Carried up by 40 horses and assembled by a team of international volunteers, it’s a replica of Noah’s Ark on the mountain where some say it came to rest. From the construction team’s weblog: “Our aim is to remind the world leaders and public that there’s not much time left to mitigate a climate disaster with devastating consequences for all.”

This photo was taken on the 23rd. I’m told that the Ark is almost now almost finished.

Today, 14 activists also reached the summit, 5,137 metres above sea level, where they unfurled a banner reading, “G8: this is the point of no return. Save the climate now”. Beate Steffens, one of the summit team, said, “If these leaders don’t act now, we will very soon reach a point where climate change gets out of control”.

Continue reading Ark on Mt. Ararat…

The Rainbow Warrior is currently on a three-month expedition in the Mediterranean, calling for the creation of marine reserves in the region, as part of a global network of protected areas covering 40% of our seas and oceans.

Sebastian Losada filed this report:

The bluefin tuna season doesn’t seem to have started yet in the waters that extend off the Libyan coasts. Some catches have already taken place, yes, but just a few compared to the levels we will possibly witness in the coming weeks. Two-hundred purse seiners will try to take as much tuna as they can from the Libyan fishing ground before the fishery is closed on July the 1st. That’s why they come to these waters: the last refuge in which an important subpopulation of bluefin tuna still survives.

Continue reading Of tuna and turtles…

Most of the time when we think of Fair Trade products, we think of supporting small farmers outside the US who struggle to earn livable wages and to receive adequate payment for their goods. But a coalition of farmers in the Midwest wants to encourage the same kind of committed support we give to imported Fair Trade products for goods farmed domestically. Wholesome Harvest raises organic meat on a network of forty farms throughout the Midwest and sells it in supermarkets (and online) through processors who’ve been approved by their members. The goal is to provide absolute traceability, transparency and access to backstory for their customers — a particularly important set of values in the meat industry, where bacterial contamination is more common than in produce, and often can’t be traced to the source due to complex networks of national and international distribution. The health threat this poses has been presented recently as a real threat to national security; but even when outbreaks effect only a small population, it’s critical to be able to identify and eliminate the problem quickly. In addition to farming, Wholesome Harvest has a strong ongoing activist effort, engaging concerned citizens like themselves to try to… (more)

(Posted by Sarah Rich in Food and Farming at 7:16 PM)

Filed under: Podcasts

Sharing a bit of auto design wisdom with us on the latest AutoblogGreen podcast is Roberto Jerez, who gives us the skinny on Velozzi and their 200 mpg entry for the Auto X Prize. Plus, the highlights from recent news and we’re still grooving to our new theme music.

More on Velozzi here:

• Team Velozzi developing Automotive X-Prize competitor

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.

Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Etc.

Ever hear the name Stan Meyer? About eight thousand conspiracy theorists just nodded their heads. Stan invented a water electrolyzer – nothing new there – however, according to Stan anyway, his actually works on demand. The above video (c. 1990) shows him driving a VW-powered dune buggy running on nothing but water. Peruse YouTube for related videos, and you’ll find he’s been actually pretty well documented, but surprisingly unpublicized.

His method of electrolysis breaks the H2 from the O into their respective gases, both which are then sent to the modified fuel injectors and combusted in a regular old ICE. The only exhaust is more water vapor, which can be left to the atmosphere, or recycled back into the system. Of course, as I said, there have been many people to make electrolyzers that do that very thing, but not in the copious quantities that Stan’s machine is said to.

When sifting through his notes and patent materials (.zip file available here), he apparently found the resonance frequency of water and tuned his electrolyzer with an oscillator to that frequency, vastly boosting the efficiency of the device, and making it an actually viable source of fuel, since you don’t have to put so much more energy into it than you’re getting out of it. No, this is not a free energy system, since energy from water is actually consumed, and water must be refilled, but the vastly more combustible gas produced nets much greater mpg of water than any means of burning gasoline.

