Current Savers Blog

The sweeping legislation unveiled in the U.S. Senate today aims to curb climate change, arguably one of the biggest tasks ever undertaken on this planet. But it’s a bill that runs to more than 800 pages, and hidden in its folds is a provision that could turn a noted symbol of New York City — the yellow taxicab — green.

And it wouldn’t just be in New York. Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and other major U.S. cities would be able to create taxi fleets made up entirely of hybrid vehicles under the proposed Green Taxis Act of 2009.

Offered by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who now fills Hillary Clinton’s former seat in the Senate, the measure aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 296,000 tons in New York City alone, which its sponsors say would be like taking some 35,000 cars off the road and save drivers $4,500 annually in gas costs.

“By creating an all hybrid taxi fleet, we can improve air quality and lower carbon emissions,” Gillibrand said in a statement. “As a mother with an asthmatic child, I believe this is a win-win for our children and our efforts to combat climate change.”

That has to be a good thing, and it’s not exactly unheard of. A quick search for “green taxi” turns up nearly 70,000 hits. But will New Yorkers say “Fuhgeddaboutit”? Will the Taxi and Limousine Commission oppose it? WIll preservationists balk at changing what has become a durable talisman of life in the Big Apple? Or will New York residents (and other residents of other cities where this law could apply) embrace their inner environmentalists?

Let the debate begin!

Photo credits: REUTERS/Eric Thayer (Taxis drive past carbon counting sign on Deutsche Bank building in Manhattan, June 18, 2009)

REUTERS/Lucas Jackson (New York City skyline, Sept 2, 2009)

Will the guardians of the Nobel Peace Prize make another green award in 2009 to encourage sluggish talks on new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen?

Or is it too early after environmental prizes in both 2004 and 2007?

The five-member Nobel panel likes to make topical awards to try to influence the world – a prize announcement on Oct. 9 linked to climate change could hardly be better timed since 190 nations will meet in Copenhagen in December to agree a new pact for fighting global warming.

And the Nobel prize will be formally handed over at a ceremony in Oslo on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of the death of founder Alfred Nobel – giving any winner a global loudspeaker during the the Dec. 7-18 meeting in Copenhagen.

But any would-be green laureate has a big problem — former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore and the U.N. Climate Panel shared the 2007 prize and Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai won in 2004 for her campaign to plant trees across Africa.

Three prizes so fast might well be one too many.

Bookmakers don’t rate green candidates very highly this year – one has Chinese dissident Hu Jia at 5-1 followed by Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai at 11/2. Greenpeace is an outsider at 40/1.

And the environment is still a controversial new area for the committee – some critics said that it had nothing to do with peace when Maathai won.

Geir Lundestad, the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, defends the green choices and says there’s no rotation of themes for peace — disarmament one year, human rights the next, etc.

“When the ice melts in the Arctic, new territorial issues arise. When the waters rise in Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands of people flee to India, creating difficulties. And when the desert spreads in the Sahara it leads to new difficult issues,” he said.

“There will be many different roads to peace and there is no rotation (of themes), as there is no rotation as far as geography is concerned,” he told Reuters.

Even if there is no green prize from a record field of 205 candidates in 2009, maybe concern about the environment could indirectly influence the choice in other ways?

Lundestad said several years ago that the committee should speak out sooner rather than later this century about the lack of democracy in China  — so far it hasn’t done so. But the committee might not want to irritate Beijing, for instance by awarding the prize a prize to a dissident, just when China is offering to do more to rein in its greenhouse gas emissions.

((Pictures - top: A large iceberg is seen on the edge of a morning fog over Frobisher Bay, Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic August 21, 2009. The picture was taken from a Canadian Forces Aurora patrol aircraft flying south of Iqaluit and taking part in military manoeuvers in the Canadian north. REUTERS/Andy Clark. Right: The Nobel Peace Prize medal awarded to South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Soweto in 1984, recovered a few days after thieves broke into his home in June 2007. REUTERS/Stringer))

After a series of setbacks since he took office in May 2008, Brazil’s Environment Minister Carlos Minc has scored several political victories in recent weeks that give his portfolio some clout for the first time in Latin America’s largest country.

