possible energy and ideas

harvesting lightning: not quite yet, but someone's out there experimenting with it.
cement coated with titanium dioxide created by an italian company apparently absorbs atmospheric pollutants and neutralizes them, thus "de-smogging" the air around it.
through a mathematical equation, two men have developed a self-righting object. they figured out the equation, designed it on the computer and a company manufactured them. what they discovered in the process was that it already occurs in nature: beetles and tortoise shells are self righting objects.
wireless energy discovered first by tesla: now redesigned copper coils can send energy to light a lamp through magnetic resonance.
elastomers are made of plastic which have the capability of generating electricity. discovered a decade ago, this material is now being tested for use in ocean buoys: the buoy moves up on the crest of a wave, therefore stretching the elastic that is secured to the sea floor. this action creates energy and stores electricity.
UPS has banned left turns for their 95,000 trucks. through research they discovered that taking only right turns saved gas and time which equals money.
turbine power from 1000 feet in the air. copper cable attached to a wind turned turbine filled with helium collects energy into a generator and sends electricity back to earth.

successful use of celebrity status and money

i really like brad pitt. he has commissioned 13 architecture firms to design and rebuild new orleans lower ninth ward using green development and technology. the project is called make it right (makeitrightnola.org) and one can visit the site and contribute by donating money for solar panels, low flush toilets, solar water heaters or adopting whole houses which seems to be a more direct and more exciting way to be charitable while contributing to the environment as well. he and steve bing are each matching $5 million in funds towards this project.

measuring impact and exploring all the options

wood or petroleum (paper or plastic)? local conventionally grown food or organic shipped from across the country? table scraps for biogas. termite bellies for their enzymes which convert biomass to biofuels. the bean found in africa that can be grown in the most arid environment between rows of food crops which has been discovered to be an efficient source of energy when burned.
it's hard to avoid the green discussion. we are confronted with it daily: at the pump, the grocery store, at home with our lights, our heat, our energy bills. what's better: make a decision based on one's personal health or the health of people and places we may never go nor meet. many of the world's pesticides are manufactured in countries far away from america. these pesticides end up locally, though, going into our food supply. transported food requires fossil fuels. we know what that does to the air. not all local food is pesticide free. see where i'm going? how do we calculate the toll from shipping healthier food long distances to picking them up locally with pesticides which rot the earth nearby and further away where they are manufactured?

green party

i was reading today in the new york times about the fabulous holiday extravaganzas thrown by the prominent museums and awards ceremonies who are notorious for their excess of trash after these one night events. this year, it seems, has the word "green" stamped all over these gatherings. the party planners seem to have made a certain statement by using materials that were recycled or will be used beyond the one night gala for which it was initially intended. the article goes on to describe the various elements used for these parties: bottle caps for decoration, post consumer cardboard for chairs, tables and the like, shredded documents reshaped into art pieces for ornamentation. the author comments on her observations that renting chairs, tables and decorations might be the optimum path for going green. i suppose these industries that create so much waste need to begin to be aware of the waste in a fancy, chic fashion before they take the step to making no waste. plus, i don't think these partygoers are ready yet to sit in rented chairs.
also, how come we don't pay tribute to all the people in all the countries who have been recycling trash and using it creatively and effectively? is it because their was no logo involved? no cash tendered? do "green" practices which stem from poverty get automatically disregarded?

stores galore with more and more

i keep updated on the new design stores which arrive in new york. i like to know what's going on in consumerism and design and how the two worlds meet. what i find fascinating is that there is more and more evidence of products geared towards green consumers. we are created a whole new palate of objects and items for sale that have a green tag tied to them. great. i love recycled, reused, refurbished items. i want them. but now i'm scared because alongside all the other stores selling non green items, we have more stores selling green items. question is: are we as consumers being green if we are buying green objects that we probably don't need? what's the difference between buying regular stuff and buying green stuff? aren't we consuming the same amount of energy to move that green product? this is not an original question, but one that still is yet to be answered.

energy saving is easy

every house in america switching out one incandescent lightbulb to a fluorescent bulb is equivalent to taking 1 million cars off the road.
household electronics account for 25% home energy use. plug everything into a power strip and shut it off at night.
packaging sucks: everything we buy has waste that rarely gets recycled. consume less.
hand washing dishes wastes tons of water (5 thousand tons per year) . only 4 gallons are used in the average dishwasher during one washing.
cleaning products full of fragrance and chemicals should be avoided. asthma, carcinogens, hormone disrupters toxicate our bodies, our homes, our water.
compost: it reduces amount of garbage we take to the dump where most of it never really degrades. take stock of everything you throw out.
choose "low-voc" materials for indoors. particle board is infested with formaldehyde. carpets are off-gassing. there are all kinds of green interior furnishings to choose from.
buy locally.
use postconsumer recycled paper. "For every 40 standard boxes of copier paper made from 100 percent post-consumer material, an office can save 24 trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 4,100 kilowatt hours of electricity, and 60 pounds of air pollution, according to the National Resources Defense Council."
know your refunds and benefits in your area for having energy saving machines: i know pv systems give homeowners both a state and federal tax refund for its installation. there are plenty of other monetary incentives available to us.
drink water from home: 845 plastic water bottles are thrown away each second.
bring your lunch to work- it cuts down on the thrown away "to-go" packaging.

