I purchased a new Specialized bike last weekend so I could commute to work and free up the car for Kate. I also like to bike so that helped me make the decision. Unfortunatly the first few weeks of long distance biking can take toll on your body while you adjust to the physical demands of biking. Lets just say that at this point in my life I prefer to stand. Biking to work is loads of fun and is going to save us a lot of money. I just wished my rump would adjust sooner than later; my heart, lungs, and legs as well, for that matter. A photo of my new bike and me to come.
Kate and I just moved from our apartment in Salt Lake to her parent’s house in Provo for a few weeks before we make the big move to San Diego. Every time we move I’m sadly reminded of how much junk we’ve accumulated and how much time we waste dealing with it. Cleaning out our closets and drawers revealed mounds of vaguely familiar items reminiscent of bygone years. Packing our belongings has become an archaeological excavation (except none of our discoveries are worth anything). This morning Kate and I had to move a pile of our cloths off the floor and onto the bed so we could put a dresser in the room and by the time we finished, the top of the cloths mountain was above the tree line and 15 degrees colder than at its base.
All I’m trying to say is that if we’re not careful (if I’m not careful) we will end up devoting our entire lives to the acquisition, storage, and disposal of stuff. And when we look back on our monstrously materialistic lives we will be sadned because we were to busy taking care of our things to really enjoy our family and friends, our senses, nature and learning.
Photos from the Orem City Dump.
One of the biggest problems affecting our planet is over-consumption. Especially prevalent in more affluent countries is the idea that everyone can have everything they can buy even if it is harmful, wasteful, or unnecessary. We have also been taught that progress can only be measured by GDP and that they only way to increase GDP is to consume. It is fair to say that America’s identity is tied to its economy and mass consumption and the identity of nearly all Americans is tied to what they consume. Now I am not going to say let’s stop all purchasing of all goods, because that is unrealistic and never going to happen. What I do think we can do though, starting this Earth Day, is to stop buying stuff that is going to end up tossed into a landfill 6 months from the time it was bought. Did you know that 99% of everything purchased and produced by Americans will end up in a landfill (or on the ground, in the ocean, in our mountains, or in the case of dangerous chemicals in our food system) within 6 months of purchase.
So why don’t we break this destructive cycle by BUYING THE LAST. What I mean by that is next time your Wal-Mart can-opener breaks, instead of heading back to get a second one that will also just break in 6 months why not find a can-opener that will last you a lifetime? New shoes? Get ones that can be resoled. New jacket? Get one that will last 50 years instead of 50 days. New computer? Upgrade your old one. Need a new house? Repaint! Next time you have to buy anything, make your purchase one that will last you forever.
You see, if we can start curbing our consumption of those little things that we all seem to need but which always seem to break, we can cut our total consumption greatly. We can stop spending so much time shopping, and we can start saving our planet from becoming one giant, lifeless, garbage dump. This Earth Day make a commitment to reduce your consumption and eliminate disposable products from your life. And watch The Story of Stuff!
- My submission to present at the Utah Conference of Undergraduate Research was accepted and so now I get to present my senior thesis research the 29th of February at UVSC. I am very excited.
- The Rocky Mountain Institute is a great organization started by Amory B. Lovins (I am sure you have never heard of him). Anyway this organization is a giant think tank that focuses on solving environmental problems through advising car manufacturers, businesses, and the government organizations into adopting ultra efficient methods that save them money and the world pollution.
- The passing of the new energy bill by congress that requires car manufacturers to maintain a fleet wide MPG average of 35 MPG (the first increase in national fuel economy in 32 years), make the 100 watt incandescent light bulb illegal, and increases the efficiency of household appliances.
- Perceptive Pixel is an awesome new technology that allows full touch interaction with a computer. Very cool product and as you will see in #5 is already being used in consume products this winter.
- Today Kate and I ate free Red Iguana leftovers from the Youth Link’s lunch-in (a NGO housed in the same building as Kate’s NGO, the ESLCenter.
- Although I dislike Microsoft because they are a monopoly, their new product, Surface, is awesome awesome awesome. It will revolutionize computer use and is finally a product that can even turn Apple’s eye.
- I found my lost cellphone today. By lost, I mean it fell out of my pocket into my boss’s car when I got a ride with her to a meeting on Tuesday and she found it this morning when someone from the office tried to call me. At least I have it back and can now participate in conference calls with my brother and his finance (which did happen today).
