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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• organic food - How green is my valley? Most people still have a bucolic view of agriculture. In fact, modern agriculture is far from green. It is in fact, one of the largest contributor to green house gas. Unfortunately, organic farming is not as productive. In fact, it is said that today's yield is bout 10 times......
• The Cost of Oil Last week the barrel of oil had its highest one-day increase ever. Every time that I hear news concerning oil prices, that always makes me realize how dependent we are on oil. I try to imagine how we could get out of that dependency. The thing is, even if the......
• Food import export and the Asian diet In a recent visit to China and South Korea, Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, of course discussed many topics. One topic was Canadian beef import to South Korea. Following the mad cow disease situation, South Korea has banned the import of Canadian beef for past six years. Currently, Asia has......

• 10 Ways to Prove that Frugal Living is Really Green Living in Disguise. I'm probably the most unlikely Green Living advocate on the planet. I'm an advocate of offshore drilling, I voted for Bush in 2004 (bad call I know), and I drive a crossover SUV. Yet, more and more these days, I find myself being slowly taken in by the tree hugger......
• 6 Ways to Save Money In the Kitchen This article is by Adam from Money Relationship. Subscribe to his site to get free updates on his journey out of debt. I'll admit it, the kitchen is my wife's zone. I only enter it to get something to drink, empty the dishwasher or grab a snack. That's about the only......
• Solar Water Pumps Solar water pumps use solar force as an attractive option to bring water to remote homes, cabins or campgrounds. Some people have employed solar drip irrigation and pumping for gardens and homes. This technology has been around for decades, is efficient, and there are a number of government programs......

According to the Conservatives, the Liberals have an agenda:  They want to rule the world.  Here are the facts: 

Al Gore owns 100% of 100% of all the green companies in the world, on top of donating money to all those non-profit organizations who own large pieces of land that they keep unspoiled, forcing us to save the ecosystem instead of being able to exploit the land for coal, natural gas, oil, or to cover the land with concrete and asphalt for parking lots, car manufacturing plants, or mega surface stores.

 Natural resources are limitless, God says so!  It’s written in the Bible, not exactly like that but, we conservatives can make the Bible say anything we want, after all we are spin experts.

 All of our natural resources should be exploited in order to keep our manufacturing sectors alive, since it controls the economy.  8% of total jobs in the U.S. are from this sector, so of course that 8% controls the economy, and not the 40% + jobs in the service sector.

 It is impossible to have a strong sustainable economy with green sustainable companies.   It absolutely has to be oil.  After all, the great world civilizations’ economy,  Egypt, Greece, Rome, and China, were based on oil.

 Pollution is good.  God says so in the Bible.  As Conservatives, we must vanquish those Liberals before they destroy the planet with their green economy.

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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 urban planning Abu Dhabi style The Abu Dhabi urban planning council asked helped from the city of Vancouver to help elaborate their their sustainable urban design.  Vancouver's  co-director of planning, is serving as the emirate’s “special adviser. The city of Abu Dhabi has requirements that are quite different, mostly heat and drought related. Among other......
• GM files for bankrupcy--the end of the car era ? I wrote a little essay on the future of the automobile,"The end of the car era ?"in it, I talk about how the snootiness and myopic visions of American auto manufacturers led to this current situation. I also talk about whether it is a good thing to keep pushing the......

• Visit India: The UN-Official Guide [/caption] India Country Guide India is a mystical land that presents the traveller with a bamboozling array of unforgettable experiences. Hinduism, the prominent religion, is intimately woven into the fabric of everyday life, reflected in an extraordinary range of time-honoured traditions. Apart from its ancient spiritual framework, India's vastness also......
• What I Am Reading June 2008. I am going to attempt to start a new roundup of the books I am reading each month, to both steer you guys away from the bad ones and let you in on any good ones I come across. Granted, these posts will not cover each and every book I......
• Sun Gods Sun worship is much more broad than people tend to be aware of. With the rise of the Holy Roman Empire they didn’t concede to allow all their traditions to be set aside in favour of purist views, and thus why they have the word Catholic to describe their faith,......

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 agree on their own Cap and Trade.   Because of that, there was no assurance that they would even show up.  Same goes for other nations such as China and India who worked out their own regulations, figuring that they didn’t need to show up.  At last count, 65 nations have indicated their presence.

The politicians who will show up at the summit believe in global warming, but have no clue on how to solve it.  Considering their ignorance of the science behind climate change, they figure they just have to come up with a given percentage of CO2 reduction, and that’s it.  Whether or not engineers and scientists can come up with the technology needed to meet this requirement is another story. 

To make matters worse, Conservatives are spreading the rumor that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax.   They have turned the whole debate into a holy war by stating that the belief in human caused global warming is akin to  ”religious” belief.  

In light of this, the God fearing Christian Conservatives must fight those infidels. 

It is no longer about common sense but about a political war turned to a religious one. 

The Conservatives must vanquish the Liberal heathens before they destroy the planet with their ecological fallacy!

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• Buildings and energy consumption. 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......
• 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,......
• Pleasantville The other day, I watched the movie "Pleasantville" (1998, starring Tobey McGuire). Briefly, the story revolves around two 1990's teenagers being "magically" transposed in a 1950's sitcom where their influence begins to profoundly change that complacent world. To me, this film shows two things very well: 1) The implications of......

