Joe Biegelsen's Sustainable Development
"Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Gro Harlem Brundtland

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Thursday, September 27, 2007
 


Here is one I had blogged about before.  It does better on range and you can recharge it today, instead of overnight.  The 10 minute recharge time might make it close to acceptable for a lot of people.  On the other hand, when I blogged before it was going to have a 250 mile range and be available in 2007.  Now they say a 200 mile range and available in 2008.

Again.... I'll believe it when I see it.


9:34:54 PM  permalink  comment []


If you have five minutes, you can check out the video. My summary... All electric car capable of 100 miles and up to 60 mph to be available for around $12,000 in about 18 months.

My comments...

1) Doesn't exactly compete with a cheap gasoline car on performance or range. Same issues that have killed electrics like the EV-1 and kin in the past. The eight hour recharge time makes the max distance less than half the range (you have to get back after all). People want cars that can do it all. Buying a separate whole car just for short trips doesn't fit into very many budgets. IMHO, the range and recharge issue will always kill electric cars.

2) The big news is the proposed price. Not the performance or range. Without dealing with the range issue, the project is doomed to failure regardless of price.

3) Not in show rooms yet. I'll believe it when I see it.



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Saturday, September 22, 2007
 


As many commenters  have noted,  92 miles square is  much different from 92 square miles.  The article is really speaking of 92 x 92 = 8464 square miles.

Also noted is this is solar thermal.  Not photovoltaic.  Solar thermal is much more efficient at converting the heat from the sun to electric power but is much harder to put on your roof.  Solar thermal works at commercial power plant quantities.

That being said, this is an opportunity to do some math.  We know the sun provides about 500 watts/square-meter.*  So we go to www.onlineconversions.com and convert 8464 square miles to 21,921,659,365 square meters.  Multiply by 700 to get about 11 Tera-Watts.

The only thing left is to add up the amount of energy used in the USA and compare to 11 Tera-Watts.  Is it just the electric use or does it claim all the liquid fuel energy users as well?  How would we convert all the liquid fuel applications to electricity?

* The referenced article actually claims 1000 watts/square meter at noon on a clear day.  I've divided by two to account for some clouds and rotation of the earth.



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Tuesday, August 07, 2007
 


Yes!  It looks like some people are combining PV and Solar Thermal.



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This page explains that for a typical photovoltaic panel 14% of incident energy is converted to electricity.  7% is reflected and the remaining 79% is converted to heat.  It also explains that "All solar panels lose power at higher cell temperatures."  That is why they recommend ventilating the PV panels and not using roof tiles. 

My question is:  Why not combine the panels with solar thermal somehow?  We could thermally connect the panel to glycol or other heat transfer medium to take away the heat and keep the panel cool.  The heat could then be transfered to a storage medium such as a water tank.  We would get better PV performance and also have heat warm our house or hot tub.
 
Is anybody doing this?


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Sunday, July 22, 2007
 


The article explains how steam, which would normally be waste heat from electric power generation, is recycled to heat buildings and run air conditioner compressors on New York City. This saves massive amounts of energy.

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Wednesday, July 18, 2007
 


This is a great article.  Global warming is not going to tear the Earth out of its orbit.  But our children and grandchildren won't have the cushy lifestyle that we enjoy now... If they have a lifestyle at all...

Found via Digg on The Good Human.

6:30:09 PM  permalink  comment []

Tuesday, July 10, 2007
 


The following is excerpted from The Tyee.   The article also comments on the obvious relationship between fares are ridership.  Raising fares reduces ridership... Duh!   Here in NYC, major capital projects are underway to address under capacity problems.  They will take years.   A fare increase is also in the works.  Maybe the fare increase will hold ridership in check until the new capacity can come on line.


