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Realizing not enough is being done to meet homeless peoples’ hygienic needs, these two friends put an ingenious idea to work and are now helping many people in Australia.
Sometimes the best thing you can do to help others is to assist them with the little things, which – believe it or not – make a great deal of difference.
Imagine being homeless and trying to get back on your feet – yet feeling extremely self-conscious of the state of your clothes when seeking out new opportunities. The two definitely don’t mix, which is why two good-Samaritan friends created a brilliant way to help the homeless re-gain confidence and also feel more optimistic about their situation. They did this by turning their van into a mobile laundromat to give those without an opportunity to wash their clothes safely.
The two creators of the Orange Sky Laundry project, Lucas Patchett and Nicholas Marchesi, began with an old van and a generator. With the support of donations, they were able to secure two washing machines and driers, and now their van can process 20 kg of laundry an hour.
Launched in July, the project is now in its trial period, during which the van will operate 5 days per week in Brisbane, Australia. If all goes well, the organization will likely spread across Australia.
Two 20-year-old friends, Lucas Patchett and Nicholas Marchesi, noticed that not enough was being done to help the homeless or meet their hygienic needs.So they created Australia’s FIRST mobile laundry unit for the homeless. Now they spend 5 days a week helping others regain a bit more self confidence and live more comfortably by washing their clothes.[Clean clothes are] “a privilege that so many of us take for granted. This is the first time Mich has been able to wash his clothes and blankets. Born in Brisbane and living on the streets, Mick can’t afford to wash his clothes or transport them. Thanks for your continued support of our program.”And as shared on the Orange Sky Laundry website, “Meet Ricky. He wants to thank you all for your donations and support. He sleeps rough on the street with his dad and today they were able to wash all their clothes.”Lucas Pratchett poses in front of one of the vans.This organization runs off the generosity of others around the globe. You can help by donating online – $6 will cover the cost of a cycle of washing for one person. “Have a look, we really appreciate it along with your continued support.”Source:HuffingtonPost
Inventors Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein are looking to revolutionize the business of small-scale solar panels with The Solar Pocket Factory, a backyard photovoltaic panel printing system. Successfully funded by a Kickstarter campaign, the two have placed themselves at the forefront of the micro solar movement, which aims to cheaply and quickly produce small PV panels.
Enthusiastic about all things solar, inventors Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein have built everything from lights to USB distribution grids. Through the process of designing and manufacturing their products, they found that the micro solar panels they used to power their devices were brittle, expensive, and poorly made. Taking matters into their own hands, they traveled the world and spent months researching current models. They found that half of the cost of conventional panels lay in their assembly, as many parts of the body are pieced and soldered by hand. They also observed that 15% of panels contained flaws from imperfect soldering, and in many cases, the materials used were cut-rate and disintegrated over the period of a few years.
They figured that if they could automate the production, they could eliminate 25% of the price tag and reducing the number of defects. By using higher quality materials, they could also create panels that are more efficient, gather more light, and last longer. The result of their labor is The Solar Pocket Factory, a small automated machine that can churn out panels on a smaller scale than a sprawling factory. The device resembles a desktop 3D printer, and the team hopes to have a full working model completed by April. When finished, the Solar Pocket Factory will be able to churn out a panel every 15 seconds – that means that just one machine could potentially power 1 million devices each year! Viva la revolucion!
Mr Sigurjonsson said the problem each time arose from ballooning credit during a strong economic cycle.
Frosti Sigurjonsson’s report, entitled A Better Monetary System For Iceland
He argued the central bank was unable to contain the credit boom, allowing inflation to rise and sparking exaggerated risk-taking and speculation, the threat of bank collapse and costly state interventions.
In Iceland, as in other modern market economies, the central bank controls the creation of banknotes and coins but not the creation of all money, which occurs as soon as a commercial bank offers a line of credit.
The central bank can only try to influence the money supply with its monetary policy tools.
Under the so-called Sovereign Money proposal, the country’s central bank would become the only creator of money.
“Crucially, the power to create money is kept separate from the power to decide how that new money is used,” Mr Sigurjonsson wrote in the proposal.
“As with the state budget, the parliament will debate the government’s proposal for allocation of new money,” he wrote.
Iceland’s three largest banks collapsed
Banks would continue to manage accounts and payments, and would serve as intermediaries between savers and lenders.
Mr Sigurjonsson, a businessman and economist, was one of the masterminds behind Iceland’s household debt relief programme launched in May 2014 and aimed at helping the many Icelanders whose finances were strangled by inflation-indexed mortgages signed before the 2008 financial crisis.
