Every week sees so many developments and news stories about the environment, energy and sustainability, it’s impossible to cover them all in depth. So I thought it would be helpful to occasionally summarize some of the more interesting reports from the past week. Here are a few that caught my eye:
Two South African architects last week won the $100,000 Curry Stone Design Prize for their unique energy-efficient housing design using timber framing and sandbags. Based on traditional mud-and-wattle construction, the timber-sandbag structures are also inexpensive and easy to build, with no electricity required.
Thanks to a combination of concerns — high gas prices, climate change and obesity — the bicycle industry is enjoying a boom market right now, reports an article in Wired. The feature includes this quote from Tim Blumenthal, executive director of Bikes Belong: “Cycling for recreation in America has always been big. Now we’re starting to see cycling for transport.”
If you haven’t jumped on board the bicycle bandwagon yet, you might soon want to. A CNN Money report notes that U.S. gas reserves are at their lowest since 1967.
For an inspiring, if frightening, take on our current energy woes, check out “Here Comes $500 Oil,” an interview with oil industry analyst Matt Simmons. A peak oil proponent who warns that the days of easy oil are over, Simmons also has this to say: “”John McCain is energy illiterate. He’s just witless about this stuff. As a lifelong Republican, I’m supporting Obama.”
What could help both our economic and energy problems? An explosion in new green jobs, says Van Jones, founder and president of Green for All. Jones writes in the Huffington Post: “Now is the time for the USA to pivot away from an economy based on borrowing and toward one based on building. We need to rely less on credit from abroad and more on creativity here at home.”
And, finally, to end this week’s roundup on a lighter note, I’ll close with a riddle courtesy of the New York Times feature Freakonomics: “What do U.S. oil production and Mick Jagger have in common? They both peaked in the late 1960s.”
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Shirley Siluk Gregory
Shirley Siluk Gregory, a transplanted Chicagoan now living in Northwest Florida, represents the progressive half of Green Options' Red, Green and Blue segment. She holds a bachelor's degree in Geological Sciences from Northwestern University but graduated in 1984, just when the market for geologists was flatter than the Florida landscape. Just as well, though: she had little interest in spending her life either in a laboratory or, heaven forbid, an oil field. So, of course, she went into journalism. After extremely low-paying but fun and educational stints at several suburban Chicago weeklies and dailies, Shirley and her then-boyfriend/now-husband Scott found themselves displaced by a media buyout and spending the next several years working as freelancers. Among their credits: The Chicago Tribune, a publication for the manufactured-housing industry, and Web Hosting Magazine, a now-defunct publication that came and went with the dotcom era. Shirley's always been concerned about nature and conservation (and an avid pack-rat, as her family can attest to), but became even more rabidly interested in the environment primarily due to two factors: the growing signs that global warming was real and threatening, and the birth of her son, Noah, in 2003. Suddenly, the prospect of a world that might not be quite as habitable in 40 or 50 years took on a whole new, and personal, meaning. Living where she lives now also helped light the fire of Shirley's environmental awareness: her hometown was severely damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and beaten up again by Hurricane Dennis in 2005. That, and the fact that she and her family were vacationing in New Orleans until the day before Katrina -- and spent 12 hours driving home for a trip that normally takes 3 -- has made Shirley deeply appreciate how fragile our lifestyles are, and how dependent they are on sound management of natural resources and sustainable living practices. That's why she's become a passionate reader and writer about all things green and sustainable.
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everyone should support wind energy but America’s wind energy company AWNE for short