Energy efficiency will save you money. Plain and simple, period.

That was the message of Anthony Malkin, president of Wein & Malkin, the firm that owns the Empire State Building, last week at the annual Energy Efficiency Forum in Washington, DC.

(Vi CoStar Group)

Buy at least 5% renewable energy: CERC orders state utilities (Business Standard India): “The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) today said that all power state utilities in the country will have to purchase at minimum five per cent of their grid purchase from renewable energy sources from 2009-10 onwards and 15 per cent by 2020.”

(Via Yahoo Search: renewable energy certificates&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&x=wrt.)

The program is focusing on 16 projects worldwide, with an emphasis on economically viable innovations in building construction, generation of clean energy, waste management, water management, transportation and outdoor lighting systems. The projects are in:

• Melbourne, Australia
• Palhoça, Brazil
• Toronto
• Victoria, Canada
• Ahmedabad, India
• Jaipur, India
• outside Panama City, Panama
• Pretoria, South Africa
• Johannesburg, South Africa
• Seoul
• Stockholm, Sweden
• London
• San Francisco
• Destiny, Fla.

Just as the White House is responding to calls for an oldtimey victory garden at 1600, longtime CT legislator Rosa DeLauro stands accused of ramrodding through a Orwellian (aren’t we done with that?) “Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009″ (HR875).

It has all sorts of previously steadfast DeLauro supporters creeped out by the small print.

Get Arrested for Growing a Tomato says one small farms blog. End of Farmer’s Markets? ask another. The “ death of organic farming and independent farming in America” says the DailyKos. Seed banking a crime? Holy crap!!!!?

The really sad, I mean truly disheartening news, is that Rep. DeLauro’s husband, Stan Greenburg, is all too easily linked to Monsanto (SourceWatch on Monsanto).

I guess no more pressing flesh at the Guilford Fair, eh Rosa?

Martha Stewart, are you believing this?

(A fittingly Ed Woodian video on the issue from Free Speech TV at youtube.)

The Citizens Network for Sustainable Development’s National Strategy for Sustainability finished among the Top Ten in Change.org’s’s Ideas for Change in America web voting competition. The Top Ten ideas are to be presented to the Obama Administration at an event today (01/16/09) at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

National Strategy for Sustainability will speed the advance of green building practices; transitioning to renewable energy; protecting and restoring the natural environment; limiting toxic chemicals; investing in all types of green jobs; adopting sustainable business practices; educating for sustainable development; ensuring that all people’s basic human needs can be met; and integrating the work of artists, engineers, educators, and restoration scientists on infrastructure, restoration, and other sustainable community projects.

The campaign is supported by the US Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development, SustainLane, the Sustainable Communities Network, Common Current, WELL Network, Resource Renewal Institute, Working Group for Sustainable Change, SustainUS, Sustainable Land Development Institute, EarthRights Institute, Food First, South Florida Environmental Art Project, GreenMuseum and other national and local sustainability leadership organizations.

Congratulations to campaign organizer Rob Wheeler. Well Done!

Herman Daly, the ecological economist and the University of Maryland, explores “uneconomic growth”: evidence that GDP growth at the current margin in the US increases social and environmental costs faster than it increases benefits. He asked a whole slew of provocative questions keynoting a recent American Meteorologic Society workshop on federal policy:

• Can we systematically continue to emit increasing amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere without eventually provoking unacceptable climate changes? (Scientists, regardless of what Stephen Milloy might claim, will say no.
• How can we design and manage a steady-state economy, one that respects the limits of the biosphere?
• What are the consequences of “growth bound” efficiency first policy? (It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth”.— William Stanley Jevons, 1866.

(Via AMS’s Climate Policy blog and found through Common Tragedies)

MI High School Offers Green Tech Program (School Library Journal): “Whitmore Lake High School in Michigan takes going green seriously. So much so that the LEED certified school is providing a year-long program called ‘Green Tech,’ which lets students explore alternative energy sources and their importance to economic stability, as well as the sustainability of the earth’s natural resources.”

(Via Yahoo Search: innovation sustainability&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&x=wrt.)