Podcars in Raleigh??

I read this earlier today, about Ithaca, NY possibly getting a podcar system. For those that may not know, a podcar is kind of like a monorail, except with many small 4 passenger maximum cars. It's described a lot of times like an elevator, only it goes horizontal. It is fully electric and very efficient (they also say that a single rail system would be the equivalent of a 3 lane highway). It got me thinking, why not in the triangle? Public transit systems have notoriously been doomed around here, partially because of just how spread out things are, but also the overall traffic on the roads, but most importantly the price. If this truly is about 10% as expensive as a light rail system or a subway, it is definitely worth a look. Here is the Unimodal website (the company mentioned in the article). This just looks SOOOO cool. I've been trying to imagine just how awesome it would be to see this in the triangle all day. Anyone have any great ideas on how we can make it happen?

Drill Drill Drill :(

So the news today is basically the moratorium on offshore oil drilling will be allowed to expire. Forget about any of these comprehensive energy bills that include renewables that everyone SAYS they want. This is pretty discouraging to me personally, since it is pretty much all of the bad with none of the good. Hopefully, one the election is over though this will be be revisited and done the way it should be.

Big Day Today

Today was a pretty big news day. First off is the new Energy Bills floating around Congress. We might as well all accept that there will be some sort of bill that will open up offshore drilling at each state's preference. The moratorium will end, and if nothing is done, it will open up drilling as close as 3 miles off the coast. Anyway, clearly my favorite is the one introduced by the Senate;

"The bi-partisan group's bill, which has not yet been formally introduced, calls for increased tax credits for renewable and clean energy production, as well as consumer tax credits for purchasing energy-efficient vehicles and business tax credits for investing in clean energy like solar power. The cost of the tax credits to the government would be offset by repealing tax credits to major oil and gas companies.

The compromise bill would also transition 85% of the nation's cars and trucks away from gasoline and diesel to renewable fuels by 2028. In the meantime, the New ERA bill would increase domestic production by expanding drilling leases to 100 miles offshore like in Pelosi's bill. The Senate bill would also permit Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas to petition for leasing as close as 50 miles offshore, and some analysts believe Alaska could be added to the fray as well. In return, the states would receive some royalty sharing from the drilling companies.

The bill would also increase energy conservation and ban exports on domestic oil, in addition to the consumer and corporate tax credits for renewables."

This is the exact type of comprehensive energy bill that McCain claims he would support, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for this one. As you may know, the president has in the past threatened to veto any bill that would repeal the tax credits to oil companies, and then there is this tidbit, "Though Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said he will try to filibuster any bill that includes raising taxes on oil and natural gas companies to offset the costs of renewable energy tax credits, compromises between lawmakers on both sides of the aisle seem to be gaining." Needless to say, I am watching this one VERY closely.

The other bit of info today was a new study released about Bisphenol A used in water bottles (among other things). I've posted about this in the past as well warning of the possible dangers. This new study has found some statistical connection to higher levels of BPA in people's systems to higher risk of things like heart disease and diabetes. The scientists say that nothing conclusive has come from this yet, but the fact is that there is enough evidence out there that would point to the possibility that this stuff isn't safe that it needs to be pulled from the shelves until we have something that proves it's safety. We should not be put at risk because there is not yet enough conclusive evidence that these products are unsafe. Canada has already all but phased these things out, but the truly disappointing and disturbing part about all of this was the response from the FDA. “A margin of safety exists that is adequate to protect consumers, including infants and children, at the current levels of exposure,” What exactly is a "Margin of safety?" I am continually shocked with the philosophy of the FDA that products innocent until proven guilty. This is great for our criminal justice system, but not for the regulating body that is supposed to be acting in the best interest of the citizens of this country. sigh... I've personally been working on using less and less plastic, but it really is nearly impossible. I can only hope at this point that FDA changes it's stance instead of hoping that all these studies are totally wrong and BPA is perfectly safe.

