1893: Raymond Loewy, one of the founders of modern industrial design, is born. His vision of streamlining will shape a century.

Loewy’s classic designs include the Coca-Cola bottle, the sleek-sided 1929 Gestetner duplicating machine, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s streamlined S-1 Locomotive, the World War II Lucky Strike cigarette package, the 1954 Greyhound Bus, JFK’s Air Force One, and corporate logos for Exxon, Shell and dozens of other firms.

But wait, there is more: the 1947 line of Hallicrafter radio receivers that influenced home sound-system design through the 1970s, Studebaker’s 1947 Starlight coupe, 1953 Starliner coupe and 1961 Avanti — the only auto exhibited in the Louvre &#151 and the interiors of the Concorde and NASA’s Sky Lab and Space Shuttle.

His client list is also astonishing: Revlon, Faberge, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Hanes, Levis, Butterick, Bulova, Omega, Mont Blanc, Seth Thomas, Rosenthal, Frigidaire, Formica, Koehler, IBM, Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Ford, GM, Chrysler, Studebaker, BMW, Jaguar and even the government of the Soviet Union.

It’s no wonder then Life magazine selected Loewy as one of the 20th century’s 100 most influential Americans.

Loewy served in the French Army Corps in World War I, immigrated to the United States in 1919 and became a U.S. citizen in 1938. He started out as a fashion illustrator for national magazines and department stores, then started his own design firm. His motto: “Between two products equal in price, function and quality, the better looking will outsell the other.”

Loewy also originated the MAYA concept in industrial design: “Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable.”

Loewy cut a dashing figure in the international set. He had country homes at one time or another outside Paris, in southern France, Mexico, Long Island, New York, and Palm Springs, California, plus posh pied-à-terre in Manhattan and Paris. His firm maintained design offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Loewy died in 1986 at age 92.

Source: Various

Continue reading " Nov. 5, 1893: A Design Star is Born "

Hello, again! I left off last week with my arrival in Chicago after graduating college and traveling the country. I was unsure how to get started looking for any sort of green job and was regretting that fact that I never interned anywhere in college. I haven’t had the best luck so far, and I hope others can learn from my mistakes.

Read more of this story »

Continue reading " My Search for an Entry Level Green Job: Part 2 "

: Photo: John Vachon

The American republic rests on the principle of one person and one vote. The voting booth is one of the most inviolable patches of American soil. Not that this ever prevented photographers from sticking their lenses inside polling places across the breadth of this great land, from seething city to bucolic township.

As you cast your ballot today, consider those who have voted before you and contemplate the amazing continuum that has led us to this time and place.

Left: Farmers of German and Russian stock, all Americans now, wait to vote in the 1940 presidential election at the Beaver Creek precinct in North Dakota’s McIntosh County. North Dakota was one of 10 states to vote for Republican Wendell Willkie. The other 38 went for Franklin D. Roosevelt, carrying him in a landslide to his third term.

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Vote early, vote often: Balloting Chicago style, circa 1904, with the man on the right casting his vote on a mechanical voting machine, despite an open curtain.

Photo courtesy Chicago Daily News

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This voting-machine “apparatus,” in a Chicago voting booth, dates from 1904, Teddy Roosevelt’s big year.

Photo courtesy Chicago Daily News

: Photo: John Vachon

On Election Day 1940, in North Dakota’s McIntosh County, farmers cast their ballots at this little schoolhouse on the prairie.

: Photo: Marion Post

In 1940, a Woodstock, Vermont, selectman casts his ballot on “the liquor question.” (”Yes, I’ll have another one.”)

: Photo: Lewis Walker

FDR was elected to an unprecedented fourth term as president in 1944. Whether this fellow leaving a voting booth in Barnesville, Maryland, was a New Dealer or cast his ballot for the GOP’s Thomas Dewey is impossible to say. Which is kind of the point, right?

: Photo: Arthur Rothstein

A black voter hands in his ballot in Dunklin County, Missouri, during a 1942 primary election.

