By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

As we listen to politicians and pundits knock ideas around (usually with a sledgehammer) about how to save money and cut costs—so long as rich people don't have to pay, earmarks are protected, the military industrial complex continues with profits as usual and nobody is inconvenienced—here are a few suggestions, courtesy of people who are actually working to find solutions to our increasingly daunting problems.

First off, energy consumption. God forbid anyone should have to surrender their Escalade in favor of a disgusting hybrid, let alone give up their giant off roading truck with fat tires, just because somebody thinks they should save energy. Screw that. We may as well try to figure out how many politicians it takes to screw in a light bulb (answers welcome). But speaking of screwing in light bulbs, did you know that up to 5% of energy consumption in many countries, and even more in most American cities is being expended on street lighting? It's those big mercury vapor lights that are sucking up electricity like an SUV sucks up, oh never mind. But the solution couldn't be more simple, and it's what many, if not most of us are already doing at home: using low energy (LED) light bulbs. This would reduce energy costs necessary for lighting by 60% or more, according to the EU. These lights last up to ten years and use a fraction of the energy: usually 50-60 watts for a streetlight. As a case in point, one small city alone, Ann Arbor, Michigan, has saved $100,000 per year just by switching to LED street lamps.

But it gets better. How about cleaning up your city streets and providing light at the same time? Sounds like a no-brainer, but as usual, nobody's thought of it until now. Enter New York designer Haneum Lee, who has invented a very trendy-looking (of course) combined trash can, generator, and street lamp which takes deposited garbage, composts it, turns it into electricity, which then lights up the street lamp. It's called the Gaon Street Light. Cool, or what? Now somebody has to figure out how to sort out the compostable organics from the plastic water bottles and McDonald’s throwaways. Good luck.

Speaking of plastic and energy costs, almost 5% of the petroleum we use goes into plastics production, according to the Petroleum Institute of America. But now comes another innovation that could not only reduce the need for oil, but also produce less toxic plastics. It’s a product developed by researcher Takuzo Aida in Japan called hydrogel, or “Smart Mud.” Great name. This stuff can be used for any product that requires molding, just like plastic, and contains no toxic materials or petroleum products. Exxon is gonna love that.

Or how about this: it sounds like Sci-fi, but how about jet fuel made from salt water? Way better then the perchlorates that they've been using for the last fifty years, which has poisoned most of the ground water in California, among other places. Plus, how cheap is salt water? Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory have now found ways to convert seawater into hydrocarbons that can be used to make kerosene-like jet fuel, at a fraction of the fiscal and environmental cost of current processes. Almost sounds too good to be true. No doubt whoever's profits are threatened by this (big oil?) will be quick to write some checks to Congress to put a stop to this one.

So how about growing crops without pesticides? That's what organic produce is all about, of course, but the big agribusinesses like Monsanto have no time for that. Still, now there are new methods that may prove cost effective for solving this problem as well. An Israeli scientist named Avi Klayman, son of a holocaust victim, has developed a type of fiber that produces nets so fine that can catch the pests themselves, and keep them away from crops. These nets were used to save the Israeli tomato crop from the white fly infestation of the 1980s, and amazingly, haven't caught on since. But newer fibers are now available to screen out even smaller pests, like thrips, using photosensitive technology.

The world already has, or is quickly developing solutions to all our problems, if we'll only just be willing to change some of our habits and apply them. But between inertia and certain people's addiction to the profitable status quo, sometimes change is hard to come by.

Sources:

Globalchange.com

Greeopolis.com

Newscientist.com

Natural News magazine

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His newest book is “Inside the New China: an Ethnographic Memoir.” He can also be found at: www.geneayres.org.