@ruben - I had an interesting discussion yesterday about the impacts of all of us converting to electric powered heating systems, even “greener” options like geothermal typically still need electricity. As we live in an ever more connected world, it seems plausible that manufacturers will be required to improve the ability for computers and other electronic devices to turn off charging or all power when not in use. In Australia - every power outlet has a switch on it - now doesn’t that make sense?

@Trish - Thanks for linking to the post! You are right with the choices we make. While oil and natural gas are cheap, we will choose to heat our houses rather than make them as efficient as possible. For many houses - aside from the really low hanging fruit of sealing leaks etc, without an intensive make-over they are almost as efficient as they can be.

No one commented on the image? I thought it was awesome

I live within walking distance to shops and public transport - and up until last year, our family only had one car. We live on almost an acre of viable land for agriculture and do grow much of our own food, including tree fruits, vegetables, and grains including wheat, oats and amaranth - we eat, process or preserve all of this food ourselves. The food currently stored in our cold room will provide about a third of our fruit and vegetable needs for the winter months. Since moving into this house we have more than doubled the area of garden used for growing food.

I do now drive to work, and chose my current job based on professional development and the opportunity to do some amazing work in a community that faces many sustainability issues. However, that community is about 600 meters higher than where I currently live, with a shorter growing season, so we have made the decision to stay in a place - the commute is along highways with minimal traffic. Part of the choice living in the mountains (in a community of 7,500 people) is that there are distances between rural centers - if you do need to travel there are few choices - that’s why I publicly advocate a revival of the rail network in this part of the world, currently only used to transport various (likely toxic) substances from a pulp mill in Castlegar and Zinc Smelter in Trail.

Do I practice what I preach? Depends on what you mean. Many things that I write are equally a challenge to me and my family as much as for my readers…
- Are my family and the organizations I work with aiming towards a level of community self reliance currently not commonly practiced? - yes.
- Am I taking advantage of the oil economy to achieve some of these things? - yes.

I’m not criticizing those who choose air travel, (I haven’t been on a plane in two years - not that it really matters - but you asked), but an acknowledgment that this behavior is likely to not be possible without oil would be nice. Oil, if you don’t know, is going to run out one day - and you’d need an awfully long power cord to run an airplane on electricity using today’s technology.

The world and particularly those of us in North America that are so comfortable in our convenient, oil driven culture, face massive challenges in the years ahead. Spending money on infrastructure that has no long term viability makes no sense. If a technology was developed that clearly showed that commercial air travel was going to be possible without reliance on oil - I would support this project. But until that day, such a plane is a pipe dream and this project squanders a million dollars that could be better spent.

You were curious…

Trish Barness last blog post..Sustainable Designs for Life

In addition to the installation costs, I have seen numbers suggesting that what Kevin Kelly calls the One Machine (all the computers in the world, servers, etc.) uses about 5% of global electricity and about 10% of energy consumed in the US. That is a staggering number. Here is a link.
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/09/the_electric_gr.php

I don’t see how we would choose the internet over warm homes, or incubators, or lights in the hospital or maybe even charging electric cars.

Browsing through your site, I’m interested to know if you practice what you self righteously preach. How do you get to work and shopping? Do you grow all all of your own food? Refuse to use airplanes? Live in high density housing? Just curious….

Walking is a lost art in today’s drive everywhere culture. If you look elsewhere on my site, you’ll see that I don’t believe that this is a permanent, sustainable or feasible state for any community - and I welcome the opportunity to challenge communities to re-design themselves around walkable hubs rather than drivable stripmalls.

There is overwhelming evidence from research that proves that natural play is important to children’s overall development in every major way, benefits include: concentration and impulse control, emotional coping and stress reduction, stimulation of creativity, reduced symptons of ADD and ADHD. No piece of manufactured play equipment can provide that. Of course it is possible to combine a good piece of equipment with a natural setting. My company LandCurrent and several other designers in the country are now designing Natural Playgrounds (also see http://www.naturalplaygrounds.info).

I think this is only one little step in the right direction, eventually we need to design our communities so that kids once again can walk out of their house and play in a natural setting right outside their home.