1
known as the bucado, a
sub-species of the Spanish mountain goat.
Copyright
2006-2007, Segue to Solar.2004 - www.Washingtonpost.com August 22, 2005
by writer Juliet Eilperin
what concerned individuals are saying:
____________________________________
We won't have a society if we destroy the
environment.
--Margaret Mead
"Today, more than ever before, there is the most urgency for answers to the question of why there are no political strategies, long overdue, to achieve peace with nature."
- Hermann Scheer, A Solar Manifesto
"Consider: the sunlight that intersects the earth in 24 hours
has more energy than all the conventional oil that has been
or ever will be extracted. As renewable energy technologies
are put into mass production, the goal of a sustainable
economy will be obtainable."
- Ron Swenson (quote from www.HubbertPeak.com)
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. ?#8218;??#8364;œ Charles Darwin, (1809-1882)
"Today, the extinction rate is increasing rapidly
as a result of human interference in natural
ecosystems. Primates, tropical birds, and many
amphibians are particularly threatened. For the f
oreseeable future, this decline is set to continue
because evolution generates new
species far more slowly than the current
rate of extinction."
- Peter Maas (quote from www.http://extinct.petermaas.nl/)
Rainforest Action Network: " You can help stop
species extinction, too. Don't buy products made
from endangered species of plants or animals; if
you're not sure about what you're buying, ask the
merchant or call an organization like the Rainforest
Action Network to find out.
Avoid buying exotic pets; even those bred in
captivity come from stock to which wild specimens
must be added in order to keep them healthy."
- thanks to Brianna at www.RAN.org
"Greater than the tread of mighty armies is the sound
of an idea whose time has come."
-- Victor Hugo"The increased area of thinning of the ozone layer is surprising considering that the Montreal Protocol, ratified by more than 180 countries, has been in effect for 16 years. The treaty establishes timelines for eliminating the production and use of ozone-depleting substances, like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), halons and methyl bromide. Although countries have made great strides in replacing these harmful products, they remain in the atmosphere for many years
and continue to break down the three-oxygen ozone molecules
high above the Earth."
- by Marcela Valente in "Argentina: Health Authorities Silent
on Dangers of Sun's Rays," Oct. 1, 2005, Tierram Arica Network
"We live in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short term thinking."
- Jacques Cousteau
National Parks affected by pollution
National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), a nonpartisan watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., listed the five most polluted national parks. Relying almost entirely on data from the National Park Service and the EPA, the group says the parks with the worst visibility and most severe ozone and acid rain levels are the Great Smoky Mountains Park on the Tennessee-North Carolina border, followed by Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, Shenandoah in Virginia, Acadia on the Maine coast, and the jointly operated Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California's Sierra Nevada. Many parks have been hard hit by sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide from coal-fired power plants, which are responsible for nearly 70 percent of sulfur dioxide and 22 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions nationwide.
Modern solar cells with reasonable efficiency were invented in early 1950's and have been used to power satellites since 1959. They began to be used for Earth based applications in a big way in the in 1970's mostly for remote telecommunication and navigational aids. They have been powering urban applications such as road side emergency telephones and traffic sign boards since mid 1980's. With price dropping steadily due to to rapid advancement in technology, they are now becoming affordable for urban homes and businesses. - Smithsonian Magazine, June, 2003
"I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this
poor planet of ours."
- Kurt Vonnegut
"The science is clear and compelling: We humans are changing the global climate. Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are at their highest levels in more than 200,000 years and climbing sharply. If the trend is not changed, scientists expect the seas to rise two feet or more over the next century. In America, that means 9,000 square miles of Florida, Louisiana, and other coastal areas will be flooded.
We will work with businesses and communities to use the sun's energy to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels by installing solar panels on one million more roofs around our nation by 2010. Capturing the sun's warmth can help us to turn down the earth's temperature."
-- President Bill Clinton before the United Nations June, 1997
"It is important to note that the point of maximum production (known as the "Hubbert Peak") tends to coincide with the midpoint of depletion of the resource under consideration. In the case of oil, this means that when we reach the Hubbert Peak, we will have used half of all the recoverable oil that ever existed on our planet."
- From www.HubbertPeak.com
"The fifth revolution will come when we have spent the stores of coal and oil that have been accumulating in the earth during hundreds of millions of years... It is to be hoped that before then other sources of energy will have been developed... Whether a convenient substitute for the present fuels is found or not, there can be no doubt that there will have to be a great change in ways of life. This change may justly be called a revolution, but it differs from all the preceding ones in that there is no likelihood of its leading to increases of population, but even perhaps to the reverse."
-Sir Charles Darwin
"'The end of the oil age is in sight,' says U.S. petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert....
If present trends continue, Dr. Hubbert estimates, production will peak in 1995 -- the deadline for alternative forms of energy that must replace petroleum in the sharp drop-off that follows."
-from "Oil, the Dwindling Treasure," National Geographic Magazine, 6/74 1974
The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time. Rudolf Diesel, 1912
"What is the use of a house, if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?" - Henry David Thoreau