CEI Launches 'Resourceful Earth' to Fight Political Barriers to Natural Resource Production

Washington, DC, June 17, 2011 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment this week launched Resourceful Earth, a new project that will oppose political barriers to natural resource production.  Resourceful Earth will take on campaigns by well-funded environmental pressure groups that abuse federal and state regulations and pursue endless lawsuits to block or hinder hardrock mines, coal mines, oil and gas drilling, timber production, farming, and ranching.

CEI’s new grassroots activist website, ResourcefulEarth.org, will educate and empower Americans to promote access to natural resources and oppose special interests that abuse the regulatory process to block new projects.  The first two campaigns targeted by Resourceful Earth will be Earthworks’ No Dirty Gold, which opposes gold mining,and Oceana’s Stop the Drill, which opposes offshore oil.

“America has incredibly abundant natural resources, but more and more of them are being locked up as a result of campaigns by environmental pressure groups,” said Myron Ebell, Director of CEI’s Center for Energy and Environment.  “And unfortunately, many major corporations are being greenmailed into supporting these political assaults on jobs and prosperity.”

“Resourceful Earth will shine a bright light on the disinformation campaigns waged against new natural resource projects and on the economic damage done when huge new investments are scrapped because of years and even decades of regulatory delays,” continued Ebell.  “Our website, ResourcefulEarth.org, will provide the tools necessary for grassroots activists to get involved and defeat the advocates of scarcity.”

Resourceful Earth is being launched on June 17 in Minneapolis at the fourth annual Right Online conference, which brings together over one thousand conservative and free market grassroots activists.  ResourcefulEarth.org is simultaneously seeking signatures on a petition that urges corporations not to support efforts such as No Dirty Gold and Stop the Drill.

Christine Hall

Fri, 2011-06-17

Sub Title: 

Activist Project Will Take on Powerful Opponents of Jobs and Prosperity

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PBS & CR 2.0--Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day

Date: Monday, April 5th, 2010
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Location: In Elluminate. http://tinyurl.com/pbscr20 If you haven't used Elluminate before, you can make sure your computer is configured correctly to enter the room by going to http://www.elluminate.com/support.
Event Page:  http://www.classroom20.com/events/pbs-cr-20celebrating-the-40th

On Monday, April 5 at 8 p.m. EDT, PBS Teachers and Classroom 2.0 will host the next webinar in our PBS Teachers Live! series: "Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day." During this event, participants will learn about two new PBS projects: "Earth Days," a film by Robert Stone chronicling the history of the modern environmental movement, and Growing Greener Schools, a film and educational resources aimed at empowering students, teachers and parents to incorporate green ideas into both school buildings and classroom curricula. Presenters include the filmmakers and educational experts who will provide resources and strategies to help teachers celebrate this important anniversary in innovative and meaningful ways.

[Cross-posted from http://www.stevehargadon.com]

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3D trees in Google Earth - now in more cities around the world

Last month, we celebrated the trees of the great American wilderness on Arbor Day. Unfortunately, many of us don’t get the opportunity to visit majestic forests like these very often, which is why we're making them available on Google Earth.

Since we first launched 3D trees in Google Earth 6 last November, we’ve worked to bring this experience to more cities. Today, we are happy to announce that the latest group of cities with 3D trees include: New York, Philadelphia, Boston, London and multiple cities in the California Bay Area.



This new 3D imagery brings new perspective to your favorite historical buildings and parks. In Philadelphia we have complemented the Independence Hall model with new 3D trees in Independence National Historic Park to enhance the realism of the historic site. Other examples are Delacorte Theater in New York City and the the famous Emerald Necklace, a gem of Boston designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, a shared experience and memory for many people – locals and visitors alike.

Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Delacorte Theater in New York City, New York

Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts
We hope that among these new cities you find fond memories of a park, a tree lined street, or even a special tree where you’ve had a fun picnic or family outing. To relive those memories by viewing 3D Trees (or start planning to make new ones), make sure you check the “Trees” layer under “3D Buildings” in your Google Earth left panel. Enjoy the new tree-lined city streets and filled-in parks!

