News — jmblog

To make your home more energy efficient:

• Stop the air infiltration by sealing the holes and cracks (except for the amount needed to get air to burn gas in the furnace and hot water heater).
• Insulate the ceilings, walls, and maybe the foundation or basement.
• Orientation: have south facing windows with eaves that shade them in the summer. And with the main roof beam going east-west, you can have photovoltaic panels and hot air or water on the roof, plus a trombe wall or greenhouse on the south side.
• Have fresh air from a heat exchanger, heat recovery ventilator, or a moisture and heat recovery ventilator.

Here are some more interesting things to try:

• Use local heat such as a hot water bottle, hot tea, hot chocolate, coffee, an electric blanket, a space heater, a sweater, hat, or walk, bike, and exercise to stay warm.
• Put clear plastic over the windows. 3M has plastic that you tape over a window.
• In hot times, you can drink a lot of fluids, wear clothes that provide shade, increase air flow at night through the house via opening windows, fans, exhaust fans, etc.
• Plant deciduous tress and install shades, eaves, or awnings for shade.

Mother Earth News has more ideas on how to heat and cool your home: insulation, energy efficiency, thermal shades, swamp coolers, etc. Also check out Finehomebuilding.com, Greenbuildingadvisor.com, and Amory Lovins' Rocky Mountain Institute. An energy audit can show what is most effective in reducing energy use. Local governments and utilities often subsidize them. What do you find effective for conserving energy? Pete Seeger got warm twice, by splitting his own wood. If you have any other tips for making homes more energy efficient, please share them in the comments below!

Pressure states to close coal power plants and do renewables! Go to utilities for dummies for Dave Roberts' introduction to the weird world where utilities make their money by building large polluting coal plants and getting a 10% profit on the construction of new plants; the more they spend, the more they make. They can then take over politicians and regulatory agencies. The utilities own the territory, so they don't want any competition (such as rooftop solar) with generating electricity and power. Obama has fortunately tightened regulations on new coal power plants and is proposing to tighten regulations on existing plants. In addition, a coalition of groups (Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Clean Energy Action, 350.org, etc.) have prevented over 50 new coal power plants from being built by means of protests, lawsuits, news reports/events, etc. Go to cleanenergyaction.org for more info on how to decrease the burning of fossil fuels. Have you heard of or been to any good clean energy events?

Now we need thousands marching to pressure politicians to stop being bought off by oil, coal, gas, and utility companies. Sustainable power is possible: Texas and Germany get much of their power from wind turbines and solar panels now. We just need to stop oil, gas, coal, and utility companies from corrupting, intimidating, and bribing politicians to allow these companies to dump their CO2 in to the air, causing more extreme floods, fires, hurricanes, droughts, higher temperatures, a projected sea level rise of 10 feet, a 30% increase in ocean acidity, and extinctions. We need:

• carbon taxes
• increases in solar power, efficiency, and conservation
• organizing to get universities, cities, churches and synagogues to sell their stocks
• more support for green politicians
• municipalization of electric utilities
• tidal power
• zoning laws that favor wind and solar power
• campaign finance reform
• jobs in increasing insulation and efficiency
• in general, actions that make it immoral and illegal for oil gas, and coal companies to destroy the earth

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/a-call-to-arms-an-invitation-to-demand-action-on-climate-change-20140521 Support: 350.org, sierraclub.org, and greenpeace.org. Recent climate change successes, from "A Big Win for Divestment" by Tim Dickinson in the June 5th, 2014 issue of Rolling Stone:

• Stanford students organized votes of their senate, a referendum, and organized alumni to pressure Stanford to divest its endowment from stocks in coal companies.
• Seattle and San Francisco are purging their portfolios from climate killing stocks.

We should avoid pesticides on our lawns and in the plants that we buy. In particular, we need to ask stores if their plants have the systemic pesticides, neonicotinoids or neonics, that appear to be killing bees. We should plant plants that are good for bees, butterflies, birds, wildlife and humans. Many pesticides sicken children, pets, and people. Read more: Protecting backyard bees Many people are marching and organizing to protect bees. Join them! Groups that fight against pesticides include:

• Beyond Pesticides
  • Demand Stores Stop Selling Bee-Killing Pesticides
• Organic Consumers Association
• Pesticide Action Network
• Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides
• Friends of the Earth
• Beyond Toxics

I went to a preview of an almost finished documentary movie on lead poisoning, Mislead: America's Secret Epidemic. It shows that many cases of ADD, ADHD, and autism are caused by lead poisoning. 1/3 of the kids in the US have unsafe levels of lead. It recommends having kids' blood tested for lead and having houses tested for lead if the kids' level is high. Also it mentioned a report where most of the decline in violent crime is due to a decrease in lead from leaded gasoline. It might make a good play. It is going around to some film festivals. It reminded me of the syphilis play David Feldshur did (where doctors and officials chose not to treat black men with antibiotics who had syphilis, because they wanted to prove that black men would go through the same stages before death as white men, to whom they gave the antibiotics). Lead poisoning costs $50.9 billion per year, just for some of the costs. There was a court judgment in December, 2013, in California. Tamara, the director and interviewer in the film, spoke at the preview. She targets the movie at mothers and pregnant women between the ages of 20 to 42. The goal is to get them upset so they will pressure the government to force cleanups of homes and schools. There is a payback of between 20 and 200 to 1 for every dollar spent in prevention. The California case involved a tobacco lawyer and took 13 years, but it may be overturned or limited by the appeal court. Maybe an anti-tobacco law firm would be interested in financing the writing of a play. Maybe I should write a play. The director said that for TV, they want more of a story or reality TV slant showing how hard it is to live with a child with difficulties. The EPA is prevented from requiring cleanups of lead in schools and homes by the power of the paint and lead industries that lobby and donate money to politicians. What do you know about lead poisoning? Have you had your children tested? Leave a comment below.

Recent studies have shown that BPA-free plastics often used in cups, bottles, and containers can be just as dangerous as BPA plastics, if not more so. Most of the 80,000 chemicals in use have not been tested for safety due to lobbying, lawsuits, PR campaigns, and campaign contributions by chemical companies. Solution: Use STAINLESS STEEL and GLASS for BOTTLES and FOOD CONTAINERS (sippy cups, Tupperware, water bottles, especially for children). MINIMIZE the use of plastics. Estrogenic chemicals leach from many plastics and are correlated with breast cancer and altered childhood development. Read the Democracy Now interview and Mother Jones article for details on the struggle to publicize this research.