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Ecological Accounting: A New Measure of Economic Health

2008-05-13T17:13:53Z

My day-to-day work life focuses on relatively concrete notions: passing global warming legislation, getting more energy efficient appliances into the hands of consumers, pushing automakers to produce more efficient cars. These are the tools I believe we must use to protect our environment. But every once in a while, I take a step back and apprehend just how transformative the change has to be if we are really going to restore the Earth. Reading Gus Speth’s new book was one of those moments.

Gus was a member of the original crew who had the quixotic notion that we could open the first the first American law firm that would hold polluters accountable in court. That was NRDC, and I think we have done pretty well for ourselves. But Gus didn’t stop there. He went on to found World Resources Institute and become the dean of Yale’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Perhaps one of Gus’ most important roles is as philosopher and provocateur. In his new book, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, he calls for nothing less than replacing capitalism with something more sensitive to the natural world.

His list of environmental indicators is grim--the Earth is clearly in dire condition. The world’s economic growth is exploding so rapidly that is outpacing the gains we have made in protecting the environment.

What does he recommend? Nothing short of changing American-style consumer culture:

First and foremost, he says we have to cap global warming emissions. If we don’t, if we keep doing what we are doing, the planet won’t be able to sustain us any longer.

But second, we have to question our devotion to economic growth above all other values. As he calls it, we must rethink “our pathetic capitulation to consumerism.” This unquestioning drive toward more and more creates a paradox: we have achieved abundance but it is teetering on extinction.

Gus’s book reminds me that fighting to protect the planet is not just about policy and proposals and legislation. It’s about what we value, what is meaningful to us, what brings us peace and long-lasting health.

I recommend you read his book--and so do many reviewers. You may not agree with his conclusions, but you will be inspired to reflect on what it is you value and what you will do to support those values.

DOE Says We Can Have Carbon Caps and Economic Growth

2008-05-02T21:12:44Z

You have heard me talk about the economic benefits of passing a global warming law. Now you can get the news from the Department of Energy itself. This week, the DOE’s Energy Information Agency released a report showing that we can cut U.S. global warming pollution to the levels required by the pending Lieberman-Warner bill and still enjoy robust economic growth.

This official government forecast confirms what NRDC, financial institutions, and scores of major US corporations have been saying for the past few years: solving global warming is affordable.

Here is just one sample indicator.

Our economy is slated to grow from $13.13 trillion in 2006 to $20.22 trillion by 2030. If we pass Lieberman-Warner, the DOE estimates that our economy will grow to $20.16 trillion in the same time period. That’s a statistically imperceptible difference equal to a two-month delay in growth.

Early this week, President Bush stood in the Rose Garden grumbling that many members of Congress support legislation--Lieberman-Warner--that will make energy more expensive and hurt the economy. The President’s own Department Energy refutes that point.

In fact, we can take the profits from the pollution allowances created by the proposed cap and trade system we can invest them in two critical programs. First, we can offset any increases in utility bills for low income families. And, second, if we reinvest them in energy efficiency and clean energy technologies, Lieberman-Warner will be a growth engine for green jobs and a booming clean energy sector.

Bush's Rose Garden Energy Plan: Deja Vu All Over Again

2008-04-30T17:52:14Z

For the second time in two weeks, President Bush returned to the Rose Garden to offer outdated ideas on how to manage America’s energy crisis. On April 16, he trotted out a plan for tackling global warming that was weaker than his campaign promise back in 2000. Yesterday, he suggested that we could lower energy prices by 1) resurrecting a plan to drill the pristine National Artic Wildlife Refuge that dates back to the disgraced Cheney Energy Task Force from 2001 and 2) offering more tax dollars to an industry that hasn’t been cutting edge since World War II: nuclear power.

I do agree with the president on one thing: we do need to address our energy needs. But I know there are better solutions out there. The best way to lower gas prices is to apply American ingenuity to making and marketing fuel-efficient and alternative-fuel vehicles. We can do this and transform our energy future, curb global warming, and stimulate the economy all at the same time. See the NRDC Action Fund ad running in USA Today for a brief look at how this can work.

