Cellulosic Ethanol
Last month, for the first time in history, the cars racing in the Indianapolis 500 were fueled by pure ethanol. This should put to rest any concerns about ethanol lacking sufficient energy density to function as a motor fuel. Corn ethanol, distilled from corn mash, is not the end of biofuel, it is just the beginning of biofuel. Even the impressive global production of ethanol from sugar cane is easily eclipsed by the potential of cellulosic extraction. So what is cellulosic ethanol, where does it come from, how can it be produced, and how long will it be before meaningful quantities of this fuel arrive at the corner filling station?

Desalination Is Here!
The promise of desalination, smart irrigation, and advanced water recycling techniques, in aggregate bestow the potential of water abundance at a level and quality unimaginable a few decades ago. Technology and free markets create wealth and abundance, which happens when businesses compete for customers, never through punitive rationing. Defining what is clean sets crucial ground rules, but only free markets create abundance. And as we determine what is clean, we must remember that special interests will set the bar so high that nothing is clean enough, that only an endless and futile war, only socialist misery, is an acceptible moral choice. But is this true? Global resource abundance could be just around the corner thanks to desalination, drip irrigation, advanced water recycling, urbanization, population stablization, clean fossil fuel, clean nuclear power, as well as alternative energy where and when it is competitive. Will humanity seize this bright and prosperous future...

China's Africa Projects
China brings to the Africans infrastructure projects that are, arguably, at lower cost and with fewer conditions than any other nation. They are now 2nd only to the United States as Africa's largest trading partner, and according to Columbia University economist Jeffery Sachs, "China gives fewer lectures and more practical help and thus offers Africa something new, a straightforward business relationship between equals based on mutual interest and non-interference in the internal affairs of its allies." And as Zulu Chief Buthelezi once said, "we cannot fight for freedom if we have no bread." Civil engineering infrastructure is the backbone of wealth, and with wealth inevitably comes the desire and the means to build democracy...

Media Hysteria
Arctic summer sea ice registers the smallest aerial extent in history, Greenland and Antarctica ice is melting at accelerating rates, paleoclimate proxies indicate current warming is unprecedented for thousands of years, and your community will be under water by the end of the century. We are within a decade of the tipping point of irrecoverable warming. These sample headlines in recent months can compel the unknowing to follow the leading alarmists' cries for CO2 action. Even agnostics and some cynics resign themselves to heed these cries as an insurance policy just in case there is some chance of climate impact. We are bombarded every day with alarmist global warming headlines, giving credence to scientific consensus and draconian mitigation policies. Are these headlines distorting reality? Yes. And worse, they are often completely false...

Who Watches the Watchers?
Is scientific peer review a way to challenge and expose conclusions that aren't clearly indicated by the underlying data, or has peer review become precisely the opposite - a way to exclude contrarian notions? Who will watch the watchers, when the watchers are our scientists, whose currency of reason is so arcane, so specialized and diverse, that nobody, not even among the scientists themselves, has sufficient credentials to question the conventional wisdom? The first step is to remember the fallibility of scientific inquiry, to restore the innate and vital skepticism of journalists, and to remind the public that debate is the crucible of truth. To that end, read on...

India's Population
It isn't if technology can deliver abundant water and energy, nor whether or not the ineluctable trends of slower population growth and eventual decline, combined with urbanization, will deliver abundant land. The question is when and how, and nowhere is that question more revealing than in India. The challenge is daunting, but possibilities for positive outcomes are real. India's tradition of democracy, combined with India's status as one of the leading global centers of technology innovation, may bring abundance to her shores far sooner than anyone has yet imagined...

China's Corn & Ethanol
Global population stablization and urbanization - well documented trends - combined with technological innovation, are going to lead to abundance of land, energy and water within a generation. And hopefully when that occurs, tropical rainforests will regenerate even faster than they were lost. Biofuel today definitely has negative side effects, but when biofuel is grown in an enclosed reactor in a factory, and food of the highest quality is grown in urban highrise farms using recycled water, we will know these innovations came about because we saw what we were doing, and adapted....

The Chevy Volt EREV
The Chevy Volt is an integral part of GM's strategy to "take the car out of the environmental equation," according to GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz. Only 67 weeks ago GM announced the Volt concept car, and if all goes according to plan, in only 138 weeks this revolutionary vehicle will be in dealer showrooms. Is this for real? Will they be ready? Last week, GM hosted about 80 journalists from around the world to provide an on-site update on the progress of the Volt, guiding us through several venues at their Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. The significance of GM's Chevy Volt is not easily overstated...

