VentureBeat has the story (I think the press conference is going on as I write this) of Google making a major commitment to generating energy at lower cost than coal in years rather than decades.

Sounds like they’re going to combine their own research initiatives with funding promising projects across the energy spectrum.

I buy organic fair trade coffee because it tastes a lot better and regular coffee is one of the most polluted food products we consume- most of it is grown in third world countries with virtually no regulations on the use of pesticides.

While shopping at my local natural food store for coffee I realized I needed milk so I picked up some organic milk. When I got home (Rochester, NY), I looked at the carton and found that this milk was either from Wisconsin or Oregon- it wasn’t clear. This is crazy. We ship a commodity like milk thousands of miles? Don’t the organic food people realize what the carbon cost of this is?

I think if we’re going certify things like Fair Trade and Organic we should add a third food label: Estimated Carbon Cost or ECC. It would a shocker to know that the supposedly environmentally friendly products we’re buying are actually much worse for the planet than those that are local.

If this is for real, it’s a breakthrough. A Penn State research team has developed a way to extract hydrogen using common bacteria that is highly efficient, clean and low cost. They claim it returns 288% more energy than the process consumes.

This would be very big news as hydrogen extraction methods in use today are not energy efficient and typically require the use of petro products, rendering hydrogen’s use in fuel cells inefficient when you look at the big picture, costwise. Because hydrogen is a completely clean fuel, an efficient production process could dramatically change things. I suspect GM will be all over this for their fuel cell car project.

They also claim the process could be used for fertilizer production, another process that currently relies heavily on using petroleum products.

Nice to have something positive to write about!

Image courtesy of the National Science Foundation.

And I’m wondering what price will initiate real change. The recent protests in Burma against the military oppressive government weren’t triggered by human rights abuses, they were the result of the government removing their artificially low gas prices (under 10 cents a gallon). Overnight it became virtually impossible to afford to drive. This triggered an entire country to rise and confront their government on a wide range of issues.

Recent earnings reports from the big oil companies had their results down sharply from the year before (when they recorded the highest profits in history for any kind of company). Ask yourself why? My answer?

They have been intentionally keeping gas prices at the pump from rising as oil prices have risen because they know the social implications of a sharp rise. One economist estimates that a $10 rise in oil should increase retail gas prices by 2.2 cents a gallon. Oil has risen almost $50/gallon without a related rise in gas prices over the past year. However, on the heels of these earnings reports and the extremely unstable political situation in the Middle East (Kurds and Turks fighting, Musharraf showing his true thug nature, Israel and Hamas fighting, sword-rattling between us and Iran…) we’re finally seeing prices rise. High test today was $3.47! Now these are New York state prices that include high taxes but…

So oil is nearing $100/barrel which puts the true cost, adjusted for inflation, higher than at our worst point during the Arab oil crisis of the seventies. I’m old enough to remember gas lines, rationing and an uptake in public transportation. I imagine that these things won’t happen until we hit $5 because we’re slightly more efficient mileage-wise than we were then. But only slightly, thanks to the insane lobbying to keep gas-guzzling behemoths legal by the US auto industry.

We could easily be driving 100 MPG vehicles today. If we were, we wouldn’t be at war in the Middle East, we’d be in a position to tell the Saudis to stop this fundamentalist craziness, we’d be an example in fighting climate change for the rest of the world and we’d be creating a better world for our grandchildren.

So bring on the $5/gallon gas if that’s what it takes to wake us up.

BTW, GM posted a $39 billion dollar loss today. This would never have happened if they had any real strategic long-term planning instead of the afore-mentioned lobbying and reliance on old technology instead of innovation.