Free Environmental Education
The world has 32 billion acres of bio-productive land and over 6 billion people so we only have 5.3 acres per person which we share (or perhaps should share) with all the other subspecies. The problem is that North Americans use 24 acres per person, Chinese 4 and Indians 1.9 acres per person. On a global level each human uses 6.9 acres which is obviously not sustainable.
The solution to problems of environmental degradation and resource depletion will not be solved by one person with one idea. We need a hundred solutions to the hundred problems and the support and co-operation of everyone to implement the most cost effective changes for any community. Only as each individual or community of individuals becomes aware of global conditions, change and become less dependent on our established infrastructure, can we begin to reduce our dependence on the world's limited resources.
The Ottawa Sustainable Community Association (OSCA) recognizes the paradigm shift towards ”mass collaboration” where a group of team players can identify and solve a problem faster than experts promoting and defending their own positions and products, and a degree in any current subject is no guarantee of a job. Mass collaboration requires mass education and team participation.
We think that all politicians and people who believe themselves to be environmentalists should at least have a baseline environmental literacy. To date we have not been able to find a convenient source of full spectrum environmental education that an average person can assimilate in the equivalent of one intensive weekend so we have started to create one. It needs a lot more work. Additions and corrections welcomed. Suggestions are needed for links to the best 10 websites [easy, fun, useful] with free information to complement each chapter, so interested readers are encouraged to expand the experience. We are not funded by anyone, so we can tell it like it is, but we need to have the facts straight about:
1.Resource Depletion: fuel, water, land, soil quality.
2.Renewable Energy and the emergence of the new Establishment.
3.Global Population and the implications of the inevitable crunch.
4.Individual Consumption: the needs and wants of developing economies.
5.Toxic Accumulation and the effects on air, water, soil, food and health.
6.Environmental Economics and the costs associated with change.
7.Global Warming; fact or fiction. A history of the study.
8.Urban Planning Walk to work? Grow your own?
9.Sustainable Buildings and the changing National Building Code.
10.Waste Management and the economics of local and regional recycling.
11.Unlikely but possible cataclysmic events.
1 Resource Depletion
1.1 Trees
One acre of mature hardwood forest will produce enough dead fall firewood to heat one average home for a year. A modern air tight wood stove with a catalytic converter is an option for some to heat their homes, but is not practical for a large concentration of urban dwellers. In some parts of the world where the general population rely on firewood to cook their food the landscape has been stripped bare. Without trees topsoil erodes and wildlife has nowhere to live. Living healthy trees are a part of a healthy ecosystem.
1.2 Coal
Coal fueled the industrial revolution and is still used to produce the steam that drives many electrical generators. Unfortunately the burning of coal releases a number of nasty air pollutants that cause breathing problems and acid rain that destroys vegetation and buildings alike. China has a lot of low grade [dirty] coal and is burning more of it every day. Coal can be distilled to produce kerosene (coal oil) and jet fuel.
1.3 Oil
Oil, and gasoline made from oil also contain sulfur. When these fuels are burnt, sulphur dioxide is released which mixes with rain and produces a mild sulphuric acid that etches everything and destroys lakes. Every year more oil deposits are discovered but the size of the discoveries is getting smaller which is an indication that most of the oil in the earth has already been discovered. At the world's present rate of consumption [82 million barrels each day by 1982] we will run out of oil within the next 40 years. As China and India develop their economies world consumption of oil, gas and coal will rise dramatically reducing our deadline for change. By 2030 the world will be using 116 million barrels a day. Canada has large deposits of tar sand from which oil can be extracted economically using our natural gas to run the refinery. These deposits are included in the world oil reserve numbers. Residents down stream from the tar sands are showing an increase in the number of cases of a rare type of cancer. All oil gets sold to the highest bidder. Since 1950 world fossil fuel consumption has increased 500%.
The United States uses 20.8 million barrels of oil every day and imports 15.6 million barrels of it. Oil can also be converted into many types of plastics and industrial chemicals which can be recycled and used indefinitely. However, once it is burned it is gone forever.
Ten percent of the oil we consume is used to produce 350 million pounds of plastic each year. This plastic is not biodegradable and unless it is recycled it pollutes our environment forever. Chemicals used in plastic can now be found in every human. The problem of plastic pollution can be solved by using plastics made from corn or soybean which is biodegradable. One such product is Mirel made by Metabolix. This is nothing new. Henry Ford actually made a demonstration automobile from soy plastic.
As we approach the end of our reserves we can expect to experience rationing of some kind. Does anyone have the numbers on fuel used by recreation boaters, off roaders, race cars [Indy cars now run on 100% ethanol], and the military; planes, ships, tanks and trucks? We should also consider the oil used for their tires and lubrication. Do we know how much energy the Government uses and how much can be saved by turning Government offices into virtual offices with employees "working" at home? Do we know how much energy/oil is used by Government funded projects?
1.4 Natural Gas
Natural gas requires no processing and can be easily distributed by pipeline to individual consumers. It is a preferred heating fuel and is the cleanest fuel readily available, although it too produces acid flue gasses and has finite availability. Methane gas is also found as a solid hydrate on the floor of the arctic ocean but a method of harvesting this has not yet been developed.
1.5 Soil
We are also depleting soil and soil nutrients. Agricultural crops remove nutrients from the soil. If chemical insecticides, herbicides and fertilizers [made from oil and gas] are used to manage the crops, the natural soil organisms that digest the waste, aerate the soil and release nitrogen for the plants are killed and a dependence on non-organic farming is established. This guarantees an increase in food prices as the cost of oil rises. Parts of North America that had 20 inches of topsoil now have 2 inches as a result of monoculture and industrial farming. Cattle feed lots pollute sections of ground so that nothing will grow there for a hundred years.
Every year planet earth loses 60,000 square kilometers of agricultural land as deserts grow. This may be caused by global warming, reduced precipitation or poor land management. Mexico loses more than 1000 square kilometers a year. By 2025 Asia will lose one third of its agricultural land, Africa two thirds and South America one fifth.
Mud slides move large amounts of topsoil into the oceans.
1.6 Fish
World fish stocks are becoming exhausted. In 40 years the world's annual fish harvest has risen from 49 million tons in 1965 to over 110 million tons today. 52 of the 120 indigenous North American fish varieties have become extinct. The introduction of invasive species like zebra mussels, lampreys and Asian Carp have displaced a lot of desirable food fish.
The European Union has had to reduce annual catch quotas from 314,000 tonnes to 156,000 tons. Use of illegal nets and chains dragged over the ocean floor to chase fish result in 27 million tonnes per year of “by catch” (unwanted species that are destroyed), destruction of habitat and depletion of acquatic populations.
1.7 Potable Water
Water is both a renewable and a finite resource. Canada has 20% of the world's fresh water but only 7% of the world's renewable fresh water. A lot of our fresh water has been stored in our lakes and aquifers since the last ice age. Unfortunately we have already polluted the sediment in the bottoms of our Great Lakes with toxins like PCB,s which will show in the water samples forever.
If water is considered a commodity it will be subject to NAFTA. As a freely traded commodity, the Canadian Government will not be able to control export and keep it for Canadians.
Presently over 1 billion people do not have clean drinking water. By 2025 2/3 of the world [about 5 billion people] will be short of water because of population increases and poor management. Global warming will exacerbate this situation. We use 70% of our fresh water for agriculture and 20% for industry, so even if all homeowners stopped using water entirely it will have little effect on the groundwater level in Arizona which is dropping one meter each year. Water used, such as the 110,000 L. to build a car and the 130 million L./day used by a nuclear power plant, is really just borrowed. As long as the water is returned cleaner than when it is taken the same water can be recycled indefinitely, but we do not know how to do this. Water used in the tar sands projects gets held in man made toxic lakes and there is a concern that these holding areas will leak.
Water conservation for Canadians is encouraged to restrict the amount of water entering the sewage system. All of this water is polluted when mixed with the industrial waste, drugs and cleaners that are also dumped into the sewers. Treatment plants are unable to remove these contaminants which remain in the water returned to the rivers and in the sewage sludge which can then only be used as toxic fertilizer or toxic landfill.
Geothermal heating systems for a single home, often pump 12 gallons of water per minute out of the ground, extract the heat and dump the waste into the drains instead of pumping it down a second well back into the water table. With increased water consumption we lower the water table. As we exceed the replenishment rate of water from pristine sources that have been filtered slowly through miles of earth, we draw local polluted surface water directly into the acquafer. The quality of water diminishes and wells have to be dug deeper.
1.8 Space
The world now has in addition to 950 functioning satellites 26,000 large man-made objects in near-earth space. 14,000 with diameters over 10 cm are monitored. It is estimated that there is more than ¼ million 1 cm to 10 cm sized bodies, 75 million between 0.1 and 1 cm in size and 10 to the 14 smaller than a few microns. All these bits of space junk are traveling 10 to 20 times faster than a bullet. A one centimeter sized piece can disable a satellite or smash another piece of junk into smaller pieces. These collisions have been documented and there is a concern that at some critical level an avalanche-like effect could make working in space impossible. There are 51 nuclear powered satellites in earth orbits. When they come down we can expect radiation levels on earth to increase.
2 Renewable Resources
2.1 Natural fibers
At the turn of the century [before last] hemp was used by average people to make things [like clothes] in their own homes. Hemp grew wild. The U.S. flagship "USS Constitution" had hemp sails and ropes. The sailors wore hemp uniforms and wrote on paper made from hemp, and hemp seed oil was burned in lamps. Until we were able to eradicate the plant by condemning it as a drug, Rockefeller could not sell his coal oil at a profit and DuPont could not sell his plastic shirts. Hemp grows 4 times faster than trees so if we had used hemp for paper production instead of wood pulp we would still have most of our virgin forests. Another member of the hemp family is KENAF which offers all the benefits of the marijuana plant without the drug properties.
2.2 Wind power
Wind power is finally being seriously developed. Carbon fiber and super magnets have increased the output of generators and made the moving parts lighter and stronger. A new design of wind powered generator is a helium balloon with fins to make it roll like a barrel with a generator mounted on the end of the barrel. This design will not require an expensive tower to allow it to operate in the stronger winds that exist at higher altitudes.
