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Alcoholics Unanimous Newsletter
David Blume, www.permaculture.com
Permaculture teacher and ethanol expert David Blume reports on the final stages of his upcoming book, as well as other developments in ethanol. David spoke at the first Peak Oil conference in Yellow Springs, Ohio, impressing even ethanol skeptics. Topics in the November newsletter include:
Status of the Book
Our Trip to Brazil
Our Plans to Distribute Fuel in Northern California
Car Conversions
Chainsaw Experiments
Gas Prices
Oil Companies Boycott Alcohol
(November 2005)
For audio of David’s talk, see energybulletin.net/3393.html . Slides of the talk are available at www.communitysolution.org/pconf1.html .
Willits localization and sustainability projects multiply
Gleaning, garden-making, and grassroots energy research
Claudia Reed, Willits News
From farm land to sewing classes, project ideas started, inspired, or co-facilitated by the year-old Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL) group are starting to manifest.
From farm land to sewing classes, project ideas started, inspired, or co-facilitated by the year-old Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL) group are starting to manifest. The idea is to produce locally the necessities that are consumed locally–and to have a good time in the process. …
Preparatory work brought in volunteers from the wider community, including an attorney who helped draw up the lease forms protecting both growers and gleaners. Another volunteer held a yard sale and donated the proceeds for the purchase of harvesting ladders, picking poles, harvesting sacks and other supplies. Richard Jeske gave several classes to team leaders on using the equipment without causing harm to either tree or gleaner. …
Working under the chairmanship of City Councilman Ron Orenstein, WELL volunteers make up the bulk of the ad hoc committee authorized by the City of Willits to explore sustainable alternate energy possibilities for city buildings and operations. Orenstein is preparing a report to the city council. …
(16 November 2005)
Recycling is good; using less is better
Kit Kirkpatrick, Eugene Register-Guard
…Although we can be proud of our efforts to capture material from the waste stream, even recycling requires an energy-intensive system that transforms waste into a usable product.
Large trucks that burn copious amounts of fuel move the recyclables to various facilities to be sorted and transformed. Glass, plastic and metals must be melted to render them useful, and paper must be soaked in a chemical bath to remove the inks and separate fibers.
Recycling should be considered the environmental choice of last resort.
(15 November 2005)
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: The Auto Industry Ratchets Up Recycling
Jim Motavalli, E Magazine
ARGONNE, ILLINOIS—The spinning drum didn’t look like much, but by sorting one form of scrap from another it was pointing the way to an important new frontier for recycling. Here on the grounds of the Argonne National Laboratories near Chicago, a pilot recycling plant is trying to convince cars to go the extra mile in donating their rusting carcasses to new products. The goal? The fully recycled automobile.
There are 210 million vehicles on the road in the U.S., with about 15 million added each year. Ever looked at the vehicles stacked on top of each other in a junkyard and wondered what happened to them? Now think about the end of life vehicles (ELV) from sea to shining sea—about 15 million of them every year—and you begin to understand the scope of our disposal problem.
Fortunately, the scrap metal from American cars and trucks is a valuable commodity, so 75 percent of the materials from the average vehicle get recycled. Ninety five percent of all cars go through the recycling process, and that produces an average of more than 14 million tons of scrap steel annually. It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
Well, it could be better.
(November/December 2005 issue)
New Orleans: New Urbanism?
Doug MacCash, Newhouse News Service via Seattle Times
NEW ORLEANS — New Urbanism will be the salvation of post-Katrina New Orleans. Or perhaps it will lead to the Big Easy’s complete demise. When planning pundits discuss the future of this battered city, New Urbanism is the dominant concept.
The air buzzes with phrases like “smart growth” and “pedestrian-friendly” — code words from the New Urbanist canon.
So, just what is New Urbanism?
(16 November 2005)
