Category Archives: gaia

Large Sequoias point to the death of the Anastasi and other North American Tribes

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No trees were sacrificed to complete this study.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36083323/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Earth’s biggest tree rings tell fiery tales

Fallen giant sequoias reveal a 3,000-year-old history of fire and drought

Image: Tree
Hemera/ThinkStock
The tree rings of 52 fallen giant sequoias, Earth’s biggest trees, have revealed a 3,000-year-old history of droughts and fires.
By Larry O’Hanlon

Using huge chainsaws and strong backs, the largest trees in the world are finally giving up their 3,000-year record of fires and droughts. No trees, however, were harmed in the making of this fire history.

“We only used dead trees,” emphasized tree ring researcher Thomas Swetnam of the University of Arizona. Swetnam led the study that was reported in a recent issue of the journal Fire Ecology. “We spent multiple years collecting the wood and hauling it back to Tucson.”

The giant sequoias in California’s Sequoia National Park are far too thick to be cored for the extraction of the pencil-thin cores typically used by tree ring researchers. So the authors of a new report on tree ring evidence of past droughts and fires used all sorts of other tools to slice and dice 52 giant dead and fallen sequoias, lug the pieces back to roads by hand. Then they spent years piecing together the valuable history in their laboratories.

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This raises the question, “what if you are good to the Earth and it burns you anyway”?

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Green Medicine – How to save energy by never using it in the first place

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Funny I just saw a report on PBS that relates to this:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/latin_america/jan-june10/peru_03-31.html

The vast majority happen in remote areas, 99 percent of them in developing countries. In Peru, a new national strategy to turn those numbers around is taking shape. And the program is being seen as a model for Latin America and the developing world.

Here, in the remote region of Ayacucho, 12,000 feet above sea level, sits the village of Vilcashuaman. Many hours from the nearest airstrip, it’s a town so remote that even the impressive Inca ruins draw few tourists.

A casa materna, or birthing home, was built for women late in pregnancy to live in as their due date nears. And it’s a centerpiece in the government’s new strategy.

Dr. Oscar Ugarte Ubillus is Peru’s health minister.

DR. OSCAR UGARTE UBILLUS, Peruvian health minister (through translator): We detected that one of the critical problems is the amount of time and distance it takes to get attention when complications arise in childbirth. So, we have created 450 waiting homes throughout the country.

RAY SUAREZ: At the casa materna in Vilcashuaman, pregnant women bring their children. They make their own meals with ingredients from a hospital garden, and live as if at home.

Twenty-nine-year-old Eulalia Centro is here with her 1-year-old daughter. Eulalia had her first child at home without complications, before the birthing home existed. But she lives in an area with no roads. It takes a full day on horseback just to get to Vilcashuaman.

So, Eulalia chose to have her second, then her third child at the birthing home.

EULALIA CENTRO, mother (through translator): Pregnant women are always dying at home, so that is why we decided to come here.

RAY SUAREZ: The birthing home is occupied nearly every day of the year. Pregnancies in the region are tracked with a simple felt map. The circles represent each pregnant woman’s home and the number of hours it takes to reach them.

Red felt represents pregnant teenagers, at greater risk for death in childbirth because their bodies haven’t fully matured. Twenty-four-hour staff are trained to deal with obstetric emergencies, like breech babies, placenta blockage, and hemorrhaging.

Josefina Montes Perez is an OB-GYN at the casa.

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They did not try to build an air conditioned hospital, with a helicopter pad filled with 1.5 million $$$ a year doctors. They made it a place where they grow their own food, heat water with the sun, use natural herbs for labor and have an an ambulance, with blood and someone who knows how to control the bleeding if there is a problem. They cut the mortality rate by 50%. You can supply healthcare to people cheap. You can not supply industrial healthcare cheap…what got me to thinking about this?

http://www.greenmedicine.net/

MISSION

The mission of Green Medicine™ is to investigate and support research efforts on medicinal substances and medical foods from Peru.

ABOUT GREEN MEDICINE

GREEN MEDICINE is the website for information on Dr. Williams’ research in the upper Amazon under the Institute for Amazonian Studies (IAS), which he founded in 1996, and the Pino Center for Traditional Healing in 2004. His intention is to advance the mission of Green Medicine by working closely with Peruvian research organizations, individual investigators, universities, socially and environmentally responsible businesses, and traditional tribes of the upper Amazon and Andes for the purpose of exploring the following areas of study:

Evolutionary Biology in Tropical Rainforests:

  • Fragmentation of natural ecosystems
  • Robustness of plant and animal evolution and behavior
  • Complexity theory in natural ecosystems

Basic Research in the Therapeutic Value of Natural Compounds from Plants and Other Biological Substances

  • Development of rainforest botanical and biological medicines and extracts from natural products including antiviral, anticancer, immunomodulatory, and health promoting adaptogenic substances

Healing Methods and Medicines of Traditional Tribal Peoples

  • Ethnobotanical investigation for new plant medicines
  • Ethnomedical investigation of indigenous healing practices in addition to plant medicines
  • Consciousness exploration among indigenous people involving natural entheogenic compounds and medicinal plants

Dr. Williams has been working in Latin American since 1969 and in Peru since 1996.
For information on his books and integrative medicine practice, visit www.drjewilliams.com.
To view his site on shamanic healing, go to www.andeancodex.com.

