Polar bear rescue: Two seconds is all it takes.

Urge Interior Secretary Salazar to Rescue the Polar Bear NOW

Help us build a national outcry to reverse the Bush Administration’s “polluters-first” policy.

Send your Citizen Petition now -- and tell the new Interior Secretary that you care more about polar bears than Big Oil’s profits.

After eight years of suffering under the Bush Administration's "polluters-first" policies, the polar bear is now hurtling headlong toward extinction.

It's up to the Obama Administration to slam on the brakes, put Bush's dangerous policies in reverse, and give the green light to full-fledged endangered species protection for the polar bear.

But that won't happen unless millions of Americans speak out now.

Why? Because President Obama's Interior Department will be under tremendous pressure from the oil lobby to maintain the Bush policy that puts oil development first and polar bears dead last.

We must make our voices heard if we are to persuade Interior Secretary Salazar to cancel Bush's "polar bears be damned" approach.

The stakes could not be higher. In the last year alone, the Bush Administration auctioned off a vast expanse of Alaska's Chukchi Sea to Shell and other oil giants -- exposing half of America's polar bears to potential drilling and lethal oil spills.

And only two months ago, Bush officials weakened the Endangered Species Act so badly that it no longer protects polar bears against the two deadliest threats they face: oil development and global warming.

But Interior Secretary Salazar is unlikely to defy Big Oil -- unless we mobilize a nationwide outcry that can't be ignored.

That's why it's so important that you send your own Citizen Petition right now and help NRDC ratchet up this next critical phase of our Polar Bear S.O.S. campaign.

Let the new Interior Secretary know you care deeply about saving the polar bear. Remind him that the American people expect our government agencies to protect our country's wildlife -- not sacrifice them for corporate profits.

Together, we can reverse eight years of relentless attacks on the polar bear -- and finally give these magnificent Arctic creatures a fighting chance at survival.

Sincerely,

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Senior Attorney
Natural Resources Defense Council

P.S. After you send your own Citizen Petition, I will let you know about an easy way to spread the word to your friends and family. We need at least one million petitions to put the polar bear on the new administration's radar screen, so rally everyone you know to speak out and say, "I Care More about the Polar Bear than Big Oil's Profits."

Obama Helps Greater Yellowstone Wolves Dodge Bullet

A Lasting Future?

President Obama has suspended the Bush Administration’s deadly plan for wolves in Greater Yellowstone and the rest of the Northern Rockies, but the future of these animals is far from certain.

Urge President Obama and Dale Hall, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to permanently abandon Bush’s deadly plan for Greater Yellowstone wolves and adopt a more responsible and inclusive wolf strategy.

President Barack Obama has suspended the eleventh-hour attempt by Bush Administration officials to eliminate vital protections for hundreds of wolves in Greater Yellowstone and the rest of the Northern Rockies.

These beloved wolves have literally dodged a bullet. Under the Bush plan, nearly 1,000 of these magnificent animals could have been slaughtered.

But Greater Yellowstone’s wolves aren’t out of the woods yet. Officials in Idaho and Wyoming have already signaled their intent to pursue delisting under their existing management plans -- the same plans that would allow widespread killing of the region’s still-recovering wolf population.

Take action now! Urge President Obama and Dale Hall, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to permanently reject the Bush wolf plan and adopt a more responsible, long-term approach to wolf management in the Northern Rockies.

A successful wolf management plan would ensure a lasting future for these amazing animals with the most current science on wolf recovery and collaborative input from conservationists, ranchers and others concerned with the future of wolves in Greater Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies.

Send a message to President Obama and Director Hall and urge them to abandon Bush’s awful wolf plan and instead develop one based on science and responsible management practices.

The Obama Administration can get wolf management right, but they need to hear from you. Please take action now…

Best Regards,

Rodger Schlickeisen President, Defenders of Wildlife

An Overview on the Interesting Facts about Solar Energy

There are lots of interesting facts about solar energy. Educating yourself about this will prove to be beneficial in the long run. You can share the information to your loved ones. You can teach them of ways on how they can help to conserve the energy. You can also do your share to help this method to advance if you are a genius in the field. But if you are an ordinary citizen who only wants to enjoy, then feast on. But remember that you also have responsibilities to the environment that you must accomplish in order to do your part in the whole scheme of things.

The Facts that Matter
1. Solar radiation makes it possible for the energy coming from the sun to be used as power source and energy that can in turn be used for many purposes. The technology on this aspect is characterized in two ways. They can either be passive or active. This will depend on the methods that are used to get, convert and allocate sunlight.

