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This morning I talked with Stuart Varney about green jobs, Al Gore's bizarre statement equating climate skeptics with racists, and getting the government out of the way of private sector job creation.

Here's the video:

Watch the latest video at <a href="http://video.foxbusiness.com">video.foxbusiness.com</a>


And here's a link in case the player doesn't work in your browser: The Green Skeptic on FOX

Cosmetic Safety Database Rating
Aveeno Clear Complexion Foaming Cleanser - 7
Kiss My Face Start Up Exfoliating Face Wash - 1
Aveeno Positively Radiant Daily Cleansing Pads - 5

Kiss My Face So Refined Jojoba & Mint Facial Scrub - 2





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Soap Hope is a for-profit company with a Heart and a Mind, and for this reason they operate with a non-profit mission. They designed the Good Returns model on purpose,

Welcome to the weekly "We are Canadian Blog Hop!!" Your co-hosts for this fun weekly Monday Hop are:


Each week we pull on blog from the previous week's hop, to be the Featured Blogger of the Week.  We use random.org, and will email the winner that they won as soon as we can.








Rules:
1. Canadians Only! (Sorry Americans, we wanted to give the Canadians some love for this one.)2. Follow the Co-hosts, and leave a comment so we will follow you back!
3. Follow the Featured Blogger, and leave a comment so they can follow you back!




get the InLinkz code

Kevin Brown, my co-founder of Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic, says, "Pennsylvania can clean up in clean tech," in the Philadelphia Inquirer this weekend:

 Philadelphia identifies with underdogs: Rocky, the Eagles, and now energy.

When business people or policymakers think of Philly, they naturally jump to the Big Five: pharmaceuticals, higher education, legal, finance, and technology. Clean tech, or renewable energy, rarely makes the list. But that's about to change. We have the potential to be a full-fledged front-runner in one of the hottest growth industries.

Read the full story here.

How Many Gadgets Do You Have?

I am sure that if you sat down and counted all of the gadgets you have in your home today, you would be amazed.  So listed below is the latest facts on how gadgets affect your lives.

1,400: The dollar amount the average American household spends on new electronics annually.

20-40: Number of gadgets the average American keeps on stand by, that suck up energy even when turned off. Televisions, computers, electric toothbrushes, phones, radios are more all use up energy and money when they aren’t even in use.

1%: The total percent of carbon dioxide emissions emitted each year from devices left on stand by.

230 million: The number of products with battery charging systems currently in use in American homes and businesses.

1.5 billion: The number of external power adapters, also known as power supplies, currently in use to power small electronic devices–that’s about five for every person. The total electricity flowing through all types of power supplies makes up about 11% of the national electric bill.

3 million: Tons of household electronics tossed by Americans in 2006.

700 million: The number of used cell phones in the US today. Each of the 140 million cell phone users discards their old phone for a new one every 14 to 18 months.

300 million: Number of obsolete computers in the U.S. today.

70%: The percentage of e-waste out of the entire toxic waste stream of landfills. In addition to valuable metals like aluminum, electronics often contain hazardous materials like lead and mercury.

50%: The percent of a computer that is recycled. The rest is dumped. Non-recyclable components of a single computer may contain almost 2 kilograms of lead.

75-80%: The percentage of old computers from the United States wind up in Asian countries such as India and China, where recycling costs are much lower.

500 million:Number of consumer electronics devices sold in the US in 2008.

530: The pounds of fossil fuels it takes to manufacture one computer and monitor. It also requires 48 pounds of chemicals and 1.5 tons of water.

81%: Percent of a desktop’s lifetime energy consumption that is used just to make it. Only a small fraction of a desktop’s total energy consumption is consumed in actually using it.

Sources: Good magazine, Energy Star, New York Times, PaceButler, Earth911, GRIDA, Computer Take Back.

So how did you do? Just remember that whatever you plug into your home, consumes energy. Think about how you can save by reducing your electronics.

Also, check out the 10 Types of Companies that Consume the Most Electricity.  Very interesting.  Although, I know of one industry that was left off the list and that is steel companies.  They also consume alot of electricity.

Gadgets …. as the green future unfolds.

I have a confession
Opting Out! No more phone books please
A Change in Habits

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I have like 6 more in the pantry and hope hope hope that it is as good as this one (but maybe not as sweet).

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Unbelievable What IS Happening to Sea Turtles

For all of you who have heard about global warming causing the decline in sea turtles. Aha… maybe we have discovered why the sea turtle is becoming extinct; and it is not global warming!

COSTA RICA

The Turtle eggs are stolen – harvested if you prefer – to be sold.  I may not understand why the local culture does this but this is beyond words.

NOTHING LIKE A PICTURE TO EXPLAIN AN EXTINCTION!

Sea Turtles  …. as the green future unfolds.

 

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Calvin on the dock at Sixth Lake.

Apparently, the Fulton Chain of Lakes region in the Adirondacks is "AVZ": an anti-Verizon zone.
  
Sure, wireless reception could be had if absolutely needed, but that required me to stand in one spot on the deck extending my arms out over Sixth Lake and performing all sorts of gymnastics that strained my abilities.   

There is also one spot in the town of Inlet, along the beach at Fourth Lake, where one can get reception.  A Verizon-user convention gathered there on Saturday night, attendees identifiable by the curious practice of holding phones aloft as torch-bearers entering a cave.

Surprisingly, I didn't mind the limited cell phone coverage and no access to the Internet; it didn't take long for me to realize that almost everything could wait until my return.