EPA actually doing their job

This came up today in my newsfeed. To sum up, the EPA took advantage of a little used veto they have for public works that could threaten the environment and natural habitats. In this case, it was a a flood control pumping station along the lower Mississippi delta area that has been in the works since the 40's. This project would potentially severely damage extremely important wetlands along the gulf of mexico. Not just for the wildlife, but also the natural barrier that these wetlands form against stormswells. So I say well done EPA. Keep up the good work and fight the good fight. Looks like this one will continue to be fought in the courts, but I'm jut happy that the EPA is standing up and doing what they are supposed to do.

Nature is getting Rights!!!

I found this today and had to pass it along. It would seem that Ecuador is doing something revolutionary and placing the same rights that fall onto individuals and corporations in this country on nature itself. The result being that people can sue for the rights of the environment in cases where there are mistreatments. It sounds really cool and I'm really curious and excited about what the ending result could be. Perhaps, mother nature fighting back in the courts and getting justice for pollution? Wouldn't that be incredible.

Pollution in China

A lot has been said about the state of the air quality in Beijing over the last few weeks with the Olympics now ongoing there. I'm not exactly going to jump into that debate. It is what it is, we can all make our own opinions, but a lot has also been said about the efforts that the Chinese government has made to clean up the place. This article I read today from a newspaper in Tanzania is one of them. I do think it is great that China has added all this green space to the city, and I was even commenting about it while I was watching the marathon the other day. I really have never seen a city with so much greenery. Still, a lot of the things they have done are hardly permanent, such as shutting down industry while the games are going on and banning half the cities cars from the roads are just not realistic to continue. I imagine the factories are firing back up and the gridlock will continue as soon as the flame is extinguished.

On top of that I just feel like the whole thing is just one big illusion. Great, they have spent tons of money to "clean" Beijing, but what about all the other cities where all the other 1 Billion plus Chinese live. What of all the other parts of the country that they are banning reporters from seeing. I really do feel like they are trying, but I have an extremely hard time praising a government for anything when they are detaining people without cause, deporting anyone who shows signs of protest to their government, flat out barring the media from reporting certain details, news reports about their president of the Olympic organization committee having been convicted of torture in the past and just their complete and total refusal to address the human rights issues that they promised they would adjust when they were awarded the games eight years ago.

I love that the environment is making headlines. Very few things make me as happy actually, but the problems they have in China just are not going to be solved by transplanting a few trees and rolling out a few fuel cell buses.

Yes we are still alive

I feel horrible having not posted in a while. I'm really sorry for such a big gap in posts. We are still alive I promise. It's been really hectic around here lately, but I'm definitely going to get back to business soon. We had a nice vacation to Ocracoke Island a couple weeks ago that that really recharged our batteries. I actually had a small accident where I broke one of my ribs not too long ago. I'm pretty well healed up now, so I'm ready to get back to things full speed again. Check back please. Hopefully by next time I'll have some really great stuff to talk about.

Kudzu to Ethanol

Personally, I am very against the use of ethanol to fuel cars. Mainly because as it is the main source of ethanol is corn, which is delicious... so it just doesn't make sense to me use something to run a machine that I could just as soon eat. Anyway, for those of you that live in the southeast, you know of the plaque that is Kudzu... I have found a couple good posts in the last couple weeks about the possibility of using it to create ethanol. Now that's more like it. Check out the article on ecogeek here. And this one on chemically green. This is the kind of thinking we need to encourage and pursue. The answer is out there, just not in my stomach.

Spin Dryer

I got an e-mail about this great product today, so I am passing it along to all of you. It is called a spin dryer. Basically it gives your clothes a nice fast spin after the washing machine to wring the water out of them, making it so that your drying time can be cut in half or more. Pretty cool product. Could for sure make a big difference in the electric bill.

