Posts Tagged by sustainability
Good Ideas in Sustainability and Clean Energy Won’t Happen in the Absence of Good Leadership
| January 31, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
A great number of folks wrote in, commenting on my recent piece in which I outlined Plans A, B, and C, i.e., three broad-level ways in which our society could deal with its sustainability issues vis-à-vis energy. Many people commented that a hybrid approach can – and should – be taken.
Good suggestions include integrating:
• A holistic approach to transportation that reduces overall fuel consumption and the number of individual cars and trucks in service Read More
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Energy Consumption, Economics, and Environmentalism
| January 28, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Sustainability |
To simplify where we are as a civilization and where we’re going with respect to energy consumption, economics, and environmentalism, it’s useful to postulate three broad “plans”:
Plan A: We continue on our current course. We ignore the fact that our population will soon be growing from 7 billion to 10 billion, and that an ever-growing percentage of that population is joining the ranks of consumers. Our leaders know that we’re in the process of driving off a cliff; they may lack basic decency, but they’re long on intelligence, and they exploit voter ignorance of this core truth as long as they possibly can. During this time, they and the extraordinarily powerful forces that elected them desperately look for new ways of extracting fossil fuels, while obfuscating the effects on global climate, ocean acidification, social chaos, war, respiratory disease, etc. The elite remain in power until the planet is in ruins.
Plan B: We aggressively adopt what Jeremy Rifkin and others refer to as “The Third Industrial Revolution,” which contemplates continued economic growth by focusing on renewable energy and the many other components of sustainability. Read More
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Our Rate of Energy Consumption: Unsustainable
| January 1, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Sustainability |
Reader and cool guy Brian McGowan writes in:
I once read something that I think applies here. In the old days before cars, people rode horses for transportation. 1 horse for 1 person. What can we take away from this? It only takes 1 horsepower to haul your butt around. The rest of the horsepower is to haul your ego around.
I reply:
Ha! I’m not sure that’s the exact reason we drive cars, but it’s certainly a disgracefully large part. And dig this: we (adult Americans) take in 2500 calories per day endosomatically (into the body) but we use 230,000 calories daily (almost 100 times that much energy) in our cars, HVAC, electronics, etc. This IS, at its core, unsustainable. Something’s about to change here. Thanks for being tuned in.
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An Efficient and Sustainable Use of Biomass for Heat and Power
| December 14, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Biomass |
I’m delighted that Ben Thorp has become friendly with us here at 2GreenEnergy. Here’s a guy who’s forgotten more about biomass than 99% of professionals in this arena know, and who frequently sends me scholarly papers he’s penned on the subject, in a patient and thoughtful effort to bring me up to speed. Here’s one of his recent publications, An Efficient and Sustainable Use of Biomass for Heat and Power. Hope you enjoy.
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Good Ideas in Sustainability Need to Contemplate the Laws of Nature
| November 29, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Sustainability |
Are you one of the many Americans jacked out of shape by this country’s supposed “slide into socialism?” If so, there may be far better places to look for evidence of this trend than whatever differences may divide present-day Democrats and Republicans. In particular, have you ever thought about the G. W. Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 – whose very title and mission statement suggests a wholesale redistribution of educational resources onto the least talented kids?
Think of what Darwin would have asked us from his grave:
Are you idiots thinking about taking the very law that governs life in the universe, turning it upside down, and thinking this will somehow represent an improvement? And now, a few years later, you’re complaining that you’re profoundly ill-equipped to compete economically in the 21st Century? Sorry, but if that’s the depth of your understanding of the natural laws, one of which I handed you 150 years ago, you’ve gotten exactly what you deserved.
Kidding aside, who but a politician would suggest that no child be left behind? Out of tens of millions of schoolkids, shouldn’t the lowest 10% or so be deliberately left behind, out of favor to the other 90%? This isn’t a philosophic argument; we seem to have lost grasp on the most basic concepts of science.
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Reclaiming Old Ideas About Sustainability
| November 22, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Sustainability |
Novelist Andre Gide once wrote: “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”
How true that is with respect to sustainability. Sure, we could use a few great new ideas, but most of the ideas we need have been with us for millennia. In terms of our respect for nature, we’re simply trying to reclaim ground we once owned. People 200 years ago didn’t need to be told to leave a habitable planet for future generations; the notion was a part of the common wisdom of the day.
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Sustainability Networking
| November 10, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
I try to keep my “networking” hat on, attending seminars and meetings, and generally getting to know as many people in the industry as possible. The concept is certainly not lost on the folks at Opportunity Green, who recognize that only good can come from putting people with similar interests in sustainability.
Unfortunately, they are not listed my “Bible” of energy conferences linked here, and so I’ll have to skip this one. I try to attend the local conferences, or those that fit in neatly with my travel schedule.
Note, however, that most of these are in some pretty far-flung locations. It would require a substantial opportunity to get me on a plane bound for Rwanda, and the 4th International Scientific Research Conference does not qualify.
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Our Fantastically Poor Energy Policy Means an Unsustainable Future
| November 4, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Sustainability |
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Cultural Programming vs. Sustainability
| November 3, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Sustainability |
Like it or not, our civilization finds itself past the point of cheap energy and easy credit — confronted with a future that simply will not look like the past.
Here’s a short video in which I mention that we as a society need to redefine ourselves, that the “rich getting richer” is not sustainable. Moreover, this isn’t a bad — or even a painful thing, since when we are able to look past the thin veil of materialistic pleasures and begin to see our lives in grander terms, we find joys that we never knew existed.
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Radio Show “Clean Up Your Act” Deals with Sustainability, Renewable Energy
| November 2, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
Here’s a radio interview I did the other day on a station in Cedar Rapids, IA. The show is cleverly called “Clean Up Your Act,” and deals with hundreds of different issues associated with sustainability and clean energy, in particular. I thought this gentleman did a good job at peppering me with sharp, relevant questions.