Kayaking, swimming, reading, eating, drinking, and hanging with my kids, my dog, and our friends proved more than enough to keep me occupied.  Several lasting memories sustain me: my teenage son's first experiences water-skiing; my younger son's intricate gnome house built of stones, bark, moss and sticks; my daughter's delight at receiving a pair of cowgirl boots for her birthday; and my dog Calvin's first ride in a kayak.

Now I'm back and the world is still here, emails await response, phone calls need to be returned, the garden needs tending -- and it's probably best I ignored the markets last week.  I am refreshed, recharged, rejuvenated, and I even grew back my beard.
 
I took along one of my favorite books, the ESSAYS of E. B. WHITE, a slim, elegant volume including some of his best essays from The New Yorker and elsewhere.  White is a great lakeside companion, for he understood the lure of a lake in summer, as he so eloquently articulated in "Once More to the Lake," from Harper's Magazine in 1941:

"Summertime, oh, summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade-proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweetfern and the juniper forever and ever, summer without end; this was the background, and the life along the shore was the design, the cottagers with their innocent and tranquil design, their tiny docks with the flagpole and the American flag floating against the white clouds in the blue sky, the little paths over the roots of the trees leading from camp to camp and the paths leading back to the outhouses and the can of lime for sprinkling, and at the souvenir counters at the store the miniature birch-bark canoes and the postcards that showed things looking a little better than they looked."

Summer is not without end, and in its waning, I get one more trip away before the routines of life set anchor again.  The balance of the year, with its inevitable changes and schedules and business may be made easier by this brief respite to the fade-proof lake in the Adirondack woods.

At least, that's what I tell myself now that my phone keeps blinking and buzzing, calling me back.
 

New Jersey is known as the "Garden State," but drive through it these days and you see a different kind of harvest: solar energy.

You'll find solar panels on large suburban homes and apartment complexes, solar panels on many of the light poles, solar panels on large warehouse facilities, and box stores.

There's even a 7,000-panel, 1.4-megawatt (MW) solar installation on the Livingston, NJ, Campus of Rutgers University. And last fall one of the largest solar developments in the country -- a 20 MW solar farm – sprouted up on former farmland in Pilesgrove.

In April, the state's Board of Public Utilities announced it had exceeded 300 MW of installed capacity and over 8,000 projects statewide.

New Jersey became a solar leader – second in the nation to California -- through an aggressive Solar Renewable Energy Certificate (SREC) program. To meet state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) utilities purchase SRECs -- tradable certificates equal to 1000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity -- from producers.

But after several years of high, stable SREC prices – the NJ SREC spot market price increased from September 2008 to March 2009 – those prices have plummeted over the past few months.

Chart by EnterSolar

According to EnterSolar, a leading provider of solar photovoltaic systems for corporate customers in the Northeast, the price dropped from over $600 in May to almost $200 currently.

"The New Jersey solar market is coming out of a short-term installation boom," Peyton Boswell, managing director of EnterSolar, wrote in an email to me. "That was unsustainable in the sense that the solar MW capacity developed and installed was far in excess of what is required under the state's RPS."

Boswell remains optimistic about the long-term prospects for New Jersey's solar market. "It will remain vibrant over the long-haul -- over the next 10 years, but we are very concerned that the next 1-2 years could be extremely tough going."

As New Jersey State Senator Bob Smith (D) told the Philadelphia Inquirer recently, "We've done such a good job at stimulating solar that the market is now crashing."

Smith has sponsored a bill that will accelerate by one year requirements for how much renewable energy must be produced, which in turn will force power companies to buy more SRECs.

The question remains whether the government propping up the solar market further will have the desired effect when it is facing what is a fairly typical supply and demand problem.

"The basic SREC market structure in New Jersey is sound," says EnterSolar's Boswell. "Like many markets, there is a propensity for over-reaction and we think we are seeing that play out right now with SREC pricing."

What is needed, in Boswell's opinion, is for solar system owners to be able to sell long-term SREC contracts, exchanging lower SREC pricing for longer-term stability.

Another flaw in the New Jersey program, according to Boswell, is that all SRECs are treated equally, including those for both large-scale wholesale solar farms and distributed solar net-metered projects.

Boswell suggests it "would be better if these two types of solar installations were treated differently from an SREC standpoint as the project costs and related Internal Rates of Return (IRR) are dramatically different -- a 10-MW solar farm installed at $3/W can generate a far higher IRR given the same SREC price than a 1-MW rooftop net-metered system at same SREC price."

Sometimes too much success is too much of a good thing. For New Jersey's solar market, it sounds like some basic structural fixes may have more positive impact than accelerating an already flawed system.

Jack's full letter to Canada

This Hummer was at the Market. I chuckled when it drove up because of the irony of someone driving a beast like this yet shopping at a farmers market.

CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, set out to find out if it’s possible to to become “heart attack-proof” and presents his findings in a one-hour documentary Dr. Sanjay Gupta Reports: The Last Heart Attack on Sunday, August 21st at 8 pm ET and again on Saturday, August 28th at 8 pm ET (on CNN).

In his documentary, Dr. Gupta speaks with doctors who are successfully helping patients prevent heart attacks, and showcases success stories such as former President Bill Clinton who … [visit site to read more]

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Supermodels undressing for a good cause? 350.org commissioned this video from Cameron Russell, American Model, Director and daughter of Zip Car Founder Robin Chase. The video was used to promote Global Day of Climate Action and influence delegates attending the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate … [visit site to read more]

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