Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Intelligent Growth



It is too late to return to a Pre-Industrial life style like the Amish have. So the only thing to do now is to work towards a local economy. Stop buying factory made crap imported at great expense to the biosphere, and buy locally made items only [eventually even heavy duty bicycle parts will need to be made by local machine shops]. Dump your GD car and pay a local builder to make the right kind of transportation for you. Only "feulish" denialists keep driving petroleum gulper vehicles.


A healthy economy should be designed
 to thrive, not grow  Kate Raworth

The age of climate gradualism is over, as unprecedented disasters are exacerbated by inequalities of race and class. We need profound, radical change. A Green New Deal can tackle the climate emergency and rampant inequality at the same time. Cutting carbon emissions while winning immediate gains for the many is the only way to build a movement strong enough to defeat big oil, big business, and the super-rich—starting right now.


It seems impossible that a gallon of gasoline, which weighs about 6.3 pounds, could produce 20 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) when burned. However, most of the weight of the CO2 doesn't come from the gasoline itself, but the oxygen in the air. When gasoline burns, the carbon and hydrogen separate.

A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. This number can vary based on a vehicle's fuel, fuel economy, and the number of miles driven per year.

An argument for small scale local utility bike production [intelligent growth]

People are still driving petrol- powered vehicles all over the place as if they just don't know how imperative it is that we must change our life styles. I know it is hard to figure out how to leave your car at home, so I want every one to read through my non-profit blog then pay someone like maybe your grandchildren to build you an electric vehicle that will drive cargo up our steep hills. People that are not weak from driving their cars most of their lives can do without a motor. I did for so many years that my knees developed such bad arthritis that I had to put a motor on my bike. And I still have a hard time walking. But If you put a pedal assist sensor on your bike, pedaling will be like you have superman legs.
Most green house gasses produced from cars is from short shopping trips. You can buy one of the long cargo bikes and put a mid-drive motor on it that will climb our steep hills much better than any hub motor. Or get a trailer that is good enough for town trips [I use a BOB trailer]. The batteries are the most expensive part, but they are worth every cent. Be sure to get one that holds enough watt-hours.

I average around 40-50Wh/mile [less than 500Watt hours per ten mile round trip]. Your lithium-ion battery pack needs to hold at least twice the Watt-hours you will use because they must not fall below 35% of their capacity and charging them to more than 90% causes them to grow crystals that makes the cells last only half of what they would other wise do. If you have properly specked pack it can easily last 6-8 years. I am going to build a pack with at least 200 cells with a capacity of two thousand Watt hours. The more cells you have the cooler they will run and the longer they will last.

I built a two speed front gear with a super low gear for climbing our steepest hills with 500lbs [total combined weight] that no hub motor can do. The price of batteries will come down over time, but only if people invest in the local economy by paying a local person to build a battery pack that fits your needs.

I got sick-n-tired of 1 ply bicycle tires wearing out twice a year, so I put a 4 ply 21.5” OD motorcycle tire [that can handle 291lbs]on the rear and a 20.5” OD on the front the front tire fits onto a BMX rim. Now I seldom get a puncture, and can ride home on a flat tire if I need to; the side walls are so strong they don't really need air in the tires.
There needs to be thousands of local builders working in small scale shops, only local builders can design for local terrain. Factories do not make things cheaper, they can only make things of cheaper quality while taking the money energy away from a small community. Local bicycle builders can make vehicles that will last much longer [if they know how] and local solar voltaic installers can make it possible to operate these locally made vehicles with locally made energy.

As Greta Thunberg put it, there is no excuse for putting more poisonous greenhouse gasses into our breathing air supply, or did she just say “How dare you! Our life support system is collapsing and all you do is talk about is fairy tales of eternal economic growth!! ”. Our world is on fire and it is time everyone took responsibility for their share of the problem. There are two books you must read: 'Hot,Flat and Crowded [why we need a green revolution and what we can do about it]' our library has it in audio CD and paper. And the newest one is 'On Fire [the burning case for a green new deal]' by Naomi Klein [please ask the library to buy a copy of the CD audio book and MP3 audio book]. It tells just how desperate things have become because of our apathy! If you have children think about their future and do something about it right NOW! You can start by demanding that the bus system convert to electricity. Buying new electric cars will NOT solve the problem, we must downsize our energy usage drastically! Also join the local 20/20 think tank. Then go to the local democratic party's meetings and change the way they think about the problem. We have only one year left to make a large change in politics and economics.


A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow Kate Raworth

This is NOT about how to buy more pastry.

Economics are at the center of our world like it or not. If we do not learn to change economics to a a human based system the world will continue to grow more corrupt and soon the proletariat will be groveling slaves to the rich and their robots.

A human based economics is the only hope to understand how to change our world. And this books talks about regenerative industrial design and how to make it work: regenerative economic design. If you want a regenerative and redistributive world business has to change the way it thinks. So next time you buy something find out who it got to you. Did it come from corporate greed?

There needs to be a knowledge commons, even better that the internet is working now. That is why I share as much information as I can on this blog.

Open source electric vehicles [wikipedia]

http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Velocar

http://velocar.cc/

It is available in audio, digital, and even paper! King County Library [seattle] has it in electronic formats. I think I am the first person to get the Audio book through the library.




My Book Review Index:

The Extinction Rebellion [not a book yet] 

How american fascism works
What they don't want you to know [satire?]
The Shock Doctrine: {the rise of Disaster Capitalism} [How the Robber-Baron's Control the Proletariat]
A Cure for Capitalism [How Agriculture must change]
Door to Door  [shipping: buying from other continents makes Americas carbon foot print much larger]
The Great Disruption [Climate Denial to Mass Awakening]
Who killed the electric car ? [a documentary film]
AFFLUENZA [a social disease]
Building a Healthy Economy? 
Hot Flat and Crowded [about saving the world we live on]

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