Annie Birdsong's Homepage



    Our Violent Dependency on Fossil Fuels    


What is the true price of coal?
Preview of the Documentary "The Last Mountain"


__________________________________________________________________

Will we be a hot, flat and dry planet?
Coal Mining: Destroy the Mountains and You Dry Up the Rivers



Electricity from solar -- not coal
Belgium: 16,000 Solar Panels provide Enough Electricity for 4,000 High Speed Trains


__________________________________________________________________

Kennedy shows how to bring about renewable energies.
Robert F. Kenndy Jr. on Coal Vs. Geothermal, Wind and Solar

A large plant generating electricity by burning coal goes through one train load of coal every 12 hours, at a huge cost to the environment, spewing mercury, lead and arsenic into the air and water.

 

__________________________________________________________________

Being responsible.
Sacramento Transitioning to Renewable Energy



Say no to coal and acid rain.
An Affordable Way to Have Solar Energy


__________________________________________________________________

You can never adequately clean up an oil spill
What Petroleum Dependency Means to Aquatic Ecosystems



Nature is struggling to survive.
Acid Rain Destroying Trees

Fossil fuels are very toxic.

They contain radioactive substances, such as uranium and thorium; as well as carbon monoxide; toulene, xylene and benzene, which are highly carcinogenic; heavy metals; PAHs, which can cause breast cancer; nitrous oxides, which cause ozone depletion; sulfur dioxide, which makes the water so acidic that thousands of streams in the United States are dead. Nothing can live.

Benzene can cause leukemia, bone marrow damage, blood disorder, anemia, infertility, bleeding, weakened immune system, convulsions, vomiting, irritated respiratory track, skin irritations, genetic degradation and more.

Coal even contains mercury, lead and arsenic.

Acid rain from fossil fuel exhaust can destroy the ozone layer.

The scientist who discovered this, Paul Crutzen, won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995. Life on earth can not exist without an ozone layer.

Acid rain from certain substances in fossil fuel exhaust is also destroying trees in many places on the earth. Take a look at what acid rain and insects have done to the fir trees in the video below. How long can nature hang on?


__________________________________________________________________

And study war no more
All Our Power Could Be Generated By Our Roads

We don't want roads made of asphalt; asphalt leaches toxic, radioactive substances into our waterways. We need roads made of glass that is strong as steel and that generates all of our power.


__________________________________________________________________

Even agriculture will be impacted.
Preparing for the Peak Oil Crisis

When Cuba had to learn to live without petroleum, even its agriculture was impacted, for fertilizers and pesticides are made from petroleum.

In the video below, Richard Heinberg discusses our need to begin now to prepare for the day when we face such a crisis.

Heinberg, a violinist, illustrator and book designer, is the Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute in Santa Rosa, California.


__________________________________________________________________

We must begin the transition now.
learning From Cuba: How Will We Feed Ourselves When the Petro Chemicals Run Out?




The dirty truth
Do We Want Dirty Oil From Tar Sands or Public Transportation?


__________________________________________________________________

We need, instead, a progressive agenda.
Rick Perry In Bed With Big Oil

Rick Perry, who is a Republican candidate for president, wants to "allow oil companies to drill in some of our most precious places protected for our children," according to Daniel J. Weiss, Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Furthermore, "The Perry plan would undo safeguards from deadly smog, acid rain, mercury, and other pollution. And it ignores a clean tech future while returning to a fossil fuel past," he said.

In addition, Perry "would continue to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to big oil companies through subsidies, while eliminating incentives for American wind and solar companies to grow," he said, adding that "The Perry plan should be stamped 'Made By Big Oil.'"
__________________________________________________________________

Sons for oil -- no!
Public Transportation In Europe

  
No to oil and climate change
Need Ads to Promote Public Trans.


__________________________________________________________________

Amazing what citizens can accomplish on a local level!
10,000 Bicycles in Portland



Peace: Love will find a way.
Set Aside a Portion of Highway Funds for Bike Paths



The State of Oregon passed legislation in the 1970's that sets aside a certain percentage of highway funds for bicycle paths.

Bicycle usage began to dramatically increase. In Portland, approximately 10,000 bicyclers cross
Small Electric Vehicles
the four main river bridges on their way downtown in just three hours, according to a 2005 study done by the Portland Department of Transportation.

