[DavidFolks]

A dear friend who passed away several years ago said something to me that stuck.

Make the right thing to do the easy thing to do.

Want to avoid a tragedy of the commons in a waterway? The answer is very simple.

Make it law that the intake pipe for your process water must be downstream of the outflow pipe of your waste water.

Keeps the costs of clean water where they should be.

[xerces]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nicholai', 'T')han who are you planning to take up this 'challenge?'

[Battle_Scarred_Galactico]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('LoneSnark', ' ')As long as we are free to use whatever resources we own, then we will not need to start shooting.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DavidFolks', 'A') dear friend who passed away several years ago said something to me that stuck.

Make the right thing to do the easy thing to do.

Want to avoid a tragedy of the commons in a waterway? The answer is very simple.

Make it law that the intake pipe for your process water must be downstream of the outflow pipe of your waste water.

Keeps the costs of clean water where they should be.

[DavidFolks]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'T')he author Rabert A. Heinlein proposed that very solution to water pollution for all inland waterways...in 1978! You can find it in the story Over The Rainbow where he has the first female President, who also happens to be of African descent, push through all sorts of common sense solutions for what ailed us in the 1970's. Too bad almost none of it got done.

[Revi]

A friend of mine had a great idea for refrigerators in northern climates. Why not run a loop of tubing filled with ethylene glycol (or propylene glycol) out of your fridge and into a box or snow or ice outside. You could have it cool the fridge for free, just like a solar hot water heater works, but in reverse. You could even pump the glycol around with pv solar.

Why wouldn't this work?

It could help with the powerdown.

[Iaato]

Revi, it has been bugging me for years now that I'm sitting up here in 20 degree weather, with a refrigerator chugging along in my nice heated house. In the reverse of your idea, I have toyed with the idea of throwing the thing outside on my back porch in the winter, with some sort of warm conduit to the inside. Or just use my garage as a fridge in the winter, as I keep that at 40 degrees F.

David, your waterway solution to the Tragedy of the Commons illustrates the difference between pollution into a seemingly unlimited space like air or water, and pollution with feedback when the space is engineered so that it is no longer unlimited in appearance. The recycling creates negative feedback in the system. These are the kinds of mechanisms we need to build into our system to change things. It's like stopping waste removal; one would learn very quickly to limit and recycle one's trash if it was piling up on the front lawn.

Joules are going to get so pricey here in a bit that I think energy will become the defacto currency. If the USD$ has peso parity, and oil is at $300 a barrel, liter fuel bottles may become the new barter currency. When that happens, we will indeed have the watt or joule as our currency.

[LoneSnark]

From an perspective of energy, during the winter your refrigerator is helping to heat your house. All it is doing is pushing heat from inside the fridge to outside the fridge, which is your kitchen, which is where you would rather have it. Ignoring this, there is no question that your refrigerator would consume less electricity in winter, but what it would be doing is pumping heat from inside the house to outside the house. Depending on how efficient your central heating system is, this could hurt you. For example, if your heating system is a heat-pump then there is no question that you will be wasting electricity, as every watt of power removed from the house by your fridge will need to be pumped back in by your heat-pump.

[Pixie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Waterthrush', '
')Next, I'd set my sights on high school sports. I'd like to end them now - the children could still compete intramurally - but I know that's not going to happen barring a plague or a doubling of gas prices (either of which would do the trick). Assuming a more gradual rise in gas prices, I'd force school systems to provide a public accounting of the true costs of travel sports. Hopefully there would be a public outcry. Then I'd start whittling them back.
.

[Pixie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', ' ')I was shocked to discover that the jar of peaches I got out of the cupboard the other day from Dole stated on the lable, Peaches from Greece, packaged in Thailand. ... When I was growing up we had a small orchard and grew our own northern fruits, Peaches, Plums, Pears, Apples, Cherries and Grapes, plus we grew Strawberries in the garden. We grew enough fruits and vegetables on an acre of land to replace all the fruit and most of the vegetables for a houshold with 7 -11 residents! ...
99% or more of the people on here have no clue what you can grow for yourself with a few hours of labor a week on a small plot of land. Of course the city objects if you try and garden too much, which cetainly doesn't help matters any.

[Pixie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')I'd like to see some estimates here about what our goals should be, per household or per capita.


By the way I should mention I do not consider this a hypothetical discussion, but a discussion of what we are actually doing or plan to do, as individuals, households, and communities. Let's keep it real, folks.

[Pixie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Duende', '
')Overall, the problem is that sporadic, personal attempts at making a dent do little to affect the situation. If we are to move toward, let alone achieve sustainability, we must work in concert with one another in order to build a critical mass of sustainable lifestyle choices. Walking to the backyard to reap lunch needs to be made as natural-seeming as zipping off to the convenience store in the car... for all of us, every single day.

The degree to which everyone would need to revisit their expectations for the future will be awesome, and the coordination and leadership needed to pull this planned, coordinated program off will be nothing short of legendary.

[Pixie]

Sorry. Duplicate post.

[Pixie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '[')

But I think this thread is about what we need to do NOW, not in the future.


But, maybe I'm confused.


Monte, is this thread about the future, or is it about NOW?

[Pixie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Waterthrush', '[')
I've been keeping track of my household energy prices for a couple of years, month by month, since I joined this group. More recently I started keeping track of my personal use. in terms of therms and kwh - it's on my energy bill. Just a spreadsheet. With this thread, I'm going to try to lower my use month by month.

Should be a big-time drop this month, just had new energy-efficient windows installed. I'll dedicate any savings towards more energy efficiency.

[Pixie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DavidFolks', '[')
Okay, here is an example of a real life current project that I'm working on now.

I am developing a prototype electric assisted human powered vehicle. It will be totally enclosed, and will move a single human and six bags of groceries. It will be operable in most weather conditions. It is designed to be recharged from a renewable platform, and will travel 30km at 50km/hr on a charge. Range can be infinite through muscle power alone.
:

[Revi]

Here's the little car we are working on:

www.sunnev.com

It's a neighborhood electric vehicle, and would work to get 2 people and their groceries around a town, island or small community. It'll go around 25 mph and about 20 miles per charge. The solar panel will gather about 1/3 of the energy needed each day.

It's really fun. Check out the Youtube movie. We built the prototype with Art and my high school kids. They loved it!

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pixie', 'Y')ou don't need to do anything right now. For the next 20 years, owerdown will happen passively as people buy more efficient cars and move closer to their work, because the proce of gas makes them need to do so. it will be gradual, but it will balance supply and demand.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pixie', ' ')American energy use is not necessary for standard of living. It's a lie that we all believe. You can powerdown by a factor of ten and not really sacrifice anything of true value.

[Pixie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pixie', 'Y')ou don't need to do anything right now. For the next 20 years, powerdown will happen passively as people buy more efficient cars and move closer to their work, because the proce of gas makes them need to do so. it will be gradual, but it will balance supply and demand.