But it would help if instead of blaming Congress for high prices, President Bush would stop threatening to veto the renewable energy tax credit, a program that has proven to bring clean energy prices down. (See Tom Friedman’s crisp analysis of this program in today's New York Times, and my own blog post about how a similar one has helped Germany’s green energy market boom.)

While Bush finds himself stuck in the past, I have traveled the country and talked with the clean technology innovators in the Silicon Valley, visited the wind farms off the shores of Europe, and met with the big box retailers like Wal-Mart that want to put affordable energy efficiency lighting and appliances into the hands of American consumers. That is what the future looks like. And it is starting to happen now.

Maybe someone should call President Bush to the Rose Garden to tell him the news.

Because yesterday’s Rose Garden performance revealed not only that this administration is bereft of new policy solutions. The policies it does offer--or dust off--have already become proven failures.

Over the past eight years, I have helped lead the fight to block drilling for oil in the Arctic Refuge, and each time we have been successful. Why? Because Congress and the American people have concluded that trading the crown jewel of our wilderness heritage for a few drops of oil isn’t worth it.

There is less than a year’s supply of oil in the refuge, and it would take 10 years to access it.

Increasing fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles to 40 miles per gallon would save more than 10 times the likely yield of oil from the Arctic Refuge. And we would get to keep the wild rivers, caribou birthing grounds, and stunning scenery in the bargain.

In his press conference yesterday, Bush implied the subsidizing the nuclear power industry--in addition to the more than $150 billion it has already received in the past 60 years--would somehow lead to lower energy costs. But his numbers don’t add up.

A pair of Florida utilities in recently forecast new reactor construction costs ranging of $6 billion to $12 billion per unit. This suggests electricity costs between 14 and 18 cents per kilowatt hour.

That’s higher than renewables like wind and even some large solar projects, and about four times the cost getting that power through proven energy efficiency programs.

The Most Important Fight of My Career: the Lieberman-Warner Bill

2008-04-29T17:15:55Z

I have been working to protect the environment for more than 30 years, and I feel like I am facing the most important fight of my career: passing the Lieberman/Warner climate change bill, which will be up for a vote in the Senate in early June.

I often write here about the steps we can take in our every day lives to reduce our carbon footprint. But the truth of the matter is none of these individual measures will be sufficient if we don’t make a national commitment to slash global warming pollution.

We have to pass a mandatory carbon cap, and we have to do it now, before it’s too late and too costly to prevent the most damaging effects of global warming.

NRDC’s climate and legislative teams are working 24/7 to get the strongest bill passed. We will push to make Lieberman/Warner stronger and we will oppose amendments that will weaken it. We will also enlist our members, activists and friends in this effort. Please join with us on this critical issue.

Visit NRDC’s website devoted to the bill, educate yourself, and make sure your senators know just how important this moment is.

Why Endocrine Disruptors Should Be a Household Word

2008-04-25T20:27:11Z

In the past week, there have been a lot of news reports and blog chatter about BPA, also known as bisphenol-A. Finally, government agencies, consumers, and manufacturers are starting to take this toxin seriously. But BPA is only one member of a very nasty family--one we should all come to know more about.

Despite my many years of working to protect the environment and public health, I still have trouble understanding the alphabet soup of toxicology--knowing my perfluorooctanic acid (in nonstick cookware and stain resistant fabric) from my polybrinuibated diphenylethers (in flame retardant bedding and furniture).

Still, most of us are familiar with a short list of common, really nasty pollutants: lead, mercury, PCBs, even the old standard, DDT. Now there is a new family of toxins worthy of being awarded this household-name recognition: endocrine disruptors.

Why, among all the pollutants to choose from, should endocrine disruptors become a part of our daily lexicon? For three main reasons.

