Message Received

Washington, D.C. -- The tide of public response to BP's Maconda oil catastrophe continues to rise. On Saturday, the world witnessed almost 1,000 rallies, with hundreds of thousands of people holding "Hands Across the Sand"  to protest of off-shore oil drilling. 

And today the Sierra Club planted 10,000 flags on the National Mall here in Washington, a literal representation of the tens of thousands of "virtual" flags that our online supporters have planted in the cause of moving Beyond Oil. The Club was joined in planting the flags by the Truman National Security Project and the Communications Workers of America. The flags spell out these words: "Freedom From Oil." But as you might imagine, reading them from ground level is not easy -- so we wondered whether anyone other than the tourists looking down from the Washington Monument would get the message on-site.

But as Club Executive Director Mike Brune stood up to begin the ceremony, Marine 1, the helicopter that carries the President of the United States, flew overhead. So, thanks to the folks who asked to bear witness with us today, at least one very important part of the audience for America's national demand that we get off oil saw the message right there on the Mall.

To see for yourself how the flags looked from the air, check out the Sierra Club's homepage.

And if you haven't already added your flag online, you can still join the crowd -- and you won't have to go through airport security to be a part of it.

'Tis the Gift to Be Simple

Sunnyvale, CA -- One of the terrific things about my job is the chance to see cool things done -- sometimes for the first time, sometimes just in a new and different way. The striking thing about these learning moments is that I often end up thinking in a new way about some entirely different question -- there's something that contagious about creativity.

I've had the joy of watching wind turbines transform Sweetwater, Texas, from a dying West Texas ghost community into a thriving hub of innovation. I've visited the low-slung Richmond, California, factory where Model A Ford assembly lines gave way to the tank factory that made Rosie the Riveter a global icon during World War II. That same factory now makes solar panels to free the U.S. from a new set of Axis powers -- coal and oil. And I've marveled at how humble-seeming algae, properly coaxed, can industriously make fuel from today's sunlight, thereby sparing us the risks of having to harvest the energy left behind by fossil algae as oil deposits millions of years ago.

Here in Sunnyvale, I took a tour of Bloom Energy. Bloom has launched upon the world a solid-oxide fuel cell, which is already making electricity for its first round of customers at about $0.10/kilowatt (which is below the market here in California). What's more, it's doing so with no more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide emissions of a coal-fired power plant -- and with none of the deadly mercury, sulfur, and other health-threatening pollutants that are the curse of coal.

As I toured the plant, my first thought was how simple it all seemed. But let's be real. The heart of Bloom's technology is its Energy Server, which is (literally) based on rocket science. K. R. Sridhar, who runs the company, generated the original idea while working for NASA on a way to make Mars habitable. He eventually decided it was more important to keep the Earth habitable and began applying his scientific knowledge to the challenge of making electricity with the minimum environmental footprint.

Each fuel cell -- there are 2,000 stacked in a refrigerator-sized server -- is a two-layered block that's half the size of a deck of cards, with a wafer of zirconium-rich sand, a metal sleeve to channel fuel and oxygen, and two high-tech paint strips silk screened onto the wafer. It looks like an unappetizing ice-cream sandwich. Each cell generates enough electricity to power a 50-watt light bulb -- using natural gas, methanol, or any other volatile hydrocarbon (or even pure hydrogen).

This fuel-cell technology could make obsolete the need to back up grid power with batteries of generators -- a requirement for hospitals, data centers, public-safety facilities, and other facilities that can't afford a power outage. That 20 percent of America's energy consumers could be served more cheaply and cleanly with Bloom Energy Servers.

But that's only the beginning. As I learned more, it became clear to me that we should reconsider before building any more natural gas "peaker" plants in crowded urban areas. Peakers are located where the grid can't deliver enough power on a hot summer afternoon -- and where neighborhoods lack the political clout to keep them out. But a Bloom Energy fuel-cell array could provide power 24/7 -- thereby freeing up valuable capacity on the transmission grid. And it could do so with no pollution, no noise, and a much lower cost.

What about those old coal-fired power plants that justify their vampire-like existence by saying, "Hey, we keep the lights on"?Fuel cells are more reliable, vastly cleaner, and now either cheaper or on the verge of becoming so.

