Farewell My Subaru-- Doug Fine-- Thoughts

Farewell My Subaru An Epic Adventure In Local Living by Doug Fine is a back to the land type book. Doug Fine decides he wants to live sustainably, so he buys a house in New Mexico which he calls the Funky Butte Ranch. (A butte is an outcrop of land overlooking an incline).
He starts the process of changing his life to a more green lifestyle. The first thing he does is buy a pair of goats for dairy, which he names Nat and Melissa.

Then he describes how he changes his house into a green "ranch". He buys a diesel truck and has the engine converted so it runs straight vegetable oil (svo). This process is described at a website called http://www.greasecar.com/ if you want to find out about it.

Then he goes into the hard work of transforming his life and his land. Everything from a homemade solar water heater, building a garden, starting a chicken hatchery, and putting in a solar powered pump for a new well is described.

There are small factoids peppered throughout the book. For example, "It takes three to four years of powering your home to offset the energy used to make your solar panels." These are all small green statements.

Also he includes some recipes in some of the chapters. These recipes often use ingredients from his garden. For example, there is a recipe for "Valisa's Kung Pao Chicken With Cold Sesame Noodles."

A lot of the book is about his hands on experiences dealing with people in his new "sustainable life". There is the army man who works part-time converting diesels to to straight vegetable oil, and there is the positive minded hippie who helps him put in his solar water heater.

Doug Fine is making a political statement in support of sustainable living. He is doing this by showing that you can take the time to do this.

The book has quite a bit of light humor in it. The writing is very easy to read. It is the kind of thing which you can read in one or two afternoons.

Doug Fine also shows how hard it can be to succeed in this kind of lifestyle. He fails in his attempt to learn how to hunt, and has difficult with the local predators who attempt to steal his chickens.

This book is an entertaining story. It is a slice of life book. If you like stories about the environment, or have a crunchy granola style of philosophy you might like this book.
He has a set of links at the back of the book to different websites which support sustainable living. The website for the book is http://www.farewellmysubaru.com/

Common Wealth Economics For Crowded Planet-- Jeffrey D. Sachs, Review

Common Wealth Economics For A Crowded Planet by Jeffrey D. Sachs is about how to address pressing common human global problems: global environmental issues, population planning, sustainable development, and persistent poverty. It is written in very clear, understandable language. There is no academic jargon here. These issues will affect everyone rich and poor alike.

If we do not address these issues at the source, our security is threatened. For example, the crisis in Ethopia and Sudan can be traced back to lack of water, arable land, and overpopulation. This pushes people into warfare and conflict over very limited resources.

Human beings are now the major cause for environmental change: desertification, global warming, species loss, and industrial pollution are caused by human beings. Jeffrey Sachs sets down a set of specific goals on how to reach these ends.

The problem here is that he couches the goals in the language of the left and the language of the United Nations which can be disconcerting at times. Jeffrey Sachs has worked with United Nations Millenium Project. His language is very much focused on international peace and diplomacy. He wants to considerably reduce global armaments and put the money into peaceful development.

This is quite idealistic. One of the advantages of this approach is that it is a soft power approach, based on diplomacy, development, culture, and superior technical knowledge something which the United States has not followed at all in recent years. He claims that if we do not address these issues we will have more terrorists, more wars, more underdevelopment, and more conflict.

The problem is one of how to balance the need to change underlying problems and still at the same time deal with the issues of terrorism and security.

There is going to be quite a bit of opposition to his ideas from the right as well. He pushes for a combination of family planning and pre-natal care. This is to reduce population pressure and encourage people to have less children. This will be hard to fund because many lobbyists do work against birth control.

I happen to think that his ideas on development are quite interesting. He puts forth the idea that government, society, and business are inseperable. In order for business to move forward infrastructure like roads, schools, and telecommunications need to be built. It is as important to make sure there is an adquate food supply as there are free market reforms.

At the end of many of the chapters, he gives examples on how to address specific problems that are fairly practical. For example in the section on climate change he endorses carbon sequestration and hybrid cars. For persistent poverty, he claims that people should drill wells in communities, open schools, introduce school lunch programs provided by indigenous farmers, distribute new seed stocks, distribute new breeds of livestock, and remove any leftover ordnance from old wars in the countryside.

If you strip away a lot of the political talk, this book gives quite a few good examples on how to address common human problems. I think it is worth reading for the solutions described, not the politics.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on the Millenium Development Goals.

