Cool Rainwater Harvesting Promotional Video...

We need more efforts like this here in the US. This one was done for India.

Anyone want to put together an ad campaign?

Reality Coalition: Gore's New Effort

From the Huffinton Post, December 4th, 2008.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/04/gore-leads-reality-coalit_n_148397.html

"Today, Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, League of Conservation Voters, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club launched the Reality Coalition, a national grassroots and advertising effort with a simple message: in reality, there is no such thing as clean coal. Coal, they say, cannot be considered clean until its carbon dioxide emissions are captured and stored. The Coalition is backing a multi-million dollar ad campaign, running in print, broadcast and online media and supported by the website www.ThisIsReality.org."

Check out the website...it's good to see a national ad campaign like this.

Can We Talk About This? --> "Greensumption"

Watch this video called "Greensumption". This is something that needs to be discussed. We think we have it all figured out, don't we???

William McDonough: Visions for a New Paradigm

This is an amazing video of William McDonough (www.mcdonough.com) from the Bioneers conference in 2000. Another visionary that is willing to challenge the capitalism paradigm is Annie Leonard of the Story of Stuff. These two individuals are really the most interesting speakers on the subject of sustainability that I have heard recently.

A Refreshing Idea: Cap-and-Dividend Proposal

Imagine if you could own a share (think Wall Street) of the air?

The idea is called cap-and-dividend (as opposed to cap-and-trade) and everyone in the United States - every single person young or old - would own a right to one share of the air which would pay a yearly dividend. This is an idea proposed by Peter Barnes, - solar entrepreneur and author of Who Owns the Sky? (2001) and Capitalism 3.0 (2006) - who is shopping the idea around to Congress with very positive initial response.

Here is an excerpt from an article The Energy Daily summing up the program.

New Greenhouse Plan Targets
Carbon Suppliers, Not Emitters
BY CHRIS HOLLY
The Energy Daily
www.TheEnergyDaily.com
Thursday, September 18, 2008
ED Vol. 36, No. 180

As senior members of Congress lay the groundwork for a new legislative debate on climate change next year, a new proposal making the rounds of Capitol Hill offices would replace the cap-and-trade approach now in vogue with one in which all carbon permits are auctioned and all auction revenues are returned to consumers.

This “cap-and-dividend” approach, being shopped on the Hill by California entrepreneur Peter Barnes, also would shift the cap from carbon emitters such as electric utilities to carbon suppliers—coal, oil and natural gas producers. Barnes will outline his plan today at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing.

Under the proposal, fossil fuel providers would have to surrender permits or allowances for each ton of carbon contained in the fuels they sell into the economy, and they could obtain the permits only from a government auction. All the revenues from the auction would be redistributed to consumers in monthly dividends.

The proposal’s elegant simplicity is at the core of its attraction, supporters say. Shifting the point of regulation upstream to fuel providers would reduce the number of regulated entities to a few hundred oil, gas and coal companies.

By comparison, an emissions cap-and-trade scheme, such as that contemplated in legislation by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.), would affect thousands of power plants and industrial facilities. Under the cap-and-dividend plan, there would be no emissions trading to monitor and no emissions offsets to verify, obviating the need for a massive new government bureaucracy. Distributing the monthly dividends to consumers could be done electronically, by wire transfer to banks or directly to debit cards, Barnes said last week.

“You could manage the whole program with two or three guys and a computer,” Barnes told The Energy Daily in a September 11 interview.

The dividends would be taxable, and Barnes estimates that the federal government would receive through taxation about 25 percent of the auction revenues, which it could use to fund clean energy research; reduce taxes or the national debt; or assist energy-intensive industries
or low-income consumers hit hardest by the carbon cap.

A co-founder of Working Assets, a non-profit that provides credit card and telephone services and donates a portion of its revenues to support progressive causes, Barnes said that the distribution of the auction revenues to consumers is a crucial element of the proposal. Capping carbon will increase the cost of energy and other economic goods and services, but the monthly dividend will help cushion the impact for all consumers, Barnes said. If consumers reduce their energy use through increased efficiency, they effectively increase the value of their dividends. And every time the carbon cap is tightened, each consumer’s monthly check will increase proportionately, he said.

“Getting the psychological benefit of a monthly dividend check is very important,” Barnes said. “To the extent you can sell a carbon cap to the American people, this is the only way you can sell it and keep it sold.”

