Advocating Gore's UT honorific

Gary McCracken, head of UT's department of ecology and evolutionary biology, makes the case in the KNS for the University awarding former VP Al Gore an honorary degree, which has been criticized by some.

Repower America

Knoxville-based Repower America and its allies aim for passage of American Clean Energy and Security Act by (ACESA) Congress. Its local counterpart is Repower Tennessee. Repower was spun-out of the Nashville-based Alliance for Climate Protection (The Climate Project), which is chaired by former VPUS Al Gore. Knoxville News Sentinel reports. A Reuters report yesterday said ACESA faces an "uphill" fight in the Senate, now it's passed the House.

NEWSBITS April 20, 2009

Innova, Petra Capital, Fred Goad (Voyent), Al Gore, health IT, BioFuels startup, echo down celljournalist up, tech-transfer event, VCs on VCs... you get the picture, so here are the words.

The best of times, the worst of times

Either way, it's Our Time to ponder: At VU Portfolio company TyraTech, execs take a paycut, putting the company's consideration of relocating to Nashville (or somewhere) into the deepfreeze, for now... CNet says Al Gore will share the spotlight with Google Ocean, next week and, okay, here's that NOAA report... Leadership Music announces Digital Summit agenda for the expanded March event... Knoxville-based Claris Networks, an IT services company, adds a Birmingham office to its growing net... A class-action lawsuit hits EPB, brought by folks who don't want their power easement used for video services... MDN's good piece on prospects for U.S. funding of EMRs... While VUMC investigators get a nice grant for collecting data via the Web... and, the State says it'll begin holding mass meetings for folks to sign-up for unemployment...

Laffer curveballs

Nashvillian and fabled Reagan economist Arthur Laffer writes overnight in today's Wall Street Journal that President-Elect Obama is wrong about renewable energy and energy independence and would do well to heed Al Gore's advice, as characterized by Laffer: "The only real solution is Al Gore's proposal to offset a carbon tax dollar-for-dollar with either an income or payroll tax reduction. If a carbon tax increase were offset dollar-for-dollar with an income tax rate cut, I for one would strongly support the policy. The economy would benefit because the progressive income tax does far more damage than a carbon tax would, and we'd use less oil. It's a win-win situation." Google Laffer and see how busy this fellow stays, largely because of a curve that people found easy to 'understand'.

Riveting story on VCs, Al Gore, Kleiner Perkins & the Green Future

A great read: If you care about university research, venture capital, innovation and, yes, the future of Civilization -- or, if you simply love or hate Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers or Al Gore or too much government or too little -- read The New York Times Magazine's Pulitzer-worthy piece, "Capitalism to the Rescue," which is the cover story today, Oct. 5. Writer Jon Gertner produced a story with depth, and along the way he put the spotlight on University of Tennessee researchers who have created a clean-energy phenomenon called The Bloom Box. Read Gertner's contribution, here. Here's a related KPMG survey of VCs regarding Green Tech.