Articles by Chris Schults

Academy Awards nominees include several green films

So what do perch, penguins, Pocahontas, and Participant Productions have in common (other than alliteration)? Oscar.

This Sunday night, the 78th Annual Academy Awards will feature a bevy of nominated films with environmental themes -- from pesky perch to egotistic energy execs to badgered, um, badgers.

If you couldn't care less about the movies and you're more into people watching, check out this week's Grist List to see what eco-swag green celebs will be receiving.

For the rest of you, the nominees are ...

Personal Rapid Transit

I've oftened wished the bus would "appear" when I arrive at the bus stop. Such daydreaming often led to ideas about somehow combining personal vehicles and public transit. As usual, mine is not an original idea, as Jeremy Faludi over at WC points out:

Wouldn't it be nice to have a bus waiting for you every time you walked up to a stop? And wouldn't it be nice if the bus just went to your destination, without stopping anywhere else in between? The main reason people drive is for convenience like this. But if public transportation were as cheap as a bus and as convenient as a cab on roads with no traffic, why would anyone bother driving anymore? That's the idea behind "Personal Rapid Transit", an idea that's been around for forty years, but is still struggling to see the light of day.

What is PRT? This, according to Jeremy:

The basic idea is having an elevated track with personal-sized cars, only big enough for 2 to 4 people (and normally used for solo trips). Cars on the main track always go at full speed, with cars shunting off to side tracks for entry & exit at stations. These stations would be located a reasonably short distance from each other so users would never have to walk too far to get to a stop, and stations would always have empty cars waiting for the next user to arrive. This individualized service would be made possible by having all the vehicles automated--no human drivers in the system, just smart network-management software.

Head on over to WorldChanging to read more. What do y'all think?

The evolutionary reason for humans?

This post over at WorldChanging got me thinking.

For those who liken the human species to a virus, feeling the planet would be better off without us ...

For those who poo-poo technology ...

Pop quiz: What do you do when an asteroid is hurtling toward the Earth and the impact will likely cause mass extinction?

Maybe send some pesky humans into space to knock the rock off its course? By employing some fancy technology?

But wait ... are extinction-level events "natural"? Cause if so I assume we humans should not prevent them.

Maybe I'm just a confused "libertarian." Take the poll (click "Link and Discuss") and tell me what to think.

Montana Governor wants to turn coal into a liquid diesel fuel

Anyone channel surfing last night that happened upon 60 Minutes might have recognized a familiar face: Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer. Last month, Grist published a story about Schweitzer, who is now promoting his latest big idea: turning Montana coal into a liquid diesel fuel.

It's not enough to completely break our addiction to foreign oil, but a start. Most coal today is used for electricity but the governor's plan is to turn Montana's billions of tons of untapped coal into a liquid diesel fuel for our cars.

Schweitzer wants to take coal that's been pressurized into a gas, and then use something called the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert that gas into a clean diesel fuel, similar to what is made at a demonstration plant in Oklahoma.

The governor handed Stahl a jar of this synthetic fuel, which looked and smelled clean. "Chanel No. 37," Schweitzer said, laughing. "It is diesel. You can pour that in your diesel car or truck right now."

Lesley Stahl also interviewed Dr. Robert Williams, a senior energy scientist at Princeton, who informed viewers that this fuel would be cleaner than conventional diesel since pollutants aren't being emitted into the atmosphere, but a lot of carbon dioxide would be released -- "twice as much carbon dioxide than traditional petroleum."

So what is Schweitzer's plan for dealing with the CO2?

"This spent carbon dioxide, we have a home for it. Right back into the earth, 5,000 feet deep," the governor explains.

He plans to sell that carbon dioxide to oil companies that use it to boost the amount of oil they can pump. "It's called enhanced oil recovery. It's worth money to the oil business," Schweitzer said.

Read more about the segment and watch a clip at CBSNews.com.