Neo-Greens
Now that the elections are over and the robocalls have finally stopped and my mailbox is no longer full of glossy ads shilling for candidates (and shameless negative ones equating voting for particular candidates with the end of the world), I can move on with my life. Well, hopefully.
One of my life long goals is to be as green as I can, without resorting to living in cave eating nuts and berries. My wildly optimistic dreams of utilizing my chemical engineering degree to apply technology to industry to make it greener was ahead of its time, and thus dashed against the rocks of Reality. But now I see that, the rest of the world, and even some Americans, is doing just that. Actually they've been doing it for several years now. Maybe there will be a spot for me when the kids are in school and I have to go back to work full time.
In the May issue of Wired, there were a couple articles about neo-greens. What the hell are neo greens? Well, consider the old greenies to be the hippies of yore: preachers of doom and gloom and wearers of hemp clothes who offered no solutions to environmental problems except consumer abstinence and commune shacks. Not very appealing. The neo-greens (yeah, labels suck but they're a fact of our culture) look for market driven solutions. They'll use technology to make their machines cleaner, hold off on the pesticides to make their food healthier, recycle everything and reuse it to make clothing and furniture. Sustainable agriculture, forestry, and fishing are replacing brute force and "slash and burn" and driftnetting. Organizations like the Nature Conservancy strive to build proverbial bridges between preserving ecosystems and utilizing their resources for local populations, whether they be in the Amazon or Iowa.
Al Gore (Give him a break already will ya!), besides promoting his book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth, heads an investment fund based on the principles of sustainability. With David Blood, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, on board, he's serious about making this work.
Brian Schweitzer, Governor of Montana, wants to put the state's vast coal reserves into use to lessen our dependency on foreign oil. Now before you get your knickers in a bunch, FuelCell Inc. of Danbury just announced a contract with the government to utilize coal in fuel cells. The process boasts an efficiency of 50% (as opposed to 35% of current coal burning tech) and would capture 90% of carbon emissions. For the record, your car doesn't capture any carbon. Schweitzer also wants to add farm subsidies to alt-energy crops like soybean, safflower, camelina, and canola for biodiesel fuel.
And Douglas Durst, co-president of the Durst Organination, is building environmentally friendly skyscrapers in Manhattan. The new Bank of America Tower at Bryant Park is the current example. Making use of recycled materials, insulated glass, fresh air (as opposed to the recycled air most office buildings use and thus make people sick), rain and treated waste water (on-site), smart lights and LED's, and a thermal storage system, these new skyscrapers will advance green building technologies in our cities with hopes of it trickling down to big box stores in suburbia.
It's all so downright sunny that I can forget Bush is in the White House for awhile.
\_/
DED
One of my life long goals is to be as green as I can, without resorting to living in cave eating nuts and berries. My wildly optimistic dreams of utilizing my chemical engineering degree to apply technology to industry to make it greener was ahead of its time, and thus dashed against the rocks of Reality. But now I see that, the rest of the world, and even some Americans, is doing just that. Actually they've been doing it for several years now. Maybe there will be a spot for me when the kids are in school and I have to go back to work full time.
In the May issue of Wired, there were a couple articles about neo-greens. What the hell are neo greens? Well, consider the old greenies to be the hippies of yore: preachers of doom and gloom and wearers of hemp clothes who offered no solutions to environmental problems except consumer abstinence and commune shacks. Not very appealing. The neo-greens (yeah, labels suck but they're a fact of our culture) look for market driven solutions. They'll use technology to make their machines cleaner, hold off on the pesticides to make their food healthier, recycle everything and reuse it to make clothing and furniture. Sustainable agriculture, forestry, and fishing are replacing brute force and "slash and burn" and driftnetting. Organizations like the Nature Conservancy strive to build proverbial bridges between preserving ecosystems and utilizing their resources for local populations, whether they be in the Amazon or Iowa.
Al Gore (Give him a break already will ya!), besides promoting his book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth, heads an investment fund based on the principles of sustainability. With David Blood, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, on board, he's serious about making this work.
Brian Schweitzer, Governor of Montana, wants to put the state's vast coal reserves into use to lessen our dependency on foreign oil. Now before you get your knickers in a bunch, FuelCell Inc. of Danbury just announced a contract with the government to utilize coal in fuel cells. The process boasts an efficiency of 50% (as opposed to 35% of current coal burning tech) and would capture 90% of carbon emissions. For the record, your car doesn't capture any carbon. Schweitzer also wants to add farm subsidies to alt-energy crops like soybean, safflower, camelina, and canola for biodiesel fuel.
And Douglas Durst, co-president of the Durst Organination, is building environmentally friendly skyscrapers in Manhattan. The new Bank of America Tower at Bryant Park is the current example. Making use of recycled materials, insulated glass, fresh air (as opposed to the recycled air most office buildings use and thus make people sick), rain and treated waste water (on-site), smart lights and LED's, and a thermal storage system, these new skyscrapers will advance green building technologies in our cities with hopes of it trickling down to big box stores in suburbia.
It's all so downright sunny that I can forget Bush is in the White House for awhile.
\_/
DED
Labels: environment
posted by DED at 6:08 PM
3 Comments:
Glossy flyers? I got enough to save for starting fires this winter. You wouldn't be in upstate NY, would you?
Western Connecticut.
Those glossy flyers will be colorful in the fire too. ;)
Oh, yeah, they burn pretty. Varnish tends to do that.
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