In the constant push for ever newer and greener technology and energy, we sometimes forget that it is often both simpler and cheaper to revisit old techniques in new ways. And that’s exactly what a group of researchers in California has done.
In France, the Old Left is rising again. Working people are becoming angry that bankers are being bailed out to continue to pay obscene bonuses while ordinary peoples’ jobs go to the wall. Governments are under pressure to limit mass unemployment as a result of the recession. But this cannot be done by propping up environmentally-dangerous industries. They must be required to change. It’s a story of danger – and of opportunity.
As the rumbling temblors beneath Yellowstone National Park continue (over 900 hundred such weak quakes in 2008), media attention shifts to two topics: the possibility of a super-volcanic eruption (not likely, according to most geologists), and secondly, the harnessing of geothermal energy.
This latter consideration is all the more fashionable these days as America struggles to embrace an alternative and sustainable energy future.
Geothermal energy offers the promise of a virtually unlimited source of power. Although less energetic in terms of total constant power output compared to the sun, harnessing the geothermal venting from a single, sufficiently high-grade, hot-spring could conceivably provide power for a population of tens of thousands, and it’s not weather dependent. But there are also plenty of “lower grade” springs that can be put to other uses, such as growing hothouse produce (and the spring water is also used for watering the plants) and naturally warming water for fish farming (the Talipia species, a popular dinner fish, is one species farmed this way). Not all animals that are farmed this way are used for food, some, like the farmed alligators in Mosca, CO (see photo), are raised for their skins primarily (though some do eat the meat).
Making green the new business as usual is catching on fast. Smart business leaders are looking for ways to cut costs and reduce their environmental impact — but they may not know exactly how to do it.Environmental Defense Fund has just launched the Innovation Exchange, a first-of-its-kind online resource that allows businesses to quickly identify steps they can take, from greening their fleets to reducing paper use.
The new EDF site provides companies with recommendations, case studies, publications and tools to make changes that are good for the environment and the bottom line, for example:
Worldwide, many industrial processes depend on steam boilers that are powered by what’s called heavy fuel oil (HFO). In the US, where coal and natural gas are plentiful, boilers are not typically run on HFO, but many homes in the Northeast US are still heated with furnaces that use HFO. These boilers are notorious for spewing out toxins into the environment when untreated.
A previous post, Rolling Blackouts to Benefit South Africa, hypothesised that the strong reaction to the rolling blackouts Eskom was forced to implement has resulted in urgent
action which will in the medium term ensure South Africa has the energy systems it needs for its long term development.
In 2004 the three major users of electricity in South Africa were Industry (64.6%), Residential (17.4%) and Commerce (12.0%). It was therefore logical that once Eskom, with the “urging” of Government, faced the situation and took co-ordinated action it went to industry.
Discussions with industries and especially the large users in mining and manufacturing, were based on Eskom admitting that it was unable to guarantee supplies to industry, presenting a long term plan of action and requesting that industry manage itself to achieve an immediate 10% reduction in its consumption.
Industry supported the request although it lead to week long shut downs of a number of mines which were unable to immediately reduce their consumption without effecting the complete process.
This was termed Phase 1 of the National Emergency Response Plan and was mainly aimed at stabilising the system to avoid catastrophic shut downs that could result from instability induced by too small a margin between demand and supply.
A new report says that global warming could cost the Californian economy billions of dollars each year, through a combination of rising sea levels, and the increased frequency of wild fires and extreme weather events.
Utility company Southern California Edison (SCE) has confirmed plans to build a massive 909 MW wind farm in Oregon. When completed, the facility will be one of the largest fully permitted wind power sites anywhere in the world.
The installation will be located in Morrow and Gilliam counties in North-Central Oregon, and will consist of 303 3MW wind turbines spread across a 30-mile radius. The project, called Caithness Shepherd’s Flat, will generate around two billion kWh of energy, roughly 10 per cent of SCE’s total alternative energy portfolio.
Dear Readers,
Some of you have inquired about how I’ve been spending my time since wrapping up production (and living) on the Sust Enable project at the end of July. As I wrote in my post “Voyage to the Center of the United States,” my August was spent travelling the country, experiencing its still awe-inspiring natural beauty.
Since mid-September, I have taken work waitressing nearly full time at a restaurant. And no, that isn’t sustainable.
Sust Enable, my three month foray of 100% sustainable living, taught me a lot of things. The first thing I noticed after the project concluded is that I was hopelessly broke. Trying to innovate a radical new eco-conscious way of living doesn’t pay… rather, it sapped money, as I watched my planned resources for feeding and housing myself in a “100% sustainable” way fall through.
