Love how this looks!

Check out the Aptera — a hot, green electric hybrid three-wheeler nearing production in Carlsbad, Calif.

Here’s a larger photo of the airplane-like, environmentally sensible, alternative-fuel Aptera. And here it is from a side view.

The designer says there’s room inside for a surfboard. And it’s built to run at freeway speeds. Perfect California beach town car.

Projected price? $30k. And there’s a waiting list.
–kwc

by ken winston caine

Towns and cities could cut electricity use significantly — simply and painlessly.

Almost overnight.

All they have to do is to commit to quit trying to light up the night as though it is day.

Turn off, or turn down, street lighting, building lighting and after-hours electric signs on businesses. (This was decreed by President Nixon as national policy during the first oil embargo in 1973, alongside more drastic measures such as gas rationing and a national 55 mph speed limit.)

Cutting street lighting has been shown to CUT crime. (More on that in a moment.)

Bring back the night.

Bring back the stars.

If cities would turn off just every other streetlight, on alternating sides of the street, immediately they would cut streetlighting energy use in half. And cut the cost of streetlighting in half.

Why is no one thinking like this at a time when greenhouse gasses produced by coal-and-other-carbon-fuel-fired power plants are destroying the planet’s equilibrium and by extension, our current and future quality of life … and simultaneously, world-wide, we are facing an energy shortage?

Instead, power companies are calling for more power plants and, at the same time, (more…)

by ken winston caine

See the November 2007 Fast Company piece on Kansan “Johnathan Goodwin [who] can:

• “get 100 mpg out of a Lincoln Continental,

• “cut emissions by 80%, and

• “double the horsepower.

“Does the car business have the guts to follow him?” asks Fast Company in headline type.

His bio-diesel/hydrogen/electric hybrid Hummer gets 60 mpg, has double the horsepower of a stock model, and “does zero to 60 in five seconds.”

Goodwin transforms noxious polluting, gas-hog muscle cars into super-powerful clean green machines using current technology and readily available Detroit parts.

He charges $25,000 per vehicle to manage the metamorphosis. His clientele is mainly celebreties and industry titans — the ultra-rich.

Detroit IS paying attention. But how long ’til this super-low-emission, renewable-energy, power-doubling, fuel-stingy technology is available to the rest of us?

Click this link to read Fast Company’s fascinating article on this fascinating young innovator: (more…)

by ken winston caine

USA Today reports that new parents are leading the fight against our widespread exposure to health-robbing, mutagenic toxins in plastics.

In one of the more comprehensive and serious examinations of the health threats from plastics and plastic food containers, USA Today reporters Elizabeth Weise and Liz Szabo, note in the copyright story, among other things:

• “Parents, activists and many scientists are concerned that if a baby drinks from a bottle made with [plastic chemicals] bisphenol A [BPA] or gums a toy made with phthalates, he or she could suffer serious, even permanent, harm.”

• “In December, the National Toxicology Program, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, concluded that one form of phthalate, called di(2-ethylhexyl), or DEHP, used in intravenous tubing, catheters and other plastic medical equipment, could pose a risk to the proper development of baby boys’ reproductive tracts.”

• “Nearly every American has been exposed. A 2000 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found

(more…)

Just found this poem I scrawled in a notebook March 20, 1989 while looking for a home in the Colorado Rockies near Glenwood Springs, after being hired to establish and man a Western news bureau there for the Denver Rocky Mountain News:

We like the scenery
so we pull it all out
flatten the hills
& scrape the landscape clean
& put up matchstick condos with rustic cedar siding
& sell them for too much, unit by unit,
to people eager to live
in: The Forest
a project whose name
evokes only memories
of the majesty of
what once stood in its place.
– ken winston caine

by ken winston caine

Are you getting the kind of gas mileage many people were getting in 1984?

I’ll bet you aren’t.

The sporty 1984 Honda Civic CRX coupe was rated at 51 mpg city and 67 mpg highway in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tests.

It was a gas-burner. (A stingy gas-burner.) And it was peppy and comfortable and fun to drive.

