Green the Earth

Vision: A Relocalized City

2008-03-11T09:47:00.002-05:00

My thoughts on a relocalized city.

The city will run off the grid on solar and wind power. The businesses and homes will use geothermal power to heat them in the winter and to cool them in the summer. The buildings will be built according to Sthapatya Vedic architecture to maximize support of nature and energy from the sun. Many areas of the town will be converted to pedestrian malls. There will be no vehicles allowed in these areas. Other changes will include retrofitting the square with more trees and flowers, solar panels on some of the rooftops and others will have garden rooftops. Many rooftops will be painted a light color to minimize heat absorption.

Transportation will consist of a public bike transit system like Vélib' in France. People will be able to buy a subscription for bike rentals or use their own for daily commutes. The cars will be energy efficient, getting 200-300 miles per gallon, running on biodiesel or people will be able to buy electric cars or air cars from the local dealership, keeping the money in the community.

Video on Vélib'

Street lighting will be LED and other types according to the recommendation of the International Dark Sky Association. The lighting will be the lowest wattage available for safety and will consist of downward or shielded lights.

The food will be all organic and locally produced and sold at the local farmers market and will also sell products other than food to thousands of people a week. Wal-Mart and Hy-Vee will buy most of their food products locally. Most of the citizens will have their own gardens, providing them food from their own back yard.

Wal-Mart will buy their cosmetic products, medicines from the local MAPI store. They will get products from local craftsman and other local shops.

The city will have its own local credit union or bank, which will produce its local currency. This will keep money in the community.

If cities could look at adopting just one of these ideas to creating a better future, everyone will benefit.

UPS leases 42 all-electric Zap Xebras for deliveries in Petaluma, California

2008-03-03T09:25:00.000-06:00

In May 2007, Zap announced that Domino's would use a three-wheeled, all-electric Xebra to deliver pizzas in Las Vegas. In November, 2007, Zero Air Pollution vehicles announced a much bigger delivery deal: UPS is leasing 42 Xebra cars and trucks to deliver packages in the city of Petaluma in Northern California. This is but one of UPS' attempts to get off the gas. You can read the details in the links listed below, but the most unusual of UPS' varied strategies is to save $600 million by favoring right hand turns.

More info here.

For more photos, see the Brown Goes Green page on Flickr.

Maine officials OK 57 megawatt wind farm

2008-03-02T19:38:00.000-06:00

Boston, MA — A 57 megawatt wind generating farm planned for Stetson Mountain received a critical OK today from Maine officials. UPC Wind, a wind power company, received approval from the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission on a rezoning petition and preliminary plan for the company’s proposed (MW) Stetson Wind Project in Washington County, Maine. The project is expected to boost the local economy and produce clean energy for Maine. Officials voted unanimously in favor of rezoning the project’s site.

For more information, see article.

I think this is a great step to saving our planet.

Air Car

2007-11-07T20:40:00.000-06:00

After fourteen years of research and development, Guy Negre has developed an engine that could become one of the biggest technological advances of this century. Its application to Compressed Air Technology(CAT) vehicles gives them significant economical and environmental advantages.

For more information, visit the air car site.

For a video of the air car in action, check out the air car on YouTube.

Invisible Solar Nano-cells Promise Clean Energy

2007-10-23T19:27:00.000-05:00

Scientists have developed solar cells 200 hundred times thinner than a human hair that could power the nanoscale gadgetry of tomorrow.

From consumer devices to bioterrorism monitors to in-body diagnostics, this ultra-microscopic technology is poised to take centre stage in less than a decade from now. But finding the sources to power these devices was an issues.

However, Charles Leiber and colleagues at Harvard University, have devised a 'silicon nanowire' that can convert light into electrical energy.

Virtually invisible to the naked eye, a single strand can crank out up to 200 picowatts.