- Fab@Home is a 3D printer; that’s right, a 3D printer. So just like a regular printer you plug it into your computer, prepare your document, and then click print. Except this time the Fab@Home is going to print your 3D object out of the hundreds of materials it is able to use. You will be able to print circuit boards, cellphone covers, even batteries and eventually, they say, you will be able to design your very own cellphone and then print the entire product out in your own home. Amazing!
- The Humdinger Windbelt is a new, inexpensive, very customizable wind mill that may make wind energy even more affordable and viable. You better just look at the site for an explanation how it works, I’m not going to do it justice.
- Some MIT students have created an amazing solar system out of regular old car parts that will create electricity, heat water or air, and refrigerate. What this means is that one simple inexpensive easily repaired setup can create and manage all the utility needs of a small dwelling or home, carbon free and off the grid. This article is really great, I recommend it.
- After a week without toiletpaper, Kate and I have finally purchased some.
- In passing my boss said something about a Christmas present of bonus. I’m not keeping my hopes up, but here’s to dreaming.
- NASA’s Chandra x-ray telescope captured the most interesting of celestial phenomenon. Recent data collected by said telescope shows cosmic radiation being shot from a black hole into a neighboring galaxy.
- Kate and I had Ethiopian food with Jesse, my brother, and his finance, Laura. Man I love Ethiopian food…and the African Restaurant and Mini Mart.
- A new giant rat was discovered in Indonesia.
- Most exciting Firefox is testing a new 3.0 release. I want to take my hat off to Firefox to really implementing some great tools that have made internet browsing fun, creative, and easy. You can download the beta version here.
- Wal-Mart, via Sam’s Club, is selling an all electric versions of the Mini Cooper converted by the company, Hybrid Technologies.
- Kate and I were given traditional Karen (a Burmese ethnic group) shirts from three of my refugee clients today. They are awesome and we will post a picture soon.
- I am done with this blog entry and can now go to bed.
My pal Ash cares deeply about many things. She quite a passionate person, and the one who organized the “Shop Outside the Box” parade. She is not only passionate, she is articulate and not afraid of cold-hard facts and substantiated evidence for a cause. Please read her article that touches on the factual sins of Big Box stores. You may be particularly interested if you have every asked yourself the question, “What’s so wrong with shopping at Wal-Mart?”
I just finished reading a most interesting book, “The World Without Us,” by Alan Weisman and now I wonder if taking the moral high ground will mean not having offspring. Since the onset of modern medicine, industrial revolution, and the Protestant work ethic the natural world has increasingly deteriorated because of human demands for foods, mineral and metals, natural resources, and a place to put all our trash. While I strongly believe humanity does not intend to destroy nature, we still do so because most of the damage we do is not in our town or backyard and is taking place in another state, another ocean, or another forest. Humans, like all other species, put survival ahead of everything and everyone else, making it very difficult to choose between a healthy environment and sufficient food, water, and shelter for survival (personally, I think we can have both). Additionally, since our life span is short in time we only see our habitat as past generations have left it and do not know what is would look like without us. “The World Without Us,” is a great thought experiment that explores this very question, and while a little boring at times, it will leave you wondering what will become of the world and us and if there is a way humanity and a healthy environment can coexist.
I just started reading the dreadfully interesting painfully detailed book, “The World Without Us,” by Alan Wiesman. The book is fairly straight forward…it’s about what would happen to the world if humans all disappeared today and nature had her chance to reclaim. As I delved deeper into the mysteries of the post rapture earth I found myself first wishing there was a way humans could coexist with a healthy environment, then hoping technology would save nature, and now thinking the only solution to the environmental problem is for all of us humans to pack up our bags and head to another planet. Seriously from what I’ve read we have tortured nature beyond the point of no return. Now every ecosystem on our poor little planet is so stressed they’re starting to act like an I.R.C. refugee case manager. Maybe I have exaggerated a little. Nature is one hell of a fighter and will take back what ever she can get…and I mean whatever; streets, towns, garbage dumps, Las Vegas, Lake Chad, Geneva Steel, even a Wal Mart if you give her some time.
The book is filled with anecdotal examples of abandoned human hot spots reclaimed by nature. Apparently the border between North and South Korea is one of the most biodiverse areas in the region because it is official no-mans-land and since the truce in 1960 no one has touched the place, leaving nature to do her thing. This got me thinking. Humans are stressing nearly every ecosystem on the planet through agriculture, housing development, mining, pollutants, and general wear and tear. So without killing off 90% of the world’s population (a real solution to the problem) what can be done to stop human impact on the earth. Here is my solution.
