Category: Uncategorized

My last post is even more relevant if you take a look at this Joel Makower post on WorldChanging. Seems water crises aren’t just for those in poverty anymore….enough for the whole family….

There was a great post on Lifehacker about using water collected from a rain barrel to flush your toilet, rather than the clean drinking water that is normally used. The comment thread is really good too.

So what about this: wouldn’t it be cool to have a house with two sets of water pipes, one for clean, one for grey water? Or maybe just a house that saves all its grey water to use later. Perhaps in a tank near the top of the house, pumped up there by the solar panels or wind turbines on the roof? And the grey water could be reused for a lot of things, and sould have to be overflowed into the sewer system sometimes. Or it could be used to water the lawn or something. Sprinklers shooting off of the roof? I think that would be cool.

Green Geek has a post which asserts that by avoiding the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables (or at least buying them organic) and eating more of the 12 least contaminated, we can reduce our pesticide exposure by 90%.

12 Most contaminated: apples, bell peppers, celery, cherries, imported grapes, nectarines, peaches, pears, potatoes, red rasberries, spinach, and strawberries.

12 Least contaminated: asparagus, avocados, bananas, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, kiwis, mangos, onions, papayas, pineapples, and peas.

There’s a great post on DeSmogBlog about how we communicate about climate change. There was a study done (pdf) by a UK research institute recently, in which they examined different ways of doing so. Basically (paired down from DeSmogBlog’s summary) the gist is that a lot of how we talk is alarmist, and that doesn’t do any good in terms of getting people to want to change. Then there’s the “20 things you can do” style, and while that’s a lot better, it’s a little out of sync with the scope of the problem. What we need to do, they concluded, is to empower the individual to make the necessary small changes.

I think this is a great clarification of a confusing issue.

I think the Richard Littlemore of DeSmogBlog was a little too angry and resentful when he wrote this post, but what I got out of it was the information that Penn and Teller look at things through an anti-environmental lens. It’s fine to joke about serious things, I think, and I love Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. But it seems Penn and Teller have been convinced by the ambiguaters that DeSmogBlog is intended to reveal, and that’s unfortunate. It makes me sad that funny people use their fame to promote the idea that there is uncertainty about the basic facts of climate change.

As promised, here‘s This Week in Sustainable Mobility from WorldChanging and Green Car Congress.

This is an absolutely phenomenal article by Charles Komanoff of Grist. He asserts that the most reasonable path to energy/fuel conservation comes from higher prices, but outlines the problem with that:

Higher prices do reduce usage. The challenge is to find a way to keep raising fuel prices without harming our economy, our pocketbooks, and, of critical importance, the millions of poor families who can’t afford higher prices for gas, home heating, and electricity and shouldn’t be made to pay to solve a problem not of their making.

Komaroff then proposes a tax shift away from current, regressive taxes toward a fuel tax. David Roberts points out in his comment the problem with this plan:

The political problem the fuel tax faces is that it’s a tax, and whether it’s shifted or rebated or whatever, the word “tax” is a weapon of the right, and it has rarely failed them. Whether the charge is accurate or not, the fuel tax will immediately be branded leftist social engineering.

The conclusion agreed upon by the various commenters is this: the idea is spot on, but please don’t associate Ralph Nader with it, and don’t call it a progressive fuel tax. Call it a tax break, or something else focusing on the eliminated taxes rather than the imposed ones. And an anti-tax Republican campaigning for this “tax break” would be great too.

One of the major problems with wind turbines cited by anti-wind advocates is that wind farms are quite fatal to bird populations. Or at least this is the implication. Studies are cited as to bird mortality near wind farms. Treehugger had a great post back in April about why this issue is more complicated and those claims are usually unreliable. Basically, turbines move slower in the newer models, and statistics are normally from older models. The other factor is how many birds migrate, nest, or breed in the area of the proposed wind farm. That very exposure factor, however, seems to be high at the proposed site of the Lewis Wind farm in Scotland. Hmm….maybe that’s not such a good place? How about offshore?

Subways are one of the major reason I’d love to live in a city. I think even such mundane subways as Boston’s or New York’s are really cool, and Washington DC’s is really pretty, but these are kinda ridiculous in their opulence. Feast your eyes.

Another great list from the Problogger list contest, this one from The Good Human. The “top 10+ ways to save money and help the environment” actually has 13 items, and it’s a great list. Near the top of both this list and the last one is compact fluorescent lightbulbs. For christ’s sake, go and replace any incandescent bulbs you have with compact fluorescents! They only cost a little more, and they’ll pay for themselves in a matter of weeks from how much less energy they use. Why wouldn’t you get them???