Brudaimonia

Climate: California Water and Agriculture

2009-02-11T11:01:00.000-08:00

Last week I posted on my personal blog about California's upcoming water problems and agriculture-killing drought. As California produces a huge amount of this country's fresh produce, the seed catalogues I received as gifts in December are now all the more valuable. Half the seeds I have ordered have arrived and the other should follow shortly. That state's water problems are giving everyone a headache from top to bottom (Gov. on down).

Now that water issues are becoming national and global problems, people are becoming involved on the federal level. Scanning headlines the other day I came across an article from the LA Times on new climate warnings issued by Energy Secretary Steven Chu:

"I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen," he said. "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California." And, he added, "I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going" either.

The knock on effects of increased temperature through AGW are potentially devastating. If increasingly severe drought trends hold, there will be major disruptions to a hydrological cycle we have become dependent on for survival. One can only imagine the scenarios that can possibly be played out: California loses it's natural storage capacity for water in the High Sierra snow pack, more water is diverted from out state, forcing those states to draw down their own in-ground aquifers forcing more water diversion projects from further east. That eventually brings us to the Midwest. In the same article, Chu also warns of "water shortages plaguing the West and Upper Midwest" so in that sense it is easy to see how this easily becomes a national problem.

It also serves as a reminder that those of us living in the upper Midwest might also prepare for changes in rainfall. One of the projects I'd like to complete this upcoming summer is a rain collection and storage system. During WW2 we had victory gardens. Now, it might be a good idea to start "climate gardens" in the face of changing agriculture patterns and availability. And if we are going to do so, we may as well start now to ensure we have secure water supplies for those gardens!

EDIT: I now have all my seeds, except for the strawberries...

MN Gov. Vetos Peak Oil Legislation

2009-01-29T21:32:00.000-08:00

This is old news, but I found it the other day browsing energy related news. In the state of Minnesota, the legislature created a bill that would petition Governor Pawlenty to "prepare a plan ... to meet the challenge of peak oil." I stumbled across this piece of legislation and was shocked. The bill was introduced in the 2007 session and went on to be vetoed in 2008.

There are a couple reasons that this bill surprised me. First I wouldn't expect this sort of thing from politicians (except Roscoe Bartlett). Peak oil and its implications have to be seen through a telescope - it's a long term issue. There are no quick fixes. The problems have been in the making for over a hundred years and the solutions must be far reaching, forward looking, yet effective enough to keep society from crashing. Politicians and long term policy rarely go hand in hand. Second is that the bill is bipartisan, and oddly enough authored by predominantly suburban representatives, though no rural reps were attached to the bill. Last, it is not a wishy-washy, feel good statement. It contains, yet goes past the tired anecdotes of US oil consumption and production figures and dives into EROI of transport fuel alternatives (pajoritively), environmental degradation of continuing BAU and biomass-based fuels, the North American natural gas peak, and laying out a time frame for mitigation as given by the Hirsch report.

The bill does not provide suggested ideas for mitigation of PO, as that is the point of the legislation: to provide "funding and ... give direction to state departments for the development of a response plan as soon as possible." In early half of 2008, Matthew Simmons addressed the Minnesota legislature. This was when oil prices were skyrocketing into the $100/bbl+ range. It's too bad the guvna didn't hear the Senior Energy Advisor to the Bush administration's presentation, though I doubt it would have rescued the bill.

I enjoy being pleasantly surprised (though not comforted) that there are at least a few people in elected politics that could be bothered to spend even a few moments drafting such a bill. If the shift is in the right direction, I can handle small steps for at least a while.

Calls for Increasing the Federal Gas Tax

2009-01-02T14:06:00.000-08:00

The National Commission on Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing, the closest thing we have to a national transportation planning body, will be recommending upping the federal gas tax in an upcoming report.

A roughly 50 percent increase in gasoline and diesel fuel taxes is being urged by the commission until the government devises another way for motorists to pay for using public roads.

The 15-member National Commission on Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing is the second group in a year to call for increasing the current 18.4 cents a gallon federal tax on gasoline and the 24.4 cents a gallon tax on diesel. State fuel taxes vary from state to state.

In a report expected in late January, members of the infrastructure financing commission say they will urge Congress to raise the gas tax by 10 cents a gallon and the diesel tax by about 12 cents to 15 cents a gallon. At the same time, the commission will recommend tying the fuel tax rates to inflation.

The commission will also recommend that states raise their fuel taxes and make greater use of toll roads and fees for rush-hour driving.

There are several reasons for increasing the gas tax. The one being trumpeted the most is obviously that the revenues pay for upkeep of our transportation system. A reemerging concern is that with low gas prices due to the economic downturn, Americans will again be tempted to buy gas guzzlers. In fact, this trend seems to be already occurring.

Surely the dealerships who this past summer found those large vehicles to be unsellable dead weight will be more than eager to pawn them off on the market segment that doesn't think about the long term when making large purchases. Gas prices are not going to stay low. The only reason they are low is because of the "demand destruction" of the global recession.

Echoing the commission's soon-to-be-released findings are the New York Times and Thomas Friedman. The Times uses the second argument, that higher gas prices will encourage Americans to buy more fuel-efficient cars.

Americans did not buy enormous gas guzzlers just because Detroit marketed them relentlessly. They bought them because they wanted big cars — and because gas was cheap. If gas stays cheap, Americans would be less inclined to squeeze their families into a lithe fuel-efficient alternative.

[...]

Americans have flirted with fuel-efficient cars before only to jilt them when gas prices fell. In the late 1970s, for instance, they spurned light trucks as gas prices doubled. But as gas prices declined between 1981 and 2005, the market share of sport-utility vehicles, pickups, vans and the like jumped from 16 percent to 61 percent of vehicle sales in the United States.

The recent infatuation with the Toyota Prius and other fuel-efficient cars could well come to a similar end. It took a gallon of gas at $4.10 to push the share of light trucks down to 45 percent in July. But as gasoline plummeted back to $1.60 a gallon, their share inched back up to 49 percent of auto sales in November.

The editorial suggests a variable tax that would effectively create a floor for gas prices of $4.00 to $5.00 per gallon.

A gas tax would help to train people who do not consider the long-term consequences of their decision to in fact do so, just like regulations on sub-prime mortgages can force would-be borrowers into more reasonable financial decisions. Gas is not going to stay cheap. The International Energy Agency, which might be called notorious for its overly rosy fossil energy outlooks, reported in November that oil prices "will rebound to more than $100 a barrel as soon as the world economy recovers, and will exceed $200 by 2030". When the economy recovers, don't be surprised to see the owners of shiny new SUVs crying wolf again. Those who are heavily dependent on gasoline are between a rock and a hard place: struggling economy plus low gas prices, or burgeoning economy plus high gas prices. There will never be a burgeoning economy with low gas prices. Our best option is a burgeoning economy with greater energy efficiency and alternative sources of energy, so that we don't care that gas prices are high.

So the time is overripe to increase gas taxes, even in this economy. I say "overripe" because the "ripe" times have already passed: the 1980s, coming out of the oil embargoes; the bright, peacetime economy of the 1990s, and the 2000s, when, as Thomas Friedman recalled in his recent call for a gas tax increase,

[i]n the wake of 9/11, President Bush had the political space to impose a gasoline tax, a “Patriot Tax,” to weaken the very people who had funded 9/11 and to stimulate a U.S. renewable-energy industry. But Bush wimped out and would not impose a tax when prices were low or a floor price when they got high.

What we can't avoid in all of our cooing for "fuel efficiency" is the importance of price. As Friedman says,

The two most important rules about energy innovation are: 1) Price matters — when prices go up people change their habits. 2) You need a systemic approach. It makes no sense for Congress to pump $13.4 billion into bailing out Detroit — and demand that the auto companies use this cash to make more fuel-efficient cars — and then do nothing to shape consumer behavior with a gas tax so more Americans will want to buy those cars. As long as gas is cheap, people will go out and buy used S.U.V.’s and Hummers.

There has to be a system that permanently changes consumer demand, which would permanently change what Detroit makes, which would attract more investment in battery technology to make electric cars, which would hugely help the expansion of the wind and solar industries — where the biggest drawback is the lack of batteries to store electrons when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. A higher gas tax would drive all these systemic benefits.

Yet another reason -- probably the most important -- is climate change. Even the chairman of the American Truckers Association is not opposed to a carbon tax (albeit only if revenues go to highway spending).

Charles Whittington, chairman of the American Trucking Associations, which supports a fuel tax increase as long as the money goes to highway projects, said Congress may decide to disguise a fuel tax hike as a surcharge to combat climate change.

Transportation is responsible for about a third of all U.S. carbon emissions created by burning fossil fuels. Traffic congestion wastes an estimated 2.9 billion gallons of fuel a year. Less congestion would reduce greenhouse gases and dependence on foreign oil.

"Instead of calling it a gas tax, call it a carbon tax," Whittington said. "As long as we label it as something else we may have the momentum and acceptance to move forward." [AP, above]

There may be, after all, a window of opportunity for moving towards the true cost of driving and fuel use by increasing the federal gas tax.

Embarrassing Recalcitrance in Poznan

2008-12-10T23:52:00.000-08:00

If climate change is the world's house on fire, then the Poznan talks are us filling a squirt gun drop by drop. Bloomberg:

Harlan Watson, who heads the U.S. delegation for the first week of talks, told reporters in Poznan it’s "unclear" whether a long-term goal for 2050 can be agreed in Poznan. He also said he didn’t think any numbers can be fixed for a 2020 target, including the possible 25 percent to 40 percent emissions cuts for developed countries that the EU and China have suggested.

"I don’t think many parties are ready to sign onto any range at this time," Watson said. "My own opinion is that that’s going to occur in the end game" in Copenhagen.

"We’ve seen in past discussions of this that a number of parties aren’t prepared to agree to a long-term goal until other parties are coming forward with a 2020 or a near-term goal, and a number of parties, including the United States, are not willing to come forward with that yet."

It's saddening that my country is representing itself like a recalcitrant child in Poland. It's not the "United States" that is unwilling; it is the Bush administration dragging its feet, at the expense of global quality of life. That is what "we've seen in past discussions" (Bali and Montreal, exhibits A and B).

Earth to Mr. Watson: you don't wait for the "end game" to decide on a range. You sign the convention. The whole purpose of agreeing on a range and a negotiating text ahead of time is so you can be ready to sign the actual treaty. Perpetual negotiation -- that is to say, shucking responsibility -- will only lead to the "end game" for the world's vulnerable ecosystems and the livelihoods of millions of people. Secondly, the long-term goal should not be based on a short-term goal. It should be based on science. Start with the target recommended by James Hansen et al. (PDF):

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.

The best policy is formulated after taking into account the recommendations of experts. Our position at the Poznan talks, if Mr. Watson's remarks are any indication, is the antithesis of good policy.

Meanwhile, a fifth of the worlds corals are dead, primarily due to climate change.

many of the remaining reefs could die in the next 20 to 40 years unless humans reduce greenhouse gas emissions...

Further coral loss will have alarming consequences for some 500 million people who depend on reefs for their livelihood, according to a report by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) presented at the UN conference on global warming in Poland.

Here is the blatant and unacceptable schism between the urgency of climate change and the twilight zone of waffling officialspeak inhabited by the Bush administration's team. No wonder youth are embarrassed by Watson's "sidestepping and recalcitrance".

But it's not just the U.S. that is waffling. George Monbiot -- whose worry that the global community would "talk ourselves to Kingdom Come", instead of actually acting on climate change, certainly seems applicable to Poznan -- recently interviewed (link to video) a defensive and noncommittal Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Though de Boer was visibly rattled in Bali at some of the machinations of responsibility avoidance, in the interview he continues to see the meek progress on international climate negotiations as acceptable.

We need to do a lot better than this, and everyone knows it.

Coal power plants must address CO2 emissions

2008-11-14T22:56:00.000-08:00

In a rather remarkable move, the Environmental Appeals Board of the Environmental Protection Agency remanded a permit to build a coal power plant in Utah because it did not adequately address carbon dioxide controls. The permit does not technically ban all coal-fired power plant construction, but delays their approval until they deal with CO2.

Of course, this should not be a problem for the coal industry, right? I mean, they've been touting how clean they are with expensive "clean coal" ad campaigns. So this is really all water under the bridge for them, is it not?

The ruling by the EAB refers to the landmark Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA, in which the court concluded that the EPA had the authority to regulate CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act, and the duty to do so as long as it concluded that CO2 emissions are harmful to the public welfare.