Two hundred billionths of a watt may not seem much, but at nanoscale it is enough to provide a steady output of electricity to run ultralow power electronics, including some that could be worn on -- or even inside -- the body.

It is also clean, highly efficient and renewable.

"An individual nanoelectonic device will indeed consume very little power, but to do something interesting will require many interconnected devices and thus the power requirement -- even for nanosystems -- can be a challenge," Lieber said in an e-mail interview.

Monitoring bioterrorism threats, for example, would require an entire array of nanosensors, nanoprocessors to analyse the signals received, and nanotransmitters to relay information to a centralised facility, he said.

Conventional sources, he added, are "bulky, non-renewable and expensive" by comparison.

The cable itself looks, at first blush, like the cables used to hook up cable television networks: both have a core covered with two layers, according to the study, published in the British journal Nature.

But the similarity stops there. Beside being 100,000 times smaller, the nanowire is not made of metal but of silicon with three different types of conductivity arranged as layered shells.

Incoming light generates electrons in the outer shell, which are then swept into the second layer and the inner core along micropores.

These "holes", as they are called, carry an equal, but opposite, charge as electrons, which means that the two particles move in opposite directions in the presence of an electric field.

"The electrically connected core and cladding" -- a kind of sheath -- "play the same role as the '+' and '-' termini of a battery," Lieber said.

Link

Bioneers Conference

2007-10-19T14:46:00.000-05:00

Bioneers was founded in 1990, for the first annual Bioneers conference, a gathering of scientific and social innovators who have demonstrated visionary and practical models for restoring the Earth and communities.

Right now, I'm blogging from the Tallgrass Bioneers conference in Iowa at Grinnell College.

I highly recommend that you attend your local Bioneers conference in your state to learn about what you can do to help save our Earth.

The conference dates are October 19-21, 2007.

For a list of conference locations, visit Beaming Bioneers or see map below.

View Larger Map

Global Dimming - Action Needed

2007-10-17T21:03:00.000-05:00

Global Dimming has been hiding the true power of Global Warming.

What is Global Dimming?

Fossil fuels produce both greenhouse gases and other pollutants, such as sulphur dioxide, soot, and ash. These other pollutants change the properties of clouds.

Clouds are normally formed when water droplets are seeded by air-borne particles, such as pollen.

Polluted air results in clouds with larger number of droplets than unpolluted clouds. This makes those clouds more reflective and less likely to precipitate as rain. As a result, more of the sun’s heat and energy is reflected back into space.
This reduction of heat reaching the earth has reached levels of 20% and is known as Global Dimming.

This was part of a talk I gave last month in Fairfield, Iowa at Maharishi University of Management.

You can download a copy of my Global Dimming talk here.

There is a video about Global Dimming done by BBC that I highly recommend watching.

TED: A Greener Future

2007-10-15T21:13:00.000-05:00

I've recently come across some inspiring videos that I would like to share. The site is called TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. They have a page called a Greener Future?

Here is a list of videos on the site that I especially liked:

• William McDonough: The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle

• John Doerr: Seeking salvation and profit in greentech

• Al Gore: 15 ways to avert a climate crisis

• Janine Benyus: 12 sustainable design ideas from nature

Ten Simple Things You Can Do

2007-10-13T14:55:00.000-05:00

1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

2. Use Less Heat and Air Conditioning

3. Use daylight if you can or buy CFL or LED lighting

4. Drive Less and Drive Smart

5. Buy Energy-Efficient Products

6. Use Less Hot Water

7. Turn off Lights when not in use and use daylight whenever possible

8. Plant a Tree

9. Use a clothesline or drying rack instead of a dryer

10. Encourage Others to Conserve

News - Saltwater into fuel

2007-10-10T21:48:00.000-05:00

With this discovery, we will be able to use saltwater to power our vehicles and end up saving money on gasoline.

Welcome

2007-10-09T21:45:00.000-05:00

I will update this blog every few days with news that might interest you and tips on how you can save the environment.