AlternativesMagazine

A 60-acre solar farm in Camp Ripley, a National Guard base in Minnesota. by Michael Reilly July 12, 2017   When it comes to renewable energy, Minnesota isn’t typically a headline-grabber: in 2016 it got about 18 percent of its energy from wind, good enough to rank in the top 10 states. But it’s just 28th in terms of installed solar capacity, and its relatively small size means projects within its borders rarely garner the attention that giants like California and Texas routinely get. A new report on the future of energy in the state should turn some heads (PDF). According to the University of Minnesota’s Energy Transition Lab, starting in 2019 and for the foreseeable future, the overall cost of building grid-scale storage there will be less than that of building natural-gas plants to meet future energy demand. Minnesota currently gets about 21 percent of its energy from renewables. That’s not bad, but current plans also call for bringing an additional

A double-decker I-15 could be in Salt Lake City's commuting future Cities have become nearly unliveable. Correction: are unliveable. If you live in, or near one, traffic is the monster you have to white-knuckle through on a daily basis. The typical American family has more vehicles than licensed drivers and in our "drive everywhere culture" it's getting worse every year.  Salt Lake City, UT is a great example. It's one of the fastest growing cities in the country and it's having a hard time keeping up with the rapid growth. However, building more infrastructure to accommodate vehicles is pure lunacy. Not too mention the unbelievable cost. But that's what they are considering for the I-15 interstate through Salt Lake City. And the plan they are considering is to double-deck the highway. The political masses very rarely, if ever, entertain the thought of alternative forms of transportation. I mean REAL SERIOUS forms of alternative transp

Add caption   Walking around in foul, soupy smog is bad enough; biking through it at a modest clip can feel like hooking your lungs up to a Ford F-150’s tail pipe. But in the future, cycling in heavy air pollution could be less damaging, if a two-wheeled intervention from Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde pans out. This week Roosegaarde’s Rotterdam-based studio revealed its “smog-free bicycle” concept. The idea is to mobilize fleets of high-tech cycles (perhaps via Chinese bike-share programs like Mobike) to cleanse the nasty miasmas that enrobe the nation’s vast urban centers.  In theory, these bikes would include a device, likely mounted on the handlebars, that can pull in ambient air and run it through positive-ionization filters to remove particulate matter. The result — a clean, healthy breeze blowing into cyclists’ faces. If such a program was adopted on a huge scale, the bike-mounted smog scrubbers might even have a marginal impact on improving a city’s overall air quali

INSANITY Why more cities need to embrace bike lanes, bike parking and other bicycle infrastructure in their urban cores. The Value of Bicycle Lanes and Thoroughfares There is a growing connection in the relationship between amenity- or service-oriented businesses and the proximity to bicycle thoroughfares. These kinds of businesses would include restaurants, coffee shops, pubs, boutiques, and the like. Michael Andersen, who writes for BikePortland and People for Bikes, has written numerous articles that detail this trend. “Bikes, it turns out, seem to be a perfect way to get people to the few retail categories that are thriving in the age of mail-order everything: bars, restaurants and personal services. And in Portland, where an early investment in basic bikeways has made bikes a popular way to run errands, retailers are responding by snapping up storefronts with good bike exposure.” Locally, an example of these changes taking place is North Williams Avenue (and Nor

By Dominique Mosbergen from the Huffpost 4/27/2017 Discarded plastic bottles and other garbage blocks the Vacha Dam, near the Bulgarian town of Krichim, on April 25, 2009. Single-use plastic containers like bottles and plastic bags are “the biggest source of trash” found near waterways and beaches, according to the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy. Plastic ― a versatile, durable and inexpensive material ― has in many ways been a boon to humanity, used in everything from medical equipment to parts of airplanes. But some of the very traits that have made plastics so popular (they’re cheap, and therefore easy to throw away) have also made them a growing problem in our landfills and oceans.  Today, plastics are the No. 1 type of trash found in the sea. Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit that organizes an annual coastal cleanup event in more than 150 countries worldwide, said plastic debris makes up around 85 percent of all the trash collected from beaches, waterways and oceans ― and t

By Teri Harbour Creator of the Arjuna Card Game ( www.ArjunaCardGame.com ) I wear size 11 shoes but I am continually trying to reduce the size of my carbon footprint. One thing I’ve contemplated doing is to live a less traditional lifestyle. It is the traditional Western lifestyle focused on satisfying our material pleasures that results in waste and diminished natural resources.  If we practice NOT giving in to so many of our desires, perhaps we could reduce our environmental impact: not eating so high on the food chain, eating organic, not drinking out of plastic, reducing the packaging we buy, (in fact, reducing our buying,) not feeling like we need to own every beautiful thing we see, not using excessive toiletries such as make-up, using less paper goods and less electricity/fuel. We can’t take our bodies with us when we pass on to the next realm, so why put so much energy into making these bodies excessively beautiful and lavishly comfortable right now?  Of course, we wan

Tiny homes have recently taken the housing market by storm, appearing all over rural and urban America as an affordable and eco-conscious solution to an increasingly tight housing supply, plus the desire for a life of adventure, more time and freedom are all listed as inspirations for going small. Simply put, it is a social movement where people are choosing to downsize the space they live in. The typical American home is around 2,600 square feet, whereas the typical small or tiny house is between 100 and 400 square feet. Tiny houses come in all shapes, sizes, and forms, but they enable simpler living in a smaller, more efficient space. What’s cool about tiny homes is that the entire space is sort of a broadcast of some sort of value that you hold in relation to homes, sustainability, and how you’re living your life. For most Americans 1/3 to 1/2 of their income is dedicated to the roof over their heads; this translates to 15 years of working over your lifetime jus