Partly, I am okay that the Sust Enable project didn’t pay me at all–it was an educational experience to
me about how money works from an outsider’s perspective. On the other hand, I was teetering near the brink of not being able to provide for myself–literally! As much as I loathe the fact, nearly all systems for providing for one’s basic needs exist within the money-exchange system. The ones outside of such a system and potentially sustainable, as I learned, are either insufficient, unavailable, or sabotaged at every possible opportunity by the capitalist system–by business owners, managers, policies, laws.
So, come September, I decided I really would like a place to myself. I really would like to be warmed in freezing weather. I really would like to have food readily accessible to me. Basic ideas, no? Certainly, each of these systems in their current states are unsustainable in terms of the environment. But at the very least, I now have a perspective on how that might be different in the future, and can hopefully work to create a society that doesn’t have to trade the health of our air or water for our immediate stability and livelihood.
Working as a server in a restaurant has been a difficult situation for me. I know I need the money… but holding that thought aloft every day above a sea of swirling, conflicting passions has been challenging. I watch perfectly good food go uneaten and thrown out–but paid for–because of the sentiments that day of the purchaser. 
I see inordinate amounts of cruel and unsustainably-harvested meat–from steak to seafood–served with enhancing garnishes on plates to carefree consumers, who will never feel or see the horrors of a meatpacking factory. Money accounts for all. I see servers, some of the hardest working people I have ever met, go untipped (our main source of income) by a table of cheerful business people. But most of all, I see a continuous flow of garbage–paper, plastic, glass, and food–into the trash bins.
This blog post was written in response to some unusually caustic replies received on my last Sustainablog post, “The Dissonance Between Dreams: Re-writing the Sust Enable Episode Scripts.” It was composed in the interrim between the second-to-last comment, and the final comment, which clarifies the author’s tone a bit and does lay out some common ground. However, based only on reading the comment quoted below, the commenter inspired deep meditation into myself and to what extent I am trying to exploit privilege–even while claiming to be 100% supportive of global sustainability. View the comments here.
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“It’s only irrelevant in the context of one who still feels entitled to the comforts and privileges that being white in Western civilization has afforded her.”
Overall, I think the most crucial component of changing the world is not privilege: it is responsibility. As someone who was born into a world with social systems favoring her, it is my responsibility to address and counteract these effects. As someone who enjoys the benefits (but not the costs) of systems that hurt the environment for future generations, I have the responsibility to try to undo the harm done in my name or the name of the dollar I spend.
You disparage psychology, but I believe that our shared psychological needs-take Maslow’s pyramid, for example-absolutely influences the immediate decision-making process of every human being. For Americans, it means that we often don’t opt to do the most responsible thing, if it is not also the most convenient and most personally-positive thing as well. Once again, this all goes back to perspective-if a hot shower feels good to me immediately, and I will never feel the worldwide damage that such an action causes, then I can hide from such knowledge and forgive myself for a single shower. With millions of people making such inner decisions-in situations with varying stakes-well, most of us can see the problem we are facing now.
I think psychology will be key, too, in fixing this little biological oversight-we can create social systems which enforce a global responsibility in personal situations (where our limited perspectives are failing us). If we can unite on truly valuing the Earth’s biosphere, then we as people, as lawmakers, can create systems of justice-environmental justice-that as validly as possible account for additions and subtractions of valuable assets within the Earth’s limited resources. This idea may sound radical-but it is amazingly simple. Often, the average person forgets that he or she is a lawmaker-that laws are not sacred nor eternal. People make them and break them according to their needs.
James Lovelock’s Gaia theory, that the Earth is a single living organism, has been invoked countless times by environmentalists. In their uses (and abuses) of it, the theory becomes evidence for humanity’s connection with nature and so our responsibility to treat nature with care.
In fact, Lovelock is anything but an “environmentalist” in the traditional sense. Nor is he a staunch advocate for rigorous conservation and “dehumanization” of the planet, at least in his first book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979). He quite often criticizes as fatuous and downright silly many environmentalists’ claims, using evidence gathered from his work in the sciences.
One passage in Gaia struck me as extremely provocative despite being written nearly thirty years ago. Discussing the atmospheric gases, specifically those produced by human industry, Lovelock writes,
In our persistent self-imposed alienation from nature, we tend to think that our industrial products are not ‘natural’. In fact, they are just as natural as all the other chemicals of the Earth, for they have been made by us, who surely are living creatures. They may of course be aggressive and dangerous, like nerve gases, but no more so than the toxin manufactured by the botulinus bacillus.1
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