Reuters Reporters Can’t Believe Billionaire Oilman Is Investing in Wind to Make Money

With a name like T. Boone Pickens, Jr., how could you not grow up to be a billionaire oilman?

80 year old T. Boone made his billions over the decades by growing his oil company through a flurry of mergers and acquisitions and is now setting his sites on the wind. His plan calls for spending $10B to build the worlds largest wind farm in Texas.

I found this news in a Reuters story, author Chris Baltimore seems blown away that someone actually expects to make money by doing something green. Check out:

But Pickens is not out to save the planet. He intends to make money.

Golly gee, a businessman invests in a green business and isn’t doing it to make the world a happier and shinier place? He actually will make money? Stop the presses, 1999 wants it’s storyline back.

Link [Reuters]

Green Vaporwear, Hucksterism, and Electric Cars- Wired Magazine Unloads on Zap!

Holy crap did Wired Magazine just unload on electric car company Zap!. It sounds like the company is run by a couple of shady hucksters who have enriched themselves at the expense of their customers, employees, and franchisees while screwing things up for all the real green car companies with their constant over promising and under delivering.

Here’s an snip, head over and read the whole article which Wired was kind enough to post in full to their site.

Over the years, ZAP has taken millions from investors and dealers eager to see the company’s line of green cars hit the road. But that line has never materialized. Of nearly a dozen groundbreaking eco-vehicles ZAP has promised in public announcements and on its Web site, only the Xebra and its sibling, a truck version, have ever made it to market. As a result, fans of electric cars have grown disillusioned, while individuals like Youssef have been financially devastated. What’s more, investment firms around the country have become cautious about financing electric vehicles after being repeatedly misled by one of the industry’s most visible companies.

In spite of all this, the pair now running the company, Starr and CEO Steve Schneider, enjoy lucrative employment packages that have made them millions. Their compensation — and ZAP’s continued existence as a business — heavily depends on the continual issuance of new stock shares. And although ZAP has earned an annual profit only once in its 16 years of existence (even that was the result of a one-time debt conversion) and its stock has been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, and the Pacific Stock Exchange, Starr and Schneider have managed to keep ZAP shares from becoming worthless. They’ve achieved this almost entirely through a relentless flow of press releases in which ZAP describes itself as “a world leader in electric transportation” and constantly claims to be on the verge of innovations and business deals that will yield breakthroughs in green transportation — claims that consistently fall short.

None of this would be possible without the optimism and naïveté of those eager to put their faith in the electric car future. When it comes to green technology, some people just want to believe. It’s easy to see why: Electric cars, after all, don’t run on gas, so they produce virtually no emissions. They do consume some fossil fuels, since they charge their batteries from the grid, which mostly uses coal and natural gas to generate power. But because electric cars are more efficient than gas cars at turning energy into miles, their carbon footprint averages out to be 50 to 90 percent less than that of traditional vehicles. (And that figure drops to nearly zero if the car is plugged into a renewable energy source like a solar panel array.) Electric cars could decrease dependence on oil, reduce global carbon emissions, and save consumers money. But while Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, and General Motors all toyed with electric vehicles in the ’90s, these companies had effectively ended development by 2003, when California stopped requiring automakers to offer zero-emissions vehicles. Since then, electric car enthusiasts have been forced to pin their hopes on small independent companies — like ZAP.

“They tug at your heartstrings,” says Joseph Gottlieb, a ZAP dealer from the San Diego area who has filed an official complaint against ZAP with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “If ZAP was in any other business, the company would have been dead long ago. But they keep taking advantage of how much environmentalists — like me — want to see electric cars come to market.”

The lesson to be learned here: Greenies are easy to rip off if you tell them you’re trying to save the world.

Link [Wired] via [EcoGeek]

Carrotmob: Harnessing People’s Dollars To Drive Businesses Green

The Carrotmob is one of the coolest green ideas I’ve heard in a long time. Founder Brent Schulkin has pulled together an amazing concept- organized groups of people channeling their spending power on one specific day to give incentive to companies to green up their operations. The first campaign they are doing is a buyout of K&D Market, a liquor store in San Francisco. All the Carrotmobbers will be showing up on Saturday, March 29th to spend a lot of money on booze. The store won a bidding war by pledging to kick 22% of the revenue generated by the Carrotmob towards greening up their operation, specifically energy saving measures recommended by SF Energy Watch.

If you’re in the Bay Area this weekend you can take part by swinging over to K&D Market to buy a bottle or three. Bring cash.

We’ll be watching Brent and his Carrotmob; it’s a great concept that could take off everywhere. Definitely Pure Awesome.

Link [Carrotmob] via [Boing Boing]

Video Shows Growth of Wal-Mart Matches Outbreak of Infectious Disease

This is awesome- Kiwi Tobes has a downright creepy video showing the growth of Wal-Mart since its founding. I’d be willing to lay a tenner down on the table betting that the growth of Wal-Mart is similar to the outbreak pattern of an infectious disease released from Bentonville- think Stephen Kings The Stand here.

