It’s been said the rich are different, and that they have more money. More toys, too, I figure, like yachts and stuff. On a few of the rare occasions when I’ve been invited on the high seas with the higher class, I’ve ended a conversation (usually after a little too much rum) with the query: “How much fuel do you burn on a trip like this, mate? It must cost a ton, huh?” A raised eyebrow (for effect, let’s say from under the brim of one of those dopey captain hats) lets me know that not only is the conversation over, but that the answer is something like: “More than you make in a year, (ahem) sir.”

Well, there’s good news for the over-privileged! Conspicuous consumption of the finer things no longer necessitates conspicuous consumption of fossil fuel and its associated costs (not that the latter matters to these – okay, I’ll give it up). Yes, the world’s first solar-powered super yacht has launched and is currently prepping for an around-the-world tour.

The mammoth catamaran, called the PlanetSolar, is the largest solar-powered boat in the world. It was launched in the Baltic Sea off Kiel, Germany, March 31. And to be fair, its makers are more focused on their effort’s promise of promoting solar-power, clean energy and reducing carbon emissions than they are serving the nouveau and oldeau riche. Still, the ship is a behemoth: tipping the scales at 60-tons, the PlanetSolar measures 102-feet long, 50-feet wide, and 24-feet tall. The reason it’s so big is so that it can present Ra with 5,300 square feet of solar panels on its deck, which translates into 103-kilowatts of electricity. That’s way more than the boat needs to run at its average speed of nine miles per hour.

After some “sea tests,” the next big step for PlanetSolar will be her world tour, which will rack up about 26,998 nautical miles, following an east to west equatorial route. (Yep, that’s where the sunshine is.) The 160-day voyage is scheduled to take place in 2011, and for those of you who’d like to visit big Miss Sunshine, the plan is to make several stopovers where the public will be able to get info on the project and visit an exhibition on renewable energy.

For all the “girl power” rhetoric of the past half-century, women still earn just 77 cents for every dollar earned by men and make up just a tiny fraction of the professionals working in scientific and technological fields. But according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, if the United States is going to emerge from the recession into a new clean energy economy, it must be with our help.

Despite the fact that women have higher levels of college enrollment, earn 1.2 million more graduate and undergraduate degrees every year than men and make up nearly 50 percent of the workforce, we’re still grossly unrepresented in the three high-paying sectors that will be integral to the clean energy economy: green collar jobs, engineering and entrepreneurship.

But it’s not because we don’t want to be – the reality is that the glass ceiling is still intact, with all kinds of factors making it difficult for women to be successful in these areas. The Center for American Progress, a liberal public policy research and advocacy organization, notes that women of all income levels don’t have equal access to training, employment, start-up capital and financing to get a foot in the doors of these industries. Women-owned businesses are also far less likely to gain lucrative federal contracting opportunities.

Demand is set to dramatically increase for skilled workers in the construction, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors as the federal government pushes for progress in alternative fuels, bio-energy and other industries, and highly trained scientists are needed to continue the advancement of green technology.

Luckily, programs that train women for these jobs are starting to pop up around the nation, like the Vermont Works for Women project and Women Going Green in Atlanta, Georgia – but addressing the barriers that women still face will need to be a major priority. The only way for the United States to compete with highly motivated nations like China is to make sure that the female workforce plays a vital role in helping the green economy flourish.

Image:greenforall.org

Climate change is nonsense.

If I’m ever lucky enough to bump into millionaire Donald Trump (say at a real estate sale or divorce court), I will rush up to the man and shake his hand. He’s opened my eyes to this global warming hoax once and for all. Addressing an audience of 500 admirers at the Trump National Golf Club (Westchester, N.Y.), he uttered these immortal words:

With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore…Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn’t care less. It would make us totally non-competitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America’s stupidity.

I bet those countries aren’t laughing now!

But if there’s one person who does look stupid, it’s me. All these years believing in the power of science, logic, reasoned argument and differentiating between weather and climate, and now the Donald’s blown that baloney into the weeds. But I can take it – after all, I’d rather get my story correct than support some thoughtless populist prejudice designed to further the political agendas of self-serving elites. Don, you’re the man.

