The Return of Sail, and Hemp?
By Andrew C. Revkin
It seems there’s a push toward the future through the past (pedicabs in Manhattan being just one example). Here are two more examples, involving sails on cargo ships and a proposal to legalize farming of hemp, a plant that was once a big crop in the United States, was banned because the industrial variety (very different than the plants grown to smoke) still has a trace of the compounds that give marijuana its punch.

The New Age of Sail
A new age of sail may be a bit closer to reality. The MV Beluga SkySails, the first freighter in the modern era using a kite-like sail along with its conventional engine when the winds are right, completed a transatlantic passage and the owners report that the sail cut fuel burning around 20 percent on days when conditions were right.
On the next trip, a sail twice the 1,700 square feet of the prototype will be used, and the owners say they will encourage the crew to deploy the sail as much as possible by offering 20 percent of saved fuel costs as a bonus. The company, Beluga Shipping GmbH of Bremen, Germany, said it expects to save about $2,000 a day when the sail is deployed. The project is partly underwritten by the European Union.

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