Who said that saving the world had to be a chore? I was blown away when I stumbled upon this TED talk by Jane McGonigal, who’s already tapping game design concepts and gamer geek enthusiasm to create awareness about peak oil and another to create solutions for major crises in Africa.

Watch this TED talk and see if you’re as inspired as I was.  Meanwhile, I’ve started talking with folks about possible games to help Detroit’s sustainability efforts. AND i just invented a game concept to help advance energy efficiency (though I have a few bugs to work out — I’ll announce it here once it’s completed).

So,  forget the Doom and Gloom! Try something more like Doom and Pictionary.

If you’re geeked enough to want to participate in the games-can-save-the-world revolution, be sure to check out Gameful.

2010 was a tipping point for Detroit’s sustainability movement. And tip it did. It will still be a long time coming for the effects to be apparent, but I think the shift has now begun. If you talk to many people in the area, they’ll be lost the miasma of bad news which still plagues our city. Economic woes, population loss, various crises of poverty — it’s all still happening. But two things of note changed, and I believe that they will set the wheels in motion for the renaissance that has eluded Detroit for decades.

The first is the media attention. Media attention alone won’t do much for our city. We’ve had media attention before, but that’s not always helpful! What’s different this time is that the media attention is positive. It’s questing. It’s curious and pondering possibilities. This is a sea-change from the constant string of devastation affirmations that we’ve usually seen. They show that across the world people are beginning to realize that Detroit is a land of great potential. For people anywhere to realize this potential is the first key step to enacting a better future. And it’s directly connected to sign number two….

Young people are moving here.  The 2000′s saw a leap in our brain drain as college graduates fled the whole state in higher numbers. And of course, Detroit’s population continues still to hemorrhage. But the popuation of young educated folks is increasing in Detroit for the first time in quite a while. And I hear the stories frequently now of empassioned young folks from around the country who were inspired to move here after hearing about the meanginful work that’s possible here.

In years past if I went to a national conference and mentioned that I was from Detroit I got a response that ranged from “I’m so sorry” to “So what are you doing here?”  Now, when I mention coming from Detroit I’ll usually get a response like “Really? Tell me more about it? I’ve been hearing about some really intriguing possibilities there.”

The UN declared 2008 as the year that a majority of the world’s population began living in cities.   I think many of us will remember 2010 as the year that Detroit started its return to health.  Which year will be remembered as the year that Detroit showed the world what a 21st century city should look like?

Here are a few videos and articles that I showed up in recently. I promise – a real blog post will come soon — but for now,  I figured this might be fun to share.

1. I had the pleasure of meeting and spending time with someone who was a big early influencer of my thoughts on urban sustainable development this past Summer. Richard Register (who literally, in both senses of the word, wrote the book on eco-cities) was in Detroit, and he writes an article about his experience here.

2. A good series (videos and an article) from the Powering the Nation folks (for whom I did a blog post earlier) about the growth of Green Jobs in Detroit. It’s a nice set of stories, though the last video makes us all look a bit like idiots — but not unreasonably so! Their central point is solid: when it comes to green jobs, clear meaningful definitions are few and far between.  Still, I’ll post the video where we all look like idiots here, because who doesn’t love that…

What is a green job? from Powering a Nation on Vimeo.

Bringing these two topics together, I’ll note that Richard Register’s take on the green jobs movement was basically this (in paraphrase):

People are working on all the wrong concepts. A barista at the local coffee shop has a green job if she can live nearby in a multi-unit apartment building and walk to work.  The infrastructure that emerges out of truly dense and vertical urban development makes any job more significantly green that what most people are talking about now.

Ever since NASA did their studies in the 80′s about the ability of houseplants to remove common toxins from the air (since you can’t open a window to ventilate the space shuttle), people have been promoting the use of plants for air purification. Well, to be fair, people have been promoting that idea for a LOT longer than that, but this time they had evidence: formaldehyde, benzene, trichloroethelyne, etc. all removed by the likes of English Ivy and Peace Lily’s. I’ve long recommended this as a low-cost approach to air purification in homes and offices.

But the EPA doesn’t agree.  Their official stance is one of skepticism, claiming that tests haven’t been done in ‘real world’ settings showing that sufficient amounts of toxins can be removed with a reasonable number of plants. But this isn’t true. Tests have been done to adress exactly this concern and found that the plants performed better than anticipated.

