We move...we move a lot, we're built for it, and we do it very efficiently. But all of that movement loses energy that could, conceivably, be harvested. For example, if we could harvest the power of 84,162,203 people taking a single step, we could launch the space shuttle with that power.
Which is why people are actively looking into how we might work on capturing some of that energy. Two students at MIT, James Graham and Thaddeus Jusczyk, just won first prize at the Holcim Forum 2007 for their concept crowd farm. Basically the farm would simply be millions of tiles that, when compressed, spin a little generator. When hooked together in busy locations into "crowd farms" this could actually generate a significant amount of electricity.
This isn't as advanced as some of the plans we've seen, which utilize piezoelectric materials which, by their very nature, emit electrons when squeezed. However, piezoelectric materials are currently quite expensive, so using small generators, while probably needing more maintenence, would likely also be significantly cheaper.
Via Inhabitat
See Also:
-Dancing Green-
-Harnessing Muscle Power-
-Pedestrian Generated Power-
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Electronics companies are spending a lot of time and money trying to 
Hand saws are inefficient and can be difficult to use in certain situations. The only alternative, unfortunately, is an overly-complex, two-stroke engine linked to a sharp chain that will set you back a couple hundred bucks, rarely be used, spew out clouds of burnt oil, and likely endanger your pets and children.
It's not gonna get you anywhere very fast, but if you're lucky, it could get you out of some tight scrapes in the post-apocalyptic Australian Outback. In any case this home-made, wind-powered tricycle is ridiculously cool, I'm just not sure why.
