Here’s a local newscast on aeroponics, featuring Doug Jacobs, Rafael Quezada’s business partner at Tower Harvest. The segment did a good job at getting at some of the key benefits: organic growing, eco-friendliness, locally grown, and bringing high quality food to blighted urban areas.
The responsible states, the responsible investors and the responsible citizens are the three pillars for renewable energy development all over the world. The responsible state creates a conducive investment climate for renewable energy enterprise and investors returns, in which citizens invest anticipating good returns. The nations with good investment climate maximize numerical capital growth and quicker formation of renewable energy corporations. (more…)
It’s hard to believe that respect for our natural environment can be such a bone of contention, but, as reported here, certain sectors of the population fiercely attack green initiatives at every turn. It seems unthinkable to me.
With all our recent discussions on aeroponics and locally grown food, I’m delighted to note that, according to the Writer’s Almanac, it’s the birthday of chef and author Alice Waters. Waters is best known for her books on the use of fresh, local ingredients; her most recent was In the Green Kitchen: Techniques to Learn by Heart, in which she wrote:
“Our full humanity is contingent on our hospitality; we can be complete only when we are giving something away.”
What a lovely thought that is – and, no offense to other authors in this genre, but that’s certainly more profundity than one expects to find in a cookbook.
Patricia A. Holden of West Dennis, MA writes:
I am concerned about the big push for industrial wind turbines in this country. I frequently visit a friend in Falmouth, Massachusetts who has had three of these turbines installed within in a mile (one is less than 1/2 mile) away from his home. He and his neighbors are having health issues as a result of the operation of these turbines so close to their homes……Please be sure that your research and understanding is all-encompassing before you continue to advocate wind energy.
Thanks for this, Patricia. Though I’m certainly not an expert on the subject, I am aware of Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS), controversial as it is. (more…)
Yesterday’s webinar on aeroponics went very well. Unless I’m mistaken, every single one of the participants wrote in at least one question in the course of the hour-long dialog between my guest Rafael Quezada and me. There were so many, in fact, we couldn’t get to all of them.
We’ll have the archived version on the site soon for those who missed it.
The more I learn about the subject, the more enthralled I become. I can’t think of another discipline that addresses as many social ills with a single technology. Sure, there is the subject of better nutrition itself and all that this entails: childhood obesity, diabetes, and the numerous forms of damage we’re doing to ourselves with our increasing toxic food supply. But aeroponics also addresses:
• The locally grown issue, eliminating the delays and the carbon footprint associated with agribusiness, and the trucking of food thousands of miles from harvest to destination.
• The chemical run-off issue, where our pesticides and herbicides are polluting our rivers and oceans.
• The challenge of bringing nutritious food to desert areas, or to blighted urban areas where grocers will not set up shop.
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
– Victor Hugo, French dramatist, novelist, & poet (1802 – 1885)
When I was much younger I recall telling a friend that if I had to live the rest of my life on exactly three foodstuffs, I would select oysters, mangoes, and beer. Of course, that was before I developed a love for renewable energy.
Where could I possibly be going with this?
Check this out: a project submitted by Chris Rene, a terrific contributor to what we’re doing at 2GreenEnergy, that combines solar energy and shellfish farming, using solar energy to grow oyster seed that will then sequester ocean CO2.
That’s a lot of goodness rolled into one. Onshore, just add a few mango trees and a microbrewery, and I think you’ve nailed it.
Seriously, if anyone’s interested in speaking with Chris, please let me know and I’ll arrange a conversation.
More info here:
www.condofish.com
http://hermosa-bay-oyster.yolasite.com/links.php
http://condofish.wordpress.com/about-2/committee-members/
http://condofish.wordpress.com/
Here’s a piece in The Economist on ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) that points out the sad truth about the development of alternative energy technologies, i.e., that interest is strong when oil is expensive, but wanes to zero when oil prices fall. Witness the U.S. response to the oil embargoes in the 1970s, and the near-immediate abandonment of all that when it appeared the crisis was over. And, of course, the story repeats itself into the 21st Century with our current “drill baby drill” mentality (more…)
You feel the rumblings of the cleantech revolution reverberating beneath your feet, as if you were standing next to an active volcano that could erupt at any second. You recognize that our world will soon be clamoring for sustainability in all its many forms, as we wake up to the fact that dinosaur technologies: inefficient appliances, gas-guzzling cars and trucks, toxic chemicals, last-century’s lighting and HVAC, coal-fired power plants, etc. are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. (more…)
The more I learn about aeroponics (growing fruit and vegetables in a mist of air, water, and minerals), the more I like. Of course, when you look at a piece of plastic with an electrical cord attached to it, you think immediately we’re trading in one set of resource hogs for another. I.e., we’re reducing certain ecologic and financial costs:
• the water for irrigation
• the fossil fuel resources to plant, harvest, process, and transport
• the chemicals necessary to fertilize
• the toxins necessary to kill an ever-evolving set of weeds and insect pests
But, we’re using plastic that comes from petroleum, and we’re using electricity, almost half of which comes from coal.
True, there is no such thing as a free lunch; everything comes with a certain environmental impact. Yet, here we have a method of growing produce that’s many hundreds of times cleaner that farming as it appears on Earth in the 21st Century. The pump in the tower pictured here is rated at 17 Watts, and it’s shut off most of the time; it consumes about a kilowatt-hour of electricity a week. Moreover, future versions of the tower will be made of bioplastic.
At the same time, aeroponics hands you a product that is far higher in nutritional value than what you’re buying through agribusiness. It’s organic – and it’s at your doorstep.
