[Georgia] Less than two weeks ago when President Bush told the country it needed to produce a whopping 35-billion gallons of biofuels a year by 2017, he may have had Georgia on his mind. Wednesday, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue announced that a plant west of Savannah would soon begin turning pine bark and tree limbs into ethanol, a venture that could turn the state’s pine country into the biofuels Saudi Arabia of the South. “It’s going to change the geopolitical nature of the world when you can take a passive waste product like biomass from Georgia and turn it into an alternative fuel,” Perdue said. Range Fuels says it will be the first company in the United States to build a commercial-scale ethanol plant using cutting-edge cellulosic technology. Unlike more common corn-based ethanol refineries, the cellulosic process can turn almost any organic material – from tree bark to municipal solid waste – into fuel.
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Increasingly, economic measures are being used to assess ecosystems by way of the universally comprehensible currency of money. As it is, environmentalists “aren’t really relevant in policy and business decision-making. If we don’t do something to become relevant, we don’t have a chance.” Many scholars and activists suspect (or at least hope) that human beings have reached the point where we’re willing to pay for nature’s services, because we’ve finally come to accept that there’s a relationship between caring for the environment and ensuring our well-being. Despite the snooze-inducing moniker, ecosystem services have occasionally appeared on the public-consciousness radar. The most frequently referenced episode occurred a decade ago, when New York City officials determined that it would be cheaper to protect from pollution the upstate New York watershed, which naturally purifies the city’s water, than it would be to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on a municipal water treatment plant. If conservation is to matter, both for its own survival as a movement and to effectively reduce damage to the biosphere, the mission must be recast. “You do realize how badly we’re losing, don’t you?” asks Rebecca Shaw, director of conservation science and planning at the Nature Conservancy in San Francisco.
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The House of Delegates yesterday gave final
approval, 82-16, to a bill that
would end the state’s experiment with electric
deregulation.

However, the sponsor of the House-passed bill, Sen.
Tho- mas K. Norment Jr.,
R-James City, asked the Senate yesterday to delay
its final vote on an
identical House bill. Afterward,Norment indicated
that he was looking at a
couple of potential changes in the measure.

Dominion Virginia Power, which provides electricity
to 80 percent of
Virginians, originated the re-regulation proposal.
Deregulation began with
passage of a 1999 law.

The bill has been amended to answer concerns of
consumer groups and
environmentalists. Those groups said that the
measure was weighted too
heavily in favor of utilities and their profits and
toward encouraging new
power plants rather than energy conservation.

The legislation would create what Dominion describes
as a hybrid form of
regulation. State regulators would set the level of
profit that utilities
are allowed by looking at the average earnings of a
peer group of utilities
in the U.S. Southeast.

The measure also would allow utilities to earn extra
profit for building
power plants and for bringing wind, solar and hydro
power into their
generation mix.

This summer, when Dominion gets its first
opportunity in more than three
years to pass along increased power-plant fuel
costs, the measure would
limit residential rate increases to 4 percent.

Critics, however, say the bill still provides more
benefits to utilities
than consumers. Supporters, on the other hand, say
the legislation is needed
to encourage construction of power plants to meet
Virginia’s needs.

During the past decade, Do- minion has been one of
the largest donors to
General Assembly campaigns and has offered gifts to
lawmakers, including
hunting trips and tickets to Redskins games.

The Associated Press reported yesterday that 11
lawmakers have reported
ownership of at least $10,000 worth of Dominion
stock. Delegates who own
stock and voted for the bill yesterday, according to
The AP, are: Watkins M.
Abbitt Jr., I-Appomattox; John S. Reid, R-Henrico;
Leo C. Wardrup Jr.,
R-Virginia Beach; Katherine B. Waddell, I-Richmond;
and Christopher K.
Peace, R-Hanover. Edward T. Scott, R-Madison, owns
stock but voted against
the bill.

Norment, the legislation’s Senate sponsor, owns at
least $50,000 worth of
Dominion stock.

