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Battery technology continues to improve

This is my hybrid bike charging at a 7-11 while I ate some lunch. I was hauling a heavy load and had been tormenting another cyclist who had been trying to close a 10-foot gap with me for a couple of miles on Sand Point Way. I took my batteries to their limit of 4.6 amp-hours, so I had to pull out of the dogfight to refuel with 14 miles on the odometer.

Yet-Ming Chiang (formerly a researcher at MIT) combined lithium ion technology with nanocarbon particles to invent the batteries that power my bike, saw, and drill. These batteries solved just enough technical problems to make the hybrid electric bicycle fully feasible, and will probably do so for the first plug-in hybrid cars.

Yi Cui (a researcher at Stanford) heads a team that has come up with an improvement on the A123 battery by combining lithium ion technology with silicon nanowires.

"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development [producing 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion batteries]."

Urban issue virtually absent from campaign; mayors speak up

Ed Glaeser asks the presidential candidates: "What about the cities?" Last month, Clyde Haberman wondered the same thing. It’s a good question. Every rural cornpone mom and pop in Iowa has had a candidate personally promise to put on their slippers on every morning, but what about the majority of Americans that live in urban […]

The Forest Guild on climate change

Here's a window into how foresters are looking at climate change: the Forest Guild is a national, nonprofit network of practicing foresters whose advice and efforts on behalf of their landowner clients has a big role to play in the health and future of privately owned forests. The Guild "promotes ecologically, economically, and socially responsible forestry as a means of sustaining the integrity of forest ecosystems" (and the welfare of those dependent on them).

So it's not a big surprise that the new edition of their publication, Forest Wisdom (large PDF), goes to some depth in exploring the challenges presented by climate change. It includes articles like "Recent Trends in US Private Forest Carbon" (of nine forest regions identified by the Forest Service, four are most important in terms of potential carbon gains and losses -- the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest/Lake states, and Pacific Northwest -- due to their high ratio of private ownership, high productivity, and intensity of management), and also a piece on carbon markets.

What caught my eye was the cover story by editor Fred Clark, "Forest Stewardship in a Changing World," the main issues of which he describes like this:

Forest practitioners will be on the frontlines in the effort to protect our forests and our environment from the effects triggered by changing climate. Guild members already possess many of the tools and skills that will be most needed ... [and] are well-suited for meeting both the new realities and expectations that society is rapidly placing on forests.

The "What's New" section of their site links to this edition of the publication, and lots of other interesting papers all delightfully full of forester-speak, but I wanted to (heavily) paraphrase here some of Fred's main points contained in the cover story:

The presidential debates once again highlight the obvious

Matthew Yglesias notes the environmental policy gap between Democratic and Republican presidential contenders: "On the Republican side, we have Mike Huckabee who thinks global warming is a serious problem but doesn't have any particular ideas about dealing with it."

It strikes me as worse than that. When I read Andy Revkin's run-down of the weekend's debates, this made me want to get my shrill on:

Mike Huckabee called for a billion-dollar prize for the first 100-mile-per-gallon car (a concept that might seem a bit goofy, but that has been embraced by some influential economists).

It did indeed seem a bit goofy at first. Then I thought again. This idea goes well beyond goofy to ... deeply unserious? Insulting? Inane? Consider:

• 100 mpg-equivalent cars already exist.
• 100 mpg isn't all that ambitious. A bunch of kids are planning to bring a commercially viable 200 MPGe car to market in 2009.
• 100 mpg cars aren't a hugely important policy goal.

So, let's see: a climate change an energy independence plan consisting of a billion-dollar prize for technology that already exists will probably soon be supplanted, and isn't a high priority.

Of course, this was just one throwaway line in a debate. But I'm thunderstruck by the level of policy discourse on one of the most important issues of the day. Then I remember that voters don't actually care about this stuff, and it all sort of makes sense.

Connecticut will require expensive structures to be built green

Connecticut has introduced new green-building regulations — that apply to public and private construction projects costing $5 million or more. And that, children, is what we call “playing to stereotype.”

What everyone’s saying about Grist’s new book, Wake Up and Smell the Planet

Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, I’m sure you’ve been hearing over and over again all the glowing praises for Grist’s slick new book, Wake Up and Smell the Planet: The Non-Pompous, Non-Preachy Grist Guide to Greening Your Day. What? You’ve never even heard of it? That must be an awfully nice rock […]

Clinton lobbied for tire burning near Granite State

With the New Hampshire primaries approaching, I thought I'd share this article about how Hillary Clinton's political style has directly affected New Hampshire voters in a way that might shed light on the kind of president she would be. The article was co-written with Friends of the Earth Action president Brent Blackwelder.

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New Hampshire has for decades struggled to keep its air clean. But during 2005 and 2006, Hillary Clinton's ambitions collided with New Hampshire's air quality, putting thousands of Granite Staters, and particularly children, directly in the line of a deadly cloud of toxic pollution.

At the time, of course, Clinton was hotly engaged in a campaign to increase her margin of victory in her bid for reelection in her New York Senate race. Her triumph was never in question: she faced only token Republican opposition in a heavily Democratic state. But she was desperate to prove that she could win with a big margin in more conservative areas of upstate New York so she could prove to Democrats that she would be viable in similar conservative areas around the country during her presidential bid.

That understandable political aspiration came head to head with New Hampshire children's health in 2005, when the International Paper logging company unveiled a proposal to burn tires at its Ticonderoga paper mill in upstate New York on the border with Vermont. Burning tires to power its operations would save IP money on its electricity bills, but it came with a heavy price.

NYC invests in local-food infrastructure

While the farm bill wallows about in Congress, awaiting reconciliation between House and Senate versions, some state and local governments are making their own smart food policies, investing public resources in the worthwhile goal of rebuilding local food systems. A piece in last week’s New York Times food section reminded me of that happy fact. […]

South Korea to outlaw single-hulled oil tankers in 2011

South Korea has announced that it will outlaw single-hulled oil tankers in its waters by January 2011, four years earlier than its original goal, due to the country’s largest oil spill in December. The December spill dumped about 2.7 million gallons of oil some five miles off the country’s coast when a barge struck a […]

Super Bowl to plant trees and make other greenish efforts

Photo: iStockphoto The National Football League has announced that it will plant trees and take other measures to offset some of the environmental impacts of the most hyped sporting event of the year. This year’s Super Bowl will be held in Phoenix, Ariz., on Feb. 3. As part of the greening effort, the organizers have […]