Within the disciplines of design and engineering it’s rare one feels the hand of fate pushing a project one way or another. Today I was working on a requirements document for the next version of my human powered vehicle (this one intended to operate under “expedition” conditions over long periods of time) when I decided I’d solicit some help from David Gordon Wilson the author of “Bicycling Science“. A couple of brief web searches brought me to his web site snooping for his contact information. It has been a while since I visited his site so I was surprised to read his “innovative policy” proposal which is a rational approach to managing consumptive habits and their associated external costs.

King Canute and rollbacks

Where the free market operates, as it does to a great extent for motor-vehicle fuel and some interstate electricity sales (where there has been substantial deregulation in many areas) prices have increased considerably, although not in general to the levels of much of the rest of the world. US legislators at every level have been calling for caps on prices. They have not heard of the early Danish-English King Canute, whose sycophantic courtiers proclaimed that he was so powerful that he could order the tides to roll back. Canute was happy to prove them wrong. US legislators have also called for the fuel consumption of vehicles to be set by regulation at extraordinarily low levels, in defiance of the second law of thermodynamics and of the law of supply and demand. They have even required that a proportion of cars sold shall be “zero emission” vehicles, but have excluded bicycles and other human-powered vehicles, which come closest to this worthy but misguided goal.

The US Administration’s policy towards addressing the problem of energy shortages is to find more sources of energy in the few remaining wild areas of the world, and to spend tax money to pay technologists to develop more-efficient vehicles, power plants, nuclear energy, and so forth. US citizens are told that they can have it all! They deserve it!

This policy is not an engineering solution to a problem. It is what engineers pejoratively term a “Mickey Mouse” approach. Engineers are trained to look at all possible solutions to problems, including the ridiculous extremes, and to pick an optimum somewhere along the spectrum.

Highly recommended reading if you have a moment and probably something you should consider forwarding to your congressional membership for consideration.

Think about investing, in a large scale, on highway transportation infrastructure for instance. I can’t imagine too many new jobs will be created as a result of a stimulus package with this intent as there are already many, many companies contracted nationally which provide both re-building and maintenance work in this market already. Stimulus of this nature will simply service what’s largely already in place; it will maintain the status quo and the underlying infrastructure in place.

Now imagine a massive stimulus package aimed at “reinventing” our power generation, distribution and storage infrastructure. Where the former economic stimulation package doesn’t build anything new (no new roads for instance) fabrication of a new power infrastructure does. This means a need for massive numbers of trained professionals to manage design, building, and sustain efforts for the new infrastructure. These new jobs, this new infrastructure *is* economic growth which could be sustained.

New jobs become possible on this massive scale only if there is available training and funding for this kind of activity. We should be talking about reinventing something on a enormous scale!

Even climate change’s worst detractors like money, they prefer regular economic growth to bear markets, and they have an equal opportunity to be part of all this.

Bold! Keynote speech by Greg Kolodziejzyk from Greg Kolodziejzyk on Vimea.

Very interesting speach given by Greg Kolodziejzyk. His accomplishments are a great example of the extremes that can be achieved with elegant design and muscle power alone. Very inspired guy who understands what the human body is capable of achieving as well as how to push the limits of experience. Maybe someday I’ll get to meet him.

Bicycle cultures are the next wave of human mobility. We’re going to have to suck tail pipe for a little while longer while we wait for the price of fuel to outpace the average American’s ability to afford it. That’s too bad to be sure, but this is happening and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Add to the above that the bicycle is the *only* readymade mobility solution to-date that can move through all our contemporary mobility infrastructure. We’re not retrofitting busses or clearing land for trains when we ride our bikes. There’s no need for advanced mining or carbon sequestering techniques to make this technology an everyday reality.

I wish, oh how I wish, that there was something like this near me.

Pedal People Move MA

I came across a fine example of a truly American powered solution meeting a specific societal requirement in Make vol 16 today.

The folks at Pedal People have a contract with the City of Northampton, MA to move 70 trash barrels to the local transfer center and a cooperative of 11 humans power this enterprise. Their mission statement follows:

“The Co-op uses bicycles and bicycle trailers to transport things, and is committed to using human power despite the culture of dependence on motorized vehicles. We hope that our use of relatively simple tools in sound business practice will debunk the prevailing belief that more technology is needed to solve problems.

We believe that social change is possible, and we share inspiration and education with people wanting to choose more sustainable lifestyles. We aim to make a living in a fair, noble way, exploiting no one.

We believe in the idea of low-income living as a counter to the work-consume-spend lifestyle common in America today. We also believe that by spending less time making a living, we can have more time to contribute to the community and live life at a human pace rather than a motorized pace.”

The question of the day, is it possible for one to so completely sell out that your average Humanist would judge one completely corrupted? If yours truly can play the part of the average humanist then we have a winner. And this specious distinction is inherently difficult for an average Humanist to grant since the notion of complete corruptibility must include to some extent the corruption of the human spirit — an objectification that tends to reach beyond a purely rational approach to living.

That said we have a winner. J. Payton Knight Free Market Ideologue extra ordinary. A man so found of worshiping the golden calf of what may be humanity’s most recent failed economic theory that he refuses to acknowledge even his own human nature, takes a constant pleasure in the recitation of FM doctrine, and avoids rational discussions of anything going on around him which may be divergent with his world view by belittling such conflict.