2.3 Electricity
Electricity from hydro power is considered environmentally friendly but there are costs associated with damming a river and flooding areas. When the James Bay project flooded thousands of acres of permafrost, the swamp thawed out and the area has bubbled methane ever since. Most of the preferred hydro sites have already been exploited but new technologies are being developed to generate electricity from small streams and tidal flows. Uranium is also used to produce electricity but it has lost its status as a preferred power source because it has proven to be dangerous and expensive, and the waste from these plants cannot be easily stored or disposed of.
Electricity is also generated from coal, oil and gas fired systems which all produce greenhouse gas. According to the Gartner research group, the global Information Technology industry is responsible for 2% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. This is the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by the aviation industry. A computer running Vista uses twice the energy used by the same machine doing the same things with a Linux operating system.
Everyday we invent new ways to use electricity and we cannot make more of it with our old production/delivery systems. Brownouts and blackouts are inevitable unless we learn how to use less of it. Smart homes that can shut down the dishwasher and clothes dryer when the air conditioner turns on will go a long way to solving this dilemma. Costs of setting up our current infrastructure have not yet been paid off so there is no political incentive to encourage an alternate supply that will not carry and retire the existing debt.
Electricity is expensive energy. The electricity produced from cheap oil sets the retail price, so cheaper electricity produced from water power and more expensive solar and biogas power have prices adjusted or subsidized to match the oil powered electricity rate. The taxpayer is actually paying 11 cents/kwh for electricity from biogas and 47 cents/kwh for electricity from solar systems although he is billed only 4.3 cents/kwh which was set when oil was cheap. Now as the price of oil rises, the price of electricity will have to rise. From this point on biogas produced electricity will actually cost the population less. If subsidies where removed from the equation this would become obvious.
2.4 Bio-Gas
Bio-gas escapes from rotting vegetation. It makes garbage dumps stink. If captured it can power an engine and generate electricity. The proposed recycling of compostables could be done locally to reduce the cost of trucking and eliminate the smell of waste waiting to be picked up. Backyard compost bins work well when people understand the process and enjoy gardening but for the rest of us, a small community processing plant might be more promotable. Locals would drop off their vegetable waste on their way to work. The waste would be fed into a digester which stirs it up and cooks it. Methane/carbon dioxide released is captured and runs a generator which feeds electricity back into the grid.
Two Ontario farmers are currently operating such a system and have eliminated their $2500 monthly hydro bill. They use cow manure. An urban system could be a closed odourless system producing electricity and high quality pathogen free fertilizer.
The largest emmitter of methane has got to be our sewage system. The quantity of energy we flush down the toilet is probably close to the total energy in all the food we consume less about 1600 calories per person per day.
2.5 Bio-fuels
Bio-fuels made from vegetable matter are being promoted, but the whole concept is still in development. Ethanol is used successfully in Brazil where it is made from sugar cane waste but we produce it from corn. If we use 20 calories of fossil energy to deliver 1 calorie of corn [as Dr. Suzuki claimed in his documentary on Cuba] and the conversion to ethanol is only 1.3 to 1, we are not doing anything to solve the problem. If the entire U.S. corn crop was converted into ethanol it would replace only 12% of the U.S. oil consumption. Most Canadian ethanol manufacturing facilities are owned, or controlled, by the farmers who grow the corn on prime agricultural land and feed their cattle with the flour left over from the ethanol process. As we produce more of this ethanol for internal combustion engines we grow less food. Ethanol however, can be produced from wood chips, and a commercial-scale plant to produce ethanol is being constructed by Iogen. It has got to be harder to produce ethanol from wood chips than it would be to produce it from a crop such as Jerusalem artichokes which could be harvested from a field of compostable garbage. The crop would self seed from the small tubers left in the ground after each harvest.
A trial presently underway produces ethanol from unmarketable potatoes, and then uses the residue in a bio-gas digester. This combination looks promising. Vegetable oils can be used to power diesel engines and show most promise as an interim replacement fuel for the internal combustion engine. Diesel fuel can also be manufactured from algae. All bio-fuels produce more nitrous oxide than fossil fuels.
Jatropha is a weed that grows in India, Africa, North America and the Caribbean. Its seeds contain up to 40% oil that will run a standard diesel engine. 15-20% bio-fuel made from this plant is used to run India's railway. Jatropha yields more than 4X as much bio-fuel as soybean and more than 10X as much as corn.
2.6 Hydrogen
Ultimately, hydrogen may be the fuel of the future. It burns cleanly but is difficult to store or transport safely. Most of the hydrogen we currently use is made from natural gas but it can be produced by passing a direct current through water. It is a slow process and requires energy in to produce the fuel before you can get energy out.
A direct current causes hydrogen to be released at one electrode and oxygen gas at the other. If these gases are to be used in an internal combustion engine or otherwise burnt, there is no reason to separate them in production. An alternating current would effectively cause the anode and cathode to alternate with each cycle and a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen gas would be released at both electrodes. At a particular resonant frequency, the alternating current through the water causes gas to be released throughout the full path of electrons between the two electrodes and gas generation increases dramatically. The inventor who discovered this, died of a heart attack and the only operating machine was sold to a Canadian company that is so busy with it's own knitting that it has not done anything with the device. They may have sold it to the U.S..
John Kansius discovered that radio frequencies can also be used to break up water, but as we all suspect, the energy in equals energy out.
Work is also progressing on energy cells which transform chemicals/hydrogen into electrical energy and super capacitors which should work as very efficient batteries that can be charged and discharged quickly without damage.
2.7 Solar
The oldest, cheapest and most reliable solar architecture is known as “passive solar” and includes things like south facing windows, overhanging roofs, skylights, heat storage walls and floors and a myriad of little things that create a more pleasant temperature moderated environment. The main drawback to passive solar is that it is difficult to share the energy collected and almost impossible to sell it as a commodity but the benefit of passive design is that all gains are very low cost and do reduce consumption of resources. Just considering passive solar for new construction does have a positive influence on overall building design. It is a good place to start.
Then there is the darling of the technological age called “photovoltaics” or “PV” described by Albert Einstein in a 1905 paper. The application consists of harnessing a physical process where light is absorbed and a charge is separated by selected material surfaces. We collect the charge and utilize the resulting electric current. The process requires exceptionally pure materials, enormous capital investment and scrupulous attention to detail in manufacture. PV is the newest, most expensive and least robust solar technology.
The workhorse technology is referred to as “solar-thermal” and is based on the simple fact that when sun shines on an object that object gets hot. The more sunshine: the hotter the object. Temperatures up to several thousand degrees are possible. The technology required to efficiently utilize the energy in a hot object is centuries old and well understood. The heat can be efficiently converted to electricity by the well known Rankine cycle and the machinery used to accomplish this is rugged, reliable and available. It can also provide “on-demand” duty by using heat from geothermal or other sources of heat. It has virtually unlimited application. Solar-thermal is the most affordable, efficient and versatile technology to-day, according to Paul Passarelli of http://solarandthermal.com
The common strenght of all solar technologies is their natural long life. A well designed solar solution will provide benefits from 20 to 25 years for a PV system, from 50 to 75 years or more for a solar-themal solution and for the life of the structure for a passive design. Only when these long lifetimes are considered do the true benfits really become obvious. The true worth of technology is to create value. As long as the “free” moniker is attached, it is difficult for people to accept the “cost” of some of these systems. However, once they look at the cost benefit ratio it becomes clear that solar has a proper place in the spectrum of solutions.
2.8 Heat Pumps
Heat pumps move heat from one area that gets colder to another area that gets warmer. A residential heat pump can move 5 times as much heat [energy] than the energy used to run the pump. However, as the outside temperature drops these air to air heat pumps become less efficient and a back up furnace has to be used. Geothermal heat pumps collect heat from the earth and can be used year round. Larger, commercial heat pumps are more efficient and can be used economically to boil water to drive electrical generators [co-generation].
2.9 Recycling
Recycling is also a renewable resource. Anything that can be re-used reduces the consumption of new materials. Products can often be designed for ease of recycling further reducing the cost of manufacturing from reused materials and the consumption of energy. The general population has become accustomed to the recycling of automobiles, paper, plastics, electronics, batteries, kitchen and garden waste. Commercial businesses have been recycling their high value scrap for years. Now, as the value of all raw materials escalates with increased demand from developing economies we are only now starting to appreciate the value of sorted garbage. Recycling has also been given a boost by legislation to reduce industrial pollution. It is no longer acceptable to flush chemicals, drugs or heavy metals down the drains. Although it is still possible to purchase "garburators" for kitchen waste disposal, most municipalities do no approve their installation. Whatever is put into the drains has to be removed at the sewage treatment facility before the effluent is pumped back into the river. Methods used to capture waste have real commercial value. Recycling has reduced the volume of waste added to the landfill sites.
2.10 Incineration
Incineration of waste can be used to generate heat for electric power. If this waste is burned in a plasma arc there are no harmful flue gases. This process does not actually burn the waste, it vaporizes it into gaseous molecules which is called "singas". This can be burned to release energy, harmless flue gases and a glass like clinker that traps the toxins. Plasco is presently operating such a test facility. We asked if they can turn tar sand into electricity, but they haven't answered.
One dump in India planned an incinerator/generator project but had to abandon it when they realized that the 8000 garbage pickers that lived in the dump left nothing to burn.
2.11 Geothermal
Geothermal energy is a renewable heat from the earth that can be easily available at hot springs and geysers. Holes drilled into the earth can also tap into the heat given off by the earth's molten core. Even low grade heat near the surface can be concentrated by heat pumps into a higher grade [higher temperature] and used to heat a home.
2.12 Free Energy Free Energy?
If you take the solenoid out of a door chime and exchange the soft iron central core (the moving piece) with a rare earth magnet, you will discover that it takes 7 to 9 volts to make the ordinary iron piece move, but only 3 volts to shoot the magnet across the room. Where does the extra energy come from?
