if we all wore shoes with embedded GPS devices?

I’m not so sure.

The article, Incandescent Bulbs Return to the Cutting Edge, is worth a look for some [...]]]> A New York Times article published on July 5th, took a look at a new breed of incandescent light bulbs, developed in response to an energy law passed two years ago that required such bulbs be much more energy efficient.

The article, Incandescent Bulbs Return to the Cutting Edge, is worth a look for some of the technology that will be replacing light bulbs on the shelves of our stores sometime within the next few years.

It also had me thinking about Edison’s invention.

Here’s the start to one of his patents involving light bulbs:

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, Thomas A. Edison, a citizen of the United States, residing at Llewellyn Park, in the county of Essex and State of New Jersey, have invented a certain new and useful Improvement in Flourescent Electric Lamps, of which the following is a specification.

The object I have in view is to produce light by fluorescence. I have found that tungstate of calcuim or strontium, when acted upon by molecular bombardment, or, if placed outside of the vaccuum tube, when acted upon by X rays, will give a useful amount of light in tubes of moderate size and with a small expenditure of energy. I have found that most of the chemical substances which fluoresce when subjected to the action of the X ray of Rontgen, outsider of a vacuum tube, are highly responsive to the molecular bombardment when placed within a vacuum tube may be utilized for the giving of light….

Fluorescent Electric Lamp – Thomas A. Edison, Patent number: 865367, Issue date: Sep 1907

The American Memories series from the Library of Congress has a nice set of pages on The Life of Thomas A. Edison.

It’s encouraging to see advances made in a technology that many of us take for granted. The New York Times article starts off by telling us that:

The law set tough efficiency standards, due to take effect in 2012, that no traditional incandescent bulb on the market could meet, and a century-old technology that helped create the modern world seemed to be doomed.

It’s good to see such prognostications proved wrong. It would be great to see similar advances in other technologies that many of us take for granted.

But what happens when someone decides that a home should be replaced, and the property it’s upon should be used for another building? Usually, homes in that situation are demolished, and pieces of the building finds their way to a landfill. [...]]]> Houses are built to last, at least most are, for a few years.

But what happens when someone decides that a home should be replaced, and the property it’s upon should be used for another building? Usually, homes in that situation are demolished, and pieces of the building finds their way to a landfill. Much of that material is reusable, at least until it is torn apart by a bulldozer.

A New York Times article, This Old Recyclable House, explores the topic of deconstruction of homes, where the materials that make up a house are salvaged so that they can be reused.

The article follows the efforts of the President of the Building Materials Reuse Association, Brad Guy, and his efforts to train a crew on how to deconstruct houses for a pilot project in Cleveland. The deconstruction industry is in its infancy, and Brad Guy is one of its biggest proponents.

Guy presents some great arguments for the growth of the deconstruction industry. According to him, approximately 300 homes were deconstructed last year. The article tells us that the EPA estimates about a quarter of a million homes are demolished each year. Yet the local reuse of building materials from a deconstructed home may end up ultimately costing less than demolition, and also create jobs.

It would be interesting to see more of the things we use everyday constructed so that their parts could be reused, no matter how “permanent” they were intended to be at the time of construction. Perhaps the word “deconstruction” should be wider used when it comes to industry.

Some deconstruction links:

• Deconstruction Institute
• Lifecycle building challenge
• Powell Center for Construction & Environment

Smarter Housing Development with Eco-Towns

Shelter England, a housing and homeless charity, is one of the leaders of a coalition of organizations in the creation of a number of eco-towns spread around England. These eco-towns aim at affordable housing with a zero carbon impact as a [...]]]> Some stories on the environment that caught my attention today.

Smarter Housing Development with Eco-Towns

Shelter England, a housing and homeless charity, is one of the leaders of a coalition of organizations in the creation of a number of eco-towns spread around England. These eco-towns aim at affordable housing with a zero carbon impact as a whole. I hope that this is an idea that will spread to other places.

Where has the Sea Life Gone?

A video comparing the ocean life seen on two trips across the Pacific, from California to Hawaii, titled Empty Oceans.

The first trip took place in 1958, and the second in 2008.

Loss of Biodiversity Illustrated in New Stamps

The Australia Post is working to raise awareness of the loss of biodiversity in Australia with a new series of stamps, which were issued today.

One of the MegaFauna stamps shows a Kangaroo weighing 200 kilograms (Procoptodon goliah). Another features the Tasmanian Tiger. Four other ancient animals fill out the set. The artist, Peter Trusler, has created other stamps for the Australia post, including a series on birds of prey to support conservation, and dinosaurs.

Preserving Our Greatest Resource – Water

We take some things for granted that we shouldn’t such as water, and place great value in other things like diamonds that we probably shouldn’t. A post at Lighter Footstep, Five Cheap Ways to Save a Thousand Gallons of Water, offers some things that you can do in your own home to use water more wisely.

Land Preservation

It’s great to see efforts to protect our natural wonders, such as Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina. The State has stepped forward to Buy and preserve Grandfather Mountain for $12M. The land has been under a a conservation easement overseen by The Nature Conservancy.

The date for blog action day is October 15th, and the focus is on Poverty. If you have a blog or podcast or videocast, sign [...]]]> Blog Action Day 2008 is a grass roots effort where bloggers and people who create podcasts and videocasts can help spread awareness and start a conversion on a global scale.

The date for blog action day is October 15th, and the focus is on Poverty. If you have a blog or podcast or videocast, sign up and help spread awareness by sharing your views on poverty, and helping to start a global discussion.

The frequently asked questions page for Blog Action Day has a number of ideas on the kinds of topics that you can post about if you participate, and what I like about their list of ideas is that they want you to post something on topic to what your blog is about. Thinking about a topic here for political diamonds, I see many options.