It’s pretty damn clever how the video was put together. Here’s what Kiki Tobes says:

Freebase has a topic for every zip code, along with it’s longitude and latitude. Here’s one example. One query pulls out all the ZIP codes along with their longitudes and latitudes. You can turn longitudes and latitudes into graphical coordinates with some simple transformations (which will vary based on the region you’re plotting and how big your image is) — here are the ones I used:

x=(longitude+127)*16
y=(50-latitude)*20

If you plot all the ZIP codes using a library like PIL, you get a nice map with dots that roughly match population density, which has the advantage of looking a little bit like a night-time satellite photo of the United States.

Freebase also contains a list of Wal-mart locations, along with their addresses and the year that they opened. Here’s an example. One query pulls all of these out of Freebase.

To create the animation, I generated 30 images for each year starting with 1962. I spread all the Wal-marts that opened that year over the 30 frames. To show the appearance of a Wal-mart, all I had to do was plot a large white dot over the small yellow dot for the appropriate ZIP code. I turned the 1380 images into an animation using MEncoder.

Here’s a version I found on YouTube, but I like the one on Kiki Tobes much better. There’s something about seeing it spread out into the black and slowly trace the outline of the country, as if the ocean is the only thing holding its hungry growth back. Click over and watch the Kiki Tobes version, it’s worth the minute it’ll cost you.

Link [Kiwi Tobes] via [Boing Boing]

The Organic Food Space is Now Owned by Conventional Mega Food Corps

The next time you stack your grocery cart with your favorite picks from the Natural section in the grocery store, you might just be dropping money into the pocket of Big Food.

Kraft, the biggest food company on the planet, owns Boca Foods and Back to Nature. Pepsi (#3) has Naked Juice; General Mills (#6) has Cascadian Farm and Muir Glen; Dean Foods (#7) has Horizon, The Organic Cow of Vermont, and White Wave; and Heinz (#27) owns Arrowhead Mills, Garden of Eatin’, Nile Spice, Celestial Seasonings, and Spectrum Organic.

Good Magazine has a cool chart showing which Big Food corp owns a bunch of your favorite organic food brands. Click over and check it out, it’s kind of scary how consolidated the organic food space is.

Link [Good Magazine] via Boing Boing

Wal-Mart CEO is a Master of the Obvious: Our Company is Not Green

I have to give credit to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott Jr. for pointing out one of the more obvious things around- Wal-Mart is NOT Green. We’re talking about a corporation that has a bigger environmental impact than most nations and whose entire business model is built on making cheap crap on one side of the world and then shipping it to the other side to sell for a percent or two more. They are a gas guzzling, land eating, profits hungry corporate beast.

They have recently embraced the goal of becoming powered by 100% renewable energy and creating zero waste- a fine and noble goal with as much likelihood of happening as my plan of becoming all-knowing and all-powerful. It’s not going to happen in my lifetime, and I plan on living through my 90’s.

Lee made his comments owning up to Wal-Mart’s lack of true Green at the ECO:nomics conference recently held in California. I found the story over at the Wall Street Journals blog and nearly choked when I read the first sentence:

Lee Scott Jr. has earned a reputation as something of an environmental guru for actions he has taken over the past few years in getting Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to green up its act.

Show me someone who thinks Lee Scott Jr. is an environmental guru and I’ll show you someone who thinks George Bush is a great President. Lee appears to be a somewhat enlightened corporate suit at the head of one of the most sprawling companies on the face of the planet looking to use green to boost his margins. That’s fine- the world needs those enlightened suits- but only in the Bizarro World could the guy be called an “environmental guru”.

Here’s a quick three minute video of Mr. Scott’s interview:

Link [Wall Street Journal]

Photo credit: Flickr user Code Poet

GM CEO Rick Wagoner: Vice Chairman Bob Lutz Doesn’t Speak for GM on Global Warming

We wrote about GM’s Vice Chairman Bob Lutz a last month when he made the brilliant comment that Global Warming was a “total crock of shit”. GM is getting their asses handed to them by Toyota and Honda who have been much smarter about deploying hybrid technology in their fleet.

GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner wants us all to know that Bob wasn’t speaking for General Motors- they believe that Global Warming is real and that they are working on how to best address the issue.

Fuck them. GM has been dragging their feet on improving efficiency for as long as cars have had four wheels. They’re hooked on building big ass cars that get single ass digit gas mileage. Mr. Wagoner can sputter all he wants about how GM loves the Earth and is doing their bestest to save it from their products, but we’re not being fooled. Bob Lutz made it very clear- GM is lead by asshat dinosaurs who will be buried in the tar pit that is a Globally Warmed future.

Link [Pure Green Cars]

EarthFirst Blog Week in Review: March 3rd - 7th

Last week was a good one if only because I turned 30 on Saturday. Three cheers for Pisces!

