Green Options » 9/11

See a Battery, Pick It Up

Rhonda Winter — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:08:07 +0000

See a battery, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck. Especially if you take the battery that you found and safely recycle it, keeping dangerous toxic poisons out of our seas and drinking water.

I found this used battery near the ocean in Pacifica, right across from our friend Rick’s Salada Beach Cafe. It has since been safely recycled, and kept from polluting our waterways.

Our oceans are already turning into acid. We have to start today to try to make things better. Keeping one more toxic battery or piece of plastic out of our oceans, collectively, will make a difference. Once you start looking, you may be really surprised just how many “disposable” batteries litter our streets and sewers. Next time you see one, pick it up; what you do matters.

After Van Jones Resigns, His ‘Homeboys’ Keep on ‘Greening the Ghetto’

Joe Walsh — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:09:45 +0000

Even in the midst of the health care fight, the Sunday talk shows devoted some time to the political fallout from the resignation of Van Jones, and with his resignation over the weekend, the former White House green jobs czar has become a national object lesson in partisan politicking. But, outside of the American political media vacuum, Jones’ green-jobs-for -the-urban-poor programming will be his lasting legacy.

For example, take this morning’s BBC feature on Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, a part of the British news radio network’s recent series of features on the US economic downturn and its ground-level impacts in California. The BBC focused on some of the funding problems that Homeboy faces in these times of both declining philanthropy and state budgets.

Still, the organization - devoted to reintegrating former LA-area gangbangers by providing everything from job training to tattoo removal - is finding a productive niche in the green-collar economy. Operating under the slogan “nothing stops a bullet like a job,” Homeboy recently began training former gang members as solar panel installers.

Class members in the solar program attend a two-month course - with the $131 tuition and an $8 hourly stipend paid by Homeboys - and graduate with skills that are helping them land jobs that pay from $15 to upwards of $30 an hour. If programs like Homeboy’s can catch on the way that Jones has envisioned, the average political observer some years hence may remember Jones more for the green-collar economic policies that the BBC highlighted rather than as the political cautionary tale that defined his 15 minutes of fame over one Labor Day weekend.

Illustration of Van Jones “greening the ghetto” by RADillustrates at Flickr.

Eliica Electric Car Accelerates Faster Than a Porsche 911

Andrew Williams — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:00:13 +0000

A Japanese professor has showcased an electric car capable of reaching a blistering 100 km/h (62 mph) in 4 seconds, quicker than a Porsche 911 [video].

The Eliica, created by Prof. Hiroshi Shimizo of Keio University, can also reach a phenomenal top speed of 370 km/h (270 mph), powered by li-ion batteries via 100 hp electric motors in each of its eight wheels.

Shimizo is understandably proud of his creation, telling reporters, “The feeling of acceleration you get with this model is something automotive technology could not produce, even in a hundred years of combustion engine cars.”

Does Terrorism Have An Economic Motive?

Reenita Malhotra — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:31:31 +0000

In the world Islamic fundamentalism, most of us believe that terrorism is brought about by religious bias. But the terrorist might in fact have an economic motive. It is abundantly clear that he who risks and often sacrifices his own life in the very act of creating terror does not have a personal economic motive however it is likely that he is motivated to destroy economies. Wealth, abundance and prosperity after all symbolize the ‘evil’ that the Islamist sees as an adversary.

Terrorist attacks occur almost daily in larger and smaller numbers impacting civilians all over the world (Terrorism Research Center) however it is the large scale attacks in major global financial centers that leave the world reeling in shock. An attack on a town in Afghanistan, Gujarat or Dagestan is quickly forgotten as people resume their daily lives the next day. But an attack on New York or London destabilizes the country’s entire economic machine for several days, leaving its citizens and those elsewhere in the world fearful and helpless. When the major financial center is Mumbai, the nerve center of an economy that is growing at 9% per annum, the terrorist’s motive is greater. Perhaps because economic growth in a country with which a terrorist can ethnically identify, is a telling sign that the threads of ‘evil’ have become deeply ingrained within his own people.

BBC released a documentary in 2005 entitled “The Power of Nightmares.” It outlines the history of the Neo-Conservative movement in America and interestingly enough it shows how Al-Qaeda and the Neo-Conservatives were rooted in the same ideology: that the economic prosperity of the West represented a decline of social values. For the Neo-Cons this spurred a desire to create state terror in the guise of war. For Al-Qaeda it spurred a desire to declare war in the guise of terror.