They are pervasive. They are present in everyday products ranging from lotion, shampoo, and air fresheners to baby bottles, plastic food containers, and soft plastic toys.
They interfere with one of the most sensitive systems in our bodies: hormones. My colleague, Dr. Gina Solomon, told me that this is what worries her most about endocrine disruptors. A chemical that damages an organ like the liver is unfortunate, but less troubling because the liver is tough and can regenerate. Hormones are different. They act in tiny doses. With just the smallest amount, hormones regulate the function of sexual and reproductive organs, neurological development, and even the rate of metabolism.

In such a delicate environment, even a modest exposure to an endocrine disruptor gets registered by the body. Over time, it can interfere with the fundamental programming of our bodies and send us off on an unhealthy track of development. For instance, exposure to phthalates--an endocrine disruptor found in shampoo, lotion and many items carrying a fragrance--has been shown to lower sperm counts in men. Worse, endocrine disruptors can lead to cancer.
Endocrine disruptors pose the most danger to the most vulnerable among us: developing babies and small children. A baby girl is extra sensitive to exposures of bisphenol-A--an endocrine disruptor found in most plastic baby bottles and cans of baby formula--because her breast buds are just developing. The endocrine disruptor has the potential to alter her breast cells, making her more likely to develop breast cancer later in life.

These are some of the things we know about endocrine disruptors. But frankly, we need to learn a lot more. We need more comprehensive scientific studies to examine the interplay between this family of toxins and human health.

Hopefully, regulation will follow more data. Right now there is no law regulating endocrine disruptors. No standard for exposure has been set; no rule has been passed to require manufacturers to list them on their ingredient labels.

NRDC is fighting to change that. We are trying to get companies to join with us in the call for much needed science and regulation. Because if endocrine disruptors are going to join the list of well-known pollutants, they should get the benefit that goes along with that status: binding regulation. Lead, mercury, PCBs, arsenic, all of those have been regulated. The laws are not perfect for those toxins, but at least we have started to reduce our exposure to them. NRDC wants to do the same with endocrine disruptors.

In the meantime, educate yourself, find out what products contain endocrine disruptors, and demand your stores offer you safer products.

A Garden Grows in The Bronx: How My Family Is Trying to Live Green

2008-04-22T17:56:11Z

Okay, so it’s Earth Day and time to reflect on personal practice. I’m at a Fortune Magazine conference called Brainstorm Green. There is a lot of talk here about innovative solutions, but also about how some of the key environmental answers come down to human behavior.

Lifestyle changes take thought, time, perseverance, and action. I know because I am making them myself. Sometimes it’s easier to think about being green than it is to do it. But my family and I are trying several things, and the more we are able to accomplish, the more excited we are to find the next green step to take. It’s a snowball effect, and it feels good.

So here is what my family is trying to do.

We Are What We Eat: It’s spring and we’ve planted a new vegetable garden. In the past we’ve participated in a CSA, or community supported agriculture, which delivered fresh, organic produce to our home from local farms. (Click here to find one in your area). But now we’re growing our own local, organic food.

Two of my daughters are serious sustainable agriculture enthusiasts, and all three of my girls love to cook, so this will be fun. Kale, chard, lettuce, carrots, radishes, beets, peas, beans. We can’t wait. In a few weeks it’ll be tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants and peppers. And how about all those herbs, basil, mint, thyme, and sage.

We have also committed to eating fewer meals with meat and to eliminate all beef from the family diet. Between the environmental devastation from factory farms and the large carbon footprint that comes from the beef industry, my family decided this was the right commitment for us to make.

You Don’t Need a Roof-top Solar Panel to Use Renewable Energy: Many utilities offer consumers the option of having the electricity for their homes generated by renewable energy. My utility is Con Edison, and it offers this choice. It costs us a little more--1 cent per kilowatt hour. But I am still saving, because I replaced all my incandescent light bulbs with highly efficient compact florescent light bulbs. My home just doesn’t use as much electricity as it used to.

