John Francis is one of the heppest cats ever.

>This man is amazing and if there is a heaven…he has a place.
>
>

 

Ped Dispenser

John Francis, a 'planetwalker'

who lived car-free and silent for

 17 years, chats with Grist

By Mark Hertsgaard

10 May 2005

Read more about: green living

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How long could you survive without your car? For the many Americans

 who think nothing of driving 10 blocks to buy a gallon of milk, the answer

is obvious. But before any of you dedicated pedestrians and die-hard

cyclists start feeling smug, try this question: How long could you survive

 without talking?

 

John Francis.

Photo: Courtesy of Planetwalk.

Chances are, nowhere near as long as John Francis did. After a massive oil

spill polluted San Francisco Bay in 1971, Francis gave up all motorized

transportation. For 22 years, he walked everywhere he went -- including

 treks across the entire United States and much of South America --

hoping to inspire others to drop out of the petroleum economy.

Soon after he stopped riding in cars, Francis, the son of working-class,

 African-American parents in Philadelphia, also stopped speaking. For

17 years, he communicated only through improvised sign language,

 notes, and his ever-present banjo. The environmental pilgrim says

he took his vow of silence as a gift to his community "because, man,

I just argued all the time." But it may have been Francis who benefited

most of all. For the first time, he found he was able to truly listen to

 other people and the larger world around him, transforming his approach

 to both personal communication and environmental activism.

Francis started speaking again on Earth Day 1990. The very next day,

 he was struck by a car. He refused to ride in the ambulance, insisting

 on walking to the hospital instead. With a Ph.D. in land resources

(earned during his silence), he was later recruited by the U.S. Coast

 Guard to write oil-spill regulations and by the United Nations Environment

Program to serve as a goodwill ambassador.

Francis, the author of Planetwalker: How to Change Your World One Step at a Time,

 is now preparing for a second environmental walk across America. He

 spoke with writer Mark Hertsgaard about how social change happens,

 the decency he encountered among red-state Americans, and the

importance of bridging the chasm between white and black environmentalists.

If Europe Can Do It Why Can’t We? – because we got OIL GUYS as president and vice president

 Sorry about the look of the blog. My scanner did not do a very good job and I tossed

 the piece before I put this up. The point is that if we had not wasted the last 7 years on

two of the worst leaders we have ever elected at the worst time we could do it. George

Bush and Dick Cheney could be remembered as the Americans that killed the Planet.

Sunday, October 14, 2007


THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER




CLEANUP in EUROPE

Cities act to prevent more climate

damage

By KARL HITTER

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

V

AXJO, Sweden—When this quiet city in southern Sweden decided in 1996 to wean itself off

 fossil fuels, most people doubted the ambi­tious goal would have any impact beyond the

town limits.

A few melting glaciers later, Vaxjo is attracting a green pilgrim­age of politicians, scientists and

business leaders from as far afield as the U.S. and North Korea seek­ing inspiration from a city

pro­gram that has allowed it to cut CO2 emissions 30 percent since 1993.

Vaxjo is a pioneer in a growing movement in dozens of European cities, large and small,

that aren’t waiting for national or internation­al measures to curb global warm­ing.

From London’s congestion charge to Paris’ city bike program and Barcelona’s solar power

cam­paign

, initiatives taken at the local level are being introduced across the continent — often influencing

national policies instead of the other way around.

“People used to ask: Isn’t it bet­ter to do this at a national or inter­national level?” said Henrik

Jo­hansson,

 environmental controller in Vaxjo, a city of 78,000 on the shores of Lake Helga, surrounded

 by thick

pine forest in the heart of Smaland province. “We want to show everyone else that you can

accomplish a lot at the local level.”

The European Union, mindful that many member states are fail­ing to meet mandated emissions

cuts under the Kyoto climate treaty, has taken notice of the trend and is encouraging cities to

adopt their own emissions targets. The bloc awarded one of its inau­gural Sustainable Energy

 Europe

awards this year to Vaxjo, which aims to have cut emissions by 50 percent by 2010 and

70 percent by 2025.


