I made a claim a while back in a letter I wrote that stated:

If a survey was conducted among a random set of Americans asking “Do you think the U.S. is becoming more or less moral?” I believe the surveyor would be hard pressed to find one respondent who would reply - “more”.

If you feel so inclined to answer the question - first compare 1950 with the present, and then compare 2000 with the present.

A definition for “moral”: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/moral

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About the Author

John Mecham is currently a Program Director at The Philanthropy Roundtable - a member donor group that seeks to strengthen our free society. He recently attended Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, where he earned his MBA with an emphasis in entrepreneurship, consulting and finance. He has lead both small international and social development organizations: “Babson Global Outreach through Entrepreneurship”and “Mentor a Child, Change a Life”. John graduated with a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Utah and worked as a manufacturing engineer for three years.

In last week’s post I wrote about current solar panel technologies and noted that, while they produce clean energy, the production of current commercial photovoltaics is far from a clean process.  Well, in this turkey-delayed post (apologies!), I’ll explore some of the new advances in silicon photovoltaics that are currently being developed.

Traditionally, solar cells are manufactured from a single pure crystal of silicon.  These single crystals are formed by melting a pure polycrystalline silicon (pc-Si) precursor and slowly growing a single crystal boule, which is then cut into wafers to be used in chips or solar panels.  This monocrystalline silicon (c-Si) processing is arduous and expensive. 

Researchers are now using another type, called amorphous silicon (a-Si).  Rather than growing a single crystal from a pool of molten silicon, cheaper chemical techniques can be used to deposit a-Si onto a substrate for generating electricity.  The best part about a-Si is that it can be made at much lower temperatures (no melting!), which means it can be deposited onto plastic substrates to make more flexible photovoltaics, rather than just glass.  As the tiny crystals in an amorphous silicon chunk get smaller and smaller, tending toward nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si), it becomes more and more stable. 

Perhaps even cooler, engineers have recently begun to use the pc-Si precursor — that grainy stuff — to make solar cells directly, which is obviously cheaper still.  Like a-Si cells, these pc-Si cells are less efficient than the pure stuff, but their lower cost to produce makes for a lower overall cost-per-watt.  And these cells can even be combined with the amorphous form to make a-Si/pc-Si hybrids, which combine inexpensiveness and flexibility to make one cool product. 

All these fancy silicon techniques mean that solar may soon reach grid parity!

Disclosure: At the time of the writing of this post, I have no financial relationships with any of the organizations mentioned, except as explicitly indicated.

The upcoming holiday season means that you’ll likely buy gifts for those you care about. If you also care about the environment, then you’ll want to buy gifts that are eco-friendly. You may have noticed all of the products on the shelves that claim to be “green” and wonder if they really are “green” or just greenwashing. What does one do to determine if a product is really eco-friendly?

Well, a North American environmental marketing firm, named TerraChoice, is helping consumers determine if a product is really eco-friendly. They released a report this week called the Six Sins of Greenwashing, which details how products make a “green” claim when they aren’t necessarily green. (You can download a pdf copy of the report to carry with you.) According to the report, 57% of all greenwashed products commit the “Sin of the Hidden-Trade Off” where a company asserts that a product is green based on a “single environmental attribute without attention to other important, or perhaps more important, environmental issues (such as energy, global warming, water, and forestry impacts of paper).” To find out about the other sins of greenwashing committed by companies, visit TerraChoice’s site for the report. You can also read about this report on CNET and the New York Times.

This holiday season, be an educated shopper and don’t be fooled by products that greenwash! You’ll make Santa very proud!

Disclosure: At the time of the writing of this post, I have no financial relationships with any of the organizations mentioned.

It may be too late for tips on how to have a more eco-friendly Thanksgiving if you are reading this on Thursday. (Hint: keeping the right amount air in your car’s tires is good advice year round).

However, it is not too late to participate in the 15th annual Buy Nothing Day. BND started in Canada as an informal day of protest against consumerism and has expanded to the US and Europe. How hard can it be do nothing? To buy noting? If you are lazy, broke, hate crowds, or live , you won’t find it hard to pass on shopping on 11/23. However, if you are like most of us, you are likely to be planning some shopping in December. The challenge is not to buy nothing on 11/23, but to buy less during all of December. The purpose of BND is not to postpone buying for a day or two, but to look more carefully at what we really need and to consider limiting our consumption of unnecessary stuff.

Bea wrote about plastic bags that are used at your local grocery store to bag your groceries. And, it seems that this issue is on the minds of city officials as well. Starting November 20th, 2007, plastic grocery bags will be illegal at major San Francisco grocery stores. The thought is that plastic bags harm the environment because they are not easily recycled. Instead, grocers will be forced to used paper bags. And, according to a San Francisco Chronicle article, “Six months from now, pharmacy chains will also have to comply. The policy will be the first enacted in the United States - Oakland passed a similar ban that goes into effect early next year and London and Paris both have followed San Francisco’s lead…”

While I commend city officials’ efforts to stop the use of environmentally harmful plastic bags, I’m not so sure that forcing grocers to distribute more paper bags is the answer. This, undoubtedly, will cause an increase in paper consumption and, not to mention, all of the other resources (such as electricity) required to manufacture paper bags.

I can’t help but think that creating incentives for people to stop using any kind of bags altogether would be most significant. Perhaps, government could provide consumers with a discount off their groceries if they bring their own bags? Can anyone comment on any other ideas their local government is employing and how effective they are?

Disclosure: At the time of the writing of this post, I have no financial relationships with any of the organizations mentioned.

I would sound pessimistic by saying that war were likely, but I would argue that that conclusion would be realistic. 

China and India have a voracious appetite for fossil fuels, in part because America led the way in fossil-fuel consumption.  I find it significant that we have staked the Middle East, China has Africa, and the Russians are making noises about undersea oil caches where the polar ice has melted.  (I wonder which area of the world India would claim.)

I do not see how we are going to satisfy everyone.  Did not a clash over resources with the Japanese lead to World War II? 

What makes this worse is what I hear from family and see among friends.  Few people have conservation on the mind and in hand.  We still want our SUVs and other gadgets.  The thought of war is too distant for us to care.

Have you seen “An Inconvenient Truth”?  Regardless of the soundness of Al Gore’s arguments (in other words, conservatives, pay attention), his analogy to the frog in hot water resonates with me.  A frog in water which gradually becomes hot is not going to jump out.  We humans act similarly.  There are many annoyances, even burdens, in the area of the environment, the operation of our democracy, health care, but no annoyance has led us to question the structure of our economy or democracy.

Interestingly, whether or not global warming be true, whether or not we humans could do something about it, there is an entirely different issue, namely, the competition for fossil fuels.  I do not know of anyone who says that the consumption has declined or is likely to decline.

If somebody were to say that countries had matured to where they would not fight over fossil fuels, I would be interested in the arguments in support of that position.