Household Products Start to Come Clean on Ingredients

• APRIL 2, 2009

By ANJALI ATHAVALEY

You can read a label to find out what's in your food. And a quick look inside a collar or hem tells you what your clothes are made of. Now, the same is happening with the stuff you use to clean your kitchen and bathroom.

A few manufacturers of household cleaning products have begun disclosing the chemicals in some of their products. S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. last month rolled out Web site WhatsInsideSCJohnson.com to describe most of the ingredients for its Windex, Glade, and Shout brands. Clorox Co. lists ingredients for its Formula 409 and other products at TheCloroxCompany.com.

Seventh Generation Inc., which has long disclosed most of the ingredients for its eco-friendly cleaning products, last year started explaining chemical names in terms that consumers can better understand on its labels. And Procter & Gamble Co. plans to list its ingredients online and describe them in consumer friendly terms.

These efforts are receiving a boost from industry trade groups that recently set up joint guidelines to encourage use of a standardized format for presenting the technical information. "Consumers want to know more to ensure the safety of their family," says a Procter & Gamble spokesman. "The industry is changing along with that."

and much more here>>>

As Eco-Seals Proliferate, So Do Doubts

• APRIL 2, 2009

By GWENDOLYN BOUNDS

It's too easy to be green.

Recently, Kevin Owsley went searching for a reputable organization that could validate the eco-friendly traits of his company's carpet-cleaning fluid. But after canvassing a dozen competing groups hawking so-called "green certification" services -- including one online outfit that awarded him an instant green diploma, no questions asked -- he grew disillusioned about how meaningful any endorsement would be to his customers.

Michael Witte

"If you want green certification bad enough, you can get it," says Mr. Owsley, owner of Cleanpro USA LLC, a Scottsdale, Ariz., company that franchises carpet and upholstery cleaning businesses. "I joke and say, 'I could buy some of these companies a case of beer, and they'd give us a certification.' I'm very frustrated by that."

As green marketing has proliferated, so has the number of "eco-labels" competing to be the environmental equivalent of a Good Housekeeping seal of approval. According to the Web site ecolabelling.org, there are more than 300 such labels putting a green stamp on everything from cosmetics and seafood to bird-friendly coffee.

Timber to make wood products is graded by a host of groups -- among them the Forest Stewardship Council, the American Tree Farm System and the Tropical Forest Foundation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency itself awards multiple eco designations, while a sea of smaller entities can be found operating online under names such as greenbiznow.com, societyofgreenbusiness.com and begreencertified.com.

and much more here>>>

Not So Fast With Those Electric Cars

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 08, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Alternative Energy: A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another.

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Related Topics: Energy

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It's a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else.

"If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?" asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: "Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy."

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, right, inspects the new Chrysler-built Peapod electric car with Peapod CEO Peter Arnell.

The GAO report says a plug-in compact car, if recharged at an outlet drawing its power from coal, provides a carbon dioxide savings of only 4% to 5%. If the feeling of saving the environment from driving an electric car causes people to drive more, that small amount of savings vanishes entirely.

It's much the same effect we saw when the Corporate Fuel Economy Standards were passed in the '70s. Aside from forcing us into less-safe downsized vehicles that increased highway fatalities, the promise of more miles per gallon caused people to drive more miles. The promised energy independence never materialized as we imported more foreign oil than ever before.

Okay, so how about a zero-emission source of electricity — nuclear power? The administration has done little to promote it beyond lip service. The administration recently killed the safest place on the planet to store what is erroneously called nuclear waste — at the nuclear repository that was being built at Yucca Mountain, Nev.

This "waste" is in the form of spent fuel rods the French and others have safely stored and reprocessed. These rods still contain most of their original energy and reprocessing them makes nuclear power renewable as well as pollution-free. The French get 80% of their electricity from nukes, and nobody in Paris glows in the dark.

They will have a place to plug in their electric cars, but right now we don't. The government is promoting solar and wind, which is fine if the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Both have their own environmental drawbacks.

Both require huge amounts of land. Wind turbines tend to slice and dice birds, including endangered species. Solar panels of the size that might be competitive require huge amounts of water to clean. Water is a rare commodity in the areas the sun shines most — the arid land of the West and Southwest.

There are the hazards of the cars themselves. We don't yet fully comprehend the hazards to drivers, passengers and first responders after, say, a collision between an electric clown car and an 18-wheeler. Then there's a whole new problem of disposing of a new generation of batteries using lithium.

As for the lithium, Bolivia, under the thumb of its leftist leader Evo Morales, has about half the world's proven reserves. "The United States has supplies of lithium, but if demand for lithium exceeded domestic supplies," warns the GAO, "the U.S. could substitute reliance on one foreign source (oil) for another (lithium)."

Then there are environmental consequences. Just as coal and oil must be extracted from the earth, so must lithium. "Extracting lithium from locations where it is abundant, such as South America, could pose environmental challenges that would damage the ecosystem in this area."

While advertised as "zero emission," electric cars have their own set of issues. As physicist Amory Lovins once put it, "Zero-emission vehicles are actually 'elsewhere-emission' vehicles."

The End Of The Affair

• MAY 30, 2009

By P.J. O’ROURKE

(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)

The phrase “bankrupt General Motors,” which we expect to hear uttered on Monday, leaves Americans my age in economic shock. The words are as melodramatic as “Mom’s nude photos.” And, indeed, if we want to understand what doomed the American automobile, we should give up on economics and turn to melodrama.