Only a few months ago Minc looked like he would follow the path of his predecessor, internationally-renowned Amazon defender Marina Silva, who stepped down in May 2008 citing opposition to her environmental policies.

He had complained to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva about a plot from the country’s powerful farm lobby and colleagues in the cabinet to undermine his green agenda.

“We were losing 3-0 and now we’re nearly tied,” one of Minc’s aides said.

Minc’s first victory was to get President Lula in September to restrict farming in Brazil’s vast central savannah region, an area rich in biodiversity that has been one of the main areas of expansion for the country’s huge agriculture.

His second victory was for the government to impose new restrictions on sugar cane planting and to ban sugar mills in the Amazon rain forest and the Pantanal wetland area. The agriculture minister, several governors, and the farm lobby in Congress had pushed hard to allow cane production in the Pantanal.

Now the next big test for Minc will be the global climate conference in Copenhagen in December. For months he has been pushing for Brazil to adopt an aggressive target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Will he manage to convince his colleagues and President Lula on this one as well?

((Picture: Brazil’s Environment Minister Carlos Minc walks next to illegal coal furnaces before they are destroyed during a raid operation aimed to protect the cerrado (savannah) in Niquelandia, 200 km (124 miles) from Brasilia, September 11, 2009. The government placed new restrictions on agriculture in its vast central savannah region. REUTERS/Roberto Jayme))

Here’s some advice for Californians who think Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s climate change policy goes too far: just be happy you’re not his kid.

Before he became a body builder, before he was the Terminator, and before he turned into the Governator, it turns out that Arnold was the youngest in a family that had no running water and relied on an outhouse. That’s what he told fourth graders who innocently asked about how he spoke to his kids.

“I have major fights with my kids,” he responded, quickly segueing into the difference between post-World War European poverty and the Golden State.

“We had kind of a system where we carried the water from 200 yards away from the well, to our house upstairs to the second floor where we lived, and then my father would wash himself first, and then my mother would wash herself, and then my brother would wash himself in the same water, and then I would wash myself, and it was all dirty, because I was the youngest. So that’s how I grew up because conservation was big in Europe. Especially since I grew up after the Second World War. There was no food, there was little electricity, there were blackouts left and right, there was nothing. After the war was worse than during the war. So we had absolutely nothing,” he said.

And while the Governor now has solar panels to heat the water in his pool and jacuzzi, a hydrogen-powered Hummer, and he recycles, it seems conservation is still BIG — and mandatory — in the Terminator household.

He recalled watching his kids take a stool into the shower to sit and enjoy the hot water — for a long time.

“I’m sitting outside timing it now, and it’s 15 minutes, and still they are in the shower. So I open the shower door and turn off the hot water and then all of a sudden they start screaming, because it is cold,” he said, adding that he had created rules: no shower longer than 5 minutes — or else.

Here’s the three-minute history of Arnold’s conservation conversion, at a Commonwealth Club event in San Francisco:

Click here to listen to the speech.

(Photo by Reuters/MAX WHITTAKER)

Electric cars can be smooth, quiet and environmentally friendly. But they still need fuel.

Many have asked — and invested according to their answer — whether that fuel will come from batteries, utility grids, curb-side charging stations or some other technology.

Drivers in California have a new option, if they drive a Tesla electric vehicle. And it’s extra environmentally friendly.

SolarCity, which installs residential solar systems, is building a charging corridor between Los Angeles and San Francisco. There will be five 240-volt stations along the highly traveled Highway 101 that will juice up electric vehicles in one third the time of other charging stations. One of the chargers — in Santa Maria — is solar-powered.

SolarCity is working with the U.S. branch of Holland’s Rabobank to install more solar power systems at the stations, which would make the corridor the first to be entirely solar-powered.

We wanted to know if readers think this is how electric cars will roll across the country — with solar power? Or are your bets with battery technology or another type of charging station?

    U.S. and Russian scientists exploring the Arctic ocean finally reached ice on Monday, about 435 miles (700 km) northwest of Barrow, Alaska.

    On a year when the Arctic sea ice has receded in the summer to its third-smallest on record, researchers on the RUSALCA expedition got the opportunity to study the water, sea life and the ocean floor at a location where there is rarely open water.

