Conservation @ MindSay 
environment
hmmmmm....(i remember this!)
JIMMY CARTER'S ENERGY IDEAS DESERVE A SECOND CHANCE
By Cynthia TuckerSat Jul 19, 7:58 PM ET
Even in his home state of Georgia, former President Jimmy Carter does not receive universal acclaim. He is regarded by many as a weak-kneed appeaser or a naive do-gooder with a puritanical bent.
Much of that reputation can be traced back to his widely noted July 1979 speech on the nation's "crisis of confidence," remembered as the "malaise" speech, though he didn't use that word. The response to that televised talk taught politicians one thing: Never ask Americans to make any sacrifices. After all, it is now accepted wisdom that the speech -- combined with hyper-inflation, hostages and an oil spike -- cost Carter a second term.
But a sober and fair look back at what Carter actually said ought to earn him higher marks. He was right when he insisted that consumers conserve energy; he was right to urge a dramatic increase in the use of solar power; he was right when he called for a cap on imported oil.
"Beginning at this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never," he said. "From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now."
Carter also called for research into alternative fuels, massive investment in public transit and a broad campaign for conservation. He acknowledged that the new programs would require billions; but "unlike the billions of dollars that we ship to foreign countries to pay for foreign oil, these funds will be paid by Americans to Americans."
Of course, you know the rest of the story. The next year, Ronald Reagan was elected and threw out Carter's plans. The Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) relented, and gasoline became, once again, plentiful and cheap. So Americans pretended Carter was the problem -- not our profligate consumption patterns. Today, we're importing twice as much oil as we were when Carter gave that speech.
(In the last 28 years, the nation's oil consumption has gone up by about 21 percent, but the increase might have been even sharper were it not for the 1973 oil shocks. That OPEC-induced discomfort prompted Congress to pass the first-ever corporate average fuel economy -- or CAFE -- standards in 1975. Between 1974 and 1989, the efficiency of a typical car sold in the U.S. almost doubled, to 27.5 miles per gallon, according to The New York Times. Since then, unfortunately, our love affair with trucks and SUVs has sent average fuel efficiency spiraling downward.)
What if the nation had stuck to the path Carter laid out? What if we had invested billions back then in public transit and alternative fuels? What if we'd made a national campaign of conservation, similar to the successful no-smoking campaign? What if we'd insisted that Detroit continue pushing up fuel efficiency?
The United States would not be held hostage by petro-crats or tied down in a volatile region of the globe. The money we send to places such as Saudi Arabia plumps the bank accounts of its many princes, who use their billions to appease jihadists. While Afghanistan's Taliban certainly played a role in 9/11, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Why send any of our money to them?
As recently as seven years ago, in the wake of 9/11, President George W. Bush could have used our renewed sense of duty and patriotism to hike the gasoline tax and push through higher CAFE standards. At the time, the average cost of a gallon of gas was around $1.55. If Bush had pushed the price to $2.50, the nation would have had a huge reserve to use for building public transit and finding alternative fuels. Instead, he did nothing about our addiction to oil.
Even now, Bush is loath to encourage conservation. "It's a little presumptuous on my part to dictate how consumers live their own lives," he told reporters last week. "You know, people can figure out whether they need to drive more or less." Wasn't it presumptuous to invade Iraq, a country that had no part in 9/11 but does have the world's second-largest known reserves of oil?
Looking back, Carter's plan makes a lot more sense than staying tied down in the Middle East. It's time to dust off his speech and several of his energy proposals.
The people who govern America on all levels have a tendency to place the burden for solving problems on consumers. But consumers cannot solve the problems they are encouraged to solve. Some are simply unwilling to do what is required, some cannot afford to do what is required, and some who are willing and can afford to simply cannot.
I have written about this before concerning water conservation:
"You present eight suggestions for ordinary people to follow in their homes. And although each would indeed save water, the effectiveness of these solutions would depend entirely upon the number of people you could get to work together in these ways. But anyone who believes that it is possible to get enough people to cooperate in such ways to have a significant effect on the problem is a dreamer.
Yet I can think of things that can have significant effects on the problem. I have over the past many years lived in seven American states, and not once have I lived in a house that had insulated hot water pipes. As a result, one had to run the hot water two or three minutes before the water became hot enough to bathe in. And I suggest that this is happening in almost every American home. This waste could be eliminated with good building codes. But building codes require businesses to tackle the problem, and American legislators are not inclined to do that.
Here in Texas, cities are always imposing watering restrictions; yet they allow builders to put houses on unstable soil using foundations not meant for such conditions. The owners of these homes are told to keep the soil around their foundations moist year round to ameliorate foundation problems. And one city I lived in that had watering restrictions also had a recycling program that required citizens to wash any glass ware that was to be recycled."
Any water saved by the eight suggestions would be dwarfed by better building codes.
Similar problems abound concerning recycling. Many are unwilling to go to the trouble, and others simply cannot recycle. I live in a single family home with a two-car garage, but I don't have room for multiple boxes into which to separate and store recyclables. And the alley behind the house is not wide enough to accommodate recycling bins. People who live in apartments have even less room. Many elderly and urban dwellers don't drive or have vehicles into which they can load their recyclables and cart them to recycling centers. A program requiring consumers to recycle can never succeed.
But my present concern is a more serious problem—protecting our good credit. Given the explosion of identity theft, insurance companies are now selling identity theft and credit protection insurance. But identity theft and credit protection are not consumer problems; they are banker problems caused by banking practices.
Why do bankers and other businesses continue to use social security numbers as identifiers? Why aren't the identities of borrowers verified by bankers? Why do they rely on signatures on credit card receipts and loan papers when fingerprints would effective deter fraud, especially if fingerprints were accompanied with a photograph? Technology to enable both of these has been available for some time. And finally just who benefits most from so-called good credit?
A consumer with good credit does enjoy some convenience, but s/he pays a hefty price for it. Consumers who don't use credit or use it sparingly save all the money that goes to banks as interest. As a result, they can buy more, not less. And if everyone had bad credit, the bankers would either have to find other means of identifying reliable borrowers or curtail their lending. But lending is the mana of banking. No lending, no profit. Consumers with bad credit save the money that consumers who use good credit regularly send directly to banks.
So as long as bankers continue to use the practices that allow fraud to flourish, consumers will always be at risk of identity theft no matter what safeguards they engage in. Consumers cannot solve the problem, only bankers can. But the bankers will lead you to believe that they can sell you something that will protect your good credit when all they really want is more of your money. The good credit they want you to pay to protect is the credit that is good for them, not you.
©2008 John Kozy
Solar design, having nothing to do with photovoltaic cells (solar panels) is a construction method that utilizes sunlight as a means to provide supplemental heating to a house or structure. The concept is fairly simple and requires no more in materials than building any other home. Early designs however were quite radical consisting of geodesic domes and other space aged shapes or bland and simple boxes and huts. Unfortunately these designs became the stereotype for environmental construction even though they were quickly traded for other more traditional designs such as the New England Saltbox. The only true sacrifice in comparison with other homes is the lack of a basement (but even that has alternatives).
The concept is fairly straightforward and simple to understand. By positioning the long, face side of the house (usually the front) directly toward the south you allow the daytime sun to strike the most surface area of the house throughout the day. To allow the sun to heat the interior of the home and not just the outside walls we add windows (glazing) to the front of the house for daytime sunlight and a few to the east and west to catch morning and evening rays. On a sunny day this is usually more than enough to heat the home in winter and will even overheat your house. In order to save this excess heat energy for nighttime use (when the suns no longer doing the job) we need a heat sink. Nothing more than a concrete slab, the heat sink warms up during the day and then slowly radiates heat throughout the night. Because we want an even heat distribution, warm air rises, and we can't just throw a concrete slab anywhere... the natural choice for our "solar slab" is the first floor. One of the best designs I have found uses concrete blocks as a base with holes laying parallel rather than pointing up. By placing the blocks one by one in front of the other we can create air channels under our floor to serve as the heat ducts. Concrete is then poured over the block base to hold them in place and act as our heat sink. The thickness of the slab varies from 4-7" depending on the heating requirements of the house, the amount of solar radiation the house receives, and thus the required Mass for a suitable heat sink.
