Ideas bank - your contributions, please
August 12 update: further ideas and brainstorming should probably go here.
(at the outset, this blog was to be for addressing all sorts of Nevada City energy-related issues; its focus has narrowed, at least for now.)
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What do you think Nevada City should be doing, to prepare for a warmer and less-fossil-fueled future? Please share your ideas in the comments.
This could be the seed for our own hyperlocal Ideas Bank (or Halfbakery).
posted at 7/02/2006 04:01:00 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
ok, I'll start.
* Have Kill-A-Watts (electricity meters) available for checkout at the library
* Have an energy 'advice column' on the APPLE website (and give The Union and Yubanet permission to republish it)
* Encourage a bike shop or other local business to rent out electric bicycles etc (or have some other way for people to try out low-impact vehicles locally)
* revive/transform the Sierra Intergenerational Time Exchange into an "Ithaca hours" type currency, with a database for services available/needed.
* a store at the dump, selling or giving away items left there, eg lumber
* coordinate dump runs!
Or maybe have an in-town Dumpster Day (or even large door-to-door pickup) once a month, so we don't all individually haul our stuff out there.
(and make the 'leavings' available for pre-collection 'gleaning')
* coordinate ride/errand sharing - e.g. my chainsaw needed to go down to Yuba City for servicing, but I would have needed to make a special trip since I never go there...
And how many people need to go down to the medical center(s) in Sacramento, on any given day?
* Accessible info like/between ebay's "reputations" and the Time Exchange "bank balance", where when someone's asking for help you can get info on them that will have the effect of encouraging cooperation and penalizing exploitation
* find some cellphone-and-computer-savvy Young Persons who could help us figure out how to implement some of this coordination via cellphones?
(Technology has made us immigrants; we need guides)
re investing in energy efficiency, See Monbiot's May 30 column on energy-efficient housing -
"...In Germany there are now some 4,000 homes built to the Passivhaus standard. A Passivhaus is a house without radiators, fan heaters, stoves, air conditioners or any other kind of heating or cooling device. The only heat it requires is produced by sunlight coming through the windows and by the bodies of the people who live there.
...
A development of 20 homes in Freiburg, with a measured energy saving of 79%, cost just 7% more than a typical building of the same kind. ..."
More density in town - encourage second units (garage conversions too) and discourage second homes.
(Monbiot on second homes here - "Every purchase of a second house deprives someone else of a first one...")
Much of the rationale for restricting density comes from traffic-and-parking impacts, so when people are driving less and have traded in their Ford Subdivisions for Smart Cars, we'll be able to fit more people in for the same amt of traffic and parking space.
Preferential parking in shopping centers for energy-and-emissions-efficient vehicles - a shady area next to the store for them, buses, two-wheeled vehicles and disabled parking; other drivers must park further away, in areas as barren and unhospitable as the parking lots we have now.
Parking lots sloped to divert rainwater to permeable-surfaced areas in the vicinity of shade trees, so the trees can survive on these water reserves come summer.
Future brainstorming should happen at this weblog.
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