Charged with a Felony? Blame Global Warming

by Katherine Gustafson

category: DIY

Published November 18, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT

When college student Tim DeChristopher bid his way to committing $1.7 million for 13 oil and gas drilling leases last December at a Bureau of Land Management auction, he had the greater good in mind; he apparently planned to mitigate climate change by blocking the pillaging of the Earth, reports the Associated Press.

Who knows how he thought this would work, considering that he bid with the knowledge that he had no ability whatsoever to pay for the parcels near Utah's national parks that he won. Indeed, instead of being honored as a hero he was indicted in April on felony charges. Apparently, Tim, it's rather illegal to interfere with government auctions and make false representations.

His opinion? The auction itself was illegal, so his interference of it couldn't possibly run afowl of any law. He came before the judge trying to use a "necessity defense," stating that he was forced to choose between two evils, namely the evil of lying in the auction and the evil of allowing climate change to continue unabated.

Logically, U.S. District Judge Dee Benson denied DeChristopher's lawyers' motion to use the defense. According to the AP, his nine-page ruling included this amusing statement: "Unlike a person demolishing a home to create a firebreak, DeChristopher's actions were more akin to placing a small pile of dirt in the fire's path."

Photo courtesy of walknboston via flickr

Find Fame, Fortune by Blogging About Global Warming

by Emily Gertz

category: DIY

Published September 08, 2009 @ 08:44AM PT

Maybe -- maybe not. But by blogging on global warming, wildlife and wilderness, the environment, or a host of other topics here at Change.org, you can reach scads of readers, some of them leaders in the world of non-profit social change, and contribute to covering some of the most important issues of our time.

Here are the highlights of the full job posting:

• Change.org is expanding our team of freelance bloggers to help broaden our coverage of the most important causes of our time.
• Each blogger will contribute to a daily blog covering news and offering commentary on a single social, political or environmental issue, convene leading nonprofits and activists working on the issue, and help people translate their passion into concrete action.
• Previous blogging experience is encouraged but not necessary; strong writing skills are required.
• To apply, send a brief introductory email and your resume (or a link to your Linkedin profile) as well as the issue(s) you like to write about to managing editor Judith Meskill, at blogs -- AT --change.org.

Videos to Watch: Home Building for an Unstable Climate

by Emily Gertz

category: DIY

Published August 30, 2009 @ 08:34PM PT

The chances are very good that East Biloxi, Missippi will be hit again by a future hurricane at least as severe as 2005's Hurricane Katrina. Rising ocean temperatures due to global warming are already creating more intense coastal storms, many climatologists say, and that's likely to just get worse in coming decades.

But as I wrote yesterday, the seven families participating in Biloxi Model Home Project didn't want to leave the neighborhood. So architects working with the project created designs that factored in future floods and high winds.

Here are a few videos about the project and some of the designs, which are available for free use and adaptation at the Open Architecture Network:

1. Porchdog

Porchdog is one of the designs created for the East Biloxi rebuilding project.

2. Principal Voices: Design for good

Architecture for Humanity founder Cameron Sinclair (a fellow former Worldchanging blogger) explains his "design for good" philosophy, spotlighting the Biloxi Model Home Program.

3. Caesarstone Video

Describes the destruction left behind in Biloxi by Hurricane Katrina, and visits the site of one of the Biloxi Model Homes to describe how their designs meet the challenge of living as safely as possible in the storm zone, while also keeping the homes affordable.

Video: Rachel Maddow dissects the anatomy of astroturf; You can, too.

by Emily Gertz

category: DIY

Published August 19, 2009 @ 04:48AM PT

Rachel Maddow dissects the particulars of astroturf campaigns: Public relations campaigns designed to influence public policy.  They're funded by corporations, but made to look like the work of "average citizens."

She ends with a look at Energy Citizen, the corporate funded fake grassroots effort to undermine climate change policy, which I've been covering here at Stop Global Warming.

Update, 12:04 pm: As Maddow notes, anyone can do it! When you encounter one of these web sites purporting to be a grassroots campaign against enactment of a reform policy, go to the bottom of the screen and click on the "about us" link (or its nearest equivalent). Then find the names of the entities and/or persons sponsoring the site, and begin digging back until you figure out exactly where the money's coming from and who's created the astroturf.

Some good resources to aid your efforts include:

SourceWatch: A collaborative wiki-based guide to the people, organizations, and companies behind the news, particularly public relations firms and professionals "engaged in managing and manipulating public perception, opinion and policy." A project of the non-partisan Center for Media and Democracy, which also publishes PR Watch.

LittleSis, another collaborative wiki documenting the "key relationships of politicians, corporate executives, lobbyists, financiers, and their affiliated organizations. (Why "Little Sis"? Because she's a watchful eye on "Big Brother.")

