Sustainability  

Thank heavens you finally brought geothermal out of the closet...
Sandia Labs, before its recent management contract take over by Carlyle, had a web page that showed a drill they designed to simply and cheaply drop as manny holes as needed 5200 feet on any continent in the world and tap into enough geothermal energy to replace ALL the oil and coal powered energy we consume presently, or might foreseeably consume for centuries to come. Geothermal is not everywhere on every continent, but it exists in massive supplies in easily accessible regions of every continent (including Antarctica) and it is just as easy to distribute by existing power line infrastructure as any other power source. It is an absolutely clean way to run turbines large or small till hell freezes over, or the oceans melt if you believe in the current anthropogenic global warming booga booga. If I recall correctly, Sandia estimated that geothermal reserves exceed the total supply of all fossil reserves that ever existed by many orders of magnitude. How's that for long term feasibility coupled with cleanliness.
To show Sandia did not always find panaceas, Sandia also did a lot of work on wind energy before the Carlyle takeover and though it made some highly efficient turbine blade advances that could make wind a much bigger contributor to energy supplied, Sandia's web site comments never suggested that wind was feasible to massively augment our energy consumption the way geothermal might.
Now, I know you were probably referring to simple, single home heat exchangers when you were referring to geothermal, but I had to add the part about the Sandia drill and geothermal reserves on all continents to put person's minds at ease once and for all about the hair-brained notion that there is a real energy shortage. The only energy shortage any of us, or our children, or our grand children, or their grand children will ever experience is one induced to expand the control of one group of oligarchs over another, or over a group of persons sitting on the oil and gas some oligarchs would like to start exploiting.
What we experience presently is a decision made by the energy oligopoly and the central bankers that own and finance the energy oligopoly, and use its energy units to back the central bank currencies, to move from oil and coal to a more proprietary, fungible, cost effective and clean natural gas infrastructure (hence the ongoing building of a large network of LNG terminals and regassfication plants around North America) that offers the cleaner burning characterstics of natural gas plus massively reduced per energy unit refining costs of natural gas, plus the much greater supplies of natural gas. But to make that move, the energy oligopoly and its central bank backers have to take all of the major oil and gas fields in the world over to prevent countries from staying with oil based energy, rather than migrating obediently to natural gas.

Thank heavens you finally brought geothermal out of the closet...Pt. 2
In the midst of this big power game is the need to generate energy locally by responsible persons who do not want to use energy as a weapon of global order and coercive power over states and nations of persons.
Hence, every home you can sustainably ween off the infrastructures that energy vampires already control, the better off humanity is, unless humanity can find peaceful ways of returning those energy infrastructures (be they natural gas, oil, coal, geothermal, or something no one has yet dreamed of)to control by legitimately representative government.
IMHO, the best thing persons can do for the world's environment at present is convert as many homes as possible to compost toilets to end the stupidity of the flushing of trillions of gallons of formerly fresh, clean water into septic tanks and sewerage treatment plants. By composting human waste, and recycling it into your lawns, flower beds and gardens, you not only eliminate all of the waste of water and the cost of its collective treatment and the cost of ground water pollution that occurs with septics, you also save many, many gasoline burning trips to the lawn and garden store for fertilizer you don't need; a fertilizer by the way which is itself a petroleum product, and not needed because one's own composted urine and feces, in combination with the composted green waste of their yards, yields more than enough nitrogen enriched fertilizer for their lawns, gardens, and flower beds, which themselves consume alot of CO2 and produce alot of oxygen.
If suburbia and exurbia were to convert to compost toilets and heat exchangers, alone, suburban and exurban sprawl would probably become an environmental virtue instead of a vice. Dense cities are massively inefficient energy sinks. Add in electric cars to suburbia and exurbia driven by turbines turned by geothermal energy, and informed, rational greens would be advocating subdivision and ranchettes for the masses in no time. Further, the oilcos and the central bankers would all quickly have to go back to honest, competitive work for a living, rather than spending all their time and our resources on figuring out how to maintain their energy and money oligopolies in an awkwardly controlled transition from coal and oil to natural gas.

