Pitch
Online, ongoing global brainstorm on local, practical solutions being implemented now and adaptable to different conditions around the world
Description
Overview:
100% success for all of humanity, from bare minimum (refugee camp) to bare maximum (holiday camping). Start with the poorest of the poor, providing them with zero emissions local production - food, energy, money, information and communication, health... within ecological design principles. Open source, maker culture, collective intelligence using all media to build livable neighborhoods and villages the way social media was used to oppose Middle Eastern dictators. Power directly to the people. Global co-creation, a Lynux operating system for Spaceship Earth.
Operating Assumptions
^ "Climate Change 2007: Mitigation of Climate Change, Summary for Policymakers" (PDF). Working Group III, IPCC. 2007-05-04. pp. Table SPM.5, page 23. Archived from the original on 2007-05-18. Retrieved 2007-05-10.
CO2 is around 392.6 ppm now, add another 80 ppm for the other anthropogenic greenhouse gases (methane, nitrous oxides, CFCs, et alia) and we are around 480 ppm of CO2 equivalent, CO2e, now. (Incidentally, why don't we talk about CO2e rather than CO2 or tons of carbon or any other measure? This seems to me to be the single most understandable measurement.)
During the last energy crisis in the 1970s, there were groups that did solar barnraisings too. Some of those solar devices are still working (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/7/5/153147/7413). This is public education through demonstration and a positive protest against business as usual (BAU).
Following in the footsteps of Khan Academy, all I know about simple solar is online I've produced a number of solar PSAs and videos: http://solarray.blogspot.com/2011/07/solar-psa-south-facing-window-is.html
Others have done the same thing. Distribute and disseminate the best of them to all those who can use the information. The solar bottle lamp for daylighting has migrated from one town in Brazil to over 10,000 homes and businesses in the Philippines
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/13/1016351/-Trash-Technology-and-Recycled-Solar:-Plastic-Bottles
[] Zero Emissions Within Ecological Design Principles
2009 Energy Use in the USA was about 100 quadrillion btu nearly 58% of which was "rejected energy," waste heat, primarily, and other forms of energy which did not useful work (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/13/966751/-2009-Energy-Use-in-the-USA). Thomas Casten of Recycled Energy believes we can recapture a great deal of that waste for a "Zero Cost Solution to Energy and Climate Change" (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/09/10/592931/-A-Zero-Cost-Solution-to-Energy-and-Climate-Change).
Ecological design
Basic ecological design principles of architect William McDonough:
waste equals food
use only available solar income
respect diversity
love all the children
John Todd, one of the founders of New Alchemy Institute, winner of the first Buckminster Fuller Challenge, an ecological designer and teacher focusing on biological remediation and waste treatment, has twelve fundamental principles of ecological design:
• Geological and mineral diversity must be present to evolve the biological responsiveness of rich soils.
• Nutrient reservoirs are essential to keep such essentials as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium available for the plants.
• Steep gradients between subcomponents must be engineered into the system to enable the biological elements to evolve rapidly to assist in the breakdown of toxic materials.
• High rates of exchange must be created by maximizing surface areas that house the bacteria that determine the metabolism of the system and facilitate treatment.
• Periodic and random pulsed exchanges improve performance. Just as random perturbations foster resilience in nature, in living technologies altering water flow creates self-organization in the system.
• Cellular design is the structural model as it is in nature where cells are the organizing unit. Expansion of the system should also use a cellular model, as in increasing the number of tanks.
• A law of the minimum must be incorporated. At least three ecosystems such as a marsh, a pond, and a terrestrial area are needed to perform the assigned function and maintain overall stability.
• Microbial communities must be introduced periodically from the natural world to maintain diversity and facilitate evolutionary processes.
• Photosynthetic foundations are essential as oxygen-producing plants foster ecosystems that require less energy, aeration, and chemical management.
• Phylogenetic diversity must be encouraged as a range of aquatic animals from the unicellular to snails to fish are as essential to the evolution and self-maintenance of the system as the plants.
• Sequenced and repeated seedings are part of maintenance as a self-contained system cannot be isolated but must be interlinked through gaseous, nutrient, mineral, and biological pathways to the external environment.
