energy story

25 August 2011

Obama Wants More Nuclear Power. Does that Make Sense?

Clean energy advocates may have noticed that President Obama didn't just tout solar and wind in this week's State of the Union address; he also encouraged the construction of new natural gas, clean coal, and nuclear power sites. Natural gas and clean coal aren't all that clean (that's for another column), but nuclear may be a decent option. Should we be paying more attention to it?

Agricultural production is only the first step in moving the world’s food from farm to fork, according to Nourishing the Planet, a project of the Worldwatch Institute. The other links in the food chain—harvesting, packaging, storing, transporting, marketing, and selling—ensure that food actually reaches consumers. Inefficiencies in these activities, rather than just low yields or poor farming techniques, are often to blame for food shortages and low prices for growers.

“Many of the farms and organizations we visited in Africa seemed to have the most success reducing hunger and poverty through efforts that had little to do with producing more crops,” said Nourishing the Planet director Danielle Nierenberg, who spent two years traveling across sub-Saharan Africa researching food chains in over 25 countries.

The climate is trying to tell us something. From one of the worst droughts in Texas history, stoking unprecedented wildfires, to record precipitation in the Midwest, fueling historic flooding along the Mississippi River, to Portland's second wettest and third coldest spring on record that's delayed the growing season, extreme weather events have gotten our attention in the past year.

And although consensus is growing on the threats that global climate change pose -- from loss of habitat for tundra wildlife to crop failures the world over -- we hear few voices of reason on what to do about it. But from Oregon to West Africa, the fields of innovative farmers are abundant and more resilient than conventional fields from techniques that work with, rather than against, ecosystems -- sometimes referred to as permaculture. They're demonstrating that we can act through choices we make at the dinner table.

If the vision of Tom Krupenkin and J. Ashley Taylor comes to fruition, one day soon your cellphone - or just about any other portable electronic device - could be powered by simply taking a walk. In a paper appearing in the journal Nature Communications, Krupenkin and Taylor, both engineering researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, describe a new energy-harvesting technology that promises to dramatically reduce our dependence on batteries and instead capture the energy of human motion to power portable electronics.

Using waste heat from automobile exhaust

http://www.ct.gov

With the completion of a successful prototype, engineers have made a major step toward addressing one of the leading problems in energy use around the world today -- the waste of half or more of the energy produced by cars, factories and power plants. New technology is being developed to capture and use the low-to-medium grade waste heat that's now going out the exhaust pipe of millions of automobiles, diesel generators, or being wasted by factories and electrical utilities.

The 10 Most Romantic Ecotourism Destinations

Print - The 10 Most Romantic Ecotourism Destinations - The Daily Green.

Need to Relax and Explore?

Stressed about the bad economy? Sick of trudging over ice and through biting winds? You need a vacation!

Yes, staycations are cheap and inherently green (since we don't normally consume much when we stick around our neighborhoods). But we also enjoy daydreaming about fantasy adventures. If you are still flush, wow your valentine with the experience of a lifetime. If you're like the rest of us, at least you can hope, and maybe plan, together.