Fare-free transit brings many benefits, some of which include:
  1. a barrier-free transportation option to every member of the community (no more worries about exact change, expiring transfers, or embarrassment about how to pay)
  2. eliminating a "toll" from a mode of transportation that we as a society want to be used (transit is often the only way of getting around that charges a toll)
  3. reducing the inequity between the subsidies given to private motorized vehicle users and public transport users
  4. reducing, and in some cases eliminating, the need for private motorized vehicle parking
  5. reducing greenhouse gas emissions, other air pollutants, noise pollution (especially with electric trolleys), and run-off of toxic chemicals into fresh water supplies and ocean environments
  6. reducing overall consumption of oil and gasoline
  7. eliminating the perceived need to spend billions on roads and highways (now up to $7 billion for the proposed Gateway Project in Vancouver)
  8. eliminating the perceived need to spend billions on bigger car-carrying ferries ($2.5 billion for BC Ferries' new super-sized boats and ramps)
  9. contributing significantly to the local economy by keeping our money in our communities
  10. reducing litter (in Vancouver, the newer transfers/receipts have overtaken fast food packaging for most common garbage found on our streets)
  11. saving trees by eliminating the need to print transfers and tickets
  12. allowing all bus doors to be used to load passengers, making service faster and more efficient
  13. allowing operators (drivers) to focus on driving safely
  14. giving operators more time to answer questions
  15. providing operators a safer work environment since fare disputes are eliminated
  16. eliminating fare evasion and the criminalization of transit-using citizens
  17. fostering more public pride in shared, community resources

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Tuesday, June 19, 2007
 


Via TreeHugger

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Saturday, June 16, 2007
 


As a fraud prevention measure, credit card companies limit the amount of dollars for each pay-at-the-pump transaction.  Now that gas prices are rising, that is inconveniencing people with larger gas tanks.

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Tuesday, February 27, 2007
 


From globalwarming-facts.info


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Tuesday, February 20, 2007
 


Expected to save 800,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions during the three year phase-out period.
9:27:04 PM  permalink  comment []

Wednesday, December 27, 2006
 


The article does not answer, or even mention, the obvious question.  "How much has sea level changed so far?"


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Tuesday, December 26, 2006
 


Available in small quantities late in 2007... So they say.

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Thursday, December 21, 2006
 


SiliconValley.com says New York taxis will soon have all sorts of cool electronics to entertain the riders. According to the article, we will be seeing about that in just a few weeks. I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, I recently attended a Green Renter presentation about Hybrid taxis. Rob Muldoon from the Sierra Club told us all about the push to put more hybrid taxis on the road. Here are a few notes from that.
  • There are about 13,000 yellow taxis and 50,000 other "cars for hire" in New York City.
  • So far, there are about 300 hybrids. Most of these are Ford Escapes, but also a few Priuses, Camerys, etc.
  • After convincing the taxi fleet owners, the next hurdle was the Taxi and Limousine Commission. No hybrids were approved as taxis, with the TLC saying they were too small. Eventually they did get approved.
  • The most recent allocation of 900 new taxi medallions reserves 9% of those for alternative/clean fuel vehicles. Hybrids qualify, along with compressed natural gas. The auction of the medallions raised about $27 million for the city, about $300,000 each. Medallions can be sold, leased, transfered like other real property.
  • As with green buildings, the motivation for hybrids depends on ownership. Taxi owner operators are easier to convince because the owner is the one to benefit from the reduced fuel usage. Fleet owners who hire drivers need additional incentives.
    • Bob is working the the TLC to allow a longer allowed lifetime for the cars (The TLC currently limits the working life of a taxi to five years and there is a push to allow six or seven for hybrids.)
    • It remains to be seen whether the batteries etc. will hold up for that many miles. An owner/operator taxi typically runs up 60,000 miles per year -- 300,000 in the allowed life. A fleet vehicle will run three shifts per day instead of one and rack up 120,000 miles per year or more. Will the batteries last that long.?

11:17:17 AM  permalink  comment []

Wednesday, December 06, 2006
 


In an earlier post, I raised some questions about soil depletion due to burning of plants as biofuel. It turns out that very little of the carbon in plants gets there by being absorbed from the soil. This makes sense because plant roots don't have teeth, digestive systems and the other apparatus necessary to take up fibrous organic material.

