Green Real Estate and Saving Energy: Part 1

GREEN HOME SHOW #40: Green Real Estate and Saving Energy: Part 1 Eco Advantages of City Living

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The following content is from THE GREAT GREEN HOME SHOW #40.

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The content of the GGHS is solely the responsibility of the ECF and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of WILM, its sponsors or Clear Channel Radio.  Any rebroadcast, reproduction or use of the Great Green Home Show or its contents without written permission from the Green Fox, Paul Hughes, Doug Hunt, Aunt Jean, Brenna Wallace, Brooke Chase, the Watson Brothers, The Snap and the Sin City Band is strictly prohibited.

Overall Segment #1 – 9:00

Music & Introduction – 5:30

Good Morning!!! Welcome to another edition of the Great Green Home Show... we’re sure glad that you could join us this morning.

It’s been an eventful week around the world and in particular in the world of renewable energy. With the way our Radio brethren are spouting economic doom and gloom, renewable energy and sustainable technology are looking better and better all the time. Sun and wind are the future - and today, we’ll tell you exactly why we know this to be the case...

Our guest today is Dale Davis of CMI Electric and CMI Solar Electric. Dale is probably one of the most informed electrical experts in the entire Delaware Valley. So our show today will focus on the sun, specifically solar power and hot water. It will be informative and extremely relevant in light of today's high energy bills. We’ll tell you how it works and how it can save you money. And we're going to talk about what you can do to perhaps, even make it profitable for you and your family. But more on that later... it should be very exciting...

Some of you are just waking up and some are out getting coffee or your Sunday paper, but fear not!!!... if you don't have a pen or pencil, you can go to the website later at WILM.com... keyword - green... any time you feel the urge, and listen to this week’s show or any week’s show for that matter. So grab your organic, half-caff, skim, low-foam, no-whip, double latte mocha-chino - or last night's beer from under the couch (we don’t judge) and prepare to listen.

I’m Doug Hunt and next to me is my co-host, Paul Hughes. What’s on your mind this week?

This week, continuing with our Green Real Estate analysis, I want to talk again about moving back to the city, which is a great way to reduce your cost of living, live well and reduce your carbon footprint. It looks like a lot of the cities on the East Coast are getting ready for an influx of people want to live in an urban environment that provides ready access to public transportation, shopping, and entertainment. There is a large renaissance here in Wilmington from Market Street South past the train station.

If history, demographics and economics teach us anything, then the powers that be in Wilmington are getting ready for this migration back to the city. It’s a renaissance we need, because if we are to reduce Global Warming and pollution, we’re all going to need to live smarter, cheaper and leaner. And that means: closer to mass transportation, reduce our driving, reduce oil consumption, walk or bike to work, live close to fresh produce and a grocery store, and reduce the energy our living spaces consume.

I know this sounds strange to some of you and make sense to others. It’s almost counter to the American dream... BUT NOT REALLY... the American dream was always a dream of living well, living a complete and progressive life, and the consequent enjoyment of family, neighbors and the pursuit of wealth and happiness. I believe this is really what we are after...

In Europe, where they've been conserving and living lean and well for centuries, most everyone lives close to a mass transit station, walks or bikes, smaller living quarters, central to or in and around a city, where shopping and food are available. They live low-cost and keep a lot of cars off the road (the café standards are an avg, 35 MPG). And if all of the surveys I read are correct, the Europeans have a much lower stress level, more time off, considerably lower cancer levels, and a much higher rated lifestyle overall. They do it for less, and they do it better. AND, yes they also get a lot more time off from work than we do. In most countries four to six weeks off a year plus holidays is common.

We definitely have something to learn here.

And now the Euro is outpacing the dollar by quite a bit... We need to learn from others in order to survive and...They do it well... I find this extremely hopeful and the change sounds fun and exciting.

Consequently I'll be putting a lot of my Real Estate efforts into finding energy-efficient homes for people, trying to work with the available real estate and the upcoming real estate in our city, a so that people can afford a nice place to live and reduce a lot of their major living costs and pollution. Don't forget that living in the city and driving your car less reduces our carbon and our waste by quite a bit. ONE of the benefits of living close to where you work is having a lot more free time, we spend a huge amount of our free time in our cars when we could be doing other things.... So take a look at what's happening in the city and I’ll be giving you a lot more updates on all the amazing projects and transformation that is happening right here in Wilmington.

Oh yes, we are re-building the Myecoagent.com website so it can accommodate more information about living a more sustainable lifestyle. We were reporting with a lot more features and information about where to live, how to live better, and how to upgrade your own home to reduce your carbon footprint, and energy use. So please bear with us. We should be up and running as soon as we can get everything downloaded and available.

