Energy security and environmental impacts of energy production and usage are growing concerns of many Americans. Alternatives to oil and other petroleum-based fuels are gaining rapidly in popularity as a result.

In this podcast, PennFuture’s D.J. Trischler begins to investigate biodiesel in an interview with Pittsburgh-based Nathaniel Doyno, co-founder of the non-profit Steel City Biofuels. 

D.J. first met up with Nathaniel while he was helping a group of boaters prepare their fleet that runs entirely on biodiesel, for a long ride down the Ohio River to Cairo, Indiana.  In that first meeting, they enjoyed a canoe ride along the Allegheny River where Nathaniel explained that he was first introduced to biodiesel three years ago while studying at Cornell University. He was working for a group based in Ithaca, New York, called Liquid Solar that converts diesel vehicles to use straight vegetable oil. Nathaniel then formed the Cornell Biodiesel Initiative. After graduation, he came back home to Pittsburgh where he created Steel City Biofuels in 2005 with Greg Boulos.

Steel City Biofuels conducts scores of biodiesel demonstrations, and in only a year, they’ve reached over 1000 people, including groups of students, politicians, fleet managers, and non-profits in the Pittsburgh region. Their programs are a little like a cooking demonstration. Nathaniel and Greg literally create biodiesel for their audiences. Always prepared for the skeptics in the audience, the duo come armed with an arsenal of research and testimonials from biodiesel users. The past year has been nothing short of thrilling for the biodiesel promoter, plainly obvious in Nathaniel’s enormous smile after a presentation wraps up.

Learn in this podcast about the basics of biodiesel, how you can get involved in using it, and where this and other biofuels are going in Pennsylvania.

For more information on biodiesel, keep listening. Voices of Pennsylvania’s Future has upcoming podcasts planned that expand on this topic, including discussions with biodiesel producers, biodiesel users, and an in-depth look at Pennsylvania’s biofuel initiatives from a government agency perspective.

You can also learn more about the future of biofuels in Pennsylvania in our report released in June 2006. Governor Rendell’s PennSecurity Fuels Initiative will create nearly 26,000 new jobs and $1.5 billion annually for Pennsylvania’s economy, and reduce our imports by almost $7 billion.  

As Atrios would say, “time to convene another blogging ethics panel”.

I don’t know how anyone could reasonably debate the contrarian side of the argument that global warming and climate change is taking place before our eyes. Ten or twenty years ago, perhaps. But the evidence is now overwhelming that a fundamental shift is taking place in the Earth’s climate, and has been at least accelerated (if not initiated) by the human beings who inhabit the planet. It’s not necessary to be an Al Gore groupie to understand the issue.

But like Republicans having to pay journalists to push their pet agendas, U.S. electric utilities are doing the climatology payola thing… They’ve bought themselves a scientist:

Coal-burning utilities are passing the hat for one of the few remaining scientists skeptical of the global warming harm caused by industries that burn fossil fuels.

Pat Michaels - Virginia’s state climatologist, a University of Virginia professor and senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute - told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists’ global warming research. So last week, a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign to help him out, raising at least $150,000 in donations and pledges…

It’s not hard to understand why he was running out of money. Even the government, as hard as it might be to believe, is not going to fund junk science (or perhaps more correctly, documented wishful thinking) that flys in the face of every shred of evidence to the contrary. Any power plant that burns hydrocarbon-based fuel (coal, oil, nat gas) is contributing to the burgeoning problem of CO2 emissions. There is no question that CO2 emissions are one of the primary catalysts for the rapidity of climate changes that are being seen. It’s indisputable.

Yet, the flat-earthers still refuse to believe that their habitat is being consumed by their own avarice. No surprise there, I suppose. I pity future generations who are going to have to clean up after this mess.

Yes, you heard right, Sierra Club and FREE Beer in fact. Join other environmentally minded or environmentally curious people to learn about key issues facing Pennsylvania and what we’re doing to change that, drink free beer, listen to live music (TBA) win a door prize, and play environmental trivia! Where else can you drink for […]

The Next Great City initiative, is a series of 12 recommendations for our mayor and city council to improve the environment and quality of life in Philadelphia. It is the product of a coalition of environmental groups that also produced the Sustainable Philadelphia forum, which brought wide attention to the opportunities Philly has to […]

This thursday at 1pm at the DEP office in Norristown are the public hearings before the Environmental Quality Board.
We’ll need a crowd to make our point clear- the federal standards, as gutted by the Bush Administration, fall short of corporate accountability and public health standards so we need a strict, state specific rule that dissallows […]

