Hi friends,
We’re home! Actually, we’ve been home for days now but we needed some time to get unpacked and get settled, so I’ve been a bit behind in the updates.
The official grand total number of miles for the trip: 12, 624 in two months!
So now what? There is a lot to get working on now that we’re back in Massachusetts; I have to transfer many hours of video onto the Mac for editing and get working on that, plus we have more video to shoot here in New England that we weren’t able to get to before we left in May. Here is a list of the upcoming New England topics yet to film:
Red Sox – Fenway Park sustainability measures
Cape Wind project – Cape Cod, MA
Hull, MA - municipal wind turbines
Poulson Hybrid, CT
Verdant Power, tidal power, East River, NYC
Stephen Lacey, Inside Renewable Energy Podcast, NH
Francis Moore Lappe, author, MA
Deep-Energy Retrofits, VT
Green City Spotlights: Boston, MA
Fosters Farm, methane digestors, VT
Timberland, NH
Recycline, MA
Owl Power, veg oil for power, MA
Geothermal heat, residential example, MA
Maine Solar House, net-zero solar heat and electricity
Connecticut small-scale hydropower
Just a few more topics…we also are planning a visit to Washington DC in the beginning of October to see and film the Solar Decathlon 2009, and visit the Green Festival put on by Green America. I’m also working on getting interviews while we’re there with William McDonough (author of the book ‘Cradle-to-Cradle’) and Bracken Hendricks (author and fellow at the Apollo Alliance, a non-partisan advocacy group for renewable energy in Washington DC).
I managed to break my ankle soon after we got home so that affects things, but I’m using whatever downtime I have to get cracking on the videos. I’m able to continue working until I have surgery a week from Monday, then I’m supposed to stay parked with my foot up and let it mend.
On the advice of friends of mine who work on video production professionally, I began using Final Cut Express for the Mac to edit videos, which is a program that is a big leap from what I’ve always used, which is the free editing software that comes with PC (Windows Movie Maker) and Mac (IMovie). I’m putting myself through a crash-course in how to use the new program, plus there are many features that I can use to make our videos even better than what we’ve done before. I’m also upgrading the computer memory to handle the strain and am picking up an external hard drive (video footage takes an incredible amount of hard drive space!)
I have plenty of thoughts to share about all we’ve seen and done over the last two months, and to speak of the things I feel the most hopeful about, but I’ll make that a separate post so I don’t go on forever here. I’m overdue in getting this message out, so I’ll leave it at that.
Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Our Visit to Farm Sanctuary
Hi friends,
In the final stop of our cross-country journey, we stopped for a few days in upstate New York to stay at Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen.
We are looking at several angles of sustainability when it comes to what we eat, since food accounts for a large piece of our environmental footprint. Vegetarian vs. meat? Organic vs. conventional? Local vs. global? There are many issues to look at here and when it comes to food it can be controversial. At the very least I'm hoping our videos spark some conversations on sustainable eating.
Farm Sanctuary is a home to downed and sick farm animals that come from the industrial factory farm system that brings us most of the meat we buy at the supermarket. We visited with the cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, rabbits and others that are living out the rest of their lives at Farm Sanctuary, being cared for by the folks who work there. Carrick interviewed Matt Rice, the campaign coordinator at Farm Sanctuary, about the factory farming system and how that model is unsustainable to the environment.
I saw a statistic last year that eating vegan (no meat or dairy) has more of a positive environmental impact than buying a Prius. Of course, there are a lot of factors there to consider, but in general the idea makes sense. The majority of food grown in this country is grown for farm animals, not people – in turn, farm animals consume a massive amount of food and water. While human sewage is treated and regulated in the U.S., farm animal waste has much less regulation for disposal, and it produces a great deal of methane, which is 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Factory farms are unsustainable because they aren’t responsible for the waste they create and they rely on cheap fossil fuels in fertilizing and harvesting the crops to feed the billions of animals.
When it comes to factory farms there is a lot of shocking material out there, with images that are hard to look at. Our videos are focusing on sustainability, so we’ll be looking at the environmental impacts of factory farms and not the animal cruelty and confinement issues with the graphic images.
People have a lot of choices when it comes to the food we buy and consume, and food can be a very touchy subject. I understand that leaving out meat and dairy can be a radical shift in how people eat. Many of the places we’ve visited on this cross-country journey have been good examples of how living sustainably will mean new ways of doing and thinking. It’s worth looking at different ways in which how we eat affects our environmental footprint, and to consider the benefits of eating lower on the food chain.
Be well,
Colin
--
Our Renewable Nation, A Cross-Country Eco-Video Adventure
www.OurRenewableNation.org
In the final stop of our cross-country journey, we stopped for a few days in upstate New York to stay at Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen.
