Time for Carbon-Nation to take its annual summer hiatus, as its editor heads off to grid-free living on Eagle Island. We leave with this musing on the role bicycles may play in cleaning up Beijing’s act posted on MSN Green today.
Surfing over from MSN Green? Here’s an ironic addendum to the biking in Beijing piece: One of the key factors currently limiting China’s exports of electric bicycles is tight supplies of lead for batteries, caused in part by the air quality-inspired closure of Beijing-region factories!
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Peter Fairley 
Really enjoyed the article on GreenMSN! I hope life off the grid is treating you well. L:
Life off-grid was glorious L. Interestingly our good friends on Eagle Island who make excellent use of solar energy, and thus have come to dependent on it, found themselves in a pickle this sun-starved summer. They drew their batteries down to unprecedented levels of discharge (which can shorten a battery’s lifespan) while the sound of gas-powered generators filled the air.
But not all was lost: their most important piece of equipment — the wood-fired hot-tub — worked like a charm!