Thank heavens you finally brought geothermal out of the closet...Pt. 3
Post Script: Please, god, spare us another generation being hoodwinked into thinking nuclear power makes sense, because it doesn't have smoke stacks and doesn't require large land tear-ups of coal mining. It is still the stupidest energy supply feasible. What kind of idiot species would base its energy needs on fission plants that require location on massive water resources that constantly run the risk of polluting those water resources from even minor technical snafus, plus produce a steady stream of lethal waste with no known peaceful use and the absolute certainty of requiring storage areas that become permanently uninhabitable potential environmental disasters. Nukes are nuts, regardless of how safe the operation of plants can eventually be made, unless the waste problem can be solved. Notice NOONE ever claims it can be.
So: keep up the good work Olive. I'm exploring the latest generation of compost toilets and heat exchangers. If I find I can walk the talk, I'll let you know. But I'm not doing it cause we're running out of energy (we're not). And I'm not doing it because we're warming the climate, because the scientific facts (not the algorithmic modelling voodoo, but the empirical record of solar cycles and current planetary warming through out the solar system presently) just about stick a fork in the anthropogenic green house effect. I'm doing it, because it is rational to stop wasting clean water, and stop polluting the ground water, and stop burning gasoline to go to the hardware store to buy fertilizer I don't need, and stop subsidizing energy and central bank oligopolies that send our kids off to die in foreign lands for oil and gas we don't need in order to protect their oligopoly power and position.

Amen and Halleluiah!
At present I have nothing to add, dcwilson pretty much said it all...however, I do believe that humans are affecting climate...although I think that we are additive not causal. But no matter what, we are wasting our planet's resources and it's the only planet we have ...we need to live responsibly on it.
If any one else wants to chime in please please do.
DCW look for a book called "The Humanure Handbook"

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Is that the product with the wonderful tagline ". . .Well, it's no Soylent Green, but. . ."

LOL!
I love that title. 🙂 I will have to buy it just to have it on the coffee table for the next social occassion. It will generate massive amounts of conversation.

my current burn
is home building practices in colder (heating season) that still dont routinely use passive solar design plans. conventional houses could and should be outlawed. if we can legally have CAFE standards for cars then we could certainly put the screws on home building. and were talking a simple design change to go from large heating energy use to potentially no heating costs.

Simple changes big impact
Passive Solar requirements could have a huge impact. So could mandatory insulation ratings, window E-ratings, higher fuel efficiency rating for heating devices, CFL usage required for a certain percentage of lighting, etc.
There are also lots of changes that people can make that would contribute and not alter their lives much. Take reusable bags to the grocery store or anywhere else you shop. Use natural biodegradable cleansers, stop using bleach unless absolutely necessary, ditch the lawn and lawn chemicals if you live in a region that doesn't support it. Turn your lights off more, turn your computer off more, by fruits and vegetables in season and locally if you can. Reduce your printed periodicals and newspaper subscriptions to those that you really do read regularly, stop buying bottled water and use tap water- filtered if you must.
Simple simple things that add up to big reductions in the amount of petrochemical usage, carbon emmissions and other waste that each person adds to the environment every day.

I can't imagine that the intelligent , educated
crowd that frequents this forum doesn't have more to offer on this subject! C'mon people...what are you thinking about on renreable energy or alternative vehicles or anything else like that

Three wheeled faired bicycles with...
electric hub motors in wheels. I want one.
Presently, firms are starting to offer electric hub mounted motors and wheel kits that you just stick on the front fork of your mountain bike. 20 miles at 18 miles per hour. Four hour recharge. Ride back home. Hub electric motors in bikes are a great future combined with moving closer to work. Bye bye multiple cars and insurance and multiple garages.