by David Burn | Jan 17, 2006 | Politics, The Environment
I found this bumper sticker in a store on Lexington Avenue in Asheville on Sunday. I like the attitude it brings and the question it begs. Hemp is not pot. It’s a plant that can revolutionize farming in America, as well as the textile and energy industries. There’s nothing to fear here. It’s a plant that has been in cultivation for the past 8000 years, yet it is outlawed in this nation today. We need to change that.
After purchasing this sticker, I crossed Lexington Ave. and entered Terra Diva, where I was lucky to find a great pair of hemp pants in my size (a miracle in its own right). The pants are from Of The Earth–headquartered in Bend, Oregon–which strives to be the premier resource for fine natural fiber apparel in the world.
by David Burn | Jan 6, 2006 | Digital culture, The Environment
c|net: A Scottish university is testing solar-powered streetlights that also deliver wireless Internet access.
The Project Starsight technology is being tested as part of a deal between Compliance Technology, a company based in Fife, Scotland, and the Abertay Center for the Environment (ACE) at the University of Abertay in Dundee.
The solar panels provide a free energy source for the streetlight and also for the Wi-Fi or WiMax connection.
by David Burn | Dec 15, 2005 | The Environment
At opus:creative in Portland, Oregon, 13 of their 31 employees ride their bikes to work.
Outside of opus:creative, bike commuter numbers are exploding throughout Portland, as profiled recently in an Associated Press article that credited cycling — and the City of Portland’s emphasis on livable urban design that encourages such activities — for helping keep Oregon’s adult obesity rate stagnant, while other U.S. states continue to climb steadily. The obesity statistics come from a study conducted by an organization called Trust for America’s Health; Michael Earls, co-author of the study, describes the relationship between urban design and fitness: “If a city or town is built in such a way that it forces residents to drive long distances instead of walking or cycling, then physical activity becomes something that has to be planned rather than an activity which can be woven into the fabric of everyday life.”
Bike Portland is a great bicycling blog and it lists several other local bicycling blogs, all of which points to just how pervasive the riding ethos is in Puddletown.
And for those who must drive, Darrell Plant says there is biodiesel for sale at Jay’s Garage, on the corner of SE 7th Ave. and Morrison St.
by David Burn | Dec 1, 2005 | The Environment
Business 2.0: Most solar panels are bulky, pricey, and difficult to install. But imagine if you could turn windows — or entire skyscrapers — into solar power generators. That’s the goal of XsunX, a startup in Aliso Viejo, Calif., that has invented a way to stick semitransparent solar cells on plastic film, which manufacturers can use to transform ordinary windows into PowerGlass. “It’s like a power-plant skin on a building,” says XsunX CEO and president Tom Djokovich.
XsunX’s amorphous silicon solar cells aren’t more efficient — they convert just 6 percent of light energy that hits them into electricity, compared with 15 percent for traditional silicon cells. They are, however, more versatile: A 20-story building has about 10 times more space for PowerGlass than it does for roof panels. That puts XsunX on the cutting edge of a trend in the $7 billion solar industry called building-integrated photovoltaics, or BIPV.
“We’re seeing a revolution where solar is disappearing into the building,” says Ron Pernick, co-founder of energy research firm Clean Edge. Next year, XsunX plans to begin selling its manufacturing technology to glass and optical-film makers and collecting licensing fees and royalties. Meanwhile, a firm called Iowa Thin Film Technologies has released solar-film radios and tents, and it’s now developing opaque BIPV products for roofs. But as the only company making see-through cells for windows, XsunX can envision a bright future ahead.
by David Burn | Nov 19, 2005 | Lowcountry, The Environment
Flickr user, Lorabelle, recently moved to Bluffton from upstate New York. She’s already captured some great images of the Lowcountry’s natural beauty. Here’s one of the May River–the lifeblood of the town.
Locals are rightly concerned about the state of this precious tidal river, given the massive development (and run off from said development) taking place in Bluffton at this time.
by David Burn | Nov 2, 2005 | The Environment
According to Wired, the Stillwell Avenue station near Coney Island has been outfitted with solar in a massive renovation project.
Rather than drawing its power from traditional polycrystalline displays mounted on a flat roof, the Stillwell Avenue station gets its juice from 2,730 building-integrated PV panels, or BIPVs, built right into a curvilinear glass roof.
On a sunny day, 60,000 square feet of integrated solar paneling on its roof can generate 210 kilowatts of power, enough to meet two-thirds of the station’s energy requirements. The solar energy doesn’t run the trains, but is expected to contribute approximately 250,000 solar kilowatt hours per year to the station’s other energy needs — primarily lighting and air conditioning in the station and its attached offices and retail stores.
New York seems to be leading the way in adopting solar. In addition to the Stillwell station, photovoltaic, or PV, cells help power a bus terminal and rail yard in Queens, as well as the Whitehall Ferry Terminal at the southern tip of Manhattan.
by David Burn | Oct 19, 2005 | Lowcountry, The Environment
Island Packet: As the pinch for oil and natural gas supply intensifies, energy companies are beginning a push to seek fuels believed to be off the coast of Hilton Head Island.
Energy industry lobbyists are ramping up efforts to convince state legislators to open up South Carolina’s coast for oil and natural gas drilling. Those efforts come despite federal moratoria on offshore drilling that last until 2012.
Though some state lawmakers insist nothing is in the works for January’s legislative session, lobbyists have acknowledged meeting with legislators on the issue, and the state’s petroleum council actively is soliciting support for exploring offshore resources.
