Deutsche Bank has designed a Car­bon Counter wid­get to be down­loaded to your desk­top in order to allow you to have an accu­rate, real-time dis­play of the esti­mated amount of green house gases in our atmos­phere.  The num­ber is the same fig­ure which is dis­played on the 70 foot tall Car­bon Counter near Penn Sta­tion in New York City. It’s a bit like a tick­ing time bomb, but if we’re suc­cess­ful in our efforts to com­bat cli­mate change, the num­ber will sta­bi­lize and even­tu­ally start to decline…

Last week I had a fan­tas­tic sur­prise.  A friend and col­league invited me to see a film in the mid­dle of the after­noon. I was just return­ing from Berlin and was jet-lagged and fig­ured, why not?  But won­dered, why is this movie show­ing dur­ing the work day?  It turned out be a pre-screening of the upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary “Car­bon Nation” for some of the amaz­ing peo­ple inter­viewed in the film so that they could give input on how they were por­trayed, check the facts, and give gen­eral input. Accord­ing to the film’s Direc­tor, Peter Byck, “Car­bon Nation” is an opti­mistic (and witty) dis­cov­ery of what peo­ple are already doing, what we as a nation could be doing and what the world needs to do to pre­vent (or at least slow down) the impend­ing cli­mate cri­sis.  The good news is we already have the tech­nol­ogy to com­bat most of the worst case sce­nar­ios of cli­mate change, and it’s also very good busi­ness. Other good films have been about the prob­lems, “Car­bon Nation” is a film that focuses on the solutions.”

Byck gives us a humor­ous, and some­times intensely per­sonal, peak into the extra­or­di­nary lives and work of peo­ple who are pio­neer­ing vital solu­tions.  I won’t give away to much about the film but one of the main char­ac­ters is Dan Nolan who is help­ing to save fuel, money and lives in Iraq and Afghanistan by help­ing the mil­i­tary reduce and sub­sti­tute their fuel needs. Other stars include Jim Woolsey, Van Jones, Amory Lovins, and Janine Benyus.

Keep an eye out for this must-see film!

I will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the inter­na­tional work­shop enti­tled “Aquatic Bio­mass: Sus­tain­able Bioen­ergy from Algae?” in Berlin, Ger­many Novem­ber 2nd. The work­shop will bring together key rep­re­sen­ta­tives from coun­tries active in research and devel­op­ment of algae-based bioen­ergy. They will present and dis­cuss the cur­rent sta­tus and future options for algae use, intro­duce rel­e­vant tech­nol­ogy prospects and dis­cuss envi­ron­men­tal and devel­op­ment issues. To see the full descrip­tion and agenda click here.

Dave Muyres will be speak­ing about the role of design in craft­ing a new vision for trans­porta­tion in the United States at the fol­low­ing events:

Mov­ing Minds: The Next Trans­porta­tion Infra­struc­ture
Novem­ber 9–12, 2009 at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan in Ann Arbor
http://um-smart.org/resources/conference09/overview.html

Oppor­tu­nity Green Busi­ness Con­fer­ence at UCLA
Los Ange­les, CA   Novem­ber 7–8, 2009
http://www.opportunitygreen.com/

Pod­car City Con­fer­ence
Decem­ber 9–10 in Malmo, Swe­den
http://www.podcar.org/cop15/index.htm

I will be speak­ing at the Inter­na­tional Con­fer­ence on Biore­fin­ery in Syra­cuse NY on Octo­ber 6th, and at Hobart and William Smith Col­lege (HWS) in Geneva, NY on Octo­ber 7th. The Fin­ger Lakes Insti­tute, based at HWS and the col­lege itself have a wide array of ‘green­ing effort. For more infor­ma­tion on their envi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives, click here.