Politicians, journalists, financial analysts and other purveyors of banality have been looking at cars as if a convertible were a business. Fire the MBAs and hire a poet. The fate of Detroit isn’t a matter of financial crisis, foreign competition, corporate greed, union intransigence, energy costs or measuring the shoe size of the footprints in the carbon. It’s a tragic romance—unleashed passions, titanic clashes, lost love and wild horses.

Foremost are the horses. Cars can’t be comprehended without them. A hundred and some years ago Rudyard Kipling wrote “The Ballad of the King’s Jest,” in which an Afghan tribesman avers: Four things greater than all things are,—Women and Horses and Power and War.

and much more>>>

The End of the Affair

• MAY 30, 2009

By P.J. O’ROURKE

(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)

The phrase “bankrupt General Motors,” which we expect to hear uttered on Monday, leaves Americans my age in economic shock. The words are as melodramatic as “Mom’s nude photos.” And, indeed, if we want to understand what doomed the American automobile, we should give up on economics and turn to melodrama.

Politicians, journalists, financial analysts and other purveyors of banality have been looking at cars as if a convertible were a business. Fire the MBAs and hire a poet. The fate of Detroit isn’t a matter of financial crisis, foreign competition, corporate greed, union intransigence, energy costs or measuring the shoe size of the footprints in the carbon. It’s a tragic romance—unleashed passions, titanic clashes, lost love and wild horses.

Foremost are the horses. Cars can’t be comprehended without them. A hundred and some years ago Rudyard Kipling wrote “The Ballad of the King’s Jest,” in which an Afghan tribesman avers: Four things greater than all things are,—Women and Horses and Power and War.

and much more>>>

World's First Air-Powered Car: Zero Emissions by Next Summer

By Matt Sullivan

Published in the June 2007 issue.

India’s largest automaker is set to start producing the world’s first commercial air-powered vehicle. The Air Car, developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy Nègre for Luxembourg-based MDI, uses compressed air, as opposed to the gas-and-oxygen explosions of internal-combustion models, to push its engine’s pistons. Some 6000 zero-emissions Air Cars are scheduled to hit Indian streets in August of 2008.

Barring any last-minute design changes on the way to production, the Air Car should be surprisingly practical. The $12,700 CityCAT, one of a handful of planned Air Car models, can hit 68 mph and has a range of 125 miles. It will take only a few minutes for the CityCAT to refuel at gas stations equipped with custom air compressor units; MDI says it should cost around $2 to fill the car’s carbon-fiber tanks with 340 liters of air at 4350 psi. Drivers also will be able to plug into the electrical grid and use the car’s built-in compressor to refill the tanks in about 4 hours.

Of course, the Air Car will likely never hit American shores,>>>

Seeing Chukchi

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, May 29, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Energy: As administration officials tilt at windmills and talk of painting our roofs white, a real energy solution has emerged from the Arctic deep. So why has only Alaska's Sarah Palin noticed?

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Read More: Energy

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Back in July, when IBD first interviewed the then-little-known governor, Palin emphasized developing Alaska's Chukchi Sea resources. Under those icy waters, it was then believed, was enough oil and gas to supply America for a decade.

"It's a very nonsensical position we're in right now," Palin told us. "(We) ask the Saudis to ramp up production of crude oil so that hungry markets in America can be fed, (and) your sister state in Alaska has those resources."

At the time, it was thought that Chukchi's waters northwest of Alaska's landmass held 30 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Today, Science magazine reports that the U.S. Geological Survey now finds it holds more than anyone thought — 1.6 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, or 30% of the world's supply and 83 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, 4% of the global conventional resources.

That's enough U.S. energy to achieve self-sufficiency and never worry about it as a national security question again.

The only thing left to do is drill. "Congress can do that for us right now," Palin told IBD, urging Washington to open the territory.

That Congress hasn't is the biggest part of the problem.

"Alaska should be the head, not the tail, to the energy solution," Palin said.

It ought to be reassuring to Americans that energy can be developed here. Americans are environmentally conscious, and Palin herself has a good record on balancing development with ecology.

The alternative isn't reassuring: If we don't drill, the Russians will. Situated over on the eastern end of the Chukchi Sea, they have global ambitions of dominating the energy trade and no qualms about muscling in on the U.S.

Already, undersea volcanic activity has melted much of the Arctic ice cap and enabled more exploration than in the past. The U.S. has as much claim to the region as the Russians, but only the Russians seem to be taking advantage of the geological bounty.

It's pure energy, not theoretics. That's significant because Steven Chu's Energy Department is spending too many resources trying to figure out how to turn all the weird wind power and switchgrass schemes into viable energy resources.

His latest idea is to paint roofs white. None of this puts significant energy out to consumers. Nor does it come close to matching oil in energy value.

A recent study by Exxon Mobil calculated that even as efforts to develop alternative fuels move forward, oil will remain the dominant energy source through at least 2030.

Domestic oil and gas development is an off-the-shelf (dare we say "shovel ready"?) solution that can serve a bridge to all the green experiments if any someday pan out.

Drilling Alaska energy beats kowtowing to the Saudis or waiting for odd energy sources like wind power to become economical.

Since neither of those are solutions for America's energy security, the best way to handle this is the third way, the Palin way: drilling.

Now that the resources are there, it's time to do it.