What if Congress mandated that all cities set aside a portion of all highway funds to create bike lanes? The lanes could be used by not only bicyclers, but also electric bicycles, golf carts, tut tuts and all kinds of alternative vehicles.

Many people stuggling financially could just have a small golf cart rather than a car, which means they would not have to purchase car insurance -- or gasoline! Consider how this would help senior citizens!

Small electric vehicles like this would also help us far less steel, which can help us protect our mountains from the ravages of mining -- and help bring world peace.
__________________________________________________________________

Breaking dependency on war and foreign oil.
The Amazing Number of Bicycles in Use in Amsterdam

If we would use some of our highway funds to build bicycle paths, far more people would begin to take bicycles -- and maybe even electric golf carts -- to school and work.


__________________________________________________________________

Where is our sense of urgency about curbing our dependency on foreign oil?
Europe: Raise Revenue Taxing Fuel, Not Income

What a difference leadership can make.

The French use seven times less gasoline per person as people living in the USA, according to the World Resources Institute.

Europeans, on average, use 286 liters of gasoline per person in a year compared to 1,624 liters of gasoline per person per year in the United States, according to the International Energy Agency.

"Students from Europe are blown away by how much people in the USA drive," wrote a student blogging on the Internet.

My mother, who visited Switzerland, said there were very few cars on the road there. "People were walking and riding bikes," she said. One of the main reasons for Europe's greatly reduced dependency on foreign oil is high taxes on fuel rather than on income. These taxes on fuel add as much as $5 to the cost of a gallon of gasoline.

In February 2011, a gallon of unleaded in France costed $8.33, in Sweden, $7.95; in Switzerland, $6.93; in the U.K, $7.91; but in the USA, only $3.14, according to the European Road Information Centre.

Seventy percent of the price paid at the pump in France is taxes.

"We've got to get used to a world with higher gas prices," said Wouter Bos, former deputy prime minister of The Netherlands.

These high taxes on fuel help solve urgent problems. By taxing fuel rather than income, Europeans believe unemployment is reduced.

Moreover, the high taxes on fuel force people to take public transportation, walk or take a bicycle rather than drive -- which is very important as oil supplies dwindle and international tensions flare. Public transportation is often very excellent in Europe.

In Paris, half the trips people made are by foot, bicycle or public transport, according to The United Nations Environment Program.

Furthermore, high oil prices really increases demand for smaller, more fuel efficient cars and electric vehicles, spurring government action. While light duty trucks get 21.6 miles per gallon in the USA, they get 31.1 mpg in Europe.

And to save fuel, many Europeans have moved closer to where they work and closer to city centers.

It all means reductions in green house gas emissions that cause global warming, reductions in other kinds of toxic pollutants from tailpipe exhausts that make their way into the water we drink and less assault on our ozone layer. Fossil fuel exhausts errode the ozone layer, according to Dr. Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1995.

Life on earth can not exist without an ozone layer.

Also significant, because of high fuel taxes, Europeans own 30 percent fewer automobiles, which means less international tensions over consumption of dwindling supplies of the many kinds of metals and other resources that it takes to build automobiles.

I say, to be responsible, peace-loving people -- who want the military out of the Middle East -- we need to enact similar legislation charging high taxes on fuel -- not income.
__________________________________________________________________

We don't need war over oil.
Hydrogen Can Be Burned in the Automobile You Have Now




World peace, harmony and love -- not fossil fuels
Fossil Fuels: The Most Costly Fuel Imaginable

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University, said the United States spends about as much on the military as the whole world put together.

I would think the purpose of our vast military is to protect our oil supplies and ensure access to the vast amount of resources needed to build the automobile.

We have 85,000 soldiers in Germany. We have 50,000 soldiers in Iraq. We have 50,000 troops in Japan. We have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan.

The USA also has troops in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Kyrgyzstan, the Netherlands, Kosovo, Kuwait, Italy, Israel, South Korea, Bulgaria, Bahrain, British Indian Ocean Territory, Brazil, Cuba, Spain, Guam, Greece, Australia, Philippines, Portugal, Turkey, United Kingdom and Greenland.

Dr. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and Linda J. Bilmes, an economics professor at Harvard University, figured that the long term costs of the Iraq War costed 3.3 Trillion when all costs are figured in, such as health care, retirement, disability, rebuilding the country etc.

