Tag Archives: power

Neither wind nor solar power “need to be purchased by Halliburton”

Continuing to see what “the indigenous” think about solar power:

Today, a number of Native tribes, from the Lakota in the Dakotas to
the Iroquois Confederacy in New York to the Anishinaabeg in Wisconsin,
battle to preserve the environment for those who are yet to come. The
next seven generations, the Lakota say, depend upon it.

“Traditionally, we’re told that as we live in this world, we have
to be careful for the next seven generations,” says Loretta Cook. “I
don’t want my grandkids to be glowing and say, ‘We have all these
bad things happening to us because you didn’t say something about it.’

Part of this family and spiritual obligation to preserve

Continue reading →

Solar as electricity for remote people

PR from Sandia National Laboratories News 13 December 2005,

Light-bringer Debby Tewa provides advice about solar power to people on Indian reservations:
Most lived without electricity like Tewa did growing up



Debby Tewa spent her first 10 years living without electricity, water,
or a telephone in a three-room stone house in an isolated area of the
Hopi Reservation in Arizona.

Today, as a contractor to the Sandia National Laboratories Sandia
Tribal Energy Program, she provides technical advice about maintaining
photovoltaic (PV) units to people on Indian reservations who live remotely
like she did. For many, it’s the first time they’ve had electricity
in their homes.

“I can identify with the people I’m helping,” Tewa says. “Many
live the way I grew up, and I fully appreciate their excitement in having
electricity and light at night.”

As part of Tewa’s job, she and program director

Continue reading →

What do “the indigenous” think about solar?

In a facebook conversation, someone said solar was useless because
we should all live like “the indigenous” used to.
Well, let’s see what some of “the indigenous” think about solar power.
Zachary Shahan wrote 13 January 2010 in CleanTechnical,
Native American Tribe Going for Solar, and Money:



The 3,000 members of the Jemez Pueblo tribe in New Mexico are looking
to build the first utility-scale solar power plant on tribal land. They
are also looking to make some money on it.

It is no secret that Native American tribes are more likely to be
poverty-stricken and they generally have more than twice the unemployment
rate of the United States. Former Jemez Pueblo governor James Roger
Magdalena says, “We don’t have any revenue coming in except for a
little convenience store.”

It is estimated this solar power plant could generate $25 million over the
next quarter century and help create a sustainable revenue for his tribe.

Mr. Magdalena sees the environmental changes

Continue reading →

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy.” –Thomas Alva Edison

Sometimes he was a prophet:



“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for
fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy —
sun, wind and tide. … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What
a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run
out before we tackle that.”

— Thomas Alva Edison talking to Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone in 1931


Source: as quoted in Uncommon Friends : Life with Thomas Edison, Henry
Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by
James Newton, p. 31

-jsq

LAKE as a news medium



We are the media, and you can be, too!

According to the

OPEN Government Act of 2007:

[T]he term ‘a representative of the news media’ means any person or
entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of
the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a
distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience. In this clause,
the term ‘news’ means information that is about current events or
that would be of current interest to the public. Examples of news-media
entities are television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at
large and publishers of periodicals (but only if such entities qualify
as disseminators of ‘news’) who make their products available for
purchase by or subscription by or free distribution to the general
public. These examples are not all-inclusive. Moreover, as methods
of news delivery evolve (for example, the adoption of the electronic
dissemination of newspapers through telecommunications services), such
alternative media shall be considered to be news-media entities.



It’s pretty obvious LAKE qualifies as a news medium
with its blog,

On the LAKE Front,
as well as its

web pages
and its

facebook page.

Here is the bill’s full text.
The bill was sponsored by

Sen. Patrick Leahy and

17 others, ranging from Sen. Barack Obama to Sen. Johnny Isakson.
It was signed into law by President George W. Bush

31 December 2007.



Of course that’s really just a detail, having to do with the

Wikileaks comparison.

Most of what LAKE does has more to do with Georgia law,
about
open records requests
and

this passage, O.C.G.A. § 50-14-1-c.:



“Visual, sound, and visual and sound recording during open meetings shall be permitted.”