We are looking at several angles of sustainability when it comes to what we eat, since food accounts for a large piece of our environmental footprint. Vegetarian vs. meat? Organic vs. conventional? Local vs. global? There are many issues to look at here and when it comes to food it can be controversial. At the very least I'm hoping our videos spark some conversations on sustainable eating.
Farm Sanctuary is a home to downed and sick farm animals that come from the industrial factory farm system that brings us most of the meat we buy at the supermarket. We visited with the cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, rabbits and others that are living out the rest of their lives at Farm Sanctuary, being cared for by the folks who work there. Carrick interviewed Matt Rice, the campaign coordinator at Farm Sanctuary, about the factory farming system and how that model is unsustainable to the environment.
I saw a statistic last year that eating vegan (no meat or dairy) has more of a positive environmental impact than buying a Prius. Of course, there are a lot of factors there to consider, but in general the idea makes sense. The majority of food grown in this country is grown for farm animals, not people – in turn, farm animals consume a massive amount of food and water. While human sewage is treated and regulated in the U.S., farm animal waste has much less regulation for disposal, and it produces a great deal of methane, which is 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Factory farms are unsustainable because they aren’t responsible for the waste they create and they rely on cheap fossil fuels in fertilizing and harvesting the crops to feed the billions of animals.
When it comes to factory farms there is a lot of shocking material out there, with images that are hard to look at. Our videos are focusing on sustainability, so we’ll be looking at the environmental impacts of factory farms and not the animal cruelty and confinement issues with the graphic images.
People have a lot of choices when it comes to the food we buy and consume, and food can be a very touchy subject. I understand that leaving out meat and dairy can be a radical shift in how people eat. Many of the places we’ve visited on this cross-country journey have been good examples of how living sustainably will mean new ways of doing and thinking. It’s worth looking at different ways in which how we eat affects our environmental footprint, and to consider the benefits of eating lower on the food chain.
Be well,
Colin
--
Our Renewable Nation, A Cross-Country Eco-Video Adventure
www.OurRenewableNation.org
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Our Big Day in Detroit
Hi friends,
What an exciting day we had in Detroit – a real treat!
I was hoping to make a video about GM’s efforts in developing alternative fuel vehicles, specifically the Chevy Volt, which is their next-generation electric hybrid. GM is a massive company and I never had any luck reaching anyone there about coming in for some interview time. When we interviewed Chelsea Sexton in Los Angeles I mentioned that we wanted to make a video about the Volt but never got anywhere with contacts, and she offered to put in a call to her contacts at GM for us! I was just hoping for a chance to see a Volt (slated for release in November 2010) and any interview we could get would be a bonus.
I heard back last night from Chelsea’s GM contacts and we got quite a welcome! First we went downtown to GM’s Renaissance Center (GM Headquarters) and interviewed Beth Lowery, Vice President of Environment & Energy. She told Carrick about GM’s efforts on a number of green fronts, including ethanol (that’s what those ‘Flex-Fuel’ badges are on the back of some GM cars and trucks you may see), hybrids, hydrogen fuel-cells, and electric vehicles. Cars of the future may be a mix of these technologies so they are developing a variety of technologies.
We then drove to GM’s battery development lab for a personal tour, which is a rare thing and we were very fortunate to get this time! There we saw the battery packs for the Volt being tested in all kinds of simulated temperatures and humidity. They are being continuously charged and discharged to make certain that the lithium ion battery packs will last for 150,000 miles of driving conditions, at least. They showed us the battery pack that they used in the EV1, GM’s electric car from the 90’s and feature of the documentary ‘Who Killed the Electric Car?’ and put that battery pack next to the Volt pack, which is 1/3 the size and weight with more storage capacity. We also saw the first EV1 GM produced, which was on display (there are only a handful left in existence, see the documentary to find out why). All in all, the folks at GM really gave us a lot of time for video and interviewing and answered all of our questions.
Here’s a quick description of the Chevy Volt if you don’t already know: the Volt is a 4-door electric hybrid, but fundamentally different than a Prius. The Volt plugs into any electric outlet to charge and the first 40 miles of driving is electric-only; after that a small gas (or ethanol) powered onboard generator makes electricity to keep the car going. There is no gasoline engine, and the small generator runs at a continuous speed to produce electricity, so it’s much more efficient than a traditional engine. Since the batteries are expensive, GM’s strategy is to build in enough electric-only range to get people to work and back every day, plugging in at home or work, and for most people they could commute each day without using any fuel. For any driving over the 40-mile electric-only range, the generator is there so people can drive as much as they need to. There is a lot of controversy surrounding their previous EV1 program but during our tour they insisted that they used much of the technology from that program in the Volt, and many of the Volt team is from the EV1 program. They look at the Volt as the next generation of technology from the EV1. The Volt is projected to be priced somewhere under $40,000 and they are committed to the program no matter what state the company may be in financially.