Lets move every single person on the planet to one giant city located in North/South Dakota and Minnesota. According to my calculations if we turned just these three states into one giant city every human on the planet plus some could live with a population density a little less than New York’s currently population density. Just imagine with only .4% of the earths land surface occupied by humans, the planet with the other 99.4% of her land mass to regenerate herself back to health. Now I know we have to think about land for food cultivation, the mega relocation process, and the cleanup of our former populations centers…but that will all come, let’s not shy away from the only viable solution to date (except drastically reducing our consumption…but is that ever going to happen??). We could recycle all the old cities into our new mega city- St. Fargopollis. The worldwide effort would unify us all into a new age of peace and tolerance.
Do you ever wounder what effects fast food leftovers have on bugs and small mammals? It probable has been proven, enough McDonald’s, Twinkie, or Cheeto’s will kill a man, so what happens to the little guys who are eating our fast food nation crumbs? Recently there has been buzz (no pun intended) about the missing honey bee. Even though bees don’t eat junk food, maybe there is a correlation. Most likely larger meaner bugs are eating the junk food and are abnormally developing to gargantuan sizes with ravenous A.D.D. behavior and are killing bees as sport. Ether way I think we should keep junk food out of our bodies and off the ground.
So here is my question. Why is the Penguin global warming’s logo? Aren’t there thousand other animals affected by global warming? Isn’t the Walrus as at risk as the Polar Bear, the Blue Whale, or the Penguin? In fact as far as evolutionary adaptations, Penguins are doing rather well. There are penguins in the Galapagos, aren’t there? Maybe it’s because Penguins are so cute or look as though they are in their formals. Actually the one thing they have going for them is their communal adaptations to deal with the cold. At least among the Imperial Penguins they must work together as a group to keep warm enough to survive the bitter arctic winters, just like humans must work together to save the earth from further warming and environmental degradation. Yet the Blue Whale, the Walrus, and the Polar Bear are much more interesting, at least I think so.
We should replace the Penguin with the Walrus because they are ugly and vulnerable, just as global warming is ugly and ecology vulnerable.
When can we expect the electric car? Have any of you noticed how quickly gas prices have risen the last few weeks? I thought for sure a little more than a month ago gas prices in Provo were $2 and now they are all the way up to $2.50. Not that I am apposed to paying high price for fuel, I think we should. I mean we do, every drop we put into our tank is subsidized by our tax money via the military, and I am all for dropping subsidies and and paying the full price. In fact we should add extra taxes to cover health and environmental problems caused by car pollution. Even so, the cars I drive are awful. I drove my brother-in-law’s jeep around over the weekend while moving boxes 3 miles from our old apartment to Kate’s parent’s house and I had to fill and use the tank with $40. Kate’s car is not much better, we put $100+ into the tank each month basically to run errands (that just cost more money). I hate it.
In-city driving kills a car’s gas mileage because so much time is spent idling at a stoplight. If cars, like electric and hybrid cars, shut off their engines at stoplights or stop signs they would have much higher gas mileage. If an electric car was made available for public consumption than over 70%of people would never use another drop of gas again, even if the cars could only go 40 or 50 miles on a charge* (which electric cars made in 1907 could just about do. EV1 could go about 80 per charge).
I am just baffled why car companies have failed to release an electric car. Just imagine how clean the Wasatch Front’s air could be if 70% of drivers were driving zero emission cars. It would be wonderful (by the way a coalition of Utah medical persons just released a statement that Utah’s air quality is so bad there is going to be major health problems in Utah’s populations). If we are dreaming we might as well go all the way…image in quietness, living by a buys street wouldn’t mean noise and pollution any more. Additionally we wouldn’t need to worry about gas prices. Sure there will be an increased demand for electricity, but it could offset with personal solar panels, wind generators, and a heavy dose of conservation and gadget upgrading (i.e. energy star rated). Something like 60% of energy used in a house is by electronic devices set on standby. We could offset the cost by turning everything else off when not in use.
Here are a few current, upcoming, or planned Electric Cars:
*Source: Vol. 3, Issue 4, Oct., 2003 Omnistats – U.S. Dept. of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
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