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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Renewable energy on the farm. Was Greenhouse- milk jugs

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  • From: Alex McGregor <waldenfarm AT sprintmail.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Renewable energy on the farm. Was Greenhouse- milk jugs
  • Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 21:58:06 -0500

Thanks for your comments, Leigh. They're just what I was thinking. I'll
add:

- Most woodlots on farms are generations old (at least here, east of the
Mississippi). We've been harvesting wood for building and heating and
there are still the same number of trees ranging from young to old. The
key is in the management- what to cut when, leaving saplings and keeping
the underbrush thin. It's the small, dry underbrush that allows for
rapid fire spread in unmanaged, hardwood forests.

- And it's not just nuclear that city folks depend on. Most electricity
is produced by coal-fired plants. This causes direct, immediate
destruction of forest ecosystems from strip mining. You have to be in
the Southeast to see this massive destruction. And the "overburden"
that's removed is pushed downhill destroying an even larger area than
that stripped and the streams are polluted with sulfuric acid and other
nasties. But that's not the worst of it. The sulfuric acid (and other
pollutants) from burning coal are killing people and the hardwood forests
in the Appalachians are dying from acid rain. This thanks to everyone
west of here who uses electricity from the grid. And I won't go into
black lung and displaced communities.

So, it really gripes my asymptote when someone smugly lectures me about
using trees for heat from the warmth of their electrically heated abode.
I'll stick to heating with a high efficiency, properly maintained wood
stove with a catalytic combustor fired with sustainably harvested wood
and wood from tree services that would otherwise go in landfills. And
I'll continue to put my money where my mouth is by paying extra into
TVA's "Green Switch" program so that more of the electricity I use is
from renewable sources.

Alex McGregor
Walden Farm





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