This book is well written and easy to follow. It has notes, a bibliography, and an index. There are eight pages of full color illustrations. I would have liked more illustrations in this book.

Earth The Sequel-- Fred Krupp-- Review

Earth The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy And Stop Global Warming by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn is a guide to renewable energy companies working on breakthrough technologies. Fred Krupp correctly states that unless there is a national competitive cap and trade system for carbon, renewable energy will not take off in this country in time to prevent global environmental disaster.

Each chapter in this book focuses on a specific type of renewable energy; solar, biofuels, ocean energy, "clean coal" (specifically carbon sequestration), geothermal energy, assorted energy sources, what can be done now, and the future.

In the chapter on solar, three types of solar power were discussed photovoltaic, thin film, and solar concentrating. The most interesting of these technologies to me is the solar tower. There was a brief overview of the "stirling engine", a type of engine often used with solar concentrating mirrors. Solar concentrating technology is an old technology that can use solar power to create utility scale energy.

This book is focused on new developments in alternative energy. Because this it skips the two already developed alternative energy sources, wind and hydropower. It would have been nice if there was some coverage of micro-hydro and distributed hydroelectric power. Oddly, the section on wind energy focused on wind energy kits and wind energy blimps. Basically, a blimp is raised on a tether with wind turbines attached. The tether is a cable which can take the current genterated at high altitudes and send it to the ground for storage.

I really enjoyed reading the section on ocean energy. It gave the complete history of the aquabuoy wave energy turbine, and a bit on the pelamis wave energy device. There was also a bit on underwater wave turbines similar to wind turbines. Ocean energy is one of the newest forms of energy and has not been exploited very much.

I thought the section on geothermal was quite limited. I think that the author correctly points out that not much funding is being put into developing new sources of geothermal energy.

The author did the best job of describing biofuels. He attacked ADM, Archer Daniels Midland for their focus on food (specifically corn) as a fuel. A lot of next generation biofuel companies were described, Verenium which makes cellulosic ethanol, Greenfuel Technologies which is working on algae biofuel, Amyris which is designing genetically engineered biojet fuel.

There was a discussion of miscellaneous technologies. Things like Waste Management's landfill gasification program, and using animal waste to create methanol. Also conservation was briefly covered.

The car was brought up in the last chapter. The author focused on the electric car. He mentions two developments that are interesting, the Tesla roadster all electric sports car, and the Volt, General Motor's planned hybrid electric car.

If you want a survey of new energy technology and ideas this book is for you. It lists many companies that are working on potential breakthrough renewable energy technology. This would be a good book to read if you are an investor. The authors point out that there is a considerable amount of money in Silicon Valley waiting to be tapped if the regulatory environment changes for alternative energy research and development. Google has an interesting program, Renewable Energe Cheaper than coal, and Vinod Khosla one of the founders of Sun Microsystems has started a venture capital firm focused on biofuels. The will to change is there, but the environment in the United States to bring about the change is difficult.

This book was on the New York Times Bestseller list, it is 279 pages long, there is an index and a short list of websites focused on renewable energy. I was not impressed with the writing in the book, it was a little slow. However, the subject held my interest readily. Fred Krupp is the president of the Ennvironmental Defense Fund, and Miriam Horn is a journalist.

Living Like Ed A Guide to the Eco-Friendly Life-- Ed Begley, Jr. -- Review

Living Like Ed A Guide to the Eco-Freindly Life by Ed Begley Jr. This book is not your typical celebrity endorsement for the environment. This is a comprehensive guide on how to live a more environmentally freindly life. It covers the Home, Transportation, Recycling, Energy, In The Garden and Kitchen, Clothing and Hair and Skin Care. Ed Begley has been a committed environmentalist for 30 years. It shows in this book. He has an electric car, solar panels and a wind turbine on his roof, is a vegetarian, sells a line of environmental cleaning products, and grows his own fresh produce.

This book is fairly practical in nature. It suggests things buying energy star products for your appliances like air conditioning and refrigerators. In addition it gives numerous examples of small things which you can do everyday like; cleaning your refrigerator coils, putting trees and awnings around your house, using a broom not a hose to clean your sidewalk, buy milk or juice in glass containers, get a time of use meter and similar things.

Some of the suggestions are surprising. He describes some interesting companies that can help home owners like PacWind which sells a noiseless 500 watt vertical axis wind turbine that can be installed in urban environments or Phoenix Motorcars where he bought his all electric car.

