When Vice President Al Gore returned from Kyoto, Japan, with a climate treaty in 1997, it was already a dead letter. The Senate, which ratifies treaties, strongly opposed the deal even before Gore signed it.

On Wednesday, Gore returned to the Senate to offer advice about how to arrive at a different outcome as a new climate treaty is negotiated this year in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The federal calendar is packed with pressing business in 2009. One of the toughest deadlines is to lay the groundwork for the international climate talks in Copenhagen.

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Suggesting that the planet will soon reach an irreversible “tipping point” of damage to the climate, former Vice President Al Gore told members of Congress on Wednesday that the United States needs to join international talks on a treaty.

“This treaty must be negotiated this year,” Gore told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

During questioning, he acknowledged that any treaty must include mechanisms to ensure compliance with prospective limits on carbon dioxide emissions, which come primarily from burning fossil fuels for energy.

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President Obama has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to look into allowing California to increase fuel efficiency standards for cars.

Is this request part of a patchwork of measures that will create a cleaner environment and green jobs?

Or – as its critics contend – will it help to create a patchwork of fuel standards that will end up costing even more jobs in America’s struggling car industry?

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Exxonmobil corp., the world’s largest crude oil refiner, supports taxing carbon dioxide as the most efficient way of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, its chief executive said.

“As a businessman, it’s hard to speak favourably about any new tax, but a carbon tax strikes me as a more direct, more transparent and more effective approach,” Rex Tillerson, CEO of the Irving, Texas based company, said Thursday at the Woodrow Wilson international center for scholars in Washington.

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Russian natural-gas exports through Ukraine to Europe halted for the first time in three years, threatening to create shortages as freezing weather spurred demand for power.

The two sides blamed each other for the disruption. OAO Gazprom, Russia’s gas-export monopoly, cut off all gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine at 7:44 a.m. Kiev time today, according to Ukrainian utility NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy. Gazprom Deputy Chief Executive Officer Alexander Medvedev said Ukraine shut off a fourth pipeline after closing three others yesterday.

The move, stopping all deliveries to Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, came after a halt in supplies to the Balkans yesterday and cuts to other countries. The dispute has already spread further and lasted longer than a similar conflict in 2006 which interrupted shipments to Europe.

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Gas supplies from Russia to Europe plummeted overnight with four countries reporting a complete halt as the dispute between Moscow and Ukraine over payment rates dramatically worsened.

Kiev said that Gazprom, the Russian state gas company, had cut the flow by 60 per cent following Vladimir Putin’s threat yesterday to punish Ukraine for allegedly stealing fuel it is supposed to allow to transit through its pipelines en route to Europe.

The Bulgarian Government called a crisis meeting at 7am this morning and appealed to all consumers to limit their usage as the gas stopped flowing at around 3.30am on the coldest night of the year, as it did to Greece, Turkey and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

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As a conservation measure, Dr. Chu has recommended that Americans drive smaller cars or pay higher taxes for driving big ones. It would be reassuring to know that he also supports, as a short-term measure for reducing dependence on foreign oil, responsible efforts to increase domestic oil and gas production. These may be stopgap supplies, but having them is better for us than not.

When he was introduced to the press by Mr. Obama, Dr. Chu said, “We must repair the economy and put us on a path forward toward sustainable energy.”

That is fine, as long as he keeps his eye on the economy’s near-term energy requirements, as well.

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The team President-elect Barack Obama introduced on Monday to carry out his energy and environmental policies faces a host of political, economic, diplomatic and scientific challenges that could impede his plans to address global warming and America’s growing dependence on dirty and uncertain sources of energy.

Acknowledging that a succession of presidents and Congresses had failed to make much progress on the issues, Obama vowed to press ahead despite the faltering economy and suggested that he would invest his political capital in trying to break logjams.

“This time must be different,” Obama said at a news conference in Chicago. “This will be a leading priority of my presidency and a defining test of our time. We cannot accept complacency, nor accept any more broken promises.”

