We need to stop relying on fossil fuel and explore renewable rescources. don't forget the lessons of civilizations like easter island that have collapsed. drilling in the arctic is not a temporary solution; it's a detrimental solution.
we depend on oil for Everything now... if new technologies for renewable resouces are not developed..it will be too late.
It is impossible for the giant oil corporations to care since it will be more and more profitable for them as resources become more scarce.
what happened on easter island is happening to us now.
please join the virtual march against arctic drilling:
Awesome. Heard a lecture last night by the developer (yes, a developer!) who is the head of Windmill Developments and leading the charge on this project.....inspiring! I'm all fired up now.
As architects and designers, this is what we should all be doing.
today is actually the 35th anniversary of earth day.
so to celebrate the house has passed bush's energy bill that hands out billions in tax breaks to fossil fuel industries, short changes energy efficiency initiatives, and protects makers of the MTBE gas additive from liability for groundwater contamination and pollution.
have a good one - and hope for a fillibuster in the senate.
Lets march on Washington. I've always wanted to march on Washington. We could all stand on the Mall holding solar panels that power...um...something symbolic, like maybe speakers that repeat the phrase "wave your wand" louder and louder the more solar panels are used... we could walk there.
I worked with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment to design a 3000sf "board game' complete with cork tiles stenciled with symbols that corresponded to questions for a trivia game that led to (very nicely designed, 8' triangular) towers with (complete with very nicely designed banners on each face) information about Missouri's natural resources.
I should give a shout out here to my design students at WebsterU who helped bring it all together.
you know i watched Inconvenient Truth today - for the first time - and had a thought; why wasn't evolution brought into the discussion? Evolution is both a FACT and a THEORY, by that of course i mean, no one disputes that we evolved, it is a fact - unless of course you are born again or your name has the initials GWB - but the way we evolved remains ground for theoretical discussion. So why did the VP not explain it in that fashion; Our planet is in trouble, global warming is a fact, but that the causes for global warming remain grounds for theoretical discussion. It seems when looked at in that way there is room for other divergent analysis that is not in lock step with popular discourse...
I celebrated Earth Day yesterday in this big festival in my city's main park. I parked my bike next to a Hummer. I found the irony to be quite humorous.
stourley, are you saying that Gore should've compared the theory of global warming with the theory of evolution?
Personally, I find the idea of "global warming" laughable, it seems to imply the climate has remained stable since forever and now, thanks to us its getting warmer. "Climate change" however, is something i can get behind, I'll also agree that human activity maybe contributing to the climate change. I just wish people would change the language.
I'm just popping my head in briefly to mention a few things in conjunction with Earth Day that I think are pretty important.
1. This weekend, whilst volunteering in Columbus at a big Earth Day event, I learned of a company that is offering Solar Power to average citizens for no more than the cost of what you are currently paying for your electricity. The concept is basically leasing solar power: essentially they design a system to ensure that the PV units power your home completely, install and maintain it free of charge, and then sell you the electricity that your PV system generates at the same rate you would pay the power company. I just learned of it, so I am going to stop short of saying that it's a revolutionary concept, but if it works, this could be a really amazing and affordable way of distributing solar power. You can find out more here: Citizenre
1a. Whilst volunteering at this same event, I was asked to lay out cable that would run between the power source and the stage where the band was playing. And no, the power source was not a big bank of solar panels. I found this task to be comically ironic and abandoned it to plant flowers as soon as I could.
2. The May issue of Vanity Fair magazine is its 2nd Annual Green Issue, complete with a cover portrait of Leo DiCaprio, a gallery of alternative fuel cars, and my favorite, "Dante's Inferno: Green Edition", with GWB and Cheney at the center of the 9 circles of hell. I found it to be well worth the $4.50 I paid for it.
I wonder if they'd do that with an office building. It seems like a great way to get those who object for financial reasons on board with photovoltaics.
The Citezenre idea is brilliant, in my non-business-minded opinion. The mot interesting business plan I've heard in a long time.
I'm not eligible because I don't have a landline phone at my house, which must be how they monitor your usage. I would think, since they are selling 25 year plans, that the landline requirement would fade eventually, as I can't imagine home telephones will be common even 10 years from now. I could be wrong.
All that said, my husband and I are discussing if it might be worth getting a landline just because I'm so interested in this company's offering.
