This link went over well on Facebook, so I thought I’d repost here (thanks to the special person who showed it to me!)
A Low-Impact Woodland House
www.simondale.net/house
The house was built with maximum regard for the environment and by reciprocation gives us a unique opportunity to live close to nature. Being your own (have a go) architect is a lot of fun and allows you to create and enjoy something which is part of yourself and the land rather than, at worst, a mass produced box designed for maximum profit and convenience of the construction industry. Building from natural materials does away with producers profits and the cocktail of carcinogenic poisons that fill most modern buildings.
Part of the story I’m working on involves a character (I changed his name to Colin) who works for a “Green Marketing” company. He soon learns his employers are not so eco-friendly and mostly interested in the other kind of green, money.
Tonight I am researching “carbon credits” and found this story.
The great carbon credit con: Why are we paying the Third World to poison its environment?
www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1188937/The-great-carbon-credit-eco-companies-causing-pollution.html
In the fields around this giant chemicals factory in Gujarat, the barren soil smells of paint stripper and the water from the well makes you gag. So why has it been given tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer-funded UN ‘green reward points’, which are traded hungrily on the financial markets at huge profit?
…
Companies that cut their emissions gain credits. If, on the other hand, they exceed their quotas, they have to acquire credits. The credits are traded on markets such as the ECX and have become such an established part of the financial world that trading involves Europe’s biggest banks, including RBS and Barclays. Until the global slowdown, carbon was one of the most profitable ‘commodities’, nearly doubling in value between 2007 and 2008.
During “economic downturns” many choose to invest in (and or hoard) gold.
Why is gold so valuable anyway? Is it just for its jewelry value or is there something more to it?
Does it matter?
Free investment advice for those with money right now: invest in SEEDS, LAND, and/or GREENHOUSES!
From David Suzuki’s awesome Nature Challenge, which offers ways to reduce one’s ecological “footprint” on the Earth:
Live close to work
Choose a home within 30 minutes walk, bike or transit to daily destinations
Living close to work, school and shopping reduces time spent driving and frees up time for you to spend on things you care about. Buying a home in a new subdivision often contributes to urban sprawl and the destruction of valuable farm and wild lands.
Essential Facts:
* It’s been estimated that the average person spends 32 hours a month driving and 27 hours a month paying for their car use.
* Locating close to work, school and shopping reduces time spent in your automobile, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
* Keeping development within existing urban areas protects valuable agricultural land and wildlife habitat.
I love the smell of a “real” Christmas tree, however it seems as it’s time to make the tradition of every family cutting one down & throwing it away every December obsolete.
Here’s a trend I predict we’ll see catching on more & more in the years to come!
Living Christmas Trees
http://www.ecospace.cc/culture/living-christmas-trees-1207.htm
These trees are dug from a field with their roots encased in a soil ball, then wrapped in burlap and potted. After their brief stay inside for the holiday, they are transplanted outside to continue growing.
Permaculture is a way of designing landscapes (or any kind of system) in a way that works with what is already there to produce more variety of plants for less labour. It’s wise and wonderful.
Yesterday I took part in an introductory class on the topic.
Wikipedia: Permaculture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
Permaculture design principles extend from the position that “The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children” (Mollison, 1990). The intent was that, by rapidly training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals could become designers of their own environments and able to build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements — ones that reduce society’s reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution that Mollison identified as fundamentally and systematically destroying the earth’s ecosystems.
Permaculture Education Template Design Building
http://podcollective.com/fora/viewtopic.php?p=9162#9162
visioning a workshop template
for permaculture education-in-action
this is a virtual record of an applied workshop template
for introducing basic permaculture concepts
in the context of creating a community permaculture education demo site
The US Government is working on drafting changes to the Endangered Species Act, many of which are actually designed to help business make more money (this is not about creating jobs here, ok?) and will weaken animal protections.
I am not an animal rights activist & I eat meat. However, the fact that more and more species are dying out every year combined with the fact that we are part of an interconnected web of life (what we do to them we do to ourselves) is an indication that weakening these laws is a bad idea.
If you want to help sign up for the mailing list below! I especially encourage Americans to get involved.
Save our Species Alliance
http://www.saveourspeciesalliance.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?page=howyoucanhelp
The first step to making a difference in the debate over and future of the Endangered Species Act is to be informed. We encourage you to use all of the resources on this website to inform yourself about the ESA and how it impacts citizens. The next step is to speak out. Talk to your family, co-workers and neighbors. If you are concerned about the failure of the ESA to recover species and the negative impact it has on everyday citizens, then so should the people around you!
