The Indian government has welcomed biofuels with open arms. Faced with a rapidly growing economy, the world's second-largest population and an eye-watering fuel import bill, finding a renewable domestic power source has become a top priority. The country's recently-revised national biofuel policy, announced in September 2008, sets out the government's intentions in black-and-white: to produce 20 per cent of the country's diesel from crops by 2017, primarily from plantations of jatropha (Jatropha curcas). This means that the oilseed-bearing shrub, already introduced in some states, needs to be planted on an additional 14 million hectares of the country's so-called 'wasteland'. This has ignited fierce debate: supporters see the move as the solution to the fuel-versus-food conundrum, while critics are fearful...

Absent a rigorous examination of statistics, meaningful dialogue about environmental issues is impossible. This is particularly challenging now that environmentalism is generally recognized to be inextricably linked not only with the endlessly complex science of ecology, but with the dismal science of economics as well. To try to quantify the rational basis for a legitimate ideology of environmentalism is not easy. One way to productively further the dialogue of rational environmentalism is to publish online interactive spreadsheets of hopefully instructive simplicity, quantitatively presenting options in terms of costs and benefits for environmental issues management. To this end, we have recently added two new online interactive calculators, Wind Energy per Area and Solar Energy per Area. In both cases the user may...

An apartment with a view is coveted property. After a hard day at work, sitting down in front of a panoramic window while sipping a glass of wine is a wonderful way to unwind. A decent view is hard to come by. Not only that, but when actually given options, it may be hard to decide between the ocean view, city view, west side, or east side facing apartments. The answer: Individual rotating floors. Just make a choice and viola! The apartment slowly turns to face whatever you are in the mood to see that day. Dubai, home to 1/3 of the world's cranes, is constantly expanding. High rise buildings, hotels and skyscrapers are popping up like daisies. The latest technology and newest ideas are often used in the building process here, so it is no wonder that the revolutionary, rotating Dynamic Tower, designed by...

Rugged microbes equipped with a unique set of survival skills find high-temperature and acidic conditions a welcome home. And scientists have a peculiar fondness for these "extremeophiles," freaks of nature that live outside the boundaries of normal existence. These are bugs that can grow in the harshest of conditions, from sulphuric acid to high-salt environments. Part of the reason scientists are interested is extremeophiles potential to be put to work to produce next-generation cellulosic-based biofuels. How? These microbes can perform feats that bioengineers till now only dreamed of. They offer, perhaps, the best hope to tear down rigid plant material without using specialized chemicals or high amounts of energy and, perhaps, one day to create new fuels to power...

The essense of New Suburbanism is to support a clean, but wider human footprint - which is anathema to much of conventional environmentalist wisdom.  In many parts of the world, such as within the state of California, there is abundant space. California, especially within its vast interior, has hundreds upon thousands of virtually vacant square miles of rolling foothills, rangeland, forests, farms and fields. The Golden State is a whopping 158,000 square miles in size, with only 36 million people, most of them already crammed quite amicably within reasonably dense urban areas. California will always have plenty of available land, and the mantra that the personal residences of humans must be consigned to ever higher densities is not natural law or indisputably moral. A wider human...

The fate of GM, Chrysler and Ford hang in the balance, with widely varying sentiments regarding what can be done, if anything. Both a bailout or a bankruptcy present a set of opportunities as well as negative consequences. If a bailout were structured to include in its terms some of the restructuring benefits that otherwise could only be realized through bankruptcy, however, it would be the preferred option. Indeed, a federal bailout that facilitated fundamental cost cuts for the automakers might set a useful precedent for restructuring other large U.S. institutions that have overpaid workforces and inefficient operations, such as most of our state and local governments. Using General Motors as an example, since they are the biggest of the big three, and since they have the most...

Most of the world's caverns, rivers and boulders were carved out by glaciers hundreds of thousands of years ago. Massive ice sheets-often 3 kilometers thick-flowed over the earth's crust, eroding and crushing the land underneath. Animals evolved to deal with the harsh climate, the most famous of which is arguably the woolly mammoth. This hairy pachyderm roamed the tundra in search of grasses, oblivious to the cold, thanks to a large layer of fat, wool (hence the name) covered in course hair and sebaceous glands that secreted insulating oils through the skin. Eventually though, the ice-age passed and the glaciers melted away, leaving behind only bones as evidence of the animals that once lived in the region. It is unclear whether hunting, climate change, or disease killed off the...

Earlier this month heralded the formal launch of "Carbon Information Management" (CIM) software from Planet Metrics, a Northern California based company that has been brewing this "web-based, multi-dimensional software that helps organizations to create and deploy innovative sustainability strategies" since early 2007. Unlike Environmental Health and Sustainability (EH&S) software, such as the enterprise wide solutions offered by market leaders in that space such as ESS, CIM software focuses on helping enterprises assess the total carbon footprint of their products and processes. As such, CIM offers an important analytical tool to help companies move towards clean and sustainable operations that is very distinct from EH&S solutions. Like ESS, Planet Metrics appears to be the furthest along...

With renewable energy sources like wind and solar constantly on hand, it is no wonder that everyone wants to harness this energy with constantly evolving technology. Cars and buildings are going solar, why not boats and massive cruise ships? Solar Sailor, an Australian company that owns the patented 'solarsail' technology, has developed devices comparable to 'wings' that attach to ocean-going vessels to harness the ever-popular wind and solar energy. Both sources of energy are especially abundant when floating on the ocean. This hybrid marine power (HMP) technology comes in the from of a 'solar wing', which typically rests on top of the ship like a solid metal sail (to take advantage of wind) and is covered with shimmering solar panels that rotate according to the sun's position in the...

Twenty-five years ago, along with another young journalist, I coauthored a book called California, Inc. about our adopted home state. The book described "California's rise to economic, political, and cultural ascendancy." As relative newcomers at the time, we saw California as a place of limitless possibility. And over most of the next two decades, my coauthor, Paul Grabowicz, and I could feel comfortable that we were indeed predicting the future. But much has changed in recent years. And today our Golden State appears headed, if not for imminent disaster, then toward an unanticipated, maddening, and largely unnecessary mediocrity. Since 2000, California's job growth rate - which in the late 1970s surged at many times the national average - has lagged behind the national average...