While I’ve been a posting hiatus (largely due to laziness, I must confess), it seems that almost every week I read about a newly planned “world’s largest” renewable energy project; it’s a game of leapfrog where everyone wins. While the freight train of cheap solar power is quickly gaining speed, I just read an article on Inhabitat about new low-temperature geothermal technology that could ultimately provide 120 GW (!) of renewable power in the United States. That’s more than all the nuclear capacity that currently exists in the US (106 GW, or 19.4% of total production in 2006).

While the article doesn’t mention cost of production, announcements like this continue to demonstrate the possibility of the impossible - that is, transitioning the world to a renewable energy economy. While much emphasis is placed on our incredible reliance on petroleum, it’s important to note that 2/3 of our petroleum is burned as transportation fuel. The important uses (that is, where there is no viable alternative) like plastic manufacturing, consume a relatively trivial amount. A future of electric trucks, superconducting trains, wind- and wave-powered barges, and freight airships is hardly inconceivable. And once we achieve low-carbon transport, we will have begun to address the perilous externalities of global trade, and the trade-off between ethics and economics becomes much less stark. This is what I spend my days doing, so that fundamental premise still holds some wonder for me.

I feel like I’m losing my edge, repeating the same optimistic tirade.

In other news, it looks like arctic ice is soon to reach a critical tipping point. Good to know, given that permafrost apparently stores 60% more greenhouse gases than we’d previously anticipated. The saying, “may you live in interesting times,” was once a curse - we may or may not have the means to change that, but there is no denying that we are living in interesting times.

The plight of the gorilla has been well known in biology/conservation circles (and to a lesser extent known to the general public - can someone please tell me how the sea turtle situation became so well publicized?) for decades, and the reports that have been coming out year after year have been increasingly bleak. In the 1980s, it was thought that there were maybe 100,000 gorillas across Africa, and this estimate had been slashed to half that in recent years. However, a team of scientists from the Congo and the Wildlife Conservation Society have just completed the most thorough census ever, and the news is good. One of the highlights of this new effort was expanding the search for gorillas into the swamps of central Africa - swamps that take days and days of trekking on foot to get to, over a hundred kilometers from the nearest road. And in these swamps, scientists found the highest density of gorillas ever reported, up to eight individuals per square kilometer. The new estimate for African gorillas is over 125,000. This makes me happy, although I fear it may weaken the motivation to establish more reserves for these awesome beasts. For now though, they remain listed as critically endangered, and that probably won’t change.