Mountain Xpress Forums

Cob construction-WNC and around the World

2009-09-06T17:51:07-05:00

There are some great Cob structures around Asheville and the surrounded hollers. There’s a handful in Montford, a few in south asheville, and little huts and homes in many surrounding counties. Rutherford, to Madison, Jackson, and i’m sure far beyond.

Anyone got any pictures of one in their neighborhood?

Anyway, some asheville acquaintances who moved to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage (Missouri) this summer forwarded this to me the other day;

With $3000 for supplies and nine months of full time labor, Ziggy was able to build GOBCOBATRON, a small cob house with interior dimensions of roughly 15′x13′, and a footprint of (again, roughly) 20′x18′. Practically all of the labor was completed by hand (and foot!), including making and applying all of the cob.

from:
http://tinyhouseblog.com/earthcob/recipe-for-building-a-cob-house/

What does the building code dictate in your area?

“Friends of America”: “You’ve got to either have energy or be willing to live in poverty and die young.”

2009-09-05T21:16:45-05:00

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Organizers of the Friends of America rally have added a karaoke competition to the pro-coal Labor Day event, but anger among environmentalists continued to mount Friday.

Coal producer Massey Energy and more than 100 associations and businesses are sponsoring the rally and free concert, which will feature country singers Hank Williams Jr. and John Rich, among others.

Earlier this week, the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity blasted Verizon Wireless for its sponsorship of the event, arguing it amounts to support for mountaintop removal coal mining and opposition to legislation designed to control climate change.

Late Friday, the group said more than 80,000 people had signed on to their letter to Verizon, including groups that represent millions of members. They include the Natural Resources Defense Council, Defenders of Wildlife, Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace USA, Friends of the Earth, Appalachian Voices and Christians Caring for Creation.

Massey Chief Executive Don Blankenship has said the rally is designed to focus attention on the need to protect American jobs by ensuring they aren’t taxed or regulated out of existence. The rally Web site asks concertgoers to sign a petition against federal cap-and-trade legislation designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

and here’s the best part:

Blankenship told the Charleston Daily Mail on Friday that he does not believe in climate change and that the benefits of mining and energy production must be weighed against the environmental costs.

“You’ve got to either have energy or be willing to live in poverty and die young,” he said.

http://wvgazette.com/ap/ApTopStories/200909050091

http://www.change.org/actions/view/tell_verizon_dont_sponsor_mountaintop_removal_rally

Following The Trail Of E-Waste

2009-08-30T20:46:51-05:00

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/19/60minutes/main4579229.shtml

Computers may seem like sleek, high-tech marvels. But what’s inside them?

“Lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, polyvinyl chlorides. All of these materials have known toxicological effects that range from brain damage to kidney disease to mutations, cancers,” Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist and authority on waste management at the Natural Resources Defense Council, explained.

“The problem with e-waste is that it is the fastest-growing component of the municipal waste stream worldwide,” he said.

Asked what he meant by “fastest-growing,” Hershkowitz said. “Well, we throw out about 130,000 computers every day in the United States.”
...
And he said over 100 million cell phones are thrown out annually.
Executive Recycling, of Englewood, Colo., which ran the Denver event, promised the public on its Web site: “Your e-waste is recycled properly, right here in the U.S. - not simply dumped on somebody else.”

That policy helped Brandon Richter, the CEO of Executive Recycling, win a contract with the city of Denver and expand operations into three western states.

Asked what the problem is with shipping this waste overseas, Richter told Pelley, “Well, you know, they’ve got low-income labor over there. So obviously they don’t have all of the right materials, the safety equipment to handle some of this material.”

Executive does recycling in-house, but 60 Minutes was curious about shipping containers that were leaving its Colorado yard. 60 Minutes found one container filled with monitors. They’re especially hazardous because each picture tube, called a cathode ray tube or CRT, contains several pounds of lead. It’s against U.S. law to ship them overseas without special permission. 60 Minutes took down the container’s number and followed it to Tacoma, Wash., where it was loaded on a ship.