Use the materials below to aid you in your effort to get involved and to inform others about the importance of updating the ESA.
The things we humans flush down the toilet (into our water supply!) would be better used to fertilize the soil (as is done traditionally in many cultures.) The plants would even thank us.
Composting Toilets
http://www.metaefficient.com/metaefficient/archives/composting-toilets/
The most efficient toilets are composting toilets. They have less odor than conventional flush toilets, use no water, are simple to maintain, and produce nutrient-rich compost. In general, they require emptying only once every 6 months. The humus produced is odorless and can be applied directly to a garden like any other fertilizer.
Composting toilets have been widely used in Scandinavia for many years. They have been around since 1964, when the multrum toilet, invented by a Swedish engineer, was introduced.
Today I went hiking in an area near my house that is slated to be logged soon. It was both gorgeous and totally depressing to imagine.
The plan is to leave only a very small buffer around the creek and a few of the “veteran” old trees in place. One of the bigger trees was spraypainted in blue with the word “leave” on it!
The forest is not just a bunch of trees. It’s an ecosystem that includes other plants, mosses, animals, insects, fungi, soil microorganisms, and more. It’s possible to do sustainable forestry (where only some of the trees are cut down so everything else can survive and continue) but unfortunately, today the forestry business is all about clearcutting, because it means more money now. Even if new trees are planted, the ecosystem of the forest is destroyed. The area I visited today has rare frogs, salamanders, mosses, and a few amazing 700+ year old trees.
Unfortunately, sustainability isn’t compatible with a stock market driven economy where business is under pressure to continually grow profits! To “succeed” requires greed! It doesn’t take a math genius to see that eternal growth is not possible and something has to give.
One of the worst parts about this is that this destruction is government sponsored. Tax dollars are being used to destroy the environment! Timber is big business and corrupt governments keep this going because of money and dangerous short-term economic thinking.
It used to seem like there would be trees available forever and ever, but today logging methods are high tech and devastatingly fast. In some areas, they’re up there with lights and going 24/7.
I seriously wonder if the people who direct and approve these projects have any concience whatsoever. Perhaps they don’t understand that what we do to the Earth, we ultimately do to ourselves. Perhaps they just don’t care about future generations or anyone but themselves.
Since we can’t fully escape from using environmentally destructive fossil fuels just yet, here’s an interesting concept on how individuals and organizations can attempt to balance that out ethically: pay an additional fee that will be applied towards climate change research!
Climatecare.org
http://www.climatecare.org
Climate Care Trust Limited sells CO2 reductions, and funds projects around the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to tackle climate change. The reductions made balance our clients’ emissions, making their activities climate neutral.
I’m not sure how effective this will be in practice, but it’s certainly better than doing nothing. It’s also good to see The Guardian using it on a business-wide scale.
Imagine what could be done if the US Government would spend billions on developing alternative energy sources instead of on an endless War! Now THERE’S something that would make a difference!
Unfortunately, that won’t happen until enough people wake the *&#$ up and stop electing oil barons into office.
Here’s an organization that is doing some really good work in America. I would like to see more of an emphasis on organic (aka the way nature intended) food, but this is a great start. The site includes info (and funding opportunities) for people wanting to start similar programs in their local schools!
Farm to School
http://www.farmtoschool.org/
Farm to School programs are popping up all over the U.S. These programs connect schools with local farms with the objectives of serving healthy meals in school cafeterias, improving student nutrition, providing health and nutrition education opportunities that will last a lifetime, and supporting local small farmers.
Should government officials be protecting the public from poisonous drinking water, or trying to make the problem go away by weakening safety standards?
Clean Water
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67343,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_6
An emerging threat looms in working-class suburbs. A chemical used in rocket fuel and defense manufacturing has befouled nearly half the drinking water supply in as many as 36 states.
The EPA has issued a safety standard that any amount of perchlorate less than 24.5 parts per billion in drinking water is safe. That was much higher than the 6 parts per billion California set as a public health goal, and higher still than EPA’s original draft standard of 1 part per billion.
Pentagon officials, who could face billions in cleanup costs, criticized the 1-part-per-billion standard, instead favoring 200 parts per billion.
EPA Bans Staff From Discussing Issue of Perchlorate Pollution
http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/2003/Perchlorate-EPA-Ban28apr03.htm
The gag order prevented EPA scientists from commenting or elaborating Friday on the two lettuce studies, which show lettuce, available in U.S. supermarkets, appears to absorb and concentrate perchlorate from polluted irrigation water in significant amounts. Other scientists familiar with the studies said both are limited in scope and are only suggestive, not conclusive, on the question of whether Americans are consuming perchlorate in food.