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There is, in progressive circles, a certain fascination with those apocalyptic prophecies that seem to hold so many religious conservatives in thrall. From the sensation over the megaselling Left Behind book series to more recent media flare-ups around figures such as John Hagee (the television pastor of countdown-to-Armageddon fame), the end times seem to be looming at all times.

Turn your attention to a strain of thought ascendant in secular, environmentalist America and you might be surprised to find a similar apocalypse fixation, minus the Book of Revelation and anti-Christ parts. Call it the secular theology of environmental collapse ”” the fearful conviction that the hopelessly corrupt world as we know it has entered its death throes, with massive destruction stalking ever nearer.

Given the huge challenges facing this country and the constant barrage of “be afraid!” messages from politics and pulpits, it’s understandable that many of us have a close relationship with dread.

Yet we should remain wary of doomsday fantasizing, in either its religious or secular form.

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Driving your car may take on a new and larger meaning ”” for your wallet.

To fix its crumbling roads and bridges and rescue the state’s financially challenged public transit system, a draft report made public yesterday says the state should consider charging tolls at the state line on every interstate highway and creating a new tax for each mile a vehicle is driven.

The report calls for tolls on a new Sakonnet River Bridge, increasing the state gas tax and a long list of other things related to using the roads. One proposed tax would apply to anything made from petroleum, from paint to detergent to plastics.

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President-elect Barack Obama added sweep and meat to his economic agenda on Saturday, pledging the largest new investment in roads and bridges since President Dwight D. Eisenhower built the Interstate system in the late 1950s, and tying his key initiatives ”“ education, energy, health care ”“back to jobs in a package that has the makings of a smaller and modern version of FDR’s New Deal marriage of job creation with infrastructure upgrades.

The president-elect also said for the first time that he will “launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen.”

“We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms,” he said in the address.

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Over the summer, the OPEC cartel could not prevent oil prices from surging to record levels even when its members pumped full out. Now, the producers seem equally unable to stop prices from collapsing as the global economy cools down.

Members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries left an informal meeting in Cairo this weekend without an agreement to reduce production, but with rising doubts about fraying discipline and tensions within the group that accounts for 40 percent of the world’s oil exports.

So great uncertainty still looms over the market. Have producers managed to draw a line in the sand, or will oil prices keep falling in coming months?

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For millions of years, invisible streams of water have run deep in the earth below Manhattan at a constant temperature of 65 degrees, a source of energy that seems beyond exhaustion ”” and beyond reach. But eight months ago, a seminary in Chelsea began to pump water from those streams to heat its buildings in the winter and cool them in the summer.

“It’s forever noiseless, forever pollution-less, forever carbon-free,” said Maureen Burnley, the executive vice president of the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church.

For the seminary, and now about 60 other places in Manhattan, the unseen bounty of the earth is being harvested by geothermal pumps. Manhattan is geologically suited for these deep wells. From a depth of 1,500 to 1,800 feet, the pumps deliver the consistently moderate temperatures of underground water to the surface, where it works like a refrigerant. It carries energy.

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The greening of religion, although long overdue, is really a quite natural phenomenon. The texts of many faiths, indeed most, at some point reference the stewardship of this earth. More surprising is that today, secular environmental groups are seizing the opportunity to reach out to faith communities.

A Sierra Club report highlights faith-based environmental initiatives in all 50 states “spiritually motivated grassroots efforts to protect the planet.” One line leaps off the page: “Lasting social change rarely takes place without the active engagement of communities of faith.” Indeed. Think of the U.S. civil rights movement, Solidarity in Poland and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Social change does not stick without the glue of religion.

But as these two movements one based on the love of God, the other on the love of the earth intersect, we should celebrate the initiative while remaining aware of the challenges and inevitable spats that await this quite remarkable marriage.

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Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. ‘Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,’ said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. ‘They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.’

