Earthtalk is a weekly environmental column made available to our readers from the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: With all the talk of rising seas, what could happen to the rivers that flow into the oceans? Will they reverse flow? Will rising seas back up into fresh water lakes? And what happens to our groundwater should saltwater flow backwards into it?
- Sandy Smith, concerned Michigander

The intrusion of saltwater from the sea into rivers and groundwater is a serious issue, but the threat is not from a reversal of flow, and our far inland lakes and rivers are not expected to be directly affected by the salty water of our oceans. However, the sensitive areas around the edges of our continents, where fresh water meets salt water, are at risk, and greater efforts must be taken to protect them. Some 40 percent of world population lives less than 40 miles (60 kilometers) from the shoreline.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global average sea levels should rise eight to 34 inches by the year 2100, a much faster pace than the four to 10 inch increase of the past century. Seas rise because of higher global temperatures, melting mountain glaciers and polar ice caps, and other factors. Higher temperatures also cause thermal expansion of ocean water, intensifying the problem.

Rising sea levels cause major problems as they erode and flood coastlines and, yes, as they mix salt water with fresh. A November 2007 article in ScienceDaily posited that coastal communities could face significant losses in fresh water supplies as saltwater intrudes inland. And whereas it had been previously assumed that salty water could only intrude underground as far as it did above ground, new studies show that in some cases salt water can go 50 percent further inland underground than it does above ground.

Salty water invading groundwater can reach not only residential water supplies but intakes for agricultural irrigation and industrial uses, as well. Economic effects include loss of coastal fisheries and other industries, coastal protection costs, and the loss of once-valuable coastal property as people move inland.

Estuaries at the mouths of rivers have in the past handled rising ocean levels. Sediment that accumulates along the edge of an estuary can raise the level of the land as the sea levels rise. And mangrove swamps, which buffer many a coastal zone around the world, flourish in brackish conditions. But because of our preference for living in coastal areas, and our habit of re-engineering our surroundings accordingly, humans make matters worse by preventing natural processes from managing the change. On the coast, we build roads and buildings, and replace natural buffers like mangrove swamps with dikes and bulkheads to control flooding, which make the problem worse by preventing beach sediment from collecting. And as we dam rivers and create reservoirs, we trap the sediment that would naturally flow down to the sea.

In some places, changes are happening. Governments are beginning to restrict or prohibit building in setback zones along the coast where risk of erosion is the greatest. A newer policy of “rolling easements” is also being tried, where developers are allowed to build in restricted zones but will be required to remove the structures if and when they become threatened by erosion. The IPCC recommends more drastic actions, such as creating more marshes and wetlands as buffers against the rising level of the sea, and migrating populations and industry away from coastlines altogether.

Contacts:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

————

Dear EarthTalk: Is it better to drive an older, well-maintained car that gets about 25 miles per gallon, or to buy a new car that gets about 35 miles per gallon?
Edward Peabody, via e-mail

It definitely makes more sense from a green perspective to keep your old car running and well-maintained as long as you can—especially if it’s getting such good mileage. There are significant environmental costs to both manufacturing a new automobile and adding your old car to the ever-growing collective junk heap.

A 2004 analysis by Toyota found that as much as 28 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions generated during the lifecycle of a typical gasoline-powered car can occur during its manufacture and its transportation to the dealer; the remaining emissions occur during driving once its new owner takes possession. An earlier study by Seikei University in Japan put the pre-purchase number at 12 percent.

Regardless of which conclusion is closer to the truth, your current car has already passed its manufacture and transport stage, so going forward the relevant comparison has only to do with its remaining footprint against that of a new car’s manufacture/transport and driver’s footprint—not to mention the environmental impact of either disposing of your old car or selling it to a new owner who will continue to drive it. There are environmental impacts, too, even if your old car is junked, dismantled and sold for parts.

And don’t forget that the new hybrids—despite lower emissions and better gas mileage—actually have a much larger environmental impact in their manufacture, compared to non-hybrids. The batteries that store energy for the drive train are no friend to the environment—and having two engines under one hood increases manufacturing emissions. And all-electric vehicles are only emission-free if the outlet providing the juice is connected to a renewable energy source, not a coal-burning power plant, as is more likely.

