Fix Earth First - Remember, "The World Solved the Ozone Problem"

A very good and timely point:

"Fix Earth's climate crisis instead of dreaming of other planets, urges Nobel prize-winning astronomer"

'Earthrise' - Earth from the Moon, Apollo 8 mission, 1968

By Olivia Campbell - The Independent

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/2019-nobel-prize-physics-chemistry-climate-change-global-warming-a9237346.html

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And that's got to be Now!

But while it certainly can seem impossible, another article I saw this morning provides a basis for hope. In an editorial yesterday, the New York Times made the point,

"The World Solved the Ozone Problem. It Can Solve Climate Change"
"The same tools that fixed the ozone hole — science, innovation and international action — can address it."

By The Editorial Board
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/opinion/sunday/ozone-climate-change.html
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One of the most hopeful examples of the kinds of solutions we'll need may be efforts in process all over the world to extract all the carbon back out of the air.  As we now fully understand, that's what has trapped all the extra heat from the sun here, melting the glaciers and raising sea levels.

That could make all the difference, and clearly would if it worked well enough. Of course, that's over time, if not in time to avoid a lot more of the kinds of impacts and resulting troubles we're seeing.

But having let it slide so badly, it seems like the current population of Earth has an obligation to at least do everything possible to get things significantly moving back in the right direction.

No Glam, Just Bam: Net-Zero Energy with Passive Design in Maine

Although putting the principles of passive energy design to work can efficiently generate a solid, high yield over time, "passive" is just not the kind of attitude the mainstream culture gets turned on by these days. You get bang for your buck, but they're looking for technologies that make more noise.

With the relics of the Industrial Age still running big jobs all around us, we unconsciously think a powerful solution has to somehow belch smoke and fire and make loud banging sounds.  Like so many pro tennis "raquet-eers" of our time, we want our solutions forcefully grunting with each serve, so we can hear how hard they're working for us.

So, with the news that wildlife on the planet has been cut in half in the last 40 years (Wall Street Journal), as the earth is blindly stripped of their habitats by multiplying human populations, here's another working example of how far you can go with how little. What a very important advantage that is turning out to be.

The New York Times just published this look at a net-zero energy house built by Jack Soley, a commercial real estate developer (and evidently, hardy outdoors-type,) in Portland, Maine. He built this retreat home on a tiny island off the coast as,

"a 1,200-square-foot structure that produces all the energy it consumes — less than it takes to power a high-end refrigerator." 

Mr. Soley and, "Christopher Campbell, a Portland-based architect, collaborated on a design that borrowed from traditional marine and boating practices to create the simplest, most cost-effective solutions..." 

"The 12-Volt Solution" - NYT Home & Garden, Oct. 1, 2014

How?  By putting passive-house principles to work in his design, like:

• "super-insulation, double-paned fiberglass-clad windows and a south-facing orientation to the sun";
• building it on only a 12-volt system powered by a micro-array of solar panels only the size of a dining room table, and stored in four marine batteries;   
• collecting and storing rainwater to supply nearly all that the home uses, with an on-demand heater providing hot showers, etc.

"'You can be here,'" Foley says in the article, "'and have no notion you’re off the grid on a coastal island.'"
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Architect Christopher Campbell's site

What Can We Do With All This Old Plastic?

Continuing this small series on solutions to the resulting problems of all of that plastic we were told to, "Use it once, and just throw it away!" – 
Echoing the words of Buckminster Fuller, here's a gentleman reusing plastic by mixing it in with cement for roadways.

The road to the dump, and beyond it to Madurai (India)’s airport, is like a Hollywood vision of dystopian ruin: lifeless, black, choked with human refuse. And that’s why Rajagopalan Vasudevan’s enthusiasm is so jarring. … “Wonderful resource,” he says, admiring a jumble of plastic bags, jerrycans, and torn food packets. “With all this plastic, I could lay the whole road to the airport.” 

