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Mayer Hillman on carbon rationing and the UK energy review (Audio)
Global Public Media
Mayer Hilman is an Emeritus Professor at the Policy Studies Institute. Two years ago he wrote a Penguin book called How to Save the Planet in which he described a carbon rationing scheme as a means to reduce carbon emissions. He believes this is the only equitable framework that can deliver the carbon reductions necessary to prevent irreparable damage to the Earth, a view increasingly held elsewhere. In this interview with GPM correspondent Richard Scrase, Hillman comments on the recent UK government energy review, describes his carbon rationing scheme and comments on the new US version of his book that he is currently writing.
(7 Aug 2006)
Professor Daniel Gilbert on “The Party’s Over: Going Local” (Audio)
Jason Bradford, Global Public Media
This week’s guest is Professor Daniel Gilbert from the department of psychology at Harvard University. His research focuses on belief systems, social perception and forecasting bias. He is author of the book Stumbling on Happiness. For society to change, we need to understand how people believe, interact socially, and plan for their future. Jason Bradford hosts “The Party’s Over: Going Local” on KZYX in Mendocino County, CA.
(7 Aug 2006)
Isolated Americans trying to connect
Associated Press via USA Today
NEW YORK — In bleak nursing homes and vibrant college dorms, in crowded cities and spread-out suburbs, Americans confront an ailment with no single cause or cure.
Some call it social isolation or disconnectedness. Often, it’s just plain loneliness.
An age-old ailment, to be sure, and yet by various measures — census figures on one-person households, a new study documenting Americans’ shrinking circle of intimate friends — it is worsening.
It seems ironic, even to those who are affected. The nation has never been more populous, soon to reach the 300 million mark. And it has never been more connected — by phone, e-mail, instant message, text message, and on and on.
Yet so many are alone in the crowd.
“People are increasingly busy,” said Margaret Gibbs, a psychologist at Fairleigh Dickinson University. “We’ve become a society where we expect things instantly, and don’t spend the time it takes to have real intimacy with another person.”
Some Americans are making a new commitment, getting reconnected in groups or one-on-one and combatting a phenomenon that can take a heavy toll on communities and individuals.
(5 Aug 2006)
Conversation with Bill Kemp about off-grid living
The Watt
Here is the transcript of the recent podcast conversation that I had with Bill Kemp, author of The Renewable Energy Handbook (and others). This conversation is about off-grid living.
You can find the podcast here or directly listen to the interview here.
Ben Kenney: Bill Kemp who has written books about biodiesel off-grid living and energy efficiency joins us on the show once again. He is on the line from his off-grid home, which is close to Ottawa, Ontario. Bill was on a show three weeks ago now talking about biodiesel. It actually feels longer than three weeks for me, but for today’s show we will be talking about living off grid and how to ditch the grid if you want to ditch the grid. Bill has written a book about this topic called the Renewable Energy Handbook, which you can purchase from amazon.com and actually I also noticed that Amazon now has Biodiesel Basics and Beyond in stock right now. So, Bill, how long have you been living off-grid?
Bill Kemp: Well, we have been 14 years now off the electrical grid and the natural gas grid, but the only grid we have coming here is the road.
Ben Kenney: Why did you decide to live off-grid?
Bill Kemp: Well, people who live off-grid do it for a number of reasons but primarily the main reason is economics, which surprises a lot of people because you hear a lot of people say, “Oh, it’s too expensive,” but that is really not true. It should not actually cost you any money. What it is, is a decision as to where you want to live in.
(4 Aug 2006)
Check out www.thewattpodcast.com for lots more great podcasts. -AF
In planning energy future, think local, small and clean (local co-generation)
Neal R. Peirce, Houston Chronicle
OVERSHADOWED by the expanding debate over global warming, another environmental issue is heating up: the grim prospects that Appalachia and the other coal-rich areas of America face as energy companies plan a series of some 150 major new coal-burning plants.
