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SUSTAINABILITY by Hunter Lovins and Kipchoge Spencer |
One of RMI's theories on saving the world is: try to know something about everything and communicate it well. By enabling the RMI brain to be hotlinked, the Internet has made endeavor significantly easier. Above all, site aims to hook users into the right source for sustainability smarts, from the geekishly technical "Costing the Ultralite in Volume Production: Can Advanced-Composite Bodies-in-White be Affordable"-to the eminently practical "How Can I Keep My Home Cool in the Summer Without Using so Much Energy?"
2. FICUS: Florida Internet Center for Understanding Sustainability
The nitty-gritty details of sustainability. Once you've figured out it's time for your community/town/city/state/watershed/bioregion/ecosystem to start sustainable developing, click here and find out what that really means. Go to Evaluation of Community Development Types to find out whether you live in sprawl or post-WWII, neo-traditional, single-use development; then go to Sustainable Community Design Principles and find out how to fix it.
3. The Institute for Local Self Reliance
Make money from garbage, convert your car to bio-diesel, replace the endocrine disruptors in the printing industry, plug into electronics reuse, and sustain businesses and jobs through pallet repair and reuse. Also: why we should be growing hemp and how taxpayers are fleeced by oil-slickers. Call in sick and put on your toolbelt --you've got a world to save and this site just showed you how.
4. Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology
The original green nerds. Unlike the clunky, hired-out boxiness of many environmental Web sites, this award winner lets us exalt that enviro-techies exist and will be active players in the development of the Internet toward green goals. Look for: free software to design an energy audit; on-line journals, pubs, case studies; and some of the most popular on-line discussion groups on sustainable energy and green technologies. This site is huge.
Bob Dylan sang, "Your mind is filled with big ideas, images, and distorted facts." Educate yourself so you know which is which. Start by reading Herman Daly's new book, Beyond Growth; then visit this site, the searchable proceedings of a moderated on-line discussion with Daly about his big ideas and facts, wherein he is at once supported, taken to task, and prodded to expound. It would have better if Julian Simon logged on, but this discussion-with-recent-author format promises to sharpen all our minds.
Also see: Speaking of Julian Simon check out the naysayer's on-line writings. Headings include "Population Growth is Not Bad for Humanity," "The Statistical Flummery About Species Loss," and "The 'Urban Sprawl' and Soil Erosion Scam." Just in case you're not already one of the 5 million hits Environlink receives each month, check out "the largest on-line environmental information resource on the planet," and make it 5,000,001.Hunter Lovins is co-founder and President of the Rocky Mountain Institute, where Kipchoge Spencer serves as a Research Associate.