Perpetual Innovation

Category: sustainability

  • More than three in four Americans believe in global warming – UPI.com

    More than three in four Americans believe in global warming – UPI.com:

    Finally. Even republicans have shifted to a majority accepting climate change. This is not a party thing; this is a human thing.

    Once people start to realize that the earth is warming. And that people are generally responsible.

    There tends to be a some obvious actions that we all must do, soon or later.

    Sustainability is a law of nature that it is hard to break. Ignore it at your own risk, and everyone else’s risk at well.

    We promote doing smarter things now to bend the curve on the human impact on the earth. It is a compounding (geometric or exponential) kind of thing. Small(er) changes now make a BIG difference over time. Business as usual (BAS) simply compounds the issues and the problems.

    Currently, this is a year of El Nino, so the record temperatures for 2015 are on path to exceed last year’s record “by a mile”.

    Related to global warming and El Nino, check out Hurricane Patricia, the strongest hurricane ever recorded. Ouch!..

    So lest start a call to action doing those actions that will save consumers, businesses, governments money while simultaneously making us all more sustainable.

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  • Sweden’s Prostitution Solution: Why Hasn’t Anyone Tried This Before? | Solutions

    Sweden’s Prostitution Solution: Why Hasn’t Anyone Tried This Before? | Solutions:

    Here is an novel approach to prostitution. Who do you put in jail/prison, the John or the Jane.

    This Swedish approach didn’t decriminalize prostitution, which apparently has it’s own problems. It totally decriminalized for the prostitute, but criminalized for the John. Read the logic and how surprisingly well it has worked since 1999. Also, what it took to support this change in mindset. And how it virtually eliminates human sex trafficking.

    When you take this change in mindset into the laws against drugs, where half of the US prison population is non-violent drug offenders.  Lots of implications for lots of old school crime and punishment.

    Hmmm…

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  • Sustainability becomes a business law: Organic is more productive

    Sustainability becomes a business law:

    Two things resurfaced over the last couple days. One is very local to Florida related to Sustainability is the Business Law. It looks at the focus of sustainability from the business view, or from the environmental view; which is the right view. And the answer, of course, is “Yes”.  Aiming for a win, win in the business vs. environment tug of war. The old approach of win-lose turns out to be a lose-lose in the long run.

    But a separate study by the Rodale Institute, with a 30-year long (and ongoing) study of farming showed organic farming to be a hands-down winner over the mass production methods used in the USA. Actual link to the study is here: http://rodaleinstitute.org/our-work/farming-systems-trial/

    That study knocked my socks off!
    Now I gotta go socks shopping for new organically grown socks (bamboo-based
    maybe?).
    A 30+ year field study on Organic farming vs. non-organic (now including GMOs).
    Yields up, resources down (water us and drought tolerance), soil quality, profits up…
    WoW!.
    And, of course, there is a major move in consumer preferences toward healthier foods and more local grown foods as measured by massive moves by such players as Chipotle’s (CMG) and Whole Foods (WFM)… and against the highly processed foods like McDonalds (McD).
    I’m curious what other people think of this study. I wonder how they did several things.
    Also, I
    could not find the exact publication date. The stats were a year or two behind.
    Do you all think that the field study is fully accurate?

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  • Wind And Solar Will Soon Become The ‘Least-Cost Option’ – Yahoo Finance

    Wind And Solar Will Soon Become The ‘Least-Cost Option’ – Yahoo Finance:

    It is interesting how quickly the prices of wind and solar have been dropping and are expected to continue.

    Obviously, these must be only a part of the solution, unless batteries get to be a whole lot better, a whole lot faster. (Maybe?). The wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine.

    One savings for solar, is that it doesn’t need to be done remotely. The transport/distribution costs can be much lower. Both sun & wind do not require the massive volumes of water that conventional fossil and nuke need. (Except for the manatees, there is no real reason to heat up rivers and lakes.)

    Those folks in the coal industries, even in China, are soon going to find that they are missing the boat. Coal is not sustainable. Once people start to think harder and longer about the externalities costs of coal, it is going to continue the downward spiral from favor.

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  • First Solar Achieves World Record 18.6 % Thin Film Module Conversion Efficiency | Business Wire

    First Solar Achieves World Record 18.6 % Thin Film Module Conversion Efficiency | Business Wire:

    Wow.

    The technology is really moving up. FirstSolar’s thin film is really working its way up. That means you can produce more power with a smaller foot print. Or produce much more power with a bigger footprint.

    Very cool to see solar gaining on wind (and, of course, non-renewable sources of power).

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