Comments Kelpie has made

biochar and biogas

Dr.X,
Biogas is great for wet biomass. For dryer stuff, biochar is better. There are some low tech stoves and kilns being designed now that are very clean because they burn the smoke they produce.

The study you refer to on charcoal in boreal forest soils is inconclusive as far as the net carbon or GHG effect. Biochar researchers do not find it discouraging for several reasons - one of which is that biochar may have its best use in very different carbon poor soils in Africa and other tropical areas.

A biochar program could certainly end up producing charcoal that people burn for fuel rather than putting it in soil. But if a biochar program provides cleaner more efficient charcoal-making technology, at least the charcoal fuel is cleaner and less wasting of biomass.

Check out my blog at http://www.greenyourhead.com

Buy Me a Bus, Barack

I tried to send this letter to the President, but the comments at Whitehouse.gov are limited to 500 characters!!! At change.gov you could actually communicate with the team. Now they are in the White House, they don't want to hear from us anymore? Anyway, here it is:

Republicans love to say that they oppose tax increases because the people should be in charge of spending their own money, not the government. But realistically, what were our spending options for that $300 tax rebate we got last summer? It did very little to "stimulate" the economy, probably because most of us used it either to pay bills or to buy some cheap imported consumer item. I don't want another silly toy, I want a bus.

By cutting taxes, government does not increase our options, it reduces them. I can't afford to buy a better transit system by myself, and that's what I most want right now. I wish I could get on a bus in my small rural town and travel quickly and safely to Portland or Seattle or beyond, but that is not an option at the moment because mass transit in general in this country is lousy. I want an infrastructure!

Unfortunately, one third of the nearly trillion dollar stimulus package now working its way through Congress consists of tax cuts. Rachel Maddow reports that this is apparently the work of your economic advisor Larry Summers. According to my congressman, Peter Defazio, Summers hates infrastructure. He is after stimulating a consumer driven economy, not a public investment driven economy.

Obviously Summers needs to do the math. DeFazio says that last year's stimulus bill gave less than a one percent boost to the economy, so why are we repeating the tax rebate/cut mistake? Ironically, Larry Summers is the guy who had to leave his post as president of Harvard University for outraging female faculty members with his assertion that lack of innate math ability is a major reason women are underrepresented in Harvard's math and science departments.

Please Mr. President, take back those tax cuts and spend it on mass transit. DeFazio says that Chicago alone has a 6 billion dollar backlog of transit improvements that are "shovel ready," but the stimulus package would provide only 2.5 billion. Hasn't Larry Summers ever heard of the multiplier effect? Not only would fully funding Chicago's transit needs provide jobs in that city, but it would immediately create 3000 new jobs in Minnesota building the buses.

Please Barack, buy me a bus, and while you're at it, please feel free to - metaphorically speaking - throw Larry Summers under the bus.

Check out my blog at http://www.greenyourhead.com

population control is needed and it's not new

There has to be a way to constructively engage in the population issue without invoking racism and all its ugly siblings (genocide, misogyny, etc).

There is a lot to be learned by looking at the past and realizing that outside of empire, small tribal groups often took explicit steps to regulate population. The key here, is that it is undertaken within the clan or family. Jared Diamond has a great example in his book Collapse (p290) of the Pacific island of Tikopia:

"On Tikopia, however, people are explicit in saying that their motive for contraception and other regulatory behaviors is to prevent the island from becoming overpopulated, and to prevent the family from having more children than the family's land could support. For instance, Tikopia chiefs each year carry out a ritual in which they preach an ideal of Zero Population Growth for the island, unaware that an organization founded with that name (but subsequently renamed) and devoted that goal has also arisen in the first world."

Further on, Diamond explains that the methods used included crude abortion (pressing on the woman's pregnant belly) and infanticide. Without the wonderful modern techniques we have, the people of Tikopia had only one choice, they could practice these repugnant methods, or allow the growing population to strip resources and plunge society into famine and perhaps extinction.

Today, we must recognize that our planet is just an island in space. We don't even have the Tikopian option of building a raft and setting out to look for a new island. But we do have the Pill, condoms, IUDs, depo provera, Plan B, diaphragms, cervical caps and maybe soon the male Pill! We are lucky, lucky, lucky!!!

So, the key, as I said, is keeping it within the clan and those posting here who bring up racism and fears of genocide must be listened to. There can be no targeting of populations for reduction. Rather what we need is a broad moral appeal to families themselves.

For instance, when I look at my own family, I see that my parents were born in 1929 when the global population was about 2 billion people. Various ecologists have suggested that 2 billion is a number that could be sustainably supported in a fairly comfortable modern lifestyle. My parents had 4 children, helping to double the population, but they have only 3 genetic grandchildren (plus two adopted). So in my extended family, we are on the way back to replacement at the 2 billion level.

Why couldn't every family (with the exception of some groups that have been targeted with genocide like Native Americans) adopt an explicit goal to only raise enough children to replace their ancestors alive in 1929? This would be a personal, family response to a moral call, not anything that could be legislated or enforced.

One problem with the population issue, I think, is that people always want to jump straight to solutions. The solutions are always scary and controversial, so the tendency is to suppress the issue. But we live on Tikopia, so that is not an option. I wrote earlier that I believe that women, if they are given the means (birth control and abortion) and the knowledge of what's at stake, will for the most part limit their families to two or fewer children. Let's start with getting them the means, but let's not give up on the education about what's at stake. If environmentalists won't even say that overpopulation is a problem, then we won't create the moral force that can lead to good solutions. We can't hide from this one. I hope this discussion can continue.

Check out my ecothriller novel Primal Tears at amazon.com and other booksellers.

The Lysistrata Strategy

This is an issue near and dear to my heart. I have struggled for years to find a way to communicate my concern in a way that people can hear. I'd like to share what I have come up with so far. Perhaps some will find these efforts useful. First, is an article published in the Winter 97/98 Overpopulation issue of Wild Earth called "The Lysistrata Strategy." You can read it here: http://kelpiewilson.com/archive/lysistrata.htm

The second project is my novel, Primal Tears. Overpopulation is the central theme and my main character, a human/bonobo hybrid girl, is the source of a solution to excess human fertility.

The last project I'd like to share is an essay/art project on myth and abortion that explores the impact of patriarchy on women's reproductive choices. It is here:
www.earthislandangels.com

Tell me what you think here or at kelpie@kelpiewilson.com

Check out my ecothriller novel Primal Tears at amazon.com and other booksellers.

compressed air car

Don't forget the compressed air car as a storage technology. When the wind blows and the sun shines, we could be filling up loads of backup tanks full of compressed air. This may not be the most efficient way to store energy, but the end use in a compressed air car avoids a lot of pollution and greenhouse gasses.

Apparently India is rolling out a compressed air car next year.

Here's a couple of links to check out:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/42170 ...

http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/06/01/tata-motors-air-car/

Check out my ecothriller novel Primal Tears at amazon.com and other booksellers.