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Justin,

Actually I feel the slow economy is backing Americans into reducing their carbon footprint. They are driving less, buying less and traveling less or closer to home. Home gardens are on the increase as is food preservation. Albeit it is not a focused effort, but I see it as the silver lining to the black cloud of the economy.

Slowly there are some significant changes taking place. A local insurance company is seriously thinking of tilling up their grass behind their building and starting a community garden. Personal windmill installations and Solar PVs are increasing. The city of Steamboat Springs, Colorado will make green building a requirement with a year. Houses will have to be oriented to the south to facilitate solar pv and solar passive air and water heating. The house design has to meet a minimum 'green' score before a permit will be issued. Google is starting the Smart Power meter initiative, where folks with a Smart Powermeter can see their electrical usage real time. They will be able to see when their tumble drier turned on and the huge amount of energy it draws.

Getting the real truth out about lowering our carbon use is the real problem. Muskegon's Environmental writer drives a gas guzzling Chevy Suburban and has written articles about compact fluorescent lights that have scared folks from using them.

If Americans had a 'number' to work to, a 'green goal' with score card, I think it would establish the needed focus for one to lower ones fossil fuel usage. But the media needs to talk positively about it, as you have, and maybe we can make the needed difference.

Dear Ethical Man,
I suggest you visit Chris Cook, who runs an advertising firm call Fairly Painless Advertising, in Holland, Michigan. That is just down the street from you, a hop, skip, and a jump away. He is the former director of Greenpeace USA. I think you can find fairly painless on the web or in the phone book for Holland, MI.

I am excited to find you have discovered our amazing little town.

Make sure you stop at the Michigan Renewable and Alternative Energy Center while you are here. There is nothing like anywhere in this part of the country. It is a new facility that is powered by fuel cells not far from the old coal plant. We also built a Fresh Water Research Center just down the road and not far from the Coles high-tech Bakery plant. Nearly seventy scientists are located in that building finding ways to protect our water resources.

Muskegon is a place where tradition meets the future. Because we have award winning beaches, and afforable real estate, many talented people "choose" to live in this scenic community just three hours from one of the world's greatest cities, Chicago.

I hope you stay a while and fall in love with this town as so many of us have! More info at www.muskegon.org

And stop by the Muskegon Museum of Art, one our country's finest as well.

Justin,
I'd suggest you read the comments of Dr Freeman Dyson at excerpted from The Question of Global Warming. He, as well as Richard Lindzen PhD at MIT both think that even if the planet is warming, it is the result of long term climate trends the influence of which are so great that any effect that co2 output as a result of human activity is negligible (i.e. statistical noise). I wish that all of you agw zealots would take long enough to do some serious homework so as to disabuse you of the notion that the picayune activities of mankind have any effect on climate at all.

Rich Pletcher
Fuquay Varina, NC

"We braved the minus 17C wind chill to go down to the lake shore and get a shot of it across the ice."

At the risk of sounding condescending, you do understand how dangerous that kind of cold is, right? If you don't have up to date gear (gortex gloves, coat, and hat are a good start, I also recommend Thinsulate), by all means hie thee (and the family) to a sporting goods store, and always keep the stuff with you when you go anywhere. Never go anywhere without gloves! Also, when you head outside, aim to cover as much exposed skin as possible. Frost bite can happen surprisingly quickly.

Believe it or not, you'll get used to the cold fairly quickly. It's something that can be dealt with (look at all those people in Muskegon). Oh, and ste second winter is soooo much easier than the first (of course, I don't suppose you'll know that).

"Can we?"

No, I don't think so. At least I don't want to take the chance. I think it would be taking an unacceptable risk. My nightmare is that we're going to trip some sort of trigger in the atmosphere that plunges us into an environment for which we're not particularly suited before we have a chance to react.

I think you'll find that people in Muskegon and the surrounding area are quite interested in converting to renewable energy because of its promise of manufacturing jobs. Also, it's a mechanical endeavor. The folks in the upper Midwest have a knack for that kind of thing (a lot of German immigrants settled in that region). Everyone knows that the person who hits on the idea which proves to be the solution will be fabulously wealthy and the community will boom as well. I wouldn't mind getting in on some of that myself.

This is not to suggest that they're not concerned about the effects of global warming, too.

Wow. I'm from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and this is the first I'm hearing about these new building requirements! Yes, a number of our new public, as well as private, buildings are LEED certified, but this has all been by choice. I wonder if I will live to see the day that such a radical building requirement would come to pass? But then who would have guessed we'd see the DOW below 8000, or an African American as our President, so I guess anything is possible! But for now, Steamboat Springs is not there yet! I wonder where you came by this information?

To SteamboatRealtor:

One of the bloggers on this site said Muskegon is interested Alternative Energy because it may create jobs and that is true. But quite a bit of thought went into this an an economic development stratagy.

The Great Lake States including Muskegon have a history of connecting our economy to our natural resources. I guess many places do. The reason we have such quality metal or alloy production here is because of the quality of the fresh water sand needed to make castings.

But it was the same industrial leaders early in this century that understood the importance of protecting the area beaches. They organized an effort to make sure those beaches were turned into public park land so they would not be developed.