Waste Management in Korea

A while back I stumbled upon a blog talking about living in Seoul for a period of time. Nothing too out of the ordinary about it at all except for a post about how they handled the trash there. It was really just a genius system to me. In order to encourage more recycling, they put together a system where you have to buy government issued bags for your garbage. In other words you can only use these certain bags that they sell for something like $1 a bag for your garbage. You can use any bag for recycling. So in effect instead of paying the flat rate for garbage like most of us currently do as part of our water bill, you would pay for the bags, and the more you use the more you pay. So the people that never recycle and fill their bin to the brim every week would actually pay more for their garbage pickup than someone like Anna and myself that get by most weeks with one bag of garbage.. wouldn't that be nice. Anyway, they also are using this system for compost, so you can limit your garbage even further by sending organic materials to the community compost heap. I would love something like that here, but who knows how or when anything like that would ever happen. They basically were having serious problems with landfills becoming too full too fast, so they came up with a new idea that is turning out to be a HUGE success. If you want to read more check out some of the links about it I've found. Anyone that has some ideas for how we could make this happen here, feel free to share.

Link1, Link2, Link3, Link4

two good articles today

Well, good is not necessarily the correct word, but interesting, infuriating or important may actually be better for this one. The Union of Concerned Scientists ran a little bit of a survey with the EPA. Just to see really how much current policy is dictating what data they are putting out, how the finding may have been edited by current administration, etc. It turns out to be quite a bit. Coming from someone in a scientific field, I am completely unsurprised by these findings, but at the same time can tell you that nothing is as frustrating to a scientist than someone coming in and manipulating your data to say what they want it to, or to challenge your assessments with no scientific evidence on the contrary. We currently have political officials with no scientific background coming in and changing scientific findings to match what they want, and this is not the first time I have heard of this sort of censorship going on under the current administration. This stuff is bad and really needs to stop.. Anyway, the article says it all better than I can, definitely a good read.

The second article is a study performed by the Environmental Defense Fund. The basic rundown is that they wanted to find out what it would actually cost our economy to put a cap on carbon emissions with a cap and trade program. What they came up with was approximately 1% of the GDP... hardly the crippling cost that we have been led to believe. The other important tidbit is that it will become more and more expensive to perform the longer we wait. So lets get it done already.

Get rid of your Nalgene bottles

If you haven't already, get rid of all your Nalgene Bottles. You know the popular clear hard plastic bottles that seemingly EVERYONE has and carries around with them. These plastics contain what is being described as a very harmful ingredient called Bisphenol A (BPA). I read an article about this several months ago in the Green Guide, and at the time it was becoming a hot issue, with cities like San Francisco banning it. Also, at the time, the people at Nalgene were defending their product and playing the there is not enough evidence to say our products are unsafe card. I recall going to their webpage at the time that I read this and they even had a special link to their own information on BPA, claiming their products were safe and all studies to that point where inconclusive.

Well, now that Canada is planning a ban, and the National Institute of Health is saying it is toxic, they are phasing it out over the next few months and offering many non-BPA alternatives. It would seem to me that they saw these bans coming a while ago.. They did offer some alternatives before, but they were not marketed nearly as much as the Polycarbonate bottles that everyone knows so well. That may just be the cynic in me, but if they DID see this coming and planned accordingly, how on earth do they explain the continued sale of a product that they knew would be classified as unsafe in the near future?

There is also a huge buzz going about where they are using these plastics in baby bottles. The green guide has also hit on this as well (in 1999!!), but it is back in the news because of these most recent studies. How is this for a response from a plastic company representative, "There is nothing new in this report," said Steven Hentges, executive director of the American Plastics Council's Polycarbonate Business Unit. "The data that is presented has been known for years and, most importantly, data of that type has been reviewed by government agencies around the world in their comprehensive reviews on BPA and, in every case, they reach a conclusion even after considering this kind of data that polycarbonate baby bottles are safe for use."

