Southern California — home to Disneyland, the mother of all amusement parks — welcomed a new attraction this month. But this theme park has no Mickey Mouse or roller coasters and is housed inside a mall instead of spread out over a swath of space.

Called Environmentaland, it is more of an interactive museum that has taken the environment as its theme.

The goal is to show there are “no free rides in life,” said Eric Ritz, executive director of Global Inheritance. The nonprofit opened the self-proclaimed first environmental theme park this month in Hollywood.

“We promote more along the lines of common sense rather than being green,” Ritz said.

Visitors can ride a see-saw on an energy playground to power up their cell phone, putt on a desert mini golf course and fly airplanes from recycled paper. This past weekend, visitors could arm wrestle a polar bear in a climate change quiz challenge for a chance to win prizes.

Ritz, a 36-year-old former advertising executive and long-time activist, started Global Inheritance in 2002. The nonprofit has passion projects, like Environmentaland, but pays the bills through working with companies like Walt Disney’s ESPN and on events like Fox’s Teen Choice Awards.

Ritz admits the name Environmentaland is “kind of preposterous.”

“But that’s the point,” he added.

He said that the name is a play on words that takes on the idea of theme parks, that are the “poster child of excessiveness,” he said.

Visitors who show a bus or subway pass get free admission; otherwise, there is a suggested donation of $3.

Environmentaland is open at the Hollywood & Highland shopping center in Los Angeles through October 2009. In the spring, the nonprofit hopes to take the theme park on the road to malls in cities like Chicago, New York and Boise.

“When we’re placed on the Earth, we have a certain responsibility to give back or evolve in a very positive way. People go and they take and take and take and they don’t give. If that’s what we do, we’re going to be in a very bad shape very soon,” Ritz said.

(Writing and reporting by Laura Isensee)

(Photo credit: Courtesy of Global Inheritance. The nonprofit displayed alternative energy golf carts at Coachella and Stagecoach festivals this year.)

Large diameter trees are not doing well in California’s Yosemite National Park — there were 24 percent fewer in a recent decade than the 1930s, the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington scientists said in a new report. Climate change is the likely culprit they say, cutting snow pack, which cuts available water, which cuts growth of big trees, which cuts production of seeds for new trees, which — you get the idea, but basically the whole ecosystem is strained.

Meanwhile, fewer fires has led to growth in the type of trees that are not fire-resistant — so future fires may be particularly bad, especially with warmer, drier conditions.

The comparison of trees in 1988-1999 versus 1932-1936 was published in Forest Ecology and Management.

California’s Yosemite may not be alone — Polish woods also face an uncertain future due to climate change, according to a new Reuters story.

Photo by ROBERT GALBRAITH/REUTERS

The green industry prides itself on innovation, perhaps especially in California, one of the most environmentally progressive states.

So it should be no surprise that a company in California has made headlines with a new technology that converts onion juice into electricity. Read about it here.

The company, Oxnard, Calif.-based Gills Onions, has been working on the project for years. But Steven Gill, co-owner of the family-owned company, didn’t set out with green energy as his goal. Gill just wanted to figure how to get rid of his onion waste in a sustainable, responsible way. Trucking excess onion tops, tails and skins out to the fields for composting was becoming a big hassle - and expensive.

In his research, and help from engineers at University of California at Davis and others, he discovered he could use the onion waste, especially the juice, in an anaerobic digester to create gas and then power up fuel cells. He ended up killing two birds with one stone. He got rid of his waste and created a clean energy source for his processing plant.

Gill said he’s gotten a lot of interest from other companies, including a carrot grower and processor. Will more food growers follow suit? Will we soon have fuel from not just onions, but carrots and potatoes and other vegetables?

– Reporting by Laura Isensee

(Photo Credit: REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth. A vendor holds a string of onions at his stall at the annual “Zibelemaerit” onion market in Bern, Switzerland.)

Sometimes, even electric vehicles aren’t good enough for the die-hard green car set.

An electric car advocacy group on Tuesday criticized California’s influential air quality regulator, the California Air Resources Board, for allowing BMW’s one-year pilot program of electric Mini Coopers to earn the same credit towards the state’s clean vehicle program as standard production cars.

California is requiring that automakers, collectively, put 7,500 zero-emissions vehicles, or ZEVs, on its roads.

But Plug In America on Tuesday said there is a “gaping loophole” in the program that “could deal a blow to the proliferation of plug-in vehicles.”

Specifically, the group targeted BMW’s leasing program of 500 electric Mini Coopers, which it calls MINI Es.

“CARB is allowing BMW to game the system by accruing the maximum number of ZEV credits with the least amount of effort,” Plug In America legislative director Jay Friedland said in a statement. “In order to receive full credit, these vehicles must be offered for sale.”

CARB plans to revisit the regulation next year and will be looking at ways to accelerate the commercialization of electric vehicles, according to spokesman Dimitri Stanich.

In the meantime, “we’ve urged BMW to consider extending that one-year lease,” Stanich said.

BMW officials were not available for comment.

No more Mr. Nice Green! San Francisco passed what it called the first mandatory requirement to throw carrot peels, moldy bread and other icky compostable material into separate bins in order to improve recycling. Total recycling would rise to 90 percent from a current 72 percent if all of the paper and scraps currently in the garbage were put in the right cans, the city said.

Mayor Gavin Newsom soft-pedaled the sticky side of the situation (although who wants any carrot in this story?). There is a $100 cap for fines on residences and small businesses, and the main goal is public awareness, he said in a statement.