However, it is still the case that common farming practices do release substantial amounts of carbon dioxide anyway, as a quick search on No Till Farming reveals. While I don't understand the underlying mechanisms, apparently simply turning over the soil releases trapped carbon dioxide. (Is it as simple as just shaking it loose?) We also have all the carbon dioxide released by the fuel for the tractors, etc.




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Tuesday, December 05, 2006
 


A picture named GroBrundtland.jpgAnother bullet point in the Principles of Sustainable Design course that I took recently was the source of the quote which has adorned the top of this blog from the beginning.

"Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

While I've seen this in a number of places, I've always been bothered by my inability to track down the source. Thanks to Jamy Bacchaus, who lead the course, I've now been able to track down the quote to the 1987: Brundtland Report.

Thanks Jamy.
12:17:45 PM  permalink  comment []

Sunday, December 03, 2006
 


William McDonough was the keynote speaker for the opening plenary for this year's GreenBuild conference. Among other things, he spoke about the “Waste Equals Food” concept. He showed a beautiful scenic picture of a mountain terraced with rice paddies. He explained that the local people had been farming that land continuously for five thousand years and that they might know a thing or two about sustainable agriculture. And then the kicker.... He said when visiting for dinner in that part of the world it is considered impolite to leave without “leaving a deposit” because that would mean taking some of the families nutritional resources away.



Yesterday I attended a “Principles of Sustainability” class at the New York Designs business center. The subject of biofuels was discussed. A bullet point on one slide made the debatable claim that the fossil fuel inputs to ethanol production are greater than the energy produced. Another claim was that biofuels are carbon neutral because the carbon released when the fuel is burned matches the carbon sequestered during the plants growth. I'm not a farmer, but I'm not so sure that is true. First, there is the question of the fossil fuel inputs to the farm. Certainly those must be included in the carbon equation. Second is the question of where the carbon in the plant actually comes from. Does it all come from the photosynthetic reaction where C02 is converted to O2? Or does some come from the organic material in the soil where the plant grows?



I conjecture that if the biofuel farmer is making a profit, then the energy produced must be greater than the energy inputs. E.g. that the embodied energy of the biofuel is closely approximated by the cost of its production. This cost of production includes the cost of fuel for the tractors and the oil used to produce the fertilizer. It also includes the energy required to manufacture and deliver the tractors. The tractor cost includes the energy used by the steel mill to smelt the ore which includes the cost of the energy used to mine and transport the ore to the smelter. And so on down the line.



To push this idea to the limit, I further conjecture that the cost of labor involved in all these activities is also driven primarily by energy costs. The farmer, manufacturer, steel worker and miner are all paid a decent living allowing them to buy houses, cars, televisions etc. As we have seen for the tractor all of those things cost as much as their energy inputs. As these are all commodity workers, their incomes are pushed by our free capitalist market place to a level that avoids spilling much out of the system, to places like vacations in the Caribbean for example.



What do these conjectures miss? As with much of our economy, they miss the costs of environmental destruction in the extraction of the ore, climate change due to burning of the fuels and – getting back to William McDonough – depletion of the soil as we convert topsoil to plants and then to ethanol and then burn it up leaving just a few green house gases and soot.



Now, I'm not claiming to be an expert in any of these subjects. I just want to point out that simple sounding statements such as “biofuels are carbon neutral” are not really so simple. There are a lot of open questions about sustainable farming and how to do it. When biofuels come into the picture, when the farm products are burned and sent into the atmosphere, when nutrients do not come back to the soil, when biofuel production cannot be done organically and is dependent on chemical fertilizers which are derived from fossil fuels – when all of this happens can biofuels be considered sustainable at all?



3:54:13 PM  permalink  comment []

Friday, December 01, 2006
 


A picture named _40804472_hawking_bbc_203.jpgStephan Hawking says we need to move to space to guarantee survival of the human race.  His logic is impeccable, pointing out that we could be wiped out by unpredictable events completely beyond our control.

