Tuesday, 11 Apr 2006

Plenty of politicians are chattering about renewable energy and clean technologies these days, but venture capitalists are ready to move beyond making noise to making profits. Grist's Full Disclosure columnists recently got an inside glimpse of those moneyed minds at work at a Cleantech Venture Forum, and now they're pondering whether missionary zeal and mercenary fervor can come together to make great things happen.

If At First You Don't Succeed, Quit

Canada won't make Kyoto emissions targets; blames targets

Canada is nearly 30 percent above its greenhouse-gas emissions targets under the Kyoto Protocol, so it's redoubling efforts to ... abandon the targets. New Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, of the less-than-ambitious Conservative Party that took power in February, concludes "it is impossible, impossible for Canada to reach its Kyoto target." Instead, she says, Canadians need to discuss "action and solutions ... that are out by 50, 100 years, not two years, five years." Bold leadership there. Ambrose is presiding over the next round of Kyoto talks in Bonn, Germany, next month and plans to challenge the international focus on emissions targets. A new study finds that Canada could reach its Kyoto targets through bioenergy technology, but it's unlikely to get much of a hearing from a government that's apparently already cut spending on climate-change programs by some 40 percent.


Last week, Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich (R) signed into law the Healthy Air Act, which restricts emissions of common air pollutants and signs Maryland on to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), joining seven other Northeast states in committing to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Quite a feat for a Republican governor in a state with several coal-fired power plants, no? Well, maybe not. State Sen. Paul Pinsky (D), one of the bill's sponsors, tells Grist about the backstory, including the governor's attempts to quite literally barricade himself in his office and dodge the bill. Good times.

Life's a Bleach and Then You Die

Caribbean coral reefs hammered by bleaching, disease

It hasn't been a good year for coral. Last summer, reefs from Panama to the Virgin Islands suffered bleaching; now coral in the Caribbean, some of it centuries old, is being attacked by deadly diseases. The whole grim sequence can be traced back to unusually high Caribbean ocean temperatures last summer, which caused the coral to freak out and expel the algae that give them their bright colors, leaving them white, weak, and susceptible to disease. Mortality rates for coral in the British Virgin Islands are 20 to 25 percent already, and it's likely the water will only get warmer as summer approaches. Coral catastrophe could spell bad news for biodiversity, ecosystem health, and -- horrors! -- the Caribbean tourism industry. "If we don't control atmospheric CO2, we're putting the nail in the coffin right now," says marine pathologist James Cervino. "You're going to see isolated patches of sick, sorry corals, trying to hang on."


The Europeans are once again appeasing George W. Bush at the expense of the global environment, argues Frank E. Loy, former undersecretary of state and chief U.S. climate-change negotiator in the Clinton administration. A few weeks ago, Bush proposed chopping by 50 percent U.S. funding for the leading international institution that helps poor nations acquire clean-energy technologies, the Global Environment Facility. The response from European leaders? Nada. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and their cohorts should step up the pressure on Bush to adequately fund the GEF, says Loy.

A Swiftly Heating Planet

Spacecraft heads to Venus to get clues about global warming

Venus coulda been a contenda. It's just a little closer to the sun than Earth, just a little smaller, and once had plentiful water. But instead of evolving life in a tropical paradise, the oceans started heating up and evaporating, trapping the planet in an unending cycle of warming that's resulted in a burning hellscape of sulfuric acid and carbon dioxide. Thank goodness we don't have to worry about that! Ahem. But just to hedge bets, spacecraft Venus Express, sent by the European Space Agency, is orbiting the second rock from the sun to "find out why Venus evolved so differently to Earth," according to a member of the project team. The ship will study the relationship between the atmosphere's layers and the planet itself to get clues about how to avoid runaway global warming on our own orb. 'Cause we're not hot about the idea of Venus' average temperature of 872 degrees.