    The mission’s science chief, Terry Whitledge, said it he did not expect explore such a northerly location without an icebreaker. 

    The team took core samples from the seabed, more than 600 metres (1,968 feet) down from the surface.

    “We think that is our biggest scientific gain,” Whitledge, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said by satellite phone from the bridge of the research vessel Professor Khromov.

    The scientists are on a six-week expedition through the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea, coordinated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Russian Academy of Sciences, to gauge the impact of climate change on the region.

    The weather has been mostly moderate for the time of year, but one recent Russian cold front made work on the ship tough by icing up the deck and freezing up some gear used to lower equipment into the ocean, Whitledge said.

    Microbiologist Alexander Savvichev said he has been surprised by the lack of methane concentrations in sediment where pockmarks, or deep depressions on the sea floor, had been identified. Such features can be caused by gas seeps, so the formation of these is a mystery.

    “The success is that we have collected enough samples for laboratory analysis, and we are taking them home. Experiments will show exactly what the situation is,” he said.

    The expedition runs to the end of September.

    (Photo: The Professor Khromov at its northernmost location in the Arctic Ocean, 77 27.5 N, 166 25.6 W, on Monday, Sept 21, 2009. Photo courtesy of RAS-NOAA)

Newsweek, encroaching on territory usually mined by activist groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, has unveiled its innaugural NEWSWEEK Green Rankings, which ranks the 500 biggest U.S. companies based on their “actual environmental performance, policies, and reputation.”

The magazine pointed out that compiling such a list was a challenge “because comparing environmental performance across industries is a bit like analyzing whether Tiger Woods or LeBron James is the world’s greatest athlete—there’s an inevitable apples-and-oranges element.”

Still, it believes it’s system makes sense. To come up with the greenest company, the magazine assigned each a “Green Score” that was then compared to the average score of the collective group. You can find out more about Newsweek’s methodology here. But, in terms of weighting, Impact and Policies were each given 45 percent and Reputation received 10 percent.

The results? I’ll let you be the judge. But I found it noteworthy that the top two overall are also the top two PC makers in the world — Hewlett-Packard and Dell. And five of the top 10 are tech companies, blamed for manufacturing products that end up contributing to mountains of electronic waste in developing nations.

What do you think? Will the rankings affect who you do business with? What would your green rankings look like? Leave your comments in the box below.

Scientists aboard the Russian research vessel Professor Khromov spent the weekend collecting samples of water, sealife and ocean-floor mud at a spot in the western Arctic Ocean that in most years would be covered with sea ice.

The ship, carrying researchers for the six-week RUSALCA expedition, was in its most northerly planned sampling stop, or “station,”  a location nearly 350 miles (563 km) northwest of Barrow, Alaska. During the mission’s last cruise in 2004, the most northerly accessible location was 345 miles (555 km) south of the weekend’s station.

Mission coordinator Kevin Wood, of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,  writes from the ship that the water is open on all sides. “There isn’t enough ice here to make a margarita,” Wood said.

The joint U.S.-Russian expedition is carrying out research to gauge the effects of global warming on the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea through the end of the month.

The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported last week that the Arctic’s sea ice thawed to its third smallest on record. This is up slightly from from the last two years, but continues an overall decline that is symptomatic of climate change. The smallest summer ice pack on record was in 2007.

Dredging the sea floor, researchers scooped up small tube-like organisms that resemble plastic cocktail stirs. So far, they have yet to be identified, Wood said.

The Khromov is preparing now to steam another 46 miles (74 km) to where radar images show the ice edge to be.

Former Arkanas Governor and Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee has won the first informal round in what will no doubt be a long race to head the party’s White House ticket in 2012.

The affable Baptist preacher, who won the hearts and minds of conservative evangelicals during his failed 2008 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, topped other possible Republican presidential contenders in a straw poll at a summit of Christian conservative voters in Washington.

Out of a field of nine, Huckabee garnered the most votes or 28.5 percent. Delegates to the convention were asked: “Thinking ahead to the 2012 presidential election and assuming the nomination of Barack Obama as Democtats’ choice for president, who would you vote for as the Republicans nominee for president?”

