Making your company greener not only has effects on the environment, it can also help to reduce running costs. Read on to find out some simple steps your company can make to go green.
Ways to Change
One of the key ways a company can change is to become more digital. (more…)
I had to laugh just now when I came across this article entitled: Yes, the Koch brothers really are that evil. To explain this sort of gallows humor, I need to mention that my mother and I speak frequently about the goings on in the world, and, as she is a regular reader of my blog, she notices that I often cover the Koch brothers in an unflattering light, as in this post last week. She asked me just the other day, “Oh, Craig, do you honestly believe they can really be that evil?”
I’ll just ask Mom to click on the link above and check it out for herself.
It’s the birthday of John Lennon, which provides me the opportunity to relate the following little anecdote. About 10 years ago when my daughter was a little girl, we happened to be driving somewhere when “Give Peace a Chance” came on the radio. As it was unfamiliar to her, she rushed to change the station, but I insisted that we listen to the song in its entirety. At the end, she was clearly resentful that I had forced her to sit through something that was so horribly repetitive. “OK!! I got it! All we are saying is give peace a chance! I heard it the first time!” (more…)
Tesla Motors receives more free ink every day than most cleantech concerns get in a decade, and this is understandable, as:
• There’s a bunch at stake here, in terms of the future of transportation
• The concept that cars from start-ups can be made and sold profitably really did stun the world, and continues to do so (more…)
It appears that my friends at EMCycle, who created a unique design for an enclosed electric bicycle, have gotten ripped off. Here’s a product from a company that seems to have simply appropriated their concept and put it into production.
How strong is their legal case against the usurper? I have no idea.
“You have a firm grasp of the obvious,” a school friend mocked me when, as a boy, I made a comment the content of which was already clear to all. The same phrase might apply to this article, pointing out that most of the targets that governmental groups set for the various components of sustainability are behind schedule.
Having said that, we need to acknowledge that it’s hard to imagine a world composed of 200 sovereign nations working together toward a vast set of 53 different common goals in complete lockstep. Also, we need to keep in mind some of these are at odds with one another; a certain piece of land can’t be used for rhino habitat and agriculture. Interesting article.
Here’s a concept that I thought readers would find interesting. The air that comes out of ducts in industrial and commercial buildings has a certain amount of kinetic energy that is wasted. Believe it or not, the air that is pumped out of an opening five feet in diameter is moving about 10 MPH, which translates to a little over a kilowatt. Here’s a system that captures about 40% of that energy. (more…)
A friend in the solar business I’ve known since high school writes:
Since the last oil embargo we have had bad or no planning, policy written by corporate and foreign funding of U.S. politicians.
We should have done energy efficiency, renewable energy back then. We knew (decades ago) that CO2 was a problem, when we were richer and could have afforded (a solution). It’s do it now time and it may be too late. (more…)
When I was a young boy I recall a bumper-sticker that read: “We’ll Have Solar Energy as Soon as the Rockefellers Own the Sun.” The bitter truth behind this is even more in our faces 50 years later. The most powerful interests on Earth are hell-bent on maintaining the status quo vis-à-vis energy, even with its terrible consequences, not only in terms of environmental and health-related damage, but also the unrelenting hostilities in places that are blessed (?) to have large quantities of oil beneath their surfaces.
Each morning I read the Writer’s Almanac, and I particularly enjoy the “poem for the day.” I hope readers will check out “Wild Turkeys” by Lawrence Kessenich, as it speaks to the issues of peace.
I had a good talk with my mother earlier today in which we discussed Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, a book that examines each of the five periods of geologic history when mass extinctions (large and rapid loss of plants and animals) occurred. Given the work’s title, the reader can see immediately that this is more than an academic curiosity; there is compelling reason to wonder whether or not humankind is in the process of causing the next big die-off. (more…)
