UN's de Boer says investors tackling global warming while governments spar

The Associated Press
2/27/08

MONTE CARLO, Monaco:
Private companies will soon be investing more than governments in
cutting the production of greenhouse gases, the U.N.'s top climate
change official said Thursday.

Yvo de Boer said business efforts were good but also not enough —
and that only a binding international agreement on cutting carbon
emissions will make private sector efforts financially viable.

"Business is really beginning to take climate change into account,"
de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention for
Climate Change, told The Associated Press. "There's a momentum building
in the finance community."

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Grass Makes Better Ethanol than Corn Does

Midwestern farms prove switchgrass could be the right crop for producing ethanol to replace gasoline

By David Biello

Farmers in Nebraska and the Dakotas brought the U.S. closer to becoming a biofuel economy, planting huge tracts of land for the first time with switchgrass—a native North American perennial grass (Panicum virgatum) that often grows on the borders of cropland naturally—and proving that it can deliver more than five times more energy than it takes to grow it.

Working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the farmers tracked the seed used to establish the plant, fertilizer used to boost its growth, fuel used to farm it, overall rainfall and the amount of grass ultimately harvested for five years on fields ranging from seven to 23 acres in size (three to nine hectares).

Once established, the fields yielded from 5.2 to 11.1 metric tons of grass bales per hectare, depending on rainfall, says USDA plant scientist Ken Vogel. "It fluctuates with the timing of the precipitation,'' he says. "Switchgrass needs most of its moisture in spring and midsummer. If you get fall rains, it's not going to do that year's crops much good."

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