The US Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, spoke recently to press the importance of forest conservation and stressed his agency’s commitment to its future in the United States. His comments sought to point out that forests are crucial in supplying clean water, sheltering wildlife, and mitigating the effects of climate change. He went on to say that the sky might in fact be blue.

Vilsack is perhaps best known for his strong support of biofuels and while serving as governor was a strong supporter of Ethanol additives. I’m still not sure how I feel about biofuels as it seems a little shortsighted to take two things as vital as energy and food and combine them into one item of such importance.

Back to the issue at hand. Key among Vilsack’s policies is reversing former president Bush’s forest planning rule of 2008 and also seeking to reinstate former president Bill Clinton’s ‘Roadless Rule’ which had imposed halts on road construction, among other development, on 58 million acres of national forests.

I firmly believe that deforestation is one of the largest threats facing the world today. And it’s great to see a member of the presidential cabinet taking such a strong stance. Smokey would be proud.

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Obesity has been in the headlines a lot recently, with health care dominating discussions in Washington most of the focus has been on the health considerations and how it seems to be permeating American culture. There was even some controversy when President Obama named Dr Regina Benjamin, a clinically obese woman, to be the nation’s Surgeon General.

And while the health considerations are important, especially if the US adopts some sort of single-payer health care system, I’m here to talk about the environmental impact of an obese population.

A report out of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (man I wish I had a more prestigious sounding source) claims that a lean population such as that of Vietnam would consume 20% less food and produce fewer greenhouse gases than a country with a 40% rate of obesity. The report went on to say that if taken into account, the lessened energy costs of transporting thin people as opposed to overweight individuals could save 1 gross ton per person in annual carbon emissions.

The news that a heavy person has a larger carbon footprint than a normal person has made a few waves in the media, leaving some to question whether we should really be ‘trying to make them feel even guiltier than they already do’. I will make sure to use that excuse the next time I fire up the G4.

Michael Moore should make a documentary about this. Oh that’s right.

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A report released by 1E, an IT energy consultant, says half of US workers don’t power down their PC’s at night resulting in energy wastes upwards of $2.8 billion US Dollars. The figures are equally disturbing in some of the other countries polled with wastes in Germany alone at over one-billion Dollars.

It would seem that many people don’t want to wait the three minutes in the morning it takes for their PC to start up. Or maybe some still think it’s bad for the computer or somehow energy inefficient to power down at night. While that may have been true in the early era of personal computing, it hasn’t been the case for the last fifteen years.

If you personally turn off your computer when you leave the office but are concerned about your coworkers habits, you should try to petition your company to install some type of energy reduction software on the computer network.

But before we get ahead of ourselves here, while it seems like a win-win to just turn off the computers at night therefore saving money and reducing carbon emissions, that would clearly be a shortsighted solution as it fails to take into account the three minutes of the American worker’s time which, unlike our environment, can’t be replaced.

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Many of you know the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, as one of the nation’s most progressive leaders on the environment. His crusades have seen him squaring off against everything from smoking to street congestion.

Earlier this year he strengthened the city’s anti-idling laws to restrict cars from idling for longer than three minutes, however the AP claims that Bloomberg routinely violates his own policies and leaves his official city SUVs idling for hours at a time. See whenever Bloomberg travels around the city he either uses his official SUVs or is trailed by said vehicles. So even when the mayor takes the subway in an attempt to seem in touch with the working man, he’s still trailed by the SUVs. And thanks to the AP’s stalking it would seem that whenever the mayor gives a speech or stops at an official function, his vehicles stay idling.

Hopefully after getting slammed by the AP all of this idling business will stop. I still like Bloomberg for all he’s done, however if hypocrisy were a crime he would be in jail along with the rest of us, and Al Gore.

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The time has come once again for Earth Hour which will take place tomorrow evening at 8PM local time. Earth Hour is the highly regarded and very fashionable brain child of the World Wildlife Fund and the Sydney Morning Herald. Its stated goal is to raise awareness of climate change by encouraging people to turn off all non-essential lights for one hour on the last Saturday of every March.