An Ottawa group looked into this and found a 30 year old patent by Benjamine Robert Teal that worked a lot like a door bell solenoid that turned a crank. Robert made all kinds of claims about the efficiency of his engine and tried, but failed, to market the product. The Ottawa group built a version of one of these “magnipulsion” engines using materials that were not all available to Robert 30 years ago. Theirs had two opposed “cylinders” which were coils of copper wire, about 1 and 1/4 inch long with a central hole just over ½ inch in diameter. The “pistons” were stacks of 10 (little lifesavers) ½ inch diameter supermagnets skewered onto ¼ brass rods which extended beyond the stack of magnets. These pistons slid in sleeve bearings so that the magnets could travel the 1 and ¼ inch and be drawn into the coil when a pulse of electricity was supplied to the coil. The pistons were connected to a crank with a 5/8 inch throw by “connecting rods” made from 1/8 inch thick aluminum flatstock. The crank turned a 5/16 inch shaft supported by ball bearings and fitted with a flywheel and a cam disk to activate contact points made from “bic” pen pocket clips.
This engine was built with hand tools and literally thrown together without drawings other than those provided by Robert's two patents. The device ran enthusiastically for about 30 seconds until the “bic” pen parts fused together and the immediate thought was to rebuild with better quality components – perhaps “Mont Blanc” or “Shaffer”.
This design can be dramatically improved with a little planning and the use of a machine shop. Four cylinders would eliminate the need for a flywheel and a computer controlled electronic replacement for the mechanical contacts would reduce resistance losses and provide engine speed and power control with pulse timing and duration. Ultra capacitors could be used to save the pulse that fires a coil and feed it back through the same coil as the piston is withdrawn, to supply a charge for the next coil/cylinder. It looks as if Robert's engine may have been capturing energy from the collapsing magnetic field. This improved version may not be an overunity engine but if it does not draw more current when under load, as Robert claimed over thirty years ago, it just may be a good choice for a number of applications.
None of this is patentable. Have fun.
3 Global Population
The world population is now 6.6 billion. It is expected to rise to 9.1 billion by 2050 and peak at under 10 billion. Most of this population increase will occur in Asia, Africa, Lain America and the Middle East. Until quite recently these countries were not even a part of the world economy.
China now manufactures everything for a fraction of what it costs us to make it ourselves, and India provides lowest cost English speaking call centers, and back room engineering and computer technicians that can deliver finished plans etc. for less than we hire North American staff. India is also aggressively entering the field of education with internet tutoring. Can India U. be far behind?
The North American population is at present 333 million [that is less than 20% of the total world population]. By 2050 we [North America] will have 4 retirees for every worker. As these developing economies grow their workforce will be able to buy whatever they want with the money we have been sending them. They will purchase our resource businesses as the U.S. shuts down Canadian manufacturing. Think of the Chinese workforce as a very large union. Unless we can develop new exportable goods or services and maintain ownership of these assets we will not be in a position to bid on anything.
4 Individual Consumption
Populations in developed countries consume and waste a lot more than the populations in developing countries. In North America and Japan the average individual uses 350 liters of water each day (This includes water used for agriculture and industry). In sub-Sahara Africa the average is 15 liters.
Developing countries eventually become developed and start to consume like the rest of us. As the 1,313,973,713 Chinese can afford to purchase two bowls of rice each day instead of one, and the 1,095,351,995 Indians [to-day's numbers] can afford to purchase an extra gallon of gas every day, we are going to become uncomfortably aware of their existence. At present the average Chinese uses only 1/7 as much energy as the average Canadian but China produces 7X as much carbon dioxide [greenhouse gas] as Canada. China now has 10 cars for every 1000 people but within 13 years will have more cars on their roads than the U.S. and will probably be using more oil than the U.S. The Kyoto agreement proposed that developed countries should reduce their pollution so that developing nations could catch them up.
100 vegetarians can be fed with the same amount of food production energy as 1 carnivore. Most vegetarians like the taste of beef, chicken and fish, and manufacturers try to simulate the flavors. Vegetarianism is becoming a concern for other people rather than a concern for the welfare of animals. Every day 35,000 people die from starvation.
5 Toxic Accumulation
5.1 Toxins
A toxin is a chemical that damages living organisms. In small quantities a toxin can often be tolerated by an organism, but if the organism cannot neutralize or eliminate the toxin, or if the toxin does not decompose fast enough or does not decompose at all, ongoing exposure to the substance can result in a detrimental accumulation within the organism. Exposure to toxins includes ingesting the stuff. Mercury ballast that escaped from submarines sunk during the second world war is absorbed by growing plants which get eaten by fish that are still being eaten by humans. Humans don't tolerate heavy metals very well and yet we still play with all kinds of dangerous things. Those energy conservation bulbs contain mercury. We have invented a lot of other compounds that are difficult to eliminate once they are released into the environment. Concentrations of just about anything can be toxic. China has already killed 80% of its rivers with pollution. Their sewers flush untreated into their rivers.
5.2 Soil Pollution
Toxins can accumulate in the earth which taints our food and affects our health. Lately we have figured out that our dumps [landfill sites] leech into our water table toxins which ultimately spread everywhere. This is also the reason that chemical and oil spills are treated with such intensity. Then there are products like auto cleaners and Polyclens. This poisonous stuff makes oil and old paint water soluble so that it washes off with water. How do you use these products without dumping them into the sewer?
5.3 Water Pollution
Over 150 dead zones exist in the oceans where low-oxygen levels kill all marine life. These areas, some as small as a square kilometer and others as large as 70,000 square kilometers are caused where pollution, mostly from fertilizer runoff [industrial waste, animal manure and human sewage], accumulates in areas with low tide activity or water movement. It is too costly or impossible to remove some chemicals that are thrown into the drains, so toxins are released into our lakes and rivers. Fertilizers made from sewage sludge, and sludge buried in landfills contaminates groundwater.
Red Tide is an algal bloom caused in part by excess nitrogen in the water. It contaminates shellfish, poisons humans and kills whales. 40 years ago red tide occurred in China 10 times a year. Now it occurs there 300 times a year.
5.4 Air Quality
The “Asian Brown Cloud” is a brown haze that forms under certain weather conditions over South Asia and India. It is often a 2 mile thick cloud of airborne particles from the burning of bio-mass, wood fires, industrial emissions (factories) and cars. It is 75% man made and is not necessarily produced locally. The ABC forms in certain areas when particular weather patterns exist and can travel half way around the world in a week.
Rising energy costs have driven home owners and builders to seal buildings, resulting in a reduction of air quality within the buildings and an increased concern for the health of occupants. With an air-tight building, indoor air quality can be maintained only if the stale air polluted with carbon dioxide is exhausted and fresh air brought in. In winter heat is lost to the outside with the exhausted air.
Available Heat Recovery [HRV] systems exhaust stale air and bring in fresh air but their ability to transfer heat from the outgoing air is very poor. Typically these units restrict air exchange on a cold day and recirculate most of the stale air back into the home. When 10% fresh cold air is mixed with 90% stale warm air, it can feel as if the unit is 80% efficient. One HRV manufacturer [they are actually all owned by one U.S. company] calls this a sensible efficiency of 80%. even though little heat is recovered from the outgoing air.
Because all available HRVs recover less heat energy than the increased losses from the forced ventilation, they are not mandatory in new home construction. Commercial buildings [shopping malls, apartments, office towers] are required to be ventilated, so any heat recovered from this source of exhausted hot air would reduce energy consumption/waste. There are no effective, affordable heat recovery systems available and billions of BTU's are released into the atmosphere from private homes and commercial buildings.
An unfunded Ottawa group has been working on a DIY exchanger which apparently has a real efficiency of over 90%, made from recycled pop cans and sheets of extruded polystyrene that can effectively recover heat from ventilation air, stove exhaust and clothes dryers without plugging up.. This heat exchanger is still patentable [efficiency of this device has nothing to do with used pop cans]. This group meets for beer and pizza several times during the winter when cold days remind them of the urgency of their project. Funding for this project could very well come from Europe.
6 Environmental Economics
Economics is concerned with the short and long term payback of any investment from the perspective of the investor. Once a product or service has passed along to the user or purchaser the investor has calculated his gain. Environmental economics places a value on the hidden costs such as the occupational health of the factory workers who produce the item, the industrial waste cleanup costs and the environmental costs of operating the product and disposing of the item at the end of its life. Environmental economics is the “cost” to the environment and because we are only just discovering the damage that we are doing, this is not that easy to calculate.
To-date academia has calculated the the “footprint” of countries and the “foot print” of individuals but I am not aware of a “footprint” for a city. If we knew for sure that per person New York is more environmentally friendly than say Stratford on Avon we might know what a most sustainable city looks like.
Environmental economics can also be a study of the costs of change. Alternate energy sources will require alternate revenue sources for Governments. When all homes are net zero energy consumers and all vehicles run on fuel cells charged by backyard solar collectors, our whole economy will look different.
Corporations make decisions that benefit the owners of the business not the employees or the country in which they operate. Their decisions are based on the costs and availability of; (1) natural resources or raw materials, (2) suitable facilities, (3) energy, (4) labour, (5) management, (6) capital, (7) access to a market, (8) product end value. Numbers for all of these factors change dramatically when environmental costs are added to each. Governments have not yet figured out how to charge environmental costs back to the producers. They can impose energy taxes but corporate owners can move industries out of a country. Climate change can also dramatically alter the dynamics of these decisions Economies dependent on imports controlled by non-nationals can be shut down overnight as a result of a change of Government or a disaster on the other side of the world. Employee owned businesses are less likely to sell out or shut down in times of adversity.
Environmental economics is also the study of money relative to the total environment considering the predicted, planned, unplanned and inevitable changes. Interplay between the forces of change needs to be considered. The retirement funds of all North Americans are presently invested either directly or indirectly in the stock market. We [North Americans] collectively own 7 trillion (that's a 7 with 12 zeros after it) dollars worth of equity in world businesses. As baby boomers go into retirement, this stock will be liquidated, but the only potential purchasers are the 80% of the developed world who don't have any money and the Chinese stock market which has been compared to a gambling casino. Their government is a 50% owner of all foreign businesses in their country and the people in power still like to control everything.
Lately Canada has been busy selling its resource industries to foreigners who can then export raw materials at reduced profit margins and import finished products at high profit margins so that profits are taken out of the country. We don't see the benefits for Canadians.