The 25x'25 Alliance
If you have boundless faith in the power of technology, innovation, and free enterprise, like we do, it shouldn't seem difficult to accomplish the goal of generating 25% of all energy from renewable sources by 2025. The real question would be which sources might dominate: biofuel, solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, ocean waves, currents and tides - who knows? Fusion? The devil is in the details, however, hence sustainability principles are very, very important as we rush to completely transform the global energy industry with renewables...

The Grand Oasis:
EcoWorld's 2008 EcoTour Survey
Have you ever looked a beautiful pristine place shining brightly on your computer's screensaver and thought how much you would like to be there right now? There really is something out there for anyone. A jungle safari might appeal to the more adventurous while a leisurely cruise would seem more appealing to someone who just wants to sit back and relax. The difference between an eco-tour and booking a trip on your own is that an eco-tour allows the traveler to give something back to the country that they visit. ...

A Case Against Climate Alarm
Dramatic and positive global economic and technological developments, along with voluntary and irreversible demographic trends, are about to deliver us a future where we enjoy unprecedented environmental health, abundance and prosperity. But to do this we need to preserve our economic and personal freedoms. Will the measures being proposed - especially in trendsetting California - fruitlessly combat a problem that doesn't exist, crush economic growth and trample on individual freedom, and rob humanity of this hopeful destiny...

China's Coal
Coal production in China increases at an astonishing pace, and most of the operating coal plants in China lack modern scrubbers to remove gross air pollution. In this regard, concerns over CO2 may be misplaced. It could be that black soot that settles on arctic ice is warming the northern polar regions more than the CO2 that accompanies that soot. And the ill-health attendant to that soot is beyond debate. The costs to remove genuine pollution, nitrogen dioxide, sulpher dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and toxic metals - is far, far less costly than attempting to sequester...

The Resource Revolution
In 2007 for the first time in history, over 50% of the world's population has moved into cities. It is now clear that the world's human population will probably max at around 8.5 billion people, and that urbanization is already removing people, voluntarily, from rural and forest areas faster than population increase is adding them to those places. At the same time we've witnessed the emergence of new trends - the rapid industrialization of China and India and other nations, putting a greater strain than ever on finite resources such as tropical forests which are prized for their hardwoods. We've also seen the popularity of biofuels translate into devastating new pressure on tropical rainforests, as they give way to plantations of oil palms and sugar cane, to harvest biodiesel and bioethanol...

Sikkim's Teesta River
The Teesta River system is one of the most beautiful watersheds of wild river left in the world. It is an unspoiled treasure of surpassing beauty. These wild rivers of Sikkim are about to be tamed, fresh water will be harvested and stored, and they will generate hydro-electric energy. Should we store water? What will we do if summer ice melt is gone? But what sort of green dam engineering could be put to work in Sikkim? To simply build a dam, a powerhouse and a reservoir on every river, inundating every valley, every village, eliminating every white water haven...

Decentralized Water Treatment
Because of recent technological advances, spanning the gamut from affordable photovoltaics to nano-tech water filtration membranes, decentralized solutions to energy and water supply are better than ever. This belies the conventional wisdom that we are entering an age of resource scarcity, as energy and water is being harvested and reused more efficiently than ever. This also changes the game of development and public infrastructure (ref. photo). With green cars and off-grid energy and water solutions, appropriate developments don't necessarily have to be within the footprint of existing cities, or within existing centralized public infrastructure. Whether it is the electric power grid or underground pipes that deliver water and remove sewage, the more decentralized solutions there are, the more the public infrastructure can be downsized...

EcoWorld Interview
Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr.
As delegates to the UN Climate Change Conference gather in Indonesia this week, the burning rainforests of Borneo - to name just one heartbreaking example - cast a plume of smoke that is visible from space. Burning to make room for oil palm plantations, subsidized by European carbon offset payments, they are the latest evidence of how large scale land use changes could be affecting global climate more than anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr., an atmospheric scientist from Colorado, rejects the notion that elevated CO2 levels are the sole culprits in climate change. In his recent scientific conference focusing on the role of land use changes as a first order climate forcing mechanism...

EcoWorld's 2007 Clean Dozen
The promise this green iteration of high technology makes is that we will achieve resource abundance. Because of high-tech green innovation, we will soon have abundant land thanks to high-rise farms, abundant energy via solar energy, and abundant water from desalination. Smart growth policies that are based on conditions of scarcity are short sighted. Spot shortages of energy and water - as well as perceived shortages of land - may last a few more decades but will then be swept away in a wave of global prosperity and abundance...