| I came across this excellent article on climate change this morning, and in it are two things that should be of particular note for the state of Michigan. It's Al Gore getting behind two things. Exhibit A: By all accounts, Gore was open to changing positions he brought to the summits. He originally thought that concentrated solar thermal power, in which the sun heats liquids that then power an electric generator, is superior to photovoltaics, in which sunlight produces electricity directly (PVs are the solar panels sprouting on rooftops these days). But "the PV industry surprised people over the last three years with the speed at which costs dropped," says Cornelius, who is now at Hudson Clean Energy, a private-equity firm. Gore came around. "We are at or near a threshold beyond which photovoltaics will actually have a cost advantage" over concentrated solar as well as fossil fuels, Gore writes. ...
...snip... Lal calculates that if more farmers adopted mulching, no-till farming, and the use of cover crops and manure, 3,700 million acres worldwide could sequester 1 gigaton per year of CO2, roughly 12 percent of annual global emissions.
The first one, obviously, directly supportes a couple of Michigan manufacturers. Concentrated solar thermal is not something most people think would work here in Michigan, because it's big and bulky and relies on lots and lots of sunlight. Michigan's solar power industry is mostly centered on photovoltaics. The second goes along with the preservation of Ag programs at the state level, provided they move towards greener ag. According to the governor's weekly radio address from late last month, that means -- among other things -- assisting with regional wind farms and such, and also encouraging regional food systems and urban farming. All very good things, and things that are critical to the environment in another, unspoken way ... people who are in direct contact with the production of their own food tend to take a bigger interest when poor quality soil, water, and air inhibit yields. The message here for the new "green" MSU Extension is that when they're helping people learn how to grow their own food, they should give some thought to encouraging people to break with old, assumed ways of growing plants, which is in monocrop rows. Interplanting and using soil layers to produce more food per square foot not just mean making better use of soil but also of helping reduce atmospheric carbon, even if only by a sliver ... consider it a personal off-set (done right, and certain plants also help keep various insect species at bay, too). |