I'm going to look into it for my old fraternity house (yeah, the rest of the alumni association doesn't know this yet, I just decided it's worth looking into). But I'm concerned about how PVs will affect the historic character of the place. Any thoughts?
Wonder K..... I have worked with Joe from the Dockside Green and he's the real deal, best advocate I have ever come across, not too mention his banker's too.
You know what's funny whistler, is that lecture that I saw, exactly 2 years ago this week, is what really marked a turning point for me, and it sort of kicked my butt in gear on environmental issues. I hadn't realized that I had posted about it! It's interesting to think of how far I've come since then....
DubK - I regurlarly attend this sort of sustainability happy hour in berkeley, once a month, called green drinks. they got got them all over. anyway, there's a guy there who's a rep for citizenre and he's always tlking up the program. definitely looks cool, but i can't imagine how the hell they expect to make any money and be viable for more than a short while. maybe i need to learn more bout their business model.
To all - i haven't seen it mentioned yet, but NYC Mayor Bloomberg made some pretty revolutionary suggestions - 120 of em to be more accurate - for NYC sustainability plans.
One of them, which has been in use in London and Singapore, is the congestion tax. $8.00 will be the daily fee to have a car in lower manhattan, anywhere below 86th street, among many others.
The way I imagine that business model is this: Power companies make money off of selling you electricity at a certain rate. Green power companies generally charge more, as they have some pretty substantial startup costs. How does one cut down on those startup costs? Don't buy land! Convince people that by letting you use their land and then selling them the power produced on it, you're doing them a favor, and you can make a similar profit to power companies.
Wow, I totally forgot about that land thing. My boss and I were discussing this earlier, and he had a similar point, so I will tell you what I told him (pure speculation on my part)...
I suppose it's possible that they have to reach a certain threshold of interest before they can begin producing the panels. Unfortunately the cost of the PV panels are still so high that even more so than with a normal start-up, they need financial capital in order to make the product. I'm only guessing here, but they probably won't even be able to begin paying off the cost of the systems until much later down the road when they have significant surplus in the energy generated by the panels and they can sell it back to the utility companies. Financially it's a big gamble, but when electricity rates begin to rise within the next couple of years, solar power will start to look more and more like a good idea, and this is the most accessible idea I've seen so far…..
I agree that it requires significant start-up capital and patience, as it will take them a while to repay that. But I think that the normal (or comparable) margin of profit which a power company makes being applied against those startup costs may pay itself off quicker than we think, especially since this company isn't maintaining a grid at all, it's using existing infrastructure.
actually, that's the other point of genius to it: Most alternative energy companies buy land out in the boonies to put their PV or windfarms on, and have to pay to get the infrastructure all the way out there. By using multiple smaller sites in urban areas which are already serviced by major utility companies, these guys are making the mainstream power companies pay for most of their infrastructure.
from the way i understand it, you basically continue to pay YOUR CURRENT amount for power, though you send the $$ to citizenre and not to PG&E.
they do some computer modelling for your load req's and then base the system on your needs, but at least in my experience, PV and Solar systems can take up to ten years to pay-off with the savings, but the guys at citizenre only need a five year contract.
maybe they're getting the panels really cheaply, or have some other economy of scale thing going on, but i just don't see where the profitability is...not that they need to be profitable to be interesting, but i'd be bumming if i went with one of their systems, and they re-possessed it 18 months later.
they also, from what i understand, can not allow you to sell power back to the grid which is where substantial savings can occur. they're just not set up for it yet.
the next mixer is this wednesday, maybe i'll track the guy down again and see if he's got any more answers.
am i the only one who is bothered that the Citizenre system is one that is still based on control and profitability (perhaps greed) of a corporation? the only benefit is that they are providing and maintaining the PV's - why not invest your money in your own personal system w/ generator and take yourself off the grid (which i know is incredibly expensive for your average joe)
They make it easy for your average joe to do something good, at the same price as it costs them to do something bad. If it makes them money, that just makes it sound like a win-win situation to me.
dont get me wrong i would MUCH rather give my money towards something like that, and will be spending some more time checking into it...
but as i quickly read through their website i got the feeling that these people are picking up on current trends and have $$ in their sights..
maybe i am a little too pessimistic on their corporate motives and a little too naïve on the abilities / concerns of the average joe
i actually half expected to get home and see 'damn you cln1 - burn in hell' so i thought of analogy (which i love to do)
i wouldnt agree to let a local farmer use my backyard to grow vegtables with the agreement that they would sell me freshly / locally grown cucumbers for the same price as the grocery store.
i wouldnt agree to let a local farmer use my backyard to grow vegtables with the agreement that they would sell me freshly / locally grown cucumbers for the same price as the grocery store.
