Sunday, December 20, 2009

New Age Idealism and Business can work together

Yesterday we put together a large charcoal kiln out of scrap metal, packed it with 40lbs of raw alfalfa and made 10 lbs of biochar. We will mix the charcoal 50/50 with leaf mulch for the spring vegetable garden.

The ratio of biomass to charcoal is even better than I thought
about 4 to 1

In cash terms that means one ton of alfalfa selling at $200 per ton when turned to biochar is worth $1200. (BioChar sells at $70 for a 30 lb bag.) And since the conversion process chars itself with its own released gasses, it costs nothing to produce but a couple of hours of labor - the net profit is almost $1000.
That is more than just a cool deal!
That is as hot as it gets!

We will construct a much bigger kilm soon, also out of scrap but this one with an added compression chamber that can store and redirect the gas releases,

We are currently producing a short video for Utube, which we taped during the initial combustion process we first did in our kitchen. There are plenty of other demo videos out there that show how to make bio-char - but this is the first one that shows the amazing amounts of oil-laden steam, nitrogen, carbon monoxide and hydrogen gasses trapped inside the raw bio mass - jetting out of the kiln under heat pressure. Enough fuel to char itsekf and then some.

This is probably the most productive way we will ever tap into stored solar energy!
It makes biochar, sequestrates the earth with replaced carbon, fertilizes the soil, grows better crops, and keeps the air and earth clean - all at the same time

The potential that our research foundation might be able at convert our entire valley ecosystem and its $200 million alfalfa agri-business into something far more sustainable
as well as five times more profitable makes the grant application to USDA almost a done deal as well as being a huge advert for the budding bioChar industry in general

There are billions of farm acres that need carbon sequestration as well as masses of excess energy for electricity

This win/win breakthrough on how to change the way we do business here in our own desert eco-system has made me realize more clearly how the whole environmental movement is stalled by the argument between business and idealism and how that can be solved.

In this experiment in Fish Lake Valley we will be showing that eco-management in a sustainable manner can be initiated without business disruption and even allow profits to soar to higher levels than previously imagined

I believe that sustainability without disruption may possibly be achieved in any and all industrialized ecosystems if idealists think more creatively and constructively about the motivational effect of bonuses and profits instead of asking for new taxes and sacrifices.

Idealists talking good business sense will shut up all the bull in Congress and get construction going faster than destruction

THAT, I believe, is the big New Age Deal!

Friday, December 18, 2009

How to Change the World without Sacrifices

I watched the debate on CNN last night re the Copenhagen summit on Global warming

Like always I ended up frustrated listening to the pros and cons

All the proposals for making a better world made obvious sense
The guy who was against it (and whom I was angry with) argued that we are asking poor nations and poor people in general to make sacrifices or pay extra taxes in order to do it - and therefore no matter how good the ideals and no matter how much economic sense it might make in the future, the existential poverty of the present means mass change can never happen.

I had spent the day with the kids doing a successful experiment in converting raw bio-mass (in this case alfalfa) into biochar in order to produce enough biochar to make soil-enrichment samples for planting in the spring. So I went to bed thinking both positively and negatively.

This whole New Age debate about mass change - politically and economically is a war between the hard realities of business as is at present and idealism as it should be - with time running out on all of us

I woke up this morning with the obvious and immediate solution to mass change staring me in the face.

The answer is to forget about taxes and sacrifices and think about bonuses and profits instead.

Pay people more money than they have at present to make significant changes in the way they do bui9sness, making them richer, happier and more motivated while doing it,

Sounds crazy right?
Not at all.

Example No 1.

Black students do more poorly in school than whites
and more end up in juvenile detention and jail

Solution

There is a guy running a private school in Harlem with over a thousand students. He has been paying his senior black students over a 100 bucks a month to keep up full attendance and high grades for the past five years.
He has been accused of bribery which he cheerfully acknowledges
but significantly not of corruption
Net result .he has lifted black scores in all grades in maths and English up to the same level as whites. Previously thought to be impossible. He has achieved 100% graduation results with every student off to college.
New York City is giving him the money and is happy to do so. It costs them $100,000 a year per child in juvenile detention and $60,000 a year for one in jail. The Harlem school has proved to be cheap at the price.

Example No 2
Fish Lake valley
Alfalfa farmers are planting a swamp plant in the desert. In the process they are draining a precious nartural aquifer of all its water The have huge energy needs required to pump the water for irrigation. And poisoning the soil with insecticides

Solution
We pay the farmers more for their alfalfa than they are currently getting ($200 per ton)

We then convert their crop into BioChar (worth $700, per ton)
on the condition that they use half the biochar ( we sell the other half to pay for it all) to improve their soil and gradually change crops to planting more sustainable corn and fruit orchards which require far less water and energy use.

If that kind of thinking is positive in those two entirely different examples of a mass change of consciousness
I am prepared to bet the farm it can be done so everywhere