- While some are very depressed over the Senate’s failure, a minority longing for real action hope that this will open the door to a new approach that is free of the heavily biased giveaways in this bill. Let’s all unite on a simple carbon tax, an end to petroleum subsidies, and support for renewables and efficiency.  We are dreamers but we’re “not the only ones.”- Editor
We’re Gonna Be Sorry By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Senate Democrats abandoned the effort to pass an energy/climate bill that would begin to cap greenhouse gases that cause global warming and promote renewable energy that could diminish our addiction to oil. I could blame Republicans for the fact that not one G.O.P. senator indicated a willingness to vote for a bill that would put the slightest price on carbon. I could blame the Democratic senators who were also waffling. I could blame President Obama for his disappearing act on energy and spending more time reading the polls than changing the polls. I could blame the Chamber of Commerce and the fossil-fuel lobby for spending bags of money to subvert this bill. But the truth is, the public, confused and stressed by the last two years, never got mobilized to press for this legislation. We will regret it.
We’ve basically decided to keep pumping greenhouse gases into Mother Nature’s operating system and take our chances that the results will be benign - even though a vast majority of scientists warn that this will not be so. Fasten your seat belts. As the environmentalist Rob Watson likes to say: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That’s all she is.” You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You cannot tell her that the oil companies say climate change is a hoax. No, Mother Nature is going to do whatever chemistry, biology and physics dictate, and “Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1.000,” says Watson. Do not mess with Mother Nature. But that is just what we’re doing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/opinion/25friedman.html

- While Washington wallows, solutions such as the following need support even more. - Editor 
  

The world’s first molten salt concentrating solar power plant- Archimede
This month, the Italian utility Enel unveiled “Archimede”, the first Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant in the world to use molten salts for heat transfer and storage, and the first to be fully integrated to an existing combined-cycle gas power plant. Newer CSP plants, as the many under construction in Spain, use molten salts storage to extend the plants’ daily operating hours. Archimede is the first plant in the world to use molten salts not just to store heat but also to collect it from the sun in the first place. This is a competitive advantage, for a variety of reasons. Molten salts can operate at higher temperatures than oils (up to 550°C instead of 390°C), therefore increasing efficiency and power output of a plant. With the higher-temperature heat storage allowed by the direct use of salts, the plant can also extend its operating hours well further than an oil-operated CSP plant with molten salt storage, thus working 24 hours a day for several days in the absence of sun or during rainy days. This feature also enables a simplified plant design.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/22/first-molten-salt-solar-power

It’s being called the largest wind power project in the country, with plans for thousands of acres of towering turbines in the Mojave Desert foothills generating electricity for 600,000 homes in Southern California. And now it’s finally kicking into gear. The multibillion-dollar Alta Wind Energy Center has had a tortured history, stretching across nearly a decade of ownership changes, opposition from local residents and transmission infrastructure delays.
But on Tuesday, the project is officially breaking ground in the Tehachapi Pass, a burgeoning hot spot for wind energy about 75 miles north of Los Angeles. When completed, Alta could produce three times as much energy as the country’s largest existing wind farm, analysts said. It’s slated to be done in the next decade. The industry is not out of the woods yet: In the first half of 2010, newly added wind capacity in the U.S. tumbled 70% compared with the same period last year to just 1,200 megawatts
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-windfarm-20100727,0,7972223.story?track=rss

I am so convinced about this from prior personal experience, I am trying to get a roofer to tackle making the roof white while adding insulation to the stylish but dysfunctional flat roofs of Santa Fe.- Editor
 

The Roof as White Knight
Since Dr. Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, took over as energy secretary last year, he has urged Americans to help cool the planet by painting their roofs a lighter color that reflects sunlight. Now he is following his own advice: on Monday, Dr. Chu directed all Energy Department offices to install white roofs during new construction, when replacing old roofs and wherever an installation is cost-effective over the lifetime of the roof. The secretary urged other federal agencies to follow suit.
“Cool roofs are one of the quickest and lowest-cost ways we can reduce our global carbon emissions and begin the hard work of slowing climate change,” he said in a statement.
As climate change remedies go, whitening roofs is the proverbial low-hanging fruit.  Lighter-colored roofs not only reduce air-conditioning bills for individual buildings but also lessen the “heat island” effect, in which the ambient air in cities is hotter than that of surrounding regions because of a high concentration of dark, heat-absorbent surfaces like asphalt.
A 2009 study found that retrofitting 80 percent of air-conditioned buildings in the United States with white roofs would save $735 million annually in reduced energy bills while achieving an emissions reduction equivalent to removing 1.2 million cars from the road.
Another study found that increasing the reflectivity of those surfaces in urban areas with a population of over one million would offset the heating effect of 1.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide emission annually, the equivalent of taking 300 million cars off the road for 20 years.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/in-a-climate-quest-the-roof-as-white-knight/

