Bugs Eat Wast and Produce Petrol

Look at what's new in Silicon Valley. Could this be part of our energy future?



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“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”

He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.

Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.

Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.
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What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to re engineer the global economy – as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel – they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this “Oil 2.0” will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.

Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.

For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. Anything will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant.

The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-z problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.

Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.

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Besides, he says, there is greater good being served. “I have two children, and climate change is something that they are going to face. The energy crisis is something that they are going to face. We have a collective responsibility to do this.”

Power points

— Google has set up an initiative to develop electricity from cheap renewable energy sources

— Craig Venter, who mapped the human genome, has created a company to create hydrogen and ethanol from genetically engineered bugs

— The US Energy and Agriculture Departments said in 2005 that there was land available to produce enough biomass (nonedible plant parts) to replace 30 per cent of current liquid transport fuels

World Food Crisis

..or "Build your garden now."

LINK

The world is facing a food crisis on a scale that it alarming. And it is reaching all of us. What started it? where will it take us?

The food price shock now roiling world markets is destabilizing governments, igniting street riots and threatening to send a new wave of hunger rippling through the world's poorest nations. It is outpacing even the Soviet grain emergency of 1972-75, when world food prices rose 78 percent. By comparison, from the beginning of 2005 to early 2008, prices leapt 80 percent, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. Much of the increase is being absorbed by middle men -- distributors, processors, even governments -- but consumers worldwide are still feeling the pinch.

The convergence of events has thrown world food supply and demand out of whack and snowballed into civil turmoil. After hungry mobs and violent riots beset Port-au-Prince, Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-Édouard Alexis was forced to step down this month. At least 14 countries have been racked by food-related violence. In Malaysia, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is struggling for political survival after a March rebuke from voters furious over food prices. In Bangladesh, more than 20,000 factory workers protesting food prices rampaged through the streets two weeks ago, injuring at least 50 people.

To quell unrest, countries including Indonesia are digging deep to boost food subsidies. The U.N. World Food Program has warned of an alarming surge in hunger in areas as far-flung as North Korea and West Africa. The crisis, it fears, will plunge more than 100 million of the world's poorest people deeper into poverty, forced to spend more and more of their income on skyrocketing food bills.

"This crisis could result in a cascade of others . . . and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said.

WA State Clean Energy Rep.

Here's the introduction to an interview with Jay Inslee by David Roberts of Grist.

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Rep. Jay Inslee's two central passions, clean energy and global warming, received scant attention during his last eight years in Congress. Now, after a power shift on Capitol Hill, he's at the center of high-profile efforts to attack climate change and promote a new energy economy -- not to mention get his colleagues up to speed on the issues.

The Democrat from Washington state's first district, which encompasses suburbs north and west of Seattle, holds spots on two House committees that will play key roles in debates over how to tackle the climate crisis: the Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), and the new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, created this year by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Happily, he's prepared. Inslee has focused on energy issues since the early 1970s and amassed a wonk's expertise. This fall, he will release a book called Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy, about the challenges and opportunities facing America as it navigates the twin crises of global warming and peak oil.

I caught up with Inslee at a Seattle café, where he enthusiastically dove into the weeds of energy and climate policy, all the while cautioning the environmental community to be realistic and understand that Congress is at the beginning of a long journey on these issues.

National Wildlife Refuges Suffer Setbacks

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Faced with a $2.5 billion budget shortfall, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is eliminating hundreds of jobs, cutting back programs and leaving more than 200 national wildlife refuges unstaffed.

In all, the agency is planning to cut 565 jobs from wildlife refuges by 2009 — a 20 percent reduction.

The national refuge system encompasses 547 wildlife refuges and more than 96 million acres in all 50 states, attracting more than 40 million visitors a year.

Environmentalists say the staffing cuts — which follow two years of reductions — will leave an already lean work force depleted and result in a decrease in habitat management, restoration projects and education projects. More than 200 wildlife refuges across the country will be unstaffed.

"Our national wildlife refuges are literally crumbling before our eyes. Across the country we're seeing how the culmination of years of negligent funding devastates these special places," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife.

William Reffalt, director of the National Wildlife Refuge System in the 1980s, lamented the deterioration in the refuge system, which celebrated its 104th anniversary this week.

