Here is some fodder for President Obama's Green Initiative. I read it in the business magazine, Fast Company. It's over a year old but still timely.
Article location:http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/127/the-eco-home-of-tomorrow.html
June 23, 2008 Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Ethonomics, green building
The Green Housing Boom
By Linda Tischler
"How do you inspire a revolution?" It's a question that obsesses Matthew Berman. A 36-year-old New York architect with short hair and a starched blue shirt, he doesn't, frankly, look like much of a rebel. "There's this grumbling," he continues. "It grows, it brings things to the center, and then you get this explosion."
Berman and his partner, Andrew Kotchen, 35, boast high-profile clients such as CNN's Anderson Cooper, but they think of themselves as guerrilla fighters in a global cause: reducing the impact of housing on the environment. When it comes to trashing the planet, gas-guzzling automobiles and belching factories get most of the blame. Yet the primary offenders are actually closer to home. Here are the shocking numbers: The construction and operation of buildings generate half of all greenhouse-gas emissions in the country, according to estimates based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Residential buildings alone account for 21% of national energy consumption -- nearly as much as transportation (27%).
Read the morning papers, and it's hard not to feel that the American housing industry is on the brink of the apocalypse. Home prices are plummeting, in some areas as much as 40%. However, it's exactly the gravity of the situation that some housing analysts see as the opportunity of a lifetime -- the chance to jolt us into embracing green housing.
The eco-revolutionary grumbling that Berman hears is spreading from communities such as California's Marin County, which now insists that all large houses meet the energy budget of a 3,500-square-foot home, to Aspen, Colorado, and surrounding Pitkin County, where any new home larger than 5,000 square feet faces special renewable-energy requirements. The latest report from McGraw-Hill Construction, cosponsored by the National Association of Home Builders, predicts that the market for green housing will grow to from as little as $12 billion this year to between $40 billion and $70 billion by 2012.
Even some large commercial home builders -- forced into hibernation by the real-estate bust -- have begun sketching plans for a decidedly different generation of American houses. "Until recently, the publicly traded home builders saw green building as a niche market best taken up by smaller players," says David Wood, director of the Boston College Institute for Responsible Investing. "But with the down market, this could be a good time for them to differentiate themselves from competitors."
Jeffrey Mezger, president and CEO of Los Angeles -- based KB Home, which built 23,743 houses last year, is among those considering the green implications -- largely for economic reasons. Two years ago, he says, the average KB Home in Southern California for a couple with two kids was 3,000 to 3,200 square feet. Today, it's 2,200 to 2,500 square feet. "Heating and cooling bills in a 3,000-square-foot home are more painful in tougher economic times," Mezger explains. In May, when Wood's BC group and Calvert Investments ranked the 13 major home builders on their environmental practices, KB ended up in the top spot.
Not everyone has gotten with the program. "When people walk into Toll Brothers, they want the luxury that Toll Brothers offers," says Matt Wilkinson, senior project manager for the high-end builder in Bucks County, near the company's Horsham, Pennsylvania, headquarters. "If people want a smaller house, they can purchase in a different community." (Toll Brothers ranked ninth on the BC/Calvert list.)
Will we, a nation that equates bigger with better, ever be able to downscale our housing ambitions? We are consumed with fixing up, showing off, and estimating the value of our property. It's the most visible manifestation of our style, our wealth, and our status. Can creative designers find a solution that allows us to enjoy luxury and shrink our footprint at the same time? If not, what will be the cost?
What they discovered "practically knocked me off my feet," Mazria recalls. They crunched the data for U.S. energy consumption and added in the "embodied energy" of buildings (what's required to produce and deliver materials, and construct the building). Their conclusion: 50% of all greenhouse-gas emissions -- which closely track energy use -- are building-related. "We have a crisis on our hands like no other in historical records," Mazria says, "and architects are the main players."
Mazria, a 6-foot -- 6-inch gentle giant, was no newcomer to the green-design movement. In 1979, he published The Passive Solar Energy Book, which has sold more than half a million copies. But catalyzed by his firm's findings, he vowed to ramp up his efforts to get out the message. Like an Al Gore for the building trades, he began traveling the country with a multimedia presentation and a white paper entitled "It's the Architecture, Stupid!" It lays out, in urgent prose, the case for the building sector's culpability in climate change.
