A personal energy
policy can help you save money, limit pollution and reduce nation's
reliance on imported fuels
by Peter Rowe, San Diego
Union-Tribune
BEIJING The United States, South
Korea and China all have energy policies. Why don't you?
Last month, during a whirlwind trip sponsored by Honolulu's
East-West Center, I and 11 other reporters explored the challenges
facing three of the world's great energy consumers. In Houston,
Seoul and Beijing, experts issued glum predictions:
Ruthless competition for oil and natural gas, the fuels that provide
nearly two-thirds of the world's energy needs.
Higher yes, even higher prices at the gas pump.
Revived interest in nuclear power; coal, clean or otherwise; and
renewable resources, such as solar, wind and geothermal...
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Bio-Char
Muck and Mystery
Charcoal in other words, but not necessarily made from wood, any
organic material will do. A Cornell researcher is begging for
funding by touting his work with "so-called bio-char -- similar to
charcoal" as a double dip ag practice that improves yield and
sequesters carbon in soil as a durable compound that can last for
ages.
"The knowledge that we can gain from studying the Amazonian dark
earths, found throughout the Amazon River region, not only teaches
us how to restore degraded soils, triple crop yields and support a
wide array of crops in regions with agriculturally poor soils, but
also can lead to technologies to sequester carbon in soil and
prevent critical changes in world climate," said Johannes Lehmann,
assistant professor of biogeochemistry in the Department of Crop and
Soil Sciences at Cornell University, speaking today (Feb. 18) at the
2006 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science.
Lehmann, who studies bio-char and is the first author of the 2003
book "Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management," the
first comprehensive overview of the black soil, said that the
super-fertile soil was produced thousands of years ago by indigenous
populations using slash-and-char methods instead of slash-and-burn.
Terra preta was studied for the first time in 1874 by Cornell
Professor Charles Hartt...
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Building a House on
Limited Means
The Elimination of all that is
unnecessary to achieve a Dream
by Thomas J. Elpel
We are
very goal-oriented in Western culture, and we often count our
successes by how much we accomplish. Eastern cultures can be very
goal-oriented as well, but sometimes with a very different approach.
While a westerner sits on his laurels at the end of the day and adds
up what he did, an easterner might sit on his laurels and add up
what he eliminated having to do.
As a simple analogy, you might say that a western artist does
sculpture with clay, assembling an entire work piece by piece, while
an eastern artist does sculpture in stone, eliminating everything
that is not part of the final goal. It is two fundamentally
different approaches to a similar point. Yet, there is still more to
this analogy than that. The western sculptor may shape clay all day
long, but the eastern sculptor sits in front of his stone and
meditates on it. Then, at the end of the day he picks up his chisel
and hammer and makes one strategic hit, revealing all at once a
whole portion of the art!
Our approach to achieving our dreams was more the eastern approach
than the western one. With this approach Renee and I have been able
to completely build and pay for our dream home on a combined annual
income averaging only $10,000 to $12,000 per year...
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Building a Passive
Solar Slipform Stone House
by Thomas J. Elpel
Is it
possible to build a solar stone house that is so energy-efficient
that it doesn't need either fossil fuel heating or firewood heating
to keep it warm through a Montana winter?The era of fossil fuels is
coming to an end, but we cannot merely substitute other fuels, such
as firewood to make up for the loss of fossil fuels. That isn't
sustainable either. The only truly sustainable option is to make
every new building so energy efficient (and to retrofit every
existing building) such that we will not need any energy other than
sunshine to keep them cozy. But some would argue that such a house
would be cost-prohibitive, much more expensive than a traditional,
energy-wasting home. I disagree. Having built our own
energy-efficient, mostly passive solar stone and log home for $10 a
square foot in the 1990's, I found myself wondering, "Is it possible
to build a 100% passive solar stone house for $10 a square
foot--when most of the materials costs have nearly doubled?"
In April of 2005 we broke ground on construction of a new
energy-efficient stone house and storefront to replace the Hollowtop
Outdoor Primitive School, LLC trailerhouse next door to Granny's
Country Store. Our goal is to build a structure that is 100% passive
solar, with no need for wood, gas, or electric heating. It will also
have a greenhouse, composting toilet, and reed bed filter system for
greywater.
But before we did anything else, we had to dismantle and recycle the
existing trailerhouse on the site. The trailer wasn't in good enough
condition to sell, so we tore it apart and recycled everything we
could. The kids and I did some prep work--removing the fixtures,
cabinetry, and interior walls. Then we hired five teenage boys to
come over and take the trailer apart as part of their fund-raising
effort for a school trip. In one day we took apart everything from
the roof on down to floor level...
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