I found this cool website while doing research for my final project
http://www.exponentialevolution.com/GuideToSustainability.html

I found it quite informative compared to what I already knew. For someone just starting this class I think this would help a lot. I particularly liked this quote "It is common for a new dome to reach a "critical mass" during construction, shift slightly, and lift any attached scaffolding from the ground" That sounds so cool that I want to go build one myself. Can you imagine what Space Mountain did then it was being built? Sooo cool!!

I came across this article the other day about how Vermont Colleges are aiming to be carbon neutral. I thought that this idea was great, but I wasn't sure how practical and easy it would be to make this switch. In the article I read, it spoke specifically about Green Mountain College. They will change their entire heating system that will be completed in January of 2010. They will change their current heating system, which is currently burning 260,000 gallons of number six oil per year. This heating system accounts for the 71% of the campus greenhouse gas emissions. With the new system which will be heated with wood pellets, they will use 4,900 lbs of wood chips to heat their campus. All the wood chips will come from a local source and will produced in an environmentally friendly way. The project will cost roughly 3.6 million dollars, which the college has recieved through grants and loans, but it will end up saving them $250,000 in heating costs per year. Hopefully this plan is successful and it sparks other colleges in Vermont to do the same. I had heard that all campuses were going to try to be carbon neutral, but this article was the only one I found that had a serious plan about how they were going to make it happen.

Today I read an article in the wall street journal about bailing out the electric car companies instead of the three American car manufactures this is a great idea that I’m all for I believe that if we are going to put money into the automotive department then it should be in alternative forms of transportation. As stated in class why should we bail a business that isn’t successful? I guess some believe that it is because we need to keep the American economy going. Well rather than adding fuel to the fire, and giving away more money that we don’t have, why can’t we take the fifteen billion dollars to start up a more efficient American car company? Why not model our cars like the pries and actually work on getting a stable alternative form of transportation up and running personally I like electric cars because they seem to cut down on air pollution. But the debate seems to be like the old chicken and the egg problem. People are unwilling to buy an electric car because there aren’t any electric charging stations and there aren’t any electric charging stations because people aren’t buying the electric cars. Why can’t we find a way to fix this problem?

Article: "Honesty About Ethanol"

I read an article that raises some interesting points that I haven’t heard before on the topic of ethanol. The main question is if there should be a increase in the production of ethanol from 7 to 36 billion gallons. There are a couple factors that need to be considered with this increase in ethanol and corn production that goes with it. The benefits of ethanol have been that it burns much cleaner than gas making it what has been thought to be carbon neutral. It also has the benefit of creating jobs and refineries in the United States and helping with the dependency on foreign oil.
There are studies still being conducted showing that ethanol might not be as environmentally friendly as we thought. The main problem is that we haven come up with an equation factoring in the carbon created by turning food to fuel in the Corn Belt. There will need to be much more land needed to be tilled and cleared for increased production of corn. Also other places in the world will have to start farming on what is now untouched land to make up for the loss of corn production for food. We could be creating more carbon in a worldly scale if the increase in land and the methods of harvesting and refining ethanol are all taken into consideration. The article mentions how hard it is to get real answers from the media concerning anything that consider with the Bush administration and foreign oil production. The government could be using ethanol as an excuse to cut and clear more rainforrests or other protected lands for profit. I have heard that there are much more efficient crops to harvest for biofuel such as wheatgrass. Maybe one of them could be an answer to the over farming and production of corn and the harm it has on the environment.