Today I thought we would step back from the USA-news bias and look at some news peices on energy and utilties from around the world. Particularly, a lot of the most interesting stuff occuring in climate change work and alternative energy is still, regrettably, overseas.
Leaky Peat: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6502239.stm
It seems as though the moorlands of the UK are leaking carbon dioxide. The leak occurs when peat begins to degrade due to fires, water drainage, overgrazing and pollution. What exactly is peat, besides a useful word to know when playing Boggle? Peat is a bunch of decaying organic matter that gets lumped and compressed together. Interesting factoid - peat is the first step in creating coal. Although we can see the formation of peat during our lifetimes, the same is obviously not true of coal. Peat, like coal, has a long history of being used as a heat source, and a few countries, namely Finland, harvest it on an industrial scale as fuel. Peat is also used in the distillation of Scotish whisky, which is what gives the drink its "smoky flavor." (For more information about this unlikely source of energy and many other things, see Wikipedia's entry entitled, "peat" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peat
The relevant part for the UK is that these bogs (I'm gonna call them what they are) are being drained and otherwise converted. It turns out that in additional to all its other uses, peat stores carbon dioxide. In fact, it stores much more carbon dioxide than forests do - which makes sense. So, the UK is contemplating giving carbon credits to those who take steps to care for peat lands.
Conflicts in Iceland: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/6453703.stm
Not all environmental causes are equal, and I predict that as the world becomes overall more "green" there will be more and more conflicts about what types of environmentalism are best. I would predict that at some point in the future there will be several environmental movements whose goals differ in important ways. This may already be occuring. This article about Iceland is an interesting example of conflicting environmental priorities. The problem is that Iceland naturally has an unusual landscape (astronauts go there to train for trips to the Moon). It also has plentiful sources of renewable energy, including rushing rivers and geothermal vents. Icelanders have no national need to tap these energy sources - but the potential of exporting this renewable energy is beginning to pull corporations over to the wilderness. On the other hand, some environmentalists believe that the good gained from renewable energy is not worth industrializing one of the last remaining pristine wildernesses. I have included two pictures here, one of a dam site in Iceland and one of a geothermal vent site. 
My own personal opinion is that extorting renewable energy from these pristine landscapes is a necessity. That is not to say that we should not set some of the land aside with a conservation easement or something, but the value of that clean energy is too large to be ignored. Although, the dams present an interesting issue because dams are one of the more inefficient and environmentally-damaging types of "renewable energy" out there. Dams hardly ever operate at the energy capacity they are designed to, and in addition they flood land and release carbon from their resevoirs. Finally, they impede wildlife in important ways - particularly, in the US at least, by preventing fish migration patterns.
My own personal opinion is that extorting renewable energy from these pristine landscapes is a necessity. That is not to say that we should not set some of the land aside with a conservation easement or something, but the value of that clean energy is too large to be ignored. Although, the dams present an interesting issue because dams are one of the more inefficient and environmentally-damaging types of "renewable energy" out there. Dams hardly ever operate at the energy capacity they are designed to, and in addition they flood land and release carbon from their resevoirs. Finally, they impede wildlife in important ways - particularly, in the US at least, by preventing fish migration patterns.
I hope that there is a little food for thought here - and if you want to look further the BBC website has excellent climate change information, articles, podcasts and forums where a wide variety of issues are addressed.
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