Chemistry for a sustainable world

After concluding that a Bush administration appointee ‘may have improperly influenced’ several rulings on whether to protect imperiled species under the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service has revised seven decisions on protecting species across the country. The appointee repeatedly overruled recommendations by scientists. Julie MacDonald, former deputy assistant secretary for fish, [...]

These comments are my analysis and discussion of an article on various sides of the “corn ethanol story” published by Joel Achenbach in the Washington Post, with farmers telling us they can’t survive without the subsidies. I guess they’ll inherit the earth when the rest of us have no water to drink. [...]

I couldn’t get digg to link to the specific story on this site for some reason, but anyway there is a wealth of collected stories on environmental issues, from studies on water quality to reports on the Bush administration’s policies. A very valuable site to check out. There doesn’t seem to be any commentary, [...]

Millions of tons of toxic e-waste from around the world are finding their way onto streets and alleyways in Chinese villages as peasants eke out a living reclaiming precious metals from electronic equipment. What isn’t reclaimed goes into unregulated dumping grounds. Reported by AP and others, this is the flip-side of recycling: a [...]

Please read the story that my previous post links to on cities that are taking various approaches to sustainability. I applaud these cities on their effort, risk, expenditure and cooperation…
but I’d like to hear what people think about the cities’ actual solutions!
Since I can barely find people who agree on anything regarding alternative fuel, [...]

“It shouldn’t shock you to hear that I receive a lot of pitches for this blog. (Which is a very good thing for ideas, actually, so keep them coming.) One trend I’ve noticed is that many of what I call the “real” green-tech efforts and experiments are very locally focused….”
by Harry Fuller and Heather Clancy [...]

Thanks to Connell83 over on hugg.com for drawing my attention to the Nature Conservancy’s website. Although I have supported them for years, I never looked at the website before.
This undated page discusses legislation proposed by senators Lieberman and Warner and adaptations supported by the Nature Conservancy aimed at decreasing, minimizing or avoiding a wide [...]

Large wind energy power project to generate more jobs for Kern County and boost local economy.
Oak Creek Energy is located in Mojave, CA and is a wind energy pioneer, beginning with one of the first wind farms built in California in early 1982.  I felt I needed to include more along the lines of “let’s [...]

Brandon Keim reports for Wired on a Corporate Code of Conduct announced by Climos, a climate engineering firm involved in using iron to “seed”, or fertilize, growth of carbon dioxide-fixing plankton in oceans. This code of conduct, while voluntary and non-binding, is a welcome step in an R&D area that reminds one scientist of [...]

As reported by Timothy Gardner of Reuters, ethanol prices are so low that producers are not making any profit.

U.S. weekly ethanol margins still in the dumps
by Timothy Gardner
NEW YORK, Nov 2 (Reuters) - U.S. ethanol margins ticked a few cents higher this week as producers fetched slightly higher prices for the renewable fuel, but the [...]