So I whipped out the video camera and here are the results. Based on research and visits, I believe the five sites captured here represent the best green roofs in New York, and by “best” I mean I the most unique, diverse and beautiful. If there is a fabulous planted roof in New York that I missed, or another unforgettable spot elsewhere in the country that deserves attention, please let me know in the comments.

Video: Best Green Roofs in New York is a post from: The Ferris Files

Muppandal pumps out 540 megawatts of electricity because of the strong, consistent winds that blow off the Arabian Sea and funnel through the Western Ghats (the lumpy, Dr. Suessian peaks in the background of the photo).

The turbines look strangely at home amid the coconut and banana groves, as if they were merely the region’s oversized new crop. The chaotic hodgepodge of turbines appears in batches over dozens of miles. Any one vista might encompass several different designs. India solicited models from all over the world, from the Netherlands’ blocky Vestas to Germany’s Enercon, with its distinctive teardrop-shaped nose.

A businessman I met explained that turbines in India are individually sponsored, which explains why corporate names and logos are painted on so many of the towers. A company “buys” the turbine, and in exchange the company gets a credit on its power bill equal to the turbine’s output.

Muppandal bears little resemblance to the wind farms I know in the U.S., with their tidy rows of identical turbines. But India seems to find its own way.

A Visit to India’s Largest Wind Plantation is a post from: The Ferris Files

In India, every power outlet is governed by its own switch, and those switches are monitored with a careful eye. I was sternly instructed to turn switches off when I was done with them. If I vacated the bedroom without turning off the switch to the overhead light and the ceiling fan, I would get an immediate reprimand from the family cook. When I visited the aunt’s place across the hall and wanted to use the Internet, I had to start up the computer from dead because it had been switched to “Off” at the wall. No standby appliances vampiring electricity here.

This thrift extended even to the apartment gym, where I arrived with water bottle and towel to find the lights off and every cardio machine dark. To work out on the treadmill I switched its outlet on. When I finished I turned it off, as the sign next to the the machine instructed.

To contend with Chennai’s broiling heat, it isn’t as simple as pushing a thermostat button and pumping an entire big room or building full of cold air. Instead I turned on the A/C unit by the treadmill, and when I was done with the treadmill I switched it off. Then I headed to the dumbbell area and activated its resident A/C unit. None of this felt like any sort of imposition.

Somehow Indians have an instinct toward electricity conservation. Maybe it has to do with the country’s roots: Like many Indians, Anjali’s family is just three generations removed from its ancestral village, where one tended to the rice paddies and the bullock. Life was too hard to let anything go to waste.

Whatever the reason, it was refreshing to take a break from America’s thoughtless, wasteful use of power and to know that, halfway around the world, a billion people have found another way.

How India Puts Itself on a Power Diet is a post from: The Ferris Files

Image Credit: www.joyerickson.wordpress.com

I grew up listening to KQED, the public radio station for the San Francisco Bay Area, and I’m exhilarated to announce that I made it on the radio yesterday.

The piece, “Wilderness Calling,” is part of KQED’s Perspectives series, where regular people make their best case on a topic of the day. While some might question if I’m a regular person, I have formed an emphatic opinion about the growing use of cellphones in the great outdoors, based on a jarring experience I had in Yosemite National Park last summer. Listen to the whole thing below. (2 minutes 20 seconds)

Ferris KQED Perspective

Me on KQED: Wilderness Yes, Cellphones No! is a post from: The Ferris Files

Roger Payne addresses the Blue Vision conference.

That speech was the keynote by Roger Payne, the biologist who discovered in the 1970s that humpback whales have songs, and who has done hard-hitting research since. He hit the crowd with a dreadful five-minute litany of the ocean’s problems that aren’t global warming: rainforest destruction, cyanide poisoning by the aquarium fish trade, pollution by undersea oil wells, the slaughter of bycatch, sewage entering the ocean and coral reef deaths, to name a few.

He went on to talk about his signature species, whales, and his most passionate topic, whaling. He detailed how Norway, Japan and Iceland continue to kill thousands of whales each year despite international treaties. Even worse, he went on, harpoons are no longer the biggest whale killers. Rather it is suffocation in abandoned nets and poisoning of the whales’ food, tainted by the toxins humans have poured into the sea. Payne gripped the lectern so hard it shook.

Where’s that “inspiring” part, you might wonder?  It came at the end. Payne concluded with something that everyone knew but needed to hear: “The chance to make a giant change has never been better than at this moment.”

That opportunity for change, embodied by our new president, is why 400 or so people crowded into a hall at George Washington University on a Sunday morning, after losing an hour of sleep to the beginning of Daylight Savings Time.

Barack Obama is, as one speaker put it, “the first bodysurfing president” and the first to grow up in the Hawaiian Islands. Following the Bush years, he’s a manta ray of hope for those who want the oceans treated more kindly. No one knows for sure whether he or Congress will champion the oceans or not. However, many attendees put their names to the sign-up sheets to meet Congressional delegations later in the week.

The conference was a clear sign that the ocean lobby enters the Obama era with a wind at its back.

The Ocean: Best of Times, Worst of Times is a post from: The Ferris Files

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This movie is all about motion because India is on the move these days. No matter where you go, people sweep, sell, travel, talk, argue and gesture with relish. Even in a land bound by such deep traditions one gets a sense of hustle. I hope this movie conveys that energy for those who haven’t yet seen India for themselves.

India: A Nation on the Move is a post from: The Ferris Files

These “climber screens” are the first line of defense, where things like rags and sticks are taken out.

Once through the door and into the innards of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control plant, our guide Catania showed us the “influent gates” where the first big chunks are removed, and from there on to a series of vast, almost Home Depot-size rooms where alien activities took place.

One was the basement level of the 70-foot-tall, 750,000-gallon “digesters” where the solid waste is mixed with bacteria and, over the process of two weeks or so, turned into “biosolids.” This transformation emits loads of heat, which is harnessed to supply almost half the plant’s power.

The bottom of a digester looks like a concrete stalactite.

Where does all that stuff end up? About 60 percent of solid waste in the United States is turned into fertilizer. In San Francisco about a quarter of what goes down the drain and the toilet ends up tilled into the farms of Sonoma County.

Will I be able to forge this the next time I breathe in the aroma of a Sonoma cabernet?

To be continued…

The Wastewater Chronicles, Part III is a post from: The Ferris Files

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