RE: Taking Care of Business – Why NOT Make the Most out of the Worst?
Nice one @stortebeker ! I agree with so much of this :) I remember listening to David Blume who wrote Alcohol Can Be A Gas, saying that it is possible to meet the USA's energy needs from Cellulosic Ethanol from the existing grass clipping cycle that is actually linear. If people made artificial wetlands alongside highways, cattails and other wetland plants could thrive on the sewage we feed them, digesting them naturally and providing more material to feed cellulosic ethanol plants. Plus the plants would absorb the CO2 fairly directly. If your car ran on ethanol, you could drive home, use the car as a generator for powering your batteries, connect the radiator to the house for heat and let the exhaust boost your greenhouse for a few hours while the batteries recharge. Add Living Machines to each home and everyone could reuse the same limited amount of rainwater indefinitely. Humanure, use of urine and incorporating 'wastes' into systems that cycle them endlessly will be the beginning of actually civilization. Nice post!
Thank you, I also agree with a lot of what you mentioned. When you first brought up ethanol for fuel, the first thing to come to my mind were huge canola fields... grown with fossil fuels, obviously. That one I don't even consider a solution, but an exacerbation of the problem. However, grass clippings, or even better natural wetlands are a whole different story. I can stand behind those. Unfortunately, cars as we know them today have many other poisonous ingredients, such as oil, radiator fluid, not to mention rubber-dust from the tires, etc. which may not be the best for the wetland ecosystem. However, I don't want to exclude anything. A little tweaking to the system can resolve huge issues.