hiya kirk,
i’ll let them know downstairs.

There is no way that the USA can meet the demand for electricity without coal-fired power plants. Now coal-fired power can be made highly efficient and nearly pollution free. That is the way to go.
This, by the way, is all USA technology. We should use it and not ignore it.

zed and zed + 1. i told them. now to read.

I came on up from downstairs. Now to read the post *g*

gw, congrats on the zed and thanks for the word to downstairs.

welcome, wobbly.

I’m getting pissed that we’re buying the gobbledy-gook of ‘Clean Coal’…! 8-(

oxymoron isn’t it?

Please enlighten me as to the ‘technology’… Considering we have none in current usage…!

Why is there so much resistance to renewable energy?

Me too, CT. Same old lethal outputs in new jargon. Amory Lovins nailed it when talking with Amy Goodman.

the cheaper, faster stuff that is walloping nuclear and coal and gas, all kinds of central plans, in the marketplace….those competitors are efficient use of electricity and what’s called micropower, which is both renewables, except big hydro, and making electricity and heat together, in fact, recent buildings, which takes about half of the money, fuel and carbon of making them separately, as we normally do.

Aussies see through the coal propaganda:

When Spain’s ageing nuclear plants reach the end of their commercial lives, they are not likely to be replaced with new ones because it is cheaper and faster to build other types of generation, such as solar and wind farms.

There are nine solar power plants under construction in Spain at the moment and 28 more approved projects waiting to be built.

This will create an extra 2000MW of electricity each year, enough to power most of Melbourne’s homes.

As Australia dilly-dallies about a low-carbon economy, it is encouraging to note that the wind and solar farms under way in Spain are not just wishful jottings on the drawing board – they are real, capitalised construction projects that have already been signed off.

They have grabbed the renewable energy bull by the horns, thanks to decisive legislation that has nurtured investment certainty.

It takes several years to build a nuclear, “clean coal” or even geothermal power plant compared with under 26 months for a 50MW solar farm with molten salt storage.

Solar and wind farms can start producing electricity years ahead of other new plants because they can be gradually connected to the grid as they are built in stages.

At the end of 2007, the ministry of industry had registered more than 50 concentrating solar power projects with a capacity of 2150MW, making Spain one of the biggest developers of solar power worldwide.

oops. Aussie link here

(and the heraldsun’s a Murdoch paper!)

Imagine the jobs that would be created from implementing solar, wind and water as energy sources. We’re talking about an industry that would be so beneficial to so many segments of the population instead of the dino juice and coal that benefits few and damages the environment. I don’t get it

wobbly, the current centralized carbon-based energy technologies funnel vast wealth to a relative few. The relative few — while literally destroying Appalachia (mountain top destuction mining) and hastening the destruction of NOLA (oil/gas co’s destruction of coastal marshes via channels and canals) effectively enlist the very workers the few’s megacorps sacrifice in industrial accidents to come out and tell the rest of us we must continue support the megacorps suicide pacts — or the coal/energy workers will perish.

This has been effective PR (with a pliant corporate media), but a false choice: Big Carbon’s suicide pacts with our ambitious pols mean we all perish.

The big task for climate scientists/enviros is to inform folks about the false choice. As the Stern (UK) report made clear, the cost of continuing to use carbon-producing energies is far greater than the cost of rapidly proceeding to renewables.

The Sten report, alas, has no adverstising budget: Big Carbon spends hundreds of millions on global propaganda to continue the centralized energy system that make them billions.

For big carbon, the greatest threat from renewables is that they ultimately offer the promise of decentralized local power production across much of North America: that ends Big Carbon’s incredibly lucrative monopoly.

Why is there so much resistance to renewable energy?

B – I – G O – I – L.

(with a pliant corporate media)

— while literally destroying Appalachia (mountain top destuction mining)

Even if we can truly temper the plant’s output of CO2 and other noxious fumes, that factor you mention needs to be factored in to the overall impact(footprint), too…!

thaks for the info Kirk. Nice to know folks are trying to do something.

coal kills the environment and people too (Crandall Canyon Mine – comes to mind)

Didn’t they get the memo that there aren’t any new dinosaurs being created? Dino juice isn’t going to last forever

or compliant?