Every time an architect designs a building, Mazria explains, his decisions about orientation, materials, windows, and heating and air-conditioning systems affect energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions for 50 to 100 years.
And size counts. The average new U.S. home now measures around 2,400 square feet, up from less than 1,000 in 1950, a 140% increase. The average new house in Canada is only 1,800 square feet; in Japan, 1,000; in Britain, 815. "It's a one-to-one ratio," Mazria says. "If you're living in 4,000 square feet instead of 1,000 square feet, you're using four times as much" of everything from wallboard to flooring and furniture.
Mazria eventually left his practice to found Architecture 2030, a nonprofit organization that has challenged the building industry to reduce emissions by 50% by 2010 and be carbon-neutral in new construction and major renovations by 2030. The American Institute of Architects, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), and even the federal government have signed on to his goals.
With a little imagination and a few billion bucks, Mazria now contends, the government could address both the struggling housing industry and the bigger problem of global warming. Speaking to the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference in Pittsburgh in March, he argued that a one-year investment of $21.6 billion targeted to increasing energy efficiency in the building sector would produce 216,000 permanent jobs, trim CO2 emissions by 86.7 million metric tons (MMT) annually, and save consumers $8.5 billion in energy bills. Extend that level of investment for five years, he says, and we'd create more than 1 million permanent jobs and save 433.5 MMT annually.
"The economic and global-warming crises are the motivation we need as a nation to retool our thinking," Mazria says. "If we're smart enough to jump on this opportunity, we will not only solve global warming, we will set up the U.S. for unprecedented economic success."
The house where Steve Glenn lives in Santa Monica is about as close as it gets to green-housing nirvana. Designed by noted California modernist architect Ray Kappe, it's a showplace that also produces its own energy, uses gray water to irrigate the lawn, and produces little waste and near-zero greenhouse-gas emissions. It's the first home in the country to be certified Platinum according to the USGBC's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards.
One of the original partners in the tech incubator Idealab, a founder of enterprise-software company PeopleLink, and the director of an AIDS project in Mozambique for the Clinton Foundation, Glenn says he once wanted to be an architect, but by college had determined he had neither the talent nor the temperament for the profession. Later, he had an epiphany: "I realized that developers, not architects, control what gets created in the built environment." He confesses that he still finds his adopted industry, well, frustrating. "This development business doesn't scale as elegantly as technology," he says. "The clock speed is different."
Glenn's extreme-green house is both his own residence and something of a prototype for a line of homes he's now rolling out with Philadelphia architectural firm KieranTimberlake, already an industry leader in sustainable design. The venture is an ambitious attempt to make green and cool coexist. The biggest challenge, Glenn says, is not environmental features or high design. It's cost. At a pricey $250 per square foot for 2,500 square feet, plus another $40,000 for the foundation, his house cost more than $765,000 to build. And that doesn't include the price of the land.
His solution: prefabricated construction. It may have a bad rep with many consumers, but architects are increasingly enthusiastic. "Prefab allows you to build a house with smaller thresholds for tolerance," Glenn says, "and a tighter energy envelope." It also allows the high up-front R&D expenses for green components to be amortized across many homes and mitigates one of the biggest environmental offenses of conventional home building: the rubble left behind. Construction waste makes up 30% of landfills.
In March, Glenn and KieranTimberlake announced the LivingHomes Building System, which combines modules for kitchens, baths, and utility cores with prefab "Smart Panels" that contain the house's mechanical ducting, electrical, and plumbing systems. The units are designed with software that allows buyers to customize their homes and to expand them over time, from a modest 900-square-foot house to a 2,160-square-foot, four-bedroom place. Initial costs are $215 a square foot (excluding foundation and delivery of materials), but Glenn expects the price to drop to $155 a square foot as volume increases. All the homes meet LEED Silver standards.
The advantages -- in terms of both economics and design -- of prefab housing are the subject of an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art this summer, "Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling." Five cutting-edge factory-built houses designed by leading architects will be erected on a lot adjacent to the museum, and 58 more projects will be featured inside.