Some developing economies already expect debt forgiveness and medication at cost, and starving people will manufacture their own solar powered bicycles, food cookers and water heaters rather than purchase them from us or the U.S.. International trade will become more of a moral rather than economic issue. Free international trade produces more products for more people on a global scale, but does not guarantee benefits for all players. Real benefits for "both" parties can
only be appreciated if there is balanced trade, but total import/export numbers are only half the problem. As we export jobs and import essential consumption we spread our income gap because we do not redistribute national wealth to all our citizens very evenly. Only importers/exporters will benefit. Also, dependence on only a few imports or exports of any kind does not create a healthy economy. Ideally, China, Korea or Japan imports X worth of product from Canada and Canada imports X worth of product from China, Korea or Japan. The numbers imbalance would be eliminated if export shipping permits were only granted when matched with an equal value shipping import. Then we could have free and equal trade with any country we choose and trade would became a moral reponsibility for importers/exporters (oil for guns or wheat for medicine).
7 Global Warming
The earth has experienced numerous ice ages that have come and gone in the past. Scientists have determined that the earth has undergone both rapid changes in temperature and also at other times gradual changes of climate. Rapid declines in temperature have been associated with volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts with the earth. A cloud of dust can, and has created, [recorded in early Canadian history], an 18 month winter. Warming periods are associated with variations in solar emissions and/or changes to the earth's atmosphere which can trap more heat against the earth's surface.
The weather we enjoy happens because the earth is heated unevenly by the sun. Air is warmed most at the equator and rises, and falls back to earth at the poles where it cools in lower intensity sunlight that has made a longer oblique passage through the atmosphere. Land masses, oceans and the rotation of the earth also affect this heating and cooling of air and creates such things as the jet streams of moving air, tornadoes, hurricanes and the shear winds experienced at the poles.
This latest period of global warming appears to be self inflicted.
The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere is higher than it has ever been since animals emerged from the ark and the 2 degrees that the world temperature has gone up in the past 50 years is directly proportional to the increase in carbon dioxide we have produced. 2 degrees does not sound like much but if your temperature went up 2 degrees you would want to see a doctor.
Presently we have 385 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere. This number increases each year by 3. When it reaches 450 parts per million we will likely not be able to adapt to the climate conditions because we will have to learn to grow food without water and eat jellyfish.
As the earth warms up these weather patterns will change dramatically. At present a stream of warm water flows towards the British Isles and makes France a balmy place to live. A very small change in the temperature of an ocean and these streams that establish our known climates for specific areas will deviate. A very small change in direction of the gulf stream and Londoners could find themselves in a Saskatchewan winter. Their homes are not built for those temperatures.
The glaciers are melting and rainfall patterns are changing. As ocean levels rise, countries like Bangladesh will disappear under water. Whole populations will be forced to migrate.
North Americans are not immune. The storm that wiped out New Orleans will not be an exception and the number of freak shear wind storms experienced along the Canada-US border are expected to increase. These shear winds at 100 miles an hour flattened thousands of acres of trees in a national park. Loggers were not allowed in to clean up so we are waiting for the forest fire that won't be easy to put out. Our biggest weather challenge will be its unpredictability.
8 Urban Planning
"Radiant City" is a docu-drama by Gary Burns and Jim Brown. It outlines the difficulties of making our present communities sustainable.
Reliance on; the personal automobile, a secure energy supply, a balance between the number of able bodied workers and dependent individuals, predictable weather, stable economies and a general ignorance of the global situation has resulted in a lot of communities that are not that easy to retrofit for sustainability. When Russia stopped supplying Cuba with oil the population had to very quickly change the way they grew their food. All the downtown parks in Cuba where turned into food gardens. It might just be a good idea to save a piece of land in each community where compostables could be processed by community gardeners and used to grow something. Another possible suggestion for every community is a secure building, a dome or earth sheltered construction that would survive a big storm and provide protection while repairs are made. This building could serve the community under normal circumstances as a university or shopping mall. Ideally we should be able to grow our own food and walk to work.
Bicycle City http://BicycleCity.com/ is an organization designing what they believe to be an environmentally sustainable community. They have a large membership in many different countries.
9 Sustainable Buildings
The national building code is the minimum standard for construction. Built to code will not survive a tornado. Recommended insulation levels are based on a simple economic formula that considers the life expectancy of the building, the costs of borrowed money and the current price of oil. When we run out of oil almost everything built to-day will not be much fun to live in. The least costly sustainable building to construct would be a stand alone exempt from the costs of the power grid, municipal water supply or sewage treatment facility. Self sufficiency makes municipal services redundant. Back in the cold war era, home owners were encouraged to build bomb shelters stocked with a year's supply of food. What a great idea!
Then there is the "Factor 9 Home" which hopes to reduce energy consumption to one ninth as much energy as a conventional 1970's home. For very little extra cost this home has good solar orientation, better insulation, better windows, good air sealing, a good air-to-air heat exchanger, a waste water heat exchanger, low cost tanks for water storage. An active solar heating system is the only costly addition to this home. All homes could be fitted with these upgrades but as always it's less costly to do it right in the first place. Planned building orientation should be a consideration before granting any building permit.
Another initiative is the "Energy Star" new homes built to reduce home energy consumption by 30%. This voluntary program for production home builders was started in the U.S. in 2000.
Although we are trying to encourage people to use less electricity the Canadian electrical code now calls for a T20 outlet in kitchens. This could be useful for induction cookers coming down the tube. In the 1950's, homes had 60 amp supplies for the whole house. Now we are required by code to supply every kitchen with a 20 amp circuit in addition to the 15 amps for the refrigerator, 15 amps for the microwave, 15 amps for the dishwasher, 40 amps for the stove, two 15 amp outlets for every 6 feet of counter top. The only appliances that I own that need 20 amps are a table saw and an arc welder, and I'm not allowed to use either one of them in the kitchen...anymore.
10 Waste Management
Canada produces 3 trillion liters of sewage each year. Halifax dumps 65.7 billion liters of untreated sewage into the ocean, St. John's 33 billion liters, Victoria 34 billion liters and Vancouver 22 billion liters. Montreal flushes 3.6 billion liters into the St. Lawrence. This would include all the drugs, chemicals, heavy metals and used condoms that kill fish. A large percentage of small communities and Indian reservations copy this technology. This is unfortunate. If we kept our rivers clean, we could pump the water out just before it flows into the ocean and sell it. Halifax has recently announced sewage treatment improvements.
These examples of blatant pollution are very costly to correct because these old cities have only one drainage system. Their toilets flush into the same drain that collects the storm water runoff. Cities like Ottawa have a separate drain for runoff which dumps the storm water [and pet droppings from streets and parks] directly into the river. The human sewage is piped to a treatment facility. Some systems work better than others. Older parts of most cities do not have weeping tile around the foundations of buildings. A heavy rain, and sump pumps move the excess water into the only drain system they are connected to. The sewage treatment plants become overloaded and in the case of Ottawa as much as 25% often overflows untreated into the river.
1 qt. of motor oil can pollute 250,000 gal. of water, and North Americans “spill” 180 million gallons of oil every year from auto engines, hydraulic equipment, washed from mechanics hands, chainsaws, lubricant sprays to stop squeaks and rust, and from garden sprayers to control dust, insects and weeds. This annual amount of oil is 16X as much as spilled by the Exon Valdez. It enters the sewage system and eventually it all ends up in our water system.
Legislation, hiring more compliance enforcement officers or paying more people to measure the rate of destruction more accurately, will not stop anyone from doing what they have to do to make a living. A change to environmental sustainability will not occur untill inhabitants can be offered security, comfort and gainful employment in a single location. Environmental sustainability is just not going to happen piecemeal.
A recommended publication that can be downloaded for free if you poke around with weblifeorg/humanure/default html is The Humanure Handbook 3rd edition available at wwwjenkinspublishing.com
11 Unlikely But Possible Cataclysmic Events
Our sun holds all the planets in their orbits but the planets cause the sun to wobble. Large planets like Jupiter cause solar flares to be drawn out of the sun's surface. When these large planets are closest to the sun [all orbits are elliptical] these solar flares are largest. These solar flares are what we call sun spots that rotate around the sun as they follow the orbiting planets and emit massive amounts of radiation. If the earth had the misfortune to to be blasted by radiation from a worst possible solar flare all living entities on the face of the planet would be killed. A lessor dose of cosmic radiation could destroy all electronic components. The next time we are in a position to suffer sun spot activity will be on or about 21 Dec 2012, the last day of the Aztec calendar. [note. it is only the last day because they did not carve a symbol in their calendar clock for the next era, much the same as our Y2K problem].
Along with possible medical pandemics perhaps we should prepare for catastrophes like asteroid impacts and mega tsunamis. La Palma is one of the Canary Islands. It is a vulcanic island with cliffs 2400 meters above the ocean that is 3000 meters deep. This area has active volcanoes and the western half of this island (500 billion tons) could break off and slide into the ocean. This would cause a mega tsunami that would reach America within 6 hours as a 90 meter high wave.
We could also be surprised by an old volcano in Yellowstone National Park. If it explodes as it did a few thousand years ago the world will have to survive a nuclear winter.
10 Aug. 2008
Ottawa Sustainable Community Association (OSCA)
With thanks to the hundreds of people responsible for creating all this public information. Memories don't have bibliographies. If we have offended any author with omission of credits please let us know, and if you have corrections/updates please let us know.
The solution to problems of environmental degradation and resource depletion will not be solved by one person with one idea. We need a hundred solutions to the hundred problems and the support and co-operation of everyone to implement the most cost effective changes for any community. Only as each individual or community of individuals becomes aware of global conditions, change and become less dependent on our established infrastructure, can we begin to reduce our dependence on the world's limited resources.
The Ottawa Sustainable Community Association (OSCA) recognizes the paradigm shift towards ”mass collaboration” where a group of team players can identify and solve a problem faster than experts promoting and defending their own positions and products, and a degree in any current subject is no guarantee of a job. Mass collaboration requires mass education and team participation.
We think that all politicians and people who believe themselves to be environmentalists should at least have a baseline environmental literacy. To date we have not been able to find a convenient source of full spectrum environmental education that an average person can assimilate in the equivalent of one intensive weekend so we have started to create one. It needs a lot more work. Additions and corrections welcomed. Suggestions are needed for links to the best 10 websites [easy, fun, useful] with free information to complement each chapter, so interested readers are encouraged to expand the experience. We are not funded by anyone, so we can tell it like it is, but we need to have the facts straight about:
1.Resource Depletion: fuel, water, land, soil quality.