Stepping up for a cleaner Europe

There is a growing green movement afoot in European cities to curb global- warming

without waiting for national or international programs.

Cities controlling carbon dioxide emissions

Vaxjo, Sweden  stoppedusing fossil fuels in

1996; wood chips from sawmills replaced oil at

power plants

 Barcelona, Spain required new buildings in 2006 to install solar

panelsto generate 100 percent of energy for hot water.

 

Copenhagen, Denmarkintroduced apublic bike service

in 1995, allowing fine pick up and return of bikes at

dozens of stations

Stockholm, Copenhagen and London have set targets to cut CO2

emissions by 60 percent by 2025

AP

SOURCES: City of Vaxjo; AP reporting

Bo­gota, the capital of Colombia, has reduced emissions with the Trans-Mileni

 municipal bus system and an extensive network of bicycle paths.

In Vaxjo, (pronounced VECK-shur), the vast majority of emis­sions cuts

 have been achieved at the heating and power plant, which replaced oil with

 wood chips from local sawmills as its main source of fuel. Ashes from the

 furnace are returned to the for­est as nutrients.


Without stronger na­tional policies promoting biofuels over gasoline, Vaxjo,

for one, will never reach its long-term target of becoming free of fossil fuels.

But it’s doing what it can locally. So-called “green cars” running on biofuels

 park free anywhere in the city. About one-fifth of the city’s fleet runs on biogas

produced at the sewage treatment plant.

Using biofuels instead of gaso­line in cars is generally considered to

 cut C02 emissions, although some scientists say greenhouse gases

released during the produc­tion of biofuel crops can offset those gains.

Vaxjo has also invested in ener­gy efficiency, from the light bulbs used

 in street lights to a new resi­dential area with Europe’s tallest all-wood

apartment buildings. Wood requires less energy to pro­duce than steel or

concrete. Although Vaxjo is tiny by com­parison, the C40 group, including major

 metropolitan centers such as New York, Mexico City and Tokyo, has been impressed

by the city’s progress and uses it as an example of “best practices” around the world.

“They’re a small town,” Reddy said. “Apply that to 7 million? It’s doable but its going

to take a lot longer.”


 

“We are convinced that the cities are a key element to change behavior and get results,”

said Pedro Ballesteros Torres, manager of the Sustainable Energy Europe campaign.

“Climate change is a global problem but the origin of the problem is very local.”

So far only a handful of Euro­pean capitals have set emissions targets, including Stockholm,

Copenhagen and London. Torres said he hopes to convince about 30 European cities to

commit to tar­gets next year.

While such goals are welcome, they may not always be the best way forward, said

Simon Reddy, who manages the C40 project, a global network of major cities ex­changing i

deas on tackling climate change.

“At the moment a lot of cities don’t know what they’re emitting so it’s very difficult to set

targets,” Reddy said.

More important than emissions targets, he said, is that cities draft action plans, outlining

specific goals needed to reduce emissions, like switching a certain percentage of the public

transit system to al­ternative fuels.

London Mayor Ken Living­stone’s Climate Action Plan calls for cutting the city’s C02

emis­sions by 60 percent in 2025, com­pared to 1990 levels. However, planners acknowledge

the cuts are not realistic unless the govern­ment introduces a system of car­bon pricing.

Barcelona, Spain’s second biggest city, has since 2006 re­quired all new and renovated

buildings to install solar panels to supply at least 60 percent of the energy needed to heat

 water. It’s not only in Europe that cities are taking action o

n climate change.

Several U.S. cities including Austin, Texas; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle

have launched programs to emulate Europe.


We run on local resources said plant manager Ulf Johnsson, scooping up a fistful of wood

chips from a giant heap outside the fac­tory.

He had just led Michael Wood, the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, on a guided tour of

 the facility, which is considered state of the art. Not only does it generate elec­tricity,

but the water that warms up as it cools the plant is used to heating homes and offices

in Vaxjo.