None of that requires a news medium.
Any citizen can file open records requests or record public meetings.
Remember,

you are the media!

-jsq for


LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange

“the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state.” –Julian Assange



Some people compare LAKE to Wikileaks, so let’s go there.
Julian Assange, like

Wendell Berry,
links the civil rights movement and the environmental movement.
He

then says:

“For the Internet generation this is our challenge and this is our time.
We support a cause that is no more radical a proposition than that the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state.
The state has asserted its authority by surveilling, monitoring and regimenting all of us, all the while hiding behind cloaks of security and opaqueness.
Surely it was only a matter of time before citizens pushed back and we asserted our rights.”

LAKE’s

motto is:

Citizen dialog for transparent process

That makes Assange’s proposition

“the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state”

sound very familiar to us.

Locally it’s more a matter of elected and appointed bodies ignoring
their chartered responsibilities to

the public good and the general welfare.
Well, many people are also tired of the permit inspection brigade,
but that’s another story.

Assange

also adds:

Continue reading →

Still no suppliers or buyers for Wiregrass Power LLC –VLCIA



According to an open records request of 17 February 2011,
the Industrial Authority says Wiregrass Power LLC still

“has not yet identified or completed a comprehensive list
of potential suppliers of raw materials,
goods and services required to construct and operate
the biomass electric generating plant.”

This is on a sheet entitled
“Owners/Investors/Suppliers/Contracts”, which also says:

“Site preparation and construction is not scheduled
to begin until June 1, 2011.”

Hm, what happened to breaking ground in January 2011?
The document also said a “Project Critical Path time-line is attached”
but it wasn’t.

Regarding buyers for the plant’s power:

Continue reading →

VDT Civics Lesson on How to Stop a Biomass Plant



The VDT explains how to effect change, if anyone is listening.
Editorial, 13 Jan 2010,

Powerless to stop the power plant:

This week as the rhetoric around the proposed biomass facility has
continued heating up, leading up to

last night’s forum,
one of the main themes has been that “government should do something.”



While the Times does not condone or condemn

Chairman Paulk’s actions in the commission meeting Tuesday night,
understanding the situation may
help shed light on the issue. The county is powerless to do anything to
stop this power plant. The only governmental entity with any power over
the project is the city, and that’s only in the form of the services
being extended and the water being sold to the company, as well as the
sewage sludge that’s being burned. They too are powerless at this
point to stop it.



The editorial continues with the tired old excuse “they can be sued”.
Don’t they have insurance for that?
If the whole thing goes as bad as some opponents predict,
they could be sued for the kind of financial disaster

that faces Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

There is one governmental entity that does have the power.
Ah, here it is:

Continue reading →

VDT Elevates Biomass and Renewable Energy as Political Issues

The Valdosta Daily Times (VDT) has apparently decided biomass and real clean energy instead are political issues.
As part of the VDT’s

sudden turn against the VLCIA and its biomass plant,
which was

provoked by citizen and student activism,
the VDT started a week of articles with the headline



“Proposed plant said to be ‘medical atrocity'”,
about Dr. William Sammons’ Monday
talk about health problems of biomass and how solar is better.

The VDT then featured biomass in

its reporting
on the

AAUW Candidate Forum:

Continue reading →

Why is the VDT suddenly anti-biomass and pro-solar?

What has caused the VDT to decide to look into the matter?
Johnna Pinholser acknowledges that it was Growing oposition of proposed biomass energy plant:



A growing organization of concerned citizens are opposing the building
of a biomass energy plant in Lowndes County.

Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy hope to promote clean and sustainable
energies while also educating the public on how a biomass plant could
be detrimental to community health.



The goal of the organization and the opposition to the plant is not to
inhibit economic development but to promote a conversation on sustainable
energy, Dr. Michael Noll, WACE president, said.

The new organization is not the only one in the community speaking out
against the biomass plant.

Continue reading →