technology

Making electricity visible helps reduce consumption

Here's what might be an ingenious idea, as reported by Wired:

For reducing the climate crisis

There are ongoing debates about the best way to address global warming, with most centering on whether a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme is best (or some combination of the two). There are also some lively, though less extensive, debates about the extent to which we should balance our attempts to reduce global warming with mitigating its effects.

I would like to shift the focus a little and ask the question: which policies will best promote technological innovation? Simple demographics and economic trends make it impossible to significantly curtail greenhouse gas emissions without major technological advances.

A car company takes a step in the right direction — and it’s GM!

It's a pretty short step from here to letting OnStar drivers pay for auto insurance by the mile; that's a plus everywhere, but especially in states like Michigan, where it would help turn what had been very high fixed costs into proconservation variable ones.

Now if only the state would stop charging all drivers the same flat fee (about $125/yr) for the catastrophic claims fund -- put it into the price of gas or something.

GM's inspiration was to realize that OnStar's global positioning satellite technology gave GMAC a reliable, low-cost way to measure the actual mileage of GMAC policyholders, allowing those who drive less to share in GMAC's reduced underwriting costs. If this cooperative undertaking leads more people to subscribe to OnStar and purchase GMAC auto policies, well, that's just a chance GM will have to take.

Solar confusion

This is a neat concept — a solar water filter — brought to us by reader Zack Scott: But I’m confused. Does this work, say, if I’m lost in the woods and waterless? Does it filter out enough of the undesired elements to render water safe for drinking? Thoughts from Gristmillers?

Hard to say, but Zonbu has clearly done its homework

A lot of the deepest environmental thinking is that we have to move away from the idea of purchasing consumer products and instead keep "ownership" with the maker, who is responsible for minimizing the environmental footprint of the product and for dealing with it when the user is ready to move to another one.

In other words, we should pay for the services we want (computing, hot water, power, cool air, comfortable office floors, etc.) rather than the devices used to provide those services (PCs, tankless heaters, electricity, air conditioners, office carpets); that way, we're not invested in less-efficient devices. As soon as the old ones wear out, we shift to new ones, and the service provider has to deal with the decisions about upgrading or handling and reusing the material wastes.

There's an outfit that seems to get the concept, selling a small(tiny)-footprint PC with all the bells and whistles, radically reduced power consumption (assuming you don't use a power-hog monitor), and extended producer responsibility for the device.

Given how fast people go through PCs, this is a great idea -- much more affordable, and upgradeable, and with far less environmental consequence.

I especially like the flash memory feature rather than the hard drive, the source of most computer problems.

If I had a student going into high school or college, this is definitely the PC I would be looking at closely.

Malawian man powers village with a $16 windmill

A great story via Inhabitat: With all the sobering news lately about global warming and war, it’s important to remember all the positive things that are also going on in the world at any given time. Case in point: the story of intrepid Malawi youth William Kamkwamba who, despite having no education or training, recently […]

Check it out

If not, here it is.

Man that's cool. I wish we had one of Chip standing on his head.

Another rad bike

The coolest, greenest bike ever.

Tubular, dude!

Nature is still the best engineer -- though good human ones take advantage whenever possible.

Here's a terrific, hopeful story about a bike designer who got a dog-gone good idea about making bike frames out of a widely grown, cheap, strong, environmentally sound material: bamboo.

Now we just need to get BioD and this guy hooked up: