From Costa Rica: Producing bio fuel, it is important  to ensure sustainable crop production that is environmentally and socially effective as well optimized. The Costa Rica News

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• Sustainable Development -- The HOME movie Luc Besson partnered with a French documentary filmmaker to produce an amazing documentary film that is a strong message sent to humanity: Stop procrastinating and take action now if we, as humans, want to have a future on this planet. The film was released on the Web and on various......
• Sustainable development, corporations and public education A large corporation like Home Depot only adopted sustainable development measures following a public outcry and boycotts over the sale of their lumber products. Seeing a threat to their profits, they adopted more ecological and sustainable business practice in order to impove their public image. But, in order for corporations......
• Copenhagen and low-carbon investments A little quote from the BusinessGreen website "The potential impact on low-carbon investments of failing to deliver a meaningful deal at the forthcoming Copenhagen Summit was underlined last week with the news that analyst firm Point Carbon is downgrading its long-term price forecasts, primarily as a result of growing uncertainty......

• Voting For The Environment - Where The Democrats Stand. While I understand there are very big issues that the next President will have to face, one of my personal concerns is how they are going to treat issues pertaining to the environment. Prior to Edwards dropping out of the race, he had my vote based on his concern for......
• How To Spot Third Party Verifications Of "Green". How can you know if you are really buying an eco-friendly product? While many everyday things we buy are not rated for their "green-ness", there are tons that are. You just have to know what to look for! I have written in the past about organic labeling and certification, but......
• Healthy Green Alternatives Push Asbestos Out of the Home Today's article is written by Joe Lederman, an Awareness Coordinator at the Mesothelioma Cancer Center. When purchasing or remodeling a home or building, there are many variables to consider. Homes which were built prior to 1980 have a strong likelihood of containing asbestos materials. Asbestos is a fibrous mineral that......

A very large version of a stereo lithographic printer is being used to “print” large structures such as sculptures or even houses. The printer uses a mixture of sand with a magnesium based glue that binds the sand into rock.

The inventor claims that his process is four times faster than conventional building, costs one-third to one-half the price of Portland cement and creates very little waste.

See the complete story on the fast company website.

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• The only problem with politics is the politicians Politicians make me sick. In a recent post, I commented on my disagreement with Cap and Trade, and why it wouldn’t resolve any issues.  All the hoopla and controversy around the upcoming Copenhagen Summit has to do with politicians not agreeing on political issues.  The United States has yet to......
• Green Portfolio A mutual funds company, Global mutual fund, has a "green" portfolio which it calls: "Portfolio 21". The corporation newly announced its top 10 companies. I was somewhat surprised to see companies listed which I never thought of as "green". For instance, the Autodesk corporation.  On the other hand, since 3D......
• Alex Mandossian and the coming era of interdependent entrepreneurs I left a comment on Alex Mandossian's blog about a recent entry of his.Quite an entry I might add. Needless to say, I agree with his well researched post and am glad that people who have a platform use it to promote ideals and help point towards the future.In my......

• Capital One Hates the Environment It's true... I have proof. Look at the picture above. The most obvious thing is that I'm horrible at taking pictures. (Unfortunately, my camera skills are not good and I recycled the evidence before I noticed how bad the picture was. Let's pretend I was trying to create blur......
• The Hour Glass of Momentum in Tennis Imagine you have an hour glass in front of you. The top half of the hour glass represents the momentum in your tennis match when you are winning. The bottom half represents the player who is losing. The person who is winning has a wealth of information available to them......
• Finding the Best Swimming Facilities in Your Area Swim training can be a challenge when you do not have the right swimming facilities to train in. The good news is there are facilities available to you no matter where you live. Some will be more convenient to use than others. Finding the right place to train is important......

An interesting article on the architecture 2030 website about energy consumption as it relates to buildings. The article shows three pie charts with the first two showing U.S. energy consumption and the third one showing worldwide energy consumption. Surprisingly, it shows that transportation only accounts for 1% of energy consumption and buildings for 76%.  That energy comes from electricity produced from oil or gas. Sometimes the heating uses oil or gas directly. But in both cases, oil or gas is used. Energy requirements are for heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) as well as lighting, elevators, security systems and all other systems using electricity. The charts include energy required for construction, renovation and maintenance of the buildings.

Most of that energy requirement could be reduced by having more intelligent HVAC systems, better insulation and heat management. But most importantly, large buildings could incorporate energy producing features such as harnessing wind and solar energy as well as geothermal energy.