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Healthcare Is Not Prepared For Peak Oil – In fact it throws our money out the window

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This article is about a year old and it makes points that have been made before, such as:

1. The medical field is not prepared for Global Warming. Our Healthcare system world wide will not be able to cope with the shift in and increase in what are largely thought of as tropical diseases today.

2. Medical Communty’s contribute to Global Warming through inefficiencies.

They also make the point that whether you believe in Peak Oil or not,  Healthcare is addicted to Oil.

3. The pharmaceutical industry’s dependence on Oil would cause it to collapse if oil supplies became restricted or suffered a huge price increase.

4. Hospitals are dependent on electricity (coal) for their medical practices and have very little flexibility built into their practice. eg. No xrays, then what?

But the most telling part for me is the following.

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http://www.greens.org/s-r/45/45-05.html

Medicine at the Crossroads of Energy
and Global Warming

by Dan Bednarz, Ph.D., and Kristin Bradford, M.D., M.P.H.

The difficult thing now is there’s no [longer any] low-hanging fruit. — Roger Elliott, St. Joseph’s Hospital, Chippewa Falls, WI, on efforts to reduce hospital energy costs.

[A]ny field … should be judged by the degree to which it understands, anticipates, and takes action in regard to changes in society. — Bernard Sarason, The Making of an American Psychologist

dot dot dot (as they say)

A given in hospital operations is unlimited inputs of energy and resources; this results in waste in the name of hygiene, insurance and regulatory considerations, and “the best” care. However, the fact that worldwide “energy demand is accelerating” and on its current pace “will double by the year 2050” will soon burst upon medicine.

Turning specifically to energy usage, the Health Care Energy Project tells us that hospitals “use twice as much energy per square foot as office buildings…” In addition, hospitals consume large quantities of petroleum-based, processed, and transported products ranging from aspirin to jells and lubricants to plastic dinnerware and gloves to pharmaceuticals, syringes, IV and dialysis tubing, to name but a few. And most of these items are produced for one-time, non-recyclable use. Petroleum derivatives are also found in many computer parts, electronic equipment, furniture, and so on.

… hospitals “use twice as much energy per square foot as office buildings…”

As noted, hospital administrators are somewhat aware of and responding to the rise in energy costs for heating, cooling, and lighting, primarily by locating the problem in the domain of facilities management. Therefore, controlling energy costs in a hospital largely is confined to electricity and natural gas bills.

As the costs of oil and natural gas have risen in recent years facilities managers are trying to make their buildings more energy efficient, hoping that such savings will offset price rises. Yet, a 2006 survey of hospitals found:

More than 90% … reported higher energy costs over the previous year [2005], and more than half cited increases in double-digit percentages.

The facilities management response is to replace, retrofit or upgrade inefficient infrastructure —boilers, lighting fixtures, building insulation, windows, etc., and in general to “modernize” facilities — in accordance with the Energy Star Program. Some of the newest “green” hospital building approaches promise to reduce energy consumption by as much as 60% below code mandates. This is encouraging, but only a beginning.

However, new construction is done only when it makes “economic sense,” leaving many older hospitals and kindred structures too obsolete to “economically” justify retrofitting or demolishing and replacement — again energy is presumed to be plentiful and cheaper than upgrading — and no consideration whatsoever is given to its scarcity. Moreover, the costs for new hospital construction are soaring, another factor traceable to increasingly expensive fossil fuels. Dave Carpenter, summarizing a 2006 energy survey of hospitals, comments on the constraints facilities managers face:

Money-related reasons were among those given most often in response to a … question asking why recommended energy-saving measures hadn’t been implemented, including 37% who reported a lack of funds. Additionally, 31% cited other priorities, 26% said the payback period was judged to be too long, 23% said operations and maintenance budgets were underfunded and 16% cited lack of senior management commitment and support.

Given these constraints:

Facilities managers have little choice but to stay on the lookout for energy savings wherever they can be found. [One manager] says “it’s going to get worse before it gets better…”

We would argue that “it,” energy costs, will not get better. The entire health care industry will be forced to accommodate to dwindling fossil resources while simultaneously beginning to face the consequences of global warming.

This is stark because the health care system —already stressed in other ways — could begin to fail and even collapse for want of energy and a surge in patients.

… the health care system … could begin to fail and even collapse…

Finally, a word is needed on the third so-called “fall-back” fossil fuel we have barely mentioned, coal, since many energy experts offer it as a painless fix for peak oil. While the high levels of greenhouse emissions of coal are well known, what is less appreciated is that carbon sequestration to control greenhouse emissions is expensive and still an unproven technology. Second, recent reviews have concluded there are substantially less coal reserves than the commonly accepted estimates of 200–300 years supply. Perhaps as little as a few decades of recoverable coal remains, much of it low-grade and high in pollutants.

The dimensions of what we face are uncertain, but the major question undeniably is how will hospitals change given the ecological (global warming as well as multiple sources of pollution and resource scarcity) and geological (twilight of fossil fuels) state of affairs the world now faces?

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And the answer is?

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Healthcare And Computer Energy Savings – Turn them off and save money

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That is right – turn off your computer when not using it and the medical world could save millions of $$$. Why don’t they energy manage their data networks? Because they don’t have to, they think they are Gods.

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http://it.med.miami.edu/x1159.xml

Computer power management

What’s the big deal?

Research shows that personal computers (PC) are not being actively used during the vast majority of the time that they are kept on.  It is estimated that an average PC is in use 4 hours each work day and idle for another 5.5 hours.  It’s also estimated that some 30-40 percent of the US’s work PCs are left running at night and on weekends.

