While many of our politicians are busy debating false solutions like drilling the OCS, nuclear energy, and carbon capture and sequestration, global warming is already wreaking havoc on planet Earth. For instance, five infectious diseases that have been virtually eradicated in the developed world are thriving as temperatures rise across the globe.

Our federal politicians may be delaying action, but several state governments and businesses are moving forward on their own. Here are some of the most promising developments from just the past couple weeks:

• Construction has begun on New Mexico’s first geothermal power plant, which is expected to be generating 10 megawatts of power by next year.
• Two California businesses announced they are building the world’s largest solar power arrays, which will be capable of producing up to 800 megawatts on a sunny day. This is not only a boon to California’s energy mix but also “the latest indication that solar energy is starting to achieve a significant scale,” according to the New York Times.
• Google announced it was investing $10 million in a “breakthrough” geothermal technology as part of its plan to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into sustainable energy development.
• Even global warming-denying federal legislators may soon be treading on recycled carpet when they report to work in our nation’s capitol thanks to new legislation that would make Washington D.C. the first major American city to require new construction projects to follow the standards of the U.S. Green Building Council.
• In Colorado, a local power company met their goal of providing 10% of the state’s power through sustainable sources eight years ahead of schedule, prompting them to double the target to 20%. In the past 18 months alone, Colorado’s wind energy capacity has quadrupled.

A frequent argument against making the switch to sustainable energy sources is that the technology is not there yet, or that it would be prohibitively expensive to make the switch. Not only do they greatly underestimate the engenuity and industriousness of the American people, but these arguments are just plain wrong, as these projects demonstrate. Renewable energy technologies are ready to go, and citizens and industry leaders alike are ready to start seriously combating global warming. All that’s lacking is the political will in Washington.

Some really great news out of Indonesia:

AMSTERDAM – The Indonesian province of Riau has pledged to halt the destruction of its forests and peatlands; a move that will prevent billions of tonnes of carbon from entering the atmosphere.

At a ceremony in the provincial capital Pekanbaru, Riau Governor Wan Abu Bakar announced the temporary ban, which will remain in place until a law is agreed. The move follows Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s pledge at the G-8 Summit in July to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation by 50 percent by 2009.

Indonesia is the world’s 3rd largest global warming polluter, mostly due to deforestation. In many cases, the forests of Indonesia are being cut down illegally to make way for palm plantations. Forest fires in Indonesia have been called the single largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.

Aside from the direct impact a ban on deforestation in Indonesia will have on the amount of pollution being dumped into our atmosphere, it’s just nice to see that some of the world’s leaders actually made meaningful commitments to combatting global warming at the G8 summit. Other commitments made at that summit were not close to being ambitious enough to really tackle the enormity of the climate crisis we’re facing. It’s just nice to see some progress.

In an epic bid to test the veracity of the old adage that repeating a lie often enough makes it true, several of our politicians, ostensibly our “leaders,” are still calling for drilling the OCS as a means to alleviate high gas prices and lead America toward energy independence.

We should be extra careful not to help validate their claims by saying things like, “It won’t lower gas prices for 10 years.” By accepting the idea that gas prices will be lowered at all, you just help perpetuate the myth that we should start drilling as soon as possible. Drilling will not lower gas prices because, as the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell recently said, “easy-to-produce oil and gas [will] likely peak in the next 10 years.” Drilling costs will skyrocket as we tap these harder-to-reach oilfields, offsetting any possible benefit of increased oil production, meaning that drilling the OCS will have a thoroughly negligible impact on gas prices no matter when we start drilling.

But all of the claims made by the Drill Now chorus have been thoroughly debunked, of course. Here’s a factsheet on the topic that compiles research done by independent parties, or in some cases done by federal agencies. (Ah, the irony: Bush is one of the loudest voices calling for drilling the OCS, and it is his federal agencies that have debunked many of his claims.)

For instance, we have 3% of the world’s oil reserves, but consume 24% of the world’s oil (Energy Information Administration, "U.S. Crude Oil, Natural Gas and Natural Gas Liquid Resources, 1999 Annual Report," DOE/EIA-0216 (99) (December 2000)). Clearly, the path to energy independence does not lead down an oil well.

The only real way out of this mess we’re in is to invest in renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Instead of making bogus claims about drilling the OCS, our federal legislators should be passing tax credits and other incentives for investment in renewable energy. Unfortunately, as Thomas Friedman recently pointed out in a scathing op-ed, the Senate has failed on eight separate occasions to renew tax credits for solar and wind investment that are set to expire in December. This has scared off many potential investors, in America and abroad.

Our “leaders” want us to open more land to drilling by oil companies that are already making a killing, but they can’t muster the political will to give tax credits to the folks who are working to implement real solutions. It’s ridiculous.

If you’re as pissed as me about this, tell Congress not to give in to the call to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. They should be concentrating on real solutions.

Biomimicry is the art of using the natural world as a basis for man-made designs. Wikpedia puts it better: “Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a relatively new science that studies nature, its models, systems, processes and elements and then imitates or takes creative inspiration from them to solve human problems sustainably.”

Real world examples include emulating the passive cooling of termite mounds in office buildings, applying the water repellant properties of lotus plants in fabric finishes, and adapting the echolocation abilities of bats for use in walking canes for the blind.

To me this is just a very cool idea: observing how nature has solved various problems, like overheating in Saharan termite mounds, then applying those lessons to human endeavors. The Earth is the ultimate sustainable resource, so it would seem obvious that we should learn everything we can about engineering and design from the natural world if we’re going to learn how to live as a part of the planet rather than living off of the planet – by which I mean, if we’re going to learn to live sustainably rather than continuing to live by raping and pillaging the Earth for all its resources.

Turns out some researchers at MIT have used biomimicry to make a potentially huge breakthrough in developing next-gen solar energy systems:

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

This is obviously a long way from being commercially available, but it’s nice to know this is on the horizon. This could be one of the breakthroughs that totally reshapes our energy industries: “Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.”

That last line, of course, points out the biggest barrier to implementation of solar energy – it’s not the pace of technological development holding us back, but the companies who are making a killing off of supplying us all with power. You see, they are a centralized power source, a monopoly, an entity from whom you have to purchase your power. If everyone is able to make power at their home, we’ll have a decentralized energy grid where everyone is an independent energy producer. This is the way of the future, make no mistake – but that doesn’t mean plenty of industry players and their paid hacks won’t be vociferously protesting the deployment of these technologies.