Friday, April 11, 2008

ENN: Mideast can avert water crisis, Californa's $600 mln think tank, Fuel breakthrough and much more


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Friday, April 11, 2008
News of Note

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California electricity and natural gas customers will be charged $600 million over the next 10 years to fund a green think tank, the California Public Utilities Commission unanimously voted on Thursday.

Top Stories

Livestock producers who sign up for marketing programs such as Process Verified, Certified Organic and Non-Hormone Treated Cattle may find themselves automatically registered in the National Animal Identification System. The USDA's Agricultural Marketing System's Business Plan, officially released last week, circumvents the opposition to NAIS, mostly from family farmers and small specialty producers, who participate in the AMS programs.

Breakthrough research sponsored by the National Science Foundation into the development of green gasoline, green diesel and green jet fuel based on the conversion of biomass from feedstock such as switchgrass, fast-growing poplar trees, corn stalks, wood waste and residues and other non-food plant sources is bearing fruit.

SocialFunds.com, 10 April 2008 - Hewlett-Packard casts a huge shadow as the largest IT company in the world. Literally hundreds of thousands of people help produce the components, parts and computers that are sold under HP's name. In an unprecedented move, last week HP made public the list of its largest suppliers as part of its yearly Global Citizenship Report. The goals in releasing the list are far reaching. First, HP is hoping to increase suppliers' accountability to workers, communities and the environment. Second, HP is hoping the increase in transparency will lead to an increase in collaboration with other IT companies and act as a model for other IT companies to follow.

In 2004 I was recruited by grassroots activists to run, as a reform candidate, for a spot on the national Sierra Club Board of Directors. At the time, I believed that election was going to be a battle of the old guard versus the reformers. I thought then that the old guard wanted to maintain power for power's sake and perpetuate the status quo. Reformers wanted stronger protections and fewer compromises on environmental issues and more grassroots involvement in the process.

ENN Spotlight

Ethical Corporation, 10 April 2008 - Big firms are joining the queue to follow in Muhammad Yunus's footsteps by developing businesses designed to fix social ills. Muhammad Yunus has for more than 30 years challenged business leaders to find radical ways of creating new markets in poor countries. The Nobel Peace Prize winner's latest book, "Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism", is no less ambitious. It explores how big companies can invest in external partners to develop products and services that will benefit the poor.

More Top Stories

Sounds a bit goofy, doesn't it? But Mr. H. Lee Scott, Jr., the oft-maligned president and CEO of Wal-Mart, said about as much during an interesting Q&A session last month at an economics conference in California devoted to discussing "environmental capital." (As a bonus, click the embedded video for a confusing conversation circling the topic of bottled water).

RABAT (Reuters) - The Middle East is overusing limited water resources and the amount of water available per head will halve by 2050, leading to social strains as more people quit the countryside, the World Bank said on Thursday. But a crisis can still be averted if governments seize the opportunity to repair water networks, build new infrastructure including desalination plants and educate people not to waste limited resources, according to a report by the bank.

f you've ever driven through the southern end of California's Central Valley in September, you're familiar with the grids of lint-strewn cotton fields that blur by for nearly 2 1/2 hours. You might even have pondered the wisdom of planting such a thirsty crop as cotton on a million acres -- an area larger than Yosemite National Park -- in a state facing a water crisis. Then again, you might ask a similar question about the half a million acres of rice, a grain adapted to the monsoons of Asia, on the valley's northern end.

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Member Press Releases
By: Architecture 2030
Amidst increasingly dire news about the economy and climate change, Architecture 2030 released a seminal study at the Eileen Rockefeller Growald Symposium on Collaborative Philanthropy today, showing how a small investment of only $21.6 billion in the Building Sector would produce 216,000 permanent jobs and save 86.7 Million Metric Tons (MMT) of CO2 in a single year. By: Center for Biological Diversity
SAN FRANCISCO— Conservation groups have reached an agreement that brings the extremely rare yellow-billed loon a step closer to much-needed protection from threats such as oil development in Alaska and the loss of its tundra habitat in the face of global warming. By: Earth Policy Institute
"Global carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels stood at a record 8.38 gigatons of carbon in 2006, 20 percent above the level in 2000", writes Frances C. Moore in a recent Earth Policy Institute release, "Carbon Dioxide Emissions Accelerating Rapidly". By: International Fund for Animal Welfare
(Bubonitsy, Tver Region, Russia. 9 April 2008) Today, in the forest of the Tver region of Russia, researchers from IFAW (the International Fund for Animal Welfare) and veterinarians from the Moscow Zoo returned five orphaned bear cubs to the wild. Prior to the release, the team performed veterinary checks and tagged the bears for monitoring. By: Center for Biological Diversity
ANCHORAGE, Alaska— The Bush administration Tuesday took the first step toward opening up 5.6 million acres in the Bering Sea to oil and gas leasing. The proposal, published in Tuesday's Federal Register by the Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service, would allow oil development in an area north of the Aleutian Islands near Bristol Bay that has been designated critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale. By: Environmental Law Institute
(Washington) A report released this week, Improving Economic Health and Competitiveness through Tax Sharing, assesses the experience of local governments with schemes that share portions of tax revenues in order to get better development results and avoid sprawl. By: The Environmental Law Institute
(Washington) The Environmental Law Institute (ELI) announces the publication of State Wetland Protection: Status, Trends & Model Approaches. This report examines state-level efforts to protect wetland resources. By: National Wildlife Federation
Take the time to connect with nature and enjoy wildlife in your community this spring by participating in the National Wildlife Federation's (NWF) Wildlife Watch, part of the National Wildlife Week celebration from April 19-27.

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