Climate Technology

Soros, Goldman Sachs financing destruction of Brazilian forests

Well, that whole beating George Bush thing in 2004 didn't work out, so now billionaire financier / Democratic fundraiser / anti-Communist crusader George Soros is back to his first love: making money -- apparently even when it comes at the expense of the planet.

Sabrina Valle of the Washington Post is reporting that Soros is one of the biggest investors in growing sugarcane ethanol in the Brazilian cerrado, "a vast plateau where temperatures range from freezing to steaming hot and bushes and grasslands alternate with forests and the richest variety of flora of all the world's savannas."

That could soon come to an end. In the past four decades, more than half of the Cerrado has been transformed by the encroachment of cattle ranchers and soybean farmers. And now another demand is quickly eating into the landscape: sugarcane, the raw material for Brazilian ethanol.

"Deforestation in the Cerrado is actually happening at a higher rate than it has in the Amazon," said John Buchanan, senior director of business practices for Conservation International in Arlington.

"If the actual deforestation rates continue, all the remaining vegetation in the Cerrado could be lost by the year 2030. That would be a huge loss of biodiversity."

The roots of this transformation lie in the worldwide demand for ethanol, recently boosted by a U.S. Senate bill that would mandate the use of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, more than six times the capacity of the United States' 115 ethanol refineries. President Bush, who proposed a similar increase in his State of the Union address, visited Brazil and negotiated a deal in March to promote ethanol production in Latin America and the Caribbean.

For ten mil

Congrats to Treehugger, which was just purchased by the Discovery Channel for a cool $10 million.

Ranking oil companies from evil to even more evil

Get pumped: Sierra has updated its guide to choosing the least-evil gas stations. And they’ve condensed it to fit in a handy travel-sized package: a rearview-mirror air freshener, which could not be more appropriate considering how gassy Americans are. (We consume some 400 million gallons of crudeness a day!) Below, the top eight oil companies […]

Interesting stuff on the hottest new green tech

I’ve been waiting for a good excuse to link to Earth2Tech, an interesting new project from internet legend Om Malik’s GigaOm family of blogs. It’s focused on clean tech startups, which as we all know are the hot new thing. I’ve also been waiting for a good excuse to post something about thin-film solar, which […]

Hayden Hamilton, CEO of GreenPrint, answers questions

Hayden Hamilton. What work do you do? I’m the founder and CEO of GreenPrint. How does it relate to the environment? We recently launched GreenPrint software which analyzes each page of every document sent to the printer and looks for typical waste characteristics (like that last page with just a URL, banner ad, logo, or […]

Sure looks that way

Back in May, I was seduced by GM's seeming sincerity in developing a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, the Chevy Volt. We must always remember, however, that GM is a master greenwasher.

Double counting does not legally qualify as fraud

The ENDS Report -- July 2007, issue 390 ($ub. rqd):

ENDS has learned that chemical corporation Rhodia is using carbon credits from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to meet voluntary corporate targets -- only to sell them at a profit to be counted again elsewhere. Cement company Lafarge has not ruled out the same practice.

Companies like Rhodia can use CDM credits to comply with mandatory targets under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. But they can also use them to meet voluntary carbon reduction commitments or to make "carbon neutral" claims, or sell them on the market.

Rhodia and other companies are counting the credits they generate towards their own voluntary emissions reductions and then selling them, thereby enabling other organizations to claim the reductions as well.

This is not a problem of a "few bad apples," or a flaw in the offset market that can be fixed. The fundamental problem with offset trading is that compliance is less transparent than a tax or auctioned permit system or even old-fashioned, non-market regulation. There is more room for deliberate gaming, and more room for honest error. At the same time, a working offset market depends on fewer errors and more precision than other means. An offset that is a formal permit to pollute (like CDM) actually increases emissions if it is implemented less than perfectly. Offsets such as CDM don't make allowances for human imperfection to the same extent other means of controlling carbon emissions do.

[Update] Stephan Singer Head of European Climate and Energy Policy Unit of the World Wildlife Fund claims that if LaFarge in fact does sell their voluntary credits on the CDM market they will be violating their agreement with WWF.

Enemies of the human race

Last week, I put up a post explaining that BP will be increasing their dumping of toxic waste into the Great Lakes.

Congress overwhelmingly approved a resolution condemning BP's dumping -- a resolution sponsored by Rahm Emanuel, a powerful Democratic Congressman.

Now, thanks to some fine investigative reporting by the Chicago Tribune, we find out that BP has been dumping mercury as well, and will continue to do so:

Federal records analyzed by the Tribune show BP puts 2 pounds of mercury into the lake every year from its sprawling plant 3 miles southeast of Chicago in Whiting, Ind. That amount is small compared with the mercury that falls into the water from air pollution, but mercury builds up in the environment and is so toxic that even tiny drops can threaten fish and people.

A little-noticed exemption in BP's controversial new state water permit gives the oil company until 2012 to meet strict federal limits on mercury discharges.

Newsweek reports on green jobs

Newsweek on the growth of the green job market: Graduates of the class of 2007 are finding the job market is receptive to those who want to do good by the environment. As public awareness of global warming grows, companies are scrambling to put in place greener practices, to present themselves as more eco-friendly and […]

Or orange. Or yellow. Or blue

I usually don’t pay much attention to ads, but I happened to notice this banner advertising the new Dell Inspiron laptops that come in eight different colors. It’s interesting that the marketing execs would think to use the concept in a national ad campaign — that "green" is so part of the collective consciousness and […]