The picture, by Reuters’ Daniel Aguilar, is of a dump in Mexico City, which is facing a crisis on where to put its garbage.

California’s environmental and other regulations are helping to send manufacturers running, but the state can capitalize on its green image (and should streamline regulations) a new study by the Milken Institute says.

The study found that Golden State manufacturing was already contracting at an astounding rate even before the latest meltdown, and that it was lagging some other Western U.S. states which had seen small upticks in jobs for people who make stuff.

In particular, high-tech manufacturing fell to 485,900 jobs in 2007 in California from 629,400 in 2000, the report said.

The report described the state as having “a regulatory regime that uses limits on production and mitigation of environmental impacts in manufacturing processes rather than encouraging higher, smarter, more sustainable forms of production.”

One solution among many proposed is to give manufacturers who build green a bit of marketing cachet — a Made Green in California designation. “California’s manufacturers can cultivate a high-value brand that emphasizes a sustainable product made through a sustainable process,” it said.

California’s cachet — and perhaps its manufacturing issues — are summed in Apple Inc’s “Designed by Apple in California” tag (one might infer the manufacturing location is NOT California).

Photo Credit: Reuters/ROBERT GALBRAITH

Yikes. Seems it ain’t easy, or at least ain’t cheap, being green.

It will cost California some $115 billion for (pretty much) hitting 33 percent renewable energy by 2020. That’s more than twice the price tag of sticking with a goal of 20 percent. The difference, according to a long-delayed report issued today by the state’s Public Utilities Commission is due to the speed of building fast. There are all sorts of other problems outlined in exquisite detail. It’s all quite handy for those trying to get a sense of just what needs to be done to go green. A lot, it seems.

When Kennedy announced the moon shot, was there this type of gnashing of teeth? Maybe no one ran the numbers ahead of time!

Pic of Mr. It’s Not Easy Being Green by Mike Segar/Reuters

Shares of U.S. solar company First Solarhave dropped about 7 percent this week on concerns about a federal review of the company’s recent acquisition of rival OptiSolar, which was first reported by the Los Angeles Times on Monday.

However, in a note to clients on Wednesday, Pacific Crest analyst Mark Bachman called the story “sensational, at best.” A day earlier, Cowen and Company analyst Robert Stone said “the issue looks overdone.” Both have “outperform” ratings on First Solar.

According to Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Jan Bedrosian, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s inspector general is probing whether OptiSolar’s applications to develop 136,000 of public land were included in the value of the $400 million deal.In the event of an acquisition, applications can be transferred from one company to another, Bedrosian said, though no value can be attached to them.

“There is no value associated with a mere application, which could be rejected by us for a variety of reasons,” Greg Miller, renewable energy program manager for the Bureau of Land Management office in Moreno Valley, told the Los Angeles Times, saying the agency was trying to weed out speculators who are snapping up land only to turn around and sell it for a quick profit.

In March, First Solar said it would buy OptiSolar’s pipeline of solar projects, including a major installation for California utility Pacific Gas & Electric and other nascent deals. The move rapidly expanded the company’s presence in the fast-growing market for utility-scale solar.

On Wednesday, Pacific Crest’s Bachman said he expected the probe to “be remedied quickly in favor of First Solar.”

“In our view, the value in the OptiSolar deal was based on the near-term project pipeline… and the 1.3 GW of short-listed projects, thus the BLM applications are upside to the deal,” Bachman wrote, saying the review should not be weighing on the stock.

First Solar shares were down 3.5 percent at $177.94 in afternoon trade on the Nasdaq. They had closed at $190.29 on May 29, the last trading day before the Los Angeles Times story appeared.

Photo Credit: Reuters/Steve Marcus (A solar photovoltaic array at Nellis Air Force base near Las Vegas. Note: the panels were not made by either First Solar or OptiSolar)

In these green times energy producers are leaving no stone unturned in the hunt for new sources of energy.

The Los Angeles Times reports that rocket-builder RocketDyne and a Santa Monica-based renewable energy company, SolarReserve, are planning to build a plant that they say could eventually power 100,000 homes by using solar power and molten salt.

The idea, which analysts say is promising, is to use solar power, collected in a huge array of tilting mirrors, to heat up molten salt to over 1,000 degrees Farenheit and use the resulting steam to drive a turbine and generate electricity.

The molten salt would then be cooled and recycled to repeat the process – generating no emissions.

The Times points out that this idea isn’t totally new. In the California desert off Interstate-15, a large solar array of more than 1,800 mirrored panels still stands where a power plant was built as a pilot project using molten salt…

The feds are taking on California’s plan to limit tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases and discussing the idea of low carbon fuel, but California has one other major idea to curb vehicle pollution, says the state senator who pushed through the tailpipe emissions law, Fran Pavley. The idea: drive less.

“No matter what we do on the clean car regs, with the gross of the state… and the sprawl out into the suburbs and the rural areas, we are going to be going in the wrong direction. And that’s something the federal government hopefully will eventually look at — land use,” she said by phone, when asked about next steps for vehicle pollution.

2008’s Senate Bill 375 by Darrell Steinberg set up targets for coordinated planning of transportation, land use and housing with regional reduction targets for greenhouse gases. At the time the bill passed, California was expecting its population to rise to 46 million by 2030 from 38 million.

Photo by REUTERS/Larry Downing