A Window (Literally) on Energy Efficiency

by Emily Gertz

category: DIY

Published August 17, 2009 @ 11:42AM PT

Thanks to federal tax credits included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and extended by President Obama in February when he signed the economic stimulus bill, there's been an uptick in business for makers and installers of energy-conserving windows.

Check out these federal tax credits -- 2009 and 2010 might be your year for putting in energy-smart windows, doors, and skylights; roofing and insulation; water heaters and air conditioning, and biomass stoves.

According to a new report from McKinsey and Company, straightforward changes like these could cut US energy use 23 percent by 2020, save the economy $1.2 trillion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.1 gigatons a year.

It sounds simple enough -- until they show up and rip your walls open.

Today, my apartment, including the home office, is the kick-off location for the installation of new windows across my entire three-building co-op.

Not to gripe, really. They're going to be a lovely upgrade to our standard of living, especially given the near-century age of the buildings: Solarban 60 Low-E Glass, which blocks solar heat gain in the summer, insulates better in the winter, and reduces the UV entering the space while transmitting a high percentage of visible light.

(This last helps stop the sun from fading your furnishings, which gets to be a pretty expensive and waste-causing problem if you would rather not have unintentionally two-toned rugs and furniture).

The installers are working hard and doing a great job, especially given the wood rot they've encountered underneath our old window frames.  (Par for the course in a pre-war NYC apartment building that has not always been lovingly maintained.)

But it's 90 degrees F worth of hot, dusty and disrupted around here -- and once the crew's finished I'll need to mop the floors, vacuum the rugs, push all the furniture back into place, and soothe the nerves of my cats, who are justly outraged at having spent most of the day imprisoned in their carriers.

So my blog posting may be light for the rest of today.  But in the energy-efficient window spirit, here's a selection of energy efficiency and emissions-reducing news:

Clotheslines for Sale: Plethora of Drying Options Online (Treehugger)

New England Frito-Lay Plant Goes 'Off the Grid' (Greener Buildings)

Scotland eyes carbon-capture for North Sea (Financial Times)

China study urges greenhouse gas caps, peak in 2030 (Reuters)

Energy Frontiers: Space Solar, Hot Lots (Dot Earth blog - The New York Times)

Life on Waterpod: Barge-borne home shows off sustainable living

by Emily Gertz

category: DIY

Published August 15, 2009 @ 10:44AM PT

The Waterpod is a floating home-sculpture-adventure in sustainable living.

“It’s about getting people to talk about how we can sustain ourselves in the future,” said artist Mary Mattingly to The Brooklyn Paper earlier this year. Mattingly worked to realize the project for three years, and is living on Waterpod herself May through October.

The recycled, 240-foot long, 3,000 square foot art barge, which has been docking at various points around New York Harbor this summer, features a geodesic "Buckyball" dome as a living space, a flock of four egg-laying hens (Gilly, Rizzo, Marble and Bonzai), a hydroponic garden, a greywater recycling system and human-powered water pumping, energy generated primarily from four rooftop solar panels (along with a bicycle power generating station and a "picohydro" energy system for brief bursts of extra energy when needed), composting toilets, and a space where the public can come on board for performances.

New York Times reporter Melena Ryzik has lived abord Waterpod intermittently. She reports being "surprised at how easy it was to adapt to the Pod’s eco-conscious systems (reuse everything, don’t mind the ever-present flies, and compost, compost, compost)..."

...and how quickly the rhythms and routines of urban life melted away. Even though the Pod was docked only blocks away, a brief visit to the farmer’s market in Dumbo one Sunday felt like a trip into “town” – and into civilization. Ooh, look! A flushing toilet!

It's an experiment in ecologically sensitive living that evokes memories of "Biosphere 2" (the Earth is Biosphere 1, natch), the troubled 1990s project that sought to prove the viability of closed-system, grow-your-own living.

But the artists living on board Waterpod and managing its systems have learned (consciously or no) from that semi-fiasco. Although they grow greens and veggies on the barge, and of course get eggs from the hens, they're accepting food donations as well. They get fresh water from rainfall and the river. And they're regularly welcoming the public aboard: check the docking schedule to find out where to meet the barge.

I imagine that some will see this as a wholly unrealistic way to live. But none of the systems are radical: stationary bikes are already being used to generate energy, for instance; places like Vermont Law School are saving water and chemicals by using composting toilets; city gardening is making a big comeback for both economic and food safety reasons; and of course solar power generation is a proven technology that's getting better all the time.

Even the thing that seems most unusual about Waterpod -- living on the water -- is actually common all around the world.

Perhaps Waterpod is actually the leading edge on restoring ourselves to a way of life that can really endure: one that values clean water and uses it wisely, relies on local food supplies to a much greater extent, takes advantage of clean energy sources to the fullest, and both depends upon and gives back to the local community.

