Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Kinsale two years on (Audio)
Andi Hazelwood, Global Public Media
Klaus Harvey of Transition Town Kinsale (TTK) shares with Global Public Media’s Andi Hazelwood the benefit of two years of experience in striving for sustainability in Kinsale, Cork, Ireland since the town’s local council adopted the world’s first Energy Descent Action Plan. Harvey talks about the food, transport and waste initiatives underway, and TTK’s relocalization plans for the future.
(8 October 2007)
Astoria couple throws out lifeboat of ideas to save energy, resources
Kara Hansen, Daily Astorian (Oregon)
After spending two years working to convert a 1970s Tudor-style Astoria home into a low-impact, energy-independent household, Caren Black and Christopher Paddon are finally going off the grid – or coming as close as possible to being entirely self-sufficient.
That means making no purchases, producing no garbage, cutting off all outside utilities and fueling their Honda hybrid with just one tank of gas over the entire month of October.
And they’d like their North Coast neighbors to do the same.
“We cannot continue to use and waste power. People are going to have to learn to conserve,” said Black, a longtime teacher and school administrator from California. “That’s one of the reasons for this challenge: Learn while you can, while you’re still on the grid. It’s easier to learn now, when if you make a mistake there’s still backup.”
For Black and Paddon, their October Green Fest is a “test” of the homestead they’ve developed, “a time to check and see how we’re doing,” according to the couple, who began the nonprofit Titanic Lifeboat Academy in 2005 for education and research on issues related to peak oil – the uppermost point before global oil production descends into terminal decline. They also hoped their home could become a sort of demonstration center for sustainable lifestyles, systems and technologies.
(8 October 2007)
What you pay for all this every year will be an electric shock
Miles Brignall, The Guardian
Cover story: Did you know that line drying your washing saves 50p a load? Or that you can easily cut your total bill by £100 a year?
—
If you are one of the sad people who still irons their clothes, are you aware that an hour’s hard graft with a standard steam iron consumes around 22p worth of electricity? If you’re only ironing them because they came out of tumble dryer all wrinkled, you are already 50p down … and if you pop the kettle on for a cup of tea to recuperate, your electricity meter will start whirring madly.
Reducing the amount of electricity consumed at home by modifying behaviour and buying the most energy-efficient products, is one of the easiest and greenest money-saving things you can do. With a few simple changes, it is possible to save £100 a year on your bill – and reduce your carbon footprint.
Figures published on the energy saving website sust-it.net show that different home appliance models use hugely varying amounts of electricity.
(6 October 2007)
Green Chemistry Attracts Fans on Campus
Mark Pratt, Associated Press
BOSTON — Terry Collins sounds like the world’s most dour pessimist.
The Carnegie Mellon University chemistry professor paints a bleak picture of the Earth’s future, a planet damaged by global warming and ravaged by toxins, with a population sickened by poisonous chemicals.
“We are practicing time-limited technologies that cause all sorts of environmental damage, and are damaging to the species, to our very civilization,” said Collins, director of Carnegie Mellon’s Institute for Green Oxidation Chemistry in Pittsburgh.
But Collins also is an optimist, hoping science can solve those problems.
He is encouraged by an increasing number of colleges and universities that incorporate the principles of green chemistry _ the idea that chemical processes and products can be designed without using toxins or generating hazardous waste.
“When you think about chemistry, most people think about the hazards,” said Paul Anastas, who coined the term green chemistry in 1991 while working at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He is now director of Yale University’s Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering.
“People think about how it’s going to hurt them, how it’s going to hurt the world. But green chemistry looks at how we can develop products that won’t hurt the environment.”
(9 October 2007)
Can this muck save the planet?
Tom Pelton, Baltimore Sun
Power company money could help build Shore wetlands, combat global warming
—
BLACKWATER NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE – Digging through the muck of a marshy island, Brian Needelman is hunting for an antidote to global warming.
The University of Maryland scientist is measuring how much carbon dioxide has been trapped in the soil of wetlands planted four years ago. Needelman hopes to prove that creating salt marshes is better than planting trees for removing global warming gases from the atmosphere.
If he’s right, power companies in search of pollution credits might be willing to invest millions of dollars to build more wetlands here, which could mean a corporate-financed reconstruction of the Chesapeake Bay’s largest breeding ground for birds, fish and crabs.
“Tidal marshes have the highest rates of sequestering carbon of any kind of land,” said Needelman, as reeds hissed around him in a stiff wind. “And captured carbon is a commodity worth a certain amount of money.”
(9 October 2007)
Short video at article.
Contributor Shane Perryman writes:
In an interesting twist, sea level rise will probably create a lot more salt marshes and shallow seas. An example of a negative feedback??
