Happy New Year!
As I was leaving Peter and Linda's great New Year's Eve Party last night (thanks for the invite guys), I was putting on my jean jacket, Wladimir Klitschko scarf, hat, and gloves. Peter asked me if my jean jacket was warm enough and I replied yes. The only down side of the walk from 57th Street to Grand Street to catch the train back to Brooklyn was light rain but it wasn't that cold and I thankfully endured it easily enough, touch wood.
I enjoyed walking the three or four plus miles down Second Avenue through Manhattan's diverse neighborhoods walking off the delicious snacks and a glass of wine and champagne, clearing my head, and exchanging New Year's greetings with strangers. While listening to Bob Valvano (brother of the late great North Carolina State Basketball Coach Jimmy Valvano, R.I.P.) on ESPN 1050 AM, he talked about the history of "Auld Lang Syne" and it got me thinking back to past New Year's Eves.
I remember playing in a big snow fort with my brother after my Dad cleared the snow in the driveway as a young boy in 1980. OK, that was 176 miles northwest of the City in Upstate New York and over 25 years ago. What about 10 years ago when I last stayed outdoors in Times Square with Bay Ridge Bob and the hundreds of thousands of strangers? New Year's Eve 1997 was really cold.
Don't get me wrong? I don't mind warm weather but winter is necessary to kill germs and bacteria that accumulate during the year. If the bacteria isn't killed, the risk of West Nile and other viruses increases. What happened to the weather over the past decade or so? Is global warming for real? During my trip to Antarctica almost two years ago where I met Steve, Linda, and the rest of the Antarctica Marathonmaniacs, I talked to a Russian sailor Valentin who had been traveling back and forth to Antarctica for several years. Valentin informed me of the climate changes that he noticed in Antarctica during that time. Just before his finishing his goal of Seven Marathon Continents on July 2, 2006, the Tank watched former VP Gore's well done and informative "Inconvenient Truth" movie.
It got me thinking about what I could do. In addition to being innovative sports journalists, Steve and the Tank care about the environment. Steve invited me to a lunchtime Baruch Conference on Halloween. Messrs. Mark Townsend Cox and Peter Fusaro were the main speakers. I am not going to bore you all my notes but will list some key points and informative websites.
(1) Mark's New Energy Fund VC fund tries to find companies long before the technologies are en vogue. He focused on sustained energy technology.
His main points were as follows:
(a) There is a "Universe of 427 Global Renewable Global Equities". There are 61 solar stocks are worth $53 Billion. Vestis of the Netherlands is a leader.
(b) "Ballard Power is a waste of time." They go through about $50 million a year without any real technological breakthroughs.
(c) Besides solar, other referenced technologies are hydro, tidal wave, geothermal, heat pump, ocean thermal, osmosis, wind power, and biodiesel (small scale).
(d) For interested investors, entry into Mark's fund is at $250,000.00. I think the management fees are 1.5 percent with the standard 20 percent profit.
After the presentation and the question and answer session, we had a good conversation about the regarding the wind power research I was doing on possibly placing a wind farm on my brother's farm land. He said New Community Energy is a good company. For more on the wind farm near my parents house in
Jordanville, New York.
The biggest problem for Community Energy or any other wind provider is the concept of Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) of residents from Upstate
NY to
Cape Cod to elsewhere across the country. The following
article has a great quote: "The developer's strategy seems to be to paint turbines to blend in and render them hard to detect. Jim Gordon, president of Cape Wind Associates, accepts that there will be some opposition. 'Everyone loves wind, but when it comes to building wind farms, no one wants them in their backyard.'"
There's hope for
Jim's project as Peter said
Martha's Vineyard resident Walter Cronkite recently came on board. Jim has been fighting for years and I wish him luck.
Cherry Valley, a town in between Jordanville and my hometown, has already zoned out wind farms. Other nearby town hall meetings are literally knock down drag out affairs when people's lives and livestock get threatened. Native born locals and retirees from the City unite to oppose wind farms because they don't want windmills in their backyards.
(2) Peter Fusaro is a former Department of Energy official and wrote the first article on global warming in March 1990. There are three driving factors to change: (i) higher sustained energy prices; (ii) technology shift; and (iii) rising global environmental impetus.
Other points include:
(a) Goldman Sachs is seeding much in this space including "11 defining technologies". Venture Capital gaint Kleiner Perkins is also getting into the act.
(b) The
Chicago Climate Exchange "is the world’s first and
North America’s only voluntary, legally binding greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction and trading system for emission sources and offset projects in
North America and
Brazil." This is
CCX's homepage.
(c) As for Brazilian sugar turned into ethanol, it is hopeful catalyst for change but they changed the way they make their cars. If America wants the same thing, we have to change the way process the fuel in cars. If not, 1,000 ethanol stations don't stand a chance against 180,000 gas stations. (My comment: It's sad because converting cars to ethanol is not that hard. Ethanol is better for the environment than oil and it would save many struggling American farmers from bankruptcy.)
(e) Germans are way ahead in wind power policy and technology as they maintain General Electric's plants in California.
(e) Other topics that were discussed were water hedge funds, weather derivatives, cleaner coal. Scientists like Dr. Paul Epstein of Harvard Medical School are now tracking how changes in the climate are affecting health.
(f) Peter was able to place the first environmental finance analyst at RNK Capital.
(g) Peter listed the following helpful websites:
Conclusion: I enjoyed the conference and grateful for Steve's invitation to same.
If we are going to save the environment, the markets are going to play a key role as they work faster and more efficiently than governments. Peter remarked that corporate guidelines through the EU and ETS are even stricter than Kyoto. I think they are fairer because Kyoto favors less developed countries and hurts more developed countries like America. There are no double standards in IT troubleshooting. Politics and international treaties should be the same way. If you think smog in LA is bad, you should go to Beijing. I have and it makes LA's air feel like fresh mountaintop air. Steve and others have informed me that Shanghai is even worse. Not good.
Lastly, we as people have to change our NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) mentality in order solve our environmental problems. Be it windmills in Upstate New York or Cape Cod, people need to look at the bigger picture and the damage we are doing to the environment. Tough choices and sacrifices are going to have to be made.
Posted by The Tank in NY.