Ed also describes hierarchies in choice for environmental decisions. For example with transportation, first he walks, then he bikes, then he drives a car as a last resort, and very rarely does he fly in airplane. When he does he buys carbon offset credits from a company called Terrapass.

There are some examples that are a little bit odd, like keeping a solar oven in the back yard instead of a barbecue, and his iZip electric powered bicycle. I think at times the book can go to extremes, but mostly his ideas are fairly practical.

He covers some material on green living which I haven't seen before. Suggestions like buying in bulk to reduce the amount of packaging which you purchase and look for products with less packaging were a surpsise to me. He also covers organic and natural fiber clothing. Things like hemp shoes, natural silk, organic cotton, and recycled clothing. There is also a discussion on peak usage for energy. That the best time to use energy and the cheapest time is between 8 p.m. and 10 a.m.

The book is very easy to follow. It has a checklist of things which you can do in the back for energy savings and water savings. There is also a recycling crib sheet. The back of the book has an index.

The book is written in an informal style which makes it a quick read. I read it in three hours. There are numerous black and white photographs and simple diagrams throughout the book.

Deep Economy-- Bill McKibben-- Review

Deep Economy The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben. This book says a tremendous amount about the benefits of making economies smaller in scale. more focused on producing better quality products, and more sustainable. It is a direct challenge to the idea of unlimited growth and development as a model for human needs and happiness.

This book is much more than a book on environmentalism. It posits we have a choice between having more and having better. There simply are no longer the resources for unlimited growth and we need to start figuring out how to make things better, both in terms of quality of life and in terms of producing goods.

One of the central ideas in this book is that at one time increases in production made us happy, but now this is no longer true. Americans have gone from being #1 in quality of life to #13 in quality of life among nations. Hyperindividualism and excess focus on consumption have destroyed many American communities.

Because we are so focused on goods, we let big box stores like Walmart move into our communities and replace the local barbers, markets, and services. For every job that a Walmart creates we lose the equivalent of one and a half jobs. I am glad that I still live in a community where I can go to the local produce store, visit the bike shop, and go to the corner deli.

Bill McKibben posits that it is best for us to consume locally. He talks about how small farmers produce better quality produce and more produce per acre. He focuses on his personal experience of buying all of his food locally as well as the benefits of organically grown food. As part of this he attacks agri-business for feeding Americans huge amounts of corn syrup and wrecking many peoples health.

He also describes how to consume energy in a more local manner. Energy efficiency is the big winner is his mind, fluorescent light bulbs, insulation, double paned windows, and more efficient appliances are all part of his life. He tells you that one of the best ways you can support energy independence is to encourage your local politician to put in bike lanes, pedestrian walkways, and improved public transportation. This will make it easier for the average consumer in the United States to have one car instead of two.

This book is a challenge to the notion that globalism in its current form is a good thing. He claims China will get tired of producing the goods for the United States eventually. What China is doing is unsustainable. Also, it cannot be a model for the rest of the world, because China is already taking away manufacturing jobs from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mexico, and India.

Also as the world changes many countries are not willing to go along with the demands of globalization. Globalization is not happening the way the United States envisioned it. We are steadily running into problems with global warming, peak oil, and environmental challenges. Many countries do not want to follow the standard industrialization model where big agribusiness comes in, then the displaced farmers go to work in factories in the cities.

There is a tremendous amount of information in this book. Almost every page talks about an importaint economic or environmental issue. Because the book is focused on what you can do locally, it gives you ideas on how to eat better, get more involved in local politics, be more energy efficient, and have an impact with your decisions on personal consumption.

There are quite a few things which I found odd in this book. There is a decent amount on local public radio stations and local community involvement which I did not get completely. I found in places that the ideas were not complete, and sometimes a bit incoherent.

Some of the examples like urban agriculture in Cuba and the Brazilian public transportation system in Curitibia are a little bit too far off the political left spectrum for me.

If you are interested in environmental lifestyle and philosophy this is a very interesting book. It is also a very personal book. It is not how to solve global warming or end the oil crisis. It is more about how to make a personal impact by being green.

This is a link to a talk by Bill McKibben. Part of the talk was available on Youtube, but the not whole thing. I decided it would be better to include a link to the talk rather than 7 minutes from Youtube.

http://fora.tv/2007/03/20/Deep_Economy