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Hollywood stars to shine at “the only green pre-Oscar party in town”
(L-R) Actors Kevin Connolly, Adrian Grenier and Jerry Ferrara.
Environmentally minded celebrities like Rosario Dawson, Orlando Bloom and Adrian Grenier will stroll the green carpet (natch) in front of the Avalon Hollywood tonight to support the 9th annual pre-Oscar party for Global Green, the American affiliate of Green Cross International.
According to the event press release, general admission tickets to the bash are going for a very reasonable $50 (VIP packages start at $1000), and will be available at the door. Proceeds from the event are dedicated for Global Green’s national Green Schools initiative, as well as a campaign around the Rio Earth Summit this June, which they would very much like for President Obama to attend.
The much-discussed Chevy Volt will serve as the event’s automotive sponsor, with Chevy rolling out a “sneak preview” of the 2012 Volt that qualifies for the both the carpool lane sticker and the new $1500 CA Clean Vehicle Rebate.
On the more extreme end of green transportation, immensely cool 100% electric motorcycle the Xenon by Evolve will be auctioned off for Global Green’s causes. Reminiscent of the light cycles from the movie "Tron: Legacy," these futuristic bikes should really come with a Daft Punk helmet.
The evening will be powered by the music of headliner Shelia E (who always sets a party off right) and DJs Michael Smith and KCRW-FM radio host Garth Trinidad.
With a GOP debate tonight, remember: scientists are Republicans, too. Even climate scientists.
In the last couple of days, political fires have been spreading across the climate policy landscape, with Peter Gleick and Heartland Institute atop headlines. I don't think this story from Inside Climate News is trying to put them out, exactly. But with a Republican debate tonight, author Katherine Bagley might be offering a roadmap back to substantive discussion.
Bagley tells the stories of five scientists who identify as Republican who say, in varying ways, to varying degrees, that they've given up on talking to leaders within their political party about their science.
MIT's Kerry Emmanuel is one scientist who believes Republican values best align with his own. And not those of Lincoln, or Eisenhower; he's registered GOP right now:
"No GOP candidates or policymakers want to touch the issue, and those of us trying to educate them are left frustrated,"Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a registered Republican, told InsideClimate News. "Climate change has become a third rail in politics."
The story also handily sums up what several of the remaining Republican candidates think about climate change:
Santorum has called global warming "a facade," "a hoax" and an example of the "politicization of science." Both Romney and Newt Gingrich, another candidate for the party's nomination, have stepped away from their previous stances that humans are contributing to global warming...
It's incredibly rare for scientists to tell anyone if they're registered with a political party. (I recently was suprised at a one-man staged reading of a play about Dave Keeling to learn he was a Republican, and I heard that guy speak.) The scientists' stories are worth a read before tonight's debate (I'm skeptical about the back half of the article)...which you can watch on CNN, as per usual. (OH, and listen to on KPCC from 9-11 pm.)
Apple turns up the sun with new solar-powered plant
Apple, the company that makes a large number of your (um, our) cell phones and computers, is in need of a little good news. The digital giant has taken a big PR hit of late, with reports of questionable employee conditions in their Chinese factories resulting in this week’s ABC “Nightline” expose.
Yesterday, Apple took to the company website to announce something decidedly more upbeat: details of their massive new data center in Maiden, North Carolina that will be primarily powered with renewable energy. CNET reports that the 500,000-square-foot facility will cost a cool $1 billion, and has already earned LEED's highest award – a Platinum certification – for what Apple has planned.
“We know of no other data center of comparable size that has achieved this level of LEED certification,” says Apple’s website. “Apple’s goal is to run the Maiden facility with high percentage renewable energy mix, and we have major projects under way to achieve this — including building the nation’s largest end user-owned solar array and building the largest nonutility fuel cell installation in the United States.”
According to Venturebeat, after the addition of the solar array later this year, the 20-megawatt building will ultimately churn out 42 million kWh of clean energy annually.
GM, Chevy Volt owners fire back at Gingrich over gun rack jab
It has been a hard year for GM’s plug-in hybrid car, the Chevy Volt. Despite a popular commercial during Super Bowl XLVI, sales have been sluggish. It even took a hit by not making the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s top 12 “greenest” cars of the year in a recent poll.
Now the Volt is suffering the ultimate injustice of being used as a political punch line. During recent campaign stops in Georgia and Oklahoma, Newt Gingrich (who recently found himself stranded in West Hollywood) has bashed the Volt as an instrument of “cultural warfare” on his way to deriding the car because “you cannot put a gun rack on it.”
GM has had enough. News comes out of Detroit that the automaker launched a new blog today to fire back at the Republican candidate, albeit humorously.
“That's like saying 'You can't put training wheels on a Harley.' Actually, you can. But the real question is 'Why would you?' In both examples: It looks weird,” replied GM spokesman Selim Bingol, according to the Detroit News. “It doesn't work very well, and, there are better places for gun racks and training wheels — pickup trucks and little Schwinns, respectively.”
To really prove that Chevy Volts and gun racks do mix, a Volt owner took to his Youtube account, posting a video of – you guessed it – his Volt rocking a gun rack (complete with an impressive array of guns) proudly displayed in the back, wrought out of good, old-fashioned American ingenuity.
Monterey County supervisors vote to reconsider strawberry fumigant
Pesticide methyl iodide has been generating controversy for years. By the time the State of California approved its use on local crops, California Senator Diane Feinstein had already called the fumigant into question over findings that it causes cancer.
Last week, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 in favor of a resolution that asks California governor Jerry Brown to take another look at the just how safe it is to use the much-debated chemical, according to the Californian.
It’s a hotly contested debate in Monterey County, as methyl iodide is used to fumigate strawberry crops, which is a $751 million industry in the county. It had been approved by the EPA as a replacement for pesticide methyl bromide in 2007, with California’s Department of Pesticides getting onboard in 2010, despite methyl iodide being on the state’s list of cancer-causing agents.
While many applaud the move to ultimately ban the pesticide, not everyone agrees. A guest editorial in the Monterey Herald questions the regulation, with agricultural scientist Glen Kardel stating: “if methyl iodide is not used on strawberry fields in Monterey County, the crop will be greatly reduced, along with employment of workers in strawberry production, sending unemployment rates and welfare costs soaring, with an attendant hardship for families of farmworkers.”
On which side of the methyl iodide debate do you stand?
CORRECTION: The original headline of this blog post was misleading. The Board of Supervisors vote does not directly lead to the banning of methyl iodide.
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