I received an email about a week ago asking me to join PG&Es Climate Smart program. I was giving it some thought until I found these posts and learned it doesn’t even support renewable power. If you are considering joining the PG&E Climate Smart program, do read these two posts :
Archive for Rants
Climate Smart?
Who Really benefits from Prop 7 & 10
While creating renewable energy is a top priority in our counrty and in the stae of California, these 2 props go at it in a bad way. These 2 propositions stand to cost billions of tax payers dollars, put smaller companies out of business, and ultimatley raise energy rates for consumers. And both are supported by out of state billionairs.
No on California’s Proposition 7
Flawed Ballot Initiative Would Undermine Renewable Energy in California.
From the Union of Concerned Scientists. Read more…
Props. 7 & 10 aren’t good green Initiatives
TWO measures on the Nov. 4 California ballot – Propositions 7 and 10 – purport to push California in a green direction. But both are financed by wealthy men with an agenda, and neither makes the best environmental sense for California. We urge voters to reject both.
Los Angelas Daily News. Read More…
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California Adopts Green Building Code
California always seems to be the leader when it comes to adopting new green plans. After all we are all a bunch of wacked out environmental nuts jobs over here, at least thats what everyone thinks. I just say were trying to do a little good in the world. Now whats wrong with that?
Heres what Governor Schwarzenegger had to say in his press release:
“By adopting this first-in-the-nation statewide green building code, California is again leading the way to fight climate change and protect the environment. This is literally a groundbreaking move to ensure that when we break ground on all new buildings in the Golden State we are promoting green building and energy efficient new technologies. Cars and buildings are two of the leading users of energy – we’re already addressing cars, and these new building standards will ensure that California remains at the forefront of reducing our carbon footprint and conserving valuable natural resources while also protecting our economy. We have already committed to making our state-owned buildings more green and energy efficient and this statewide code will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy efficiency and conserve water in all new buildings.
“With today’s action, California continues to lead the nation and I commend the hard work of the Building Standards Commission to adopt the first-in-the-nation statewide green building standards.”
Not to say its all bad. But in the forseeable future I see a whole load of mess with zoning issues. That means in SC county it will take 15 years for things to get built instead of 10. (YEA!) Lets spend more time and waste more money debating over minute issues and getting nothing done! Cause thats how to government works!
Its not that I’m at all against building green, as you should know I think everything should be that way. I just see a headache as the government steps in. All of a sudden what we “should” be doing becomes what we “are forced to do” , closely followed by mass confusion about what we are “allowed” to do, and then everyone complaining, debating, and getting nothing done. I guess we shall see what happens.
Creating Sustainable Housing
For the next few Posts I’m going to be concentrating on sustainable housing. I recently watched a program on the Discovery channel (don’t remember the name of it) about groups on students competing in an international contest. The contest involved building modual self sustainable housing. Not only did it have to be self sustainable, but practical and aesthetically pleasing as well. Some of these homes where absolutely fantastic.
As usual, programs like this asked me asking questions. If we spend so much time researching things like this, why don’t I see modular sustainable homes everywhere? Why aren’t we seeing new neighborhoods popping up everywhere boosting these new modular homes instead or the normal old “brick and mortar” kind? Is it the expense? Can we make this affordable for everyone? Are we just too stuck in our ways to make this kind of change? If you could afford it would you? I would love to hear your answers.
My answer for me is. I can’t afford a home, I rent (and quite frankly Santa Cruz is one of the most “un-affordable” places to live in the US, right under San Fransisco). But my dream home is one of these modular homes I’ll be showing in a few posts.
(I’ll have to post a rant about Santa Cruz’s un-affordability some day too)
Trash Talking 4th of July Fireworks
I was going to write about the trash cleanup for post 4th of July, but this year this whole holiday has gotten me upset. I’ve always hated how people just leave all their trash after the 4th and every year something like 4 thousand pounds of trash are picked up the next day by volunteers. This year was much different.
This year was the biggest crackdown in Santa Cruz county in 2 decades as police combed the beaches for fireworks and alcohol. Living a block from the beach, I got to experience this first hand. I was quite upset as I saw our beaches fenced off and police checking every bag and cooler for fireworks and alcohol. Honestly I thought this was way too much policing. Some people had to go through as many as 5 checkpoints before they could even get to the beach.
Last I heard the 4th of July was about Freedom. PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY are the source of freedom. So many have lost sight of this fact. It sounds like too many people are too willing to give up too much in order to try to make their world 100 percent safe. We shouldn’t expect our government to have to protect us to the level where absolutely nothing bad can happen to anybody. This is not possible. This is not living.
I can understand the ban of fireworks because of the large amount of fires going on this year and the high risk, but the beaches? I fail to see how banning fireworks from the beaches reduces wildfire risk. Last I heard sand and seawater aren’t combustible. Also, my recollection is that fireworks-related wildfires seemed to increase when people were prohibited from setting off so much as a sparkler in their driveway. Perhaps they should be encouraging people to take fireworks to the beach in lieu of other places.
In previous years they had even set aside a fireworks lighting area on the beach near my house and a firetruck and ambulance were always on hand in case of an injury or fire. In fact no major fireworks injuries have been reported in the Santa Cruz area for over 20 years.
Despite all the police, people did manage to sneak in some fireworks and at about 10 pm fireworks started going off, although much much less then in previous years. I guess people just decided to risk a citation at that point.
But there is one positive thing. There was much less trash this year to pick up, in fact the beach the next morning was almost clean…
Keep our Beaches Beautiful and Clean!