It’s exciting to see an effort like blog action day, and it shows how many people can work together to have their voices heard. I hope to hear yours…

Added – Hat tip to Adam Shake of Twilight Earth, for the following video:

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

A little like traveling back to the past, but an interesting look at the importance of climate in our lives.

Inalienable Rights for Endangered Animals

Ecuadorians are considering a new constitution that would protect the habitats of endangered animals such as jaguars, spectacled bears, brown-headed spider monkeys, and plate-billed mountain toucans. [...]]]> A new approach at Political Diamonds – I’m going to try to write some posts that share news and articles that I find interesting.

Inalienable Rights for Endangered Animals

Ecuadorians are considering a new constitution that would protect the habitats of endangered animals such as jaguars, spectacled bears, brown-headed spider monkeys, and plate-billed mountain toucans. How well will the government of Ecuador manage these new rights?

A discussion at Dissident Voice describes some of the issues surrounding this referendum in Ecuador’s Constitution Gives Rights to Nature

Protecting National Parks from Global Warming

Southern Colorado newspaper, The Pueblo Chieftain reports on a new initiative from the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) in an article titled Visitors Go Online to Protect National Parks.

The NPCA website, Do Your Part for Climate Friendly Parks allows people to check their carbon footprint, and pledge their reductions in that footprint to specific national parks, including a number of steps that you can take to reduce your carbon footprint.

Navy Sonar Testing and Protection of Whales and Dolphins

After receiving over 40,000 comments (mostly complaints) from the public over locating a sonar training range off the shore of North Carolina, the Navy is looking at other places to put the training facility, which would cost more that $100 million to build. The training targets teaching submarine operators to be able to quiet their noisy diesel vehicles, so that they stand a chance of not being detected with sonar. The training ground would have microphones placed at a number of locations on the ocean floor, so that efforts to quiet submarines could be analyzed.

Active sonar can harm whales and dolphins. The coastline of Florida is one location that they are exploring, but studies behind that location are being looked at with a great deal of skepticism by environmental groups and at least one Florida agency.

State Wildlife Refugees At Risk

New Jersey Wildlife Refuges are suffering from a lack of funding and staffing, as reported in Financial woes leave state’s wildlife refuges in crisis. The article stresses that New Jersey isn’t the only state having difficulty in funding and staffing their refuges, and they point towards a report from the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement (CARE), which tells us that:

one in three refuges in the United States is operating without a single staff member, and has only one full-time law enforcement officer for every 555,000 acres.

We all lose if the wildlife refuge system fails for lack of funding.

Milk Safety

I was shopping at the grocery store yesterday, and on one of the labels of a brand of milk was the statement, “You can’t choose a better milk.” That had me wondering, what exactly makes a “better” milk. This article from Pa Farm News describes some of the safety processes that milk producers and distributors follow: From Cow to Milk Case: Safety First

I came across an article today in Connecticut’s Hartford Courant which asked, How Are [...]]]> Schools are one of the keystones to a more environmentally friendly world. Maybe we can learn as much as the children of the world by the greening of our schools, and by an environment concern for material in their classrooms.

I came across an article today in Connecticut’s Hartford Courant which asked, How Are Schools Going Green?

The article focuses upon two different kinds of reforms happening in Connecticut schools.

The first involves the schools themselves becoming more environmentally friendly and energy efficient. The second kind of reform aims at raising awareness of environmental concerns in students who attend those schools.

The school reforms include things like energy waste reduction initiatives, such as:

• Limiting teachers’ use of appliances, like mini-refrigerators and microwaves
• Installing state of the art programmable thermostats to more accurately control room temperature
• Covering windows at night to create a thermal buffer and keep heat in
• Using both sides of paper in classrooms before they are recycled them, and
• Turning computers off when they aren’t use.

The student reforms include:

• A No Child Left Inside Initiative that works to get childrem exploring parks and outdoors activities.
• A Farm to School program where the State Department of Agriculture gets locally grown produce into school cafeterias. Beyond the home grown fruits and vegetables, students and school staff can actively participate in some of the programs:
  

  The Bloomfield Public School system has joined the Farm-to-School program, along with schools in Tolland, Manchester, South Windsor, Windsor, Hartford and Glastonbury. The program is a farming program in which students and staff tend to fruits and vegetables in greenhouses, raised-bed gardens and aquaculture tanks. Agricultural science classes also raise free-range chickens and gather their eggs. The products of their farming are then used in culinary classes and the school’s kitchen staff harvests the vegetables for use in lunches in the cafeteria.

• Recycling initiatives at schools where students reach out to the community, and help raise awareness in their homes and their neighbors’ homes. The schools practice composting of organic wastes, and share and reuse games, books, and other materials.

Some efforts include a combination of school and student reforms, such as a Magnet School where environmental studies are the focus of the curriculum, and the school itself is an effort towards best green practices.

The Barnard Environmental Studies Magnet School was reopened in New Haven. The school:

• Is Leed certified by the U.S. Green Building Council,
• Is part of the Green Schools 101 program,
• Has solar panels installed on its roof,
• Has greenhouses installed for educational purposes, and;
• Is landscaped with native plant species to control irrigation.

What kinds of green efforts are your local schools making to education the children of your community? What kind of learning environment do they find themselves within?

Is it one where they are shown that responsibility for the world around them is something they can take some ownership and control of? What kinds of examples are they being shown by the communities that they are growing into?

Some resources for more environmentally friendly schools:

• The Green School Initiative
• Build Green Schools
• Green School Alliance

The Natural Resources Defense Council has some great links on their Reference/Links: For Kids page aimed at helping children learn about the environment. Greener schools are important. Greener homes, too.