When do the standards take effect? Jan. 1, 2011, with more stringent rules kicking in two years later.

Do they apply to the TV sets I currently own?  No. They also don’t apply to any television set you buy next year. And you can keep using your TVs as long as they last.

What television sets will be regulated?  All that measure 58 inches (1,400 square inches) or smaller.

How will future TVs be affected? By 2011, television sets sold in California stories must use a third less power than they do now. That goes up to a 49 percent power savings by 2013.

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As atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increase, scientists say that higher temperatures and ocean acidification could kill 70 percent of the world’s coral reefs by 2050. By century’s end, they could be gone entirely.

If this loss could be assigned a dollar amount, how much would it be? A group of economists presented an assessment of coral reefs’ value at the recent DIVERSITAS biodiversity conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

As it turns out, reefs are quite valuable. Inferring from more than 80 studies, the economists found that, on average, 2.5 acres of coral reef provide $130,000 worth of goods and services, and sometimes as much as $1.2 million.

Here’s the monetary breakdown:
• Food, raw materials, ornamental resources: average, $1,100 (up to $6,000).
• Climate regulation, moderation of extreme events, waste treatment/water purification, biological control: average, $26,000 (up to $35,000).
• Cultural services (e.g., recreation/tourism): average, $88,700 (up to $1.1 million).
• Maintenance of genetic diversity: average, $13,500 (up to $57,000).

Editor’s note: This article is one of a series of brief updates on environmental studies of interest.

For more articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many environment topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.

These costs aren’t factored into the market prices of coal, oil, and gasoline, or the prices of electricity generated by fossil fuels, the report says. But someone eventually pays for them.

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That’s in part because we already knew we’d be spending significantly more upfront for a geothermal system than we would have for traditional heating in exchange for the long-term savings geothermal produces.

And one of our goals in renovating Sheep Dog Hollow is to test the assertion that building green and economically are no longer mutually exclusive. (I’m finding that they’re not, but only if you’re looking at a five- to 10-year time frame … but more on that later.)

While we wanted to go for the less costly open-loop geothermal system, Tony was quite clear that he’d recommend the more expensive closed-loop system.

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There’s no precise definition of “creationism,” but the term generally encompasses those who oppose all or part of the theory – held almost universally by biologists and supported by overwhelming amounts of empirical evidence – that all known species are descended from a common ancestor or gene pool and that complex life arises as a result of random mutation and natural selection.

On the hard-core end of the creationist spectrum are biblically inspired “young-earth creationists,” who tend to believe that Earth is less than 10,000 years old, that humans coexisted with dinosaurs, and that God created all species “as is” in their present form. They usually don’t mind being called creationists.

On the other end are proponents of “intelligent design.” This hypothesis does not reject the timescale of evolution, nor does it reject the belief that all living things share a common ancestor. But intelligent design proponents do hold that certain living structures, such as the bacterial flagella, blood cells, and cellular pumps, are too complex to have arisen by mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection.

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Now, a team of researchers led by the University of Colorado’s Shemin Ge suggest that this could well be what happened with the devastating Wenchuan earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province in May 2008.

According to the Chinese government, the magnitude 8.0 quake left nearly 68,000 people killed, some 374,000 injured, and 18,500 people listed at the time as missing. Some estimates put the disaster’s price tag at more than $75 billion. You can read more about the quake here, here, and here.

The reservoir in question is the Zipingpu Reservoir. It was filled in late 2005 and reached its maximum water level in December 2006. The reservoir is situated between the two faults that ruptured during that quake.

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A:   It’s true that littered cigarette butts are a public nuisance, and not just for aesthetic reasons. The filters on cigarettes – four-fifths of all cigarettes have them – are made of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic that is very slow to degrade in the environment. A typical cigarette butt can take anywhere from 18 months to 10 years to decompose, depending on conditions.

But beyond the plastic, these filters – which are on cigarettes in the first place to absorb contaminants to prevent them from going into the lungs – contain trace amounts of toxins such as cadmium, arsenic, and lead.

Thus, when smokers discard their butts improperly – out car windows or off the end of a pier or onto the sidewalk – they are essentially tossing these substances into the environment.

Studies done by Johns Hopkins University, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and even the tobacco industry show that these contaminants can get into soils and waterways, harm or kill living organisms, and generally degrade surrounding ecosystems.

While individual discarded cigarette butts may be small, they add up to a huge problem. Some 5.5 trillion cigarettes are consumed worldwide each year.

Keep America Beautiful reports that cigarette butts constitute as much as one-third of all litter nationwide when measured by the number of discarded items, not by volume.

According to the Ocean Conservancy, which advocates for stronger protection of marine ecosystems, cigarette butts are the most common litter found on America’s salt- and freshwater beaches.

Critics say the tobacco industry should be doing more to prevent cigarette butt litter. “Just as beverage manufacturers contribute to antilitter campaigns, and have invested in public education on litter issues, so, too, should the tobacco industry,” says Kathleen Register, founder and executive director of Clean Virginia Waterways, a nonprofit group that has spearheaded the fight against cigarette butt litter in the mid-Atlantic region.

Ms. Register suggests a number of strategies, including putting antilitter messages on all cigarette packaging and advertisements; distributing small, free, portable ashtrays; and placing and maintaining outdoor ashtrays in areas where smokers congregate.

She also suggests putting an extra tax on cigarette sales, with proceeds going toward antilitter education efforts and to defray the costs of cleaning up butts.

“Picking up littered cigarette butts costs schools, businesses, and park agencies money,” she says. “By taxing smokers for antilitter educational efforts, some of the costs of cleaning up cigarette butts will shift onto smokers.”

Questions about living green? Send to: EarthTalk, c/o E - The Environmental Magazine, Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com.

Editor’s note: For more articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many environment topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.

Some extra juice is needed, of course, to run a heat pump to keep the system operating, but it amounts to a fraction – as little as 30 percent – of what a traditional gas or oil burner would use. Your main source of comfort in your home is just what’s under the good green earth.

That was in perfect harmony with my vision of our green renovation of Sheep Dog Hollow, and so it made sense to put it in, even though it cost significantly more than a traditional heating system.

Still, the payback in terms of tax credits and long-term energy savings convinced us that in the long term it was indeed economical – even it appears initially to break the bank.

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Pushing animals to the brink – and then trying to bring them back – is nothing new for humans. Remedies have long included setting aside land for a special habitat (spotted owls) or making it illegal to kill them (whooping cranes).

But sweeping changes that would accompany projected climate change mean that an animal’s traditional range may no longer be habitable to it in a few years – or that a key food source or resource it needs is disappearing. And that calls for different solutions from those in the past.

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Among them:

–  Add more protected areas.

–  Conserve multiple examples of each ecosystem type.

–  Manage and restore existing protected areas for maximum resilience.

–  Design new natural areas and restoration sites to maximize resilience. For example, restore marsh communities behind gently sloped and undeveloped ocean shorelines (those most likely to be affected by sea-level rise) rather than fortify existing beaches. Preparing for the change in this way will mitigate the effects when they arrive.

–  Increase landscape “connectivity” and permeability so animals can migrate more freely. Remove dams and fish ladders in rivers, for instance.

–  Protect wildlife corridors and “stepping stone” habitat islands to serve as stopovers for migratory waterfowl and for land-based species as they seek cooler climates.

–  Reduce nonclimate stressors such as invasive species, chemical contaminants, and catastrophic wildfires.

Editor’s note: See also Mark Clayton’s main article, Saving wildlife in a warmer world.

For more articles about the environment, check out the Monitor’s main environment page. Also, visit our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.