However, we are far more likely to be wiped out by apathy and inaction toward controllable and ongoing processes such as climate change the the end of cheap oil.

Far better, I think, to keep the focus on saving our current planet and not on finding a new one.  The technology to save the Earth is firmly within our grasp.  The technology to find a new one is a remote fantasy.

It brings to mind the serenity prayer....  Not that I normally do much praying...

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

And it would also be great if I could have more personal effectiveness and be able to change more things.


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Saturday, November 11, 2006
 


On October 27, I attended a workshop on LEED CI Workshop.  One of the stories told by the instructors was about Wal-MartAs the story goes a Wal-Mart store was built with skylights but only in part of the store.  Analysis of sales data showed an unusually high sales rate for certain products.  Someone noticed that those were the products under the skylights.  Curiosity lead them to rearrange the store to put other products under the skylights and the increase in sales followed the lights.  So the theory goes that people will quite simply spend more time in that part of the store.

On November 9, I attended the Green Brooklyn conference.  Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation also talked about Wal-Mart.  Apparently Wal-Mart is still not green enough for Jeffrey.  Seventh Generation still won't sell to Wal-Mart.  But he says they are doing a lot better lately.

And now, via an advertising link on Grist Magazine's site, I find a link to Wal-Mart Watch.   A picture named environment.jpg
The purpose of Wal-Mart Watch is to independently track the progress that Wal-Mart is making on these goals (which I have copied directly from the Wal-Mart web site.
  • To Be Supplied 100% By Renewable Energy
  • Existing stores 25% more efficient in 7 years
  • New stores 30% more efficient in 4 years.
  • To Create Zero Waste
  • Have a 25% reduction in solid waste in 3 years
  • All private brand packaging improved in 2 years
  • To Sell Products That Sustain Our Resources & Environment
  • To have 20% supply base aligned in 3 years
  • Design and support Green Company Program in China


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Thursday, October 26, 2006
 


Just a few notes on things I am doing lately.  The big news is that I'm getting out of computer programming as a profession and focusing 100% on sustainability.  This is a huge and scary change for me, but one that I think will be worth while in the long run.

My primary focus right now is to build a personal network of people in sustainable industries and to build my knowledge base in general.  My focus for the next few months will be on Green Building.  I will be attending classes and conferences in the green building arena and talking to as many people as I can.  I will be working toward obtaining LEED Accreditation.

My calendar looks something like this for the next couple of months.



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Wednesday, October 18, 2006
 


A picture named story.300mil.over.ap.jpgAs of 7:46 am Eastern Time
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Saturday, October 07, 2006
 


BTW. I did get to try out one of the Ford Escape Hybrid taxi cabs. It still had the sticker in the window and from where I sat I could see it had less than 100 miles on the odometer. I suppose I might have been the first fare. I passed on asking the driver how it was holding up :-)

I suppose we can say they are holding up well enough that the cab compaines are still buying them.
9:19:42 PM  permalink  comment []


So, I've moved to New York City and not blogged for a while. Today I saw the NYC version of the National Solar Tour, sponsered by GreenHomeNYC.

Another interesting link I'm adding to my blog role is Plenty Magazine.




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Tuesday, July 11, 2006
 


This is similar to the Windsource program for Xcel, but uses methane produced from cow manure instead.  The added cost is about 4 cents per Kwh.  About a 40% increase from what I am paying now.  Thus it is not nearly as economic as the Windsource program, which at times has actually been cheaper than conventional fossil electricity.


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Thursday, May 18, 2006
 


Consider the following quote with emphasis added...

What Soucy and MTI CEO Peng Lim envision is a world where instead of recharging your phone's battery, you'll buy disposable fuel cells that last longer than the batteries that come with cell phones today and are more eco-friendly. Exactly how much longer they'll last the company won't say yet. "We've promised to demonstrate a fuel cell that is better than a lithium ion battery by the third quarter of this year, and we're on track to do that," Lim says.