"For most people," says Barry Bergdoll, the curator of architecture at MoMA, "prefab means mobile homes and things that are upside down after the next hurricane in Florida." That's a particularly American stigma we should get over, he asserts. "Each house can be different, in a much richer way than Nike can personalize your sneakers," from a contemporary design like Glenn's to a Colonial. "Many houses in Japan are prefab," Bergdoll says, "and if you walk down the street, you'd never know it."
It's a long way from the tony precinct of MoMA to New Orleans's devastated Lower Ninth Ward, but the housing going up in the Holy Cross neighborhood there would not be out of place in the museum's show. In August 2006, Berman and Kotchen's architecture firm, Workshop/apd, won a competition sponsored by environmental activist group Global Green USA and actor Brad Pitt to design a zero-energy affordable-housing development in the most ravaged part of the city.
Workshop/apd's "GREEN.O.LA," which is currently under construction, will include five single-family houses and 18 apartments, powered by solar panels and equipped with rainwater-collection systems. The buildings are sited for maximum cross ventilation and rigged with louvers to minimize heat and capture breezes. Trellises will help keep the interiors cool.
Much of the project will be prefabricated off-site, with sustainable materials. But the feature that most animates the designers is Lucid Design Group's Building Dashboard, a digital meter installed by the front door of the model home that uses sensors to provide a continuous digital readout of the energy being used. It can even translate the cost of that energy into real-world terms -- to show how the number of kilowatt-hours of electricity used, for example, translates into gallons of gas or hair-dryer hours. "So you leave the AC cranked up while you're gone, and it will show you that it cost you the equivalent of gas for two weeks," Kotchen says.
Berman and Kotchen also design custom homes for the well-heeled. Their role, they say, is to transform the way these clients think about the space they inhabit and to provide them with the most efficient platform -- which usually means smaller is better. "Good design is inherently more efficient and uses less materials," says Kotchen.
"We struggle with our own clients, to educate them," he continues. "We tell them they don't need a family room, a living room, and a media room, because all those spaces essentially perform the same."
"If we can un-name the rooms, and step back and look instead at how they're used, we can give you more opportunity in less space," Berman chimes in. "Then you can start layering on the other things -- orientation, power consumption, material use."
They've had some success. One client who came in wanting a 3,000-square-foot house now is content with a mere 1,900. But they don't always win. "We now have one very flexible couple," Kotchen says, "but we cannot get them to give up the media room."
Wilfried Wang thinks that if builders really want to help save the planet, they should stop building altogether. That's an odd thing for an architecture professor to suggest, but then Wang is unusual among his peers in his disregard for the things that normally set architects' CAD-CAM programs aquiver. "As long as we attach importance to housing starts as a statistic, we will continue to see the development of single-family freestanding houses as a positive contribution to the economy. That in itself leaves aside the issue of ecology," says Wang, who holds a chair in architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. Wang would have architects and builders focus their attention on retrofitting existing buildings to be energy efficient, rather than razing them and building anew. "If we're honest," he goes on, "we're in no way going toward a building industry capable of producing housing in a sustainable way."
There are also those who argue that density is essential -- that cities and apartment buildings are the best route to greener housing. But, barring a dramatic sociological shift, the environmental impact of the single-family houses that are part of the American dream will have to be addressed. There are some signs that could happen when construction picks up. The McGraw-Hill Construction study estimates that by 2010 as many as 10% of all housing starts in the United States will include some eco-friendly features such as energy-saving appliances, low-flush toilets, and more-efficient heating and cooling systems, up from 2% of starts in 2005. KB Home's Mezger says his company's "My Home. My Earth" program, in which KB designers educate buyers on greener choices, is gaining momentum even in the face of the downturn. "Less than 2% of customers a few years ago were asking about energy-efficient options," Mezger says. "Since we introduced My Earth in April 2007, it's gone up to 75%."
Even in hard-hit Northern California, where Grupe Co. has virtually shut down its green development, Carsten Crossings, there are indications that there will be a market for houses with a more modest footprint. "Prices have fallen so low here that we have completely stopped building," says Mark Fischer, senior vice president of operations. "If we build a house, green or otherwise, we lose money." Yet before the bubble burst, the LEED-certified homes in Carsten Crossings were outselling their competitors' two to one, and buyers were boasting online of monthly energy bills of $5 to $10.
