Key dates and facts about crack vs. cocaine sentencing, 3-strikes laws, and other drug law details Key dates and facts about crack vs. cocaine sentencing, 3-strikes laws, and other drug law details

Awareness is low, but 63 percent of those who had a view on it favor a California ballot measure that would require half the state's electricity to come from renewable sources by 2025, a Field poll issued on Tuesday shows. Voter awareness of Proposition 7 on the November ballot is extremely low -- 82 percent of those interviewed said they did not know of the measure. Phone interviews of 672 likely voters were conducted last week, Field Research said. Voters were asked opinions on several issues on the statewide ballot this November. On the renewable energy measure, 24 percent said they were likely to vote against it and 13 percent said they were undecided.

Political appointees at the Dept. of Labor are moving with unusual speed to push through--in the final months of the Bush administration--a rule making it tougher to regulate workers' exposure to chemicals and toxins.

As wind energy continues to expand across the U.S. heartland, rural America is likely to experience a revitalization not experienced since the homestead land grabs of the 19th century. Green jobs - high-quality employment for environmentally sustainable industries - and related spin-off opportunities are proliferating across West Texas. Local leaders predict that the economic growth has only just begun.

Common household items such as dryer sheets, fabric softeners, detergents, and solid, spray and plug-in air fresheners are potentially exposing your family and friends to dangerous chemicals, a new study finds.

With the Games due to start in less than three weeks, Beijing on Sunday cranked up anti-pollution measures by yanking cars off the roads, expanding mass transit and staggering work hours in a bid to meet its pledge of a "green" Olympics.

Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water.

A flame retardant that was taken out of childrenâ??s pajamas more than 30 years ago after it was found to cause cancer is being used with increasing regularity in furniture, paint and even baby carriers, and EPA's safety assessment is biased toward industry, again.

New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.

When Weyerhaeuser began clear-cutting the Douglas firs on the slopes surrounding Little Mill Creek, local water officials were on edge. They worried new slides could dump sediments into the mountain stream and overwhelm a treatment plant. Those fears came true last December.

A transition to renewable energy sources promises significant global job gains at a time when the coal industry has been hemorrhaging jobs for years.

The internet is abuzz (abuzz, we tell you) about Greenthinkers’ new feature BPA-Free. Look for this talk to continue as we are looking to keep this one going for a long time. Look for news, views and product reviews for days, weeks and months to come.

But that doesn’t mean we still won’t continue to cover green products and news like always. Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere.

BPA Free is a new running Greenthinkers feature where we discuss BPA, link to BPA-related pieces in the news, and also discuss and review all the BPA-free products you can handle. Enjoy your new BPA-free life.

Today we tackle one of the more pressing BPA-related issues out there - baby bottles. In early 2007, Environment California Research & Policy Center published a report titled Toxic Baby Bottles: Scientific Study Finds Leaching Chemicals in Clear Plastic Baby Bottles. The report describes how polycarbonate plastic’s harmful BPA is used to make the vast majority of baby bottles. Flash forward a year and there are a myriad of BPA options available on the market. So let’s take a look at them with the help of Environmental Defence. We don’t have any babies in our group of testers at the moment so no reviews will be forthcoming from the world of baby bottles.

Adiri has a new Natural Nurser line that is bisphenol A-free. Soft and shaped like a mother’s breast, Adiri’s Natural Nurser comes with an easy to use and dishwasher safe Fill, Twist and Feed system. Made of polycarbonate-free and bisphenol-A free materials, it features a unique Petal vent that is said to help reduce colic.

BornFree is a hot seller at hip baby shops everywhere as they manufacture and sell baby bottles that are BPA, phthalates and PVC-free.

Evenflo makes glass bottles and its Comfort Select plastic line doesn’t contain BPA either. Weird website alert.

Green to Grow bottles are made of PES plastic, which gives them a natural golden color. They are free of phthalates and free of bisphenol A.

MAM ‘Care’ bottles are BPA-free. Their other lines are not.

Current hot breast pump brand Medela makes all their pump kits and bottles without BPA.

Mother’s Milkmate also offers BPA-free bottles in its unique pump-store-feed system.

On the flipside, according to Z Recommends:

You should be most concerned if you are using bottles by Avent, Dr. Brown’s, Evenflo, the First Years, Munchkin, Nuby, Playskool, or Second Nature, or sippy cups or breast pumps by many of these brands. You are also likely, but less certain, to be using products containing Bisphenol-A if you are using bottles by Gerber, Playtex, or Tommee Tippee.

Coming soon, a look at sippy cups, bottles, flasks and more for children of all ages.

I'm going to geek out for a second . But first, check out this graph:

I suppose there are two lessons:

1. Price and consumption are not perfectly correlated. Clearly there are many non-price factors affecting electricity consumption. (These include, at least, the local climate, building size and type, and local energy efficiency policies.) But still...

2. Price definitely affects use, and the fit gets better as you move up the price axis. The more expensive electricity is, the less likely consumers are to be profligate.

In energy circles it's sometimes alleged that consumers are price insensitive or economically irrational about consumption. There's some truth to that, but it's only a partial truth.

These charts help demonstrate why carbon pricing can be effective. Putting a price on carbon -- or a price on energy -- acts to reduce consumption. Price is not the only factor and it may not even be the biggest factor, but it does appear to matter. And it appears to matter more above about 10 or 12 cents per kilowatt hour.

