Alternative Energy, Green Visionaries

Join an environmental organization. If they're not involved with climate change, get them involved.

Energy Law Drives Alternative to Corn Ethanol

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. energy bill signed into law by President George W. Bush on Wednesday should drive a billion-dollar domestic business for a low-emissions domestic ethanol made from sources other than corn -- though it could take nearly a decade to go from the lab into car tanks.

The bill calls for the blending of 36 billion gallons per year of domestic alternative fuels like ethanol, a five-fold increase, into motor fuels by 2022.

Next-Generation Biofuels Edge to Center

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The quest by executives and venture capitalists to build a next-generation biofuels industry has made strides this year as oil reached $100 a barrel and the world's largest energy consumer laid down ambitious new mandates for alternative fuels.

Prices for the agricultural commodities that traditional biofuels are made from have soared to historic levels in recent months on global demand for both fuels and food, driving up all grain prices and hurting customers ranging from Mexican peasants to U.S. beer makers.

Could a Fuel Cell That Runs on Glucose Save the Planet?

Could a fuel cell that runs on glucose save the planet? A new type of fuel cell powered with glucose derived from biomass is described in the latest issue of the Inderscience Publication International Journal of Global Energy Issues.

The experimental device works by using sunlight to convert the glucose into hydrogen to power the cell, which produces several hundred millivolts. The use of biological resources, such as food waste and managed high-energy crops, are gradually becoming a viable approach to reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. However, imaginative ways to convert these materials into useful, electrical energy are still required. Renewable biomass resources include starch, cellulose, sucrose, and lactose. These complex sugar molecules can be readily converted to the much simpler glucose molecule with little energy cost through fermentation processes.

Internet Visionaries Betting On Green Technology Boom

Bill Gates, John Doerr and Steve Case believed in the Internet long before Wall Street did. Now, they're betting on the next great "disruptive" technology: alternative fuels and other environmentally friendly products, but this time other investors aren't far behind.

Last year, AOL LLC founder Case launched Revolution LLC, which has invested in companies such as car-sharing service Flexcar…

U.S. Survey Ties Biofuels to High Food Costs, Hunger

CINCINNATI (Reuters) - Six in 10 Americans believe the use of corn to make ethanol has raised food prices and caused more people to go hungry, the latest evidence of a growing global backlash against alternative "green" fuels.

Hammer Simwinga - Saving Wildlife in Zambia

It is easy to dismiss this part of the world as hopeless. Sub-Saharan Africa has some of the highest mortality rates, the lowest literacy rates, the worst unemployment, the most tenacious, soul-eroding poverty on earth. The problems are so vexing, so widespread, that the question is not so much what to do as where to begin.

Hammer Simwinga began here, in remote northeast Zambia, in a village that is little more than a gas stop for big semis plying the Cape-to-Cairo truck route. When Mr. Simwinga arrived in Mpika in 1994, farming was struggling, and poaching had supplanted crops as a money-earner. Nearby North Luangwa National Park had lost more than 15,000 elephants, thousands of antelope and buffalo, and all its black rhinos — slain for their tusks, their meat, their horns.

Site Of The Month

THIS MONTH IS (www.ecc1.org)

We enthusiastically suggest that members of the EarthLab community learn about the Earth Conservation Corps, a revolutionary environmental organization that recruits inner city children, many of them former gang members, to patrol the polluted waterways of New Jersey. We urge members of the EarthLab community to take the time to examine their web site: http://www.ecc1.org/. The Corps was featured on the PBS show, Bill Moyers Journal on July 6, 2007, and a video clip and printed article can be accessed at the site archive: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html.

RFK JR. Rips President Bush For Environmental Policy

BLACKSBURG -- The crowd that nearly filled Virginia Tech's 3,000-seat Burruss Hall Auditorium to hear environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak probably had an idea about what he thought of the Bush administration before he took the podium. Some of Kennedy's books were on sale in the auditorium lobby, including his most recent -- "Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy."

Mario Batali's Ultimate Grilling Challenge*. Think you can grill like Mario? Click here to enter and vote for your favorite grilling recipe. Sponsored by VIVA® towels. *NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Enter by: 7/30/08. To enter and for Official Rules, visit mariobatali.com/grillingcontest.

Pacific salmon populations fell sharply in 1997 and 1998, when local ocean temperatures rose 6 degrees F.

EarthLab > Learn > Envisioneers