What of the primal instinct behind our love affair with big homes? We don't really need massive family rooms or kitchens grand enough to cater a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It's more about our human desire to embody in bricks and mortar our sense of ourselves and our place in the community. But perhaps, come the revolution, sustainability will replace opulence as the new status marker.
As Wang puts it, "Sustainability is a cultural problem, embedded in unsustainable lifestyles. The radical restart has to begin with each one of us."
The weapon design and arms control communities agree that it is not the capability to design a nuclear device that determines the pace of a country’s acquisition of a first weapon, but, rather, the availability of nuclear weapons materials that can be turned to weapons purposes. For a nation-state, the material for weapons can come from uranium enrichment plants (highly enriched uranium), or reactors and nuclear fuel reprocessing plants (plutonium), or both.
Regardless of its isotopic composition, the minimum amount of plutonium required to make a pure fission nuclear explosive, with a yield equivalent to one to 25 kilotons of chemical high explosives, is quite small, on the order of 1 to 3 kilograms (kg), with the exact amount depending on the level of design expertise and the desired nuclear explosive yield. The minimum amount of highly enriched uranium required is a few times larger—5 to 10kg.
While far from ideal for military applications, the isotopic composition of the plutonium typically produced in civil power reactors does not pose a serious obstacle to fabricating efficient and powerful weapons, as well as crude terrorist devices.
http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/power/power.pdf
The proliferation of nuclear weapons is inextricably linked to nuclear power by a shared need for enriched uranium, and through the generation of plutonium as a by-product of spent nuclear fuel. The two industries have been linked since the very beginning and a nuclear weapons free world requires a non-nuclear energy policy. http://www.cnduk.org/index.php/information/info-sheets/briefings.html#nuclearpower
HOPE AND HYPE VS. REALITY IN NUCLEAR REACTOR COST
THE ECONOMICS OF NUCLEAR REACTORS:http://www.vermontlaw.edu/Documents/Cooper%20Report%20on%20Nuclear%20Economics%20FINAL%5B1%5D.pdf
Taking a risk here... posting a quick update to my previous post. I added what I hope are some more convincing reasons. However, the post can now be found here:
So I have come across an idea that Barack Obama REALLY needs to hear about. If you agree, please spread the word to him and to all of your friends and colleagues!
The idea is: Solar Roadways. An idea that is finding its way in the world thanks to Scott Brusaw in Idaho. It involves creating a system of interconnected solar panels that also serve as roads. At first glance it sounds a little crazy, but ultimately, if you extend the lifetimes of our roads and combine our power generation AND transportation infrastructure, this actually becomes cost competitive with current roads and a completely renewable source of energy.
Think about it. And check out the website at http://www.solarroadways.com . You can also see a video of the project on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3PeSm6_hTE
Since y'all are considering spending a bunch of money, want to see it come back to you, want to help society and promote green energy and green jobs, then this idea is for you!
Let’s be honest. We didn’t really expect Congress to come up with a "bold" stimulus plan, did we? But do we agree that NO action will only aggravate our current crisis?
The GOP surprised us when it failed to respond more constructively to the bipartisan overture from Barack Obama. I personally witnessed the precedent-setting bipartisan dinner for his defeated opponent (my photo of the President-elect at the dinner honoring McCain, January 19) and noted the subsequent meetings with Congressional Republicans. And what did we get in the way of proposals from the loyal opposition? More of the dogma-driven, supply-side ideology that contributed to our current mess: tax cuts!
On the other hand, GOP critics have a point: the bill that passed the House and was embraced by Obama essentially is an accumulation of favorite Democratic spending proposals.
What is missing is CHANGE. The CHANGE Obama advocated in his campaign for the Presidency. The CHANGE that won him a resounding mandate to govern for four years. The CHANGE from policies that have worked to benefit few and imperil many. Where are the first steps toward affordable health care, a sustainable green economy and alternative energy? And why are we not moving boldly to address the systemic failures that underlie the current crisis in credit markets?
