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Meteor Blades

Dan E. Arvizu will take his seat as the eighth director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on Friday. The federally funded, privately managed lab is the premier U.S. research institution for renewable energy and also conducts research into energy efficiency.  Its goal is not only to pioneer new technologies, but to get the fruit of its endeavors into the marketplace.

All I know about Mr. Arvizu is what I read in the DOE press release and what little is available about him on the Internet. He seems to have plenty of the right credentials and experience for the job. I wish him well.

But a new director won't mean more money for the laboratory, which will be operating on around $200 million again this year, about a sixth of the nation's entire renewables and efficiency budget. That's less than half the 1980 budget of NREL's predecessor, the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), where I went to work in 1978. Indeed, this year's entire R&E budget, which is poking at the $1.3 billion level, is only 40% of the R&E budget of a quarter century ago. It ought to be 400%. That would put it in the range of three months worth of what we're spending on Iraq.

Paper or pla… oh, fer chrissake!

Can you ever have enough answers to the paper-or-plastic question? Of course not! Here's another, from Treehugger.

Where’s Horton When You Need Him?

Natural disasters boon, bust for marine animals The latest in grim tsunami news comes via Sri Lankan sea-turtle researcher Kithsiri Kannangara, whose turtle hatchery was completely wiped out by the […]

Global warming consensus

A couple of things I missed over the holiday break: Via this interesting piece on climate change consensus on RealClimate I found this interesting piece on climate change consensus in the Washington Post. Read 'em -- we'll be talking about this more soon.

Fred Thompson, CEO of Jane Goodall Institute, answers questions

Fred Thompson. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I’m president and CEO of the Jane Goodall Institute. What does your organization do? What, in a perfect world, would constitute […]

Green quid pro quo for Liberia

William Powers has an intriguing editorial in the New York Times today arguing that Bush should help Liberia institute a sort of "Peace for Nature swap, based on the Debt for Nature model in which third world countries receive debt relief for conserving their natural heritage." The idea is that Liberia has something lots of folks want -- intact rain forest -- and they desperately need something we can help provide: stability. In exchange for setting its rain forest aside as a United Nations biosphere reserve, Liberia would receive U.N. peacekeeping, electricity and water, and training in new jobs based around ecotourism and limited logging. I think enviros should be skeptical about these schemes, vigilant against their historical tendency to value the rain forest over the long-term health and development of indigenous populations, but this sounds like an excellent plan to me, particularly given the grim alternatives Powers describes. An example of economic development driven by preservation of natural resources rather than exploitation thereof, sitting in the heart of Africa, would be, as Martha Stewart says, a good thing.

Deconstructing Inhofe

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Ok.) is the chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. He thinks global warming is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." He recently gave a speech on the floor of the Senate summarizing new science that he says supports his position. Chris Mooney utterly dismantles it.

UPDATE: Ah, yet another dismantling, more technical in nature, from the folks at RealClimate.

2004 climate change and energy wrap-up

An interesting summary of climate change and energy news from 2004 over on EDIE. (See also their contaminated land news round-up.)

UPDATE: A similar round-up of clean energy news from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Happy Monday!

A Somalian mother has to choose which of her children to save. Meanwhile, Americans knowingly and deliberately poison their children.

The North knows best?

DDT is very effective at killing the mosquitoes that carry malaria.  Malaria kills 2 to 3 million people a year.  These people, the bulk of whom are children and the elderly, live in the global South, the tropics of the developing world.

DDT doesn't just hurt mosquitoes. The United States and most Northern countries have banned its usage because of its threat to animal and human health.  These bans are extended to the foreign assistance that flows North to South.

Is the ban the "best" thing for those facing the imminent threat of malaria in developing countries?