Posted by Kay Chen, Geo Program Manager

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Celebrating Earth Day

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Today, we’re celebrating Earth Day with an animated, interactive doodle on our homepage and events at Google offices around the world. At our headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., we’re holding an environmental fair for Googlers, complete with speakers and contests to strengthen Googlers’ green acumen, and a cookout using—what else—parabolic solar cookers (don’t worry, we’ll compost the leftovers).

Our campus garden in Mountain View

We’ve been carbon neutral since 2007 and—Earth Day or not—we’re always asking ourselves what we can do to make the world greener today than it was yesterday. This week, we launched a new website with many of the questions we’ve been asking over the years that have inspired our environmental initiatives. What can we do to make renewable energy cheaper than coal? How can we run a data center using 50 percent less energy? And what does it take to green our energy supply?

It’s questions like these that led us to install solar panels on our Mountain View campus in 2007—at the time, the largest corporate solar installation in the U.S. They’re also what made us decide to donate to Googlers’ favorite charities based on how often they self-power their commute, whether by bike or by pogo stick. We hope the new website helps you start asking bold questions that lead to innovative solutions to make the world a greener place.

In addition to our new site, we’ve had a busy few weeks continuing our green streak. We doubled down on greening our energy supply with our second power purchase agreement (PPA) in less than a year and made several new investments: at a solar photovoltaic plant in Germany (our first in Europe), and others in the largest wind farm and solar project in the world, bringing our total invested in clean energy to more than $350 million. While the investments won’t supply our operations with energy, we believe they make business sense and will spur development and deployment of compelling clean energy technologies.

This Earth Day, we’ll continue to ask ourselves what else we can do to bring us closer to true sustainability. We hope that you, and companies across the world, will be doing the same.

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Enegy Czar

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Post-tornado mapping in Google Maps and Earth

(Cross-posted from the Google LatLong Blog)

This past week, several devastating tornadoes struck across a wide swathe of the southern United States. Our Crisis Response team is activating to provide data and imagery we hope will be useful to first responders and the general public.

In cooperation with our satellite partner GeoEye, we have imagery of the aftermath of several tornadoes, including in Tuscaloosa, Alabama as shown below. We have created several before-and-after comparisons in a Picasa album.

Left: Google imagery from late 2010. Right: GeoEye imagery from Thursday, April 28.
Top: Charleston Square Apartments, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Bottom: Towns of Pleasant Grove, Concord, and Hueytown, Jefferson County, Alabama. Click to see enlarged.

This imagery, as well as data sets such as Red Cross shelter locations and tornado touchdown reports, are available in this collection on Google Maps. We will continue to add imagery and data as it comes available.

Our heart goes out to everyone affected by this tragic event.

Posted by Jesse Friedman, Google Crisis Response team

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Announcing the Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants Program

Over the years, the Google Earth Outreach team has seen hundreds of maps that nonprofits are using to change the world for the better. We’ve also talked to just as many nonprofits who have a great idea for a map they want to create, but don’t have people on their team with enough technical skills to create it.

Today, we’re excited to announce the Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants program, supporting selected projects from eligible nonprofit organizations that are using Google’s mapping technologies in novel, innovative ways to make the world a better place.

Through this program, non-profit organizations from all over the world will have an opportunity to receive up to $20,000 that will help turn their mapping ideas to support their causes into a reality. Numerous nonprofits have already used Google Earth to raise awareness about an issue or cause that demonstrate innovation and creativity. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum and partners created the Crisis in Darfur Google Earth layer, which utilized Google Earth’s high-resolution satellite imagery to document the burning of villages, destruction of communities and livelihoods as a result of the genocide in Sudan. The presentation of refugee stories and testimonials in a map visualization brought 26 times the usual number of visitors to the USHMM’s “How Can I Help?” section of the website.

Charity:Water uses the Google Maps API to show donors precisely where the money they contributed was allocated. After donating, donors receive geographic coordinates to view the location of a well to which they’ve contributed, and they can also view pictures of people accessing clean drinking water as a result of their contribution.

Charity:Water connects donors to well sites all over the globe.

Applications to the Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants program will be accepted until May 26, 2011. More details of the program, project requirements and eligibility can be found on the Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants page. Apply today!

Posted by Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach Team

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