2.Renewable Energy and the emergence of the new Establishment.
3.Global Population and the implications of the inevitable crunch.
4.Individual Consumption: the needs and wants of developing economies.
5.Toxic Accumulation and the effects on air, water, soil, food and health.
6.Environmental Economics and the costs associated with change.
7.Global Warming; fact or fiction. A history of the study.
8.Urban Planning Walk to work? Grow your own?
9.Sustainable Buildings and the changing National Building Code.
10.Waste Management and the economics of local and regional recycling.
11.Unlikely but possible cataclysmic events.
1 Resource Depletion
1.1 Trees
One acre of mature hardwood forest will produce enough dead fall firewood to heat one average home for a year. A modern air tight wood stove with a catalytic converter is an option for some to heat their homes, but is not practical for a large concentration of urban dwellers. In some parts of the world where the general population rely on firewood to cook their food the landscape has been stripped bare. Without trees topsoil erodes and wildlife has nowhere to live. Living healthy trees are a part of a healthy ecosystem.
1.2 Coal
Coal fueled the industrial revolution and is still used to produce the steam that drives many electrical generators. Unfortunately the burning of coal releases a number of nasty air pollutants that cause breathing problems and acid rain that destroys vegetation and buildings alike. China has a lot of low grade [dirty] coal and is burning more of it every day. Coal can be distilled to produce kerosene (coal oil) and jet fuel.
1.3 Oil
Oil, and gasoline made from oil also contain sulfur. When these fuels are burnt, sulphur dioxide is released which mixes with rain and produces a mild sulphuric acid that etches everything and destroys lakes. Every year more oil deposits are discovered but the size of the discoveries is getting smaller which is an indication that most of the oil in the earth has already been discovered. At the world's present rate of consumption [82 million barrels each day by 1982] we will run out of oil within the next 40 years. As China and India develop their economies world consumption of oil, gas and coal will rise dramatically reducing our deadline for change. By 2030 the world will be using 116 million barrels a day. Canada has large deposits of tar sand from which oil can be extracted economically using our natural gas to run the refinery. These deposits are included in the world oil reserve numbers. Residents down stream from the tar sands are showing an increase in the number of cases of a rare type of cancer. All oil gets sold to the highest bidder. Since 1950 world fossil fuel consumption has increased 500%.
The United States uses 20.8 million barrels of oil every day and imports 15.6 million barrels of it. Oil can also be converted into many types of plastics and industrial chemicals which can be recycled and used indefinitely. However, once it is burned it is gone forever.
Ten percent of the oil we consume is used to produce 350 million pounds of plastic each year. This plastic is not biodegradable and unless it is recycled it pollutes our environment forever. Chemicals used in plastic can now be found in every human. The problem of plastic pollution can be solved by using plastics made from corn or soybean which is biodegradable. One such product is Mirel made by Metabolix. This is nothing new. Henry Ford actually made a demonstration automobile from soy plastic.
As we approach the end of our reserves we can expect to experience rationing of some kind. Does anyone have the numbers on fuel used by recreation boaters, off roaders, race cars [Indy cars now run on 100% ethanol], and the military; planes, ships, tanks and trucks? We should also consider the oil used for their tires and lubrication. Do we know how much energy the Government uses and how much can be saved by turning Government offices into virtual offices with employees "working" at home? Do we know how much energy/oil is used by Government funded projects?
1.4 Natural Gas
Natural gas requires no processing and can be easily distributed by pipeline to individual consumers. It is a preferred heating fuel and is the cleanest fuel readily available, although it too produces acid flue gasses and has finite availability. Methane gas is also found as a solid hydrate on the floor of the arctic ocean but a method of harvesting this has not yet been developed.
1.5 Soil
We are also depleting soil and soil nutrients. Agricultural crops remove nutrients from the soil. If chemical insecticides, herbicides and fertilizers [made from oil and gas] are used to manage the crops, the natural soil organisms that digest the waste, aerate the soil and release nitrogen for the plants are killed and a dependence on non-organic farming is established. This guarantees an increase in food prices as the cost of oil rises. Parts of North America that had 20 inches of topsoil now have 2 inches as a result of monoculture and industrial farming. Cattle feed lots pollute sections of ground so that nothing will grow there for a hundred years.
Every year planet earth loses 60,000 square kilometers of agricultural land as deserts grow. This may be caused by global warming, reduced precipitation or poor land management. Mexico loses more than 1000 square kilometers a year. By 2025 Asia will lose one third of its agricultural land, Africa two thirds and South America one fifth.
Mud slides move large amounts of topsoil into the oceans.
1.6 Fish
World fish stocks are becoming exhausted. In 40 years the world's annual fish harvest has risen from 49 million tons in 1965 to over 110 million tons today. 52 of the 120 indigenous North American fish varieties have become extinct. The introduction of invasive species like zebra mussels, lampreys and Asian Carp have displaced a lot of desirable food fish.
The European Union has had to reduce annual catch quotas from 314,000 tonnes to 156,000 tons. Use of illegal nets and chains dragged over the ocean floor to chase fish result in 27 million tonnes per year of “by catch” (unwanted species that are destroyed), destruction of habitat and depletion of acquatic populations.
1.7 Potable Water
Water is both a renewable and a finite resource. Canada has 20% of the world's fresh water but only 7% of the world's renewable fresh water. A lot of our fresh water has been stored in our lakes and aquifers since the last ice age. Unfortunately we have already polluted the sediment in the bottoms of our Great Lakes with toxins like PCB,s which will show in the water samples forever.
If water is considered a commodity it will be subject to NAFTA. As a freely traded commodity, the Canadian Government will not be able to control export and keep it for Canadians.
Presently over 1 billion people do not have clean drinking water. By 2025 2/3 of the world [about 5 billion people] will be short of water because of population increases and poor management. Global warming will exacerbate this situation. We use 70% of our fresh water for agriculture and 20% for industry, so even if all homeowners stopped using water entirely it will have little effect on the groundwater level in Arizona which is dropping one meter each year. Water used, such as the 110,000 L. to build a car and the 130 million L./day used by a nuclear power plant, is really just borrowed. As long as the water is returned cleaner than when it is taken the same water can be recycled indefinitely, but we do not know how to do this. Water used in the tar sands projects gets held in man made toxic lakes and there is a concern that these holding areas will leak.
Water conservation for Canadians is encouraged to restrict the amount of water entering the sewage system. All of this water is polluted when mixed with the industrial waste, drugs and cleaners that are also dumped into the sewers. Treatment plants are unable to remove these contaminants which remain in the water returned to the rivers and in the sewage sludge which can then only be used as toxic fertilizer or toxic landfill.
Geothermal heating systems for a single home, often pump 12 gallons of water per minute out of the ground, extract the heat and dump the waste into the drains instead of pumping it down a second well back into the water table. With increased water consumption we lower the water table. As we exceed the replenishment rate of water from pristine sources that have been filtered slowly through miles of earth, we draw local polluted surface water directly into the acquafer. The quality of water diminishes and wells have to be dug deeper.
1.8 Space
The world now has in addition to 950 functioning satellites 26,000 large man-made objects in near-earth space. 14,000 with diameters over 10 cm are monitored. It is estimated that there is more than ¼ million 1 cm to 10 cm sized bodies, 75 million between 0.1 and 1 cm in size and 10 to the 14 smaller than a few microns. All these bits of space junk are traveling 10 to 20 times faster than a bullet. A one centimeter sized piece can disable a satellite or smash another piece of junk into smaller pieces. These collisions have been documented and there is a concern that at some critical level an avalanche-like effect could make working in space impossible. There are 51 nuclear powered satellites in earth orbits. When they come down we can expect radiation levels on earth to increase.
2 Renewable Resources
2.1 Natural fibers
At the turn of the century [before last] hemp was used by average people to make things [like clothes] in their own homes. Hemp grew wild. The U.S. flagship "USS Constitution" had hemp sails and ropes. The sailors wore hemp uniforms and wrote on paper made from hemp, and hemp seed oil was burned in lamps. Until we were able to eradicate the plant by condemning it as a drug, Rockefeller could not sell his coal oil at a profit and DuPont could not sell his plastic shirts. Hemp grows 4 times faster than trees so if we had used hemp for paper production instead of wood pulp we would still have most of our virgin forests. Another member of the hemp family is KENAF which offers all the benefits of the marijuana plant without the drug properties.
2.2 Wind power
Wind power is finally being seriously developed. Carbon fiber and super magnets have increased the output of generators and made the moving parts lighter and stronger. A new design of wind powered generator is a helium balloon with fins to make it roll like a barrel with a generator mounted on the end of the barrel. This design will not require an expensive tower to allow it to operate in the stronger winds that exist at higher altitudes.
2.3 Electricity
Electricity from hydro power is considered environmentally friendly but there are costs associated with damming a river and flooding areas. When the James Bay project flooded thousands of acres of permafrost, the swamp thawed out and the area has bubbled methane ever since. Most of the preferred hydro sites have already been exploited but new technologies are being developed to generate electricity from small streams and tidal flows. Uranium is also used to produce electricity but it has lost its status as a preferred power source because it has proven to be dangerous and expensive, and the waste from these plants cannot be easily stored or disposed of.
Electricity is also generated from coal, oil and gas fired systems which all produce greenhouse gas. According to the Gartner research group, the global Information Technology industry is responsible for 2% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. This is the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by the aviation industry. A computer running Vista uses twice the energy used by the same machine doing the same things with a Linux operating system.
Everyday we invent new ways to use electricity and we cannot make more of it with our old production/delivery systems. Brownouts and blackouts are inevitable unless we learn how to use less of it. Smart homes that can shut down the dishwasher and clothes dryer when the air conditioner turns on will go a long way to solving this dilemma. Costs of setting up our current infrastructure have not yet been paid off so there is no political incentive to encourage an alternate supply that will not carry and retire the existing debt.