Ok. I have to post even though I’ve been online far longer than I should:

Kirk: Your last post on this inspired me to action, but it’s really hard to put into words. I’m working on it for the debut of Oxdown Gazette, but basically, here’s the gist:

We cannot rely on others to do this for us. No groups or powers that be can do it. We’ve seen how they work and they just don’t do it right. Why should we trust them? We have to do it and more than we think. We have to start building our communities to be green and independent. We can make this happen. With bedroom communities, for instance, we work for re-zoning so that we can build community centers, community gardens, pedestrian walkways, community transport. We have to stop being isolationist in our lifestyles. Multi-use communities are not unheard of. What if each community had its own power source relying on the type of energy that is naturally provided for the area. Sun, wind, thermal, hydro etc are usually available in some form. If we do that and cut back our usage at the same time, we should have abundance, while really making an impact on pollution and global warming.

That’s just the start. Hope it makes sense.

There is no way that the USA can meet the demand for electricity without coal-fired power plants. Now coal-fired power can be made highly efficient and nearly pollution free. That is the way to go.
This, by the way, is all USA technology. We should use it and not ignore it.

So, no offense but, let’s TURN off the FREAKING LIGHTS!

yep — you nailed it.

(brings complict to mind… but I’m sure all the coal ads don’t skew news coverage. cough)

They apparently did not get the memo. As we speak, they are rounding up more and more support for offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR – the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Maybe we need a bigger MEMO.

Sickening that the chief lobbyist for the National Mining Asssociation is put in charge of the principal Agency charged with miners and mines safety… The veritable Fox in charge of the henhouse… 8-(

Audrey, sure look forward to reading what you post on Oxdown Gazette. I couldn’t agree with you more: our future is up to us!

What you write makes perfect sense to me.

It made sense to our grandparents, too — local electrical co-ops helped bring power to rural America.

Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.

Quoth Darth

Keep rolling with it. Each house can built as a a battery. Daisy chain a community of “House as battery” and you have a self powered community.

Part of the long-term plan of The Wrecking Crew.

More from Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute (this from Mother Jones)

The reason the U.S. lags so badly is that we have obsolete rules that favor big over small, supply over efficiency, and incumbents over new market entrants. It’s the very opposite of a competitive market. So a good dose of conservative economic principles would get us even further than trying to give technologies we like subsidies as big as the ones we don’t like are already getting. Of course, desubsidizing the whole energy sector would be a wonderful advance. Remember, the subsidies that renewables get are an attempt to catch up with much larger and ever-increasing subsidies that fossil and nuclear already enjoy. And those are permanent, whereas the renewable ones tend to be temporary, doled out a year or two at a time. The U.S. wind industry has been crashed at least three times, quite deliberately, by Congress messing with the tax credits from year to year and in a stop-and-go fashion. You can’t run an industry that way and develop the capacity and the jobs. That’s why we import most of our wind turbines.

Gnashing my teeth.

So, let’s go ahead, (per big dick) and just waste the hell out of everything, full speed ahead. I still see plenty of that going around, but maybe not as much as used to be.

Darth’s idea of a country is a place that makes me want to throw up.

Ahhh…you get my point. Thanks. I’ve been living near pioneer stage for 15 years. I’m very careful about water because I haul it by the bucket. It gives an interesting perspective when people talk about wasting it. :) We can cut back a lot more than we think. The thing is that we need a vision to achieve our goals, not just goals themselves. That won’t motivate people. The whole vision of what a clean and healthy world will look like is what we need to establish.

amazing that people like that can sleep at night

Lovins and staff at the RMI produce free newsletters and have started a free Solutions Journal.

We have the solutions — our task is to lead local/regional adoption of the soltuions, force regional/national policies (and pols) to support the solutions, and also ensure the defeat of the suicide policies and the pols who support them.