What are active solar techniques? These utilize pumps, photovoltaic panels and fans to renovate sunlight into useful resources. These aim to increase the energy supply that is why these can also be referred as supply side technologies. The passive solar techniques, on the other hand, use only selected resources with constructive thermal properties, utilize the kind of spaces that can circulate air naturally and apply the position of buildings and structures towards the sun. These will lessen the need for other sources and can also be referred as the demand side technology.

2. Solar energy has influenced many factors that surround people. This can be referred in planning and designing buildings. This process can be rooted back at the early days of the architectural history. The Greeks and the Chinese first used such factor in building and constructing their architectural pieces and on their planning methods.

3. Solar energy is also being utilized by the agricultural sector because they rely heavily on its benefits in order to gain more harvest. They developed ways in order to plant the kind of crops that will grow according to the amount of sun that they will be getting for the season. This can also be used to dry the crops, pump water, brooding of chicks and to dry animal manures that can later be used as fertilizers.

4. On seasons like the Little Ice Age, fruit walls were used by French and Chinese farmers to be able to collect and store solar energy to help them keep the plants warm and to speedy up the process of ripening of fruits. These walls serve as the thermal masses. The fruit walls that were first developed were perpendicular to the ground and faced the south direction. Over time, innovations were done and slopping walls were used to gain more advantage from the sun.

5. To convert the solar light into heat, people have developed greenhouses. These enable the production and cultivation of specialty crops all year round. Such innovation made it possible for crops to be produced in untimely seasons and in places where you think that those plants won’t grow.

And these are only some of the interesting facts about solar energy. These give you a good peek at how wonderful nature is and how people have developed ways to use it to advance in many aspects of their lives.

The Biggest Business Startup Ideas You Can Start Today

There will always be room for new ideas, particularly in business. Over the years, ideas have come and gone – some with a bang and some with a whimper. Many of these ideas have revolutionized the industry while others merely reinvented the wheel. But if you're looking to start a venture that will make a difference, cater to a ready market and still have the profitability of a promising business, here is the biggest startup business idea you can use:

Easy going green
Green technology is one of the best and biggest business startup ideas that have ever hit the industry. With eco-friendly consciousness becoming widespread worldwide and still a small number of products to meet that demand, today is the perfect time to consider going into business promoting green technology. Already, industry insiders are predicting that this business will grow and become a trillion dollar a year business in 10 years' time and could become the basis of the future global economy.

Some business ventures to consider:

Products recreated from recycled materials
From apparel to shoes to construction materials, products made from recycled materials have switched from being novelties at specialty shops to becoming mainstream items. Simple, uncomplicated and practical, the switch has become one of the biggest startup business ideas today, resulting to the establishment of hundreds of stores and production facilities around the world.

Probably the most saleable and ubiquitous so far are reusable shopping bags, touted as the eco-friendly consumer's answer to the call for reducing product carbon footprints and encouraging the use of materials that would otherwise clog up dumpsites.

How much you'll need: should you go homemade, you'll spend from around $3,000 to $5,000, depending on the equipment and materials you use. Design also matters, primarily because this product line does enjoy some popularity.

Eco-friendly car dealership
Eco-friendly cars don't only reduce the user's carbon footprint, they also minimize the demand for fossil fuel. These are mostly hybrids and are designed to be fuel-efficient, thus allowing high savings to the user. Car dealership can involve sales or leasing, so you'll have a choice. Either way, the use of alternative energy is indirectly being promoted. The business will require establishing a relationship with auto manufacturers, although a known dealer could offer the same opportunity for nearly the same profits.

How much you'll need: $10,000 to use with alternative models, probably lower if the auto producer is smaller. The latter option is a good choice for a startup business since new entrepreneurs might not want to shell out such a big capital. The need, however, is huge and continues to expand.

Organic products
Selling products that have been produced using organic methods helps promote a healthy choice and encourages a more responsible way of using natural resources. Organically grown plants, fruits and vegetables, for example, present a huge market and remain as one of the biggest startup business ideas today. The demand for organic products is rising and the profits are quite promising, considering that organic products are better priced than products using chemical fertilizers.

By-products in this sector are also promising. They could be expanded to include product lines such as skin care, cosmetics, home cleaning and maintenance created from organic materials. Many consumers are making the switch to these products because they are hypoallergenic and made from natural and naturally-sourced materials.

This segment of the industry expects huge growth, which means more competitors will be joining the field, all the more reason to grab the opportunity to make your mark as early as possible.

Gainesville utility places premium on solar power

By Asjylyn Loder, Times Staff Writer

James Mulhearn, left, owner of Interstate Mini Storage in Gainesville, had a 50-kilowatt solar system installed on one of his storage buildings. “It’s a new frontier,” he said.