Office equipment is the fastest growing electricity load in the commercial sector.  Computer systems are believed to account for 10 percent or more of commercial electricity consumption already.  Since computer systems generate waste heat, they also increase the amount of electricity necessary to cool office spaces.  (Yes, they lower the cost of heating somewhat.  That’s not a big factor in Miami.)

For the Medical Center, we estimate the savings from PC power management to be hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, even without factoring in increased office cooling costs.  Considerable savings are also possible from easing wear-and-tear on the computers themselves.

If you’d like to make a savings calculation for yourself or your organization — on electricity, dollars, trees, CO2 emissions — you can do that here.

Isn’t this “automatic” on most computers?

Almost all computers and monitors sold in the US today come with ENERGY-STAR energy-saving features.  But they generally don’t work unless you set them.

Both Windows and Apple/Mac systems allow you to set the amount of idle time that occurs before the system goes into “standby” or “sleep”  mode:

  • On Microsoft (Windows) systems, times are set in the Power Options section of the Control Panel.  Get there by the following path: Start > [My Computer >] Control Panel > [Performance and Maintenance >] Power Options.
  • On Apple (OS X) systems, standby and power option settings are set under System Preferences.  Go there and then select Energy Saver.

Standby/sleep modes are suitable for when your computer is idle for an hour or more.  A full system shut-down and power-off is appropriate at the end of the work day.

Will power management hurt my computer?

It’s a myth that turning computers off and on shortens their lives — unless you turn them off many, many, many times every day.  It’s also a myth that starting the computer requires a lot of “extra energy”: it actually only takes the equivalent of a few seconds of running time power.

Computers generate a lot of heat — principally from their central processor units (CPU).  Allowing a “cool down” during a power-off period will generally increase the life span of the entire system.  Allowing your computer to rest its moving parts, like the spinning hard drive, cooling fans, etc., will tend to increase the life-span of those components.

The reboot of the system that takes place when power is restored has another positive effect.  Many software patches and upgrades require a reboot to be fully installed and functional.  A computer that is only rarely rebooted may lag behind on software updates, and accordingly be more vulnerable to malware attacks.

Is there any downside to power management?

Obviously you have to consider the value of your time too.  A fully powered-down “off” computer takes a considerably longer time to restore to operational status than one in stand-by mode.  One in stand-by takes longer to restore than one that is fully on — although not much longer.

We’re not recommending you turn your system entirely off unless you plan to be away from it for a long time — such as at the end of the work day.  We do recommend setting a sleep/stand-by mode for when your system is idle for 30-60 minutes or more.

Unless your system is controlling an ongoing process, such as running/monitoring laboratory equipment, there is usually no good reason to leave it on when you are away for extended periods.  And many good reasons not to.

How does power management work?

Power management savings come from reducing hardware power to sleep levels when the computer is not fully active.   Idle-ness is defined by an absence of mouse or keyboard activity (and no on-going processes for applications) for a set time period.

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That’s right they saved hundreds of thousands of $$$. So how many Medical Centers like this exist? Well how many Major Universities are there in the US. That is right…hundreds of millions of $$$$

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Green Hospitals And Environmental Doctors – They sure are hard to change

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People always ask me, “why did you study psychology”? I always reply, “because saving the planet Earth from Humans is all about changing behavior. Doctors are a case in point. Doctors are investors. What do they invest in? Why highly profitable things…like coal mines, plastics manufacturing, and utilities. So they know that if they change their behavior at work – even though they make money in the short run – in the long term they could lose money as the very things that make them wealthy become less profitable. They also know that their work load will drop because people stay healthier. So, while all other businesses are cutting costs through things like recycling and waste reduction on the back end and enviro friendly practices on the front end you still hear terms like “barriers”  and “hurdles” in the healthcare industry. These are polite terms for “no way” and “not in your lifetime”. In all fairness, this article is dated 2003 and in some ways that is a lifetime ago…others not so much…

http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archives/2003/06/medical_product.html

« The Future of the Medical Device Industry | Main | Move Over X-Rays, Welcome T-Rays »

June 5, 2003

Medical Products Struggle to Get “Green”

By Katrina C. Arabe

Designing medical products for recyclability is tough. And recapturing medical equipment for recycling is even trickier. Learn how the industry is managing the journey toward “green”:

The eco-friendliness drive is accelerating in the medical products industry, but the road to “green” is marked with many potholes. For starters, increased use of disposable products has exacerbated hospital waste. And designing medical products to be easily disassembled and recycled continues to be confounding because many medical devices are required to be extra-tough—able to endure falls and harsh sterilization. But many manufacturers, vendors and suppliers are facing such obstacles head-on.

“Two years ago you couldn’t get group purchasing organizations for hospitals to talk about environmentally preferable purchasing,” says Laura Brannen, co-director for Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (H2E), “but now many champion the cause.” For instance, Baxter Healthcare of Illinois, one of the largest medical products manufacturers, together with group purchaser Premier Inc. and Catholic Health Care West, both of California, is trying to create an advisory group that will delve into recycling and waste-reduction issues, such as decreasing medical packaging and recycling single-use plastics.