Surprisingly, former Alaska Governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who lit up the party’s conservative Christian base last year, came in fourth with 12 percent. Her relatively poor performance could have been linked to her failure to attend the summit — Huckabee delivered a rousing speech on Friday.

Huckabee’s arch rival in the 2008 race, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, was the runner-up with 12.4 percent.  He also gave a well-received speech that stuck mostly to economic and foreign policy themes.

Like any straw poll, this one counts for nothing. But it does give an idea of what this key Republican base is looking for as the party tries to chart a path back to power in Congress and the White House.

The second question on the straw poll asked the almost 2,000 delegates — of whom about 600 responded — to indicate the most important issue in determining their choice of candidate out of a list of 13 choices.

Abortion won by a long shot at almost 41 percent, while “protection of religious liberty” was a distant second at 18 percent.

Some observers have suggested the conservative Christian movement, known as the “Religious Right,” needs to expand its agenda beyond “hot-button social issues” if it wants to grow and have political and electoral success. And much of its leadership has been talking more about issues such as poverty.

The movement has also turned its attention to climate change in response to Obama’s agenda, which includes proposed legislation aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Conservative Christian radio stations have spent the summer assailing the “cap and trade” provisions of this legislation as a massive tax hike and several of the delegates whom I spoke to expressed skepticism if not hostility to the widely accepted scientific idea that humans are causing climate change.

One of the break-out sessions on Saturday was called “Global Warming Hysteria: The New Face of the ‘Pro-Death’ Agenda.” For a synposis of this and other sessions click here.

But it is clear that abortion remains by far the biggest issue to this crowd — and even when they talk about climate change these “pro-lifers” talk about the “culture of death.” Time will tell if this is an electoral winner or loser for the Republican Party.

Utilities across the United States are rushing to a federal stimulus program that is doling out money to create a “smart grid” — systems that will upgrade the electricity grid.

In this story, Reuters correspondent Eileen O’Grady looks at the tough job facing the U.S. Department of Energy: They have to divvy up $4.5 billion in smart-grid money among some 565 applications.

Smart grid technology measures and modifies power usage in homes and businesses and improves grid reliability. Experts envision that it will open the door to a new era with “smart” appliances that turn themselves on and off, electric cars, more renewable energy and more efficiency on power lines.

San Diego Gas & Electric is one of the utilities hoping to launch a smart grid through the federal program and has applied for $100 million in stimulus funds.

Their plan would build micro smart grids at the University of California, San Diego and a residential community in San Diego County. They would work with companies like IBM, Cisco and Itron on the system technologies, software and hardware.

“They not only have to talk with each other but we have to make sure the entire network is secure. So from an intellectual security standpoint, we’ll ensure that we have that set-up, that we have the ability to communicate from one device and we make it seamless for the customer,” said Michael Niggli, chief operations officer at San Diego Gas & Electric.

Another major issue the utility hopes to solve is what happens when energy from renewable resources is intermittent, with its power generated fading or spiking.

“If the wind stops blowing or if the sun has clouds that intervene, so you can be in a situation where the power supply is affected,” Niggli said in a phone interview with Reuters.

“That’s a lot different than what we have today … where it’s like driving a car. If you want to go faster, you push the accelerator.”

Niggli envisions a system where customers can control their home energy use remotely, turning on the air-conditioning from a computer through the Internet or even on  their handset.

Some companies that are partnering with utilities are not putting all their eggs in one basket in the race for the smart-grid stimulus funds.

IBM is working as a vendor with a dozen utilities that have applied for money.

If the smart grid is done right, then customers won’t even notice a difference, said IBM’s Stephen Callahan, who leads the company’s Intelligent Utility Network unit for the Americas.

“Those customers shouldn’t see anything but improvement in cost, reliability, all those things,” Callahan said.

We wanted to know what readers think about the federal program to jump-start smart grid projects. What should the DOE prioritize? What kind of projects would you like to see?

(Photo: The sun is shown as it rises between power transmission lines in Burbank, California. Photo credit: Fred Prouser/Reuters)