Look at it this way: If they'd called it "Extreme Houseboating," then everyone would want to do it.

Do-It-Yourself Enviro, Ag, Science "Afrigadget" Makers Gather in Accra

by Emily Gertz

category: DIY

Published August 10, 2009 @ 08:45AM PT

Above: The Zeer pot is an African cooling gadget which, for less than $2US in local materials and without electricity, can extend the storage lifetime of fresh produce by as much as 18 days...Two clay pots are nested with a relatively thin layer of sand between them. The sand is watered twice daily, and the lidded inner pot is cooled by evaporation. More info at the end of this post.

The first-ever Maker Faire Africa, happening this week in Accra, Ghana, will put a heavy emphasis on what activist-entrepreneur Emeka Okafor calls bottom-up indigenous industrialization. It's a challenge to the top-down style of international aid and development programs, which typically focus on bringing "First World" technologies and agriculture methods into poorer nations, whether or not they really suit local conditions.  (Worse, these are often technologies and food production methods that contribute to worsening global warming.)

In contrast, bottom-up indigenous industrialization offers solutions that are based on local knowledge, materials, and infrastructure. The emphasis is on smaller-scale, local economic development, rather than projects that generate food and goods for export to Europe and North America.

The event in Accra looks like it will feature more pragmatic inventions and innovations and get them into mass distribution; tech that's locally designed, with the potential to help people pull themselves out of poverty, hunger, and environmental degradation (while steering firmly away from digital information and communication technologies, or ICT):

Maker Faire Africa asks the question, “What happens when you put the drivers of ingenious concepts from Mali with those from Ghana and Kenya, and add resources to the mix?”

Maker Faire Africa will engage on-the-ground breakthrough organizations like Ashesi University and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology to sharpen focus on locally-generated, bottom-up prototypes of technologies that solve immediate challenges to development. Specifically, Maker Faire Africa will take an approach that will achieve three principal aims:

• Brighten the light on local examples of the “fabrication” ethos
• Provide mechanisms to incubate these innovators and their products to a point where they can be taken to market
• Connect refined plans to disseminate innovations with venture finance

The aim is to identify, spur and support local innovation. At the same time, Maker Faire Africa would seek to imbue creative types in science and technology with an appreciation of fabrication and by default manufacturing. The long-term interest here is to cultivate an endogenous manufacturing base that supplies innovative products in response to market needs.

That's not to say everything must be serious. Maker Faire Africa is being programmed on four tracks, according to the event's first press release, which factor in art, craft and Lego blocks along with the bio-energy sources:

• Robotics – Lead by Afrobotics in the ROBOlab, this track host lectures as well as a LEGO robotics workshop and competition.
• Agriculture & Environment – takes a new look at sustainability, green technologies and innovations such as biofuel and architecture.
• Science and Engineering - this track will highlight new innovations from the 3rd annual International Development Design Summit (IDDS) at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) (a joint project with MIT and MacArthur “Genius Grant” award winner Amy Smith, who has focused on fostering indigenous technological development).
• Arts & Crafts – held at an outdoor art center, this track will showcase everything from sculptures to toys to textiles

Maker-type events I've been to in the US typically feature a lot of whimsical gadgetry, some hacked energy conservation-related tools, and a smattering of works with loftier artistic goals. They're fun, sometimes thought-provoking, and often more than a little anti-corporate. The fundamental organizing principle is that you can make something yourself instead of buying it at the store -- reflecting both our high level of prosperity as a nation, and a major challenge of American-style late stage capitalism: transforming ourselves back into citizens who shop as necessary in order to live, instead of consumers who live to shop.

Understandably, Maker Faire Africa's gadgets and gizmos are likely to be more down-to-earth. We've got our problems, and they've got theirs.

I'd love to be in Accra this week to enjoy Maker Faire Africa firsthand. (Hello, assigning editors!) Ah well: If you won't be making it to Ghana, either, I'd recommend keeping an eye on the following blogs and tags for first-hand reports from the scene:

Maker Faire Africa blog
Maker Faire Africa on Twitter
#mfa09 on Twitter
Emeka Okafor, at Timbuktu Chronicles

I'll add more links if and as I encounter them...please add yours to the comments!

Hat tip to Bruce.

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Image: "The Zeer pot is an African cooling gadget which, for less than $2US in local materials and without electricity, can extend the storage lifetime of fresh produce by as much as 18 days. It is of staggeringly simple design: Two clay pots are nested with a relatively thin layer of sand between them. The sand is watered twice daily, and the inner pot, which is lidded, is cooled by evaporation. It's interesting to note that, although the technology to manufacture the zeer pot has existed literally since the dawn of civilization, it is not known to have been produced until recently. Who would have thought there was a profound invention remaining to be discovered using only clay and sand?" Via Make Magazine Blog