''Innovators – India's 'Plastic Man' Turns Litter Into Paved Roads''
By Akash Kapur, Businessweek, July 10, 2014

As is characteristic of truly good ideas, it has benefits in multiple ways: 

•  it literally "takes out the garbage," but for real,

•  it's much cheaper than the bitumen it replaces in the cement mixer,

•  it even makes the roads stronger!

But wait, there's more — Vasudevan’s roads reuse more types of plastic than can currently be recycled otherwise, including thicker types, grocery bags, wrappers, even the unfortunately popular snackpacks that are layers of different plastics and aluminum. 

The method also has the rare quality of Simplicity: Businessweek's story says, "It requires no significant technical knowledge and no large investments or changes to existing road-laying procedures."

=0=

Question: shouldn't it simply be against the law, internationally, to produce or introduce anything into the environment that can't be recycled?

Here it's probably worth noting that any product, material or substance, of any kind, that's publically available must be considered as entering the ecosystem, because it will — as proven by The Great Ocean Garbage Patches.

Also in here:
UNDO-ing Plastic: At The Source

Photo: Chandigarh, India
Some rights reserved by sandeepachetan.com, under Creative Commons

UNDO-ing Plastic: At The Source

As I've been documenting just one small corner of our problems with plastic pollution — the fact of the vast patches of plastic garbage in the world's oceans — it's equally important to keep the focus on solutions.

They do exist (Bucky Fuller said so), and while we don't expect any particular new deconstruction of technology to restore the planet back to Eden overnight, it's almost always a much better use of our time and attention to be part of a solution.  That's even if its effect is no more than a nudge in the right direction (which, let's be realistic, may be the best we can expect at this point).

But it is still worth doing – any part of the right direction feels better than just moving further into the wrong ones.

Trying to address the source of the problem is usually a good way to go.  So here is just such an effort:

The "Think Beyond Plastic Business Accelerator," in Menlo Park, California, (of course,) calls itself the world’s first such incubator to focus on eliminating plastic pollution.  The company helps startups to develop affordable, sustainable alternatives to plastic, meeting the specific needs of large companies.

"Plastic may be toxic, and it lasts forever, but it’s also extremely convenient.  ...If you want companies to stop using plastic, you need to offer viable alternatives—and provide assistance to the startups coming up with them."

"A NewBusiness Accelerator Takes on Plastic Pollution"
By Caroline Winter, Businessweek, July 14, 2014

In here:
The OceanS' Floating Garbage PatcheS – Yes, it's worse than you thought

Fun Facts' About The Great Pacific Garbage Patch & Co.

New Leaves on the Tree Again

It's Spring, (even if kind of an on-again, off-again one this year,) so what better way to restart the discussion here in the Things Green Dept. than by Going Back To The Roots.

Yes, we're talking about Trees, in this case stimulated by an Op-Ed piece in the NY Times, "Why Trees Matter."

"We have underestimated the importance of trees," author Jim Robbins writes. "They are not merely pleasant sources of shade but a potentially major answer to some of our most pressing environmental problems. We take them for granted, but they are a near miracle."

Among the many well-cited benefits he names are,

•  "In a campaign called Forests Are Lovers of the Sea, fishermen have replanted forests along coasts and rivers to bring back fish and oyster stocks. And they have returned. 

• "In Japan, researchers have long studied what they call 'forest bathing.' A walk in the woods, they say, reduces the level of stress chemicals in the body and increases natural killer cells in the immune system… 

• "In Africa, millions of acres of parched land have been reclaimed through strategic tree growth."

"…an old proverb seems apt. When is the best time to plant a tree? The answer: 'Twenty years ago.' The second-best time? 'Today.' "

From "Why Trees Matter," by Jim Robbins, author of the upcoming book, “The Man Who Planted Trees.” NY Times, published April 11, 2012

Ah, the endless subject of trees, the lengthy lists of all their virtues and gifts to us. From just one page of the Arbor Day Foundation's site, for example, we can learn that trees:

• help fight climate change, 
• are the “low tech” solution to energy problems, 
• reduce your carbon footprint,
• tame stormwater, 
• conserve soil and water, 
• regulate the temperature of your neighborhood, 
• provide food for wildlife. 