"Our nation had the foresight to establish these sanctuaries to conserve fish and wildlife, but we are failing to provide the ongoing stewardship that is required," he said. "We need leadership in the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt," who established the first wildlife refuge in Florida in 1903.

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"If the Service does not act decisively now, it will become unable to effectively operate most national wildlife refuges within a few years, even if budgets remain level," said David Eisenhauer, an agency spokesman.

The job cuts should increase efficiency and free up funding for refuge management and operations, Eisenhauer said.

But critics said leaving refuges unstaffed could lead to problems with invasive species — and increased crime or vandalism on the rustic sites, many of which are within an hour's drive of a major city

"In this day and age, no land can really be left alone," said Noah Matson, director of federal lands programs for Defenders of Wildlife. About 8 million refuge acres nationwide are infested with invasive species such as beetles and carp, Matson said.

The cuts also mean fewer law enforcement officers. In the Pacific region, only six officers will patrol a four-state area. In Oregon, just one full-time officer patrols the entire coastline, with a half-dozen wildlife refuges.

"That's just pathetic," Matson said.

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About 221 refuges will be unstaffed after the staffing reductions are finished, Eisenhauer said. All refuges will continue to be managed, he said, although some will become unstaffed "satellite units" of larger refuge complexes with no day-to-day management.

The Economy and China

The following in a excerpt of an article by a business professor in California.

Considering what the stock market did today, it may have been a timely written op/ed.

Full Article Here

China finances the US deficits as part of a broader mercantilist strategy to keep its currency undervalued. The way it does so is to set a "fixed peg" between the US dollar and the Chinese yuan. To maintain that peg in the face of a record trade imbalance between the US and China, China simply recycles its surplus US dollars back into the US bond market.

Today, as a result of its currency manipulation, China has become the largest monthly net buyer of US securities. More than two-thirds of its massive and highly undiversified $1 trillion in foreign currency reserves are estimated to be invested in US bonds. China will very shortly eclipse Japan as America's largest creditor. And its foreign currency reserves are projected to double within a few short years.

Here's the clear and present danger: What may have started out as a simple mercantilist currency gambit for China to sell its exports cheap and keep imports dear has morphed into a powerful weapon to hold off any effective US response to China's unfair trade practices. And make no mistake: Such practices run the gamut from a complex web of illegal export subsidies and currency manipulation to rampant piracy and woefully lax environmental, health, and safety standards.

From time to time, US politicians have railed against these practices - and the collateral hollowing out of America that China's "weapons of mass production" have brought about. However, any time that the Bush administration or Congress threatens any kind of significant and tangible action - as opposed to simply beating its chest - China can now credibly threaten to stop financing US deficits and start dumping greenbacks.

This is a very credible threat. If executed, inflation, the costs of imports, and interest and mortgage rates would skyrocket. With higher housing costs leading the way, consumers would soon be overburdened. The result: a nasty stagflation shock.

Some say that the Chinese would never take such an action because it would hurt them as much as Americans. But it's Beijing's view that the Chinese people are far tougher and better able to withstand any economic shock than Americans who've grown soft living the good life - and they are probably right. Chinese officials also take a far longer view of strategic action. So if a "dump the greenbacks" strategy needs to be implemented to break the back of a rising American protectionism, to secure Taiwan, or to achieve any other strategic goals, sobeit.

That's the snapshot right now - and it goes a long way in explaining why the Bush administration, and particularly Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, have taken such timid actions in dealing with this threat.

But the long-run picture is even scarier. In the next five years, as China's foreign reserves hurtle toward the $2 trillion mark (and perhaps as China begins to allow its currency to appreciate somewhat), the Chinese government and its many state-run enterprises will be in a very strong position to go on an acquisition binge for US companies.

So what, you say? Corporations bearing the flags of countries such as Germany, Japan, and France regularly shop for US assets, and no harm has come of it.

This is very different. China's "buying of America" will be largely financed and orchestrated by the Chinese government - not corporations. This means China's acquisition binge will be far more strategic from a policymaking, rather than from a profitmaking, perspective. The likely result: a rapid acceleration in the transfer of sensitive technology, as well as the outsourcing and offshoring of US jobs. Ironically, as more US companies offshore their production - and as more fall into Chinese hands - there will be fewer voices to lobby against China's mercantilism.