New Mexico Paradise

This is pretty much my dream project:

http://tinyurl.com/buksv4

Not the one home, but the whole concept for the community. Proceeds go
to preserving the preserve! Awesome.

Sent from my iPhone

More Gloom and Doom

Check out this article recently posted on FoxNews.com. I sure wish I could find something a bit more cheerful to post, but this is worth reading.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,499244,00.html

Hydraulic Hybrids

This is from my buddy Jake and since he's done all the work, I'll copy his email verbatim.

"So I guess this is a few months old now, but I just read about it the other day at the doc's office:

Car & Driver Article

Basically the hydraulic hybrid setup is slowly being adopted and tested on UPS trucks (just 7 planned for '09/10), which is a perfect market/test-bed for it. They get about 45-50% increase in fuel economy and 30% decrease in emissions. Plus all the trucks are centrally maintained so the data can be monitored closely.

Another article from Wired:"

What can Brown do for Green?

Best Buy Going Green

Best Buy is offering electronics recylcing nationwide. Most items are free, although some cost $10 but they give you a $10 gift card in exchange. Read more here: Best Buy Recycling Program

Cow Farts & Beer

Not to pander to the lowest common denominator, but like I tell my son, "Farting is always funny." Writing about farts is also pretty funny, so to honor fellow Greenius Pat, I'll link to an article that discusses how the Denmark tax commission is considering a greenhouse "gas" emissions tax on farmers. They estimate that a cow's carbon "output" is almost double that of a passenger car (which sounds absurdly high, but I have no idea about such things). Is this is a government's misdirected attempt to raise taxes under the cloak of environmentalism? Or is it the greatest idea ever? I guess if the farmers could actually do something about the "emissions" of the cows, I could "get behind" this. Thoughts? Sorry for the pun overload. It was necessary.

Remember this gem from Dubya...



According to this article, he may be right about something (finally). These guys have figured out a way to feed fish with the byproduct of brewing beer. So, in effect, the more beer we drink the more fish we feed. I loved the suggestion that their research must have been pouring beer into their fish tanks in college.

Remember in school, when you learned about native Americans and how they used every part of the animals that they killed. It's almost like our society is coming full-circle from those days to the wasteful years in between and now we may actually use our brains to reduce our impact on this world. And in doing so, we'll end up more efficient and wealthier. Have a great weekend, and do your part to save the fish.

I'm Becoming a Greench

One side-effect of my effort to become a Greenius is that I have become a Greench; that is a Green Grinch.  I try hard to reduce, reuse, and recycle.  At work I try to be aware of the resources I use. For example, I think whether a note requires a mini sticky note, a full-size sticky note, a printed page, or will suffice to stay purely in electronic format. Instead of replacing the shredder with a new garbage bag every time it gets full, I dump the shredded paper and reuse the bag. I’m not perfect of course and when the proverbial shit hits the fan and I’m busy multitasking these efforts often fall to the wayside. The point though is that I do make a concerted effort to reduce my environmental impact.

As I’ve ranted about in a previous post, my co-workers are not so thoughtful.  Many of them still throw recyclables in the trash, go through paper like hungry goats, drink 3 bottles of water per day, and generally just don’t care about reducing waste.  It’s not as if they don’t know better. I try to educate them and make it as easy as possible to do the green thing. It really comes down to not being aware of and trying to change their wasteful habits, something we all are guilty of at times

Despite this realization that nobody is perfect, I can’t help but feel that I am the only one who gives a damn about our home the earth.  I feel as if I am surrounded by uncaring houseguests who leave their crap out, eat all my food, and feel they are entitled to do so.  I have often been tempted to remove the 20 oz soda bottle from the garbage can and lob it at the head of the offender.  Fortunately for my job security I have to this point been able to control my spurts of rage.

I don’t want to become a Greench, whose heart has shrunk and who has given up on his fellow humans.  I want to continue believing that mankind will realize that you shouldn’t trash your home, especially when you have 7 billion roommates and trillions of pets.  What do you guys and gals think? Besides our efforts here on the blog, what else can we do to get others to buy into green?

Are the Grammy's Green?

If any of you are like me and watched the Grammy's last night, you may be wondering where did all of the energy come from to produce all of that glitz and glam, and no I'm not talking about Neil Diamond's jacket?

By doing a quick search I was able to dig up this press release from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). It appears, at least from this statement, that the Recording Academy made a concerted effort to make the show as green as possible.