Industry groups have claimed that the CAA is not the appropriate legal tool to regulate CO2 emissions.

The American Petroleum Institute filed a brief opposing the Sierra Club, arguing that the Clean Air Act, a version of which first passed in 1963 long before climate change became an environmental issue, is the wrong vehicle for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

There is merit to the argument that the Clean Air Act wasn't intended to regulate CO2, which is a different kind of pollutant than, for example, volatile organic compounds or particulate matter. CO2's harm is not medical, but physical, in terms of the way it compromises the stability of climate systems if too much of it is concentrated in the air.

But the Clean Air Act gives flexible authority to the EPA administrator to regulate air pollutants. For example, at least regarding motor vehicles, Section 202 (a)(1), which was at the heart of the Massachusetts ruling, states:

The Administrator shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) in accordance with the provisions of this section, standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. Such standards shall be applicable to such vehicles and engines for their useful life (as determined under subsection (d), relating to useful life of vehicles for purposes of certification), whether such vehicles and engines are designed as complete systems or incorporate devices to prevent or control such pollution.

Notice how the section does not specify the way in which a pollutant might endanger public health or welfare. In fact, the finding in section 101(a)(2) acknowledges the "complexity" of air pollution. No one word better describes the nature of climate change. In the past, complexity had been exploited by skeptics to deny that climate change was occurring due to greenhouse gas emissions.

Even complex processes can hold general truths, however. The EAB ruling is a long-awaited regulatory affirmation from the federal government of that complex but firm truth that CO2 emissions en masse are endangering the public health and welfare.

Talking with Spain

2008-11-09T17:26:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama has been President-Elect for five days and already we are starting to see the differences between how he conducts himself compared to how John McCain likely would have.

For example, the President-Elect has already spoken with Spain.

Recall that McCain bewilderingly refused to commit to a meeting with the NATO ally's Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

McCain's reticence was pointed out by Obama in the first debate as well as Joe Biden in the VP debate:

John McCain said as recently as a couple of weeks ago he wouldn't even sit down with the government of Spain, a NATO ally that has troops in Afghanistan with us now. I find that incredible.

We'll welcome you back, multilateralism.

Four Years Later

2008-11-09T03:10:00.000-08:00

I started Brudaimonia four years ago, on the night of election day in 2004, after returning dejected from an election party in a downtown Minneapolis hotel. The initial excitement of that night was gradually sucked away over the course of the evening as we learned the result.

I started the blog as an outlet for my frustration, hoping to maintain it with occasional posts on environmental concerns and sustainability, war and peace, foreign policy, religion, and science; highlighting overlooked issues.

Four years later, President-Elect Obama is 72 days from moving into the White House, and our country has a lot of work to do to restore itself to a place where people can thrive. Obama's election was a landmark for one of the three sides of the sustainability triangle. But the great achievement for social sustainability -- an African American president less than a half-century after the long, gripping period of institutional discrimination and segregation -- comes in the midst of great challenges to economic and environmental sustainability.

Regarding the former, the global economic crisis is the global realization that wild, unrestrained capitalism is really just delayed socialism behind a curtain -- socialism, that is, for the large corporations whose greed drove the crisis. Regarding the latter, climate change, the most pressing environmental issue the world has ever faced and the biggest environmental justice issue in world history -- threatens to sneak out of our consciousness as we focus on the economy. But it is front-and-center for those who know that climate change is intimately connected with the long-term health of the global economy.

So we all have work to do. After 72 days, progressives will (thankfully) no longer have at their disposal that crutch of complaining about the many ways in which the Bush administration set this country back. We have to embrace better, smarter government and remember that while cynicism is much easier than hope, hope is the stronger and everlasting force.

Matt Simmons: "McCain Doesn't Have a Clue"

2008-10-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

More damning evidence that McCain simply doesn't understand the world we live in, particularly when it comes to Energy, is Matthew Simmons' endorsement of Barack Obama. Simmons is a lifelong republican, Texas oilman and energy adviser to Bush and Cheney in the early years of the administration. Scanning through various blogger headlines I found the above endorsement:

“He’s [McCain] just witless about this stuff. As a lifelong Republican, I’m supporting Obama.”

In the original article Simmons goes on to explain that McCain just doesn't get it with his off-shore drilling and nuclear plant energy policy proposals. It's shocking to see just how many people (republicans and independents) McCain has disuaded from supporting him with the terrible ideas he wants to pursue as our nations leader. I'd think republicans tend not to rub each other the wrong way -I thought maybe Simmons just doesn't like McCain- because for Simmons to go out and specifically criticise McCains energy policy while at the same time stating he supports Obama really says it all about the depth of McCains policy and (lack of) understanding on the issues.

Bile

2008-10-06T22:00:00.000-07:00

I frequently describe today's Republican Party platform as being a tumbleweed of contradictions and hollow platitudes, devoid of any meaningful principles, but its increasingly desperate ticket for the White House is making it clear that that description is way too charitable.

Scenes from the Two-Minutes Hate in Clearwater, Florida, earlier today:

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

[...]

Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Why drilling in ANWR is a bad idea

2008-10-01T21:05:00.000-07:00

Bru's note: This post is an adaptation of an email reply to a forwarded message by a family friend containing this misinformation about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Apparently this misinformation has been circulating around conservative websites, as a simple Google search will reveal. The forwarded message I received contained the hilarious preface: "I received this from my nephew who is an oil geologist and successful wildcatter in Texas and Montana."

I'm hoping to update this ANWR truth post and refine it over time to include more information on why drilling in ANWR is a bad idea. This is just the first draft.

The best sources of recent information are the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA) May 2008 report on ANWR and an analysis by Congress's Joint Economic Committee. I would tend to trust the EIA over someone's "nephew who is an oil geologist and successful wildcatter in Texas and Montana". (wtf?)

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/06/18/dont-expect-too-much-from-anwr/

* Drilling in ANWR would lower gas prices by one to four cents ($0.01 to $0.04) by 2025. So, in other words, if gas is $6.00 per gallon in 2025, drilling in ANWR would lower prices to $5.96 to $5.99 per gallon. Hugh savings, eh?

* There is just not that much oil there, relative to what our country consumes. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated that 10.4 billion barrels of oil are technically recoverable in the "1002 Area", which basically comprises the coastal plain of ANWR. 10.4 billion barrels may sound like a lot, but consider that the U.S. consumes over 20.6 million barrels of oil per day.

Furthermore, consider that only part of the 1002 area was designated by Congress as open for drilling in the 1980 act that established ANWR. This area only has an estimate of 7.7 billion barrels of oil. The other part of the 1002 area belongs to Native peoples.

What's more, this estimate is only given by USGS as being 50 percent likely. There could be more oil, but there could be less. (There is a 5 percent chance of there being at least 11.8 billion barrels, and a 95 percent chance of there being at least 4.2 billion barrels.)

Moreover, this is just "technically recoverable" oil, which means oil that could be recovered without consideration of cost constraints. Economically recoverable oil may be a lot lower. Using the 50 percent figure of 7.7 billion barrels of oil and making the generous assumption that all of it is economically recoverable, then ANWR could only provide enough oil to supply U.S. consumption for 296 days, or less than 10 months.

And this is assuming current oil demand, not demand in 2016 (1), when ANWR oil production would finally begin contributing to oil supply and oil demand will likely be much higher.

* Oil infrastructure is more than a "point". The photo below suggesting oil development would be no larger than an itty-bitty dot is an insult to rational thinking. Does this supposed "oil geologist" think that crude oil magically appears as gasoline in people's gas tanks after being pumped out of the ground? The truth is that each well would have to be connected to a pipeline system, and accessible by road. The footprint of drilling in this 1.5 million acre area would be more than just the wells. The chance for an oil spill is also very real. In 2006, a corroded BP pipeline leaked 267,000 gallons of crude oil in Prudhoe Bay, which is an existing oil production zone not far west of the ANWR coastal plain.

* It is a lie to suggest wildlife aren't affected by oil infrastructure based on a few token photographs of wildlife coinciding with a background of oil facilities. To cite one example, a 1992 report by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game found significant disruption of caribou calving by oil infrastructure development in Prudhoe Bay. Here is the report's abstract (emphasis added):

---- Aerial surveys were conducted annually in June 1978-87 near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to determine changes in the distribution of calving caribou (Rangifer tarandus granfi) that accompanied petroleum-related development. With construction of an oil field access road through a calving concentration area, mean caribou density (no./km2) decreased from 1.41 to 0.31 (P = 0.05) within 1 km and increased from 1.41 to 4.53 (P = 0.04) 5-6 km from the road. Concurrently, relative caribou use of the adjacent area declined (P < 0.02), apparently in response to increasing surface development. We suggest that perturbed distribution associated with roads reduced the capacity of the nearby area to sustain parturient females [i.e. females in labor and about to give birth] and that insufficient spacing of roads may have depressed overall calving activity. Use of traditional calving grounds and of certain areas therein appears to favor calf survival, principally through lower predation risk and improved foraging conditions. Given the possible loss of those habitats through displacement and the crucial importance of the reproductive process, a cautious approach to petroleum development on the Arctic Slope is warranted.----

Here is the link to the article: http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic45-4-338.pdf

* The coastal plain is not a "barren wasteland". When all you can think about is "drill, baby, drill", like many conservatives, you probably don't want to face the simple fact that just because a few photos don't show massive amounts of large, furry animals, that nothing exists of biological importance on the coastal plain. But when Rush Limbaugh "drill, baby, drills" ludicrous talking points into conservatives' heads on a daily basis such as, "The wildlife that lives [in ANWR] wishes it didn't, but it's too stupid to figure out how to move anywhere" (yes, he actually said that), the overwhelming ignorance of misinformation such as this pro-drilling email is not surprising.

In reality, ANWR is a treasure trove of wildlife. That's why it's a wildlife refuge. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is home to some of the most diverse and spectacular wildlife in the arctic. The Refuge's rich pageant of wildlife includes 36 fish species, 36 land mammals, nine marine mammals, and more than 160 migratory and resident bird species." The FWS has a detailed list of all this wildlife: http://arctic.fws.gov/wildlife.htm. The 1002 area, where conservatives want to put oil derricks, pipelines, and access roads, shares in this great biological diversity. According to the FWS, "The [1002] area includes habitat important to the Porcupine and Central Arctic Caribou Herds, as well as many other species." (Source: http://www.fws.gov/refuges/profiles/index.cfm?id=75600).

Additional resources:

Here is the EIA report (commissioned, interestingly, by Ted Stevens): http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/anwr/pdf/sroiaf(2008)03.pdf
Here is the USGS report: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-0028-01/fs-0028-01.pdf
BP oil spill in 2006: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/15/national/15spill.html

Endnotes:

(1) Burgos, Russell A. "Unraveling myths about ANWR drilling: It just won't work." Ventura County Star. June 16, 2008.

Another Storm of the Century

2008-08-31T07:34:00.000-07:00

As Hurricane Gustav swirls towards the northern Gulf Coast, officials and people there are clearly less complacent than they were almost three years ago to the day when Katrina made landfall.

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin called Gustav the "storm of the century", calling for a mandatory evacuation and telling those who don't leave that they are on their own. Many Gulf Coast residents would undoubtedly affix that label to Katrina, which had category 5 winds (160 mph) at landfill in Louisiana. Gustav has weakened to a category 3 after passing over Cuba, but it is expected to gain strength as it is fueled by the warm waters of the Gulf Coast.

The characterization of Gustav, so soon after Katrina, as the "storm of the century" is the perfect real-life example of climate change models' predictions of more frequent, more intense storms in the Gulf Coast and other areas of the earth. An "100-year flood" is a pliable definition, which can change based on climate change, land use change, and other changes. The storm surge channeled by over-industrialization of the Mississippi Delta and levees that eventually failed, more than Katrina's winds themselves, was what unleashed the true wrath on New Orleans three years ago. Let's hope that hurricanes like Katrina and Gustav don't become "storms of every three years".

Let's do more than hope: let's limit the emission of the greenhouse gases that are making more intense storms like these more likely.

Power Corrupts

2008-06-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, it looked like a victory for human rights. Robert Mugabe, his brutal administration, and his Zanu-PF party appeared to be defeated in Zimbabwe's presidential and parliamentary elections in March by the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). This would have ended his 28-year grip on this impoverished, oppressed country and its inflation-laden economy.