If you want to assess your current car’s fuel efficiency or emissions, there are many services available online. The government website FuelEconomy.gov provides fuel efficiency stats for hundreds of different vehicles dating back to 1985. Websites TrackYourGasMileage.com and MPGTune.com can help you track your mileage and provide ongoing tips to improve fuel efficiency for your specific make and model vehicle. MyMileMarker.com takes it a step further, making projections about annual mileage, fuel costs and fuel efficiency based on your driving habits. If you have an iPhone, you can keep track of your car’s carbon footprint with the new “Greenmeter App” from Hunter Research and Technologies. The program uses numerous variables to make its calculations on-the-go as you drive, including weather conditions, cost of fuel, vehicle weight, and more.

If you simply must change your vehicle, be it for fuel efficiency or any other reason, one option is to simply buy a used car that gets better gas mileage than your existing one. There’s much to be said, from many environmental vantage points, about postponing replacement purchases—of anything, not just cars—to keep what’s already made out of the waste stream and to delay the additional environmental costs of making something new.

Contacts:
FuelEconomy.gov
TrackYourMileage.com
MPGTune.com
MyMileMarker.com
Greenmeter App

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION?

• Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881
• Submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk[at]emagazine.com.
• Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.

E - The Environmental Magazine

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Rising seas, Sea level rise and climate change

New laws pertaining to 'green' issues are predicted to be the fourth most important legal trend in 2009. That's what the experts at the legal site Findlaw.com recently announced. The consultancy, owned by Reuters, released a top ten of legal hot topics for 2009 which also lists urban living, employee rights, military rights and legal issues impacting small business as hotly pursued.

Green legal issues, which dominated early in 2008 because of the high price of fuel, a rising awareness of environment issues like climate change, and the election campaign, are set to become much more important during 2009, the lawyers say. They predict that their clients will especially seek advice about legislative issues supporting the creation and growth of "green" industries such as alternative energy, climate and automobiles. The growth is spurred by President elect Barack Obama's call for the rise of a green collar sector. Mr. Obama singled out a goal to create a Roosevelt-style public works program which will result in many unprecedented issues and situations.

FindLaw experts say that 2009 will be the year of many controversies. Hotly contested and integral consumer issues centering on green laws and employee rights, military rights and internet privacy laws are going to be standard routine, the lawyers believe. All the elements leading to precarious situations are already emerging. For instance, joblessness is climbing, which means that job seekers increasingly are going to rely on online social networks. That in turn may call for legislative action to further protect individual rights and secure personal information.

"In addition, with the new administration taking office in January, returning military personnel will continue to drive demand for information around military rights", the lawyers predict.

There’s a lot of negative news regarding the costs of government efforts to reduce global warming. But scientists in Europe have published research which shows that by focusing on lowering temperatures, rather than on reducing CO2 emissions, sizable cost benefits are achieved.

The researchers, from Germany and the Netherlands, published an article in The Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) in which they say they're confident that global governments stand a 90 percent chance of limiting temperature rises to 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures if they invest 2 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP) in climate mitigation packages from 2005 until the year 2100.

Among climate change research, the general approach taken is to set a future level of CO2 emissions and then infer the implied emissions pathways. But the Dutch and German scientists based their calculations on a predetermined ceiling for future temperature rises.This makes more sense, says Michiel Schaeffer, the report's lead author who’s attached to Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He explains that cost estimates associated with limiting a predetermined level of carbon emissions often rise rapidly, even exponentially, as the scale of emission reductions from a reference level increases. It’s much easier to look at the bright side and focus on temperature reductions and the success levels achieved.

Schaeffer also believes that looking at the problems from a temperature point of view is more relevant for real-life impacts other than CO2.

"[Co2] concentrations don't tell you that much about what happens in terms of rainfall … or to society," Schaeffer told a Reuters journalist.

You might wonder whether this is really true or relevant. After all, aren't we faced with a certain, undeniable level of CO2 in the air that simply needs scrubbing out? But at the decision-maker level, working with a global mean temperature as the normative target changes the game considerably. It's all a matter of math, the scientists show. The qualitative relationship between the likelihood of achieving temperature decreases and the costs of climate change mitigation is positive. Mitigation costs rise proportionally to the likelihood of meeting a temperature target across a range of concentration levels.

Climate targets simply have “constant returns to scale”. The reason is that there is a counterbalancing rapid rise in the probabilities of meeting a temperature target as concentration is lowered, the scientists say.