The event started a mere two years ago and has already gained significant traction around the globe, with over 36 million participants in the event last year. Tomorrow lights will dim all around the globe with some of the world’s most iconic landmarks getting involved in going dark.

All of this has led me to question, what is Earth Hour, what are its impacts, and why should I care? Now I’m all for protecting the environment, reduce and reuse, and all of that. What I can’t say is that I’m a big fan of grandiose symbolic gestures.

I can see why raising awareness can be good. But are candles really better for the environment than light-bulbs? I read an interesting blog post earlier today that said if you wanted to replace a 40-watt bulb with candles (500 Candles) you would end up emitting ten times the C02. Of course no one will be burning that many candles tomorrow night but even if you end up only using a few candles during Earth Hour you will be emitting more emissions than you would have from using one light-bulb for one hour.

(Now obviously there are ways to mitigate your candles’ environmental impact such as using natural candles, or you could just not use any candles. But if I wanted to get into the details I would have things like sources and facts.)

I think the lesson is that if you think reading by candlelight for one hour absolves you from any sort of responsibility, you would be wrong. And to remember to take Earth Hour for what it is. Something only beneficial if you remember to apply its core values of reducing your energy consumption more often than one hour a year.

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The much maligned economic stimulus package that has been championed by President Obama might not actually stimulate the economy in the traditional sense, but it will absolutely stimulate the nation’s ‘green economy’. More than ten percent of the package’s 787 billion dollars are expected to go towards renewable domestic energy, a better grid to transmit electricity, energy research and programs to reduce the use of fossil fuels, such as weatherizing homes and federal buildings.

Ignoring for the moment that the United States’ economic foundation is no more sturdy than that of a house of cards, I am pleased to see even in the face of dire economic straits America’s current leadership has recognized the importance of protecting the environment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090216/sc_mcclatchy/3169168

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The British Meteorological Office recently purchased a new super computer to better calculate how best to fight climate change. But the computer has a dirty little secret, it produces a ton of carbon, or 14,400 tonnes to be exact.

The Met Office says that while the computer’s carbon footprint is unfortunate, it represents only a fraction of the emissions they save through their work.

The problem of course isn’t the actual computer, but instead the way the electricity is produced. Great Britain depends on fossil fuel based power for 74% of their electrical needs. Compare that to France where only 7% of the nation’s power comes from fossil fuel. Therefore the computer’s carbon footprint would be just one-tenth what it is now if it were located in France instead of England.

So my answer to the problem, outsource to France!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5536973.ece?Submitted=true

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The European Union is taking steps to ban the ownership of large screen plasma televisions citing concerns over their energy consumption. In their estimations on average a 42 inch plasma television consumes 822 kilowatt hours per year in contrast to the 350 kilowatt hours by an LCD screen television of equal size.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/giant-plasma-tvs-face-ban-in-battle-to-green-britain-1299665.html

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A recently released study suggests that for every Google search 7 grams of CO2 are generated. And with 200 Million searches a day taking place on that one website alone, that’s a lot of CO2. I have to say this really takes the wind out of my attempts at environmentalism because I’m pretty sure I use Google 8 million times a day.

Google apparently consumes more energy than other websites because of the way their servers are set up for optimized speed. Adding some mystery to it all Google refuses to release their energy consumption figures causing people to wonder whether they leave the lights on when they’re not even there. They probably do.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece

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The G8 is a group of eight large industrial nations in the northern hemisphere. Founded in 1974, it was the rich nation’s answer to OPEC. The group has since been at the forefront of many global issues.

Recently they had a meeting in Japan to discuss climate change, and what more their nations could do to minimize carbon emissions. They didn’t really accomplish anything with their conference, that is except for increasing carbon emissions.

As if it weren’t bad enough that the group of leaders flew thousand of miles on private jets to talk to one another, because videoconferencing just isn’t their thing. It’s been reported this week that wine from California had been airlifted in especially for the conference.

How very Kim Jong-Il of our leaders.

http://wwcpd.org/2008/g8-hypocrisy/#comments

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