While I figure out how to post an audio MP3 file that’s larger than 2MB, please visit WJFF’s web site to listen to the radio show. The radio show is powered entirely by a hydroturbine located adjacent to the radio station building and a fairly large dam.

I’d like to thank Mr. Dick Riseling for having me on the show and introducing me to his incredible sustainably operated farm in Sullivan County, New York. Please, check out his farm’s website at http://www.applepondfarm.com/ . The farm acts as a working renewable energy education center to demonstrate that renewable energy technologies and sustainable living scenarios are practical in the world we live in today.

We started with a dearth of climate science completely and utterly backing up the assertion that humans are changing the climate of the earth. What we didn’t know was how much. Now, evidence is surfacing that the changes we’re having on our environment are potentially even worse than the pessimists predicted. Krugman notes a study by M.I.T. (it’s a college in Boston. I hear it’s hard to get into) which more than doubled the expected rise in temperature by the end of the century from 4 degrees to 9 degrees. I don’t know about you, but I plan on being around for at least another 60 years. And I don’t want to move to Florida when I retire. Nor do I want Boston to turn into Florida.

The evidence is out there. The conversation should be, how much is it going to cost us to mitigate the changes and potentially halt human-caused climate change. Instead, 212 members of our legislature refuse to acknowledge the glass on the table and have a productive debate. One called climate change a hoax, saying there is no scientific consensus. He received applause. Then he misquoted numbers on the cost of the bill to American families.

I have issues with the cap and trade bill. I have issues with some of the proposed ‘fixes’ to the climate crisis. But until we all agree that there is a big ol’ glass of water on the table, this conversation and the subsequent action, in whatever form it may take, will keep getting pushed to the next generation. I just hope I have time to teach my kids how to swim. Because the glass is getting bigger. And sooner or later the levees are going to break.

*http://www.indiaclimatesolutions.com/pump-sets-irrigation-and-human-power

Growing Vegetables

Since we don’t have a nice raised bed to plant our vegetables in, we’ve resorted to using old pots, buckets, tomato sauce containers from a local pizza shop, an old tire lined with cardboard (to keep the toxins from getting into the vegetables), and even old gallon milk jugs. We’re growing tomatoes, basil, spinach, mixed greens, onions, peppers, eggplants, and herbs. We’ve gotten a few salads out of it so far, but will hopefully be cutting out most of our vegetable costs in the not so distant future!

Compost

We recently purchased our Earth Machine Composter. Its pretty awesome – you put compostable materials (vegetable scraps, paper, yard clippings, leaves), turn it every few days, and when its ready take rich earth out of the door on the bottom. We’ve already used some of our compost in our vegetable garden! If you live in the City of Boston, it only costs $45 – Check out the website: http://www.cityofboston.gov/publicworks/recycling/composting.asp

We’ve also been expermenting with making our own cleaning supplies, which we will talk about in a future post…

This is a transformational president, and the department is following the president’s lead. People haven’t really been thinking about these things. They have been thinking about how to build roads, how to build interstates, how to build bridges. People now are thinking differently about where they want to live, how they want to live, and how they want to be able to get around their communities.

Finally, the day has come for responsible transportation planning:

What we’ve talked about is getting to a concept that we call livable communities, where people don’t have to get in a car every day. You can use light rail, you can use buses, you can use walking paths, you can use your bike.

Mr. LaHood reiterates over and over the need for a focus on walkable communities and better rail transport for our country, something that has been neglected for nearly fifty years.

And here’s something even more fantastic:

Integrated Urban Planning

In order to make that happen, LaHood’s Department of Transportation wants every metropolitan area in the country to conduct “integrated housing, transportation, and land use planning.” As the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Kaid Benfield notes on the NRDC’s blog Switchboard, this by itself is an almost revolutionary shift.

Although it sounds like a no-brainer, in reality transportation, housing policy (including affordable housing) and land use issues are rarely addressed in an integrated fashion. The results of this disjointed approach to planning can be seen in every American city.

In another groudbreaking move, a three-way partnership has been created between LaHood’s DOT, the Environmental Protection Agency and HUD, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. The goal of the partnership is to use the three agencies’ collective influence and budgets to build more equitable and sustainable communities, with cheaper, more efficient transportation and more affordable and walkable neighborhoods.

All of this adds up to a real sea change in the way the US government deals with transportation issues.

The Suburban parked at a Shell Station in New Jersey, behind a new Prius.

The Administration is sanctioning (through the “Stimulus Bill”) payment to anyone who brings in their old car, and uses that payment toward a new car. The environmental and carbon impacts of this program is devastating. The amount of new carbon dioxide that shall be spewed into the atmosphere by the recycling of old cars and creation of new cars vastly outweighs simply driving our old clunkers until they die. Preferably, we would repair our cars until they have literally rusted away. The amount of carbon dioxide and new pollution that is tacked onto the production of a new automobile is burdensome. I wish the U.S. Government would consult scientists prior to passing these programs that are meant to “bolster the economy.”

Fun Commentary on this:

http://www.journalgazette.net/

http://forums.treehugger.com/

A Constant Shore

And through the ages of Impermanence
Through nations: rise and fall
Through long and short winters
The taste of Constancy has riddled our tongues

We have built our cities on a Constant Shore
We’ve driven the moorings deep
We’ve hung the heavy doors
Of Civilization, of Art, of Sanctity

Yes, we have built our city on the shore
So sure the waves would only offer sleep
Sure our White Cliffs offer support
And what’s more than the waters of the shore?
Seem to slowly creep to the feet of our beds

Creep into our lungs
Creep into our heads
Our cliffs fall into the sea

And what’s more than the waters of our shore?
As constant as the exhalation the neighbor seethes
As midnight black as the Back Country of Pennsylvania
Of Bethlehem, strong as steel
Of New York or London, weak-kneed by the soot

Main Street straddles the waterline
This is fine, of course, as long as there is Sanctity.
And the Maples have gone north to find their sanity
And the taste of constancy has gone quite awfully sour

We have built our cities on a Constant Shore
And by the end of the shortest winter of them all
The ocean licks the feet of our beds

Jared Rodriguez, 2002

GAGA is a true representation of our sustainable past. Mr. Garner built a community in Garnerville, a community built upon the Minisceongo Creek for its hydro power potential. Imagine that – a community built for making fine dies.

The internet has created a vast knowledge bank, an ever-growing body of information that acts to cross-fertilize diverse sets of experimentation, discovery, and scientific or emotional intuition.

If our brains and souls were the ‘computer-nodes’ of a ‘wireless’ and neurologically-, organically-, and biologically-based internet, would we become an All-Knowing and Enlightened Humanity?

Is that device that I mentioned God, or is it something that has yet to be engineered by brilliant masterminds that have yet to be born?