EcoGeeks

Is Renewable Energy the Biggest Threat to Land Conservation?

Hank Green

renewableconservation I'm a conservationist. I was a conservationist before I was an EcoGeek. There is very little land on earth left in a sem-natural state, and I believe that we should keep as much of that land as natural as possible forever. Unfortunately, that belief does sometimes collide with my belief that we need to increase renewable energy production as fast as possible. The Nature Conservancy estimates that renewable energy will occupy some 73,000 square miles of land by 2030, meaning that renewable energy could be the biggest threat to land conservation in America. The only thing that comes even close is real estate development.

Renewable energy has a leg up on real estate though, because renewable energy projects can be sourced on public lands fairly easily. And these public lands are the very lands that are the only untouched areas of America we have left.

And, of course, this discussion ranges beyond individual projects. A wind power project might be built in the middle of a corn field, but in order to get the power form the corn field to a big city, transmission lines have to be built, and often built through prime wildlife habitat. It's starting to seem like land conservation is the biggest threat to renewable energy as well as vice versa.

So where do we come down?

Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that the 40 year old NEPA process provides a structure for determining the environmental impact of a project on public lands, taking public comments on those projects, and determining whether the project should go forward. Despite some outcry, this process has served America surprisingly well over the last 40 years.

The bad news is that the NEPA process is not what you would call perfect. It can be an extremely long, drawn out process, and if there are significant concerns, it can be held up in court for years. Additionally, as the number of renewable energy projects increase, the staff working these environmental assessments (already strained) will start backlogging projects as we've already seen in many areas of the country.

Renewable energy and conservation both require vast areas of land to be effective, so they are always going to be somewhat at odds. There is no way to avoid this conflict or claim that one always needs to take precedence over the other. It's going to be frustrating to have to watch pristine land get developed, and renewable energy projects get cancelled, but through my experiences in the environmental field, I actually believe we're going to handle this fairly well. Let's hope I'm right.

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Cleantech Now Tops Venture Investing

Megan Treacy

solar-vc
A new report from the Cleantech Group has some reassuring news. Investments in cleantech startups have gone back up and cleantech is now the largest venture capital investment category!

Investments in the sector in North America, Europe, Israel, China and India totaled $1.59 billion across 134 deals in the third quarter of 2009, its second period of recovery after downturns in early 2009 and late 2008.

Government investments in green technology companies likely pushed the sector into the top spot. Tesla Motors, Solyndra and A123Systems were party to the largest deals in cleantech and they were all recipients of significant government funding.

Cleantech claimed 27 percent of all venture capital in the third quarter. Solar took the largest share of that cash with $451 million, transportation (vehicles, biofuels and batteries) came in second with $383 million, and green buildings third with $110 million.

via Cleantech Group

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Dot Eco Domains May Arrive Soon, What Should We Do With Them?

Hank Green

Yes, ICANN is accepting applications for new top-level domains. And, yes, Al Gore (and many others) are championing a new .eco TLD. But what will that actually mean? Will it be just like other TLDs that aren't .com? Subjugated to being a cheaper, less convenient (even if more precise) option like .org, .tv, or .cc? Is there any way to save the .eco domain from that fate or, worse, to have it be a cheap and quick tool for effective greenwahsing?

Al Gore's company, Dot Eco LLC, is planning on snapping up the rights to distribute .eco domain names. All they really bring to the table is a big marketing force (in the form of Gore himself) and a promise to distribute most of the profits to charity. There would be no controls on how the domain would work or who would be able to purchase them.

BigRoom, on the other hand, has some more structured ideas. They would control who could and could not get a .eco domain, much like the .edu domain only allows accredited educational institutions. Of course, this also means that they would have to come up with some kind of accreditation program...and that sounds pretty expensive to me. More likely, they would have each buyer pay for the accreditation, and that would not be cheap. So, in effect, you just create a bunch of really expensive domain names.

They're asking people to help define the .eco policy right now, thought it seems to me that there is never going to be a way to exclude Exxon Mobil while including, say Dell or Apple in an objective way.

The BigRoom people also want the .eco domain names to be one piece of a larger scheme in which companies, organizations and individuals share information about their ecological footprint. But accurately determining this information has proven over and over again to be difficult and expensive. It would be wonderful if they created this system and, in order to determine the greenness of a company, you just had to type in nike.eco, but it seems unlikely to me.

In all probability. ICANN will either just reject the .eco TLD, or it will become just one more in a slew of more-specific but less-useful options for domain purchasers. Of course, that doesn't mean I won't be out there trying to get ecogeek.eco at the first opportunity.

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U.S. Government Report: Global Warming is in Your Backyard

Hank Green

govreport
In a ridiculously fast and intense turn-around from the policy of the last eight years, the U.S. Government has put together a report written by experts from 13 U.S. agencies on the current (not future) effects of global warming. It cites global warming as the cause of increased drought in the southwest, stronger hurricanes and tropical storms, increased flooding, reduced snowpack, increased river temperatures, longer heatwaves, wildfires, and shore erosion.

The purpose of the report is, apparently, to inform the American public that this is not some far-off issue that will maybe effect our kids someday. But, instead, it's having real effects that we can feel right now, which might even include a 10% drop in average wind speeds over the last 30 years.

The report also breaks the effects down into regions and economic sectors. So, based on where you live and who you work for, you'll see how you're already being effected. The worst news seems to be for farmers, which, honestly is pretty bad news for everyone who enjoys eating food. Growing seasons will lengthen throughout the country, but insect infestations and infectious diseases will become more difficult to manage. The biggest scare, however, is that water supplies will continue to run low until irrigation becomes costly or even impossible.

The intensity of these changes, however, is not something that the report is able to go into detail on. While we can see significant changes in migration patters, snowfall, temperature and other key indicators, it's unlikely that we'll know the full impacts of this global weirding until we feel them for ourselves.

Check out the full report and the full press release below.

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The New EcoGeek (Dot Com?)

Hank Green

Welcome to another historic day! That's right, a blog got a redesign! This is actually EcoGeek 3.0...and for those of you who can remember what 1.0 looked like, I give you much respect...I myself can't seem to remember it, like the face of a dead loved one. Or, maybe not quite like that.

So there are a few differences here. One is that we're still wading through some bugs. Bylines aren't working, and neither is search or the newsletter sign up. If you run into any other bugs, please let us know ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with "new ecogeek" in the subject line.)

We've streamlined the commenting process with a new script that will hopefully cut down on the amount of WoW Gold you can buy directly from EcoGeek's comment section. We've upgraded to a version of our CMS (Joomla) that isn't two years old, which should help us implement new features more regularly.

Additionally, EcoGeek Dot Org is finally now just EcoGeek as we recently acquired the dot com, so now when national news media writes about EcoGeek and (invariably) calls it EcoGeek.com, those people will actually find a useful resource (yay!)

We've heard a lot of feedback about the old design in the last year and I like to think that we've taken care of some of the biggest problems. Of course, that doesn't mean I think it's perfect. Please let us know in the comments below what you think of the new design, and if you'd like to get in touch with me directly about the site, please e-mail me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with "new ecogeek" in the subject line.

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Is Renewable Energy the Biggest Threat to Land Conservation?

Cleantech Now Tops Venture Investing

Dot Eco Domains May Arrive Soon, What Should We Do With Them?

U.S. Government Report: Global Warming is in Your Backyard

The New EcoGeek (Dot Com?)

Are you an EcoGeek?

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