Bob Keefe, writing for the CoxNews Service, recaps the business world’s commitment to environmental sustainability. Why are they doing what they are doing? Profits.
Some highlights:
In no particular order, here is a selection of the new, cool, ordinary things we’ve seen this year:
December 2007
Happy Holidays! We want to share with you some of the accomplishments of the Student PIRGs over the last year.CAMPUS CLIMATE CHALLENGE:We’ve just finished organizing the largest youth environmental conference in recent history with our coalition partners in the Energy Action Coalition. PIRG student leaders and staff organized and recruited students to attend Powershift 2007 at the University of Maryland Nov 2-5. Over 5,500 students from all 50 states came to the University of Maryland College Park this weekend for the largest student global warming conference ever. Over 250 of the country’s leading organizers and advocates and policy experts gave speeches, ran skills trainings and issue briefings for the crowd.
To cap off the weekend, CALPIRG Student Board Chair Mike Reagan spoke about global warming and urged our federal decision-makers to adopt meaning global warming solutions at a special Congressional hearing. The hearing kicked off the largest student Lobby Day on Capitol Hill ever - 3000 students stayed to meet with over 300 Congressional offices and ask them, among other things, to pass an energy bill this year that includes tough car economy standards (35 MPG by 2020) and renewable energy standards (15% by 2020).
This came on the heels of a year of very successful global warming campaign work around the country.
During the weekend of March 2-4, the WISPIRG students from UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee helped to host the Midwest Clean Energy Conference. Despite a snowstorm in the Midwest, about 250 students attended. To cap off the weekend, the students held a press conference and marched to the state capitol.
CALPIRG students organized the necessary grassroots support to help convince Governor Schwarzenegger to sign into law the nation’s first source-wide cap on global warming pollution, a measure that will reduce emissions by 25 percent in the next 14 years.
A reader at Slate’s Green Lantern (environmental advice column) asks: “If I want to be greener about my fandom, should I ditch pro football in favor of a more environmentally friendly sport? And if so, what sport would that be?”
A football stadium that seats approximately 78,000 fans, for example, will consume about 65,000 kilowatt hours of electricity and 35,000 cubic feet of natural gas on game day. In the United States, where roughly half of our electricity still comes from coal, each kilowatt hour of electricity produces an average of 1.55 pounds of carbon dioxide. Natural gas is cleaner per unit: Each cubic foot emits 0.12 pounds of carbon dioxide. Putting on a big-time pigskin game thus ends up pumping around 47.6 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere
Today The David Suzuki Foundation and the National Hockey League Players’ Association will unveil a partnership to help offset the greenhouse gas emissions produced by NHL players. The environmental challenge is now a core part of union business and is being promoted in a fall tour to NHL teams by NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly and ombudsman Eric Lindros. So far 300 players and the entire Dallas Stars team have signed up. Boston Bruin defenseman Andrew Ference is playing point on the effort.
“Hockey players are educated enough and smart enough to do the right thing. There is a lot of good character in the league. What I like about the initiative is that it is positive. It’s actually taking action.”
Story from the Toronto Globe and Mail
The Presidential Climate Action Plan, “a bold, comprehensive and non-partisan plan for presidential leadership rooted in climate science and designed to ignite innovation at every level of the American economy.”
Everyone Plays: Measures to stabilize the climate must change the behaviors of business, industry, agriculture, government, workers and consumers. All sectors and the public must be engaged in changing both infrastructure and social norms.
* All Zambonis are ice-resurfacers, except for The Zambonis , the all-hockey rock band. Not all ice-resurfacers are Zambonis.
This story concerns ice-resurfacers that enter sporting arenas filled with people three or four times per hockey match. While pale in comparison to the blood carboxyhemoglobin madness of Monster Truck Nights, Zamboni’s typically burn propane to get around the rinks. Burning propane emits carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides. Depending on how well particular arenas exchange air, how great can that be for players and fans and vendors?
The Zamboni Model 552 is electric powered.
The first-ever hydrogen fuel-cell powered ice-resurfacer, the ep-ICEBEAR, was developed by the University of North Dakota’s Energy & Environmental Research Center’s National Center for Hydrogen Technology .
The NY Times reports on the how the city’s diesel vehicles are running on a mixture of B-20 (twenty percent biodiesel, eighty percent conventional diesel) and is collecting cooking oil from city restaurants that once went down the drain in an effort to reduce carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrocarbons and particulate pollution. It is something that a whole slew of college campuses have been pioneering across the country:
One possible caution, especially for already foggy San Francisco. Some biofuel mixtures are known to release equal or greater emissions of nitrous oxide.
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