What
· The World
· · Environment
Late-2020 EV Charging in Canada · I haven’t seen my 90-year-old mother since January. I guess by mid-year both she and I are likely to be vaccinated so maybe I could go visit. I’d rather drive than fly. What with Covid I’ve been cooped up so long I could scream, so there are few things I’d rather do than get out on the highway. As a displacement activity I’ve been working out how I could get the electric Jaguar 1734 kilometres from Vancouver to Saskatchewan to see her. Thus this quick survey of the state of the infrastructure in Western Canada, and also trip-planning tools. Some of this info might be useful elsewhere than in Western Canada ...
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Oil Fail · Today I learned things that I think every environmentalist and investment manager should know: A coherent argument that we are more or less at Peak Oil. Not the Nineties version, which worried that we might be running out of fossil fuels, but rather that global human petroleum demand is about at its all-time peak and about to start drifting down. Some of the key data points involve electric cars, which I care a lot about, and China, which is always interesting ...
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Car-Charge Economics · The Wikipedia article on Electric Car Use by Country is interesting. Below I excerpt a graph (misspellings: theirs) of the leading electric-car jurisdictions: As I write, Norway leads, at over 20%, while the US average is 1.5%. (Visit the Wikipedia link for the latest whenever you read this.) How are all these cars going to be fed? Let’s consider the future business of car-charging ...
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How To Stop Kinder Morgan · Yesterday, I was arrested and charged with Civil Contempt for failing to respect an injunction forbidding protesters from coming within 5 meters of the property where Kinder Morgan is trying to bring a pipeline for tar-sands bitumen to the Pacific. Herewith a few words on why this kind of action might work and how to go about doing it. Well, and I guess I should tack on a note about why the pipeline is a stupid idea and should be stopped, but I suspect most readers here are already on-board with that ...
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Springtime Tab Sweep — The World · The only unifying theme is that they’ve been building up in the browser for months, and are generally consistent with my worldview ...
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Green Phone · I’ve noticed that having an Android in my pocket makes me more likely to take public transit around town as opposed to driving. Yeah, it takes a little longer, but it’s not downtime; I can be catching up on email and admin work and so on. A huge amount of most people’s workload is manageable given anything with a decent email client and browser ...
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Not Easy Being Green · I landed at SFO and, rolling into the Rent-a-car center after the usual stupidity, saw this big green sign: “Rent a hybrid and get $15 off!” Since Avis more often than not foists an oversized misshapen thirst-crazed Detroit Mistake on me, I thought it sounded good. So I bounced up to the counter and said “It says $15 less for a hybrid, I’ll take one.” They looked surprised and, after consulting their computers, informed me that the hybrid was a $30/day upgrade, and the $15 a one-time rebate for the whole rental of however many days. Then they sent me on my way in another pathetic SUV.
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Candlelit Quiet · I mean Earth Hour. Lauren lit a bunch of candles and we just sat there enjoying the silence. Well, until I got out the camera ...
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Green Biz · Wow, was my employer ever busy while I was hiding in Saskatchewan. I think this whole Eco Innovation launch is maybe the most important thing we’ve done since I joined in 2004. There are a whole lot of arrows pointing the same direction: The rising, and generally uncontrollable, cost of energy. The space and HVAC constraints in modern data centers. The future of the planet. It’s not (quite) an emergency yet, but there are plenty of environmental, economic, and political scenarios that could land us in (not entirely figurative) hot water pretty damn quick, alone or in combination. I suspect the whole industry’s going to be climbing in this bandwagon; it would be irresponsible not to.
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Electricity · Two Carr-provoked posts in a row today; check out Avatars consume as much electricity as Brazilians, and then the quantitative comment from our own enviroguru Dave Douglas. Suppose you wanted to know for sure how many watts your databoxes are sucking? Well, our server people have come up with a clever little marketing gimmick, the Try and Buy Power Meter Program; pick up a T1000 or T2000 through T&B and they’ll send along an actual power meter. Kind of symbolic since they only cost about $30, but still, I bet this motivates a few people to have a look who wouldn’t have, otherwise; which has to be a good thing.
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Forest Practices From Above · Via Dave Shea, a visual lesson on modern forestry. I’ve actually visited a clear-cut or two, that’s some real ugliness. You don’t have to be a fanatical green, here in BC, to start having a real attitude problem about forestry companies and their pet politicians. Kind of like the Ents’ attitude towards Saruman’s Orcs. There has to be middle ground; I like living in a wooden house and reading words on paper. But look at those pictures; we can’t go on like this.