But I want more from our Gore-slaying guru of truthiness. I want him to explain the specifics. What say you to these thorny issues, Mr. Trump?

1. Increasingly extreme weather. Any fool can see that the earth can’t be warming up if it’s snowing! So what is causing all this weird weather right now? There’s only one rational conclusion: the earth must be cooling down. (I’m blaming all these wind turbines, it’s like global air-con).

2. Crops are on the run. Guatemalan coffee growers are moving their plantations, claiming that climbing temperatures are putting their livelihoods at risk. Scottish soft fruit is in danger of getting squished. Indian farmers are insuring themselves against crop failure. To them all I say – what’s wrong with tinned food? This loose food fad has to stop sometime, might as well be now. (And don’t get me started on that organic rubbish).

3. The mountains are thawing. The glaciers are melting on Everest and the Himalayan snows are turning into lakes. What’s that about, Don? No, I’ve got it – summer’s coming! Of course. These things are so obvious if you spend the time to really think them through.

4. The seas are rising. The island chain of the Maldives is sliding beneath the waves, and its inhabitants are responding with heavy investment in a zero-carbon economy. Heavy. See what I’m saying? The heavier it is, the less it floats. (Pro tip, guys: use coal, it gets lighter the more you use it).

5. The ice-caps are melting. The Antarctic ice shelves are breaking up (here’s the latest from the US Geological Survey), making the oceans rise twice as fast as they were doing in the 1970s. The summer polar ice cap is 20% reduced from its 1979 coverage. Where’s it all going? It’s this snow we’re having! Gotcha. The ice isn’t melting, it’s just moving around! Give it a few years and it’ll be right back at the poles again, you’ll see.

Am I on the right track, Don?

Image: Trump Ice Skating Rink in Central Park, New York, by James Trosh

]]> http://ecosalon.com/donald-trump-sets-the-world-straight/feed/ 8 http://ecosalon.com/green-cities/ http://ecosalon.com/green-cities/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:00:12 +0000 Vanessa Barrington http://www.ecosalon.com/?p=33794

Mayor, mayor, on the wall: Who is the greenest of them all?

My neighboring hometown across the Bay, San Francisco, makes all the greenest cities lists, with its mayor, Gavin Newsom, regularly billed as “America’s Greenest Mayor.” But behind the glossy Priuses, how green is SF?

Google “country’s greenest mayor” and you get some interesting results. Rocky Anderson, former mayor of Salt Lake City, comes up first. Greg Nickels, former mayor of Seattle, also gets some hits. Then there’s Chicago’s Richard Daly, New York’s Bloomberg, Shirley Franklin of Atlanta, and Bill White of Houston, along with Gavin and others mentioned in this article. L.A.’s chief executive, Villaraigosa, just loses out to Newsom in this article about the two mayors’ dueling plans to cut greenhouse gases.

San Francisco definitely stacks up among the greenest of the green and deservedly so, but is San Francisco all about the shiny green PR-driven gestures, neglecting the concrete hard daily work that nobody notices? Let’s find out.

What San Francisco Does Right

1. Curbside recycling and composting

San Francisco was one of the first (if not the first) large cities to institute curbside composting and recycling. As of late last year, San Francisco made composting mandatory for houses, apartment buildings, businesses and restaurants.

2. Plastic Bag Ban

San Francisco was the first American city to ban plastic bags.

3. Green Building

San Francisco has some of the strictest green building codes in the nation.

Mayor Newsom clearly enjoys being the first to do anything, but what about the everyday, not-so-flashy actions he could take to green the city and set an example for its citizens?

If I were mayor for a year, here are five things I’d do.

1. Spread the composting bug to the airport.

If they can do it in El Salvador, they can certainly do it in San Francisco. The above picture is one I took  about a year ago in El Salvador, yet on that same trip, in the San Francisco International Airport, I couldn’t find a place to recycle my water bottle (I  know, I know) or compost my apple core. A green airport is a great way to show the world that San Francisco walks its talk.