Interesting point cln1, but why not? would you expect the farmers to give you the produce for free? if it's an ownership society that's troubling you, then how are you able to allow the farmer to use your land?
what if you knew the cost of produce was going up, and that you could lock in the price by letting them frm your land?
As an agricultural tangent...that's how CSA's work. Well, not exactly, but similar. You pay up front for vegetables that the farmer intends to farm. When they're harvested, you get them delivered to you. If there's a shortage due to bad weather, drought, or something else, you take a small hit but the farmer doesn't go out of business.
I'm not suggesting that citizenre is the farmer in my little story there, but just that the terms implied by an ownership society should, IMHO, share both the risk and the benefit. Maybe citizenre's current offerings don't yet measure up...I'm not too sure.
earthday
We need to stop relying on fossil fuel and explore renewable rescources. don't forget the lessons of civilizations like easter island that have collapsed. drilling in the arctic is not a temporary solution; it's a detrimental solution.
we depend on oil for Everything now... if new technologies for renewable resouces are not developed..it will be too late.
It is impossible for the giant oil corporations to care since it will be more and more profitable for them as resources become more scarce.
what happened on easter island is happening to us now.
please join the virtual march against arctic drilling:
http://earthday.care2.com
Check this sh*t out:
http://www.docksidegreen.ca/
Awesome. Heard a lecture last night by the developer (yes, a developer!) who is the head of Windmill Developments and leading the charge on this project.....inspiring! I'm all fired up now.
As architects and designers, this is what we should all be doing.
got a free cuppa coffee at my starbucks if i drank it in store in celebration of earthday...... go earth!
today is actually the 35th anniversary of earth day.
so to celebrate the house has passed bush's energy bill that hands out billions in tax breaks to fossil fuel industries, short changes energy efficiency initiatives, and protects makers of the MTBE gas additive from liability for groundwater contamination and pollution.
have a good one - and hope for a fillibuster in the senate.
I recycled my cuppa coffee today, and reused the water that I brushed my teeth in for lunch.
Lets march on Washington. I've always wanted to march on Washington. We could all stand on the Mall holding solar panels that power...um...something symbolic, like maybe speakers that repeat the phrase "wave your wand" louder and louder the more solar panels are used... we could walk there.
did anyone else catch dennis miller talking about the environment on the daily show the other night?
it made me mad, but then i remembered that he's just kind of ignorant.
dennis miller, igorant? naaaaah
what did he say? me no see dennis. no cable.
Happy 35th Earth Day
Don't agitate, celebrate
link
get active. takes but a second so send some handy form letters to your senator. esp. people in red states.
i roda my bika to worka today.
look at mother nature on the run in the 21st century
vado...
you can never go wrong with a neil reference.
happy earth day
resurrected for your reading purposes
brought to you by green spam
im suprised the reason article didn't start a flame war.
Anyway, i celebrated earth day by cading in central park
OK, I'm pretty proud of this ——
I worked with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment to design a 3000sf "board game' complete with cork tiles stenciled with symbols that corresponded to questions for a trivia game that led to (very nicely designed, 8' triangular) towers with (complete with very nicely designed banners on each face) information about Missouri's natural resources.
I should give a shout out here to my design students at WebsterU who helped bring it all together.
General concensus was that it all kicked ass.
pics to follow if they turned out.
this can be accessed from the link lbg provided above: http://qntm.org/board
HAhahahahahaha HAHAhahahaha.
very funny website, it is undoubtedly british
you know i watched Inconvenient Truth today - for the first time - and had a thought; why wasn't evolution brought into the discussion? Evolution is both a FACT and a THEORY, by that of course i mean, no one disputes that we evolved, it is a fact - unless of course you are born again or your name has the initials GWB - but the way we evolved remains ground for theoretical discussion. So why did the VP not explain it in that fashion; Our planet is in trouble, global warming is a fact, but that the causes for global warming remain grounds for theoretical discussion. It seems when looked at in that way there is room for other divergent analysis that is not in lock step with popular discourse...
good movie btw, very accessible.