The small Nordic country was hit hard as the crash of US investment bank Lehman Brothers caused the collapse of its three largest banks.
Iceland then became the first western European nation in 25 years to appeal to the International Monetary Fund to save its battered economy.
Its GDP fell by 5.1pc in 2009 and 3.1pc in 2010 before it started rising again.
The adoption of goals aiming for the achievement of 100% renewable energy (with regard to retail electricity) by the year 2050 could save the major economies of the world — the European Union, the United States, China — more than $500 billion a year (combined), according to a new study from the NewClimate Institute (commissioned by Climate Action Network).
As well as delivering huge savings in energy costs, the adoption of strong targets would result in the creation of millions of new jobs, according to the new work.
Also worth noting is that, according to the new work, if all countries adopted (and acted upon) such goals, then the anthropogenic temperature increase (global warming) could be limited to under the 2°C threshold that some researchers have marked as the point of no return as far as serious issues go.
(Author’s note: I’m not so convinced that the climate can be modelled to such a precise degree as to provide useful predictions in this regard. Yes, carbon dioxide and methane are greenhouse gases, yes the planet is warming, and yes people are implicated in that, but…. The climate is a very complex system, one not easily modelled or predicted to any precise degree. While it would be prudent from a ‘rational’ perspective to curtail greenhouse gas emissions (on a global level), what’s going to happen exactly is something of an open question. We’ll find out soon enough though — I expect to see significant issues arising from anthropogenic climate change within my lifetime.)
The new report comes as many countries are beginning to create their climate offers for upcoming (in December) UN climate talks — where, presumably, a new international agreement will be signed.
According to the new report, if the steps outlined for the EU, the US, and China in the new report are followed to the T, then around 3 million new jobs will be created by 2030; the deaths of two million people by air pollution related diseases will be prevented; and huge savings (of around $520 billion a year) will be afforded, owing to reduced fossil fuel imports.
For many of us, purchasing an electric vehicle is still a pie in the sky dream. But that might be changing soon, if a new peer-reviewed study is correct that the cost of electric car batteries is falling much more quickly than we assumed.
Lithium ion batteries make up anywhere between a quarter and half the cost of electric cars today. By systematically reviewing over 80 cost estimates published between 2007 and 2014, researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute found that the cost of Li-battery packs used by leading manufacturers like Tesla and Nissan is falling by roughly 8 % per year. That’s similar to the rate that was seen with the nickel metal hydride battery technology used in hybrids like the Toyota Prius.
What’s more, it means that battery cost is rapidly approaching a threshold that could make the average Joe think seriously about trading in his gas guzzler. According to MIT Technology Review:
The authors of the new study concluded that the battery packs used by market-leading EV manufacturers cost as little as $300 per kilowatt-hour of energy in 2014. That’s lower than the most optimistic published projections for 2015, and even below the average published projection for 2020. The authors found that batteries appear on track to reach $230 per kilowatt-hour by 2018. Depending on the price of gas, the sticker price of an EV is expected to appeal to many more people if its battery costs between $125 and $300 per kilowatt-hour.
Of course, other factors matter when it comes to giving up gasoline, including EV ranges and the expected useful lifespan of the battery. Another recent study gives us hope on these fronts, as well: Analyzing power fade over time, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab found that even after batteries have lost 20 percent of their originally rated energy storage capacity, they could still meet the daily travel needs for more than 85% of US citizens.
We should take all of this with a healthy dose of skepticism-energy costs projections are often wrong-but still, electric vehicles do seem to be moving mainstream fast. If Elon Musk had it his way, we’d all be getting driven around by autonomous Teslas this summer, but more realistically, ten years out doesn’t sound like too much to hope for. [ MIT Technology Review]
Researchers at the University of Alabama recently published a study suggesting that Corexit EC9500A, the primary oil dispersant used in the Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is causing major harm to the local eco-system.
According to the study, Corexit damages epithelium cells in both humans and marine animals.
The study was published in PLOS ONE this week and studied the effect that the chemical had on the bodies of humans, zebrafish, and blue crabs.
“There were some 48,000 workers involved in the cleanup operations, and it is possible that workers were exposed to Corexit via inhalation. Cough, shortness of breath and sputum production were among symptoms expressed by workers, ” Veena Antony, one of the researchers said.
According to the study, “The evidence that Corexit causes structural and functional abnormalities in airway tissue includes dispersant-induced cell detachment, edema, contraction in cell diameter and increased permeability.”
