Our National Sustainability Crash Course

We all keep reading about that Keynesian chestnut, the Paradox of Thrift - the theory that if everyone cuts back simultaneously, it results in the economy contracting even more. All kinds of good behaviors have unintended outcomes - if people all stop smoking and drinking, tax revenues plummet. So even if the contracting consumption causes economic contraction, I'm all for it. I love that the newspapers are reporting on sensible behavior, which they find noteworthy. A recent article highlighted a booming Recession Biz - vacuum repairs. If more people discover how to live more sustainably, and therefore lower their overhead, it just can't be a bad thing in the long run.
A few years ago I read about the six-hour day, championed by Kellogg in Battle Creek, Michigan. Workers loved it. They had time to garden, be with their kids, and involve themselves in all kinds of civic activities and organizations. It seems to have balanced out - they needed less childcare, spent less on groceries, and had lots of homegrown entertainment and great quality of life. Probably not so much in the way of consumer high-end stuff.
What killed it? The escalating cost of healthcare, for one thing. It became too expensive to offer benefits spread over more workers, so the hours were increased to extract more labor per healthcare contract.

logo from 6hourday.org

What Does US Air Use for Brains?

I'm all for congestion pricing to get people off the road. But I don't quite understand why US Air is using it to convince people not to fly on their airline.
We're heading to Boston for a family wedding. Round trip airfare from Philly to Boston is nearly twice what my kids are paying for flying a longer distance, DC to Boston. That was crazy already.
Then we went to make a one-way reservation for another one of us, from Boston to Philly, and the flight is more expensive one-way than two-way, nearly $500. Needless to say, forget it. But it does make me wonder why US Air wants to treat its customers like this?

Cuddl Dud's New Bamboo Leggings: A Winner

I try to avoid encouraging people to go out an buy green stuff which you don't really need. THat's not really green at all. So when I get excited enough about an eco-design to plug it, it's special.
Check these awesome leggings out. They help you stay warm when your thermostat is set in the low 60's, they're made out of bamboo, a sustainable natural fiber (microfleece is usually made from virgin petroleum; cotton requires a great deal more inputs than bamboo does). Plus bamboo is INCREDIBLY SOFT. And these are so pretty, too. Score, A+. They run big.
On sale at Norby's - from Detroit Lakes, MN. They know about cold weather there!

An Neo-Eastern Orthodox Icon

Do you think the photographer was going for the St. Barack icon image, complete with a golden halo?

Outlook Rosy for Green Energy Tech Investors?

Our timing for buying Winslow Green Growth Fund really sucked - it went straight down all through 2008 and is now about at 50% less than where we bought it. However, I just read their quarterly newsletter which arrived - electronically - today. I am impressed by the writing and thinking, an excellent summary of the situation for clean energy investing. It is a mutual fund, so not the strictly objective, of course. Their point is, once the economy starts ramping up again, green energy tech is likely to really explode - all the indicators are there. This article suggests that renewables and fossil-fuel generated electricity is coming close to parity, and when that happens, wow!

India Launching $10 Student Computers

You read the headline correctly. When we went to buy simcards for our cellphones in Guatemala, we heard that the components of a cellphone only cost about $1.00. Hence they sell mobile phones with prepaid minutes loaded for not much more than a simcard, and without saying it, they're practically telling you they're disposable. Disposable cellphones seemed so wasteful to us that we skipped having phones altogether, and it was rather pleasant.
The government of India is working on a 2 gigabite design, with wireless internet capability, to run on 2 watts of electricity. Pretty crazy. Inspired by One Laptap per Child, this will cost 1/20th of those, which run around $200.
The idea is to load them with textbooks. That way, they can widely disseminate materials that have been, presumably, unavailable in rural areas. Kind of like a Kindel for the masses? It's hard to think of anything more transformative, or more effective at spreading literacy. Hope they're easily and safely disposed of - at ten dollars a pop, hard to imagine they won't be a hit.

This photo is simply gorgeous - but it's promoting cellphones, not computers, of course.

Help Launch LendForPeace, Microfinance in the Middle East!

A group of students at Penn, including an Orthodox Jew and a Palestininan American, have started LendForPeace (a wordplay on Land for Peace) a Kiva-type Microfinance loan direct fund aimed at fostering Middle East Peace. It's a very idealistic mission - that by lending to West Bank women micro-entrepreneurs, hope for the future will trump ideology and despair. They are launching the fund at a talk and event at Penn this THursday night and the community is invited. Come and support these awesome students!
I am bowled over by how much these students have accomplished. If you're in the Delaware Valley, come to help them launch. If you're out there in cyberspace, go to the site and lend away! Here's the info:
For those of you who have been following the LendforPeace.org story since the time over a year ago when LendforPeace.org was nothing but an idea, we have some exciting news that has been a long time coming:
LendforPeace.org is proud to announce that it will launch to the world on February 5th, 2009!

Come be a part of the excitement by joining us at our launch event. As all four of LendforPeace.org’s founders have current or previous ties with the University of Pennsylvania, we thought there was no better place to launch the site than on Penn’s campus in Philadelphia. Here are the details:

LendforPeace.org Philadelphia Launch Event
7:00 PM, Thursday February 5, 2009
Jon M. Huntsman Hall F95
University of Pennsylvania
3730 Walnut Street

The launch event will include a presentation by the founders, an invocation from University Chaplain Chas Howard and a keynote address on active citizenship by Dr. John DiIulio, the first Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.

Our Philadelphia launch is brought to you in partnership with the Penn Israel Coalition, Penn for Palestine, the Penn Arab Students Society, Fox Leadership, the Middle East Center, PRISM, and the Penn Microfinance Club.

We plan to run events in a variety of other cities in the coming months to bring LendforPeace.org to you. If you would like to host a launch event in your city, let us know by emailing Team[at]lendforpeace.org. If you cannot make it to Philadelphia on the 5th, please visit us via the web next week and participate in LendforPeace.org’s mission to promote economic opportunity and political stability in the Middle East through microfinance.