home sweet prefab

the website inhabitat has a section devoted to prefab houses. on the top ten list of prefab houses are the LV house and the wee house. both are quite beautiful on the outside, but it seems like one must add a bunch of their own interior elements, such as lighting & heating to make if fully habitable. in those cases, it feels like the prefab has flunked. what i wish for prefabs is not only their low cost, installation ready materials, but pre-made homes that go all the way to include sustainable interiors, pv panels, radiant heating, and the like. why not make sure that people are living in low carbon footprint homes - if they're made in a factory like setting don't give them the option of not doing the right thing.

Frankentrees

somehow i have managed to make two blogs disappear with the innovative tabs at the top of my screen. not since the 90's did i think it was possible to lose data, but here i am, writing this same paragraph for the third time in a couple of days. i was writing about michelle kaufman designs, the architecture firm on the west coast which designs and manufactures green prefab houses. these spectacular dwellings not only look like an exceptional piece of architecture, but come with grey water systems, LED lighting, radiant heat, PV systems, green roofing and more. website: mkd-arc.com

today the new york times had an article about scientists reducing the chemical lignin in trees in order to potentially increase the production of ethanol. the idea is that through the lessening of this chemical, the cellulose would be able to break down more readily. the use of steam and acids is currently employed in the breakdown of the starch in corn for ethanol and by paper companies. there are hopes that perhaps a 50% reduction in lignin would increase our ethanol supplies. the fear by some tree scientists is that the long term repercussions of this tree engineering could result in transmuted natural trees from the pollen of transgenic low lignin lab trees.

Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: November 14, 2007
Two dates — two numbers. Read them and weep for what could have, and should have, been. On Sept. 11, 2001, the OPEC basket oil price was $25.50 a barrel. On Nov. 13, 2007, the OPEC basket price was around $90 a barrel.
In the wake of 9/11, some of us pleaded for a “patriot tax” on gasoline of $1 or more a gallon to diminish the transfers of wealth we were making to the very countries who were indirectly financing the ideologies of intolerance that were killing Americans and in order to spur innovation in energy efficiency by U.S. manufacturers.
But no, George Bush and Dick Cheney had a better idea. And the Democrats went along for the ride. They were all going to let the market work and not let our government shape that market — like OPEC does.
You’d think that one person, just one, running for Congress or the Senate would take a flier and say: “Oh, what the heck. I’m going to lose anyway. Why not tell the truth? I’ll support a gasoline tax.”
Not one. Everyone just runs away from the “T-word” and watches our wealth run away to Russia, Venezuela and Iran.
I can’t believe that someone could not win the following debate:
REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE: “My Democratic opponent, true to form, wants to raise your taxes. Yes, now he wants to raise your taxes at the gasoline pump by $1 a gallon. Another tax-and-spend liberal who wants to get into your pocket.”
DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: “Yes, my opponent is right. I do favor a gasoline tax phased in over 12 months. But let’s get one thing straight: My opponent and I are both for a tax. I just prefer that my taxes go to the U.S. Treasury, and he’s ready to see his go to the Russian, Venezuelan, Saudi and Iranian treasuries. His tax finances people who hate us. Mine would offset some of our payroll taxes, pay down our deficit, strengthen our dollar, stimulate energy efficiency and shore up Social Security. It’s called win-win-win-win-win for America. My opponent’s strategy is sit back, let the market work and watch America lose-lose-lose-lose-lose.” If you can’t win that debate, you don’t belong in politics.
“Think about it,” says Phil Verleger, an energy economist. “We could have replaced the current payroll tax with a gasoline tax. Middle-class consumers would have seen increased take-home pay of between six and nine percent, even though they would have had to pay more at the pump. A stronger foundation for future economic growth would have been laid by keeping more oil revenue home, and we might not now be facing a recession.”
As a higher gas tax discouraged oil consumption, the Harvard University economist and former Bush adviser N. Gregory Mankiw has argued: “the price of oil would fall in world markets. As a result, the price of gas to [U.S.] consumers would rise by less than the increase in the tax. Some of the tax would in effect be paid by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.”
But U.S. consumers would have known that, with a higher gasoline tax locked in for good, pump prices would never be going back to the old days, adds Mr. Verleger, so they would have a much stronger incentive to switch to more fuel-efficient vehicles and Detroit would have had to make more hybrids to survive. This would have put Detroit five years ahead of where it is now. “It’s called the America wins program,” said Mr. Verleger, “instead of the petro-states win program.”
We simply cannot go on being as dumb as we wanna be. If you hate the war in Iraq, then you want a gasoline tax so you can argue that we can pull out of there without remaining dependent on an even more unstable region. If you want to see us negotiate with Iran, not bomb it, you want a gasoline tax that will give us some real leverage by helping to reduce the income of the ayatollahs.
If you’re a conservative and you believed that the Iraq war was necessary to drive reform in the Middle East, but the war has failed to do that and we need “Plan B” for the same objective, you want a gasoline tax that will reduce the flow of wealth to petrolist leaders who will never change if all they have to do is drill well holes rather than educate and empower their people.
If you want to see America thrive by becoming the most energy productive economy in the world — a title that now belongs to Japan, which doesn’t have a drop of oil in its soil — you want a gasoline tax, which will only spur U.S. innovation in energy efficiency.
President Bush squandered a historic opportunity to put America on a radically different energy course after 9/11. But considering how few Democrats or Republicans are ready to tell the people the truth on this issue, maybe we have the president we deserve. I refuse to believe that, but I’m starting to doubt myself.

