So with global warming being linked to all sorts of bad things lately,
Scientists studying a fast-dwindling genus of colorful harlequin frogs on misty mountainsides in Central and South America are reporting today that global warming is combining with a spreading fungus to kill off many species.
The researchers implicate global warming, as opposed to local variations in temperature or other conditions. Their conclusion is based on their finding that patterns of fungus outbreaks and extinctions in widely dispersed patches of habitat were synchronized in a way that could not be explained by chance.
And our illustrious leaders doing nothing about the problem because they don’t want to slow down the economy,
SYDNEY (AFX) – Australian Prime Minister John Howard said it was unrealistic to expect nations to sacrifice economic growth in order to halt global climate change.
Howard told a conference of Asia-Pacific nations and corporations that growth was the only way many nations could reduce poverty levels among their populations.
‘The idea that we can address climate change matters successfully at the expense of economic growth is not only unrealistic but it also unacceptable to the population of Australia which I represent,’ Howard said.
‘(It’s also) I’m sure, unacceptable to the populations of all the other countries that are represented around this table.’
Howard, whose conservative government has joined the United States in refusing to sign the UN’s Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, said economic growth and climate solutions need not be mutually exclusive.
Its good to see someone doing something about the problem, Whole Foods is the first fortune 500 company to go 100% green. And I for one am happy as a clam. This just goes to show you that you can have a wonderful, profitable business, without raping the earth or your customers, or your employees.
Or, to put it another way: The purchase – in terms of the environmental benefit in displacing conventional fuels – is equivalent to taking 60,000 cars off the road or planting 90,000 acres of trees.
Whole Foods executives say the move was the result of the environmental activism of its Colorado employees.
See a small group of people at one store changed the way an entire company does business. We can make a difference.
Come again? Whole Foods is buying green tags, not wind energy. They’re still using the same electricity as their neighbors, and the wind energy that the green tags represent already went into the grid. They are giving money to the wind energy companies, but nothing is changed in anyone’s energy use.
I disagree rosa, whole foods buying wind energy tags is the same as using wind energy. The money goes to the wind energy producers and they will use that money to produce more wind turbines.
If you put up turbines the people closest to these turbines will be using wind power, its physics, the electrons go to the closest load.
So if you put up a wind farm, all the people around that wind farm will be using wind energy, this means that even though other power plants are on the grid, that much energy is now produced cleanly.
Whole foods is funding this process by buying green tags. They are in effect using wind energy, even if the actual electrons that go into there store might have been produced by some other means. They are paying to have someone somplace use green power.
The wind energy is not going into the grid for free. It is already being paid for by the local utiity’s ratepayers, not by Whole Foods.
Whole Foods is just providing the wind company with extra income for what they have already sold and someone else has already used.
They can say they support wind energy by buying green tags, but they certainly can’t say they are changing anyone’s use of it.
Whole foods is paying to offset the use of conventional energy with renewable energy. If they don’t use the actual electrons produced by a wind turbine, they are still displacing fossil fuel use. They are in fact changing the mix of energy that is being used. Because of whole foods, much more green renewable energy is being used.
Read the article that I got that quote from, it explains it very well.
There are two issues at hand now: first, does the purchase of green tags actually add more wind energy to the grid, and second, does the presence of wind energy on the grid actually reduce other fuel use.
Missing in the article is the fact that the wind energy is sold into the grid whether or not the green tags are also sold. As the article does say, the green tags must represent a real amount of energy produced. If the green tags weren’t sold, the energy would still be produced, still sold into the grid. With the sale of green tags, they may be able to keep the price down a bit or increase their revenue, thus making wind energy more economically feasible, but that’s a long way from the claim of “using” 100% wind energy.
THe second issue is wind energy’s effect on other sources. First, it never reduces coal use, which provides steady base load and can not ramp its production up and down in response to wind’s fluctuations. Second, displacing other fossil fuel peak load sources would require them to run less efficiently with the extra burden of balancing the highly variable wind power. That cancels out some, if not all, of the presumed benefit. (And if there’s hydro on the system, that’s the most likely to be displaced.) No wind promoter has ever shown an actual reduction of other fuel use or emissions because of wind on the grid.
So Whole Foods and similar companies are doubly deceived.
Rosa check this out.