Obama asked for ideas. And Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, among others, obliged. But what these brilliant men offer is predictable: rationales for orthodox Keynesian solutions and concern about labor market distortions, respectively. More is needed, not just in additional spending, but in fresh ideas that advance the President's policy agenda. So, if suggestions are still welcomed, here is my two-cents worth. And please do keep the CHANGE.
Health Care
Obama has promised the nation affordable health care similar to his own Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), to be available to all by the end of his first term. There is no need to back off this goal. Health care is one of the largest drags on our economy and the stimulus bill provides a real opportunity to begin managing its cost. In addition to the bill’s provisions to help state governments fund Medicare and work projects, I suggest that the federal government reimburse all state and local governments for their employer's share of health care for the rest of this year. In exchange, recipients may not fire government workers and must commit to integrating their health care plans with the existing FEHBP starting in 2010. That provides additional and immediate financial assistance to state and local governments, while paving the way for the establishment of a Public Employees Health Benefits Program. By January 2010, the federal government’s negotiated health care program would expand its base and economies of scale. The next step will be to apply the system to businesses, and subsequently to capture the un- and under-insured.
Energy Independence
Most honest leaders recognize that in due course government will have to produce the substantial additional revenue to pay for the stimulus. But good luck finding a politician willing to propose increasing taxes of any kind. So let me suggest instead a hefty tariff on imported oil to fund the “green economy.” A tariff of 50 percent or more on the landed cost of all imported energy (probably with some form of accommodation for our NAFTA partners) can be justified because of national security as well as the external costs to our environment inherent in the use of fossil fuels. And such a levy would promote conservation, subsidize domestic production, and help to fund and protect our investments in alternative energy. This is a measure that should be welcomed by Republicans who advocate "drill, baby, drill” as well as environmentalists interested in promoting clean energy. The windfall earned by American producers could be invested domestically or taxed as profits. And while there may be a marginal increase of fuel cost at the pump, it will pale in comparison with the amounts we forked over to foreign potentates rather than our own Treasury these past few years, when oil was effectively 200% greater than its current price.
Reestablish a ‘Risk-Free’ Investment Benchmark
Explanations for our current credit crisis and financial market meltdown abound, including the Washington Post's excellent series. But absent from all the expert analyses is any mention of the Treasury Department's October 2001 decision to discontinue issuing 30-year Bonds. That decision, on the heels of 9/11 and the cusp of Bush's costly war on terror, both lowered mortgage yields and prompted increased sales of bundled mortgages marketed as alternative 'risk-free' instruments, which in turn fueled the housing bubble and distorted both government and corporate credit point spreads. Treasury Bond auctions have resumed, but a clear provision to finance America’s recovery through borrowing would repair yield spreads – both between short and long term sovereign debt and in relation to all other debt instruments. Transparent budget financing will help re-establish more realistic risk pricing and global confidence in the US economy. But the 30-year Bond will not regain its position as a benchmark for 'risk-free' long-term investment if Fed meddling in the market, as it proposes to do with its planned purchase of Treasuries from troubled banks. In fact, this central-bankers-gone-wild approach will only create a greater Treasury bubble that will seriously aggravate our problems. Once markets are allowed to properly price the cost and risk of our recovery without Fed manipulation, global confidence in the US economy has a chance to be recover.
So Pay the Bill, and Keep the CHANGE
Barack Obama attended his last inaugural event, the Staff Ball, at the DC Armory on January 21. But he arrived after a performance by the opening act, Arcade Fire. So here are some insightful lysircs from their “Intervention”:
You say it's money that we need As if we're only mouths to feed I know no matter what you say There are some debts you'll never pay
You say it's money that we need
As if we're only mouths to feed
I know no matter what you say
There are some debts you'll never pay
The message is relevant to the stimulus bill now before Congress.
We can act responsibly and cautiously if we:
Pay the Bill and Keep the CHANGE.
Today is the day that we honor a man who in his time, was the moral leader of a generation not just of Americans, but people around the world. We are here today in the Golden State, in the navel orange capital of the world, our beloved city of Redlands, not just to celebrate the life of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, but also what his life, and his dream mean for us today, on the eve of history.
