Perpetual Innovation

Author: SustainMe

  • US’s looming Federal Debt crisis as described by Dave Cote of Honeywell.

    US’s looming Federal Debt crisis has to be addressed, and soon. Maybe not before the end of this week when the Federal government might shut down without a 2011 budget allocation. But soon.

    Check out this video for the Committee for Economic Development: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1DKIg2CcLk  (5min)

    Or we can delay and let the debt market and the IMF help use with austerity decision.

    My favorite, always is the national debt clock: http://www.usdebtclock.org/

    Any comments on its accuracy are welcome. Seem pretty accurate though. When the Federal government has already spent all the money it gathered for Social Security and Medicare and the Baby Boomers all start to retire and start to require that money… It’s gonna get ugly. Very ugly:-(

    The question is how soon and how quickly we can start to dig ourselves out the hole we’re in. Cote suggests both tax increases and spending cuts. For sure we have to get the 10% growth rate per year in SS & Medical expenses under central. But ever since “W” Bush we have cut taxes and increased spending. That was before we got into a recession and decided to stimulus-spend our way out of it… Only at the Federal government can that make any sense.

  • Sustainable Taxes… No laughing matter.

    Sir Tax-a-LOT…

    Lots of people are debating the argument that the US has taxes that are too high and that the current deficit will have to be cured by raising huge taxes.

    Mankiw is the author of the leading text book on economics: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/

    Check out his current post on our tax levels (permanent link): http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/03/taxes-per-person.html

    What do you think. Are we overtaxed as a nation? And what’s with the pundits that say we have the highest tax rates in ?world?… I haven’t been able to find evidence on that assertion. If you count double taxation: Business max tax + Personal max tax (on dividends?) and you have a pretty good case for really high taxes, but eventually, really high taxes cause a shift in investment decisions into muni’s etc. US people in the highest income levels have surprisingly low overall tax rates…

    BUT as Laffer would tell ya, you put enough taxes on the golden goose and eventually it stops producing golden eggs. And the federal deficits are massive storm clouds hanging over the US and the World economies. That’z really no Laughing matter. EH.

  • EarthHOUR 2010

    It’s EarhHOUR tonight.  (Sat March 27th at 8:30pm, local time).

    What are you doing with this time in the dark??? If it is publishable in public, let us know.

    What if you’re driving at 8:30????

    You still have to turn your lights out, Right??? …!:-)

    Visit http://www.earthhour.org/
    Check out the cool pix from years past. Expect cool pics from this year as we start down under and work the clock to you!…

  • Bloombox… Fuel Cell in every household.

    Give a look at the cool Fuel Cell technology that was announced tonight on CBS. They have 20 companies, including Google, FedEx and Wal-Mart testing units. BloomEnergy will have to get its mass production in place. The cool thing about fuel cell technology is that it can use a multitude of fuels and it can function as a power generator as well as an uninterruptible power supply (but without the issues associated with batteries).

    Also see some discussion on this issue at Earth2Tech.

    Pretty cool. Let’s see how reviews sound now that the technology has been unveiled.

  • Sustainability in Education?

    Even though campuses are getting greener, the classes are not.

    A big study of campuses, the Campus Report Card, by the NWF (with others) showed how much various schools are doing in terms of sustainability. They are doing a lot on campus but not much teaching of the concepts in the classroom. (Also see some recent research on Generation E.)

    The Campus Report Card is actually two similar studies, on in 2001 and one in 2008. They show that the course offerings of environmental and sustainability programs essentially reduced by half. That is, the average student in 2001 had an 8% chance of having an sustainability/environment class, but that dropped in half to 4% chance by 2008.

    In fact the worst educational department was teachers education. “Teacher education, that program that trains K-12 teachers, has about a 15% chance of being able to take a course on sustainability within their major” (Hall et al., 2009, p. 17).

    The best guess as to why this drop happened is because of two forces. First, and probably foremost, the prices of oil were really low until after this 2008 study was completed (and then they shot up to ~$150 per barrel). Second, the Bush/Chaney administration was friendly to oil interests and not so friendly to environmental interests (no links to environmental sites comments on this since this is a family-friendly site).

    Can we move forward with Sustainability in the US without educating on the subject?
    Tell us what you think?

    Reference
    Hall, E., Taylor, S., Zapalski, C., & Hall, T. (2009). Sustainability in education: Green in the facilities, but not in the classrooms. Proceedings of the Society for Advancement of Management, USA.