VentureBeat

When John Doerr spoke at the Ted conference in March, he broke into tears at the end of a 20-minute talk about global warming.

We heard from some participants that the speech was moving.

The talk is on YouTube, and is worth watching. Doerr summarizes what large companies like Wal-Mart can do, what governments can do (citing California’s emission-capping legislation, but more, such as geothermal policy), what entrepreneurs can do (make “designer bugs” for biofuels, for example) and what citizens can do (sign up for carbon neutral programs, or otherwise help policy leaders).

China will pump 22.9 gigatons of greenhouse emissions by 2050, up from 3.3 gigatons, which would be catastrophic. We can’t tell them to stop, because we’re emitting seven times what Chinese do on a per capital basis. In other words, we’ve got to start at home to take urgent measures, to set an example and start pushing urgent measures internationally.

(Hat-tip to Dan Primack)

In separate but related: A Russian scientist, Yury Izrael, says a sulfur-based aerosol sprayed into the atmosphere at a height of 10-14 kilometers (six to 10 miles) could reflect the sun’s rays, and help slow down global warming. (Update: This guy is controversial, as you’ll find out from a quick Google search, and his Wikipedia entry. He has denied global warming is a problem.)

Here’s the latest on environment developments:

Did you know this? — Fluorescent lightbulbs, those funny looking spiral bulbs that cost a little more than regular bulbs, will save you money in the long run (they last longer), and are also kinder to the environment. No brainer to buy these things, right? Well, that’s not happening, because people don’t seem to get it. So a state lawmaker wants to implement legislation to ban sales of the standard incandescent bulbs by 2012. See story here.

Other policy news — See here for how the White House has reportedly pressured climate scientists from talking openly about global warming, and here for how there’s growing momentum among leading U.S. Senators to push for greenhouse gas legislation.

FindPollution for sale — FindPollution, a site that integrates Google Maps with US Government data about pollution sites, has listed itself for sale at VentureBeat’s VentureBoard. If you’re looking to buy a home, might be worth checking your desired location on this map beforehand. See screenshot below:

In his State of the Union address tonight, President Bush is expected to call for a doubling of ethanol use in gasoline.

This is a much delayed but very important step by the Administration to recognize that global warming has become a serious problem.

It comes after ten major companies — from General Electric to Dupont and PG&E — launched an initiative yesterday to push for mandatory federal emission controls, something Bush is unlikely to support. It also comes after an unprecedented number of observations about dramatic changes happening to our water, wildlife and crops.

There are drawbacks with corn ethanol, and the cynic will say Bush’s move is politically motivated (the policy is good farmers in Iowa, an important state for Presidential elections). But it feels like something has finally cracked. Scientists have even hooked up with evangelicals on this!

It’s good California is helping lead the way, via Gov. Schwarzenegger’s unilaterial proposal to cut green-house emissions in California. There are large economic rewards for being early to develop needed technologies.

Here’s the New York Times:

…President Bush is expected to call for a huge increase in the amount of ethanol that refiners mix with gasoline, probably double the current goal of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012.

While the details of the proposal are not known, 15 billion gallons of ethanol would work out to more than 10 percent of the country’s current gasoline consumption, and is far beyond the current capacity of about 5.4 billion gallons. At least half of the new ethanol would come from corn…

In separate, but related: The NYT has a piece about the boom in green technology investments in China, and how government leaders are eager to cooperate, and are making this clear to U.S. venture firms like Kleiner Perkins.

While independent hard data on alternative energy investments in China is hard to come by, Mr. Li’s joint venture, aimed at marrying overseas investors and Chinese entrepreneurs, testifies to the emerging trend. From June 2005 to June 2006, American venture capitalists put $100 million into China-based start-ups focused on alternative energy, double the investment in the period a year earlier, Cleantech China said.

Amid continued evidence global warming is speeding up, Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed new regulations requiring a 10 percent reduction in the carbon content of all passenger vehicle fuels sold in California by 2020.

Details are still being ironed out, but it suggests the Silicon Valley environment for investments in green technologies will remain healthy.

The standard would apply to all gasoline refiners, and it could be met if they increase the amount of ethanol in gasoline from the current 6 percent to 10 percent. There’s a summary of Schwarzenegger’s plans in the Mercury News. He also wants to introduce a carbon-trading system, so that the oil industry can find the most cost-effective way of meeting the standard.

