The Greening of the Pope

This should make at least a few million more people pay attention.

Pope Makes Christmas Appeal to Protect the Environment
Published: December 25, 2007
ROME — Pope Benedict XVI reinforced the Vatican’s growing concern with protecting the environment in the traditional midnight Christmas Mass on Tuesday, bemoaning an “ill-treated world” in a homily given to thousands of pilgrims here in the seat of the world’s billion Roman Catholics.

Earlier:
Environmental policies must respect needs of the poor: pope
AFP - Dec 11, 2007
VATICAN CITY (AFP) — Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday called for environmental policies to take account of the needs of poorer countries, as the UN-sponsored ...


Pope urges prudence in environmental decisions
Reuters South Africa, South Africa - Dec 11, 2007
... the impact of environmental change should be made prudently, avoiding hasty conclusions, ideological pressures and unilateral stands, Pope Benedict said ...

And from some evangelicals:
Skeptics dwindle as popular movement builds
• U.S. signs on to global climate treaty as traditional conservatives say greater needs are today—not tomorrow
By Layton Ehmke
Homer Tribune
December 19, 2007
This is the second of a two-part series exploring the connection between humans and global warming from the perspective of those on the most divergent fronts: top global warming scientists and skeptical conservative Christians. Since meeting in Homer this summer, these groups and others are finding more common ground to unite in the effort to slow the consequences of a changing world climate. In this edition, local pastors continue to doubt the overlying message, while the popular movement says progress should come from the pulpit.

Go Take a Look

Epinions has a number of new product reviews for the environmentally inclined, including:
Hell and High Water
The Creation
Global Warming: Signs and Science
Strange Days on Planet Earth
The Weather Makers
The P.I.G. Guide To Global Warming and Environmentalism
The Arctic Tale
Face to Face With Polar Bear
IMAX Bears
Loony Little
Heating advice

Enough to Make You Sick.

Wow, this is going to be interesting.

Feds hedge on environmental link to Pennsylvania illnesses

ATLANTA (AP) — Officials abruptly backpedaled Friday on a federally funded health study that suggests an environmental link to a cluster of rare blood cancer cases in northeastern Pennsylvania, saying an abstract that made the claim was mistakenly released to the public.

The research is to be presented Monday at a medical conference in Atlanta. An abstract released in advance of the meeting said there is "significant evidence" that something in the environment caused an unusually large number of cases of polycythemia vera in Luzerne, Carbon and Schuylkill counties.

E-Events

Ecobuild Fall
Dec.10-13, Washington, D.C.
Ecobuild Fall and AEC-ST Fall is an annual event that goes beyond green to cover the breadth of green building, sustainable design, renewable energy, environmental planning processes and information collaboration strategies for commercial, industrial, institutional and residential construction.
Attendees include the federal government, design and construction decision-makers from the public sector and private practice, AEC professionals, owners, developers, and facility managers - the entire project team in one place, at one time.

The MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize deadline Feb.15.
Competition Will Net $200K for Clean Energy Entrepreneursm

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 30, 2007 -- The winners of a new competition will take home $200,000 for developing a next-generation clean energy technology.

The MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize (CEEP), a joint project between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the U.S. Department of Energy and utility company NSTAR Electric & Gas, aims to inspire and motivate entrepreneurs to work on meeting the world's energy needs in a sustainable way.

The prize money -- $200,000 for the best overall team, plus three $20,000 prizes to the best student and professional teams -- is provided by the DOE and NSTAR, a Massachusetts-based gas and electric utility company. The competition's organizers said the increased prize money would bring a larger pool of applicants to the challenge, and would help the winning entry reach the market more quickly.

The large purse offered by CEEP makes it the richest cleantech prize out there, far ahead of the $50,000 first prize for the winner of the second annual California Clean Tech Open, which was announced at the end of October.

The MIT prize announcement was made at a time when cleantech companies and their stocks are heating up rapidly. Earlier this month, First Solar made headlines when its stocks climbed from $20 to over $224 in a year, based on its remarkable 300 percent sales growth.

Entries for the MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize are due on Feb. 15, 2008. More information, as well as applications and resources, are online.

Wall Street Green Trading Summit
April 2+3, 2008
New York Times Building, New York
The 7th Annual Wall Street Green Trading Summit is the seminal New York City environmental financial market event created by Peter C. Fusaro. Working with Hedge Connection for the third year, this event does it all in 2 days covering carbon emissions trading and finance, renewable energy markets, cleantech VC, green hedge funds and energy efficiency financial markets.

Globe 2008, Vancouver, British ColumbiaThousands of corporate executives, government decision makers and leaders of the environmental industry will converge at GLOBE 2008. Plan to join them for three days of exciting and ground-breaking discussions, March 12-14, 2008 in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Green Reviews

Jan Peregrine at Epinions.com has been working on a Global Warming writeoff (Epinions offers product reviews but a lot of participants consider themselves a community, frequently picking a theme and inviting others to write on the same topic.)

Take a look. There's some pretty good information available. Here's another in the same theme.