The United States is spending $105 billion per year in Afghanistan, according to the USA Today newspaper. That is $2,187,500,000 billion per week!

When everything has been counted, it means the cost of using fossil fuels and an automobile for everyone is just astronomical. About $840 per car in one year -- just in Afghanistan. (We have about 125 million automobiles on our roads.)

We've been in Afghanistan 10 years. That's $8,400 per car, just in Afghanistan. If we add to that Iraq we see thatwhat is going on is completely crazy and cruel!

Wouldn't it be far cheaper and more humane for us to take some of the defense money and use it to purchase everyone an electric car, subsize solar and wind and develop first class public transportation, such as light rail, trolleys, subways and buses. We also need to build bike lanes that can be used for not only bicycles but also electric bicyles and golf cars.

It seems we Americans are the least intelligent creatures on the entire earth.
__________________________________________________________________

California always leads the way.
California Drives the Future of the Automobile

The state of California is taking aggressive action to bring about zero- emission vehicles, such as cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells. But some in the state are advocating that commuters burn hydrogen in internal combustion engines instead, while a professor with a big following says plug-in hybrids are the vehicles of the future. Click here to read more.
__________________________________________________________________

How electric cars can have an unlimited range.
When Batteries of An Electric Car Need Charging, Station Swaps Out the Batteries


__________________________________________________________________

Do we need war over oil?
Man Converts Car to Run on Electricity


__________________________________________________________________

Say No to Oil From the Middle-East and War
Convert Your Car to Run on Natural Gas or Home-made Methane for $100




Reducing pollution and illness by embracing renewable energy.
School Earns Money To Pay Two Teachers By Having Windmills


__________________________________________________________________

We don't need to tear down mountains for coal.
A Solar Power Plant in West Sacramento


__________________________________________________________________

California leads the way to sustainability.
Sustainable Living: Order Products from Real Goods


__________________________________________________________________

To those who hate war
Turn Your Automobile Into a Power Plant

You can turn your car into a power plant to help generate money for yourself.

Even if you live in an apartment complex, you can purchase solar panels for the roof and trunk of your automobile to generate electricity and store the electricity in batteries in your trunk.

This electricity can be sold to the grid for money because a U.S. law called The Regulatory Policies Act requires power companies to purchase renewably generated electricity at the "avoided cost" of power from alternative producers of energy.

So while you are at work or school, your car can be making money for you.

Farmers could make money by putting windmills in their cow pastures or farm fields.

Another piece of legislation offers loan guarantees for the invention of innovative technologies for producing renewable energy. This legislation is an amendment in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Section 406, the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Some of you could figure out how the wheels of automobiles, as they spin, could generate electricity that is stored in batteries in the trunk and sold to the grid.

You can save the lives of young boys -- preventing war -- by tinkering in your garage. (You could gain a better understanding of engine technology by taking an automotive class at your local community college.)

Also significant, the act mandates that subsidies be given to wind and other alternative energy producers.

Some will be glad to know that the legislation requires that all public electric utilities to offer net metering on request to their customers. Net metering is where you get a credit for renewable energy you produce that makes the meter run backwards.

Furthermore, the law also offers tax breaks to citizens to make energy conservation improvements to their homes.
__________________________________________________________________

The potential of students is amazing.
Students Build Earth-Friendly Homes Powered Solely By the Sun



Transitioning off coal-fired power plants and natural gas
University of Maryland Wins Solar Decathelon 2011


__________________________________________________________________

To live light and traceless
Preview of the Video "Build Green"


__________________________________________________________________

We need to be in crisis mode to prevent wars over oil.
Fixing Our Unemployment Crisis By Transitioning Off Petroleum

Unemployment is a sad sad thing.

Right now, we have women shacking up with men they hardly know -- no money for rent or even for storage rental.

We have unemployed women prostituting themselves. (They should instead go to the shelter!)

We have unemployed men stealing cars and robbing people.

We have millions of unemployed people losing their homes.

We have unemployed people with crumbling marriages as they argue over finances.

How can we fix our broken economy?

I say we need for the government to create businesses providing millions of jobs to transition the nation completely off petroleum.

Decent people don't believe in bombing countries for petroleum when there are renewable forms of energy.

Haven't we bombed enough countries? (Twenty-four since World War II.)