GAINESVILLE — James Mulhearn clambered up a ladder and surveyed a gleaming stretch of flat metal roof and a newly installed solar panel, one of 288 that would soon cover the shed's roof with 50 kilowatts of solar power.

The retired electrician scanned the rows of flat-roofed storage sheds that make up his business, Interstate Mini Storage in Gainesville. If the numbers worked out, he might cover them all.

"It's the first thing in this business in 30 years that has gotten me excited," Mulhearn said. "It's brand new. It's a new frontier."

In a bid to become the nation's Solar City, Gainesville recently became the first in the country to adopt a feed-in tariff, which pays a premium price for electricity from the sun. Pioneered by Germany, feed-in tariffs led to a national solar boom.

Gainesville Regional Utilities is betting that if temperate Germany can become a world leader in solar power, then Gainesville can do the same.

• • •

At first, the idea seemed outrageous to Ed Regan, the assistant general manager for strategic planning at Gainesville Regional Utilities, the state's fifth-largest municipal utility with about 90,000 customers. He had heard that the German program paid as much as 60 cents per kilowatt hour for solar electricity — more than three times what Regan's utility charged its customers. Intrigued, Regan wrote a grant proposal and got the money last summer to travel to Germany.

"I wanted to find out, how do they possibly justify that?" Regan said.

Gainesville already had generous rebates for solar. Florida also allows net-metering, which runs the meter backward as the solar panels produce power. Still, some businesses were telling Regan it wasn't enough. Installing solar just didn't make financial sense.

Meanwhile, in far-cloudier Germany, farmers installed solar panels in pastures and on barns. The roofs of factories and office buildings gleamed with panels. In German villages, house after house had solar power.

Other countries took note of the German solar boom, said Jerry Karnas, Florida climate project director for Environmental Defense. The country is forecast to grow to 18 percent renewables by the end of the year from 2 percent in 1997. It also created 250,000 jobs in renewable energy. Dozens of other countries adopted similar tariffs, and a handful of U.S. states began considering it.

"It's a strategy that worked all over Europe, particularly in Germany," Regan said.

He was convinced he could make it work in Gainesville.

• • •

The feed-in tariff works by offering customers a higher price for solar than customers pay for power from the grid.

Gainesville Regional Utilities signs a 20-year contract to buy electricity from a homeowner's new solar installation at 32 cents a kilowatt hour, well above the average of about 17.5 cents the residential customers pay for electricity from the utility's fossil fuel plants, explained Barry Jacobson, founding partner of Solar Impact, Gainesville's leading solar installer. The prices are different for commercial and industrial customers, and depend on the size of the solar installation.

The 20-year contract — and the above-market rate — helps homeowners secure financing to pay for the panels, which can cost up to $40,000 for a 5-kilowatt solar home system, Jacobson said. The contract shows the bank that the homeowner has a revenue stream to repay a loan.

Over time, retail electric rates catch up to the premium feed-in tariff rate. The hope is that by that time, the prices of solar will have come down, and a sustainable market will have been created that makes solar power more competitive with fossil fuels.

Jacobson said he's working with developers who want to install solar on the rooftops of small office buildings and parking garages to see whether the feed-in tariff makes sense for them.

Some businesses may even see profit of up to 5 percent, Regan said. Considering the stock market's dismal performance last year, he said, 5 percent isn't all that bad.

• • •

Like many great ideas for renewable energy, it isn't free. The rest of Gainesville's customers pay a surcharge to subsidize those that go solar.

To Regan, the architect of the Gainesville system, the beauty of the program is that it distributes the cost over so many people that it has a negligible impact on the average consumer. In Germany, the average customer paid about $2.50 a month for the subsidy. In Gainesville, it will come out to about 40 cents a month for the average residential customer. To keep that cost from soaring, the City Commission agreed to revisit the program if more customers than expected signed up.

Regan expects that Gainesville will add about 1 megawatt of solar capacity every year. That's just a fraction of the 611 megawatts the city's fossil fuel plants can produce, but it's twice as much solar as the city has installed.

The price tag doesn't tell the whole story, Regan said. More solar power will result in more local jobs, greater energy independence and reduced pollution. It adds a value to the community that's not reflected in dollars and cents.

"It may not be the least expensive form of energy," said John Crider, an analyst with Gainesville Regional Utilities. But it is the most valuable, he said.

Feed-in tariffs have been adopted by 45 countries, and a handful of U.S. states are debating it, Karnas said. Florida Public Service Commissioner Nathan Skop recently proposed a similar measure. Last month, the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles adopted feed-in tariffs, crediting Gainesville for leading the way.