Jim ONeill’s Recent Comments

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  Local Economies

  To drastically oversimplify an admittedly complex and layered issue: When African farmers grow food for export to Europe and America, that's a lot of food that they're NOT growing for their fellow Africans. When Tesco and others choose to support their local growers (a more sustainable solution), growers in Africa will have more incentives to contribute to their own local economies instead (also a more sustainable solution).

  Strengthening local, diversified, stable economies does far more good than furthering the globalization agenda. Encouraging small, locally-owned businesses will create more jobs and improve the quality of life of more African people -- it raises equality and lessens poverty, while the "free trade" currently practiced by the developed world does the reverse.

  (Incidentally, the above is true not only for Africans, but for people on other continents as well.)On Kenya Screw Me Now? posted 2 years, 9 months ago 3 Responses

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  Nuclear? Gimme a break....

  Gah. This sounds awesome: Let's support more ponderous, centralized, not-very-adaptable solutions as the world climate situation steadily worsens. Or even if it doesn't.

  Small business and decentralized renewables are the way to go. Just my opinion.On McCain and Lieberman have it posted 2 years, 9 months ago 8 Responses

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  Surge vs. Current: The Numbers

  The duration that a bulb will be on vs. the number of on/off flips is good to consider. This article from Treehugger.com addresses the issue. Here's the short version:

  "The rule of thumb for optimizing the in-use versus turn-on power is:

  • Standard incandescent: turn off even if you leave the room for just seconds.
  
  
  • Compact fluorescent: turn off if you leave the room for 3 minutes.
  
  
  • Standard fluorescent: turn off if you leave the room for 15 minutes."

  So if you use CFLs, leave them on if you'll be in and out of the room every 3 minutes; otherwise, turn them off when you leave.On Umbra on convincing colleagues to turn the lights off posted 2 years, 9 months ago 7 Responses