Basically there is no ban yet, but many producers admit they are BPA is unsafe, but they downgrade the amounts that are leached and they plan to keep selling them anyway. I personally really wish we would remove the phrase "safe level" from our vocabulary. If we know something is unsafe... why have ANY of it?

top 20 bills in NC Assembly - Part 4 (#1-5)

Part 4 (#1-5) of the top 20 bills in the NC general assembly

This is it.. the final part. Check out part 1, part 2 and part 3 if you haven't yet.

And on we go.

5. Senate Bill 1493/House Bill 1232 - Fund State Water Infrastructure Commission
The State Water Infrastructure Commission would of course identify the state's water needs and develop plans to meet them. Then monitor the implementation of the plans.

4. House Bill 1179 - Clean Cars Program/Funds
This would establish a low emissions vehicle program in North Carolina. This would basically adopt the low-emissions vehicle program that they have in California for the state of North Carolina, effective for cars sold after 2009 model year. There is a lot of info included in this bill, so if you are interested I recommend reading up. Needless to say, any bill that will require the phase out of vehicle emissions is a good thing.

3. Senate Bill 927/House Bill 1073 - Green School Construction Loan Fund/Program
This basically allows for schools to get no interest loans for the purpose of green constructions or renovations. With the number of schools going up in the state every year (especially Wake County) there is no reason why they shouldn't be building as green as they can, and this would help them cover a lot of those costs.

2. Senate Bill 1522/House Bill 990 - Land and Water Conservation Bond Act of 2007
This one looks to have been sat on a bit, but there is no reason to think we couldn't get it moved back up and pushed through. It would authorize the issuance of bonds, provided passing of vote to address the statewide needs of land conservation, Water Quality protection and Historic preservation. We are talking about a lot of money here (up to $1 Billion), that is needed in a bad way for conservation around the state. I can only hope that this one gets revisited.

1. Senate Bill 634/House Bill 557 - North Carolina GREEEN Act
This act is to grow a renewable and energy-efficient economy in North Carolina by establishing a Green Business Fund to be administered by the state energy office to provide seed grants to develop North Carolina's green economy. This version of the bill allows for $15 Million a year to be divided between Bio-fuels, Green Building and general Green Entrepreneurship. This one is important to me for clear reasons, but not only because I am trying to start a green business. I think becoming a leader in this industry can pay huge dividends for this state in the future.

With elections coming up, etc. it is on all of us to make sure the folks running know what we think is important and the type of things we want them to work on for us. All of these bills may not work out in these particular iterations, but we can at least draw some attention to them. Check out the state board of elections for info on all the candidates. E-mail them, call them, whatever. but let them know what you want. Maybe something can eventually get done.

Top 20 Bills in NC Asembly - Part 3 #6-10

So here we are for yet another installment. Check out part 1 and part 2 if you haven't yet.

And on we go.

10. Senate Bill 1149 - Use of Biodiesel on School Buses
This bill would allow $5,000,000 for grants to NC public schools for production of biofuels to be used to run school buses.

9. House Bill 1052 - Hog Farms/Methane Gas
This bill would require power suppliers to purchase electricity from farms/facilities that use hog waste to produce it.

Just found out that my #8 was ratified as well. It was a bill that prohibited any sort of control over the use of solar collectors by things such as homeowners associations, etc.

7. Senate Bill 215 - Litter Reduction Act
This bill would be an attempt to curb litter and promote recycling by instituting a deposit program for things like bottles and cans. Other states do this with a lot of success, so no reason to think it wouldn't work here.

6. Senate Bill 967/House Bill 1600 - NC Organic Economic Opportunities Study
Self explanatory, but it would be a market research study to determine what sort of opportunities there would be for organic farming in the state. I can give them the quick answer, PLENTY. But government needs an actual study with actual results, so the sooner they get it over with the better.

That 5 flew by. check back soon for the top 5.

Top 20 Bills in NC Asembly - Part 2 #11-15

Part 2 (#11-15) of the top 20 bills in the NC general assembly

So here we are for another installment. See part 1 if you have no idea what this is.