In our tour at GM they also told us about the upcoming sequel to ‘Who Killed the Electric Car?’ which is going to be called ‘Revenge of the Electric Car’. The sequel is going to focus primarily on GM and Tesla’s electric car developments. Tesla has shown how exciting an electric car can be with the Roadster (let me say from first-hand experience, it’s very exciting!) but they are a startup company and building cars in large numbers will be a challenge. GM is focusing on technology like the Volt that will give a limited electric-only range (40 miles) but they have the ability to produce cars in huge numbers, and a dealership network to sell them in. They are different visions of what an electric car should be, and it will be exciting to see which one the public embraces.
We traveled over to visit Enviro-Energies, which makes vertical-axis wind turbines. The big wind turbines we’re used to seeing are horizontal-axis machines but Enviro-Energies makes wind turbines that mount to rooftops and capture wind energy in a different ‘twist’. Instead of the usual propeller-type these look more like soft-serve ice cream cones turning on the rooftop on a vertical axis, able to capture wind from any direction. They don’t have the same issues with height that traditional wind turbines have for residential use – for many towns the laws make it difficult for the majority of homeowners to put up a wind turbine on a pole 60 feet in the air, unless people have many acres of land. Also, vertical axis wind turbines (called VAWTs) need less wind to produce electricity, they’re very quiet, of course no problem with birds or bats, and they would stick out less than a pole-mounted wind turbine. We saw several sizes of their turbines including a 6-foot wide model going on Ed Begley Jr.’s house, and a 20-foot wide model that will be installed on Jay Leno’s huge garage of collected cars. They have designed and are planning to install some much larger-scale turbines on the tops of skyscrapers, which would be impossible with traditional propeller-type wind turbines (or very difficult anyway). It was a great opportunity for us to see a kind of renewable energy technology that hasn’t really become widely known yet but has a lot of potential.
Be well,
Colin
--
Our Renewable Nation, A Cross-Country Eco-Video Adventure
www.OurRenewableNation.org
What an exciting day we had in Detroit – a real treat!
I was hoping to make a video about GM’s efforts in developing alternative fuel vehicles, specifically the Chevy Volt, which is their next-generation electric hybrid. GM is a massive company and I never had any luck reaching anyone there about coming in for some interview time. When we interviewed Chelsea Sexton in Los Angeles I mentioned that we wanted to make a video about the Volt but never got anywhere with contacts, and she offered to put in a call to her contacts at GM for us! I was just hoping for a chance to see a Volt (slated for release in November 2010) and any interview we could get would be a bonus.
I heard back last night from Chelsea’s GM contacts and we got quite a welcome! First we went downtown to GM’s Renaissance Center (GM Headquarters) and interviewed Beth Lowery, Vice President of Environment & Energy. She told Carrick about GM’s efforts on a number of green fronts, including ethanol (that’s what those ‘Flex-Fuel’ badges are on the back of some GM cars and trucks you may see), hybrids, hydrogen fuel-cells, and electric vehicles. Cars of the future may be a mix of these technologies so they are developing a variety of technologies.
We then drove to GM’s battery development lab for a personal tour, which is a rare thing and we were very fortunate to get this time! There we saw the battery packs for the Volt being tested in all kinds of simulated temperatures and humidity. They are being continuously charged and discharged to make certain that the lithium ion battery packs will last for 150,000 miles of driving conditions, at least. They showed us the battery pack that they used in the EV1, GM’s electric car from the 90’s and feature of the documentary ‘Who Killed the Electric Car?’ and put that battery pack next to the Volt pack, which is 1/3 the size and weight with more storage capacity. We also saw the first EV1 GM produced, which was on display (there are only a handful left in existence, see the documentary to find out why). All in all, the folks at GM really gave us a lot of time for video and interviewing and answered all of our questions.
Here’s a quick description of the Chevy Volt if you don’t already know: the Volt is a 4-door electric hybrid, but fundamentally different than a Prius. The Volt plugs into any electric outlet to charge and the first 40 miles of driving is electric-only; after that a small gas (or ethanol) powered onboard generator makes electricity to keep the car going. There is no gasoline engine, and the small generator runs at a continuous speed to produce electricity, so it’s much more efficient than a traditional engine. Since the batteries are expensive, GM’s strategy is to build in enough electric-only range to get people to work and back every day, plugging in at home or work, and for most people they could commute each day without using any fuel. For any driving over the 40-mile electric-only range, the generator is there so people can drive as much as they need to. There is a lot of controversy surrounding their previous EV1 program but during our tour they insisted that they used much of the technology from that program in the Volt, and many of the Volt team is from the EV1 program. They look at the Volt as the next generation of technology from the EV1. The Volt is projected to be priced somewhere under $40,000 and they are committed to the program no matter what state the company may be in financially.
