Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Many automobile enthusiasts believe that the electric car is the wave of the future that will help save the environment while expanding the availability of private transport to the world’s growing middle class. They are wrong on both counts.
– The electric car age just got a little closer (Deutsche Bank on peak oil)
– Robert Rapier’s Top 10 Energy Related Stories of 2010
– EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2011: Don’t Worry, Be Happy
– Renewable and fossil electricity generation costs compared
– Want a safe place to raise kids? Look to the cities
– Turning Failed Commercial Properties Into Parks
– Road rage in India growing along with economy
– Paris To Test Banning Gas-Guzzlers (Yes, SUVs!) In City Core
– The value of a nuclear Iran (Shi’ite oil)
– Green War: “Because the Earth is worth the fight!” (greenwashing)
– S. American mountains hold key to electric car’s future: lithium for batteries
– End of consumerism
– Peak oil novel: “Player One: What is to Become of Us”
– Carbon-Neutral Sail-Powered Cargo Ships Scheduled to Return to European Waters in 2012
– Leaked document shows EPA allowed bee-toxic pesticide despite own scientists’ red flags
The efficiency with which people and goods move into and within cities has a huge impact on both energy use and air quality. And the availability of non-driving modes of transportation can improve people’s lives in a lot of ways.
– No Impact Experiment: A One Week Carbon Cleanse from No-Impact Man
– Peak oil to drive changes in Dunedin NZ (new report NOW ONLINE)
– Bringing Transition to the airport near you
– Bicycle freight: thinking outside the box truck
– Nassim Taleb looks at what will break, and what won’t
– Tea Party & Cars
– Post Carbon Politics, Intro
– Slow Money: Reconnecting The Economy To Soil, Biodiversity and Food Quality, By Woody Tasch
– UK economic recovery ‘poses threat to environment’
– Copenhagen plans bike superhighways
– The “Transition Town” Movement’s Initial Genius
– Green Property: The Power of Community Spirit
– Code Green Community (TEDxYouth in Tampa)
– Heroes of the web changing the world
The waterwheel was seen as the most important power source in the world, from the Middle Ages to the end of the nineteenth century. When smaller streams became saturated, medieval engineers turned their attention to larger rivers, eventually leading to the development of the hydropower dams that still exists today. Lesser known are the intermediate steps toward that technology: boat mills, bridge mills and hanging mills.
Horses and carriages clop past my Dublin office every day, and while they are mostly for tourists, a few country folk still drive them around our land. They are almost unknown across much of the Western World these days; even here they are rare enough that children point and wave when a horse goes by. A hundred years ago they might have shrugged at the ubiquitous presence of horses and run shrieking towards an automobile, and it’s possible their great-grandchildren might do the same a century from now.
Birk has just the right message to the bike community: Don’t get defensive, hold your ground and push ahead, because in the end even your opponents will come to appreciate the progress you make. … “We’re driving a cultural shift where you trade off motor vehicle space for bike lanes. This is deep, fundamental change. It’s not like just adding a bike lane and Boom, you’re done.”
