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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SiouxPal who wrote (8386)	8/8/2008 6:32:46 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 24246

No, not at all. There were lots of studies years ago about the health effects of air pollution. Ain't natural to wear a mask all the time. Ain't natural for 1 out of 6 school kids in Fresno to need asthma inhalers. Even if Fresno isn't in China. Why haven't we sold pollution control equipment to them? (Probably cuz they have a plant making it for us; oy.) Worse, we sell them entire plants that can no longer meet our standards; like a pulp mill from Eureka. Trucked that sucker down the highway for days and days. Should be a law we can't sell polluting equipment and factories. The people are gonna have to complain loud enuf to make the gvt take action without shooting them. I saw a news report from there yesterday, and it looked pretty bad. They are saying it was mostly fog, not smog. Be interesting to see how the people react when there is BAU, and they get the bad smog, boom, with no long, slow build-up like happened the first time around, as more people got cars and more people moved in to the urban areas, and one day it was "Hey, didn't there used to be mountains there last year?" They should experience what I did with the wildfires. One day I could see mountains maybe 50 miles to the east, the next day visibility in Ukiah was maybe 30 yards. Sometimes it seems so easy; that solar article I posted, with almost everything except solar paint, shows we are right there. Add TBone's wind generators, and a bunch of ocean wave generators, and electric trains and city buses, and electric cars as fast as we can turn them out, and we get thru this this, and emerge prosperous. Sometimes, I don't think we will ever get past the talking stage. We need John Luc Picard..."Make it so".

To: SiouxPal who wrote (8386)	8/19/2008 2:22:01 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24246

Bill Clinton: 10 Things the U.S. Government Should Do For Clean Power Written by Katie Fehrenbacher Posted August 18th, 2008 at 10:26 pm in @NYT, The 42nd U.S. President, Bill Clinton, delivered a top 10 laundry list of actions that the U.S. government should take to help solve the energy crisis during a speech to kick off the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas on Monday night. Along with the list, which advocated various incentives to accelerate the proliferation of clean technologies, Clinton suggested some more controversial plans: he raised the idea of a single state, like Nevada, or an area like Puerto Rico becoming energy independent — he said this could “rock the world.” And beyond his concrete policy advice, Clinton also confirmed previous reports that his foundation is looking into helping build solar thermal projects in India. The speech, which was followed by a Q&A with John Podesta, the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, provided some of the more innovative and forward-thinking policy ideas we’ve heard to date. Clinton emphasized the fact that the new clean energy economy has to deliver “good economics,” and if we aren’t convinced of the positive financials, we won’t be able to convince other countries to join us. So what’s the federal government’s role in ensuring all that? Here are Clinton’s top 10 suggestions: 1). Congress must pass legislation that puts a price on carbon and establish a cap-and-trade system. The alternative is passing a carbon tax, Clinton says, but adds that he tried that route already and it didn’t work out too well. 2). We need to renew and lengthen the tax credits for clean energy. The time frame needs to be longer than three years — more like 6 to 10 years. That is the only way to stimulate enough production of clean energy technologies. 3). It’s important to figure out the federal government’s role in modernizing the electrical grid, including both efficiency and carrying capacity. The grid wastes a lot of energy moving power, given that the wind blows and the sun shines in places where a lot of people don’t live. Tax payers should also be able to split the cost of modernizing the grid with utilities. 4). Utility decoupling should be federally mandated. That’s what California has done on a state level, separating its utility profits from electricity sales, and has thus become one of the most efficient energy states in the nation. While this has been an issue for the states, Clinton says the federal government should take on this task. 5). We should have legislation to accelerate replacing traditional incandescent lighting with LED lighting. This could save us the equivalent power of a dozen power plants over the next 20 years. 6). On the production side we need to continue to fund carbon capture and storage projects. China is bringing on a new coal plant every 10 days or so, so we need to figure this technology out. 7). We need to accelerate the move from corn-based ethanol to more sustainable biofuels. The conversion ratio is twice as good, but the enzyme process is twice as expensive. Many of the corn ethanol plants can be easily modified to produce cellulosic ethanol from the waste of farm crops. We can’t continue to raise the price of food and skew production patterns. It seems worth it to have differential tax incentives to do this right. We should consider doing a joint investment with Brazil, potentially in the Caribbean, which would import sugar cane-based ethanol into the U.S, but it would not be subject to the tax that is placed on the rest of Brazilian ethanol. It might not be politically feasible, Clinton added. 8). We should have a program to shut down urban landfills and use them for either waste heat or fertilizer. The green house gas coming out of landfills is methane, which is pretty bad. “We do a lot of work around this area with my foundation,” he said. Organic landfills should just not be there — it’s bad for global warming, and it’s a public health nightmare. 9). We need to accelerate the move to hybrid and electric vehicles and modernize our railway system. After our party lost, Clinton said, we were succeeded by a group that thought high-speed rail was virtually closet communism. Biofuels are also just a transition to electric and hybrid cars. We have this electric vehicle technology today, and it’s made in America. The technology would probably require larger tax credits, but it would be worth it because the prices for electronics would immediately drop — think the iPhone or a flat-screen TVs. 10). We need to demonstrate to the rest of the world that this is not an affectation for rich countries — that this is as big an opportunity for developing counties as it is for wealthy countries. The most popular thing the U.S. has done is its work with AIDS and Malaria, including work done by the Gates and Clinton Foundations. We need to also use this model for what we could do for clean energy development in the developing world. earth2tech.com