- Separating utilities now hidden inside rent has potential to greatly reduce energy usage- another low-hanging fruit. - Editor
Honeywell Buys Another Grid Company: E-Mon
Today, Honeywell announced that it will buy E-Mon, which makes sub-metering equipment for apartments and commercial buildings. Sub-metering essentially allows landlords to put tenants onto individual electrical meters and thereby encourage conservation. It is often cited as one of the more effective techniques for getting companies and individuals in shared buildings to think about power.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/honeywell-buys-another-grid-company-e-mon/

- Protecting the brains of our future generation needs to be a primary goal of any sane society. When you study child development and IQ’s, it is astonishing what even a few IQ points mean. Our society values mere dollars- if it’s cheaper, it’s better. Again the equation needs to place a reasonable price on IQ points to show a truer picture. Lose of IQ points alone should end coal. And what about other health impacts, with these reproductive and developmental toxicants, mutagens, and carcinogens? - Editor

If you want smarter kids, shut coal plants
A major new study by the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health finds:
“Closing coal-fired power plants can have a direct, positive impact on children’s cognitive development and health….prenatal exposure to coal-burning emissions was associated with significantly lower average developmental scores and reduced motor development at age two. In the second unexposed group, these adverse effects were no longer observed; and the frequency of delayed motor developmental was significantly reduced.
For the report- http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.11480
http://climateprogress.org/2008/07/15/study-if-you-want-smarter-kids-shut-coal-plants/
(The book cover is not real but should be!)

- And what about the millions of U.S. citizens that will be leaving the coasts, too? - Editor
Climate change linked to possible mass Mexican migration to U.S
Scientists are predicting another consequence of climate change: mass migration to the United States.
Between 1.4 million and 6.7 million Mexicans could migrate to the U.S. by 2080 as climate change reduces crop yields and agricultural production in Mexico, according to a study published online this week. The number could amount to 10% of the current population of Mexicans ages 15 to 65.
For the study- http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/07/16/1002632107
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/26/nation/la-na-immig-climate-20100727

- We all have idols, and last week, I got to listen to one of mine. It was partly the ground-breaking Club of Rome work that influenced me away from my intended career and on to population, environment, and climate change. With such an important message, why weren’t all the City decision makers there at the talk? How do we get other cities to listen? Dr. Meadows had read our Sustainable Santa Fe Plan- great! - and while he congratulated us on its importance and value, he said that if population and consumption levels are not included in a climate plan, we can not become sustainable. It’s true. If we cut our emissions, for example 50%, but double the number of people, we have not become more sustainable.

For those of you who have been reading Climate Today for at least a year will not have had any surprises- his talk covered Peak Oil, population growth, the lag time of climate change, the need for local adaptation and relocalization, voluntary simplicity with reduced consumption, etc.

Here are a few gems from his talk that are worth remembering and sharing:
- 50% of all the oil consumed by humans has been consumed since 1984, creating a world we now view as normal, but this high energy usage can not continue.
- We are moving into the “Post Petroleum Age.”  In 2006, 9 billion barrels of oil were discovered, but we consumed 31 billion barrels that year. World consumption of oil is currently 5 to 6 times the amount that is being discovered, so we are using up our savings account, which can not continue.
- Prepare yourself for less available energy. It appears now that the government in the coming years will have to resort to some kind of rationing or quotas, similar to World War II. Just raising prices harms the poor.
- The “biocapacity” of the earth has been surpassed, and we are currently overshooting, which, if continues, is always followed by collapse. We are now consuming 140% of resources with demands accelerating against the world’s ecosystems. These trends include not only fossil fuels but also groundwater, greenhouse gases, the destruction of agricultural soils, the degradation of natural resources, the gap between the rich and the poor, the supply of fish, etc.
- Embodied energy is the energy used to create and ship the things that we import. We have to fully recognize the energy and resources used in other places like China if we are to reach sustainability.
- The world’s population will be going back down this century. It is only a matter of how.
- It is unlikely that waiting for the Federal government will work. Politicians want to get re-elected, and therefore fail to make the essential significant structural changes required to convert to sustainability.
Thank you Dr. Meadows for speaking so frankly. - Editor