Those who followed the results of my experiment in heating water with a special mound of composting wood-chips will be glad to hear that my mound is up to 115-degrees, a full year after we first built it.

See my previous posts on how we made our "Jean Pain Mound" at http://www.vtcommons.org/blog/2009/10/02/energy-optimist-brown-mound-com...

The topic of how we get our energy is on the forefront of conversations these days as we grapple with the oil-spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the recent coal-mine collapse in West Virginia, not to mention the dozens of aging nuclear power plants around the country.

I recently had the privilege of visiting friends and family in the chaotic and bizarre city of Beograd (Belgrade), Serbia, former capital of Jugoslavia. Beograd's economy collapsed and spiraled into black-market chaos during the civil war and the 10-year embargo of the 1990s. I lived there for a year in early 2000s and the economy has only seen a modest improvement since then, with the average income still being only $6,000 per year.

The letter below was written to Seven Days newspaper by Josh Schlossberg of East Montpelier. Josh is active in Transition Towns and other relocalization projects, and is a supporter of Vt Commons and the independent candidates running for VT political office in November.
This is why I'm running for Senate in Washington county, to turn despair and denial into ACTION.
www.GaelanBrown.com
Josh, I love your letter in 7 Days. You capture exactly the sentiment that I think we need to harness, both in terms of the Mike Ruppert Tour, and in terms of political action in Vt.

Although I'm guilty of it myself, I am personally tired of every natural or man-made disaster being held up as more "proof" that the world is ending. Nothing is ending, we're just entering a new beginning.

The doom and gloom is a tired wake-up call. We need to focus on what we can do to create stronger local communities and stop focusing on "see, look at how messed up our ______ is!" and instead focus our positive energies on creating solutions.

The US ANNUAL military budget of $1 TRILLION is enough money to pay for the complete installation of more than 166 GIGAWATTS of residential solar power, enough to power 27 MILLION homes across America. That would be 1000 times more residential installation than the entire nation saw in 2009 and would convert nearly 30% of American homes to being completely powered by clean solar energy.

US taxpayers pay this amount of money EVERY year to keep our global military overstretch funded, but solar power is too expensive?

www.CollateralMurder.com just released a military-video from WikiLeaks that was obtained from someone in the military. This blood is on ALL of our hands. We are all paying for this and allowing this to continue on a daily basis. The irony of it all is that Vermont has an $87 million dollar deficit, yet the federal government is spending $1.5 billion Vermont tax-payer dollars annually to fund the United State's global military overstretch.

I've been studying the economics of firewood since I was 6 years old when it was my job to bring firewood into the house from the shed out back. Here's something I've learned recently after crunching some numbers: If by 2020, 75% of Vermont's 250,000 households relied on wood for heating fuel, which could be done sustainably by using only 1% of the standing forest each year, the citizens of Vermont would keep more than $800 million per year in our local economies.

One of the most interesting tension-points in the politics of climate change, sustainability and renewable energy is the issue of state sovereignty.

Any global solution that tries to force people, businesses, or governments to invest in renewable energy, or to pay a carbon-tax, will meet resistance from nations and individuals who simply want the cheapest energy possible.

In my heart the VT Yankee relicense question never felt right to me. But in the interest of being reasonable I have explored the facts with an open mind. I am very sensitive to protecting Vermont's business climate, because I do believe that the health of the Vermont business community should be a top priority to strengthen our state. But my conclusion, like State Senate Candidate Robert Wagner's as detailed in his press release, is that Vermont Yankee is not a valuable asset to Vermont and it should be decommisioned in 2012.