Now, three months later, Mugabe is the "sole effective candidate in Friday's presidential run-off, and he cannot fail to win with an overwhelming majority."

How did this come to be?

Amid continuing violence on its supporters, the MDC has withdrawn from the contest.

However, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai said his supporters should vote rather than face violent reprisals.

Reports suggested Zanu-PF membership cards were selling for huge sums of money on the black market.

Those buying the cards believe they will offer some protection from attack by militias, a BBC correspondent reports.

* * *

The streets of Harare are quiet because there is no longer any need for the groups of violent political activists in Zanu-PF T-shirts who have been roaming them, looking for people to beat up.

[...]

The official media scarcely mentions Mr Tsvangirai or the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) unless they are obliged to.

The main English-language television news programme at 8pm each evening on the ZBC is an hour-long paean of praise to Mr Mugabe and his past record.

The programme's reporting merges imperceptibly with the frequent election advertisements for Mr Mugabe. If anything, the reporters and newscasters praise him more than his own party hacks.

So that's how you keep the people's support at a time when "on Monday [June 24] the Zimbabwean dollar fell to 30 billion against the US dollar. The cost of a tub of margarine in a Harare store on Monday was Z$420m" (previous link). Yes, that "m" is for "million".

If You Must Drive, Drive 55

2008-06-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

A statistic that can save you money: fuel economy by speed.

15 mph - 24.4 mpg
20 mph - 27.9 mpg
25 mph - 30.5 mpg
30 mph - 31.7 mpg
35 mph - 31.2 mpg
40 mph - 31.0 mpg
45 mph - 31.6 mpg
50 mph - 32.4 mpg
55 mph - 32.4 mpg
60 mph - 31.4 mpg
65 mph - 29.2 mpg
70 mph - 26.8 mpg
75 mph - 24.8 mpg

(Adapted from Table 4.22, "Fuel Economy by Speed, 1973, 1984, and 1997 Studies (miles per gallon)", Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 26-2007, U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

At $4.00 per gallon of gas, you save over half a gallon of gas, and $2.00, for every 55 miles you travel going 55 mph instead of 75 mph. (Thanks to Anonymous for correcting my "fuzzy math".) So if you don't have to get anywhere fast, drive 55 (or 50)! Use less gas and pollute less, compared with faster speeds.

Struggling and Scampering

2008-06-12T04:59:00.000-07:00

The fable of the grasshopper and the ant: The ants work hard during the summer to prepare their colony for the winter. The grasshopper, lounging under a nearby tree, laughs at them for working when they could be relaxing, or playing. When the winter comes, the ants are prepared, and the grasshopper is not. He must beg them for assistance to survive the winter.

The fable, along with the Faustian Bargain, are two of the most relevant metaphors of our current economic situation. What the ants did was called planning, a responsibility that even real-life, non-anthropomorphized animals, such as squirrels, undertake. Planning is something we did not do nearly enough of when the "weather" was nice and gas was cheap.

People forget that there are real consequences to their decisions. We are experiencing the real consequences now of every politically-motivated decision to allow sprawl to creep gallons of gas away from anything else, to let our passenger railroad wither on tracks owned by freight companies who care little about Amtrak as long as it pays rent, to turn transportation policy at all levels of government into a feeding trough for highway-building interests, and to allow the previously-externalized costs of our economic, fiscal, and environmental irresponsibility to bundle up and come crashing down on our unprepared society like the Yucatan Peninsula asteroid believed to have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other species in the Cretaceous Period.

Our reaction to these consequences has been that of struggling and scampering, affirming Carter-administration Energy Secretary James R. Schlesinger's quote that "we have only two modes: complacency and panic". We are doing rational self-rationing that might have been mitigated had we planned better. We are substituting lower-quality for higher-quality foods, the gas-station-quality, preservative-laden ham for the hams sold in authentic delis. We are driving and flying less (a boon for climate change and air quality and people's lungs) and staying in more. High school kids are curtailing their cruising. Police patrols are being cut back. Municipalities at the sub-prime mortgage crisis ground zero are going bankrupt, while others are raising taxes to pay for services, further cutting into families' disposable incomes. The airline industry is in a well-known downward spiral.

In Wilmington, NC, a few months ago, motorists eschewed honesty while swarming a gas station accidentally selling gas for $0.35 per gallon. Car dealerships are dangling free gas or "$2.99 gas guarantees" to try and unload their rapidly devaluing gas guzzlers. The cargo trucking industry is in a tailspin, as the boastful, red-white-and-blue signs on the backs of tractor-trailers contending that "without trucks, America stops" begin to ring true in a nation that has shunned local self-reliance for a dependency on the unsustainable global marketplace. Now we have finally started to undertake serious planning for high energy costs, and those who have never shied from spitting on environmentalism are beginning to fight for some marginal turf on the growing isle of conservation consciousness.

If Climate Change Doesn't Kill Polar Bears....

2008-06-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

...Then the Icelandic police will! For the first time in 15 years a polar bear had arrived via the ice floe and was "promptly shot dead" according to the Daily Mail. I'm not sure which part of the story is more ridiculous: that despite the polar bear being on the endangered species list, local law prevails allowing the police to shoot it dead or that there appears to be only one tranquiliser gun in the entire country, which is flown from place to place depending on where it is needed.

This Is Your Father's Airline Industry

2008-05-25T06:27:00.000-07:00

"The airline industry as it is constituted today was not built for $125 [per barrel] or $135 oil," Gerard Arpey, American's chief executive, told reporters. "It can't continue in its present state."

* * *

"The industry will not and cannot continue in its current state," he said. "The fact that four more airlines have liquidated this year and one is operating in Chapter 11 is clear evidence of that fact.

* * *

"The bottom line is that the airlines are at the end of their rope," said Rick Seaney, chief executive of FareCompare.com in Dallas, which tracks fare adjustments. "They can raise fares and cut capacity, but after that there's nothing they can do if people start running to the exits," meaning passengers cease buying tickets.

* * *

"Are we at the breaking point?" David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, the trade association for major carriers, asked rhetorically at his office in Washington. "We're there."

* * *

Herb Kelleher, who retired as chairman of Southwest on Wednesday, said this was a "very perilous time" for U.S. carriers.

"We are being forced back to the days when fewer people flew because the cost barrier was so significant," Kelleher said at the airline's annual meeting, Bloomberg reported. "As you have a contraction of service and higher fares, you may see a lot less air service across the U.S. We hope it's not a permanent situation. Fuel prices are just beyond belief."

These are the lamentations of an industry in upheaval. Airlines are doing whatever they can to make money, at best, and stave off bankruptcy, at worst. One of the most recent measures, as the articles linked above detail, is to charge for checked bags. American will be charging $15 for one checked bag and $25 for a second. They will also be cutting jobs by perhaps 7 percent and cutting "capacity" by 11 to 12 percent, which will mean parking 40 to 45 jets and returning others to lessors, according to the Dallas Morning News article.

But American is the nation's largest airline, and the low-cost Southwest, the only airline making money, has always been a horse of a different color. Counterintuitively, Southwest's customer satisfaction rating has risen while other Airlines' ratings have tanked.

The exception, of course, is profitable Southwest Airlines. It has been profitable for 35 consecutive years, largely because of fuel hedging, or contracting for purchase of fuel at a fixed price for future delivery. This year, Southwest has 70 percent of its fuel hedged at approximately $51 per barrel. In 2009, it's more than 55 percent at $51, and in 2010, it's nearly 30 percent at $63 per barrel. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Furthermore, Southwest does not buy into the hub-and-spoke system that is (or was) the credo of other carriers. A hub-and-spoke approach is not such a bright idea when jet fuel is $173 per barrel (with $131.70 crude, after refining). Though I cannot locate a source at the moment, I am almost certain -- and it seems intuitive -- that short-haul flights are the least fuel-efficient in terms of passenger miles per unit of energy, due to high fuel usage during takeoff.

The compounding problems of air travel in 2008 are an irritation for airline passengers accustomed to feeling like they deserve something for nothing (or, at most, for less than what it truly costs), and the proposed job cuts will be a major life challenge for all the airline employees affected, even if their unions just don't get it ("It's time to fix the problems" was the message of the Allied Pilots Association to American Airlines, assuming that peak oil can be brushed aside with the wave of a CEO's arm.)

But how much have we acknowledged that a drop in flights -- and the concurrent decrease in driving -- is a gift to the planet and the future of global quality of life? Flying is one of the most destructive forms of long-distance travel, not only due to the energy used (source: see tables 2.13 and 2.14), but also due to the extra warming effect of water-vapor contrails formed by planes flying at high altitudes, which, as George Monbiot cites, could be 2.7 times the effect of the CO2 emissions alone.

Global warming is the type of planetary crisis that is perfectly tailored for insufficient response from the general public. Its effects are mostly distant, both spatially and temporally, from their causes. It is extremely complex in nature, with a high degree of uncertainty even if its general characteristics -- that the planet is warming overall, that greenhouse gas emissions are a major cause, and that the likelihood of catastrophic effects is too great to refrain from action -- are evident.

It is unfortunate that it has taken that same old behavior driver -- the pocketbook -- to lead to some meaningful drops in the conveniences that are collectively destroying the planet. We could have made these cuts without causing so much hardship -- that is, without losing so much mobility -- if, for instance, just a few people in Washington (or in state governments) had cared a whit about a decent national rail system, like we see in Europe and Japan. This would have made a more energy-efficient (and non-contrail-forming) mode of travel more attractive to more people. But unfortunately the entire U.S. has only one high-speed rail line -- the Acela Express from Washington, DC, to Boston -- and plans for others (in California and the Southeast U.S., linking Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, and Richmond to Washington, DC) are still at least 5-10 years away.

But could we have expected anything more in a society where the president tells people to fight the recession he helped bring about by going shopping?

The Wayfarer

2008-04-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

The wayfarer
Perceiving the pathway to truth
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
"In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."

- Stephen Crane

This strikes me as a particularly apt metaphor for the reaction of the mainstream media to Obama's recent "bitter" comments in Pennsylvania.

The Impending Recession or a Flag Pin on One Man's Lapel? -- A Frustrated Comment on our National Priorities

2008-03-19T21:59:00.000-07:00

At some crucial times in our nation's history we have had the right people in charge: Abraham Lincoln helped the country get through the Civil War, and Franklin Roosevelt helped it get through the Great Depression. Lincoln and FDR are revered today because, although there have been some relatively good presidents, they were good when it mattered the most.

This is precisely why the Bush administration's tenure has been so mercilessly atrocious for our future. It has not just been a case of the president trying hard, but failing, to steer our country through treacherous waters. It has been a case of an administration intentionally doing what it wants to please its own and its friends' interests, the rest of us be damned. History will wretchedly remember this administration as one that, when faced with the tipping point of global warming, the peaking and decline of the liquid that has kept the industrialized world going, the overwhelming housing value crisis, the skyrocketing of food prices, crumbling national transportation infrastructure, and an economy speeding towards recession, was obsessed with the military occupation of a Middle Eastern country with a little bit of oil, at a cost of thousands of young Americans' lives, tens of thousands of Iraqis' lives, and trillions of taxpayers' dollars. "Fiddling while Rome burns" is an understatement.

As Dick Cheney scoffs "So?" when reminded on the fifth anniversary of "shock and awe" that Americans don't support his long-planned conquest -- and have not for a while -- Americans should be coming to realize that the administration really just doesn't care. Its apathy has been more shocking and awful than its evil. Most Democrats in Congress, for their part, just aren't courageous enough to care about the nation's most pressing problems. The silver lining in the U.S.'s losing battle to do something about sustainability has been notable efforts at the local level (and somewhat at the state level).

The conglomeration of big challenges facing us today will require ethics, dedication, creativity, honesty, and humility to solve. We will somehow have to find a way of overcoming a disorder which has crept into society en masse: obsession with image -- the belief that it's most important to look like you are doing good things than to actually do them. We are obsessed with the award rather than the good deed. Whether this theory can explain the abomination of mainstream media coverage of the increasingly silly presidential campaign's to-do of the week -- Barack Obama happens to belong to a church where some guy once said something that makes people uncomfortable, therefore is he fit to be president? -- I don't know, but there's something so heinously depressing about the fact that as the vise of the worst recession in decades tightens around us, we are worried about the significance of Obama not wearing a flag pin on his lapel, a despicable folly which is its own bad metaphor.