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Friedman’s cheerleading for globalization has brought brickbats not only from economic populists but also from environmentalists, who point out that if China and India raise their per-capita resource consumption to American levels, the world is well and truly doomed. Unsustainable development poses a serious challenge to Friedman’s globalist vision and indeed, an existential dilemma for humanity. Our disasters are no longer local; we’re playing with all the chips now. To his credit, Friedman doesn’t try to dodge or minimize the challenges. The first half or so of the book is a solemn tour of woes: “the growing demand for ever scarcer energy supplies and natural resources; a massive transfer of wealth to oil-rich countries and their petrodictators; disruptive climate change; energy poverty, which is sharply dividing the world into electricity haves and electricity have-nots; and rapidly accelerating biodiversity loss, as plants and animals go extinct at record rates.”

These metastasizing dangers don’t for a second cause Friedman to question his commitment to globalization. He’s determined to make the project work, and green is the key that he hopes will open the way. Happily, his instincts on green issues turn out to be considerably more reliable than his instincts on foreign policy. In the name of energy independence, a lot of other self-consciously butch new greens support ethanol and other biofuels, which raise the price of food and encourage deforestation, or “clean coal,” which blows the tops off of mountains. Friedman doesn’t fall into those traps. He’s found the right people to talk to, focused on the correct inflection points, and hit on the best answers to the biggest questions.

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This moment feels to me like a bad B-movie rerun of the 1980s. And I know how this movie ends ”” with our re-addiction to oil and OPEC, as well as corrosive uncertainty for our economy, trade balance, security and environment.

“Is the economic crisis going to be the end of green?” asks David Rothkopf, energy consultant and author of “Superclass.” “Or, could green be the way to end the economic crisis?”

It has to be the latter. We can’t afford a financial bailout that also isn’t a green buildup ”” a buildup of a new clean energy industry that strengthens America and helps the planet.

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I did not vote for the deposition of Bishop Duncan for a couple of reasons. I was one of the few who believed that his intention to lead his diocese out of The Episcopal Church was not the same as actually doing it. Secondly, I was impressed with the argument of one of our own partnered gay priests now serving in another diocese that we must act to end the cycle of violence that our Communion struggles really extend on all sides. In that vein, I have also believed that we have to find a broader canonical framework with which to account for one another, which allows for removal and transfer within the Communion of the Anglican Church, and not deposition. I also think accountability should have come from the highest ranking bishop in our Communion five years ago, who had the right idea of making Lambeth 2008 a place for conversation and relationship building, but ought to have started at that point several years ago in face to face interaction.

Is it all now too late? The planet is still in peril. Trillions of dollars of value have been wiped off the portfolios of millions never to be returned in quite that same way. The Church is divided and we face a public to whom we are obliged to witness to the reconciling love of God in Jesus, who has every right to judge us according to the Gospel we promise to proclaim in word and deed but also to live.

With Christ it is never too late. Error turns into truth, sin into righteousness and death into life. The cross and resurrection are our ultimate points of accountability, and even righteous people get things wrong but can start again.

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The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States recorded its largest drop ever as consumer demand continued to wane and oil prices slid, a prominent industry analyst said on Sunday.

The national average price for self-serve, regular unleaded gas fell 35.03 cents to $3.3079 a gallon on October 10 from $3.6582 two weeks earlier, according to the nationwide Lundberg Survey.

It was the lowest national average price since March 21, 2008. Since peaking at $4.1124 on July 11, the average cost of a gallon of gas has receded by 80.45 cents. Diesel fuel fell 21 cents to $3.95 a gallon, the first time since March that it has been below $4.00 a gallon.

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The iJET is a new type of solar cell that’s cheap and easy to make, requiring not much more than a pizza oven, some nail polish remover, and a common inkjet printer. Australian scientist Nicole Kuepper describes her invention.

Listen to it all and note carefully HOW she made the discovery.

