The S.E.E.P. - Sustainability and justice for all.

Disaster Prep and Free CPR iOS Apps now on the iTunes Store!

2011-04-30T13:46:00.001-07:00

While working on my Master's of Public Health through Walden University, part of my practicum was with the Office of Emergency Preparedness in San Luis Obispo County Department of Public Health (SLODPH). All Public Health Departments and FEMA recommend that families have a disaster kit prepared that will provide 72 hours worth of food and water along with basic supplies in the event of an evacuation, a local disaster, or the need to "shelter in place" if supply chains are cut off. While there is a great deal of information available on these recommendations, I could not find an iOS-based application that provided me with all of the resources that are necessary in an emergency situation. So, I utilized some of the SLODPH materials, FEMA resources, and other research to build the Disaster Prep App.

Disasters can happen at any time, at any place and without warning. In a natural disaster, disease outbreak, terrorist attack or other major emergency, a network of local, regional, stateand federal systems will initiate pre-planned and practiced responses. Beyond the municipal and public health responses, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommend that you and your family prepare to take care of yourselves as much as possible in a disaster.

Downloading the Emergency and Disaster Preparedness Checklist and Guide and filling in your local emergency information is an excellent start. Collecting some basic supplies (not much more than you’d put together for a camping trip) will also provide the basics for you and your family if and when a disaster occurs. Planning for medium and long-term supply chain disruptions that prohibit your ability to access foodand other necessities is also a good strategy in major disasters. Finally, it is important to be able to “shelter in place” – or stay at home or another protected area away from the impacts of the disaster until it is safe to leave.

The Emergency Preparedness Checklist and Guide provides you a means to collect necessary and information in the one piece of equipment you always have on you - your phone.

Disaster Prep Features:

Disaster Kit Checklists
Personal Medical Record Database with export to email function.
Reminders every 6 months to check/rotate kit supplies
Family Emergency Plan
Insurance and vehicle information
General information on disaster basics
Basic CPR and First Aid information
U.S. Military Survival Manual included!
Ability to import photos and PDF files of EKGs, X-rays, lab results, discharge summaries, and other medical information, or other disaster-related diagrams and information.

Planned future updates:
Sync Medical Information with Google Health!
Export Medical Information to PDF
Regular additions of disaster preparedness information
Port to Android

Check out screenshots, more information, and the Free CPR app on evolvingmonkeys.com!

A Response to FWD: Pray

2010-12-22T02:02:00.000-08:00

A copy of this FWD came to my wife's inbox today and, as I've been in a period of philosophical, religious, and non-theist study and reflection, I did a quick google search and decided to write a reply. Interestingly, this has been going around the interwebs since 1999 and although it has been attributed to Andy Rooney, was mostly the work of Nick Gholson, a sports writer from Wichita Falls, TX. Read the full forward on snopes.com (here) or below first for full effect. While the s.e.e.p. has generally discussed environmental and some political issues, we will in the future also be discussing religion, it's place in regard to scientific pursuits, it's effect on our civilization, social justice and other aspects.

A message to Nick Gholson/Paul Harvey/Andy Rooney/The "Christian Nation":

You may not agree with Darwin, but you must accede that he is based on reason and solid scientific data. Which is, of course, what we teach in science class in public schools. If you hired a lawyer to prevent this, it would demonstrate your complete lack of understanding of what science is and why it has been so important to the development of our civilization and technology.

While religion also has been important to the development of our civilization, you are wrong when you assert that a 30-second prayer does not endager our liberty. While you say that the United States was founded on Christian principles, you are partially correct in that it was indeed Christians who came here, seeking freedom from religious persecution. But from whom? For the most part, other Christians. The nation was indeed started by Christians, but anyone who says that we are a "Christian Nation" does not truly understand freedom, nor do they understand the principles upon which it was founded. People of this mindset often misinterpret "freedom of religion" as "freedom to live in a Christian Nation", when what it really means, is that everyone has the right to practice their own religion, or lack thereof, without being harassed or their freedoms imposed upon by members of other religions. In order for us to achieve real freedom for all, this concept needs to apply to any government-related activity, in this case, public schools. Just as you have a right to say a PERSONAL prayer before a football game, I have the right to not have what I consider superstition and mythology preached at my child's publicly-sponsored activities. If you want to have a group prayer before a game, send your child to a Christian school, not a public school where everyone must be free of religious indoctrination or coercion. How does the son or daughter of Muslim, Jewish, or non-theist parents feel when many of their classmates are chanting a prayer from a different religion that they do not believe in? They feel at best segregated, and at worst demeaned or oppressed, and is not much better than good-old fashioned school bullying.

Using the argument of numbers, where Christian churches outnumber others 200-1 is a horrible logical fallacy. I hate to play the incessant Glen Beck Hitler card, but the although the numbers were to his advantage when he conquered Greece, Libya, and other countries during their advancement in WWII, this most certainly did not make it the right thing to do. This is clearly exaggeration of the issue at hand, but I'm sure you get my point. Our country was founded from a minority, feeling that the majority was wrong and oppressing their freedoms. By calling for a Christian ceremony to take precedence over the practices of non-theists and non-Christians, simply because they are a minority, you imply that they do not have the same rights as Christians, and in doing so you miss the entire point of what freedom really is, threatening to become the same type of despots that led to the founding of our great country.

Regarding prayers before sports in other countries, you are correct that you would hear Muslim prayers in Baghdad, mostly because if you said a different type of prayer you could be shot. China as well, has killed or incarcerated people for practicing their own religions.

I find your interpretation of an atheist's response amusing and hypocritical, as Christians have a longer and more violent history of the same, with many lawyers being called to take scientifically supported evolution out of science in exchange for non-scientific and religiously-based "intelligent design", as well as banning books, taking away people's rights by not allowing them to marry, and other impositions on our civil liberties. Contrary to your opinion, others have more of a right NOT to hear your prayers in public schools than you have to say them. And to clarify, this does not infringe on your liberties at all, as you are still welcome to practice your religion in whatever way you please in your home, your 200-1 churches, or other non-taxpayer supported venue.

And while a short prayer before a football game will most certainly not "shake the world's foundations," it is simply not the right thing to do at a public school function in our modern-day secular society. We've made incredible progress in social justice over the last century. It used to be that women would stand to the side while men voted. Blacks had separate schools, water fountains, and couldn't vote. Now all you're asking is for those who do not believe in the same religious text as you do to stand aside and wait, and be put in an inferior and less respected position, while you practice your ritual in front of them. This is, to those of no or different faiths, rude to say the least. And while we could just roll our eyes at the futile yet endearing chanting, waiting patiently for you to finish YOUR sacred rites but leaving no time or consideration for any of our traditions, we simply will not stand for it. We WILL call our lawyers. We WILL raise our voices. And we will continue to do this until you keep your religion out of our schools. While we appreciate your blessings, they are not necessary. Just like you, we also hope and work for an improved world for our children, our families, our citizens, and the global community. We also hope for the safe return of our troops and the spread of true freedom and prosperity. We just don't ask or rely on any supernatural deities to do it, we know that we need to do it ourselves. We recognize that your prayers, however earnest they may be, won't fix the problems of the world . . . we will.

Respectfully,

Clint Slaughter, M.D.

Forward:

Pray if you want to!


CBS and Katie Couric et al must be in a panic and rushing to reassure the White House that this is not network policy. (Andy Rooney's segment on 60 Minutes program on CBS Sundays is below.)

Folks, this is the year that  we RE-TAKE AMERICA & CANADA
********* Get  Ready *********

Keep this going around the  globe. Read it and forward every time you receive it. We  can't give up on this issue.

Andy Rooney and Prayer


Andy Rooney says:

I don't believe in Santa Claus but I'm not going to sue somebody for singing a Ho-Ho-Ho song in December.  I don't agree with Darwinbut I didn't go out and hire a lawyer when my high school  teacher taught his Theory of Evolution.

Life, liberty or your pursuit of happiness will not be endangered because someone says a  30-second prayer before a football game. So what's the big deal?  It's not like somebody is up there reading the entire Book of Acts.  They're just talking to a God they believe in and asking him to grant safety to the players on the field and the fans going home from the game.

But it's a Christian prayersome will argue.

Yes, and this is the United States of America and Canada , countries founded on Christian principles.  According to our very own phone book Christian churches outnumber all others better than 200-to-1.  So what would you expect -- somebody chanting Hare Krishna?

If I went to a football game in JerusalemI would expect to hear a Jewish prayer.

If I went to a soccer game inBaghdad I would expect to hear a Muslim prayer.

If I went to a ping pong match in China I would expect to hear someone pray to Buddha.

And I wouldn't be offended.It wouldn't bother me one bit.

When in Rome .....

But what about the atheists? Is another argument.

What about them? Nobody is asking them to be baptized. We're not going to pass the collection plate. Just humour us for 30 seconds.If that's asking too much bring a Walkman or a pair of ear plugs. Go to the bathroom. Visit the concession stand. Call your lawyer!

Unfortunately, one or two will make that call. One or two will tell thousands what they can and cannot do. I don't think a short prayer at a football game is going to shake the world's  foundations.

Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek while our courts strip us of  all our rights. Our parents and grandparents taught us to pray before eating, to pray before we go to sleep.Our Bible tells us to pray without ceasing. Now a handful of people and their lawyers are telling us to cease praying.

God, help us. And if that last sentence offends you, well, just sue me.

The silent majority has been silent too long. It's time we tell that one or two who scream loud enough to be heard that the vast majority doesn't care what they want. It is time that the majority rules! It's time we tell them, "You don't have to pray; you don't have to say the Pledge of Allegiance; you don't have to believe in God or attend services that honour Him. That is your right and we will honour your right; but by golly, you are no longer going to take our rights away.  We are fighting back and we WILL WIN!"

God bless us one and all...Especially those who denounce Him,God bless America and Canada , despite all our faults we are still the greatest nations of all. God bless our service men who are fighting to protect our right to pray and worship God.

Let's make 2010the year the silent majority is heard and we put God back as the foundation of our families and institutions. And our military forces come home from all the wars.

Keep looking up.

If you agree with this please pass it on.=

------ End of Forwarded Message

The Electric Xtracycle: The S.E.E.P.'s Latest in Eco-Friendly Transportation!

2010-06-22T22:51:00.000-07:00

I've had my xtracycle for a few years now and it's served me well commuting around town and to French Hospital for work. Now that we have Orion, we decided to go for xtracycle's PeaPod promotion and got Laura their Radish model with the PeaPod child seat attachment. Although the bike was quite a looker and very functional, the components left a little to be desired, so I upgraded the front crank from a single to triple chain ring, upgraded brakes levers and shifters, and rear derailleur to Shimano XT, swapped out a more practical handlebar, and put on the sweet seat from Laura's old commuter. While this worked well around town, the xtracycle setup and PeaPod made for a heavy bike and because of this, and time constraints, we weren't using it as much as we wanted. So, I overcame my biker's guilt and we decided to electrify it through Jake at San Luis Rides. We went with a high-end kit, including a 600W BMC V2 motor in the rear wheel, a 48V, a LiFePO4 48v 15AH Battery w/ charger, and the Cycle Analyst computer to monitor discharge status and mileage. Along with Jake's EV install, I also installed a 12V lighting system and some barrio fabuloso green ground effects, which required some research, making a bracket for the headlight and turn signals, and some wiring, then I wrapped all the wires up neatly with some spiral cable wrap and tucked the controller and 48v-12v inverter into a bag behind the seat. After all was said and done, we now have a beautiful and efficient assisted mode of transportation for one of us with Orion and he loves it! We get a top speed of around 27 mph (although we're legally topped out at 20mph) and a range of 15-20 miles depending on how fast we're cooking and how much we're pedaling. We're definitely using the bike more for our around town errands and shopping with the motor than before. Even though the xtracycle was great before, electrifying it has overcome the "energy of activation" that we needed to really ditch the car for most of our quick trips!

Here is the video we made for xtracycle as part of the "PeaPod Pilots" promotion they did:

Orion's New Xtracycle PeaPod LT from Clint Slaughter on Vimeo.

A Brief Essay on The History and Dangers of Trans Fats.

2010-03-28T21:09:00.000-07:00

Author: Clint Slaughter, M.D., March 19, 2009

Rather than an infectious or outright chemical additive to food, our industrial food process has developed many ways to modify what we eat into other forms with occasionally unanticipated and disastrous results. The introduction of chemically modified trans-fats, formerly known as "partially hydrogenated" fats, into our diets over the course of the 20th century is one example of industrial food manipulation gone wrong. Vegetable oil comes in many natural and unnatural forms, the four main types in our diet being saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, and trans fats, all of which affect the body slightly differently (Fats 101, 2009). Saturated fats and trans fats are considered the "bad fats", which have been found to increase Low Density Lipoproteins (LDLs), or "bad cholesterol", when consumed regularly (de Roos, Bots, Katan, 2001), saturated fats also being more calorically dense than unsaturated fats. Since 1990, however, many studies have shown that the artificially modified trans fats have many more deleterious health effects, significantly contributing to vascular and coronary artery disease in various ways (Mozaffarian, Katan, Ascherio, Stampfer, Willett, 2006).

Partially hydrogenated oils were first introduced to the American Public in the form of Crisco in 1911 (A History of Trans Fats, 2008). A chemical reaction causes the natural cis, or same-side bond in a fatty acid chain to be converted to a trans, or opposite side bond. This actually straightens the molecule so that it becomes a more solid substance which allows for longer shelf life, longer use in fryers, and forms solid shortenings and margerine from liquid oil. Since the 1990's, more and more studies have demonstrated that trans fats have many more health effects than natural fats, even the more caloric saturated fats. An excellent review of the current literature was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2006, discussed these many health issues, including elevated LDLs, and triglycerides, decreased High Density Lipoproteins (HDLs), or "good cholesterol", increased systemic inflammation, and impaired endothelial cell dysfunction, all of which contribute to atherosclerosis, vascular disease, and coronary artery disease (Mozaffarian, et al, 2006). Another study looked at the effects of trans fats on flow-mediated vasodilation (FMD), another risk marker for vascular disease, and found that in comparison with saturated fats, trans fats decreased normal FMD, presumably further increasing cardiac risk (de Roos, et al, 2001).

Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the United States, leading to nearly 8 million heart attacks a year and 6.5 million strokes (Cardiovascular Disease Statistics, 2009). The American Heart Association notes that in 2005, this translates to 864,480 deaths, or 35.3% of U.S. deaths, in comparison to 559,312 deaths from cancer, and 117,809 deaths from accidents. Unfortunately, trans fats have become a part of every American's diet through margarine, fried foods, trans fats added to foods, it is ubiquitous in our industrial food supply, effecting all of us. As cardiovascular disease has increased over the last century, the addition of trans fats into the American diet has undoubedtly been a factor in the rise of our number one killer. As a testament to the public health system, the healthcare system, and the scientific community, over the last few years, trans fats have become a source of national attention. Through grass-roots activism and public health efforts, trans fats are being discouraged and even outlawed in New York City in 2006 and in California in 2007. More education is needed for consumers to be able to distinguish between types of fats and look for trans fats in labels where they are still available.

References

American Heart Association (2008). A History of Trans Fats. Retrieved on March 19, 2009 from: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3048193

American Heart Association (2009). Cardiovascular Disease Statistics. Retrieved on March 19, 2009 from: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4478

American Heart Association (2009). Fats 101. Retrieved on March 19, 2009 from: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3045789

American Heart Association (2009). Trans Fats. Retrieved on March 19, 2009 from: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3045792

de Roos, M., Bots, L., Katan, M. (2001). Replacement of Dietary Saturated Fatty Acids by Trans Fatty Acids Lowers Serum HDL Cholesterol and Impairs Endothelial Function in Healthy Men and Women
Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 21: 1233 - 1237. Retrieved on March 19, 2009 from: http://atvb.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/21/7/1233

Mozaffarian, D., Katan, M., Ascherio, A., Stampfer, M., Willett W. (2006). Trans fatty acids and cardiovascular disease. New England Journal of Medicine. 354:15. 1601-13. Retrieved on March 19, 2009 from http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/354/15/1601?ijkey=/Ulbtkh3itKkQ&keytype=ref&siteid=nejm

The S.E.E.P. is Back in School - Master's of Public Health from Walden University

2010-03-16T01:33:00.001-07:00

I apologize to any regular readers for the paucity of posts over the past year, I am now just over halfway through a Master's of Public Health Degree from Walden University online while continuing to work as an ER physician and helping with our now 8 month old son Orion. My wife Laura is back in school as well for a Master's of Nursing Education, so we've been very busy while enjoying our new family at home.

I'm concentrating on environmental health and will begin posting relevant essays from classes with citations, shifting some of the writing on theseep.com from my generally well-informed, standard rants to articles with reliable sources and citations so that readers can look further into issues and see the basic research behind the rants.

Orion's Xtracycle and Peapod Commercial

2010-02-13T08:47:00.001-08:00

I've thoroughly enjoyed my Xtracycle over the last 3 years and it was time to figure out a mode of eco-friendly transport for Orion, so we opted to upgrade Laura's commuter to an Xtracycle Radish model with the Peapod child carrier kit. They had a promotion that required us to make a video, submit a testimonial and some photos for almost $400 off the package!

At 7 months Orion is almost ready to take his first trip to Farmer's Market on his new bike limousine! Of course, we're still using biodiesel and vegetable oil for our vehicle transport, but cycling is still preferred when we can (you really pay attention to how much fuel you use when you make it yourself!).

Food Inc. - A Must Watch For Everyone That Eats!

2009-12-11T06:29:00.001-08:00

If you've read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, you probably know many of the concepts presented in this riveting and eye-opening documentary. Seeing the images of the industrial food machine next to traditional farming practices is a stark contrast, and the many unintended consequences of how we grow and process the majority of our food are just plain frightening. From massively increasing rates of obesity and diabetes, to E. Coli contaminated spinach from C.A.F.O. feces runoff, to antibiotic resistant superbugs from the large doses of antibiotics given to livestock, to the contamination of fields with GMO crops, this film shows that we can no longer be oblivious to where our food comes from and how it gets to our tables.

This film will change the way you eat for a healthier you and a healthier planet.

Get Your Reusable Water Bottle and Utensils! The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has Spoken!

2009-09-04T00:41:00.000-07:00

Haven't heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch yet? Besides the chemicals that that likely affect human health, like phalates and bisphenol-A, and the use of finite and polluting fossil fuels, the plastics that are so important and ubiquitous in our society are toxic to our oceans as well. Surfline.com has a good article on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and a Good Morning America segment too.

Refuse to drink bottled water and don't use disposable utensils! Get a reusable bottle, we like Klean Kanteen stainless steel bottles (for kids too!)and SIGG bottles, or some plastic bottles - 'if it is a #2 HDPE , or a #4 LDPE, or a #5 PP, your bottle is fine". (You can even make your own SIGG bottle at cafepress.com for cheap or grab The S.E.E.P.'s "Consume Like You Give a Damn" series bottle!

As for the sporks, grab a mismatched set of utensils, a camping mess kit, or there are some bamboo utensil travel kits at gowesty.com. Throw them wrapped up in a cloth napkin in your backpack, purse, laptop bag, or man-purse and do your best to stop using disposables!

The S.E.E.P. Welcomes it's Newest Addition!

2009-07-19T14:23:00.001-07:00

We've been chronicling some of our efforts toward an eco-friendly nursery over at http://www.orionslaughter.com and now we can switch to logging our efforts at raising a sustainable baby! Orion was born on 7/10/09 at 2:53pm, weighing 7 lbs, 11 oz, and 21 inches long. Laura and he are doing great and I'll be posting on our adventures with cloth diapers soon! Sorry for the lack of updates lately, we've been working hard preparing our home for Orion's arrival and now we're getting used to an entirely new life with our wonderful new family.

An Excellent View on GM's Demise, by Michael Moore

2009-06-02T00:09:00.001-07:00

Although Michael Moore makes excellent and valid points in his documentaries, you have to take them with a grain of salt as he's decidedly biased in his views. This forwarded letter, however, rang so true with many of my views on the environment and what we can do with this opportunity as we try to bail out GM. I don't necessarily agree with the bailout in the first place, but if that's what were doing, we might as well make it as productive as possible for the American workforce and the American people. Definitely worth a read, even for the anti-Moore crowd.

Goodbye, GM by Michael Moore

June 1, 2009

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated. We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet. The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true -- that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline. President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.

9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.

100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front -- and the back -- seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The President -- and the UAW -- must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.

So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

Yours,

Michael Moore

MMFlint@aol.com MichaelMoore.com

Autism is Not Caused by Vaccines: A Response to Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey's Article.

2009-05-28T00:10:00.000-07:00

Autism has become a major issue for modern parents, affecting 1 in 150 children, and can be linked to a number of exposures, including vaccines, according to a piece written last year by actress Jenny McCarthy and actor Jim Carrey and published in the New York Times (McCarthy, Carrey, 2008). Unfortunately, although some legitimate sources are cited, including statistics from the CDC, McCarthy's article uses mostly supposition and anecdotal evidence to support her arguments that vaccines "play a major role" in the development of autism. McCarthy and Carrey have apparrently had success in reversing many of their son's autism symptoms through "starting a gluten-free, casein-free diet, vitmain supplementation, detox of metals, and anti-fungals for yeast overgrowth that plagued his intestines" (McCarthy, Carrey, 2008). While they do make an excellent point that physicians that they have seen after this improvement have not investigated the factors in his recovery, an action that could potentially lead to more understanding of the disease, the improvements could be due to any one of their interventions, behavioral or cognitive therapy, or a combination of factors.

Although it is true that Autism rates have risen in recent years and is a major health problem, it is imperative to use information derived from reliable sources before rushing to stop vaccinations, an intervention that saves countless lives. The Wakefield paper published in 1998 that began the popular notion that autism is caused by vaccines was only a case series, where 12 children who were observed to have developed intestinal problems within a month of the MMR vaccine, and 8 of whom were also diagnosed with autism at that time ("A Look at What Causes", 2008). While there may be a correlation, this does not denote causation, and along with the small sample size and type of study, this paper should not be used to base any conclusions on, only the possibilty of future research. Other studies are currently looking at biochemical contributors for autism that may lead back to an environmental cause (Deth, Muratore, Benzecry, Power-Charnitsky, & Waly, 2008; Van Den Hazel, Zuurbier, Babisch, Bartonova, Bistrup, Bolte, et al., 2006), and the CHARGE Study is an ongoing large-scale case-control study investigating a wide array of possible environmental and genetic factors into the development of autism and hopes to uncover some statistically significant causational factors (Hertz-Picciotto, I., Croen, L., Hansen, R., Jones, C., Van De Water, J., & Pessah, I., 2006).

