So, just four days into my month of buying only American-made goods I did a little shopping at Trader Joes, a place where I figured I could let my domestic product radar down. My bad. When I got home I came to find that I purchased a little plastic container of cherry tomatoes picked in Mexico.
Damn.
Now, I'm not nearly as upset as I would be if they had been grown in China or Taiwan or a place where we have a massive import to export disparity (in favor of import). In fact, Mexico is an amicable trade partner (except for the drug thing, which is a whole other story) and I suppose in a way, by supporting Mexican farm workers we lower their desire to come here illegally, where they take jobs from American (taxpaying) workers and get abused by a system hostile toward illegals.
Anyway, I'll be more careful from now on. Tasty tomatoes though!
I made a decision today, a decision that, if everyone in this country also made, would go a long way towards solving our current financial dilemma. I decided, for the next 30 days, to buy only American-made products. No Sony or Sanyo, no GAP or Nike, no off brands imported from China or Pakistan. If it doesn't say "Made in USA" I ain't buying it.
Unless it's second hand. I decided that I will check out thrift stores as I'm stocking my new apartment because buying second hand means not pulling something new from the production chain, whether it's a foreign or domestic one.
You see, part of the problem that resulted in our economic meltdown – a big part – is the fact that whereas up until the mid-70's we had a trade surplus, the largest in history. Simply put, we produced and sol more than we bought.
But all of that began to shift in the late-70's. We flipped over from having a surplus to a deficit, and we've never looked back. Today it's nearly $800 billion, or 7% of our GDP. That's a lot of buying and very little selling internationally. For a nice fable on the mechanics of how this all came to be check out this Warren Buffet-penned article from 2003: America's Growing Trade Deficit...
The point of this is twofold: For one, by buying foreign we are sinking our own ship. As our deficit grows out of control the dollar is increasingly devalued, inflation rises, people can't afford to pay for the things we import cheaply but sell high.
The second half of this equation is that by buying American we protect the atmosphere on a global scale. When products are produced here they don't have to be shipped halfway around the world, saving tons of carbon (literally) from entering the atmosphere. We are essentially shopping locally, with the whole of the United States counting for "local."
So, I am pledging here and now to buy only U.S. produced goods for the next 30 days, longer if possible. It won't be easy – lots of label reading required – and probably more expensive too. But the goal is a worthy one. If I can ween myself off foreign-made goods maybe others will be inspired to as well, and with an increased demand for Made in the USA stuff local production will increase, jobs created and the environment protected.
We'd like to give props to the entire state of New Jersey today for agreeing to build a huge offshore wind farm in the southern part of the state toGarden State Offshore Energy, a joint venture that includesP.S.E.G. Renewable Generation, a subsidiary of P.S.E.G. Global, a sister company of the state’s largest utility. The decision, which includes access of up to $19 million in state grants, is part ofNew Jersey’s Energy Master Plan, which calls for 20 percent of the state’s energy to come from renewable sources by 2020.
The proposal by Garden State Offshore Energy includes installing 96 turbines to produce as much as 346 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about ten thousand houses. The turbines would be arranged in a rectangle about a half-mile long by one-third of a mile wide. The project, which would cost more than $1 billion, would not start producing electricity until 2013.
The turbines would be between 16 and 20 miles off the coast of New Jersey’s Atlantic and Ocean counties, and thus in much deeper water than other proposed projects. Deepwater Wind, which will work with P.S.E.G to build the wind farm, said it can affordably build turbines in 100 feet of water with the same technology used to build oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and other locations.
This plan follows ones already approved in Delaware and Rhode Island and hopes are high that New York will soon follow suit. Can Florida be far behind?
By now we should all be separating our garbage from our recylables from our compostables. So what's the next step in cradle-to-grave ethos? How about compostable garbage cans?
UMBRA has come out with a line of cans they say will degrade under natural conditions – the kind found in composting heaps. It's kind of hard to believe, seeing how sturdy and plasticy they look, but we purchased a tall grey can with a swivel top for the kitchen.
We're going to check into just how they degrade, and as to how organic their materials are. Upon seeing the can in the store however, we were compelled to buy it, if for no other reason than to make a statement with our "disposable" income. For now we can report that the can works up to our standards...
Just read this compelling, and heartening, piece on Andrew Sullivan's excellent blog. I'm seriously psyched over this one folks!
"This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."
Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a
postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night. The key component in Nocera and Kanan's new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas.
The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity -- whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source -- runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.
Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.
The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it's easy to set up, Nocera said. "That's why I know this is going to work. It's so easy to implement," he said.
Just returned from a weekend jaunt to the Tampa-Clearwater area of Florida and have to say that I was disappointed by a seeming lack of indifference to our environment. Be it at Tampa Int'l Airport, the Tampa Performing Arts Center, or my grandparents' community center, I saw nary a recycling bin. While I'll slap myself on the wrist later for not bringing my SIGG bottle on this trip, I winced several times as I was forced to throw plastic bottles in the trash. C'mon Tampa! Let's get with the program!!
Now, I'm sure southwestern FL is chock full of environmentally conscious types far more frustrated over the situation than I. So, I encourage any of you reading this to contact me. Let's put our heads together and come up with a gameplan for getting your city and its outlying towns on the right track. There's a lot of lush greenery in semi-tropical Florida. What say we make the state even greener, together?
When I was a kid I was fascinated by the concept of being able to cook food with the sun. My sisters had their EZ Bake oven – I wanted to harness the power of the cosmos!
I remember seeing various solar cookers – from cigarette lighters to big-ass ovens – in the 1970 Whole Earth catalog and feeling envious of those who had the money to actually buy these things. Then I saw instructions for making your own solar cooker. All I needed was cardboard, tinfoil, and something to adhere everything together.
I never got my makeshift oven to work (although I may have inadvertently reflected radio waves to an alien society), but never gave up the thought that, in theory at least, I could cook with the sun.
Fast forward about 30 years and the do-it-yourself bug has struck me again. Wouldn't it be coo, I thought, to finally get that solar cooker cooking? Indeed. Enter instructables.com.
This site has detailed instructions on making an incredible array of cool useful things, including a solar hotdog cooker. Now, I'm not a fan of dogs, but I may have to try to build on eof these things and itch that self-sustaining scratch I've had lo the past three decades. I'll let you know if it works...
So, just four days into my month of buying only American-made goods I did a little shopping at Trader Joes, a place where I figured I could let my domestic product radar down. My bad. When I got home I came to find that I purchased a little plastic container of cherry tomatoes picked in Mexico.