A Crisis of Value

2008-01-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

Although the U.S. economy sinking towards recession like a McMansion built on a bog is no laughing matter for the millions of Americans whose quality of life will be negatively affected, I couldn't help but laugh at Bush's recently announced "special package of measures worth billions of dollars to avoid a downturn in the world's biggest economy."

It's dark comedy indeed that "US shares turned sharply lower following the announcement" of a "stimulus package worth perhaps $140bn dollars [that] will have little real impact on a total US economy worth a gargantuan $14,000bn a year," according to the BBC correspondent. A more poignant evaluation of the tax cut is to question how much good it will do to stave off a recession that has little to do with tax levels in the first place.

It only takes one look at the BBC's "latest news" sidebar next to the article, which, at the time I read it, displayed these headlines:

GLOBAL CREDIT CRUNCH
Sub-prime woes spread worldwide

LATEST NEWS
Merrill Lynch posts $7.8bn loss
JP Morgan's $1.3bn sub-prime hit
Citigroup's $9.8bn sub-prime loss
Fed boss says 2008 outlook worse
Sub-prime woes continue for UBS
Bear Stearns boss Cayne resigns
Morgan Stanley takes $9.4bn hit
Fed tightens sub-prime rules
ECB lends $500bn to lower rates

And these headlines, further down under the "US SUB-PRIME PROBLEMS" header:

Bush details housing rescue plan
Political deadlock on aid
Carnage on Wall Street
Foreclosure wave sweeps US
US housing market crash
Credit woes 'need private action'

Nor will Bush's "housing rescue plan," which allows some distressed sub-prime borrowers to refinance their mortgage loans at a lower rate or freeze interest payments, guarantee a significant leg up for the economy.

"Something other than lower interest rates is needed to fix the sub-prime crisis and a freeze on mortgage interest payments is a big step in the right direction, if it works," said Cary Leahey, managing director of Decision Economics. [BBC]

It won't work for many people, according to Forbes.

The Bush Administration's plan to rescue the housing market and keep the economy from slipping into recession took flak yesterday for freezing interest rate hikes for a mere fraction of subprime, adjustable-rate borrowers. But there's a bigger risk: It could deepen and lengthen the credit crisis.

According to analysis by Barclays Capital, the "freezer-teaser" plan applies to just 240,000 subprime loans. The Mortgage Bankers Association reports the number of subprime adjustable rate mortgages at 2.9 million.

It also won't help the 16% of subprime borrowers who are already delinquent or in default, and it won't help millions of other homeowners who either will be deemed able to pay the higher rates when they adjust, starting in January, or who have the unhappy circumstance of having a house worth less than their mortgage or a loan that has already reset to the higher rates.

From the perspective of a financial layman like me, the federal government's branch-hacking strategies fail to get at the root of the U.S. economic crisis. It is a crisis of value.

Home "buyers" took out sub-prime mortgage loans that seemed irresistible due to their initial low interest rates. When the interest rates reset to much higher levels (sometimes double), many borrowers could not pay them back. Many had poor credit histories and-or income levels that were not prepared for the higher rates.

These homes, of course, were primarily in the suburbs. According to an excellent BBC guide on the crisis, "it was difficult [for lower-income or first-time buyers] to become an owner-occupier without moving to the very edge of the metropolitan area." The guide contains a telling graphic of the locations of the Cleveland metropolitan area's foreclosures: primarily in the suburban areas. The City of Cleveland has since filed a lawsuit against 21 banks who engaged in sub-prime lending in the area.

The hard evidence points to the deception of the banks in offering sub-prime loans without clearly explaining the adjustable rate structure. But the crisis is about the more abstract but fundamental deception of the American dream. In an important sense, cookie-cutter suburban homes are overvalued. They incur higher transportation costs on their inhabitants, who have to drive to do any errand. Many potential buyers probably also overestimated the size of the house they could afford. The initial "teaser" rates could have made these homes seem affordable. If so, they also could be facing higher heating or cooling costs.

In any case, it was naive to believe that the expected value of these homes would materialize. A U.S. Conference of Mayors report (PDF) chronicles the housing bubble growing and bursting:

The U.S. economy this decade experienced a dramatic real estate bubble – the inflation of both home values far in excess of historic norms and of reasonable estimates of the growth of fundamental determinants of home value. One salient feature of the bubble psychology was the expectation on the part of home-buyers of a continuation of this supra-normal trend in home price appreciation.

[...]

...then the perfect storm occurred. Home price appreciation ground to a halt, and home sales plummeted. This happened just as the ARM rate resets were beginning in large numbers, dooming the finances of millions of buyers. Delinquencies and foreclosures began to mount. At the same time, the inventory of new and existing homes for sale escalated, putting further downward pressure on prices, and limiting the ability of those who needed to
sell.

[...]

[In 2008,] [h]omeowners will...see property values decline by $1.2 trillion in 2008. The initial adjustment of over-heated home prices to the combination of weaker market demand and large inventories of homes for sale would have reduced values by $676 billion in 2008. Now, due to the foreclosure and mortgage crisis, home values will decline further, by an additional $519 billion. Foreclosures in 2008 will increase by at least 1.4 million. These homes represent a market value of $316 billion. [emphasis added]

The mortgage crisis is primarily a metropolitan crisis. It is the first shock reality has sent us that our suburban fantasy is unsustainable. (The second shock might come with the 2008 summer driving season.) The libertarian, hyper-individualist strand in our society has pushed us to think that there is only value in individual homes. The larger the house, the larger the lot, the better, even if we are isolated from everyone else, even if we have to spend a lot more for our daily lives. In short, we have forgotten the value of community. We have forgotten that living in urban settings can decrease our cost of living, primarily through lower transportation costs. Transportation costs are significant, sometimes higher for households than housing costs, but they are not something homeowners generally think about when deciding the affordability of a place. A 2006 report by the Center for Housing Policy (PDF) found that

On average...working families in the 28 metropolitan areas spend about 57 percent of their incomes on the combined costs of housing and transportation, with roughly 28 percent of income going for housing and 29 percent going for transportation. While the share of income devoted to housing or transportation varies from area to area, the combined costs of the two expenses are surprisingly constant. In areas where families spend more on housing, they tend to spend less on transportation, and vice-versa. However, in all the metropolitan areas there are neighborhoods where working families are saddled with both high housing and high transportation cost burdens.

In their search for lower cost housing, working families often locate far from their place of work, dramatically increasing their transportation costs and commute times. Indeed, for many such families, their transportation costs exceed their housing costs. Recent census data suggest this trend may be accelerating. Of the 20 fastest growing counties in the United States, 15 are located 30 miles or more from the closest central business district.

It follows that if families spend less on transportation, they can spend more on housing. That is to say, perhaps they could better bear ratcheted-up interest rates and save their property from foreclosure, or, better yet, afford a conventional loan with prime rates.

What would help our current economic woes much more than offering up minute tax breaks or suing sub-prime lenders would be to halt the suburban growth in this country. It actually would have paid off 15 years ago when we were starting to come out of the early 1990s recession and the housing market started booming, or 60 years ago when we converted the hubris of World War II victory into paving the first interstate highways and machining the first suburban tract homes on a large-scale. We could have done this through comprehensive, regional planning that directed growth towards existing built-up centers where utilities were already provided. We could have done this through urban growth boundaries or urban services boundaries. In short, we could have done this through smart growth.

Now reality has started to halt suburban growth for us. And since we were relatively unprepared due to our previous collective fantasizing, it is being halted the hard way, and we will endure losses to the tune of $166 billion less GDP, half a million fewer jobs, and the aforementioned $1.2 trillion drop in property values, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors report.

This, I have long thought, is an example that gets at the heart of what sustainability really means to me. If nothing is constant but change, then, technically, nothing is sustainable. We can only be sustainable in direct proportion to our ability to adapt to change. Even a country totally powered by renewable energy cannot escape the law of entropy. Wind turbines and solar panels eventually deteriorate.

The central question of sustainability then becomes, "Do we want to avoid massive hardship or suffer it?" This question is intimately tied to ethical first principles based on happiness, on eudaimonia. Its necessary corollary is, "Do we want to plan for change or let it overtake us when we are unprepared?" Clearly, the housing crisis and slumping economy fall under the latter result. We should learn from this hardship and accelerate planning for quality of life after all the cheap oil is gone. This involves rediscovering the value of community.

Europe Beginning to Realize Not All Biofuels are Created Equally

2008-01-15T12:55:00.001-08:00

From the New York Times:

Europe May Ban Imports of Some Biofuel Crops

PARIS — In a sign of growing concern about the impact of supposedly “green” policies, European Union officials will propose a ban on imports of certain biofuels, according to a draft law to be unveiled next week.

If approved by European governments, the law would prohibit the importation of fuels derived from crops grown on certain kinds of land — including forests, wetlands or grasslands — into the 27-nation bloc.

The draft law would also require that biofuels used in Europe deliver “a minimum level of greenhouse gas savings.” That level is still under discussion.

Brasil's New Black-Gold

2008-01-07T00:46:00.000-08:00

In mid November, Petroleo Brasileiro announced the discovery of a super-giant oil field. It contains 5-8 billion BOE and like most of Brasil's oil, is located off-shore and is an ultra deep water field. The largest discovery in the last 7 years (since Kashagan) brought out the peak oil deniers as usual:

Peak oil advocates claim that the world is running out of oil unless the West gives up its energy-consuming lifestyle. Like global warming and population-bomb Malthusianism, it's essentially junk science because it operates on a static model. Crucially, it leaves out the politics of whether oil companies are allowed to discover

Recent news suggests that Brazil may be sitting on even bigger oil deposits than the recently discovered (and huge) Tupi field

Besides Brazil, China has made 10 major new discoveries this year alone

They go on to include India, Mexico and Russia in their list of countries making oil discoveries. Never mind that the first sentence isn't quite correct, but from what I gather they are trying to equate moderate oil discoveries in a few countries as proof that oil is not peaking. A reminder then: even though it is technically correct that we are "running out" of oil (once you begin to consume a finite resource, you start running out) peak oil activists do not necessarily claim that the primary problem of peak oil is that we are running out. The main point is that current and projected rates of production are neither sustainable nor possible. In a world of diminishing resources where supply cannot keep up with demand, serious problems will begin to plague our economic system upon which growth (of money and energy) is quintessential.

What about Tupi? We've been using technology for a long time now, why was this just discovered? What does the find mean for Brasil's and global production? Via Reuters we find that Tupi was hidden from previous scans. Only once new technology was developed specifically for surveying through layers of salt was the possibility of an oil field detected. We are now developing technology to locate oil in more extreme environments, but do we also have the technology and physical capacity to commercially extract oil in these same places? A short answer would be yes, but not without costs and delays. Nearly all types of oil or equivalents being developed to replace and supplement on-shore conventional crude production are running into barriers, including but not limited to rig shortages (Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea), engineer/technician shortages, financing problems (Kashagan), cost overruns (Alberta oil sands) harsh climates (Sakhalin) and limits to drilling technology.

An article I read at the time of the discovery that had some cost information is now archived, so no link. I recall that the initial test well alone cost millions to drill. This field is under miles of water and sea bed, including over a mile of rock hard salt (layers of salt are difficult to drill through). As with the other projects above, the Tupi field will also have its high costs and a long development timeline to bring commercial production online. Pilot production won't begin until 2013, assuming there is an "investment of $35 per barrel before financing costs," and the deeper Brasil must go for more oil, the cost to produce a barrel of oil will rise. The Middle East cost per barrel is about $5.

The media jumped on the reserves and possible production amounts and ecstatically reported that the field may well produce 1mbbl/day. What most failed to mention is that such a level of production could take until 2022 to be brought on stream. This article by Dave Cohen is an excellent analysis of not only Tupi but the short and mid-term future of Brasilian oil production. In it he describes the huge problems Brasil is currently facing, such as the 10-15% decline from its existing production base of off-shore and deep water fields, the fact that these fields are known to peak faster than on-shore fields and do not plateau and that bringing these massive fields on stream can take years. This is not soon enough to cover Petrobras' projected production shortfall through 2013. Tupi will not make up for the declines and delays over the next five years.

I do also agree with the other conclusions reached: that Petrobras is most likely to succeed in producing this oil. The bulk of its production lies off-shore and so there lies its area of expertise. And it certainly is a boon for the country as a whole and should do much to provide the government with new revenues if the oil can be exported. If Petrobras does indeed eventually export oil, could they become our new Mexico? Mexican production is crashing and net exports could be nothing by the time Tupi is just starting to produce 100k bbl/d. Perhaps the US has a reason to begin mending relations with Brasil and its new found growing oil wealth (discoveries will continue to be made in the Santos basin).

