No Name Key’s Fight to Remain Off the Grid - Green Living Ideas

No Name Key’s Fight to Remain Off the Grid

Posted on Aug 25, 2010 by Jennifer Lance.

When you live off the grid, it becomes part of your persona. It is part of your identity; one way you might describe yourself to strangers.  Off-gridders take personal pride in their ability to make their own power, be energy efficient, and live without the gadgets many Americans take for granted as part of life.
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The Crop Mob Unleashes Community on Sustainable Farms

Posted on Aug 24, 2010 by Scott James.

You may have seen a “flashmob” as part of a guerrilla marketing stunt in the last few years, where hundreds of people descend on an urban location to participate in a coordinated show that is a surprise to everyone but those involved. How would that marketing idea play out in the green world? The Crop Mob in North Carolina is digging on sustainable farms across the state to see what they can make grow. On one afternoon each month a group of volunteers gather at a chosen sustainable farm as a community to do the work it would take a solitary farmer months to do.
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Solar Leasing Makes Solar Power Affordable

Posted on Aug 17, 2010 by Scott James.

Anyone I know who is interested in solar power usually has two thing that make them tilt their head, clench their teeth and do the breathe-in hesitation- high up front costs and maintenance. It can cost a lot of money to buy solar panels, and even more to keep them in optimal shape once you install them. But the new Solar Power Purchase Agreement (SPPA) program from the EPA aims to change all that. The idea is simple- whole companies will exist that buy large amounts of solar panels, maintain them, generate the energy, and lease it to homeowners.
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Climate Counts Back-2-Cool Campaign

Posted on Aug 12, 2010 by Zachary Shahan.

It won’t be long before we’ll start seeing Back-2-School advertisements again. Back-2-School campaigns seem like relatively harmless advertising campaigns, right? Maybe not. Back-2-School season actually creates more revenue for the US’ top 100 companies than any other time of year other than the holiday shopping season. And, as with all advertising campaigns, Back-2-School advertising campaigns try to get you to buy stuff you don’t need. The amount of wasteful, polluting consumerism that occurs during Back-2-School season is surely quite significant, and even more so if you aren’t buying green products from green companies.

If you are interested in lightening your impact on the planet when the Back-2-School campaigns kick in, leading environmental organization Climate Counts has launched a great Back-2-Cool campaign to help you do so.

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Could Obama Administration’s ‘Big Solar’ Grow Up to Beat Big Oil?

Posted on Aug 10, 2010 by Susan Kraemer.

One of the reasons that this nation is unable to pass meaningful legislation to get us off fossil fuels is that the Federal treasury has long relied on income from oil leases amounting in the billions per year. So it is hard for the US government to actually truly stand up to Big Oil.

But what if renewable energy contributed as much money to the Federal treasury… wouldn’t that create a new and powerful energy interest to successfully battle the Godzilla of Big Oil and get us to a new world where government decision-making is just as much influenced by renewable, clean and safe energy? Could we create Big Solar to fight Big Oil?

The Obama administration appears to be doing just that.  It recently proposed extremely high new land fees totaling in the billions, annually. These will fatten the Federal treasury as much as those paid by oil drillers,  from 200 solar projects proposed on desert lands, under Salazar’s Bureau of Land Management. Huge yearly income from all of these per-acre land rents and per megawatt yearly fees could have the effect of doing just that by creating ‘Big Solar’.

Even just one source will add $9.5 million a year to the nation’s common wealth from the 1,000 MW Solar Millennium parabolic-trough solar thermal project near Blythe, to supply LA.
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