Here are a few highlights of the actions taken:

• Renewable energy used to power STAPLES Center and Los Angeles Convention Center
• Renewable energy credits purchased by Bonneville Environmental Foundation to offset carbon emissions from the Pre-Telecast and Arrivals
• Organic and environmentally-friendly food (including seafood, dairy, and produce) featured at GRAMMY Celebration after-party
• Un-used food donated by Wolfgang Puck to Angel Harvest

There are plenty more items listed in the press release but I am glad to see an effort was made.

Oh and by the way there were some stellar performances last night including Neil Diamond bringing down the house with "Sweet Caroline". M.I.A. performing despite being 9 months pregnant. Then there was this gem from one of my all time favorites Radiohead with the USC marching band.

Is Ticketmaster the Most Un-Green Company Ever?

I have been coveting tickets to see Willie Nelson at the House of Blues in Orlando for some time. I've only seen him live twice and the last time was 7 years ago. I needed to see how big the hole in his guitar has gotten. Logged on to Ticketmaster and the tickets are a bit steep ($58.50), but TM is charging nearly $15 per ticket on top of that for "convenience" and facility charges. I'm buying two tickets, so that's $30 in bogus fees. Last night, I loaded the kids in the car and set off to HOB to buy them directly from the box office. The problem with this is that while I see the waste in me driving over there, I'm not at a place in my life where I'm willing to pay a company $30 to save $4 in gas and my time. If the fees were $10, I'd have the tickets already. Not to mention, if I buy the tickets in person, the box office has to pay someone to sit there and sell them to me, and they have to have a building with lights and a/c, etc. It should be cheaper to buy them online and print them from home, but instead it costs me $2.50 to print them from my printer but it's free for TM to print them and mail them to me.

The point I'm getting at is that Ticketmaster is encouraging people to buy directly from the box office because their fees are so jacked up. The beauty of the web is supposed to be that it reduces the need for such trips and transactions. Do you agree? By the way, the box office was closed last night (I didn't check their hours on their very convenient website), but that one's on me. I'll be going back soon and will still come out money ahead.

Can you think of other companies that are so backwards in their thinking when it comes to things like this? I'll report back on how the concert went.

Prefab Fridays on the Inhabitat Blog

Through my Twitter account, I came across the Inhabitat blog a few weeks ago, and now it's my favorite site in the eco-blogosphere.  They cover all kinds of green-related stuff, but by far my favorite thing about their site is their weekly "Prefab Friday" specials.  As a six-year veteran of the prefab business at Palm Harbor Homes, Inc., I have a natural bias towards these posts, but look at how cool these buildings are (my comments below each):

It's a green houseboat for Pete's sake!

Ultra-modern, ultra-green, award-winning "Spoorhouse."

Prefab home built in Australia.

Shipping container buildings (yes, it's a house, a "Weekend House" as a matter of fact).

The lights under the home indicate whether the house is producing more energy than it's using (green) or consuming more than it's producing (red).  Now, I don't see much of a market for this, but it's cool in a crazy green kind of way.

The adaptable R-house is made of sustainable wood and can change shape based on sun position and wind patterns.  Wow!

"Cottage in a Day" utilizes structural insulated panels (SIP's).

They actually had this home set-up at the International Builders' Show in Vegas.

I've long been a believer in the power of Prefab/modular technology to revolutionize the homebuilding industry.  The fact that this type of construction is really leading the way in the green/sustainable building movement, makes me even more of a believer.  I'm just glad to have such cool blogs out there to keep me informed about these cool builders.

What a Game!

Now that's what I am talking about. Steelers 27 Cardinals 23 in Superbowl XLIII was one to remember. Being a fan of neither team I went into last night hoping to at least see a close game and also for there to be some kick ass commercials to watch. I feel that both hopes were delivered on and then some. The fourth quarter of the game last night made for some of the most compelling television I have ever seen. I can only imagine what it must have been like to be there in person watching all of the drama unfold.

Now after having read that first paragraph and knowing that this is a blog about green I am sure that you are wondering how is he going to spin this into a post about green. Check this out. My second hope being to see some really cool commercials also produced some insight into wind energy and also smart grid technology. Both courtesy of a company I have blogged on before, General Electric.

First here is the commercial on wind energy:

And here is the commercial on Smart Grid Technology:

Now check out the Ecomagination website section that talks about Plugging into the Smart Grid.

And last but not least here is a link to all of the Superbowl commercials from last night in order by quarter.

You can all thank me later for killing your productivity level at work for the rest of the day.

Kyoto

No one with any sense can look back and say President Bush's administration was a complete success, but one decision he made that I have always proudly stood behind was not to sign the Kyoto Treaty. Check out this link and then read Probe International article you can link to from there.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/01/28/how-kyoto-credit-scams-work.aspx