2. Leave the SUV in the garage and ride that bike once in awhile.

Ok, so the mayor’s ride is a hybrid, but a $58,000 SUV paid for with tax dollars and driven to Montana by a staffer while the mayor took a private jet? Come on. When he was mayor, Rocky Anderson’s personal car was a compressed natural gas Honda. The plan to revitalize Market Street and make it more bicycle and pedestrian-friendly is a good one but is only happening now after years of lobbying by bicycle and pedestrian groups. The Mayor could lead on this.

3. Want to leave the SUV in the garage and rub shoulders with a few strangers on Muni? Get ready for a mess.

Fare hikes, service cuts and allegations of misplaced public funds have riders fuming. The mayor should see what it feels like to be packed onto the N Judah at rush hour. Or have his local bus line cut out completely.

4. Support Clean Public Power.

One of the city’s oldest and most heavily polluting power plants, The Potrero Power Plant needs to be shut down. It is scheduled for closure, but unfortunately, the city wants to replace it with another polluting fossil fuel burning plant. Also, the fight for public power is heating up again in San Francisco. Advocates say public power would open the way for more green technologies. The mayor doesn’t necessarily agree and PG&E is shelling out gigantic, steaming piles of money to put a measure on ballot seeking to require 2/3 majority to pass public power.

5. Speaking of gigantic, steaming piles, stop selling toxic sludge – we know it’s not good for us. That high-quality, nutrient rich “compost” you’re giving away to gardeners? No thanks. It’s just the toxic sludge industry’s way of gaining public acceptance.

How does your city stack up? Is it all bells and whistles, or is it like Portland, with a unified green front at all levels?

Images: Dave Minogue, Vanessa Barrington

Energy, that is. With few energy resources of its own, Japan is literally reaching for the stars in its attempt to turn unlimited clean energy into reality by 2030.

The nation’s plan, known as the Space Solar Power System (SSPS), involves positioning huge, floating photovoltaic dishes to hover in the geostationary orbit just outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

These photovoltaic dishes would harvest the solar energy that, at this level, is at least five times stronger than on earth and beam it down to earth through lasers and microwaves. On earth, gigantic antennae, located in restricted areas at sea or on dam reservoirs, would collect and store the solar energy.

This controversial plan sounds like something you’d only find in a Sci-Fi novel.

But the Japanese government thinks it has huge potential. To that end, it has established the Institute for Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer (USEF), a consortium of companies (including Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Fujitsu and Sharp) and scientists who will be working on finding ways of turning the SSPS into reality.

Image: Velo Steve

As a rule, hospitals aren’t all that keen on the alcohol industry. Alcohol, after all, is seen as causing many of the accidents that bring victims through their emergency room doors every day.

But one hospital in LaCrosse, Wisconsin is starting to see the alcohol industry in a totally new light. Gundersen Lutheran Hospital and the local City Brewery are participating in a joint heat and power project with the potential to create about 3 million kilowatt hours of energy a year.

The project consists of capturing the methane gas released by City Brewery during its brewing process, and using it to run a biogas Jenbacher engine which, in turn, feeds electricity into the grid. This electricity is credited to the hospital by Xcel Energy (a local power company), and is just one of the many ways in which Gundersen Lutheran Hospital hopes to reach its goal of becoming 100 percent energy independent by 2014.

But the hospital isn’t the only one gaining from this project. Heat generated from the Jenbacher engine is also being captured and re-used by City Brewery to assist with the brewing process.

Looks like, at least in some circumstances, hospitals and alcohol can get along.

Image: boliston

Everyone knows that onions can produce tears. But do you know that they can also produce energy? That’s the word from Steve Gill of Gill Onions, who has been using onion waste to run the refrigerators and lights at his family’s processing plant in Oxnard, California.

Prior to converting onions to energy, the company either spread the onion waste as fertilizer over their fields throughout California or sold it as cattle feed. Both these options posed a hazard not only to the atmosphere but also the groundwater.

These days at Gills Onions, the fermented onion juice is converted to methane and burned in the two on-site fuels cells, saving the company around $1.4 million in electricity and disposal costs.

And this is only the beginning of Gill Onion’s sustainability aspirations. Their aim is to turn the plant into a zero-waste facility through actions such as recycling employees’ lunch leftovers and revamping packaging.

Image: Darwin Bell