Templates
Everything about Good Change is each individual person taking action however they can. We can all optimize our own impact and helpfulness, and sometimes we can help our community or our school to make good change. Here are some templates to get you started.
Optimize Impact:
- Residential Actions Checklist – save to your own computer/cloud, and add track your progress
Optimize Helpfulness
Community and School Templates:
ReGen Villages for Public Housing
ReGen Villages for Public Housing – Google Doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rc4nknO8On4vWIqE6cAP7VuPqSmACYDCyb3086CKQUM/edit?usp=sharing
The Climate Economy Education Inc has been working intermittently with college students to continue research on different topics related to ReGen Villages for Public Housing.
Research:
- Bhore, Safya, Arizona State University, Mechanical Engineering Master Student, “Site Research for ReGen Villages in Southern Illinois,” December 2021: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17X2pL3ZBiv0mY4MhFQxTASpM5NguhjVk/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=112212107609826214427&rtpof=true&sd=true
- Mwambo, Masa, Arizona State University, Mechanical Engineering Master Student, “ReGen Village Research Topics”: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZrH84DYTV0NiAAyECvU2IZYVA7RMrA39pzwCFYzYjKU/edit?usp=sharing
Urban Community and Rural Agriculture Based Energy Economic Development Systems
Relocalized and distributed business models for food, sustainable agriculture, energy efficiency, renewable energy, technology, ecotourism, water conservation/reclamation, waste and investment are increasingly common tools for local economic development and wealth-building strategies.
Images, developed by Energy Resources Management https://www.energyresourcesgroupinc.com/:
Figure 1: https://bit.ly/2RXag0t – Urban community energy economic development system development
Figure 2: https://bit.ly/3oga0Gf – Rural agriculture based energy economic development system development
Figure 3: https://bit.ly/3br9jVp – Representative sample of local green jobs
Potential businesses/projects:
- Connect rural and urban economies: Research, analyze community assets and issues; Establish/optimize communication, public/private collaboration, and increase local grass-roots organizing capacity
- Stimulate entrepreneurship: Establish plans and support for Illuminations/DHUD Envision Centers demonstration projects that provide opportunities for collaboration, resource-sharing, business incubator/accelerator, research/development, education, and training
- Train workers for jobs in sustainable careers: Identify, support, expand existing programs; Develop new programs to provide pathways for community economic development systems (Fig 1-2), help people find their niche, funnel them toward available jobs (Fig 3)
- Optimize policies/programs to support CLEANetwork: Investigate, facilitate, implement municipal policies that reinforce green/sustainable community economic development. Develop master plans to sustain and grow local businesses utilizing the local workforce and create generational wealth within communities
Biochar
Introduction
Biochar – Expanding Our Economic Choices
Biochar is an example of flipping our traditional way of thinking on its head. There are so many crazy things that humans do in mindless ways that result in damages to the environment. All we have to do is think differently.
We have a choice before us now, individually and collectively. Civilizations undergo transformations. We can leave behind the old one that is poorly adapted, and design and build a better society… The destructive civilization of the past few centuries was founded on plundering and profiting from prehistoric carbon. The new economy will be carbon-centric, too, but the focus will be on continuous cycling—and a virtuous spiral of improvement. Bates, Albert. Burn . Chelsea Green Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Biochar is created from waste.
Contrary to what some claim, there is no shortage of biomass. Fields of food do not need to be replaced with biomass energy crops. Our linear economy and lifestyle is positively drowning in wasted organics—sewage sludge, livestock manure, invasive species, green waste (yard clippings), food waste—the list goes on. Many are either landfilled or burned in an effort to ship them away, although as we are learning, there really is no “away” anymore. This type of handling comes at a cost, not just to waste producers who have to arrange disposal, but to those on the receiving end—those who live near landfills or close to areas being burned and despoiled. Bates, Albert. Burn . Chelsea Green Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Biochar can be used in a lot of ways that are normally provided by petroleum-based products. So instead of digging up the fossil fuels that are happily sequestering carbon under the ground, we use human waste that otherwise pollutes the environment and emits more carbon into the air.
We can have our energy and our food at the same time. We can get rid of landfills and incinerators, waste lagoons, and ocean dumps all at once. To do this, we need to transform our old linear model into a carbon cascade economy, in which a growing portion of underutilized labile carbon cycle will be converted into recalcitrant carbon. Bates, Albert. Burn . Chelsea Green Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Much has been written about biochar as a soil amendment, and it’s certainly a crucial component of efforts to drawdown carbon (https://drawdown.org/solutions/biochar-production).
We can begin to sequester carbon in concrete highways and high-rises. We can grow kelp and, after pressing it for leaf protein, char that and build coral-restoring coastal filter barriers. Carbon abuse and waste becomes carbon abundance and recycling. The change we make starts to stay changed. Circular carbon economies begin to cascade. Carbon rebalancing can begin in earnest. Bates, Albert. Burn . Chelsea Green Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Albert Bates came to Carbondale in June 2019, you can watch that presentation here: https://youtu.be/WM7wStUrAfs.
Recently Active Members
Recently Active Members