Electricity is expensive energy. The electricity produced from cheap oil sets the retail price, so cheaper electricity produced from water power and more expensive solar and biogas power have prices adjusted or subsidized to match the oil powered electricity rate. The taxpayer is actually paying 11 cents/kwh for electricity from biogas and 47 cents/kwh for electricity from solar systems although he is billed only 4.3 cents/kwh which was set when oil was cheap. Now as the price of oil rises, the price of electricity will have to rise. From this point on biogas produced electricity will actually cost the population less. If subsidies where removed from the equation this would become obvious.
2.4 Bio-Gas
Bio-gas escapes from rotting vegetation. It makes garbage dumps stink. If captured it can power an engine and generate electricity. The proposed recycling of compostables could be done locally to reduce the cost of trucking and eliminate the smell of waste waiting to be picked up. Backyard compost bins work well when people understand the process and enjoy gardening but for the rest of us, a small community processing plant might be more promotable. Locals would drop off their vegetable waste on their way to work. The waste would be fed into a digester which stirs it up and cooks it. Methane/carbon dioxide released is captured and runs a generator which feeds electricity back into the grid.
Two Ontario farmers are currently operating such a system and have eliminated their $2500 monthly hydro bill. They use cow manure. An urban system could be a closed odourless system producing electricity and high quality pathogen free fertilizer.
The largest emmitter of methane has got to be our sewage system. The quantity of energy we flush down the toilet is probably close to the total energy in all the food we consume less about 1600 calories per person per day.
2.5 Bio-fuels
Bio-fuels made from vegetable matter are being promoted, but the whole concept is still in development. Ethanol is used successfully in Brazil where it is made from sugar cane waste but we produce it from corn. If we use 20 calories of fossil energy to deliver 1 calorie of corn [as Dr. Suzuki claimed in his documentary on Cuba] and the conversion to ethanol is only 1.3 to 1, we are not doing anything to solve the problem. If the entire U.S. corn crop was converted into ethanol it would replace only 12% of the U.S. oil consumption. Most Canadian ethanol manufacturing facilities are owned, or controlled, by the farmers who grow the corn on prime agricultural land and feed their cattle with the flour left over from the ethanol process. As we produce more of this ethanol for internal combustion engines we grow less food. Ethanol however, can be produced from wood chips, and a commercial-scale plant to produce ethanol is being constructed by Iogen. It has got to be harder to produce ethanol from wood chips than it would be to produce it from a crop such as Jerusalem artichokes which could be harvested from a field of compostable garbage. The crop would self seed from the small tubers left in the ground after each harvest.
A trial presently underway produces ethanol from unmarketable potatoes, and then uses the residue in a bio-gas digester. This combination looks promising. Vegetable oils can be used to power diesel engines and show most promise as an interim replacement fuel for the internal combustion engine. Diesel fuel can also be manufactured from algae. All bio-fuels produce more nitrous oxide than fossil fuels.
Jatropha is a weed that grows in India, Africa, North America and the Caribbean. Its seeds contain up to 40% oil that will run a standard diesel engine. 15-20% bio-fuel made from this plant is used to run India's railway. Jatropha yields more than 4X as much bio-fuel as soybean and more than 10X as much as corn.
2.6 Hydrogen
Ultimately, hydrogen may be the fuel of the future. It burns cleanly but is difficult to store or transport safely. Most of the hydrogen we currently use is made from natural gas but it can be produced by passing a direct current through water. It is a slow process and requires energy in to produce the fuel before you can get energy out.
A direct current causes hydrogen to be released at one electrode and oxygen gas at the other. If these gases are to be used in an internal combustion engine or otherwise burnt, there is no reason to separate them in production. An alternating current would effectively cause the anode and cathode to alternate with each cycle and a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen gas would be released at both electrodes. At a particular resonant frequency, the alternating current through the water causes gas to be released throughout the full path of electrons between the two electrodes and gas generation increases dramatically. The inventor who discovered this, died of a heart attack and the only operating machine was sold to a Canadian company that is so busy with it's own knitting that it has not done anything with the device. They may have sold it to the U.S..
John Kansius discovered that radio frequencies can also be used to break up water, but as we all suspect, the energy in equals energy out.
Work is also progressing on energy cells which transform chemicals/hydrogen into electrical energy and super capacitors which should work as very efficient batteries that can be charged and discharged quickly without damage.
2.7 Solar
The oldest, cheapest and most reliable solar architecture is known as “passive solar” and includes things like south facing windows, overhanging roofs, skylights, heat storage walls and floors and a myriad of little things that create a more pleasant temperature moderated environment. The main drawback to passive solar is that it is difficult to share the energy collected and almost impossible to sell it as a commodity but the benefit of passive design is that all gains are very low cost and do reduce consumption of resources. Just considering passive solar for new construction does have a positive influence on overall building design. It is a good place to start.
Then there is the darling of the technological age called “photovoltaics” or “PV” described by Albert Einstein in a 1905 paper. The application consists of harnessing a physical process where light is absorbed and a charge is separated by selected material surfaces. We collect the charge and utilize the resulting electric current. The process requires exceptionally pure materials, enormous capital investment and scrupulous attention to detail in manufacture. PV is the newest, most expensive and least robust solar technology.
The workhorse technology is referred to as “solar-thermal” and is based on the simple fact that when sun shines on an object that object gets hot. The more sunshine: the hotter the object. Temperatures up to several thousand degrees are possible. The technology required to efficiently utilize the energy in a hot object is centuries old and well understood. The heat can be efficiently converted to electricity by the well known Rankine cycle and the machinery used to accomplish this is rugged, reliable and available. It can also provide “on-demand” duty by using heat from geothermal or other sources of heat. It has virtually unlimited application. Solar-thermal is the most affordable, efficient and versatile technology to-day, according to Paul Passarelli of http://solarandthermal.com
The common strenght of all solar technologies is their natural long life. A well designed solar solution will provide benefits from 20 to 25 years for a PV system, from 50 to 75 years or more for a solar-themal solution and for the life of the structure for a passive design. Only when these long lifetimes are considered do the true benfits really become obvious. The true worth of technology is to create value. As long as the “free” moniker is attached, it is difficult for people to accept the “cost” of some of these systems. However, once they look at the cost benefit ratio it becomes clear that solar has a proper place in the spectrum of solutions.
2.8 Heat Pumps
Heat pumps move heat from one area that gets colder to another area that gets warmer. A residential heat pump can move 5 times as much heat [energy] than the energy used to run the pump. However, as the outside temperature drops these air to air heat pumps become less efficient and a back up furnace has to be used. Geothermal heat pumps collect heat from the earth and can be used year round. Larger, commercial heat pumps are more efficient and can be used economically to boil water to drive electrical generators [co-generation].
2.9 Recycling
Recycling is also a renewable resource. Anything that can be re-used reduces the consumption of new materials. Products can often be designed for ease of recycling further reducing the cost of manufacturing from reused materials and the consumption of energy. The general population has become accustomed to the recycling of automobiles, paper, plastics, electronics, batteries, kitchen and garden waste. Commercial businesses have been recycling their high value scrap for years. Now, as the value of all raw materials escalates with increased demand from developing economies we are only now starting to appreciate the value of sorted garbage. Recycling has also been given a boost by legislation to reduce industrial pollution. It is no longer acceptable to flush chemicals, drugs or heavy metals down the drains. Although it is still possible to purchase "garburators" for kitchen waste disposal, most municipalities do no approve their installation. Whatever is put into the drains has to be removed at the sewage treatment facility before the effluent is pumped back into the river. Methods used to capture waste have real commercial value. Recycling has reduced the volume of waste added to the landfill sites.
2.10 Incineration
Incineration of waste can be used to generate heat for electric power. If this waste is burned in a plasma arc there are no harmful flue gases. This process does not actually burn the waste, it vaporizes it into gaseous molecules which is called "singas". This can be burned to release energy, harmless flue gases and a glass like clinker that traps the toxins. Plasco is presently operating such a test facility. We asked if they can turn tar sand into electricity, but they haven't answered.
One dump in India planned an incinerator/generator project but had to abandon it when they realized that the 8000 garbage pickers that lived in the dump left nothing to burn.
2.11 Geothermal
Geothermal energy is a renewable heat from the earth that can be easily available at hot springs and geysers. Holes drilled into the earth can also tap into the heat given off by the earth's molten core. Even low grade heat near the surface can be concentrated by heat pumps into a higher grade [higher temperature] and used to heat a home.
2.12 Free Energy Free Energy?
If you take the solenoid out of a door chime and exchange the soft iron central core (the moving piece) with a rare earth magnet, you will discover that it takes 7 to 9 volts to make the ordinary iron piece move, but only 3 volts to shoot the magnet across the room. Where does the extra energy come from?
An Ottawa group looked into this and found a 30 year old patent by Benjamine Robert Teal that worked a lot like a door bell solenoid that turned a crank. Robert made all kinds of claims about the efficiency of his engine and tried, but failed, to market the product. The Ottawa group built a version of one of these “magnipulsion” engines using materials that were not all available to Robert 30 years ago. Theirs had two opposed “cylinders” which were coils of copper wire, about 1 and 1/4 inch long with a central hole just over ½ inch in diameter. The “pistons” were stacks of 10 (little lifesavers) ½ inch diameter supermagnets skewered onto ¼ brass rods which extended beyond the stack of magnets. These pistons slid in sleeve bearings so that the magnets could travel the 1 and ¼ inch and be drawn into the coil when a pulse of electricity was supplied to the coil. The pistons were connected to a crank with a 5/8 inch throw by “connecting rods” made from 1/8 inch thick aluminum flatstock. The crank turned a 5/16 inch shaft supported by ball bearings and fitted with a flywheel and a cam disk to activate contact points made from “bic” pen pocket clips.
This engine was built with hand tools and literally thrown together without drawings other than those provided by Robert's two patents. The device ran enthusiastically for about 30 seconds until the “bic” pen parts fused together and the immediate thought was to rebuild with better quality components – perhaps “Mont Blanc” or “Shaffer”.
This design can be dramatically improved with a little planning and the use of a machine shop. Four cylinders would eliminate the need for a flywheel and a computer controlled electronic replacement for the mechanical contacts would reduce resistance losses and provide engine speed and power control with pulse timing and duration. Ultra capacitors could be used to save the pulse that fires a coil and feed it back through the same coil as the piston is withdrawn, to supply a charge for the next coil/cylinder. It looks as if Robert's engine may have been capturing energy from the collapsing magnetic field. This improved version may not be an overunity engine but if it does not draw more current when under load, as Robert claimed over thirty years ago, it just may be a good choice for a number of applications.