In our tour at GM they also told us about the upcoming sequel to ‘Who Killed the Electric Car?’ which is going to be called ‘Revenge of the Electric Car’. The sequel is going to focus primarily on GM and Tesla’s electric car developments. Tesla has shown how exciting an electric car can be with the Roadster (let me say from first-hand experience, it’s very exciting!) but they are a startup company and building cars in large numbers will be a challenge. GM is focusing on technology like the Volt that will give a limited electric-only range (40 miles) but they have the ability to produce cars in huge numbers, and a dealership network to sell them in. They are different visions of what an electric car should be, and it will be exciting to see which one the public embraces.
We traveled over to visit Enviro-Energies, which makes vertical-axis wind turbines. The big wind turbines we’re used to seeing are horizontal-axis machines but Enviro-Energies makes wind turbines that mount to rooftops and capture wind energy in a different ‘twist’. Instead of the usual propeller-type these look more like soft-serve ice cream cones turning on the rooftop on a vertical axis, able to capture wind from any direction. They don’t have the same issues with height that traditional wind turbines have for residential use – for many towns the laws make it difficult for the majority of homeowners to put up a wind turbine on a pole 60 feet in the air, unless people have many acres of land. Also, vertical axis wind turbines (called VAWTs) need less wind to produce electricity, they’re very quiet, of course no problem with birds or bats, and they would stick out less than a pole-mounted wind turbine. We saw several sizes of their turbines including a 6-foot wide model going on Ed Begley Jr.’s house, and a 20-foot wide model that will be installed on Jay Leno’s huge garage of collected cars. They have designed and are planning to install some much larger-scale turbines on the tops of skyscrapers, which would be impossible with traditional propeller-type wind turbines (or very difficult anyway). It was a great opportunity for us to see a kind of renewable energy technology that hasn’t really become widely known yet but has a lot of potential.
Be well,
Colin
--
Our Renewable Nation, A Cross-Country Eco-Video Adventure
www.OurRenewableNation.org
Oh Canada! Our Visit to Toronto
Hi friends,
We just spent the weekend in Toronto, Ontario for a brief trip over the U.S. border with a few videos planned there.
Toronto is a great example of a green city, by the standards of those we saw on the Top 10 lists we’ve been using for our Green City Spotlights. They have great public transportation, many parks throughout the city, and a great recycling program. Right outside the city hall building was a huge wind turbine, clearly visible when entering the city. There were throngs of people walking everywhere we went throughout Toronto, surely a healthy sign of an active city.
We were planning to do an interview at Zenn Motors in Toronto, which produces neighborhood electric cars. Unfortunately our contact there had to change plans and go to Chicago, so that didn’t work out. That’s OK, because with our videos at Tesla Motors and GM we got two different perspectives on electric cars from the two companies that will most likely be playing key roles in the future of the auto industry.
We did travel north of Toronto to Wildflower Farm for an interview with Miriam Goldberger, who runs the farm. They produce Ecolawn, which is a grass seed blend that provides a much more sustainable alternative to the traditional grass we’re all used to. Ecolawn looks like normal grass but doesn’t need to be watered, uses no fertilizers or pesticides, and it grows slowly to need less mowing. The secret is the long roots that grow down into the soil almost a foot, which aerates the soil, pulls water and nutrients from further down, and the roots grow close together to crowd out grubs and shallow-root weeds like crabgrass. It grows well in either shade or sun in a variety of climates, and is non-invasive so it won’t spread into anyone else’s yard. Check them out at www.Wildflowerfarm.com.
Wildflower Farm also produces seeds for hundreds of wildflower varieties, and they have many demonstration beds to show that wildflower gardens can be a very easy, low-maintenance and beautiful alternative to big lawns. Miriam talked about the history of lawns and why we in the U.S. came to be so obsessed with surrounding our homes with “green carpets”, and the bizarre turn in the last 60 years of using however many gallons of water and chemicals necessary to “conquer” the lawn. It was an eye-opener, believe me. Many of us have lawns so Carrick interviewed Miriam about rethinking lawns and open space to be more sustainable, beyond switching to a reel mower!
We also visited Niagara Falls since we were driving through – we didn’t do any filming there but it’s worth mentioning nonetheless. The Canadian side of the falls is shaped like a big horseshoe and we went aboard the ‘Maid of the Mist’, a boat that brought us to the bottom of the falls. Standing on the deck of this boat (getting soaked) and seeing the giant falls up close, was an amazing sight. The height and power of the water sure made me feel very small! I could feel the shaking of the engines working hard just to keep the boat in place.
That’s all for now – onto upstate New York!
Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org
We just spent the weekend in Toronto, Ontario for a brief trip over the U.S. border with a few videos planned there.
Toronto is a great example of a green city, by the standards of those we saw on the Top 10 lists we’ve been using for our Green City Spotlights. They have great public transportation, many parks throughout the city, and a great recycling program. Right outside the city hall building was a huge wind turbine, clearly visible when entering the city. There were throngs of people walking everywhere we went throughout Toronto, surely a healthy sign of an active city.
We were planning to do an interview at Zenn Motors in Toronto, which produces neighborhood electric cars. Unfortunately our contact there had to change plans and go to Chicago, so that didn’t work out. That’s OK, because with our videos at Tesla Motors and GM we got two different perspectives on electric cars from the two companies that will most likely be playing key roles in the future of the auto industry.
We did travel north of Toronto to Wildflower Farm for an interview with Miriam Goldberger, who runs the farm. They produce Ecolawn, which is a grass seed blend that provides a much more sustainable alternative to the traditional grass we’re all used to. Ecolawn looks like normal grass but doesn’t need to be watered, uses no fertilizers or pesticides, and it grows slowly to need less mowing. The secret is the long roots that grow down into the soil almost a foot, which aerates the soil, pulls water and nutrients from further down, and the roots grow close together to crowd out grubs and shallow-root weeds like crabgrass. It grows well in either shade or sun in a variety of climates, and is non-invasive so it won’t spread into anyone else’s yard. Check them out at www.Wildflowerfarm.com.
Wildflower Farm also produces seeds for hundreds of wildflower varieties, and they have many demonstration beds to show that wildflower gardens can be a very easy, low-maintenance and beautiful alternative to big lawns. Miriam talked about the history of lawns and why we in the U.S. came to be so obsessed with surrounding our homes with “green carpets”, and the bizarre turn in the last 60 years of using however many gallons of water and chemicals necessary to “conquer” the lawn. It was an eye-opener, believe me. Many of us have lawns so Carrick interviewed Miriam about rethinking lawns and open space to be more sustainable, beyond switching to a reel mower!
We also visited Niagara Falls since we were driving through – we didn’t do any filming there but it’s worth mentioning nonetheless. The Canadian side of the falls is shaped like a big horseshoe and we went aboard the ‘Maid of the Mist’, a boat that brought us to the bottom of the falls. Standing on the deck of this boat (getting soaked) and seeing the giant falls up close, was an amazing sight. The height and power of the water sure made me feel very small! I could feel the shaking of the engines working hard just to keep the boat in place.
That’s all for now – onto upstate New York!
Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org
Monday, June 22, 2009
Chicago, the Windy Green City
Hi friends,
Greetings from Kalamazoo, Michigan! We just spent the last few days in Chicago for our Green City Spotlights and saw some great things in the Windy City.
We came into Chicago on Saturday night and stayed with hosts in the city, then visited the 2nd UU Church in Chicago on Sunday morning and gave a presentation there afterwards. We spent the afternoon in the city then drove up north to Deerfield and gave another presentation at the North Shore UU Church there. Both were great crowds, and now the only presentation we have left on our cross-country journey is in Toronto next Sunday. If anyone is wondering why I am mentioning Unitarian Universalism in these posts it’s because most of our hosts are UU’s and most of the presentations we’ve been giving along the way have been at UU churches. Staying with the many generous folks who have hosted us on our travels has been a tremendous help in making our two months more affordable and we are very grateful. It’s also made traveling much more interesting, meeting folks everywhere we go instead of staying in one boring hotel after the next!
We had a chance to see Chicago’s green offerings yesterday and today – there has been a strong push recently to make Chicago the #1 green city in the U.S. and they’ve made great strides. Having been to the #1 green city, Portland, Oregon, I have to say they’ve got a ways to go but a big tip of the hat to Chicago for their efforts. We were pleasantly surprised to see just how much green space there is in Chicago, especially along the lakefront. There are miles of bike paths and walking paths, beaches along the coast, etc. They are putting in many new bikes paths throughout the city, which seems a great place for riding since the city is pretty flat. The elevated train (or just the ‘L’) runs all over the city and makes public transportation easy, plus a number of commuter trains coming into the city from the suburbs. Chicago has one of the strictest green building requirements in the country for all new construction, and City Hall proudly boasts a green roof with gardens on top. We found Chicago to be a fun place to visit!
Here’s a random thing we’ve learned while driving around the country: oil refineries smell really, really badly. We’ve seen the iconic oil pumps moving up and down as we drove through Texas and in different spots since then, and it was a foul smell coming just from those, but the big refineries just smell terrible and look like huge industrial behemoths – a real eyesore. We just passed one on the drive out of Chicago in Gary, Indiana and couldn’t imagine how people who live there put up with the awful smell, with the refinery on one side of the highway and the houses on the other.