There is much epidemiologic work to be done in the search for causes of the autism epidemic. Although it is good to have these types of issues brought to the attention of the public through media, much of the media information and hype is innaccurate. In this case, because of celebrity status and media attention, McCarthy and Carrey write a heartfelt and well-intentioned piece that is presented by lay-people without the epidemiologic background to properly interpret and synthesize the current data on autism and it's contributors. This lack of scientific rigor and support in many popular media outlets unfortunately is not uncommon and spreads innacurate and potentially harmful information.

References:

Deth, R., Muratore, C., Benzecry, J., Power-Charnitsky, V., & Waly, M. (2008). How environmental and genetic factors combine to cause autism: A redox/methylation hypothesis [Abstract]. NeuroToxicology, 29(1), 190-201. Retrieved May 10, 2009 from the EBSCO Database.

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Vaccine Education Center. (2008) A Look at What Causes, and What Doesn't Cause, Autism. Retrieved on May 9, 2009 from: http://www.chop.edu/consumer/jsp/division/generic.jsp?id=84662#other_studies .

Hertz-Picciotto, I., Croen, L., Hansen, R., Jones, C., Van De Water, J., & Pessah, I. (2006). The CHARGE Study: An Epidemiologic Investigation of Genetic and Environmental Factors Contributing to Autism. Environmental Health Perspectives, 114(7), 1119-1125. Retrieved May 10, 2009

McCarthy, J., Carrey, J. (2008, April 4). Jenny McCarthy: My son's recovery from autism. CNN.com. Retrieved on May 8, 2009 from: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/02/mccarthy.autsimtreatment/ .

Van Den Hazel, P., Zuurbier, M., Babisch, W., Bartonova, A., Bistrup, M., Bolte, G., et al. (2006). Today's epidemics in children: Possible relations to environmental pollution and suggested preventive measures. Acta Paediatrica, 95, 18-25. Retrieved May 10, 2009 from the EBSCO database.

Cap and Trade: What is It?

2009-05-13T14:30:00.001-07:00

Hank Green over at ecogeek.com has posted a nearly auction-style, fast primer on the Cap and Trade system proposed by the Obama administration. This is a must see, as this legislation stands to be one of the most important pieces in starting our emissions decline. He does a good job flitting though the major point of contention - the assertion by many conservatives that it's just another tax. Although it can be construed as such, it's more of a pollution cap with monetary incentives for companies, a system that should be much more flexible, functional, and fair to both businesses and American citizens than a straight "carbon tax".

26 Week Ultrasound Art and Treehugger.com’s Going Green Guide

2009-04-17T16:53:00.000-07:00

For the latest installment of Orion’s ultrasound art, on Orion's sustainable baby blog, I chose to completely rip off Andy Warhol’s techniques, right down to the colors! This is a pretty good 2D close-up view of his face and everything is going well so far.

In our continuing quest to have a “green baby” and with Earth Day coming up and all, I figured we could check out one of my favorite green blogs, treehugger.com, and their “Going Green Guide”. Many people aren’t sure where to start once their eco-consciousness has been raised, and the guide is a great place to start without being too overwhelming. It’s divided into many categories, so whatever subject you want to start working on, from dinner parties, to home energy, gift guides, personal care products, and of course, having babies, there is an incredible amount of information there. Right now we’re researching reusable diaper options, so stay tuned and have a great Earth Day!

24 Week Ultrasound and Ecofriendly Baby Chair Review: Crate and Barrel’s Bayside Swivel Glider

2009-04-07T15:25:00.000-07:00

I was happy to see Orion striking a “Thinker” pose when we were playing with the ultrasound last week. Laura is feeling well, still exercising with swimming, spin class, and hiking with Marley. We’re both busy with work and school, but the nursery is almost done, and we’re trying to figure out our “chair” situation. It seems that getting the proper rocker/glider/combo/baby calmer is a big deal and we’ve been trying to find the most comfortable-yet-eco-friendly option.

After much internet research, we found Crate and Barrel’s Bayside Swivel Glider, a slipcovered glider benchmade in the USA from “certified sustainable” hardwood with soy-based polyfoam seats and 100% recycled and post-consumer backing. We tested one out in the San Jose store, and I must say that it is a VERY comfortable chair with a soft feel, low armrests good for breastfeeding (and I’ll mention again the removable/replaceable slipcover - nice for baby messes). The only drawback was the lack of head support, which was easily fixed with a well-placed throw pillow. With quite a few attractive fabric options, this one would fit our needs well, along with the matching ottoman, and actually was both domestically produced and pretty ecofriendly! For this well-made furniture with these premium options, unfortunately you’ll pay a premium price, $1398 for chair and glider. This is in comparison to $649 for a wood glider made in Canada at our local baby store, Johnson’s or $209 or more for a BabiesRUs glider made who-knows-where of unknown materials. Interestingly, Laura’s Dad is bringing her Great-Grandfather’s 75 year old rocking chair, so we may not even need a glider, but it’s been fun doing the research! The best part about the hand-me-down rocker is that it’s a family heirloom and carries special memories, with now 4 generations of the family being rocked to sleep in it, not to mention that it’s the ultimate in recycling!

If we do end up needing one, I think we’ll end up going big and getting the Crate and Barrel chair - it’s by far the most comfortable, is well built, attractive, can end up being a regular piece of furniture instead of just a “baby chair”, is made in the U.S., and is pretty darn ecofriendly (I'd like some organic cotton or hemp slipcover options, though). Either that or get a used crapola one on craigslist for super cheap! I think what we’ve learned from this is to not get caught up in the “baby hype”, many things that people say you need you can find used, get through your family and friends, or you may not even need it at all.

Volatile Organic Compounds, Why They're Bad, Why They're In Your House, and Why FEMA Wasn't Really at Fault for the Trailer Formaldehyde Debacle.

2009-03-18T03:32:00.000-07:00

In the course of my classes for my Master's of Public Health, I've been doing quite a bit on environmental health. I'm sorry I've been a bit slack on the posts, but it's because of school so besides a baby blog, I'm going to start posting excerpts from some of my papers and discussions. The bonus is that I'll be adding citations for references and data support for the discussion. This is from a paper on environmental causes of health problems and exposure to chemicals, the section on volatile organic compounds, or VOCs:

"This problem effects us all in varying levels, but can disproportionally effect those living in areas with concentrated levels of certain chemicals, those that regularly utilize potentially hazardous products, and especially those in developing nations where many modern potentially hazardous substances and products are produced or disposed of. Children, pregnant women, and the elderly are also at greater risk for developing disease from lower levels of exposure (Freedman, et al, 2001). Shifts in exposure can occur quickly as well, as in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, where thousands of people were displaced from their homes and many were provided trailers to live in by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It was found later that these trailers, made from standard off-the-shelf building materials, were off-gassing enough volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as formaldehyde to cause significant health problems in many of those living in them (Final Report on Formaldehyde, 2008). Although it was dismissed by some, offering that these types of trailers were not meant to live in for prolonged periods, these very same materials such as pressboard, melamine, paints and sealants, are used in regular home construction as well and can affect any homeowner given the proper concentrations and conditions." (Slaughter, Environmental, 2009)

Next is a brief definition of VOCs and some human health effects:

The selected toxicologic agent for discussion is Toluene, described on the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry website as "among the most abundantly produced chemicals in the United States." (Toluene: Medical Management, 2007). Toluene is an aromatic hydrocarbon molecule that is a type of volatile organic compound (VOC). It is found abundantly throughout our society, in gasoline, glues, inks, dyes, lacquers, paints, pesticides, cleaners, and other household and industrial products (Olson, 1999). Although exposures and overdoses are seen in industrial accidents, it is also commonly abused through "huffing" or "sniffing" the fumes to produce dizzyness and euphoria. It can produce human toxicity through inhalation, ingestion, skin or mucous membrane exposure, is passed through uterine circulation to a fetus, and is also passed in breast milk (Toluene: Medical Management, 2007). Toluene causes a significant amount of toxicity, often from acute exposures, although chronic exposures occur as well, with effects including skin irritation, corneal abrasions, tremors, ataxia (unsteady gait), nausea, headache, and even renal failure and death in high enough doses. Also, because of it's physical properties like other VOCs, toluene can cause asphyxiation from concentrated inhalation as well as chemical pneumonitis and respiratory failure from aspiration (Olson, 1999). " (Slaughter, Online discussion, 2009)

So really, even though FEMA made some mistakes, people getting sick from the formaldehyde levels in the trailers wasn't their fault. The trailers were actually the fault of the EPA and other regulatory bodies that should have been keeping VOCs out of our building materials in the first place, and a building materials industry that doesn't always take adequate precautions to protect their consumers. Bottom line - have an idea of what you're consuming and what's in it.

There are over 85,000 chemicals used in the U.S. in industry and consumer goods, of which we have full toxicologic data for about 7%. That's a lot we don't know. Even though we don't know all of the effects of many of the chemicals we are being exposed to, there is good scientific evidence that some of the more toxic ones and some of the commonly used chemicals cause significant human health problems, even cancer. Exposures are incredibly variable and many of the severe health effects are often accidental or one-time exposures, occupational, or from long-term, chronic exposures, so most people will probably be just fine. However, we'll see a few thousand people die or get ill from pesticide exposure here, a few hundred thousand cancers from smoking and other carcinogen exposures there, some kids losing 30 or 40 IQ points from lead exposure in homes and toys, male frogs turning into females or having extra legs, little stuff, not really a big deal, right? OR, we could change the way we regulate chemicals to use the precautionary principle and properly test chemicals for human health risks before allowing them to be sold to consumers. Pretty easy way to save lives and an incredible amount of healthcare spending, really.

References

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (2007). Toluene: Medical Management Guidelines. Retrieved on March 12, 2009 from: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/MHMI/mmg56.html

Freedman, D., Stewart, P., Kleinerman, R., Wacholder, S., Hatch, E., Tarone, R., Robison, L., Linet, M. (2001). Household Solvent Exposures and Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. American Journal of Public Health. 91:4

Centers for Disease Control (2008). Final Report on Formaldehyde Levels in FEMA-Supplied Travel Trailers, Park Models, and Mobile Homes. Retrieved on December 28, 2008 from: http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehhe/trailerstudy/

Olgar, S., Oktem, F., Dindar, A., Kilbas, A., Turkoglu, U., Cetin, H., et al. (2008). Volatile solvent abuse caused glomerulopathy and tubulopathy in street children. Human and Experimental Toxicology. 27:477-483. Retrieved on March 12, 2009 from: EBSCO Database, Walden Library.

Olson, K. (Ed.). (1999). Poisoning and Drug Overdose. Stamford: Appleton and Lange.

Slaughter, C. (2009). Online Discussion. PUBH 6105 Environmental Health Class. Walden University

Slaughter, C. (2009). Environmental Causes of Illness. Final Paper. Course 6115: Social, Behavioral and Cultural Factors in Public Health. Walden University

If You're Not In The "If It's Yellow Let it Mellow" Crowd: $150 Toilet Retrofit Will Save You Thousands of Gallons of Water!

2009-02-08T23:47:00.000-08:00

In the bathroom in our bedroom, Laura and I generally stick to the "If it's yellow let is mellow, if it's brown flush is down" mantra. Instead of flushing the toilet, say 12-15 times a day, we only flush 4 or 5. At 1.6 gallons per flush, just doing this on one toilet saves us over 5000 gallons per year of water. We tend to flush the downstairs toilet regularly, as we don't want to gross out our guests, plus for some reason that bathroom has an uncanny amplification of smells (tmi, I know). Many people are uncomfortable with not flushing every time, especially in more public restrooms, and we've started to see some businesses install dual-flush toilets such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Now there is a solution for the home! Rather than replacing your entire toilet, Brondell is releasing the "Perfect Flush" retrofit that can be installed on nearly any standard home toilet and can save about 50% of the water you would normally use if you're an "everytime flusher." At $150, it's also affordable and looks to be fairly easy to install yourself. Although we should be seriously rethinking our water use in general, (ie: how much sense does it make to contaminate millions of gallons of water from showers, kitchens, washing machines, sinks, etc, with a few hundred gallons of blackwater?) this is an easy and affordable first step until you can get your composting toilets and greywater systems in place!

via Gizmodo.

The Tables are Turned: Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are now "Un-American" and "Traitorous" for Not Supporting Our President!

2009-01-24T16:37:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Fox News Fear Imbalance

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Incredibly, but not so surprisingly, the right-winged pundits such O'Reilly and Limbaugh,and the rest of Fox News, have completely flipped their attitudes about supporting the American presidency. It was not so long ago that these very same people ranted and raved about how "Un-American" it was to criticize the war in Iraq or any of the other poorly informed/thought-out decisions of our last President. Now, when it's not "their boy" in the White House, they've opted to take the Un-American route of unabashedly fear-mongering, undermining, and other douchebaggery while covering President Obama's first few days in office, rather than being constructive and contributing reasonable and intelligent discourse to the sorely needed changes in our government.

This Friday, January 15, is national call-in day to promote a single-payer healthcare system. Here is the official page with information on HR676 and

2009-01-15T08:06:00.000-08:00

This Friday, January 15, is national call-in day to promote a single-payer healthcare system. Here is the official page with information on HR676 and how to contact your congressperson. Also, you can call (202) 225-3121 and ask to be connected to the office of your Representative or your Senators (you can also look up their direct numbers using your zip code here)

Being in the healthcare community, I find it hard to believe that so many people don't support this concept. One of the big arguments is whether healthcare is a right or a privilege and when you work in the medical field, it is obvious that it should be a right, just like having a firefighter to put out your burning house, or a police officer to rescue you from an assailant, everyone should have basic medical care. We often hear the term "socialized" attached to single-payer healthcare as a fear tactic because of the negative stigma still associated with the term socialism. Single-payer, however, is not government run healthcare, it is private healthcare with government paying the bills instead of insurance companies. Essentially nothing will change with how you interact with your physician or clinic, but rather than insurance companies artificially driving up costs and making profits on people's health, denying legitimate claims, and costing an extra 15% or more in administrative costs, medicare and medicaid will cover everyone! Costs overall will decrease, and the out of pocket expense to the individual will be lower than the current system. If we can combine this with a massive expansion in public health education and services, along with major tort reform to revamp medical liability, we might just be able to improve our status from spending more money per capita than any other country, yet ranking number 37 in the world in quality of health care. Shameful.

Please call in on Friday and make your voice heard!

EcoGeek Compares CFL Incandescent and LED Lightbulbs

2008-12-10T16:13:00.001-08:00

EcoGeek just posted this is a great and quick comparison of the light output and quality from incandescents vs. CFLs vs. LEDs, as well as discussion of efficiency.

Although we did the conversion to CFLs a few years ago, we're on the second phase and slowly coverting to LED bulbs as the CFLs burn out. The technology has already come a long way in the last 2 years and LED bulb prices are starting to come down. At this point, if you haven't changed out your incandescent bulbs, you might as well skip the CFLs and go straight to the LEDs! With 1/4-1/3 of the power use and 10,000-50,000 hour lifespans, LEDs are certainly the way to go.

via treehugger.com, ecogeek.com

John Stewart and John Olliver Say What We All Are Thinking About Terrorists of Any Type.

2008-12-03T12:55:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mumbai Tragedy

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

This is a brilliant exchange between John Olliver and John Stewart on 12/1/09's The Daily Show. Simply brilliant - an incredibly accurate discussion of terrorists of any kind.

Vote: No Bailout For The Auto Industry. Unless. . .

2008-11-19T10:47:00.001-08:00

Ok, so first we've thrown hundreds of billions of dollars haphazardly at banks, much of which they've already hoarded, squandered, and rearranged, rather than taking a few weeks for our government to carefully draft an educated and well-thought out plan to mediate the value to loan ratio problem, devalue existing loans to help foreclosing homeowners restructure debt, and tightly regulate the use of said taxpayer dollars to avoid the current system of lining the pockets of the greedy lenders and traders who were gambling away everyone's debt and 401k money.

Now we're talking about bailing out three companies, who no matter how "Downhome American" and "Heartlandy" they are, have spent the last half century manipulating the American public through engineered obsolescence and ruthless marketing campaigns to sell the biggest and least efficient vehicles, partnered with oil companies to actively fight emissions standards and efficiency requirements, have purposefully withheld technology that would improve mileage and save fuel, have killed California's zero-emission legislation through legal actions, failed to have any concern whatsoever for the growing climate change and peak oil crises, and have allowed their own greed and obliviousness, purposeful or not, to lead to their own downfall.

The ONLY way we should give any money to the U.S. Auto industry is if they are required to use these funds to completely revamp their lines to include only vehicles that are electric, are compatible with modern biofuels, or use some other type of renewable and low or no emissions fuel. They must also begin large initiatives to convert existing vehicles to run on one of these fuels. The beauty is, that this is in reality a fairly easy proposal: Most modern gasoline engines can be easily modified to run E85 or natural gas, every diesel can run on 100% biodiesel (it's just not covered by warranty) and can easily be modified to run on vegetable oil. Pretty much any vehicle chassis can be easily converted to run on electricity, using standard golf cart batteries to go more than 40 miles to a charge at highway speeds, more than enough for the vast majority of daily drivers. With minimal training and barely adequate electrical skills, I've even been thinking about building one in my garage. The "Big Three" have much smarter people than I with much more mechanical knowledge,and they have much, much. . . MUCH bigger garages.

For that matter, I can think of quite a few things we can do as well with that 813 billion (in tax breaks and funds) Congress has already authorized to bail out Wall Street. How about we pay our craftsmen and builders to learn about energy efficient and eco-friendly building techniques? Why don't we start a national solar loan program that gives anyone who wishes a low interest loan to get solar water heating and photovoltaic panels? Why don't we reteach and train those losing their jobs how to grow food, how to farm energy, how to retrofit homes for efficiency, and other skills? Why don't we help towns and cities rebuild their energy infrastructures to make clean power, ethanol, and biodiesel from waste streams and utilize resources efficiently?

We need to use this money wisely in a well-designed renewable energy "New Deal" for our country to build a sustainable infrastructure for a future of economic prosperity, food security, and clean energy.

reference: bbc news article

Obama Understands Our Environmental Problem: "We can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house."

2008-11-16T14:53:00.002-08:00

Newsweek picked up this off-the-record comment by Senator Obama prior to the debates:

"I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

The beauty of this unscripted, honest response to climate change is that it demonstrates that Barack Obama isn't just about the superficial, pop-media responses to the crisis, he has a deeper understanding of the work we have in front of us. He realizes that this isn't something that a few token efforts will solve, it will require sweeping changes in how we live, how we utilize energy and our resources, and massive changes in our fuel and energy infrastructure. He knows that it's not about the effing light bulbs.

via treehugger.com

Finally, a Time for Change

2008-11-09T12:16:00.001-08:00

We've done it! Elected a man whom we hope has the integrity, the intelligence, and the vision that he's shown us in this election race. If you haven't watched his acceptance speech yet, it is truly inspiring and makes me, for the first time in years, proud to be an American, with hope that we can once again live up to the ideals that we were founded upon - freedom and justice (and sustainability) for all.

Californians Need To Vote No on Proposition 8 To Protect Civil Liberties and Freedom.

2008-10-22T21:47:00.000-07:00

I had thought that we lived in a free society, where we are all entitled by the constitution to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in a country founded upon the separation of church and state and the promise of freedom of religion, or lack thereof. As I was making a trip to the hardware store 2 days ago, I saw two young men in front of the entrance to the strip mall with signs saying "Save Marriage : Vote Yes on Prop 8" (a proposition to outlaw same-sex marriages for you non-Californians out there). Well, in the usual S.E.E.P. fashion, I felt the need to have a discussion with one of them to try figure out why someone would want to stomp on someone else's civil liberties like that. I asked, "Why are you campaigning for the suppression of freedom? I don't understand why anyone would do such a thing."

In the 20 minute conversation that ensued, his main defense was that gay marraige undermines the institution of marraige and that "we believe" that it's not right. I said, "There you go - when you say, "we believe," you mean that it's your opinion and your personal and religious beliefs that you are trying to impose on other people." You are certainly entitled to your opinion, that's the wonderful thing about our country - for the most part you have freedom to do and say what you like as long as you're not hurting anyone else. But just because you don't personally approve of what someone else is doing, that does not give you the right to take away their rights. If you want to teach your children hate, intolerance, and bigotry within the confines of your own home, so be it. That's your right, but it's not a decision that should even be brought up for a vote! It doesn't matter that your bible says that being gay is a sin - you might need to remember that not everyone believes in the same religious text that you do. It doesn't matter that it makes you feel uncomfortable (possibly because of your latent homosexual urges?), people have the right to have relationships with whomever they please and they should have the rights that any other couple have.

On the ridiculous argument of "undermining the institution of marriage" - please people. If you really think that two homosexual people getting married takes away from the meaning of the concept, then you clearly have no idea what marriage is and what it means. It is a word. A word describing an incredible bond between two people that is impossible to put into words. A connection for which you would do anything for the other person, sacrifice everything for their happiness, and go to the ends of the earth to be with them. It's the bond that I proudly share with my heterosexual partner Laura, and it's a bond that homosexual partners share as well.

I find it incredulous that the same right-wing, bible-wielding Republicans that proudly fly the American flag and claim to value so highly the freedom that we share, feel such a need to take freedoms and liberties away from other people (I apologize to all of the bible-wielding Republicans who understand the place of government, value civil liberties, and will be voting against Prop 8). You can't pick and choose what freedoms you grant - you are either free or you are not. End of story. Stop mixing your personal hangups and religious "morality" (don't get me started on the hypocrisy of religion and morality throughout history) and come to terms with the fact that the United States of America is (was?) the greatest country in the world because it was founded on freedom and justice for all. And that true freedom is what we should all continue to fight for, regardless of our race, creed, religion, color, or sexual orientation.

The Mini-E: Finally We're (Almost) Seeing A Consumer Electric Car!

2008-10-18T18:58:00.001-07:00

The BMW group has announced that it will have 500 Mini E's ready to deploy in California by the end of 2008! This electric version of the cuddly yet sporty Mini will house a 150kw (204 hp) motor powered by Li-ion batteries that will go 0-62 in 8.5 seconds, rock an electronically limited top speed of 95 mph, go an estimated 150 miles to a charge, and will be repowered in 2.5 hours by a garage charger. These vehicles unfortunately will only "initially be made available to select private and corporate customers as part of a pilot project in the US states of California, New York and New Jersey", but it's a start and I'm optimistically hoping that they'll see great success and get to the consumer sometime in 2009-10.