Look him up and be impressed. J. Peyton Knight is listed paradoxically on LinkedIn as Director of Environmental and Regulatory Affairs at The National Center for Public Policy Research an über right-wing “think tank” which is integrally involved in pushing a political interest agenda. Read just about anything he’s written and be amazed at how government projects to kill invasive weeds or Federal health projects to reduce obesity are nothing more than clumsily camouflaged Big Brother attempts to steal your rights and deny business its rightful exploitative access to the piles of resources we’re all just sitting atop. Or watch disk Five of the Planet Earth series where Knight’s opinions are offered up to counter balance an otherwise overwhelming review concerning environmental degradations and the future of humanity.

I’m underwhelmed to say the least. Is this the best that the failing free market devout can offer in the way of possible solutions sets? How will acting in a manner as our society has previously acted produce different results? Is Knight sitting on a solution set he’s just neglected to share with the rest of us? Would they like some more bail out money?

So feel free, your use of ad hominem henceforth is completely acceptable. He did win this competition.

I started messing around rendering a few design ideas of a utility/modular velomobiles. In the past I’ve done this work all by hand because I haven’t known enough about any variety of software. Tonight however, I began messing around with Google’s SketchUp 7 and was actually able to make some immediate progress. Still learning how to make the tool render what I want to see, but measureable progress has been made.

Watch CBS Videos Online

The video above illustrates exactly how far away from any level of sustainability we are as a nation, as society, or any individual enterprise. The blatant waste that is inherent in the criminal acts detailed above illustrate the distance that must be traversed before the age of Information will show the legs necessary to make it through its second decade. Possible most disheartening is the very real knowledge that there is no solidarity from those with the most power to attempt corrective action. The fractured approach that is offered by companies seeking to gain social credit from within this society may result in improvement, but is bound to be held back as companies race for public favor by trying to appear greenest.

Often “Green IT” initiatives are spawned as supplementary support initiatives designed to achieve one of the two following goals.

• Improve public perception of the service provider
• Reduce the cost of support systems and infrastructure

While both of the above goals, in and of themselves, can have the effect of reducing environmental impact of any enterprise they do not represent a substantive reduction in the overall national or individual enterprise footprint left in the wake of what is essentially a socially motivated mode of consumption. For instance, will the knowledge that Company X has reduced its environmental impact by reducing its annual power consumption some percentage, an act that will ultimately improve the Company X’s public perception and reduce their annual energy bill, reduce their solid and toxic waste disposal footprint?

The above goals, which are appearing more often in many statements of Corporate Social Responsibility, regularly encounter additional challenge because they are secondary programs which are not tied to the framework of control motivating executive decision. If the company can reap the auxiliary benefits that are the result of these “green” goals then great, but largely any company’s central motivation is to improve return on any investment through traditional means. These traditional means, derivatives of Industrial era models, are largely exploitative and segmented. They, as a collection, represent a business ethic that is, at its core, not sustainable.

This cycle of consumption is difficult to break as is evidenced by the present state of US Auto Manufacturing. The business model behind the manufacture of future cars is designed to provide what the customer has asked for in the past. The customer tends to ask for more of what its already consumed. Reductions in environmental footprint are only realized when the company can make minor efficiency improvements to the support infrastructure responsible for producing the automobiles because they are bound by an institutional business ethic which prevents them from pursing true innovation.

Most of my adult life I’ve read news articles about this industry which said essentially the same thing over and over. American consumers are buying foreign cars because of their inherent efficiencies when compared to US models, the US auto makers then proclaim they’ve heard the consumer and will deliver, the next series of US models to hit the show room has invariably been the same automobile that they’ve sold for half a century. Again, the colossal failure these companies are facing today has been caused and exacerbated by their inability to evolve a sustainable business ethic.

The substance of this article is the following rudimentary proposal. It’s something that occurred to me today and which I haven’t really spent too much time considering, but I believe the principle may remain true despite its generality. Essentially it’s the proposal driven at first by considering the complete environmental and social impact and thus the total cost of integrated systems or enterprise. This consideration is critical when if the ultimate goal of the business is to become independently sustaining. The efficiencies of an independently sustained enterprise may result financial return or public social capital, but are not its central pursuit. These are passive benefits of a framework of control that is designed to be self sustaining within a predefined footprint.

Don’t hold your breath, but I’m upgrading WordPress and changing the theme a bit.

I don’t get this! How does gluing or welding together a bunch of junk result in bringing “waste and recycling issues to the public eye”. Doesn’t it actually result in an exacerbation of waste and recycling issues? Consider if you will for a moment that there may be materials which could be recycled for utility purposes in this pile of old electronic crap. Copper, gold, and other metal alloys, glass, and plastic. Maybe there’s barium or mercury in the CRT? All of these things have been extracted from our, dare I say it, precious planet and thus the energy and resouces needed to complete that process have been expended. A ready economy of reuse and real recycling is just a preception shift away.

Look, I’m not opposed to art any more than I’m opposed to engineering as a vocation. Projects like WEEE lack much appreciable contribution from either of these houses in my opinion. And as Steven Roberts has said “Art without engineering is dreaming; engineering without art is calculating.” This is an example of why waste and recycling issues are still issues in our society. Simply dreaming of resolution results in piles of junk, and quantification of junk piles is only simple calculation. Not to appear too harsh, but this is a seven ton toy with no apparent purpose.