This hooks into a larger debate in the Western Climate Initiative.

Many utilities are arguing that they should get free carbon allowances on the grounds that they are rate-regulated, and so they will not (or cannot) take windfall profits. They even deploy arguments about consumer protection, pointing out that they can protect ratepayers by not passing on price increases. That sounds pretty good at first, but it doesn't work so well in practice. (For the definitive rebuttal to these arguments, see Clark's excellent post.)

The point is, for carbon policy to work fairly, the price of energy needs to go up to stimulate appropriate conservation. When the price of electricity is low, as it is in Seattle for example, even the most aggressive efficiency and conservation programs yield modest results. (And Seattle truly does have industry-leading programs.) Residents of California's air-conditioned cities consume less electricity, on average, than residents of either Seattle or Portland.

Luckily, under smart versions of cap and trade, higher energy prices can be good for consumers -- as counter-intuitive as that sounds. Here's how: WCI should auction carbon permits and allow utilities to pass on the prices to consumers. Then -- and this is critical -- WCI should refund the money to citizens, especially those below median income. These refunds (two flavors here and here) can easily make most energy consumers whole again. With cap and rebate, the "price signal" of carbon gets communicated through to consumers, but with no net pain for most.

(A footnote: there might still be inequities in a system like the one I've described. If you're a Seattle City Light customer, for example, your hydro-based utility needs to purchase very few carbon permits and so there would be only a very modest price increase at most. That would mean a continuation of the limited price incentive to conserve. But your neighbors in western Washington would see higher rate increases, and your friends in, say, southern California would see much higher increases. We might need to iron out these geographic inequities.)

Want more evidence of the relationship? Okay, then. Here's a chart for the 200 largest utilities in the United States. You see very much the same price-consumption trend as you see in the West. And the correlation appears to get stronger as prices get higher.

The data for these charts come from energy economics guru Jim Lazar. Jim also provided original versions of these charts and then I re-designed them to make them a little easier to read. The conclusions in this blog post are, of course, mine and not necessarily Jim's.

In health and cell phone news this week…

The head of a U.S. cancer centre is urging that children not use cellphones, except in emergencies, because of a growing body of literature pointing to possible adverse health effects, including cancer…Dr. Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, cited Toronto Public Health’s warning and similar recommendations from France, Germany and India, in issuing his own advisory.

No big surprise there.

Does that headline even make sense? We thought not. Oh well, on to the shoes.

Portland startup END Footwear’s goal: market performance running shoes as sustainable footwear. In addition to the up to 15 to 30% recycled rubber in their soles, END shoes will feature laces and upper webbing made from recycled plastic bottles. Plus, the box is 100% post-consumer recycled paper. But on the flipside, it’s made in China and still consists mostly of synthetic components.

Coming soon. Available August 1 at REI.com and other specialty footwear retailers. Via Treehugger and Oregon Live. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/end-sustainable-recycled-content-sneak.php

BPA Free is a new running Greenthinkers feature where we discuss BPA, link to BPA-related pieces in the news, and also discuss and review all the BPA-free products you can handle. Enjoy your new BPA-free life.

BPA in the news this week…

Canada.com: A recent U.S. study found most of its subjects had rocket fuel chemicals in their bodies as well as a host of other toxins like bisphenol A, which gives the clear, pliable strength to plastic water bottles as well as baby formula bottles. Health Canada tests reveal that bisphenol A disrupts the body’s hormones and could be toxic even at low levels. Because the government here is worried that bisphenol A migrates into baby formula, Health Canada is banning its use in baby bottles.

Vancouver Dad: Environment Canada and Health Canada selected BPA as one of 200 substances in need of assessment. Critics charge that the government shouldn’t wait for the results and ban BPA now, saying there’s enough evidence that it’s harmful.

CBC: Bisphenol A — a chemical used to make some hard plastics — does not pose any human health risks, the European Union’s food safety regulatory agency says.

Innovative News covers companies and institutions who are developing technologies to promote green living. But in this post they’ve moved away from that outlook to look internally. We present to you their top ten ways to live a green life.

1. Reduce your energy consumption in ways you CAN control.

2. Be aware of the preciousness of water.

3. Reduce your dependency on the automobile.

4. Get the most of your daily food.

5. Create a compost pile in your backyard.

6. Reducing waste means enhancing your green life style.

7. Reusing items helps to reduce waste.

8. Realize recycling in your life in a threefold way.

9. Create your own personal green day.

10. Start living green!

Click here for lots and lots of detail and links.

The scented fabric sheet makes your shirts and socks smell flowery fresh and clean. That plug-in air freshener fills your home with inviting fragrances of apple and cinnamon or a country garden. But those common household items are potentially exposing your family and friends to dangerous chemicals, a University of Washington study has found.

As we start to tackle the world of BPA-free living here on Greenthinkers, we’d be remiss to not point to this article as well.

Via Consumerist.

Here’s an interesting piece. From Bamboo 54 Inc. comes a ‘Bag Bamboo Square Burnt’ with a square shape, made from bamboo root, in a burnt color with a vinyl lining and zipper. Interesting.

Who is Bamboo54 Inc.? It’s an L.A.-based company that makes its wares from materials like bamboo, hemp and others of that ilk.