With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...

Desi Doyen Byon 4/14/2009, 11:58am PT

Welcome aboard MORE new affiliates! Bob Kincaid's Head-On Radio Network joins the GNR team!

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Florida homes stink!; FDA under fire (again); McDonald's may reduce pesticides in fries; PLUS: The cardboard box that could save the world; And the Utah college student indicted for saving public lands from destruction...All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, college student indictments? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (links below): Alaskan volcano still threatens oil facility; Are America's suburbs in danger of becoming the new slums?; the Oil Price Shock of 2008 may have triggered the current economic downturn; Robert Redford confronts the NIMBY problem in renewable energy sites....See below for more!

Info/links on stuff we talked about on today's episode, plus MORE green news, all follows below...

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': More green news not covered in today's audio report... Alaskan volcano still threatens oil facility; Are America's suburbs in danger of becoming slums?; States consider making energy efficiency upgrades mandatory on new homes; the Oil Price Shock may have triggered the economic meltdown; Robert Redford has a on the competing needs of endangered species vs. renewable energy development on public lands...

NASA Photo Reveals Drift River Terminal in Jeopardy

Suburbs - our new slums? The burbs are in decline as more poor move out from the cities and more suburbanites struggle to stay in the middle class [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]:

Mr. Nelson and others warn that suburbia's least desirable neighborhoods --- aging, middle-class tract-home developments far from city centers and mass transit lines --- are America's emerging slums, characterized by poverty, crime and other social ills. Treating those ills is complicated by the same qualities that once defined suburbia's appeal --- seclusion, homogeneity and low population density. "We built too much of the suburban dream, and now it's coming back to haunt us," Mr. Nelson said.

Renewables Fever Sweeps State Legislatures

More states want solar power to be option on new homes

Should We Follow Germany's Lead On Renewables?

The basic idea is that utilities have to buy renewable power from anyone who produces it. Period. If I install a solar panel on my roof, I can sell that power into the grid, and the utility will offer me a 15- to 20-year contract at a fixed rate that will cover my costs and ensure a tidy profit. (The rate is set by regulators, and the utility spreads the extra cost among all ratepayers; in Germany, this has meant $4 more per household per month.) The result? Private investors stampede in. Germany, which gets less sun than Minnesota, now has half the world's installed solar capacity.

Did the Oil Price Boom of 2008 Cause Crisis?

[T]here’s the uncomfortable fact previous oil shocks, like the ones that came with the 1973 oil embargo, the 1979 Iranian revolution and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, were also associated with recessions. And the 2001 recession, too, came on the heels of a run-up in oil prices.

In a paper presented at the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity Thursday, University of Calif.-San Diego economist James Hamilton crunched some numbers on how consumer spending responds to rising energy prices and came to a surprising result: Nearly all of last year’s economic downturn could be attributed to the oil price shock.

Robert Redford on Huffington Post Green: Balancing Renewable Energy Projects & Public Lands Stewardship



...

That's why my friends at NRDC got together with Google Earth and started mapping out public lands where renewable development is not appropriate.

...

The state of California recently did a similar mapping process and found that when it removed all the environmentally sensitive lands, California still has renewable potential of about 500,000 MW--that's greater than the state's peak demand. [I]f we don't handle this boom carefully, unspoiled wildlands will get trammeled in its wake....That's why my friends at NRDC got together with Google Earth and started mapping out public lands where renewable development is not appropriate....The state of California recently did a similar mapping process and found that when it removed all the environmentally sensitive lands, California still has renewable potential of about 500,000 MW--that's greater than the state's peak demand. But we can't begin the new energy future by only saying where we can't build renewable projects. We also have to agree on where we can...