• Ecological design should reflect the macrocosmos in the microcosmos, representing the natural world miniaturized and reflecting its proportions, as in terrestrial to oceanic and aquatic areas.
from A Safe and Sustainable World: The Promise of Ecological Design by Nancy Jack Todd
Washington: Island Press, 2005
ISBN 1-55963-778-1
"You can fix all the world's problems in a garden" - permaculture as a local and bioregional growth and remediation strategy: http://solarray.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-to-heal-world.html
Urban ecological Systems (The shareable future of cities http://www.ted.com/talks/alex_steffen.html): With green infrastructure, cities today capture rainwater, runoff, and waste liquids, filter, clean them to grow urban street trees. We can design urban permacultures for food, fiber, and materials production (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/03/12/311157/-Raspberry-Gobble)
source http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/13/993349/-Climate-ChangeFast-Solutions-Are-All-We-Have-Left and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7HllgQ4LkM
Black Carbon
More than 50% of the accelerated global warming in the Arctic is due to Black Carbon but it only stays in the atmosphere a few weeks
Replace all three stone cooking with more efficient systems with ancillary health and time benefits
Concentrate in areas near glaciers to reduce local warming effect of black carbon on snow and ice
Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves: http://cleancookstoves.org/
List of improved cook stoves: http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Improved_cook_stoves
Robert Lange ( http://www.the-icsee.org/projects/africa/maasaioftanzania.htm ) is working in Tanzania with the Maasai developing a more efficient cookstove and building solar LED lighting systems. He has field tested his design and Tanzanian women have started a factory building parts. Other people are installing and repairing stoves on the local level as well as installing solar LED lighting systems.
Methane is at least 72 times more potent than C02 over a 20 year period but takes only 12 years to cycle out of atmosphere.
It can be addressed through agriculture, stoves, biogas and methane management. Cows, feedlots versus grass (with additional health and taste advantages) Alan Savory's work has direct relevance here.
Constructive Programme - latrines - Gandhian economics once again
ionization to take out of atmosphere? Methane management is important especially in the possibility of large natural releases due to increased warming in the polar regions.
Towards Zero Emissions: The Methane Cycle
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/05/07/332213/-Towards-Zero-Emissions:-The-Methane-Cycle-
Ozone
Methane and N02 help to create ground level ozone contributes to smog and is resident in the atmosphere for a few days.
smog - mass transit, zero emissions culture and practice
The great advantage and opportunity is that these forces all cycle out of the atmosphere quickly and can slow global warming just as quickly to buy us the time necessary to reduce C02 long-term.
"We need a short term and a long term solution. The long term is cutting back on C02 emissions. The short term is rapid reduction of Black Carbon, Methane and Ground Level Ozone."
Livestock production is a significant contribution to all of the short term climate forces.
Global scale systems simulations: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/15/985424/-Global-Scale-Systems-Simulations:-FuturICT
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Examples of possible repositories for open source resources
Appropedia http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia
Climatetechwiki http://climatetechwiki.org/technology/imcookstoves
Open Source Ecology http://opensourceecology.org/
Globalswadeshi http://globalswadeshi.ning.com/
Coalition of the Willing coalition@googlegroups.com
Global System for Sustainable Development http://gssd.mit.edu/GSSD/GSSDen.nsf
"MiiU is a collection of all the resources and places that make personal, family, and community resilience possible. Resilience isn't only about surviving global failures, it's about building a better life for you and everyone around you." http://www.miiu.org/
ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability http://www.iclei.org/
Solar Cooking Archive - http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Solar_cooker_plans
Vision of the future under this proposal
in the great alluvial valleys,
deserts left wild for those
who would live there by skill.
Computer technicians who run
the plant part of the year
and walk
along with the Elk
in their migrations
One evening, I walked out of the White Crane Hotel
on Shamian Island and crossed the bridge
into the city of Guangzhou.
There was a line of men
standing behind small folding tables
in closed shop doorways.
Coming closer, I saw that they were
plastic "disposable" lighters.
I want a solar rechargeable reading light
just as cheap, adaptable, and readily available
as a disposable cigarette lighter.
We need to make it possible
for every child around the world
to read in bed
and dream.
George Mokray
218 Franklin Street #3
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-661-2676
gmoke@world.std.com
http://solarray.blogspot.com
http://gmoke.dailykos.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/gmoke
http://hubevents.blogspot.com
PS: All I know about simple solar is at
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/09/simple-solar-parts-1-2-and-3.html
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2009/12/simple-solar-parts-4-through-8.html