And the H2E program is attacking the environmental problem from many fronts. “H2E hopes to provide the framework and initiate discussions on how the industry can create processes and infrastructure that develop take-back programs, or products and packaging that are stackable and returnable,” says Brannen. “H2E is also pursuing partnerships between manufacturers and distributors to establish methods that let distributors back-haul plastics to the manufacturer or plastic recyclers. The group’s ultimate goal is reaching medical device designers so products have minimal environmental impact.”

What a Waste

Hospitals produce over 6,600 tons of waste per day, estimates H2E, at least 15% more than 10 years ago due to the proliferation of disposable products. And this estimate does not even take into account the output of private medical and dental clinics, veterinarians, long-term care, laboratories and independent blood banks.

Accounting for 75-80% of a healthcare facility’s waste, solid waste is the most sizeable portion, says H2E, encompassing paper, metal, glass and plastics. Chlorinated materials, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC), are especially problematic because incinerating waste with chlorinated content produces dioxins, which can cause cancer and hormonal defects. In fact, burning medical waste with chlorinated materials is the third biggest source of dioxins in the environment, says Health Care Without Harm (HCWH). And globally, waste incinerators account for 69% of dioxins, estimates HCWH.

PVC is found in a wide range of medical products, from disposable intravenous (IV) bags and tubing to bedpans and notebook binders. Additionally, it’s common in durable medical products, where it is particularly difficult to reduce because of a dearth of PVC-labeling and PVC-free devices. “A first step in reducing PVC use in these applications would be to require vendors to disclose the PVC content in their products,” says Brannen. “Medical products and their packaging are often not labeled with their contents.”

Currently, there is no U.S. industry standard that calls for the labeling of injection molded parts, says Chris Belisle, senior project engineer for injection molder Phillips Plastics Corp. of Wisconsin. However, several internationally owned medical OEMS are preparing for recycling mandates that may be enforced in the future. For example, Datex-Ohmeda Inc. of Finland, a supplier of anesthesia equipment, denotes the resin acronym on every injection molded part.

Designing for Disassembly

An even more fundamental approach to the “green” issue is designing medical products for easy dismantling and recycling—not an easy feat for many medical devices. “Common methods for making disassembly easier such as snap fits, may work well for some products, but they may not be appropriate for use in certain medical applications,” says Belisle. Unlike other products, many medical devices are required to pass demanding drop tests and to withstand severe sterilization that could damage fragile internal electronic circuits. In some cases, designing for recyclability could even negatively impact medical product design and increase production costs.

Nonetheless, some companies are incorporating recyclability concerns in product development. Says Pedro Torres, a supply manager for Datex-Ohmeda’s manufacturing plant in Wisconsin, “Taking time to review each step in a development process may at first appear to slow it down, but we found that strategic cradle-to-grave program reviews improve current products and provide cost-saving initiatives for future programs.”

Design engineers can take certain measures to promote a product’s future recyclability. According to Jack Pape, a VP with rotational molding company, Meese Orbitron Dunne Co., New Jersey, engineers can reduce the priciest part of disassembly—labor—by incorporating simple hinges. Furthermore, he recommends specifying recyclable materials, such as linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE), as well as materials that are commonly used and likely to remain in wide circulation.

Engineers should also refrain from modifying the material through additives, textures and foaming agents because this drives up the cost of recycling and diminishes the recycled material’s potential market and value, Pape says. Moreover, he advises engineers to consider the effect of weathering—dirt, debris, and wear and tear—on recyclability. Finally, he tells engineers to steer clear of adhesive labels and inks whenever possible because they are difficult and expensive to remove.

Other Hurdles

Pape’s company already designs many products for future recyclability, but he acknowledges that it’s only a start. “Just because a product can be recycled doesn’t mean it will be economically viable to do so when the product is ready to enter the waste stream,” he explains. “Nor is there any guarantee there will be a market for the recycled material.”

And that’s not all design engineers must take into account. Another issue is how the price of the recycled material will match up against that of the virgin material at the product’s anticipated date of obsolescence or disposal. “Further clouding the forecast,” he notes, “are the possibilities that new materials may be developed after manufacturing that render recycled material useless. And environmental regulations may be enacted after manufacturing that could eliminate use of the material or increase the cost to use it.”

“After considering these possibilities, design engineers must address their greatest and most costly challenge: how the product will be removed from the waste stream and transferred into the recycling stream, assuming there’s a market for the material,” continues Pape. He points out that there is currently no government-sponsored collection program for obsolete medical equipment. “Who will bear the responsibility for tagging a given product for recycling at the end of its useful life and who will assume the cost of shipping it to a recycling operation that can accommodate the given material?” he asks.

Long Road Ahead

Indeed, medical product manufacturers, vendors and suppliers have their work cut out for them. But through more conscientious purchasing, eco-friendly design and established recycling programs, they can make steady progress in their long journey toward a “green” medical products industry.

Source: Think “RECYCLE” for Medical Products
Jean M. Hoffman
Medical Design News

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The link to the article was broken so I printed only the author’s name for attribution. However here is the drirect link to the publication and part of a 2008 article. Apparently GREEN In Medicine has gotten a bit more lively:

http://www.medicaldesignnews.com

http://medicaldesign.com/engineering-prototyping/sustainable_design_medical/index.html

Sustainable design for medical devices

Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Chris Kadamus, Principal Design Engineer, Cambridge Consultants, Cambridge, Mass.