We've known about climate change for decades, yet hardly any action has been taken until recently. We've seen fuel prices rise and the threat of peak oil has loomed closer and closer, threatening a global energy and economic meltdown at any time. Since the EV-1, subject of the film "Who Killed The Electric Car", we have yet to see a consumer-oriented, highway-capable electric vehicle come out of any of the major auto manufacturers. Sure, we've seen prototypes, concepts, and a flurry of promised vehicles from startups, and don't forget the DIY movement, where an enterprising wannabe engineer can spend a few hundred hours and $10K or more on an EV hobby kit, but where have the electric cars been for the rest of us? We want to go to the car lot, test drive a few, and slap down less than $25k for a nice, solid, reliable electric car with all of the bells and whistles. The technology is there - the only stumbling block has been battery technology, which is advancing at a blinding speed. Why hasn't the industry gotten together to make a standard interchangeable battery pack that can be swapped out with better technology in 5-10 years when it's ready? I'll take a car with a 100 mile range now with the prospect of a 300 mile range in a few years when batteries are better!

via Gas 2.0

Insulate Yourself Against Recession With Renewable Energy and Urban Farming

2008-10-18T11:15:00.000-07:00

Like it or not, we're in at least a recession and possibly heading for a depression. The federal government can bail out banks and throw money into the system without having any real inkling as to whether it will actually work or not, but there's no denying that we will all be affected. Some will lose jobs, some will take a hit on retirement, some will lose their homes, and some might even have to sell their second yacht. Regardless of where you stand, as we approach peak oil, energy, food, and transportation will continue to become more costly, and as finances become tighter, we will all have to take a good look at how we use our money and our resources.

How can you protect yourself against this downturn? Become as self-sufficient as possible. With the renewed and expanded tax credits, and more payment plans available, residential solar installations are now within reach of many Americans. Solar hot water and solar ovens to cook your food will decrease your gas or electric bill. Plant a garden for cheap, fresh vegetables and herbs and some free exercise instead of a gym membership. Compost your kitchen waste for free fertilizer for your plants and garden. Look into a commuter bike or an electric bike or scooter for fast, nearly free local transportation. Find out what public transportation is available to you and take the bus or the train to work, or find other commuters to carpool with. Perform an energy audit of your home and replace incandescents with CFL bulbs or even better, energy-sipping LEDs. Turn off unused lights and electronics with power strips to combat phantom power loads. If you're upgrading or changing appliances, make sure that your new ones are Energy Star certified, particularly your computer, refrigerator, dishwasher, clothes washer and dryer. Reinsulate your home and seal doors and windows against drafts. Plant fruit trees and berry bushes around your property for year after year of seasonal food that can be canned for use later or given away as inexpensive but creative and sustainable gifts. There are hundreds of other small changes that you can make that are not only rewarding and will decrease your impact on the planet, but will save significant amounts of money for you and your family as food and energy prices rise. This is not only a conscientious thing to do, it's fiscally responsible!

ABC Refuses to Air Repower America Commerical - They've Already Been Bought By Big Oil.

2008-10-09T20:04:00.001-07:00

In a blatant maneuver to stay in the good graces of oil companies and keep their ad revenue, ABC has refused to air this commercial from the Alliance for Climate Protection at wecansolveit.org. Lets see. . . we can support a message funded by the public for the public good in a time of crisis, or we can pander to the oil companies, supporting private corporatism and greed from those partially responsible for the mess we're in.

Sounds like a boycott to me! I'll stick to CNN, BBC, and NBC (sorry FOX, I only watch to laugh at your ridiculously obvious bias).

Sarah Palin is a Self-Proclaimed "Energy Expert" Because There's Oil in Alaska, Just Like She's a Foreign Policy Expert Because Russia is Next Door.

2008-10-09T03:36:00.000-07:00

I hate to keep harping on Governor Palin, but unfortunately she deserves it. It is imperative that the middle America that she somehow appeals to understands how utterly inappropriate she is as a Vice Presidential Candidate, making the otherwise reasonable McCain ticket a no-deal (I'd still vote for Obama, but McCain isn't a bad guy). In the vice-presidential debate, Palin called herself an "energy expert", which, it seems, is a moniker earned in a similar manner to her supposed foreign policy prowess. By her reckoning, she is close to Russia, making her a foreign policy expert, and there's oil in Alaska, making her an energy expert.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, none of our candidates fully understand the dire nature of our global energy crisis. It's not just climate change that we should be worried about - it's peak oil. Just like the economy taking a downward spiral in a "perfect storm" of deregulation, risky mortgages, bad decisions on consumer's behalves, industry greed, and bipartisan legislative ineptitude, climate change and peak oil are intimately intertwined and we are heading straight into the eye of yet another perfect storm. By nearly all estimates, peak oil, or the time when we cannot pump anymore oil from the earth in a day, is either happening now or will happen within the next 5-20 years. What this means practically is that as daily oil extraction levels off and starts to decline, as long as demand continues to rise, we will see an astronomical spike in oil costs and worldwide shortages. Let me repeat - if we continue to use oil as we do today, within the next few years to few decades, we are guaranteed to see huge oil shortages and massive price increases. This is not supposition, it is supported by oil industry insiders, geologists, and energy experts alike and if we do not shift to alternative forms of energy quickly, starting right now, civilization as we know it, fueled by oil, will grind to a halt. Not only that, but once the oil is gone, if we haven't prepared ourselves, we'll likely fall back on the other, dirtier fossil fuel that is still plentiful - coal. This, in turn, will accelerate the already unstoppable threat of climate change.

The fact is, that offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR will give us a few measly percent of our annual oil use. The rest must still be bought from unstable Middle Eastern dictatorships, some of whom continue to funnel oil money into the hands of the very terrrorists that we are trying to defeat. We can pour money into drilling for more of a dying paradigm and building multi-billion dollar nuclear plants, neither of which will yield any power for a decade. Or, we can focus our efforts and resources on researching and building a renewable energy infrastructure for our entire country, which will protect us from the global economic collapse that will occur as peak oil hits. We will be actively fighting climate change, we will generate domestic jobs, we will wean ourselves off of foreign oil, and we can reclaim our role as a leader and innovator in the world.

Not one of our presidential or vice presidential candidates has even mentioned peak oil, and we've barely heard a peep about the environment or climate change. None of these people are energy experts, especially not Governor Palin, who continues to spew her "Drill, baby, drill" mantra. She will not bring you lower gas prices, nobody will. If you calculate the true cost of a gallon of gas, including extraction, refining, transport, and environmental impact, it should be around $12/gallon. For the better part of a century, we have enjoyed cheap gas subsidized by government tax breaks, political power plays, and even war, and now that we're starting to see fuel prices rise towards what a true and fair market price would be, Americans have cried in outrage rather than taken action to become part of the solution.

At least Senator Obama and Senator McCain recognize the importance of climate change and renewable energy, at least they have an inkling of the true crisis at hand. Governor Palin is still in denial about climate change and is proposing to waste more of the taxpayers dollars on what will become a nearly obselete energy source within our lifetimes. Sorry, but this "Joe Six-Pack" needs a leader who has the intelligence and foresight to set aside their preconcieved notions, objectively evaluate the evidence and take steps to lead us into a prosperous and sustainable future, and Sarah Palin is not that leader.

Sarah Palin Report: Pro-corporation With No Regard for the Environment, Nepetism, Half-truths, Bullying, and Bush-like Secretism.

2008-09-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

Looking at our presidential candidates over the past few weeks, along with their new running mates, has caused a flurry of media attention, especially with the introduction of formerly unknown Alaskan Governor, Sarah Palin. While I admit up front that I am an Obama supporter, I feel a certain due diligence is in order to review what our possibilities could be and see what we could have in store if McCain and Palin are elected.

The media has been frankly ridiculous, hanging on every comment with the right-wingers uncharacteristically pulling the sexism card at every opportunity and playing up the "downhome" quality of Palin's background, going so far as calling her husband "The First Dude" almost exclusively. The less biased mainstream media has been pretty harsh as well, playing the usual game of digging up every possible piece of dirt that they can find. The truth is, we need to look at Palin's qualifications and her political record thus far. Although there has been media attention focused on her past record, but much of this has been drowned out by the starry-eyed wonder with which many conservatives and women voters are looking at Palin.

The NYTimes article entitled "Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes," is a chilling tale of secrecy, nepotism, and Bush-esque politics, describing how Palin and her staffers have used alternative communications methods outside of government email systems to be less trackable, avoid being subpoenaed, and reduce accountability. It describes how Palin has hired many friends, most without proper qualifications, to various state political positions - my favorite example is Palin's high school classmate hired to head the Alaska Department of Agriculture who listed a "childhood love of cows" as a qualification for the job. This article, along with the now-infamous blog of Alaskan conservative Sherry Whitstein, details the strong-arming and bullying that Palin, her family, and her supporters have used to manipulate opponents in her seemingly desperate quest for political power. There are tales of phone calls from Palin's staff, her husband and other family members with yelling, cursing, and threats, to reporters, interviewers, and opponents, basically trying to bully those who speak out against her actions or policies. This tactic comes up over and over with their camp, from the librarian who she tried to get fired for not banning books, to the "Troopergate" scandal, it seems that Palin thinks it fine to use her political power inappropriately as a means to her own ends, be they "moral", personal, or political.

Meanwhile, it seems that during Palin's reign in Wasillia, Alaska, she reversed much of the work that was being done by the previous Mayor to limit commercial growth and reduce the pollution of the town's lakes. Under Palin, big-box retailers were given what sounds to be free reign, building complexes next to the lake and allowing toxic parking lot runoff to drain into an already polluted lake system. Add the pro-drilling stance, the disbelief in human-caused climate change, a bear pelt over her interview couch, and a wonderful photo of her entire family ensconced in fur, demonstrates clearly that Palin is no friend to the environment and will choose a money-making opportunity with corporate deals regardless of any potential environmental impacts.

Deepak Chopra, M.D., the renowned mind-body physician has written an article entitled "Obama and the Palin Effect" about the psychological phenomenon that makes Palin so appealing to so many, then discusses in plain terms what she stands for:

"Small town values — a nostaligic return to simpler times disguises a denial of America’s global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
Ignorance of world affairs — a repudiation of the need to repair America’s image abroad.
Family values — a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don’t need to be needed.
Rigid stands on guns and abortion — a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
Patriotism — the usual fallback in a failed war.
”Reform” — an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn’t fit your ideology."

There is, unfortunately, much more to say, but The S.E.E.P.'s official position on Palin is that although she is attractive to a large section of our conservative citizens, much of her appeal is on the surface and there are some very concerning issues in how she has conducted her politics in Alaska and this is not the type of people we want leading our country, as Vice-President, or for the remote possibility of President. Her environmental record is abysmal and we can only hope that conservative Americans do not misinterpret her being "outdoorsy" and a hunter with being remotely concerned with the environment. We need more integrity and openness, we need someone who will work for the will of the people, not someone who plans to push their own personal agenda, especially if they feel that the ends justify the questionable means.

via NYTimes

Fossil Fuel Free Concert Series: Ben Harper and Jack Johnson Shows in Santa Barbara

2008-09-14T23:59:00.000-07:00

Last month Laura and I were fortunate enough to make it to see two of our favorite artists, Ben Harper at the Santa Barbara Bowl on August 22nd, and Jack Johnson at UC Santa Barbara on August 27th. Each of these trips are about a 220 mile round trip and to save money and relieve our eco-guilt, we of course drove our biodiesel vehicles in another installment of Fossil Fuel Free roadtrips. For the Ben Harper show it was just me and Laura, so we took the 2003 Jetta TDI wagon which gets 37+ miles/gallon on our homemade biodiesel. The show was fantastic, Santa Barbara Bowl is a fantastic venue, and watching Harper rock out on his slide guitar will drop your jaw in amazement as he melts your face off with his ridiculous musical talent.

For the Jack Johnson show, we carpooled with some friends and took the Vegfalia for some straight used vegetable oil transport. The Jack show was fantastic as always and as a bonus, he has the "All At Once" initiative in full swing. His mellow musical stylings always get the crowd swaying and bouncing to the beat, listening to his honest and heartfelt lyrics. The show was a bit festival-like, with the All-At-Once tent and a circle of tents housing various environmental groups as well. Impressively, the entire concert tour is striving to be carbon neutral, through biodiesel-powered tourbuses and generators and CO2 offsets. Also, there were water stations to refill your reusable bottles, discouraging bottled water, there were recycling bins next to every trash can, the concert T-shirts were organic cotton, and if you collected enough stamps from refilling your bottle, carpooling, and visiting the environmental non-profits there, you were entered to win a JJ skateboard or to get up on stage with Jack. Also, any donations to the non-profits were matched by the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation. Basically Jack Johnson is demonstrating by example that large events and tours can have minimal environmental impact and he it seems that he is successfully converting fans to be more mindful of their consumption.

Go Jack!

I'm Voting Republican

2008-09-10T15:42:00.001-07:00

This is a wonderfully sarcastic look at some of the Republican party's stances on issues in the upcoming election from synthetic human studios.

Obama's Acceptance Speech at the DNC: Inspiring and Right on Target.

2008-08-29T15:19:00.001-07:00

This speech is a must-watch for Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and even non-voters - it will probably get you to vote for Obama. Senator Obama describes specific policy changes that he plans to address social security, healthcare, trade deficits, unemployment, renewable energy, foreign policy and more. This is certainly anything but the "empty rhetoric" that the conservatives have been describing of Obama's speeches. It is powerful, honest, and inspires hope.

Continuing Right-Wing Shortsightedness on Oil: Drilling Won't Bring Down Gas Prices!

2008-08-19T12:25:00.001-07:00

In the continuing media campaign to get Americans to want to drill offshore and in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, Hannity and Gingrich are shown here once again making fun of conservation techniques and attempting to discredit the real solution: DECREASE OIL CONSUMPTION AND TRANSITION TO ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES. It's really that simple. The "drill, drill, drill" philosophy might get us a little more oil in the relative short term (3-5 years before we start seeing any actual oil), but by staying with our current infrastructure, demand will continue to rise, and the future result will be the same - rising oil prices and the continued "addiction to oil".

The alternative is to change how we use oil now by conserving, and continue to develop battery and alternative fuel technology so that in the next 1-5 years your next new car will be electric or fueled with cellulosic ethanol or algae-based biodiesel instead of oil. In the same time it would take to see anything from drilling new wells, we'll be well on our way to kicking fossil fuels to the curb.

What kills me is the continued lack of professionalism and blatant skew put on this type of reporting from Fox News and many conservatives. They scoff at inflating your tires, where in fact, keeping your tires at proper pressure can improve mileage by as much as 3.3%, which is not bad for such an easy solution. Combine that with people using public transportation, riding bikes for local trips, carpooling, and other basic, money-saving conservation strategies, and a solid plan for renewable technology implementation, and we simply won't need to drill.

We can only hope that our future and current leaders have the foresight and wisdom to guide us there rather than staying with the reactionary, short-sighted status quo.

video via treehugger.com

Take a Stand! World Boycott on New Fossil Fuel Powered Cars!

2008-07-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

I'm publishing this on a public blog so that if I mysteriously disappear after making this proposal, you'll know to investigate the major auto manufacturers and oil companies, but here's the reasoning behind the boycott:

Say you need another car: Your child is turning 16, your old clunker is on it's last legs, you're just plain tired of your old car and want a new one, whatever the reason. You could buy a new car, nice and shiny, with that sweet smell of VOCs (volatile organic compounds) wafting from the upholstery, the latest and greatest gadgetry, a fresh coat of wax from the dealer. You'll be paying $20-30K or more for the vehicle, then immediately lose 30% of the value just by driving off of the lot, and then proceed to pay $100 to fill the tank up every week. Sound good? Not really.

You could buy that car, but why would you buy a new car right now that crudely burns a dying and outdated 20th century fuel? Why not wait and buy a 21st century car - one fueled by electricity or hydrogen, one that burns waste vegetable oil or cellulosic ethanol made from agricultural by-products and recycled paper? Everybody knows that gas isn't going to get significantly cheaper anytime soon, it will actually likely rise slowly for the next few years, then once we are irrefutably in the midst of peak oil and the world starts significantly restricting carbon emissions and taxes energy use, fossil fuel prices will skyrocket, making it impossible to cheaply travel and waste power like we had in the past. The products we buy and the energy we use to heat and power our homes will all be more expensive because they will be more precious. They will carry the true cost of extracting the resources, the human skill and labor, the overall impact on the environment, and the cost of recycling it at the end of their lives. This extra expense is not unfair, and once we understand the true costs of using the world's resources, moderate our consumption, and decrease our footprint, we will probably actually save money in the long run. Buy making responsible, educated, and forward-thinking purchases now, you will be readying yourself for the coming change in energy infrastructure. You'll be leaving the status-quo behind, and making intelligent plans for providing you and your family affordable and available transportation and power options in the future as energy prices rise. You're insulating yourself from volatile changes in prices in gasoline, natural gas, electricity, and even food.

What I'm saying is, if you need another car, let the manufacturers know that you don't want to run your car on fossil fuels, it's bad for the environment, expensive, causes global political unrest and contributes to terrorism, and the technology is available right now to move the same distance at the same speeds without burning any gas, causing any emissions, or contributing to climate change. Make them give you another option, change their practices, divorce themselves from the corporate oil giants. If you need another car right now: go buy a cool used car, fix up a classic roadster, put yourself on the waiting list for a an Aptera, a Tesla Roadster, a Chevy Volt, or a Prius Plug-in Hybrid - you'll have a next-generation car within the next 1-3 years depending on your choice, not really all that long! Plus, you'll have killer eco-street cred. Better yet, make your car stretch - use the money you saved to buy some great commuter bikes, an xtracycle, or an electric scooter or motorcycle. If you want a project, build your own electric car or motorcycle. There are so many options besides buying a new fossil-fuel powered car, it's really just ridiculous to do it right now.

Our entire energy infrastructure is set to change over the next decade, why would you waste your hard-earned money buying in to a dying paradigm? The age of cheap oil is over. Regardless of drilling offshore or in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, irregarding the horribly polluting tar sands projects in Canada, and outside of political deals and wars meant to keep oil flowing to us, fossil fuel demand is increasing and supply is dwindling. Hard core oil exploration and exploitation will be more expensive, less productive, and more environmentally hazardous than ever before. At our current rate of increasing oil consumption, the government-subsidized "resource depletion projects" will at best only postpone the impending energy crisis for a short time if at all. If we're lucky, they might at best keep fossil fuel prices relatively stable as we actively transition off of them in favor or renewable resources.

It's time to invest in the future and stop fueling the climate crisis and start making smart choices for your family's future and vow never to buy another new fossil-fuel powered vehicle. Buy electric, buy used, get a bike instead, become a public transportation expert, stop contributing to the problem and consume like you give a damn.

MRSA: The Basics For The Layperson

2008-07-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

My grandmother ended up with an MRSA toe infection and to give my parents a good understanding of what to worry about and, more importantly, what not to worry about, I wrote this "mini-article" and thought it would be useful for those of you worrying about this up and coming infection.

MRSA, or Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus, has unfortunately become the norm of skin infections. For the past few years In the ER we've been treating almost all of our skin infections empirically for MRSA, since in that time we've seen it increasing in frequency, so that more than 50% of our skin infections are now due to it. It's become endemic and there's not much you can do to prevent it these days. Don't get too worried yet, though, it usually doesn't make you too sick as long as it's treated, and often times people will have just an isolated infection.

Interestingly, despite our increasingly germophobic culture, using UV-irradiated toothbrushes, largely unnecessary hand sanitizer gels, and the ubiquitous antibacterial soap, we are unfortunately beginning to generate a place for these products, with ever-increasing virulence of viruses and bacteria and a continuing rise in resistance against traditional antibiotics.
These hypersanitation products have not been traditionally necessary, since the human immune system, along with skin anatomy and a commensualistic relationship with "friendly" bacteria, have been enough to fight off the majority of invasive skin infections fairly well. Bacteria, however, are resourceful. They are highly adaptable to environmental pressure, and since they multiply at logarithmic rates, doubling a colony size in as little as 10 minutes time, the opportunity for mutation and the induction of "resistance genes" and other advantageous traits is significant.

The rampant use of antibiotics for agriculture has likely been one of the biggest evolutionary pressures for modern bacteria, with MRSA being cultured in higher rates in factory farm workers than in the general population and resistant E. coli strains being found in various human food products. This has been an interesting biologic process that has significantly increased human disease and has been due in large part to politics and economics rather than common sense and forward thinking. Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma", details the whole sordid tale - basically, in the early part of the century, as farmers got better at growing things, due to cheap fuel oil, advances in machinery, petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides, and other improvements in technology, crop yields increased, generating a huge grain surplus in the 1930's, driving the price of grain to almost nothing. With all that extra corn, we figured out that we could use the surplus super-cheap grain to feed cattle, the cattle grow quickly and chubbily (the marbling us Americans all like), but at the cost of their health. A ruminant's stomach has evolved to eat grass, not corn, so feeding cows grain causes liver infections, bloat, and sometimes death in 30% or more of grain-fed cattle if not treated with antibiotics. This is one of the main reasons I'm trying to decrease red meat intake and when I do eat it, stick to grass-fed beef (besides the 10-fold increase in resource use to produce meat over vegetables, and the cruel factory farming techniques used in the industry today). The point is, because of the grain use, we're using inordinate and otherwise unnecessary quantities of antibiotics to treat whole herds of cows, and we're seeing an increase in microbial resistance and thereby an increase in human disease as a result.

I've come to think of antibiotic resistance as an unending race of technology vs. nature. We will never eradicate disease, and the very act of fighting it pressures it towards resistance. Fighting it too hard leads to more resistance, but not fighting it enough increases human morbidity and mortality. I suppose the answer is informed but cautious prudence in the use of antibiotics.

So what do you do about it? Aside from any political action or dietary change, what happens if you or a loved one gets MRSA? If you end up colonized with MRSA, all it means is that the normal Staph bacteria on your skin are now a bit tougher and more opportunistic, so it becomes easier to get skin infections, infected hair follicles, boils, abscesses, and other tasty low-level infections. Sometimes it can progress to worse problems, but if lesions are drained early, the proper antibiotics are given when needed (Bactrim, a sulfa drug, or a combination of clindamycin and rifampin is best right now where we are, but resistance profiles vary significantly depending on where you live). The biggest mistake I see practitioners make is to give antibiotics instead of draining an abscess. Once you get the pus out (I know, it's pretty nasty, but welcome to my world), it usually starts to improve fairly quickly and often actually doesn't need antibiotics at all. So, if you start to get big zits or boils, you actually need to try to "pop" them and allow them to drain. Sometime heating pads or moist heat will help draw a developing abscess to the surface of the skin where it can drain. When we have to incise them, we actually leave a packing in for a few days so that it can start to heal from the inside out, otherwise they seal themselves up and continue to fester. Once you start seeing recurrent MRSA in the household, it's probably a good idea to have everyone use intranasal Bactoban ointment in the nose, three times a day, for 5 days - this is because a common place for MRSA colonization is the nose. I would probably give the bathrooms a good once-over with some disinfectant, chlorhexidine kills MRSA and we use it in the hospital, but I'll have to check to see if it's available to the general public.

