Making the decision to live in a green home can create a large, positive impact on your life, as well as the environment. For years, the world’s population has become increasingly focused on green initiatives, and, as technology advances, there are a number of opportunities for families to enjoy the comfort of their home, while remaining environmentally friendly. (more…)
In my recent post The Connection Between Rural Electrification and Environmental Devastation, I extol the importance of bringing electricity to the developing world so as to promote education, affluence and family planning, while reducing the size of the field for terrorist recruitment. In response, conservative reader MarcoPolo notes: Top down solutions seldom work… The big difference seems to be when the individuals in a community accept a duty to actively participate in community governance. Only then do individuals feel responsible for successes and failures within their society. (more…)
A reader asks for my viewpoint on this article, suggesting that one-third of the world’s oceans have been polluted from the radiation that continues to leak from the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
My take is that this is the typical hysteria about nuclear energy, driven, at least in part, by the folks who don’t want nuclear energy to replace what we have now. The oceans are “contaminated” in an extremely limited, virtually inapplicable sense of the word. (more…)
In response to my piece “Per Capita Energy Consumption” in which I extol the importance of bringing electricity to the developing world, a reader notes: Some may cynically observe the acquisition of electricity in third world countries seldom means a reduction of unhealthy hovels and crime ridden squalor, but an increase in watching TV!
There is no doubt that the connection between electricity and education (and between education and family planning) is a tenuous one in many cases. But here are a couple of things to consider: (more…)
As the weather gets warmer, you’re likely going to be using your air conditioning unit a lot more. However, this isn’t the only way that you can stay cool. There are several practical ways to keep your home comfortable during the summer season without raising your electricity bill. Here are a few practical tips you can start using today.
Don’t Close off Your Rooms (more…)
Advocates of renewable energy who may be interested in understanding the Obama Administration’s approach to energy storage should check out this recent “fact sheet.” You’re bound to be impressed that our government’s involvement here is extremely wide-ranging and robust.
Thanks to my colleague Joe Spease for sending this along. Joe’s particularly attuned to this whole arena because of the project he has under development that will integrate CAES (compressed air energy storage) with a large wind farm; it’s listed in my database of solid clean energy investment opportunities.
Those who correspond to me via email know that my “signature” contains the following:
“Few are the giants of the soul who actually feel that the human race is their family circle.” – Freya Stark, explorer and writer (1893-1993) (more…)
A reader notes: “Efficiency” is bogus. Amory Lovins has been pushing “negawatts” for 40 years or so, and energy consumption has only gone UP. Jevons’ paradox (that asserts that the increasing efficiencies with which a resource is used cause additional consumption of those resources) explains why.
There are two main points to be made here: (more…)
The course of technological progress isn’t always represented by a positive slope, and in the case of renewable energy there are most definitely a few examples of retrograde motion.
The poster child for all this is small wind, meaning devices whose nameplate is under 100KW (mostly under 10 KW), normally deployed on the rooftops of residential and commercial buildings. The article linked here is just another indication of the fact that this whole sector has always been, and probably will always be, an abject failure. (more…)
I just received an email that is so perfectly crafted I thought I’d publish it here in its entirety. The subject: Citizens United, the notorious U. S. Supreme Court decision of 2010 that enables corporations to spend as much as they wish influencing our elections. This law has effectively put a spear through all meaningful democracy here in the U.S., but that sad fact is not lost on 80% of Americans, many of whom are working hard in support of a constitutional amendment that would restore the integrity of our electoral processes. (more…)