None of this is patentable. Have fun.
3 Global Population
The world population is now 6.6 billion. It is expected to rise to 9.1 billion by 2050 and peak at under 10 billion. Most of this population increase will occur in Asia, Africa, Lain America and the Middle East. Until quite recently these countries were not even a part of the world economy.
China now manufactures everything for a fraction of what it costs us to make it ourselves, and India provides lowest cost English speaking call centers, and back room engineering and computer technicians that can deliver finished plans etc. for less than we hire North American staff. India is also aggressively entering the field of education with internet tutoring. Can India U. be far behind?
The North American population is at present 333 million [that is less than 20% of the total world population]. By 2050 we [North America] will have 4 retirees for every worker. As these developing economies grow their workforce will be able to buy whatever they want with the money we have been sending them. They will purchase our resource businesses as the U.S. shuts down Canadian manufacturing. Think of the Chinese workforce as a very large union. Unless we can develop new exportable goods or services and maintain ownership of these assets we will not be in a position to bid on anything.
4 Individual Consumption
Populations in developed countries consume and waste a lot more than the populations in developing countries. In North America and Japan the average individual uses 350 liters of water each day (This includes water used for agriculture and industry). In sub-Sahara Africa the average is 15 liters.
Developing countries eventually become developed and start to consume like the rest of us. As the 1,313,973,713 Chinese can afford to purchase two bowls of rice each day instead of one, and the 1,095,351,995 Indians [to-day's numbers] can afford to purchase an extra gallon of gas every day, we are going to become uncomfortably aware of their existence. At present the average Chinese uses only 1/7 as much energy as the average Canadian but China produces 7X as much carbon dioxide [greenhouse gas] as Canada. China now has 10 cars for every 1000 people but within 13 years will have more cars on their roads than the U.S. and will probably be using more oil than the U.S. The Kyoto agreement proposed that developed countries should reduce their pollution so that developing nations could catch them up.
100 vegetarians can be fed with the same amount of food production energy as 1 carnivore. Most vegetarians like the taste of beef, chicken and fish, and manufacturers try to simulate the flavors. Vegetarianism is becoming a concern for other people rather than a concern for the welfare of animals. Every day 35,000 people die from starvation.
5 Toxic Accumulation
5.1 Toxins
A toxin is a chemical that damages living organisms. In small quantities a toxin can often be tolerated by an organism, but if the organism cannot neutralize or eliminate the toxin, or if the toxin does not decompose fast enough or does not decompose at all, ongoing exposure to the substance can result in a detrimental accumulation within the organism. Exposure to toxins includes ingesting the stuff. Mercury ballast that escaped from submarines sunk during the second world war is absorbed by growing plants which get eaten by fish that are still being eaten by humans. Humans don't tolerate heavy metals very well and yet we still play with all kinds of dangerous things. Those energy conservation bulbs contain mercury. We have invented a lot of other compounds that are difficult to eliminate once they are released into the environment. Concentrations of just about anything can be toxic. China has already killed 80% of its rivers with pollution. Their sewers flush untreated into their rivers.
5.2 Soil Pollution
Toxins can accumulate in the earth which taints our food and affects our health. Lately we have figured out that our dumps [landfill sites] leech into our water table toxins which ultimately spread everywhere. This is also the reason that chemical and oil spills are treated with such intensity. Then there are products like auto cleaners and Polyclens. This poisonous stuff makes oil and old paint water soluble so that it washes off with water. How do you use these products without dumping them into the sewer?
5.3 Water Pollution
Over 150 dead zones exist in the oceans where low-oxygen levels kill all marine life. These areas, some as small as a square kilometer and others as large as 70,000 square kilometers are caused where pollution, mostly from fertilizer runoff [industrial waste, animal manure and human sewage], accumulates in areas with low tide activity or water movement. It is too costly or impossible to remove some chemicals that are thrown into the drains, so toxins are released into our lakes and rivers. Fertilizers made from sewage sludge, and sludge buried in landfills contaminates groundwater.
Red Tide is an algal bloom caused in part by excess nitrogen in the water. It contaminates shellfish, poisons humans and kills whales. 40 years ago red tide occurred in China 10 times a year. Now it occurs there 300 times a year.
5.4 Air Quality
The “Asian Brown Cloud” is a brown haze that forms under certain weather conditions over South Asia and India. It is often a 2 mile thick cloud of airborne particles from the burning of bio-mass, wood fires, industrial emissions (factories) and cars. It is 75% man made and is not necessarily produced locally. The ABC forms in certain areas when particular weather patterns exist and can travel half way around the world in a week.
Rising energy costs have driven home owners and builders to seal buildings, resulting in a reduction of air quality within the buildings and an increased concern for the health of occupants. With an air-tight building, indoor air quality can be maintained only if the stale air polluted with carbon dioxide is exhausted and fresh air brought in. In winter heat is lost to the outside with the exhausted air.
Available Heat Recovery [HRV] systems exhaust stale air and bring in fresh air but their ability to transfer heat from the outgoing air is very poor. Typically these units restrict air exchange on a cold day and recirculate most of the stale air back into the home. When 10% fresh cold air is mixed with 90% stale warm air, it can feel as if the unit is 80% efficient. One HRV manufacturer [they are actually all owned by one U.S. company] calls this a sensible efficiency of 80%. even though little heat is recovered from the outgoing air.
Because all available HRVs recover less heat energy than the increased losses from the forced ventilation, they are not mandatory in new home construction. Commercial buildings [shopping malls, apartments, office towers] are required to be ventilated, so any heat recovered from this source of exhausted hot air would reduce energy consumption/waste. There are no effective, affordable heat recovery systems available and billions of BTU's are released into the atmosphere from private homes and commercial buildings.
An unfunded Ottawa group has been working on a DIY exchanger which apparently has a real efficiency of over 90%, made from recycled pop cans and sheets of extruded polystyrene that can effectively recover heat from ventilation air, stove exhaust and clothes dryers without plugging up.. This heat exchanger is still patentable [efficiency of this device has nothing to do with used pop cans]. This group meets for beer and pizza several times during the winter when cold days remind them of the urgency of their project. Funding for this project could very well come from Europe.
6 Environmental Economics
Economics is concerned with the short and long term payback of any investment from the perspective of the investor. Once a product or service has passed along to the user or purchaser the investor has calculated his gain. Environmental economics places a value on the hidden costs such as the occupational health of the factory workers who produce the item, the industrial waste cleanup costs and the environmental costs of operating the product and disposing of the item at the end of its life. Environmental economics is the “cost” to the environment and because we are only just discovering the damage that we are doing, this is not that easy to calculate.
To-date academia has calculated the the “footprint” of countries and the “foot print” of individuals but I am not aware of a “footprint” for a city. If we knew for sure that per person New York is more environmentally friendly than say Stratford on Avon we might know what a most sustainable city looks like.
Environmental economics can also be a study of the costs of change. Alternate energy sources will require alternate revenue sources for Governments. When all homes are net zero energy consumers and all vehicles run on fuel cells charged by backyard solar collectors, our whole economy will look different.
Corporations make decisions that benefit the owners of the business not the employees or the country in which they operate. Their decisions are based on the costs and availability of; (1) natural resources or raw materials, (2) suitable facilities, (3) energy, (4) labour, (5) management, (6) capital, (7) access to a market, (8) product end value. Numbers for all of these factors change dramatically when environmental costs are added to each. Governments have not yet figured out how to charge environmental costs back to the producers. They can impose energy taxes but corporate owners can move industries out of a country. Climate change can also dramatically alter the dynamics of these decisions Economies dependent on imports controlled by non-nationals can be shut down overnight as a result of a change of Government or a disaster on the other side of the world. Employee owned businesses are less likely to sell out or shut down in times of adversity.
Environmental economics is also the study of money relative to the total environment considering the predicted, planned, unplanned and inevitable changes. Interplay between the forces of change needs to be considered. The retirement funds of all North Americans are presently invested either directly or indirectly in the stock market. We [North Americans] collectively own 7 trillion (that's a 7 with 12 zeros after it) dollars worth of equity in world businesses. As baby boomers go into retirement, this stock will be liquidated, but the only potential purchasers are the 80% of the developed world who don't have any money and the Chinese stock market which has been compared to a gambling casino. Their government is a 50% owner of all foreign businesses in their country and the people in power still like to control everything.
Lately Canada has been busy selling its resource industries to foreigners who can then export raw materials at reduced profit margins and import finished products at high profit margins so that profits are taken out of the country. We don't see the benefits for Canadians.
Some developing economies already expect debt forgiveness and medication at cost, and starving people will manufacture their own solar powered bicycles, food cookers and water heaters rather than purchase them from us or the U.S.. International trade will become more of a moral rather than economic issue. Free international trade produces more products for more people on a global scale, but does not guarantee benefits for all players. Real benefits for "both" parties can
only be appreciated if there is balanced trade, but total import/export numbers are only half the problem. As we export jobs and import essential consumption we spread our income gap because we do not redistribute national wealth to all our citizens very evenly. Only importers/exporters will benefit. Also, dependence on only a few imports or exports of any kind does not create a healthy economy. Ideally, China, Korea or Japan imports X worth of product from Canada and Canada imports X worth of product from China, Korea or Japan. The numbers imbalance would be eliminated if export shipping permits were only granted when matched with an equal value shipping import. Then we could have free and equal trade with any country we choose and trade would became a moral reponsibility for importers/exporters (oil for guns or wheat for medicine).
7 Global Warming
The earth has experienced numerous ice ages that have come and gone in the past. Scientists have determined that the earth has undergone both rapid changes in temperature and also at other times gradual changes of climate. Rapid declines in temperature have been associated with volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts with the earth. A cloud of dust can, and has created, [recorded in early Canadian history], an 18 month winter. Warming periods are associated with variations in solar emissions and/or changes to the earth's atmosphere which can trap more heat against the earth's surface.