Unfortunately, Mr. Meyer is no longer around to tell us about his invention – let alone sell us his proposed DIY kit for $1,500 – because he was poisoned. His brother, however, has continued his research to the best of his ability and posted Stan’s notes and patent info. Stan was not a trained scientist or engineer, so his notes use terms not accepted by the scientific or engineering community, and they can be hard to decipher. I’m sure that if you can make sense of his research, prove theories correct, and build a working prototype, the world as a whole would really appreciate it. Post your comments, findings, thoughts and discussions for all to hear.

[Source: Water Powered Car, YouTube]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.

Your garden doesn't have to suffer just because of water restrictions or drought problems. Collecting water that would otherwise go down the drain will make you and your plants happy.

• GO reader Georgie Mallett, who lives on the coast of Southern Georgia, washes her dishes (with eco-friendly dish soap) in a plastic dish pan, then waters her organic garden with it when finished.
• You can also keep a container in the shower to catch water while you're sudsing up (be sure to use enviro-friendly soap and shampoo).
• If you run the water and wait for it to get hot (or cold) don't let it go down the drain; instead, fill up a bucket or other containers.
• GO's Jimmy Hogan puts a bucket under the AC to catch the condensation drippings
• Collect rain water in a rain barrel. Connect hoses or pipes to rain barrels for easy garden watering. Rig two barrels together to catch the overflow.

What do you to make your water go farther? Let us know with a comment below.

Thanks to Georgie Mallett of St. Simons Island, Georgia for today's tip! Georgie wins two months of wind power from Renewable Choice Energy for the tip suggestion.

Got a tip for Amy and Rebecca? Suggest it here.

Renowned University of Alberta ecologist David Schindler said in a speech Friday that children are our best hope for slowing climate change.

Speaking at the Trails To Sustainability conference on environmental education near Calgary, Schindler said,

"By the time people who are six to 12 years old now are grown up, we're going to see a different political landscape and a different environmental one."

A world-renowned expert on climate change and fresh-water ecology, Schindler was the 2001 winner of the NSERC Gerhard Herzberg Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, Canada's highest scientific honor. Schindler also noted,

"We're all pretty set in our ways and I think looking at people who really don't get it – who leave their cars idling while they're in the grocery store for an hour in the winter and things like that – we're not going to reach those folks. We can reach their kids."

Schindler, who also teaches environmental decision making at the University of Alberta, also said that while today's generation and their elected leaders have refused to deal with looming water shortages and global warming issues, unavoidable change is coming.

Last week, on the second anniversary of the launch of GE’s ecomagination initiative, the company held a massive press conference in Los Angeles to announce its many new partnerships. Since this was a press conference, I was skeptical of the information to be provided…was this just going to be one big GE commercial love fest? And perhaps more importantly, would I drink the Kool-Aid?

The answer on both questions? Yes and no. My skepticism of the motives of corporations aside, I must admit a bias in favor of the impact that businesses (especially businesses the size of GE) can have on the climate crisis we currently face. However, companies must be able to make a “business case” for green initiatives. In other words, going green has to be profitable for the company. Remember, the three elements of the triple bottom line include profit. Yes, it would be nice if companies made changes to improve their footprint out of a concern for people and the environment, and a few companies do just that, but the business world is not designed to reward such behavior. To get a critical mass of companies on board, profit must be achievable.

Apparently, GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt feels the same way. His new mantra is “green is green,” meaning that green business equals green money. This could not be more true for GE. According to their May 24th press release, “Revenues from its (ecomagination) portfolio of energy efficient and environmentally advantageous products and services surged past $12 billion in 2006, up 20% from 2005, while the order backlog rose to $50 billion.”

Wow.

Immelt goes on to say, “These extraordinary revenues and orders are the initial payoff from directly aligning our product portfolio with our customers’ needs and evolving trends, while ‘doubling-down’ on investments in leading edge technology and innovation. Ecomagination is growing beyond our expectations, evolving into a sales initiative unlike any other I’ve seen in 25 years at GE.”