The fact that the EPA is slow-walking the Solar Arrays environmental impact statements on public lands speaks volumes to whom runs the show… We can quickly approve shale and Oil drilling pronto, but, heavens to betsy, we need to really analyze the Solar projects impact…! F*ckers…!

fork: newsletters/Solutions linky

Hey Kirk, thanks for the links to the climate camps. Hadn’t heard of them, but they sound just right.

I LIKE IT! That’s what we need. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a local energy co-op to depend on rather than the high-priced lords of life and death deciding whether we’re worthy to participate based on what we can afford?

Big oil definitely has a choke hold on us. i can’t help but believe if the EPA was actually doing its job (allowing standards for air quality and the such), there would have been much more movement towards alternative energy to deal with the push for higher fuel economy

My sentiments exactly.

A friend of mine from Spain is actually studying Renewable Energy here in the U.S. (seems we have quite a fantastic program here even though we aren’t walking the walk)

Big oil definitely has a choke hold on us.

We’ve just got to get rid of them. It’s them or us.

Yep. And the footprint of all the land (especially Bureau Land Management — but also National Forest) leased for Big Carbon’s profit is vast. I’m all for protection of fragile desert habitat — but the forking Bushies who opened the deeds for Big Carbon to trash Federal public lands (at far below market prices) while steamrolling enviro concerns are the forkers who just happened to find eco-concerns about opening Federal public lands to renewables: the energy source that threatens the Bushies’ owners in Big Carbon.

See my 34… Interesting that the EPA’s ‘political’ honchos run the show… Hopefully they’ll reap what they sowed… Particularly, ‘ignoring’ their e-mail inbox…

Agreed. Of course conservation on the part of consumers is also important. Whatever little we can do adds up.

If we factor in health costs (leaving out the war machine to grab oil costs altogether), carbon-based fuels are already uncompetitive with renewables in the West, Southwest, and Southeast.

Asthma, COPD, heart attacks, strokes, and various cancers are ruinously expensive in productivity and treatment costs.

Of course, that’s just the beancounters’ view.

On a human level, the suffering our “leaders” infict on our species and the rest of the living world so the Carbon Billionaires keep getting richer is a moral atrocity; the destruction of the biosphere for future generations is a crime against humanity.

What are pups doing locally to support renewables and minimize/avoid use of carbon-based fuels?

*rolls eyes* that is some kind of mess over there, huh? Karma is a bitch

Did you see Bmaz’s awesome article on the continued swindling of the Native Americans by Big Oil and the Mining corps… Sickening what transpired… A measley $456 Mil. settlement when conservative estimates put the swindle at $46 Bil…! Serious F*ckery…

Would you be comfortable saying more about your lifestyle and the insights you have gained from it?

Oh my no, not at-tall

nor did ADM’s sponsorship of the NewsHour while ADM was cornering the market in essential amino acids. my no.

Isn’t consumer society a product of marketing?

The story of this Administration’s life

as a matter of fact, there’s an angle of attack —

BushCo:
THIS IS YOUR LIFE.

We bike when possible and were thinking of getting a hybrid but we’re going to wait as we are in Honda and BMW’s market for hydrogen fuel cell cars. I’m on the waitlist for the Honda Clarity

I would love to do solar panels but I need to read up on it in order to ask the intelligent questions

Yep. The subtext is that — under the GOP ghouls — Dept of Interior and Bureau of Indian Affairs were actively complicit in recovering as little as possible for the oil/gas/mining leases on Native American lands.

Why?

Big Carbon/Big Mining/Big Timber are responsibel for paying the royalties. Wampum had great coverage of this and the Abramoff/DOI/Griles aspect; EW’s also had great coverage.

Not driving, or let’s say, down to one functional day per week of out with car doing everything that needs to get done; growing my own food; not buying plastic – very tricky – recycling reusing everything; not using any pesticides; not buying any factory farmed meat from animals; buying only local organic veggies and fruit; turning off lights, etc etc, reducing dramatically what I use; also, spreading the word about financial incentives to install solar electric and hot water thru writing and word of mouth.

My big personal interest lately is finding and collecting old time tools – from push rotor mowers to gardening tools powered by people and animals. This is the way to go.