Tupi and Kashagan provide two clear pieces of evidence that the easy-to-discover oil is gone. We now dig deeper, search in harsher environments and spend more money to find new sources of oil. In regards to climate change, this raises the question: Should we really be looking for more oil? If our options were mutually exclusive between choosing new oil (and natural gas) discoveries or, say, coal, then I would opt for the former. Today we have more climate friendly options such as conservation (simply eliminating waste would be a giant first step) and alternative energy development (wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, hydro). Is it moral to continue on our teleopathic quest of finding and exploiting the last drop of recoverable oil reserves, blindly ignoring the hazards of climate change that creep in from the sides? At times it may be, but we ought to generally choose a cleaner path.

Recession and the American Public

2007-12-30T23:30:00.000-08:00

A quick item of note, and sort of an update to the CPI bit a couple of posts below.

Yesterday morning I was watching Your $$$$$ on CNN and there was a guest on talking about differences in inflation measurements and where the economy is sitting, relative to a recession. A few months ago less than half the population thought the US was in a recession. In a recent poll that number climbed over 50%. Quite a disconnect if you think about it. Stated/reported GDP growth rates are still positive (we can't know we've entered a recession for 6 months, by definition). The economy is still growing, technically, but a majority doesn't...feel that that is necessarily the case, economists be damned.

One of the guests on the program was also making a point similar to one below regarding inflation. Looking at core and non-core inflation and whether how it is measured is the best way; it is another disconnect between the American Public and economists. From what I could tell his point was that public perception of prices is that they are rising a lot faster than the stated CPI saying our grocery and gasoline bills are a lot higher than any previous moment.
Is it best (or right?) that we continue to use core and non core inflation rates to determine whether the economy is growing or not?

NB: Are declining housing prices keeping inflation numbers artificially low?

Climate Change Adaptation at the Bali Talks

2007-12-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

While the greenhouse-gas-emitting colossus that is the United States -- now alone among industrialized countries in its spurning of the Kyoto Protocol after new Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made ratifying it his government's first official act -- continues to fuss and whine about binding emissions targets at the UN Climate Conference in Bali (well, the Bush administration at least, if not other American officials), poor and vulnerable countries -- who will be the first victims of our inaction -- are already planning for adaptation to the changing climate, and pleading for rich countries' help in doing so. As the International Herald Tribune reports,

The haves — which pump the lion's share of pollutants into the atmosphere — are arguing about emission targets and high-tech solutions. The have-nots — which contribute little to global warming but are disproportionately among the victims — need tens of billions of dollars to save their sinking islands, to help farmers adapt and to relocate those in the path of destruction.

"The issue of equity is crucial. Climate affects us all, but does not affect us all equally," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told delegates. "Those who are least able to cope are being hit hardest. Those who have done the least to cause the problem bear the gravest consequences."

The United Nations Development Program says 98 percent of the 262 million people hit by disasters from 2000 to 2004 came from impoverished countries, while the money to prevent disasters in the United Kingdom alone was six times what was spent in all poor countries.

[...]

The U.N. predicts that about 1.8 billion of the most vulnerable people across the globe will be hit by water shortages, 600 million more will go hungry and 32 million will be displaced by droughts and floods.

Right now, we are failing at the most widespread environmental justice issue in human history. Instead of trying to solve it, we are playing a farcical game of chicken with China over emissions, unwilling to give up the excesses we mistakenly think will bring us better quality of life and slow to invest in the energy efficiency that might put a dent in our beloved short-term profit.

ELM Entering MSM?

2007-12-09T16:57:00.000-08:00

When it comes to oil supply, global production totals tend to be the numbers analysed, along with various inventory levels. Recently, a new model has come about regarding oil supply. As far as I know, the Export Land Model was developed by Jeff Brown aka Westexas over at The Oil Drum. Without getting into the specifics too much, it basically changes the way we look at oil supplies: not as an overall number, but as availability of exports. This morning I stumbled across this article in the New York Times. Without mentioning the ELM specifically, it pointed out the realities happening in many countries as laid out by the model. The model was presented earlier this year, about 8 months ago. It has just now started creeping into the Mainstream Media, but not by name or recognition.

I did this somewhat backwards. I had wanted to post on the importance of this new model, especially as there is empirical evidence it is actually happening. Having it show up in the NYT should warrant some chatter in the blogosphere in the coming days. There is a short, easy to understand Wikipedia entry on the ELM, which I recommend.

EDIT: 12/17/2007
Here is an article that does a much better job of making the point I was attempting to above! Click me.

A Small Break for the Atmosphere?

2007-12-05T09:16:00.000-08:00

(Update: There is usually some bad news to temper any good news, and cgb mentioned an instance of the former in the comments section. It was discovered that in November British Airways was flying empty jets from the UK to US, about one per day, due to cabin crew coordination problems. This is quite disturbing, since a jet uses 357,750 Btu/mile of energy [US Department of Energy, Transportation Energy Data Book, edition 26-2007, Table 2.12]. That's about 1.25 billion Btu to get from London to New York.)

The unavoidable vulnerability of airlines to high oil prices is causing them to cut back on domestic flights that threaten to become unprofitable in the face of $110.10/barrel jet fuel (as of 11/30).

Airlines cut U.S. schedules despite strong demand
By Barbara De Lollis and Barbara Hansen, USA TODAY

Responding largely to high fuel costs, the USA's six big network airlines continue to trim their U.S. schedules despite strong travel demand.

The six carriers...have scheduled 4.4% fewer seats for January than a year earlier.

[...]

The airlines, which handle about two-thirds of domestic flying, are reacting to this autumn's run-up in fuel prices, which can make some flights unprofitable, says William Swelbar, a research engineer at MIT's International Center for Air Transportation.

"With $90 oil, (airlines) have to really look in the mirror … to see whether the economics still make sense," he says.

While this is bad news for frequent air travelers who will have lesser options, could it be good news for the climate considering jets' staggering greenhouse gas emissions?

If this drop in domestic flights is counteracted by a proportionate rise in international flights, then the answer is no. As the USA TODAY article mentions, "[t]he airlines in recent years have been shifting more toward international routes, which, in general, are more lucrative." As I understand it, longer flights are also more fuel efficient. In other words, one 1,000-mile flight is more efficient than two 500-mile flights using the same origin and final destination, because fuel use is most intensive during take off. I would guess that the domestic cuts won't be counteracted by equal increases in international flights, but even that would burn less fuel due to the efficiency factor.

Cutting domestic flights is a sign that shorter flights will become rarer and rarer as they become more unprofitable. This will be good news for the climate, especially if they are replaced by more efficient means of transportation, such as trains, or not replaced at all. It would be hard to cut our emissions to levels necessary to mitigate the worst effects of climate change without significantly cutting airline flights.

Real Wealth, Imagined Wealth, Real Hardship

2007-11-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

(Co-written by Bru and Eric)

Our economy is run on real things and imagined things. What happens when those real things start to disappear and we admit that the imagined things are imagined?

Oil: A Real Thing

The liquid which runs the global economy is nearing $100 per barrel. A few weeks ago, the price of crude reached as high as $98.62, which, save for in the immediate aftermath of the Iranian Revolution in 1980 (and adjusted for inflation), is an all-time high.

And this isn't even the summer driving season. And prices will stay this high, at best.

There are oil shortages in Russia, China, and Africa.

British oil and gas production in the North Sea is way down. There is a global shortage of oil engineers.

To the north, Canada warns us that natural gas exports will start declining, down 30% by 2015 and that imported oil from the Alberta tar sands will be less than previously thought. To the south, Mexican oil infrastructure is crumbling and production is crashing. The Cantarell field (one of the world's largest) has peaked and is in decline. Felipe Calderon has said Mexico may be out of the oil business by 2013. I assume this means the US will no longer be able to rely on Mexico's 2 billion exported barrels of oil at that time.

Then there were the things that have nothing directly to do with physics, geology, or economics. There was the oil spill in San Francisco, which dumped 58,000 gallons of oil into the bay, killing hundreds of birds. There was the bombing of a Yemeni oil pipeline.

Even Big Oil CEOs -- from Total, to BP, to Conoco -- are hinting at peak oil. The European Commission President mentioned it. The IEA chief economist implied it. The Italian prime minister said it jeopardizes the world economy. Renowned oil man T. Boone Pickens even mentioned it to the nation on prime time TV at the recent Oklahoma State/Kansas football game.

It is affecting nearly every aspect of our industrialized way of life. The fuel-guzzling airlines are, of course, one of the canaries in the ~~coal mine~~ water-logged oil well. British Airways is raising ticket prices because of it. Cruise ships chug oil too; they are tacking on a fuel surcharge now. Predictably, it is pecking away at our long-distance transportation network, as diesel prices rise to record levels. Drivers are cringing (and still thinking it's just the oil companies' price-gouging).

So we turn to biofuels to save us. Biofuels are an unmitigated global disaster waiting to happen, potentially a bigger killer than even the Iraq war, George Monbiot points out. A high-ranking UN official also called biofuels a "crime against humanity". Food prices have already caused unrest in Mexico, and now West Africa.

Wealth: Where Is It Going?

China is again signaling that it may start converting its dollar denominated assets -US Treasury Bills- into other currencies. They hold well over one trillion dollars of assets, a sizable fraction which, if dumped, could wreck the value of the dollar. Though a move of this scale would hurt China, even its mention brings fear and instability into currency exchange markets.

Not only are Middle East countries discussing a concerted de-pegging of its currencies from the US Dollar, but what was supposed to be a private OPEC meeting was mistakenly broadcast to reporters. The topic of said meeting? Selling oil in non-USD currencies because of its declining value.

A column from the Asia Times brings us a slew of other economic woes including: consumer spending is down, middleman (wholesaler) spending is down, 4th quarter GDP could be flat, our deficit spending is in the half-trillion dollar range, old-school inflation rates are close to 10% (as opposed to current distorted Greenspan CPI) - or in other words, things that hint at recession.

The most comic part from the AT column above is that because of the governments use of a distorted CPI, investments are potentially losing huge sums of money. Purchasing power is vanishing into thin air because of a higher, "shadow" rate of inflation and an APY higher than the official gov't inflation rate but lower than the alternative rate. The government then collects capital gains taxes on money gobbled up by purchasing power that was never realised. Ha, ha.

Climate Change: This Is It

2007-11-18T00:19:00.000-08:00

"The danger is not that we will stop talking about climate change, or recognising that it presents an existential threat to humankind. The danger is that we will talk ourselves to kingdom come."
- George Monbiot

George Monbiot's fears are coming true. We're still largely just talking about climate change in the U.S. while the IPCC pleads us to cut our emissions drastically and Bangladeshis drown in a cyclone.

Talk is one important part of the unprecedented global effort and cooperation that is needed to end our emissions growth in seven years and cut them by nearly 90% by 2030, as Monbiot has suggested. For example, I just went to a talk by James Hansen, NASA climate scientist, who has with remarkable courage come forward to raise the issue, as he has been doing since 1988. It seemed like most of the people in the audience "got it" but they didn't really get it. They left the talk and drove away in their cars. Of course, the talk was at a place that was hardly accessible by anything but a car, unless you wanted to bike there (like I did).

The IPCC report that was released today leaves no more room for waffling, denying, putting aside, or merely talking.

Such impacts could include the fast melting of glaciers and species extinctions.

"Approximately 20-30% of species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average temperature exceed 1.5-2.5C (relative to the 1980-1999 average)," the summary concludes.

Other potential impacts highlighted in the text include:

* between 75m and 250m people are projected to have scarcer fresh water supplies than at present
* yields from rain-fed agriculture could be halved
* food security is likely to be further compromised in Africa
* there will be widespread impacts on coral reefs (BBC)

This is the real world. It's not up to "other people" to do anything; it's up to you. Don't wait for the federal government to force you to do something, just do it. The folks in Washington seem to be waiting for more droughts and more floods and more species extinctions and more forest fires and more hurricanes before they take their thumbs out of their asses and realize that the life of the entire planet is worth more than a few political brownie points. Until they enact strong emissions caps, I consider Congress as a whole to be on the same moral level with someone who steals food aid at a refugee camp to use for an eating contest.

Something like this just cannot be allowed to happen. For the future of the planet it just cannot.

I'll give you a secret: cutting your own emissions is easier than you think. You just have to get started.

