The city & county of San Francisco decided last year to offer incentives to homeowners & businesses that wanted to install solar panels on their roofs. It’s a great idea, your average coal fired plant gets truckloads of subsidies and tax breaks, it seems only fair that regular people get the same breaks. Hopefully more and more municipalities will do the same across the country.The incentives increase if local labor and other socially responsible practices are used.
For people living in San Francisco these are the incentive levels for residential solar installations as of Feb 1 2009.
Kitchen cabinets are freaking expensive, but the kitchen is one of those rooms that gets a horrific amount of abuse and often needs freshening up at least once a decade. Tearing out can be more than most people have the patience and dollars for, so another option is to repaint the cabinets. You can hire a pro or do it yourself, depending on your budget and level of energy, but some nice low/no VOC paint and new hardware can totally change the character of your kitchen – and reusing the cabinets that are there instead of buying new ones is muy sustainable! Here is a short video from a great site, ask the builder, that can get you started.
I was reading the NY Times this morning and struck by a piece on a vid phenom called “The Story of Stuff“. Its impressive, designed as an educational tool it breaks down the global consumption chain and offers a pretty frank an in my opinion 100% correct critique of the worldwide economy. We can’t live sustainably under our current assumptions – what do you think?
Marc Ona Essangui is an activist in Gabon fighting both his government and the Chinese company CMEC’s plan to harvest Iron Ore in the ecology sensitive Ivindo National Park. He is the recipient of the San Francisco based Goldman Environmental Prize, brainchild of Richard & the late Rhoda Goldman, two of the City’s brightest philanthropic and humanitarian lights.
Resource exploitation is one of the foundations of growth. The global economy cannot produce all the outputs needed for capitalism to survive without raw material for production. Most of the harvesting of these raw materials happen in far off places like Gabon, and most consumers do not care if some poor black or brown tribe gets stepped on in the name of progress. But it is the basics, things like iron, steel and wood, that goes into our structures when we build. If we don’t become conscious of what we are using on the back end, communities like Marc’s, and in the end our own as well, will fall.
Marc has been a grass roots leader in Gabon, leading his NGO “Brainforest” to advocate for the rights of the people and environment of Gabon in the face of international resource acquisition. His work has lead to threats, arrest and restrictions for both him and his family, but he continues to press for sustainable policies in Gabon & by extension, here in the US.
Politics has as much to do with sustainable building and living as good insulation and non toxic materials. Maybe your not a politico like I am, but you should be. Without political power, we have no chance of realizing global sustainability. I only remodeled one little house in San Francisco, and the boards over at the Chronicle lit up like a Christmas tree with folks criticizing my motives, calling me a dirty developer and profiteer, so on and so forth.
But its all good – if I am not being criticized I figure I am not actually doing anything. For every 5 people who like the solar array I installed I run across one grump who tells me its a lousy idea because San Francisco is foggy (1,500 watts today baby!!!). So imagine someone who has a much higher profile and the abuse they get. Here is a short clip form on of Al Gore’s recent house committee appearances where he has to defend himself against charges of being a greedy SOB. Since the science behind his arguments in an Inconvenient Truth have never to my satisfaction been refuted (and feel free to show me any hard data here) character assassination is the only tool left for tools like Rep Blackburn.
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