And on with the list.

15. Senate Bill 1451 - Biodiesel Incentive Fund
It may seem awfully familiar, as in #16, but this Biodiesel incentive is slightly different. This one provides for a fund to pay out to biodiesel producers to encourage development of Biodiesel in the state. The only downside to this one for me is that if emphasizes the use of feedstock for biodiesel production. The perfect bill would be to really push biodiesel from recycled veggie oil or cellulosic ethanol, but we will take what we can get I suppose.

14. My #14 I just noticed has been ratified since I first checked it, so we’ll skip that one. FYI it was for an increase in the penalty for Air Polluters.

13. House Bill 1832 - No Mining Sand from Tidal Inlet/Delta
This one is self explanatory, but it would basically end all mining of sand and damage to the ecosystem, unless it is necessary to maintain navigation channels.

12. House Bill 1846 - Tax Credit for Recycling Vegetable Oil
This bill would provide for a tax credit equal to 25% of the cost of equipment for the conversion of used vegetable oil to fuel.

11. Senate Bill 141/House Bill 1117 - Topsail Beach/Beach Renourishment funds
This would provide $2,000,000 to the town of Topsail Beach for use in beach renourishment.

Thats if for this one, check back for the rest later

Top 20 Bills in NC Asembly - Part 1 #16-20

I was doing some digging this weekend on the NC general assembly webpage to see what the state government in North Carolina was doing as far as environmental policy, I looked through every bill introduced and still in committee, etc. for the 2007-2008 session. What I have put together is what I feel are the top 20 most important bills in that category. They are in somewhat of order of importance, and I hopefully caught all the good ones, but it was a VERY long list, so I apologize if I may have missed any (and if I have please let me know and I can post them up as well). The basic goal of this was to show what our representatives are looking at, and what we can bring to their attention to help push through. I personally feel like much much more can be done, but I will save that for later, right now I just want to look at what IS there so we can all start bugging our representatives on a regular basis to keep tabs on how these things are progressing. It is actually somewhat hard to tell what the current status of some of these are, but I am sure it won’t hurt to bring them up to the folks in power. I will break this up into a few parts to kind of shorten these posts a bit, so check back over the next few days to get them all.

OK so here goes #’s 16-20;

20. Senate Bill 843 - Establish the Biofuels Center of North Carolina
The bill says the Biofuel center would be created as a non-profit organization with an annual budget of $5,000,000 for both and would be responsible for the implementation of “North Carolina’s Strategic Plan for Biofuels Leadership.”

19. Senate Bill 1222 - Funds for NC Solar Center
Appropriation of funds for North Carolina Solar Center at NCState University.

18. Senate Bill 948 - Small Dairy Sustainability
This bill would allow for consumers to contract with local farmers to become partial or complete owners of dairy animals. The original edition of this one was just to allow for people to contract with local farmers to buy fresh milk, but it turned into the current bill that would allow consumers to buy into a local farm to get fresh milk, it now would also require a health warning of the dangers of raw milk, but the nature remains the same. It would allow for small dairy farmers to stay afloat, and for people to support and take part in local agriculture and give themselves a local food source.

17. House Bill 618/Senate Bill 671 - Eat Smart...Move More Initiative
This would provide a budget of $3,000,000 for the next two years for to promote community environments that would support physical activity, healthy lifestyles and personal well-being.

16. House Bill 2003 - Biofuel Incentives
This would supply incentives for distributors of Biofuel in the form of a tax discount.

Business Update

I just want to really quickly try and give everyone an update on how things are going for GHH. I have been asked several times in the last couple weeks about when we might open. The best answer that I have right now is, we don't know. I wish I had something more definite, but right now that is the best I can do. We are currently in the status of looking for funds. Truthfully, right now we haven't yet even been able to find any positive leads. What I can for sure tell you is that we have completed our business plan, after long hours of research, editing, writing, rewriting, etc. If any of you readers out there might know someone/something that would be a good place to look for funding, we would MUCH appreciate it. Until we can find some way to get us off the ground we are somewhat on hold. Rest assured though that we are VERY committed to this movement. We will not allow this idea/dream die. Again, if any of you readers may have some ideas, or even just encouragement, please don't hesitate. Hopefully soon I will have some more definite and happy news. Thanks for reading and please come back often.