” Corexit exposure led to an increase in NOX4 activation, and there is evidence that the increase of NOX4 is tied to increased apoptosis. On the other hand, HO-1 was also activated following Corexit exposure. We also noted that the introduction of HO-1 following injury served to remediate the effects of that injury,” Antony added.
At the time of the spill, many activists had spoken out against the use of Corexit, but it was used indiscriminately anyway, as if it was the only option. It is possible that these new studies could help to prevent this toxic chemical from being used in the future.
” In summary, our results indicate that respiratory epithelial surfaces across phylogenetic species are sensitive to injury by Corexit. However, the enzyme HO-1 protects against inflammation and cell death induced by Corexit. Unfortunately, the likelihood of another oil spill is high, and the need to use dispersal agents will remain. We propose that upregulating HO-1 may offer a novel therapeutic approach for treating dispersant-induced injury and apo’ptosis by enhancing the antioxidant and anti-apoptotic ability of the epitheliu m,” Antony said.
The video below is several years old, but it shows a prior independent study conducted by engineer Marco Kaltofen, which also shows the effects of Corexit.
John Vibes writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war.
Yum! Brands, the organization that claims KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, on Thursday reported a zero deforestation arrangement for its palm oil sourcing. The move came after forceful battles by ecological gatherings that argued that the restaurants weren’t doing what’s needed to guarantee the palm oil they used to cook food wasn’t connected to human rights misuses, obliteration of peat lands, and logging of rainforests.
The strategy sets December 2017 as focus for creating shields for palm oil sourcing. Yum! says it will just come from suppliers who block farmstead advancement in high carbon stock and high preservation esteem ranges, in the same way as rainforests and peat lands; have debate determination forms set up; offer traceability to the plant level; and evade underage laborers and constrained work.
The benchmarks apply Yum’s! worldwide fast food business, the importance it applies to every last bit of its restaurants.
Yum! has a comparable arrangement of rules for its paper and fiber sourcing.
The declaration was immediately accepted by Greenpeace, which battled against the organization’s mash and paper sourcing practices in 2012.
Rolf Skar, Woods Crusade Executive at Greenpeace USA., said, “Yum! Brands’ new palm oil policy is a good sign it’s listening to customers around the world who want rainforest destruction taken off the menu.”
He added, “more clearly define terms like ‘high carbon stock forest’ and ‘best management practices’ for peat lands in order to make sure change really happens on the ground.”
Nonetheless, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a support assembly discharged on Wednesday, a scorecard giving Yum! a zero out of 100 rank on its palm oil approach, which needed more from the organization.
“Yum! Brands seem to have good intentions with this commitment, “said UCS’s Lael Goodman in an announcement. “The problem is that palm oil is also a common ingredient in some the company’s baked goods and sauces – products that are prepared by a third-party vendor – and are not covered under the commitment. This is where the commitment loses steam.”
However, Goodman said that the approach would increase Yum! on UCS’s scorecard, moving it out of the base position it imparted to Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr, Dairy Ruler, and Domino’s.
“The company scored a zero as of yesterday, but today’s announcement will surely raise their score somewhat,” she stated.
“However, if Yum! Brands wants to be an environmental leader amongst fast food giants, the company should to extend the commitment to all forms of palm oil and bulk up its transparency efforts. Such transparency efforts include reporting the quantities of palm oil used and on the commitment’s implementation.”
Yum’s! dedication has been made much simpler as of recent years with the reception of zero deforestation arrangements by a percentage of the world’s biggest palm oil makers and dealers, including Brilliant Agri Assets, Wilmar, Cargill, Musim Mas, IOI, and Bunge.
These approaches have developed as a direct after effect of weight from backing gatherings and shoppers concerned over palm oil’s part in driving change of peat lands and rainforests for farms.
The damage was found mostly in Malaysia and Indonesia; however the business has its sights on growing in West and Focal Africa, the Amazon, Focal America, and different parts of tropical Asia.
From where I’m standing, the city-sized Baogang Steel and Rare Earth complex dominates the horizon, its endless cooling towers and chimneys reaching up into grey, washed-out sky. Between it and me, stretching into the distance, lies an artificial lake filled with a black, barely-liquid, toxic sludge.
Dozens of pipes line the shore, churning out a torrent of thick, black, chemical waste from the refineries that surround the lake. The smell of sulphur and the roar of the pipes invades my senses. It feels like hell on Earth.