Every week, foreign visitors ar­rive to see Vaxjo’s environmental campaign. Last year,

even a dele­gation of 10 energy officials from reclusive North Korea got a tour.

A similar but much larger sys­tem is in place in Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital, where

waste heat from incineration and com­bined heat and power plants is pumped through a

 purpose-built 800-mile network of pipes to 97 percent of the city.

Copenhagen is often cited as a climate pioneer among European cities. It cut (f02 emissions

 by 187,600 tons annually in the late ’90s by switching from coal to nat­ural gas and friofuels

at its energy plants. Its goal is to reduce emis­sions by 35 percent by 2010, com­pared to

1990 levels, even more ambitious than Denmark’s nation­al target of 21 percent cuts under

the Kyoto accord.

In 1995, the city became one of the first European capitals to in­troduce a public bicycle service that lets people pick up and return bikes at dozens of stations city-wide for a small fee. Similar initia­tives have since taken root in Paris and several other European cities.

Next, Copenhagen plans to spend about $38 million on vari­ous initiatives to get more resi­dents to use bicycles instead of cars.

Transport is one of the hardest areas for local leaders to control since traffic is not confined to a single area.

Al Gore Wins The Nobel Prize! Congratulations

Yah I know this is old news, but I was busy with the Presidential Candidates for 2008 when he won the Prize. Al Gore was the best Presidential Candidate we never elected. Or at least the Supreme Court never allowed to be President.

 

I believe that one of the most obnoxious slanders of Al Gore was the ridicule he received about his statement that he invented the Internet. When in fact he advocated for and helped sign the bill that DID create the backbone of the Internet.

 In the 1970s universities and the military had access to 2 long distance telephone lines that had been put up and paid for years before. These lines were termed WAIS lines and WAIICS lines that only the military and universities had access to transmit data around the country for free or dramatically reduced rates. This was when there was only one telephone company, AT & T. Though it was only a few years from being broken up into the Baby Bells.

Al Gore, in the early 80’s shepherded a bill through congress that opened those lines to commercial activity forming the backbone of the modern Internet. As a user, you only pay for the telephone connection to your ISP, not the connection between your ISP and other ISPs your Internet travels will use. This birthed the Internet, as we know it. It was a tough bill to pass. The Military, the Universities, and AT&T opposed it! But it was passed and that led to the expansion of the ARPnet into the Internet that we know today. Without it the Internet would have been too expensive for any private citizen to use.

Yeh and Thank YOU Al Gore.!!! Congratulations on your Nobel Prize. You deserve it sir.

The Best Energy Policy in the Presidential Race – Drum roll please

The real Difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats recognize that the carbon economy has to end if we are to survive as a species. The Republicans still believe that the carbon economy is here to stay, we have just have to make it “better”. That was a tenable idea (though wrong) 30 years ago. It is dead wrong now.

Richardson is by far the best candidate on Energy Issues. However, the Democrats get it – the Republicans don’t.  Energy will be one of most important issues if not THE most important issue of the 2008 race.

Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Richardson, Bidden, Dodd, Kucinich, Gravel? This is a Real Tough Call

Unlike the Republicans, ALL of the Democrat Presidential Candidates HAVE Energy Policies!

Disclaimer 1: Gravel’s Policy is so dislike the others that I am not sure it can be “compared” to anyone elses.

Disclaimer 2: I still can not get Dodd’s Energy Issues to open. Not sure whether its my computer or his, but its a windows issue so I am sure others are having the same problem.

Disclaimer 3: I am a Richardson Supporter.

Disclaimer 4: CES can not endorse political candidates! This is a statement about about whose Energy Policy is the best.

Having said that, There are very few differences between Obama, Bidden, Kucinich, and Richardson’s Energy Policies. They are agressive and huge. They vary in perspective and focus. Kucinich in particular gets huge kudos and hurrays for having an excellent section on the relationship between global warming, energy efficiency and WATER. Fact is the climate won’t kill us but the lack of fresh water will. Of course, fresh water will be what evaporates first as the globe continues to warm.

