Eco & Energy

A few months ago I decided to look into buying a used Nissan leaf.  For $4-6k one can get a 2012-14 Leaf with about 70% battery pack life left and around 100 miles per charge.  With a little upgrade one can increase that range to 200miles.   I could use WinSol so!ar and battery system to charge the Leaf and meet 80% of my driving needs.  I would still keep my current AWD SUV for winter and super long distance (SLC, Oregon+) trips. And then I read a WIRED article about e-cars being a big problem.  https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-i-used-to-love-cars-heres-what-drove-me-away/ https://eu.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2019/10/23/european-countries-like-germany-italy-and-netherlands-e-bikes-now-make-up-nearly-quarter-all-bike-sa/4022117002/ And it wasn't about hydrogen or any fuel, but about the car itself and how we've been snookered by politicians and corporations into believing that all we need to do is get a zero emission car and our environment will l...

California's 'planned public safety power outages' is one new concept that will require major re-thinking of our infrastructure - and this is a VERY GOOD THING.  It's about time we get away from a 150 year-old concept of centralized power grids.  I hope to see the deconstruction of those massive transmission lines and those ugly neighborhood overhead electrical lines.  We have two solutions at hand (and many more to come):  whole-house battery powerpacks, and microgrids. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last year these frequent 'public safety' power outages bewildered California residents.  The number of complaints and whining about them was excessively unfounded.   In response, many homeowners are installing generators.  This action alone is indicative of our continued laziness, ignorance and/or denial of global warming, and more importantly a failure of the renewable energy industry to seize upon...

Patagonia i s an enigma.       It's founder, Yvon Choinard is a legend in so many ways. Patagonia was one of the first mainstream companies to be certified Cradle-to-Cradle .  Their Ventura based manufacturing plant is legendary for its surfer and laid-back culture. How does a $1billion company act like a small company?  How does it continue to outperform its competitors?  How does it do more for the environment and real sustainability than most other $1b c ompanies?  Read this Fast Company interview with it's founder and CEO:  ' Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard talks about the sustainability myth, the problem with Amazon—and why it’s not too late to save the planet '   https://www.fastcompany.com/90411397/exclusive-patagonia-founder-yvon-chouinard-talks-about-the-sustainability-myth-the-problem-with-amazon-and-why-its-not-too-late-to-save-the-planet here's one excerpt from  Yvon Chouinard: ' Ultimately, capitalism is going t...

There is no such thing as recycling.     The pop media and consumers are slowly (very! slowly) waking up to this reality.  I first posted that statement in 2005 after my internship with Dr. Michael Braungart at his EPEA office in Hamburg.  Only steel and nylon66 can be truly 'recycled', everything else is down-cycled.   That milk container, water bottle, plastic straw, etc. that you throw in the recyle bin ends up (if you're lucky) being turned into repurposed products such as plastic wood, plastic whatever - but at a HUGE expense.  It's cheaper to make a new plastic bottle than to make one out of recycled bottles. Hence, you'll continue to see a six pack of plastic water bottles selling for $1.  yikes!   And now comes an undercover report of Asian plastic recycling operations that show the reality of this 'recycling' process.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8aVYb-a7Uw&t=646s Marketplace jour...

We’re excited to report that Earth Overshoot Day enjoyed yet another very strong following around the world this year. We have tracked over 5100 media stories in 86 countries. Many reacted, including Austria’s President Van Bellen who  tweeted about it . So did young Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg, prompting  10.5k people  to engage. Chile’s Minister of Environment and chair of the Climate COP25, María Carolina Schmidt Zaldívar, stated that “with Earth Overshoot Day occurring ever earlier in the year, the importance of decisive action is becoming ever more evident.” We also couldn’t agree more with former secretary-general of NATO, Javier Solano,  who wrote  that "the earliest ever Earth Overshoot Day is a stark reminder of how much we demand from our planet, and of the unprecedented energy transition required to combat global warming."  You can see more voices here. Did we miss anything worth sharing ? Please let us know.   ...

So you want to help the planet, do good things but can't seem to stop flying or having less kids?  Try biochar - it's an ancient miracle addition to soil that just may be a tipping point for our very tired soil AND is the process reduces the need for one of the BIG BIG culprits in CO2 levels increasing.  The majority most foods' carbon footprint is in the chemical fertilizers used to 'grow' the animals, fruits and vegies.  While all the attention is on the bad boys of the fossil fuel industry the biggest polluter of them all - the chemical industry - is getting a pass.  Our media considers this too boring to report on, since it won't sell more clicks, ads, or print. So here's all you need to know about biochar:  This is a new(?) miracle soil amendment that is rocking through farmlands around the globe - especially in the USA midwest.  Archeologists first discovered the concept of biochar when they unearthed some Aztec & Mayan ruins and found rich, n...

I am constantly impressed with our ingenuity.  And that's why I am a bit optimistic about our future on this planet.  While technology will not be solving most of our issues, it can contribute in a positive way.  In the 70's the term 'appropriate technology' became a buzz word.  To this day we are still trying to define what that means.  The best example of good appropriate technology is LED light bulbs.  They last a long time (until most manufacturers downsized their run hours from 100,000 hours to 20,000 hours - gee, I wonder why? ) Here's another one:  using our discarded plastics as road beds.  Not that we need more roads, but those colored (especially green) plastic bottles that can't be recycled back into something useful are being Vietnam to build roads.   Turns out that other Asian countries have also done this... when will the USA and Europe start doing that? I also found an interesting link on Vietnam's supermarket packaging....