when the lights go out

today the electricity went out in our house and a few houses down. everything shut off and i heard a loud boom from not too far off. i took a shower, thinking about the future and possibly not having any lights later on. what i didn't realize is that our water pump for the well runs on electricity...
”There are few professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few… by creating whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air we breath, designers have become a dangerous breed… In this age of mass production when everything must be planned and designed, design has become the most powerful tool with which man shapes his tools and environments (and, by extension, society and himself). This demands high social and moral responsibility from the designer.” --this is excerpted from sustainableday.com, presumably from william mcdonough, a speaker at the 2005 isda conference.
good to know: to build the average american house requires an acre of trees. built with bamboo the same house uses only as much wood as square footage of the proposed house. bamboo can be harvested in 5-7 years, while other trees take 20-50 years. and bamboo doesn't die when it is cut

november 7th

“Bottled water is a business that is fundamentally, inherently and inalterably unconscionable,” said Michael J. Brune, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network. “No side deals to protect forests or combat global warming can offset that reality.”

Mr. Prickett, however, insists that is an unrealistic view.

“Maybe it would be morally preferable to carry a bottle I filled at the tap, but bottled water is a consumer reality,” he said. “So rather than operate in a moralistic framework, we’ll use the economy as it exists to make a difference.”

this is the current debate on bottled water excerpted from a new york times article about how fiji water is striving to be more green.

november 5th 2007

i just read two articles about sustainability. the first one spoke of living a "sustainable" lifestyle in which one incorporates environmentally friendly clothing or buying sustainable design elements for one's home is equivalent to drinking a diet coke while eating an entire chocolate cake. this article stated how one must live it, but there wasn't any advice on how to achieve this - only a sense of how one must go all the way: either all or nothing. neither do i believe this nor understand it fully. i suppose this person was stating the fact that we cannot expect a global transformation until we are all acting as a unit or choosing the same things on a grand scale.
the next article was by a sustainability proffesional giving us his code for other people who consider themselves to be sustainable proffessionals. i liked this code. it combined morals, common sense and a code of ethics for a fast growing group of proffessionals who choose site their proffesions as beacons for change. this can be found on worldchanging.com.,"a code of ethics for sustainability proffessionals".

November 4th 2007

Now that i know that 12 million barrels of oil per year go into the creation of plastic bags worldwide, i will not be forgetting to bring my own canvas bags sitting in my car. apparently in 2002 ireland imposed a tax on plastic bags that reduced their consumption by 90%. new york is considering a first step in cutting the use of plastic bags: to require all stores over 5,000 s.f. to reuse in store bags and sell them back to customers. not so radical, considering how most stores in new york are under the proposed square footage. while in san fran, in march 2007, plastic bags were banned from large supermarkets. how large, i don't know. i'm amazed that in europe, they just decide to enact these recycling laws and it seems to work, while in this country we have to take these teeny weeny steps before anything of importance happens.

November 1st 2007

now we have one-of-a-kind furniture that isn't exactly 100 percent original, but uses accessories to make that specific unique statement on like pieces of furniture. this seems to be a new era of one of a kind art/object/furniture pieces. i like it because one can manufacture many pieces then decide, per client, what the accoutrement will be. seems like a good idea: more cost effective than creating a totally different design for everyone. some of the examples cited in this new york times article were a chair with what looked like a large charm bracelet and a couch with its own shawl. at first glance this seems silly, but it's a lot less work to add specialized knobs for a dresser than to produce a completely different form. in the end, the client gets what he/she wants while feeling that they are buying something unique unto themselves.

halloween 2007

i read today in the new york times about the kaufman house by richard neutra in palm springs, built in 1946. the current owners have not only put it on the market, they're auctioning it at christie's. the idea is that this house, a landmark of steel and stone, is a piece of art, not merely a residence. not the first home to be auctioned, there was the 1951 mies van der rohe Farnsworth house and another 1951 house in africa by jean prouve sold by sotheby's and christie's.