When the container left Tacoma, 60 Minutes followed it for 7,459 miles to Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong.

how do you follow a ship for 7500 miles?

Greenpeace has been filming around Guiyu and caught the recycling work. Women were heating circuit boards over a coal fire, pulling out chips and pouring off the lead solder. Men were using what is literally a medieval acid recipe to extract gold. Pollution has ruined the town. Drinking water is trucked in. Scientists have studied the area and discovered that Guiyu has the highest levels of cancer-causing dioxins in the world. They found pregnancies are six times more likely to end in miscarriage, and that seven out of ten kids have too much lead in their blood.

“These people are not just working with these materials, they’re living with them. They’re all around their homes,” Pelley told Allen Hershkowitz.

“The situation in Guiyu is actually pre-capitalist. It’s mercantile. It reverts back to a time when people lived where they worked, lived at their shop. Open, uncontrolled burning of plastics. Chlorinated and brominated plastics is known worldwide to cause the emission of polychlorinated and polybrominated dioxins. These are among the most toxic compounds known on earth,” Hershkowitz explained.

“We have a situation where we have 21st century toxics being managed in a 17th century environment.”

The Delusion Revolution

2009-08-07T15:47:41-05:00

https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/85/delusion-revolution.html

in part:

We are told that it is “realistic” to yield to the absurd idea that the systems we live in are the only systems possible or acceptable based on the fact that some people like them and wish them to continue. But what if our current level of first world consumption is exhausting the ecological basis for life? Too bad. The only “realistic” options are those that view this lifestyle as nonnegotiable. What if real democracy is not possible in a nation-state with 300 million people? Too bad. The only “realistic” options are those that view this way of organizing a polity as immutable. What if the hierarchies our lives are based on are producing extreme material deprivation for the oppressed and dull misery among the privileged? Too bad. The only “realistic” options are those that view hierarchy as inevitable.

Let me offer a different view of reality:

(1) We live in a system that, taken as a whole, is unsustainable – not only over the long haul but in the short term.

(2) Unsustainable systems cannot be sustained.

How’s that for a profound theoretical insight? Unsustainable systems can’t be sustained. It’s hard to argue with that. The important question is whether or not we live in a system that is truly unsustainable. There’s no way to definitively prove such a sweeping statement, but look around at what we’ve built and ask yourself whether you really believe this world can go forward indefinitely … or even for more than a few decades. Take a minute to ponder the end of cheap fossil energy, the lack of viable large-scale replacements for that energy and the ecological consequences of burning what remains of it. Consider the indicators of the health of the planet: groundwater contamination, topsoil loss, levels of toxicity. Factor in the widening inequality in the world, the intensity of the violence and the desperation that so many feel at every level of society.

Based on what you know about these trends, do you think this is a sustainable system? If you were to let go of your attachment to this world, is there any way to imagine this as a sustainable system? Considering all the ways you understand the world, is there anything in your field of perception that tells you we’re on the right track?

Pollution From Lawns Worse Than You Think

2009-08-24T17:26:53-05:00

I don’t know anyone who has a ‘lawn’. But that’s cause I’m sort of a freak.

Do you have a lawn?

Here’s a story from Wired you should read.

What happens on your lawn should stay on your lawn. Scientists have found that runoff from residential yards is filled with far more pollutants than theoretical models would predict, even more than in some agricultural areas.

Loren Oki, an environmental science and landscaping expert from the University of California, Davis, and his colleagues picked eight neighborhoods in California and collected sewage every other week to check for pesticides, nitrates, and other pollutants.

“We started our study in 2006, and at the time there was very little data,” said Oki.”There is a chronic level of pesticides, specifically fipronil and bifenthrin, sometimes at very high concentrations.”

Most of those pesticides are often meant for killing ants, Oki explained, during a press conference at the American Chemical Society. In sewage, the poisons tend to be commingled with high levels of nitrates, from fertilizer, and other pollutants. So his team has been reaching out to several communities, in Sacramento and Orange counties, and offering suggestions to reduce their toxic runoff.

