Takes lot of green to live green

Let’s face it: Most of us will never have the resources it takes to buy a solar-power storage battery at today’s prices and go "off the grid," as entrepreneur Henk Rogers does.

But there are people who do, and the rest of the community can benefit from their investment in the fledgling industry.

Rogers, who made his money through the Tetris game phenom, is an avid promoter of clean energy, starting the advocacy group Blue Planet Foundation. He’s now promoting Blue Planet Energy Systems’ "Blue Ion" battery, though he’s hesitant to say how much the battery system costs.

The price will come down, he said, as it always does when new technologies settle in.

A sign that this technology has arrived will be when companies can be less coy about the pricetag.

Is that in coral or human years?

The oldest living thing in the sea is found only in Hawaii. Researchers have identified a distinct species of deep-sea black coral that can live more than 4,000 years, longer than any other known marine organism. Human life spans are mere blips compared to the epoch duration of deep-sea life such as the newly classified species of fan-shaped coral, Leiopathes annosa.

So kudos to all those people who work hard to improve ocean conditions so that this coral and other hardy marine organisms do not expire prematurely.