The importance of building green

For those out there that may (not sure how you could though) doubt the importance of building green, check out this post on ecogeek. Not sure exactly where they get the figures on the amount of carbon from cars, but an interesting bit of info anyway. Basically, they are saying that if all building were to turn "green" for the year, then we would save as much greenhouse gasses, etc. as are used by every car and plane used in North America for the year.

Again, I have no idea about the accuracy of those numbers, but either way it is CLEAR that building green will have a huge impact. Now all we have to do is make every builder and developer to build everything green.. Then renovate every existing building using green principles. Seems like a rather daunting task, but things seem to be moving in the right direction at least. Maybe someday we will all be living in sustainable, comfortable homes. We can only hope...

Stumbled upon this earlier

Great conservation tips here. A lot of them are kind of common sense, but it's nice to see all these tips in one place like this.

If my couch is healthy, I'm healthy

By my estimation, the average American probably spends somewhere between 700 and 1000 hours a year on his or her couch.  Watching TV, napping, reading, relaxing after a long day; some of us (Jake and I are guilty!) even have meals there.  Most of us don't give much thought to the close relationships we've developed with our furniture, but it is a fact that we are intimately involved.  So it only seems natural that we'd expect an object we're in such close contact with every day to be made of materials that won't harm us.  Unfortunately, Green Daily just mentioned a new report that links an ingredient in more than 2/3 of California furniture to birth defects and cancer.  The chemical, called PBDE (a type of bromide) seeps into the bloodstreams of pregnant women, affecting the fetus or baby via the umbilical cord or breast milk.  This toxin has even been affecting the cats who snuggle with us.

So that begs the observation: if California is noticing this problem in household furniture (and still hasn't resolved it via legislature), imagine what that says about my couch here in North Carolina, one of the largest furniture-producing states around.  My solution?  The next couch we buy (which will be very soon) will be a green one! 

Clorox going green?

Most if not all of you have probably seen these products advertised by Clorox, the new GreenWorks line. They are touting it as a "natural" cleaner, safer for the environment and the user, etc. etc. etc. Most of you may also know that my background is in chemistry, and today I had a few minutes to take a look into the ingredients of these "natural" cleaners. I add the quotes, because the word natural as it is used by corporations is a completely unregulated and VERY loosely used term. OK, so what's the verdict, is it natural or not. Well we will get to that shortly, first let me just list to you the ingredients per their labels:
water, alkyl polyglucoside, ethanol SDA-3C, glycerine, lemon essential oil, preservative (Kathon) and colorant (Milliken Liquitint Blue HP dye and Bright Yellow dye X) and also some of them contain sodium lauryl sulfate and lauramine oxide.

Now a good general rule of thumb with these sorts of things is, if you can't tell right away where something comes from, then it probably isn't natural. Alkyl polyglucoside??? Turns out is pretty readily available from chemical manufacturers such as Dow. Clorox says that it is derived from Coconuts. OK then. The use for this surfactant (which basically means a wetting agent that lowers the surface tension of a liquid) is to help form nice soapy bubbles and act as the main detergent ingredient. This is basically the meat and potatoes of the cleaning product. The other stuff is added for smell, color and preservation. So what exactly is it? well it is a synthetically produced chemical. It does appear to degrade pretty quickly (28 days) I do not know the path to degredation though, so I have no idea why it doesn't just break down in the bottle, most likely what the preservatives are preventing, as well as the prevention of bacterial growth. Dow says they are quite stable in a caustic environment, meaning pH higher than 8 or so, which is common for soaps and cleaning products.

