The Oakland, CA - based builder of prefabricated green homes, Michelle Kauffman Designs, will be closing as a result of the banking crisis in the United States. Difficulty with project financing is reportedly a major culprit in the company's inability to continue.

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Starbucks is going Fair Trade in the UK, so is Cadbury.  Their U.S. counterparts aren't.  What's up with that?

This piece in CS Monitor pretty much sums it up:

"more than 70 percent of the British populace recognize the fair-trade mark, whereas consumer recognition in the United States is only 28 percent, according to recent surveys."

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The way I see it there are 3 ways that technology rapidly advances:

1) Greed - Somebody is going to make oodles of money if…

2) Space - “How the heck are we gonna win this here space race?”

3) War - “How do we kill more of them and save more of us?”

Let’s think about this in terms of our quest for alternative fuels.

Since we’re not launching poop-powered rockets into space…yet. And the green revolution has yet to fully evolve. War might be our best hope. (That’s a sentence I never thought I’d ever write.)

Consider this piece in the Washington Post:

“Every time you bring a gallon of fuel forward, you have to send a convoy,” said Alan R. Shaffer, director of defense research and engineering at the Pentagon. “That puts people’s lives at risk.”

Spurred by this grim reality, the Pentagon, which traditionally has not made saving energy much of a priority, has launched initiatives to find alternative fuel sources. The goals include saving money, preserving dwindling natural resources and lessening U.S. dependence on foreign sources.

“The honest-to-God truth, the most compelling reason to do it is it saves lives,” said Brig. Gen. Steven Anderson, director of operations and logistics for the Army. “It takes drivers off the road.”

And because turning water to wine is so B.C…

Two prototypes — known as the Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery — were deployed to Iraq in the summer and were initially successful, converting field waste — paper, plastic, cardboard and food slop — into biofuel to power a 60-kilowatt generator. “We were able to get oil out of trash,” Shaffer said.

Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery…Cool!

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Companies merely doing business with the regime in South Africa had their lawsuits dismissed. That left those who provided tools for repression.

According to the plaintiffs, the car manufacturers Daimler, Ford and General Motors knew their cars were to be used to suppress dissent. IBM knew its IT systems were to being used to strip people of their rights. The action can also proceed against Rheinmetall Group, which owns an armaments maker.

These actions under the Alien Tort Claims Act are to be permitted to proceed. The cases against them describe classic examples of what we at APEsphere refer to as the "use chain". In other words, as the BBC report put its: "The judge disagreed with IBM's argument that it was not the company's place to tell clients how to use its products."

Claims against banks Barclays and UBS were dismissed.

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A bipartisan group of senators and representatives has unveiled a bill that aims to curb the escalating money war that is a modern election.

The Center for Responsive Politics' Capital Eye blog reports:

"A proposal to establish a system of public financing for congressional races was unveiled yesterday by a bipartisan group of senators and representatives who say this legislation would keep elected officials focused on governing instead of raising increasingly larger and larger amounts campaign cash. Based on the models in states such as Arizona, Connecticut and Maine, the Fair Elections Now Act would create a voluntary public financing system that allocates competitive levels of money to candidates, caps individual contributions at $100 and bans contributions, fundraising, and bundling by political action committees."

Of course, the benefit from an APEsphere perspective is less about cheaper elections - although cheaper means more potential candidates can enter the fray - so much as reduced opportunities for corporations to buy influence.

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