A storm-related gas shortage in the Southeast that has left some places bone-dry and others with two-hour gas lines is expected to continue for at least another two weeks, energy experts and industry officials say.

The shortage began two weeks after Hurricane Gustav hit the oil-refining regions of the Gulf Coast on Sept. 1. Operations that shut down before that storm were just coming back online when Hurricane Ike hit, forcing another shutdown. The gas shortage, now in its third week, is particularly acute here in sprawling Atlanta, in Nashville in parts of the Carolinas and in Anniston, Ala.

“I don’t go anywhere once I find some and get my tank filled up,” says Alicia Woods, 32, who waited 45 minutes to fill up Sunday morning at a QuikTrip in Cobb County, Ga. “Going out, visiting friends, all that just has to wait. I have to keep my gas for getting back and forth to work.”

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Yes, this bailout is necessary. This is a credit crisis, and credit crises involve a breakdown in confidence that leads to no one lending to anyone. You don’t fool around with a credit crisis. You have to overwhelm it with capital. Unfortunately, some people who don’t deserve it will be rescued. But, more importantly, those who had nothing to do with it will be spared devastation. You have to save the system.

But that is not the point of this column. The point is, we don’t just need a bailout. We need a buildup. We need to get back to making stuff, based on real engineering not just financial engineering. We need to get back to a world where people are able to realize the American Dream ”” a house with a yard ”” because they have built something with their hands, not because they got a “liar loan” from an underregulated bank with no money down and nothing to pay for two years. The American Dream is an aspiration, not an entitlement.

When I need reminding of the real foundations of the American Dream, I talk to my Indian-American immigrant friends who have come here to start new companies ”” friends like K.R. Sridhar, the founder of Bloom Energy. He e-mailed me a pep talk in the midst of this financial crisis ”” a note about the difference between surviving and thriving.

“Infants and the elderly who are disabled obsess about survival,” said Sridhar. “As a nation, if we just focus on survival, the demise of our leadership is imminent. We are thrivers. Thrivers are constantly looking for new opportunities to seize and lead and be No. 1.” That is what America is about.

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The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.

The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.

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Here’s how it worked. The Knoxville area has several bulk fuel storage depots. Some belong to the chain outfits, others are run by wholesalers that supply independent gas stations. In either case, they manage their storage levels to maintain a competitive retail price. When the price of gas is rising, they maintain a relatively full inventory. This means that on average the gas they store always costs less than the current spot price. On the other hand, when gas prices are dropping, they keep inventories low, so they aren’t holding a lot of gas that cost them more than the market price.

It’s the exact same thing you do to minimize how much you pay for gas. If the price is going up, you fill up in the morning before the price changes go into effect, and you fill the tank full. When the price is going down, you guy your gas in the afternoon, after the price changes, and you buy just what you need. The wholesalers and bulk storage facilities do exactly the same thing, except on a much larger scale. Gas prices have been plummeting lately, so all of the bulk storage facilities have been keeping their stocks low.

Then along came Gustav, which impacted the ability of refineries to deliver fuel to the regional and local bulk storage facilities. That hasn’t been a huge deal because they were drawing down their stocks anyway. But now Ike is headed for Galveston, and the pipelines are being shut down completely. And that is where the fertilizer hits the propeller. When you’re in a low stock condition, you are relying on a steady flow of gasoline to maintain smooth distribution. When that steady flow is disrupted, you’re only hours away from shortages.

It’s been more than a few hours, and shortages are already here.

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Hungry after a recent day of classes, Lake Forest College freshman Peter Bacon piled an odd assortment of chicken patties, a grilled cheese sandwich, Tater Tots, mashed potatoes and meatloaf onto two dinner plates.

And he would have taken even more food, he said, if one staple weren’t missing from the college’s cafeteria: a plastic tray to carry it all.

“At most, I’ll carry two, maybe three plates on top of each other,” Bacon, 18, said. “I would love to have a tray.”