We are heading to Detroit tomorrow for more filming that we almost didn’t get. I’ve been trying to line up these interviews for some time now and didn’t know if they were going to happen for certain until, oh, 7:00pm tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Be well,
Colin McCullough
www.OurRenewableNation.org
Greetings from Kalamazoo, Michigan! We just spent the last few days in Chicago for our Green City Spotlights and saw some great things in the Windy City.
We came into Chicago on Saturday night and stayed with hosts in the city, then visited the 2nd UU Church in Chicago on Sunday morning and gave a presentation there afterwards. We spent the afternoon in the city then drove up north to Deerfield and gave another presentation at the North Shore UU Church there. Both were great crowds, and now the only presentation we have left on our cross-country journey is in Toronto next Sunday. If anyone is wondering why I am mentioning Unitarian Universalism in these posts it’s because most of our hosts are UU’s and most of the presentations we’ve been giving along the way have been at UU churches. Staying with the many generous folks who have hosted us on our travels has been a tremendous help in making our two months more affordable and we are very grateful. It’s also made traveling much more interesting, meeting folks everywhere we go instead of staying in one boring hotel after the next!
We had a chance to see Chicago’s green offerings yesterday and today – there has been a strong push recently to make Chicago the #1 green city in the U.S. and they’ve made great strides. Having been to the #1 green city, Portland, Oregon, I have to say they’ve got a ways to go but a big tip of the hat to Chicago for their efforts. We were pleasantly surprised to see just how much green space there is in Chicago, especially along the lakefront. There are miles of bike paths and walking paths, beaches along the coast, etc. They are putting in many new bikes paths throughout the city, which seems a great place for riding since the city is pretty flat. The elevated train (or just the ‘L’) runs all over the city and makes public transportation easy, plus a number of commuter trains coming into the city from the suburbs. Chicago has one of the strictest green building requirements in the country for all new construction, and City Hall proudly boasts a green roof with gardens on top. We found Chicago to be a fun place to visit!
Here’s a random thing we’ve learned while driving around the country: oil refineries smell really, really badly. We’ve seen the iconic oil pumps moving up and down as we drove through Texas and in different spots since then, and it was a foul smell coming just from those, but the big refineries just smell terrible and look like huge industrial behemoths – a real eyesore. We just passed one on the drive out of Chicago in Gary, Indiana and couldn’t imagine how people who live there put up with the awful smell, with the refinery on one side of the highway and the houses on the other.
We are heading to Detroit tomorrow for more filming that we almost didn’t get. I’ve been trying to line up these interviews for some time now and didn’t know if they were going to happen for certain until, oh, 7:00pm tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Be well,
Colin McCullough
www.OurRenewableNation.org
Friday, June 19, 2009
On the Way East
Hi friends,
Since we left Montana we’ve been driving for several days on the way back east, and until we reach Chicago we won’t be doing any filming. Actually we only have a handful of interviews left before we get back home in 2 weeks, then another 15 videos/interviews to film back in New England. We’ve been to some interesting places since Missoula so even if we didn’t film much I thought they’re worth mentioning.
Saturday night we stayed outside of Missoula and got to meet Priscilla the blogging goat (http://www.pricillaspeaks.blogspot.com/) I knew kids were computer savvy but this was something else…(pun intentional)
Sunday and Monday we stayed in Burlington, Wyoming, which is about 2 hours outside of Yellowstone National Park. We stayed at the Wayfaring Traveler Llama Ranch which has a vegetarian bed and breakfast, enjoying the hospitality of our hosts Mike and BJ Carlson and the 35 llamas they have. One llama, Pudley, wrote their last Christmas letter. First a blogging goat then a letter-writing llama, go figure. We visited what we could of Yellowstone, but the park is so big as to need several days to see everything! We saw Old Faithful, the most popular geyser in the world (not the biggest but the most popular because of it’s regularity, about every hour give or take). I did film the spouting of Old Faithful to use in a video about geothermal energy, since we weren’t able to get an interview with a company in California that is developing deep-geothermal energy production for electricity. We saw bison, a moose, and outside the park we saw a few hundred (yes, we counted) pronghorn antelope.
Tuesday we drove to Cheyenne and stopped in Thermopolis to visit the Wyoming Dinosaur Museum, which has 60 active dig-sites in within the 500-mile area. On the way out of Thermopolis we drove down into a canyon aside the Wind River, and saw the most amazing natural optical illusion ever! The river was flowing in the wrong direction! We drove down….and the river was flowing….up? We checked the GPS and we were actually ASCENDING even though it looked like we were driving DOWN into the canyon. It was totally bizarre. I kept checking with Jen reading the GPS but our elevation kept going up, and the river was indeed flowing down even though it looked like it was flowing up. Very strange.
We got into Cheyenne, Wyoming after dark and suffered the consequences – the entire front end of the Beetle and the cargo carrier on the roof was COATED in bug splatter. The next morning we saw the carnage and it was really disgusting. There were actually flies buzzing around the front of the car. I didn’t even want to touch the roof rack to get the luggage out.
We drove most of the day yesterday to get to Lincoln, Nebraska for a presentation at the UU Church in the evening, and enjoyed talking with the folks there. One of our hosts works for the Nebraska Forestry Service and is working with the University of Nebraska to develop a new crop to grow in the state for biodiesel: hazel nuts (also called filberts). Hazel nuts have double the yield of vegetable oil as one of the most popular crops here, soybeans. They have many environmental benefits including no irrigation or pesticides required, they sequester carbon, they are perennial so they don’t need to be replanted every year, and they are harvested using current equipment. They’ve been working on developing a hybrid variety that will grow well in the Nebraska climate. Yesterday afternoon we heard tornado warnings on the radio for southern Nebraska – the kids looked worried and I was excited – great video! Fortunately for us, no tornados.
So that brings us up to speed on our way east – we’re in Des Moines, Iowa then to Chicago where we’ll spend several days and get some video for our Green City Spotlight series.
Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org
Since we left Montana we’ve been driving for several days on the way back east, and until we reach Chicago we won’t be doing any filming. Actually we only have a handful of interviews left before we get back home in 2 weeks, then another 15 videos/interviews to film back in New England. We’ve been to some interesting places since Missoula so even if we didn’t film much I thought they’re worth mentioning.
Saturday night we stayed outside of Missoula and got to meet Priscilla the blogging goat (http://www.pricillaspeaks.blogspot.com/) I knew kids were computer savvy but this was something else…(pun intentional)
Sunday and Monday we stayed in Burlington, Wyoming, which is about 2 hours outside of Yellowstone National Park. We stayed at the Wayfaring Traveler Llama Ranch which has a vegetarian bed and breakfast, enjoying the hospitality of our hosts Mike and BJ Carlson and the 35 llamas they have. One llama, Pudley, wrote their last Christmas letter. First a blogging goat then a letter-writing llama, go figure. We visited what we could of Yellowstone, but the park is so big as to need several days to see everything! We saw Old Faithful, the most popular geyser in the world (not the biggest but the most popular because of it’s regularity, about every hour give or take). I did film the spouting of Old Faithful to use in a video about geothermal energy, since we weren’t able to get an interview with a company in California that is developing deep-geothermal energy production for electricity. We saw bison, a moose, and outside the park we saw a few hundred (yes, we counted) pronghorn antelope.
Tuesday we drove to Cheyenne and stopped in Thermopolis to visit the Wyoming Dinosaur Museum, which has 60 active dig-sites in within the 500-mile area. On the way out of Thermopolis we drove down into a canyon aside the Wind River, and saw the most amazing natural optical illusion ever! The river was flowing in the wrong direction! We drove down….and the river was flowing….up? We checked the GPS and we were actually ASCENDING even though it looked like we were driving DOWN into the canyon. It was totally bizarre. I kept checking with Jen reading the GPS but our elevation kept going up, and the river was indeed flowing down even though it looked like it was flowing up. Very strange.
We got into Cheyenne, Wyoming after dark and suffered the consequences – the entire front end of the Beetle and the cargo carrier on the roof was COATED in bug splatter. The next morning we saw the carnage and it was really disgusting. There were actually flies buzzing around the front of the car. I didn’t even want to touch the roof rack to get the luggage out.
We drove most of the day yesterday to get to Lincoln, Nebraska for a presentation at the UU Church in the evening, and enjoyed talking with the folks there. One of our hosts works for the Nebraska Forestry Service and is working with the University of Nebraska to develop a new crop to grow in the state for biodiesel: hazel nuts (also called filberts). Hazel nuts have double the yield of vegetable oil as one of the most popular crops here, soybeans. They have many environmental benefits including no irrigation or pesticides required, they sequester carbon, they are perennial so they don’t need to be replanted every year, and they are harvested using current equipment. They’ve been working on developing a hybrid variety that will grow well in the Nebraska climate. Yesterday afternoon we heard tornado warnings on the radio for southern Nebraska – the kids looked worried and I was excited – great video! Fortunately for us, no tornados.
So that brings us up to speed on our way east – we’re in Des Moines, Iowa then to Chicago where we’ll spend several days and get some video for our Green City Spotlight series.
Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Biomimicry in Montana
Hi friends,
We continue our return trip back east, stopping in Missoula, Montana to visit the Biomimicry Institute.
