Jamais Cascio is all about solutions. He considers himself an ethical futurist- one who designs and executes resilient and sustainable solutions that will not adversely effect present and future generations. On his blog, OpenTheFuture.com, Jamais writes about three cornerstone issues that will make or break this planet: Global Warming, Global Poverty and Nanotechnology. As he explains in this video
All of these are intrinsically connected. If you are to succeed in any one of them, you have to deal with the others…everything is connected. Fortunately, the solutions are connected as well…As these concepts become more commonplace, what happens is they disappear into the woodwork. They really become expectations.
By Co-Founding the site WorldChanging.com (also check out the beautiful World Changing Book), Jamais is helping to make these solutions part of the planetary problem solving vocabulary.
Big Thanks to Lisa Rein for connecting us and letting us take over her apartment for the interview!
Published by jay on February 28, 2008
in Blog and Energy.
Our friend, Mikey Skylar, recently bought himself a diesel car which he converted to veggie oil. He found that he wanted a better way to know when to switch his diesel tank to a the vegetable oil tank. You do this because the veggie oil must be warmed up before it can efficiently run the engine.
Being the builder he is, Mikey made a device called The Greasy Mon that tells him when his veggie oil has warmed up enough. You can either download instructions on how to build your own, or he is now selling these devices to other people who may want them for $100.
There are three thermistors which measure temperature changes based on resistance. Each of the thermistor sensors has four LEDs associated with it which the driver can see illuminate as the temperature increases. Each LED that turns on indicates that the grease has increased by 20 deg. fahrenheit in temperature. The temperature range is from 65F - 135F. Due to the sensors being placed on the outside of the fuel hoses the sensor range peaks rather low to allow for the insulation provided by the fuel hose.
Right now, Jay and I are touring Europe- basically we’re couch hopping at videobloggers’ houses! We took a short detour and stayed in a hostel in Edinburgh, Scotland. One of the cool things about this hostel was its energy conserving light systems (besides these LEDs, they had motion sensor hallway lights that were only on when you walked through!). This LED halogen replacement was super cool. LEDs have very low wattage, so they use a ton less electricity than even fluorescents- compare .5-2w to the average 13-20w fluorescents or 40-100w incandescents. They also are said to have an almost infinite life span. I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more of these in the future. Philips, one of the major light bulb manufacturers, just recently bought some LED technologies for future(istic) integration. The only issues are that LEDs are super focused, meaning they don’t spread light like other bulbs; they keep light kind of funneled and focused like a spot light. The other issue is that they tend be a more cold, blue color, rather than the pleasant warm glow of incandescents and the newer fluorescents. Hopefully LEDs will start to evolve into warmer hues and eventually replace the energy sucking lights we have now. I was really excited to see this light in use as a little reading light!
I’m so sick of getting my utility bill and seeing that a huge majority of my money goes to pay for energy from Natural Gas and Nuclear (and in many places in the US, Coal). I want my money to go towards renewables and I’m not the only one. Many communities, including San Francisco and Oakland are petitioning and passing legislation for more choice in their energy purchasing. The movement is called Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) or Community Choice Energy. This type of legislation would not take down big corporations like PG&E, but would work with their existing infrastructure to deliver energy from sources chosen by the community. This would allow citizens to put their money towards more sustainable and renewable options and not have to wait around for the private companies to decide when to start investing in these technologies. As you’ll hear Rory Cox of PacificEnvironment.org say:
PG&E gets about half of its electricity from domestically sourced natural gas. The plan that PG&E is pushing right now is to import natural gas from abroad…most likely…from the former Soviet Union and The Middle East. It would require a whole brand, new fossil fuel energy infrastructure. We’d rather see those billions spent on clean energy.
When will it end? When will companies stop thinking that it is ok to continue to invest in finite resources? When communities stop relying on them to make energy choices for the people. For more info on Community Choice Aggregation, check out Local Clean Energy and Local Government Commission’s CCA page.
When I was little, my best friend’s family never dried their clothes in their dryer but on a clothes line or indoor rack next to the radiators. In my house, we did use a dryer. I never understood their reasoning until now. Why use all that electricity or gas when you can just hang your clothes out in the sun (or partial sun in my case)? This is how it’s been done for thousands of years before the industrial revolution, so why change? According to the US Dept of Energy an electric dryer can use between 1800-5000 watts of power. That’s a lot of electricity! Even if you supplement your dryer usage by hanging stuff out half the time, you’d be saving a bunch of money and resources. So that’s what we’ve decided to do. It’s even catching on among our fellow eco-villagers - every time I walk by the line, it’s got someone else’s clothes on it! Thanks to Rhett and Amy at Greentime for the inspiration!
P.S. Check out Project Laundry List for more info on communities coming together to end laundry line bans. Isn’t that nutty? Drying clothes on a line is illegal in a lot of places!
Recent Comments