Welcome to Baotou, the largest industrial city in Inner Mongolia. I’m here with a group of architects and designers called the Unknown Fields Division, and this is the final stop on a three-week-long journey up the global supply chain, tracing back the route consumer goods take from China to our shops and homes, via container ships and factories.
You may not have heard of Baotou, but the mines and factories here help to keep our modern lives ticking. It is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of “rare earth” minerals. These elements can be found in everything from magnets in wind turbines and electric car motors, to the electronic guts of smartphones and flatscreen TVs. In 2009 China produced 95% of the world’s supply of these elements, and it’s estimated that the Bayan Obo mines just north of Baotou contain 70% of the world’s reserves. But, as we would discover, at what cost?
Element of success
Rare earth minerals have played a key role in the transformation and explosive growth of China’s world-beating economy over the last few decades. It’s clear from visiting Baotou that it’s had a huge, transformative impact on the city too. As the centre of this 21st Century gold-rush, Baotou feels very much like a frontier town.
In 1950, before rare earth mining started in earnest, the city had a population of 97,000. Today, the population is more than two-and-a-half million. There is only one reason for this huge influx of people – minerals. As a result Baotou often feels stuck somewhere between a brave new world of opportunity presented by the global capitalism that depends on it, and the fading memories of Communism that still line its Soviet era boulevards. Billboards for expensive American brands stand next to revolution-era propaganda murals, as the disinterested faces of Western supermodels gaze down on statues of Chairman Mao. At night, multicoloured lights, glass-dyed by rare earth elements, line the larger roads, turning the city into a scene from the movie Tron, while the smaller side streets are filled with drunk, vomiting refinery workers that spill from bars and barbecue joints.
Even before getting to the toxic lake, the environmental impact the rare earth industry has had on the city is painfully clear. At times it’s impossible to tell where the vast structure of the Baogang refineries complex ends and the city begins. Massive pipes erupt from the ground and run along roadways and sidewalks, arching into the air to cross roads like bridges. The streets here are wide, built to accommodate the constant stream of huge diesel-belching coal trucks that dwarf all other traffic.
After it rains they plough, unstoppable, through roads flooded with water turned black by coal dust. They line up by the sides of the road, queuing to turn into one of Baotou’s many coal-burning power stations that sit unsettlingly close to freshly built apartment towers. Everywhere you look, between the half-completed tower blocks and hastily thrown up multi-storey parking lots, is a forest of flame-tipped refinery towers and endless electricity pylons. The air is filled with a constant, ambient, smell of sulphur. It’s the kind of industrial landscape that America and Europe has largely forgotten – at one time parts of Detroit or Sheffield must have looked and smelled like this.
Quiet plant
One of our first visits in the city is to a processing plant that specialises mainly in producing cerium, one of the most abundant rare earth minerals. Cerium has a huge number of commercial applications, from colouring glass to making catalytic converters. The guide who shows us around the plant explains that they mainly produce cerium oxide, used to polish touchscreens on smartphones and tablets.
As we are wandering through the factory’s hangar-like rooms, it’s impossible not to notice that something is missing. Amongst the mazes of pipes, tanks, and centrifuges, there are no people. In fact there’s no activity at all. Apart from our voices, which echo through the huge sheds, the plant is silent. It’s very obviously not operating. When asked, our guide tells us the plant is closed for maintenance – but there’s no sign of that either: no maintenance crews, no cleaning or repairs being done. When pushed further our guide gets suspicious, wonders why we are asking so many questions, and clams up. It’s a behaviour we’ll encounter a lot in Baotou – a refusal to answer questions or stray off a strictly worded script.
As we leave, one of our party who has visited the area before suggests a possible explanation: could local industry be artificially controlling market scarcity of products like cerium oxide, in order to keep rare earth prices high? We can’t know for sure that this was the case the day we visited. Yet it would not be unprecedented: in 2012, for example, the news agency Xinhua reported that China’s largest rare earth producer was suspending operations to prevent price drops.
One of Baotou’s other main exports is neodymium, another rare earth with a variety of applications. Again it is used to dye glass, especially for making lasers, but perhaps its most important use is in making powerful yet lightweight magnets. Neodymium magnets are used in consumer electronics items such as in-ear headphones, cellphone microphones, and computer hard-drives. At the other end of the scale they are a vital component in large equipment that requires powerful magnetic fields, such as wind farm turbines and the motors that power the new generation of electric cars. We’re shown around a neodymium magnet factory by a guide who seems more open than our friend at the cerium plant. We’re even given some magnets to play with. But again, when our questions stray too far from applications and to production and associated environmental costs, the answers are less forthcoming, and pretty soon the visit is over.
