So how much to green my India trip ?

So lately the biggest perk at work is trips to India, very welcome if you have folks back home. But these trips come at an expense, a total of 3,300 kg of carbon dioxide, say 4000lb of carbon dioxide including trips to/from the airport, very carbon intensive accommodation and food that has definitely a lot of miles. So for a mere $ 23.80 I can be absolved of my carbon indiscretion. On the other hand, a tree is estimated to offset about 2000 lb of CO2 in its lifetime. So I am off to planting two trees which I hope to do over the weekend.

So will you pee in your sink ?

Human urine is loaded with nitrates , great for the plants and every time you use the loo you flush down 5-10 liters of clean drinking water to flush it away. Now for an entirely hypothetical solution. Say your spouse is averse to not flushing the loo after every use and equally averse to bottles of pee in the loo and you have a greywater system connected to the bath sink that goes to the plants outside, would you let all of these nitrates go waste along with fresh potable water or would you pee in your sink ?

Homegrown Revolution

For the last couple of years I have been following the online journal of a family in urban Pasadena that decided to convert their one-tenth acre garden to a Urban Homestead . Over the years they have diversified a lot from growing food to a lifestyle of being self sustaining , at least as close one can get to in an urban area , effectively minimising their ecological footprint . Their internet and media footprint has increased considerably . They have created sites like Freedom seeds , Freedom Gardens and have been the subject of many news clips and documentaries . The film Homegrown revolution featuring the homestead , has been screened in a number of green film festivals . In a couple of months the family will be coming to Israel and would like to screen this movie . I am sending out this message to a number of groups hoping that someone can organise a community screening of this movie along with the Dervaes family . Their journal can be accessed here at Path to freedom

In the midst of a densely urban setting in downtown Pasadena, radical change is taking root.

For over twenty years, the Dervaes family have transformed their home into an urban homestead. They harvest nearly 3 tons of organic food from their 1/10 acre garden while incorporating many back-to-basics practices, as well as solar energy and biodiesel. (Film's Runtime 15:44)

Biomass

Yesterday I found a huge pile of yard waste from the neighbouring building . All in all I brought in nearly a cube of biomass to the garden to add to the nearly sterile soil in the garden . A lot of grass , a significant amount of mustard and similar weeds . On the way to work I saw quite a few of these biomass piles all destined for the municipal dump .

Food

For the last couple of months I have been reading voraciously about food , organic , backyard , the ills of industrial monocultures , Fukuoka , Geoff Lawton , the broken nutrient cycles , Monsanto , the Future of food , Permaculture , Bill Mollison, Emilia Hazelip and more . It is quite clear that my mind is made up , industrial production of food is bad for me and my family and the environment . So time to take the plunge seriously into growing my own food or part of it and at the same time utilize wastes that we create in a manner that is not only non destructive but also adds to the immediate environment . Not that this is the first time I am trying to do so , I have at least two seasons of growing but not producing anything with my blessed black thumb but I believe I have reached a point where I have enough know how to do it better . We will be using greywater from our bath , composting all our kitchen and yard wastes and using a lot of mulch .

Greywater system

Today we finalised the greywater system that we are going to install . It is a very basic setup , greywater from the bath and the washing machine goes in a subterranean tank with a submersible pump which pumps it up to the terrace . The contractor is going to do the job of pumping up the terrace and I will make the rest of the filtration system which is essentially going to be a trench with gravel . The water will be released into a subsurface drip system . Schematically it is going to be like this .
If the water pump is 0.5 kw and takes even as much as half an hour everyday to pump up the water , the monthly consumption of electricity will be 15 Kwh which at 0.50 shekels/Kwh works out to 7.50 shekels a month or less than 2$ a month . The water saved will definitely offset the cost of running the pump .

Crank my bike video

Came across this wonderful video of what cities should look like , bikes everywhere . The city featured here is Copenhagen .

Should we be worried about the price of tortillas

Ok , it has started happening . BBC reported that in Mexico the Mexicans stage tortilla protest

The price of the flat corn bread, the main source of calories for many poor Mexicans, recently rose by over 400%.

President Felipe Calderon has said the government will clamp down on hoarding and speculation to ease the problem.

But some blame the rise on demand for corn to make environmentally-friendly biofuels in the United States.

So is this where we are headed , the developed nations divert food crops to the production of bio-fuels and in the developing nations there is shortage of food ?
If this story is indicative of what is un store we are headed for worse times than 'tortilla protests' To reiterate what I has been said before about the damage bio-fuels can wreak read George Monbiot's Worse than fossil fuel .
Bio-fuels are no silver bullet , the one all inclusive means to salvation . It has to be a number of ideas leading to the same goal . Also we just cannot fool ourselves into believing we can continue to expend energy at the same levels as we did at our arrogant best if we switch to 'sustainable alternatives ' .