Getting Peak Oil into the Mainstream

2007-11-11T23:42:00.000-08:00

With the potential for the price of a barrel of oil to go above $100 very soon, I was thinking about ways that peak oil activists could help get out our message. Of course, breaking through the psychological barrier of USD 100 may well be the most helpful event, but what else? It seems that your typical news watcher pays attention to only gas prices, heating costs in winter and electricity bills - this is what hits consumers' wallets. Here are a couple ideas I've had lately on how to get Peak Oil more exposure in the MSM.

1) Dress up PO as a little rich white girl and kidnap it. When little girls go missing, people pay attention! We would have to give it a media friendly name and also get POs mom, Population Bubble to continually confront the press and make bat-shit crazy statements for months on end. If PO could capture a fraction of the investigative journalism that child abduction receives each year, it'd be on the talk/news show circuit for months.

2) Make PO famous, get it drunk and send it off from a party driving home. The rest will take care of itself. Once the reports of the DUI and accident come out in the news, everyone will want to know this things life story. Who (what) are it's parents? What kind of life did it lead, what environment did it grow up in to get to this point in it's life? Why didn't we notice the warning signs before it was too late?!

But seriously, screaming bloody Mary about rising energy prices does not do much to help our cause, because when they drop back down (as will happen in volatile markets) we are blown off as criers of wolf. I've also noticed lately on networks like CNBC that people like Matt Simmons or T. Boone Pickens are quieted, or have the subject quickly changed when they bring up ideas of supply shortages being caused by limits. When discretionary side spending companies pay you for commercial airtime - the last thing you want is someone claiming we that we are approaching limits within a finite world. How do we operate, either outside or within, this framework?

Georgia Politicians: The Drought is the Endangered Species' Fault

2007-10-22T21:07:00.000-07:00

Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue has resorted to blaming endangered species for drought conditions in the northern part of the state.

Gov. Sonny Perdue and other state officials have been arguing with the Army Corps of Engineers over how much of the water in Lake Lanier should be pumped downriver to Florida and Alabama.

But the Corps insists it's only following federal law and continues to pump billions of gallons of water downriver to help preserve federally protected sturgeon and mussels.

The press release in which Perdue announced that the state is suing the Corps boasted that Perdue is doing so to "protect people over mussels, sturgeons."

How many sturgeons wash their cars? How many mussels are members of golf clubs? Were they the causes of the tremendous sprawl that has surrounded Atlanta? Were they watering European lawn grass yards or planting monocultures of fertilized, pesticided, water-guzzling commodity crops and watering them during the day so a good volume of it evaporates?

It's time for some people to get a clue.

Updated Baseball Quote, with Annotations

2007-09-22T16:33:00.000-07:00

To update a quote attributed to Walt Whitman:

I see bad things in (Major League) baseball. It will keep people in-doors (fantasy leagues), fill them with overpriced stadium food and beer, give them a larger bitter skepticism (steroids), tend to achieve a gaping economic disparity (e.g. the Yankees' payroll), assuage no losses, and ultimately be something too cheapened and commercialized for us.

Thoughts on Stemming Overpopulation to Save the Environment

2007-09-03T21:06:00.000-07:00

If you ask me what are the three best ways to save the planet, I would say they are:

Creating and restoring compact, mixed-use, walkable and bikeable urban form
Establishing a local food system that protects local farmland
Building all of our future buildings to be climate-sensitive and climate-resilient (i.e. they do not rely on conventional heating and cooling machines)

If I said this in a speech in front of a big crowd (A man can dream, can't he?), there would inevitably be a small group of hard line enviros upset that I didn't mention controlling overpopulation. They would be upset because they feel that the world's burgeoning population, by seriously stretching our planet's carrying capacity and relying on buried sunlight to sustain itself, is far-and-away the worst environmental problem.

Technically, they would be correct. And on the practical level I will passively stand beside them, agreeing with increased access to birth control and wincing when I hear about Christian families from Arkansas with 16 kids.

But their argument approaches a mere tautology that delves much deeper into ethics than, I presume, most of them realize. Their argument can be, I think, fairly represented along these lines:

The Earth's population is well beyond the Earth's long-term carrying capacity. The reason this many people can survive in the short term is because we have tapped into the finite savings account of fossil fuels, which are basically just energy stored at a time when there were no humans to consume it. We cannot sustain this population (and especially projected future increases) for a long time, and if we try to it will only result in massive hardship, war, starvation, pestilence, and death, to mention only the anthropocentric consequences. (The consequences to other species will be loss of habitat and perhaps extinction.) In fact, we can already see the first pangs of overpopulation in the widespread starvation that is already a fact of life in the less developed world, the resource wars that have taken place in many parts of the globe, global warming, accelerating species extinctions, and so forth. If we can reduce global population, then we can mitigate these bad consequences because there will be less people to stretch and fight over the planet's resources.

It is a stirring argument with a lot of meaningful truth to it, but it is tautologous because people, like all living things, consume resources to survive. Humans are, of course, unprecedented among species for the resources we consume not just to survive, but also to thrive, achieve comfort, and entertain ourselves. If there were no humans on the planet, we would not have any of the problems mentioned above. But then there would be no humans to feel happiness.

The first rule of being an environmentalist is not merely to maintain as little of an ecological footprint as possible. If this were the case, we could all reduce our footprint to zero by dying. Rather, the first rule is to be content while maintaining as little of an ecological footprint as possible.

We don't know what the true maximum "carrying capacity" of the planet for human beings. It may seem as if we have passed the long-term capacity, but there is still a lot of room to conserve more in our lifestyles and use energy much more efficiently. If we suddenly started excelling at every energy/climate change solution out there and made unexpectedly marked progress on environmental goals, then we might find that 6+ billion people can all fit here sustainably.

So overpopulation as a solution to global environmental problems should at best require a supplemental focus for us, something of which to be wary, but focusing solely on overpopulation is heading straight for the tip of an ethical iceberg.

Transportation Secretary Unclear on What Transportation Is

2007-08-27T18:59:00.000-07:00

Bear with me here on the chain of citations.

Via the D.C.-area CommuterPageBlog, Richard Layman of the blog, Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space, cites a StreetsBlog article pointing to an interview U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters had a few weeks ago on PBS' "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on the nation's transportation infrastructure in the wake of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, in which

Peters said that instead of raising taxes on gasoline to renew the nation's sagging infrastructure, Congress should examine its spending priorities -- including investments in bike paths and trails, which, Peters said, "are not transportation."

Here is the official transcript from the NewsHour, where Peters was interviewed by Gwen Ifill:

GWEN IFILL: Aren't many of those [earmark] projects, even though they're special interest projects, aren't they roads and bridges, often?

MARY PETERS: Gwen, some of them are, but many of them are not. There are museums that are being built with that money, bike paths, trails, repairing lighthouses. Those are some of the kind of things that that money is being spent on, as opposed to our infrastructure.

Peters is making a valid point when referring to non-transportation projects like museums; there were indeed many of those in the pork-laden SAFETEA-LU. (Just go to the full text of the legislation and search for "museum".) Yet by implication here she says that bike paths and trails are not our transportation "infrastructure".

The transcript continues:

[MARY PETERS:] I think people are reluctant to spend more money unless they know that money is going to actually make an improvement in the transportation infrastructure.

GWEN IFILL: Who is spending the money inappropriately?

MARY PETERS: Well, there's about probably some 10 percent to 20 percent of the current spending that is going to projects that really are not transportation, directly transportation-related. Some of that money is being spent on things, as I said earlier, like bike paths or trails. Some is being spent on museums, on restoring lighthouses, as I indicated.

So it appears that Peters is unclear on what actually constitutes transportation. Not the best attribute to have when you're U.S. Transportation Secretary.

The League of American Bicyclists was all over Peters' ignorant statements. Here's part of a response letter (PDF) to Peters by the League's executive director, Andy Clarke:

Dear Secretary Peters:
I listened with dismay to your recent interview on the MacNeil Lehrer Newshour, August 15 airing, on the subject of transportation funding and the Minneapolis bridge collapse. I was particularly taken aback by your comments related to the funding of bicycle projects in the United States.

1. Your statement that bicycle trails and paths are not “transportation-related” or “infrastructure” is baffling. I have been riding to work every day in Washington DC for almost 20 years on one of the regions many well-used bicycle paths, many of which have benefited from Federal transportation funding. Tens of millions of bicyclists and pedestrians in communities across the country use trails to get to work, school, shops, and to visit friends and family — and every one of these trips prevents congestion, pollution, and energy consumption while improving the health of the rider or walker.

2. You left the impression that an enormous percentage of Federal transportation funds are spent on projects such as these. The reality is that only one percent of these funds are spent on bicycling and walking projects despite the fact that these two modes account for ten percent of all trips in the country and 12 percent of traffic fatalities each year.

3. You also left the impression that critical bridge projects are being left unfunded because of this. You did not point out the huge sums of money that states have been allocated for bridge projects over the years but they have failed to spend. Indeed, states have returned to Washington hundreds of millions of “unspent” bridge program dollars as part of recent rescissions ordered by the Congress.

[snip]

Secretary Peters, as Federal Highway Administrator you delivered remarks at the 2002 National Bike Summit that presented a much different view of the role bicycling can play in our national transportation system.

As you stated then, and I quote, “Many people in our country use bikes for more than recreation. For them, bikes are their vehicle for the commute to work and for the errands of daily life. We need every mode of transportation to keep America mobile. What modes did you use to get to your hotel? Very few of us depend on a single mode. I strongly agree with Secretary Mineta, bicyclists are an integral part of our nation’s transportation system and we all need to work together to develop a better more balanced transportation system that provides facilities and programs for bicyclists on a routine basis.”

So it appears that Peters' confusion is only recent. Maybe joining Bush's cabinet just has a "dumbing down" effect.

The larger issue behind Peters' words is that the bicycle continues to be disrespected, both on the local and national levels, as a mode of transportation. For her to single out this mode and imply that it is at fault for our nation's crumbling bridge and road infrastructure is truly dumbfounding. Don Young (R-AK) and Congress steered close to $500 million in federal tax revenues to the two Alaska "Bridges to Nowhere" -- which Peters does mention in the interview -- and yet she still brings bikes into the equation? Unbelievable.

If more people incorporated bicycling into their everyday transportation needs, we would have less need for such an extensive network of highways, and our scarce maintenance dollars, which already compete for new highway pork, wouldn't be stretched so thin. We would have better quality infrastructure if we could concentrate this funding on a smaller network. Then maybe more of our worst-conditioned bridges, like the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, could get repaired in a more timely fashion.

Iraq: The Imbalance of Opinion

2007-08-22T20:59:00.000-07:00

100 American foreign policy experts said it:

No effort of the U.S. government was more harshly criticized, however, than the war in Iraq. In fact, that conflict appears to be the root cause of the experts’ pessimism about the state of national security. Nearly all—92 percent—of the index’s experts said the war in Iraq negatively affects U.S. national security [emphasis mine], an increase of 5 percentage points from a year ago. Negative perceptions of the war in Iraq are shared across the political spectrum, with 84 percent of those who describe themselves as conservative taking a dim view of the war’s impact. More than half of the experts now oppose the White House’s decision to “surge” additional troops into Baghdad, a remarkable 22 percentage-point increase from just six months ago. Almost 7 in 10 now support a drawdown and redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq.

[snip]

But is Petraeus’s plan [the recent troop surge] working?

The index’s experts don’t think so. More than half say the surge is having a negative impact on U.S. national security, up 22 percentage points from just six months ago. This sentiment was shared across party lines, with 64 percent of conservative experts saying the surge is having either a negative impact or no impact at all [emphasis in original]. When the experts were asked to grade the government’s handling of the Iraq war, the news was even worse. They gave the overall effort in Iraq an average point score of just 2.9 on a 10-point scale [emphasis in original]. The government’s public diplomacy record was the only policy that scored lower.

Seven U.S. soldiers in Iraq said it:

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

The American people said it (once more):

A majority of Americans remain pessimistic about the direction of the war in general. Just 29 percent say the U.S. efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq are going well, while more than two-thirds say those efforts are going badly.

Almost everyone is saying that the Iraq war is a disaster, despite recent conjured up fluff over the troop escalation from the media and some Democrats.

Almost everyone knows that it was a mistake, that it is irrational and immoral, that it has harmed this country.

So, why is Mr. Bush wanting to extend his policy of putting American troops' lives in danger?

When you have a so-called "President" who has no regard for rationality or morality, you might as well ask, "Why wouldn't he?"

