Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Blue-collar desert town goes green

by Todd Woody.

Cities like San Francisco and Seattle usually get kudos for being green pioneers, but the blue-collar Mojave Desert town of Lancaster really shines.

Literally.

Located about 70 miles northeast of Los Angeles, Lancaster has embarked on a program to solarize the community. Last week, for instance, the city and SolarCity, a Silicon Valley photovoltaic panel installer, announced that the local baseball park would become the first minor-league stadium in California to go solar.

The 340-kilowatt array to be installed on carports at Clear Channel Stadium—home base of the Lancaster JetHawks—will supply enough electricity to power nearly the entire facility (during the day, at least). It will mean as much as $48,000 in savings on utility bills during the first year of operation, according to the city.

Another 114 solar projects under the city’s Solar Lancaster program will generate a total of 12.5 megawatts when built out. The installations include five other city buildings that will produce 2.5 megawatts.

Like other inland California communities, Lancaster has been hit hard by the housing collapse and the disappearance of construction jobs. The solar program will create green jobs while tapping the city’s most abundant natural resource—the intense desert sunshine.

“I don’t know of a business that burns more electricity than these stadiums, and 98 percent of it is now alternative energy from the sun,” Mayor R. Rex Parris said at a ceremony Thursday to launch the solar ballpark project. “There is not a business here that couldn’t have the electrical needs met by solar power.”

Covering the carports with solar panels will also keep baseball fans’ vehicles cooler during Lancaster’s scorching summers. “You have to live here to understand the feeling of grabbing a 120-degree steering wheel,” said Parris.

Lancaster’s embrace of solar was a major factor leading eSolar to build its five-megawatt demonstration Sierra solar thermal power plant in the city last year, company founder Bill Gross told me when I visited the project while it was under construction.

“They welcomed us with open arms,” Gross said as we stood amid a huge field of mirrors called heliostats. “We had absolutely no problem getting Sierra permitted, unlike other places.”

Related Links:

Federal solar incentives cost schools ownership opportunity

Will we make the needed investment in the nation’s cities?

Less energy, less pollution, and greater savings. Some dilemma.



Source: http://feeds.grist.org/click.phdo?i=a7868c32cd60b40595ea36177c812476

CUOMO

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Ask Umbra gives relationship advice to a couple battling it out over ?eco-stress?

by Umbra Fisk.

Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dear Umbra,

This is a personal question, but hopefully you can help. My husband and I met when I was 20. I “woke up” to the destructive nature of our consumer lifestyle at 25. Still in love with my husband at age 30, I am wrestling with our vastly different levels of commitment to changing said lifestyle. I would like to go to a therapist that can bring us together on this issue, but I can’t find one that shares my concern for the environment. I’m tired of compromising my values. He’s tired of compromising the conveniences and luxuries he feels he’s “earned” at his corporate job. I feel trapped; he feels judged. Do we keep compromising, or do we divorce and find more like-minded mates? Do you know of any resources for people like us?

Michelle F.
Milwaukee, WI

A. Dearest Michelle,

I think it was Shakespeare who said, “The course of true love never did run smooth, especially when there’s climate change.”

Take some comfort in knowing you’re not alone, Michelle. More and more couples are having disagreements as we collectively learn about the impact of our consumerism. Couples in the U.K. are fighting over how much water is getting boiled in the teakettle. Pairs there and elsewhere are squabbling over leaving the lights on vs. turning them off. I once caught a certain redhead gruffly saying to her significant other on a mission to buy a shower curtain, “No vinyl, that’s final!” It can happen to the best of us.

Your different levels of commitment to sustainability don’t have to be a deal-breaker.

So before recycling your wedding band, take inspiration from the Fixers’ Collective and repair what you have. It sounds like you and your husband love each other and are committed to the relationship, a solid foundation on which to retrofit your marriage. (And while you’re at it, you may want to do some of that to your house, which will save money, often a good way to help sway the not-so-convinced-or-interested.)

Couples therapy can be a useful resource. There are therapists out there who care about environmental issues, even some who do something called Eco-Therapy. But don’t expect a therapist to “take your side” because they share your “concerns for the environment.” A more helpful expectation is that therapy will reframe your problems, giving you both communication tools to navigate any disagreement together.

“It’s important to listen to your partner and support him,” notes therapist and licensed clinical social worker Sarah Gentry. “If you want to be listened to, it helps to listen a lot.”

You say he feels judged and you feel trapped. I say open the door, step outside, and throw judgment into that compost pile you’ve been tending. “Try to appreciate his ability to give you room to pursue living more sustainably,” adds Gentry.

And have a little fun! Share what you enjoy about your values, Michelle. In the process, your fella is likely to discover living mindfully and living luxuriously are not mutually exclusive.

What are your favorite parts of living a more sustainable life? What fascinates you? Delights you? The way to a person’s heart is through the stomach, so food is a great place to start. Local, seasonal, organic food can itself become a positive reinforcement for a new set of values. Has he tried a freshly laid egg from a local farm? Once it cracks, he’ll never go back. Share your good taste at a locavore farm-to-table restaurant like Roots, or the Hinterland Gastropub near you.

You’ll catch more flies with local honey, honey. Try shopping together at a local farmers market. Fair-trade organic chocolates won’t hurt, either. But if you pull something, consider getting massages at an eco-friendly day spa, an “extravagance” you both can feel good about. Give your guy an experience to remember, rather than an object, this holiday season. Perhaps a romantic train trip to a biodynamic winery?

You could stay at a wind- and solar-powered eco-village for your next vacation. Or enjoy a staycation while spicing up your beau’s sense of sustainability. In the sack! Renewable, sumptuous bamboo sheets and DIY lube made from flax seeds can be gamechangers. Hey, any entry point will work!

Sharing this type of enjoyment together will also beging shifting your hubby’s behavior. Behavior change is the name of the game in sustainability, as it leads to changes in beliefs, as my colleague David Roberts has so eloquently written about of late.

Michelle, my belle, I wish you and yours the best.

Love is all you need—which means love is impressively sustainable.

Therapeutically,
Umbra

Get off your ass alert:

Have a Movie Date: Pop some local corn and sit down for the relatable, entertaining and inspiring tale of a couple with different values and ensuing “eco-stress” in the movie No Impact Man—starring Colin Beavan and his Prada-wearing, very funny wife Michelle.

Want therapy? Do a search in your area and ask trusted friends for recommendations for either a Licensed Marriage Family Therapists, a therapist trained in Imago relationship therapy, or one who specializes in cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on living holiday trees and other options

Building with the disabled in mind means better access for everyone

Greenpeace Sues Dow, Sasol, Dezenhall for Corporate Spying, RICO



Source: http://feeds.grist.org/click.phdo?i=7655430284a5d12efd7cf92b6fd63e41

DAVID PATERSON DAVID PETRAEUS DAVID PLOUFFE DAVID SOUTER

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Solving the problem of the city, scientifically

by Sarah Goodyear.

Anyone who thinks that cities are key to the future of a sustainable human presence on the planet—and anyone who thinks the contrary—should read Jonah Lehrer’s fascinating piece in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, “A Physicist Solves the City.”

In it, Lehrer examines the ideas of Geoffrey West, a theoretical physicist who (with his colleague Luis Bettencourt) has come up with a variety of mathematical equations that attempt to define and explore the essential nature of cities. (West’s and Bettencourt’s work was also featured on a recent excellent episode of Radiolab that I discussed in an earlier post.)

As Lehrer writes, “West considers urban theory to be a field without principles, comparing it to physics before Kepler pioneered the laws of planetary motion in the 17th century.”

And so he set out to discover those laws—proceeding on the assumption that they exist, and can be mined and refined from the chaos of urban life.

West first noticed the similarities between cities and living organisms:

This implied that the real purpose of cities, and the reason cities keep on growing, is their ability to create massive economies of scale, just as big animals do. After analyzing the first sets of city data—the physicists began with infrastructure and consumption statistics - they concluded that cities looked a lot like elephants. In city after city, the indicators of urban “metabolism,” like the number of gas stations or the total surface area of roads, showed that when a city doubles in size, it requires an increase in resources of only 85 percent.

But West and his colleagues then realized was that the true essence of a successful city can’t be explained by efficiency:

[A] city is not just a frugal elephant; biological equations can’t entirely explain the growth of urban areas…. “In retrospect, I was quite stupid,” West says. He was so excited by the parallels between cities and living things that he “didn’t pay enough attention to the ways in which urban areas and organisms are completely different.”

What Bettencourt and West failed to appreciate, at least at first, was that the value of modern cities has little to do with energy efficiency. As West puts it, “Nobody moves to New York to save money on their gas bill.” Why, then, do we put up with the indignities of the city? Why do we accept the failing schools and overpriced apartments, the bedbugs and the traffic?

In essence, they arrive at the sensible conclusion that cities are valuable because they facilitate human interactions, as people crammed into a few square miles exchange ideas and start collaborations. “If you ask people why they move to the city, they always give the same reasons,” West says. “They’ve come to get a job or follow their friends or to be at the center of a scene. That’s why we pay the high rent. Cities are all about the people, not the infrastructure.”

The agglomeration of all those people leads to a lot of innovative thinking—which is good, because we need the innovations to keep pace with our ever-growing appetites. (See some recent related discussions of David Owen’s New Yorker article on energy efficiency and the Jevons paradox).

Lehrer writes this about West’s evolving thinking on the city and its role as a hotbed of innovation:

There is a serious complication to this triumphant narrative of cliff edges and creativity, however. Because our lifestyle has become so expensive to maintain, every new resource now becomes exhausted at a faster rate. This means that the cycle of innovations has to constantly accelerate, with each breakthrough providing a shorter reprieve. The end result is that cities aren’t just increasing the pace of life; they are also increasing the pace at which life changes. “It’s like being on a treadmill that keeps on getting faster,” West says. “We used to get a big revolution every few thousand years. And then it took us a century to go from the steam engine to the internal-­combustion engine. Now we’re down to about 15 years between big innovations. What this means is that, for the first time ever, people are living through multiple revolutions. And this all comes from cities. Once we started to urbanize, we put ourselves on this treadmill. We traded away stability for growth. And growth requires change.”

Ultimately, West’s research affirms his belief in the organic resilience of megalopolises. But is he right? Is this real science? Can cities continue to grow without collapsing in on themselves?

With more than 50 percent of the world’s populations now living in urban areas, much depends on the answer.

Related Links:

Taming the mean streets: A talk with NYC transportation chief Janette Sadik-Khan

Helmet Wars: A gripping account of the great bicycle helmet campaigns

Memo to ecovores: It’s cheaper being green



Source: http://feeds.grist.org/click.phdo?i=92b9db02725def9014f969fc4c9ff779

DAN LUNGREN DAN ROSTENKOWSKI DAN SENOR DANIEL COWART

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START moves a step closer to approval

The Senate stepped closer to approving the START treaty Tuesday, with 67 senators voting to tee up a final vote to ratify the nuclear arms pact before Christmas Eve.

Source: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/12/21/5690778-start-moves-a-step-closer-to-approval-

ALBANY (NY) ALBERTO GONZALES ALBERTO GONZALEZ ALEX CASTELLANOS

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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The Sultans of Storage

The Sultans of Storage
As governments begin mandating storage on the grid, big questions loom: Who's gonna pay for it? How much will it cost? Can we survive without it? Decision makers at the policy and utility levels mix it up onstage with the tech companies providing solutions.

Moderator: Eric Wesoff, Senior Analyst, Greentech Media

Ed Cazalet, VP & Founder, Megawatt Storage Farms

Nat Goldhaber, Managing Director, Claremont Creek Ventures

Christopher Villarreal, Policy and Planning Division, CPUC
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700
Location: Stanford, CA, Stanford Memorial Auditorium, VentureBeat
Program and discussion: http://fora.tv/2010/11/03/The_Sultans_of_Storage

Source: http://fora.tv/2010/11/03/The_Sultans_of_Storage

BILL NELSON BILL OWENS BILL RICHARDSON BILL RITTER

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California approves more Big Solar projects

by Todd Woody.

The California Energy Commission on Wednesday approved two more big solar thermal power plants, ending the year having green-lighted a total of nine projects that would generate 4,142.5 megawatts if all were built.

That’s enough carbon-free electricity to power more than three million homes. The question now is, how many of those massive solar farms will actually break ground?

Hours after the energy commission vote, a federal judge temporarily blocked construction of Tessera Solar’s 709-megawatt Imperial Valley power plant in the Southern California desert in response to a suit by the Quechan Native American tribe.

The Quechan sued the United States Interior Department in October over its approval of the project, arguing that the government failed to adequately consult with the tribe over the impact of installing 28,360, 40-foot-tall solar dishes on its ancestral lands.

The Quechan argued the project would harm the flat-tailed horned lizard, an animal proposed for endangered species protection that is part of the tribe’s creation story.

“Tessera Solar is deeply disappointed with the federal court’s ruling last night,” Robert Lukefahr, Tessera’s chief executive, said in a statement on Thursday. “This ruling sets back our ability to provide clean, renewable power to Southern California and delays our ability to bring jobs and economic development to a region with the highest unemployment rate in America.”

Lukefahr pointed out that El Centro, a city 14 miles from the Imperial Valley project, suffers an unemployment rate of 29.3 percent.

However, a Reuters story last night reported that Tessera had put on hold the Imperial Valley power plant as well as its 663.5-megawatt Calico project in the Mojave Desert due to difficulties in raising financing to build the solar farms.

But on Thursday, Tessera spokesperson Janette Coates told me that the projects had not been abandoned.

“We are actively seeking equity for our Imperial Valley Solar and Calico Solar projects and the actual start of construction will depend on project financing and compliance work which is ongoing,” Coates wrote in an email.

There was some good news on Wednesday for the developers seeking to finance such multibillion-dollar renewable energy projects.

The U.S. Senate passed a one-year extension of a crucial cash grant program that was set to expire at year’s end. The program allows developers to receive a cash payment to cover 30 percent of a renewable energy project’s cost in lieu of receiving an investment tax credit.

The House of Representatives was set to take up the extension of the cash grant program on Thursday. 

Related Links:

Blue collar desert town goes green

Less energy, less pollution, and greater savings. Some dilemma.

The top five stories of the year for climate hawks



Source: http://feeds.grist.org/click.phdo?i=3eb2aa11a000c13172b02ebe209aec9f

CHRISTOPHER HILL CHUCK DEVORE CHUCK HAGEL CIA

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Bishop Eddie Long Accusers Say They Broke Into Office to Obtain Evidence

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Bishop Eddie Long Accusers Say They Broke Into Office to Obtain Evidence

The Bishop Eddie Long sex scandal has been the peculiar incident in Atlanta that turned the black church upside down. A popular pastor given the responsibility of caring for scores of young men has been accused of coercing some of them in to sexual relationships.

Just when you thought the scandal couldn't get anymore scandalous, another piece of evidence emerges from the fray.

Several of Bishop Eddie Long's accusers now claim that the reason they broke in to his office earlier this year was to obtain evidence against Bishop Eddie Long for a pending lawsuit. This is in contrast to previous reports that the men broke in to Long's office for money.

"That man was hurt," said one of Long's accusers, Jamal Parris. "He wanted to get evidence to prove what was happening to him and to all of us."

Related Articles




Parris' story is corroborated by the fact that the buglars took Bishop Long's I-Phone and I-Pad, copying all of the information off of it before giving it back.

Additionally, there was more than $100,000 in jewelry left in the Bishop's private bath that could have been easily stolen. The young men did, however, take some of Long's valuables during the break-in.

"They are feeding the media that this was about money," Parris told Fox 5 News in Atlanta back in September. "But it was about more than that, these men were collecting evidence because they were tired, tired of being hurt and used - so they decided to stand up for themselves and do what they had to do to get attention."

When it comes to the Bishop Eddie Long sex scandal, my head has been spinning for months. First, I must publicly wonder why a man has more than $100,000 in jewelry just laying around his office?

Is he a Baptist minister or a gangsta rapper?

Most black folks don't even have $100,000 in home equity or in their 401K account, let alone in jewelry.

Second, the fact that the young men didn't take the jewelry supports their case. At the same time, it's not as if they didn't take anything of value, and it's hard to determine if that particular part of the theft was due to revenge or simple robbery.

At the very least, Long's attorneys can't easily write the men off as thugs just because they broke in to the man's office. The truth is that young people who are sexually abused may act out in strange ways.

We recently asked here on Black Voices why Bishop Eddie Long settled for mediation instead of a public trial. One of our members of the Your Black World coalition, an attorney out of Atlanta, claims that part of the reason Long might have gone for mediation is because the court system in Atlanta is overcrowded and the courts strongly encourage this option. In fact, he claims that Long was forced to use mediation, which doesn't make much sense to me. So, I reached out to Dr. Christopher Metzler, a highly-respected attorney who also resides at Georgetown University to ascertain the likelihood that Bishop Long was not given the option of having a public trial.

According to Dr. Metzler,"He could have decided to forgo mediation and went to trial. The court can't force mediation, it is simply an alternative. Under Georgia rules of Civil Procedure, and county rules, mediation is known as alternative dispute resolution. Thus, it is an alternative rather than a mandate."

Once again, I submit that Bishop Eddie Long, being accountable to thousands of church members and supporters around the nation, should ensure that his name is cleared by asking that all evidence be presented to the public.

If there is any chance that he may have been having sex with teenage boys while they were in his care, he should not be anyone's spiritual leader.


Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

 

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Source: http://www.bvblackspin.com/2010/12/17/eddie-long-accusers-say-they-broke-into-office-to-obtain-evidenc/

ARNE DUNCAN ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER AT AUSTRALIA

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