After all that, the message is: don't worry too much, just keep an eye out and take care of infections when they come along.

image from giantmicrobes.com

White House Strongarms EPA Into Lying About Climate Change . . . Again

2008-06-26T03:48:00.000-07:00

NY Times article here

It seems that once again, the Bush Administration has taken to distorting facts and even outright lying in order to further their agenda. In 2007, the Supreme Court made a ruling requiring the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gases were a danger to human health or the environment. In December of 2007, after gathering data and consensus opinion, the EPA had prepared a report concluding "that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled" and that it would be cost effective to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as well as tough fleet mileage requirements, producing an estimated 500 billion to 2 trillion dollars in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The report says basically what the entire rest of the world has embraced and started taking action about: climate change is happening, it is due to man's actions on our planet and the burning of fossil fuels, and unless we act quickly to control it, we will see significant global economic, health, and environmental implications. Sounds pretty on target, right?

Interestingly, this report was sent via email to the White House in December as requested by the Supreme Court. The Bush Administration, however, in an act of childish negligence, has buried it's head in the sand and has flatly refused to open the email. Because of this and other pressure from the administration, the EPA has "been forced" to water down the report so that it only "reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant, " rather than actually addressing the issue. This whole kerfuffle is being reviewed by Henry Waxman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as well as by Representative Edward J. Markey of The House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, and the Bush Administration has already once again evoked "executive privilege" to avoid handing over incriminating documents on the matter.

All I can say is, WTF? Why can't the EPA simply hand over the original report to the Supreme Court and let the Judicial Branch get involved. Or better yet, release it to the public so that we can all see the true reports that our tax dollars pay for rather than a document full of irrelevant discussion and half-truths? I think that Mr. Johnson of the EPA needs to stand up and do what the American people have hired him to do: protect them from environmental hazards with integrity and honor, not bowing down to criminal political pressure. Send out the Global Warming report to the Supreme Court, every Senator and Representative, and the New York Times. I'll take a copy as well.

What's worse, it that this report doesn't even have any revolutionary information in it, the U.N.'s Panel on Climate Change has pages and pages of documentation on the subject and whether or not global warming is real is no longer up for discussion. What is up for discussion is what we will do about it and if we will be a leader, or act like we're 5 years old and hold our hands over our ears, kicking and screaming, because we don't want to be told to clean up our mess. This type of attitude by our government simply slows down the necessary changes to deal with climate change and further discredits our country in the eyes of the global community.

Here is a link to the EPA director, Stephen Johnson's email address and phone number, let's all drop him a line to let him know that these types of shenanigans will not be tolerated.

via: NYT

treehugger

The Story of Stuff: An Excellent Short Movie For Kids And Adults Alike

2008-06-19T21:40:00.000-07:00

I had heard about Annie Leonard's "The Story of Stuff" a while ago, and recently finally watched it. Only 20 minutes and 40 seconds long, it delivers a clear, easily followed path of, for lack of a better word, stuff. From the resource use and depletion, to the manufacturing process and toxic chemical use, to the political manipulation by corporate entities, to the disposal (or lack thereof) of "stuff", this story is a must see for everyone. Simplistic enough for a child to understand but sophisticated enough and stylish enough to keep an adult's attention, it is clearly designed to spread it's message to the masses. The Story of Stuff should be standard curriculum in every home and school, reminding us that what we buy had to come from somewhere, has to go somewhere when we're done, and every action carries some sort of consequence. Whether we choose to acknowledge these consequences and how we act on this knowledge is up to us and our own consciences.

Increase Your Public Transit Use With Google Maps!

2008-06-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

Google has done it again with a new feature added to Google Maps Mobile - public transit directions and schedules. We have the NYC subway and the Boston T system wireds, but If you're like me and don't live in an area with a lot of public transportation, using transit systems, especially buses, when you're visiting other places can be daunting - unfamiliar stations, unknown schedules, figuring out destinations when you're not sure where you're going in the first place. Unfortunately it ends up being easier sometimes to drive and use a map or a GPS.

Google has now solved that problem with the new release of Google Maps Mobile, where a second tab has been added under "directions", allowing you to choose between "driving" and "transit" options. You can enter your location and your destination and get step by step walking instructions to the bus stop or transit station, schedules for departure, directions to your final destination, and even search ahead for the latest return trip! This should work on iPhones, Windows Mobile, Palm, as well as a good number of regular mobile phones. As a bonus, if you have a "location aware" phone with GPS, you'll be able to use your current location to start and follow your little blue dot as you go towards your destination.

This is really exciting as it opens up the possibility of using public transportation to an incredible number of people that wouldn't otherwise, so whenever you can, leave your car behind and get on the bus/train/bike!

via Lifehacker

News Flash: Gas Prices Will Continue to Rise! Stop Whining and Start Acting!

2008-05-31T08:01:00.000-07:00

We're all tired of hearing everyone complain about gas prices. Besides the everyday complainers, we have truckers protesting, middle class families in suburbia going broke driving to work, and now McCain and Hillary are pushing a summertime "gas tax holiday". Although it is unfortunate that so many people are being effected by the rising prices of fuel, the reality is that our days of cheap, government-subsidized cabon-based fuels are at an end. To put it in perspective, Germany just hit $8/gallon as the already expensive fuel prices throughout Europe continue to increase.
Peter Schwartz, PhD., a local Cal Poly Professor of sustainability calculated that the true cost of a gallon of gas, when you factor in extraction, refining, the environmental impacts, transport, associated human and health impacts, and every other estimatable cost, is around $12/gallon. As we approach this true cost, people will be forced to reconsider how they are utilizing energy resources.

Because we have manipulated the market for so long and fought wars for "energy security", the U.S. has enjoyed falsely lowered fuel prices for half a century. This cheap gas market allowed the expansion of suburbia, the cheap transport of goods and services, the rise of the unparalleled American car culture, a booming vacation and travel market, and an incredible number of other unsustainable luxurious activities. It has also allowed us to waste an incredible amount of energy and resources because they have been so cheap. We have built grandiose, inefficient stick houses with poor insulation, installed energy-sucking appliances, and we drive down the street in our image-conscious, 12mpg SUVs, all choices based on what many people call the "free market", but what is in reality a subsidized, racketeered, bastardized version of capitalism. The oil subsidies unto themselves are incredible, with an estimated $17.8 billion in tax subsidies and between $38 billion and $114.6 billion in government program subsidies, according to an article on treehugger.com.

Many conservative economists, would like us to "stay the course", saying that this "free market" will direct where our money goes, ie: as consumer demand for renewable energy, efficient and electric cars, and sustainable business increases, we will see more of these products available. Although they are correct in basic theory, their entire paradigm of capitalism has been so twisted by political deals, unfair trade agreements, the aforementioned fuel subsidies, and a lack of accountability for the impacts of industrial production, that the basic tenets of the conceptual free market no longer apply. If not for these modifying factors falsely lowering the prices of certain goods and services, opening access to unsustainable development, as well as the effect of psychologically based marketing to sell us wasteful, often toxic products and foods, we would have likely been well on the way to being sustainable 30 years ago with the first energy crisis. If we had been paying European energy prices as we should have been, we would be living efficiently in closer communities, with less waste, public transportation, and more local food production, the very direction that we need to move in immediately if we are to decrease the looming effects of our self-induced climate change.

I recently saw a few minutes of Glenn Beck on a near-sighted, unthoughtful rant on why we should start drilling in Alaska to get us more cheap oil. This is the same lunacy that brings us the gas tax holiday and the "economic stimulus package", maneuvers that don't even prolong the inevitable, they don't even actually help anyone, except that they make some of the more oblivious public feel like something is being done. For us to actually make any progress, each individual must first take responsibility for their energy use and carbon footprint: If you haven't dumped your SUV yet, do it! Change your lightbulbs, install solar, bike more, compost, start your garden, stop buying things from China and overseas, buy local, organic foods, consume like you give a damn!

We also need to pass sweeping changes in legislation, here are a few examples:

1. Immediate moratorium on new coal-fired or nuclear power plants with required emissions-reducing equipment on all existing plants.

2. Home and industrial efficiency requirements to meet LEED certification on ALL new construction and a program to require and assist in efficiency retrofitting on existing homes and industrial buildings.

3. Increased support for renewable energy research and infrastructure with

4. Standardization in electric vehicle battery and/or charging units to allow for swappable battery packs and the deployment of universal charging stations.

5. Better subsidies for residential solar and electric/plug-in hybrid vehicles with significantly increased fees/taxes on non-industrial/non-farming vehicles getting less than 25mpg (this should quickly increase to 30+mpg)

6. Integrated waste management systems with greywater recycling, green waste reutilization for biomass digestion and composting, extensive recycling programs, and increased tariffs for waste and refuse.

With significant conservation initiatives and continued development of existing renewable energy technologies, we can negate the need for new coal power plants, we can avoid drilling in the arctic, and we can decrease some of the effects of climate change. I doubt that any of our current legislators have the courage to make many of these changes, so it is up to us, the citizens, to first do our part, then support our leaders in taking the steps needed to protect our society, our people, and our environment.

What To Do On Your Memorial Day Weekend If You Don't Want To Pay For Gas: Resurrect the Victory Garden!

2008-05-23T23:19:00.000-07:00

Rising fuel prices have you down?
Don't want to pay the extra cash for a road trip this Memorial Day?
If you're tired of supporting the huge profits made by oil companies and money going to terrorist regimes when you fill your gas tank, let's make the choice NOT to travel. Let's choose to do something productive for ourselves and our families with our time off this holiday.

I'm talking about planting a garden. I'm talking about grabbing your families and friends, have a BBQ with local grassfed steaks, organic veggies, and some Fat Tire ale, pitching in and ripping up your lawn. Yep, that carefully tended, picket-fence lined, weed-free, lush, verdant patch that you've carefully nurtured with petroleum derived fertilizers, toxic insecticides, and gallons upon gallons of precious water. Rip it up. Pull it all out and plant a garden to help feed your family and friends. If you have any doubts, pick up a copy of Michael Pollan's, An Omnivore's Dilemma and give it a skim tomorrow morning over coffee. If you don't have time for that, read his article entitled "Why Bother" in the NY Time's Green Issue, he cites that 30% of our nation's produce after WWII was grown in backyard "Victory Gardens".

Once you're convinced, start planning out how to best use your lawn space. There are countless ways to organize your new project. If you want to make it easy, build or buy some raised garden beds and fill them with planting mix and compost. Or, throw down some landscaping fabric then cover it with soil like in last month's Mother Earth News. Find plants that grow well in your area and spread them out to transform your lawn into an "edible forests" with fruit trees, vegetable plots, an herb garden, and whatever else you can dream up. Make sure you dig up your sprinklers first, though - you can hook them up to drip irrigation systems to water your new project. There's tons of info on gardening out there, start googling and then start planting! You get exercise, family time, you save water over irrigating your lawn, and once it's established you'll save money and fossil fuel while providing more nutritious, pesticide free, organic food option for your household.

Biofuels Comparison Study - Conclusion: Properly Planned Biofuel Is A Great Transition Fuel, Poorly Designed Is Superbad.

2008-05-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

The results of a study by University of Washington and The Nature Conservancy are shown in the chart below, detailing the efficiency and impact of various biofuel production strategies.
Basically it shows what we already know about corn ethanol and soy biodiesel, and other "food-for-fuel" crops - they are extraordinarily inefficient, using large amounts of fossil fuels, water, pesticides, and fertilizer to produce, and directly detracting from food sources. Because of the recent food shortages, these biofuels are getting another look as a potential part of the problem. Unfortunately all biofuels are being vilified by this media hype, and even efficient processes like sugar cane and cellulosic ethanol or waste oil and algae-based biodiesel are getting a bad name as well.

One of our biggest problems is the lack of foresight - the U.S. government has been supporting corn ethanol extensively due to lobbying and special interests even though it is though it actually uses more resources than it produces. If we can put our resources toward developing technologies like cellulosic ethanol and algae biodiesel, we will have bridging biofuels that will allow us to continue to use existing combustion technology as we reach peak oil. This will be a critical phase for further development of the next generation of renewable energy production and infrastructure.

In 20 years, after peak oil has been reached and fossil fuel prices are ridiculously high, our combustion technology will be mostly obsolete and electric cars powered by next-gen battery technology. Once again, for this to happen smoothly, we need strong and wise leadership that will resist corporate and lobbyist influence and be able to encourage the most efficient and promising technologies.

via treehugger and Seattle Post-Intelligencer

NY Times Magazine Green Issue Is Worth The Read

2008-04-22T07:50:00.000-07:00

The NY Times just published their "Green Issue" on Sunday with a plethora of articles discussing the movement towards sustainability and the battle against climate change. One of the best articles is "Why Bother", by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivores Dilemma and In Defense of Food. In the essay, Pollan discusses the notion of hopelessness in decreasing our personal footprint - why should we change our daily practices when on the other side of the world, families in China are buying cars and firing up refrigerators for the first time, thereby undoing any good we may do on an individual level. Frustrating though it may be, the truth is that it is not hopeless. Everything we do makes a small impact on our earth. Everything we buy supports the system wherein it is produced - from the oppressed laborer in horrific working conditions, to the toxic chemicals used in it's manufacture and packaging, to the fossil fuels used in shipping, to the local business owner pushed out of work by the corporate machine delivering the product. Every time we don't speak up to our families, friends, neighbors, and our politicians, we support the status quo rather than being a part of the change. It starts with individuals, and like the proverbial butterfly flapping it's wings causing a storm across the world, this is what personal action leads to. It is not the only answer, and needs to be done in conjunction with wise and foresightful governmental leadership, but it is imperative that we all contribute what we can to the solution.

5 Trillion Watt Laser Slated To Make Miniature Star in California: Energy Solution Vs. Total Plutonic Reversal

2008-04-16T18:01:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area has built a facility that takes a single 1/billionth of a joule laser, splits it into 48 beams that are amplified, split again into 192 beams and further amplified exponentially, eventually building to "1.8 million joules of ultraviolet energy", which is 1,000 times as much energy produced by all U.S. power plants, a staggering 5 trillion watts. This energy will be directed into an ignition chamber wherein lies a frozen hydrogen fuel cell in a gold-plated cylinder, dubbed the "hohlarum". There, the lasers will be transformed into incredibly intense x-rays that will compress the hydrogen almost instantly, fusing the atoms together and essentially creating a small star.

Wow. Should we be excited that our energy problems are at an end or should we be worried that we'll pull half the solar system into a laboratory-generated rip in the fabric of the space-time continuum? This type of research is really exciting, just like nanotechnology, genetic manipulation, and other forays into quantum mechanics, like Cern's Hadron collider. As we learn more about our natural world on a smaller and smaller level, and gain the ability to manipulate these properties, we truly begin to have power over our material world. We have the potential to cure disease, stop world hunger, to solve our energy crisis, maybe eventually to travel across space and time and communicate with other civilizations, and other concepts that thus far have been reserved for science fiction novels. Unfortunately, our track records as humans has shown that we, in general, lack the foresight and wisdom to properly develop and use these technologies. Capitalism, greed, and lust for power drives these industries forward, pushing them for marketable results, often without considering the possible ramifications or side effects of the wonders that we create. We've created transgenic crops that have both helped to feed starving children, and at the same time left subsistence farmers hopelessly in debt and committing suicide by the thousands after promised engineered cotton crops have failed. Nuclear fission has powered our homes, yet it has killed hundreds of thousands of people, contaminated soil and groundwater, and caused significant human illness and morbidity. These technologies are child's play next to nanotechnology and quantum manipulation. The potential for good is incredible, yet the potential for disaster is as, if not more amazing.

Should we ban genetic manipulation, nanotech, and quantum physics? No, definitely not. Advancing scientific knowledge is imperative for the human race to survive, especially with the path we've taken - we'll need advanced technologies to either reverse the damage we're causing, or to make conditions habitable enough in spite of the damage. We should, however, be frightened enough of the potential catastrophies to be wise in it's use and ensure oversight and regulation of these technologies as they develop.

via Gizmodo

Spark-EV Closed Down - A Torrid Tale of Broken Promises and Vaporware

2008-04-11T06:31:00.000-07:00

Edit: It seems that Spark-EV has shut it's doors, the owner replacing the former website with a description of events that led to Spark's downfall. I'm sorry for posting without researching the company better, but the posted letter is interesting reading!

I had thought that I was keeping up on the development of this generation of electric vehicles, being completely disappointed by the lack of commitment from American carmakers and the plethora of vaporware from the likes of Zap!, and anxiously awaiting a "new" EV1 that is affordable, practical, and has a decent range. While Tesla has finally started production of their legendary electric roadster, at 100,000 clams, this is still far out of reach of the average eco-conscious consumer. However, I recently came across Spark-EV, a U.S. company that supposedly already has 3 models in production and 2 more pending certification for 75+mph highway operation and over 100 miles to a charge. All that plus a few neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs), 2 electric scooters, and a futuristic 3 wheel EV in the works as well!

The largest option currently available is the Qilin, a 5-seater mini-SUV akin to a Honda CRV with a range of 100+ miles/charge, top speed of 80mph, and a price tag of $27,950. Next is the Zotye (pictured) with a range of 110+ miles, top speed of 75mph, and goes for $24,900. The smallest current full-speed option is the Dragon, a compact similar to a VW Golf or Toyota Matrix with a range of 125+ miles, top speed of 80mph, and sells for $24,950. They also have a micro-compact dubbed the Panda, that is pending full-speed certification, but is a 2-seater similar to a SmartCar that will get you 80mph and 125+ miles per charge for $21,950. These all run on LiFePO4 batteries that charge fully in 10 hours, but can get 75% charge in 5 hours.

Let's do some simple calculations: The average commuter drives 15,000 miles/year, estimate fuel efficiency at a generous 30mpg, and you're using 500 gallons of fuel per year. Over the next 10 years, with fuel prices climbing, let's estimate a lowball average cost of $5/gallon. If you add in solar panels for "free" charging at home (the solar installation will pay itself off in 10-15 years as well in savings), by this calculation, your fuel savings alone in the next 10 years will pay for the price of the entire car! If you're still a skeptic, you can refer to The S.E.E.P.'s New Car Buyer's Guide, which basically says - don't buy a new car! Over the next 10 years peak oil, emissions restrictions, and rising fuel prices will force a significant change in our transportation infrastructure. Combine that with the upfront cost of a new vehicle and the incredibly fast depreciation, you're much better off either buying a used vehicle, preferably one capable of using biofuels, so you can wait for the next generation of electrics and new technology, or buy an all-electric now, which will save you more and more money as fuel prices increase. For the DIY'er, you can build your own EV with a kit from Electro-Auto, EV USA, or pick up kit plans from Riley Enterprises. In addition, battery technology will continue to improve at a rapid pace, so by the time your new EV needs new batteries, it is probable that you'll be able to extend your range by upgrading to an ultracapacitor, hydrogen, or other type of next-generation battery.

We need to stop fearing new technology and think outside of our fossil-fuel box. We still have a chance to change what we have set in motion and preserve much of the planet for our children, but we all need to make some sacrifices and take some risks.

Recycle and DIY - Do It Yourself Websites On The Rise!

2008-04-05T09:24:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit of a DIYer, making biodiesel, doing as much as possible myself to retrofit our home into a lower energy place, tinkering on the WVO Vegfalia, etc.. I have to admit, though, that there are many others out there who completely put me to shame as the DIY movement has taken off over the last few years. The best part is that you can share what you've done and learn from other peoples' creativity through a few fantastic websites:

Instructables: With regular contests for contributors, instructables has everything from baby slings to wind turbines, to LED lighting, to gardening constructs, all in a searchable database.

Readymade: A fun DIY magazine that has now gone electronic, with an archive of all past projects with difficulty and time ratings. They have a few kits and plans for sale, we'll be working on our 10 X 10 recycled garden house soon!

Make: Another magazine with DIY projects that has a presence on instructables as well as plenty of creativity, plans, and some kits.

Hit the dump, curbside, freecycle, craigslist, friends' garages, or wherever you can find some material to recycle into some fun and useful projects!

Letter To An Apathetic Manufacturer - Active Conscious Consumerism

2008-03-31T14:44:00.000-07:00

Over the last few years, we have made big changes - solar, biodiesel production, WVO conversion on our Vegfalia, LED and CFL lighting, changing what we eat and from whom we buy it, and trying to curb our gluttonous consumerism. It is difficult, however, for a bargain-hunting gadget geek to overcome some of these long-ingrained urges.

Yesterday, I received a sale email from Scott E-Vest, a manufacturer and retailer of "technology-enabled" clothing which I have been eyeing for some time. Basically, their jackets and other clothing have multiple, well-designed pockets, a weight-management system, and conduits to run your headphones and cables - truly worthy of even the most discriminating techie dorks (they even have a solar panel option!). I was tempted by a big sale, but my ecovangelism got the best of me and I emailed them to see what their materials were and where the products were made. This was their response:

"We manufacture our products in China. At this time, we do not use recycled materials." . . .
Cordially,
Laura Jordan
SCOTTEVEST, INC.
ljordan@scottevest.com

So here was my eco-minded retort:

"Thanks for the reply, let me know if you bring manufacturing back to the U.S. to support our own country's economy.

We will hopefully be seeing more of this as we slide into this recession, as we start to realize the social implications of our workforce choices, as the costs of fuel and transport increase, and as global emissions become commodities. Also, as more environmentally friendly and recycled materials are more available at lower costs, they are more and more becoming the intelligent choice for responsible manufacturing.

Please consider the chain of effect the production of your goods makes - from materials made out of petroleum with toxic by-products, to oppressive and sweatshop-like conditions of manufacture in China, to the CO2 emissions and fuel use from shipping across the globe, to the decline of the American workforce and our current economic downturn as the result of outsourcing these jobs.

Today's consumers are quickly becoming more responsible in their purchasing as the conscious consumerism movement grows and each manufacturer is held responsible for the environmental and social effects of what they offer to the market. We are voting for responsible and thoughtful products with our dollars and against corporate apathy and greed by taking our business elsewhere.

Thank you for your consideration,

Clint Slaughter, M.D. "

Feel free to use this letter as a basis for writing to companies that you used to use, but have phased out because of their business practices and lack of environmental and social responsibility. If we just vote with our dollar, it will be a slow transition. If we combine words and action, we might speed up the process!

Barack Obama, Our Country's Hope for Redemption

2008-03-12T15:39:00.001-07:00

Obama certainly is inspirational. So much so that a variety of musicians put his "Yes We Can" speech to music in a video that gives you goosebumps. Can Barack keep his integrity in todays horribly corrupt and corporation-controlled political atmosphere? Can we as a country redeem ourselves in the eyes of the rest of the world? Can we rebuilt trust and begin righting the wrongs of the Bush administration? Can we bring back the legendary American workforce and show the world that we can change from the gluttonous, wasteful society that we have become into a world leader against climate change?
Yes we can.