The other eyebrow raisers; Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Lauramine Oxide (an emulsifier, meaning it allows oil and water to be mixed). could both definitely be construed as very un-natural and SLS sounds downright scary. The others, preservatives and dyes.. eh.. Then you have corn based ethanol, which I don't have a problem with using in a cleaner personally, but there is the little problem of the creation of that ethanol taking up huge amounts of energy both in production and in the transport of corn, etc.

Anyway, about the only thing truly natural in this bottle would probably be the water, the rest are synthetically extracted or produced wholly in a lab. I think I'll just use some vinegar and water...

Six Degrees Could Change the World

I watched this last night, and I just have to say that it is a MUST watch for really anyone. Not just the people like me that are obsessed with the planet, but even the sceptics among us. I really encourage anyone to check it out and the webpage if they get a chance. It is far superior to the horribly dumbed down special that CNN put together a couple months ago. This one gets a bit spectacular with the visuals, but by most accounts they are being pretty conservative with the predictions.

It is pretty scary stuff. We all know the troubles we could be in if nothing is done, but unless something really big happens soon, we might as well all invest in the future breadbasket of the world in north-central Canada.

Wind and Solar Potential

I found this fun little toy earlier today. Basically a quick breakdown of wind and solar potnential for the entire nation, but detailed enough that you can find your own town. A lot of fun to look at.

Air Quality

Ready to be completely depressed. Check out the Air Quality maps I found on creativemethods.com. I have no real idea where they get their data from, but it was appear to me to make sense based on the areas with F grades. There sure seems to be a lot of F's and D's out there, and as of yet I have not found a single speck of A quality other than the Aleutian Islands. That is a truly sad state of things.

Water Shortages

For those of you out there that may not know, the southeast is currently suffering from a SEVERE drought. Many places are down to as little as a month of drinking water remaining. Plans are being put into place to truck water in and begin rationing it if things persist, other plans include taking water from other sources (quarries, lake bed sediment, etc). I was just poking around a bit yesterday to try and find some articles out there on there, as well as some of the truly unbelievable pictures of lakes and river, etc. in the area. In the process of that search I found these 2 articles; the first from USA today from 2003, the other is from a blog called whyfiles from 2001. Both of these articles predict extreme water shortages in the coming years, going as far as to predict "water wars" and other such horrors. I point out just how old they are for the simple reason that there are still people that do not believe global warming is taking place. Scientists can release information and articles all day and they will always be labelled as Doom and Gloomers. The fact is, the water shortage issues talked about in these articles from years ago are happening NOW. Some people would way that it is just a normal trend when it comes to weather, there are dry times, and there are wet times.. This is true, and may be so, but the fact is that all these people drinking SO much water and using water for frivolous things is a HUGE factor. The perfect illustration is Falls Lake near Raleigh, where basically all of Wake County draws drinking water, The lake has turned practically into a stream... Meanwhile Jordan lake nearby (while quite low) still resembles a lake.

The truly frustrating thing is that all of this can be helped, aided, whatever you want to call it with responsible uses. Stop watering your lawns for something as useless as green grass for one thing. Then there are many conservation steps we can all take, as well as systems that can be built into our houses to reuse graywater. I highly recommend the book The Natural House, which is also a GREAT source of info on the basics of many different natural building techniques, but also includes a great chapter on Graywater systems. Just one of the many types of things that I feel will need to be integrated into ALL homes for things to continue to be as prosperous as they currently are.. I personally do not want to ever have to worry about whether there will be enough water in which to bathe, but far too many people are more concerned with whether or not their yard is pretty. A lot of things will need to chance dramatically in this country and a lot of people's priorities are going to need to shift, but lets just all hope for some rain soon, and then we can maybe start to change some people's habits.

Back From the Holidays

Sorry for the long gap in posts. Been very busy around here with the holidays, but it's time to get back to work. Hopefully, there will be some more posts and updates coming soon.