lipow has discussed how friggin' cheap it would be to replace coal, and Bill Becker has pointed to several studies that show how renewables could replace coal.

I will argue in this post that if buildings could produce all the space and water heating, air conditioning, and ventilation that they need, we wouldn't need any coal. Heating and cooling buildings and water now consume 30 percent of our electricity and 32 percent of our natural gas.

If, for instance, geothermal exchange units (also known as geothermal heat pumps) were installed under every building, and an appropriate amount of solar photovoltaics were installed on roofs in order to power those units, we wouldn't need to burn 60 percent of our coal because we would not need 30 percent of our electricity. And because we could redirect our natural gas from warming and cooling into electricity generation, we could get rid of the remaining coal, replacing it with natural gas.

In other words, the buildings would both destroy electrical demand and free up natural gas, until renewables come online and replaced natural gas in turn. If we did this within a 10-year timeframe, we could generate millions of green-collar jobs, create new industries, and help the rest of the world kill off the rest of coal.

All of the data that I use in this post is available online in a spreadsheet I created called "EnergyUse." It has tabs for electrical use, natural gas use, my calculations concerning coal, and some notes on the data, all of which comes from the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA).

So let's get electricity literate, and take a look at how electricity (and natural gas) are used in this country, so that we can figure out how to kill coal:

CBS to pay $31 million to clean up Indiana Superfund sites

The media giant CBS has agreed to pay $31 million to clean up six ultra-polluted Superfund sites around Bloomington, Ind. CBS is the corporate successor of Westinghouse, which ran industrial operations in the area that polluted streams and groundwater with high concentrations of PCBs. An agreement to clean up the contamination in the 1990s was […]

How do we define the green-job economy?

Photo: iStockphoto If my inbox and recent headlines are any indication, the green jobs bandwagon is rolling on jet fuel and it’s “game on” for labor market consultants. Having announced the imminent arrival of the green economy, we’re scrambling to define exactly what that means and to generate hard data about job descriptions, training requirements, […]

British Columbia unveils carbon tax

The Canadian province of British Columbia has announced it will implement a carbon tax beginning in July that could lead to a cut in greenhouse-gas emissions of about 3 million tons in the next five years. The tax is expected to bring in as much as $1.8 billion over the next three years by increasing […]

Obama pledges to cap carbon

In this video (the second of two) of his victory speech this evening in Houston, at about 7 min. in, Obama discusses energy policy — says we’re shipping money overseas and melting the polar icecaps. He pledges to cap carbon, invest in renewable energy, and raise fuel efficiency in cars (it’s "the only way we […]

Wisconsin goes to Obama and McCain

The Wisconsin primary goes to Barack Obama and John McCain — both got about 55%, to Clinton’s 43 and Huckabee’s 37 respectively (Ron Paul got his usual 4). That’s Obama’s ninth victory in a row. Clinton’s chances of reversing this tide are looking slimmer all the time. On that note, both winners seem to be […]

Kleenex boxes infiltrated by anti-logging leaflets

Planning to buy some tissues for your February sniffles? Be forewarned: Menacing notes have been found in Kleenex boxes across the U.S. and Canada. “Wiping away ancient forests,” says a leaflet found by a reporter in a New York drugstore. “Here’s a little secret that Kimberly-Clark, the largest tissue maker in the world and parent […]

Notable quotable

“I think this is a landmark decision in North America as far as government addressing global warming. The B.C. government has decided to use one of the most powerful incentives at its disposal to reduce pollution.” — Ian Bruce of the Suzuki Foundation, on the carbon tax just implemented by the provincial government of British […]