And they have the numbers to support this. Massive initial investments are needed to book successes at slowing temperature rises. But after a certain level of achievement has been reached, the costs will have positive returns on warming. The researchers point out that early investment of only 0.5 percent of world GDP (approximately what the EU currently spends) will not nearly be enough because there’s only a 10 percent chance that temperatures actually decline by 2 degrees. Increasing the initial investments to one percent of GDP yields a 40 percent chance of success. Only if 2% of global GDP is spent on the environment do we arrive at a scenario which ensures a 90% chance of successfully reducing temperature rises by 2%.

Costs might be high initially, but if all works to plan, they won't spiral out of control afterwards. Most governments expect the opposite. They fear that the higher the initial costs, the higher the future expenditure will be too.

"It gets easier once the world gets going ," according to Schaeffer.

Clean coal? (not in Tennessee - not even close)
Following are scenes of the areas affected in Tennessee by the TVA pond breach last week, with interviews of people living in the area. The video is from Knoxnews.com

Latest news on the TVA coal disaster:
At Plant in Coal Ash Spill, Toxic Deposits by the Ton - New York Times
Ash flood may change way TVA handles coal waste - Associated Press
EPA: Rivers high in arsenic, heavy metals after sludge spill - CNN
Bloggers on TVA's toxic spill - Knoxnews.com

Technorati Tags:
coal, TVA coal disaster, fly ash pond breach, TVA toxic spill

Earthtalk is a weekly environmental column made available to our readers from the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: How much “old growth” forest is left in the United States and is it all protected from logging at this point?
– John Foye, via e-mail

As crazy as it sounds, no one really knows how much old growth is left in America’s forested regions, mainly because various agencies and scientists have different ideas about how to define the term. Generally speaking, “old growth” refers to forests containing trees often hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years old. But even when there is agreement on a specific definition, differences in the methods used to inventory remaining stands of old growth forest can produce major discrepancies. Or so complains the National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry (NCSSF) in its recent report, “Beyond Old Growth: Older Forests in a Changing World.”

In 1991, for example, the U.S. Forest Service and the nonprofit Wilderness Society each released its own inventory of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest and northern California. They both used the Forest Service’s definition based on the number, age and density of large trees per acre, the characteristics of the forest canopy, the number of dead standing trees and fallen logs and other criteria. However, because each agency used different remote sensing techniques to glean data, the Forest Service came up with 4.3 million acres of old-growth and the Wilderness Society found only two million acres.

The NCSSF also studied the data, and they concluded that 3.5 million acres (or six percent) of the region’s 56.8 million acres of forest qualified as old growth—that is, largely trees over 30 inches in diameter with complex forest canopies. By broadening the definition to include older forest with medium-diameter trees and both simple and complex canopies, NCSSF said their figure would go up substantially.

In other parts of the country, less than one percent of Northeast forest is old growth, though mature forests that will become old growth in a few decades are more abundant. The Southeast has even less acreage—a 1993 inventory found about 425 old growth sites across the region, equaling only a half a percent of total forest area. The Southwest has only a few scattered pockets of old-growth (mostly Ponderosa Pine), but for the most part is not known for its age-old trees. Old-growth is even scarcer in the Great Lakes.

It is hard to say whether the remaining pockets of scattered old-growth in areas besides the Pacific Northwest will remain protected, but environmentalists are working hard to save what they can in northern California, Oregon and Washington. The outgoing Bush administration recently announced plans to increase logging across Oregon’s remaining old-growth reserves by some 700 percent, in effect overturning the landmark Northwest Forest Plan of 1994 that set aside most of the region’s remaining old growth as habitat for the endangered spotted owl.

Protecting remaining old-growth is important for many reasons. “These areas provide some of the cleanest drinking water in the world, critical salmon and wildlife habitat, world-class recreational opportunities and critical carbon storage in our fight against global warming,” says Jonathan Jelen of the nonprofit Oregon Wild, adding that as much as 20 percent of the emissions related to global warming can be attributed to deforestation and poor forest management. “A growing body of evidence is showing the critical role that forests—and old-growth forests in particular—can play in mitigating climate change.”

Contacts:
NCSSF
Oregon Wild

————

Dear EarthTalk: Is it true that some baby bottles contain chemicals that can cause health problems for babies? If so, how can I find alternatives that are safer?
– Amy Gorman, Berkeley, CA

No links connecting specific human illnesses to chemicals oozing out of baby bottles have been proven definitively. Nonetheless, many parents are heeding the call of scientists to switch to products with less risk. A 2008 report by American and Canadian environmental researchers entitled “Baby’s Toxic Bottle” found that plastic polycarbonate baby bottles leach dangerous levels of Bisphenol-A (BPA), a synthetic chemical that mimics natural hormones and can send bodily processes into disarray, when heated.