“I’ve had a number of conversations with members of the General Assembly having to do with natural gas drilling,” said Hope Lanier, a lobbyist with Charlotte-based Piedmont Natural Gas, a distribution company that serves upstate South Carolina and parts of North Carolina and Tennessee. “I think there is a lot of positive momentum” for exploring offshore natural gas reserves.
A small provision in a wide-ranging energy bill passed by Congress this summer mandated a national inventory of offshore energy resources, prompting local concern that drilling for oil and natural gas off South Carolina’s prized coastline could be a step closer.
Experts believe most of the oil and natural gas deposits in the South Atlantic region are in an area called the Carolina Trough, a large undersea basin that runs along the coast from North Carolina to northern Georgia. At its closest, near Cape Hatteras, N.C., the trough is about 60 miles from shore.
Near Hilton Head Island, the trough is estimated to be about 150 miles from shore.
by David Burn | Oct 9, 2005 | Politics, The Environment
Washington Post: The Bush administration is proposing far-reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries.
Giving Americans access to endangered animals, officials said, would feed the gigantic U.S. demand for live animals, skins, parts and trophies, and generate profits that would allow poor nations to pay for conservation of the remaining animals and their habitat.
This and other proposals that pursue conservation through trade would, for example, open the door for American trophy hunters to kill the endangered straight-horned markhor in Pakistan; license the pet industry to import the blue fronted Amazon parrot from Argentina; permit the capture of endangered Asian elephants for U.S. circuses and zoos; and partially resume the trade in African ivory. No U.S. endangered species would be affected.
The proposal involves an interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that deviates radically from the course followed by Republican and Democratic administrations since President Richard M. Nixon signed the act in 1973. The law established broad protection for endangered species, most of which are not native to America, and effectively prohibited trade in them.
The Endangered Species Act prohibits removing domestic endangered species from the wild. Until now, that protection was extended to foreign species.
Thanks to Smudge Report for the pointer.
by David Burn | Sep 28, 2005 | The Environment
Wired: Tens of thousands of empty storage containers are stacked in towers along I-95 across from the harbor in Newark, New Jersey. They’re heaped there in perpetuity, too cheap to be shipped back to Asia but too expensive to melt down.
Where many might see a pile of garbage, Lior Hessel sees, of all things, an organic farm. Those storage containers would be ideal housing for miniature farms, he believes, stacked one upon another like an agricultural skyscraper, all growing fresh organic produce for millions of wealthy consumers. And since the crops would be grown with artificial lighting, servers, sensors and robots, the cost of labor would consist of a single computer technician’s salary.
Hessel has a personal stake in this vision: He’s the CEO of OrganiTech, a Wilmington, Delaware, company working toward making such farms a reality. The design and layout of the automated farms are more related to the semiconductor plants of Silicon Valley than the lettuce fields of Salinas Valley. “This is a factory, not a farm,” says Hessel, whose own background is in the chip industry. “We just build lettuce instead of CPUs.”
The vertical farm model is one of Hessel’s ultimate goals, and OrganiTech has been busy laying the groundwork to make skyscraper farms possible.
OrganiTech can supply a complete set of robotic equipment plus greenhouse for $2 million. A system the size of a tennis court can produce 145,000 bags of lettuce leaves per year — that’s a yield similar to a 100-acre traditional farm. According to the company, it costs 27 cents to produce a single head of lettuce with its system, compared to about 18 cents per head of lettuce grown in California fields. Factor in the transportation costs and suddenly the automated greenhouse grower saves as much as 43 cents a head.
by David Burn | Jul 28, 2005 | Politics, The Environment
Nine months ago I wrote this, “Bald eagles, egrets, herons, alligators, manatee, dolphins and panthers make Florida their home. For sure, increasing human population is a dangerous threat to pristine nature. Which makes it all the sweeter to visit places in the state that are hard to reach and therefore relatively untouched. The Ten Thousand Islands are such a place, as is Keewaydin, a barrier island between Naples and Marco Island. Keewaydin is accessible only by boat. There are homes, but very few. You can walk the beach and see no one. That’s a true joy in modern times.”
Tonight I heard from a concerned citizen in Naples who informed me Keewaydin is in danger of being opened to resort-type development. Some Collier County mucky mucks want a new place for another private club, is the short of it. To their credit, the developers say they want to do it right. But that’s not the point. The point is once you give an inch the game is lost, for some other jackasses will be lined up to take a mile.
Naples News: Basil Street Partners LLC, a company making a redevelopment mark on downtown Naples, wants to build a 2,925-square-foot beach club on land the company owns on the barrier island within the boundaries of the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve.
The club would serve as a private amenity for as many as 750 club members and their guests. Members would be condominium and boat slip owners at Naples Bay Resort, a collection of Basil Street Partners projects at the former Boat Haven site, at the intersection of U.S. 41 and Sandpiper Street and at Grand Central Station. The general public also might have a chance to buy memberships.
Basil Street Partners, which is managed by developer Jack Antaramian, needs approval by Collier County commissioners to build the beach club.
Please voice your opposition by August 19, 2005, to:
Linda Bedtelyon, Community Planning Coordinator
Community Development and Environmental Services Administration
2800 North Horseshoe Drive, Naples, FL 34104
Phone: (239) 213-2948
Fax: (239) 403-2395
email: lindabedtelyon@colliergov.net
