I stumbled upon an article in the New York Times describing how North Dakota has an incredibly unusual problem.  They have more jobs than housing.  How could that be?

North Dakota has a lot of one thing: oil fields.  And those oil fields needs lots of people and they pay them a lot.  This is probably due to the high risk of the job and the very high profits of the industry.

So what’s the problem?  There isn’t any housing! People walk around the town with a pocket full of money and nowhere to live.  From motels to trailer parks to campgrounds to apartments.  Everything is full and/or has a wait list.

Why is this being discussed on an environmental blog? Because we have to make economics part of the environmental discussion every day.  The truth of our society is this: corporations, governments and communities won’t truly accept a change in lifestyle until it is economically beneficial to do so.

As evidence, look at the evolution of environmentally friendly vehicles.  Green vehicles didn’t hit the market until the business model started to erode and the consumers demanded clean vehicles.  A pathetic but true fact.

I usually strive to bring readers cool, clever eco-innovations.  However I must take a quick break to discuss the Gulf Oil Spill which is monopolizing the news in the U.S. over the last month.

Amidst heavy discussion stateside about domestic oil drilling, many opinions have surfaced.  Americans are deeply dependent on foreign oil.  That has not been much debated as the numbers support consumption.  We simply do not have enough oil drilling and processing capacity in the U.S., so we look to Middle Eastern countries to supplement our needs.  Americans consume vast amounts of oil per capita.  more so than most industrialized countries.

Whether we have enough domestic supply to meet our needs is debatable, and debated consistently.  However whether or not we have the capacity is not the dominant issue.  We must be talking about consumption and safety.  Consumption, because we will run out of oil at some point (leaving Global Warming out of the discussion for now).  Safety, because the eleven people who gave their life on that rig have been eclipsed by the continuous press coverage of the oil leak.

(more…)

On one major platform, societies are judged by their knowledge, which is clarified and communicated by language, using words which are the framework of this language.

With this as a guideline, one might conclude that if a particular word had many, often disparate meanings, then societal knowledge would suffer, creating confusion and potential chaos.

Chaos? Isn’t that a bit exaggerated?

Perhaps , but certainly relative to one’s personal experience with chaos itself, or perhaps academic study into chaos theories of combustion powerful enough to create solar systems.

Ah, but the word. That particular word. Green, that’s it. Green.

(more…)

Now that we’ve got your attention… we really do think you shouldn’t buy a hybrid.  Not because we’re ignorant or stubborn, but because it is a waste both environmentally and economically to purchase a new hybrid vehicle when you’ve got a perfectly good vehicle in the driveway.

Now you see where we’re coming from.  If you’ve got a car, even if it’s an SUV, it is more environmentally friendly to keep your car rather than purchase a new one… even if its a hybrid.

The making of a new car, hybrid or convention, is an incredibly wasteful and energy-intensive process.  From sourcing new materials like metal, plastic and fabrics, to the electricity required to assembled the vehicle, it takes a lot to make a new car.  Yes, buying cars keeps jobs, but more and more domestic car companies are shipping jobs overseas anyway.

So save your money and save the environment by driving the same care that gets you to and from work every day.

If your car breaks and you must buy a new one, a hybrid will do just fine.

The green movement is becoming less and less of a movement and more and more of a way of life.  We all want a green home, and there are lots of ways to get there.  We have sorted through the silly, the pointless and the too expensive to get down to the real ways to get a green home.

Taking any number of these steps will help you transform your home into a thriving, environmentally friendly habitat.