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• How clean is clean coal ? Clean coal, Carbon Sequestration, these are expressions we hear quite often when dealing with the production of electricity using fossil fuel other than oil. About twice a week, a new coal plant opens in China.I came across a blog post on the topic of patents and innovations and the possible......
• Cap and Trade - off I read an interesting article in the Washington Post about Cap and Trade. It gives an example about how a polluter can simply purchase carbon credits from an industry that is in a naturally low polluting field of activity and which would not even engage in that field of activity.......
• Sustainable development and large corporations It is always a good sign when large corporations get on the bandwagon.In this case, the sustainable development bandwagon. There are currently two very different strategies taken large corporations in their drive towards sustainable development: • A “sustainable brand” strategy: Clorox and S.C. Johnson have both chosen to create a......

• Pelosi Flexes Her Muscles, Republicans Point and Laugh; Democrats Sigh Congress is a never ending battle of words.  Thankfully one party usually has a majority and legislation gets passed.  Sadly, our current majority is more like Pop-eye without his spinach.  The Democrats are lead by Speaker Pelosi, the mascot and perfect case study for weakness.  If the Republicans, lead......
• Voting For The Environment - Where The Democrats Stand. While I understand there are very big issues that the next President will have to face, one of my personal concerns is how they are going to treat issues pertaining to the environment. Prior to Edwards dropping out of the race, he had my vote based on his concern for......
• What is the Feed in Tariff Program? The impact of climate change has resulted in many governments coming up with programs to counter the negative impact. To do this, there has been an effort to move towards using renewable energy sources. A Feed-In Tariff (FiT) is an incentive program to promote the implementation of renewable energy......

Foreclosures, mortgage industry collapse, bank collapse. With all those bad housing industry news, one wonders who sets the prices on a house.

The old real estate adage is well known: To succeed in real estate, there are three things you have to know: Location, location, location.

A house in Beverly Hills may be worth $3 Million and an identical house in Missouri may  be worth $200,000. It’s all in the location. 6 months later, the stock market collapses,fortunes are lost, people in Beverly Hills scramble to sell their houses, there is a surplus of houses for sale and not enough buyers, price plummets in that location.

Location can also mean where are you in time. One day its up, one day its down.

The price we put on things is equal to the value we put on the darn things. And the value has to do with scarcity, demand, desire, etc…  It’s all very emotional.

One thing to remember, though is that a house can be worth as much or as little as one puts value to it. If someone were to tell you: ”Your house will be flooded 6 months from now, but I will swap your house for a brand new house of equivalent size.” Would you do it?

How much will your house be worth when it is flooded ? (or put any natural disater you want, hurricane, eartquake, fire). Would you still get that house swap deal ? Probably not.

Money and finances are in fact very abstract notions. Yet, these abstractions have very real consequences on the lives of many people.

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• Could Internet Marketers Save the Human Race? Let me put some perspective on things first. Nobody knows how a new technology will lead us. Heck often times, the darn thing is invented without a specific purpose in mind. It just is. When Arthur Fry the Post-It (TM), he had to distribute massive amounts of them to coworkers,......
• China's low carbon and sustainability problems I came across an interesting article about the low carbon emissions and sustainability problems facing China as the country moves increasingly towards urbanization. It is predicted that china will have 75 percent of urbanization by 2050, which means much more energy consumption and green house gas emission. China currently lacks......
• Masdar to be the first zero polluton city The city of Masdar near Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirate wl be the first city to produce its energy entirely by way of renewable energy such as solar and wind energy. They wil also recycle all their waste and as such, have a "zero carbon" footprint. Of course,......

• The Stanley Complete Step-by-Step Revised Book of Home Repair and Improvement By The Stanley Company When it comes to home repair, one of the most trusted names has to be the Stanley Company. They make what many consider to be the best tools, and when you see that yellow and black label, you immediately know you can count on it. This branding has served them......
• Online Antiques Auctions According purely to definition, antiques are described as being any object that has a collectible value and that is more than 100 years in age. There are a number of different antiques auction websites that are designed to sell these types of antique items online. Some of these websites specialize......
• Why You Should Stop Paying For Storage And Just Get Organized. Although these storage companies are taking over the landscape here in Los Angeles, the idea of paying for a storage facility makes absolutely no sense to me unless it is for a short term hold while you are moving or something like that. If I could not fit the stuff......