You can feel Spring in the air here in Maine, though we’re probably due for another good storm or three. We’re slowly ramping up things on the ol’ blog here and should be getting our Official Launch on in the next few weeks. You’ll start to see some new writers get into the mix and our editorial intern Caroline starts this week. Yeeeehaw!

Here are the headlines from Earthfirst.com from March 3rd through the 7th.

• The Internet Saves 10 Watts of Energy for Every Watt it Uses
• War’s a Comin’! Alabama, Georgia and Florida Will Fight it Out Over Water
  
• Bush 0 Whales 1, Federal Court Rules Against Use of Navy Sonar
• Al Gore Calls out Major Media at TED: Ask More Green Questions to Presidential Candidates
• It’s a Long Way Back to The Office- A Pull Back in Work At Home Policies?
  
• Very Stupid Eco-Arsonists Torch Green Homes in Seattle Suburb
• Tiny Homes Are Full of Awesome, 100 Square Foot Tumbleweed Tour Video
  
• Higher Gas Prices + Road Congestion = Greener Mass Transit
• Great Flying Spaghetti Monster! Look at Those Gas Prices!
  
• Alyssa Milano Makes a Very Strong Argument for Vegetarianism
• Ripping Off Mother Nature For Design Tips Nets Better Wind Turbines
  
• George Bush Bends Space and Time to Recast America as a Leader on Climate Change
• The Pedal Powered Snow Plow Is Chock Full of Awesome
  
• Tripp Isenhour, Pro Golfer and Dick, Kills a Hawk with a Well Aimed Bal
• Bullet Proof Vest Saves Anti-Whaling Activist from Japanese Whaler’s Bullet
  
• Clearly You’re Doing it Wrong
• The Friday Crazy: The Can Man Suit is 35lbs. of Aluminum Can Awesome

It’s a Long Way Back to The Office- A Pull Back in Work At Home Policies?

Tempers are likely to be rising high in offices around the country soon, as teleworkers are forced to rejoin the sheeple and go in to the office.

Intel recently began requiring many telecommuters in its information-technology group to report to the office at least four days a week. Full-time home-office workers now make up 1% to 2% of Intel’s 5,500 information-technology workers, down from less than 4%, a spokeswoman says; managers wanted “to keep the team spirit strong, which requires face-to-face interaction, impromptu dialogues, collaboration and mentoring,” she explains.

Here’s a few things former home workers need to think about before heading back into the office:

1. Personal Hygiene
2. No more Spontaneous Singing
3. No more Porn
4. Coffee
5. Computer allpaper
6. How to share the paper clips
7. YouTube
8. No more easy Dog Walks
9. Gotta be Discreet when shopping online
10. Household chores have to wait until after work.

In short, it’s going to be tough - who is going to want to give up all the perks of home working?
Not to mention the environmental effects of a zillion extra miles commuting to an office you don’t recognize, to interact with people you don’t like, causing higher levels of stress and various other forms of bad karma as workers are forced to regiment themselves into patterns of work they are not used to. Pollution, congestion, stress, millions of extra shirts to wash, gallons of extra coffee…
If office workers were meant to be together, the Flying Spaghetti Monster would have made office work enjoyable. It’s obvious when you think about it.

Our friends over at Web Daily Worker have some good home-working news - due to tax breaks, 135 businesses in Georgia have instituted new teleworker programs.

Do yourself a favor. Move to Georgia and negotiate yourself a nice four-day working teleworker job.

Then relocate yourself somewhere more interesting.

I hear Bermuda is nice at this time of year.

Link [Business Opportunities]

Photo by Flickr user WadeRockett

The Green Cell Battery Vending Machine is an Awesome Model

I went to the Greener Gadgets Conference a few weeks ago and caught the green design competition at the end of the day. One of the entries that was presented made absolutely no sense to me- the Green Cell battery network.

The idea is to standardize cell phone and gadget batteries and sell them in a vending machine. People would switch out batteries via the Green Cell machine when they run down, getting a fully charged one in return. The designers of Green Cell think this is better than charging up your battery at home because you wouldn’t have to buy a ton of different adapters for all your hand held gadgets.

Really?

Am I missing something here? Do they really think people will buy into a system where they need to run out to a vending machine every time their cell phone or iPod batteries die? Wouldn’t the extra gas to make the trip offset any savings from not having to make the extra adapters in the first place? I plug in my cell year old cell phone once every day or two, I’ll be damned if I had to run down to the store to get a new one 3 times a week.

I think model is flawed. I doubt many people change out their gadget batteries in the first place- they just get a new one when they buy their new phone or MP3 player. Standard battery sizes are something the tech industry needs to embrace, but does it make sense to sell/lease batteries in a vending machine? No, I don’t think so.

I’m a dumbass. See Jill’s comment below.

Link [Inhabitat]

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