To: SiouxPal who wrote (8386)	7/24/2009 10:05:49 AM
From: Wharf Rat	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24246

Living with the land: Florida’s first Earthship (video) July 20, 2009 at 8:00 am by Eric Stewart In previous posts, I declared the problems that our country faces. The point was not to be pessimistic but to maturely point out the weak points so we can find solutions. We face mounting debt, a dependence on a finite power source stored beneath the Earth that may have peaked production, the baby boomer generation about to enter retirement, a lack of savings, and a consumer culture built upon a dominator society that depends entirely from receiving it’s inputs of materials and things from far away. This society is unsustainable and will need to transition to something different by choice or by collapse. This society arose when we began valuing things, more than people. It is not a recent event, but an event that has playing itself out for thousands of years. I spoke of a permaculture path. A path to improve our economy to be environmentally friendly and get us off our addiction to fossil fuels. As a by-product of utilizing these permaculture design principles we will have healthier food, cheaper costs of living, meaningful work repairing the Earth all as we return to the community way of thinking and away from individualism. We must create a partnership society, partnering with the Earth and one another to repair the damage. What does this look like though? It’s easy to state abstract ideas on digital paper, but how about an example locally? Meet Bryan Roberts, the contractor for Florida’s first Earthship in Manatee County and founder of Eco-Tech Construction. An Earthship is a concept founded by Michael Reynolds, a.k.a. The Garbage Warrior. Mr. Reynolds wanted to design a home that took care of the people that lived within it. He utilized reclaimed material such as aluminum cans, glass bottles, and the infamous used tires to build the walls of the Earthship. In the permaculture design philosophy there is no such thing as waste, it is simply a unused resource waiting to be utilized. Mimicking nature Mr. Reynolds as well as the Florida Earthship utilizes a greywater system that uses the water from kitchen sinks and showers. This water can be used to water plants and in toilets in the home. Utilizing water more than once allows the Earthship to drastically reduce its water use. The water will come from a nearby well, as well as from 6,000 gallons of stored rain water from the home’s roof collection system. In Florida, our water supply is at critical levels - if every home began utilizing their water more than once we wouldn’t have problems with our water supply. Greywater is thefuture we all need to be investing in. The exterior walls are built up using dirt-filled used tires. Each tire when filled completely are over 300 lbs in weight - no hurricane will move this home. These tires add thermal mass to the building keeping the inside temperature stable so it’s easier to cool. There will be no air conditioner on this house. The home will be cooled using tubes running underground bringing hot air from the outside and cooling it under the constant 68 degree Fahrenheit temperature found just a few feet below. In most net-energy homes the air conditioner is the main concern with lowering your energy bill, by eliminating it completely Eco-Tech enables the Earthship to be completely grid free. Solar panels will create the energy for the home. The community aspect of building a Earthship is also one of the most inspiring parts of this project. Students from both USF and SPC’s Sustainability clubs came out to volunteer. People interested in creating their own Earthships as well as the seeing technologies utilized were in attendance for education as well as stuffing a few tires full of dirt. Even the owners of the Earthship, Michael and Denise Pfalzer, came out to move some dirt and tires. Eco-Tech is open sourcing their information for free to all to utilize as they wish. Even the landscape will change to permaculture design. A permaculture design course had taken place back in March at the site. The students designed the landscape to become an edible food forest (fruit trees surrounded by vegetable ground cover with legumenous trees/plants as well) so that the couple could eventually live off their land with a variety of fruits and vegetables. Swales and ponds were dug up to alter the water flow so the land would be less swampy and more fertile. Floating wetlands will suck up and utilize any extra runoff from nearby farms that might cause algae blooms to start. It’s an extrordinary site seeing this ecologically-based system only a mile or two from typical agriculture that is nothing more than long rows of dirt covered with plastic and sprayed with with nutrients and pesticides. On the two hour ride home from a long day volunteering I couldn’t help but ponder all my life experiences leading to these last few months. As I mentioned in my first blog, I spent my teenage and young adult life working in the construction industry in Pasco. We built homes out of cheap materials to produce way too many homes causing a glut that Florida will have to contend with for years to come. As my framer friend mentioned “We worked ourselves out of a job”. These homes were all built with money in mind, not efficiency. We could put as many people as we needed to work retrofitting these homes to be more self sufficient and people more self reliant. This shift of thinking will be so radical to the mindset of before. I see pioneers abound throughout the Tampa Bay area. We have to move away from linear thinking that produces waste and is reliant on a dominator society. This transition to a partnership culture where we respect and partner with nature and each other to achieve a lifestyle worth living is the most admirable course we can pursue in our lifetimes. We are not just securing the future for ourselves, but we are helping to secure the future for human beings as a species. It’s all but a choice, we must chose to live permanently on this planet or we will lose the opportunity to live at all. Earthships are such a way of living in partnership with the world. Thanks for reading, Please share this blog with others! Eric Stewart Director of Code Green Community Follow me on Twitter: @code_green www.codegreencommunity.org blogs.creativeloafing.com