As is often the case with the large, complex issues facing humanity, most of our effort is (dare I say it?) wasted on trying to fix the wrong things. Like changing our lightbulbs. Even changing our cars is, most of the time, the wrong thing. Why?

Making a thing, almost ANY thing, takes an enormous amount of energy input. These days, most of that energy input is petroleum, generating huge amounts of waste carbon. So regardless of how much BETTER the end product is, it needs to fulfill two criteria to justify the switch:

1. It needs to last forever (or some reasonable facsimile).
2. It needs to use so much less carbon, that it offsets the output of buying something NEW in the first place.

Our problem, as a culture, is less an OIL addiction, as it is an addiction to CONSUMING. Endlessly.

Let’s take the principles of the “Tucker” automobile, and apply them to all consumer goods. Do away with “designed obsolescence“, and try building things to LAST, for a change.

My favorite example of this? A Stanley #2 plane.

(‘But wait!’ you cry. ‘What about the Rabbits?’)

Ah yes. The Rabbits.

Even in “Peak Everything”, when the author discusses how America may need to shift back to a nation with 20-40% of our workforce involved directly in agriculture (in a move called re-ruralization), which mimics much of what Cuba did after the trade embargo was put into place – there’s still too much emphasis on simple vegetables and grain. As a passionate carnivore, I have to ask – Where’s the beef?!?

What’s wrong with cows, anyway? A lot, as it turns out.

1. They produce tons of methane, a greenhouse gas that’s hundreds of times worse than simple carbon dioxide.
2. They’re horribly inefficient at converting feed or pasture to meat.
3. They’re grazed at great distances from where they’re processed, and then transported great distances AGAIN to where they’re consumed.

4. They require relatively high-quality rangeland, and human-edible feed – which contributes directly to the worldwide shortage of arable land.

What’s better? Locally-grown, locally-processed rabbits. Why?

1. Rabbits are incredibly efficient at converting vegetable scraps, and simple non-human-edible vegetation (dandelions, for instance) into meat.
2. Their meat is lean, perhaps cutting down on the obesity endemic.
3. They’re fast and simple to process, with very little toxic byproduct from slaughtering.
4. They breed like, well, like rabbits.
5. They’re simple to breed on a highly-localized scale, reducing transport and attendant fuel costs, pollution, etc.

So here’s my pitch, Mr. Cuban – strike some direct-to-restaurant business deals with major fast-food chains (I’m thinking Wendy’s or McD-scale) for the “Bunny Burger”. Work with these guys on some compelling branding to take the stigma away from breaking fast on the bunny scramble, and put together massively distributed production of bunnies (and their attendant feed). Compost and sell the manure. Feed them kitchen scraps from the same restaurants that are buying your bunny burgers.

Hire the homeless as Neo-shepherds, to keep stray dogs and eagles away from your flock. And where do you put them? How bout the parking garages that will be abandoned as our global economy (and our ability to make ridiculous monthly payments) hits the toilet?

Rabbits. FTW.

However, after three turbulent years, McKenty’s website is starting to garner international attention. Created in 2005, Bountyup.com has received millions of donations to fund projects for Oak Bay science students, North Carolina choirs and Middle East social activists.

Trust me – if I had received “Millions of donations”, I wouldn’t still be freelancing for NASA. I believe the word I used was “dozens”. Ah well.

Oh, and I never got paid for being in the circus. My first paying job was shoveling horse manure, several years later.

Still, the coverage (plus the recent coverage of the Oak Bay High School Bounty) has been enough to get me excited about the project again – even after Microsoft launched their competitor. I’m toying with the idea of using 99designs.com for a face-lift, but what I really need is some improvements in usability. What are YOUR favorite contest sites?

It’s a 70s-era oil furnace that came with the house. It smells funny, it sucks oil down like a breast-fed three-year-old, and it’s burning a serious hole in my pocket.

Since I’ve got to do something about it, I figured I’d go one step better than a simple upgrade, and put in a heat pump. Heat pumps are one of the coolest things invented in the last few centuries. (My own personal standard of coolness is the bicycle, which I consider to be the closest man has come so far to a perfect machine, with the exception of the friction brakes. All braking should be energy recapture.)

When I realized that a heat pump is effectively 200-300% efficient (compared to production of heat), I started to wonder if it could be made even more environmentally friendly by doing away with the electrical motor entirely. A little research uncovered gas-engine-powered heat pumps, but I wanted to go even farther – bicycle power.

The most popular consumer-grade bicycle generator outputs around 200 watts of electricity. If I assume that the generator efficiency is around 60% (based on data on wikipedia), and we use direct-drive of the compressor, then effective power output of the cyclist is about 330 watts.

If I was REALLY hard-core, I can imagine bicycling 2 hours, every day, for a total power generation of:

330 watts * 2 hours * 365 days = 240 kWh per year.

A two-ton heat pump from Goodman (the SSZ16, for those of you following along from home) draws 1.7 kW at 47 degrees F (the typical measurement point). If, theoretically, a one-ton unit drew only half that (it doesn’t), and we took some advantage (not much) from avoiding the electric motor and using direct drive from the bicycle, we *might* be able, with two cyclists, to run a heat pump in real time.

Wow. For a near-perfect machine, that’s a lot of wasted power.

In an upcoming post, I’ll be looking into ways we can establish a mental framework for evaluating our energy usage, and other aspects of our “inconvenience“.

• Carbon output
• Non-renewables consumed
• Average distance food travels (aka carbon output in transport)
• Social impact (Average wage in USD of all workers in the supply chain of all goods and services consumed)

Obviously need a good baseline and some rough approximations.
Contests are regional in scope (e.g., Inconvenience Vancouver Island, Inconvenience Chicago, etc).
Teams can seek local or international corporate sponsors as appropriate to their plan (BC Hydro for a team looking mostly at electrical reduction, etc.)
Teams are responsible for documenting their score (photographic evidence of bicycle transport, power bills, etc.)

Make a reality TV show around it.
Host a massive awards ceremony with Celebrity MCs.
Kick it off with a rock concert, bring the teams up on stage in between acts.

If we can figure out a way to generate a handicap for each region (based on climate, available options, etc.) then we could play regional champions against each other.

THE NAME:

Obviously a not-subtle reference to the film, it also highlights that it is, at most, an “Inconvenience” to change your lifestyle to save the planet, and by extension, humanity.
It’s verbable.
It can be abbreviated to iCon, which also has interesting connotations as being a symbol of something bigger.
The domain name is parked and possibly for sale (or donation?)

STRATEGIES:

Plant sedge-grass for carbon-credit offset.
Rules should include not buying carbon credits, has to be direct action.
Direct action can include educational campaigns, with some percentage of the effects of the educational campaign scored against the team.
Note that final teams will probably all have NEGATIVE scores.

PS:

If someone runs with this before I get it together, more power to you. But you should still use bountyup.com for the prize

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