We spent $3.3 Trillion in our unprovoked war against Iraq, according to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist. What if we had spent every penny of that money on transitioning off petroleum?

The government could create businesses to manufacture solar panels for every home, businesses to create light rail transportation systems powered by solar panels for all the cities and businesses to re-engineer everyone's cars to be powered by electricity.

Dr. Andrew Frank, a professor at the University of California, Davis, and his students have re-engineered cars to run on electricity.

It seems to me, we could even cover every inch of car bodies, excluding the windows, with inexpensive thin-film solar to recharge the batteries during the day. The electricity generated could be stored in batteries.

We could even put windmills on the roofs of vehicles.

Now that oil has peaked, we better be transitioning off petroleum or the world will be in war like we've never seen.

The government needs to step in because the private sector is failing so badly.

I am afraid if the government doesn't step in there will be war in Iran over oil.

Peace movements should be concerned with transitioning to renewable energy.
__________________________________________________________________

Good people are for renewable energy -- not war over oil.
In Our Communties, Let's Re-engineer the Cars to be Plug-In Hybrids

A professor at the University of California, Davis, and his students have re-engineered nine sedans and sport utility vehicles to be plug-in hybrids, which get 100 miles-per-gallon of gasoline.

Professor Andy Frank, who teaches mechanical and aeronautical engineering at the University of California, Davis, said plug-in hybrids were being discussed in engineering literature as vehicles that could fix the shortcomings of electric vehicles. Then he then built the first one.

The major problem with electric vehicles when they were taken off the market was that they only get 120-150 miles before the battery has to be recharged.

"People might want to visit grandma who lives 250 miles away," said Jerry Martin, who was spokesperson for the California Air Resources Board.

"An Electric vehicle couldn't make the trip without stopping for eight to 10 hours to recharge the batteries, whereas an internal combustion engine has an unlimited range as long as there are fueling stations."

But now there is an electric vehicle, the plug-in hybrid, that has an unlimited range. These vehicles have the capacity to go 60 miles solely on electricity supplied by a battery before automatically shifting to an internal combustion engine that burns gasoline or ethanol.

Professor Frank explained that the reason he designed the vehicle to have an electric range of only 60 miles when a range of 120-150 miles possible is because batteries are expensive.

To recharge the battery, the vehicle is plugged into a 120 volt wall socket. "When one forgets to recharge the battery at night, gasoline can just be burned the next day, but daily travel would cost three times as much," said Professor Frank, a Chinese American with a quick smile.

"However, it would still be cheaper than driving a conventional car since the plug-in hybrid is very efficient. Running soley on gasoline, this vehicle gets twice the fuel economy of a conventional gasoline car." When the calculation includes the all electric range, the plug-in hybrids get over 100 miles-per-gallon.

Professor Frank and his students have re-engineered nine sedans and sport utility vehicles to be plug-in hybrids. One was a Ford Taurus that originally got 24 miles-per-gallon, but now gets 68 mpg once the engine has shifted to gasoline.

To achieve this fuel economy, Professor Frank did not merely put batteries in a conventional automobile. He made the engine much smaller and simpler, with only 15 percent the parts used by conventional vehicles, as well as electronic controls, which means less wear and more reliability.

"Maintenance costs are much lower than those of a conventional car," he said.

Plug-in hybrids vehicles could "get us out of the Middle East and Iraq right now," he said, adding that "Seventy percent of all people driving would use no gasoline at all on a daily basis if they plug-in at night when electricity rates are cheaper.

"The remaining 30 percent would use only a small amount of gasoline per day. ?"The liquid fuel could easily be ethanol that we currently produce for blending with gasoline [in California.] Thus, these plug-in hybrid electric vehicles could use no gasoline at all."

The vehicle could cut an individual's trip to the gas station from 35 to 5 times per year and reduce U.S. consumption of gasoline by 90 percent, according to a three-volume report published cooperatively by the California Air Resources board, the California Energy Commission , The National Renewable Energy Laboratory and other organizations.

Former Secretary of State George Shultz and former CIA director James Woolsey promoted plug-in hybrids in a policy paper decrying "the dangers of oil dependency."

The country "would be substantially more secure" if plug-in hybrids were marketed, they wrote.