Perchlorates
http://www.organicconsumers.org/perchlorate.htm
The Pentagon is urging Congress to pass a new law that would allow the military to freely violate a host of environmental regulations. Entitled “The Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative,” the legislation would allow military facilities to ignore laws like the Clean Air Act. The Pentagon claims environmental regulations are a threat to national security, since they restrict the military.
Here’s a really sensible and useful engineering innovation!
Need a Building? Just Add Water
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66872,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
A pair of engineers in London have come up with a “building in a bag” — a sack of cement-impregnated fabric. To erect the structure, all you have to do is add water to the bag and inflate it with air. Twelve hours later the Nissen-shaped shelter is dried out and ready for use.
Biodiesel needs to get far more press than it has been getting, and this is really going to help. I love when celebrities use their influence to promote progressive ideas in a practical way! This particular idea also makes good business sense.
Willie Nelson Bets on Biodiesel
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66288,00.html
Nelson and three business partners recently formed a company called Willie Nelson’s Biodiesel that is marketing the fuel to truck stops. The fuel is made from vegetable oils, mainly soybeans, and can be burned without modification to diesel engines.
It may be difficult to picture the 71-year-old hair-braided Texas rebel as an energy company executive, but the singer’s new gig is in many ways about social responsibility — and that is classic Nelson.
“There is really no need going around starting wars over oil. We have it here at home. We have the necessary product, the farmers can grow it,” said Nelson, who organized Farm Aid two decades ago to draw attention to the plight of American agriculture.
Habitat for Humanity builds houses for low income people and have done a lot of really good work.
Different Habitat for Humanity groups have been experimenting with options for energy efficiency, something that should be important to all of us, but is especially important for low income people. They’ve come up with some good innovations!
Most homes built today aren’t constructed with energy efficiency in mind. Developers want to get houses up as quickly and cheaply as possible.
I’ve heard a lot of nightmare stories about how much it costs to heat and air condition a McMansion!
Building Green
Energy Efficiency Takes Root at Habitat for Humanity
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?2170
After trying homes made of soil blocks and straw bales, Almost Heaven turned back to more mainstream materials. The group now uses insulated concrete floors that include hot-water radiant heating. The installation is cost effective because of trained volunteer labor. Walls are built with “structural insulated panel” systems, rigid foam sandwiched between oriented-strand-board plywood that provides continuous insulation and fewer thermal breaks. “We’ve completely abandoned traditional stick construction and fiberglass insulation in the quest for energy efficiency,” Connor says. In the snowy Allegheny Mountains, “Our families can heat their homes for $20 a month.”
Such an integrated, whole-house design is promoted by the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Green Building Council, which sets standards that some affiliates seek to meet. The Habitat New York City affiliate’s holistic view goes even further, with a mission that includes this statement: “We believe green building is about health, wealth and justice.”
The government should be putting major dollars into pushing new ways of fueling vehicles. Unfortunately, the USA is run by oil barons who want to keep the oil economy going as long as possible for their own personal gain.
Most of the major automakers can see that the end of oil is coming, and are working on developing hydrogen powered cars.
It remains to be seen if these vehicles will become available/affordable for the general public anytime soon…
Automakers put hydrogen on fast track
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6803788
But for all the exotic gizmos on the Sequel, an experimental hydrogen-powered car to be shown today by General Motors Corp., the biggest breakthrough is that it is designed to drive as far and accelerate as quickly as the cars in most driveways.
The Sequel uses fuel-cell technology that until now has not matched the overall performance of gasoline engines. GM is introducing the car at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit as rival companies make similar announcements.
Solar Energy is a wonderful thing, but unfortunately production of the solar cells we use today is expensive and partially toxic.
Here’s a press release about some exciting new research at Georgia Tech:
Tech Developing Efficient Organic Solar Cell
http://www.gatech.edu/news-room/release.php?id=497
As the price of energy continues to rise, businesses are looking to renewable energy for cheaper sources of power. Making electricity from the most plentiful of these sources – the sun -can be expensive due to the high price of producing traditional silicon-based solar cells. Enter organic solar cells. Made from cheaper materials, their flexibility and feather-weight construction promise to open up new markets for solar energy, potentially powering everything from Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to iPods and laptop computers.
I’m not too excited about RFID tags, but otherwise this could be a very good development.