Bush Administration Pushes Out Admiral Fallon, Middle East Commander, For Not Wanting War With Iran

2008-03-12T03:23:00.000-07:00

In yet another astonishingly obvious ploy to continue their war machine, the Bush administration has forced Admiral William Fallon, the commander of American troops in the Middle East, to retire. In a recent Esquire magazine article, comments by Commander Fallon to the Arab T.V. station Al Jazeera last fall were discussed as he pushed for diplomacy with Iran rather than pressing towards war as the Bush administration has been over the last year. Commander Fallon described the “constant drumbeat of conflict” from Washington that was directed at Iran was “not helpful and not useful.” He went on to say “I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for,” and that “We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions.”

Unfortunately, even though Fallon has demonstrated success in improving conditions in Iraq, he has also called for diplomacy and peace, suggested that we are losing focus from Afghanistan where Al Qaeda has the majority of their operations still are.

So, the man who has been described by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates as one of the most brilliant strategic minds in the military, has been dismissed, simply because he has suggested that peaceful conflict resolution might be a good idea after all.

The pattern or relentless imperialism, inhumanitarian practice, violation of international peace accords, war mongering, policy influence by corporate interests, and complete and utter disregard for the values and opinion of the American people (and the rest of the civilized world for that matter) is alive and flourishing in the Bush Administration.

via BBC and NYT

Pharmaceuticals Found in Washington D.C.'s Tap Water

2008-03-09T18:24:00.000-07:00

The first thing that needs to be said about this is: please don't use more bottled water as a result of this finding! There are plenty of other issues with bottled water like higher bacterial content, leeching chemicals from plastics, and the fact that bottled water is an environmental nightmare, using 1.5 million barrels of oil annually for the plastic from the U.S. alone.

Back to the matter at hand: according to the Washington post, trace amounts of a variety of pharmaceutical drugs has been found in the drinking water supply of more than 1 million people in and around D.C..

"In addition to caffeine, the drugs found in water treated by the Washington Aqueduct include the well-known pain medications ibuprofen and naproxen, commonly found in Aleve. But there were also some lesser-known drugs: carbamazepine, an anti-convulsive to reduce epileptic seizures and a mood stabilizer for treating bipolar disorders; sulfamethoxazole, an antibiotic that can be used for humans and animals in treating urinary tract and other infections; and monensin, an antibiotic typically given to cattle. In addition, the study uncovered traces of triclocarban, a disinfectant used in antibacterial soaps."

Nobody knows what this means to human health yet, with such small amounts it is unlikely to cause any immediate harm, however the additive effects are uncalculable at this point. We are continuing to find more and more potentially harmful chemicals that we are exposing ourselves to at low levels, some of which have similar hormone-disrupting properties, some that have been shown to be carcinogenic or effect thyroid function, and a multitude of others that have unknown human health implications and for which there is no know safety cutoff.

We as a society have to stop allowing ourselves to be preyed upon by the corporate sales machine - the majority of the chemicals and pharmaceuticals in our environment that can potentially effect our health are simply not necessary. I have addressed the antibacterial soap and germiphobe movement in the past, and if you read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan, the horrors of feedlot-grown, grain-fed beef are described, with the cows having chronic liver infections and abscesses from the food requiring antibiotics to survive until slaughter. These practices continue to pressure evolution in bacteria and is generating the "superbugs" that are harder and harder to treat. These are not acceptable or sustainable practices, we are seeing more and more contamination of our food, our water, and our homes with chemicals and toxins now an ubiquitous part of our environment and it will soon catch up with us if we continue to allow it to happen.

via Jack Foreman via AHIP Newsletter via Washington Post

Environmental Toxicology: Unsafe toys, lipstick, water bottles, pesticides and more!

2008-02-25T19:25:00.000-08:00

This is part of a grant proposal that we are writing through ECOSLO to start an environmental health education program in our community. It truly is frightening what we are being exposed to on a daily basis.

In our modern industrialized society, on a daily basis we are exposed to countless chemicals, toxins, and carcinogens in the form of fumes, preservatives, pesticides, fertilizers, waste runoff, and residues. Some of these substances have been proven to be harmful, some of them are speculated to be harmful, and for many of them, we have no idea as to their potential impact on our health.
Even though we are certain of many of these health effects, the offending chemicals are still in our everyday foods, packaging, toys, household cleaners and many other products. It is of paramount importance that we educate consumers on what is safe, what is dangerous and why, and continue to support research into the effects of other potentially harmful substances. A more difficult subject to tackle is the additive effects of what we are exposed to, combinations of heavy metals, multiple hormone-modulating chemicals, or chronic, long-term exposure to materials that we are told are safe at low levels.
While educating consumers is important, educating healthcare professionals is important as well. The same way we are supposed to educate our patients on the dangers of smoking and obesity, we need to be educating our patients on the myriad of issues involving environmental health, both known and potential. Preventative medicine has been proven to be the least expensive and most effective way to counter many disease processes, and our hope is to prevent a portion of the morbidity and mortality that is occurring and will occur from human exposure to chemicals from our industrialized society.
The more publicized exposures include lead-based paint in children’s toys, lead leeching from dishes, phalates and bisphenols leeching from plastics, organophosphate poisoning from pesticides, and perchlorate contamination in many foods. Lead and other heavy metals are known to cause developmental delay, hyperactivity, and various other neurologic problems and can commonly found in old paints, many lipsticks, and more recently contaminating children’s toys. Phalates are plasticizers found in a wide range of consumer goods including pesticides, perfumes, nail polish adhesives, caulk, baby care products, and medical tubing and has been correlated with hormonal changes linked to decreased sperm counts, changes in genital anatomy in boys, and is possibly linked to resistance to insulin and the development of Type II diabetes. Bisphenols are used in the production of polycarbonate plastic and is found in the lining of canned foods, water bottles (including the commonly used Nalgene bottles with recycling symbol #7), and a large percentage of plastic food containers. They have been found to mimic estrogen and disrupt hormones, causing decreased sperm counts, carcinogenic effects during development, as well as a link to increased risk of breast cancer. Organophosphates are pesticides that block acetylcholinesterase, disrupting nerve conduction and also make up the active ingredients in Sarin and VX nerve gas. Although they degrade fairly quickly in the environment, they are one of the most common causes of poisoning worldwide and can potentially effect brain development even at low levels. Perchlorates are salts that are used in rocket fuel and fertilizers and has been found to contaminate up to 1/3 of American produce and milk. It interferes with iodide uptake in the thyroid gland, thereby causing hypothyroidism (low thyroid functioning).
While more research is necessary to support and confirm some of these correlations, and a significant amount of work has yet to be done to uncover the health effects of other chemicals, what we can do now, on local, regional, and national levels, is to educate consumers of the known and potential problems with exposure to these substances in our homes and daily lives. Through outreach to local hospitals, physicians’ offices, nurses, and other healthcare professionals, we hope to decrease the exposure risk to our community. We hope to integrate environmental health into a comprehensive preventative health system that can save billions of healthcare dollars per year and lead to significantly decreased morbidity and improved lives for our citizens. As a secondary benefit to this education, decreasing the use of toxic pesticides, chemicals, and plastics, will also decrease the amount of toxins released into the environment in the manufacture of these goods, decrease landfill waste, and encourage sustainable and organic farming, which as been recently shown to provide food using 20% less energy and with significantly more vitamins and antioxidants.

New Renewable Oil Source: Bio-crude Could Be Big

2008-02-18T10:55:00.000-08:00

Australia's national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), along with Monash University have taken cellulosic ethanol to another level. Using agricultural waste, forest thinnings, waste paper, and anything else with lignocellulose, they are able to make bio-crude, similar to a renewable "light and sweet" crude petroleum which can then be further refined into ethanol, bioplastics, and other uses. They smartly propose local processing plants to use regional waste, thereby closing the loop on a good deal of what would otherwise go to landfill.

OK U.S.A., while we're still half-ignoring the issue being the ONLY industrialized nation not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (Australia and Iraq recently caved), other nations are using public funds to research and develop innovative, clean technologies to take them into the fossil fuel free, sustainable future. This is what we could be doing with the billions of dollars of subsidies going to the oil companies that are making record profits by exploiting us both as taxpayers and consumers. Write your congresspeople to kill oil subsidies and support renewable energy research!

via Treehugger

Major Auto Makers Ignore Automotive X-Prize

2008-02-04T12:40:00.000-08:00

The X-Prize foundation, the same folks who organized the competition for consumer spaceflight technology, is ponying up another multi-million dollar prize for the team that can produce the best consumer car that gets more than 100mpg. Although this isn't new news, it is interesting to see that every single major U.S. automaker, those with the most R & D money, the most to gain, and the most to lose, are conspicuously absent from the competition. Exciting startups like Aptera, with their 300+mpg plug-in hybrid, and both Tesla and Zap! Automotive, with their 250 miles per charge electric cars, have thrown their hats in the ring along with 30 or so other competitors. Not only do consumers want more efficient cars, but with peak oil just around the corner and the current state of climate change, we NEED more efficient modes of transportation that use minimal or no fossil fuels.

The U.S. carmakers have shown their loyalty to the oil companies time and time again by fighting improved efficiency standards and continuing to make cars bigger and less efficient. It is indeed sad that the once great American auto industry has fallen so far, but they have and continue to dig their own graves. We can only hope that our government and our people will have the foresight to support these burgeoning clean energy and clean vehicle industries. We can rebuild some of the lost American manufacturing empire, stimulate the economy, and keep jobs in our country.

via Engadget

Shell Oil CEO Informs Employees That Peak Oil is an Estimated 7 Years Out!

2008-01-28T22:55:00.000-08:00

In a move that defies the stance of other petrochemical giants, the Shell CEO, Jeroen van der Veer, sent a letter to employees stating in no uncertain terms that peak oil is about 7 years out. (bold type for emphasis by treehugger)

"Regardless of which route we choose, the world's current predicament limits our maneuvering room. We are experiencing a step-change in the growth rate of energy demand due to population growth and economic development, and Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand."

Van der Veer goes on to briefly and reasonably discuss the shortfalls of current public energy policy and renewables. Do you think they meant for this to become general knowledge? It's time to ramp up our battery/hydrogen/cellulosic ethanol/wind/solar research, according to Shell, we'll see a sharp increase in oil prices ($500/barrel?) by 2015!

via treehugger

Sustainable Sewer for Los Osos, CA?

2008-01-28T22:16:00.000-08:00

San Luis County Surfrider chapter and SLO Green Build are co-sponsoring 2 public presentations and workshops in an effort to present environmentally and economically friendly ways to solve the small coastal town's sewer problems.

Currently everyone in the town, just south of Morro Bay, are on septic systems and no further growth is allowed since they have saturated the ability of the local ground to process the sewage. There are many members of the community that are fine with less growth, but also many who feel it would be good for the town, or those who stand to make a lot of money from development. So far, a waste treatment facility has been planned smack in the center of town, in a beautiful plot overlooking the ocean. The community has been outraged at the proposal, and a few million dollars in taxpayer dollars has been wasted in order to advance the agenda of a few. Los Osos, however, has the perfect opportunity to be a model community for sustainability. Instead of each citizen having to pay $30,000 or more to be hooked up to the new downtown sewage treatment plant in addition to the costs to the county for construction, each home could be retrofitted with composting toilets and greywater reclamation systems for less than that and in the process saving water and significant amounts of money in the long run, all while being better to the environment. Sounds like a simple decision, right? Not when there's money to be had by local developers with their pocketbooks open for local officials. Well, it's either that, or the planning board of Los Osos is seated with stubborn, backwards-thinking codgers with no vision or reasonable thought processes. Hopefully these presentations will educate and drum up enough public support for a well-planned, sustainable water and sewer plan for this unique and beautiful coastal town.

“Sustainability...the Final Frontier!”

Can Appropriate Water Technology Help

Los Osos and other cities in our County...?

Keynote Speaker: Jonathan Todd, of Todd Ecological Design Inc. (www.toddecological.com) an award-winning water and natural resources planning firm, will be visiting San Luis Obispo County on February 6th and 7th to address appropriate technology in San Luis county including the Los Osos sewer project. Todd Ecological specializes in the development of ecological technologies for food production, waste purification and conversion, environmental restoration and systems integration ofr architecture and eco-industrial parks throughout the world. The focus is to provide clients with cost-effective aesthetic solutions to wastewater, storm water, aquatic environment management, and bio-solids conversion.

Two Public Presentations &

Sustainability Socials

(Pizza, Beer, Wine, Sweets, Raffle, & Music!)

February 6th, Weds; 6 – 9 pm

SLO Botanical Garden ($20 suggested donation)

New education & convention facility. (www.slobg.org)

(El Chorro Regional Park, across Hwy 1 from Cuesta College)

(Between Morro Bay & SLO)

February 7th, Thurs; 6 – 10 pm:

LOS OSOS @ South Bay Community Center

($5 suggested donation)

(2180 Palisades Ave, behind Skate Park)

Available at both events: Music by THE CUESTA JAZZ ENSEMBLE

By Donation (All Funds raised will assist sustainability efforts within SLO County)

• Food by American Flatbread Pizza,

• Beer tasting by Cayucos Brewing Company,

• Wine tasting, and

• Slo Chai and SweetEarth Chocolates

Examples of appropriate technology to maintain a healthy water cycle:

1. Low Impact development strategies

2. Ultra low flow toilets or high efficiency 1.28 Gpf

3. Rainwater harvesting

4. Dual Flush Toilets .9 / 1.6 Gpf

5. Grey water reuse systems

6. Energy Star Appliances (Clothes washer and dishwasher)

7. Composting toilets

For more details about this event, please see the press release

For downloadable flyer please click HERE.

Los Osos Blog: SewerWatch

The Center for Public Integrity releases "The War Card", a Tally of the Bush Administration's Deceptions Leading to the Iraq War

2008-01-23T20:27:00.000-08:00

An AP report released yesterday showcased a study performed by 2 non-profit groups, the Center for Public Integrity, and The Fund For Independence in Journalism that documents the incredible number of false statements made by the Bush administration that led the public to acquiesce and go to war in Iraq. The study cites at least 935 false statements by Bush, Cheney, Condi, and Rumsfeld, 532 or more inaccurate statements by Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, and press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan. Most of these statements asserted that there was unequivocal proof that Iraq did indeed have weapons of mass destruction and/or that there were proven ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

The Center for Public Integrity's "Iraq: The War Card" is a comprehensive database of this intentional deception by our government and shows without doubt that the Iraq war was brought about by a carefully orchestrated media and propaganda campaign designed to utilize the tragedy and outrage generated by the 9/11 attacks as fuel for the flame.

The evidence has been available now for years and is growing in strength. So when can we start the criminal hearings for the Bush administration for fraud, deception, genocide in Iraq, and the almost 4000 wrongful deaths of our valiant U.S. soldiers that went to war to defend us from a lie.

via msnbc, Gavin W.

The Ethanol Scam: One of America's Political Boondoggles, via Rolling Stone

2008-01-23T19:00:00.000-08:00

Although this article came out last June in Rolling Stone magazine, it is an excellent discussion of the scam that is corn ethanol. As you know, I'm all for eco-friendliness, but through political manipulation, lobbying (ie: bribery), and as Rolling Stone puts it, boondoggling, corn ethanol has become the country's fastest growing biofuel, while at the same time being the least efficient and most fossil-fuel intensive to produce. For every 1 gallon of fossil fuel you put in, you only get 1.3 gallons of ethanol out. Add in the chemical pesticides, petroleum-based fertilizers, and the fact that ethanol provides up to 20% less energy than petrol, ethanol efficiency drops into negative numbers. (previous seep post)

If the numbers for corn-based ethanol are so bad, why are we subsidizing this horrific waste of food when there are starving people around the world? It's an environmental and social catastrophe. It seems that for many Americans, filling your SUV is more important than feeding a hungry family. I know that may sound harsh and unreasonable, but when you lay it all out, that is really the choice that we're making.

Who has the political guts to stop allowing corporate interests to dictate national energy policy and start making rational, well-thought out decisions that will provide us with energy security into the next century? Obama? Hillary?

Nobody yet.

Photo from Rolling Stone Magazine

Beck From the Dead: A Review of Glenn Beck's Deathbed Video

2008-01-21T23:59:00.001-08:00

I watched the video of Glenn Beck, rambling clearly under the influence of some sort of narcotic pain medication. In the video he indemnifies the entire medical system because he feels that he didn't get the care he deserved, fingering himself and the CEO of GE as prominent local VIPs. He compares the unbearable hospital experiences with his slightly less horrific, back alley, miscreant-style Glenn Beck days. Maybe when he was an unnamed, unimportant "schlub", like he refers to all of us other lowly peons. "One of the darker experiences of my life", he said twice, comparing his experience to the horror movie, "saw". Looking at the video clinically, it appears that he possibly had a mild psychotic break while on the medications, hallucinating and becoming suicidal. Regardless of whatever actually happened, his reaction was certainly not normal.
The video continues, his histrionically derailed trains of thought wander around, lacking any type insight or trace of intelligent analysis, never saying what was so horrific about the hospital stay. Was it the wait time to be seen? Did he feel that he should have had his pain relieved more quickly? Did he have to sit for a few minutes in a dirty waiting room with other sneezing, oozing, bleeding, moaning patients? Was it a busy ER, where he was triaged appropriately and seen as soon as the busy staff could, while they were concurrently coding an elderly cancer patient, getting report on the next ambulance coming in, trying to arrange an emergency cardiac catheterization for a heart attack victim, paging three admitting docs at the same time, all while calling the floor supervisor to stop stalling on admitting the 1 ICU, 2 telemetry, and 2 more med-surg patients that we've been boarding overnight so we can put 4 more of the 15 other sick people in the waiting room in beds to be seen?

Maybe he simply has no perspective and should discuss some of the real problems with our health system. Like how insurance companies deny patients the care that they need so they don't lose profit margins. Or how a growing number of American citizens commit healthcare fraud, lying and faking to feed their prescription narcotic addiction, or driving gas-guzzling Hummers and Expeditions while raking up thousands of dollars in U.S. taxpayer funded healthcare bills per year. Or how the processed, industrially made, pesticide-laden foods that we feed ourselves directly contributes to obesity, diabetes, cardiac disease, and other illnesses, with many dyes, preservatives, or other ingredients causing medically significant side effects, including cancer, birth defects, miscarraiges, and others, even contributing to childhood ADD. Or how frivolous lawsuits cost millions of taxpayer dollars per year, drive good physicians out of business, causing healthcare shortages, and further drive the price of basic medical care through the roof.

I'm sure you had some discomfort, but suck it up, man! I really don't understand how this issue became "Glenn Beck has a Harrowing Medical Experience: U.S. Healthcare in Shambles" story, as opposed to, "Glenn Beat has Transient Psychotic Break While in Hospital: Narcotic side effects and How Prescription Narcotic Abuse is On The Rise."

6th Annual Mount Sinai Global Health Conference, "Environmental Crisis and Human Health", 6pm, Friday, February 29th and 9am Saturday, March 1st.

2008-01-21T01:18:00.000-08:00

I've just been informed that the Mount Sinai School of Medicine Global Health Center and the Global Health Education Consortium, along with Physicians for Social Responsibility and the MSSM Masters in Public Health Program have announced the 6th Annual Mount Sinai Global Health Conference, entitled "Environmental Crisis and Human Health" to be held at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. More info at www.mssm-ghc.org/conference2008

SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
Dr. Howie Frumpkin, M.D., MPH, DrPH
Director of the National Center for Environmental Health/ Agency for
Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and one of
the leaders of the CDC’s response to climate change

Dr. Michael McCally, MD, PHD
The executive director of the Nobel Prize-winning organization
“Physicians for Social Responsibility” and a leading
environmental health expert and advocate

Dr. Joel Cohen, PHD, DRPH
Author of “How Many People Can the Earth Support?”
and Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of Populations
at Rockefeller and Columbia Universities

Robin Guenther, FAIA, LEED AP
An architect who won the Center for Health Design's
Changemaker Award for her efforts to green healthcare,
she co-authored the “Green Guide for Health Care” and
also wrote the new book, “Sustainable Healthcare Architecture”.

Sponsored by the Rosenbluth Foundation at the
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Goldwurm Auditorium
1425 Madison Ave
NY, NY

This sounds like a fantastic conference but I unfortunately don't think I'll be able to make it out. The issue of human health and climate change as well as current exposures to environmental toxins and chemicals is a growing field and we need to be prepared for the forthcoming crises.

via Sigrid Hahn

Glenn Beck's ER Experience: Much Ado About A Total Lack of Perspective

2008-01-21T00:17:00.000-08:00

So we've all been subjected to CNN's poorly informed pundit's "harrowing" ER experience. From what I can gather, he had a thrombosed hemorrhoid, waited for 40 minutes to be brought back to a room and around 2 hours for pain medications. He sobbed when recounting the event and how unfair it was that he, Glenn Beck, had to wait for medical care. Somehow, this has become a national news sensation and is being touted as an example of how horrible our medical system is. To top it all off, Beck's hemorrhoids are now ridiculously being likened to the Edith Rodriguez tragedy, who actually died in a L.A. ER waiting room after waiting for hours to be seen.
I'm an ER doctor and although I do agree that our health care system is in trouble and is riddled with problems, Glenn Beck's rectal pain does not showcase any of them.

As far as his 40 minute wait time goes, certainly he was in pain and this should be treated as expediently as possible, but I'm sorry to inform the general public that a 40 minute wait is really short! Although our hospitals only have a 15-30 minute wait, most hospitals routinely have 2 hour or longer wait times, sometimes 12 or more hours for less acute issues! It is unfortunate that he had to wait 2 hours for pain medications, but I would assume that in a busy ER, there were likely much more pressing issues from other patients like heart attacks and people trying to die. There are multiple reasons for prolonged wait times in emergency departments. The most common is because of triage protocols. From all of the patients presenting to an ER, we must take the sickest patients back first - strokes, chest pain, active bleeding, respiratory compromise, sepsis (severe infections), etc, come back first. Unfortunately there are many people that present to ERs that do not actually need emergency care and these people must wait for the more acute complaints to be take care of.

