BIG HOME BUILDER GOES SOLAR
One of the nation's biggest home builders, Lennar Homes, has announced
it will be installing solar power systems in all of its new homes in the
San Francisco Bay Area. The "standard" solar package makes use of
PowerLight "Sun Tiles" by SunPower. These solar tiles integrate into a
roof of a home just like regular tiles. In its promotional video and
related materials, SunPower boasts that homeowners will experience
savings of 40% to 50% on their energy bills as a result of installing
its solar tiles. The company also notes that homes such as those in the
Milano community employ a variety of energy-saving technologies. These
include double-pane windows, high-performance insulation, low-wattage
lighting systems and other features.
http://www.treehugger.com/
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HOW TO BE A GREEN BANKER
NY TIMES - Under a proposed $45 billion buyout by a team of private
equity firms, the TXU Corporation, a Texas utility that has long been
the bane of environmental groups, will abandon plans to build 8 of 11
coal plants and commit to a broad menu of environmental measures. . .
People involved in the negotiations said that Goldman Sachs, an adviser
and lender to the buyers, helped broker peace with environmental groups
and sought their support for the transaction. Goldman Sachs has been one
of the most aggressive firms on Wall Street about taking action on
climate change; the company sends its bankers home at night in hybrid
limousines.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/business/25coal.html?
ex=1330059600&en=69077db1c860173d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
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AN INDIAN LOOKS AT CLIMATE CHANGE
C.E. KARUNAKARAN, FRONTLINE, INDIA - "I'll tell you one thing I'm not
going to do is, I'm not going to let the United States carry the burden
for cleaning up the world's air, like the Kyoto Treaty would have done.
China and India were exempted from that treaty." So said the then
presidential hopeful, George W. Bush, in October 2000, to Al Gore, in a
televised debate. Al Gore could have responded, "I am sure you would be
happy to let the United States carry the responsibility for polluting
the world's air the most." He did not, being the other presidential
hopeful.
After all, Al Gore, who only three years earlier represented the U.S. in
the Kyoto discussions and had authored a book on global warming, could
not have been unaware of what Andrew Kerr of the World Wide Fund for
Nature pointed out: "The United States is responsible for almost half of
the increase in world carbon dioxide in the past decade. That increase
is greater than the increase in China, India, Africa and the whole of
Latin America."
Nor could he have been unaware that with a little over 4 per cent of the
world's population, the U.S. was responsible for 35 per cent of the
total historic emissions of carbon dioxide - the principal driver of
global warming - in the post-industrial era. Or about the fact that the
average American was then emitting seven times as much carbon dioxide as
the average Chinese and 20 times as much as the average Indian. But
then, he refrained from pointing this out in the debate, or for that
matter any time after that, including in his latest movie An
Inconvenient Truth - a commendable effort that has initiated more public
debate in the U.S. on the seriousness of the climate change issue than
probably any other single trigger before it.
To describe climate change as serious is now generally accepted to be an
understatement - catastrophic is more like it. It is variously described
as the ultimate weapon of mass destruction and a threat worse than
terrorism or nuclear war. To understand why it is so, one should look at
some basic facts. Global warming is caused primarily by the very
foundation on which modern civilization is built - the burning of coal,
oil and gas. So much so, a real solution to the problem would include
lifestyle changes, something that goes against the grain of the consumer
culture and the socio-economic system built on it. Our earth has not
seen anything like this build-up of carbon dioxide for over half a
million years. If this continues, by the end of the century the earth
will be hotter than at any other time in the last two million years. . .
AN INDIAN LOOKS AT CLIMATE CHANGE
C.E. KARUNAKARAN, FRONTLINE, INDIA - "I'll tell you one thing I'm not
going to do is, I'm not going to let the United States carry the burden
for cleaning up the world's air, like the Kyoto Treaty would have done.
China and India were exempted from that treaty." So said the then
presidential hopeful, George W. Bush, in October 2000, to Al Gore, in a
televised debate. Al Gore could have responded, "I am sure you would be
happy to let the United States carry the responsibility for polluting
the world's air the most." He did not, being the other presidential
hopeful.
After all, Al Gore, who only three years earlier represented the U.S. in
the Kyoto discussions and had authored a book on global warming, could
not have been unaware of what Andrew Kerr of the World Wide Fund for
Nature pointed out: "The United States is responsible for almost half of
the increase in world carbon dioxide in the past decade. That increase
is greater than the increase in China, India, Africa and the whole of
Latin America."
Nor could he have been unaware that with a little over 4 per cent of the
world's population, the U.S. was responsible for 35 per cent of the
total historic emissions of carbon dioxide - the principal driver of
global warming - in the post-industrial era. Or about the fact that the
average American was then emitting seven times as much carbon dioxide as
the average Chinese and 20 times as much as the average Indian. But
then, he refrained from pointing this out in the debate, or for that
matter any time after that, including in his latest movie An
Inconvenient Truth - a commendable effort that has initiated more public
debate in the U.S. on the seriousness of the climate change issue than
probably any other single trigger before it.
To describe climate change as serious is now generally accepted to be an
understatement - catastrophic is more like it. It is variously described
as the ultimate weapon of mass destruction and a threat worse than
terrorism or nuclear war. To understand why it is so, one should look at
some basic facts. Global warming is caused primarily by the very
foundation on which modern civilization is built - the burning of coal,
oil and gas. So much so, a real solution to the problem would include
lifestyle changes, something that goes against the grain of the consumer
culture and the socio-economic system built on it. Our earth has not
seen anything like this build-up of carbon dioxide for over half a
million years. If this continues, by the end of the century the earth
will be hotter than at any other time in the last two million years. . .
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/stories/20070309003802500.htm
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