Chris Kadamus
Chris Kadamus

Medical products account for an enormous amount of the solid, industrial, and chemical waste in developed countries throughout the world. In the U.S. alone, hospitals produce more than 6,600 tons of waste per day, including 800 tons of non-hazardous, and potentially recyclable, plastic parts. In addition, many medical products use hazardous chemicals and solvents during manufacture or include materials that can be harmful if not disposed of properly. Disposal of non-hazardous and hazardous medical waste can be costly from an environmental and financial point of view. As such, it could benefit the medical-device industry to embrace sustainable design, a concept in which products are evaluated in terms of financial impact and social and environmental impact as well.

Historically, the medical-device industry as a whole has been risk averse. This is primarily because of stringent FDA regulations, fear that alternate methods or materials may compromise patient health, and an overarching fear of legal liability. Adding design for sustainability to an already rigorous set of design requirements, including biocompatibility and aseptic assembly, can put an additional burden on design teams whose primary goals are time-to-market and FDA compliance.

Furthermore, much of the medical-device industry generates most of their revenue from disposable products. Approximately 90% of medical-device waste consists of items designated for one-time use. Fears of contamination, the high costs of sterilization and reprocessing, and the desire for continuous revenue have firmly anchored the disposable products’ business model in the minds of industry leaders.

There are, however, a number of driving factors and significant competitive advantages in bringing sustainable design to the medical-device industry. First, while the U.S. has lagged in the ratification of environment legislation, the European Union has moved to ban some hazardous materials, promote recycling and encourage energy efficiency using legislation. Standards such as WEEE (Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment), RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment), REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals), and the EuP regulations (Energy Using Products), while not currently applicable to the U.S. or enforced for many medical products, have gained significant support in recent years. Many experts agree it is only a matter of time before these or similar standards will be enacted in the U.S. and become applicable to the medical-device industry.

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Risk adverse my ass.

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David Gergen Supports Alternative Energy And The Green Economy

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Well this brings this blog and blogger right to the environmental focus we had hoped for. I saw this Sunday in the Parade Magazine. I knew I had to post it.

http://www.parade.com/news/2010/03/14-back-page-how-america-can-create-new-jobs.html

Back Page

How America Can Create New Jobs

by David Gergen
published: 03/14/2010
Technicians install a solar panel in Malibu, Calif.

‘Our company is like many other big ones in this country,” a CEO told me recently. “We expect to create plenty of jobs in coming years, but guess what: They won’t be in the U.S.”Welcome to the “new normal.” For more than five straight decades after World War II, the Great American Job Machine cranked out jobs at a phenomenal pace—22 million in the 1990s alone. But since December 1999, there has been zero net job creation—nada, zippo. Coming out of recession, one in six Americans is now unemployed or can’t find full-time work. Worse still, some economists say we won’t be back to pre-recession levels until 2016!

What can be done? Sadly, not much in the short term. Washington can and should pass bipartisan programs that create infrastructure jobs, ease the pain of unemployment, and hasten lending for small business. But progress will be painfully slow for millions of families.

The bigger challenge is whether we rally and renew for the long run. We are facing the toughest international competition in our lifetimes, and we are no longer winning. The signs are all around us. Who can believe that the first 20 floors of the new World Trade Center will be wrapped in glass made in China? Or that the new 28-foot statue of Martin Luther King Jr. will be coming to the Mall in Washington from Chinese workshops? These should be made-in-America jobs.

It is easy to get mad; great nations get even. We shouldn’t erect trade barriers—those helped to spark the Great Depression. We have to remember what made us the most dynamic nation in the world and can do so again: education and innovation.

In their new book, Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz point to the fundamental truth that the U.S. became the world’s richest nation at the beginning of the 20th century because we educated  more of our kids than anyone else. Generation after generation, children finished about two more years of schooling than their parents. We created the top research universities. But then we slowed down and others sped up. In the 1960s, the U.S. had the top high school graduation rate in the world; by the early 2000s, we were 19th. Our college graduation rates of young people have fallen into 12th place. To reignite job creation, Goldin and Katz say, we must once again be the best at educating our kids.

Fortunately, we’re finally firing up on education reform. Cities like New York, Chicago, Houston, and, yes, New Orleans are pushing reforms. Arne Duncan is a first-class Secretary of Education. More than 40,000 college seniors applied this year to Teach for America, the volunteer teaching corp. Even unions are getting the message. We are far, far from where we should be—but at last there is fresh hope.

The second fundamental truth is that scientific and technological research is key to job creation. MIT president Susan Hockfield notes that investment after World War II created waves of new industries and jobs in electronics, nuclear power, aerospace, communications, and computing. Yet again, we’ve slowed relative to other hungry nations. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman points out, we have only a tiny handful of the top 10 global companies in emerging green industries.

Relentless global competition is here to stay. We shouldn’t be scared nor discouraged. That’s not who we are as Americans. As my favorite preacher, Peter Gomes, says about how one should handle adversity in life, “Get used to it, get over it, and get on with it.”

David Gergen is a professor of public service at Harvard and a senior political analyst at CNN. He serves on the board of Teach for America and has advised four Presidents.

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More next time.

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What Your House Should Have Looked Like In The First Place – Last day of residential efficiency meditation

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It’s Jam Band Friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gpdz8INFBg

So we end this meditation where we have been for 3 days on building a house that does what it should, make your life cheap and comfortable. This all started with an Energy Audit. Could that get you to build a better home in the future? Sure it could. It just depends on how important the planet Earth is to you. It is very important to me. Other people think of it as their personal toilet.