I know we need an auto industry in this country if for no other reason than national security. But, does it have to be the current big three?
My proposal:
I exclude current management on the basis of incompetance or out right malice. They have had decades to see this day coming. They did NOTHING constructive and fought tooth and nail any attempt to nudge them in the right direction. They have been suffering from dwindling sales and market share for decades and refused to adapt. They don't deserbe to be in the business. And it is common practice when a small business owner sells their business that they enter into a non-competion clause. The same should hold for these miscreatins.
This approach will reinvigorate the industry with true leaders and visionaries that can lead us into the rest of this millenium. Why give this moey to a blackhole of ineptitude that is the management of the big three.
State Senator Tarryl Clark, Former Agriculture Commissioner Jim Nichols, and Campaign for Change Outreach Director Scott Cooper toured the Biomass Gasification Facility and a wind turbine at the University of Minnesota's Morris campus after an incredibly productive town hall on renewable energy in rural Minnesota.
UM-Morris is a leader in renewable energy initiatives, both in Minnesota and America, and is home to the first large-scale wind research turbine ever constructed in the United States, which produces 5.6 million kilowatt hours of power each year--more than half of the campus' annual energy requirements.
The wind turbine and biomass gasification facility are an example of what can be done to secure our energy future, and it's going to require far more than the same old Washington gimmicks proposed by John McCain and Sarah Palin. It will require a sustained and shared effort by government, businesses, education and research facilities, and the American people. With the clean tech research being done at UM-Morris, Minnesota proves that, with clarity of direction and adequate resources, Americans poses the insight, courage, and determination to build a new economy.
The Biomass Gasification Facility is a testament to the potential of partnerships between communities, universities, and state and local governments, as Senator Obama calls for. What started with the Minnesota Legislature's appropriation of funds to build the facility in 2005, is on track to reach its goal of energy self-sufficiency on the UM-Morris campus by 2010.
Biomass technology allows crops such as corn stover and other fibrous plants to be used as fuel sources, sources which don't produce greenhouse gases and emit fewer pollutants than coal, oil, and wood. Click here to take a virtual tour of the Biomass Gasification Facility
The facility at UM-Morris generates steam to meet 80% of the campus heating and cooling needs--proof that, with proper investment, Americans can rise to the energy challenge and transform our energy economy.
Senator Obama has a comprehensive energy plan that provides immediate relief to struggling Minnesotans, and summons the nation to confront our dependence on foreign oil, address the moral, economic, and environmental challenge of global climate change, and build a clean energy future that benefits all Americans. You can learn more about Barack's New Energy for America plan by clicking here.
Here are some more pictures of the tour of the biomass gasification facility and wind turbine at UM-Morris.
The Heartland for Change RV Tour is making its way through 24 communities across Minnesota, talking with folks in coffee shops, senior centers, and in their homes about Barack Obama and Joe Biden's plans to bring the change Minnesotans need. Click here to find a stop near you or to follow our travels across the state.
Today, as Barack was unveiling his New Energy for America plan, supporters across Minnesota were celebrating his 47th birthday by organizing voter registration birthday parties.