: Photo: Russell Lee

Mormon farmers, part of a Farm Security Administration cooperative stallion group, meet in 1940 to elect a caretaker for their group. The FSA was formed as a part of FDR’s New Deal to alleviate the effects of rural poverty.

: Photo: Maria Ealand

This firehouse in Arlington, Virginia, served as a polling place during the 1944 presidential election.

: Photo: Arthur Rothstein

A voter casts his ballot during a 1937 community election in Greenbelt, Maryland.

: Photo: Courtesy Franklin D. Roosevelt Library

First lady Eleanor Roosevelt votes in Hyde Park, New York. Who did she vote for? She’s not saying.

: Photo: Benjamin Brown French

All that voting leads to inauguration day, in this case Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural in 1861. Note that the U.S. Capitol is still under construction. You can’t see the war clouds gathering but they’re very present, and getting darker by the minute.

Continue reading " Casting the Ballot in Elections Gone By "

By Guest author

The following is a guest essay by author, advocate, and renewable energy industry analyst Paul Gipe. His latest book, Wind Energy Basics, will be published by Chelsea Green in early 2009.

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In a startling reversal, Britain’s Labour government has put on the table a feed-in tariff proposal for "microgeneration." The proposed feed-in tariffs will pay homeowners, farmers, and community groups for the electricity they generate with renewable energy.

The move represents an ideological breakthrough. Long an ardent supporter of Renewable Obligation Certificate trading systems and plain old-fashioned subsidies as the sole means of developing renewable energy, Britain’s Labour government has abruptly changed course.

Britain, along with its English-speaking allies in the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, has been a staunch proponent of the "Washington Consensus" of neoliberal economic orthodoxy. In this world view, the only mechanisms that can be used to develop renewable energy and hew to ideological purity are quota systems coupled with Tradable Green Certificates. In Britain this policy is called the Renewable Obligation; in North America, it is known as Renewable Portfolio Standards.

However, outside the schools of economics aligned along the Chicago-London axis, others have argued that feed-in tariffs are a more effective and less costly market mechanism for rapidly developing renewable energy. These include prominent British economist Sir Nicholas Stern, as well as continental European economists who are less well-known in North America.

The specific proposal by the new Minister of Climate Change, Ed Miliband, is less significant than the fact the government felt compelled to act. Prime Minister Gordon Brown narrowly escaped a backbench revolt in the House of Commons earlier this year over exclusion of a feed-in tariff in Britain’s long-awaited energy bill. Meanwhile, in the House of Lords, debate on the inclusion of feed-in tariff provisions continued despite the government’s attempts to quash the subject.

Nevertheless, Miliband’s proposal is timid and vague.

For example, the proposal limits individual projects to no more than 3 MW. That’s enough for rooftop solar systems, but not big enough for most community wind projects. It’s clear that the government doesn’t want a program of feed-in tariffs to threaten its quota system, despite the fact that there’s widespread acknowledgement that Britain will miss its renewable energy targets and now pays more for renewables than its European neighbors that use feed-in tariffs.

The existing Renewable Obligation has mostly benefited commercial wind development in Britain’s highlands. What the British call microgeneration — rooftop solar, for example — has been dependent upon the waxing and waning of traditional up-front subsidies. As a consequence, Britain lags well behind Germany, Spain, Italy, and France — all countries using feed-in tariffs — in the development of rooftop solar photovoltaics.

Even in wind energy, Britain is falling increasingly behind continental nations. By the end of 2008, France, Britain’s long-time cross-channel rival, will operate nearly 1,000 MW more wind-generating capacity than Britain, despite being a relative newcomer to wind energy development. (See "French Wind Growth Continuing.") France uses an innovative feed-in tariff policy.

British renewable energy campaigners, notably Friends of the Earth, have called for more specifics in the proposal and for increasing the maximum project size to at least 10 MW — equivalent to about five modern wind turbines. Friends of the Earth is also calling for prices (the feed-in tariffs) to be differentiated by technology — solar is paid one price, wind another, and so on — a feature found in all countries successfully developing renewable energy.