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/your-future-homes-roof-will-be-eco-friendly-too

Your Future Home’s Roof Will Be Eco-Friendly Too

BY Kit EatonFri Oct 9, 2009

Scientists at MIT have invented a smart roofing material that takes a new thermal-management approach to eco-design. It’s a different approach to previous efforts, of which there are many. We’ve rounded them up for you, starting with the latest, below.

thermeleon

MIT’s Black and White Solution

MIT’s Thermeleon material is a composite of layers that makes it thermochromic–on exposure to heat it changes color from black to white. It works by sandwiching a common polymer between flexible plastic layers, with a black one at the back–when cold the polymer solution stays dissolved and the black rear face shows through, and when it heats up the solution condenses to form light-scattering droplets.

The upshot is that when the sun is shining a roof tile covered in the material is white-colored, scattering up to 80% of the sunlight back and thus keeping the building beneath the roof cooler. The result is a 20% reduction in cost to keep the interior at a comfortable temperature in the summer, a figure which also comes with an eco-friendly drop in the electricity supply demands. During winter, of course, you’d prefer your roof to capture as much heat as possible from the sun, which is where the black coloring is handy–the tiles scatter just 30% of incoming solar radiation then.

The team’s working on micro-encapsulating the chemicals, so that in future they may work as a paintable or spray-on coating, and then if the prices drop to match the innovation, the tech could also find much use in the developing world

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs8HcICxzAU&feature=related )

Why haven’t we done things like this for years:

Dow Chemicals’ Covert Solar Tiles

If your house design calls for a shingled roof instead of a tiled one, and you live in an area where theft of expensive roof-top solar panels is a problem, then Dow Chemicals has a neat trick.

Its Solar Shingles use thin-film copper indium gallium diselenide technology to make them cheap and light, and they’re designed to be intermingled with traditional asphalt roof tiles on a roof. That makes for easy installation, and lower visibility to street-level thieves.

solar roof shingles

And there you have it: Proof positive that in the future, our building roofing will do much more for us than keeping the sun, wind, and rain off our heads. They all make good sense, of course, since traditional roofs spend all their time staring at the sun rather than harnessing its rays for energy. Now if there were only a clever hybrid of all these different ideas…

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With credits to:

http://www.physorg.com/news174209373.html

and

http://www.physorg.com/news174209373.html

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQyt_xy2mMQ&feature=related )

Then there is the really far out stuff:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3351863/Eco-tree-houses-the-homes-of-the-future.html

Eco tree houses – the homes of the future

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Published: 5:00PM BST 16 Sep 2008

A model of the proposed tree house (left) and an illustration of how one might look (click to enlarge)

Tree houses grown specifically for modern living could be the eco-homes of the future.

Scientists from the US and Israel have developed the trees that can be shaped into the structure of innovative homes.

The ingenious tree houses naturally provide shade and can also be used to process waste and reduce carbon emissions.

The researchers at Tel Aviv University and a branch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are confident the first prototype home could be ready in just ten years.

Plantware, the organisation behind the technology, have already built bus-shelters, park benches and traffic lights using the advanced techniques of airoponics, where plants are grown without soil.

Now they have built a model for a tree house to be used in cities.

The extraordinary structure is build from actual tree roots that are grown to be mallable and then hardened into a structure like steel girders. The houses can be equipped with solar panels and wind turbines to generate electricity and even convert human waste into valuable nutrient for the living tree.

Different species of trees could be chosen for different environments so for example, willows could be used in England and giant American redwoods in California.

However at the moment the tree homes would be prohibitively expensive to all but a few.

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqUTB5bflCM&feature=related )

This is a really long article so I will get you started and list the 3 architects. Watch out the prices will kill you, but you can do the same things without the expense.

http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/new_homes/article3203472.ece

From The Sunday Times
January 20, 2008

Building the future: eco-architecture

Home gave three leading eco-architects different budgets and one brief: to create a sustainable urban family dwelling. Our correspondent is impressed by the result

Brooke Coombes House

So, you want a stylish green home, but think it will cost the earth? Think again. Home asked three leading exponents of sustainable design to come up with the ultimate green new-build house to suit three very different budgets – and the results were spectacular.

All had the same brief: to design a home for a young part-time teacher and her husband, an IT specialist. The imaginary couple have two children, aged nine and seven, and own an end-of-terrace plot on a tree-lined street of Victorian houses. The house can’t be taller than neighbouring three-storey homes, and must be as green as possible.

Dan Burr, 40, an associate partner at Sheppard Robson, which has offices in London and Manchester, has come up with a three-bedroom, 1,500 sq ft home costing £250,000 (plus land costs). Burr was the design director on Britain’s first zero-carbon house, the Lighthouse, built in Watford last year. The building meets level 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes, with which all new homes in Britain will have to comply by 2016.

Justin Bere, 48, principal of the north London-based firm Bere Architects, designed a four-bedroom, 1,800 sq ft home costing £400,000 (plus land costs). His residential projects include Focus House, built in 2006 in Finsbury Park, north London, which won the Riba London Region Award 2007, among other prizes. His practice is a devotee of PassivHaus, an established German style of energy-efficient construction.

The third property is a five-bedroom, 2,500 sq ft home costing £600,000, designed by the husband-and-wife team Catherine Burd and Buddy Haward, both 41. Based in northwest London, they devised the low-energy Brooke Coombes House, in Ealing, west London, which in 2002 won the Riba Manser Medal, and are designing 600 sustainable homes in the Rochester Riverside scheme at Thames Gateway.

