Planet Gets a Lemon as Global Car Industry Revs Up

The world’s auto manufacturers produced a record 67 million vehicles in 2006, putting more cars on the road than ever before, according to a new Vital Signs Update from the Worldwatch Institute. While global production grew 4 percent last year, China increased its production by nearly 30 percent, overtaking Germany to become the third largest producer.

"America’s car addiction is becoming a global phenomenon with no sign of reversing,” says Worldwatch Senior Researcher Michael Renner, who authored the update. “This trend begs immediate and innovative transportation solutions to address the consumption of fossil fuels that is harming our climate.”

Reasons not to glow

Chances are good, gentle reader, that you are going to have to sit next to someone in the coming year who will assert that nuclear power is the solution to climate change. What will you tell them? There’s so much to say. You could be sitting next to someone who hasn’t really considered the evidence yet. Or you could be sitting next to scientist and Gaia theorist James Lovelock, a supporter of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy™, which quotes him saying, “We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear—the one safe, available, energy source—now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.”

Read on...

The Model G: Google's Plug-in Hybrid Program

When Henry Ford’s neighbors watched the young inventor roll his first gas-powered contraption out of a backyard shed, they had no way of knowing how the rickety four-wheeled carriage would revolutionize human transportation.

More than 100 years later, the billionaire founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, backed out of a parking space in a Toyota Prius converted to run almost exclusively on energy from solar panels. This demonstration of the capabilities of plug-in hybrids, and the two-way flow of electricity between car and electric grid, could have a profound impact on transportation in the 21st century.

“Symbolically, this event is very important” said Stephen Schneider, PhD, one of the authors of the recent United Nations report on climate change. Dr. Schneider, a professor of environmental studies at nearby Stanford University, was at Google's headquarters to observe. “We have to get people to stop thinking big is cool, and start thinking efficiency is cool,” he said.

The Google founders’ two-minute journey was part of the company’s celebration, on June 18, announcing the switching on of the largest solar installation to date on any corporate campus in the United States. Google has installed over 90% of the 9,212 solar panels that comprise the 1,600 kilowatt project. This installation is projected to produce enough electricity for approximately 1,000 California homes. The installation will help the company reduce its environmental footprint and power its new fleet of plug-in cars with clean solar electricity. The dashboard display of the converted Prius driven by Mr. Brin and Mr. Page showed a fuel economy reading of 99.9 miles-per-gallon, the highest number that the Toyota hybrid is capable of showing.

One highlight of the event occurred when Mr. Brin tapped a key on a laptop computer to launch the so-called “vehicle-to-grid” capabilities of the “ReChargeIt” project. With the keystroke, a nearby energy meter paused and then spun backwards, showing the flow of energy out of the plug-in car’s batteries and back into the electric grid. The crowd cheered when the meter, projected on a large flat-screen monitor, reversed directions.

When Mr. Page was asked if his family roots in Detroit had an effect on his support of advanced car technology, he declined to answer. One attendee associated with the project was more forthcoming. “This project tells General Motors and Ford and the American political establishment that it’s time for a change, and we’re not going to wait any longer,” said the gentleman, who asked not to be identified. “If Detroit doesn’t lead, California will.”

Learn more and watch Google’s video about www.ReChargeIt.org.

Transition Towns

This website is a WIKI for use by all the communities that have adopted the Transition Towns model for responding to the twin challenges of Peak Oil and Climate Change.

This site provides a focal point for all towns, villages, cities and localities around the world as they implement their own Transition Initiative.

The Point of Return

It is ‘cool’ to be an optimist.

PESSIMISM IS IN fashion. Scientists, environmentalists and climatologists are claiming that collapse is around the corner and civilisation is coming to an end. Book after book tells us that we have passed the tipping point and have reached the point of no return. The skies are saturated with CO2 and the atmosphere is filled with greenhouse gases. We are told over and over that whatever we do, we cannot reverse the rise in temperature or prevent the sea from flooding London! What happened to New Orleans will happen to New York. Global warming is here to stay. The scenario of doom and gloom is expounded by experts and activists alike.

