Article Contributed on: 10/24/2009 10:53:07 PM
An email acquaintance who employs himself resolving dilemmas of delivering clean and economical renewable energy to mass populations has provided me a copy of a critique he prepared on the Waxman (Henry - D-CA)-Markey (Edward - D-MA) Bill, H.R.2454. The bill passed the U.S. House in June 2009 and is being reviewed in the U.S. Senate. It is on the public media plate now and may be in the Oval Office for signature this year. It certainly is being discussed in advance of the climate change conference of world leaders to be held in Copenhagen in December. It is commonly referred to as the "Cap and Trade Bill," an omnibus bill, meaning it has a lot of stuff tacked into it by various Congresspersons, purportedly related to effecting a type of graduated cap on greenhouse gas emissions, i.e., carbon dioxide, and other environmental problems.
Fred, the author, indicates the important stuff that addresses the real subject of sequestering (setting apart, preferably deep in a mine) carbon dioxide emissions is intentionally obfuscated (darkened, made obscure) in the bill. To sort it out, he went through the +1100 pages and cut out and pasted into some sort of logical sequence the bill as and when it identified issues, its contradictory and "archaic" definitions, and its expressed resolutions. He evidently left in place the bells, whistles, and blings, scattered at pertinent points throughout, included to satisfy panaceas popular with the general public. He indicates the latter expenditures were put there for those voters who desire to see something done they can comprehend today to heal the environment, and that our querulous sense our negligence or direct insult toward it may have taken us to the point of no return as to clean air, clean water, clean fuel, clean conscience, clean - up.
Fred says the Waxman-Markey Bill is a terrible bill, that though he is "supportive of carbon dioxide emissions management through carbon cap, tax and trade legislation" (and we are all in great peril if something isn't done, he says), he is "totally opposed to this bill" because "it is a very poorly conceived piece of legislation, likely to accomplish very little in terms of carbon dioxide management while resulting in considerable cost increases to consumers...and probably very costly and undermining for manufacturing."
In the last quarter of his paper, Fred really caught my attention writing about algae and biocharcoal. Algae is algae (Algy met a bear, A bear met Algy, The bear was bulgy, The bulge was Algy; as Red Skelton used to recite in his one-man show). From what I extrapolated, though I need to question Fred further on this, I conceived that a householder could grow algae, as Fred indicated, in a sort of baggy, drawing in carbon dioxide and providing a bit of sewage for added nutrients for the bulging algae. Then the algae is dried, which I conceive being accomplished in one's homemade solar oven, made from two cardboard boxes and a ¼ to ½ inch thick sheet of hard plastic, and cooked therein to release bio-oils and other hydrocarbons. The 60% left would be biocharcoal to be used in a variety of ways, including plowing it into the householder's soil to "boost soil fertility," as one example.
Making biochar was developed by an ancient civilization in the Amazon about 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, and it made the Amazonian jungle soil, as we all know, "eight times as fertile as surrounding soil," reports Fred. What environmentally friendly householder wouldn't want that soil additive?
My thought is that if one could first develop a program with the City of Aurora, say, whereby the City officially notes that one amended one's soil at the biochar baseline, and provided the householder a certification as to same, then the householder produced a quantity of garden veg, more than the householder needed personally, and the City accepted the certified biochar based residential garden veg as a contribution to a food bank it developed, institutions requiring food to serve each day in the City to school children, hospital patients, prisoners, gov. sponsored nursing home residents and so forth might pick up gratis the veg, herbs, spices and other produce from the food bank. This might cut expenditures for food from government coffers, and help the environment by amending a patchwork of soil through our community for the purpose of better serving humanity for thousands of years to come. Maybe, or maybe not, the City might have something to share with the householder in exchange for this effort, without any capital changing hands. Hmmn; wonder what that might be?
One way to move our purported service economy into one sustaining the environment, ourselves and our own, while we identify the real cost of what we purchase from what has Not been factored into the price of things.
Baked with love,
Sharon Pearce