Hi Greenadelphia,
I’d like to announce my website, http://www.greencityjournal.com/, which I hope will be of interest to you. There’s a great article posted by local author Nathaniel Popkin about the shape of cities in the “Age of Heat”. 
GCJ hopes to cover some of the same issues that are discussed here, and to help widen the reach of these […]

Earlier this summer, over one hundred citizen activists from throughout Pennsylvania traveled to the State Capitol in Harrisburg for a Joint Lobby Day for Health and the Environment. Members from PennFuture, the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, Sierra Club, Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, Penn Environment, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Clean Water Action, Group Against Smog and Pollution, and many other organizations came together to speak to our elected officials about two pressing issues of concern to Pennsylvanians: a state rule to limit mercury pollution from power plants, and implementing the Pennsylvania Clean Vehicles Program.

Each day, the halls of the Capitol teem with well-paid lobbyists. While it is difficult for citizens to travel to Harrisburg regularly, events like this help raise the visibility and awareness of critical issues like toxic mercury pollution. Together with calls, e-mails, letters, visits back in the district, letters to the editor, rallies, and press events, we are able to effect meaningful and positive change on issues that affect our communities, health, economy, and the environment.

In this podcast, PennFuture’s DJ Trischler reports from Harrisburg at the Lobby Day event. DJ speaks with Representative Dan Surra (D-75) from Elk and Clearfield counties, and Representative David Steil (R-31) from Bucks County. Both legislators have strongly opposed bills that were introduced in the House and Senate aimed at killing the efforts to implement a state regulation that will cut mercury pollution from our coal-fired power plants by 90 percent. It is somewhat disheartening to note that we attempted to get interviews with almost all of the legislators who are actively opposing the Pennsylvania State Mercury Rule, but none would agree to make a statement.

DJ also talks with Megan Hamm and Jared Andrews from Clean Water Action, about why they’ve gotten involved in the legislative process and in citizen activism. DJ wraps things up by talking with Jan Jarrett, PennFuture’s Vice President, who emphasizes how critical it is for citizens, especially young people, to get involved in the political process as soon as possible, to make democracy work for all of us.

At the Lobby Day event, PennFuture released the results of a statewide poll conducted by Terry Madonna Opinion Research, that showed 80 percent of Pennsylvanians want a strong state mercury rule as soon as possible. View the poll summary here.

This week, Pennsylvania’s Environmental Quality Board is holding three public hearings to get your input on the proposed state mercury rule. The comment period remains open until August 26, 2006. To take action, visit our web site or www.protectbabies.org. We need a huge outpouring of citizen action to support this critical rule, and to overcome the high-paid representatives of the utility industry who are working against it. For more information, e-mail us at pennfuture (at) podcast (dot) com.

This is a distressing read from the NY Times. It's about how a few landlords on the West Side awoke to freshly poured concrete where their flower beds and gardens once were. The landlords said they were just doing what the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene told them to do to get […]

If blowback from the Middle East doesn’t kill us, maybe we’ll just go extinct. You can’t kill the food chain and expect to go on eating. Human beings are like a plague of locusts. Good luck to those scientists who want to advise governments how to partially alleviate this problem. Bush doesn’t care about catastrophic losses of human beings, let alone ecosystems, and he definitely doesn’t “do” science.

Earth faces ‘catastrophic loss of species’
Life on earth is facing a major crisis with thousands of species threatened with imminent extinction - a global emergency demanding urgent action. This is the view of 19 of the world’s most eminent biodiversity specialists, who have called on governments to establish a political framework to save the planet.

The planet is losing species faster than at any time since 65 million years ago, when the earth was hit by an enormous asteroid that wiped out thousands of animals and plants, including the dinosaurs. Scientists estimate that the current rate at which species are becoming extinct is between 100 and 1,000 times greater than the normal “background” extinction rate - and say this is all due to human activity…

In a joint declaration, published today in Nature, the scientists say that the earth is on the verge of a biodiversity catastrophe and that only a global political initiative stands a chance of stemming the loss.

UPDATE: Peggy Noonan deserves a Darwin Award. She’s the weakest link.

After all of the hoopla, it turns out Philly is not the #4 most sustainable city in America.  SustianLane.com has updated their rankings,  which originally put Philly behind only Portland, San Fran and Seattle, causing alot of media attention about this hidden green gem on the East Coast.  We’re actually #8. 
The change is not surprising.  Many had trouble believing […]