Beyond conservation the infrastructure here is non-conducive to any alternatives.

That’s true. But infrastructure can be changed.

I have been involved in solar technologies since the late 70’s. Utilized solar hot water, passive solar design with trombe walls to active systems utilizing phase change materials. I have developed communities where the aim of the layout was to provide bldg. sites where either the front or rear of the houses were south facing. The overwhelming preponderence of buyers were more interested in other ammenities. My son, in preparation for his retirement from the AF, has been developing a wind farm in wyoming (where they have wind festival that extends from jan 1 thru dec 31).
What frustrates the hell out of me is this hell bent fixation on growth, from the local to the state to the federal level. In my lifetime the population of the country has grown from 160M to 300M. There is just so much that this planet can sustain. The plan of the govt. is an ever expanding tax paying population = make babies everybody.

Out with big dog and my kid. See you cats shortly.

All the more reason for universal single-payer health care: if the state is responsible for the health care of its citizens, it has a stake in regulating their clean air, water, and land.

Then there is the oil and mineral rights factor. Over in Culver City, the oil companies have land their leased to drill and have not begun drilling because environmental impact reports and such have effectively prevented them from doing so but now they are maintaining that the people who have leased their land to them in exchange for mineral/oil rights are losing up to $5000 a month. I’ll see if I can locate the news article (not sure i have remembered all correctly)

Well, I take the bus or walk; use a car-share when I have to drive somewhere. Recycle. Buy local food when I can.

I like the old tools thing. I’ll add that to my list *g* Thanks! Forgot to add that we garden here and buy organic as well.

Culver City oil drilling story here

Environmental and Health concern story here

Sorry, I’m coming in late on this. Did anybody read the recent reports about an energy storage breakthrough at MIT? I’m not qualified to assess the validity. I tend to greet media accounts of revolutionary breakthroughs was a dose of skepticism, however here is a link for anyone interested. The emphasis is mainly on solar applications but I understand the technology would also be applicable to other energy sources such as wind.

http://computerworld.com/actio…..Id=9111578

Oh and buying food in season helps as well (helps the local growers, tastes better and cuts down of food transport costs/pollution)

That’s a nice healthy and positive activity, I do it myself, but without replacing current infrastructure it is not going to make an overall difference.

hope i’m not being difficult here, but much of what CarolynU describes is what Lovins calls negawatts: simply not using (or using less of) energy currently produced from Big Carbon/nuclear.

wow. what genuinely evil PR.
(sorry for redundancy)

Actually, I would. :) Carolyn makes a good post at 54 that fairly well describes me. (I much prefer hand tools over those that depend on electricity or gas. Been trying to acquire a push mower to replace one that I had borrowed for many years until the owner suddenly wanted it back. Seriously. Someone gave me a gas mower and I hate it.) This is a post I recently made on a social network. Same topic:

“How’s this for reducing your carbon footprint.

1. Heating and cooling: I don’t use heating above 40 degrees…mostly because I’m too lazy (distracted) to cut that much farwood (as they call it here). I don’t use air conditioning. I have a small fan next to the computer. Disclaimer: I don’t HAVE air conditioning.

2. Appliances: I wash all my clothes and dishes by hand. I heat the water in the sun in glass jars. I don’t have a washer for laundry or dishes and hang all my clothes on the line because I don’t have a dryer. I don’t have running water so all my water is hand hauled from the cistern where I catch rainwater and it’s precious so it’s recycled to the max. I have a microwave but it’s broken so it’s really a breadbox. The puppies chewed through the gasline to the stove so I cook on the grill, but I only cook a couple of times a week because I’m lazy about farwood…see #1.

3. Travel: Everywhere on foot except for once a week I travel by coach to town for groceries. I had a bike but it doesn’t work on the soft dirt road to my house and I don’t own a car.

4. Food: I buy no laboratory prepared food. Only fresh plain stuff, thanks. I only have a small grocer so my choices are limited. I’m quite certain I’m getting a dose of chemistry that way, unfortunately…but I try to keep it pure within my means. I have a small garden, tomatoes, potatoes, watermelon, garlic and onion. Would have more but I wouldn’t be able to water anything bigger.