The intriguing thing about both neodymium and cerium is that while they’re called rare earth minerals, they’re actually fairly common. Neodymium is no rarer than copper or nickel and quite evenly distributed throughout the world’s crust. While China produces 90% of the global market’s neodymium, only 30% of the world’s deposits are located there. Arguably, what makes it, and cerium, scarce enough to be profitable are the hugely hazardous and toxic process needed to extract them from ore and to refine them into usable products. For example, cerium is extracted by crushing mineral mixtures and dissolving them in sulphuric and nitric acid, and this has to be done on a huge industrial scale, resulting in a vast amount of poisonous waste as a byproduct. It could be argued that China’s dominance of the rare earth market is less about geology and far more about the country’s willingness to take an environmental hit that other nations shy away from.
And there’s no better place to understand China’s true sacrifice than the shores of Baotou toxic lake. Apparently created by damming a river and flooding what was once farm land, the lake is a “tailings pond”: a dumping ground for waste byproducts. It takes just 20 minutes to reach the lake by car from the centre of the city, passing through abandoned countryside dominated by the industrial architecture on the horizon. Earlier reports claim the lake is guarded by the military, but we see no sign. We pass a shack that was presumably a guard hut at one point but it’s abandoned now; whoever was here left in a hurry, leaving their bedding, cooking stove, and instant noodle packets behind when they did.
We reached the shore, and looked across the lake. I’d seen some photos before I left for Inner Mongolia, but nothing prepared me for the sight. It’s a truly alien environment, dystopian and horrifying. The thought that it is man-made depressed and terrified me, as did the realisation that this was the byproduct not just of the consumer electronics in my pocket, but also green technologies like wind turbines and electric cars that we get so smugly excited about in the West. Unsure of quite how to react, I take photos and shoot video on my cerium polished iPhone.
You can see the lake on Google Maps, and that hints at the scale. Zoom in far enough and you can make out the dozens of pipes that line the shore. Unknown Fields’ Liam Young collected some samples of the waste and took it back to the UK to be tested. “The clay we collected from the toxic lake tested at around three times background radiation,” he later tells me.
Watch the black byproduct of rare earth mining pouring into the lake at Baotao (Credit: Richard John Seymour/Unknown Fields)
Unknown Fields has an unusual plan for the stuff. “We are using this radioactive clay to make a series of ceramic vessels modelled on traditional Ming vases,” Young explains, “each proportioned based on the amount of toxic waste produced by the rare earth minerals used in a particular tech gadget.” The idea is to illustrate the impact our consumer goods have on the environment, even when that environment might be unseen and thousands of miles away.
After seeing the impact of rare earth mining myself, it’s impossible to view the gadgets I use everyday in the same way. As I watched Apple announce their smart watch recently, a thought crossed my mind: once we made watches with minerals mined from the Earth and treated them like precious heirlooms; now we use even rarer minerals and we’ll want to update them yearly. Technology companies continually urge us to upgrade; to buy the newest tablet or phone. But I cannot forget that it all begins in a place like Bautou, and a terrible toxic lake that stretches to the horizon.
Light breaks through the open window of our temporary home in Vanuatu and I rise from bed, following the sound of children laughing and a dog barking. At intervals, the stillness of the island air is disrupted by the drone of relief helicopters, swaying back and forth over the capital Port Villa. After a quick …
PHILLIPS, Calif. – Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday ordered mandatory water use reductions for the first time in California’s history, saying the state’s four-year drought had reached near-crisis proportions after a winter of record-low snowfalls.
Mr. Brown, in an executive order, directed the State Water Resources Control Board to impose a 25 percent reduction on the state’s 400 local water supply agencies, which serve 90 percent of California residents, over the coming year. The agencies will be responsible for coming up with restrictions to cut back on water use and for monitoring compliance. State officials said the order would impose varying degrees of cutbacks on water use across the board – affecting homeowners, farms and other businesses, as well as the maintenance of cemeteries and golf courses.
While the specifics of how this will be accomplished are being left to the water agencies, it is certain that Californians across the state will have to cut back on watering gardens and lawns – which soak up a vast amount of the water this state uses every day – as well as washing cars and even taking showers.
“People should realize we are in a new era,” Mr. Brown said at a news conference here on Wednesday, standing on a patch of brown and green grass that would normally be thick with snow at this time of year. “The idea of your nice little green lawn getting watered every day, those days are past.”
