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

As part of wining the bid to host the 2008 summer Olympics the Chinese government made assurances they would provide acceptable air quaility levels for the summer event. With the Olympics right around the corner the Times Online is reporting that the air quality is actually 5 times the safe air quality limit set by the World Health Organization. This is prompting widespread concern amongst athletes and may even cancel the Beijing Marathon.

The Chinese government has done little over the last decade to combat air pollution however there were hopes the being awarded the 2008 Olympics they would kick their “green campaign” into high gear both to protect the athletes and showcase Beijing as beacon of progress on the environmental front. It appears that this goal has not come to fruition. While it certainly is bad news for the athletes one can only hope that this debacle helps highlight to the world the environmental crisis caused by the voracious energy appetites of developing nations as well as put greater international pressure on the Chinese goverment to begin to tackle their environmental crisis.

As reported by Eco Geek the famous German automaker is going to go 100% green by 2015. Relying on electric, fuel cell, and biofuels to fuel their line up of vehicles. This is a major step and one of the most ambitious undertaken by any major auto-maker. It remains to be seen what the cost the these future vehicles will be or the affluent public reaction, as for most Mercedes oweners the cost of gas has never really been a problem. Kudos to them however for their ambitions plans, it would be great to see other major automakers make the same ambitious pledge.

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.