About Richard Blake

Richard R. Blake has written articles for newspapers and numerous magazines for over 40 years. He is author of the children's book and screenplay A Dolphin's Tale which expands on the many native legends of the amazing Amazon River dolphins and educates children about the incredible Amazon rainforest and the environmental challenges, it, and we all face.

Posts by Richard:

“Going Solar” Affordably

The focus of government programs encouraging the individual use of alternative energy sources focusing primarily on high end systems, particularly solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, although well-intentioned, may ultimately end up ineffective for the most part. Programs that result in significant numbers using at least some solar, geothermal or other alternative energy sources are infinitely more valuable than ones that are more expensive but are only utilized by a small “elite” of environmentally aware AND financially well off consumers.

While strong majorities of Americans believe that all new home construction ought to offer consumers a solar option, and most state that they would be willing to pay a premium of 10% more on a new home, very few Americans currently own solar home installations.

No doubt part of the reason for that lies in the fact that most people are only aware of PV and, to a somewhat lesser extent, solar hot water systems. PV systems are often out of reach for most Americans because of high initial costs. Solar hot water systems, while not as costly, are still out of the reach of a lot of consumers, and often have performance, maintenance and installation issues.

Fortunately there are a number of additional alternatives for “going solar,” all of which are significantly less costly than PV systems. Also many of these systems are passive and thus have no moving parts or major maintenance issues.
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Filling the Gaps in Energy Production with Cogeneration

In the late 1970s, John Gofman, co-inventor of plutonium, had second thoughts about his work with nuclear power over the years. He authored a book entitled Irrevy, in which he argued that the use of nuclear power for electrical production amounted to a bad tradeoff of inefficient and expensive power generation for an insoluble toxic waste problem and generations upon generations of unknown cancers and genetic defects.

While the portion of domestic electricity currently produced by nuclear energy is marginal, at that time there were quite a few more nuclear power plants and nuclear energy production. A perfect storm of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl together with movies such as The China Syndrome gave impetus to an anti-nuclear movement, of which, Gofman was a pre-eminent spokesman, which changed all of that.

Now, as the nation faces an energy crisis, not just of gas lines, but of all energy production, the idea of re-introducing nuclear energy with a vengeance has emerged. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Republican candidate John McCain proposed building 50 new nuclear plants. As the electorate starts to forget why the moratorium on nuclear plants in the US went into effect in the first place and embraces the simplistic argument that 80% of France’s electricity is produced by nuclear plants, it becomes more imperative that we not only examine Gofman’s objections to the ‘nuclear option,’ but take a look at some of the alternatives he proposed.

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Telecommuting a Quiet Environmental Success Story

One of the most effective and certainly one of the easiest steps that can be taken to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and cut US dependence on foreign oil – and the balance of trade, national security, economic and other problems directly associated with that dependence – would be the widespread use of telecommuting or telework by US businesses.

The term “telecommuting” and the associated term “telework” were coined in 1973 by Jack Nilles. As Wikipedia puts it, telecommuting involves a management style based on objectives (MBO) as opposed to a style based on direct observation. The term was first used in Peter Drucker’s 1954 book, The Practice of Management, and is based on a consensus arrived at by both management and employees concerning both the objectives of the organization and the employee’s role in implementing those objectives.

Prior to the industrial revolution most of the workforce was headquartered at their homes, which were usually family farms. The new technologies of that revolution – the steam engine, turbines, industrial furnaces, assembly lines, etc. – moved most workplaces to centralized locations within large metropolitan areas. This caused secondary problems such as pollution, urban congestion, crime and social breakdown that we are still dealing with today.

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Biogas from Sewage and Landfills, Glamorous No but a Renewable Yes

In the last of the “Mad Max” movies, the one that prominently featured Tina Turner, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, the post-apocalyptic world depended on “pig sh*t” for energy.

That idea, albeit the invention of a Hollywood screenwriter, may not, however, be as outlandish as it might originally appear. In India, for example, there are myriad small methane producers throughout the country that produce just enough methane for home uses, using small methane generators powered mostly by cow dung.

In September of 2008, San Antonio, Texas set into motion an ambitious plan that would make it the first US city ever to convert sewage into methane gas on a large scale. The plan calls for the complete recycling of at least 90% of the approximately 140,000 tons a year of “biosolids” produced by the citizens of San Antonio into water for agricultural irrigation, solid compost and now, methane gas, which will be used for the generation of electrical power.

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Organic Lawncare: Safer, Cheaper, Easier than Chemical

On May 10, 2002 PBS’ “Now with Bill Moyers” ran a report which asked the provocative question “Are We Poisoning Our Children.” While the short answer to question appeared to be “yes,” the details were nonetheless startling. “In my lifetime 75,000 synthetic chemicals and metals have been put to use in America,” Moyers declared, “Chemicals, that, in many cases make our lives easier and better. They kill insects and weeds, clean our clothes and carpets, unclog our drains, create and produce lawns, pretty as a picture.”

An increase in the incidence of childhood cancers was the first trigger for the investigation, which discovered children with home and garden pesticides in their urine, lactating women with termite poison and flame retardants in their breast milk and in Bill Moyer’s personal blood test a veritable witch’s brew including the long banned pesticide DDT, as well as dioxin, PCBs, organochlorine and organophosphate pesticides, ad nauseum.

When the Moyer’s reports ran in 2002 I had, perhaps naively, expected the start of a grassroots movement aimed at reducing our and, more importantly, our children’s exposures to chemicals at least in those areas where individuals could make choices, such as whether or not we would put chemicals on the lawns our children played upon.

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While Genetically Modified Foods Quietly Proliferate, Disquieting Questions Remain

The promise of the potential benefits of genetic modified (GMO) plants (and animals and even plant/animal hybrids) is indeed tempting. Imagine combining the genes responsible for drought resistence of, say, sagebrush or yucca, with rice or corn. The result could potentially be the utilization of vast tracts of Nevada, for example, for intensive food production that would have been extremely difficult to impossible given the vast periods of time that would be necessary for selective breeding to accomplish the same goal.

An example of a plant-animal hybrid gene is an anti-freeze gene taken from fish that was added to tobacco and potatoes to avoid frost damage. Genetic engineering can also be used to enhance a plant’s resistence to disease, insects, chemical exposures (such as herbicides) and so on.

The most tauted example of a benefit and apparent success of genetically modified food crops is so-called “golden rice,” a rice variant that is genetically altered, through the addition of daffodil and bacterium genes, to contain high amounts of Vitamin A (Wikipedia – Genetically Modified Food). Another particularly tempting benefit has been the genetic engineering of poplar trees to remove heavy metal contamination from polluted soils.

Are Genetically Modified Foods Safe?

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Cap and Trade Bill Presents Dilemma for Environmental Movement

There is an old saying that there are two things you never want to watch being made. The first is hot dogs. The second is legislation.

Considering that the legislative twists and turns taken by the first cap and trade bill dealing with carbon dioxide with a legitimate chance of passage, twists that have caused Greenpeace and the American Petroleum Institute to be on the same side of an environmental issue and not in a good way, that saying appears more than ever to be a truism.

On Thursday May 21st the House Energy and Commerce Committee, by a 33-25 vote passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, also known as the Markey-Waxman bill, and sent it on to the full House. By the time it had left committee the bill was 946 pages long and already contained over 100 amendments, an indication that a Republican strategy predicted by Grist reporter, Kate Sheppard on May 18th (Republicans plan to offer hundreds of amendments to slow climate bill), had been at least partially successful.

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