Elsewhere, a number of Australian and American states, as well as Canadian provinces, are considering feed-in tariffs:

• The Guardian: People-power a step closer in energy bill
• Discussion Paper on Electricity Feed-in Tariffs in Tasmania Released (PDF)
• Renewable Energy Tariffs in Australia
• Gainesville Regional Utilities Proposes Solar Feed-in Tariff (Gainesville Sun)
• Feed-in Tariffs and Renewable Energy in the USA — a Policy Update (PDF) by Wilson Rickerson, Florian Bennhold, and James Bradbury (May 2008)

Continue reading " You put your feed-in there "

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is seeking a Nuclear Energy and Climate Change Project Manager to provide information to the public, policy-makers, and media on nuclear power in the context of climate change. Candidates must have a solid background in energy technologies and policies, and comfort with nuclear economics. UCS is a leading science-based […]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Great Green Job of the Week: Nuclear Energy & Climate Change Project Manager”, url: “http://earthfirst.com/great-green-job-of-the-week-nuclear-energy-climate-change-project-manager/” });

Continue reading " Great Green Job of the Week: Nuclear Energy & Climate Change Project Manager "

By David Roberts

On Thursday night, Barack Obama appeared on the (highly rated) Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Continuing his comprehensive effort to say things that make me really happy, he had a long exchange with Maddow about … the electrical grid. Seriously!

He says, "we’re going to have to have a smart grid — if we want to use plug-in hybrids, then we want to be able to have ordinary consumers sell back the electricity that’s generated from those car batteries, back into the grid."

Are you kidding me? I think it’s safe to say that this is the most a presidential candidate has ever talked about the grid during a campaign. It’s certainly the first time a presidential candidate has explicitly tied together economic stimulus spending, infrastructure, national security, smart grids, and plug-in hybrids. Just like my op-ed! Is Obama reading Gristmill? Inquiring minds want to know.

Here’s the excerpt from the transcript:

MADDOW: There may be some policy fights ahead, particularly in responding to the economic crisis that will have both a practical and an ideological component. If we are looking at economic stimulus, is there a possibility that you could see in your first term, if you are elected, that we’d need an economic stimulus program that felt to Americans a little bit like a public works program, a little bit like an FDR-style infrastructure building program?

OBAMA: Well, I’ve actually talked about this. And I haven’t been hiding the ball on this. I think we have to rebuild our infrastructure. Look at what China’s doing right now. Their trains are faster than us, their ports are better than us. They are preparing for a very competitive 21st century economy and we’re not.

One of the most frustrating things over the last eight years has been the ability of George Bush to pile up debt and huge deficits and not have anything to show for it, right? So, if you’re going to run deficit spending, then it better be in rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our sewer lines, our water system, laying broadband lines.

One of, I think, the most important infrastructure projects that we need is a whole new electricity grid. Because if we’re going to be serious about renewable energy, I want to be able to get wind power from North Dakota to population centers, like Chicago. And we’re going to have to have a smart grid if we want to use plug-in hybrids then we want to be able to have ordinary consumers sell back the electricity that’s generated from those car batteries, back into the grid. That can create 5 million new jobs, just in new energy.

But, it’s huge projects that generally speaking, you’re not going to have private enterprise would want to take all those risks. And we’re going to have to be involved in that process.

MADDOW: Also an issue on something like the electrical grid, that’s an issue of American resilience, even against the threat of terrorism. A lot of times when you look at counter-terrorism, officials think that they came out, or an al-Qaeda attack on the electrical grid.

OBAMA: That’s exactly right.

MADDOW: Well you know, at this point, a snow storm is an attack on our electrical grid.

OBAMA: That’s exactly right.

MADDOW: Are there Homeland Security vulnerabilities that you think are fixable in ways that would also be good for the economy?

OBAMA: Well, you mentioned one. The electricity grid I think is important.

Sigh. He talks so purty …

Here’s the video — the relevant bit starts about 7:15 in:

Continue reading " Grid me Barry one more time "