The biggest reduction came from the kitchen ceiling lights because that’s the room we all spend the most time in. I actually saw the decrease in my monthly bill. Now the bill go up a bit because we are switching to green power, but hopefully it’ll have a net gain

Location, Location, Location: I confess it hasn’t been too hard for me and my family to keep our gasoline use relatively low simply because of where we live: The Bronx. There is plenty of mass transit here. I also bought a Prius, but thanks to the subway, I only put about 8,000 miles on the car each year--a lot less than the national average.

One thing I do a lot though is fly in planes. Planes emit a hefty dose of global warming pollution, so I have started buying carbon offsets for plane travel.

These are some of the steps my family has made toward greener living. We also recycle, and have lately switched to cleaning products that are safer than the toxic-laden standbys.

I would love to hear about the latest you and your families are doing to protect the environment. Send your ideas on the next big thing. Or visit NRDC’s Celebrate Earth Day site for inspiration.

And Happy Earth Day.

Calling a Toxin a Toxin: BPA Gets the Name It Deserves

2008-04-17T16:10:25Z

It’s been a bad week for bisphenol-A, and that’s a good thing. Not one but two government agencies came out for the first time publicly saying that this chemical--found in plastic water bottles, canned food, and numerous baby products--could harm human health.

This is personally gratifying for me. As I have written about before, I had breast cancer several years ago, and breast cancer is what is known as a hormone-sensitive disease. It is fueled in part by estrogen. Women at risk for breast cancer are advised to avoid ingesting estrogen, such as excess amounts of soy (which has a natural form of estrogen) or hormone replacement therapy (which includes estrogen).

BPA is a synthetic form of estrogen. It was developed in the 1930s by scientists looking for hormone replacement drugs. BPA was sidelined in favor of another estrogen, DES, which of course turned out to be all-too toxic after a generation of women gave birth to daughters with reproductive defects.

But BPA didn’t die. It resurfaced as a building block of some of the most popular plastics, including the beloved Bakelite in the 1950s and 1960s and the ubiquitous polycarbonate today.

The problem is the stuff doesn’t stay inside the plastic. It leaches out into food and water. In other words, we are likely taking in small doses of estrogen when we drink from a Nalgene water bottle or make spaghetti sauce from canned tomatoes. Worse, our babies could be receiving doses when they use most plastic baby bottles or drink formula made from a can.

What does this extra estrogen lead to? A decade of research has shown that BPA causes abnormalities during fetal development. In lab animals, it has been shown to feminize males. Most alarming to me, it has been found to cause the early onset of puberty (a risk factor for breast cancer, because it means a prolonged exposure to estrogen) and to promote pre-cancerous changes in the breast. Many studies show these effects at low levels – near or at the levels that come out of food cans or bottles.

NRDC has been working to get government agencies to take this chemical seriously for years. In fact, it wasn’t until NRDC blew the whistle on the U.S. government for using industry-paid scientists to determine the toxicity of BPA that the EPA fired its tainted contractors, started over again, and came to more objective conclusions.

On Monday, the U.S. National Toxicology Program became the first federal agency in the world to express concern regarding this chemical’s potential to cause harm to fetuses, infants and children (see my colleague Dr. Gina Solomon’s blog post).

And on Wednesday, it became clear that Health Canada will likely declare bisphenol-A (BPA) a toxin, which sets it on the road to a partial or complete ban in food-related containers.

We are happy for the vindication of things we have been saying for years, but we won’t sit around. Now it’s time to take action!

NRDC will work to first get BPA out of baby products. Then we will turn to outher sources of exposure, including the lining of other food and soda cans, and polycarbonate water bottles--the ones marked #7.

In the meantime, here are some steps you can take.

