On occasion the apple hits my head and I will share my musings in a manner more rigorous than US Weekly but less than Nature.
The electricity needed for lighting is in free fall and the reason is technology. As we discussed in the previous post, electricity used for residential lighting has (somewhat) unexpectedly begun to fall and is expected to continue to do so for the ensuing decades. Tentatively, we can conclude that neither changing consumer behavior nor saturated … Read more…
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In 2006 when the first Annual Energy Outlook was released by the Department of Energy, electricity dedicated to residential lighting was expected to continue growing at a consistent (if slow 0.3% per household annually) rate (red line below). Instead the electricity the average household is using for lighting has fallen by 18%!1)The AEO’s most recent … Read more…
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Ever since Jimmy Carter’s infamous “Crisis of Confidence” speech calling on Americans to conserve energy, Sustainability has acquired an (undeserved) reputation of requiring a dark, sweater-wearing future. But that is thinking about it all backwards, Sustainability is really about achieving the future that we want. That is not is not to say that we can … Read more…
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When I wrote about the two competing words for Sustainability in Spanish, I focused my discussion on using some of Google’s tools to analyze usage in the hopes of providing a new perspective on the issue. I have neither standing nor the ability to comment personally on the linguistic appropriateness of the two sustainabilitys. Fortunately, … Read more…
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The school year is starting up again and if you are interested in gaining an academic perspective on Achieving Sustainability, there is no better place to do that than at Arizona State University’s (ASU) School of Sustainability (SOS). Disclosure: I got my master’s degree there from 2008-2010. The current dean, Dr. Christopher Boone is laying … Read more…
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One thing you will notice on this website, and certainly something that the spell checkers do, is that I capitalize the S in Sustainability. The reason is simple. Sustainability in the sense that I mean it- “Achieving the highest quality of life possible for the most people at the most times and places within the … Read more…
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La version en español. When I first arrived in Mexico I was surprised to discover that there were actually two different translations for Sustainability in Spanish-Sostenibilidad and Sustentabilidad. Since my colleagues at UNAM’s Institute of Ecology used Sostenibilidad I decided to stick to that version for all my work here. Inevitably when I present about … Read more…
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