According to a new study by Environmental Health Perspectives, biking instead of driving for trips under five miles turns out not only to be healthful, cleaner, more fun, etc.–it’s also apparently good for the economy to replace car trips with bike trips.
As a long-term bike fan (and sometime bike commuter all the way back to high school), I’m not surprised.
(via @undriving)
Two commentators demonstrate why solar continues to be viable, and why the dramatic and very public failure of Solyndra has nothing to do with the viability of solar.
On Huffington Post, Graciela Tiscareño-Sato writes, in “A Teaching Moment About the Green Economy,” of several brilliant entrepreneurs who are helping us take big steps toward a green economy, emphasizing multiple benefits such as saving cost and carbon and creating jobs at the same time. Her examples (all from the Latino world, incidentally) cover the building industry (specifically, solarizing schools in California), fashion, eco-consulting, and more.
And in the New York Times, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman points out that Solyndra’s failure was directly related to the success of solar. Solyndra’s model was based in high prices and scarcity, but as solar becomes more popular, the energy equivalent of the computer industry’s Moore’s Law kicks in; we get ever-more-powerful, cheaper, more effective systems as the quantity goes up. Solyndra couldn’t compete with the new low-cost solar providers. (Note: this is a different aspect of the same article I blogged about yesterday.)
A new European survey shows a substantial majority of consumers and business decision makers are eager to invest in energy efficiency.
(Thanks to @thecentristword for sharing the link on Twitter).
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, in the NYT, on why the solar economy is really here, and why natural gas fracking is a lousy idea.
(Thanks for the link, Bobby Cookie Hirtle)
An eerie, devastated, and highly radioactive place, according to the New York Times.
Nuclear power is NOT the answer. It has an abysmal record. The March 2011 accidents are only the latest in a long line of hundreds of mishaps, including earlier accidents at Fukushima going back to 1985.
Even a majority of Republicans, according to this detailed survey of Americans’ feelings on alternative energy in Huffington Post.
A popular slogan during the 1960s was “If the people lead, the politicians will follow.” Might be time to bring that one back.
Thanks to C Gauvin for the link.
A lot of visionary people out there are convinced that pretty much anything in the waste stream can be turned to more productive use. And quite a number of them are building low-cost houses out of other people’s discarded junk.
The above link takes you to several articles, with cool photos, about various people who are doing just that. (Note that the first, second, and fourth links all cover the work of one man, Dan Phillips of Huntsville, Texas—but with different pictures and narrative).
What I love about this kind of approach is that it simultaneously accomplishes multiple goods:
Here’s a company that’s been selling hand-made recycled art papers since 1998 (think about really cool and classy invitations)—and has just developed a new paper line using post-brewery barley as one of the ingredients—and being smart marketers, billing it as the first beer paper. They sponsored this morning’s HARO, and thus, I learned about them. I clicked over half expecting some very rough page put up by a few carousing fratboys–boy, was I wrong! These people love the earth and love what they do, which is obvious on every page of their site.
The firm is called Twisted Limb, out of Bloomington, Indiana. I love their sustainability page, too.
I love this! Recognizing that they need to be part of the solution and not just the agitation, permaculture experts have started some deep green initiatives including graywater recycling–at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, home to the original Occupy Wall Street demonstration/encampment.
Once again, the protests remind me of the remarkable communities we had during the Seabrook occupation and our subsequent incarceration at various national guard armories, back in 1977.
Note: if they can do permaculture in an impermanent camp in a city park, we should be able to do it all over the country and the world in our permanent dwellings.
A new poll by the University of Texas shows 76 percent of Americans think we should be doing more on renewable energy—so we’ve made good progress in penetrating consciousness.
Yet only 5 percent see energy or the environment as the top government priorities. Jobs, not surprisingly, topped the list with 37 percent.