Why, they even "add value to your home," especially when planted to require less energy to heat or cool it.

That's all just on the coolly rational, cost/benefit analysis side, too. Trees, standing in for the entire plant world, offer a perfect symbiosis with oxygen-breathing, carbon-dioxide-exhaling humans. "Through the natural process of photosynthesis," Arborday.org reminds us, "trees absorb CO2 and other pollutant particulates, then store the carbon and emit pure oxygen."

Then, in the most direct terms, how much does the shade of a tree mean to you on a hot summer day, with the sun at full blast? How about the sound and the visual of a grand old tree in the wind, being moved and heard from a thousand different spots; and the incomparably soothing effect that can produce in your nervous system?  How is it that all that motion can massage us, tip to toe, from inside to out, somehow washing away a tide of tension and concerns?

Like the man said, we don't appreciate trees nearly enough.

Not that there aren't people who do, and are working on it: for example, the United Nations sponsored an International Year of Forests in 2011, "a global celebration to highlight people's action for sustainable forest management," and "highlight our relationship with forests and humankind’s role in ensuring their well-being and development."

"The four shared Global Objectives provide a framework for international efforts toward sustainable forest management."

This United Nations Forum on Forests awarded their first-ever Forest Heroes Awards, celebrating the "countless individuals around the world who are dedicating their lives to nurturing forests in quiet and heroic ways. By honouring everyday people, we would like to show that it is possible for everyone to make a positive change for forests!"

(Snapshot by BR, 2012)

Finally, It Pays To Go Greener

For the longest time it's been the case that if you wanted to leave a lighter footprint on the earth, it was going to cost you. Now, thanks both to general awareness and government subsidies, you hear of people who are actually saving money by going a little more green.

Says right here that this one guy in Shreveport, guided by a website, spent $260 on small energy-saving devices, which saved him $300 off his utility bill in just a few months, plus they gave him three new trees in his yard. Sounds like a deal that bears looking into.

The anthropomorphized focus of the Associated Press story (beginning, as all reporting must these days, through the eyes of a single person,) purchased only a couple programmable thermostats, blankets for the water heater, and a buncha them new-fangled lightbulbs to gain all that green - the metaphorical, financial, and photosynthetic.

The website he used was Earthaid.net, only one of many new Web services for reducing home energy consumption; the story also mentions Google PowerMeter, My Emissions Exchange, and the EPA's "Energy Star" Home Energy Yardstick. They offer graphs that track a home's natural gas, electric and water usage, with impressive integration with utilities, allowing homeowners to spot and optimize where unnecessary amounts of energy are being spent. Earth Aid, for example, also will highlight "the rebates, tax incentives, and discounts that make it even more economical for you to save energy."

"Each year the average household spends about $2,200 on utilities and spews 22,300 pounds in carbon dioxide emissions. With just a few basic energy upgrades, consumers could pocket an average of $660, or 30 percent of their spending, and shrink their carbon footprint by as much as 8,000 pounds each year, according to the EPA."

With the DOE saying residential emissions account for an eighth of the U.S. total, a healthy response to these upgrade campaigns could have a significant impact on how often we as a country need to fill-'er-up.

Some of these Web programs further reward reduced emissions with various prizes, in services or cash. Adding the rewards component to what's fundamentally a cost-saving offer appeals and speaks to more than just the person who pays the electric bill.