Owners of large farms, who obtain their water from sources outside the local water agencies, will not fall under the 25 percent guideline. State officials noted that many farms had already seen a cutback in their water allocations because of the drought. In addition, the owners of large farms will be required, under the governor’s executive order, to offer detailed reports to state regulators about water use, ideally as a way to highlight incidents of water diversion or waste.
Because of this system, state officials said, they did not expect the executive order to result – at least in the immediate future – in an increase in farm or food prices.
State officials said that they were prepared to enforce punitive measures, including fines, to ensure compliance, but that they were hopeful it would not be necessary to do so. That said, the state had trouble reaching the 20 percent reduction target that Mr. Brown set in January 2014 when he issued a voluntary reduction order as part of declaring a drought emergency. The state water board has the power to impose fines on local water suppliers that fail to meet the reduction targets set by the board over the coming weeks.
The governor announced what amounts to a dramatic new chapter in the state’s response to the drought while attending the annual April 1 measuring of the snowpack here in the Sierra Nevada. Snowpacks are critical to the state’s water system: They store water that falls during the wet season, and release it through the summer.
In a typical year, the measure in Phillips is around five or six feet, as Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Survey Program, indicated by displaying the measuring stick brought out annually. But on Wednesday, Mr. Brown was standing on an utterly dry field after he and Mr. Gehrke went through the motions of measuring a snowpack. State officials said they now expected the statewide snowpack measure to be about 6 percent of normal.
“We are standing on dry grass, and we should be standing on five feet of snow,” Mr. Brown said. “We are in an historic drought.”
Water has long been a precious resource in California, the subject of battles pitting farmer against city-dweller and northern communities against southern ones; books and movies have been made about its scarcity and plunder. Water is central to the state’s identity and economy, and a symbol of how wealth and ingenuity have tamed nature: There are golf courses in the deserts of Palm Springs, lush gardens and lawns in Los Angeles, and vast expanses of irrigated fields of farmland throughout the Central Valley.
Given that backdrop, any effort to force reductions in water use could be politically contentious, as Mr. Brown himself acknowledged. “This will be somewhat of a burden – it’s going to be very difficult,” he said. “People will say, ‘What about the farmers?’ Farmers will say, ‘What about the people who water their lawns?’ “
Within hours of Mr. Brown’s announcement, Representative Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who is the House majority leader, announced plans to renew efforts in Congress to pass legislation requiring the building of two huge water facilities in the state. The efforts had been blocked by Democrats concerned that the water projects would harm the environment and damage endangered species of fish.
“The current drought in California is devastating,” Mr. McCarthy said. “Today’s order from the governor should not only alarm Californians, but the entire nation should take notice that the most productive agriculture state in the country has entered uncharted territory.”
“I’m from the Central Valley, and we know that we cannot conserve or ration our way out of this drought,” he said.
The newly mandated 25 percent cut is in relation to total water use in the state in 2013. Cuts will vary from community to community, reflecting that per capita water use reduction has been better in some areas than others. In addition, the state and local governments will offer temporary rebate programs for homeowners who replace dishwashers and washing machines with water-efficient models.
Mr. Brown said the state would impose water-use restrictions on golf courses and cemeteries and require that nonpotable water be used on median dividers.
Lawns consume much of the water used every year in California, and the executive order calls for the state, working with local governments, to replace 50 million acres of ornamental turf with planting that consumes less water.
The order also instructs water authorities to raise rates on heavy water users. Those pricing systems, intended to reward conservers and punish wasters, are used in some parts of this state and have proved effective, state officials said.
Felicia Marcus, the chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, said that California would leave it to local water providers to decide how to enforce the reductions on homeowners and businesses. She said she anticipated that most of the restrictions would be aimed at the outdoor use of water; many communities have already imposed water restrictions on lawns and gardens, but Ms. Marcus suggested they had not gone far enough.
“We are in a drought unlike one we’ve seen before, and we have to take actions that we haven’t taken before,” she said. “We are not getting the level of effort that the situation clearly warrants.”
Mark W. Cowin, the director of the California Department of Water Resources, said the state would tightly monitor compliance, in the hope that would be enough to accomplish the 25 percent reduction. If it is not, the order authorizes water suppliers to penalize offenders.
“We are looking for success, not to be punitive,” Mr. Cowin said. “In the end, if people and communities don’t comply, there will be repercussions, including fines.”
while speaking in Utah, President Obama announced a new program that will combat climate change while training 75,000 veterans for jobs in the solar industry.