Their EZ House has three key principles: its construction must incorporate local materials from sustainable sources and low-energy build methods; it must consume little or no energy, so conserve or generate it on site; and the flexible design must have non-load-bearing internal walls, so that it can be adapted to the changing needs of the occupants

The sectional house
£250,000

Sheppard Robson: 020 7504 1779, www.sheppardrobson.com

The PassivHaus
£400,000

bere:architects: 020 7837 9333, www.bere.co.uk

The EZ House
£600,000

Burd Haward: 020 7722 0788, www.burdhaward.com

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Next week I go back to the environment. So much has been happening on the energy and the environment front that I have been dieing to print but…well meditations go where ever they will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7pHo9amiZY&feature=related

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Earthships – Michael Reynolds and the build your own eco habitat

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There is so much about this guy and his projects. The good news is that they are finally winning the building code battles. Oh and of course they ran up against the utility companies too. They hate houses that do not use power. So these are not houses for the faint of heart.

http://www.vaboomer.com/the_portal_to_boomeranger/2009/03/earthships-part-i.html

Earthships – Eco-Friendly Houses for the Future (Now?) Part I

Biotecture – from Trash to Shelter Earthship3

Just think — a house made of discarded garbage; used tires rammed with earth, soda bottle walls.  And the cost to heat?  $40 per month in the ‘dead of winter’.

The brainchild of architect Michael Reynolds, earthships are truly the homes for the future.

An Earthship is a type of rammed-earth house, sort of a modern version of a Native American pueblo dwelling. It is a utopian type of passive solar home made of natural and recycled materials such as earth-filled tires.  The home is “bermed,” meaning that dirt is gently placed, from ground to roof line, on the northern, eastern, and western sides of the home.  The berm is about 15-20 feet deep. They’re much more than houses — they provides shelter, heating, cooling, power, water and sewage. In these very tough economic times, there are people in America living very comfortably with a zero, yes, zero utility bill. They live in Earthships, beautiful homes made out of recycled tires and bottles, built completely off the grid.

Architect Michael Reynolds

Mreynolds

The Earthship, as it exists today, began to take shape in the 1970s. Mike Reynolds, founder of Earthship Biotecture, a company that specializes in designing and building Earthships, wanted to create a home that would be sustainable, rely on natural energy sources and be economically feasible for the average person with no specialized construction skills to be able to create.

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Doesn’t hurt to have a certain level of skills and can do spirit.

http://www.earthships.com/

Earthship Landing:
A Pictorial History

My name is Stuart Simmons and I built an Earthship home near Durango, Colorado. I decided to make the photo journey of my experience available to the public because there wasn’t much available in the WWW Land about alternative structures and there is quite a bit of interest in building alternatively. I used to live in the Bay Area, but due to the Rat Race and several other factors, I decided to move to Durango where I found my piece of Heaven. The pictorial history of Earthship Landing on the Internet is an ongoing process. I will start off by putting the pictures on the web as I believe this is what people mostly want to see, but over time I will add a lot more text to the pages of my experience of building the home and what it’s like to live in a house made of tires. The way I am going to set up the pages is like a book. each page will have one or two pictures two help keep it small for downloading. I am going to start at the beginning and go through the history of building the Earthship. At the end of the book I will also show some other peoples Earthships and how they have built them differently. Let’s get on with it . I would love to hear from you once you have seen these pages. If you know of another link which you think should be included in these pages, then please let me know its URL and I will include it. If you know of other styles of alternative houses, please let me know and I will include them as well. You can E-mail me at Info@Earthships.com

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I mean you have got to admire people like this. Why wasn’t I born that cool?

http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/earthship.htm

Earthships

The Earthship concept is the brainchild of Michael Reynolds, who has written several books on the topic. Near Taos New Mexico, where he has his Earthship Biotecture business, are whole communities of earthships. The basic earthship design incorporates substantially bermed, passive solar architecture. The primary retaining walls are constructed with used tires, filled with earth and stacked up like bricks. The interior surface of the tires is then plastered with adobe or cement so the tires don’t normally show. Mike has also pioneered the use of empty aluminum cans mortared into lightweight, curvable walls. Earthships often employ many ecological concepts, such as water catchment from the roof, reuse of greywater, composting toilets, indoor gardening, etc.

While some of the work of building is simple to do, it also tends to be very labor intensive. Furthermore, the wood framing required is not simple. Some of the earlier designs tend to overheat, especially in the summer, because of the slanted glass to the south. I have seen some truly elegant earthships, along with some that are pretty funky. Engineered plans are available that seem to please building inspectors, as these have been built in many localities.

Here is a 5 minute radio interview with Kelly Hart talking about Earthships:

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Please go to the above site and listen to the radio interview…we may yet survive.

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After The Energy Audit – All of the things that I suggested that you do

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All of those things could have taken SEVERAL Years to complete.You have to ask yourself, “How badly must my house have been designed for me to have to do all this work”? The answer is VERY badly. The big housing push in post WWII America led to many bad practices. But let’s face it our population went from 60 million to over 325 million in 3 decades and energy was a nickle or less a kilowatt. That is just an excuse I know but it is all I got. Hostility to our environment is a genetic trait for Americans. Having a Capitalistic Economy does not help because it has a total disregard for the environment. It is in fact dismissed as an externality.  Is Capitalism psychotic? Look at how it treats the only home we have got. It defiles it.