Carbon Offsets : More snake oil

Saw Al Gore's An Inconvenient truth the other day . The film is quite
convincing to somebody who doesn't need convincing , it just reaffirms one's faith in reducing one's footprint on planet earth . I believe it is
also quite convincing to the skeptics that one needs to take action. I
heard my boss spewing the need to go green . And what better way to be
green than to buy green !! I mentioned this need to buy green in a
previous blog. Coming back to the movie , the
movie suggests to take action and sends you to Climate Crisis to learn more
about global warming and action we as individuals can take. I agree
with everything in varying degrees to what the site promotes until it
comes to the point of carbon offsets/credits . The site points to the Cool driver site that allows you
to clean your conscience . It proclaims at the top of the site "You do
not have to stop driving to fight global warming "


The idea is that you clean your conscience by buying green credits that go towards seting up green energy like wind power , planting trees etc , very much akin to
absolving yourself of your sins by giving to the temple/priest/poor . I
understand the logic of carbon credits and I am for it but when somebody
starts promoting it as a tool to take care of one's sins , it really
gets my goat .
Rather than promoting a lifestyle that involves reduction of consumption
and using a car only when necessary it says , go and drive and we will
clean up the mess afterwards which is a lot of bull !!
The argument advanced by the likes of SinksWatch, Carbon Trade Watch or The Corner House is that such schemes fail to address (or, worse, deliberately disguise) the fact that the real problem is our excessive burning of fossil fuels. The Corner House’s uncompromising position is that “the only realistic approach to the dangers of climate change is to stop production of coal, oil and gas as soon as possible, leaving the great bulk of fossil fuels safely underground”.
Offsetting, in this view, merely salves consciences, while creating the
illusion that consumption (cheap air travel being a prime example) and
production patterns in the richer countries can be maintained without
harming the climate . Businesses offer the option to neutralize
everything from buying a plane ticket or cars by buying equivalent green
credits with ready calculators online .
The subtext that
these adverts forget to write is " We are a corporation that makes money doing green power
projects and we use suckers to pay for it . "

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Links
http://www.greenfutures.org.uk/features/default.asp?id=2599
http://www.newint.org/features/2006/07/01/keynote/
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/10/19/selling-indulgences/

Biodiesel : Snake oil ?

Wikipedia defines Biodiesel as

Biodiesel refers to a diesel-equivalent, processed fuel derived from biological sources. ...biodiesel refers to alkyl esters made from the transesterification of both vegetable oils and/or animal fats. Biodiesel is biodegradable and non-toxic, and has significantly fewer emissions than petroleum-based diesel when burned. Biodiesel functions in current diesel engines, and could in theory supplement fossil fuels as the world's primary transport energy source.

Which loosely translated means that biodiesel is a fuel from vegetable/animal sources that does not need to be taken out from the earth's crust , is less polluting and since it is not extracted from beneath the surface , it doesn't add to the carbon in the system . And so it is being touted as the next saviour in our effort against global warming . Biodiesel can be synthesised from waste vegetable oils , vegetable oils , animal fat , waste agricultural produce and algae . So theoretically one can pop over to the local felafel/fish 'n chips shop , get all the waste oil which needs to be disposed off and through a simple process make it ready to be poured into the car !! Alternatively you can buy a load of oil from the supermarket . So if we shifted to biodiesel we would be doing a lot of good to the environment .

Wikipedia defines Snake oil as

a traditional Chinese medicine used for joint pain. However, the most common usage of the words is as a derogatory term for medicines to imply that they are fake, fraudulent, and usually ineffective. The expression is also applied metaphorically to any product with exaggerated marketing but questionable or unverifiable quality. In short, it refers to a product sold as part of a hoax.

As the title suggests I am pointing out to the discrepancies in the theory .

• The local felafel shops can provide a very limited quantity of waste oil that can be used as a fuel .


• If biodiesel is to be used extensively one needs to grow oil producing crops specifically for biodiesel . Since the arable land under cultivation is also finite , oil producing crop can come intead of food producing crop . shortage of food , starvation is a likely scenario. ..more


• Or else forests could be cut down to make room for oil producing plants. This as we know is not a very smart thing to do as well

We can see the effect of deforestation here

The need is to regulate the production of biodiesel . Biodiesel from wastes or from industrial waste sites can provide a fraction of our needs .
According to an article by George Monbiot

In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter “containing 44×10 to the 18 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet’s current biota.”(1) In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries’ worth of plants and animals.

Biodiesel as I see is not a sustainable option at all. In it's billed avatar as a solution to all our woes is not just snake oil , it is something much more destructive .

Grass is for the cows

When Ivan Lendl blurted this out in frustration at not being able to win on grass at Wimbledon yet again , little did he realise he was voicing a very sound ecological principle . Grass is definately for the cows where it doesn't grow naturally . But for some reason grass and garden have become synonymous and people will go to absurd lengths to grow it everywhere , Jerusalem included . Most grasses guzzle water in enormous quantity , need generous amounts of fertilizers , herbicides and a lot of your time when you could have laid back and watched your local flora grow virtually unaided. Looks like some people have a similar idea about grass as this story inTreehugger

The rich really are different from you and me. Where many of us are planting green roofs and permeable paving to increase the amount of green in the world, many of the rich have "garden fatigue" and are paving it over. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Here's what's on the way out in landscaping: grass, flowers and trees.

They got the part about getting rid of the grass right but then they lost track of the script . Grass does one thing right and that is to maintain a permeable surface . So instead of losing water as surface runoff the water sits in and percolates gradually to the acquifer . In Urban areas with high percentage of paved area , surface runoff is a big issue during rains . The drainage system has to be designed for the worst possible scenario to prevent flooding and top it all , it is done at the expense of the groundwater . So if you live in an area where the climate supports grass , by all means go and plant a lawn . In areas not suitable for grasses the same can be replaced with permeable surfaces and vegetation that is native to the place . I bet the cow is also more accustomed to the local vegetation than to an imported grass .