Solar Home Cycle
At first light, sun shines through the eastern windows and begins to warm the floor & air. By noon the sun is entering the front of the house full force, the air temperature remains steady (provided the number of windows and slab thickness were calculated correctly) and the solar slab is gradually raising in temperature. As the sun drops below the horizon the solar slab slowly begins to radiate heat to maintain the air temperature. In a properly designed system the solar slab is able to keep the house from dropping below 60 degrees until morning after a full days "charging" from the sun. We call this "thermal balance" and it is a crucial part of a properly functioning system. As the sun comes up the next morning the cycle starts again, heating the air back up to temperature and storing energy for the evening.
Problems
As mentioned before there are no extra costs to building a passive solar home, only preplanning and minor design adjustments. The only flaw is the reliability of the sun. Naturally, when the suns not out during the day the solar slab can't collect energy. Weather conditions can vary greatly depending on time of year and location. This is why solar design is meant as a Supplement to normal means and not a replacement. Each area is unique and homes will realize different efficiencies based on local weather conditions. Central New York for example is westsouthwest of the great lakes and therefore encounters elevated precipitation and cloud cover in the coldest winter months (25% sunshine) where as Maine which is much further north has sunshine no less than 50% of the time in Dec, Jan, and Feb.
What does this Mean?
By looking up the average percentage of possible sunshine your area receives (which can be obtained from the US Weather Bureau...or for the same price included in a book on passive solar homes) you can estimate directly the relative percentage of your homes heating costs that you could cover for each month of the year. In layman’s terms, a mean of 59% possible sunshine for Portland Maine in the month of February suggests that a passive solar home could supply up to 59% of its heating costs in that month from FREE solar energy. What’s more is that the solar slab isn't just limited to sunlight to store heat energy. By using a wood stove or hot water radiant heat you can heat your home on dreary days and still charge the solar slab to take over at night. Its truly a versatile system!
Misconceptions
Passive solar design does not mean your house has to look like its out of The Jetsons. Your home can easily be built to suite your style and needs. The interior and solar slab can be covered with anything, even hardwood flooring and contrary to what you may think you won't be living in a "wall of glass". In fact, too many windows can throw the house out of balance and make it less efficient than a normal home. Another fallacy is that you must tilt your windows toward the sun. The suns path through the sky is closest to the horizon during the winter months. That means its already shinning almost directly through your windows in the months you need it most. "What about the summer, won't it overheat?" In the summer the sun travels high in the sky overhead and will barely shine through. In fact, because the sun doesn't shine through the windows in the summer it doesn't heat your solar slab. This means the slab will cool further through the night when the temperature drops off and then act as a cold source during the day. It warms in the winter and cools in the summer, the best of both worlds! But the best part about passive solar design is that its integrated straight into the construction of the house. There are no mechanical parts and no maintenance is required. Simply put its the BEST way to build a home.
Suggested Reading:
The Passive Solar House by James Kachadorian
The Solar House by Dan Chiras
The Solar Living Source Book by John Shaeffer & Real Goods
For anyone interested in saving the Earth's resources. PLEASE READ!! Even if you are not very interested, it may make you more aware. Check out the post made by mysticpizzaguy today. It is vid clips pertaining to consumerism titled Glasses For Your Global Eye. He got it from nomad.
OR YOU CAN GO TO WWW.STORYOFSTUFF.COM to watch it in it's entirety instead of short clips. Find out what you can do to help on a personal and local level.
Billions of trees are cut down each year to send those catalogs out that you either toss or in my case put in the recyce bin. Now there is a web site that let's you cancel those catalogs- sorta like the do not call list- so today I cancelled more than 37 catalogs that come to my house and I never buy from and just toss in the recycle container. Like: travel smith, levenger, domestications, cuddledown, lillian vernon, horchow, ross simons, anthropologie, home decorators, restoration hardware- I could go on and on.
It is free to register
some of these venders I DO shop with but I know how to get to their web site so if talbots sends me an email about a 80& sale I go to their site and shop- I bought a dress originally tagged at $186 for $15. last week. so an email gets me there and no trees die.
and aside from the fact that I simplt LOVE trees, deforestation is a major cause of global warming. so everytime one gets cut down, the problem increases. You know the cliche- if you are not part of the solution you are part if the problem- right?
and while we are at it - think about what trees you are going to plant in your yard next spring and how much grass you will remove and add planting that are self sustaining for your climate. Get you ass in gear people !!!
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