Wednesday, 09 Aug 2006

Last week, as news broke that legendary Cuban leader Fidel Castro had undergone surgery and temporarily transferred power to his brother, writers around the world scrambled to pen premature eulogies of the man and the communist state he oversaw -- oops, oversees! Erica Gies takes a different tack, exploring the brighter side of Cuba's social and environmental policies.

To Tech With It

Investment money pours into the green-tech sector

Investors are ga-ga for green. In 2005, clean energy projects in the U.S. were showered with $17 billion in investment money, up 89 percent from 2004. Just in 2005, the worldwide market for carbon credits blossomed from essentially nothing to around $11 billion. And these are not just do-gooders: public pension funds, hedge fund groups, venture capitalists, they're all scouring the landscape for the next Big Green Thing. Says Lehman Brothers' John V. Veech of clean-tech gatherings, "If you went five years ago you'd see a lot of ponytails. Now these conferences are packed with suits." Everything that promises to displace fossil fuels, from ethanol to wind and solar to geothermal, is being transformed by infusions of cash. Why? Disparate constituencies are uniting behind energy independence. Some 22 states have passed renewable portfolio standards. And many expect federal regulation of carbon emissions soon. Of course, there was a clean-energy boom in the '70s, squashed when OPEC opened the spigots and drove down the price of oil. But many doubt whether there are sufficient oil reserves to pull that trick again. So invest away!


We can't think of anything we like better, after a long, strenuous hike across unforgiving ground, than falling into a deep slumber on that same unforgiving ground. Oh wait, yes we can. But some of you think this "camping" thing is fun, and wonder whether there's any way to color your experience an even deeper shade of green. Is there such a thing as an eco-friendly tent? Advice maven Umbra Fisk would stake her life on it.

School and Unusual Punishment

Temporary deal struck to prop up rural funding amid logging-revenue decline

What happens if you make funding for rural schools and roads dependent on revenues from a declining resource industry? What's that you say? Nobody would be stupid enough to do that? Ha ha. Readers, meet the federal government. A federal program that had tied rural funding to logging revenue led, as logging revenues declined, to rural counties scrambling for funding for basic services. In 2000, a federal law began guaranteeing continued payments tied to past (higher) logging levels. Whew. But wait! Then someone in the Bush administration suggested phasing out the guaranteed payments and instead selling off some 309,000 acres of public forestlands to fund the shortfall. Not surprisingly, that approach was met with skepticism and derision. Enter the current deal: the Bush administration has agreed to sustain current funding (over $500 million) for a year, with funds from ... some unspecified other source. After that, it hopes people will stop paying attention, and then God knows what it will do.

Sardar Superstar

India dam project still hot issue after more than 20 years

For citizens of India, debate over dams is soap-operatic. Take the saga of the country's still-unfinished Sardar Sarovar dam. It has everything: protests, riots, hunger strikes, and long, protracted court battles. Proponents of the $7.7 billion dam on the Narmada River claim that, when completed, it will produce megawatts upon megawatts of much-needed hydropower, drinking water for 20 million citizens, and irrigation for nearly 4.5 million acres of farmland. Detractors say some 320,000 people -- mostly poor farmers -- will be displaced, and also that the benefit estimates are way, way off. Even the mega-development-happy World Bank refused to fund the project after a 1991 review found it "flawed." The government has been accused of shafting those in need of relocation, offering poor-quality land as compensation, and unjustly excluding people from official relocation lists. And Sardar Sarovar is just one of 30 major dams either planned or already being built on the river. A Supreme Court decision on whether to allow Sardar construction to continue is slated for September. Stay tuned.