Live in Harmony with Nature!
D.C. Considers Community Solar Power.
The D.C. Council is considering legislation that would allow people to get their energy from solar panels anywhere in the city — even for businesses and residents that don’t get the best light themselves.
Pastor Peter Spann is proud of all the things that go on under the roof of Promised Land Baptist Church in Takoma, D.C. From weddings to baby dedications, food donations to financial planning, Spann says the church is all about opening its doors to people. Still, the roof itself poses a problem. Spann wants to go solar, but the church can’t support the panels.
“The pitch of the roof is oriented east/west, and most of the sun comes from the south,” says Erin Alexander, who works for Kenergy Solar. “And it’s an old roof, so you’d have to redo the roof completely.”
But the recreation center across the street has a roof that’s perfectly suited for solar panels. Now Spann’s hoping a new bill will allow him to generate solar power there. Earlier this week, Ward 7 council member Yvette Alexander introduced the Community Renewables Energy Act of 2012, which would allow two or more individuals to share the electricity produced by a single system.
Steve Seuser, a member of the solar advocacy group D.C. SUN, explains: “The problem is if people can’t do solar on their own roofs, there’s no way to connect a solar system they would have somewhere else on their Pepco bill. That’s what this bill would do.”
It’s called community solar . And it means that people pay for power produced on panels anywhere in the city. Nicole Sitaraman with the D.C. Sierra Club says it’s an issue of equity.
“The main people who can benefit from solar energy generation are people who own the building, who own their own home, or their own businesses,” says Sitaraman. “Other people, like renters, are not able to benefit from solar energy generation.”
Similar bills have been under consideration in Maryland and Virginia, and Alexander says she hopes the D.C. bill will be passed before year’s end. After all, Spann says it’s all about promoting clean energy, and preserving resources.
“It helps us save our money for other needs,” says Spann.
And with solar power, he says he’ll be able to do even more under his roof.
Springtime! Are you ready to plant?
I am ready to put my hands in the dirt and watch as things start to grow.
I am reading a book called “The Third Industrial Revolution” and it is about the shift to lateral power.
I think the three sisters garden is a good example of lateral power.
Beans, Corn and Squash. The corn provides shade and its roots break up the soil. The beans grow up the stalks of corn and the squash covers the ground.
Let’s plant seeds of collaboration and growth
Happy Spring!
Principles of Indigenous Permaculture
- To understand, respect, and follow the natural laws given to us by the Creator.
- To understand natural energy flows.
- To understand impacts on the natural environment and indigenous communities when unsustainable choices are made
- To be conscious and responsible in our use of natural resources.
- To establish microclimates for natural habitats that will promote a favorable environment for all living beings.
- To create diversity for beneficial symbiotic plant and animal relationships.
- To develop a cooperative existence with human kind and the natural world.
- To utilize the designs, patterns and rhythms of nature.
The environmental movement -through my eyes.
Culture
I was born just six years before the first earth day. That same year, Rachel Carson died of breast cancer and John Coltrane wroteThe Love Supreme. Our world was changing.
Sixteen years later I read Frances Moore Lappe’s Book Diet for a Small Planet and became a vegetarian. Not many of my friends were vegetarian and it became a running joke around my house and earned me the nickname “Rabbit.” I was gung-ho about environmentalism and would go into a speech about it at a flick of a dime.
My uncle convinced me to cut up the soda pop plastic holders and never let go of balloons into the air. He emphasized that they ended up in the ocean where birds and fish found them, ate them and died.
One day when we were out on my uncle’s boat, I saw a deflated balloon floating on the surface of the water and was appalled at the idea of all the fish and birds dying because of people’s extravagances.
Since then I have worked for many environmental companies and now run Earthwise Design Consulting dedicated to sustainable design.
Would I have chosen this path, if it were not for the culture that I grew up in?
Capital
When my daughter was in kindergarten she would call me around lunch time and say she wanted to come home because she was sick. After a little investigation I found out that her school was renovating and the chemicals were making her sick. After that I always spent extra money to buy healthy products. I was a single mother raising three children but my daughter’s health was not something that I could compromise on.
Money is important, especially when you don’t have any. But is it more important than the health of the people and the planet?
Convenience
I always recycle, but people tell me that there are many reasons why recycling is not convenient. There is now something called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch where all the garbage that we have been throwing into the ocean is converging.
What will we tell future generations about how we took care of the planet?
So environmentalism has gone main stream. Most people know about recycling, solar, healthy foods and green building. The average American says that they want to go green, but still struggles with how to make these choices. Capital, culture and convenience continue to be the issues that are slowing down progress. The old paradigms are changing and we are moving toward sustainability. I am excited about this movement. Progress may be a little slow for me, but it is progress nonetheless.
There is a lot of talk going on about the passing of Steve Jobs and he will be missed. But let us not forget that we lost another being that changed the world. On September 25 Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Winner became an ancestor. I first heard about Wangari in 2002 when a colleague of mine asked me if I had heard of the Green Belt Movement. At the time I was working for an environmental organization and I was ecstatic to find out about an African woman that was doing environmental work.
She endured prison, beatings, and losing her children. But she still moved forward to change the lives of women and men in Kenya.
WE MUST NOT TIRE, WE MUST NOT GIVE UP, WE MUST PERSIST-
Wangari Maathai
Her strategy was simple and yet it changed a country
Barack Obama said “The work of the Greenbelt Movement stands as a testament to the power of grassroots organizing, proof that one person’s simple idea—that a community should come together to plant trees—can make a difference, first in one village, then in one nation, and now across Africa.
And the Dalai Lama said” Her movement combined women’s rights, conservation and transparent government.
How did Wangari Maathai change things?
She taught women how to plant trees and trained them in grass roots organizing around an idea she called the Wrong Bus Syndrome
“What could possibly make anyone get on the wrong bus?
1. Ignorance — You do not know how to read the signs or you asked for directions but was misled by someone else who also does not know how to read the signs
2. Naivety — You think there is only one direction (whatever direction the bus is going)
3. Fear — You are too afraid to ask for directions because you do not want to disturb other people’s peace or hurt their feelings (by making them aware of the fact that they too are sitting in the wrong bus).
4. Pride — You are too proud to ask for directions. You find an inquisitive mind embarrassing and asking questions of strangers stupid
5. Pack mentality — Everyone else was getting in the bus and you too got in because you didn’t want to be the “odd one” looking in from the outside
6. Absent-mindedness — You are preoccupied with other thoughts, not mentally alert or focused
7. Indecisiveness — You got on the right bus but midway changed your mind about the direction you want to go. Got out and got into the wrong bus. Now you’re so confused and can’t figure out exactly which is the “right bus” and which one is the “wrong bus”
In honor to Wangari Maathai I am going to make a conscious effort to see the ways that I have gotten on the wrong bus and move to change these behaviors in myself.
My get off the wrong bus resolution
- Put my money in a credit union
- Grow my own food in a community garden next year
- Talk to a young person about their hopes and dreams
- Volunteer at an organization that feeds people
- Help clean the Anacostia River ( Maferefun Oshun)
- Create the Osoosi Peace Garden that I have been talking about for 8 years
Yes, It is time for me to get off the wrong bus and walk my path.
We love you Wangari Maathai and will miss you!
