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Monthly Conversations: Begin again in the fall.

Tuesday Conversations: Next meeting: September 2010

Tuesday Discussion Summary

May 11th Discussion:

Small Is Big:

• Martha reported success using one of our favorite tools for dandelions: The Weed Hound. Many of us are moving to a more organic form of lawn care and we get some dandelions, so this is helpful.
• We have 3 new books on permaculture for anyone who would like to read them over the summer.
• We discussed an article we had recently read in the New york Times about the fact that China's demand for energy is skyrocketing. From the article: "...the country’s surging demand for power from oil and coal has led to the largest six-month increase in the tonnage of human generated greenhouse gases ever by a single country." China now owns a pipeline across Canada, and the largest corporation in America is currently PetroChina. This reminds us of one of the key reasons that we started working in this area in 2005: we were aware that India and China had the intent to live a Western lifestyle, and knew that this was impossible given our current energy sources. We are on our way there!
• Mike pointed us to a new wind turbine developed by Honeywell for mass market use, the WT 6500 Wind Turbine. It uses a gearless blade tip, which reduces resistance and is thus far more efficient.
• Mike also talked about the new Bloom Energy Server, a distributed power generator, producing clean, reliable, affordable electricity at the customer site. You've heard of micro-lending? Well, this is micro-servers, located at the place of use.

Socially Responsible Investing:

• Most of our discussion is located on our Socially Responsible Investing page.
• We first talked about the material Peggy found in 'The Earth User's Guide to Permaculture.' Notes are on the link. Major idea is that we can choose to support systems that are ethical, self-sustaining and ecologically sound (new economics), or we can support systems currently in place that rely on cheap, non-renewable resources (old economics). Obviously we all do a little of both, but this does give us food for thought.
• We also talked about the IHM (Immaculate Heart of Mary) order and their idea of socially responsible investing. Details and links also on the link.

Next meeting: May 18: Products we use and how green they actually are. Please note that this is the LAST MEETING OF THE SEASON. We will be having breakfast together on June 1st to celebrate the end of our 5th year of discussions!

Tuesday Discussion Summary archives

GLGI Blog

June 7, 2010

Driving to save money and gas

This morning I was driving back from my morning swim and I hit a red light. When it turned green, I did what I usually do - I gradually pulled away from the light until I finally hit the speed limit (45) when I was about 1/2 mile from the light. The person behind me responded typically - he sped up, pulled around me, and then pulled in front of me, prevented from further movement by the person in front of him. I'm always amazed at this. Perhaps they don't trust that I will eventually hit the 45 mph if I don't make a jack-rabbit start. I sometimes watch to see just where these people end up, and it is usually not much further than me. So what gives? What's the big hurry?

I can understand if this behavior comes predominately from teenagers, but that doesn't appear to be the case. I have a theory about this: I don't think people have any idea that what they are doing is costing them money, and that if they drove a bit differently they would save both money and fuel. I have a car (Prius) with a display screen that shows me in real time what my mileage is. It is shown below. Because my car was parked when I took this picture (always recommended), you can't see that the bar graph on the right varies between 0 and 100, depending on what my current mpg ratio is is. When I started driving this car, I learned that if I took my foot off the pedal and glided a bit my mileage would improve. I also found that paying attention to how I started and stopped at lights helped. Yesterday my mileage read at about 53 mpg.

So here's the idea for the day: How about just taking your time at lights? If you are approaching a red light, take your foot off the pedal and glide in. Accelerate slowly when leaving a light. You don't need to own a hybrid car to see mileage improvement. Remember, this is saving money and it's saving gas. I keep thinking about the millions of barrels of oil that are spilling into the Gulf right now, in part because our lifestyles require it. None of us know what to do about it. I say let's focus on what we can do. If something as simple as slower starts and stops from traffic lights can improve mileage, require less gasoline/oil, AND save money...well, seems like a slam dunk to me.