Last year, when G8 leaders agreed a “vision” of halving world greenhouse gases by 2050 at a summit in Tokyo, Japan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel looked around the table and wondered aloud if any of them would still be around to ensure the plan worked — or held to account if it didn’t.

“Probably only Dmitry”, one of the leaders said, referring to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, according to a G8 source. At the time, Medvedev was 42 and will be 84 in 2050.

At this year’s G8 summit, the discussion came up again when the leaders agreed other distant targets, including an 80 percent reduction in emissions by developed nations by 2050. (Critics said they should have focused more on 2020 goals that are most relevant to a new U.N. climate treaty due in December.)

“We probably have a second person — Barack will still be here,” one of the leaders said of U.S. President Barack Obama, who is now 47 and took over from former President George W. Bush in January.

But then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the oldest of the leaders at 72, piped up:

“I will still be here. Look at me — I don’t look old . That’s why I have so many problems with the ladies.”

(Picture: from L-R: Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, U.S. President Barack Obama, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev react as they pose for a group photograph at the G8 summit in L’Aquila July 8, 2009. Leaders from the Group of Eight major industrial nations and the main developing economies will hold talks from July 8-10. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer)

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

The Obama administration’s move to declare climate-warming carbon pollution a danger to human health was quickly hailed by environmental groups and leading liberals as a long-overdue shift from the Bush era and a historic first step toward regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

In making the announcement, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson said that solving the problem would not only clean up the air but also “create millions of green jobs and end our country’s dependence on foreign oil.”

She says the way to do it is for Congress to pass comprehensive climate change legislation while at the same time averting a “regulatory thicket” that unduly burdens governments and businesses.

But announcing that greenhouse gases are bad and getting the likes of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to agree with you is the easy part.

 Manufacturers and industry groups, concerned that they will end up shouldering the cost of cleaning up the atmosphere, were wary.

And, speaking of thickets, it will be no easy task getting such monumental policy change as a renewable portfolio standard for utilities, a cap-and-trade program or a carbon tax through Congress during an economic recession.

So, what do you think?  Do you agree with the EPA?  Can Obama get it done during a recession?  Should he? What do you expect him to do first? And if you had his ear, what would be tops on your wish list?

Top photo: Reuters/ Lucy Nicholson (the Los Angeles skyline)

Bottom photo: Reuters/ Fred Prouser (a downtown Los Angeles freeway)

A scientist at the University of California, Riverside has named a newly discovered lichen after President Obama, a gesture he clearly intends as an honor.

Kerry Knudsen, lichen curator at UCR’s Herbarium, says he discovered the hardy orange organism on Santa Rosa Island,  off the California coast, and “named it Caloplaca obamae to show my appreciation for the president’s support of science and science education.”

Lichen is a plant-like growth that looks like moss.

Knudsen,  an ardent supporter of Obama, says he made his final collections of the presidential lichen, which grows on soil and was almost driven to extinction by cattle ranching on the island during the final weeks of the presidential election.

“Indeed, the final draft (of his scientific paper) was completed on the very day of President Obama’s inauguration,” he said in a release issued by UCR.

Though President Lincoln has a rose in his honor, the university says the lichen the first species of any organism to be named after Obama — who after all has been in office for less than 3 months.

And Knudsen, who has written more than 70 peer-reviewed research papers on lichen, suggested to the Los Angeles Times that he never would have bestowed such an honor on Obama’s predecessor.

“I think there’s a dung beetle named after Bush,” he said. “Thats definately an insult.”

There was no immediate word from the White House press corps, which never lets moss grow under its feet.

California wasted no time asking incoming U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson to reconsider a request to let the state impose stiff targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

 The state’s top air quality regulator sent a letter to Jackson on Wednesday, the Obama administration’s first full day at work. Jackson hasn’t even been confirmed as the new EPA administrator yet, but California isn’t beating around the bush.

Stephen Johnson, the EPA administrator under former President Bush, drew the ire of California and more than a dozen other states in 2007 when he denied the state’s request for federal permission to impose tough new standards on auto emissions. 

With a new president in office, California is trying again. Even Gov. Schwarzenegger got involved, sending his own letter to Obama on Wednesday asking for his help in directing the EPA. To check out both Nichols and Schwarzenegger’s letters, click here.

Odds appear to be on California’s side, as Jackson said during her confirmation hearing that she would reconsider California’s request for a waiver on auto emissions — and would let science guide her on policy decisions.

A green contracting outfit based in a former Brooklyn brewery says it’s the first business in a major U.S. city that can sell power back to the grid that it generates from the sun.

New York state gave Big Sue, LLC, which has about 3,500 square feet of solar panels on its roof, the OK to sell any extra power it generates from the panels back to the grid.

For years, homeowners who have put solar panels on their roofs have been able to sell a bit of solar power back to the grid, which has helped them deal with the big costs of buying and installing the panels. For homeowners it can take 8 to 12 years to break even on the initial investment.

New York businesses, which have shorter break-even times on their solar investments due to greater availability of  tax breaks and incentives,  have had to wait until now to get net-metering rights.

But eventually commercial net-metering could help New York deal with growing power demand. Gov. David Paterson said in a press release about Big Sue that businesses with solar net-metering will “relieve stress on New York City’s overburdened” power grid.

David Buckner, the president of Solar Energy Systems, who installed Big Sue’s solar panels, said he has 15 other commercial projects lined up for net-metering, including a bicycle manufacturer and a perfume bottle top maker. (Full disclosure: Solar Energy Systems’ COO is the husband of a colleague of mine.)