This was more than two decades ago. Long, long before hybrids.

That same year the Pontiac Fiero 4 cylinder, 2.5 liter, stickshift got 27 mpg city, 47 mpg highway in EPA tests… The Chevy Camaro got 40 mpg on the highway. The Nissan Sentra got a whopping 50 mpg city and 66 mpg highway…

Those were official figures, but they didn’t tell the whole truth. They didn’t (more…)

by ken winston caine

Need more motivation to give up plastic in your food supply?

Here’s a current scientific assessment about the apparent danger of just one chemical that leaches into our bodies from plastic bottles and containers — as well as from plastic coatings and linings that are used in canned foods and in cardboard food-and-drink boxes.

Getting plastic out of your store-bought food supply is nearly impossible to do. Plastic is used everywhere now. Over the past 25 years, it has almost universally replaced once-standard glass jars and unlined “tin” cans and waxed cardboard and waxed paper and foil packaging.

And maybe most shocking, just about a decade ago ingestible plastic suddenly appeared in the produce section of grocery markets.

It’s the shiny coating sprayed onto many fruits and vegetables.

The plastic sheen makes them look attractive in the supermarket and extends their shelf-life by sealing the surfaces, which slows the rate of surface oxidation and makes them appear to be fresher, longer.

Just try to avoid plastic for two weeks and you’ll see why I say that it is nearly impossible.

Dr. Joseph Mercola reports on “a statement by several dozen scientists, including four from federal health agencies” that analyzed 700 studies and concluded humans are exposed to dangerous levels of a chemical found in many plastics used for storing, preparing and serving food and water.

The chemical, bisphenol A, also referred to as BPA, is an estrogen-like substance known to cause cancers and reproductive disorders (more…)

by ken winston caine

It is possible that bottled water is making you fat . . . and that it causes cancer.

Really.

The plastic bottles of designer water that you see people carrying everywhere are NOT good for you…

Packaging water in small plastic bottles has staggering environmental costs — both in the manufacturing process and in the waste-stream created when the bottles are used and tossed in the trash. You’re beginning to read a lot about that aspect of the $15 billion bottled-water obsession.

What you’re not hearing about — yet — are the little-known, but severe, personal health costs — the long-term damage you can suffer from consuming foods and liquids packaged and stored in plastic or plastic-lined containers.

It may take mainstream health and media another 10 years to get onto this. But you shouldn’t wait. You should get onto it now.

Writer Charles Fishman’s fascinating and exceptional piece of in-depth health-and-business investigative journalism in this month’s Fast Company details exactly how the plastic bottled water craze is hurting you and the planet.

Click that link and read the article.

Should you stop drinking water?

Should you stop carrying water with you?

No.

No, no, no, no, no…

The solution is simple: (more…)

Let me share this urgent message I received today:

SPREAD THE WORD

Tell Congress to shift funding from chemical-based agriculture to more environmentally friendly organics!

“According to the subsidy data from the Environmental Working Group, one giant cotton farm collected $2.95 million through crop subsidies in 2005, nearly as much money as the federal government spent on its primary research program for organic agriculture last year — $3 million.”
– The New York Times, July 4, 2007
“The Debate Over Subsidizing Snacks”

Dear Supporter,

New York Times reporters aren’t the only ones poring over the information in EWG’s Farm Subsidy Database. The unfair funding distributions have everyone’s attention and EWG Action Fund’s Grow Organics Campaign (www.ewg.org/organics/petition) for organics funding is taking off. Thanks to your generous support, we surpassed our goal and raised a total of $45,000! These vital funds will help our staff meet with lawmakers to gain support for crucial changes in the Farm Bill.

But organics aren’t safe yet. In just a two short weeks the full House will vote on a new Farm Bill, which could be the first to include significant funding for organics. To make this happen, our Representatives need to hear from us! Add your voice to the Grow Organics petition today at www.ewg.org/organics/petition.

More than 17,000 of you have signed on to level the playing field for organic farmers with the petition so we’re more than halfway to our goal! Now is the time to (more…)