Will the idea of the commune experiment actually be applicable to others as a model? A few people have suggested that the whole difficulty of the Green-izing of America is that the differences in situations make any one example moot. Here is why I don’t think this will be true:
At any given point, I (a relatively motivated, yet occasionally overwhelmed individual with something of an eco-conscience) feel completely lost about what alternative energy sources are useful, how much each one provides under what conditions, etc. I think that a study in one environmental condition can really put all the claims that green energy make into the light of personal experience. This doesn’t mean that anything can be said for sure about other situations and conditions, but it does mean that a final study or book we create can be used as an anchor in an otherwise complicated and unknown world. The claims of people selling solar power or wind power vary dramatically depending on who is doing the talking. What I don’t know, and want to know, is a range: How much work, how much energy results, how does it actually change over the course of the year, etc. Sure, our experiment is not going to answer all these questions, but it can act as a blue print for other people, and give them a range with which to experiment themselves, as well as some troubleshooting help to figure things out along the way.
Its easy to say, but I think any data we can create would be possible to extrapolate to other situations. We should hash out as much as possible the specific conditions that we are dealing with where ever our commune ends up, and you can use that to make a guess for yourself down the road. Our wind chart says X, yours says Y, but they are close together on the overall range. Our solar house was dealing with an average temperature of 42 degrees over the course of the spring, your house deals with 35 degrees, but you know how much energy we used for heat so you can factor in a larger number. There would be a Margin of Error, but not a large enough one to make the whole process not useful.
Now, some links and thinks:
The Supreme Court finally ruled on the EPA, essentially forcing them to do their job. I confess to being a little confused as to how this argument was still going on. I don’t even think the republican party or the oil companies are as far behind the times as the Bush administration. The EPA made the argument that they couldn’t Protect the Environment… because it would interfere with the jurisdiction of the transportation department? Really? What ARE they allowed to do then?
Anyway, this seems like one of those things that needs to happen, if only to remind us how far away we really are from getting to where need to be in terms of government support of alternative energy.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Scotus-Greenhouse-Gase.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
And here is some quality pie in the sky type stuff. This is the logical extreme of green energy in the city:
http://nymag.com/news/features/30020/
How sweet is that? Its like a SimCity 2000 building. And its only 2007!
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