Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is a procedure used by oil and gas companies to extract hard-to-reach deposits deep beneath the earth’s surface. It involves injecting large quantities of water mixed with sand and a host of toxic chemicals (lubricants, gels, abrasives, etc.) under enormous pressure. This process opens small cracks in the shale, allowing tiny...
Category: Uncategorized
Post
The bottled water scam
One looming cause of localized water shortages is the American public’s love of bottled water. From inland Maine to the Rocky Mountains, millions of gallons of local water are being siphoned into plastic bottles and shipped far and wide. Water bottlers have been pumping and selling millions of gallons of water a year from springs...
Post
This isn’t rocket science: conserve water
It’s not that we didn’t see this coming. Forget the weather patterns you grew up with, the U.S. and the rest of the world are entering a new climatic pattern: water will be scarcer, rains shorter and more intense, snowfalls fewer, weather patterns more erratic. These new weather patterns are no longer abnormal. According to...
Post
What can you do?
It is confounding why more people don’t take the many simple steps available to them to conserve water. You can significantly reduce water consumption in and around your home or business for, in most cases, very reasonable cost. There is no simple one-size-fits-all set of solutions, but doing a little homework can make a big...
Post
Tapped out and going dry
From Australia to Mexico to sub-Saharan Africa, the world is gripped by a shortage of fresh, clean water. The evidence is everywhere. Up to 80% of China’s rivers are now so polluted that they no longer support aquatic life. NASA satellite photos indicate that India’s water table is shrinking by as much as a foot...
Post
Surveillance state
It’s the Summer of 2013. How much of what has happened since the Spring Trends Journal do you remember? And of what you do remember, which events affected your life? Spring was still new when on April 15 two brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were accused of detonating bombs near the finish line of the...
Post
Trend forecast
While the causes of class, regional or civil war are different, the end result is essentially the same: “War.” And it’s going to go global. It was, and remains, my Top Trend for 2013.
Post
What can you do?
Buy locally grown and made products. Keep the money in your community! If you’re a community-minded entrepreneur, put a team together and make a grassroots investment in this emerging trend, particularly if no grocery store serves the community. Encourage community and local youth groups to use urban farming as a jobs training program, and seek...
Post
The Rust Belt goes green
In the 20th century, the American heartland — from Kansas City to Pittsburgh — sprouted factories that turned out everything from hammers to rocket engines. Now, after decades of hard times for manufacturing, the heartland is sprouting again. Only this time, the crop is sprouts – along with jobs, an urban-agriculture industry, and a solution...
Post
Is gold still golden?
Turn on the cable business shows, read the financial papers, listen to the media’s prized “experts,” hear it from billionaires, and most of all, pay attention when Mr. Big speaks. The message is essentially the same: Gold is a loser’s game. We begin with media favorite Nouriel Roubini, New York University’s own and a member...