The City of Fort Wayne passed a light pollution ordinance this week. The quantity of criticism of this commonsense law is amazing. I certainly agree that this shouldn’t need to be a law, but unfortunately, it does. The only problem I see with this ordinance is that it only applies to residential properties. It is [...]
In surprising good news, the Fort Wayne city council passed–and the mayor signed–a residential light pollution law. This is something I have supported for at least twelve years. I can see the point of some on the council that this shouldn’t be a law, but their reasoning is wrong. It shouldn’t need to be a [...]
In surprising news, the Fort Wayne National Bank Santa Claus and Reindeer display is going green this year. The 24,717 incandescent bulbs are being replaced with LEDs. This will be a large energy savings. The 10W bulbs are being replaced with brighter 1W LEDs. The new LEDs cost around $2.80 each, and are expected to [...]
“Drill, Baby, Drill!” We have heard this phrase constantly since the Republican convention. The thought behind this chant is that increased American oil production will lead to lower gas prices. This idea is based on supply and demand. With a constant demand, increasing supply should lower the price of a resource. Drilling in the US [...]
(This is a re-post from last week. The original post disappeared in the server change.) I saw a graph of car and bicycle production in The Economist. The article was On your bike: Obesity and high oil prices are good news for the world’s biggest bikemaker. This was one of the many recent stories on [...]
I’m sick of the phrase “free from foreign oil.” I’ve heard this phrase a lot with the party conventions the last couple weeks. People who use this phrase are missing the point. The correct phrase is “free from oil.”
I finally got around to watching Who Killed the Electric Car?. It is a very good documentary. I have been reading about electric vehicles the past few months, and the movie inspired me to start looking again.
This is really cool. I thought of doing this myself, but it is too expensive for now. Randall Fishman built an electric ultralight. He is now selling them as the ElectraFlyer. Depending on the battery pack and propeller installed, it can fly for up to two hours. Instead of the short noisy propellers on most [...]
Acording to a News-Sentinel story, there is a possibility of some windmills being installed in the eastern part of Allen County. There is no good reason that a wind farm hasn’t been installed there yet. Even a few windmills will help lower Fort Wayne’s use of coal power.