Small manufacturers stand to gain the most from net-metering because of the way the law is written, he said.  At least 35 other businesses in the region are lining up for net-metering with other solar installers.

Commercial net-metering by itself is probably not enough to boost shares in solar companies that fell after oil prices plummeted and amid surplus panel supplies.  But with optimism that the Obama administration will move quickly on legislation to boost renewable energy demand, it certainly can’t hurt.

Susan Boyle, the co-owner of Big Sue, said it’s fun to check her solar panel system on Mondays to see how many electrons her panels pushed to the grid over the weekend, when power demand is low from her business and the 24 studios in the building that lease space there.

If the panels have generated more power than her business used at the end of the year she’ll get a credit from the power company toward future bills.  She installed compact florescent lighting and took other efficiency steps in the late 19th century brewery to help the chances.

Oh, and she cleared the snow off her panels after a recent storm so they will work better.

A Chinese campaigner has urged U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to prove his green credentials, asking him to offset the emissions generated by his inauguration by funding a forest in China.

A carbon fund named “Obama, future” could invest in increased forest coverage in another country and Obama himself could plant a tree there, Lin Hui said in an open letter, published on www.ditan360.com. Lin hopes that country will be China.

Lin’s appeal is based on estimates by conservative U.S. think-tank, the Institute for Liberty, that people travelling to attend Tuesday’s inauguration would generate 220,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

“Obama’s presidency is a big opportunity. The whole world is pinning their hopes on him, even the greens, believing he’ll be different than Bush,” Lin told Reuters.

The website, run by a team of volunteers, contains news articles and information designed to educate Chinese about a low-carbon lifestyle.

The Chinese government, which has been active in encouraging Western firms to invest in carbon-offset projects in China, approved the website in April, Lin said.

Lin’s posting in Chinese is illustrated with photos of Obama’s “whistle-stop tour”, his itinerary for Tuesday, and pictures from the inauguration of predecessor George W. Bush. He tried sending a copy of the open letter, which is in English, through Obama’s public email address, “but I doubt he’ll receive it.”

Lin signed his congratulatory letter as “A Chinese citizen, also your friend in green career”.

President Bush is pulling out of the race to set the next round of car fuel efficiency standards before his term in office ends. That means President-to-be Obama will decide how fast Detroit should be pushed toward a car and light-truck standard of at least 35 mpg. That’s the goal set by Congress for 2020, but the president gets to decide how fast to move in the phased implementation.

With Detroit drooping, Bush thinks a little breathing room is needed. Environmentalists, meanwhile, are eager for quick action by Obama. The Transportation Department has until April to finalize the 2011-2015 target.

(Picture: Reuters)

Are those green jobs Obama has been promising already on their way? Really?

Despite a weak global economy and all the gloom that has brought to the solar industry of late, two solar companies this week quietly bucked the trend by announcing new manufacturing plants here in the United States.

On Monday, Hemlock Semiconductor said it would invest up to $3 billion to expand U.S. production of polysilicon, the key raw material used to make solar cells and semiconductors.  That will include $1.2 billion to build a new facility in Clarksville, Tennesee, and up to $1 billion to expand its current operations in Hemlock, Michigan. The company said the investment will create 800 permanent positions at the plants (and a few hundred more once Clarksville is expanded) and 1,800 construction jobs.

A day later, Signet Solar said it will build a solar panel manufacturing plant in Belen, New Mexico. The first phase of the plant will create 200 jobs, though ultimately it will employ about 600 people, the Menlo Park, California-based company said.

These announcements stand in stark contrast to the slew of dour news that has emanated from the industry in recent weeks.  Just yesterday, Hemlock rival MEMC became the latest solar player to cut its sales forecast for the current quarter.

Hemlock acknowledged the dismal state of the economy in its statement, saying “the exact scale of this investment will be determined by market conditions.”

It’s too soon, of course, to know how those “conditions” will play out, and things look pretty grim at the moment. But with Barack Obama’s inauguration around the corner, there is palpable optimism that more alternative energy companies will be setting up shop here.

How do you think this will play out? Are “green jobs” for real?

Photo: REUTERS

T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire oil investor who is building the largest wind farm in the United States, is also setting his sights on solar power.

Pickens last month launched a campaign aimed at weaning the United States off its dependence on foreign oil and is in the midst of a nation-wide tour to promote it. Following a speech in Los Angeles, Pickens told me he is looking beyond his wind investments to solar energy and is eager to share his “Pickens Plan” with both of the U.S. presidential candidates. Here’s what he had to say:

Q: Do you think your plan to meet with  Obama and McCain will happen any time soon?

A: Don’t know. It could. We’ll see.

 Q: Are you investing in technologies other than wind?

A: I’m interested in solar, but I’m not near as far along. But I have a bunch of engineers that are with me working on solar.

Q: Are there any emerging technologies other than wind and solar that interest you?

A: That’s what I got my attention on. Google is plenty smart on geothermal and I was real interested in what they had on that. Those guys know what they’re doing. I’m impressed with them.

Q: You are a businessman, so why launch this media campaign instead of trying to make deals with politicians and others behind the scenes?

A: You couldn’t get it into the presidential campaign. You go see some people, talk to them, nothing would happen. I’ve been to Washington hundreds of times, nothing happens. They are very polite, but nothing happens. You get the people with you, something will happen.