1. Buy Local
2. Buy Organic
3. Buy free range/cage-free
4. Avoid packaging
5. Do your research on products
6. Insulate or additionally insulate your home
7. Drive less
8. Make your own cleaning products
9. Wash clothes in cold water
10. Get a dishwasher
11. Convert to CFL bulbs from incandescent
12. Avoid greenwashing
13. Recycle
14. Eat less meat
15. Eat no meat
16. Reuse instead of buying new
17. Use Craigslist
18. Sell that extra car
19. Ride your bike
20. Take a staycation
21. Turn your computer off
22. Cancel your newspaper delivery and read it online
23. Offset your carbon footprint
24. Rake your leaves, don’t blow them
25. Get a reel mower (and ditch the gas one)
26. Start composting
27. Repurpose old things
28. Shop at garage sales, not stores
29. Turn down the heat
30. Turn down (up) the air conditioner
31. Eliminate phantom energy waste
32. Use power strips and turn them off at night
33. Shut doors to unused rooms
34. Stop printing things you don’t absolutely need
35. Use coupons
36. Make a donation to an environmental program
37. Convert your 2 stroke engines to 4 stroke
38. Mow your lawn less
39. Start a flower garden
40. Grow your own food
41. Paint instead of renovate
42. Use low VOC paint
43. Buy energy star appliances (only when you absolutely need a new appliance)
44. Don’t buy a hybrid (huh??)
45. Telecommute
46. Buy organic dog food
47. Ditch the paper cups for coffee and bring a mug to work
48. Dry your clothes on a rack
49. Dry your clothes on a clothesline
50. Seal up your home to stop heating (and cooling) the outdoors
51. Turn your AC completely off (we need heat to survive, we don’t need cold)
52. Wrap your water heater in one of those silver blanket things
53. Install a timer on your water heater so you only have hot water when you typically need it or…
54. Install a tankless (on demand) water heater
55. Convert to electric hot water and/or heat and…
56. Install solar panels or…
57. Install a wind turbine or…
58. Buy clean energy from your utility provider
59. Get netflix (instead of driving to Blockbuster) or…
60. Even better: download your movies
61. Cancel your junk mail and extra catalogs and magazines (the mail system is incredibly inefficient)
62. Give gift certificates for birthdays and holidays instead of shipping presents
63. Give to an environmental charity instead of buying “things”
64. Only run that dishwasher when full
65. Use electricity during off-peak demand times whenever possible (avoid mornings and evenings)
66. Clear off the top of your fridge (both inside and out)
67. Fill up your freezer (it’s more efficient when full)
68. Clean your fridge’s rear-end (the coils should be clear of dust and pet hair)
69. Take the bus
70. Start or utilize a ride-sharing program
71. Work four 10 hour days instead of five 8 hour days (cuts your commute waste)
72. Stop buying bottled water – bring a water bottle of tap water
73. Buy a filter if you can’t stand the taste
74. Turn off the TV and…
75. get some exercise
76. Turn off those extra lights or…
77. Install some light timers
78. Turn off those holiday lights at night
79. Turn off those fans
80. Turn down up the refrigerator temperature
81. Host your website with a green web host
82. Print with an eco-font
83. Reuse an older cell phone or…
84. Buy a used one or…
85. Stick with the one you’ve got
86. Read by candlelight (instead of electric light)
87. Light a fire (in a fireplace or something)
88. Keep plastics out of the microwave or…
89. Ditch plastics altogether and switch to glass containers
90. Bring leftovers, don’t buy your lunch every day
91. Recycle your metal, even old electrical wire and computers (did you know you could do that??)
92. Don’t burn yard waste (let it rot… seriously)
93. Eat less (a lot of a human’s carbon footprint comes from growing, processing, preparing, cooking and *cough* disposing of food waste)
94. Don’t even think about using paper plates
95. Drink green wine
96. Don’t host a progressive party (it’s wasteful to drive lots of people from place to place)
97. Send an e-vite
98. Serve and buy seasonal food (can YOUR region grow strawberries in January?!?)
99. Join a CSA Farm (community sustained agriculture)
100. Read this blog!
101. Keep your car instead of upgrading
102. Shovel snow instead of plowing or snowblowing
103. Turn the TV OFF (we already said this once but it’s double-important)

Do you have an idea for making a green home?  Post it here as a comment.

This article is CROWD SOURCED! What does that mean?  Our goal is to grow this list, and for each item to have a link to a helpful resource.  For example, if you have a resource for #91, recycling your metal, post it here as a comment and we’ll try to create a link for you.

Sources/Additional Resources:

• The Green Guide
• Planet Green
• Treehugger
• Daily Eco Tips

Image credit: souzablog.com

This is from a comment left by one of our readers on this post: Eco innovation in the form of an electric car

Less than 20 car companies applied for $25 BILLION DOLLARS in taxpayer money managed by a certain smug group of people at DOE in order to get loans to make green cars for Americans’. This was not all of DOE that did bad things, just a private cadre of men.There was enough money to help every single one of the car companies that applied. The administrators applied their interpretations of the law in order to benefit the large lobby group-related firms and avoided every one of the “unconnected” companies.

The amount of lobby and influence money spent is in direct ratio to the amount of money awarded.

The smaller companies, due to lower overhead, could have dramatically more productive results with the money than the large burdened companies yet the money was given out based on political career advantages rather technology advantages.

All of the people that reviewed the applications had political and financial connections to GM, Ford, Chrysler and the large Detroit recipients.

Each of those smaller American companies had technology and resources that presented a strong economic threat, if they got the loans, to the large politically connected companies that did receive funds.

Some of the companies that have gotten money have backed out of making the electric cars they said they would make. But they still get to keep the money.

The Section 136 Law was created by the lobbyists for GM, Ford & Chrysler when they saw that they were about to go bankrupt and wanted to tap into additional taxpayer dollars by claiming the money was going to be used for electric cars in order to win rapid support for Section 136 by tugging at heartstrings. In retrospect, the money mostly went to gasoline car projects.

Some of the companies that got the money have already wasted more money than other companies applied for as their total request.

Some of the companies that got taxpayer loan money are not even American companies and/or are doing their manufacturing offshore with non-American employees.

The decision about who would get money was made in 2008 by a private group who then pretended there was a lengthy review throughout 2009 but in fact, the money was pre-wired for a select few.

