Greenvangelical – Enviromental and Ecological News and Tips For A Greener Earth

Flush with cash from is fast rising market cap. Google announced via a press release that via their philanthropic organization Google.org that they are going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the quest to find renewable energy that is cheaper than coal to produce electricity – not in decades but in years, and for a profit.

“We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient data centers,” said Larry Page, Google Co-founder. “We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating renewable electricity at globally significant scale, and produce it cheaper than from coal.”

Currently Coal is a primary power source for many, supplying roughly 40% of the world’s electricity. The greenhouse gases it produces are one of the greatest environmental challenges we face in regards to global warming. Even the so called “Clean Coal” initiatives mentioned of late would have practically little effect in developing nations such as China where environmental concerns often take a back seat to feeding their countries voracious appetite for energy. If Google could provide a solution that is cheaper and has the added benefit of being green it would take huge burden off of our need to utilize fossil fuels (such as coal) generate power.

Given Google’s track record with innovation and their seemingly endless supply of cash this is one green initiative that may actually have some legs. We certainly wish them the best.

LED Lighting Fixtures in North Carolina has announced a major breakthrough in LED lighting technology that they claim uses only 5.8 watts of power to produce the same amount of light as that of a comparable 60 watt light bulb.

If this claim is true it heralds a major advance in the technology which many feel has great promise as the next revolution in eco-friendly lighting. While CFC’s help a great deal in reducing our energy usage they also contain Mercury which is a toxic substance that is often released into the environment by careless consumers who don’t dispose of their used CFC light bulbs properly.

The Department of Energy has estimated that LEDs could reduce national energy consumption for lighting by 29% over the next decade and a half.

The Sierra club recently rated the major brands of gasoline to determine which brands you should purchase to be enviromentially friendly. They based their research on how much historical ecological respect each company has as well as their comitements to more enviromentally friendly technologies.

Here are the results of their findings:

Bottom of the Barrel

* ExxonMobil
* ConocoPhillips

Middle of the Barrel

* Royal Dutch Shell
* Chevron
* Valero Energy Corporation
* Citgo

Top of the Barrel

* BP
* Sunoco

Read detailed results here

With the worlds population currently at 6.6 billion I have to bring up an important yet taboo topic. What should we do with all the worlds dead bodies? Consider the impact of a western style burial with the Formaldehyde (classified as a class 1 Carcinogen), the long car exhaust spewing parades, the chemicals and water used to keep cemetary lawns green etc.

Many have chose cremation not for environmental reasons but because its substantially cheaper than a burial. However cremation releases dioxin, hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. It is estimated that cremation released 1,000 to 7,800 pounds of mercury into the air anually. Not a good way to go if you are a greenvangelical wanting to leave the earth on a better foot.

So what is the alternative? Well there is a small but growing cottage industry of ways to die green. Their answer, simple do what humans have done for years and bury the dead in the natural world and let natural processes do what they do best, recycle. I personally would rather my family visit a tree I helped nourish naturally than a concrete slab in a fertilized and watered urban park.

To find a provider near you please visit the site below.

greenburialcouncil.org/

The average cab in New York currently gets 14 miles per gallon. According to a new law put into effect by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg the entire fleet of 13,000 cabs will be required to go hybrid by 2012. With 1,000 required by 2008 and increasing by 20% each year. This is yet another step in the Mayors effort to have New York achieve a 30 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. New York City produced a net emission of 58.3 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2005 which is a massive amount by any standard.

While I applaud the leadership Mayor Bloomberg is taking on this issue it begs the question “can they do more?”. Consider that the most typical taxi cab in New York (and in most major American cities) is the Ford Crown Victoria and almost every police car is also a Crown Victoria it begs the reasonable assumption that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. There are over 7,760 vehicles in the NYPD – the largest in the nation. If as the mayor states the conversion of the cabs to hybrid cars will save the cab drivers money and help the environment it seems to logically follow that converting the cities fleet would also have the same win-win effect.