Ran across the Human Car while browsing. Kind of hard to tell whether it’s a bicycle car, some kind of human powered light rail or what. They do mention that they timed one at 80MPH, going downhill…

Oh yeah, they have a Human Car song selection you can sing along with- that’s a first for me!

According to this article in New Scientist, a new survey of fresh water shows that world supplies are declining at a rate much faster than previously predicted. This study focused on water basins rather than a country by country approach and found that we are 20 years ahead of predicted levels for water loss.

The article has an upside however- the solution in many subsistence agricultural areas is relatively simple: Create systems for storing rainwater in anticipation of drought. As obvious as it sounds, many poor farmers have no means to store water. There are simple plastic inflatable basins similar to swimming pools that can help with storage issues at low costs.

The primary message of articles like this is that we can no longer treat fresh water as an inexhaustible resource. We need to conserve and plan for times when no water falls from the sky. Time to buy a rain barrel.

We’re looking at replacing our roof in the next year. Due to changed local regulations, this will be a complete tear off and resheathing of the roof. I’m looking at Solar shingles but they’re pretty expensive and we’re not in an area with many sun days annually.
I’ve read about a company called NanoSolar that is building a factory in San Franscisco to build a new generation of solar panels that are far more efficient and much lower in cost. Maybe we can hold out until we see if they’re for real (they did recently raise $100 million in capital so it’s not a start-up).

In this Washington Post article, the Cass Sunstein makes a very persuasive case for why we won’t see China or the US do anything about climate change until its too late. Basically China will soon move from #2 producer of carbons (we’re #1) to #1 and they can’t slow their economic growth by taking away the fuel that’s powering it including dirty coal plants, cars with no emission standards and their huge population.
The US, on the other hand, has the highest per capita usage by a mile and our economy is totally dependent on oil to the point where we might revert to a very different kind of place if it weren’t available (think medieval villages). Disturbing stuff.