Poverty is soooo green! ;)”

As to insights, I think the biggest one is that it’s doable. We can fix this mess we’re in by just looking beyond what we consider “standards” and creating new and better “standards”. BTW: I’m almost never sick.

ding!

Wow — thank you.

I can’t wait to read your posts at Oxdown.

Carolyn, we are insynch. Yes, infrastructure can be changed. In fact it must be. What better time than now when it is old and falling apart to change it and make it community (as opposed to car) friendly?

Yeah. i should have placed a projetile vomiting warning with the links

good on you and your son for seeing ahead!

what’s a “trombe” wall?

Then the answer is to simply use negawatts?

wow. I’m impressed and inspired.

Again we can all bang our heads against the wall or jump up and down in unison and it will be to no avail. If we double our effeiciency and triple
the number of energy consumers will someone plese tell me how we have gained on the problem of global warming
http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=3267
http://climateextremist.blogsp…..-bomb.html

That sure looks exciting to me!

Joseph Romm at Climate Progress wasn’t as impressed — just had time to skim, but what I gleaned was concern re hydrogen and infrastrucuture for same (I may be wrong).

To me, the catalytic work looks exciting because it seems to offer an efficient route for storing solar energy in very local sytems (homes), with potential use for carbon-free transport (fuel cells)….

ditto

wow, bring back memories of visiting my grandparent’s farm in kentucky as a kid. they did not get running water until the 70’s and my grandma cooked on a big cast iron wood stove. had an outhouse and a house well until they got ‘city’ water. milk came from the cow and sunday chicken dinner came from one of their hens.

thank you for reminding me of them, audrey, and the lessons they taught me about how to ‘get by’ when times are hard.

Usually heavy mass such as stone or brick but can be water in drums. The mass absorbs heat and then yeilds it back as ambient temperatures go down

don’t forget to digg

One part of the answer, tw3k — no the whole thing. To get CO2 back down to 350, minimizing use of current carbon producing energy sources is one part of the solution. Developing (in parallel) carbon-neutral energy sources (local when possible) is another part. These two parts are complementary, not mutually exclusive.

True, considering this assessment…

“Based on the annual emission reporting requirements of the SCAQMD [South Coast Air Quality Management District], future operations … exceed the thresholds for benzene, butadiene, formaldehyde, ammonia and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons. Overall, worst-case health risk associated with future operations exceeded applicable health risk criteria for individual cancer risk and acute non-cancer risk”

But, the Pol interviewed placed faith that the safeguards would alleviate it… *gah*

i know a few people here who do the same. some have solar, but no ’grid’.

only thing is, a lot of the self-sufficient ’ways’ take a lot of time t live that way.
not just a ’way of life’, it IS your life.

do you have electric at all? how do you run your your computer?

LOL! I’m mustering the courage for it. Hope I can do a good enough job of it so we can have an impact. That’s what’s important to me. I live this life but it has no impact on the climate and we really need to impact it fast. There are things I can only dream of doing right now that I would love to be a part of.

trombe walls are great :D

works well in conjuction with thermal mass.

84 was to audrey

first linky no good tw3k :(

Thanks, WB. :)

hence the fight going on and the delay in drilling. The fight is still going on but with oil prices high, they are really pushing to drill there and over in Baldwin Hills (another residential area)

thanks!

wrt population growth, steadily expanding populations in industrialized democracies (the biggest per capita energy users) would indeed be problematic.

Japan, northern Europe, and much of western Europe are actually showing trends towards decreased birthrate/population (IIRC).

The big exception among the industrialized democracies is — once again – the US. Here the oligarchs long ago figured the only way for the tiny minority of the populace enriched by economic fundamentalism to hold political power is to deceive religious fundametalists into supproting the false god of the “free market”.

The top 1% does so in part by appearing to cave to the fundies on sexuality/reproductive issues (except, of course, with their own daughters and sons). The result has been the deliberate dismantling of widespread access to family planning, sex ed, and reprodcutive services.

FOrtunately, that is a fixable problem.