'''It makes it easier for us as parents to explain it to our kids and for them to see a tangible result of their actions,' Kincaid said. Now the kids are quick to switch off lights and shut down electronics, with the hope that in a few months they can plant another oak tree."
- Online Ways to Cash In on Going Green - AP, April 9, 2010

An Informative Mind-Twister Involving Oysters

Okay, here's one for you, one of those you-gotta-be-kid'nme type facts, from a story about reseeding New York City's waterways with once-plentiful oysters. These are not intended as delicacies for the table, though, but as prodigious pollution digesters:

"Oysters act as natural water purification systems. 'Think of oysters as the catalytic converter on your car,' Fabian Cousteau, the grandson of Jacques Cousteau, explained. One adult oyster can filter up to 24 gallons of water in a day…"

"You Say Oyster," by Katherine Stirling, Sept. 21, 2009 issue, The New Yorker, in "Talk of the Town"
(Note: The New Yorker doesn't have that article online except with a paid subscription)

Besides being just plumb amazing, this is only one more example of how the big new wave of activity for re-greening our world could best be guided.

There's a great principle of accomplishing anything that states, Work From Your Strengths. It would hard to overestimate all the strengths that nature provides, this stupifyingly deep, rich web of life that is always in motion and regenerating itself, spontaneously growing things that we can eat to live(!), and just coincidentally manufacture oxygen which we need to breathe, and all this without requiring a single btu's worth of energy from our vaunted infrastructure.

Even purebread bottom-liners must understand the appeal of the savings in power and electricity alone when you can harness a system that is self-sustaining. You don't have to buy any fuel for the engine!

Don't get me wrong, I'm on board with the whole human evolution thing, the idea that we've got this brain and imagination and opposable thumbs so we can be creative, and respectfully customize and extend our physical circumstances here. And I love my Mac and my Honda, and all their family forebears.

But, going back to the oysters, have human engineers ever designed and built anything which was both that efficient at a job and completely self-perpetuating, and each over extremely long product lifecycles? Have they instead, in the process of going too far out on a limb (probably mostly due to the incitement of grants or investments, let's say), produced maybe as many horrors as upgrades?

(We do have to keep inventing, of course, because aside from any common speculations about our destiny, there's a rumor going around the scientific community that our planet is slowly losing momentum and being pulled closer to and eventually will be sucked right into the Sun. It's surface temperature is said to be around 6,000 degrees — Celsius. So, let's make sure funding for NASA is in good shape, too, cuz we're gonna need 'em.)

The pocket-guide conclusion: To whatever extent possible,

Work With Nature.

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Related, here:
"Where do Great Ideas come from?" (One guess, based on the above...)
Posts tagged appropriate technology

New Points on Local Green Map, Prism Solar Ribbon Spinoff

Added a few newsy spots to my Sustainability 'Heat' Map of Hudson Valley, explained and windowed-into in the preceding(/following) post.

The biggest news recently was Prism Solar Technologies' announcement Tuesday that they'll receive $3.6 million in federal money to spin off their R&D on a new form of photovoltaic technology in the Hudson Valley. They predict the new company will create 300 jobs over the next three years.

The new flexible solar ribbon cell is highly efficient, lightweight, made with much less waste, and has other unique characteristics, but its flexibility that's the main attraction. That allows countless applications, from the hood of a car to the outside face of a building, from cellphones and laptops to equipment for the U.S. Military, which has shown interest. Congressman Maurice Hinchey announced the grant with Prism Solar CEO Richard Lewandowski.

"Prism Solar gets $3.6 million in federal funds" - Poughkeepsie Journal, Sarah Bradshaw, 8/11/09

"Solar company to create spin-off, create 300 jobs" - Mid-Hudson News

= = =
…And I added these two places to the map:

"Green Living" index, Times Herald Record

The venerable Times Herald Record, published from Middletown, NY and in its modern form at Recordonline.com, covers all things renewable in the region with its page on "Green Living - local coverage of the green revolution." It's a handy spot from which to keep updated on all recent related activity.

Author Joanne Michaels' "Hudson River Valley Farms"

Joanne Michaels' latest book, published July 2009, is "Hudson River Valley Farms - The People and the Pride Behind the Produce." This beautiful book, thanks to the wonderful photography of Rich Pomerantz, is portrait of 44 farms from Westchester to Albany, taking the reader on an amazing journey through the heart of the Hudson Valley. The appendix covers close to 100 farmers' markets in eight counties, including driving directions.