Critics of the proposal suggest that, while attractive theoretically, it ignores political realities in Washington and the power of oil, coal, gas and utility lobbies. A utility attorney said Friday that if the proposal were enacted into law, power companies would be faced with sharply higher fuel costs and worry that they might not be able to pass on all the cost increases to consumers. At the same time, the attorney said, the shape of the climate change debate so far has led energy-intensive industries to conclude that they will be getting government assistance—in the form of free emission allowances—to help them cope with higher energy prices resulting from a carbon cap.

“Any new proposal that doesn’t involve cost relief for some of these companies is going to attract their organized opposition,” the utility lawyer said.

A veteran politico who now works on energy policy issues was bluntly dismissive of the proposal: “The notion that electric utilities, the oil and gas industry, the automotive industry and others are just going to lie down while all this occurs is simply absurd.”

But Barnes said that as he has shopped the cap-and-dividend proposal on the Hill, no one has raised any significant objections or identified fatal flaws. “I have to say that this is probably no one’s first choice for a climate change program, but I think it’s a lot of people’s second choice,” he said.

The Senate debate on the Lieberman-Warner legislation this year revealed some of the political pitfalls that a cap-and-trade system must overcome to be enacted into law. There is sharp disagreement in Congress and among utilities and other affected industries over whether to auction allowances or give them to emitters, and how to use auction revenues. A failure to resolve these disputes was a key reason the bill died on the Senate floor.

Dallas Burtraw, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future who has done extensive research on the architecture of cap-and-trade programs, said last week that the cap-and-dividend approach may emerge as the preferred fall-back option if lawmakers cannot resolve the numerous cap-and-trade design disputes.

It may sound far-fetched, but it is a refreshing alternative to cap-and-trade and I hope it catches on. Spread the word!

Brushing My Teeth in Two Ounces of Water

Today, the plumber came and turned off our water. There was a leak in the pipes and the plumber couldn't fix it for three days. "Three days!!!", I exclaimed.

It is amazing how helpless you are suddenly when there is no ready supply of water.

I quickly filled a few buckets and some other receptacles and then that was that - the water was off. I washed my hands with just a few cups of water. The process went like this: get the hands wet, apply soap, scrub, then add more water until there were no suds left. Brushing teeth was extremely economical. I was able to brush my teeth AND rinse with just one cup of water.

I realized that most of our water usage habits are based on laziness.

I am not as bad these days as I used to be back before Al Gore was a Nobel Peace Prize winner. I used to leave the tap running in many situations, including when I was brushing my teeth. Even though I have much better habits nowadays, having NO water made me think just how far I could push this conservation thing. I became a super-efficient "water hero" who only used exactly what he needed. Actually, in the third world, most everyone consumes water like this, and much less I'm sure.

It was annoying having to use the neighbor's shower, but having to shape my consumption habits was really no more time-consuming than my regular routines - once I adjusted, that is. We really don't appreciate how lucky we are to have limitless clean water flowing out of our taps on command and we certainly have no idea about the true value of water until there is none!

So CONSERVE it!!!

All Foods at Anytime

Consumers expect all types of food, with no concession to season or geography. This used to be mainly a habit of the richer countries, but now the developing world is taking our example. This seems so ridiculous, and I have been doing it my whole life. But I forgive myself, because I didn't know better! Until now.

Why is this like this? Well part of the reason is that there was a little-known international treaty signed in Chicago in 1944 called the Convention on International Civil Aviation to help the (then) fledgling airline industry. This was basically a tax exemption on fuel for international transport of goods, unlike what we pay for cars and trucks. Also, the exemption extended to ocean freighters.

This is only part of the reason, the other part is that the labor in the developing world is so cheap.

There is much debate about the carbon footprint of a good versus the distance it traveled. They are not always the same. Sometimes, people argue, that the locally produced good has a higher carbon footprint than an imported good. I would think this is a rarity, and if this is the case, I think that we can find ways to minimize the locally produced footprint much easier than the one from across the world.

I would prefer to just reinstate the tax on all of this transported food from all over the world. We need the cost of food to reflect the distances covered and energy used to get the food to us. Firstly, we should have labels about where everything comes from, which I am starting to see more and more although you really have to have good eyes! Secondly, we should have a carbon footprint label on the item. Maybe they could be the same label.

Meanwhile, as a food shopper, I would suggest to buy as locally as you can and to buy in bulk as much as you can to minimize packaging. Now that I know better, I will change my much-ingrained habits. Or do my best...that's about all any of us can do.