It’s a good time to look into solar energy for your home or business

At the recent Earth Day celebration in St. Louis, Chris Klarer of Advanced Energy Solutions offered to give a video statement on the advantages of solar. In addition to producing clean and sustainable energy, there are substantial tax advantages for owners of businesses and homes. I went to the site of AES and used its calculator, determining that a solar system on my roof could provide more than half of my family's electricity. This was quite interesting, of course. What made things even more interesting are those tax advantages.  In addition to talking with Chris, I discussed these tax advantages with another a man who was promoting solar at his own booth (he was not selling anything, onlypromoting the use of solar panels). His numbers were even rosier than those suggested by Chris -- click on the thumbnail to see how he reduced the cost of a $12,000 installation to only about $2,000. I am, indeed, going to look further into solar electric for my home, but here is a hurdle: I live in an historic neighborhood, and I suspect that I'm going to have a struggle over getting a permit. I'll make my best arguments and see how far I get - - it would seem that there should be a way--after all, the state of Missouri is offering tax credits for solar, making it official public policy that solar electric is to be encouraged.  I'll report back after I learn more.

Continue ReadingIt’s a good time to look into solar energy for your home or business

The Free Market Problem

Paul Ryan and his supporters are trying to sell their spending cut and lower tax program and they’re getting booed at town hall meetings.  They’re finally cutting into people’s pockets who can’t defend themselves.  They thought they were doing what their constituency wanted and must be baffled at this negative response. Okay, this might get a bit complicated, but not really.  It just requires a shift in perspective away from the definition of capitalism we’ve been being sold since Reagan to something that is more descriptive of what actually happens.  Theory is all well and good and can be very useful in specific instances, but a one-size-fits-all approach to something as basic as resources is destined to fail. Oh, I’m sorry, let me back up a sec there—fail if your stated goal is to float all boats, to raise the general standard of living, to provide jobs and resources sufficient to sustain a viable community at a decent level.  If, on the other hand, your goal is to feed a machine that generates larger and larger bank accounts for fewer and fewer people at the expense of communities, then by all means keep doing what we’ve been doing. Here’s the basic problem.  People think that the free market and capitalism are one and the same thing.  They are not.  THEY ARE CLOSELY RELATED and both thrive in the presence of the other, but they are not the same thing. But before all that we have to understand one thing---there is no such thing as a Free Market.  None.  Someone always dominates it, controls it, and usually to the detriment of someone else. How is it a free market when one of the most salient features of it is the ability of a small group to determine who will be allowed to participate and at what level?  I’m not talking about the government here, I’m talking about big business, which as standard practice does all it can to eliminate competitors through any means it can get away with and that includes market manipulations that can devalue smaller companies and make them ripe for take-over or force them into bankruptcy.

Continue ReadingThe Free Market Problem

There’s no such thing as “away”

At the November 2010 TEDx:GPGP (Great Pacific Garbage Patch), Van Jones spoke on “[t]he economic injustice of plastic”. Jones is an attorney and activist and was the “Special Advisor [to President Obama] for Green Jobs”. He is also the author of “The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems” (subject of mixed reviews but endorsed by prominent environmental personalities). Activism begets controversy and Jones is not immune. Regardless of the controversies, he makes good points. While it seems to me that his ideas as presented are short on substance, ideas still have to start somewhere and merely talking about them raises awareness of an issue. Jones approaches the problem of plastic pollution from a perspective of social justice. The worst of plastics – most toxic and carcinogenic – are also the cheapest. The poorest have no choice to buy anything else. The manufacture of plastics certainly does not take place in the wealthier neighborhoods, rather, in places where the poorest can afford to live. Jones also claims that plastics at the point of disposal affect the poorest because “too often that [plastic] bottle is going to be put on a boat… go all the way across the ocean at some expense…wind up in a developing country, often China…[where] that bottle winds up getting burned” ... releasing harmful chemicals. And Jones calls attention to “Cancer Alley”, that region in Louisiana which reportedly has a higher than average cancer rate among residents, which also happens to be the “petrochemical corridor”. Now, even if that bottle or any plastics are actually recycled, the next generation is not going to be another container; more likely they will be secondary products such as textiles and plastic lumber for park furniture or wheel stops, none of which are “recyclable” and only temporarily divert from the landfills we are trying to avoid. Jones says

Well, the root of this problem, in my view, is the idea of disposability itself….In order to trash the planet, you have to trash people…we are at a moment where the coming together of social justice as an idea, and ecology as an idea,we can finally now see that they are really, at the end of the day, one idea.”
And his idea:
We don’t have disposable anything. We don’t have disposable resources. We don’t have disposable species. And we don’t have disposable people either. We don’t have a throwaway planet.
Jones hammers gently that disposability is something we believe in, but we don’t realize the cost in human capital that goes with that (“25% of the people incarcerated in the world are incarcerated in the U.S”). --much more follows--

Continue ReadingThere’s no such thing as “away”

Sustainability means forever

There is much talk of "sustainability" these days, but I don't think very many people have considered what that truly means. "Sustainable" has become synonymous with "green", which in our hyper-consumerist American society has transformed into "buy something". Understandable, perhaps, but it's deadly wrong. The World English dictionary defines "sustainable" as "2. (of economic development, energy sources, etc) capable of being maintained at a steady level without exhausting natural resources or causing severe ecological damage", which seems to me to be a pretty good definition of what the word really means, as opposed to what people think it means.

Continue ReadingSustainability means forever

On banning free plastic bags

I just don't get it. Just look at the damage being done by allowing free plastic bags and ask yourself why we can't motivate ourselves to ban free plastic bags. If we, as a country, can't make this obviously necessary move, are we capable of anything at all? If some Middle Eastern terrorist dumped this amount of crap all over our country (and world), we'd declare war to seek revenge. But we're doing this to ourselves, so it's OK. And what about bottled water? The ends simply don't justify the means. We are being poisoned by free market fundamentalism.

Continue ReadingOn banning free plastic bags