Growing a Forest Rapidly

1. First, you start with soil. We identify what nutrition the soil lacks. 2. Then we identify what species we should be growing in this soil, depending on climate. 3. We then identify locally abundant biomass available in that region to give the soil whatever nourishment it needs. This is typically an agricultural or industrial byproduct — like chicken manure or press mud, a byproduct of sugar production — but it can be almost anything. We’ve made a rule that it must come from...

 Concepts from Accelerando

agalmics: A form of economics concerning the "study and practice of the production and allocation of non-scarce goods," primarily via free-market trading, open-source initiatives, and flexible standards for intellectual property. Consult Robert Levin's "The Marginalization of Scarcity" for more information. anarcho-capitalism: A political philosophy which proposes the replacement of governments with the free market. For more information see wikipedia:anarcho-capitalis...

 Cost Benefits of Lead Cleanup

It's difficult to put firm numbers to the costs and benefits of lead abatement. But for a rough idea, let's start with the two biggest costs. Nevin estimates that there are perhaps 16 million pre-1960 houses with lead-painted windows, and replacing them all would cost something like $10 billion per year over 20 years. Soil cleanup in the hardest-hit urban neighborhoods is tougher to get a handle on, with estimates ranging from $2 to $36 per square foot. A rough extrapolation from Mielke's est...

 O'Neill Cylinders

The O’Neill cylinder is named after an American physicist and space scientist who sought to engage his students by getting them to think about big problems—space settlement, in particular. He also led symposiums where the concepts behind large, permanent space habitats—including the cylinder that bears his name—were hashed out. The basic principle is fairly simple. Construct a cylinder at least half a kilometer in diameter so that it can be rotated at low speed and provide 1 g of art...