GOING GREEN. And in general, fuel cells have chemistry on their side, says Frost & Sullivan analyst Sara Bradford. "The batteries we have are starting to reach their theoretical limits," she says. "Plus, with the fuel cells there's the added benefit that there's no acids or heavy metals involved," she says. "The green factor is important."

So what does this mean that the fuel cells last longer than the recharble batteries? Does one fuel cell, without recharging, last longer than the typical lifetime of a recharble battery? As in years!? Or does it last longer than the typical single charge of a recharble battery? As in hours?

This claim of green fuel cells seem spurious to me. Having to buy new fuel cartridges for every few hours of use doesn't seem to be a big environmental win over the toxic chemicals. The batteries can be properly disposed of or recycled, thus keeping the toxics out of the landfill. Disposable fuel cartridges are just like any other disposable. They fill the landfill and they involve frequent uses of petroleum powered transportation to replace.

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Thursday, April 27, 2006
 


A picture named 004462.2.jpgA few months back someone gave me a political button to wear. It said "Stop Global Warming" and also said something about an vigil style protest to happen December 11, 2005. So what did it do that day? Bought an SUV. It wasn't a hybrid either. Despite all my objections, my wife insists that the Honda CR-V handles so much better and is just so much more reliable.

For me, this was really hard as I realized she is not nearly so devoted to envionmental causes as I am. To me, when better choices came available, the normal old ICE only vehicles became unacceptable. This was about a month after I attended the ASPO Conference on Peak Oil. I was buying a car with 30% worse gas mileage. Toyota was airing ads showing people taking deep breaths of hybrid enhanced, less polluted air. I was buying a car with a CARB emmissions rating ten times what I could have. OK for other people maybe, but not for me. To her, tiny differences in handling and Consumer Reports overcame the huge differences in mileage and pollution.

Keeping the wife happy was really the only jusification I could find to go along with the CR-V. But I still hate that car. It doesn't help that the color she chose is oil slick grey.

One thing the ASPO Conference pointed out was that automobiles stay in the fleet for a long time. The choice we made not only encourages the auto makers to continue with ICE only vehicles, but our car, and every car like it, will be on the road polluting and guzzling for another 10 to 20 years. This moral transgression that we have commited is no small temporary thing at all.

Anyway, on to happier times. The Auto Channel says the Ford Escape Hybrid is holding up pretty well in very demanding taxi service in New York and San Francisco.

Here are a few links from arguments I made back in December...
I would have thought the HOV thing would have got her, since she commutes to Denver. Alas....


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Wednesday, April 12, 2006
 


A picture named prius_mpg.jpgWow!
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Tuesday, March 28, 2006
 


I recently got a Kill-A-Watt meter. The first thing I plugged into it was the power strip that supplies my little home office computer setup. This includes a big laptop, printer and external disk drive. It arrived just last Wednesday so I really don't have good numbers yet. A full day of work, plus very light weekend surfing has used 2.59 Kwh. My current rate, including WindSource adjustments is 9.755 cents/Kwh. So I spend about a quarter a day running my computer. That does not include the Wireless Router and Cable Modem that are on a different plug.

Anyway, this article on Excite says Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Time Warner are all looking at property near a Hydro plant.

The draw appears to be the region's relatively cheap land, inexpensive hydropower and wide-open space...

It will interesting to see if similar companies move to the southwest to take advantage of cheap solar and wind power. Transmission is typically a problem in new wind plants since they tend to be far from population centers. Bringing the power users to the wind would be a good fit. But data centers also need consistent power, so lines from the fossil plant would still have to be built. Oh Well...

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Monday, March 20, 2006
 


A picture named REW_062_cameron_avoid.jpgWe here a lot these days about the promise of bio-fuels. For example this article in Wired News and GM's Live Green Go Yellow campaign.

