 Stories from September 5, 2008
In Brief
Snippets from the news
• Highway repair fund, paid for with gas-tax revenue, is nearly depleted.• Want to put stinkweed in your tank?• Climate change could harm giant sequoias.• Engineers unveil new generation of tidal turbines.• Power outages from hurricanes hamper gasoline production.• Iraqi marshes thought to be site of Garden of Eden will be a World Heritage Site.&bull Pyrenees glaciers may melt by 2050.
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2008, Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved
You Be Gorillin'
Cameroon and Nigeria team up to protect endangered gorilla
Cameroon and Nigeria will partner up to protect the world's most endangered gorilla under an agreement facilitated by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Only some 300 Cross River gorillas remain, all of which live only in those two Central African countries. Gorilla gorilla diehli is threatened by illegal logging, agricultural conversion of its habitat, and poaching for the bushmeat trade. Cameroon and Nigeria will work to increase monitoring of the gorillas, educate and involve surrounding communities in conservation, and improve law enforcement.
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2008, Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved
It's a Fiesta, But You're Not Invited
Ford won't sell 65-mpg diesel car in U.S.
The Ford Fiesta ECOnetic, a small, sporty five-seater that gets an impressive 65 miles per gallon, will the hit the road in November -- but only in Europe. "We just don't think North and South America would buy that many diesel cars," says Ford America President Mark Fields. The new generation of diesel cars, which are dramatically cleaner than old-school diesels and are at least 30 percent more fuel-efficient than gas-powered vehicles, haven't managed to shake Americans' longstanding aversion to the fuel: only 3 percent of cars in the U.S. are diesel-powered. But other automakers are betting that Americans can be swayed. Mercedes-Benz will by next year have three diesel vehicles on the market, and a handful of other automakers will introduce diesel models to the U.S. in 2010.
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2008, Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved
Pumpe It Up
Germany opens world's first carbon-capturing 'clean coal' demo plant
Germany will next week open the world's first "clean coal" plant actually ready to capture and store its carbon-dioxide emissions. The 30-megawatt, $100 million Schwarze Pumpe demonstration plant will burn coal in an atmosphere of oxygen instead of regular air, producing some 10 tons per hour of compressed CO2 that can be captured and buried under a depleted gas field. (Such "oxyfuel combustion" technology is different from the integrated gasification combined cycle systems being pursued in the U.S.) While the project is a step forward for "clean coal," a full-scale system is many years and many dollars away. By the by, "clean coal" is both oxymoronic and plain ol' moronic; as one Greenpeace activist sums up, "Our concern is that this technology is used to justify the construction of more coal power plants. It's too expensive, it will come too late, and it will divert money from the real solutions, renewable energies and energy efficiency." Not to mention that whole leveling-mountains thing.
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2008, Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved
They've Had Their Fill
Half of GM's manufacturing plants to go "landfill-free" by 2010
Automaker GM is planning to make half of its 181 manufacturing plants worldwide "landfill-free" by 2011 through initiatives to reuse or recycle some 90 percent of its waste, according to USA Today. The not-reused, not-recycled portion of the waste would potentially be incinerated to produce energy. GM has yet to formally announce the program, but USA Today reports that the company already has 10 "landfill-free" plants in operation and a spokesperson told the paper that another 80 plants will likely meet the no-landfill-waste goal sometime in 2010. GM, along with other U.S. automakers, has been struggling financially lately as high gasoline prices have substantially curtailed SUV sales that had been a central part of its business model. Automakers that have focused on offering greener vehicles, such as Honda and Toyota, have lately fared much better than GM whose green-car offerings are still quite slim. However, GM has focused its efforts on developing one green car, the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid slated for release sometime in the next few years when battery technology catches up to GM's design.
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2008, Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved
You, Shale, Know Our Velocity!
BLM finalizes plan for leasing oil shale in U.S. West
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has finalized plans to open some 1.9 million acres of public lands in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming to oil-shale development, a necessary step on the road to tapping the vast reserves. The technology for turning oil shale into usable crude oil is energy-intensive and heavily polluting, but the Bush administration has pushed to clear the way for exploiting U.S. oil-shale deposits in the name of energy independence; oil-shale deposits in the three states could hold up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. However, the processes for developing oil-shale deposits are still largely in the experimental stage so the full extent of the process's impacts on air quality, water quality, and wildlife in the area are as yet poorly understood. Environmentalists and Democrats in the region criticized the BLM's plan as misguided and premature. "Finalizing an environmental impact statement without any clear understanding of the environmental, community, economic, and energy impacts of commercial-scale oil shale development is irresponsible, short-sighted, and premature," said Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D).
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2008, Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved
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