Finding replacements for plastic

Plastic is in our bodies now.  It's in the Arctic.  It's everywhere.  And it hardly breaks down.  We need an alternative.

 

Making products from recycled tires

 

This seems entirely possible in any country.

more tiny homes going up

 https://www.newscenter1.tv/news/black-hills-tiny-homes/article_e643a0f6-0700-11ef-9e19-87718a560000.html

 

"When she originally got her tiny house, it was decorated farmhouse/ranch style. Being an interior decorator by degree, Kira revamped her tiny house to fit her style – modern and colorful with a yellow ceiling. She says tiny homes can range from $50,000 to $100,000 with hers being on the ‘tinier’ end of the spectrum.

As far as winter preparation, Kira says her tiny house came insulated, but she had to get creative with snow solutions. One technique she used was spray foam to seal the cervices on the exterior metal sheeting. She’s still working on making it more aesthetically pleasing, she says. Her tiny home is also snow-load appropriate as it was inspected by a private contractor for her own peace of mind and local compliance. It is the landowner, her mother, who took care of the local ordinance compliance with Pennington County for the WeeCasa resort and tiny houses."

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The history of homes in the US was a gradual growth in size, but now it appears to be going the other direction.  Home prices are surging, so one way to counter that is to reduce the size of homes.

 

 

Be careful of Fascism

“If one can convince a population that they are rightfully exceptional, that they are destined by nature or by religious fate to rule other populations, one has already convinced them of a monstrous lie.” [How Fascism Works, by Jason Stanley, p. 13]

  “Allowing every opinion into the public sphere and giving it serious time for considerations, far from resulting in a process that is conducive to knowledge formation via deliberation, destroys its very possibility. Responsible media in a liberal democracy must, in the face of this threat, try to report the truth, and resist the temptation to report on every possible theory, no matter how fantastical, as long as someone advances it. What happens when conspiracy theories become the coin of politics, and mainstream media and educational institutions are discredited, is that citizens no longer have a common reality that can serve as background for democratic deliberation.” [How Fascism Works, by Jason Stanley, pp. 70-71]

 

This is a good book!

Another chemical in the air to be concerned about

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/19/california-toxic-gas-sulfuryl-fluoride

 

"About 85% of US emissions of sulfuryl fluoride were traced by a recent peer-reviewed study to southern California, where the state’s $4.2bn pest-control industry uses it for drywood termite control. Sulfuryl fluoride is estimated to be up to 7,500 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of its greenhouse-gas potential."

 

Oh boy, yet another climate-warming chemical to worry about.

No farmers means no food; what to do?

 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/20/pennsylvania-young-farmers-00147753

 

"With millions of acres of American farmland set to change hands in the next 20 years, state legislators and agricultural policymakers are warning of a crisis for domestic food production and fading vibrancy in rural communities. The U.S. has lost over half a million farms since the 1980s and the average age of the American farmer has ticked up to 58. Without reliable domestic food production, they say, America’s ability to feed itself and address global food security could be in jeopardy."

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I spent summers on my grandfather's farm.  I think if he would have taught me how to be a farmer instead of just using me as temporary help, I would have taken over his farm when he retired.  It's not an easy life and requires skill in lots of different areas, from mechanics to crop rotation.  Hopefully we can make it appealing to the upcoming generations.

Turning dry ground to fertile fields

 https://youtu.be/79VUAFq2rbg?si=V-Uy6jK89nug5QT_

 

A community in India spent many years building a water-catchment system that keeps the monsoon waters in their area.  Wouldn't turning desert and dry land into fertile fields help cool the planet?

The Great Green Wall of Africa stops the desert

 

One way to fight global warming is to replace desert land with agricultural land.  And it's working!

Tiny homes catching on!

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/great-compression-151806242.html

 

A decade ago, Jesse Russell was a former reality TV producer looking to get started in real estate. He had just moved back to Bend (his hometown) from Los Angeles, and began with a plot of two dozen 500-square-foot cottages sprinkled around a pond and common gardens. When he pitched it at community meetings, “the overwhelming sentiment was, ‘Nobody is going to live in a house that small,’” he said.

Then the units sold out, and his investors nearly doubled their money in two years.

Russell’s company, Hiatus Homes, has since built about three dozen more homes that range from 400 square feet to 900 square feet, and he has 100 more in development — a thriving business.

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I lived 2 summers in a 400 square foot cabin with an outhouse.  It was fine, but I did need to rent storage space for stuff I had accumulated living in a regular sized house. My home today is 864 square feet with a garage and for a single person that feels just right to me.  I have a spare bedroom for guests and a small back yard.  But most importantly, I can afford it.

Obviously families need larger homes.  But more and more it's single people looking to buy.

 

Now the entire world is stuck with plastic everywhere for thousands of years

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/recycling-plastics-producers-report

 

Plastic, which is made from oil and gas, is notoriously difficult to recycle. Doing so requires meticulous sorting, since most of the thousands of chemically distinct varieties of plastic cannot be recycled together. That renders an already pricey process even more expensive. Another challenge: the material degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can generally only be reused once or twice.

The industry has known for decades about these existential challenges, but obscured that information in its marketing campaigns, the report shows.

The research draws on previous investigations as well as newly revealed internal documents illustrating the extent of this decades-long campaign.

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Every living thing on earth is affected by the lies of an industry that would rather make money than worry about the health of the planet.

 

new style of windmill

 

https://youtu.be/TX9tN7yFhcE?si=fdXSxYQNp5jzc8NC

 Blades on an oval racetrack instead of blades on top of a tower?  Check it out.

 

People actually like reducing car dependency

 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240122-from-london-to-new-york-can-quitting-cars-be-popular

 

Moreover, reforms elsewhere suggest that, despite initial resistance, car reduction plans steadily gain public acceptance in the long run. When the city of Ljubljana in Slovenia pedestrianised its city centre in 2007, opposition was considerable, with residents fearing restricted access to their homes – yet a little over decade later, roughly 90% said they were against reintroducing cars.

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Yeah, more public transit!  I like monorails myself.