I’m in the process of contacting the appropriate people at the EPA, but have received no response over the past several weeks. I know they’re busy. Still, I’m frustrated with this stance. This low-cost, effective solution should not be cast into doubt by an agency like the EPA when evidence supports this technique. A disclaimer of uncertainty would be fine, while also being a strong improvement over their unnecessarily skeptic stance.

I’ve posted more links into the research as part of an advice post here.

For many years, those who wanted to track their home energy usage more carefully than just looking at their monthly utility bill (if they lived in a home powered by renewable energy, for example) have been measuring the energy use of individual appliances. In the old days this was done with a basic Kill-a-Watt or Watt’s Up (the latter is my personal choice, and more recent versions have come with a logger and USB port so you can download data and graphs to your computer).

Nowadays many more players are getting into the game. I’m field testing a fantastic product from ThinkEco (the “Modlet“) that you can plug up to two devices into and have it wirelessly transmit their energy use to your computer. Then, it will suggest schedules to automatically turn things on and off for energy savings, and easily let you compare your usage across periods. And Watt’s Up is working with Google PowerMeter to accomplish something similar.

These devices are now becoming mainstream. However, they remain bulky, inconvenient, and individualized in their application and use. Even if some day “smart houses” have individual meters on each outlet, it will not measure the load of individual devices on power strips.

A much better idea would be to standardize an interface for electric devices to report their own power use. By including it in the manufacturing process, it would be smaller and cheaper – and come by default. It would work just as well if you lived in a smart house as an old, dumb one. And consumers would not have to choose to shell out upfront costs – even though power meters do tend to pay themselves off quickly in savings.

Under this plan, every electric device would wirelessly report its make, model, and energy draw using a standard system that interfaced with easily available computer (or smartphone) software. A wired option might be available for those who don’t want more wireless waves in their home. Perhaps very low current draw or very small devices (like cell phone chargers) could be exempted – but with miniaturization that might not be necessary. Data transfer and device control would use a standard set of wireless, communication, and security protocols (like Zigbee et al) so that consumers don’t have to download a new piece of software or buy a new USB dongle just to use the new microwave.

So who should create and maintain this standard? There are many options – IEEE, ASHRAE, ISO, ANSI, IEC, CE, USDOE, USEPA, NREL, FCC – so pick an acronym. Manufacturer’s consortia are also an option. That said, one intriguing idea would be Underwriter’s Laboratories (UL). They already review just about every device that hits the US market and would be ideally situated in the marketplace.

Or we could just ask Google to do it.

Magical triangular solar panels!

Check out this article in the NYT about an energy self-sufficient sports stadium. While there may be things to admire about the project, a couple of greenwashing points:

1) There’s no way those turbines and the solar panels they show will put out the peak load of the stadium (think about how much stadium lighting draws). When they say “self-sufficient” in energy they mean they’ll put as much in the grid as they take out, overall. Not so hard for a stadium…which is unoccupied most of the time.

2) Major bogus architect greenwashing: check out the fictional triangular solar panels in the photo! You can’t cut a stock solar panel to get the shape you want; it actually needs a certain number of solar cells hooked up in series to produce the design panel voltage. While certain triangular solar panels do exist, they have fixed shapes and anemic lower voltages that won’t match this system. These ain’t gingerbread man cookies you can just bite the head off, folks.

To say that the recent election was disheartening for those on the left is a broad understatement. I wish that we could just blame the Democratic Party’s incompetence or the evil corporations deep pockets but I think alas, too many Americans really believe the shit they see on Fox and end up wanting to be led by Tea Party wack-jobs.

So what can someone on the left do now? What should Obama do?

1. Keep the Tea Party wackos in the fight – Focus on the populist issue of Jobs, Jobs, Jobs and get both Michael Moore and the Tea Party out there screaming at politicians, both Democrat and Republican, to do something about it, Now! “Main Street not Wall Street!” “No Jobs – No Votes!” If we don’t see progress on the economy then we’ll vote this batch of yahoos out too. That will keep the Republicans from just hunkering down as the party of gridlock and force them to engage on the issue. And if the economy improves, Obama can take credit. If it doesn’t, he’d probably get voted out anyway because people blame the President no matter whose fault it is.