Joanne, the former editor of Hudson Valley Magazine, has published numerous books which draw our attention to the profound beauty of the region, including "The Hudson Valley & Catskill Mountains: An Explorer's Guide," and coauthoring with renowned photographer Hardie Truesdale the stunning "Hudson River Journey" and "Adirondack High."

Joannemichaels.com

Is Your Head (Lost) In The Cloud?

Google's recent unscheduled downtime came at a good point, perhaps, with so many technology promoters urging us all to hurry up into the Cloud for all our computing needs.

PC World reported that the May 14th outage "left 14 percent of its user base without Google's wide variety of online services for a few hours." PC World's story was accompanied by this graph of North American Web traffic that day, from an Internet security company, Arbor Networks, which tells the story in concise and dramatic fashion.
Google said, in one of their blogs, it was the result of a simple traffic jam at a data center. Oh, that's really reassuring. What if it had been the dirty work of some of those cyber-crooks, who decided to put their botnets to work on taking down or compromising the All-Seeing Eye? How long might it have taken them to get all their services back in operation then?

"Ultimately, the outage was a fixable error and the Internet didn't come crashing down because of it," PC World said, but asked, "Just how smart is it to depend on a company to store all your data online?"

Cloud computing is a natural development of the technological path we're on, and of course it has many benefits, like being able to get at your information from anywhere there's an Internet connection. My point is just this: don't over-depend on it.

Do not assume that what you upload to any brand of cloud formation will necessarily be there when you next look for it — like the young lady I knew whose emails, years' worth, disappeared one day from Hotmail, never to be seen again.

When it's crunch time, especially with free services, host companies have oft responded by saying, Gee, sorry, there's nothing we can do about that now — but you know, it is a free service. (Implying about their own no-cost, no-guarantee offerings that YGWYPF: You Get What You Pay For.)

So, okay, these services can be highly useful. Just don't forget, in a tenet from the earliest days of computing: Back It Up!

"Google Outage Lesson: Don't Get Stuck in a Cloud"
by Ian Paul, PC World

Related, here:
Crackberry Down!

"Baaack it up!" * (Before the Botnets get it)

Web-based apps vs. Verizon customer service

(P.S.: Appropriately, I got this message several times while trying to post this: "Could not contact Blogger.com. Saving and publishing may fail. Retrying...")

"How do we come up with new ideas?"

Alison Arieff, blogging on design in the New York Times, asks this always-useful question, by way of giving some serious room to a gentleman who vividly "illustrates" the practical value of plain old seat of the pants blue-sky imagining.

She begins by listing a battery of common distractions we're all fighting through to remain optimistic enough to keep creative and productive, remarking,

"I can’t help thinking that we’re all so mired in it that we’ve forgotten how to get out of it — how to daydream, invent, engage with the absurd.

"That’s why I am so enamored with the work of inventor/author/cartoonist/former urban planner Steven M. Johnson, a sort of R. Crumb meets R. Buckminster Fuller. Many of his musings are simply whimsical, existing primarily as a source of inspiration or delight. Others tackle very real issues, from environmentalism to alternative transportation to homelessness."

(Johnson's caption:)
"Auto Abandonment Zones are built to acccomodate growing numbers of drivers who lose the will to proceed further in bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic. Drivers may pull off, leave car keys with an Abandonment Officer, and board a nearby train, phone relatives, or calm themselves in 'parks.'" (Bolding mine.)

As one who has spent far-r-r too much time edging along in traffic, in the pre-mostly-virtual world when the only way to get paid was to show up somewhere every day and be there throughout regular work hours — thus condemning you to rush hour drives — I found that to be wickedly dry humor. Arieff continues,

"In Johnson’s oeuvre, nothing gets to exist if it doesn’t have at least two functions: the skylight uses solar energy to cook the dinner, for instance, and the exercise bike operates the washing machine (cleaning clothes and toning the wearer’s muscles simultaneously)."