The weather we enjoy happens because the earth is heated unevenly by the sun. Air is warmed most at the equator and rises, and falls back to earth at the poles where it cools in lower intensity sunlight that has made a longer oblique passage through the atmosphere. Land masses, oceans and the rotation of the earth also affect this heating and cooling of air and creates such things as the jet streams of moving air, tornadoes, hurricanes and the shear winds experienced at the poles.
This latest period of global warming appears to be self inflicted.
The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere is higher than it has ever been since animals emerged from the ark and the 2 degrees that the world temperature has gone up in the past 50 years is directly proportional to the increase in carbon dioxide we have produced. 2 degrees does not sound like much but if your temperature went up 2 degrees you would want to see a doctor.
Presently we have 385 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere. This number increases each year by 3. When it reaches 450 parts per million we will likely not be able to adapt to the climate conditions because we will have to learn to grow food without water and eat jellyfish.
As the earth warms up these weather patterns will change dramatically. At present a stream of warm water flows towards the British Isles and makes France a balmy place to live. A very small change in the temperature of an ocean and these streams that establish our known climates for specific areas will deviate. A very small change in direction of the gulf stream and Londoners could find themselves in a Saskatchewan winter. Their homes are not built for those temperatures.
The glaciers are melting and rainfall patterns are changing. As ocean levels rise, countries like Bangladesh will disappear under water. Whole populations will be forced to migrate.
North Americans are not immune. The storm that wiped out New Orleans will not be an exception and the number of freak shear wind storms experienced along the Canada-US border are expected to increase. These shear winds at 100 miles an hour flattened thousands of acres of trees in a national park. Loggers were not allowed in to clean up so we are waiting for the forest fire that won't be easy to put out. Our biggest weather challenge will be its unpredictability.
8 Urban Planning
"Radiant City" is a docu-drama by Gary Burns and Jim Brown. It outlines the difficulties of making our present communities sustainable.
Reliance on; the personal automobile, a secure energy supply, a balance between the number of able bodied workers and dependent individuals, predictable weather, stable economies and a general ignorance of the global situation has resulted in a lot of communities that are not that easy to retrofit for sustainability. When Russia stopped supplying Cuba with oil the population had to very quickly change the way they grew their food. All the downtown parks in Cuba where turned into food gardens. It might just be a good idea to save a piece of land in each community where compostables could be processed by community gardeners and used to grow something. Another possible suggestion for every community is a secure building, a dome or earth sheltered construction that would survive a big storm and provide protection while repairs are made. This building could serve the community under normal circumstances as a university or shopping mall. Ideally we should be able to grow our own food and walk to work.
Bicycle City http://BicycleCity.com/ is an organization designing what they believe to be an environmentally sustainable community. They have a large membership in many different countries.
9 Sustainable Buildings
The national building code is the minimum standard for construction. Built to code will not survive a tornado. Recommended insulation levels are based on a simple economic formula that considers the life expectancy of the building, the costs of borrowed money and the current price of oil. When we run out of oil almost everything built to-day will not be much fun to live in. The least costly sustainable building to construct would be a stand alone exempt from the costs of the power grid, municipal water supply or sewage treatment facility. Self sufficiency makes municipal services redundant. Back in the cold war era, home owners were encouraged to build bomb shelters stocked with a year's supply of food. What a great idea!
Then there is the "Factor 9 Home" which hopes to reduce energy consumption to one ninth as much energy as a conventional 1970's home. For very little extra cost this home has good solar orientation, better insulation, better windows, good air sealing, a good air-to-air heat exchanger, a waste water heat exchanger, low cost tanks for water storage. An active solar heating system is the only costly addition to this home. All homes could be fitted with these upgrades but as always it's less costly to do it right in the first place. Planned building orientation should be a consideration before granting any building permit.
Another initiative is the "Energy Star" new homes built to reduce home energy consumption by 30%. This voluntary program for production home builders was started in the U.S. in 2000.
Although we are trying to encourage people to use less electricity the Canadian electrical code now calls for a T20 outlet in kitchens. This could be useful for induction cookers coming down the tube. In the 1950's, homes had 60 amp supplies for the whole house. Now we are required by code to supply every kitchen with a 20 amp circuit in addition to the 15 amps for the refrigerator, 15 amps for the microwave, 15 amps for the dishwasher, 40 amps for the stove, two 15 amp outlets for every 6 feet of counter top. The only appliances that I own that need 20 amps are a table saw and an arc welder, and I'm not allowed to use either one of them in the kitchen...anymore.
10 Waste Management
Canada produces 3 trillion liters of sewage each year. Halifax dumps 65.7 billion liters of untreated sewage into the ocean, St. John's 33 billion liters, Victoria 34 billion liters and Vancouver 22 billion liters. Montreal flushes 3.6 billion liters into the St. Lawrence. This would include all the drugs, chemicals, heavy metals and used condoms that kill fish. A large percentage of small communities and Indian reservations copy this technology. This is unfortunate. If we kept our rivers clean, we could pump the water out just before it flows into the ocean and sell it. Halifax has recently announced sewage treatment improvements.
These examples of blatant pollution are very costly to correct because these old cities have only one drainage system. Their toilets flush into the same drain that collects the storm water runoff. Cities like Ottawa have a separate drain for runoff which dumps the storm water [and pet droppings from streets and parks] directly into the river. The human sewage is piped to a treatment facility. Some systems work better than others. Older parts of most cities do not have weeping tile around the foundations of buildings. A heavy rain, and sump pumps move the excess water into the only drain system they are connected to. The sewage treatment plants become overloaded and in the case of Ottawa as much as 25% often overflows untreated into the river.
1 qt. of motor oil can pollute 250,000 gal. of water, and North Americans “spill” 180 million gallons of oil every year from auto engines, hydraulic equipment, washed from mechanics hands, chainsaws, lubricant sprays to stop squeaks and rust, and from garden sprayers to control dust, insects and weeds. This annual amount of oil is 16X as much as spilled by the Exon Valdez. It enters the sewage system and eventually it all ends up in our water system.
Legislation, hiring more compliance enforcement officers or paying more people to measure the rate of destruction more accurately, will not stop anyone from doing what they have to do to make a living. A change to environmental sustainability will not occur untill inhabitants can be offered security, comfort and gainful employment in a single location. Environmental sustainability is just not going to happen piecemeal.
A recommended publication that can be downloaded for free if you poke around with weblifeorg/humanure/default html is The Humanure Handbook 3rd edition available at wwwjenkinspublishing.com
11 Unlikely But Possible Cataclysmic Events
Our sun holds all the planets in their orbits but the planets cause the sun to wobble. Large planets like Jupiter cause solar flares to be drawn out of the sun's surface. When these large planets are closest to the sun [all orbits are elliptical] these solar flares are largest. These solar flares are what we call sun spots that rotate around the sun as they follow the orbiting planets and emit massive amounts of radiation. If the earth had the misfortune to to be blasted by radiation from a worst possible solar flare all living entities on the face of the planet would be killed. A lessor dose of cosmic radiation could destroy all electronic components. The next time we are in a position to suffer sun spot activity will be on or about 21 Dec 2012, the last day of the Aztec calendar. [note. it is only the last day because they did not carve a symbol in their calendar clock for the next era, much the same as our Y2K problem].
Along with possible medical pandemics perhaps we should prepare for catastrophes like asteroid impacts and mega tsunamis. La Palma is one of the Canary Islands. It is a vulcanic island with cliffs 2400 meters above the ocean that is 3000 meters deep. This area has active volcanoes and the western half of this island (500 billion tons) could break off and slide into the ocean. This would cause a mega tsunami that would reach America within 6 hours as a 90 meter high wave.
We could also be surprised by an old volcano in Yellowstone National Park. If it explodes as it did a few thousand years ago the world will have to survive a nuclear winter.
10 Aug. 2008
Ottawa Sustainable Community Association (OSCA)
With thanks to the hundreds of people responsible for creating all this public information. Memories don't have bibliographies. If we have offended any author with omission of credits please let us know, and if you have corrections/updates please let us know.
Comment
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Comment by Lou De Frog on November 28, 2008 at 7:04pm -
Thank you.
My disappointment with our present production of corn based ethanol is based on the fact that back in the days of the model "T" every farmer had a still in his back barn where he produced ethanol from waste and ran his car at zero cost. Turn it into a big business and the costs of trucking and distribution really interfere with the efficiency of the whole system. There are too many middle men and administrators and retailers
Ethanol production from any crop requiring prime agricultural land seems to me to be wasteful. I suspect that you have never grown field corn that requires herbicides, fertilizer and pesticides made from fossil fuels. Too much energy in for not enough out.
As for production of oil from corn, There are lots of other crops with yields of more than 40X that of corn -and they grow on garbage like weeds.
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Comment by Nathan Campbell on November 28, 2008 at 10:16am -
Your info on corn ethanol is dated. The best thing about ethanol is that unlike the oil companies, it is still a young industry that is able to make year after year improvements. Average corn yields per acre have increased 25% over the past 6 years while natural gas requirements for processing have fallen by 50%.
Corn is the right crop for North America. It uses the "C4" pathway for photosynthesis which is an evolutionary advancement in photosynthetic efficiency that is only shared with rice and sugar cane. We have also been breeding corn for thousands of years and are making advancements with genetic modification. The next step to making corn based biofuels more efficiently is biodiesel from corn-oil extraction. Corn oil is currently left in the animal feed but could be removed to increase energy output by 40%.
Removing corn oil would have the additional benefit of improving the quality of the left over animal feed. It is now a low-fat protein meal. This can now be fed to any animal, while traditional distillers grain can only be fed to cattle.
Want me to solve the food crisis at the same time? OK! Instead of feeding the protein meal to livestock, we should start raising fish in aquaculture. It takes 20 pounds of feed to produce 1 pound of meat, but only 1.5 pounds of feed to raise 1 pound of fist. We can increase the amount of available food and make ethanol at the same time!
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Comment by Jeffery Schultz on August 31, 2008 at 6:39am - Nice "gaggle' of info Chris. I wasn't aware of the numbers concerning the North American fish species and their demise. As always, thanks. Have a good weekend and a better week.
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Comment by Luane Todd on August 13, 2008 at 2:18pm -
I am impressed. This is the kind of thing I have been working on for 25 years, off and on. I will be back in touch with you when I have had time to digest this and see what I can add to it.
Luane Todd
luanetodd@yahoo.com
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