Step It Up, Part Two

2007-08-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

Step It Up, a day of action this past April that called attention to the urgent need to enact policies to mitigate global warming, was a huge success. It generated over 1,400 demonstrations calling for Congress to enact an emissions reduction target of 80% by 2050.

In response, Washington politicians briefly yakked up their supposed environmental records until the people went away to leave them with their thumb-twiddling. This is the downside of singular days of action; they fizzle away in our distraction-based society and the status quo quickly resumes.

Aware of the need to keep the heat on (no pun intended), Bill McKibben is organizing Step It Up 2: Who's a Leader? for November 3, 2007. It is a shrewd attempt to separate those politicians whose rhetoric generates tons of hot gas from those who are actually trying to cut tons of greenhouse gas. For those of you who couldn't participate in an event back in April (which includes me, as I was working at a conference the whole day), now's your chance to be a part of the advocacy side of one of the most pressing issues ever to face humanity.

Read more at the link above, or see A Siegel's summary on Daily Kos.

Imagine All of New York State Flooded

2007-08-05T23:01:00.000-07:00

Cross-post: Daily Kos

If the entire state of New York were flooded, then about as many people would be displaced as the current flooding in South Asia. In India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, about 20 million have been uprooted from their homes, and the death toll is now approaching 200.

At first, this looked looked like a severe weather event not too out-of-the-ordinary for the monsoon season. After all, a third of Bangladesh is usually under water at this time every year (CIA World Factbook). But as the rainy day streak has now stretched to 20, the descriptions have turned dire:

"some of the worst floods for years"

"In some areas, the floods are being called the worst in living memory." [BBC, first link]

They might as well get used to them, because, unless things change, the world won't be able to reach the emissions targets necessary to render unlikely the increases in flooding climate change models suggest for the low-lying areas of South Asia.

Those who know anything about the likely impacts of climate change have a general idea that Bangladesh will be (and probably is now) one of its first victims. In a January diary, A Look Down the Barrel of the Global Warming Gun, I provided a little more detail as to why this is so.

If the climate model results reported in the New Scientist in 2003 come even close to being true, the land will be pushed over the edge:
Flooding in the country is set to increase by up to 40 per cent this century as global temperatures rise, the latest climate models suggest.

[snip]

...heavier rainfall triggered by global warming will swamp Bangladesh's riverbanks, a previously unforeseen effect, flooding between 20 and 40 per cent more land than today, says Monirul Qader Mirza, a Bangladeshi water resources expert now at the Adaptation and Impacts Research Group at the University of Toronto.

...People can grow crops on land regularly fertilised by nutrient-laden silt from the rivers...But extreme floods cause considerable hardship and loss of life: in 1988 and 1998 over two-thirds of the country was under water at some point.
Granted, the 40 percent figure is the worst case scenario, but even
[i]f temperatures rose by just 2 °C, two of the models showed that the mean flow of the Meghna and Brahmaputra rivers would increase by 20 per cent. (New Scientist Article)
What will it take to give ourselves a good chance of (but not ensure) avoiding a 2 °C raise and increase the likelihood of sparing Bangladeshis great hardship? According to this seminal article by George Monbiot (related to his new book), it will take a 60% global reduction of greenhouse gases, a 90% average cut by rich countries, and a 94% cut by the U.S by 2030. If this reasoning is even close to the mark, things look really bad for Bangladesh.

The IPCC's latest report echoes these findings. The following are excerpts from the Asia (PDF) section of the Working Group II contribution on "Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" of the Fourth Assessment Report (bold emphasis mine).

Climate change impacts.
An enhanced hydrological cycle and an increase in area averaged annual mean rainfall over Asia were projected. [10.1.1]

Increased rainfall intensity, particularly during the summer monsoon, could increase floodprone areas in temperate and tropical Asia. [10.1.1]

Annual mean rainfall exhibits increasing trends in Western China, Changjiang Valley and the South-Eastern coast of China, Arabian Peninsula, Bangladesh and along the western coasts of the Philippines. [10.2.2]

In other parts of Asia there will be less rainy days and more droughts, but in Bangladesh and India, the current floods are evidence of the IPCC's predictions, as well as current trends.

[Adapted from Table 10.2, "Summary of key observed past and present climate trends and variability", Ibid]

Region: South Asia
Country: India
...
Change in precipitation: Increase in extreme rains in north-west during summer monsoon in recent decades, lower number of rainy days along east coast

Region: South Asia
Country: Bangladesh
...
Change in precipitation: Decadal rain anomalies above long term averages since 1960s

Keep in mind that the east coast of India is not one of the affected areas. They are Assam (in the far northeast), Uttar Pradesh (in the north central and northwest), and Maharashtra (in the west, including Mumbai).

The result is hardship. Residents of low-lying areas are incredibly resilient to flooding, but when things get this inundated, no one can stay put.

Almost 200 people have died in the floods in the last few days.

In Bangladesh thousands of families are on the move in search of higher ground.

Hundreds of thousands of people across the affected area are at risk from hunger and disease.

...food, clean drinking water and medical aid are the priorities, but just a fraction of those who need them are receiving supplies as aid agencies and government teams struggle to get through.

Hardship. That is the primary (anthropogenic) motivation for environmentalism, the primary reason to reduce our emissions. No matter what we do, a large number of people will survive. We could go on burning fossil fuels until all the economically extractable resources have been used up, increase the GHG concentration in the atmosphere to well over 550 parts per billion, and increase the average global temperature to well over 2 degrees celsius from pre-industrial levels, and still not everyone or every species will become extinct. But there would be a massive amount of hardship.

Assuming that we as a global society care about avoiding hardship and pursuing happiness, then one would think that we would be preparing for and trying to minimize future negative changes before they spring upon us. This is the fundamental human ethical connection to fighting climate change and drastically cutting our emissions. It applies not only to ourselves and our neighbors, but people halfway around the world. I personally need that ethical grounding to give strength to my environmental beliefs. We're not just fighting climate change for the hell of it; we're doing so to, other things equal, preserve a certain level of global quality of life. So the question remains: do we want an easier transition or a harder one? The answer lies in how proactive we want to be about global warming.

If George Monbiot is correct (and I strongly recommend Heat; I'm reading it right now and it is a well-researched, honest, interesting, thorough, and tremendous book), then even the most progressive political solutions getting any attention (i.e. the Sanders-Boxer bill) will fall short of the ideal emissions cuts. For all the exciting involvement in the US Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement (645 cities), as well as ICLEI's Cities for Climate Protection Campaign (over 800 local governments) and the Clinton Climate Initiative (40 large cities), still, in the US the only city coming close to keeping its emissions level, much less reducing them, is Portland, Oregon (source).

So we have a long way to go, but the ingenuity is already within us. We just need to keep motivating ourselves that this is a cause worth fighting. Perhaps if we just imagined if our own state was flooded (or desiccated, or denuded of certain tree species, or whatever the predicted effects are for each of our areas), then we'd always be able to find that motivation.

Frustration of Conservation

2007-07-26T00:35:00.000-07:00

The reasons for conservation are many; two of them being that it 1) saves money and 2) reduces the demand for finite resources. Depending on how active and aggressive you are in your conservation efforts and how much of a lifestyle change you make you can save a lot of money, lower demand for electricity/petrol/water/land use and feel like you are making a positive change. What if you discovered that it really didn't matter? All that effort, in the end, winds up being wrung through a cycle of self-defeat. What would be your reaction?

The way our economic system works and through the choices we make, we do indeed erase the results of efforts. The idea goes this way: You start conserving in general and because of that your bills aren't as high as normal. Utilities, food, petrol... anything. A net savings is realised and dollars normally spent on those things listed above are instead kept in your bank account. Your financial institution uses that money to make a loan to someone else, which results in economic growth. Let's say that person buys a car or house with the money you (and other conservers) saved. Then a new house leads to a new family and the cycle repeats itself. The way our banking/capital allocation system works perpetuates growth and the expanding use of limited resources. An obvious problem is what happens not only when we hit the wall of growth, but even when we approach its limit.

My goal here isn't to bash capitalism and state that we need to move away from it. I think that for the situation humanity has been in (industrial/technological/oil age), it has been the best system to use. It has allowed the bulk of the population to come out of an agrarian economy, has brought prosperity to a broad range of people and has made living much easier - as opposed to a "nasty, brutish and short" life described by past philosophers.

Thing is, we don't live in a purely capitalistic system. We have entered the age of demented corporatism. Business has been given the same rights as people even though it doesn't possess a set of morals, intellect, reason and many other human traits. It used to be that corporations were formed for specific goals: to build a bridge or railroad, and the charter was then undone upon completion. Now we have eternal entities with one specific goal: to make profit (via growth) at any cost. All systems have their flaws - this one not being able to understand exponential growth and that someday it will hit its limit. I find it hard to believe that these two items can be reconciled - that an economic system that exists only to grow, irrespective of costs and resources can survive in a reality of fewer natural resources, peak oil, population overshoot and excess pollution/climate change. Of course its not the fault of the economic system per se that it fails to recognise these limits, but rather the businesses and real people that operate within it. Though they are rewarded most (and rewarded now) for producing and growing as much as possible. Self destructive feedback loop.

The world is facing the problems that have accumulated over the last 170 or so years, and in hindsight, the path that allowed us to arrive at this point is staggeringly simple (read any of Richard Heinberg's books). The paths ahead of us are unlimited. One option: we can sit around and be cynical. Think "If the resources I save through conservation are only going to be used up by someone else, why not use them myself?" This seems logical too; people watch out for #1 first in most situations. As we continue to gobble up resources they will become scarce so we should maybe think about conserving not ought of it a) being the right thing to do b) financial incentives c) environmental concerns d) etc. but rather because in the future it will be forced on us by physical limits. Our one-trick-pony and outdated economic system whose only solution is to find/produce/grow will not save us.

Nitpicking

2007-07-18T01:27:00.000-07:00

As Bru is on holiday in a land far, far south of here, I have free reign of our quality rag for the time being. Muahaha!

I really hate to flog a dead horse here, but even after all this time I still have issues with the CNN article on why we need big SUV's. I could have posted again in the comments but most likely it would not be seen. Also, I figure it's OK as I (hopefully) am not just rehashing Bru's post in my own words.

First things first: ambiguity. Right away the article subtitle states that the Yukon hybrid saves more gas than a civic hybrid. Now I am somewhat slow to react on a lot of things: jokes, wordplay, puns... but when I read that it made me think the article was about SUV's using less gas than civic hybrids. Wow! I understand titles are there to draw readers in but that, to me, is somewhat misleading without a qualifier.

Next comes the actual numbers and math behind the report. Normally I would expect to see a fuller analysis done and then a conclusion drawn from that research. This article seems to have an agenda it wants to get published (better to only develop and use hybrid technology in SUVs). It then lays out selective numbers to back up that point. Bru easily cuts through the rubbish here. The point here is that the author skips over numbers that I, and many others, would view as essential in a decision to purchase or perhaps even produce hybrid SUV's. The author doesn't even go over total annual gasoline use when comparing hybrid and non-hybrid SUV's and cars. All we are presented is one sentence -as Bru said, the one that disqualifies the rest of the article- with the difference stated (and even that is a bit off using the articles figures!). Its 322 gallons/year for the hybrid sedan (prius), 394 glns/yr for the regular hybrid sedan, 793 glns/yr for the hybrid SUV and 941 glns/yr for the non-hybrid SUV. Now and again while I was on the senior slide in college, I cherry picked some math to use for presentations and was ripped to shreds by my peers. It wasn't fun, but that's reality for poor analysis.

The other part that got to me was at the end where the article seems to insinuate that developing hybrid technology for different kinds of autos is mutually exclusive. "Use hybrid technology in SUVs because that's what I want to drive!" he seems to be saying. If a car company wants to develop hybrid technology for SUVs and produce them, that's fine, but it doesn't mean it can't also use it in smaller cars. So then technology is confused with production, which in the end is what really matters.

OK, I'm off to look for my shovel so we can bury this once and for all. Just wanted to get that all this out before I start digging.

267 MPH

2007-07-02T20:04:00.000-07:00

If only I could publish posts on the Brudaimonia as fast as this Maglev train leaving Shanghai:

Why We Don't Need Big Hybrid SUVs

2007-06-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

Eric, with his keen eye on the financial world, alerted me to this twisted non-argument about why we supposedly need big hybrid SUVs. And since my baseball team just got shellacked tonight, I feel like bullying around something else to make up for it.