If you have a newborn, opt for the baby bottles now being manufactured without BPA. Click here for a list of BPA-free bottles, including some you can buy at Whole Foods.
Opt for glass jars and bottles instead of cans when buying soda, preserved vegetables, or soup.
Buy packaged soups and broth in cardboard “brick” cartons, which are made of safer materials.
Limit your consumption of canned soda and canned food during pregnancy.
Avoid plastic jugs labeled #7, especially if you are pregnant or breast-feeding.
Don’t allow your children to have dental sealants made from BPA applied to their teeth, and don’t have these sealants applied to your teeth while you are pregnant.

Bush's Global Warming Plan Weaker than Even He Promised

2008-04-16T22:17:04Z

In a swirl of Rose Garden ceremony, President Bush announced today an eleventh-hour plan for curbing global warming emissions. Unfortunately, it is as feeble as it is late.

Now, in his eighth year, the president has proposed a path on global warming weaker than the campaign pledge he made in September of 2000--the pledge he broke three months into office.

To me and to most of us in the environmental arena, his statement seems like a thinly disguised attempt to derail global warming solutions currently moving in Congress.

The Lieberman-Warner bill would reduce emissions 25 to 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, in line with what scientists say is needed. In sharp contrast, the president’s new goal would allow continued emissions growth of as much as 10 percent or more.

It calls for dangerously lax targets, and as my colleague David Doniger, NRDC’s chief climate litigator, said today on NPR’s Marketplace,

“Targets are just aspirations, and without some law in which the marketplace is set up so that these reductions have to be made and there are incentives to do it and penalties for not doing it, it won't happen.”

Take a look at the New York Times' Andy Revkin’s blog for a transcript of the speech and for more insights from NRDC’s David Doniger.

Finding Real Optimism for Solving Global Warming

2008-04-04T17:29:06Z

Last week, I witnessed something I wouldn’t have seen two years ago: a group of leading climate scientists and environmental thinkers expressing genuine optimism about our ability to solve global warming. Why the change? The explosive innovation in green energy technology that puts more of these solutions in our grasp.

I made this discovery at the Aspen Institute’s Environmental Forum. It felt great to be back in the Rockies, gazing up at the towering Elk Mountain Range. Wild landscapes like these are what inspired me to join the environmental movement in the first place back when I was in college.

In those days, the pressing concerns for the Rocky Mountain West were logging and drilling. The threats of drilling for oil and gas and developing oil shale remain high on the list of local concerns. But the threat of impacts from global warming looms very high as well. Just last week, NRDC and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization released a report concluding that the American West is heating up nearly twice as fast as the rest of the world.

That haunting reality was brought home to me and all the participants at the Aspen Institute thanks to sobering presentations on the latest scientific data. National Geographic, one of the event’s partners, shared powerful images documenting how global warming is already transforming--and distorting--the world’s landscapes.

But there was an antidote to this grim news. The conference was filled with environmental luminaries: Ed Wilson, Sylvia Earle, Lester Brown, Amory Lovins, Van Jones, Majora Carter--a stunning array of MacArthur Fellow talent! What I found so inspiring was that many of these great minds express real optimistic about the solutions we have to curb global warming.

Two years ago, this may not have been the case--people were demoralized by the dire scientific reports and the magnitude of the problem. But since then, we have seen unprecedented investment in technologies that will take us down a different pathway. From tech companies in Silicon Valley to financial houses on Wall Street to mayors and governors across the nation, people are creating and committing to clean energy solutions. And as Van and Majora underscored in their Aspen presentations, America is generating new green jobs in the process.

Since my days as a bright-eyed college student, I have learned that change in the environmental arena can take a long, long time. But it does happen, and it is important to celebrate progress along the way. That is what the Aspen Institute was for me. It reminded me that we really are moving forward in tackling global warming, that attitudes as well as technologies are shifting. We still have a long, long way to go, particularly in the policy arena.

This challenge is enormous, but looking around the room at the visionaries in Aspen, I realized that we have the talent to deal with it.

