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Wild Law: The New Jurisprudence

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Every component of the Earth Community has three rights: **The Right To Be **The Right to Habitat **The Right to fulfill its role in the ever-renewing processes of the earth community – Thomas Berry — Wild Law, the acknowledgement in law and governance that nature and all its elements have rights, is a concept whose time has come, and you’ll likely be hearing more about it from now on. Remember how suddenly the Iron Curtain came down, despite how solidly it had been in place for almost 50 years? And remember how the entrenched apartheid system in South Africa ended so abruptly? Many people struggled for decades, but when the world was finally ready for a paradigm shift, it happened quickly. With global warming waking up even those previously in deep denial about the dire state of the environment, the embrace of wild law may be the next paradigm shift. The Law of the Wild Wild law recognizes the rights of rivers to flow unimpeded, the rights of mountains to remain intact instead of having their tops blown off for coal mining, the rights of old growth forests to remain unlogged, and the rights of all humans, animals, birds, insects […]

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AFS Trinity's Extreme Hybrid

As you know, automakers’ resistance to manufacturing more efficient cars is just that – a "can’t do" attitude. AFS Trinity Power Corp. unveiled a plug-in SUV at the Detroit Auto Show that exceeds 150 miles per gallon combined city/ highway driving. The firm took two 2007 Saturn Vue Greenline SUVs off a dealer’s showroom floor and equipped them with its patent pending Extreme HybridTM (XHTM) drive train. Its secret is a dual energy storage system that combines Lithium-Ion batteries and ultra capacitors with proprietary control electronics. The car can go 40 miles using only electric and has a range of 400 miles with hybrid operation. In all-electric mode, the vehicle accelerates from zero to 60 mph in 11.6 seconds; 6.9 seconds in full hybrid mode. It achieves highway speeds of 87 miles per hour in either mode. Incorporating the technology into commercial production would raise the price of an SUV by about $8,700, but at $2.85 per gallon, the cost savings from using so little gasoline would mean a payback period of only 3.5 years. Prices would come down, of course, with mass production and with government tax incentives. "Addressing the central limitations of chemical batteries was critical to creating […]

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Weekly Clean Energy Roundup February 13, 2008

IRS Allocates $406 Million in Clean Renewable Energy Bonds GM Unveils the Sierra Hybrid Pickup at the Chicago Auto Show New Energy Star Requirements Cut Energy Use in Operating TVs EPA Boosts Renewable Fuel Requirement by 66% for 2008 Wave Energy Project Proposed for Maui Europe Falling Short of Renewable Energy Goals for 2010 IRS Allocates $406 Million in Clean Renewable Energy Bonds The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced last week that it has allocated $406 million in Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs) for a total of 312 renewable energy projects to be located throughout the United States. Unlike normal bonds that pay interest, CREBs are known as "tax-credit" bonds, and they pay the bondholders by providing a credit against their federal income tax. In effect, the CREBs will provide interest-free financing for certain renewable energy projects. And because the federal government essentially pays the interest via tax credits, the IRS needs to allocate such credits in advance to the lending authorities, which can be state or local governments or electrical cooperatives. The IRS allocates the CREBs under a program established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. See Internal Revenue Bulletin 2006-10. The new bond allocations range from […]

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