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Well, there’s nothing like the feeling of being “that guy”. The ambitious no-show who is “more bark than bite”. I’m talking about the obvious lack of action taken by me on Blog Action Day, which was now almost two months ago. But worse, to me, is the problem of feeling and admitting a recent short-coming and then still doing nothing. So here’s my post. And I think to make myself feel a little better about it, I’ll treat it both like a normal post and also my promised Blog Action Day post.

So…

The purpose of Blog Action Day was to get as many bloggers to write, upon their own perspective, on the environment, the climate crisis, and the like.

From time to time I am reminded of just how little, as a people, as a nation who believe so firmly in the power of capitalism, who so readily agree that the aim of business is to make life better, we try to succeed in that aim.

It isn’t because we haven’t figured out the science of money yet, that so many people are still poor. Or that we have no idea how to reach people with health services that so many people live in unhealthy locations. Or that we haven’t rooted out many culprits in the fight against chronic depression. It is because it is not part of our national agenda to be giving, gracious or, sadly, intelligent with people in mind. Our vision of the present and the future leave no room for an agenda that is both driven and guided by love.

One of my favorite quotes regarding this comes from Bertrand Russell. I see this as an explanation to why so many people still feel they have not/can not/will not achieve the American dream of success, and why those who have achieved it are still in pursuit of happiness.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

That is something I think about when I think of when I discover advancements like this. Shawn Frayne (pictured above) is the inventor of what is said to be the world’s first turbine-less wind energy generator. The problem with wind turbines is one of inefficiency, which is a problem across the spectrum of energy sources, the fact that so much energy is lost in the reaping and transporting of it. I don’t know much about physics but I think most of us understand: the more that has to be moved to harness or create energy, the more energy it takes to do it, and the less of that energy that can be captured and used elsewhere. It would stand to reason that there would be people trying to create ways to capture or create more energy with a minimal amount of loss through exertion, friction, movement - things like that. That is what Shawn Frayne did with his wind-belt called the Micro-Wind.

Of course, I have no idea if Frayne invented the wind-belt to change the world, to make a name or to pay the rent.

Hopefully, all of the above. Regardless, it is inventions like his that tend to balance the scales so terribly skewed by war, greed, racism, Bush, shoddy business practices, wasteful consumption, etc.

I used to work for a company that made radar detectors for your car. It was commonly understood that this particular radar detector was inferior to other radar detectors. They worked poorly and broke often. Yet year after year, tens of thousands of dollars were pumped into the creation of this radar, variations of the radar, better ways to get the radar into our hands, and better ways to make the technology cheaper so as to be able to meet Wal-Mart’s low-price/low-quality demands. My employers, not exactly in the radar detector business for the betterment of the human race and the environment, were all-to-happy to manipulate the marketing, downgrade components, and generally waste profusely both money, materials and morale in order to sell more units. It is people like this that make people like Shawn Frayne saints. He, and his funders I’m assuming, have put (insert correct amount) of dollars into a technology that addresses actual human needs. Plus it is being developed from a small scale up. God bless people like Frayne. Time will tell if the Windbelt technology is applied directly as a tool for energy equality and sustainability, is watered down and sold as the next brief money maker, or if it gets squashed by conflicting interests elsewhere. We’ll see.

More about the Windbelt and Humdinger.

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