Unlocking the Global Warming Gridlock: Congestion Pricing Speeds Ahead in NYC

2008-04-02T18:44:45Z

Like millions of New Yorkers, I ride the subway all the time. I view it as one of the small steps I can take as an individual to help curb global warming, since fewer cars on Manhattan streets mean fewer greenhouse gas pollutants in the Earth’s atmosphere. That’s why I am thrilled that the New York City Council approved congestion pricing this week. Congestion pricing will not only cut down on traffic, but it will also raise billions of dollars for one of our best global warming busters: public transit.

The congestion pricing proposal calls for charging a fee of $8 per car and $21 per truck for entering Manhattan below 60th Street on weekdays. That money will be used to fund major upgrades in subway and bus lines. London enacted a similar plan five years ago and got impressive results: car traffic within the congestion pricing zone dropped by an amazing 30 percent in the first year alone, while bus traffic has grown 22 percent and bicycle use has risen 43 percent.

Despite these great numbers, congestion pricing has been a tough battle, and we wouldn’t have come this far without the leadership of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. This was not a popular issue for the mayor to take on--several council members were concerned about how the pricing would impact their neighborhoods.

But Mayor Bloomberg is courageous. When he identifies something that can benefit the city, he is willing to fight for it. He has confronted the challenges that await us----explosive growth, aging subways, global warming--and said: we can solve this. We can create a cleaner, more vital future for this city, and congestion pricing will help get us there.

Last night, NRDC honored the mayor at our annual Forces for Nature benefit. We also got to thank Council Speaker Christine Quinn for Monday’s historic vote. Our benefit was held in Midtown Manhattan, and fittingly, the Empire State Building was lit up green in NRDC’s honor. With measures like congestion pricing, New York can indeed become a green beacon--an example for other cities to follow as they tackle global warming themselves.

Granted, the congestion pricing battle is not over. As Mayor Bloomberg said last night, “We are 95 percent of the way over the Grand Canyon, but that doesn’t get your there.” The plan still has to be approved in Albany, which promises to be a challenge. Stay tuned to my colleague Rich Kassel’s blog for progress on the Albany front.

Breast Cancer and One of the Most Pervasive Chemicals of Modern Life

2008-03-26T04:56:35Z

I had breast cancer nine years ago. I have a strong constitution--and a strong will--and those carried me far during my diagnosis and treatment. But still it was a difficult time for me and my family. One thing that brought me comfort was this thought: better that I was sick than one of my three daughters. What parent wouldn’t want to protect their children from such a trial?

The trouble is our job of protecting our children is getting harder, particularly shielding our daughters--and ourselves--from breast cancer. Why? Because one of the most pervasive chemicals in modern life has been linked to breast cancer.

Known as bisphenol-A, or BPA, it is among the 50 most produced chemicals in the world. It is found in everything from plastic water jugs labeled #7 to baby bottles to canned food liners to take-out containers from your local deli. It is so omnipresent that the CDC has found that 95 percent of Americans have the chemical in their urine.

What does this mean for women concerned about breast cancer? BPA is a synthetic form of estrogen, and estrogen feeds breast cancer. It ramps up cell division in pre-cancerous cells and it can prompt tumors to metastasize.

In animal studies, BPA has been found to cause the early onset of puberty and stimulate mammary gland development in females. The estrogen-like properties in BPA are so strong that even when male rodents were exposed to it, they had an increased risk of mammary tumors.

I do not carry the genetic mutations that scientists have linked to breast cancer, but still my daughters are at greater risk for the disease simply because I had it. I hate to think that every day they come into contact with a chemical that adds to their burden of risk.

One of my environmental heroes, Rachel Carson, died of breast cancer, but before she did, she set us on the path to outlawing another estrogenic chemical, DDT. Surely we can do the same with BPA.

NRDC’s Health Program is focusing hard on eliminating BPA from consumer products. Meantime, here are some steps you can take to protect yourself and your loved ones.