Though skeptics will point to the fact that ecomagination represents a small piece of GE’s business, this growth can only be good news. A company the size of GE can have a huge impact with their investment in new technologies, as well as in spreading the word through their visibility.

Immelt announced at the press conference a series of new partnerships and investment in many divergent industries, including:

• Water desalination: slated to open in 2010, the Carlsbad Seawater Desalination Plant will draw water from the Pacific Ocean for use in San Diego County. The facility will use GE’s ZeeWeed® ultra filtration technology.
• Hydrogen energy: GE, along with BP, is forming a global alliance to develop and deploy 10 to 15 hydrogen power projects.
• Wind energy: GE Energy Financial Services will invest in its biggest wind farm to date, the 241-megawatt Sweetwater 4 facility and a sister project, both in Texas.
• Transportation: efforts here include the first hybrid locomotive with Union Pacific, and investment in A123’s work toward the next-generation battery technology for hybrid electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
• Lighting: Wal-Mart, the largest individual electricity user in the country, will be installing motion-activated LED lighting in its refrigerated cases. In addition to using less energy for lighting, less heat will be generated reducing the amount of energy used for refrigeration.
• Housing: RWO Acquisitions is retrofitting an old Air Force base in coastal South Carolina into a green community, featuring energy efficient homes and GE’s first energy-efficient mortgage. Homes will offer the GE SmartCommand™ Dashboard, which provides current and historical data on water and electricity usage.
• Carbon emissions offsetting: with AES Corp., GE will invest in projects to capture and destroy GHG emissions from agricultural waste, landfills, coalmines and the like. The partnership will then sell the resulting offsets.
• Entertainment: NBC Universal has launched “Get On Board,” a program to improve the environmental impact of its operations by reducing greenhouse gases, raising awareness about green issues, and stimulating change in the media and entertainment industry.

After the press conference, we had time to view examples of some of the new technologies in the exhibit hall, before returning for a discussion on sustainability with Immelt and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Though the questions posed by NBC’s Lester Holt were pretty much softballs, it was an interesting discussion. The gist? From the Governor’s point of view, in finding ways to balance environmental initiatives with economic concerns California can lead the way for the rest of the nation, including the federal government. Keys to success include giving industry enough time to meet new standards, and the realization that new technology brings new jobs.

Immelt’s answers did not waiver from his earlier message: GE is into green as a business initiative. When asked about GE’s biggest areas for growth, Immelt responded that taking these new technologies to India and China, where they are needed most, would be a coup for whoever delivers them affordably.

Both agreed that the US must provide leadership for the rest of the world by first cleaning up its own act. The US remains the world’s biggest polluter, representing just 5% of the population while being responsible for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions. The US must remedy this situation to have credibility when offering help to developing nations.

After a long day, I left the event with the sense that we’ve turned a corner. If companies like GE and Wal-Mart can make tons of money with green initiatives, while communicating the message that greening doesn’t cost money but makes money, other companies will follow their lead. This offers real hope, without the Kool-Aid.

Greenpeace activists in Finland spent the night 80 meters in the air on a crane at a nuclear power plant under construction in Olkiluoto. The protest is a direct reaction to the quality problems at the construction site, which has lead to over one thousand reported breaches of safety standards.

TVO, the company that ordered plant, estimated in the application to the Finnish government that a 1600 MW reactor would cost EUR2.5 billion and take four years to build. Now the costs are exceeding four billion euros and the project will take at least six years.

The project was supposed to require no public subsidies. In reality it is reliant on an export guarantee financed by French and Swedish taxpayers and a dirt-cheap loan from public banks.

As the Finnish government begins preparing a long-term climate strategy, it needs to take a hard look at nuclear power’s track record of failing to deliver on promises of being the cheap, clean solution to climate change.

Finland needs a plan to phase out existing reactors. They’re really not comfortable places to sleep. More images of the occupation from Flickr.