• 5 ‘World views’ the world can do without /caption] The world has been shaped and coloured by myriads of political ideologies, cultural dispositions, religious beliefs and spiritual affinities.  It is also strongly influenced by the zeitgeist or the collective spirit of the moment. Some of them have been good and perhaps even though strongly resisted or fought......
• The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage [/caption] Why same-sex marriage is an American value. By Theodore B. Olson | NEWSWEEK Together with my good friend and occasional courtroom adversary David Boies, I am attempting to persuade a federal court to invalidate California's Proposition 8—the voter-approved measure that overturned California's constitutional right to marry a person of......
• A winter "normal" challenges the global warming Another month like this and farewell Global Warming! They've already noticed in Illinois: the glaciers of the Arctic, of which only a year ago predicted the dissolution, are quickly returned to the distant splendor of the 70s. In Italy the towns are submerged by snow and cold makes me......

Last June, a group of scientists met up in Copenhagen as part of the preparation for the December summit. They hinted at some bad prognosis in regards to climate change.

At the time, I thought that this would be the focus of the December summit: Forcing industrialized nations to put in more concrete efforts and act quickly to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What then happened late October was that US Pres. Barack Obama announced that he may not show up at the summit because the United States would probably not have agreed on a cap and trade bill.  But now, with the recent visit of the Danish prime minister in Washington, looks like Obama will be in Copenhagen.

Then comes more controversy with the conservatives trying to turn Copenhagen into a platform for communist leftists wanting to create a totalitarian world regime.

This is hot stuff and I am currently doing some research on that for my next post.

Wombles, a UK group promoting anarchy is planning a series of protests leading up to and during the Copenhagen summit, COP15 for short, since it will be the fifteenth summit related to climate change.

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• Global Warming, getting worse faster. Global warming could lead to a climate catastrophe closer than we think. Last March, in Copenhagen, at a climate conference, a group of scientists presented more than 1,400 studies related to climate change and its impact on the planet. Last month, a 39 page summary entitled "Climate Change - Synthesis......
• 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......
• Pleasantville The other day, I watched the movie "Pleasantville" (1998, starring Tobey McGuire). Briefly, the story revolves around two 1990's teenagers being "magically" transposed in a 1950's sitcom where their influence begins to profoundly change that complacent world. To me, this film shows two things very well: 1) The implications of......

• Proper Care and Maintenance of a Violin If you have just received or purchased a violin, and you are worried that you may damage or break your violin accidentally, then the following set of instructions will help you keep your violin looking and playing well. 1 - First and foremost, you need to make sure that you......
• Obama Addresses World Leaders at Climate Talks [/caption] U.S. President Barack Obama told world leaders at the final day of the Copenhagen climate change conference Friday it is time for "the nations of the world to come together behind a common purpose." Negotiators have failed after two weeks of talks to hammer out an agreement cutting greenhouse......
• Do Rich Nations Owe Poor Ones a Climate Debt? [/caption] By BRYAN WALSH Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009 In two decades of climate-change negotiations, a deep divide has remained between wealthy nations and developing ones, each side insisting the other move first to lower carbon emissions and curb the effects of global warming. But this year there was an uncommon......

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 at the prospects of an international climate change deal being reached.”

What this means is that when carbon price is low, trading carbon credits is less profitable, so there is less of an incentive to reduce carbon emissions in order to have more credits to sell.

Of course, if there is scarcity of carbon credits, that could also drive prices up, but that is mere speculation. The BusinessGreen website is from the UK and they suggest that the European governments, including the UK, may intervene in the ETS market — the European equivalent of the US cap and trade system — to drive up the price of carbon to promote low-carbon investments.

That would mean throwing government money to incite corporations to invest money in R&D so as to reduce their carbon footprint so as to sell carbon credits  to other corporations too lazy or cheap or malicious to invest in R&D and reduce their own carbon footprint. That sounds way too complicated for me, only governments would think such convoluted schemes.

Haven’t corporations and governments heard that ordinary consumers are getting more and more concerned about the environment and that corporations who show themselves as being green do attract consumers. When Wal-Mart decided to change all their lighting fixtures in all their stores to low consumption lighting, and that they even promoted the sale of low energy light bulbs as well as forcing their suppliers to package their products with less packaging and more “eco-friendly” materials, that gave them some good press.

More and more large corporations are jumping on the green bandwagon as well as the philanthropy bandwagon, which at times can be the same bandwagon, depending upon what humanitarian causes one embraces. Being good, being green is good PR. Why need all that government money and artificial incentives when being good is good for business?

If governments want to get involved, they should put more money in quality education so that more consumers are aware of all that is at stakes in our world today as it relates to climate change so that they are even more encouraged to seek out products from corporations genuinely making a difference. For example, Richard Branson, of Virgin, is investing a lot of money to come up with a good bio fuel for his Virgin airways planes. Other airline companies would also benefit from that R&D. If Branson owns that bio fuel company, more power to him since he took the investment risks in developing a better fuel.

In the end, profits is what makes the world go round, not subsidies, rules and coercion. If you can make money helping the world, what more can you ask for?

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• Copenhagen and Third World nations By being just a little smarter and with just a bit more foresight, it could be advantage of Third World. Third World nations feel that first world nations had it good for 200 years and that it gave them an advantage that they are now denied. In fact, it's quite......
• 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......
• 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,......

• Book Review: $20 Per Gallon You need to read this book. In fact, if you can read only one book between now and the end of the year, I highly recommend it be this one. $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better by......
• 10 Truths About Frugal Living Revealed By 5,000 Reader Comments Photo courtesy of Michel Filion At least a couple times a week I get asked some version of the following question, "Have your thoughts on frugal living changed since you started your blog?"  The direct answer is a resounding, "Yes and No".  Yes, writing about frugal living has helped......
• Using Credit Cards to Make More Money When it comes to credit cards, most of us think of them as a way to get things we really want right now. We may not actually "need" these things, but we sure do want them. Whether it's a new couch, a new stereo or even a new wardrobe, we......