"Searching for Value in Ludicrous Ideas" (On Design blog), 5/4/09

For more examples of witty yet functional doubling-up, Johnson has visually proposed an array of gardening tool footwear, including the Weeding Oxfords, Shear Shoes, Lawn Aeraters, Lawn Edging Spurs, and the Watering Sneakers. Presumably, you could accomplish a lot of tasks among the dirt and weeds just by walking around — in a very deliberate manner, one would guess. Afterwards, you can relax in Johnson's Ten-Speed Hammock, or the Blooming Rose Chair with Ottoman (p. 62 in the book preview).

Now, a lot of this stuff is intentionally (we hope) zany; besides demonstrating some fairly precise drafting skills, the man's also a comedian. But the creative thinking on display, focused on real-world objects, can only spark a few fresh thoughts in anyone trying to see where things can progress in their own sphere of influence.

A vast number of such thoughts are drawn out in Johnson’s 1984 book: “What the World Needs Now: A Resource Book for Daydreamers, Frustrated Inventors, Cranks, Efficiency Experts, Utopians, Gadgeteers, Tinkerers, and Just About Everybody Else.” Let me recommend the final, how-to chapter, "Author's Tips for Inventing Useful and Useless Things," which is excerpted there at the other end of that link.

"I sit on the living room rug at home and look out the window at the garden. …I avoid my desk and drafting table, as such furniture has the connotations of serious endeavor, deadlines," etc.

He places a stack of typing paper and a pen or pencil on the floor next to him.

"I find that a few key words and a blurry scribble are all that I need for capturing an idea, but it is important to note down all ideas, since like dream images these products of the imagination evaporate easily and are usually impossible to retrieve."

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Related, here:
Building 'Living Space' Around Railroad Stations

Where Do Great Ideas Come From?

Posts tagged innovation and creative thinking

Epson's Built-In Cheating Mechanism

(A little righteously indignant background music, there, maestro... just a bit lower? Thank you, that's perfect.)

I turned on my printer yesterday, and it informed me that the ink was out in three of the six cartridges. Okay, these things happen. But then there are these puzzling occurrences, and a rather troubling number of them, in fact.

This is a printer series that is infamous for shutting down and not letting you print once it decides any one of the cartridges is "out" of ink. (You can guess there's more to this subject, and I'll get to it in turn.) I didn't realize when I bought this thing that Epson was withholding the right I'd enjoyed with every printer I ever owned or used to that point, to print a faded copy of something I needed right then.

First of all, even though I'm supposedly out of a color ink, it refuses to print even a purely black-and-white page. There is really no reasonable justification for this, except to hasten the hapless owner's purchase of more of "the Barbie clothes." (Would prefer to use "razors and blades," but that one is so over.)

Secondly, while "the paperless office" is an absolute that is still beyond reach, I certainly live and function in the "much-less-paper office," and as such wind up printing very little. I use this machine much more often for its scanning.

So it was obvious to me when I turned the machine on several weeks ago and it informed me that the ink was getting low on those three cartridges, that I hadn't printed anything between the last time the device was on and then. Some timer had clicked over a notch, and the ink in half the cartridges was duly reported as having evaporated below the sensor lines or escaped or something.

But Wait, There's More: yesterday I turned the machine on for the first time since the last time, still not having printed anything, and was informed that I was completely out of ink in all three of those cartridges.

It turns out that in 2005, Epson, the maker of my Stylus Photo RX620, settled a a class action suit against them for exactly this behavior. According to a PC World article when legal actions were filed in, oops, 2003,

"…chips are used to monitor the amount of ink inside the ink jet cartridge. Cartridges actually contain up to 38 percent more usable ink after the chip cuts them off, according to research cited in the suits.
"The chip does not measure the real volume; instead, it estimates the amount of ink used and predicts when the cartridge will be empty. The chip transmits estimated ink levels to the printer, which alerts the user with a screen message."

The gist of that message: "You're Gist Out Of Luck!"

