·:[ Environmental News Bits ]:·
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Via the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Building & Grounds blog.

Professors in green: The University of Washington plans to jointly appoint Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake, partners at the well-known firm KieranTimberlake Associates, to an endowed professorship in sustainability. The professorship is the first of its kind at the University of Washington, which has had a number of sustainability efforts in recent years.

There is a difficulty here, however: KieranTimberlake is located in Philadelphia, which makes for a long — and fuel-intensive — commute to Seattle. A university spokeswoman referred The Chronicle to KieranTimberlake when asked about how the appointment would be made sustainable. Carin Whitney, a spokeswoman for the firm, seemed to think that it was the university’s problem. “I’m not sure how the university is planning to address that,” she said.

Mr. Kieran and Mr. Timberlake, who have been involved in a number of green projects, like the Sidwell Friends Middle School, in Washington, D.C., will teach concepts in sustainable design. “Our communities urgently need critical, creative thinking in sustainable building design,” said Daniel S. Friedman, dean of the university’s College of Architecture and Urban Planning. “Kieran and Timberlake are among the first to attack the problem systemically, through technology transfer and novel production.” The Board of Trustees still has to approve the appointment.

Deadline 2020: Brown University has announced that it will try to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions to 42 percent below 2007 levels by 2020. The plan will involve reducing energy use on several fronts, including switching to more efficient appliances and relying on renewable energy sources. New buildings on the campus will have to meet silver ratings in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, and energy consumption in those buildings will have to be between 25 percent and 50 percent below standards required by state code. Newly acquired buildings will have to reduce emissions by 15 percent and 30 percent.

Read the full story at News.com.

In the future, french fries might be infused with all the brimming, healthy flavor of oil produced by algae.

The latest issue of Renewable Energy Weekly is now available. Highlights include:

• Renewable Energy as a Mainstream Product Choice
• Inside Renewable Energy podcast: CSP: Market Trends and New Technologies
• Santa Barbara Explores the Art of the Possible
• Time To Move On to the Next Bubble: Clean Energy
• Attention Eco-Consumers: Eco-Fashion Comes to Boston!

Read the full story at WorldWatch.

A recent report from Greenpeace details the direct and indirect effects of agriculture on climate change and suggests how the sector can move from being a major greenhouse gas emitter to being a carbon sink. “As a key contributor to climate change, the environmental impact of industrial farming has reached critical levels,” said Jan van Aken, Greenpeace Sustainable Agriculture Campaigner. “Governments must support a farming future that works with nature, not against it.”

Read the full story from WorldWatch.

Some of the world’s largest banks are beginning to address the business challenges associated with climate change, but none of them are doing enough to fully tackle the issue, says a new report from Ceres, a Boston-based network of investors and groups that promotes corporate sustainability. “More banks realize that climate change is a big business issue,” notes Ceres President Mindy S. Lubber, “but the responses so far are the tip of the iceberg of what is needed to tackle this colossal global challenge.”

Read the full story in USA Today.

There’s a familiar question that Whole Foods will stop asking shoppers: Paper or plastic?

Tuesday, Whole Foods (WFMI) will announce plans to stop offering disposable, plastic grocery bags in all 270 stores in the USA, Canada and United Kingdom by Earth Day — April 22. That means roughly 100 million plastic bags will be kept out of the environment between that date and the end of 2008, the company says.

Read the full story from WorldWatch.

Casual observers might consider it a setback for proponents of ethanol and biodiesel now that Europe is planning to ban biofuels made from crops grown on high-value conservation lands. But the truth is, shunning biofuels produced on wetlands, grasslands, and deforested land is good for both critics and supporters. Overall, it’s even good for the biofuel industry because it might restore some faith in their product, which has been attacked from all corners in recent months. The main problem with Europe’s new law, in fact, may be that it is not stringent enough.

The February 2008 issue of Biomass Magazine is now online. Highlights include:

• All Roads Lead to Rome and Rice
• Cool, Hot and Green
• Lukewarm on Cofiring
• Agricultural Versus Industrial Waste for Energy
• Straw Tiger
• Designing for the Need: Effective Biomass Gasification
• DOE signs MOU with USDA and China, awards biofuels grants
• Eco-flavored chips: Zero trans fat, zero carbon footprint
• Switchgrass, mixed grass research projects advance

Read the full story in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Building & Grounds blog.

In December, The Chronicle ran a story about the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, which included a box on four institutions that, so far, had refused to sign.

The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities was one of them. University officials, like those at other institutions that had not signed, were concerned that some of the goals of the commitment — notably climate neutrality — just weren’t feasible. The Twin Cities campus gets about 70 percent of its power from coal, one of the dirtiest and least-climate-friendly power sources out there. Deborah L. Swackhamer, interim director of the university’s Institute on the Environment, was also concerned about the commitment’s fuzzy language and its push to include sustainability in the curriculum, which is set by faculty members, not the university president.

It seemed that Robert H. Bruininks, the university president, would never sign.

Yet on January 8, Mr. Bruininks added the University of Minnesota system to the list of signatories, making Minnesota the first Big 10 university to commit.

The American Geophysical Union has revised and reaffirmed its statement on the human impacts on climate.

The Earth’s climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system — including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons– are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century.

Read the full story in Environmental Science and Technology.

Treaties intended to preserve the fragile Antarctic environment don’t protect the continent from hydrophobic contaminants that adhere to particles.

Via Docuticker.

Oceana Report: Hold the Mercury
Source: Oceana

Oceana has published a new report on mercury levels in popular fish and sushi. Hold the Mercury includes the results of mercury tests on 94 fish samples collected by Oceana staff and volunteers from sushi bars and grocery stores from cities across the country. The high mercury levels found in fresh tuna and sushi as well as swordfish demonstrate the need to post the Food and Drug Administration’s advice about mercury in seafood at grocery stores.

+ Full Report (PDF; 1.7 MB)