Bonus rant: These are patients with coughs, colds, rashes, some chronic conditions, and a plethora of other complaints that should be treated by primary care as an outpatient rather than in an emergency department. Some come because they couldn't get into their primary care doctor or don't even have one, some come because they didn't want to wait for primary care, some just want immediate gratification, and some just have noplace else to go. Regardless of the cause, primary care complaints clog up the department so poorly informed pundits screaming in peroneal agony need to wait until the other patients are cleared out. We are actually mandated by law to give a medical screening exam to any patient that presents to the ER, regardless of their complaint, be it emergent, chronic, or completely ridiculous. All this without requesting any information about ability to pay or insurance status, we must see them all. The most frequent abusers of the emergency system tend to be those on our public assistance programs, MediCal here in California. These are "heavy utilizers", people that choose to go to the ER for even minor complaints, because they know that they can be seen quickly and they don't have to pay a copay. Now the taxpayers get a $500 ER bill for what would have been a $75 primary care visit. Unfortunately, since there is no personal accountability built into our public health system, there is no incentive to use the system properly. In the same vein, a surprising number of patients utilizing our public health system are smokers, spending the equivalent of a low-cost heath insurance policy on a pack of cigarettes per day (~$150/month) and incurring billions of dollars collectively in smoking related healthcare costs and lost wages. These patients cost the system and the taxpayers a ridiculous amount of money and often will keep other emergency patients from being seen in a timely fashion.

The problem with our healthcare system today is not with the physicians, nurses, and other staff, we all strive to give our patients the best care we can considering the circumstances at any given time. We're there to help, and even though we didn't sign up to be spit on, cursed at, swung at, vomited on, sprayed with blood and other body fluids, plus have ridiculous lawsuits filed against us, we go to work anyway and try to give some help to whomever comes in, regardless or race, creed, disease state, wimpitude factor, or ability to pay. Many of you have seen Sicko, so you know that insurance companies are a big part of the problem. I think two other major contributors to our healthcare crisis are frivolous lawsuits (often from unreasonable expectation of care), and a lack of personal responsibility from a patient perspective. If insurance coverage is made non-profit, medical liability is reformed, and people have to pay the health costs of their lifestyle choices (ie: smokers pay for smoking related illness costs, obese patients contribute extra to care for cardiac disease and diabetes, etc), we'll see a significant decrease in cost to everyone and more efficient care. Leaving healthcare up to the free market is a recipe for disaster - right now we outspend every other country in the world by far, yet our health system ranks 37th!

How's that free market working for you?

CNN Report

Some of Beck's Humdingers

Bombproof Argument For Taking Action: Climate Skeptics Please Watch And Consider!

2008-01-06T21:45:00.001-08:00

This is a simple discussion on a 4-square graph where we look at the two agreed upon scenarios: 1. Global warming is real, 2. Global warming is not happening. He then takes our two options, action or inaction, and plots out worst case scenarios. If you're a skeptic, take a look and see what you think. If you're on board, take a look and pass it on.

New Belgium Brewery Tour Review: A Beer-Loving Ecovangelist's Mecca

2008-01-04T20:57:00.001-08:00

While visiting family in Ft. Collins, CO, on our winter attempt at a fossil fuel free road trip, we had the pleasure of touring the New Belgium Brewing Company, makers of Fat Tire Ale, Mothership Wit Organic Ale, 2° Below, and other tasty concoctions. Located a stone’s throw from old town, this sustainable brew house is now the 3^rd largest craft brewery in the country, only behind giants like Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada.

I was already a fan, knowing that the brewery was completely wind-powered, that their fat tire beer is pretty darn good, and that we would get free samples. I really didn’t see how I would be disappointed, but I didn’t know what wonders that I was to behold on the tour.

Walking up to the New Belgium Brewing Company, the flagship brew Fat Tire comes alive through long rows of bike racks, filled with the chubby-wheeled bikes of employees, who are encouraged to bike to work and given one of the logo-clad gas-savers after one year of employment. Once you enter the bar/tasting area, further clues of their mission abound – stained concrete floors, stools and chairs made from recycled bike wheels, the shrine to bicycling, to the eco-tips article clipped to the bathroom stall wall. The mood in the tasting room is fun and jovial, the employee-owners (yes, 1/3 of the company is owned by the employees!) wearing holiday garb, their verve for working at New Belgium apparent in their expressions.

The Tour:

We were able to jump on to the last tour of the day and since we didn’t have time to choose our 4 samples, our server gave us a primer sample of 2° Below, the deep caramel –colored, mildly spiced and satisfying winter brew. With our whistle wetted, we headed off with Erin, our energetic and impassioned employee-owner tour guide. As we walked to brew house 2, the new facility, capable of 700 bottles per minute, Erin pointed out the porous concrete walkway for drainage, the LED/recycled bottle chandelier, and the massive skylight, solar tube, and reflector system to maximize daylight. We watched the armies of bottles being cleaned, filled, and packaged for shipping on the slick new assembly line. New Belgium uses B20 for all local shipping, and is looking into ways to make long-distance distribution (which they must subcontract out at this point) more eco-friendly such as the use of trains rather than trucks when possible. In fact, the thing that impressed me most about this company is that they have built a successful business model as sustainable as they could from the beginning, and are constantly trying to move forward, improve, and innovate, to hopefully make everything in their process, from cradle to grave, have as small of an environmental footprint as possible.

Erin spoke about the brewery with a near religious fervor, referring in awe to the founders, Jeff and Kim, and of the sense of family that had been engendered there. As we continued the tour, we climbed some stairs to the top of the vats where wort was stewing in one and barley was being cracked in another. I was surprised to find that what would have been a bare and warehouse atmosphere anywhere else, was adorned with sculptures made from recycled parts, and each of the 3 tanks was surrounded by a different mosaic, the first of which had embedded, “To make our love and talent manifest.” idealistic prose, straight from the mission statement of this visionary company.

The Beers:

Once we finished the tour, we headed back to the crowded and cheerful tasting room and ordered our 4 samples each. All of the beers are based on Belgian style beermaking, but New Belgium has creatively expanded upon the former standards. The flagship, Fat Tire is a good, basic, medium ale with a tasty and solid flavor, a minimally bitter aftertaste, and is just as comfortable quenching your beer-thirst after a grueling bike ride as it is at your favorite social gathering – plus, you definitely get extra points these days bringing an environmentally friendly brew to a party. Mothership Wit is a 95% organic wheat ale that is light and refreshing, but to me has a much fuller flavor than most Belgian wheats. It has a hint of citrus and it’s slight turbidity makes you feel like you’re drinking a natural, organic beer. 1554, a reproduction of the oldest known recipe of dark Belgian ale, dug up from the depths of the ancient Brussels’ city archives, is a dark, chocolaty concoction that gives you a wonderful array of flavors up front, a satisfying aftertaste, and a stoutish feel without being to heavy. The Frambosen is probably one of the best fruit-tainted beers I’ve had, ranking up with Magic Hat #9. The beer is somewhat dark, with a full body and just enough raspberry to make it out of this world. Although I could only sample 4 of my own, I sneaked some sips of a few others as well as cleaning up some floaters from other family members. The Trippel ale that Laura ordered was unexpectedly interesting but good, with a yeasty and slightly sour flavor, making me feel like I had just scored some of the best 16^th century mead the knighthood could buy.

After the tasting, we signed up for the Wunderbike team, pledging to ride to work at least twice a month (which we do anyway) and getting some sweet pant-straps in the process. We also picked up New Belgium bike socks, a growler of Frombosen for the holidays, and Laura bought me a cycling jersey because the whole experience had been so exciting to me. We had just had the pleasure of touring this wonderful company that makes great beer in a sustainable way, in a creative, caring atmosphere. If I wasn’t already an ER doc in CA, I would be tempted to submit my application! Did I mention that the owner/employees get a case of beer/week during the holidays? To Jeff and Kim and the rest of the New Belgium family, keep up the fantastic work, we’ll be enjoying plenty of Fat Tire in the future.

EPA (aka Oil Cronies) Keeps 17 States From Setting Their Own MPG Standards

2007-12-26T20:54:00.000-08:00

So over the past few months we've seen both the House and the Senate pass weakened fuel economy standards and poor excuses for energy policies. After wasting hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars debating the standards, they passed a humiliatingly flaccid plan requiring manufacturers to meet a 35 mpg average by 2020. The original bill also contained minimum future requirements for renewable energy from power companies and various clean energy tax incentives, but these were all slashed when Bush threatened to veto. This unto itself shows the utter lack of power or fight in our legislators regarding the environment. The actions of the EPA, however, are even more disgusting, as Stephen L. Johnson, the EPA administrator (clearly a "loyal Bushie"), turned down California's request to impose it's own, more strict standards of approximately 43 mpg by 2016, a much more reasonable commitment considering the state of our planet. Oddly, the EPA has pretty much always allowed California to impose it's own standards, but it is now balking. Now, when 16 other states, including NY, NJ, and CT, comprising over 50% of all U.S. vehicle sales, also want to pass tougher efficiency requirements. The debacle is discussed further in this NYTimes article, and thankfully the Governator is standing strong and, along with many of the other states in question and some environmental groups, they are vowing to sue the EPA and fight this judgement.

Nice work Arnold. Although I generally recommend buying locally and buying U.S. made products to help our own economy and rebuild our country's production capability, when it comes to cars, we have to refuse to buy from the big American manufacturers until they give us the fuel-efficient and alternative energy cars and trucks that we need. They have fallen miserably behind the leaders, Toyota and Honda, and rather than actually stepping up and giving us an environmental option, they stoop to political shell games to keep selling their gas-guzzling monstrosities.

photo from fuh2.com

via Gavin

Lead Poisoning From Your Dishes? You Betcha!

2007-12-26T20:15:00.000-08:00

Once again, our runaway train to industrialization and mass-production has turned up more ways that we're poisoning ourselves. Over the last month or so, a flurry of concern has arisen across Utah after a 16 month old girl was found to have lead poisoning. After extensive testing of their home, it was found that the plates that the mother was eating from contained lead, which was then passed to the child through breast milk. Wow. The original story aired on KUTV from Salt Lake, and their local on-air watchdog, "Get Gephardt", did some further investigation. The television station was able to get viewers to bring in over 1,500 plates for lead testing and found that more than 30% contained toxic levels of lead (pdf link for the full report and list of manufacturers). It seems that glazings commonly have lead and many plates with colorful paintings or patterns often have higher levels as well. The lead in the glazing and paints leeches out into your food, especially when heating them in microwaves. Although some of these plates were made in China, many were made in Europe, or here in the good old US of A. And it wasn't just cheapo Walmart brands either, expensive names such as Spode were full of the stuff.

Lead is extraordinarily toxic to the developing nervous systems of young children and can cause permanent developmental delays and retardation. This is just another example of how industrialized production of goods from improperly tested materials can be harmful. We're finding more and more toxic substances in everyday items, from toys, to food containers, to foods, and more. Imagine how many things we haven't figured out are harming us at low levels or have an additive effect with others?

If you can, get your dishes tested. If you can't, consider performing a "tox audit" of your home - we're transitioning to metal water bottles and glass food containers from petrol-based plastics with phalates, Bisphenol-A, and other toxins (here's a good quick article on plastics).

As far as the lead-tainted dishes in question go, there have been no recalls, although the HomeTrends/Gibson dishes in question were pulled from WalMart's shelves. Utah legislators are going to bat and trying to get a law passed to require manufacturers to label products with lead. Nice start, hopefully that will help you choose when you buy new dishes in 5-10 years.

Low-Carbon Holidays Through Skype

2007-12-25T08:46:00.000-08:00

My wife Laura and I are in the same holiday predicament as many - how can we visit all of our extended family in one short holiday season when everyone lives so far away? We could fly here and there, spend a thousand dollars on airfare and blow a few thousand extra tons of carbon into the atmosphere, or we could use free technology to have a "virtual x-mas." Since Laura's dad lives in Salt Lake and she has other family in Ft. Collins, CO, we decided to attempt a winter-time Fossil-Fuel-Free-Roadtrip in the Vegfalia. My parents and grandmother, however, live in Maryland and we can't make it out there for x-mas, so we set up our Skype video call for 9am Mountain Time. Some sound issues aside, we were able to open presents from each other across the country using this fantastic free technology. My sister and her husband came up from Mexico to see my parents as well and although we couldn't give holiday hugs, but we were able to laugh and talk and appreciate being "together" as best we could. We managed to see more family, save time, money, and CO2 - it was certainly a special holiday despite the distance.

Although a full report will be coming for the Vegfalia trip itself, I winterized the biodiesel system with a 110V fuel filter heater and a magnetic block heater, plumbed up our Roadside Filtration System to filter WVO on the fly, and headed out with 2 full tanks and an extra 30 gallons of filtered oil. Unfortunately along the way, we've run into cold weather issues with the lower quality oil, and although we found B20 at the pump in Ft. Collins and SLC, the Cardwell Distributing's B100/B50 pumps were gelled up and not functioning at all. The Roadside Filtration System we've discovered is also not able to filter at these temps. So, we've been using what fuel we brought, a little petrol diesel, mostly B20, and we hope to fill up with B100 and some virgin VO from Costco before we leave SLC. Not as fossil-fuel-free as we'd hoped, but still better than flying or driving on all petrol, plus we got to bring our dog Marley and our eco-friendly presents for the families.

Peace and goodwill to all!

Not-so-shocking Study Shows Childhood Obesity Significantly Increases Risk for Heart Attack

2007-12-17T02:16:00.000-08:00

In a recent New England Journal of Medicine article, Danish researchers showed significant correlations between childhood obesity and coronary artery disease as adults. Looking at 276,835 children born between 1930 and 1976, a linear correlation was found with increasing BMI (Body Mass Index) directly related to increasing risk of having a heart attack. The example used was that a 13 year old boy who is 11kg (24.2 lbs) overweight will have a 33% higher likelihood of having a coronary event than a similar boy of average weight.

NIH statistics show that 17% 0f American children are obese, triple the number since 1980!

Smoking and obesity have become two of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in our country, both of which are preventable. Obesity is a multifactorial issue that stems primarily from the obvious - poor diet and lack of exercise. Granted, the "American diet" is horrendous overall, with plastic-wrapped, preserved offerings of fried this and that, breaded and cheese-filled whatevers, and heaping portions of processed carbohydrates. One of the problems is that these foods are being marketed to children. Sales and demographics experts run numbers to see how they can most effectively sell horrendously unhealthy foods to more and more children (don't you feel guilty, you heartless bastards?). Cartoons and plastic gifts are used to entice kids to throw fits until they get the Happy Meal or package of sweets that they saw on TV. Also, there is a trend in the media to say that "It's OK to be yourself (aka obese)." Yes, it is good to be comfortable with yourself as a person, but it is not OK to be morbidly obese! From a pure healthcare standpoint, once you are more than 10-20 lbs overweight, you should start looking at ways to lose some poundage, not find ways to justify your excess weight in the eyes of society. It's not insensitive or rude, it's your health. We have gotten so bad, that last year a physician in New Hampshire actually lost his license because one of his patients was offended that he told her that she was overweight and needed to lose weight for her health. She complained to the board and when he refused to go to sensitivity training, they took his license! This to me is absolutely ridiculous. It's like an alcoholic suing you because you told them to stop drinking!

It comes down to parents, however, to provide their children with a healthy diet and teach them lifelong lessons of nutrition and regular exercise. To do your child the most good, feed them locally grown, organic foods when possible, avoid prepackaged foods as much as you can, and avoid fast foods entirely. Minimal or no sodas/sport drinks/etc, water down your juices, and no bottled water (that's more of an environmental concern, though). Once the kids are out of the house, it's tough to encourage these things, so do it while you have their full attention. Also, don't forget the exercise! Limit TV/computer/video game time significantly. Go cycling or play ball with your kids, take them surfing or hiking instead of letting them vegetate in front of the television. Don't buy your child Guitar Hero, buy them an actual guitar! Fiddling with 4 buttons on a plastic guitar teaches them nothing except that it's OK to sit around on the couch and do nothing to better yourself in any way. Your son won't thank you for all the dates he DIDN'T get because you encouraged him to be an awesome "Guitar Hero." He may, on the other hand, thank you for the guitar lessons after the plethora of dates he actually got from his swoon-worthy real-life guitar melodies. Oh, and virtual dates don't count.

Baker JL et al. Childhood body-mass index and the risk of coronary heart disease in adulthood. N Engl J Med 2007 Dec 6; 357:2329.

Eco Gift Expo in Santa Monica December 15 & 16

2007-12-12T21:47:00.000-08:00

In addition to suggestions on The S.E.E.P.'s Holiday Gift Guide, I was just informed of the Eco Gift Expo being put on in Santa Monica this weekend. Over 150 eco-conscious companies will be purveying their wares at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium at 1855 Main St on Saturday, December 15th and Sunday the 16th. They'll be joined with vendors of organic food and drink, a live jazz pavilion, performers, an eco-wrapping station, and "The Hall of Indulgence" display. Tickets are $10 and 10% of the proceeds will be donated to Global Green USA and the Whole Planet Foundation.

If you haven't figured out what you're doing for your loved ones this holiday, be it an oxfam sheep, some home made bread (We got a breadmaker at Goodwill for $12!), or a Patagonia fleece, head on over to the Eco Gift Expo for some more sustainable options!

BP Goes For Canadian Tar Sands, Turns More Evil.

2007-12-11T18:02:00.001-08:00

BP, aka British Petroleum, aka "Beyond Petroleum", had been doing fairly well in the eyes of environmentalists, seeming to make commitments to alternative energies, trying to live up to their new name. Now, however, they have made moves that put them up with the highest echelons of environmental criminals. According to The Independent, in a joint venture with Husky Energy, BP has ponied up 3 billion dollars to develop a facility in Alberta, Canada to begin extracting oil from the controversial tar sands. This 54,000 square mile area, covered with virgin forest and wildlife, has an estimated 175 billion barrels of recoverable oil. This recovery, however, is much more resource intensive and damaging that extracting a barrel of oil from a typical well. One way to get at these sands is basically a strip mining process, but BP is planning a slightly more environmentally friendly option which involves injecting water heated with natural gas to liquefy the oil for extraction. This will require 350 million cubic meters (92.4 trillion gallons) of water from the Athabasca river per year, which will then be contaminated and stored in a 20 square mile system of artifical ponds rather than being returned to the local ecosystem. In addition, it will require 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas to produce one barrel of unrefinded bitumen (tar sand oil), which is the same volume needed to heat a typical British home for 5.5 days.
"It takes about 29kg of CO2 to produce a barrel of oil conventionally. That figure can be as much 125kg for tar sands oil. It also has the potential to kill off or damage the vast forest wilderness, greater than the size of England and Wales, which forms part of the world's biggest carbon sinks. For BP to be involved in this trade not only flies in the face of their rhetoric but in the era of climate change it should not be being developed at all. You cannot call yourself 'Beyond Petroleum' and involve yourself in tar sands extraction," stated Mike Hudema of Greenpeace. According to Hudema, the organization is planning direct action to stop the project.

With this action, BP has completely destroyed any eco-credibility they have garnered thus far, and seem to have no problem commiting what is being described as "the biggest environmental crime in history." In a previous post, I presented the Sierra Club's ranking of the oil companie's relative harm, with Exxon-Mobile and ConocoPhillips the worst at the "bottom of the barrel", and BP and Sunoco at the top. This horrifically irresponsible move will no doubt rocket BP to the bottom of the list environmentally. BP is not the only one to blame, by allowing this travesty, the Canadian government is demonstrating a distinct lack of commitment to the environment.

I suppose we'll be adding BP to the list of companies that will not receive any more of our business! Time to boycott and BP as well as Exxon-Mobil!
via Gavin/infoshop news

Chevy's Greenwashed "Gas Friendly to Gas Free" Marketing Campaign

2007-12-11T15:30:00.000-08:00

OK, we all know that all of the U.S. car manufacturers have made decision after decision that is leading to their own demise. First, the engineered obselescence of the 80's and 90's - you need to keep buying new cars if the one you bought was designed to fail, right? Brilliant strategy. Once they knocked that off and lost the faith of the U.S. consumer, they launched ad campaigns convincing a frightening number of us that big, powerful cars are what you need to be a rugged, manly American. They even managed to get ridiculously unnecessary tax incentives passed for ginormous SUVs to sucker in more people. Unfortunately for the American worker, they have continued to lag behind the rest of the world's auto manufacturers and have yet to give us a reasonably sized hybrid or alternative fuel car with the exception of the Chrysler Sebring and Malibu (I don't consider the Impala "reasonably sized")
Now Chevy has answered all of our environmental prayers by launching their new "Gas Friendly to Gas Free" marketing campaign. This ridiculous attempt at greenwashing lists the following subjects: Fuel Efficiency, E85 Ethanol, Hybrid, Electric, and Fuel Cell. Let's go through the list:
#1: Fuel Efficiency - although some chevy cars get decent gas mileage, they still don't match up to most foreign offerings, with Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Minis, and VWs taking all of the top MPG spots. Some improved technology has come out, limiting the use of cylinders when not needed, but this is mostly in huge vehicles. Thanks for polishing our brass - love, the Titanic's crew.
#2: E85 Ethanol - Once again, almost all of these Flex-fuel vehicles are massive SUVs. Also, when was the last time you saw E85 at the pump in most of America? This in addition to the fact that corn ethanol is THE WORST BIOFUEL available! For every 1 gallon of fuel you put into the process you only get about 1.3 gallons of fuel out. Corn requires large volumes of irrigation, fertilizer, and pesticides. And don't forget that you're taking a needed food source to pour into your SUV - it just doesn't make any sense at all. Please feel guilty and picture a starving child while you pour what should be their corn into your fuel tank.
#3: Hybrid - What is their first hybrid? A freakin' Chevy Tahoe. You have got to be kidding me. This wasteful monstrosity gets a whopping 20-22 mpg, and although that's good for an SUV, it's downright horrendous for your most eco-friendly offering to date. Why not take your Aveo or Cobalt, which get 24/34 and 24/33 (city/hwy mpg) respectively, and make one of those into a hybrid to compete with the Prius or Civic hybrids?
#4: Electric - Ahh. . . The much discussed Chevy Volt. For one thing, didn't you already make one of these that worked marvelously? Oh right, the EV1. They were repossessed and shredded (not even recycled or disassembled!). Whoops! The Volt is still vaporware to date (but to be fair, so is the much anticipated Tesla Roadster). If/when it actually does come out, it might be a pretty sweet ride.
#5: Fuel Cell - Yet another concept that will probably never reach any one of us. Can we please get some people with money and brains (Sir Branson, would you consider this as the next X-prize?) together to design a functional, reliable, long-lasting, non-toxic super battery/fuel cell/whatever? All we need is a power source people - that's all the hydrogen and fuel cell concepts are - glorified batteries. I think that ultracapacitors might do it (still vaporware as well, though) - imagine driving your electric car for 250 miles or more and when you run low, plug in to a power station, swipe your card, and charge up in minutes! Maybe if the oil companies would release some of those battery patents they've gobbled up, there would be one worth developing.
Basically, I'm asking that nobody fall for this greenwashing campaign of Chevy's. Don't buy an SUV just because it's a hybrid or it's Flex-fuel - don't buy one, period! If they really cared, they'd stop making Hummers, Tahoes, Escalades, and all of the other gas-guzzling compensation tools and make super-efficient, hybrid, alternative fuel (the forthcoming algae biodiesel or cellulosic ethanol), or electric work vehicles, people-movers, and small personal transportation vehicles. Admittedly it would take a lot of chutspa for a major auto manufacturer to trim the fat and only concentrate on these types of vehicles. Toyota is coming close with it's goal to go all-hybrid, but that's not enough. If one of the American companies would step forward to this goal, it could be done, and it could be accomplished with American ingenuity and style and we could lead the world once again in transportation innovation.
Any takers?