The solution is simple: Design your sprinkler system, and your lawn, so that none of its irrigation water runs into the gutter.

Oki’s lab plans to continue monitoring sewage from the neighborhoods to learn whether their intervention has been effective.

Coal Ash Ponds

2009-08-23T11:20:26-05:00

I’m sure everyone heard about the coal ash pond damn in tennessee failing last december.

The results were horrific.

The TVA says it could take 3 years (which means at least 6) to remove the 3 million cubic yards of ash from the water by early 2010.

http://www.theleafchronicle.com/article/20090821/NEWS01/90821026/TVA+says+ash+spill+cleanup+could+take+3+years

This stuff is extremely toxic.

And yet Asheville has two unlined, barely regulated coal ash ponds of its own.

http://www.mountainx.com/news/2007/coal_ash_dams_in_buncombe_potential_hazard_but_sound/

It amazes me that people would buy a house right next to one of these things.

Or that ‘Progress’ Energy would put them so close to people in the first place.

What say ye?

Is this just crazy?

Or am I chicken little?

Saving Detroit- can America do it by going green?

2008-11-12T16:31:00-05:00

Can we save the American auto industry by making the companies we are bailing out build hybrid vehicles?

I don’t know. I wish someone with a better knowledge of this stuff would tell me.

Personally I’d only drive a Prius, simple because Larry David drives one.

Any tree experts here?

2009-06-06T19:58:08-05:00

I can identify a few trees, but not many. This one has me stumped. The leaves are 4 to 5 inches in length. I know it’s not a beech or a birch. Anyone know what it might be?

Eco-Friendly Hilton Asheville Prepares to Open

2009-08-12T20:21:50-05:00

Nothing like a few token achievements to Greenwash an entirely unsustainable industry…

The Hilton Asheville aims to bring sustainability to its hospitality when it opens this month. Yesterday, representatives for the hotel outlined its goals for green practices, including reduced use of natural resources and the implementation of a solar water heating system (the first in the United States). It also pledged to embrace of the hotel’s western North Carolina surroundings into its design and operation.

The 165-room hotel was designed to LEED certification standards. Among its plans are to reduce water usage by 30 percent through the use of low-flow toilets, showerheads and sink fixtures. By relying on CFL bulbs throughout the facility, the Hilton Asheville leadership expects to use as much as 75 percent less energy than they would with traditional light bulbs.

The Hilton Asheville’s 4,500 square feet of meeting space will be available for groups and will also follow green meeting policies, such as reducing the use of linens or avoiding them entirely. Those arriving at the hotel will also be offered shuttle service in an alternative fuel vehicle, and bicycles will be available for local travel. Those guests arriving in their own hybrid vehicles will be offered preferred parking.

Green efforts will extend to the hotel’s Sparrow Spa, which will include organic treatments, and the on-site restaurant will offer a menu that draws on local growers. The hotel’s water—including the pool—will be solar heated, which the hotel reps claim will eliminate 25 tons of carbon dioxide a year, or the equivalent of planting 7,377 trees.

Yeah, who needs trees when you have carbon credits and low-flow hybrid solar toilets?

http://www.hdmag.com/hospitalitydesign/content_display/industry-news/e3ia9983423088724a68634893823a30194

Why do people get all worked up about kudzu?

2008-06-27T16:33:27-05:00

I just moved to a new neighborhood, and there is kudzu everywhere. People have backyards which are completely covered in the stuff (mine isn’t far from it, in fact). There’s a neighborhood group that spends a significant amount of their free time hacking away at the stuff. Since erosion is a problem in the area, I’m not particularly inclined to get behind the effort, but I’m wondering of there’s more to it than I realize.

I’m not a real flora kind of guy, so I’m not particularly familiar with the arguments. Will someone fill me in on the whole kudzu controversy?