I hope you find that sharing your own experience with others affords you the opportunity to make the impact you desire.

I still think the keystones are infrastructure and how consumer society is sold its’ lifestyle. I just don’t see negawatts as being a driving force.

I don’t see Big Carbon aka the powers that be standing idly by as former consumers become energy independent. The more promising the technology, the more threatened they’ll feel and the harder they will work to stifle development or impede it’s implementation.

oops!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombe_wall

thanks, suz! I hope folks digg: I’d like to see the climate camps and the ideas our commenters share here get wider airing…

thanks tw3k

Picked up a book during one of my bi-monthly runs to the bookstore, Climate Change by Broecker and Kunzig. Haven’t gotten to reading it yet but a perusal revealed an interesting idea: sequestering carbon dioxide via production of carbonates (like limestone). No idea whether this is feasible but I found it a fascinating concept.

Yeah but when our wonderful govt is drafting regulation to treat birth control methods as abortion, the whole controlling the birth rate thing gets a wee bit harder

hmm. you and Amory Lovins seem to disagree; if you can convince him, please consider me convinced! ;)

Another problem that is not getting the proper consideration is the continued migration of the populace to urban areas, globally… In that, we’ve already crossed the 50% of the population living in an urban setting… Which subsequently taxes the energy and food production quotas further…!

Audrey
You are amazing. May I ask what state you live in? I am asking because I was thinking about the climate and if you have very cold winters.

lol! well, good luck you with efforts at any rate.

Suzanne, dmac: Thanks. The idea is that we take those “old ways” many of which were very earth friendly and incorporate them as much as possible. I’m thinking not just the lifestyle but the approach to it that’s important as well as building strong communities. The pioneers would never have survived without neighbors they could depend on. That’s what we have to rebuild.

I’m not advocating that my lifestyle should be everybody’s, but if we all work toward zero impact as best we can…make those lifestyle changes rather than the “recommended” just recycling or turning off lights which isn’t enough, would lead us to a much better place.

And yes, I have electricity…of a sort. *g*

OTOH: I earn less than 100.00/wk at my job and there is a lot that is unpleasant about my lifestyle. But I have limited resources. That’s why I don’t advocate “dropping out”, as we used to say, without the resources to do it right.

LOL! I’m mustering the courage for it. Hope I can do a good enough job of it so we can have an impact. That’s what’s important to me. I live this life but it has no impact on the climate and we really need to impact it fast. There are things I can only dream of doing right now that I would love to be a part of.

Audrey, I love the way you’re living. Absolutely doable, everyone can just dial down. As for you having no impact, I don’t know. Certainly, you aren’t adding your cultural share of negative impact; and you are a role model for others.

As for dreaming of being part of a greater effort: me too. I love the sound of these climate camps. I think I know what I want to be when I grow up (I’m nearly 50 – so, we’re talking , hopefully, soon?) – a Climate Warrior!

Anyway, keep up the good life! And spread it around.

How` does this tax further

following a link in the trombe wall article, i found this
The Druk White Lotus School

Me too. :)

I still think the keystones are infrastructure and how consumer society is sold its’ lifestyle. I just don’t see negawatts as being a driving force.

Can’t agree. Think if everyone got rid of their (scuse my french) fucking Hummers and got on a bike. We have a small percentage of the world population and yet we are enormous consumers and polluters. And our lives and our economy is based on waste and conspicuous consumption.

Let’s make this clear: this is dispicable. It is not okay to waste anything. We should call everyone on it that we see.

I’m not saying this is where it ends. This is where it starts. The American public is just beginning to snort awake in their century long slumber. They’re snorting because of prices at the pump. I’d personally like to bludgeon this culture awake.

Julia is upstairs with LateNite!
and then on the other hand

There are many great example of self-sustainable buildings in most climate ranges.

Why doesn’t society implement these designs?

We don’t get deep freezes like up north. I’m in North Central Texas just below the panhandle. We get below zero freezes and snow, but it doesn’t usually last more than a couple of days at a time. I built a lot of what I have from scrap, so it’s ideal that I live here because there’s no regulation. OTOH: When I lived in Wisconsin, I used to sell fireplaces and had to know codes, so I can still try to keep stuff “up to code” for safety’s sake.

By the way 8% of our oil consumption is in plastic manufacture

Y’know, humans have been using one method for storing solar energy since the invention of pavement. I’ve been doing a lot of cycling lately have noticed that as I approach a local park I feel a discernible drop in air temperature. The park is roughly one square block, heavily shaded. This is strictly a residential area but during the summer the roads and structures radiate a large amount of stored heat, resulting in a huge energy expenditure as people crank up their air conditioners to compensate. Conclusion, we don’t just need green energy sources, we need more green spaces.

a whole lot harder

and as ratfood points out, Big Carbon will (and is) making the 100 Months War For Survival harder.

That’s why fighting back (Climate Camps, DIY birth control distribution outside of high schools, DIY local renewables, local political action, freeway bannering, negawatts, sharing knowledge of solutions) is on the agenda for the next 100 months — and after.

Mussolini (and he ought to know) defined fascism as — roughly — pursuit of corporate benefit using State power. Yep, the overt Nazis were vanquished sixty years ago — but fascism never really left. The Spanish had to defeat Franco’s regime; the Greeks had to defeat the colonels; the Argentinians had to survive the Dirty War and defeat the junta.

They all succeded, by the way.

Now it’s our time to fight State power applied for corporate benefit. The corporatists (the fascists du the American jour) won’t make it easy for us: just like Franco’s regime, the colonels, and the generals, they’ll fight like hell.

And just like those fascists, our home grown corporatist regime is going broke — no more bennies to hand out to the vast bulk of us, and to obroke to maintain the centralized energy systems that have given the corporatists so much of their wealth. [The financial wealth center don’t look too godd for ‘em either — after the dollar topples as a reserve currency, war tools will be a hard sell, too.].

We’ve always been more numerous. We are becoming — as a populace — better informed. And we’re about to become — as a populace — more disaffected. All the prerequisites that brought about peaceful defeat of fascist states in Spain, Greece, and Argentina.

They’ll fight with all the propaganda and regualtons they can. The next corporatist President will have to choose between sticking with the losing corporatist or allowing policies and regualtions that actually work for us.

Sane family planning will be one of our achievements. Ending the suicide pacts will be another.

All we have to do is fight hard enough: hungry pissed off people are good at that.

How does that song go about paving paradise and putting in a parking lot

There are a lot of great programs that are now being implemented in Universities – environmental science and sustainable communities and transportation and food and energy are hot fields – here in the east anyway. I know local builders who get green certifications by making sure all their materials are from within a certain distance – generally 100 to 500 miles.

Also, communities can create an awareness and interest in this. My local community is currently having it’s EAT LOCAL week, challenging everyone to eat food strictly from the valley – with local workshops on raising poultry and wild foraging etc.

Building codes are a great obstacle to sustainable building. Not saying there shouldn’t be quality control. It’s just geared to the manufacture of inefficient housing.

i know many who live as you do.

for some, it is finances, for others it is by choice.
it is not an easy way to live. i would never idealize it. however, the rewards of being self-sufficient are just that, self-suffiecient, created by you, every day.

the ones with solar have it to power fridges, exhaust fan to draw hot air up and out, computer an hour or so, and tv for a movie on a really high-storage day.

one has a one-room ‘cabin’ that she lives in as soon as spring hits. no electric. can’t live there in the winter.

even one who does have electric–he and his wife’s bill is 38 dollars.

composting toilets, water storage, land for firewood.

gardens. thrift stores. making things instead of buying them.

ingenuity.

when i was ‘home’ last week, we discussed how i only have a light on where i am. always been that way. dad’s training. but friend and sister have been trying to get me to use more lighting cuz when i do have lights on in other rooms, i tend to get more things done. toss up. dunno.

joanie Mitchell

Big Yellow Taxi

Cripers – Julia’s upstairs!

Pups, thanks somuch for sharing your ideas, hopes, experiences, and concerns. I look forward to checking back in with y’all in the AM!

joni mitchell
yellow taxi

Kirk, thanks for these environmental posts – there is no more important issue facing us. Keep fighting the good fight!

Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi
(2nd verse)
They took all the trees
Put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see em
Dont it always seem to go
That you dont know what youve got
Till its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/j…..75370.html

Disagree strongly with that statement. BUilding codes have evolved a great deal and many reward and/or demand sustainability

Thanks very much, Doc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSe0DOeopOA

yeah? what part of the country are you in?

tw3k, I’m in Vermont. My stepdaughter just got her masters from Tuft’s in Urban Planning and Sustainability. I understand Harvard and all the elite Universities and schools are all offering similar advanced degree programs. It’s big. Anything being built now, up here, is being built green.

Thanks for the Joni Mitchell info & link.

And Doc. Thank you for the evening well spent

Thanks Carolyn.

Being a role model is actually a very important part of saving the world but people have to see it. I posted about it here because people have to know it can be done, right? As I posted above, I don’t use heat above 40 degrees. That should not be unthinkable. We’re told “Turn your heat down to 65″ or “Turn your AC to 75″ just isn’t enough. Not by a long shot. It will be 101 degrees here tomorrow. Without AC, I’ll still be alive come Monday. That’s my point, I guess. Even if I won the lottery, I think I’ve learned too much living this lifestyle to adopt the current “standard of living”. It’s just too wrong. I’d build a better fireplace, but I wouldn’t give it up for fossile fuels.

Everything being built from PA to MI is being built outta sticks, chipboard and sheetrock. Even with insulation they need to be heated and cooled.

she was on tavis smiley on pbs a few months ago, great interview. he loves her.

True, and no doubt many of the same materials are being used here in VT and northeast. But, do you get your lumber locally or from 1000 miles away? Your brick? How do you design your dwelling? Is it walkable to basic services or must you get in a car to do anything? Is it designed to take advantage of passive solar heating? What is your heating system? Is it as efficient as can be? Is your house designed to need minimal heating and cooling? How does your building get water? How does it handle wastes? A million decisions, all of which add up to buildings that are “sustainable” or ones that are wasteful. Huge differences over the life of a building – say 50 to 100 years.

yep.

forgot to mention, there are quite a few ’straw bale’ houses here, too.

yup! Your “green” building in VT sound more like marketing hype than sustainable design.

Hey, we have our showplace homes here too. Enormous 8000 square foot mansions at the top of a mountain, all 40 foot ceilings and wall to ceiling glass to take in the views.

My feeling: have fun heating them this winter. I bet they’ll increasingly be lying empty, in years to come. People will be huddling in good old fashioned new england farmhouses with low ceilings and fat wood stoves.

Don’t think so. We take it kind of seriously here. Don’t mistake my inability to adequately describe what’s going on as the measure of what people are doing to live sensibly – and sustainably here in Vermont.

I don’t know about where you live, but where I live, we really take care of our surroundings. That’s why people travel from out of state or other countries to visit here, because we haven’t fucked it all up. Vermonters have always been stewards of the land, it only makes sense when the land give you life. And now we’re putting more thought and energy into it than ever before.

It’s not just the showcase McMansions tho it’s all the housing developments deisgned to consume from Big Carbon.

keep up the good work then. Just don’t look across the heartland.

Greenpeace Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JniWdP0MO7s

You Only Get What You Give. How can this fail to inspire?

Essentially only doing laundry on sunny days and hanging wash on line. Dryer hasn’t been used in ages.

Individual conservation measures are important, but like spitting into the wonderful, energy-packed wind if we don’t have good policy. NOW. We don’t have the luxury of time any longer. We are at, what, about 400 PPM right now, and must get back to <350, fast.

Great video here: http://www.350.org/en/animation

excuse me but coal is not pollution free and clean coal does not exist – resources wasted on capturing carbon from burning coal is better invested in developing alternatives – besides, what do you do if an earthquake releases all that carbon in one hit? pumping for coal is not very smart and we, as humans, are capable of being smart enough to solve our problems that we have created even if you, personally, are not