BY GREG EDWARDS
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

The power of the human alimentary tract to act as the final resting place for non-human life-forms is not to be underestimated. Perhaps it’s time to put all of those grumbling stomachs and gnashing teeth to work in a way that benefits biodiversity conservation. To this author Joe Franke has provided gourmet recipes from some of the world’s finest chefs, some great old standards and kitchen tested inventions to bring you hundreds of ways to do your ecological duty while filling your bellies for free.
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www.southernsustainableforests.org

The objectives of this study were to: (1) describe and quantify likely family forest owner enrollment in Minnesota’s Sustainable Forest Incentives Act (SFIA) under a range of annual incentive payment levels;(2) identify the characteristics of those family forest landowners most likely to enroll in the SFIA; and (3) identify the most and least desirable SFIA enrollment requirements. This report summarizes the preliminary findings and presents descriptive statistics of the data generated from the study.

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www.southernsustainableforests.org

This 182-page book contains chapters by a variety of scientists and others with expertise in climate change and the role of forests in storing atmospheric carbon, a greenhouse gas. Topics include forest management strategies for carbon storage, the role of wood products in storing carbon and new markets based on carbon storage and carbon accounting. Published by Oregon State University’s College of Forestry, the state Department of Forestry and the Oregon Forest Resources Institute. Free!

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[Washington, DC] In a decision broadly affecting field trials of genetically engineered crops a federal district judge ruled yesterday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) must halt approval of all new field trials until more rigorous environmental reviews are conducted. Citing potential threats to the environment, Judge Harold Kennedy found in favor of the Center for Food Safety that USDA’s past approvals of field trials of herbicide tolerant, genetically engineered bentgrass were illegal

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[England] Timber was overwhelmingly voted the most sustainable construction material over steel, concrete, masonry and PVCu at ‘The Great Materials Debate’ at Ecobuild…Through photosynthesis, trees draw in energy from sunlight, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, take in water from the soil and then release oxygen back into the atmosphere. Timber is also a local material. … more and more of the timber we use is certified as ‘Legal and Sustainable’… And timber manufacturing processes are efficient with virtually zero waste. … timber can be reused, recycled or recovered.
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Imagine a world in which farmers and ranchers were paid to generate … ecosystem services such as water filtration, carbon sequestration and wildlife habitat. Imagine a world in which carbon and water-quality credits traded on a commodities exchange alongside oat and wheat futures. Sound crazy? The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) doesn’t think so. In fact, a number of announcements in the final week of January 2007 brought the brave new world described above one huge step closer to reality. When Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns unveiled the USDA’s plans for the 2007 Farm Bill on January 31, 2007, it was hard to miss the new focus on incentive-based conservation in many of the 65 proposals.

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www.southernsustainableforests.org

[Wisconsin] Efforts to responsibly manage Wisconsin’s forest resources will be shifting into a higher gear in 2007… according to the new coordinator of the state Forestry Certification Program. Forest certification is a systematic process to promote responsible resource management, according to Paul Pingrey, a 32-year-DNR veteran recently appointed to the Bureau of Forest Management position. “A surge of interest in environmentalism, fueled by global warming, extreme weather events like Hurricane Katrina, the fragmentation of forested lands by new construction, and the march of invasive species may propel forest certification beyond its commercial products assurance origins and broaden certification’s appeal,” according to Pingrey.

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The change will allow contractors to invest in gear and train workers
[Oregon] A top Bush administration forestry official announced Wednesday that the Forest Service will try a new business model for contract work in federal forests to help prevent worker abuse and encourage investment in rural communities. The goal is to make forest management projects into long-term projects stretching as long as 10 years to allow contractors to invest in equipment and training for workers, and to allow them to build stronger ties to the community, Rey and other federal officials said. “What we’re trying to do with this new business model is see if we can respond to some of the problems that the current contracting system creates in terms of making it more difficult for local communities to participate,” Rey said.

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[North Carolina] About 15 women learned about timber management during a seminar put on Monday by N.C. Cooperative Extension and NCWoodlands, a nonprofit agency that represents the interests of private timber owners. Whitfield drove home the importance of choosing a qualified timber consultant or registered forester to handle management and harvesting of trees. He urged the timber owners to hire consulting foresters, who are registered and licensed under rules set out by the state Legislature. Whitfield further advised the women — and the two men in attendance — to go with professionals who are members of the Association of Consulting Foresters. Securing the services of a registered tree expert yields, on average, a 23 percent higher sale price for timber, Whitfield said.

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www.southernsustainableforests.org