All of the things that the rejected small companies (who did not pay lobby fees) were rejected for, were the same things that the insider big companies were doing.

Everyone seems to be writing “Year in Review” posts right now.  We considered that too, but since everyone else is doing it, why would we?

We settled on a different idea.  We looked back on 2008 year in reviews to compare between then and now.  We asked: How far have we come? Are we where we hoped to be? Is our slope of innovation steep enough?  There are so many more questions to ask but these were enough to get started.

1. T. Boone Pickens was getting some press.  His plan is still out there: to use our domestic wind resources to power the country.  Although this hasn’t happened yet, it is catching on as a realistic idea.  But coming from a man who made his billions from the oil industry – can’t we rely on anyone else?
2. Big money was getting pumped into solar.  From unconventional solar installations to micro-solar applications on your roof, we saw big investments in solar.  This hasn’t come to fruition yet either, but solar is steadily growing in terms of infrastructure and capacity.  As we invest more and more in this renewable energy source, we predict the U.S. will reach the solar tipping point in 2010.
3. President Obama had just picked a green technology expert to lead us into the next decade.  Steven Chu, an alternative energy and green tech guru was picked to lead the U.S. into the future of renewable energy policy.  We have yet to see sweeping changes in this area.  To be fair, the Administration has been focused on healthcare and the horrific mess in the Middle East.
4. Flexible computer displays promised to put energy-efficient computers in every hand.  The race for the $100 laptop was similar to the race for the smallest, most mobile and flexible computers.  Flexible displays promised to put more mobile devices in people’s hands – thus limiting the reliance on big, energy-sucking desktop computers.  This also hasn’t happened yet, but would be great to see in the near future.  Our prediction: the price is (and will remain) too high for the average consumer for some time.
5. Cloud Computing was going to take the CPU out of your computer.  The idea of cloud computing is amazingly simple. It would decentralize your files, your computing power, etc. and only place minimal components in your hands.  This would lighten the energy load of your computer and allow you to access files and computing power from virtually anywhere.  This has not come to reality just yet.  Some companies are still pushing the idea, including Google.  Maybe in 2010?
6. President Obama was poised to change the U.S.’s position in the world of climate change. We were set to become the leader in progressive energy policy. From Ecollo.com” title=”http://www.ecollo.com/post/2009/01/Green-predictions-for-2009.aspx\”>Ecollo.com” target=”_blank”>www.ecollo.com/post/2009/01/Green-predictions-for-2009.aspx”>Ecollo.com we saw this prediction for 2009 “Speaking of the U.S. government, President-elect Barack Obama could turn the country into climate change leaders by the end of the year, says the Globe and Mail. The columnist for the paper also predicts that the price of oil is now reasonable enough to implement a cap-and-trade and that climate change will be the – for lack of a better word – hot topic of 2009.”  This has not happened and Copenhagen was a giant disappointment.
7. The Huffington Post predicted the United States Government could make bottled water a thing of the past.  Again, the Government has failed us.
8. JetsonGreen.com predicted the non-green would perish.  This is partly true.  We have certainly seen an increase in the number of green products available.  Although some of these are greenwashing, there are many companies innovating and inventing like crazy to keep up with consumer demand for environmentally friendly products.  The economic down-turn helped with this, but we would love to see the next evolution of this movement be to de-consumerization (I think we just made that word up).  Rather than buying more eco-friendly products, should we just buy less products?

So we ask, have we made the progress we hoped to make?  Have we grown in environmental courage like we planned?  We have made tons of progress and many eco innovations.  However, we put entirely too much faith in our world leaders to make the changes the majority of us are asking for.

What we hope to learn from the minimal progress made in 2009 is that real change begins at the bottom.  Originating with the people, lasting and effective change happens when citizens collect themselves to identify a need and offer a solution.

Sources:

• http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/the-top-10-gree/
• http://www.ecostreet.com/blog/eco-technology/2008/01/16/2008s-most-desirable-eco-gadgets
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-feldman/frameshop-10-phrases-that_b_154276.html
• http://www.ecollo.com/post/2009/01/Green-predictions-for-2009.aspx
• http://www.jetsongreen.com/2009/01/seven-green-tre.html

Image Credit: JetsonGreen

World leaders have gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark to address the issue of climate change.  There are tons of bloggers and conventional media outlets discussing this very topic recently.  There is even a huge advertising campaign called “Hopenhagen” aimed at convincing the attendees to stand up and commit to real, lasting change.  We say, “Copenhagen, Shmopenhagen”.  Politicians have never been the source of change.  If people want to address the climate crisis in an effective way, they will have to do it themselves.  Innovators, business leaders, inventors… these people have the skills to change how the world works.  Visit Hopenhagen.org

Instead of a “top 5 ways to go green” list, which everyone seems to be doing, we thought it would be nice to share a list of what we feel are the most over-used tips for going green.