Dear ecobot, Episode 1 - Have any suggestions for cleaner energy around the house for those that can't afford to have solar power installed?

2007-12-08T03:12:00.000-08:00

This is my preview/tester/first installment of The S.E.E.P.'s "Dear Ecobot" column.

Rachel asked:

Dear Ecobot

"Hi, I found your blog while looking for info on the desalination theater and must say how inspiring it was to see.
I keep seeing sites suggesting all these ways to have clean energy this way and that way, but everything is so expensive considering I am a not so wealthy college student still.
Have any suggestions for cleaner energy around the house for those that cant afford to have solar power installed?

Well Rachel,

There's all kinds of fun ways to decrease your footprint without having to drop $10,000 or more on a household solar system. Plus, if you're a renter or a student, there's no way you'll be allowed to significantly modify anything in your apartment. So, my first answer is always conservation.

If you haven't already replaced your incandescent bulbs with CFLs and started looking into LED fixtures and bulbs, then get to it. For those that don't mind the cold, get a warm beanie and your favorite Patagonia (or other ecofriendly company) fleece and turn down your thermostat to 62 or so. Thaw out your toes every once in a while with an energy-efficient space heater. Use the seep-worthy mantra, "If it's yellow let it mellow, ". . . you know the rest, low-flow showerheads (cheap and easy to install), and limited showers to save H2O. You can also grab one of the toilet top sinks to save hand washing water.

The next step is to change your consumption to decrease your personal energy footprint. Buy local and organic foods whenever possible, go to farmer's markets. Increase vegetable intake and limit meats to those that are sustainably and humanely raised. Go vegetarian if you like, although I'm in the "Omnivore's Dilemma camp." In general, try to avoid processed foods, pesticides, GMOs (genetically modified organisms), foods with hormones, trans-fats, and most chemicals that you can find an OSHA data sheet on. When you buy goods, make a pledge to buy sustainably and responsibly made. Don't shop at BR, A&F, The G@p, Old N@vy, Walmart, most department stores, and other retailers that basically sell sweatshop-made nylon garments made from processed fossil fuels and other chemicals that have been shipped around the world to you. Instead stick to local shops, even thrift shops, and known responsible companies like Patagonia, Prana, Keen, Simple, Aveeda, The Body Shop, Trader Joe's, Method, the list goes on. We no longer need to look very far or need to look or smell (although my wife Laura loves Patchouli) like hippies, you can be hip and fashionable in your eco-friendly duds.

Recycle everything you can. Start a small compost bin. Get cloth napkins, bring your own utensils and stop using disposable plastic ones. Plant a small garden and grow a dwarf citrus tree on your porch, balcony, or roof.

Here's a project that I've been meaning to build: the seep's micro-solar array. It's basically a modular charging station that can cost anywhere from $50 to $1000, depending on how far you want to go.

The small version: Find your sunniest window. Get some fun and relatively cheap solar chargers like a Solio, a small Brunton, or other pre-wired small electronics charger. Try to get one for each device for maximum daylight charging potential. If you want to get creative, sew/stick velcro onto a curtain/shade and on the back of your chargers and hang them in the window for maximum sun soakage. You can make pouches on the inside for your phone, ipod and maybe laptop and poke a hole through for the wires.

The medium version: Get a Brunton 26 watt foldable solar array (currently $266.52) and one of the Xantrex power packs, like the Powerpack 600 (129.99). For less than $400, this combination should provide you with enough power to charge your laptop, your ipod, your phone, maybe a few AAs, and power a few LED lights.

The big version: If you have a little balcony space or a south-facing window, get an RV Solar Power kit online with an 85 watt or so solar panel a charge controller, a decent power inverter (I chose a 1200 watt one), and get some batteries. I was thinking 2 Optima 55 amp-hour deep-cycle batteries (usually cheapest locally due to high delivery costs) which should give a pretty decent amount of power time and wire them all up. Be creative to find or build a small shelving system or other way to disguise your power station. Fashion some brackets to hang it the the window or off of the balcony. This requires some DIY, but is the most bang for your buck and can be put together for as little as $650 and should provide enough juice to run your laptop, your mobile/iPhone/iPod/gadgets-of-choice, an LCD TV, and a few LED lights for a good deal of your evening hours' work or play. With a bigger system, you could power a small microwave and even a small and efficient DC refrigerator!

85-110 Watt Solar Panel $400-800+

batteries with 100 ahr or so $150-$500+

Charge controller $30-$150

Inverter $50-$150+

This will definitely be an official S.E.E.P. project in the upcoming year!

Thanks for the question Rachel!

VolksVegan - Another Vegetable Oil Powered Westy!

2007-11-30T20:39:00.000-08:00

Sweet Camping Spot

Originally uploaded by meganpru

In planning our upcoming fossil-fuel-free roadtrip to Ft. Collins, CO and Salt Lake City, I've been scouring the web for help with finding vegetable oil while on the road and have come across not only another "Vegfalia" blog at Volksvegan.org, but their site pointed me to Fillup4Free.com, a growing database of VO coops, restaurants with WVO available, people and businesses with filtered WVO available, and others just using VO in their vehicles. It's a fantastic resources for people trying to travel on vegetable oil.
Megan and Seneca, the VolksVegan folks have some incredible photos and some fantastic posts about their travels on vegetable oil. It's great to see others dedicating themselves towards sustainability.
Nice work guys!

The S.E.E.P.'s Green/Eco-friendly Holiday Gift Guide

2007-11-26T20:07:00.000-08:00

After "Black Friday"/"Buy Nothing Day", and now "Cyber Monday", we enter the mainstream holiday shopping period. Hopefully, as climate change and peak oil become more real, consumers will begin to think about the true costs of the various trinkets and mass-produced goods that we buy. As a nation, we no longer produce, we import, and as we have recently seen, many of these imports are poorly regulated, sending toxic toys into the hands of our youths. But never fear, if you're not into giving your friends lead-tainted, petrol-based crap made in sweatshops and shipped around the world, wasting fossil fuels and undermining American jobs, there are many other options out there!

Donate: You can buy an amazing array of animals, supplies, and other helpful items for 3rd world villages through Oxfam or Heifer International, or adopt a child through Save the Children. To make sure that your money is going to the right place and your charities are run efficiently and properly, check out CharityNavigator.org for reviews.

Offset: Buy CO2 offsets for friends and family through Terrapass (for profit) or Carbonfund (non-profit).

Reuse: Check out craigslist, freecycle, and ebay for used items that can still be a thoughtful gift, and don't forget your local thrift shops! Also check out make, readymade, and instructables for fun projects that can recycle your old stuff into fun gifts.

Online Gifts: A digital iTunes gift certificate can get your loved one some sweet melodies and not use a single piece of paper, no CDs, no jewel cases, no fuel for delivery. Just the electrons going to your computer! Amazon.com has a digital music store as well with gift certificates available, offering up DRM-free tunes for download.

Buy Responsibly: If you're can't find that perfect non-consumer gift, there are plenty of responsible options out there as well. Try to find fair-trade and local goods when possible. With fair trade, you have confidence that the workers that produced what you're buying are getting paid a reasonable wage and are not subjected to sweat shop conditions. Since we live in central CA, a good local bottle of wine, especially organic, is the perfect tasty gift. Ten Thousand Villages imports fair-trade crafts from around the world and more and more online retailers like Greenfeet, Gaiam, 3rLiving, and are targeting the green crowd with a lot of eco-friendly options. We're huge Patagonia fans as well, where you'll find responsibly and well-made clothing for the outdoors and indoors, they've been using organic cotton, hemp, and recycled PET for years and even have an underwear recycling program! Their new eco-conscious wetsuit is on my holiday list (R3 model, size XLS if you're wondering). Prana, Timberland, and Simple (I have a pair of the Green Toe "Toemorrows" and they're fantastic) are other companies that have reworked their business practices in response to the current state of our planet's health. Outdoor gear retailer Backcountry.com has a new page called "The Green Goat" that spotlights all of their green offerings. Method is our favorite eco-friendly cleaning supply company that serves up non-toxic, naturally scented, designer products for most of your home scouring needs. Also, a quick and easy stocking stuffer is a steel water bottle (and here) to fight the "bottled water environmental catastrophe" (here, here, and here) that we have fallen prey to.

Get Them What They Want: Although I'd hope that most people these days would be stoked to receive one of the aforementioned ideas as a socially conscious gift, some people might not be as receptive to the concept. Our culture still has a long way to go to let go of the consumerist traditions that have been cultivated since WWII, but that doesn't mean that they deserve coal in their stockings. I think that one of the easiest ways to avoid waste this holiday season without offending some, is to find out what they really need and/or want, and get them that. Then you're sure they'll like it and use it, and it won't be thrown away (or hopefully recycled) to make room for next year's unwanted presents.

There are many more responsible options available, Treehugger has their holiday gift guides up as well for more ideas. Feel free to post your favorites!

Happy Holidays to all!

Noon Solar Releases Solar Messenger Bags

2007-11-26T20:02:00.001-08:00

While these aren't the first solar backpack/messenger bag offerings, the new offerings from Noon Solar are the most stylish that I've seen so far. They are constructed of "Bavarian sourced, chrome-free, naturally tanned and dyed, full-grain cowhide leather and naturally dyed hemp cotton blend." Sorry for the vegans in the crowd, but Voltaic has a solar backpack and messenger bag offering made of recycled PET as a more eco-friendly but not quite so chic option. Then again, when have I ever been into chic? Both Noon's and Voltaic's designs integrate a battery and charger into the bag, allowing you to charge your various gadgets on the fly with nothing but photons from the skies.
Either would be an expensive but relatively environmentally conscious and useful holiday present!

via Engadget

More Insights Into The Cost of Smoking + bonus rant

2007-11-21T23:12:00.001-08:00

Also, see "Some Insights Into The Costs of Smoking."

Besides the fact that smoking causes more deaths per year than AIDS, homicide, suicide, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, auto accidents, and fire deaths combined, this video shows the amount of tar inhaled into your lungs smoking a pack a day for 20 days 7.2 grams, the volume of about 2 charcoal briquettes.

Imagine the tar/dust from 2-3 briquettes coating your lungs every month for years. Imagine that every pack causes irreversible hardening of all of the arteries of your body, promoting the formation of fibrinous plaques that rupture, sending cascades of clot-activating protein into the small arteries of your heart and brain, causing early heart attacks and stroke. Imagine the inflammation from your immune system trying desperately to remove the tar and inactivate cancer-causing free radicals. Oxygen-exchanging alveoli are broken down, intima is thickened, and smooth muscles spasm, causing COPD and emphysema, which becomes progressively irreversible. While you are breaking down your own lungs, causing your cancer, and contributing to your future stroke and heart attack, the second-hand smoke does the same thing to your friends, your family, and your children.

The average healthcare costs of a smoker are 40% higher than the average person and an additional 40,000-60,000 cardiac deaths per year are due to exposure to environmental tobacco. According to the CDC, smoking accounts for about 87% percent of lung cancer deaths and 30% of all cancer deaths. How is this legal? How do we allow the tobacco corporations to cater and market to the poorest subsection of our population, those who work the hardest and utilize the most tax-funded healthcare dollars? By not holding the companies accountable, we are actually subsidizing the profits of tobacco companies. By not holding the smoker responsible for their lifestyle choices, we allow them to draw far more than their share of healthcare funding, thereby subsidising their tobacco habits as well.

Here's my proposal, and I realize that this is just rough math leaving out many variables. If there are 44.5 million smokers in America with healthcare costs directly attributable to smoking topping 50 billion heathcare dollars per year, estimating a 1 pack per day habit, that comes to a health system cost of about $3.08 per pack of cigarettes. We simply add this $3.08 as a tax to each pack of cigarettes that will go directly to pay for the projected heathcare costs that smoking that individual pack will incur. Of course, for our healthcare and public assistance programs to work, many more things need to be done, like making healthcare as an industry not-for-profit (single-payer could work as well, but this is easier), initiating tort reform with penalties for frivolous lawsuits (both of the aforementioned mean campaign reform and eliminating lobbyist favors/contributions/bribery), and instituting personal accountability for lifestyle choices. Let's get some people in Washington that have the integrity and moral fortitude to question and challenge the status quo. Let's start doing the right things for the right reasons and hold both corporations and individuals accountable for the true costs of their actions, socially and environmentally.

Anyone up for it? Dennis Kucinich? Barack? Stewart and Colbert?

via Gizmodo

The Beginning of the Next Evolution of Humankind Through Technology

2007-11-15T09:10:00.001-08:00

Humanity has stopped evolving. To be more precise, we have stopped progressing forward in an evolutionary sense and thanks to medical technology and cultural constructs, we are actually de-evolving in certain ways. The unfortunate but simple truth is that Darwinism has been defeated by modern science. No longer do the strongest and most intelligent survive, we now keep alive the weak and ill and due to both technology and social constructs less desirable genes and traits are passed along more and more. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we shouldn't be doing these things, I am simply pointing out how technology has altered natural environmental pressures and we should expect to eventually see physiologic and physical changes in humanity as a result. Besides altering natural evolution, we are also developing our own version of evolution through technology.
We have seen a melding of humankind and machine for years in Sci-Fi books, movies, and television shows and are there more and more evidence that this could represent the future direction of the human race. We have already made significant progress in cyborg technology - prosthetic limbs, cochlear implants, eye implants, exoskeletons (and here), and other advancements. One of my favorite tech blogs, Engadget, has had a recent few posts that show some of the newer developments - targeted muscle reinnervation for prosthetic limbs to allow better control, and a brain implant that should allow a patient to speak again through a computer. Both DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Research Project) and Segway inventor, Dean Kamen have developed prosthetic arm prototypes that are revolutionary with incredible dexterity thus far unsurpassed function for a robotic limb.
The next 100 years will certainly be interesting for humanity - climate change, peak oil, superbugs, technoevolution, and who knows what else?

Femtosecond Lasers May Save Us From Superbugs

2007-11-14T08:38:00.000-08:00

On November 1st, the Institute of Physics published an article describing the use of specialized femtosecond laser pulses to destroy viruses and bacteria while leaving human cells unscathed. Using a process called Impulsive Stimulated Raman Scattering (ISRS), lethal vibrations are produced in the protein coat of microbes similar to an opera singer shattering a glass with her voice. Supposedly by modulating wavelengths and frequency, human cells are not damaged by the laser. If this research comes to fruition and can be developed further, we may have our next wave of high-tech "antibiotic" treatment. Since we're currently manufacturing "superbugs" through overuse of antibiotics, we're going to have more and more difficulty finding chemical cures for these wee beasties and this type of therapy just might save our skins. This is truly a groundbreaking news and could revolutionize the way we treat infections - imagine getting a 30 minute laser treatment for pneumonia instead of being admitted to the hospital on 10 days of antibiotics!
Via Engadget

Vegfalia Hits 300,000 Miles, Last 4,000 Without Petrol

2007-11-12T12:58:00.000-08:00

We've just passed a fantastic milestone in any vehicle - the 300,000 mile mark. Although the Vegfalia has only run 1% of these miles on biodiesel and veggie oil thus far, we're hoping for many more miles out of her. In today's disposable society, conservation is still the easiest and best way to protect our resources, and taking care of and preserving an older vehicle can still be more eco-friendly than getting a new one when you factor in the energy and materials required to build it. Granted, driving around a poorly-tuned 1975 smoke belcher isn't what we're talking about and at that point you could probably upgrade to something more efficient. Don't forget, if you have a favorite vintage frame that you're still in love with keeping alive, you can always consider converting it to electric.

Eglide Sector 9 Bamboo Electric Skateboard

2007-11-09T21:12:00.000-08:00

I've never been much of a skater, but this baby from E-Glide makes me
want to start! Built on a 46 inch bamboo pintail deck, this longboard includes a 400 watt electric motor and a trigger-style hand control that propels you from 0-20mph in 4 seconds and can go 15 miles on a charge. It also integrates electric brakes to keep you in control. Besides having an eco-friendly bamboo deck, this board is manufactured locally in Santa Monica, CA. We're using our bikes for local travel, but this would be a fun addition to the low-footprint transportation arsenal! At the Electric Cyclery they also have a variety other electric boards, electric bicycles, conversion kits, and electric scooters, plenty of relatively low cost short range ecopeoplemovers.

Rivera Family Sues After NYC MRSA Death, Why Superbugs Will Take Over

2007-10-30T09:24:00.000-07:00

Nobody will argue that the death of 12 year old Omar Rivera was not a tragedy, but why does his name need to be dishonored by suing the hospital and NYC Health and Hospital Corp. This is not a one-sided argument, however. This is the type of high-profile case that vilifies everyone, from the parents, to the hospital that treated the child, to the media, to our entire healthcare and judicial systems. Firstly, this case is already causing a panic in the population because of how it has been handled by the media. This MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staph Aureus, was first isolated in 1953 and has been a constant battle in hospitals, showing up in the sickest, most stressed and immunocompromised patients. Along with VRE (vancomycin-resistant enterococcus), healthcare workers have constantly put themselves at risk to treat these “superbugs” that are nothing more than the result of our own use of antibiotics. All organisms have the ability to respond to environmental pressure, and since the advent of antibiotics, humanity has pressured bacteria to evolve and adapt to survive our chemical assault. The unfortunate part is, that through irresponsible use of antibiotics, we have hastened this evolution and continue to encourage microbial resistance. As an ER doctor, since moving from Massachusetts to California just 4 years ago, we have gone from treating skin infections, known as “cellulitis”, usually caused by Staph and/or Strep bacteria (which live on all of our skin and you can’t get rid of, no matter how much antibacterial soap you use), with penicillin or a 1st generation cephalosporin like cephalexin (Keflex), to using entirely different classes or multiple antibiotics due to resistance. Currently in California, greater than 50% of skin infections are due to MRSA, which is now classified as “community acquired”, since we no longer see it exclusively in very ill or immunocompromised patients. Because this is such a new phenomenon, I still see primary care doctors and others placing patients on the “old” antibiotics for these newer “superbugs”. It sounds like young Mr. Rivera was placed on amoxicillin for his cellulitis, which just a few years ago, would have been fine. This issue is so new, however, that studies are just coming out that document these new changes in resistance patterns and the proper antibiotic treatment is still under development.

So what can we do? We as citizens need to question any and all antibiotic use. Stop demanding antibiotics from your doctors. Stop using antimicrobial soaps and sanitizers (see this previous rant)- we evolved to live commensualistically with bacteria on our skin, you cannot and should not sterilize yourself. In today’s high-volume, low-reimbursement healthcare system, it is easier for a doctor to prescribe antibiotics for a viral cold than to explain to a demanding, rude, uninformed patient, that antibiotics are only for bacterial infections like pneumonia, cellulitis, and urinary tract infections and do not treat viruses. People expect a “magic bullet”, that by going to the doctor there will be come miracle cure for every ailment and sniffle. Unfortunately this is not the case, but these expectations, along with the corporatization of healthcare, demanding “customer satisfaction” over good medical practice, is indirectly leading to the type of irresponsible antibiotic use that is causing these “superbugs” in the first place. We as physicians need to take the time to discuss the proper use of antibiotics with our patients and give them only what they need, not what they think they need.

I could continue to rant about how our current legal system and our “sue-happy” nation is one of the major factors contributing to the impending downfall of our healthcare system, and how the Rivera family is disgracing the memory of their child by trying to leverage $25 million dollars from their son’s death, but I will leave it at this: Everything we do has an impact, from every bit of fuel we burn contributing to global warming, to each mass produced bit of clothing we buy contributing to the oppression of those workers and dispersing toxins into the environment, to every dose of antibiotic we take contributing to resistance. Most of our problems on a macroscopic scale are being caused by our individual actions on a microscopic scale. If we each educate ourselves and begin making the right decisions, we will see a slowing of these phenomenoae, which represent nothing more than the equal and opposite reaction of our personal and collective actions.

Inventor makes "Wind Belt" Generator, 10-30X More Efficient Than Microturbines

2007-10-15T12:01:00.001-07:00

Shawn Frayne, a 28 year old Californian inventor, has discovered a way to generate efficient power from the wind-generated vibrations. It seems that he was inspired by the collapse of the famous Tacoma Narrows bridge, or "galloping Gertie", in 1940. Wind flowing over a stretched mylar band produces similar vibrations, and by attaching a small magnet on either end that interact with copper coils, power is generated that is supposedly 10-30 times more efficient than the best microturbines! Here is the Popular Mechanics page with a video.

This represents a truly innovative solution to sustainable power generation. If we can encourage research and development and then encourage adoption and use of these types of efficient, small-scale power sources, our coal-fired and nuclear power plants will be things of the past.

How about a clean energy X-Prize? Any uber-rich supporter? Sir Branson?

via Gizmodo via Gadget Lab via Make via Popular Mechanics

Al Gore Wins Nobel Prize!

2007-10-12T13:55:00.001-07:00

Dear Naysayers (Fox news, climate change non-believers, etc.):
Please, please, please, now that Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize, rather than lambasting and insulting him because you don't agree with his stance on climate change, ask yourself, "Why would Gore win a Nobel prize for his efforts?" Do you really think that the Nobel organization would grant a prize for an effort that was all propaganda and opinion? Do you think that more than 2000 of the world's best climate and environmental experts on the UN's Panel for Climate Change are clueless? If you still don't believe in climate change, I implore you to turn off Fox news for a little while, stop listening to your tight group of conservative friends, and venture out, question those sources and hold them responsible. Most of the dissenters to climate change choose to cast insults, nitpick on small irregularities in findings, or quote data that misrepresents the issues due to scale. The classic argument along these lines is that this is a "natural cycle", however if you look back a few hundred thousand years it becomes obvious that this is far from "natural."
Basically, I'm asking you to skip the spins and the unveiled propaganda from the conservatives and get right to the point - do you really think that the rest of the world, including all of Europe, the UN, The Nobel Prize Committee, and an amazing number of other organizations, are making this up? Start thinking for yourselves and get on board with the rest of humanity regardless of your political or religious affiliation.

Sincerely,
Clint Slaughter, M.D.
The S.E.E.P.