I celebrated Earth Day yesterday in this big festival in my city's main park. I parked my bike next to a Hummer. I found the irony to be quite humorous.
stourley, are you saying that Gore should've compared the theory of global warming with the theory of evolution?
Personally, I find the idea of "global warming" laughable, it seems to imply the climate has remained stable since forever and now, thanks to us its getting warmer. "Climate change" however, is something i can get behind, I'll also agree that human activity maybe contributing to the climate change. I just wish people would change the language.
I'm just popping my head in briefly to mention a few things in conjunction with Earth Day that I think are pretty important.
1. This weekend, whilst volunteering in Columbus at a big Earth Day event, I learned of a company that is offering Solar Power to average citizens for no more than the cost of what you are currently paying for your electricity. The concept is basically leasing solar power: essentially they design a system to ensure that the PV units power your home completely, install and maintain it free of charge, and then sell you the electricity that your PV system generates at the same rate you would pay the power company. I just learned of it, so I am going to stop short of saying that it's a revolutionary concept, but if it works, this could be a really amazing and affordable way of distributing solar power. You can find out more here: Citizenre
1a. Whilst volunteering at this same event, I was asked to lay out cable that would run between the power source and the stage where the band was playing. And no, the power source was not a big bank of solar panels. I found this task to be comically ironic and abandoned it to plant flowers as soon as I could.
2. The May issue of Vanity Fair magazine is its 2nd Annual Green Issue, complete with a cover portrait of Leo DiCaprio, a gallery of alternative fuel cars, and my favorite, "Dante's Inferno: Green Edition", with GWB and Cheney at the center of the 9 circles of hell. I found it to be well worth the $4.50 I paid for it.
Happy Earth Day, everyone.
Today was a gorgeous Earth Day in Washington. I took a short nap on the National Mall.
I didnt take a shower today.
That Citizenre solar power stuff looks pretty cool. Too bad I don't own a house or I'd sign up for it :(
I wonder if they'd do that with an office building. It seems like a great way to get those who object for financial reasons on board with photovoltaics.
The Citezenre idea is brilliant, in my non-business-minded opinion. The mot interesting business plan I've heard in a long time.
I'm not eligible because I don't have a landline phone at my house, which must be how they monitor your usage. I would think, since they are selling 25 year plans, that the landline requirement would fade eventually, as I can't imagine home telephones will be common even 10 years from now. I could be wrong.
All that said, my husband and I are discussing if it might be worth getting a landline just because I'm so interested in this company's offering.
I just heard the story of Ira Einhorn for the first time last week.
I'm going to look into it for my old fraternity house (yeah, the rest of the alumni association doesn't know this yet, I just decided it's worth looking into). But I'm concerned about how PVs will affect the historic character of the place. Any thoughts?
Wonder K..... I have worked with Joe from the Dockside Green and he's the real deal, best advocate I have ever come across, not too mention his banker's too.
You know what's funny whistler, is that lecture that I saw, exactly 2 years ago this week, is what really marked a turning point for me, and it sort of kicked my butt in gear on environmental issues. I hadn't realized that I had posted about it! It's interesting to think of how far I've come since then....
couple quick tangents here...
DubK - I regurlarly attend this sort of sustainability happy hour in berkeley, once a month, called green drinks. they got got them all over. anyway, there's a guy there who's a rep for citizenre and he's always tlking up the program. definitely looks cool, but i can't imagine how the hell they expect to make any money and be viable for more than a short while. maybe i need to learn more bout their business model.
To all - i haven't seen it mentioned yet, but NYC Mayor Bloomberg made some pretty revolutionary suggestions - 120 of em to be more accurate - for NYC sustainability plans.
One of them, which has been in use in London and Singapore, is the congestion tax. $8.00 will be the daily fee to have a car in lower manhattan, anywhere below 86th street, among many others.
Article from NY Times can be found here.