But students returning this fall to Lake Forest College and dozens of other campuses nationwide are finding that’s no longer an option. In one of the latest””and perhaps quirkiest””environmentally conscious initiatives, cafeteria trays are becoming as outdated as mystery meat.

Ditching the trays decreases food waste, conserves water and energy used in cleaning and reduces the need for polluting detergents, according to proponents of trayless dining. The move comes as campuses are competing to be the greenest by starting bike-sharing programs, adding environmental majors, focusing on energy efficiency and hiring “sustainability” coordinators.

But critics of the tray take-away, including Bacon, have a menu of complaints: It’s cumbersome to carry multiple plates. It’s disruptive to make several trips to get more food. And it takes longer to clear dirty dishes from the table.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s Chicago Tribune.

DURING a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, the boss of General Motors (GM), Rick Wagoner, unveiled the Cadillac Provoq, a new hydrogen fuel-cell concept car. With a drivetrain emitting only water vapour, a 300-mile range and a top speed of 160kph (100mph), the vehicle, said Mr Wagoner, represented “the promise of truly sustainable transportation”. It was a promise that sounded vaguely familiar.

A decade earlier, in 1998, Mr Wagoner’s predecessor, Jack Smith, told the Detroit auto show that GM had a plan to produce a production-ready fuel-cell vehicle “by 2004 or sooner”. That same year, Ford’s incoming boss, Jacques Nasser, said that he saw fuel-cell cars as being a viable alternative to petrol cars for many people during the course of his career (he was replaced in 2001). And as recently as 2004 California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, rhapsodised about “hydrogen highways” all across the state by 2010.

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The best deal on fuel in the country right now might be here in Utah, where people are waiting in lines to pay the equivalent of 87 cents a gallon. Demand is so strong at rush hour that fuel runs low, and some days people can pump only half a tank.

It is not gasoline they are buying for their cars, but natural gas.

By an odd confluence of public policy and private initiative, Utah has become the first state in the country to experience broad consumer interest in the idea of running cars on clean natural gas.

Residents of the state are hunting the Internet and traveling the country to pick up used natural gas cars at auctions. They are spending thousands of dollars to transform their trucks and sport utility vehicles to run on compressed gas. Some fueling stations that sell it to the public are so busy they frequently run low on pressure, forcing drivers to return before dawn when demand is down.

It all began when unleaded gasoline rose above $3.25 a gallon last year, and has spiraled into a frenzy in the last few months.

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Tropical cyclones have been getting stronger over the past several decades, according to a new report in the journal Nature. This finding supports a theory that storms will get stronger as the surface of the ocean heats up because of global warming.

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When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.

That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.

The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.

The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.

“We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

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Don’t Stop at the Lights, launched [this week]… by Church House Publishing, includes sermon ideas and extensive bible study notes drawing on ancient theological themes which aim to reconnect the church to the natural world and the roots of its faith. It inspires priests to make churches beacons in their community, offering case studies linked to the Church’s year including:

* setting up a decorations swap shop during Advent for people to exchange unwanted decorations;
* using Lent as an opportunity to carry out a complete internal environmental audit and to set targets, beginning on Ash Wednesday;
* re-establishing the tradition of beating the bounds at Rogationtide to help refocus congregations on God’s gifts and the role of the Church in preserving justice and extending charity;
* limiting the number of nights that the church is floodlit and then inviting members of the congregation and wider community to ”˜sponsor’ an evening’s illumination in memory of a loved one or to mark an anniversary

Former Church of England environment adviser Claire Foster and David Shreeve, a current adviser to the Church and director of The Conservation Foundation, have written the book to help enable churches to take climate change seriously as a core Christian concern. It follows last year’s successful pocket guide by the same authors and also produced by Church House Publishing, called How Many Lightbulbs does it take to Change a Christian? which will be published in the United States this Autumn.

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