All six of the leading brands of baby bottles tested—Avent, Disney/The First Years, Dr. Brown’s, Evenflo, Gerber and Playtex—leaked what researchers considered dangerous amounts of BPA. The report calls on major retailers selling these bottles—including Toys “R” Us, Babies “R” Us, CVS, Target, Walgreens and Wal-Mart—to switch to safer products.

According to the report, BPA is a “developmental, neural and reproductive toxicant that mimics estrogen and can interfere with healthy growth and body function.” Researchers cite numerous animal studies demonstrating that the chemical can damage reproductive, neurological and immune systems during critical stages of development. It has also been linked to breast cancer and to the early onset of puberty.

So what’s a concerned parent to do? Glass bottles are a tried-and-true chemical-free solution, and they are widely available, though very breakable. To the rescue are several companies making BPA-free plastic bottles (out of either PES/polyamide or polypropylene instead of polycarbonate). Some of the leaders are BornFree, thinkbaby, Green to Grow, Nuby, Momo Baby, Mother’s Milkmate and Medela’s. These brands are available at natural foods stores, directly from manufacturers, or from online vendors.

Most of the major brands selling BPA-containing bottles are now also offering or planning to offer BPA-free versions of their products. Consumers should read labels and packaging carefully to make sure that any product they are considering buying says unequivocally that it does not contain the chemical.

Unfortunately, switching to a BPA-free bottle is no guarantee the chemical won’t make its way into your baby’s bloodstream anyway. BPA is one of the 50 most-produced chemicals in the world. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), it is used in everything from plastic water jugs labeled #7 to plastic take-out containers, baby bottles and canned food liners. It is so omnipresent that the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) has found that 95 percent of Americans have the chemical in their urine.

Also, nursing mothers—especially those who haven’t discarded their old BPA-containing Nalgene water bottles—may be passing the chemical along through their breast milk. And if that weren’t enough, BPA is also used in the lining of many metal liquid baby formula cans. The nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) has posted email links to the consumer affairs offices of the major formula manufacturers so concerned parents can ask them to remove BPA from their product offerings and packaging.

Contacts:
Baby’s Toxic Bottle Report (pdf)
NRDC,
CDC
EWG

Image Credits: Streaminspector, courtesy Flickr and Getty Images

Got an Environmental Question?

• Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881
• Submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk[at]emagazine.com.
• Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.

E - The Environmental Magazine

Technorati Tags:
earth talk, old growth forest, baby bottle safety

The physical beauty of Guatemala's Lake Amatitlan is known to many, and growing, numbers of people. One of many such mountain valley lakes, Lake Amatitlan is situated a relatively short distance from burgeoning Guatemala City. Hence, it's suffered more than more remote, hard to get to lakes from human generated land degradation, pollution and waste. The same volcanic forces that led to the creation of the the lake and its surrounding, mineral and nutrient rich soils are also pointing the way towards a more sustainable and healthy future, however.

Japanese and the Inter-American Development Bank were among the first international development organizations to undertake geologic surveying and mapping of the Amatitlan regions's potential geothermal resources, with the latter eventually putting together a request for proposals and financing to develop them.

Clean, Renewable Power

Enter Nevada-based Ormat Technologies which was awarded the contract to build and operate a 20-plus megawatt geothermal power plant that taps into Amatitlan's underlying geothermal hot zone.

Commissioned in 2004, the plant, initially expected to produce clean, renewable power for 20 years, results in some 83,000 less metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions that would have otherwise fouled the area's air and waters if fossil fuel power had been used. It may eventually be scaled up to as much as 50 MW, electricity that's being sold to the Institutio Nacional de Electrificatio, the Guatemalan electric utility, as per the terms of a long term power purchase agreement.

A pioneer in the development and use of emerging new geothermal engineering and technology, Ormat on December 23, announced that the executive board of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on Dec. 12 approved and officially registered the Amatitlan Geothermal Project under the Clean Development Mechanism.

It's the first project in Guatemala, as well as for Ormat, to obtain CDM approval, which means the project qualifies for CDM certified emission reduction credits. These–one for each metric ton of CO2 avoided– have in turn been sold under a long-term contract to a European buyer, according to the company's media release. They are also eligible for trading in the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme.