The President said:
I am announcing a new goal to train 75,000 workers to enter the solar industry by 2020. As part of this, we’re creating what we’re calling a solar ready vets program that’s modeled after some successful pilot initiatives that have already been established over the last several years.
It’s going to train transitioning military personnel for careers in this growing industry at ten bases including right here at Hill, and as part of this effort we’re also going to work with states to enable more veterans to use the post-9/11 GI Bill for solar job training.
It’s one of the many steps we’re taking to help nearly 700,000 military veterans and spouses get a job. In fact, about thirty percent of the federal workforce is now made up of veterans. I’ve said it before, and I think employers are starting to catch on if you really want to get the job done, hire a veteran.
The plan is smart because it trains tens of thousands of transitioning military personnel and spouses for a civilian job in an industry that is growing ten times faster than the national average. The president also pointed out the military bases that get a substantial percentage of their energy from the sun save money that can applied towards other goals and missions.
The nation has undergone a dramatic shift from a president who fought a foreign war for oil (Bush and Iraq) to a forward thinking president who is using growing clean energy industry industries to train veterans of the Bush wars for good paying jobs.
The plan that the President unveiled isn’t just good politics. It’s also common sense. No veteran should have to take a low-paying service industry job because they can’t find anything else. It is part of our national obligation to everything possible to help those who served succeed when they return home.
President Obama is creating opportunities for today’s veterans to acquire the jobs of tomorrow.
I walk over to my office window. My house plants greet me. I say hello to each of them. I look over their leaves. I visually check the moisture level of the soil and add water where necessary. I love them. I pay very close attention to one of them, a small maple tree I found in my front overgrown flower garden in Black Mountain as I was cleaning it out last spring. It would have never flourished in that spot so I pulled it up and planted it in a small pot. I’ve been carrying it around for almost a year now. It’s just getting ready to shoot out some new leaves for spring, and this is very exciting to me, as I almost killed it in an overheated window at my office in Rhode Island during my short stay there.This is my routine nearly every day when I get up for work. Those plants really do make me happy. They are living things, each with it’s own character. These plants give me something beautiful to turn in my chair and look at whenever I’m pondering the solution to an IT problem or a I need to take a mental break. I sometimes look to them for inspiration when I’m working on a story. They make me smile.
The natural anti-depressant
I recently found an article floating around the web indicating that plants, and tending to them, actually do a lot more than the credit they’re given. Working with plants outdoors, and the soil in particular, is especially beneficial for mental health, stress reduction, and happiness. A specific type of bacteria, Mycobacterium vaccae, found in soil increases the production of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin production is key to happiness. The effects of coming in contact with this bacteria while gardening were found to produce the same results as anti-depressants such as prozac. Serotonin also strengthens brain function and is found to increase learning capacity. House plants are also linked to decreasing stress and anxiety, especially in the workplace and at school.
Plants are the champions of Small Acts, without even having to try
It doesn’t stop there. House plants actually have a positive impact on your health and improve overall wellbeing. It’s pretty common knowledge that plants absorb C02 and turn it into oxygen, but they also clean the air of other indoor pollutants. NASA conducted very thorough research about the topic and concluded that “both plant leaves and roots are utilized in removing trace levels of toxic vapors from inside tightly sealed buildings. Low levels of chemicals such as carbon monoxide and formaldehyde can be removed from indoor environments by plant leaves alone.” Some of our polluted outdoor air comes inside with us, not to mention all the Volatile Organic Compounds, found in many household products, polluting our indoor air. A few houseplants are a great remedy to this health hazard.
Stay focused
Plants improve concentration and memory. They provide a calming effect while working that helps improve accuracy and focus, which allows for higher quality results. A study found that being around plants or nature while performing a task can “increase memory retention up to twenty percent.” I strongly believe that the natural beauty and better air quality that my plants provide helps me tremendously as a “telecommuting” employee.
Healing
We often see plants and flowers in hospital rooms, but they really do provide added benefits aside from a nice aesthetic touch. Plants inside or visible outside the hospital room were proven to decrease the time it takes for patients to heal. Horticulture therapy, where patients are tasked with taking care of plants, has proven to be effective in the rehabilitation of patients following brain injuries and other conditions.
Improve your relationships
I find this one to be one of the most profound reasons to adopt some houseplants or get outside and do some gardening. People that spend extended time around plants were found to have stronger relationships with others and are more likely to be willing to help others. Interacting with and caring for plants increases our aptitude for compassion and empathy. I believe our world needs more empathy, or, the ability to understand how others feel. Maybe then, there would be a little less judgement, and a little more acceptance. It is especially important to teach these skills to children, as their behavior and actions define the future. Caring for plants helps kids understand the fragility of life and external environments, but event as adults, we could all stand to cultivate a little more compassion and appreciation for our planet.
Return on investment
The great thing is that plants are relatively inexpensive, especially compared to the benefits. Investing in a few for your window sill is a Small Act worth your time and money.
So you’re a conservationist, eh? Can you prove it? Can you stop washing your hands before this fish runs out of water? For his appropriately titled Poor Little Fishbowl Sink, designer Yan Lu created a very direct incentive to minimize water usage – when you turn the faucet on, the water level in the fishbowl decreases. It reminds us how precious this resource is, and how our everyday actions can affect the creatures around us. It also reminds us of our childhood pet goldfish, aww. Read on to learn more about this fish-traumatizing faucet.
In case you were worried, the water sources for the fish bowl and the faucet are separate: you wouldn’t be washing your hands in fish excrement or sending soapy water back into the bowl. The fish’s “aquarium” is simply designed to lower its water level until you stop washing your hands, although it never drains completely. Still, we can’t help but feel that this rapidly changing environment must be tough for the little guy (which, come to think of it, makes his situation pretty similar to the real world). Poor little fish indeed.
Spain is getting the vast majority of its electricity from carbon-free sources, the country’s grid operator reported on Tuesday.
CREDIT: ree.es
According to Red Electrica de Espana (REE), the Spanish peninsula got 69 percent of its electricity generation in March from technologies that produce zero carbon emissions – that is to say, renewable energy plus some of its nuclear power. Nuclear as a whole provided 23.8 percent of the country’s electricity in March, while 47 percent came solely from renewable sources.
Most of the renewable electricity being generated in Spain comes from wind, which alone provided 22.5 percent of the country’s electricity last month. Wind often competes with nuclear for the title of Spain’s top electricity generation source overall – in fact, though nuclear pulled through in March as the top source of electricity, wind has overall provided more electricity to Spain in the entirety of 2015. From January to March, according to REE, wind provided 23.7 percent of electricity generation while nuclear made up 22.7 percent.
Spain has long been a leader in renewable energy, just recently becoming the first country in the world to have relied on wind as its top energy source for an entire year. The country is attempting to use wind power to supply 40 percent of its electricity consumption by 2020, according to CleanTechnica.
At the same time, Spain is also developing other renewable sources of energy, particularly solar photovoltaic. Though it currently only accounts for about 3 percent of electricity generation, Spain’s solar industry is one of the largest in the world, according to Al Jazeera. In 2012, it reported that solar power accounted for almost 2,000 megawatts of energy. Comparatively in the United States, there were 3,313 megawatts of solar photovoltaic installations that same year.
Though the U.S. may have more solar cumulatively, Spain’s solar makes up more more of the smaller country’s electricity use as a whole. In 2013, solar accounted for about 0.2 percent of the net electricity produced in the United States, according to the Institute for Energy Research. That same year, solar accounted for 3.1 percent of Spain’s total electricity, according to REE.
Still, Spain’s renewable energy story has not been all roses. The country’s aggressive goals have been heavily subsidized by its government, and the government has fallen into economic distress as a result. Specifically, the New York Times reported in 2013 that Spain’s tariff deficit had built up a cumulative debt of about €26 billion ($35 billion). Since then, however, the country has slashed its subsidies, putting the bulk of costs back on the power utilities themselves.
The subsidy cuts happened last summer, and since then renewable energy has not significantly grown in the country as a whole. But it has grown substantially in at least one part of Spain – the tiny island of El Hierro, which is nearing its goal to be powered 100 percent by wind and water.
So they created Australia’s FIRST mobile laundry unit for the homeless. Now they spend 5 days a week helping others regain a bit more self confidence and live more comfortably by washing their clothes. 
[Clean clothes are] “a privilege that so many of us take for granted. This is the first time Mich has been able to wash his clothes and blankets. Born in Brisbane and living on the streets, Mick can’t afford to wash his clothes or transport them. Thanks for your continued support of our program.” 
And as shared on the Orange Sky Laundry website, “Meet Ricky. He wants to thank you all for your donations and support. He sleeps rough on the street with his dad and today they were able to wash all their clothes.” 
Lucas Pratchett poses in front of one of the vans. 
This organization runs off the generosity of others around the globe. You can help by donating online – $6 will cover the cost of a cycle of washing for one person. “Have a look, we really appreciate it along with your continued support.” 
Source: HuffingtonPost