Also Bidden gets much praise for his aggressive approach to automobile and gasoline consumption.

Obama gets similar praise for including a plan to train poor and under educated young people in the green building trades so they can particpate in the new economy.

I pick Richardson’s Policies because he has a committment to stay ahead of the Kyoto accords by 10 years, his requirement that the Energy companies pay for it, and his EXPERIENCE as Energy Secretary. His opposition to any form of emissions is well know and thats what we have to do to survive. We Must Stop The Burning.

Zenn, EEStor, and Venture Capitalist Kleiner Perkins Cauflield and Byers All Bet ON Patent #7,033,406

Invention suggests car

-energy revolution

By GRANT SLATER

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

AUSTIN, Texas — Millions of inventions pass quietly through the U.S. patent office each

year. Patent No. 7,033,406 did, too, until energy insiders spotted six words in the filing

that sounded like a death knell for the internal combustion engine.An Austin-based

startup called EEStor promised “tech­nologies for replacement of electrochemical

batteries,” meaning a motorist could plug in a car for five minutes and drive 500 miles

roundtrip be­tween Dallas and Houston without gasoline.

“THE ACHILLES’ HEEL to the electric car industry has

 been energy storage. By all rights, this would make

internal combustion engines unnecessary.”

IAN CLIFFORD,

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF

ZENN MOTOR CO., WHICH

LICENSED THE INVENTION

By contrast, some plug-in hybrids on the horizon would require motorists to

charge their cars in a wall outlet overnight and promise only 50 miles of

gasoline-free com­mute. And the popular hybrids on the road today still depend

heavily on fossil fuels. “It’s a paradigm shift,” said Ian Clifford,

chief executive of Toronto-based ZENN Motor Co., which has licensed EEStor’s

invention. “The Achilles’ heel to the electric car industry has been energy

 stor­age. By all rights, this would make internal combustion en­gines unnecessary.”


Clifford’s company bought rights to EEStor’s technology in August 2005

and expects EEStor to start shipping the battery replacement later this

year for use in ZENN Motor’s short-range, low-speed vehi­cles. The technology

also could help invigorate the renewable-energy sector by providing

ef­ficient, lightning-fast storage for solar power, or, on a small scale, a flash-charge

 for cell phones and laptops. Skeptics, though, fear the claims stretch

 the bounds of existing technology to the point of alchemy. “We’ve been

trying to make this type of thing for 20 years, and no one has

been able to do it,” said Robert Hebner, direc­tor of the University of

Texas Center for Electromechanics. “Depending on who you be­lieve, they’re

at or beyond the limit of what is possible. “EEStor’s secret ingredient is

a material sandwiched be­tween thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets,

like a series of foil-and-paper gum wrappers stacked on top of each other.

INVENTION

• From page 47

Charged particles stick to the metal sheets and move quickly across EEStor’s

proprietary materi­al. The result is an ultracapacitor, a battery-like device that

stores and releases energy quickly. Batteries rely on chemical reac­tions to store

energy but can take hours to charge and release energy. The simplest

capacitors found in computers and radios hold less en­ergy but can charge or

 discharge in­stantly. Ultracapacitors take the best of both, stacking capacitors

to increase capacity while maintaining the speed of simple capacitors. Hebner said

vehicles require bursts of energy to accelerate, a task better suited for

capacitors than batteries. But Hebner said nothing close to EEStor’s claim

exists today. For years, EEStor has tried to fly beneath the radar in the competitive

industry for alternative energy, con­tent with a phone-book listing and a handful of

cryptic press releases. Yet the speculation and skepti­cism have

continued, fueled by the company’s original assertion of making batteries obsolete

 — a claim that still resonates loudly for a com­pany that rarely speaks,

including declining an interview with The As­sociated Press.

The deal with ZENN Motor and a $3 million investment by the ven­ture capital

group Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which made big-payoff early bets

on companies like Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., hint that EEStor may be

on the edge of a breakthrough technology, a “game changer” as Clifford put it.

