Gil Friend

[Earth Policy Institute]: World
production of solar cells--which convert sunlight directly into
electricity--soared to 742 megawatts (MW) in 2003, a jump of 32 percent
in just one year. With solar cell production growing by 27 percent
annually over the past five years, cumulative world production now
stands at 3,145 MW, enough to meet the electricity needs of more than a
million homes. This extraordinary growth is driven to some degree by
improvements in materials and technology, but primarily by market
introduction programs and government incentives.



Coincidentally, a TV news report last night talked about the pending
return of the nuclear power industry in the US -- where no plants have
been ordered in 25 years -- despite the still unresolved issues of the
nuclear fuel cycle, waste management, decommissioning of plants (some
now approaching 60 years old). "This may be our only alternative to
oil," someone actually said. Hmmm... have they looked up recently? (Dr. Don Aitken, senior scientist for Union of Concerned Scientists, observed that Earth's daily solar flux exceeds our current global energy budget by a factor of only...17,000!

--------

[Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)]: An
analysis by the University of California, Berkeley, shows that without
BART traffic jams from Bay Area bridges would spill back to most of the
East Bay and San Francisco street networks. Drivers would spend one or
two hours just getting to the closest freeway and an extra few hours in
freeway traffic.



Half hour to one hour commutes turn into three to four hour commutes! I
can't speak to the study methodology, but it sounds pretty compelling.



For my part, in addition to ditching car for mass transit as much as
possible, I find that biking cross-twon (Berkeley CA, ~120,000 people)
takes very little more time than driving -- if any -- and is much more
fun. I discover parts of this town that I've lived in for two decades
-- sights, sounds, smells -- that I never encountered before.

--------

True stability results when presumed
order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects
the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.

- Tom Robbins



Thank you David Allen. (He's
writing about personal productivity, but this applies equally well to
the wise design of 'sustainable' systems -- whether ecological systems,
business systems, social systems (or the hopefully narrowing divide
between them).

--------

Those Brilliant Fall Outfits May Be Saving Trees.
As trees across the northern United States turn gold and crimson,
scientists are debating exactly what those colors are for. By By CARL
ZIMMER. [The New York Times > Science]



The scientists do agree on one thing: the colors are for something.
That represents a major shift in thinking. For decades, textbooks
claimed that autumn colors were just a byproduct of dying leaves. 'I
had always assumed that autumn leaves were waste baskets,' said Dr.
David Wilkinson



It turns out that the carotenoids and anthocyanins that produce those
beuatiful yellows and reds aren't just 'unmasked' by the breakdown of
chlorophyll; production of anthocyanin actually increases in autumn.



'Why' is less clear. One theory: the vivid colors warn insect pests to
stay clear. Another: the anthocyanins protect the leaves from damage
from too much sunlight. The article summarizes research in support of
both positions.



'People sometimes say that science makes the world less interesting and
awesome by just explaining things away,' Dr. Wilkinson said. 'But with
autumn leaves, the more you know about them, the more amazed you are.'



Another reminder that 'waste' is very rare in nature -- perhaps non-existent. Another reminder that it needs to become obsolete in human affairs as well.

--------

From a Physicist and New Nobel Winner, Some Food for Thought. The history of physics is, like the universe, a story of expansion. By DENNIS OVERBYE. [The New York Times > Science]



Fresh from a new Nobel Prize, with a
smile as wide as the Pacific
Ocean only a Frisbee throw away, Dr. David Gross...[declared] 'The most
important product of knowledge is ignorance.' And without much more ado
than that, Dr. Gross proceeded to
enumerate what he considered to be the most enticing items that physics
had learned enough to be ignorant about in 25 different areas.



Fascinating munching. Worth a read.



(Dr. Gross, of the Kavli Insitute, just won the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Dr. Frank
Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and my good ol' high school buddy Dr. H. David
Politzer of the California Institute of Technology. Are we proud? You betcha!)

--------

'Things can be wrong without being important.'

Fran Leibowitz, in a typically curmudgeonly interview (mostly about church and state) on Hardball.

--------

[Port of Entry]: Renewable
energy is playing a growing role in Chinese energy supply and is poised
to become a significant future energy source. The Chinese Government
has set a target to meet 12 percent of its power generation capacity
from renewables by 2020. A significant share of this new capacity will
come from wind. In May 2004, the three groups launched the report ëWind
Force 12 - China‰, an industry scenario which showed that by 2020 China
is capable of installing 170 GW of wind power, delivering annual
savings of 325 million tonnes of CO2 and creating hundreds of thousands
of jobs. The report further showed how to create a massive industrial
manufacturing capacity for wind turbines and outlined the policy
frameworks necessary to unlock these opportunities with a combination
of public, private and citizen inputs.



The US will have a significant price to pay if it continues to lag on this. Fortunately industry leadership is filling at least some of the government vaccum. (And maybe the government vaccuum will shift in the next couple of weeks. Hey, could happen -- the Red Sox won, didn't they?)



Has anyone seen a compilation, in one place, of all the national and
corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goes that have been publicly
declared?


--------

The wonder is that, as we walk it,
the path becomes clear. We have only to trust it into action, then
truth reveals itself, shining all the brighter for the darkness of our
time.

- Joanna Macy
--------

As noted a while back, I've been in full-tilt sustainability conference mode for the last few weeks. Profitable Sustainability (Seattle), Sustainable Resources (Boulder), SRI in the Rockies (Keystone), SOL Sustainabilty Forum (Dearborn). All very interesting and very different events.



And 12 days from now -- the day after the election -- I'll be offering the opening keynote at the CoopAmerica Business Network conference
in San Francisco. (MUCH easier commute than the other ones.) The topic
(my current 'stump speech'): The State of 'Sustainability' -- considering sterling accomplishments and significant
shortcomings, and presenting critical challenges for companies,
public policy, and each of us.



I'm also working dilligently to set up two or three pilot installations of our key performance indicators (KPI) software -- Business Metabolics -- with companies that have

- multiple facilities

- a strong or growing sustainability commitment

- an interest in effectively measuring their progress to that sometimes amorphous goal.



And the of course there's that pair of books I'm trying to birth (in my spare time). More on those anon...

--------

Dave Pollard's got a more than usually fascinating collection or diverse items on his how to save the world
blog this week (10/17-10/24), ranging from electoral politics to
macroeconomic collision course, with energy policy, organizational
change and Lakoff's
'frames' thrown in for good measure. Long and thoughtful stuff --
including suggested corporate and individual responses to things like
this view of the US 'current accounts deficit'







-- which make snippet bloggers like me feel a bit embarassed at our brevity.

--------

Some beautiful web design work here and here and here. Some meaningful stuff under one of those walnuts, some beautiful stuff under them all. Enjoy.

--------

Reacutal beta page, courtesy of MetaEfficient -- a kinda cool in its own right (if not humble) "guide to the most efficient things in the world."

--------