We do not underestimate the severity of the climate crisis. We respect the scientists who are predicting a catastrophic future for humanity. We agree that our present way of life, so dependent on the use of fossil fuel, is hanging on a cliff edge. If we go any further we will fall into the abyss. So the only thing we can do now is to take a step back; let’s call it “the point of return”. We need to return to a way of life that is free from damaging dependence on fossil fuel.

At present we burn billions of barrels of petroleum every day for our food, clothes, homes, heating, lighting, transport and entertainment. This way of life is not only wasteful and unsustainable, but also very dangerous. As Sir Crispin Tickell writes in his article, it took nature 200 million years to create the vast store of fossil energy that we have almost spent in 200 years. The speed with which we are exhausting fossil energy is incredible. Sir Crispin suggests a fundamental shift in values and a radical return to a holistic worldview.

There is a word in Sanskrit for the point of return: it is pratikraman. Its opposite is atikraman, which means stepping outside our natural limits. Atikraman happens when we break the universal law. Returning to the centre of one’s being or to the source of inner wisdom is pratikraman. These two Sanskrit words provide a useful approach to understanding the current human predicament and a possible way out. A profound introspection is needed to examine the state of our psyche; we need to ask, are we meeting our need or indulging our greed? Are we healing or wounding the Earth?

In the context of climate change and global warming, addiction to oil is atikraman and a return to the energy derived from air, water and sun is pratikraman. One way to begin our pratikraman is to stop and put a cap on consumerism. We need a moratorium on motorways and runways. No new homes without insulation. We need to put an immediate freeze on industrialised agriculture everywhere in the world. Once we have put such a complete freeze on the use of fossil fuel, we can start the reduction process and the return journey to renewable resources. If we plan and manage our return journey carefully we should be able to escape the projected meltdown. We were able to repair the hole in the ozone layer by reducing the use of CFCs; we should be able to mitigate the extreme consequences of global warming if we can put an immediate cap on the use of fossil fuel and prepare to make the return journey instantly.

To meet the challenge of global warming, we need to change from being consumers to being artists; we have to take refuge in the arts and crafts. As William Morris advocated long ago, arts and crafts ignite our imagination, stimulate our creativity and bring us a sense of fulfilment. Poetry, painting, pottery, music, meditation, gardening, sculpting and umpteen other forms of arts and crafts can meet all basic human needs; produce beautiful objects to use, which need not require the use of fossil fuel. Human happiness, true prosperity and joyful living can only emerge from a life of elegant simplicity.

We are at the point of return from gross to subtle, from glamorous to gracious, from hedonism to healing, from conquest of the Earth to conservation of Nature, and from quantities of possessions to quality of life. It is ‘cool’ to be an optimist.

Satish Kumar

Satish Kumar is President of Schumacher UK, Editor of Resurgence and Director of Programmes at Schumacher College.

Youth Bring Low-Cost Solar Panels to Kenyan Slum

The World Clean Energy Awards, announced in Basel, Switzerland, on June 15, recognize innovative, practical projects that move renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions into the mainstream. Developed by the independent transatlantic21 Association, the awards are intended to create benchmarks for clean energy in seven categories: construction; transport and mobility; products; services, trade, and marketing; finance and investment; policy and lawmaking; and NGOs and initiatives. The Worldwatch Institute was one of eight organizations invited to participate in the nomination and jury process. Eye on Earth will run a weekly feature on each of the nine winners.

KCYP project members cutting panels.

Nairobi’s Kibera slum, one of the largest informal settlements in sub-Saharan Africa, is home to an innovative new solar panel assembly program. The Kibera Community Youth Program (KCYP) trains local youth to construct simple, low-cost photovoltaic panels and to sell them to other residents for use in charging radios and mobile phones. The initiative, which recently won a World Clean Energy Award (WCEA) in the “product” category, has brought low-cost, environmentally sound energy to people around Kenya as well as beyond the country’s borders.

Read more:
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5172

ZeroFootprint

1,000,000

people pledging to reduce their environmental footprint by

10% in 1 year

http://www.zerofootprint.net

Sign the Pledge

I PLEDGE:

1.To demand that my country join an international treaty within the next 2 years that cuts global warming pollution by 90% in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth;

2.To take personal action to help solve the climate crisis by reducing my own CO2 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become "carbon neutral;"

3.To fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2;

4.To work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation;

5.To fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal;

6.To plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests; and,

7.To buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century.

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