If you have a newborn, opt for the baby bottles now being manufactured without BPA. Click here for a list of BPA-free bottles, including some you can buy at Whole Foods.
Don’t microwave food in plastic containers; use glass or ceramic. Many plates and cups made for babies and toddlers are made with plastics that contain BPA (they typically include a recycling triangle with #7). Be especially careful not to microwave these, since high heat has been shown to increase the leaching of BPA.
Buy packaged soups and broth in cardboard “brick” cartons, which are made of safer materials.
Opt for glass jars and bottles instead of cans when buying soda, preserved vegetables, or soup.
Avoid plastic jugs labeled #7. That includes the popular Nalgene water bottles which we especially urge pregnant or breast-feeding mothers to steer clear of.

The New Green Stakeholder: Activist or Investment Bank?

2008-03-20T21:05:45Z

“Have the dynamics between your industry and environmental NGOs shifted?

"What are the hard trade-offs and challenges in forging partnerships between businesses and NGOs?”

These are some of the questions posed right now in a forum on the Harvard Business Review’s Green.org site. I was asked to be a featured contributor and so far the discussion has been very interesting.

Judith Samuelson of the Aspen Institute kicks off the conversation by chartering the changing development of the green stakeholder.

She points out that in the past when corporations went to battles over environmental issues it was usually against activists or NGOs like NRDC. More recently, though, the pressure for corporations to account for environmental risk is also coming from big investors like pension funds, institutional investors, and bankers.

So who are the corporations turning to for guidance? The NGOs they used to spar with.

Check out the site to see how both environmental leaders and businesspeople view the opportunities -- and the limitations -- of these partnerships.

I Wish They All Could Be California Innovators

2008-03-18T20:17:56Z

I recently spent the a month working out of NRDC’s California offices. I am an Easterner by birth and inclination. I feel more at home on the subway than the freeway, the Adirondack woods than the Santa Monica beach. But I am enthralled with one of California’s most appealing attributes. People there possess a spirit of innovation-especially when it comes to global warming solutions.

This is particularly true in Silicon Valley, where last week I had dinner with Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, and other technology leaders. Schmidt said to me, “We are surrounded here by people who are innovative and looking for solutions. That is what we do, so of course we should be doing it for clean energy.”

The sense of possibility is contagious in Silicon Valley. The engineers, the executives, and the venture capitalists are all confident they can deliver clean tech answers, because they have delivered so many solutions to our economy already.

That is a departure from the mood in Washington, where Congress tends to focus on who will be the losers under a cap and trade system for global warming emissions instead of figuring out how to ensure our nation as a whole will win and prosper.

Our capitol could use a dose of California can-do attitude. We have to be brave and bold in what we do to address global warming. We have to truly transform our energy economy. This is a daunting prospect that will mean redirecting millions of dollars of capital from dirty polluting energy into clean tech solutions.

But we will not only gain a healthier climate. We will also gain jobs. The clean tech solutions being hatched by Silicon Valley firms translate into tens of thousands of jobs for architects and engineers; air conditioning contractors and solar panel installers; software designers and energy auditors.

These are jobs that cannot be shipped offshore in businesses that pay lasting dividends to the U.S. economy through increased competitiveness and reduced dependence on energy imports.

And at a time when the nation’s economy appears to be teetering on the brink of a recession it is doubly critical that we seize these now and for the long term.

California is pointing the way, but even Silicon Valley’s advances in clean tech are not enough to lift our entire country. We need to nurture other regional pockets of innovation--in the wind farms of Texas, the factories in the Midwest, the labs of MIT or the software office parks of Seattle.

Innovation after all, isn’t only a California trait. It’s as American as Ben Franklin discovering electricity. We created airplanes, cars, and computers. Now we can create more sustainable energy solutions--and the jobs that go with them.

With Biofuels, Better Is Better

2008-03-14T18:13:12Z

If you have read this blog in the past, you know I firmly believe we can curb global warming with the help of a long list of clean energy technologies. But a recent article in the New York Times about pollution from biodiesel plants reminds us that all energy production--whether it is conventional or marketed as green--needs environmental oversight.

