Clean Energy Springfield

So, there was Community Energy Systems (CES). And that was weird, but okay. Now there's the Coalition of Energy Suppiers. Does anyone else want to be a CES?

If I can indulge in a little bit of self-publicity, a review I wrote of a Resources for the Future book called Scarcity and Growth Revisited has been posted at the Environmental Economics blog. At the end of it, one of the things I mention is that there's a burgeoning subfield of study called "time affluence," or the way that people's well-being increases more when they have lots of time than when they have lots of money and stuff.

I mostly let lie low the consumerism side of sustainability, but that's not because it's unimportant. Rather, it's maybe even more important, but also even trickier to get a handle on since you're dealing with people's hope, fears, aspirations, and identities.

One knock against a lot of the lifestyle sustainability issues that swirl around in environmentalism is that they're elite re-creations of older ways of doing things. I think this is true, to some extent, though not always for the reasons people think. (For instance, carey, in comments below, notes that you can't use food stamps at the farmers market.) Generally, though, I think that liberal and environmental elites have been in the vanguard of sustainability, and that's reflected in what sustainability is, as it's portrayed in the media.

But that "is" isn't what has to be. Conservative Rod Dreher wrote a book about "Crunchy Conservatives" (crunchy like granola; the origin of the book is probably this column in the National Review). That's a way into sustainability for conservatives.

Alternately, for the even more traditional-minded among us, The Two Income Trap offers a sustainability-friendly paen to the single-income family (based on the reasoning that one-income families are more resilient to economic shocks and more self-reliant).

With all of this in mind, and with the recent buzz about Bike to Work Day, allow me to point everybody to Take Back Your Time Day, which is October 24 this year. If you're interested in this sort of thing, I flipped through the book list at TimeDay, and pulled out a few that are available at our library:

Graceful Simplicity (decatur; requestable)
Living the Simple Life (Segal)
The Art of Doing Nothing (Vienne)
The Overworked American (Schor)
Simple Living Guide (Luhrs)

Ah, the bane of bloggers everywhere -- the long, unexplained absence that leaves your front page entirely post-less. Vacation travel followed by a family emergency has left us in dire straits. But fear not -- I have brought presents for you all. We've tweaked the design of the front page a little bit to make room for the most wonderful supercool thing ever -- a Wind Farm monitor for Springfield's wind power purchases.

Since our wind farm is out of town--Iowa, to be approximate--we thought it would be nice to have a little way for people in town to keep tabs on when the wind blows. Dave Heinzel did a wonderful job of taking a publicity photo from Florida Power and Light and animating it. The monitor pulls real-time weather data, with the wind speed, from the National Weather Service, and turns the blades of the turbine somewhat in-line with the speed. ("Somewhat" because the relation of turns to wind speed is just made up right now, but we hope to update it with real information from FPL one day.)

Right now, we're only buying into the Hancock County wind farm -- Osceola won't come online until late this year or early 2008. So if you ever have the hankering to check in on our little contribution to fighting climate change, drop by and see how the wind is blowing.

First off, I've been negligent in not welcoming Kevin to the blog. Kevin's been with CES from the start, and was active doing what we're trying to do even before that. As you can see from his first two posts, he's extremely knowledgeable about some of the nitty-gritty of moving to a more sustainable world, and so should be an invaluable member of the Springfield blogging community.

Secondly, I guess now is as good a time as any to note that in the next month or so, I'll be leaving Springfield for Austin, TX, due to my wife getting transferred. It's been great living in Springfield, and CES has been a huge part of that. But Austin is booming and weird, so the sadness is mixed with excitement. I'll still be around for a little while, though, so you're not rid of me yet.