Here's the press release announcing his plan here in Minnesota:
Senator Obama’s New Energy for America plan is a comprehensive energy plan will help Americans cope with the energy crisis in the short term, and make the long-term investments we need to break our addiction to oil.You can read the plan here: http://www.NewEnergyforAmerica.com.“Senator McCain recently blamed our dependence on foreign oil on the inaction of ‘politicians in Washington’ over the last 30 years. He’s right. And for the last 26 years, he’s been one of them—part of the problem,” Obama’s Minnesota state director Jeff Blodgett said. &ldquoand across the country.” Obama’s plan provides immediate relief, invests ;Senator Obama’s New Energy for America plan will lessen our dependence on foreign oil, give American families an immediate energy rebate of $1000 to deal with soaring gas prices, and create five million new green jobs. That’s the kind of change we need here in Minnesota a clean energy future, and brings us closer to energy independence: Provide immediate relief to American families facing pain at the pump. Obama will use some of the oil companies’ record profits to provide Americans with an Emergency Energy Rebate of $1,000 per family or $500 per individual. He’ll also release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to cut prices.Within ten years, save more oil than we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined. To do this, Obama will increase fuel efficiency standards for our vehicles, work with the auto industry to put 1 million plug-in hybrid cars—cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon—on the road by 2015, and he’ll invest in the development of new fuels.Help create five million new jobs by investing in a clean energy future. Obama will invest $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to develop clean energy technologies—from jumpstarting the commercialization of plug-in hybrids to advancing the next generation of biofuels. That will create 5 million jobs that can’t be outsourced. And Obama will make sure that American workers have the skills and tools they need to pioneer these new technologies.Diversify our energy sources by adopting an aggressive Renewable Portfolio Standard. Obama will require that 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025. That standard will spur significant private sector investment in renewable sources of energy and create thousands of new American jobs.Promote domestic energy production. Obama will take a “use it or lose it” approach to existing oil leases, requiring oil companies to develop the land they have—68 million acres that are currently going unused—or turn it over to another company. He’ll also work to improve access to untapped and unconventional domestic energy supplies.Tackle climate change. Obama will implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. And he’ll work with our allies abroad to develop effective emissions reduction efforts.
You can read the plan here: http://www.NewEnergyforAmerica.com.
“Senator McCain recently blamed our dependence on foreign oil on the inaction of ‘politicians in Washington’ over the last 30 years. He’s right. And for the last 26 years, he’s been one of them—part of the problem,” Obama’s Minnesota state director Jeff Blodgett said. &ldquoand across the country.”
Obama’s plan provides immediate relief, invests ;Senator Obama’s New Energy for America plan will lessen our dependence on foreign oil, give American families an immediate energy rebate of $1000 to deal with soaring gas prices, and create five million new green jobs. That’s the kind of change we need here in Minnesota a clean energy future, and brings us closer to energy independence:
See more details of the New Energy for America plan at: http://www.NewEnergyforAmerica.com.
In previous posts, I have talked about my economic theories based on pies:
http://www.democrats.org/page/community/post/lauraschneider/C5m9
http://www.democrats.org/page/community/post/lauraschneider/Cxm2
I have been listening to a lot of what Al Gore and Thomas Freidman have been saying for a while now. I think that this country needs to invest heavily in education and alternative energy in an effort to transform our misguided zoning laws and oil-based economy into something more sustainable.
The economy can be brought back to life if we begin this process. It's time to start planning for a cleaner future that is based on local sustainable economies. Towns and cities that are planned and zoned for people walking, biking and using public transportation. This is going to take a monumental effort. our entire infrastructure and the resulting markets exist because of cheap oil. some politicians thought that cheap oil would last forever - they were wrong and they put the consumers in a horrible position.
Converting our oil-based, car-culture economy to a more sustainable, local economy will be no small task. the result will be more jobs and a better environment. our sense of community will be restored. our time in our cars will shrink and we will begin to talk to our neighbors again. we will have more time to ourselves, as we rid ourselves of the hour commute. our health will improve - we will get exercise in our daily tasks.
"Grace Unto You And Peace, Tomm
You know that I have to ask, cajole, beg your listners and you to walk a preceinct.
Get to know the people around you. [The people who live in your voting precinct.]
If you favor Obama? Fine!
If you favor Clinton? Fine!
If you favor Edwards or Dennis Kucinich, Fine!
Then keep their legacies alive by walking a precinct. And then use it as leverage and by leverage I mean to get "lean, green and clean."
New jobs in the green economy: Home cisterns, solar [photoelectric] panels, regional landscaping of yards [instead of planting expensive imports.]
You know? There is a lot to do!
But walk the preceinct and if you [Tomm Hartmann] get a show where you walk a precinct on a remote [broadcast], I think you'd get national publicity and it would really fire up the troops."
[Broadcast ends.]
[UNHEARD-- "For me? I have already voted. I voted by absentee ballot. I voted for Obama. But I still will, if given a chance, walk my precinct for the Senator from Illinois. Just as much as I would walk my precinct for that other Senator from Illinois whose hand I shook at the Greek Theater in Berkeley so long ago: Adeli E. Stevenson. We needed Adeli badly and we need Obama desperately."]