So hear is a look at more earth friendly models.

http://scienceray.com/biology/ecology/three-extreme-eco-friendly-houses-of-the-future/

Three Extreme Eco-friendly Houses of the Future

Published by Nelson Doyle
November 9, 2008, Category: Ecology

The most extreme eco-friendly houses of the future reduces the environmental impact on the planet and demonstrates how less means more quality living.

With so much attention being drawn towards the perils of our planet and the environmental impact that a global population is causing on natural resources, some forward-thinking companies and individuals are developing new ways to solve our housing needs and the future impact to the environment once built. It requires creative people like these to develop solutions to solve critical issues like the ones we have to deal with in today’s environment.

The majority of eco-friendly houses share similar engineering characteristics such as; smaller living spaces and recycled building materials incorporated into the design. Some houses incorporate solar panels, wood-burning stoves or other energy-saving heating and cooling appliances. The potential costs saving on utility bills, property taxes, home maintenance, and furniture would more than make this kind of living ideal for single or duel family housing.

Ewok-Style Tree House

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I could post the photos but out of respect I will say please see the article for more.

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This Ewok-style tree house designed by Canadian carpenter Tom Chudleigh saw the future and built it.

Portable Martin House-To-Go

Honestly, this has to be the most practical house on the planet that is eco-friendly to the extremes. Live anywhere and change your scenery when the mood strikes in your own portable house. The Martin portable house-to-go is built to the highest building standards and is weatherproofed with NASA-approved insulation to endure in extreme weather conditions.

Dome House

The Japanese are amazing engineers in both housing and technology, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that a prefab home manufacturer Japan called “Japan Dome Housing Co., Ltd., developed an amazingly energy-efficient, extreme weather durable, Styrofoam expandable modular igloo-shaped kit house. Oh, yes, it’s true. The house of the future that can be purchased and assembled by you and two or three of your friends in just a matter of 3-days if you work around the clock or about a week if you take your time.

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More tomorrow.

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An Energy Audit Leads Directly To Wind Generation – People get the bug

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It is true. Not everyone will get the bug. Where you stop after your energy audit could many times be with good thoughts. A liberal bastion such as Boulder, has to hire people to go door to door to install Compact Flourescent Lighbulbs.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704320104575015920992845334.html

Even Boulder Finds It Isn’t Easy Going Green

By STEPHANIE SIMON

BOULDER, Colo.—This spring, city contractors will fan out across this well-to-do college town to unscrew light bulbs in thousands of homes and replace them with more energy-efficient models, at taxpayer expense.

City officials never dreamed they’d have to play nanny when they set out in 2006 to make Boulder a role model in the fight against global warming. The cause seemed like a natural fit in a place where residents tend to be politically liberal and passionate about the great outdoors.

Instead, as Congress considers how to encourage Americans to conserve more energy, Boulder stands as a cautionary tale about the limits of good intentions.

“What we’ve found is that for the vast majority of people, it’s exceedingly difficult to get them to do much of anything,” says Kevin Doran, a senior research fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

President Barack Obama has set ambitious goals for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, in part by improving energy efficiency. Last year’s stimulus bill set aside billions to weatherize buildings. The president has also called for a “cash for caulkers” rebate for Americans who weatherize their homes.

But Boulder has found that financial incentives and an intense publicity campaign aren’t enough to spur most homeowners to action, even in a city so environmentally conscious that the college football stadium won’t sell potato chips because the packaging isn’t recyclable.

Take George Karakehian. He considers himself quite green: He drives a hybrid, recycles, uses energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs. But he refuses to practice the most basic of conservation measures: Shutting the doors to his downtown art gallery when his heating or air conditioning is running.

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NONETHELESS

Many people get the bug to the point where they want to make their own which ain’t very hard to do. Ed Beagley Jr. makes his with a bicycle generator.

http://www.magnet4less.com/index.php?cPath=8&gclid=CMT6sKTjqaACFQTyDAod6i0xeg

Residential & Home Wind Turbines
WindMax is the Exclusive Distributor in the US for HYenergy wind turbines. HYEnergy Residential-Home Wind Turbines feature High performance, high efficiency, high reliability and superior workmanship. Patented, twisted high efficiency blades with extremely efficient aerodynamics design, brushless generator, electromagnetic overspeed control and aerodynamic blade speed limitation make the whole system maintenance free, fully automatic and providing higher energy output. HYenergy wind turbine patent was awarded in March of 2004. CE certification was awarded in July of 2005.

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Wind Turbine Generators with Inverters

Wind Turbine Generators with Inverters
Wind Turbine system with inverter included. WindMax wind turbines have high performance, high efficiency, high reliability and superior workmanship, designed to work from low to high wind speeds.: High performance, high efficiency, high reliability and superior workmanship, designed to work from low to high wind speeds.We also are the leading manufacturer of top quality, excellent performing, and long lasting wind turbine blades.

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Hybrid Wind Turbines w/Solar Panels

Hybrid Wind Turbines w/Solar Panels
The advanced wind-solar hybrid system generates electricity using both solar panels modules and WindMax wind turbines at the same time at all conditions. The hybrid system features high efficiency, high reliability, and high sustainability. It is light weight, easy to install and has electromagnetic over-speed control which more reliable than traditional furling system.

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Just think one day everyone might have one

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