The best wind in America is in Wyoming. It is a door-snapping, heart-pounding wind that barrels in from the west, chasing the truckers along Interstate 80 as they race to make Omaha by nightfall. It is sometimes described with words ordinarily associated with dark chocolate or exceptional pinot noir. It has been called dense, world-class, consistently extraordinary, special, and fabulous..
Advocates of wind power though are faced with a conundrum. [more inside]
posted by storybored
on Oct 3, 2011 -
29 comments
So with global warming being linked to all sorts of
bad things lately, and our illustrious leaders
doing nothing about the problem because they don't want to slow down the economy, its good to see someone
doing something about the problem, Whole Foods is the first fortune 500 company to go 100% green. And I for one am happy as a clam. This just goes to show you that you can have a wonderful, profitable business, without raping the earth, your customers, or your employees.
posted by stilgar
on Jan 11, 2006 -
54 comments
A viilage to reinvent the world : Gaviotas "In 1965 Paulo Lugari was flying over the impoverished Llanos Orientales, the “eastern plains” that border Venezuela. The soil of the Llanos is tough and acidic, some of the worst in Colombia. Lugari mused that if people could live here they could live anywhere.....The following year Lugari and a group of scientists, artists, agronomists and engineers took the 15-hour journey along a tortuous route from Bogota to the Llanos Orientales to settle.""...they would need to be very resourceful. So they invented wind turbines that convert mild breezes into energy, super-efficient pumps that tap previously inaccessible sources of water [powered by a child's playground seesaw!], and solar kettles that sterilize drinking water using the furious heat of the tropical sun....They even invented a rain forest!" (from
"Gaviotas - A village to reinvent the World", by Tim Weisman) Amidst the strife of war torn Columbia,
Gaviotas persists and even flourishes.
" "When we import solutions from the US or Europe," said Lugari, founder of Gaviotas, "we also import their problems."....
Over the years Gaviotas technicians have installed thousands of the windmills across Colombia....Since Gaviotas refuses to patent inventions, preferring to share them freely, the design has been copied from Central America to Chile."
Gaviotas is
real, yes, but it is also a
state of mind - as if Ben Franklin, Frank Lloyd Wright, Leonardo Da Vinci - all of the great
those giants who reinvisioned the possible - were reincarnated : as a small Columbian village on a once-desolate plain.
"Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez has called Paolo Lugari the "inventor of the world." "
posted by troutfishing
on Apr 16, 2004 -
12 comments
The building of this has kept the average car driving commuter of my fair city enraged for 18 months. Not one person who complained to me, the token non-driver, knew that they were going to be wind-powered musical bus stops. Aren't they going to be happy when they find out? :)
There's also an audio (RM) link
here.
posted by vbfg
on Jan 30, 2002 -
16 comments
Wind power vs. hot air? Shamelessly purloined from
ms. nut: wind farms in the Mojave are being left idle because the power utilities won't upgrade the distribution lines. Instead, they buy in power from neighbouring grids, at inflated prices, with the state and the consumer underwriting the cost. (more inside thread)
posted by holgate
on Apr 3, 2001 -
3 comments
Flying Windmills and
Whirlygigs.
As the windy month comes to a close, these two stories seem appropriate. Two men on opposite sides of the globe, each a bit of a cross between Edison and Quixote.
posted by gimli
on Mar 30, 2001 -
2 comments
