ESNA_open_graph_1200x630I try not to miss the annual Energy Storage North America conference in San Diego each year…and that’s where I’ll be late this afternoon and all day tomorrow.  To anyone in the area: please feel free to join me.

The trip also gives me the opportunity to meet with one of my favorite clients, Terrapro Solutions, whose domain is outsourcing the vast amount of administrative work associated with the development of large wind and solar energy projects, both in the U.S. and internationally.

 

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European-Investment-BankWe can learn a great deal from the European Investment Bank’s recent decision to pump $5 billion to renewables in the Eastern Hemisphere.  Principally, greening up the energy landscape in Europe and Asia is a bit more complicated than dumping cash into solar and wind. (more…)

3EF0576500000578-4379788-image-a-18_14913256905143EF0576500000578-4379788-image-a-18_1491325690514Would-be entrepreneurs sometimes fall into the trap of being too close to their idea to see it objectively, and wrongly assume that everyone’s as enthusiastic about it as they are themselves.  This seems to be a wonderful case in point: “Sally the Salad Robot,” a vending machine that dispenses salad ingredients (including pieces of chicken!) as if they were candy bars or sodas.  (more…)

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921edf226cd54dd48d05f46d29b3e72aThere are several ways that you can help your community become more environmentally friendly. Others will want to join in when they see one person starting. If each of the 89,000 communities in the United States. If each one does there part, then the world will become a totally different place. Start with these seven ideas.

Reconnect with Your Neighbors (more…)

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aquaponics-systemIt’s been quite a while since we’ve had any discussion of aeroponics, the cutting-edge agricultural system for growing plants (and raising fish) in an extremely compact manner, with a fraction of the environmental impact of conventional farming.  It’s funny, it was just a few hours ago that I wrote a piece to the effect that there is no such thing as a free lunch in anything we do to preserve the quality of our environment, i.e., that all our actions have themselves some adverse effects. (more…)

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FREE-LUNCHThere are so many things we can do in our personal and professional lives to improve environmental sustainability that it’s impossible to count them all.  Similarly, there are many different flavors of renewable energy, all vying for dominance in our world as we migrate away from fossil fuels.  Yet there is one thing to be said about every single one of these endeavors: they come at a cost.   (more…)

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Picture 929The 3500 deaths of heat that occurred in Pakistan and India in the summer of 2015 are a terrifying harbinger of what our world will be like by the end of the century if our civilization fails to take effective action to mitigate global warming.

Maps that show increasing temperatures have traditionally served to show what’s happening here, though scientists are more concerned about the so-called “wet-bulb” reading, i.e., the temperature at which a certain volume of air is cooled by the evaporation of the water it contains until it reaches 100% relative humidity. (more…)

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obaminoid_698768112As part of our ongoing effort to function as a conduit of information on job openings in the sustainability sector, I present this little beauty: NASA needs someone on staff to protect the planet from aliens.

If aliens are coming, I only hope they don’t arrive until we tidy up the place a bit and get rid of a certain world leader who behaves like a deranged child who didn’t go to Sunday School.  Otherwise, this would be like throwing a party without cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms.  It’s just not done–in this part of the galaxy, at least; I can’t speak for the rest of the universe.

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la-pol-sac-california-vehicle-emissions-20170324Here’s one you can file under “Business as Usual.” Automakers want to review (read: “repeal and replace”) the Obama-era gas-mileage standards, citing that such an aggressive approach would cripple the U.S. economy and destroy jobs.

It seems to me that I’ve heard that before, though, haven’t I? (more…)

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20597536_1896572527049877_7481608018358669611_nErrr…no. This has been a weird little perturbation in the political scene, much like the witch trials in 1692; the phenomenon came and went, and a year later, most people of that place and time couldn’t even explain how it had happened in the first place.
 
Do you see the Germans electing another genocidal sociopath?

(more…)

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