My thoughts turned to locomotives. Current locomotive technology requires three enormous drive sources -- a diesel engine to drive a huge generator that in turn powers electric motors. But a back-of-an-envelope calculation suggests that much better -- and cleaner -- locomotives could use fuel cells powered by natural gas directly driving the electric motor. That would eliminate most of the moving parts, most of the weight, and all of the need for imported oil to run our railroads.

Remarkably, as I toured the factory, I didn't have that usual layman's impression of high technology -- that what's happening is simply incomprehensible, with lots of complicated junctions and pathways. Even though the underlying science is indeed complex, what I saw happening in the Bloom Energy factory seemed both elegant and easy. It reminded me of an experience I had in elementary school. Although the underlying science that produced a radish 40 days after I planted one on a window sill was also very complex, what made it seem straightforward to me as a child (plant a radish, get a radish) was the simplicity of my own contribution (keep your radish watered and in the sun). What happens in the Sunnyvale factory seemed equally powerful, elegant, and easy in much the same way.

Now consider BP's Macondo disaster in the Gulf, where combining high technology with an extraordinarily complex human equation inevitably led to a catastrophic failure. Compare that to Bloom Energy, which also relies on complex science, but doesn't also require complex, perfect human behavior. Which one would you rather bet on?

As the old Shaker hymn says, "When we find ourselves in the place just right, 'twill be in the valley of love and delight." A quiet fuel cell in your neighborhood beats an old coal-fired clunker or a jet-engine-style natural-gas peaker plant anytime -- not to mention the larger menace of a nuke down the block, just waiting for something to go wrong.

Law and Order on the Docks

San Francisco -- For years the advocates of trade giveaways like NAFTA and the WTO have argued that they wanted a "rules-based" set of global trading regulations. It's a good idea. Unfortunately, they haven't delivered. Instead, we have huge components of global trade that are little more than organized-crime cartels.

This week we heard how new diamond discoveries in Zimbabwe might keep the Mugabe regime afloat for a few more years.  What's important to understand about the Zimbabwe story and its counterparts is that the issue is not governments profiting from trade -- it's individual officials. In Zimbabwe, one regime insider described what's happening this way:

"This is ZANU-PF's salvation," said one of Mr. Mugabe's closest confidants, on the condition of anonymity because his conversations with the president were supposed to be confidential. Diamonds are being sold on the black market for partisan and personal gain, he said, with some party leaders gaining and others being cut out: "The looting has intensified over the past six months."

In the case of diamonds, an international effort has been made to bring law to the trade. The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme is supposed to determine whether rough diamonds are from sources that are free of conflict fueled by diamond production. A meeting this weekend will determine whether the new Marange fields meet that standard.

But other natural resources don't have a Kimberley Process -- yet. And the existing world trade order not only fails to prevent the trade in stolen goods, it actually prevents governments from individually setting their own standards against fencing. So if China, for example, buys logs taken from forests at gunpoint by criminal gangs in Indonesia, and then turns those logs into coated paper for export to the U.S., we are precluded by the WTO from simply refusing to take paper from China unless we first set up our own elaborate processes. While the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers have been struggling to get U.S. trade officials and the Congress to make it clear that illegal logging and its products should not have access to American markets, the European Union has finally taken the lead.

Last week the EU, after a decade of campaigning by environmental groups, required that those importing wood-based products into Europe after 2012 be able to document that the trees in question were logged legally.  Still, the EU rules took far too long to put in place, and they aren't perfect. Printed materials are exempted for another five years.

It's still a major victory. "If this law is passed, illegal timber will be banned from Europe. The world's largest market is about to shut its gates to companies profiting from illegal trafficking and forest destruction," said Sebastien Risso, a forests campaigner with Greenpeace.

Considering that globally between 20% and 40% of all trade wood products are from illegal logging, and that one-fifth of this ends up in Europe, this is a big victory for groups like Greenpeace. But you have to wonder: If trade agreements are supposed to be "rules-based," then shouldn't a flat prohibition on the trading or fencing of all stolen goods simply be a basic part of the rules?