This article in Renewable Energy World takes a balanced look at the costs and benefits of bio-fuels. How much agricultural land would be required to grow energy equivalent to our current fossil fuel use? How does that impact food production? How much carbon is released by initially plowing the fields to make them ready for agriculture?

Quotes...

Land Use:
Therefore to make the European Union entirely self-sufficient in terms of vehicle fuel would require more than 200 million hectares of crops, around 55% of the land mass of the EU-25...

Carbon Emissions:
...theory suggests that biofuels are carbon neutral - i.e. when burnt, a plant releases the same amount of carbon back into the atmosphere as it absorbed during its lifetime. However, once the energy inputs into the farming system in terms of fertilizers, transportation and carbon dioxide released from the soil by tillage etc. are accounted for, this figure drops substantially

...Land clearance not only has implications for habitat destruction, but also for climate change. Bringing forest, bog or grassland into cultivation releases vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. In Malaysia and Indonesia, plantations of this kind often lead to the drainage of large areas of tropical peat bogs, which then catch fire or erode away. These peat bogs are estimated to contain around 20% of all the land-based carbon on earth and their destruction is a leading cause of climate change (on average it produces about 15% of all global CO2 emissions, although in 1997-1998 this may have reached 40%!).13

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Tuesday, March 07, 2006
 


A picture named electric_skateboard_action5.jpgThe same company sells electric bikes too.
6:14:19 PM  permalink  comment []


A picture named ebiking-benefits.jpgThis Tree Hugger article says electric bikes give a "better" workout than standandard bikes. They are talking about bikes that you pedal to charge, but then get an assist when going up hill.

The basic idea is similar to hybrid vehicle technology. The battery pack and motor allow one to smooth out the power being applied. In the case of hybrid cars, the engine can run at its most efficient speed. In the case of bikes, it is the rider who can maintain a steady workout. He doesn't drive his heart rate too high going up hill and doesn't get much of a break going down hill.


6:06:04 PM  permalink  comment []

Thursday, March 02, 2006
 


A multi-topic article as is typical of the Green Money Journal. My bank already has all the features of EcoCash, without the marketing hype. The interesting part of the article is about truck stop electrification. Substituting Cable TV and Internet for pollution sounds good to me.

...The Climate Trust, the Truck Stop Electrification project deals with a ubiquitous source of GHGs - that of truckers idling diesel engines to run heating and A/C appliances while drivers sleep, rest, or just wait out federally mandated rest periods.

Each night thousands of idling engines cause undue wear on machinery, emit harmful local and global air pollutants, and increase noise levels for drivers and neighboring communities.

In a joint partnership that will eliminate 90,000 metric tons of GHG carbon dioxide over 16 years, (the average US auto produces about one metric ton of C02 in two or three months) The Climate Trust and Shurepower LLC will install 275 pedestals at seven truck stops in Oregon and Washington.

Shurepower's electrified parking system is a low cost alternative to idling that provides grid-based electricity, cable TV, and Internet connections to allow drivers of long-haul heavy-duty trucks to shut down their engines and save fuel. Using the Shurepower technology is much cheaper than paying the costs of fuel for idling engines.


Cool!!

1:54:22 PM  permalink  comment []

Saturday, February 25, 2006
 


Goldman Sachs ... acknowledges the value of "ecosystem services" ...

Selected quotes from the article...

"A number of oil and auto executives have said privately that they can make the transition to clean energy, but they need government to regulate them so they can make the change in lockstep with no loss of market share. Others are willing to move forward, sensing opportunity in being greener first."

"According to Gelbspan, the immediate impetus comes from the escalating losses of the world's property insurers to floods, droughts and increasingly destructive storms."

"Gelbspan continued, "Seen in a larger context, it seems that their own strategic needs require banks, insurers and financial institutions to take a longer view of the health of the capitalist system. Most individual companies, by contrast, are obligated to respond to shorter-term concerns about their quarterly or annual earnings and losses. So it falls to the world's financial institutions to protect the long-term viability of the economy."

4:29:42 PM  permalink  comment []


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