The way I imagine that business model is this: Power companies make money off of selling you electricity at a certain rate. Green power companies generally charge more, as they have some pretty substantial startup costs. How does one cut down on those startup costs? Don't buy land! Convince people that by letting you use their land and then selling them the power produced on it, you're doing them a favor, and you can make a similar profit to power companies.
Wow, I totally forgot about that land thing. My boss and I were discussing this earlier, and he had a similar point, so I will tell you what I told him (pure speculation on my part)...
I suppose it's possible that they have to reach a certain threshold of interest before they can begin producing the panels. Unfortunately the cost of the PV panels are still so high that even more so than with a normal start-up, they need financial capital in order to make the product. I'm only guessing here, but they probably won't even be able to begin paying off the cost of the systems until much later down the road when they have significant surplus in the energy generated by the panels and they can sell it back to the utility companies. Financially it's a big gamble, but when electricity rates begin to rise within the next couple of years, solar power will start to look more and more like a good idea, and this is the most accessible idea I've seen so far…..
I agree that it requires significant start-up capital and patience, as it will take them a while to repay that. But I think that the normal (or comparable) margin of profit which a power company makes being applied against those startup costs may pay itself off quicker than we think, especially since this company isn't maintaining a grid at all, it's using existing infrastructure.
actually, that's the other point of genius to it: Most alternative energy companies buy land out in the boonies to put their PV or windfarms on, and have to pay to get the infrastructure all the way out there. By using multiple smaller sites in urban areas which are already serviced by major utility companies, these guys are making the mainstream power companies pay for most of their infrastructure.
from the way i understand it, you basically continue to pay YOUR CURRENT amount for power, though you send the $$ to citizenre and not to PG&E.
they do some computer modelling for your load req's and then base the system on your needs, but at least in my experience, PV and Solar systems can take up to ten years to pay-off with the savings, but the guys at citizenre only need a five year contract.
maybe they're getting the panels really cheaply, or have some other economy of scale thing going on, but i just don't see where the profitability is...not that they need to be profitable to be interesting, but i'd be bumming if i went with one of their systems, and they re-possessed it 18 months later.
they also, from what i understand, can not allow you to sell power back to the grid which is where substantial savings can occur. they're just not set up for it yet.
the next mixer is this wednesday, maybe i'll track the guy down again and see if he's got any more answers.
happy late Earth day, make a change today!
am i the only one who is bothered that the Citizenre system is one that is still based on control and profitability (perhaps greed) of a corporation? the only benefit is that they are providing and maintaining the PV's - why not invest your money in your own personal system w/ generator and take yourself off the grid (which i know is incredibly expensive for your average joe)
or am i missing something?
They make it easy for your average joe to do something good, at the same price as it costs them to do something bad. If it makes them money, that just makes it sound like a win-win situation to me.
beware of green capitalism thou
it is a owners society not much different that we see today but with more regulation
imagine living in a world where everything was 100% recycled, how would those 'owners' justify profiting off that?
dont get me wrong i would MUCH rather give my money towards something like that, and will be spending some more time checking into it...
but as i quickly read through their website i got the feeling that these people are picking up on current trends and have $$ in their sights..
maybe i am a little too pessimistic on their corporate motives and a little too naïve on the abilities / concerns of the average joe
i actually half expected to get home and see 'damn you cln1 - burn in hell' so i thought of analogy (which i love to do)
i wouldnt agree to let a local farmer use my backyard to grow vegtables with the agreement that they would sell me freshly / locally grown cucumbers for the same price as the grocery store.
It would be nice if you could sort of rent-to-own the PV array they installed.
i have had PV since 84
it is not that hard or expensive and the same panels still work.
Interesting point cln1, but why not? would you expect the farmers to give you the produce for free? if it's an ownership society that's troubling you, then how are you able to allow the farmer to use your land?
what if you knew the cost of produce was going up, and that you could lock in the price by letting them frm your land?
As an agricultural tangent...that's how CSA's work. Well, not exactly, but similar. You pay up front for vegetables that the farmer intends to farm. When they're harvested, you get them delivered to you. If there's a shortage due to bad weather, drought, or something else, you take a small hit but the farmer doesn't go out of business.
I'm not suggesting that citizenre is the farmer in my little story there, but just that the terms implied by an ownership society should, IMHO, share both the risk and the benefit. Maybe citizenre's current offerings don't yet measure up...I'm not too sure.
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