A Spork in the Road

And now for something completely unrelated to my ongoing physiological solipsism:

Energy-gobbling city home to biggest solar roof (CNN):

…at a ceremony scheduled for Thursday, city and state officials commemorated the city’s convention center, newly powered in part by the largest single-roof solar-panel array in the United States.

The 13,321 photovoltaic panels will produce an average of 26 percent of the convention center’s energy, according to consultants. The panels cover most of the roof’s usable space, leaving room for walkways and other equipment.

“We estimate that we are going to save $4.4 million over the 20 years of the contract [with the solar provider],” said Jeff Vasser, president of the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority.

I’m fascinated by the potential of solar panels (especially in Florida, where it seems an obvious power choice), and I feel chagrined at my own ignorance of the practicalities of this technology in terms of finance, technical challenges, local regulations, etc.

Solar energy will have to be one of my research projects this year. Stay tuned!

I found a link to the website for one of my all-time favorite books about architecture and home planning: The Not So Big House.

I love this book (series of books, actually) for both aesthetic and environmental reasons. They are extraordinarily well written and well thought-out.

The basic premise is this: leaving everything else aside, the modern oversized American floorplan is badly designed and ends up feeling smaller than a well-designed smaller floorplan.

I highly recommend the website and books to anyone who’s thinking about reworking their current living spaces or buying/building a new home.

I walked to some friends’ house last night around 7:30pm. It was cool. The moon was one night short of full and glinted off the silhouettes of palm trees. As I walked, I could feel the living organism of the town around me, breathing and metabolizing. I felt like a cell wandering down an artery, and it was a gift to have even a glimpse of my connection to the greater organism.

The town around me. The region around the town. And out and out to the entire planet and its interlocking ecosystems. The magnificent body of the Earth.

I have cancer, I thought. And I am cancer. Humanity has become a cancer to the body of our planet, and we’re beginning to metastasize. Is it possible for cancer to decide to change its nature, to stop reproducing madly and corrupting its host? I guess we’ll find out over the coming decades.

The oyster population in the Chesapeake today stands at just 1% of its pre-1980 levels.
“Gem of the Ocean” – The Economist

Considering how integral oysters are to cleaning up the water, this is not good, as any Chesapeake aficionado knows. And oysters aren’t faring much better elsewhere; I’ve seen estimates that the current total oyster population is somewhere around 10% of pristine levels.

As in 90% gone.

The Environmental Defense Fund has a convenient seafood selector to help make eco-conscious seafood choices.

Do you think this would be a more effective ecological rallying cry: Don’t be cancer!

Hm. Maybe not.