However, since ethanol is impractical as a source here in California (because the state doesn’t grow corn, and it is costly to import it), this gives start-ups more incentive to invest in cellulosic ethanol, made form plant residue.

By the way, check out TerraPass, a San Francisco company that sells carbon offset credits to individuals, who want to be “carbon neutral” in their lives. Terrapass lets you compensate for the amount of carbon you’re producing by driving or flying by planting trees on your behalf. We’ve mentioned it before. But that was before the word “carbon neutral” entered the mainstream. The company has 30,000 customers, up from 2,000 last year, when we first mentioned it.

Last year was the warmest in the U.S. for the past 112 years, continuing a nine-year warming streak “unprecedented in the historical record,” the federal National Climate Data Center said this week, blaming it on the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And the warming appears to be speeding up.

The latest roundup of the action happening in Silicon Valley:

First evidence of YouTube wealth — What do you do with your money, when you get it? One way is to spend $20 million to buy Andre Agassi’s Tiburon estate. That’s what Stuart Peterson, of Artis Capital Management, an investor in YouTube, did, as PE Week’s Alex Haislip reports. Or you can invest it into night clubs, as some Web entrepreneurs have done.

Google Answers shuts down, while Yahoo Answers booms — This is one more confirmation that Google does best with automation. It started its answering service before Yahoo did, yet was blown away by Yahoo. Google is not adept at the messy business of getting humans involved. Yahoo claims 60 million unique users of Yahoo Answers. It just signed a deal with Answers.com, too. This is a rare victory for Yahoo, and should encourage it to stay focused on its relative advantage at implementing “community”-oriented projects.

Allow comments anywhere on your site — There are some places on blogs or web sites where comments aren’t enabled by the site’s software. So Lev Walkin, a Cisco Security Engineer out of Santa Clara, has come up with a way to let you place them pretty much anywhere, called JS-Kit (via Techcrunch).

Will U.S. Supreme Court brake global warming action? — The future of many clean-tech start-ups here in Silicon Valley depends in part on Washington. The U.S. Supreme Court is deciding whether California can move ahead with strict pollution controls. In European, meanwhile, the opposite is happening. Brussels is forcing stricter controls on member states, rather than braking.

Danger raises $10.3 million from Sharp –This deal makes sense, because Sharp is building a Danger “hiptop” device, similar to the one distributed by T-Mobile, to run Danger’s software. Also, in case you missed it, see the update on our recent snarky post about Danger and its IPO. Hank Nothhaft took exception, and we clarified some facts. He says the company’s valuation has increased, which is a good sign.

Fuddy U.S. companies on London’s AIM — Now the Brits are suddenly asking why the U.S. companies going public on the London alternative stock market AIM are doing so poorly. Two thirds of them are losing money for investors. Could the reason be that the only reason U.S. companies listing on AIM is because 1) they couldn’t do it in the U.S., or 2) they couldn’t raise money from private equity investors (or venture capitalists) at a time when it is very easy to raise money?

Presto launches the photo service for elderly or tech-phobic — We wrote about Silicon Valley company Presto’s product a while back. Presto has $10M from venture firm Kleiner Perkins and others.

Turns out, a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr, and other business folks helped tipped the balance on the landmark global warming bill passed last week.

The bill, AB 32, mandates that California reduce global warming emissions by 25 percent — to 1990 levels — by the year 2020. Major carbon-emitting industries will be forced to report emissions to the state Air Resources Board.

California Assembly Member Pavley, co-author of AB 32, apparently told the group, which also included Amy Christensen, of Google and Felix Kramer of CalCars (see his VentureBeat “contributor” column today), that their press conference a few weeks ago had helped tipped the scales. By arguing the legislation will help California’s economy, the group (pictured above) produced media coverage depicting California’s business community as divided on the legislation’s economic benefits — and thus, making it more than simply a battle between business and environmentalists. The Environmental Entrepreneurs group, based here in San Francisco, held a total of 124 individual meetings with members of the legislature, plus multiple other meetings — not to mention organizing letter and phone campaigns.

Why do we care? We’ve mentioned before California’s significant role in influencing global policy on the environment. Don’t want to overstate the point, nor do we want to overstate the role of this one group, but this latest example suggests how a few business leaders here in Silicon Valley can potentially have a very large impact on world policy by driving up to Sacramento and trying to move the needle a little bit.