And this community build one of the world's first large scale wastewater systems world to keep industry from dumping into the lakes. All waste was piped to the system which inturn supported the agriculture industry. This was done more than 30 years ago.

So in my opinion, much of this activity reflects the innovative culture that still exists in the heart of this country.

Such pressing needs for so many measures at the same time, economic actions now possible from January 2009 onwards so long as the lists are compiled and acted on; hard to imagine a greater anthesis to this than the political disinterest in environmental concerns and energy efficiency during the last eight years.

Practically like political anti-social behaviour when put in terms of what the public are expecting to put up with and always paying out for so heavily when so much progress exists and might otherwise have been invested in and brought to the public's attention.

But change does need to be for the good of people here for most of them to be interested in change being good for people elsewhere.

Sometimes it can feel like living on an island here, which is odd, coming from an island which feels like being connected to the rest of the world

Simply put, cars made to travel twice as far on the same quantity of fuel leaves more money in the wallets of people now increasingly more anxious about their employment security. Not possible, if the cars that can do this are in Japan and Europe - if not available here in the USA. GM aka Opel, Fiat, VW and others in Europe have 60-70 mpg vehicles, albeit with the gallon made up of eight pints while the US gallon is around six.

Go to any good video rental store and rent the documentary "Who killed the electric car" on DVD, as well as reading the verbatim testimony of the Detroit representatives, in order to really understand just how far the car company employees have been misled or left uninformed about what has already been proven possible and abandoned, without which you couldn't do them justice in any report.

Yet half the energy consumed in Europe is overall still wasted through buildings. There are some rare examples of new buildings and standards here in the US appearing; but house construction and mortgages have largely stalled and cars are not selling.

The vast majority of what has been regarded as good enough is now shown to be unable to employ the hundreds of thousands of people who had no idea that generally poor standards and economic fraud were endemic and pandemic; many of whom are now joining the forty eight million Americans with no health insurance, most of who have no experience of unemployment and no imagination of a national health service available to prevent them from facing bankruptcy, should stress and illness take them down before prolonged unemployment does.

It seems unfair and ill thought out to imply that the manifestation of recovery is to be defined by an increase in the sale of vehicles with poor fuel performance, and that householders will experience relief while still having to pay hundreds of dollars per month in winter to keep warm, and hundreds of dollars per month in summer to keep cool instead of halving both seasonal expenditures or better through real insulation.

If having energy to waste was ever a badge of ostentation here for some few sadder folk, now it is one area where saving energy and therefore money can to some extent make up for the wage rises and security that people need but don't reasonably expect to receive at this time unless they are involved with some criminal activity, or certain levels of banking.

If you travel around and ask about you will find that there has been scant political support for public education about and the effect of installing insulation in housing, under housing, around water pipes, and that there are few methods or media means for proponents of progressive technologies to afford to fund public education or marketing.

Consider: what does energy efficiency mean to to an oil company or a power company but a loss of profits, define what 'good' it does for them? Be very cynical as it will help.

Renewable energies exist in increasingly large numbers and forms, which can intertie with existing grids and customers, and in small scale which can attach or be detached from these grids, can act independently as localized microgrids, but in neither large or small cases is there the excuse for any energy inefficiency.

Renewables do present the revolutionary condition whereby, contrasting power sales monopoly prices, RE can become the ultimate form of competition, where the consumer can compete with the producer, by being an efficient, conserving, producing consumer.

People must have work and especially now, with the elements for recovery so uncertain - even unlikely when interned by the energy inefficient attitudes so many have lived with.

Mortgages must be written for people who need homes who must have the means to pay for them, or else all that can be done is what is being done now, to assist millions more people to avoid defaulting and foreclosures.

Writing good mortgages on good properties is the only way out and forward from fraudulent practice in lending and the subsequent blind eye selling on of these un-payable debts. Many more people might now stop renting and afford a mortgage payment if it could be assured that the property they bought would cost far less to run.

Honestly, the sheer numbers of innovators and innovations in the US are such that one month here might become a worthwhile reconnaissance, and may lead you to the possibility of realizing that using the ´óÏó´«Ã½ legend to invite full video and media reports along with the request for freedom to compile and edit existing materials will far exceed the potential which might be achieved touring for a year. People really want to tell their stories and show their efforts, and have largely done the work, but been stumped by the challenges of public education and dissemination.

At grass roots levels, at high levels of guidance, and at almost all levels between, mostly people here have to work hard and learn to be pragmatic, and should some means of gathering good ideas with plausible values come along, on television, it will be noted and catch on like wildfire.

The premise of your project being so right, the real challenge is to realize the enormity and source of resources, the urgency of needs at the social level here, and the willingness to respond to sound requests, the goal you have is to genuinely contribute by using your extraordinary position as "the ´óÏó´«Ã½" to energize public interest imagination.

Clearly a time to not risk producing a quick superficial look at relevant issues, causes and solutions, and with such a shortage of time available to you in just one month, best hunt down the sort of solid well-informed economic perspectives which can structure the macro frame in preparation for the many dimensions you need to take into consideration.

Seriously, make it easier for yourselves, and make contact with the Rocky Mountain Institute, Snowmass, Colorado - RMI.org