Professor Frank said, "The buzz is that all the automakers in Japan are interested in building plug-in hybrids."
__________________________________________________________________

Reducing Reliance on foreign oil and war.
Democrat Says Republicans Opposed Fuel Efficiency Standards


__________________________________________________________________

We need many ways of creating electricity.
Using a Biodigester to Fertilizer and Electricity or Methane from Hog Manure

Electricity can not only be made of hog and cow manure, but humanure.

To collect humanure, you collect the urine separate from the humanure in buckets. The bucket collecting humanure has a compostable bag in it to line it. The bucket holds a layer of humanure and table scraps, then a layer of soil, a layer of humanure and table scraps, then a layer of soil etc. When the bucket is full, the bag is tied and might be set out on the curb on a certain day to be picked up by the government to make composted fertilizer and electricity from the methane. Or cars might be powered by the methane that is generated.

The fertilizer should be given free of charge to our small farmers so that the topsoil of our farms is ever enriched -- which means it can last 2,000 years and beyond.


__________________________________________________________________

Some Republicans resist
Farmers Get Gov. Funds to Make Electricity From Manure -- And More


__________________________________________________________________

"Let's transition from the automobile and war to public transportation and peace."
Alabama Needs Progressive Leadership to Improve Public Transportation

Public transportation system in my lovely state -- Alabama -- is absolutely primitive.

The state gives not one cent to the cities for transportation. The only other states that do not fund transportation at all are Hawaii, Nevada and Utah.

It means that millions of dollars Alabama could get from the federal government for public transportation go unclaimed because we fail to put up matching funds of 20 percent.

A good public transit system is a quality of life issue for the students -- whose parents may have difficulty purchasing and upkeeping a car for them, the unemployed, the disabled, the unlucky underpaid workers and the senior citizens.

One half of the 67 counties in Alabama have no public tranportation system, except for vans for the disabled and elderly that come to the door.

There are no buses in the city where my mother lives. As a bus rider, I'm wondering how I will get there if she gets sick. She is almost 80 years old.

Where I live, on Southside, there is a bus, but it only runs every hour -- except on Saturdays, it runs every hour and a half.

Where I used to live, in the state of Maryland, there are buses every 20 minutes on weekdays. There are also subways that could take you across the city or to DC or Virginia, very quickly.

When the buses only come every hour, it makes it very hard when you have to transfer three or four times running errands.

The waiting is unbearable -- especially since there are very few seats or shelters at bus stops.

Recently, I saw a young guy waiting on the bus sit right on the concrete where sick people spit.

The bus service is so underfunded, it can't send replacements when a bus breaks down.

Because the bus service is so poor, many people who CAN'T AFFORD the expenses of owning a car -- car insurance, car repair, car payment, rotating tires, getting tune ups -- buy one anyway.

In Alabama, only 4 people per 1000 use public transportation to get to work, whereas in Maryland, 80 or 90 people per 1000 take the bus, according to 2009 federal census data.

Where you really see progressive public transportation is Portland, Oregon.

Approximately 45 percent of commuters going into downtown are taking the bus, light rail or streetcar, according to a 2005 survey by the Portland Business Alliance. Another three percent are car pooling, five percent are biking and three percent walking. In all, 56 percent of commuters have abandoned single-occupancy car trips.

Moreover, in 2005, the Portland Department of Transportation counted approximately 10,000 bicyclers crossing the four main river bridges on their way downtown in just three hours.

Alabama is not prepared if gasoline jumps up to $80 per barrel.

The people will be calling for war in Iran, though we are in the Bible Belt.

Alabama's health is also being affected by our poor leadership in transitioning to public transportation. Our air is among the dirtiest in the nation.

Poisons in the air and on the roads from toxic exhaust fumes wash into our culverts, and into our streams and rivers when it rains -- river that provide water for us to drink and bath in and that aquatic biota swim in.

Because of acid rain from fossil fuel exhaust, many thousands of streams in the country are dead, nothing can live in them.

Petroleum is toxic ? it contains radioactive particles and stuff that causes leukemia. Just breathing the fumes can kill baby animals, so we believe it can kill humans.

Breathing in pollution puts free radicals in your blood that take electrons out of your cholesterol, making it sticky so that it adheres to walls of blood vessels.

So we need progressive leadership to encourage people to take public transportation and phase out the automobile.

We need light rail powered by electricity generated by solar panels.