ZENN Motor’s public reports show that it so far has invested $3.8 million and

 has promised another $1.2 million if the ultracapacitor company meets

a third-party testing standard and delivers a product Clifford said his

company con­sulted experts and did a “tremen­dous amount of due diligence” on

EEStor’s innovation. EEStor’s founders have a track record. Richard D. Weir

and Carl Nelson worked on disk-storage technology at IBM Corp. in the

1990s before forming EEStor in 2001. The two have acquired dozens of

patents in two decades. Neil Dikeman of Jane Capital Partners, an investor in

clean tech­nologies, said the nearly $7 million investment in EEStor pales

com­pared with other energy storage en­deavors, where investment has av­eraged

$50 million to $100 million. Yet curiosity is unusually high, Dikeman said, thanks

to the invest­ment by a prominent venture capi­tal group and EEStor’s

secretive na­ture. “The EEStor claims are around a process that would be

quite revolu­tionary if they can make it work,” Dikeman said. Previous attempts to

improve ultracapacitors have focused on im­proving the metal sheets by increas­ing

the surface area where charges can attach. EEStor is instead creating better nonconductive

material for use be­tween the metal sheets, using a chemical compound called barium

titanate. The question  is whether the company can mass-produce it. ZENN Motor

pays EEStor for passing milestones in the produc­tion process, and chemical

re­searchers say the strength and func­tionality of this material is the only thing

standing between EEStor and the holy grail of energy-storage technology.

Joseph Perry and the other re­searchers he oversees at Georgia Tech say

 EEstor seems to be claim­ing a 400-fold improvement of a ca­pacitor’s retention

ability, yet in­creasing that ability often results in decreased strength of the materials.

“They’re not saying a lot about how they’re making these things,” Perry said. 

electric-car.jpg

More New Orleans

 “I wanted to write about this story when it broke in March but we were just setting up the website and I was up to my neck in the FREEZE Legislation which was just signed today!!! as Senate Bill 1592. Please see the Bulletin Board for the details. And I had not even tackled the Bulletin Board let alone this blog but since the last entry was about NOLA I thought I would go back and get it. I lived in NOLA for 12 years and I KNOW a Bruce Harris, so when I first saw the story I almost died, but its not my Bruce.”

 http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=47637

Greening the Future of New Orleans

Residents in the Lower 9th Ward rebuild using donated solar systems from Sharp Solar.

by Stephen Lacey, Staff Writer

New Orleans, Louisiana [RenewableEnergyAccess.com]

Bruce Harris has a big smile on his face. Standing between his small FEMA trailer and peeling yellow house in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, he points to a new inverter attached to the worn clapboard.

“It’s great being a part of the reconstruction effort here — to be installing a solar system for someone who’s going to make great use of it.” 

Harris’ new 1.5-kilowatt (kW) system is one of ten donated to New Orleans residents by the Sharp Solar Energy Solutions Group (SESG) as part of the company’s customer conference, called “SOLA in NOLA.”

 “I also used to work at the Alliance For Affordable Energy, so this story is a double OH YAH for me.”

Namaste Solar and Solar Plexus are two of ten installation companies that have donated their time and labor to put solar systems on the houses of residents in the Lower 9th Ward who are rebuilding their lives after the flooding from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.The other companies participating in the effort include Borrego Solar, Direct Power and Water, Meridian Energy Systems, HelioPower, REgrid Power, Sharpe Solar Energy Systems, Solar Design Associates and Jersey Solar. The teams came down for Sharp’s annual customer conference two days early to install the systems.Sharp partnered with the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, the Alliance for Affordable Energy, Williams Architects and the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources to select the installation sites. Applicants for the systems were put in a lottery and selected at random.