Doug, remind us of that great green expo on March 29...“The Great Green Expo” on March 29th at the Chase Riverfront Center. First, I’d like to apologize for apologizing last week. It was weak-willed and sissified. As you are all aware, there are a lot of great things happening and I promise not to threaten everyone with what I threatened to do two weeks ago until we get a bit closer to the Expo. If you don’t remember what it was that I threatened to do two weeks ago, you are required to go to the website and listen to it again. There will be a quiz. In any event, I cannot over-emphasize the importance of the Great Green Expo on March 29th at the Morgan Chase Riverfront Convention Center. Tell all your friends and bring all your neighbors and your dog and your gerbel and your pet turtle and your crazy cousin who goes by the name “Spike”. In order to get you there, we’re going to entice you with great music at the show. We have a terrific world music group coming up from DC and they will be debuting their new world peace CD. In addition, we’ll have Scott Bernie and the Sin City Band with a lot of friends sitting-in, like Mark Unruh and some other really outstanding local musicians. If you haven't heard this wonderful mix of bluegrass country and rock you're in for a treat. Great music, great food, a chance to win terrific door prizes and then, all sorts of green vendors and businesses from all over the country. Paul? What will you be doing on Saturday, March 29th? I’ll be at the first annual Great Green Expo at the Chase Riverfront Convention Center, of course!

Paul, please thank our sponsors. Thanks to: – CMI Solar Electric - Energy Services Group - Suntrust Mortgage of Christiana - Myecoagent.com and Option Insurance Group. Also, Mark Unruh for the great music… Protect us Doug…

Today’s Topic – 3:00 Sponsored by: Myecoagent.com

As you know the great green home show is always trying to present hopeful examples of progress on the environmental front. I just finished watching a couple of feel-good movies, you know the ones where the hero comes back in the end, hit's the home run, scores the winning touchdown, basically finally overcomes his/her own shortcomings and saves the day. I got to tell you, I love these movies. These are my favorite type of movies, where the world is against you, the odds seem too high and a lot of the time (for a while at least) the hero finds herself alone or sees himself as being alone. And then someone comes along or something happens and they find the strength to overcome their shortcomings and step outside of their old way of acting and seeing life, to become the person that they always knew that they were. And the cool thing about these movies is that's usually where it ends, and in our minds, that hero or heroine is forever transformed. I've got to tell you I really like that image.

Well it's the real world here but we're still on the same path everyday trying to find new ways of improving the health of the planet, improving the way that we live, and finding ways to highlight heroes and become heroes ourselves. Or as we like to say you can be a Great Green Fox too... it just takes some work.

Okay on today's story...

In a report compiled in the early 2007 US Department of Energy listed 151 coal-fired power plants in the planning stages and talked about resurgence in coal-fired electricity. But, here's the good part… during 2007, 59 proposed US coal-fired power plants were either refused licenses by state governments or were quietly abandoned. In addition to the 59 plants that were dropped, close to 50 more coal plants are currently being contested in the courts and the remaining plants will likely be challenged as they reached the permitting stage.

What began as a few local ripples of resistance to coal-fired power, is quickly evolving into a national title wave of grass-roots opposition from environmental, health, farm, and community organizations as well as a fast-growing number of state governments.

The public at large is turning against coal. In September 2007 a national poll by the Opinion Research Corporation about which electricity source people would prefer, only 3% chose coal. (Is Delmarva and or our Local Legislature listening?)

Okay, here's my point for everybody out there who's a tree hugger, or not... there are enough people out there, activist groups, enlightened local government organizations, mothers and fathers who want a healthy environment for their children, and, and even Major Financial institutions fighting against Nuclear power and Dirty coal, that it looks like both are slowly on the way out, at least in its present carbon belching and radioactive waste forms.

So... if you followed last week’s show, then you know we presented a lot of practical reasons and economic reasons why nuclear power wasn't going to happen anytime soon (at least not on any large scale) here in the U.S., and now we see a groundswell against new coal-fired plants...

So with that, can anyone in the state of Delaware or anywhere else on the Coast explain to me why we're not building a wind farm off of our coast as fast as we can? I have only myself and the internet to research this data, and the local Legislature has so much more time and resources, yet they seem to be completely unaware of the larger picture... this has been a global movement for a while and the citizens of this country have been a part of it and for quite a while. What our government and local government is missing is that in the big picture, we have been well-organized for quite a while and the tipping point in effective resistance has apparently been reached.

If you take a look at the trends nationwide and worldwide and the protests and the effective legislative and court based initiatives which are now effectively eliminating most of the proposed new nuclear and coal plants from the picture, it seems to me that we should be building alternative energy sources as quickly as possible. In essence, I am not sure that our local government is aware that the fervent protests against coal and gas and the overwhelming citizen support for bluewaterwind and their projects are not just a local or new phenomenon.

If you look at the national map we are eliminating the possibility of everything carbon belching but alternative energy. It is inevitable, it is a groundswell that will not be stopped and can only be delayed by local politicians who may or may not be playing games within their own political careers and political debts. That remains to be seen. They could just be misinformed by those entities battling to hold onto their present and future quarterly profits.

What is certain is that this will happen, and most assuredly is happening... it's just a matter of time and a matter of cost.

And for those who don't know, I do believe that Bluewaterwind has pledged a certain amount of manufacturing to the state, should this project go forward. Again I don't have confirmation on that, but it sure looks like something that we need with the layoffs coming at Chrysler and into some other banking institutions.

So let's get going people, we must make this happen as quickly as possible... it looks like the citizens of the United States want it... and If the court cases and the disinvestment in coal and Nuclear plants in other parts of the country is any indication, we will have it.

By the way if you haven’t, watched: Coach Carter, Bull Durham, The Princess Bride, Glory Road, Hoosiers, or Remember the Titans... Treat yourself... get psyched, and then go save the planet.... May I suggest you start with your own neighborhood..... perhaps a neighborhood garden or car pooling with your neighbor...We’ll be right back...

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