Ormat also built, and jointly owns and operates the 24 MW binary cycle Zunil I Binary Geothermal power plant in Guatemala, which uses brine and water as heat sinks in a two-phase process. Zunil I has been in operation since 1999.

"This registration is a major encouragement for Ormat to continue developing additional geothermal CDM eligible projects worldwide. Even looking beyond the benefit it provides for Ormat, it is an arrangement with far-reaching advantages that will allow for developing host countries to gain access to cost effective, clean and reliable base-load power, that will help reduce their dependency on imported fuels and on rainfall required to sustain their Hydro reservoirs," Ormat chairman Lucien Bronicki said of the Amatitlan project qualifying for CDM accreditation.

A new Canadian neighborhood is North America's first solar-powered community.  The community, named the Drake Landing Solar Community (DLSC) is located in the town of Okotoks, Alberta, and consists of 52 houses all powered by solar (what else?) energy.

The system that links the community together is ingenious. It stores the summer months’ excess energy underground for it to be put to use in the extremely cold winter months that Alberta is notorious for. A total of 800 solar panels located on garage roofs throughout the community generate 1.5 megawatts of thermal power during a typical summer day, the project’s organizers say.

They started testing on June 21 last year, the summer solstice. It was a glorious day and the first results were that the stored energy captured was exactly as had been calculated. Now the engineers say that in five years' time they'll be able to capture enough summer energy to provide more than 90% of the space heating needs of the homes during the winter months. The houses sold like hot cakes and the last one was occupied in October this year. 

DLSC's underground energy storage system is unique in the world. Dubbed the Borehole Thermal Energy Storage (BTES), the unit links all the newly built, single detached homes together. The rest of the building efforts have been as green as possible and the entire community has been awarded gold-certified status under the Built Green Alberta program. That program in turn is modeled on NRCan’s EnerGuide for New Houses Program. All of them have rear garages separated from the houses via a breezeway. The best news is of course the low carbon footprint of the people that occupy the houses. A typical household will generate only  1 to 2 tonnes of greenhouse gas annually, compared to an average Canadian footprint of around 6 to 7 tonnes per home a year, according to a report on YellowsandBlues.com.

Image Credit: www.DLSC.ca

A book just out reveals that investors have already allocated over US$5trillion to sustainable investment strategies. This could kick-start an economic recovery strategy, according to the writers of the book, entitled Sustainable Investing: The Art of Long-Term Performance.

Authors Cary Krosinsky is vice president for Trucost Plc. Nick Robins is head of the HSBC Climate Change Centre of Excellence, believe that up to a quarter of public equities, as well as corporate and government bonds, (estimated to be worth US$120 trillion in 2006) are partly exposed to sustainable issues such as environmental goals and social imperatives. The investment in these types of instruments helps finance a resurgent and more resilient global economy, the authors assert.

Sustainable investment is becoming the trend and accelerating this are attractive returns. The asset class outperformed mainstream indices between December 2002 and December 2007, returning +18.7%, on average. By comparison, the MSCI World Index returned +17%, whilst the S&P 500 Index returned +13.2% and the FTSE 100 Index returned +13.0%.

Interesting examples of sustainable investment vehicles the book cites include the Winslow Green Growth Fund, which significantly outperformed silver specialist Warren Buffett’s holding company Berkshire Hathaway, registering 200% growth compared to Buffet’s 100%.

Commenting on his inclusion in the book, Jackson Robinson, Portfolio Manager for The Winslow Green Growth Fund, says that he believes that the green economy “offers one of the most promising paths to economic recovery, and therefore continues to appear very attractive to us as a long-term investment opportunity.”

That pretty much sums up the book’s message. The authors make the case for a long term growth trend of the sustainable investing funds in general. They believe that investors on the look-out for superior risk-adjusted returns do best to incorporate long-term environmental, social and economic trends within investment and ownership decision-making, rather than following the short-term strategies that have brought the global economy to its knees.

According to Nick Robins,

whether they are huge pension funds or individual savers, investors are looking for strategies that offer long-term security– and sustainable investing provides the answer. As the world seeks to stimulate an economic recovery, sustainable investing in clean technologies, microfinance and social enterprise offer proven routes to generating wealth and resolving pressing problems such as climate change and global poverty.”

The book is published by Earthscan.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Stephen Johnson released a 19-page memo last Thursday claiming that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant subject to regulation when permitting coal-fired power plants.

