vegthreads

Watch this video showing some of the crazy stunts Green Peace has pulled off through the years. Their website says they are looking for students to join their campaign in 2009… after watching the video it look like it would be cool as hell to spend a summer with these dudes.

In 2000 after graduating from college Cookie and Paul made a pact to walk the Continental divide in 2008. They chose 2008 because they figured by then they would have paid off their all student loans (smirks), and they chose the 3,000 mile Continental Divide trail which spans from Mexico all the way to British Columbia purely because it was the longest trail they could find information on.

On May 1st 2008 the two started off on their journey just outside of El Paso, the two cavemen are now just outside of Denver. At their current pace it looks like they will complete their journey sometime about mid November. The terrible twosome carry cell phones which they use to update their blog, and chart their progress via GPS whenever they get a signal.

Cookie and Paul are making the trek to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis, you can donate money securely to their cause here. These guys receive my stamp of approval, what they are doing is the coolest thing since sliced bread, keep it up!

The nice folks over at hacknmod.com have came up with an easy 3 step tutorial to convert your gas powered lawn mower to a solar powered one. They boost the project will save you cash, while letting you feel good about mowing your lawn.

The tutorial is divided into 3 steps

1. Remove the engine from your gas powered mower.
2. Charge the electric engine with a solar panel.
3. Put it all together.

A comprehensive tutorial can be found here.

Most people have probably never heard of the Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) maintained by the US department of energy currently housing more then 727 million barrels of crude oil. The reserves were originally created to mitigate future petroleum supply disruptions during the 73-74 oil embargo. With the oil embargo long past the reserves now seem rather foolish. To put things into perspective the 727 million barrels housed in the reserve would account for a 58 day supply of oil to the entire nation (we use about 12 million barrels per day). If the oil was allowed to enter the market the price at the pump would drop by about 30 cents per gallons.

Considering the ever increasing price of gasoline, releasing this crude oil into the market to be refined would come as a relief to consumers. The flip side of course is currently the US is capable of refining only about 2 million barrels per day total, far from the current 12 million barrels we devour each day. Since we have not built any new refineries for the past 25 years within US boundaries refining the oil would be a major obstacle to overcome.

In the midst of rampant unemployment, and a bleak economic forecast the outlook for the summer of 2008 is grim at best. Housing prices continue to drop, while commodity prices continue to rise, and gas prices, ugh well lets just say gas is becoming out of reach for many if not all Americans. The economist inside of me is tempted to say this is a good thing, after all rising gas prices will lead consumers to switch to now relatively cheaper greener substitutes such as hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius. At least theoretically in the school of standard economic thought that’s how things should work. But as I grow older I’m slowly but surely discovering things almost never go according to plan.

Traditional economic thought would insist that the rising price of gas should lure entrepreneurial spirits to invest in the research and development of new transportation technologies to cash in on their piece of the pie. And in someways this theoretical model is met with empirical (real world) data. Companies like Tesla Motors have successfully developed viable vehicles that run entirely on electric power. So why aren’t we seeing more of these vehicles on the road? Well for one Tesla has produced a very limited number of automobiles, and their vehicles come at a high price, somewhere to the tune of $100k. Placing them far out of the reach of almost all Americans.

Companies like Tesla have proved the technology to build, and develop a viable electric car is there. Heck GM proved the technology was there back in the mid 90’s when they first rolled out the EV1. If your not already familiar with the GM EV1 it was a production vehicle which ran solely on electrical power. The vehicle was developed in response to California’s zero emissions mandate or ZEV. The mandate specified that by the year 2003 10% of all new vehicles sold within the state of California must be ZEV compliant vehicles. So much for that mandate eh? Well long story GM developed the EV1, and eventually after some under the table negotiations with big oil agreed to pull the EV1 from production. The thing is not only did GM pull the EV1 from productions, they literally bought back every vehicles from consumers for copious amounts of cold hard cash. Sound suspicious? Ya I would say so, if your not already familiar with all of this I suggest you check out the movie “Who Killed The Electric Car” which traces the birth and subsequent death of the electric automobile. Read the rest of this entry »