How do the United States solve the ecological problem?

Question

What do the United States do to solve the ecological problem?

I need to find a comprehensive website, a book, or something where I could read about this in detail.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Well, I can't suggest anything but common sense. Why do we use Gas cars? Why do we send jobs out of the country? Common sense shouldn't cost THAT much. :P

Answer 2

you assume there is a problem... I suggest you go to your local video store and rent Penn and Tellers bullshit.. your looking for the episode on Recycling... you may just find that there is no problem... that it is all a big con to get taxpayers to give up money to dirty fake recycling companies.

Answer 3

Heh', some people are sure long winded.

If you want to "solve" the eco problem, then make it "do-able" for the common man.  

Higher gas taxes = higher product prices = less money consumers have to spend on efficient products.  Vicious cycle.

Solar energy became big in the 70's, but it was SOOO expensive, that people couldn't afford it.  Even today, most states offer to pay HALF of the install bill if you install a system on your home, and the new technology produces twice the kilowatts from the same size panels.  Why aren't more people doing it?  Because it costs $40,000-$50,000 for a system that can run todays home.  Most don't have their half, or $20,000, that they can put towards it, even though they would recoup it in ten years or less.  After that, the lights, fridge, and tv is FREE.

Answer 4

The best thing we can do to make the biggest difference it electric cars.  70% of pollution comes from cars.

Answer 5

We need most of all to change how we think.

You can't solve problems with the same kind of thinking that got you into them...   as someone famous said, Einstein I think.

The Story of Stuff

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

video that shows how our consumerism on steroids type of capitalism is not sustainable.

It's based on manipulation and exploitation of our desires and weaknesses and gullibility.  we are constantly being told that we need every conceivable consumer product, most of which we soon throw away, depleting our resources, destroying ecosytems, and not really in our best interest economically.  

We need to focus less on the doom and gloom of global warming and the rest of the environmental problems, and start focusing on what to do about it.  We should use current technology to get moving.  It is sufficient.

Solar power alone could power the entire country.  It would take less land than now used by coal mines.  Solar power plants in the southwest could do that, using 1% of our deserts.

No fuel ever. No fuel to mine, transport, store, burn, get rid of the waste from, pay for,  or fight wars over.

Scientific American  A Solar Grand Plan

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-so...  

Shows how we can have 65% solar grid by 2050 using solar thermal and concentrating PV power plants in the southwest.

http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/

Green Wombat has a bunch of articles on progress in this direction already happening in California where we will have over 2 gigawatts of this power in a few years, in addition to the 355 megawatts we already have in the Mojave Desert.  

Just the beginning.

One gigawatt could  power San Francisco or 778,000 homes.   Hoover Dam is 2 gigawatts.

Some solar thermal company websites:

http://www.ausra.com

http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/

http://www.infiniacorp.com/main.php

http://www.torresolenergy.com/

http://www.skyfuel.com/

http://www.solucar.es/sites/solar/en/ind...

http://www.esolar.com/

From Ausra

"Solar thermal power plants such as Ausra's generate electricity by driving steam turbines with sunshine. Ausra's solar concentrators boil water with focused sunlight, and produce electricity at prices directly competitive with gas- and coal-fired electric power."

"All of America's needs for electric power – the entire US grid, night and day – can be generated with Ausra's current technology using a square parcel of land 92 miles on a side. For comparison, this is less than 1% of America's deserts, less land than currently in use in the U.S. for coal mines."

"The same acre can produce 10 times as much energy from wind as it can from corn ethanol, 180,000 miles per acre per year. But both corn ethanol and wind power pale in comparison with solar photovoltaic, which can produce more than 2 million miles worth of transport per acre per year."   http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1454...

"Using mirrors to focus the sun's heat on one of any various heat-to-electricity converters seems to have separated itself out as being the cheapest form of solar power."

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1444...

"I'd put my money on the sun & solar energy.  What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."  Thomas Edison, 1931

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/s...

article on planned solar plants in U.S. and

Germany.

And that's just solar.

Wind has big potential as well.  Wind is already cheap and is a good balance for solar, because, on average, wind is more available at night."

"In the US, the American Wind Energy Association forecasts that installed capacity could grow from 11,603 MW today to around 100,000 MW by 2020."

"In Canada, Emerging Energy Research predicts that installed wind capacity will expand from around 1,500 MW today to around 14,000 MW by 2015."

{from an article at altenergystocks.com by Charles Morand}

"There are areas in Denmark and Germany who use more than 40 percent of their electricity from wind.   From what I have read, they are less concerned about the intermittency than we are in the United States even though we aren't at 1 pecent yet.   Why?   Because we are told by the fossil fuel guys, hey, can't use wind, can't use solar, what about the intermittency.   If wind gets up to 40 percent of the electricity we use and solar gets up to 40 of the electricity we use, the other percents of electricity we need can be made up from the fossil fuel plants that are still there.  If they are run less at full power, they can last a long time.  That can be your electricity `battery.'"

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/1/...

"Solar energy is the great leveler (unlike oil, which has been the great divider) between the haves and the have nots). No one owns the sun. It can't be drilled or mined or tied up in financial derivatives. It is the only energy source in the world that is primarily free at its source and universally available to consumers. And the closer a nation is situated towards the equator - and the bigger their deserts - the better the technology works." (See Here Comes the Sun, February 17, 2007, Commentary, Chipstocktrader.com)

http://www.setamericafree.org/blueprint....

A BLUEPRINT FOR U.S. ENERGY SECURITY

This book should give you some ideas.

http://www.earththesequel.com./

"Krupp and Horn have turned the doom and gloom of global warming on its head.

   "Earth: The Sequel"  makes it crystal clear that we can build a low-carbon economy while unleashing American entrepreneurs to save the planet, putting optimism back into the environmental story."

Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City

http://www.logicalscience.com/technology...  - a list of promising energy technologies

http://www.pluginpartners.org/

Plug in Partners, an advocacy group to promote plug in hybrid vehicles, or PHEVs.   This is our best bet for now.  The average American driver, considering people's driving habits, commutes to work, etc, would average 100 mpg overall with PHEVs.   Day to day shopping, commuting etc., would be mostly driving in electric mode, well within the range of the batteries.  There are no range limits with PHEVs, go anywhere there is fuel.  Overnight charge at home would cost $1 at today's rates.  So you would get 30-60 miles for that $1.   At $1.75 per gallon you would come out even over the life of the car, as compared with buying a regular gas or diesel car.  At today's $3.50 a gallon, you're saving a bunch of money.

The grid can handle the nighttime charging because it's off peak demand hours.

The grid is even now cleaner than burning gas or diesel.   It will get much cleaner with the conversion to alternative energy.  Eventually electric cars will have overcome their range limitations and the grid will be mostly clean energy.