Congress has approved what will be a big bonanza for car buyers — not to mention car dealers — with the “Cash for Clunkers” bill that cleared the Senate on Thursday.

Once signed by President Obama, who pushed for the law, car buyers will be able to get up to $4,500 toward more efficient new vehicles (like the Honda Insight shown here) when they trade in their aging gas guzzlers (or even just their aging cars that get so-so mileage). Cars must pre-date 2002 but not be older than 1984 models.

Ironically, this generous program would not be available had it not been for the short-sighted American car manufacturers who made so many gas gulpers, their heedless American customers and also the torpid economy. None of those players gets chastened or overhauled or even pinched in this deal.

Consumers, in fact, get rewarded for not paying attention earlier. The forward-thinking person who bought a Civic years ago can’t trade it in now because they get good gas mileage!

Ironies aside, the Clunkers law should help get some high-emissions vehicles off the road: Clunkers have to get 18 mpg or less to qualify as trade-in candidates. The new car or truck you choose to replace the clunker must provide an improvement of 10 mpg to qualify for the $4,500 voucher.  If you improve your mileage by just four mpg, you would qualify for a $3,500 voucher (which is just about the weeniest of requirements, indicating that this is really all about triggering new car purchases and not so much about improving the Earth’s atmosphere.)

There are likable aspects to this bill. It helps people with old cars that aren’t worth much, and in this economy, that’s apropos. In other words, if your trade-in is worth more than $4,500, then it doesn’t qualify for the program, and you probably don’t need the help anyway. Keep your fancy-pants aging gas guzzler, you, you, SUV person!

And with all this sad news about car dealers losing their dealerships, tanking Michigan towns, and idled factories, this law will spread some dollars around. Rather like George Bailey handing out a few needed dollars to the savings and loan customers, instead of letting the whole system crash.

And yet, it feels like once again we’re shopping to save ourselves.

For more info on the Cash for Clunkers program, visit the website.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

It’s settled. The loneliest salesperson in the frontier is not the Hummer dealer, but the guy selling Fleetwoods.

The recreational vehicle maker filed for bankruptcy today, saying that the rugged economic climate was proving too tough to weather, especially coming as it does after a protracted slump in sales already underway. Essentially, the Fleetwood’s been spinning its wheels in the mud for sometime, up against changing demographics, high gasoline prices and declining American incomes.

Aside from the loss of jobs (700 or so immediately and more if the company can’t be sold), the sad symbolism of the matter is almost too much to bear. America’s great rush to get on wheels found its fullest expression in the vacation motor home (or, some would argue, tractor-wheel monster pickup trucks). A generation or two took flight upon retirement, heading to Sun City, Lake Powell, the Grand Canyon, Corpus Christi, McAllen, Lakewood and Panama City.

My grandparents were snowbirds, though they didn’t own a Fleetwood, and did time as temporary Minnesota transplants to the Rio Grande Valley, playing cards and checkers with other retirees wandering the country after years cooped up in offices. Those lucky enough to end their working life with enough cash to cover a recreational vehicle didn’t have to stay in one spot, but could sprint around the country, checking out buttes and bluffs, ticking off historical markers and eating cherry pie at a different truck stop every day. After refueling their 9 mpg townhomes on wheels, they would slog off to kibbutz at the KOA, concoct variations on the sloppy joe and share pecan rolls from Stuckey’s.

Ah, the call of the road. Jack Kerouac. Hell’s Angels. Grandpa and Grandma. Let’s not even go there.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

The Earth Day Network, the Clean Air Campaign and UPS have launched a campaign that challenges an American tradition – idling your car outside the neighborhood school while waiting to scoop up the munchkins.

The groups are targeting active idlers because the practice needlessly pollutes the air, contributing to global warming and aggravating kids’ respiratory health issues.

UPS is funding the effort with a $350,000 grant that helps supply students, teachers, parents and community leaders with “toolkits” and educational material for bus drivers and parents. Schools can get signs for car pool lanes, educational material for children and curriculum guides for teachers at the EDN website.

“Turning off your engine while waiting to pick up your child is such a simple step to help everyone breathe cleaner air, save money on gas and reduce emissions all at the same time,” said Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network, in a news release announcing the program today.

“Vehicle idling wastes fuel and money. In fact, idling for 30 seconds uses more fuel than restarting your engine, and idling for 10 minutes a day wastes an average of 24.6 gallons of gas per year.” (Tell that to our crossing guard and her idling truck!)

It almost goes without saying, but kids are more affected by this ambient air pollution than anyone, because their lungs are still developing.

“In fact, particle pollution and ground level ozone and can aggravate asthma and contribute to increased upper-respiratory infections,” says Kevin Green, executive director of The Clean Air Campaign.

For Atlanta-based UPS, the national program is an expansion of a previous partnership with the Clean Air Campaign in Georgia. The Clean Air Campaign is a Georgia non-profit that works with employers to help find commuting solutions, reduce highway congestion and improve air quality.

Earth Day Network is the clearinghouse for Earth Day, with thousands of partner organizations in 174 countries.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

With winter weather at its most aggressive about now, it’s hard not to notice all the idlers in our midst. They’re idling at fast food restaurants, outside offices and schools. You find a business, there’s a car idling outside. Some people take their right to idle pretty seriously. Police cruisers sometimes idle while they lie in wait and will get no argument from me. Ditto crossing guards, for different reasons.

I am not suggesting that we regular folks suffer frozen feet nobly in the name of curbing carbon emissions. I’m all for necessary feet-saving measures. But I have noticed that my car stays warm for a little while after I’ve been driving it. You notice that? Do I really need to idle while my teenager tarries at the bookstore checkout? Reaallly? No, I don’t. Do I need to warm up in the driveway before heading to an appointment? Not anymore. Experts say modern engines do just fine with a cold start. Do I need to keep the car especially toasty, while someone runs into the bakery for bread? No — and neither did the woman I noticed last week in a big hulking truck that idled while someone else got the bread. Humpff!

