More trouble for Orcas

Puget Sound pod roams south to California in search of food -- just in time for the collapse of the salmon stock there.

Masdar interview

AME Info speaks to Masdar spokesman Ron Heyselaar in a video, here.

Bruce Babbitt to make Seattle appearance

Former Congressman, Democratic presidential candidate and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has accepted an invitation from People For Puget Sound to give a talk on the environmental topics of his choice. The Seattle green NGO has signed up Babbitt, who is hilarious, to be the featured speaker at its third annual A New Day For Puget Sound event on May 8.

It's a pre-work breakfast time event, which means EARLY. It's also a fundraiser. But Babbitt is, as noted, hilarious, so it's well worth the money and rising at the crack of dawn.

Details will be posted at pugetsound.org as soon as it becomes available.

The Orca-Salmon Link

A nicely timed pair of articles in Puget Sound's leading dailies reminds us of the interconnectedness in nature, as well as our responsibility to repair the mistakes made in less enlightened times.

And it won't be cheap:

Saving orcas will cost billions, feds say
Expressing "considerable uncertainty" about how to rescue Puget Sound's imperiled orcas, federal fisheries officials on Thursday said the job will take more than 20 years and cost some $50 million.
Even that price tag considers only the extra costs of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The agency's recovery plan for orcas assumes that billions more will be spent to restore Puget Sound and bring back battered salmon runs -- their main food.
...
The plan specifically recommends stationing a fulltime rescue tugboat near Washington's outer coast to prevent an oil spill -- the biggest short-term threat to the orcas. It says "more aggressive initial responses" are needed.
It also calls for "greater efforts ... to minimize pollution," including the stormwater that washes filth into the Sound after every good-sized rain. More

No sir. Not cheap at all:

Unveiling "The Source"

This is some interesting news of an event that I've not really seen covered in the U.S. media: A World Future Energy Summit held in Abu Dhabi, including plans for a sustainable new-city (Breaking: TIME has brief story). I'm mostly an NPR-Air America listener and I read at least two newspapers a day, so you think there would have been something about it crammed in amongst the other Mideast reporting about who Dubya wants to attack next.

But no. I have to be Googlerted to pieces running in the UK media -- and mostly because they're all excited about Lord Foster (the architect behind The Gherkin and other notable edifices) unveiling his master plan model for the Masdar ("the source") project's showpiece Masdar City. Dubya got a sneak preview last week (you can kinda see it in the photo attached to this article), but I expect it went in one ear and out the other as usual.

Virginia PRT study -- Not too bad

The Examiner has the story on the release of the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation study on the viability of Personal Rapid Transit. The bad news -- PRT is still "unwise," because there are no full-fledged true PRT systems currently in operation. VDRPT (great acronym by the way) therefore concludes PRT might cost the state too much in research and development.

Basically, another example of a jurisdiction not wanting to be first to innovate, because it would have to assume the risk. Which is fine, really, we are after all talking about public funds.

The good news -- there's a lot of it in the report itself.