Johnson's reasoning goes against a ruling made by his own agency, when the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board rejected a permit from a regional EPA office in Denver for a 110 megawatt plant on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in Utah. The three-judge panel denied the permit saying that the regional office failed to support its decision to approve the plant without requiring it to have the best CO2 controls available, further directing the office to think again about its determination that the controls not be put in place.

Johnson's memorandum of last Thursday uses the very same logic that EPA Appeals Board rejected from the Denver office last November.

The board's decision is also in accordance with the 2007 Supreme Court Ruling directing the EPA to regulate CO2 as a pollutant.

None of this stopped Administrator Johnson from his "…11th hour …transparently cynical attempt to tie the hands of the incoming administration and prevent Clean Air Act regulation of global warming pollution", said John Walke, director of Natural Resources Defense Council's Clean Air Program.

It’s a marvel to behold an EPA action that so utterly disdains global warming responsibility and disdains the law at the same time,” said Walke. “EPA’s administrator is defying the agency’s own judges, the Clean Air Act, and the course of history that recognizes the urgency in tackling global warming.”

Johnson issued his memo just one day after scientists at the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union warned that the degree humanity effectively deals with climate change is the degree to which we deal with coal. A major concern is that as oil and gas reserves decline, instead of naturally limiting greenhouse gas emissions as some have thought, it will lead to development of coal-to-liquid technologies and and unconventional fossil fuels such as methane hydrates, tar sands, oil shale. Coal and unconventional fuels are by far the dirtiest in terms of emissions per unit of energy output.

Limiting coal burning and avoiding the use of liquified coal use, while developing as rapidly as possible renewable energy sources, is essential to avoid possible catastrophic consequences of global warming.

Addressing the climate problem means addressing the coal problem," said Ken Caldeira, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "Whether there's a little more oil or a little less oil will change the details, but if we want to change the overall shape of the warming curve, it matters what we do with coal."

It apparently doesn't matter to outgoing EPA administrator Stephen Johnson. "Outgoing" is the bright spot in this story. I've made it no secret what I (and many, many others) think of Stephen Johnson's tenure at the EPA.

NRDC's John Walke sums it up:

The ultimate consolation, however, is that today’s EPA offense is so ham-handed, so divorced from the law, that it can and should be reversed by the Obama administration with the stroke of a pen.”

I'm not sure who I'll miss more. George Bush or Stephen Johnson.

Listen to NASA scientist Dr. Pushker Kharecha discuss various carbon futures

Stephen Johnson's full memorandum

Europeans are far ahead compared to North Americans when it comes to adopting green living standards by large groups and local communities. The case of the Danish Island of Samso is a brilliant example of how a self sufficient lifestyle can be adopted by a community within a relatively short space of time.

The island, located in central Denmark, is home to 4,000 people who by collaborating are not only totally self sufficient,  but are generating more power than they're using because of unexpected strong winds. The island is run entirely on renewable energy generated by wind turbines placed in green fields as well as in the surrounding coastal waters of the North Sea. The houses in which the inhabitants live are heated with natural resources such as rye, wheat and straw. The roofs are paneled neatly with solar panels. All this has been completed in the last decade. A report by Reuters comments that Samso is living proof to the rest of the world that there is ‘an effective way to deal with the carbon problem’.

What’s particularly amazing is that the islanders have done it all without any government loans or subsidies. The individual households coughed up the 400 million Danish crown ($84.35 million) investment in renewable energy all by themselves. The investment averages at just over $20,000 per citizen, which is rather hefty.

The outside world meanwhile is eager to find out all the ins and outs of how the community got their act together so fast. Visitors to Samso will find that the inhabitants have put in plenty of effort to achieve self-sufficiency. One islander, a self-styled 'milk producer' called Jorgen Tranberg, says what’s most important is that you have determination and can-do spirit. That, plus a solid economic basis makes it possible, according to Tranberg.

He says he's also the owner of a number of wind turbines that operate at top capacity, which probably amounts to a seizeable portion of that economic basis. Owning shares in the wind turbines is a lucrative issue because they are going around at 10 to 15% higher speeds than originally anticipated. This literal windfall bonus also will reduce the amount of time needed for the turbines to pay back the investment, originally believed to be eight to ten years. The Samso Energy Academy calculated that a wind turbine generates about 500 crowns per year in income but in reality it might be more than that thanks to the wind. Tranberg also said that commitment amounted to attending plenty of meetings to discuss ongoing issues as well as advice from outside experts with other community members.

The island's fame is spreading because of a popular song called Energy Island, which you can listen to here.

Image Credit: Reuters