In the settlement, any owner of an Epson printer manufactured and bought within some period of time, and who heard about this in time (it wasn't referenced on their home page when the settlement was in force), got a $45 dollar certificate from Epson's own online store, as I recall. Since you pay full retail there, that's not even three cartridges. And, critically, Epson was not required to change the programming in the chips or offer a download to correct the cheating calculations, and give an accurate reading of the ink levels. Bad settlement.

It's a shame, and an insult to the engineers who put this printer scanner copier together, because they did a really nice job. It prints beautiful photos, the scanner works fine and has very good, well integrated software. But somewhere between the various departments with input on this design, the dark directive came down to operate on its brain to turn it against its owner. (Hm, sounds like a great sci-fi movie concept.. .)

===

Good grief, I think I just released my first real, full-out rant. !, even. My apologies; but these skunks should be aired out appropriately. And I feel a little better now.

Epson Faces Consumer Suits - PC World (10/24/03)

Epson ink cartridge controversy - Wikipedia

"Can America Invent Its Way Back?" & "No Time to Forget Innovation"

Extracts of today's and another recent post I put together for the Heart of Innovation, the blog of Idea Champions.

Nov. 24 '08 -
"Can America Invent Its Way Back?"

A recent article in BusinessWeek by Michael Mandel asks this highly relevant question, noting that while the U.S. has spent almost $5 trillion on research and development and on higher education, "employment in most technologically advanced industries has stagnated or even fallen."

Mandel's focus is on the new field of "innovation economics," which studies what forms of funding drive successful innovation.

The first launch at Cape Canaveral, 1950 (NASA)

Nov. 4 '08 -
"It's No Time to Forget About Innovation"

Writing in the New York Times, Janet Rae-Dupree reminds us that even or especially in times "of corporate belt-tightening," companies reduce their efforts to strengthen innovation at their own risk. For example, "a large acquirer's interest in a start-up or smaller company is binary in nature: They either want you or they don't, based on the innovation you have to offer."

Hard times can be the source of innovative inspiration... Some of the best products and services come out of some of the worst times.

"10 Most 'Accountable' Big Companies"

Okay, it's official: Green is in, and funding is loudly touted for initiatives on recovery and sustainability. We have every reason to expect this support to flow significantly from the highest levels, since, for example, just today the President-Elect(!),

".. .reiterated a campaign pledge to invest $15 billion each year in the development of clean technology...

"'When I am president, any governor who's willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that's willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that's willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America.'"

- "US president-elect promises 'new chapter in America's leadership on climate change'"
The Guardian, guardian.co.uk

(I just can't help but saying, while still at this early point, is it not a profound relief to see the President of the country saying this? Alright alright, "-elect" -- but you've got to admit that in spirit he's already effectively taken charge of the country.)

If this new enlightened age for Green Sustainable Whole Earthitude is for real, or to whatever extent it is, then the focus must shift to two types of things:

• Finding out which are the best ideas, the ones that should get the big-league support, and
• Recognizing which companies and countries are already doing it right. This also must involve keeping the believability of the whole movement alive by vigorously exposing "greenwashers," those soulless touts trying to pass off their net-effect polluting employers as a saints of save-the-earthness.

So it's good to see the CNN/Money/Fortune magazine agglomeration "rank the world's 100 largest corporations by the quality of their commitment to social and environmental goals."

"10 Most 'Accountable' Big Companies"
Five U.S. companies were in Fortune's top 20 Most Accountable, with one or two in the top ten (since the tenth spot was a statistical three-way tie, with just .1 out of 100 separating their scores).

England's Vodafone was #1; the top U.S. companies were:

#2: GE
11: Hewlett-Packard (really tied for 10th)
16: Chevron
17: Citigroup (Uh-oh...)
23: Ford (Uh-oh!)

Rewarding "Appropriate Tech" Innovation

One of my favorite recurring topics has turned out to be when technology is being used for the right reasons, namely, to fundamentally improve the circumstances of life, especially where it's needed most, instead of only to produce more self-indulgent gadgetry. I didn't plan for appropriate technology to be one of my most frequent tags over a year and a half, that's just the way it happened. (Not that this came as any surprise.)

