Lester Brown and the Earth Policy Institute have released Plan B 3.0 in the Plan B series of books (Plan B and Plan B 2.0) and continues to provide one of the few sane voices for a real, actionable plan to reduce our environmental impact and save the human race from self-extinction. I really hope his ideas and suggestions gain traction and soon. We don't have much of a future at our current rates of consumption. And I sincerely wish for my children's grandchildren to inherit a world that is not just livable but actually better than the one I inherited. Here's an excerpt from the Time.com coverage of the book release.

The numbers are simple. It's easy to ridicule the "switch a light bulb, save the planet" school of environmental planning, but Brown points out that by making the most of efficiency improvements in lighting and appliances, we could reduce power demand sufficiently to obviate the need for 1,410 coal plants. That's more than the 1,382 coal plants the International Energy Agency predicts will be built by 2020. If we start pumping out new wind turbines with the same industrial urgency the U.S. produced tanks and bombers in World War II, Brown writes, we could generate 3 million megawatts of wind power by 2020, enough to meet 40% of the world's energy needs. Solar thermal, plug-in hybrid and geothermal technology are all part of Plan B. (Did you know that the geothermal energy contained in the upper six miles of the Earth's crust is 50,000 times more powerful than all of our oil and natural gas? Brown does.)

To push the transition to a cleaner, more efficient economy — the Plan B economy — Brown argues for a worldwide carbon tax to be phased in at $20 per ton each year between 2008 and 2020, topping out at $240 per ton. That might seem excessive, but Brown points out that even a carbon tax higher than $240 per ton wouldn't cover all the environmental and health costs of burning fossil fuels, from climate change to air pollution–related illnesses. And while it's difficult to imagine any politician standing up for such a tax, he reminds us that we already have a precedent for a heavy tax that takes into account negative externalities and attempts to discourage consumption: cigarette taxes.

Well, the Al Gore Mansion is now LEED Certified, and apparently is the ONLY LEED certified home in all of Tennessee. I'm not sure what saddens me more. That Gore didn't apply these conservation efforts to his home BEFORE all of the negative publicity regarding his outrageous energy consumption, or the fact that NOONE ELSE in the entire State of Tennessee has gone through the process of LEED certifying their home. Perhaps there are energy efficient homes in the State and the LEED process is too intense or too expensive for the rest to certify, but it's still a sad reminder of life in the conservative sunbelt.

Update: Well, I decided to Google this one, and it does appear that there are quite a few LEED Certified buildings in process of being built or refurbished in Tennessee but these all appear to be commercial or educational buildings, not personal dwellings like the Gore Mansion. 

from PhysOrg.com

This is an older article but I love when I find news that is from the recent past that I still think is incredibly relevant to the moment. Clearly we are still worried about a possible pandemic for the bird flu and what kind of devastation could be wreaked on the world population, so any non-vaccine solution (besides exercise, healthier diets and lots of antioxidants) to help prevent the spread of influenza based diseases is good news in our book. Here is an excerpt from the article. 

A new "antimicrobial paint" developed at MIT can kill influenza viruses that land on surfaces coated with it, potentially offering a new weapon in the battle against a disease that kills nearly 40,000 Americans per year.

If applied to doorknobs or other surfaces where germs tend to accumulate, the new substance could help fight the spread of the flu, says Jianzhu Chen, MIT professor of biology.

Most fatal flu cases occur in the elderly or in people with weakened immune systems. Available flu vaccines are only 30 to 40 percent effective among those groups, and only 70 to 80 percent effective among healthy adults.

Influenza is spread when viruses released by an infected person accumulate on surfaces, where other people pick them up. Stopping the viruses before they infect people could prevent some flu cases, says Chen.

The new substance can do just that, by killing influenza viruses before they infect new hosts. The "antimicrobial paint," which can be sprayed or brushed onto surfaces, consists of spiky polymers that poke holes in the membranes that surround influenza viruses.

Influenza viruses exposed to the polymer coating were essentially wiped out. The researchers observed a more than 10,000-fold drop in the number of viruses on surfaces coated with the substance, according to Alexander Klibanov, MIT professor of chemistry and bioengineering and the senior author of the paper.