Comment on ATV Riding: It's Bad on so Many Levels

2007-10-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

This is a comment left responding to Lloyd Alter's "ATVs: Destroying the Climate and Environment for Fun", posted on Treehugger.com. Lloyd, I completely agree!

Recreational ATVs are horrid. I am an ER doc near Pismo Beach, CA, where thousands of campers and ATV riders flock every weekend, spewing fumes, tearing up the beach and dunes, and getting injured regularly, sometimes severely or fatally. We have people killed every year, a 4 year old was run over just last month, a 21 year old girl is now a permanent quadriplegic, plus hundreds of broken bones and lacerations per season. Many ATVers also put their small children on these motorized deathtraps and have them ride around in the midst of thousands of other high-speed motorists, some of whom are under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs.
What ever happened to human-powered recreation? It's much more rewarding when you hike or ride your bike to the top of a mountain, rather than being artificially propelled while wasting fossil fuel, polluting, and ripping up the landscape. Along similar lines, sometimes when we go surfing along the coast, jetskiiers will obliviously and obnoxiously choke us with their exhaust in their quest for speed and bigger air over the waves. The dolphins that often play in those waves are nowhere to be seen on these days, driven off by the noise, fumes, and oil slicks floating on the water. Human-powered recreation is healthier, less dangerous, and has much less environmental impact than the motorized equivalent. To make matters worse, the average person that uses these vehicles has little to no regard for the environment in the first place, driving jacked-up trucks and towing huge "toy-haulers" for hundreds of miles so that they can "camp" in RVs and use tons of pre-packaged food and disposable utensils (leaving a great deal behind on the beach). The same people that will argue that it has minimal impact and is safe, are the same people that think it is a good idea to drive a Hummer around town, or go to the grocery store in an Escalade.
And yes, I know that hikers, climbers, and mountain bikers effect the local environment as well, but as with everything else, there is a continuum of effect with responsible hikers and bikers being relatively low on the scale, and ATV and motorcycle riders causing much more impact.
If I was looking for a way to waste fuel, destroy wildlife habitat, get minimal actual exercise while exposing myself and my family to as dangerous a situation as possible, all under the pretense of "being outdoors", it sounds like the perfect family vacation.

Electroauto Electric Car Seminar in San Luis Obispo Review

2007-10-07T10:59:00.001-07:00

I was able to attend most of an electric vehicle seminar at Cal Poly today sponsored by the Central Coast Clean Cities Coalition and presented by Bob of Electroauto. Now I've lusted after the electric car conversion kits from Electroauto for years, so it was interesting to see the husband and wife founding team presenting information on electric vehicle practicality and efficiency, cost of conversion and maintenance, conversion techniques, chassis selection, battery issues, and basically answered any question someone would have if you're considering building an electric car.

The electroauto kits range from $6000 for a "universal" DC kit (+ ~$2000 for batteries every 4 years or so) that requires some fabrication and fitting by the installer, to $13,415 (+batteries and shipping) for a custom AC "Voltsporsche" kit that bolts directly into a Porsche 914 chassis. The Voltsporsche kit is the highest performace, with a top speed of 100mph and a range from 100-150 miles although most kits promise highway speeds up to 70mph with a range of 50-100 miles. The speed and range of these kits is multifactorial and depends primarily on the weight and aerodynamics of your chassis, choice of AC or DC kits, and your choice of batteries, but is also affected by driving techniques, and use of accessories like A/C, heat, and other electronics. AC kits, although more expensive, are slightly more efficient and allow regenerative braking (which reclaims up to 1/3 of the energy used to accelerate to that speed) and a broad array of battery choices in comparison to DC kits. These kits can be installed by a technician for around $5000, or a tinkerer with moderate skill can install the kit in a weekend or two, depending on the shape of your chassis and the kit you choose.
Conclusions? If you drive 50 miles or less (85%+ of commuters) and are in the market for a vehicle, one of these are the way to go. For $20-$30k, you can have a fully functional highway-capable electric vehicle with 1/3 of the operating cost of a regular car, and significantly less or even no emissions, depending on your power source. One of the common myths you'll hear from detractors (like auto manufacturers and naysayers that don't check their sources) is the argument that you make just as much pollution from the power source from your charging as you do from a combustion engine. The so-called "long tailpipe" phenomenon, is decidedly false - even with power from the dirtiest coal-fired power plant, emissions from charging an electric car are 2/3 less than that of a combustion engine. Calculations demonstrating this are detailed on the Tesla Roadster website (pdf file link). Although vehicles like the Zap-X and Tesla roadster are slotted to be available over the next few years, they cost $60K and $100K respectively, and are thus far vaporware. We will be waiting a few years before consumer electrics come down to the price of an installed Electroauto kit, and although they will probably have somewhat longer ranges, they will be more complicated, not be user maintainable, and you won't have the fun and pride of selecting, building and maintaining your own custom vehicle! With battery technology improving rapidly, you can start with cheap and reliable flooded lead batteries, and as you recycle and replace your batteries every 3-5 years, more efficient and lighter options will become more and more reasonably priced.

Essentially, if you are prepared to spend the money on a new or newer used car and you are prepared for a little legwork or some tinkering, this is the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly way to have a mid-range commuter car. If you slap some solar panels on your home as well, you'll be the envy of every treehugger on the block!

Fossil Fuel Free Roadtrip #'s 2 and 3

2007-10-07T10:57:00.000-07:00

Originally uploaded by neuphoto57

Over 8 days we managed to take 2 separate veggie oil trips to the southern part of Big Sur, California. Since we live in San Luis Obispo, we can make it to Kirk Creek, Limekiln, and Julia Pfeiffer Burns campgrounds within 2 hours straight up the incredibly scenic and legendary Route 1. It's approximately a 190 mile round trip, and as we drive through Cayucos where we got married, the minimally existent Harmony, quaint Cambria, and up along the cliffs and hills overlooking the edge of the Pacific. The first overnighter was just Laura and myself, reminiscing on the early days of our relationship. We watched the sunset, played guitar, and talked until we drifted off to sleep on the relatively comfortable upper bunk. The next day we hiked a bit and headed home.
This past weekend, we headed back up Rt 1 with our cousins Cindy and Thomas. We decided to go "Westy only" for camping, with Laura and I in the top bunk and Cindy and Thomas in the lower. We brought sandwiches from Gus's and shared a local bottle of wine to a nearly full moon and topiaries. The front seats held the laptop for an evening showing of Tenacious D and The Pick of Destiny to top it off (luckily the viewing angle was decent from both bunks). In the morning, we hiked part of the trail to Vincente flats across from our campground, used the shower I installed in the back of the Vegfalia to wash the poison oak and dirt off from the knees down, made a quick stop for a few photos of Elephant seals and made it to a few wineries in Paso Robles before heading home. This may sound a little strange, but it was fantastic to spend good time with family and not feel guilty about using fossil fuels - Thomas even refilled the same water bottle the entire trip! We're still working out the bugs in the Vegfalia. I had to take out the heat exchanger water heater because the coolant hose blew again that is teed off to the Greasecar kit. Hopefully that issue is settle for now. This week I'm trying to tackle fixing some of the electrical issues with the power locks and repair the broken heater flap cables under the dash.

First Fossil Fuel Free Roadtrip a Success! The Vegfalia Makes its Debut.

2007-08-31T08:50:00.000-07:00

After 6 months in the Autostadt West shop rebuilding the transmission and installing a 1.9L Turbo Diesel engine, our 1987 Vanagon Syncro Westfalia has finally returned to the S.E.E.P. It had biodiesel running through it's veins within hours, and the next day I started installing the Greasecar SVO conversion kit. Because of our limited time off work, I only had one day to complete the conversion and test it before we took off for our first experimental road trip. Aside from a few minor glitches, we traveled almost 2000 miles on only biodiesel and vegetable oil from San Luis Obispo, CA to Hood River, OR via Bend and then returning through Portland and Santa Cruz. Since there was a paucity of biodiesel and/or filtered waste veggie oil, we had to carry fuel with us and fill up when we could, including a Costco in Sacramento for around 19 gallons of bulk vegetable oil and a big fill-up of biodiesel in Portland including both of our tanks and 4 plastic cubes that got us home. Overall, the trip was fantastic, Laura and I enjoyed the much-needed disconnect from work and home projects, and although our dog Marley was a "nervous nellie" while driving in the Vegfalia, she definitely enjoyed the hikes. The official Vegfalia page has been started and will be regularly updated with our experiences and modifications - fossil fuel independence is not difficult and is doable for anyone who wants to put forth the effort!

Letter to The Secretary of Transportation - She thinks that bikes are not transportation!

2007-08-21T02:52:00.000-07:00

This letter is in response to Mary Peters's, the Secretary of Transportation who described in her interview how DOT funds go to earmarked projects that aren't actually transportation like bike paths! These are the kinds of comments that show how short-sighted our administration and how much more work we all have to do.

Hello,
I would like this forwarded to Mary Peters. I am writing regarding Ms. Peters comments during her public television interview aired on August 15th. In this interview, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation stated that she does not actually consider the most fuel efficient mode of transportation currently available to not fit under the realm of the DOT and should not be funded. To quote, "Well, there's about probably some 10 percent to 20 percent of the current spending that is going to projects that really are not transportation, directly transportation-related. Some of that money is being spent on things, as I said earlier, like bike paths or trails." Although bicycling for some is sport, exercise, and recreation, for many others, it is a major method of commuting and an important part of our transportation infrastructure now and moreso in the future. My wife and I both ride 3/4 mile to work and we frequently ride 3-5 miles on errands and around town and it is an important part of how we travel locally.
Fuel prices are rising and will continue to rise. Many experts admit that "Peak Oil", that is, the point where oil production can no longer be increased and will soon begin to fall, will happen within the next 10 years. With the enormous increase in demand for fossil fuels from developing countries like India and China and continuing increasing demand in other countries, including our own, we need to expect a collapse of the oil economy within the next 20-30 years, easily within our lifetimes. Spending billions of dollars supporting this corroded and corrupt infrastructure does nothing to prepare us for the crisis that we will face. Roads and bridges need to be repaired, it is true. However, we must also have a vision of how transportation will happen in 20 years. Will electric or hydrogen cars fill the streets? Will public transportation be the norm as people are forced to move from the suburbs back into cities because travel and commuting becomes so expensive? Will human-powered vehicles be the standard for short-distance commuting?
Of all these possibilites and more, biking is the only mode of transportation that requires nothing but the calories of the user, uses currently available technology, and actually improves the health of the user rather than belching toxic emissions into the air we breathe. Biking should be encouraged by the agency responsible for our Nation's transportation. It should be made safer and more accessible.
As far as the fuel tax Ms. Peters was discussing, there should be a large fuel tax. Gas should be $6/gallon or more like it is in Europe and we need to start paying for the true cost of our consumption. Some of the 453 billion dollars spent on the Iraq war should come from fuel taxes, as this war has been partially fueled by our obsession with cheap oil. Infrastructure and incentives for alternative fueled vehicles like electrics, biodiesel, cellulosic (not corn) ethanol can come from these taxes along with repealing the billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil companies. And of course, repair and maintenance of our existing infrastructure can come from this money as we slowly phase out the era of the fossil-powered vehicle.
Please realize that bicycles are an extraordinarily important part of a CO2 neutral world, they allow us exercise and reasonably rapid transport for short and medium distances with no emissions and no fuel consumption (aside from dinner). Bicycles need to be included in a responsible, forward-thinking plan for our nation's Department of Transportation.
Thank You,

Clint Slaughter, M.D.Emergency Medicine
San Luis Obispo, CA

via Treehugger.com

Body Glove ECO - Environmentally Friendly Wetsuits

2007-08-03T07:28:00.000-07:00

Following in Patagonia's treehugging footsteps, Body Glove is releasing their ECO wetsuit, made from snappily named eco-flex and bio-stretch. The Eco-flex exterior is "the purest form of non toxic stretch material on the planet." I'm not sure what that means, but it is supposedly non-petroleum based and "100% environmentally friendly." The mid later, Bio-stretch, is made from natural rubber, and the "interior of the ECO is 100% non-petroleum calcium carbonate closed cell foam rubber. Sounds promising, we surfers have another choice in environmentally friendly wetsuits, plenty of catchy marketing words, an odd photo shoot with a surfer in a jungle, and a maybe touch of greenwashing as well.

via Stefan Teitge

Bush Invokes Executive Privilege With U.S. Attorney Firings - Redux

2007-08-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

The abuse of power continues as Bush once again invokes "Executive Privilege" to keep Karl Rove, white house political aide J. Scott Jennings, and various documents that have been subpoenaed in the continuing investigation of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez's role in the firings of U.S. Attorneys last year. Bush has already invoked his supreme executive power in this same case to prevent other aides from testifying, and is continuing to do his best to cover up his office's political wrongdoing and thwart the scales of justice.
Although I still think that "Executive Privilege" is a cop-out way to get away with illegal activities, I can see some utility if national security is truly threatened and lives are at stake. In this case of the use/abuse of this power, however, the matter at hand is nothing more than a political power play by the Bush administration. It is very simple - they illegally fired U.S. Attorneys who were not acting in the interests of their political party. Using Executive Privilege to cover up politically motivated lies and manipulation is an obvious and abominable misuse of this power (which is NOT part of a President's constitutional powers, by the way). Congress needs to force the administration to give up these documents and force testimony, complete the investigation of the Alzheimer-struck Gonzalez, impeach him, impeach Cheney, impeach Bush, get us out of this twisted oil war, pass some sweeping energy and trade reform, and revamp our healthcare system. Got it? Now get to it Congress - do your job and stop dicking around with rhetoric and magic shows, we're not buying it anymore.

via International Herald Tribune, Washington Post

Surgeon General's Message Twisted by Politics

2007-07-29T23:55:00.000-07:00

Although not surprising in the least, Dr. Richard Carmona, the Surgeon General of the United States of America from 2002-2006, the Nation's guiding voice for the health and well-being of it's citizens, has come forth to reveal that his position was tainted by politics. His recommendations were edited or silenced, and his professional opinion was undermined by the interests of the controlling political party. Earlier this month, Dr. Carmona, a former trauma surgeon who served in Vietnam in the Army Special Forces, winning two purple hearts, told a congressional panel that during his 4 year term as Surgeon General he was forbidden to discuss or issue reports on stem cell research, emergency contraception, sex education, prison and mental health or global health issues. Top aides also attempted to block and "water down" reports on the significant dangers of second hand smoke.
Continuing on with the ridiculousness, Dr. Carmona was told to mention Bush three times in every speech, and was discouraged from supporting or attending the Special Olympics because they are supported by an opposing "prominent political family" (read: The Kennedys). Are you kidding? Don't support the Special Olympics because of your political agenda? What kind of twisted, self-centered, manipulative SOB tells the Surgeon General not to support the handicapped because of their political interests. Our current regime has stooped lower than any other in history. Once again, the Bush administration's true colors are revealed, and impeachment hearings should be initiated for Cheney then Bush. Write your congressperson to express your outrage.

via NY Times

George Bush on Global Warming - Spoof by Will Ferrell

2007-07-23T12:35:00.001-07:00

If you haven't seen this Ferrell satire and you need a quick laugh, this one's worth a gander.

Personal Micro-Generator Feeds of Body Vibrations

2007-07-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

Steve Beeby, an engineer at the University of Southampton in the UK led a team that has developed a micro generator that converts 30% of environmental kinetic energy into power. The design is based on accelerometers and uses a few magnets that wobble against each other with vibration and motion that generates electricity. The prototype design is a mere 7mm x 7mm x 8.5mm and could be strategically placed in clothing or even implanted to generate power for a variety of low power devices including LED lighting, pacemakers, and eventually phones, music players, and pdas. The potential of this is fantastic - have a few micro-generators, a few batteries, and a few solar cells embedded in your favorite jacket or shirt, and you'll have power for your personal electronics and lighting systems, plus keep your ticker going if you need it!

via engadget, new scientist tech

DOT and Auto Alliance Team Up to Fight the Fight Against Climate Change

2007-07-09T18:13:00.000-07:00

The House Oversight and Government Reform committee uncovered an effort last week by the Department of Transportation, in conjunction with the Auto Alliance - a trade group representing Ford, DaimlerChrysler, and others, to thwart California's legislation to cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars by 25% and SUVs by 18% slated to start in 2009. Under the Clean Air Act, in order to enact more stringent emissions standards, a federal waiver must be granted through the EPA. In order to fight this waiver's approval, the Auto Alliance has furbished the DOT with a breakdown of auto facilities and workers in each congressional district. One of the 70 pages of memos and emails released by the DOT on the matter contained an email from Simon Gros, deputy chief of staff, to Transportation Secretary Mary Peters instructing, "Just hit the members/senators with the really big facilities. No need to call those with small distribution centers or anything." These documents once again show the true nature of the Bush Administration - working hand in hand with big business to undermine and halt legislation dealing with climate change and conservation. Despicable.

Fortunately, Nancy Pelosi and Governor Schwarzenegger are ready to fight this manipulation of power and have warned the EPA that a lawsuit may be forthcoming. Although the DOT maintains that no lobbying laws have been broken, to many of us, this is simply another example of how corrupt the legalized bribery system we call lobbying really is.

via Treehugger and Red Orbit

The Yes Men Democracy Now Interview

2007-07-08T01:10:00.001-07:00

I was just turned on to "The Yes Men", two gentlemen that make a habit of impersonating corporate executives in interviews and conferences, only to subtly ridicule their practices and bring attention to corporate scandal. This interview by Amy Goodman highlights them "representing" Halliburton at a LexisNexis conference and after taking some jabs at the insurance industry, they introduce the "survivaball", a hilarious protective suit for executives in disasters. There are other interviews on YouTube including them impersonating a Dow Chemical representative finally admitting responsibility for the Bhopal chemical disaster on BBC news! They are quickly becoming one of my favorite guerrilla media protesters.

Greener Surfboards with Bamboo and Bioplastic at Greenlight Surfboard Supply

2007-07-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

Another excellent option has surfaced in the environmentally-friendly surfboard industry - Greenlight Surfboard Supply! They carry a number of alternatives to traditional, toxic surfboard-making supplies including less toxic EPS foam (rather than traditional polyurethane), renewable bamboo stringers and fins, bioplastic leash plugs, fins and fin boxes, and bamboo laminating fabric - they even include a hemp leash cord. They have basically re-thought surfboard production materials and replaced everything they could with eco-friendly options without compromising quality and surfability. The EPS foam isn't perfect, but it is much better than polyurethane, and they are working on bio-resins to replace the traditional ones.

To stay consistent, the company has a "Minimal Waste Philosophy" whereby scraps from their EPS foam blanks are recycled, bamboo dust from their bamboo stringers and fins is reused as an epoxy thickener, shipping is spaced out to reduce fuel use, the office is paperless, they buy their power from wind sources with a plan to add solar and a wind generator to the factory!

Via Brad Groh, R.N.

Keith Olbermann Special Comment 7/3/07

2007-07-05T14:22:00.001-07:00

This is a call for justice. A message to the administration and the people that we cannot stand for the manipulation of power. A statement that we are not blind to the deception in our government and we will not stand for the lies and the corruption.
Finally we hear the mass media stepping up to say what needs to be said rather than blasting iPhone and Paris Hilton news while the country is falling apart around the real issues. Will it continue, or will Olberman see political repercussions of his words and have the same fear injected back into our media that has kept this type of discussion silent for the past 6 years?
Since Bush and Cheney will never resign, let's start the impeachment hearings! If everyone writes and calls their state representatives, governors (or governators here in CA), congresspeople and any other elected official possible and enough voices are heard, we could reclaim our America from this tyrannical regime. We have just celebrated our nation's independence day yet our liberties are being twisted and taken away by George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their administration. True patriots do not follow blindly, they stand up for their rights and the interests of the people. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Our patriots' blood has been spilled unnecessarily in Iraq, now we need to call for the political blood of the tyrants by removing Bush and Cheney from office!

via makeshiftblog

Response to Another Brainwashed, Poorly Thought-Out, Anti-Environmental Website

2007-07-01T00:02:00.000-07:00

The site globalwarminghysteria.com (I can't even justify linking the site) is an anti-climate change and anti-environmental website similar to Junkscience.com (sponsored by Fox News, of course) that is so clearly manipulating and misinterpreting it's data that you can't help but laugh as you read through it. As I've seen more and more of these types of websites, it's amazing how similar their arguments are. They tend to make fun of people rather than actually supporting an argument with facts. They try to undermine a person's credibility rather than presenting credible data to contradict them. They pick and choose facts to support their arguments without putting them in context or telling you the whole story. As a start, the most common attempt at debunking climate change is the "natural variation" argument, that there has always been a natural cycle and isn't out of the ordinary. The flaw in this argument is that they always look back only a few thousand years. Just a cursory glance at the graph from the EPA above, over 400 thousand years, makes it painfully obvious that we are far beyond any "natural fluctuation" in our current CO2 emissions. And although CO2 is only one of the many greenhouse gases, as far as scientists can tell it is the one that humans are most responsible for and can be attributed to climate change. I urge the naysayers to look at data concerning global warming with an open, scientifically oriented mind and I urge hard core environmentalists to avoid manipulating data to make points, no matter how important. It undermines the credibility of our arguments.

This is my response to it's post calling John Ashton hypocritical for flying to other countries to persuade them to decrease their CO2 use:
You're looking at this very one-sidedly. In order to educate others and spread the message of conservation and climate change, resources must be utilized. By criticizing Gore for his flights and his family home's energy use and Ashton for his flights to persuade others to decrease CO2 emissions, you are highlighting your lack of understanding in the process of change. At this point, we must conserve where we can, yet current systems force us to use resources as a means to an end. Eventually there will be better, less energy-intensive methods of travel and doing this type of work, but at this time, flying to destinations to educate and bargain are their only options.
Reading through your site and your "ten myths of global warming", it is obvious that you are being led by anti-environmentalist propaganda and have a poor grasp of many concepts. The statements in your "myths" are as warped as some extremist environmentalist claims. It is true and unfortunate that scare-mongering and distortion of data is occurring on the environmentalist front as well, which does undermine credibility at times and opens the movement to your type of poorly thought out criticism.
In general, however, the preponderance of scientific data shows that human activity on this planet is causing climate change and unless we act, we can look forward to unprecedented natural disasters and human suffering. If we step back, and with an open mind, look at the data that has been collected this is an inevitable conclusion. Nothing can be said 100% certainty and we know that models are flawed and need to be constantly revised as new data is recorded, but to ignore the threat just because we cannot "prove" some of these extrapolated theories is utter stupidity. We as humans need to act upon our best research in order to prevent widespread disaster, energy shortages, famine, floods and droughts. Instead of being part of the problem, you could be a part of the solution. I urge you to educate yourself on both the strengths and flaws involved with scientific method, avoid political entanglements, and take an objective, unbiased look at the data at hand and your opinion will surely change.