So naturally I wanted to pitch in this piece that appeared on CNet's news.com today --
The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Calif., gave out its annual awards on Wednesday night to companies and organizations that have created breakthrough devices for helping the environment and emerging nations. (Slide show of the winners.)

The first photo is of a clever stove invented for families in Guatemala, which cuts down the amount of firewood needed for a family by 70 percent. "That's hugely important in a country trying to deal with a growing population and deforestation," CNet's Michael Kanellos writes. It directly helps the families, too, not only cutting their cost for firewood, but also it's weight -- since they "often have to transport it on their backs."

Significantly, at a cost of $120, "It pays for itself in six months." (This contrasts dramatically with a personal wind power generator I'd written about last year that was predicted to pay off in 24 years!)

"Take Me To Your Leader!"

Other related posts here:
WSJ Tech Innovation Awards (9/13/06)
(Tag:) Green Tech

(Treetops photo by meire, flickr.com)

A Shift in Perspective

(A Saturday afternoon post...)

"Everything is familiar, Daniel M. Tani said, but 'it feels a little alien.' He did not have some of the problems adjusting to gravity that other astronauts have had — absent-mindedly leaving an object in mid-air and being startled to see it crash to the ground. 'You’re very conscious of that,' he said.

"But he still marveled at the mundane. 'You take the lid off the bottle, and you put it on the table,' he said, 'and it’s just amazing that it stays on the sink.' In space, it would have flown away unless it was secured. 'You don’t have to find a piece of velcro to stick it to,' he recalled. 'that seemed like it was magic to me.'"

"Adapting to Earth After 120 Days in Space"
By John Schwartz, NY Times "The Lede" blog, 3/11/08

(Photo uploaded to Flickr by kEnObAnDo)

"Google: Huge Idea, Simple Insight"

(Extract of a recent post written for Idea Champions' "Heart of Innovation")

"Discovery's Science Channel Has Good New Series On (the) Internet." (Search Engine Watch)

Download: The True Story of the Internet, by former editor and writer for Wired, John Heileman, "is no softball show.. . the series gives it to you 'warts and all' and does not hold back the punches on how things have developed so far. The last show I watched discussed the development of search..."

"We hear amazing stories," The Discovery Channel tells us, "of how, in ten short years, the Internet took over our lives. The style of the story-telling is up close and personal... with first-hand testimony from the people that matter."

I also was watching that episode on search, one of four. To me, the most arresting observation was that while the original, breakthrough idea at the root of Google's effectiveness and success came from a programmer, cofounder Larry Page, it was a very simple thought. Page was not crouched over a keyboard or remembering any computer code in order to come up with this construct.

The billion-dollar insight was just this: that a link to a site from another is like a vote for that destination. The more sites link to yours (and the more linked-to their sites are), the better yours must be... (one of) the ones which the most visitors have "voted for with their feet," or in this case, their eyeballs.

[ more ] on The Heart of Innovation

That's most of the Google logo as of the Spring equinox,
which is coming up within the hour.

"The Sweat That Eureka Demands"

(Extract of a recent, very up-to-the-minute post of mine in Idea Champions' "The Heart of Innovation"... a couple weeks back:)

Serious about doing something innovative? Be prepared to spend many long, focused hours working on it (and working and working and reworking...)

Thomas Edison  (Wikipedia)

"We want to believe that creativity and innovation come in flashes of pure brilliance," Janet Rae-Dupree writes in the New York Times. But, "Innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time."
...
(As one of the greatest inventors in memory, Thomas Edison, knew so well:)

In an interview in Harpers magazine, February 1890, (stay tuned here at Heart Of Innovation as we present the latest, greatest breakthroughs! ; ) Edison explained his method:

"I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. ... I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory."

(More of "The Sweat That Eureka Demands" here...)

Related, here in Rosswriting: 
inventors (tag)