Already, reports Joe Lovett of the Lewisburg, W.Va.-based Appalachian Center, the brutal mountaintop removal that operators currently favor as the fastest way to extract Appalachian coal has buried more than 1,200 miles of previously free-flowing streams and caused the loss of more than 1 million acres of the world’s most productive hardwood forests.
…Another promising reform is radical rethinking of how we generate and distribute electricity in the first place. “Today’s average generating plant was built in 1964 with 1950s technology. Two-thirds of the fuel we burn is wasted. There are staggering inefficiencies,” says Richard Munson, executive director of the Northeast-Midwest Institute and author of a new book, From Edison to Enron: The Business of Power and What It Means for the Future of Electricity.
…So what’s the answer? Not to eliminate central power stations — we still need all the energy we can get our hands on, notes Yeager. But simultaneously, he insists, we need to institute “distributed energy to improve efficiency, reliability, quality and security of power for customers of this century.”
So what is distributed energy? Essentially, it means local generation of power — small power plants typically constructed to serve individual hospitals, campuses, apartment houses, factories or entire neighborhoods. The plants have an efficiency level double or better that of regional power plants, because they practice cogeneration — producing electricity and steam simultaneously.
(6 Aug 2006)
Energy-efficient homes the wave of the future
Jennifer Bordelon and Web staff, News8-Austin
Glenn Moore’s South Austin home looks like any other simple wood frame home. You can tell it’s newly built to look like an older structure, with a fresh coat of sage green paint and ivory trim.
But it’s what’s on the inside that makes this house stand out. Austin Energy’s Green Building Program awarded it five stars for its zero energy design. It may have cost a little extra, but makes up for it in low utility costs.
“The house is easy to maintain, the concrete floors easy to clean up. Someone is building a house across the street. It’s just part of the concrete walls and stuff that I knew was there but never really thought about until I moved in and that is that this house if very quiet,” Moore said.
…On Thursday, Aug. 10, Austin Mayor Will Wynn and the city council will look at creating and appointing a task force to study a change to the city ordinance so that all newly built single family homes are zero energy capable by 2015.
The task force would consist of homebuilders, architects, designers, contractors, affordable housing advocates, and representatives from the City’s Resource Management Commission and energy efficiency and renewable energy advocates.
The strategies the task force comes up with will be piloted through the city’s Green Building Program. If those ideas are both energy efficient and cost effective, Austin would incorporate them into the city’s energy code, beginning with the adoption of the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) already under way.
(6 Aug 2006)
The Visionary Life of Murray Bookchin
Brian Tokar, CounterPunch
Murray Bookchin, the visionary social theorist and activist, died during the early morning of Sunday, July 30th in his home in Burlington, Vermont. During a prolific career of writing, teaching and political activism that spanned half a century, Bookchin forged a new anti-authoritarian outlook rooted in ecology, dialectical philosophy and left libertarianism.
During the 1950s and ’60s, Bookchin built upon the legacies of utopian social philosophy and critical theory, challenging the primacy of Marxism on the left and linking contemporary ecological and urban crises to problems of capital and social hierarchy in general. Beginning in the mid-sixties, he pioneered a new political and philosophical synthesis-termed social ecology-that sought to reclaim local political power, by means of direct popular democracy, against the consolidation and increasing centralization of the nation state.
From the 1960s to the present, the utopian dimension of Bookchin’s social ecology inspired several generations of social and ecological activists, from the pioneering urban ecology movements of the sixties, to the 1970s’ back-to-the-land, antinuclear, and sustainable technology movements, the beginnings of Green politics and organic agriculture in the early 1980s, and the anti-authoritarian global justice movement that came of age in 1999 in the streets of Seattle. His influence was often cited by prominent political and social activists throughout the US, Europe, South America, Turkey, Japan, and beyond.
(31 July 2006)
Related:
NY Times obituary for Bookchin
Gristmill tribute
