FCPP Publications :: Cheer Up, Canada's Environmental Record is Improving

FCPP Publications :: Cheer Up, Canada's Environmental Record is Improving: "In light of these trends, Earth Day should not be an occasion for hand-wringing and lamentation. It should instead be viewed as an opportunity to celebrate the tremendous progress we have made towards greater environmental sustainability. There is always room for further improvement, and we should strive toward smart, environmentally-sustainable growth 365 days a year. This week, however, we should also reflect on what has already been achieved. So congratulations to all of us and, of course, Happy Earth Day!"

This is is a good review of the major improvements that have been made in Canada on the environment-
sht

Ethnol is it artificial bust and wishful thinking

Burn our food as gasoline. Brilliant. Farmers love it of course, because, like 99% of Americans, they love government handouts. But growing corn consumes a lot of diesel fuel. Transporting corn consumes a lot of diesel fuel. And turning corn into fuel consumes a lot of electricity... which is produced by burning coal and natural gas. Which makes ethanol a huge money loser without government support. Washington's ethanol plan is taking its only natural course: Bankruptcy. As this excellent WSJ opinion piece outlines, most ethanol players have gone belly up. So guess what is on the way from our "bigger government is better" president? You guessed it: More money and more support. Read full article...

Wishfull thinking can be dangerous . Wall street That's pretty much the story of ethanol. Consumers were asked to suspend disbelief as policy makers blurred the lines between economic reality and a business model built on fantasies of a better environment and energy independence through ethanol. Notwithstanding federal subsidies and mandates that force-feed the biofuel to the driving public, ethanol is proving to be a bust. - the market economy rules not wishful thinking Sht

Is Solar Power Right for You?

Is Solar Power Right for You?: " useful review SGT
So how much do solar-electric systems cost? An initial estimate on an average size solar-electric system might come in at $20,000 to $40,000 — or more. But as Liz points out, an average American household can expect to spend more than $100,000 over the next 25 years on electricity. Buying a solar-electric system is like buying that electricity up front, and depending on the details of your situation, making that investment now can save you a lot of money in the future. It also creates immediate cash flow and increases the value of your home, which can help offset that sticker shock."

Wave power

Q: You talk about geothermal, solar and wind, but you never mention wave power. Got an opinion? – G.T.

A: I think wave power is cute – it looks like a power source, only smaller... No really, these buoys do generate power. But like solar and wind, they need a whole lot of space and a whole lot of expensive investment to approach anything like a real power plant.

Wave power extracts energy from the ocean using buoys. The rise and fall of the buoys on the ocean's surface generates a current, which runs by a cable to a power station on land.

It takes 30 acres of buoys to generate 1 megawatt. The U.S. has peak production capacity of about 1,000 gigawatts of electricity. A gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts. Therefore, to generate one one-thousandth (0.001) of the energy we need, you'd have to cover almost 50 square miles of ocean.

According to Unenergy, a blog that promotes alternative energy, geothermal is the cheapest alternative energy. A new geothermal plant will cost about $6.2 million per megawatt to build. A wind farm comes in around $6.75 million per megawatt. And a new solar plant runs about $7.9 million per megawatt.
Wave systems cost around $8.2 million per megawatt.


Compare that to a coal-fired power plant that can pull carbon dioxide out of its exhaust. It would cost about $2.9 million per megawatt to build. A new nuclear power plants costs about $3.75 million per megawatt.
So for coastal towns that want to supplement their existing power grids, wave power could be an expensive but "green" option. But it won't ever be a meaningful addition to the national power supply.

Fwd: Why we are not effective as environmentalists ME

Interesting view of why zealots are not effective -food for thought SHT

From the Mother Earth news

I would describe myself as a committed environmentalist. It's my passion and my work. I've covered our deepening environmental crisis as a journalist for 30 years and now I run magazines and Web sites dedicated to raising human awareness of environmental issues. My wife and I raise much of our own food on our little organic farm and we supply organic food to lots of other local families. Environmentalism is my passion, my career, my chief avocation.

I've watched the environmental "movement," if you will, grow from a radical, tie-dyed clique into a mainstream global consensus. I don't think we, as environmentalists, can take much credit for that however.

We have, for the last 30 years, been among society's least effective leaders and least pleasurable companions. In his 2006 essay, "Beyond Hope," Derrick Jensen claims that the most common words he hears spoken by environmentalists,everywhere,are "We're fucked."[1] He exaggerates, but he has a point.

Our attitudes reek of Puritanism. We are, often, dour, strict and humorless. We're judgmental. Behind most of life's simple pleasures we see unnecessary consumption, which we ridicule. Because humanity is responsible for environmental problems we are, ipso facto, all sinners and we find little joy in being human. We portray the giant global corporations as occult covens, and we burn their representatives in effigy in our own reenactments of the Salem witch trials. When our neighbors seem too moderate or abstract for our tastes — as the Quakers did to New England's 17^th-century Puritans — we whip them out of the colony, at least figuratively, and we're not above discussing executions. (The Puritan authorities hanged four Quakers for their religious beliefs in Boston between 1659 and 1661.)

To say the least, we're no fun a lot of the time.

Maybe that explains why we've accomplished so little in the past 30 years. After all, we were right all along. Why has it taken popular opinion so long to catch up?

Well, for one thing, no one follows a pessimist. We've spent far too much time confessing our sins and assigning our scarlet letters. We've invested far too little time visualizing successful outcomes.

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[1] Jensen, Derrick. Beyond Hope. May/June 2006 issue of Orion magazine. Excerpted from Endgame, published in June 2006 by Seven Stories Press.

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United States Had Record Solar Energy Growth in 2008

United States Had Record Solar Energy Growth in 2008: "United States Had Record Solar Energy Growth in 2008
The United States’ solar energy capacity jumped a record 17 percent last year, though the U.S. solar photovoltaic market still lags behind those of Spain and Germany.
March 25, 2008 From EERE Network News
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The Solar Energy Industries Association estimates that 342 megawatts of solar photovoltaic electric power were installed throughout the United States in 2008."