OK, I agree, this is a little thing, in the large scheme of things. But did you know that two minutes of idling is the equivalent of driving one mile, according to the Consumer Energy Center ?

It might be worth thinking about. A hundred million Americans idling less — and thinking more. It could help.

And while you’re at it, check those tires to make sure they’re properly inflated.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Biomass technology promises what few other alternative fuel schemes can: energy created from waste. Given the controversial use of corn (and other food crops) for biofuel, which is turning out to be less of a greenhouse gas saver than once thought, waste is looking pretty attractive.

A new plant in Central Texas, dedicated last week, promises to take sewage waste, organic garbage, grass clippings and manure, and convert them into gasoline.

Initially the plant, designed as a large-scale demonstration project, will use forage sorghum as its base material. Forage sorghum, unlike other varieties grown to produce sorghum seed for food products, does not steal directly from the human food chain. It is used as feed for cattle, but even so, it’s more renewable than corn because about five times more can be grown per acre.

After proving itself using forage sorghum, the biomass plant is expected to begin converting waste into fuel, a process that offers the dual benefits of recycling waste and capturing its energy, while increasing the options for locally produce energy.

At the moment, the distribution chain for delivering sewage and municipal waste is not as evolved as would be needed for a large-scale production; that is, cities aren’t set up to efficiently deliver their solid waste. Delivery cost and sanitation present kinks in the system.

Still, once all the systems are “go” as they say, using waste and garbage for fuel makes a lot more sense that digging more landfills, according to the innovator behind the conversion process.

“Financially, we benefit at both ends. At the front end, we earn money from ‘tipping fees’ for accepting the waste. At the tail end, we earn money from selling the biofuel,” said Dr. Mark Holtzapple, a professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station.

“The environment benefits because we don’t have to dig holes and throw it (garbage) away, which requires that they be monitored forever because there’s always this fear about toxic chemicals leaching away in landfills,” he said. “Another environmental benefit is that biofuels are CO2 neutral because they were derived from plants and not fossil resources.”

Holtzapple developed the pioneering technology that will be used at the plant, built by Terrebon LLC. The process relies on fermenting the organic waste (or sorghum) and was initially inspired by examining the digestive systems of cattle being studied at A & M.

The process differs from others in the pipeline, used at other biofuel development labs, in that it doesn’t rely on adding enzymes to breakdown matter. Instead, it applies “chemistry that’s been known since the 1920s,” Dr Holtzapple explained.

And while it’s not as carbon-friendly at the user end as its cousin ethanol, which burns more cleanly, locally manufactured gasoline, which will be needed for some time to come, has its virtues — creating local jobs and lessening the need for imported oil.

“I’ve been developing this process for about 18 years,” Holtzapple said, adding that biomass conversion became “his life’s work” after seeing the need for better recovery of waste and energy production during the 1970s energy crisis.

The new facility, dedicated Nov. 7, is in Bryan, Texas, about an hour northwest of Houston, and is expected to be online by year’s end. A smaller pilot project was in operation at the A & M campus nearby for about three years.

At the dedication, Terrebon CEO Gary Luce explained that the fuel could be affordably produced and that cities could generate substantial gasoline from their sewage sludge, according to the Environmental News Service.

For example, the from a city of 200,000 could generate 4.5 million gallons of gasoline every year, he said.

The gasoline could be sold for about $1.50 to $2 a gallon, Dr. Holtzapple said, taking into account a 15 percent return on investment and capital costs of the plant, depreciated over 10 years.

That cost also assumes a payback or “tipping fee” from municipalities for processing wastes, something that is already being done in some locations.

Copyright © 2008 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Aahhhh. Another beautiful fall day. Another leaf blower. BBZZZZZZZZ!!!!

Solution? Rake.

Suggested New Thought Bubble: Wait a minute, what am I doing with this silly, ineffectual, dirty-emissions gadget? I’m an American, I should be conserving gasoline*, not squandering it. We’re at war in the Middle East! What was I thinking? My parents would have known better during WWII.

(* or electricity for plug-in leaf blower owners.)

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

By John DeFore

California leads the nation in efforts to curb its addiction to oil, according to a report issued this week by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The group’s second annual report is mainly intended to measure each state’s relative vulnerability to rising oil prices, suggesting that while “the federal government has a responsibility to take strong and necessary actions to reduce our oil dependence,” the varied experience of individual state governments “presents our nation’s leaders with an opportunity to gauge the most effective measures and adopt them.”

The report tallies state efforts in four general categories (clean/efficient vehicle use, research and development, clean fuels, and smart growth/transit), most of which are broken into sub-categories of legislative action. California is the only state to take all of the suggested actions in three of the four categories (perhaps unsurprisingly, it comes up short in the smart growth/transit arena), placing it just ahead of competitors New York and Connecticut. (Alaska, perhaps counting on all that oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is doing the least to curb dependency.)

California stood out as the only state to have adopted a low-carbon fuel standard, designed to reduce the intensity of auto-fuel pollution, which was implemented by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year; the defense council notes that states such as Massachusetts are considering those measures but have yet to enact them.

The council measures a state’s vulnerability as the percentage of an average driver’s income going to gasoline, and even that basic data may be an eye-opener: In Mississippi, the most vulnerable state, drivers spent nearly 8 percent of their income filling their tanks (an average of nearly $2,300 per driver) — and that figure is based on 2007 spending, before the price increases seen this year. Connecticut drivers spent the least, at 3.17 percent, while Californians fell in the middle at 5.38 percent.

© Photo by Vasyl Dudenko | Dreamstime.com

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media