Green Leaf Report

  Dr. James Hansen originally spoke in front of a Congressional committee on global warming in 1988.  He’s updated his warning with an eye-opening report on the current risks facing our planet.  The part that keeps running through my mind is where he suggests the heads of fossil fuel companies should be tried for their […]

One of the things that surprised me about the WindPower 2008 show was that so many of the exhibitors primarily serve the oil and gas industry, and are now moving into wind.  I expected to see a lot of pretty serious environmentalists- I’m not sure if I thought everyone would have long hair, beards, […]

I arrived today at the WindPower 2008 conference in Houston - I’m so excited to attend!  So far we’ve only attended for one partial day, but I’ve already met some great new people and learned things about wind that I didn’t know I didn’t know.
After our registration, we headed over to the […]

So President  Bush has been out stumping in Saudi Arabia asking them to pump out more of their non-renewable oil resources so that America can have temporarily lowered prices.  I guess if the Saudis complied, that plan would work for lowering prices at least until the Saudis ran out of oil and/or Bush was no […]

The debate continues on whether the US is on the edge of a recession, if we’re already in one, or if everything is fine and business continues as usual.  I was interested to read Alan Greenspan’s views coming out of the Cambridge Energy Research Associate’s energy conference  in Houston.  The hook of his comments appears related to the […]

Last year I wrote about using solar panels on cell phones, and the great benefits of taking consumer devices off the grid.  Texas Instruments just issued a press release that even goes a step further than solar panels- a joint project between TI and MIT is developing chips for consumer and medical applications that require such low amounts of power the devices […]

The Energy Bill of 2007 did not pass the Senate with the much discussed renewable energy plans in place.  The Senate voted as follows on December 13th:
Republican Senators Voting ‘Nay’ on Cloture Vote for Energy Bill Tax Title
Stevens (AK), Sessions, Shelby (AL), Kyl (AZ), Allard (CO), Martinez (FL)
Chambliss, Isakson (GA), Craig, Crapo (ID), Brownback, Roberts (KS)
Bunning, […]

I’m very excited that the energy bill just passed in the House with renewable energy incentives in place; some of these details are listed below. It’s a good start, but we need to get this past the Senate..  Solar Nation has a coordinated letter-writing campaign: http://capwiz.com/re-action/go/GENenergyvote.  Add your voice today!
“Among its provisions, the energy […]

I just noticed in a previous post how similar the words politician and pollution are when my spelling abilities temporarily lapsed.  With that in mind, I wrote letters to my two Texas state senators this week for their political pollution in blocking the energy bill provision that would support renewable energy standards.  We could have this […]

 I learned about a new plant today: the inedible jatropha plant that grows in scrubland and generates 30 - 40% of its seed-weight in oil.  BP is partnering up with a biofuel company, D1 Oils, to produce this plant in Africa, thus helping struggling economies while lessening the global reliance on non-renewable fuel sources.  BP […]

Companies around the world are evaluating various types of plants as a possible source for fuel.  Algae has always been one of my favorites; the plant grows anywhere we don’t want it, thus is both plentiful and easy to acquire.  But as I read more about companies working on the production of algae, I […]

I’m giving a thumbs up to Zap (Zero Air Pollution) for minimizing the bad stuff you and I have to breathe. CNET featured them recently in one of their Green reports.  I have to give them a thumbs down, though, for manufacturing in China.  Isn’t it possible to help the environment while also minimizing our trade deficit?  […]