2. Extend the Tax Cuts but Give It All to the Middle Class – The Republicans want to extend the Bush Tax cuts because they claim tax cuts are good for the economy (mostly its a ‘starve the beast’ philosophy but its the spin that matters in elections). Obama already wants to extend them for those making under $250,000/year. He should compromise with the Republicans and say, “Fine you want that money back in people’s pockets. We’ll take the total amount of the Bush tax cuts and extend em, but still give it to people making under $250,000/year.” They will of course respond with “socialism”, “class warfare”, etc. but if the Dems and the left get out there and scream “Main Street not Wall Street” and “No handouts to the Rich” louder it just might work. I never have understood how the right can get the masses rallying around programs that only benefit the very wealthy while also claiming that the left are elitist. We’ve got to stop letting them get away with that.

3. Health Care Reform – The Republicans want to repeal or defund Health Care Reform. Progressives need to get out there and protest in person at their representatives offices. Remember how much press those Tea Party screamers got? This is our turn. “Hands off our Health Care!” Show up waving hospital bills and insurance denials. Get in their faces and don’t back down. Remember that a majority of American’s want health care reform – make sure that the Republicans don’t forget that fact.

4. Climate Change – OK we are probably just screwed here as far as any comprehensive action. The best we can hope for is to avoid having a Republican hosted circus of congressional hearings where they trot out all the denialists. If they try – go back to #1 and tell them to quit wasting our time and focus on Jobs, Jobs, Jobs! In the mean time maybe Obama can push through some bill that gets some support for renewables, a smart-grid, and energy independence that will help create some Jobs. The rest will have to be done at the EPA and State level.

5. Bailout Money - First step – get it all back. I’m not sure how but by the next campaign season, Obama’s got to get every penny of that bailout repaid to the Government. Then make sure that everyone knows that it was Bush and the Republicans who got us into the mess and then bailed out Wall Street, while its Obama who cleaned things up and got our money back. If that doesn’t play well in Peoria I don’t know what will.

I could go on about foreclosures, education reform, wall street regulation, and the deficit, but frankly its all about the economy and jobs and then whatever spin gets the most airtime.

Now is the time to get out there and get our voices heard and make sure the politicians know that the left has screaming wack-jobs too and we know how to use them.

If you need some motivation just think “President Palin”.

Jacob mentioned this to me: an electric car that ran 370 miles on a single charge in Germany.

It appears to be legit, so I’m not calling scam (and I certainly hope it’s for real!), but something is lost in translation.

Assume the thing has a 30hp motor like a VW Beetle from the 60s.

30hp=22kW. Times 7 hours is 156kWh. (This is close to a comment I read that said 115kWh necessary, maybe the motor is even less powerful than a 1965 VW Bug.)

It also says charges in 6 or 18 minutes, depending on what article you read. Fine. Call it 18 minutes.

115kWh in 18 minutes is over 380kW. That’s what a 100,000 square foot office building draws on the hottest day of the year when all the AC is going, through a 2000A, 4kV bus in the basement with cables as big as your forearm.

No way is it coming out of your household service.

I am not even taking into account overhead losses, efficiency of charging, etc.

Also extra fishy, there are very few independent news sources reporting on this…it’s all blog posts quoting each other. Not reassuring.

I hope it’s true, but something is wrong here.

I took the train from NYC to Denver for the AASHE (higher ed sustainability group conference). Most people take it for granted that flying is the only way to go that distance. So I wrote a blog post for AASHE about my experiences. Find it here.

I’m on a panel with Mitchell Joachim of Terreform Tuesday, Sept. 13 at Lawrence Tech University. Mitchell has some sci-fi-esque notions about future urban design — yet swears it’s all with current day technologies. His focus is NYC, but we know that Detroit’s a different creature with lots of room for redefining the American City. What would a Terreform approach look like in D-town? Should be a fun discussion.

Of course, I’ll be focusing on the human and social interface — new exciting technologies or no will still account for and integrate with real people to succeed.

Check out these images:

Detroit-folks might particularly appreciate their strong transportation focus and ideas: