85 year old Liz Moore is nobody’s fool. The minute she laid eyes on Syncrude’s Canadian Oil Sands operation in Alberta, Canada, she knew some terrible things were happening to the ecology of that area. While touring the company’s site, she took pictures of land not reclaimed, a few snapshots in the visitors center, and came home to Colorado bound to tell a story. She set up a website, The Oil (Tar) Sands of Alberta The Canada/U.S. Connection, and published her pictures along with some interesting facts about the operation.

Almost immediately, Syncrude’s legal staff wrote her and demanded she remove the pictures she had taken. Shortly thereafter, the company’s publishing firm did the same, as did the Alberta provincial government concerning pictures of the Oil Sands Discovery Center which they helped fund.

Liz also maintains another website: Energy Smart

Here is her story….

If a person pays attention, they can turn common situations into a positive energy saving message. That’s what today’s guest does very well with an interesting and informative website called Energy Boomer.

He tells the story of a bat that helped him find areas that would leak heat, and the story of that grasshopper. He shares his views on ethanol and electric automobiles, but you may not agree completely on his choice of a fuel to power electric generating stations.

You’ll find interesting ways to save energy, at home and at work, and also some tips on saving energy if you work at home. His latest post concerns wind energy, saying wind is a form of solar power. Well, enough of this: listen in and enjoy.

The people whose land we occupied so many years ago have not been given their fair share of our prosperity. Right now, there are more than 10,000 Native American households in Arizona that have no access to electricity. Shamefully, that’s 7% of all Native American households without electricity in America.

Arizona is making an effort to bring electricty to it’s Native American residents through a new program called the Tribal Rural Electrification Program (in PDF). Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano announced the new initiative Wednesday, saying the first phase will bring solar power to at least 100 reservation homes by the end of the year.

The Arizona Department of Commerce Energy Office will run the program, with the help of Arizona State University Polytechnic Campus’ Photovoltaic Testing Laboratory. Arizona utilities and solar power companies will also partner in the initiative.

What are other states doing?

Here’s another one who thinks nuclear power is the energy panacea we all need, and that renewable energy production is, as he states, "a rape of nature." Strong words and I just had to talk about it. The story comes from Science Daily, and there’s also a link to Nuclear Waste Storage that pretty well explains the problem, and takes a good look at the controversial Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada.

Today we’re going to talk about small businesses and their role in laying the foundations for clean and ecologically sensitive industries in this country. Our guest is a long-time advocate of the environment and small business, his name is Byron Kennard, and he is Executive Director of The Center for Small Business and the Environment.

Mr. Kennard has a long list of credits, starting as a community organizer for the Conservation Foundation in the late 1960’s, helping to “lay groundwork for the environmental movement and the subsequent explosion of grassroots action on Earth Day.”. He was awarded the Leadership Medal of the United Nations Environment Program for “distinguished contribution to the cause of the environment.”

He served as National Vice Chair of Sun Day in 1978, National Chair of Earth Day in 1980 and as Special Consultant to the EPA Administrator for Earth Day 1990.

He also authored the book of essays on social and political change, “Nothing Can Be Done, Everything Is Possible.” The Christian Science Monitor called the book “a primer for the modern-day activist.”

The Ford Model T and the Chevy Volt: Image Sources: University of Houston, Edmonds.com

I was reflecting over the weekend on just how far we’ve come in the past 100 years or so, and I’d like to do some reminiscing. Old folks are prone to do that since we have so many “miles” stacked up. So humor me.

This was a little before my time, but back in the early 1900’s, Henry Ford began production of his Model T, the Volkswagen of its time. The really interesting thing about his new car was that it ran on ethanol, or gasoline, or a combination of the two. As a matter of fact, Ford was quoted as predicting ethanol was the fuel of the future. His vision was to “build a vehicle affordable to the working family and powered by a fuel (ethanol) that would boost the rural farm community.” He also became fascinated with soybean-based plastics through his relationship with George Washington Carver.

In 1942, Ford patented an automobile using a tubular welded frame and a body made almost entirely of plastic derived from soybeans. According to Wikipedia, the vehicle weighed 30% less than a steel car, ran on ethanol instead of gasoline, and could withstand impacts ten times greater than could steel. WWII was underway, and the concept was lost in the demand for war materials.

So what happened to that prediction? Ethanol was used as a fuel by itself and as a blend with gasoline until prohibition hit in 1919, when anything alcoholic was illegal, except for ethanol’s use as an additive to gasoline. After prohibition, ethanol as a fuel by itself never regained popularity, and it was used in gasoline for a very short time to help boost octane and reduce the annoying engine knock that haunted higher compression engines. After World War II, the price of fossil fuels edged ethanol out of the fuels market, and by the late 1940’s, virtually no commercial fuel ethanol was available in the US.

The use of ethanol as an octane booster, or anti-knock additive, gave way in the early 1920’s to a substance known as tetraethyl lead, a cheap, explosive and very poisonous solution developed by General Motors. It was marketed as “leaded gasoline”, and remained a staple of the oil industry until the mid-1970’s when it was outlawed for what it was: a dangerous health threat. That’s why when you pull up to the pump, you see that you are using “unleaded” gasoline. It’s interesting to note that the developers of leaded gasoline were strong advocates of ethanol for boosting octane, but GM reportedly caved in to oil company interests looking for a cheaper method of preventing the pre-ignition of fuels in the cylinder.

So today, the love affair with fossil fuels is waning for a number of reasons, probably more because of the cost than the pollution they cause. Ok, it’s an old man’s cynicism that simply says “money talks”, or to quote Billy Holiday’s lyrics in “God Bless the Child,” “Them that’s got shall get, Them that’s not shall lose.” I really suspect that if the price of gas goes back to $1 a gallon, the push for alternatives like ethanol would fade big time.

Diesel fuel

Let’s move along to another fossil fuel, diesel. When Rudolph Diesel first conceived the engine that bears his name, his primary focus was to provide a simpler and more efficient power plant that would run on petroleum-based fuel or one made from natural plant oils.

The idea caught on in Europe, and Diesel became a millionaire. He came to the US on a couple of occasions to enlist the help of a super salesman he’d heard about, August Busch. Yeah, the Anheuser Busch guy. Busch gave it his best but the concept didn’t catch on in the states, so Rudolph went back to Europe to perfect his invention, and August sold beer. The first diesel engine put into use in the United States was at the Busch brewery in St. Louis. Diesel’s trip wasn’t in vain after all: he sold one. In 1913, as World War I was looming, Diesel boarded a ship to cross the English Channel in an effort to sell his concept to the British. Diesel didn’t make it to the isles: his body was found floating in the water after he didn’t show up for breakfast one morning. It is believed Mr. Diesel was very despondent after losing a patent battle and his fortune, and chose to end his life in that manner. Some conspiracy buffs think the German army, in an effort to keep the British from powering their submarine fleets with his engine, murdered him.

The diesel engine finally caught on after WWI, and became a workhorse during and after WWII. Today, it’s a major contributor to our society, yet most of those engines still run on fossil fuels. Again, I ask the question: if the price of diesel fuel drops to $1 a gallon, would money talk?

The Electric Car

Now, let’s consider the electric car. At one time, many years ago, there were more electric cars on the road than those fueled with gasoline. However, battery technology wasn’t as sophisticated as it is today, and the idea died rather quickly. But let’s fast-forward about 90 years and ponder for a moment GM’s electric car of the mid 1990’s, the EV1. It was a sensation in California, and more than 1000 were leased to eager customers with orders piling up. Then, one day, GM pulled the plug on their new concept, saying they stood no chance of ever making a profit on the car. As leases expired the cars went to the shredders, and all but a very few that were purchased, as I understand, are still traveling the roads of California.

Once again it’s alleged the oil companies, auto manufacturers and even our federal government weighed in on the undesirability of GM’s EV1 and the concept died a mangled death. The documentary film, Who Killed the Electric Car? tells an interesting story; it’s worth a look.

So, here we are, everything that’s old is new again! We’re spending billions of dollars today, researching and producing alternative energy sources to replace high priced and dirty fossil fuels, when the answers were there a century ago. But at that time, fossil fuels were cheap, and money appears to have talked louder than concerns for our health and environment. That’s progress, I guess. What fuels will prevail? With all the research going on we’ll just have to invoke the old saying, “let’s throw it against the wall and see what sticks.”

Sally and I are doing our part, by the way. We drive a ’96 Ford Contour, a nice little car and it serves our needs. However, since my lungs are giving out due to the coal smoke I inhaled as a kid, in addition to emissions from other fossil fuel sources, and of course, cigarettes, walking any distance just doesn’t happen anymore. So, the Veterans Administration was nice enough to give me a four-wheel Rascal scooter to get around. Sally’s knees work on a flat level only, so she now has a Jazzy power chair. We drive the car very little. She shops at the nearby farmers market for most things, and since we live downtown, the public library is close by, and city and county buildings, restaurants and movie theatres are but a few minutes away on our electric vehicles. And yes, it was forced upon us, and yes, there is still a carbon footprint because of the utility company’s use of fossil fuels, but we’re grateful to have these options and know we are contributing our small bit to cleaning up the air and still lead normal lives.