Technology meets Environment Links
Solitary Tree by Iguana Jo
#1. Convert your car (yes, your Porche!) to electric for under $10k
[Niall talked about the cost of gas just commuting from the city to the Peninsula...nearly $10k in gas alone! You'd have made the money back in just over 1 year]
#2. The Intelligrid
Open source power, man:
There is a particular need in the power industry for an organized infrastructure (standards and technology) that will enable valuable and cost effective interoperation between products developed by different vendors. Without substantial demand (or pull) from the user community, there is little incentive for vendor ‘A’ to facilitate interoperability with products from vendor ‘B’. Instead, vendors must recognize that interoperation is the minimum common requirement and that differentiation will come from feature sets and service offerings.#3. The Green Phone
Linux-based, VoiP phone with GSM/GPRS. Totally hackable. Press Release.
#4. FON
Maybe not 'directly' green, but definitely collaborative, community-based and networked, which helps us go 'Bedouin', which leads to greener practices like reductions in commuting and fewer lights-on-all-night unhealthy ecosystem office towers. Share your wifi for an eventual worldwide mesh network.
#5. Waterless Urinals
Reported by Chris first....one restaurant saved 120,000 gallons of water in one year. Wow. That sounds like alot.
#6. 10 Simple pledges you can make to change your behaviour
It's really painful, but Chris and I pledged to not buy a car until a fully electric vehicle is available. I've had cars all of my life. It's funny...people treat you differently when you don't have a vehicle. I think they assume you can't afford one (clients keep saying, "We don't pay you enough?").
Believe me, every day, I'm tempted. When there are no cabs to be found. When the bus system is crappy (which it is here). When someone down the peninsula wants to meet with us so that means a 4-5 hour commute (there and back combined). We'll rent a car when we really need to, but even then, I feel bad (mostly because I don't want to let the car go). Car rental companies don't have hybrids. :(
What else is there out there? What else can we do? What technology or otherwise cool stuff is emerging that gives you hope that we can start to reduce our environmental footprint?
8 Comments:
Actually, various car rental companies do have hybrids, including Fox Rent A Car and EV Rental Cars. And when you're back in Toronto, Discount has them.
A few electric cars are already for sale, including some in Santa Rosa.
It's a few years since I was in the Bay Area but with the combination of sea breeze, Marin Island and the sun you folk get has no-one seriously thought about the potential for wind and solar power? Slap a few salar panels on the roofs of the gazillion hotels in SF would save a fortune in electricity costs. The technology could be developed down the road at Stanford and funded like Delancey Street - for the common good.
Dang - those wind power things would likely interfere with the Golden Gate view and we couldn't have that could we? :)
Convert the pool car lane on i-90 (is it?) to a monorail, make the middle lane car pool with the outside lane for the selfish so-and-sos.
Or how about undersizing those take outs instead of supersizing them? That's food and power you've saved.
Do you have compulsory sorted garbage collection for recycling purposes?
Just a few crackpot ideas...that work.
Flexcar has hybrids, and the rest are Ultra Low Emission Vehicles (ULEVs). Car sharing is a great way to live without a car but still maintain access to one, and car sharing companies tend to be smaller, more local, convienient and more environmentally aware. Also check out City CarShare (a nonprofit and my favorite) and Zipcar.
Have you see Daryl Hannah's videoblog?
I thought generating the electricity for an electric car was inefficient. You either need a dam that impacts fish or a pile of coal...
OMG Rohan, I love
this one:
LOL...those are mostly 'neighborhood' cars, which would work within the city (where we don't need a car mostly anyways)...there are cars that will get up to 200-300 mpc (miles per charge) in development.
@splitbamboo:
Not totally a myth, but we do have windpower in California. I believe in the movie, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" that the EV1 was said to use about the same amount of electricity a month as your refridgerator...but I could be wrong.
@dennis
I loved the recycling program in Toronto. I ended up with 1/2 bag of garbage every two weeks because they had recycling and composting for everything. Great ideas!
@seth
Thanks! Once again, though...those city car share things aren't for the peninsula trips (they charge you so much for the mileage and time...going to a TechCrunch party, for instance would cost the price of a week's rental of a Budget car). I'm totally going to check out EV Rental and Fox Rent a Car. Thanks again Rohan!
Check out Treehugger for a great blog on all things green!
There's so much simple stuff that can be done without a big change in lifestyle. For example if everyone just buys a small car instead of a big one that could halve the CO2 production from cars in itself.
I am also a member of the no-car club, as I live in a city centre in Holland and do most of my travelling either by bicycle or train and rent a car when I need one (not all that often).
Admittedly it's a lot flatter here than in SF! But cycling here is incredibly practical, safe and pleasant for short journeys because of the investment the cities make in separate bike lanes, separate bike traffic signals at junctions etc. Also there is a culture where riding a bike is something everyone does, not just sports fanatics or environmental fringe groups. But it dramatically cuts down the amount of car use in the city and I find my 15 minute bike ride to work a very relaxing way to start the day.
So if you provide the right infrastructure, then it becomes simply easier not to have a car. But that costs some money up front...
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home