The article described how hazardous discharges from several plants that make biodiesel out of soybean oil have polluted streams in Iowa, Missouri, and Alabama. In one incident, an anonymous caller tipped off officials that a tanker truck was dumping “milky white goop” into a waterway. The goop turned out to be from a biodiesel plant and it killed 25,000 fish.

It doesn’t matter if toxic goop comes from an oil refinery or a biofuels refinery. Pollution is pollution and needs to be halted.

As NRDC’s biofuels expert Nathanael Greene has said, current federal biofuels policies reward volume. They assume that more is better. That kind of thinking has created a frenzied rush to build hasty and sometimes unpermitted refineries.

But not all biofuels are created equal: some produce more global warming emissions than they save. Some result in the polluted streams and dead fish described in the New York Times article. Some degrade crop lands with excessive pesticide use.

So rather than thinking that more is better, it’s about thinking that better is better. Biofuels that are made with better, safer, more sustainable practices are the fuels that should get the tax credits and incentives.

This is not a simple process. Biofuels are quite possibly the most complicated renewable energy source to produce in an environmentally friendly way. Never mind the politics of this issue; we still have a host of engineering challenges to work out.

But at the same time, we most certainly need biofuels if we are going to combat global warming. The key is to put rigorous environmental standards in place that favor green performance and penalize pollution and degradation.

There is a lot of money to be made in the biofuels market, but not all of that green will come from green practices. NRDC’s staff--from our biofuels and vehicles experts to our land and water teams--is vigilantly tracking this burgeoning industry. We are drafting and helping pass the policies that will reward only the cleanest producers.

Green Energy: When Enviros and CEOs Agree on Regulations

2008-03-13T19:15:06Z

Twenty years ago, when I was fighting to protect coastal areas from overdevelopment, the reigning stereotype of environmentalists was that we never met a regulation we didn’t like. The counterpart to that type-casting was that businesspeople saw every regulation as a direct attack on the bottom line.

It’s a sign of the changing times that last week I read this sentence in Business Week: “Thanks to smart regulation, Germany has become a global powerhouse in green energy.”

That’s right, smart regulation enhances the bottom line. In Germany it has given rise to a green energy sector that generates $33 billion in annual sales and employs more than 235,000 people.

Germany isn’t the only nation trying to bolster the clean energy market, but what makes its regulations so smart is consistency and long-term planning: Germany ensures that wind and solar power generators will be guaranteed an above-market price for electricity for as long as 20 years.

The Business Week article writes: “The crucial point,’ says Paul Buchwitz, a Deutsche Bank fund manager who focuses on renewable energy, is ‘you know how much you will get in advance.’”

Compare that to the regulatory situation in the United States, where the main green energy incentive--the renewable energy tax credit--has to be extended every 1 to 2 years. It has been allowed to lapse three different times since 2000, prompting some investors to leave the market. It’s up for renewal right now, and its future is uncertain. If it expires again, the U.S. could loose 75,000 jobs in the wind sector in one year alone.

Businesses crave predictability. If you are a fund manager deciding whether to invest $100 million in a plant that manufactures silicon solar panels for the U.S. solar market, you have very few sign posts telling you what the landscape will look like in 5 years, never mind 20.

It doesn’t have to be that way in the United States. We can write the rules of the game so business can scale up clean energy solutions quickly and profitably. We can give investors greater clarity, so they know what the rules will be for a long period of time.

Ideally regulations that spur market growth should be so successful that they become redundant. Japan passed green energy regulations similar to Germany’s, and the sector has expanded so dramatically that solar power is already cost competitive with conventional power. The government has largely phased out subsidies for the residential sector.

It’s true that 20 years ago some of my battles over coastal regulations ended up in acrimony or court. But today, I spend a lot of time in board rooms talking with CEOs about national policies that will help bring cheaper solar panels and more efficient appliances to market.

Smart regulations--those that are both environmentally sustainable and good for investors--are something we can agree on and need to make happen.