 The immortal truth about this article is that no buildings should be built in this country without power generation installed. And I don’t care how small the building or for that matter how large. If we would have started doing this 30 years ago we would be done, Burning Down The House.

http://www.last.fm/music/Talking+Heads/_/Burning+Down+the+House

Low Burn Behavior Helps Rebuild New Orleans

 http://green.yahoo.com/index.php?q=node/1372

ORLEANS (Reuters) – Calling Hurricane Katrina a “man-made disaster,” actor Brad Pitt said on Tuesday he remains committed to helping the city recover from the storm.Nearly two years after the August 29, 2005 hurricane, the “Ocean’s Thirteen” star said he was at times dismayed by the pace of recovery in New Orleans, where he and partner Angelina Jolie own an elegant townhouse in the historic French Quarter.

Pitt was in the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood to tour an ecologically sustainable single-family home being built by Global Green USA, an environmental group he backs.

The actor praised the house in the Holy Cross area of the ward as a “small victory” for efforts to rebuild the city, but said, “it’s hard to find an overall victory when you see how slowly everything is still moving. And Katrina was a man-made disaster. This house is a man-made solution

Pitt believes this house can do away with power bills. The houses design is a result of a Pitt sponsored green design competition.

The house that Pitt toured, loosely modeled on the distinctive New Orleans “shotgun” style of long, narrow homes, will generate almost all its electricity from 28 roof-mounted solar panels, said Global Green USA president Matt Petersen.

Global Green hopes to use the house, which should be completed this fall, as a prototype for the neighborhood. Built not far from the banks of the Mississippi River and raised by three feet on concrete pilings, it is above sea level.

From the same Bog

 http://earth911.org/blog/2007/08/21/brad-pitt-unveils-eco-friendly-house/

New Orleans has already committed to energy efficiency as it continues to rebuild in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The house Pitt toured was built above sea level, which may be a good idea given that levees have still not been fully repaired in the city. For more Green Building news, visit Earth 911’s Green Building archive.

To see a virtual tour or the house use the link below:

http://holycrossproject.globalgreen.org/flash/virtualhouse.html

Energy Tough Love (hot rocks)

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Hot Rocks Energy Generation

I call this blog ENERGY TOUGH LOVE because digging combustables up or cutting them down is so easy it is hard to stop. We, as a species have been doing it for 1000s of years and its a tough habit to break. But we are at a point where burning stuff up is damaging the environment to the point where its STOP BURNING OR DIE.

Lets Face IT, the Sun is on fire, and for all intents and purposes so is the center of the Earth. There is enough stuff burning already in our Solar System that we don’t have to burn more stuff. To prove the point below is a partial discussion of Geothermal steam generation on a scale that could rid ourselves of standard burning type electrical generating stations. 

Saturdays at 8.30am, repeated Mondays at 2.30pm

Presented by Alexandra de Blas

Printer friendly version print

Hot Rock Energy
Saturday 19 June  2004 

Summary
The idea of geothermal or hot rock power has been
around for years. Now it is one of the technologies
that might benefit from the Government’s low emissions
energy fund.

..Program Transcript
–>.. PRINT_CONTENT_START –>Scientists say that pumping water underground to heat it and drive clean electricity production is just around the corner.

The idea of geothermal or hot rock power, has been around for three decades, but realising the vision has proved difficult.

Now though, it’s one of the technologies that might benefit from the government’s low emissions energy fund.

Dr Prame Chopra from the Australian National University is a passionate advocate.

Prame Chopra: The idea is this, you find a place on earth where you can get access to rocks that are at high temperature inexpensively as you can. Everybody knows I guess that the earth gets hotter as you go deeper, in fact the centre of the planet is about the same temperature as the surface of the sun. In fact the deepest well that’s been drilled is only 12 kilometres deep anywhere in the world, and that’s cost billions of dollars, so accessing temperature at shallow depths is the key to making this technology work. Now there are plenty of places in the world where high temperatures come very close to the surface: volcanoes, and geysers and things like this come to mind immediately. Think of New Zealand or Japan or Indonesia, places like this. And of course Australia doesn’t have anything like that, we don’t have any active volcanoes on the mainland, so the original feeling about this technology for Australia was that we really didn’t have a significant resource.

For more of the discussion go to http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/stories/s1135215.htm

The point being we don’t need to dig up coal anymore to heat water..we can do it directly from the source..but it takes the political will to do it.