Biomimicry is "the process of learning from and then emulating Nature's genius to create more sustainable designs. It's studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell or an electric eel to make a better battery." The Biomimicry Institute works to educate designers and inventors to ask nature first - before trying to reinvent the wheel, look to nature first for solutions for design ideas, because whatever the design challenge nature has already done it somewhere!
You may remember back before we left for our cross-country journey in May we interviewed Janine Benyus, who founded the Biomimicry Institute, has written several books, and travels for conferences, training, etc. Janine wasn't going to be in Missoula while we came through so we were able to get some time with her while she was stopping in Boston. Unfortunately for us, five minutes into the interview our video camera completely 'spazzed out' and we had to cut the interview short. I felt that biomimicry was such an important topic for our video series that I asked to interview someone at the Institute in Missoula to complete the video. They were gracious enough to give us some more time and this time the camera cooperated!
Carrick interviewed Bryony Schwan, the Executive Director of the Biomimicry Institute, and it was a great visit. Bryony showed us several examples of biomimicry, really fascinating stuff. One fabric company wanted to make a waterproof and self-cleaning fabric without chemicals, and they found a great solution in biomimicry. When water falls on a lotus leaf it beads up and runs off, and any dirt that collects on the leaf washes right off. The secret is in the surface structure of the leaf itself, with many small bumps we can't see. Bryony showed us two swatches of cloth identical in appearance. The first she held under the tap and it absorbed water as you would expect. The second cloth was using the same material but when it was sewn it was given the same surface structure as the leaf and when held under the tap the water just rolled right off. From our eyes and touch both cloths were the same. Imagine the applications for something like that - building surfaces, car paint, etc.
She also showed us a few other examples that were fascinating: Carrick's watch is coated with a film that makes it glow in the sunlight, without using any power. The film was developed by Qualcomm for cell phones and was created with biomimicry. Both abalone shells and butterfly wings have that same iridescent glow and they were both analyzed to find out what compound makes them reflect light that way. They used the same coating on cell phone displays, since backlighting the displays uses a lot of battery power. From there other companies have used the coating and it turned out that the watch Carrick got has that same coating. We also saw a new design for fans and water mixers - think of the spiral shape of a conch shell and other seashells, or that of fiddlehead ferns. The new design reduces energy consumption by 35-70% and noise up to 75%.
There are many amazing examples of biomimicry at www.biomimicryinstitute.org.
Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org
We continue our return trip back east, stopping in Missoula, Montana to visit the Biomimicry Institute.
Biomimicry is "the process of learning from and then emulating Nature's genius to create more sustainable designs. It's studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell or an electric eel to make a better battery." The Biomimicry Institute works to educate designers and inventors to ask nature first - before trying to reinvent the wheel, look to nature first for solutions for design ideas, because whatever the design challenge nature has already done it somewhere!
You may remember back before we left for our cross-country journey in May we interviewed Janine Benyus, who founded the Biomimicry Institute, has written several books, and travels for conferences, training, etc. Janine wasn't going to be in Missoula while we came through so we were able to get some time with her while she was stopping in Boston. Unfortunately for us, five minutes into the interview our video camera completely 'spazzed out' and we had to cut the interview short. I felt that biomimicry was such an important topic for our video series that I asked to interview someone at the Institute in Missoula to complete the video. They were gracious enough to give us some more time and this time the camera cooperated!
Carrick interviewed Bryony Schwan, the Executive Director of the Biomimicry Institute, and it was a great visit. Bryony showed us several examples of biomimicry, really fascinating stuff. One fabric company wanted to make a waterproof and self-cleaning fabric without chemicals, and they found a great solution in biomimicry. When water falls on a lotus leaf it beads up and runs off, and any dirt that collects on the leaf washes right off. The secret is in the surface structure of the leaf itself, with many small bumps we can't see. Bryony showed us two swatches of cloth identical in appearance. The first she held under the tap and it absorbed water as you would expect. The second cloth was using the same material but when it was sewn it was given the same surface structure as the leaf and when held under the tap the water just rolled right off. From our eyes and touch both cloths were the same. Imagine the applications for something like that - building surfaces, car paint, etc.
She also showed us a few other examples that were fascinating: Carrick's watch is coated with a film that makes it glow in the sunlight, without using any power. The film was developed by Qualcomm for cell phones and was created with biomimicry. Both abalone shells and butterfly wings have that same iridescent glow and they were both analyzed to find out what compound makes them reflect light that way. They used the same coating on cell phone displays, since backlighting the displays uses a lot of battery power. From there other companies have used the coating and it turned out that the watch Carrick got has that same coating. We also saw a new design for fans and water mixers - think of the spiral shape of a conch shell and other seashells, or that of fiddlehead ferns. The new design reduces energy consumption by 35-70% and noise up to 75%.
There are many amazing examples of biomimicry at www.biomimicryinstitute.org.
Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org
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