The article basically claims that we need more hybrid SUVs because they save more gas over regular SUVs, compared to the savings between small hybrids (such as the Honda Civic hybrid) and their non-hybrid counterparts (the regular old Honda Civic). That's like saying doing acid is better for you than eating an oatmeal cookie, because doing acid is more improved over doing crack cocaine than eating an oatmeal cookie is over eating a Twinkie.

I'm not trying to hide from the obvious here. Someone who switches from a non-hybrid GMC Yukon to a Toyota (Charts) Prius will save about 611 gallons of gas a year. That switch would make a huge difference.

The author apparently doesn't realize that inserting this little disclaimer pretty much disproves the rest of the article.

But how many people do you think could actually do that?

That assumes that all consumers are able to buy the smallest possible vehicle and that no one who drives a large SUV or other full-sized vehicle actually needs one.

Even as consumers have been ditching mid-sized SUVs for smaller SUVs and cars amid rising gas prices, sales of large SUVs have stayed relatively flat. That indicates that these buyers can't easily switch.

I didn't have to go very far to find a perfect test case: my sister. She lives in Cape Cod, Mass., where it snows heavily in the winter. She has three boys who all play hockey, a dog and a husband; and she usually has a couple of her kids' friends - and their hockey equipment - tagging along wherever they go.

Editorials like these love to try to universalize isolated examples to prove a point, which is, of course, a fallacy of multiplication. How many people are really like this guy's sister, having to cart around a whole line of hockey players and their equipment? I doubt all those SUVs motoring around Palo Alto or Orlando are bus services for youth hockey.

What's more, it's wrong to think that one needs an SUV to handle snowy roads. With a high center of gravity, SUVs are actually more dangerous in one regard when driving in unpleasant conditions. My brother has a smaller European car, and it handles the snow without any problems. In fact, he can park it on top of miniature snow banks in the winter that no one else dares parking in.

So what we have here is a desparate attempt by some money writer to justify a now failing business practice. As people are finally -- finally -- starting to buy smaller, more efficient cars, expect more smoke-and-mirrors arguments used to pitch hybrid SUVs.

Like a Johnny-Come-Lately on Global Warming, But Not Even That

2007-06-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

Now look who's "coming around." George Bush has proposed "aspirational goals" for capping CO2 emissions ahead of G8 talks on the subject.

Mr. Bush promised to convene a series of meetings, beginning in the fall, with 10 to 15 countries that produce the most greenhouse gas emissions, including China and India. Each country would establish midterm national targets for reducing emissions over the next 10 to 20 years, while working together to set a longer-term goal.

The talks also would bring together industry leaders, Mr. Bush said, so that the countries could work with them to pool their knowledge and promote investment in energy-efficient technologies, including solar and wind energy, clean coal and nuclear power. But each country would be free to set its own goals, and there would be no binding international framework for enforcement.

One look at these two paragraphs shows you why it's too generous to say he's even "come around" on global warming.

But what can you expect from someone who took five years into his rule to even acknowledge the basic connection between humans' incessant greenhouse gas emissions and the perilous increases in the average global temperature?

“The United States is taking the lead, and that’s the message I’m going to take to the G-8,” Mr. Bush said.

That message couldn't be farther from the truth. Sick and tired of trying to get the runaway train that is the U.S.-as-polluter on board the Kyoto Protocol, smart nations have gone on their own and proposed binding, much tougher emissions reductions standards. The UK has already proposed to cut carbon by 60% by 2050. Germany and Japan have proposed a 50% cut by the same year. Sweden plans to be oil free by 2020. Then there there 169 countries that have ratified Kyoto, which calls for reductions of emissions below 1990 levels.

U.S. cities, too, have left the laggard federal government behind and have taken bold actions to reduce their carbon emissions. Cities have always been the best realms for effecting change anyway. In 2005, the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement was introduced by Seattle mayor Greg Nickels and eight other mayors (including Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City, RT Rybak of Minneapolis, Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, Tom Potter of Portland, and others). The agreement urges mayors to strive to meet Kyoto Protocol emissions targets, and encourage their state governments and the federal government to take action on climate change. As of this writing, 522 mayors have signed it, from North Pole, AK, to Key West, FL. Portland has actually stabilized or come close to stabilizing its emissions levels through sound planning, strong transit systems, its urban growth boundary, and the environmentally progressive mindset of many of its citizens and local officials. The C40 has now been formed, which is "a group of the world's largest cities committed to tackling climate change." That the group is working with the Clinton Climate Initiative is telling that our former president and vice president have already done leagues more for pointing us in the right direction on climate change than our current president.

So for Mr. Bush to say that his administration is "lead[ing]" on climate change is the most farcical, ludicrous bit of tripe I have ever heard. He has fiddled while the Earth has burned and forward-thinking government officials around the world have fought to put out the fire. Perhaps the reason he still thinks he can win brownie points with a non-binding "aspirational goal" that doesn't take effect for another four years at a time when other cities and countries are already leagues ahead of him is that major American media outlets are still his lapdogs, as Dan Froomkin astutely observed.

The White House yesterday showed that it still knows how to play the American press like a harp.

[snip]

...a change in rhetoric was enough to generate some headlines about the administration's attention to the issue: Bush Proposes Goals on Greenhouse Gas Emissions, reads the New York Times headline. Bush Proposes Talks on Warming, says The Washington Post's front page. Bush offers to take climate lead, proclaims the Los Angeles Times.

"Bush offers to take climate lead"? That's like Kent Hovind offering to take the reins of the National Academy of Sciences.

What we can take out of Bush's non-announcement (which was really just a bedizened restatement of his administration's inadequate policy of voluntarism) is the constant reminder that we don't have to wait for the federal government to do something about global warming. Local action is the most effective, whether it be on the personal, familial, neighborhood, community, city, or county levels. Leave Bush to his fiddling and we'll save the world ourselves.

Ten Easy Ways to Reduce Your Ecological Footprint

2007-05-24T02:31:00.000-07:00

In January I started a short list of things I could do to lower my impact on our earth. What can I do to use fewer resources? What can I do to use less energy? Somewhat indirectly, what can I do to lower my financial costs? I jotted a few ideas down and after talking about it with a couple of mates, decided to expand on it a bit.

1) Purchase re-usable cloth type bags to carry groceries home. To be effective this will require some planning. Pick a day to do a major shopping trip and remember to actually bring the bags. A backpack is also a good idea, but try fitting a weeks worth of food in it - you can only carry so much. In Sydney there has been an on going campaign to use "Go Green" bags to reduce waste of plastic bags. In the US we could do this to reduce use of both plastic and paper. The bags cost a dollar and proceeds go to an environmental fund. Yeah, it is a bit of a trendy was to be green - people flaunt their bags like bling and I'm sure a lot of people who buy the bags drive in rather than walk or take public transport, but it is about small steps and making cultural change so that the next, more difficult step only seems only marginally harder to make. I worked in the grocery business for years. It is quite amazing to see how much paper and plastic (pallets!) goes into the simple task of bagging up groceries when there is a completely impact-free method of doing this. I like Ireland's take on this: 5 cent bag tax if you don't bring your own.

2) Buy organic. This is easy to do in theory but difficult in practice for a couple of reasons. First, not every store has an organic section or even organic products (this is quickly changing!) So basic access to organic food might not even exist via the market. Second, if that market access exists, price may be a barrier to making the switch. Organic food can be anywhere from 25-100% more expensive than non-organic. Can you take that kind of hit to your grocery bill? I make an attempt to buy it when I can but having been a backpacker for the last couple years makes it difficult. In my view the benefits of buying organic ultimately compensate when price isn't an issue. For one, the food tastes better. Have a sandwich with organic bread, tomatoes, etc or use org. eggs in cooking or organic fruit and meat and the difference is immediately noticeable. Tastes are stronger and more distinct. Secondly, based on my initial research into organic farming, and actually having worked on one, I am fairly confident in saying that these farmers are more likely to practice crop rotation, soil/water conservation, sustainable agriculture, permaculture and holistic farm management than non-organic, green revolution era corporate farms. What does all this mean? Mechanisation will be less likely to be used - reduced diesel for farm output. Pesticides and artificial fertilizers won't be used, preserving the natural soil balance of nitrates and reducing demand for natural gas that goes into the fertiliser. These are just a few of the pros to organic farming; it is too vast to list all!

3) Start a compost heap to reduce waste output. This is directed at the home owners out there. For those with flats or are renters there are alternatives. Set aside a small part of your yard and construct a small box to start. Have a quick look on the internet to see what makes a good compost pile (Wikipedia!). Where I lived in Sydney, free classes on home composting where offered through local environmental agencies, so I've no doubt something similar is offered where you live. An important reminder: it is not an outdoor garbage can! Incorrect setup and poor maintenance can lead to an increase in greenhouse gases. It is very rare that waste inputs can be turned into useful outputs; it's why I like this idea so much. A decent pile will create a fair bit of "black gold" and you can use it in conjunction with #6. For those without yards, volunteer a couple hours each week at a local urban garden or greenspace. If you don't have one, organise with a council, parkboard or other authority to start a new project on unused land.

4) Don't use the dryer. Invest in a clothes drying rack or put up a clothes line outside. During the winter when I lived in London, we would use the house radiators to dry out clothes, though for most of us this is only practical in the summer months. Either way, taking a major appliance out of use will reduce electricity consumption during the peak summer months when the cost of electricity is highest, cutting down your utilities. I don't want to hear the groans about how air dryed clothes are too stiff and abrasive - you'll get used to it ya pansies! 10 minutes after you put your clothes on they are soft. There is no reason for a machine to artificially (wastefully?) dry your clothes when nature can do it for free. Call it solar power.

5) Turn off your computer! Do not put it on stand by or leave it on over night. A computer/monitor can cost $25/month to run nonstop. A home PC probably won't be used more than 8 hours each day - usually less - so save yourself $96/year and click 'Start Menu' ---> 'Shut Down' ---> 'OK.' Do this at work too. As computers get faster, power usage will only increase. I remember buying 250W power supplies a few years ago. These days they are closer to 550W/600W!

6) Start a garden. With all the nutrient rich compost you have been churning out, put some of it to good use in your own garden. Easy and useful things to grow include potatoes, tomatoes, onions, carrots, celery, raspberries, herbs. If you live in Iowa you might even have corn growing back there too, no matter whether you live in the city limits! You have the major ingredients to stews, curries and pasta sauces in your back yard, not to mention the fresh factor. No tomato in the grocery store is naturally ripened the way it is in your garden. Even by growing just a few of your own foods, you are reducing your dependence on logistics chains thousands of miles long. What you can't do with #6, carry on to #7.

7) Buy Locally! As in, utilise the farmers market. Buy fruit and veg, meat, fish and dairy and other products from your state or region rather than from the other side of the world (Vietnamese cashews, Nicaraguan bananas) or even the other side of the country if you live in a big one. I'm not sure whether petrol that is used in the transportation of food is classified as an industrial/commercial or personal transport purpose, but no matter. Transporting food for long distances requires huge amounts of fossil fuel inputs. In theory, reducing demand for things that travel along shipping or trucking lanes that are thousands of miles long should reduce the use of diesel. Ultimately, as global oil production declines, economies will have to localise anyways so you might as well get used to it now. Ones food miles will be forced into reduction. In fact, us northerners may well be USC when it comes to wintertime food. Canned, jams, conserves and preserves to the rescue.

8) Switch to halogen light bulbs. This is probably one of the easiest ways to reduce a) your energy bill b) your light bulbs bill and c) your eco print and personal chunk of greenhouse gases (it's not that light bulbs individually take up lots of power, but rather that we leave them on unnecessarily for long periods of time). Al Gore was recently infront of the U.S. congress giving an address on greenhouse gases, global warming and the like and rightly proposed the banning of incandescent bulbs. These are the traditional type that give off that soft, yellow glow we all grew up with. Example #1 of what we grow up with will not be what we live with in the future (the recency effect - it was this way yesterday, it will be the same tomorrow). OK, maybe example #2, after petrol prices. Incandescents produce far too much heat along with light given the amount of energy used (watts to lumens) compared with more efficient halogens. Of course, just buying and installing these is only the first step. Other actions go hand in hand with more efficient devices. Technology will not be the silver bullet of our plight (and neither will the supply side Jesus!). General conservation is will become a way of life no matter how far technology advances. The mantra will always exist: technology is not a substitute for energy.

which is a great segue for #9!

9) Conservation. Lots of ideas, both good and bad, come to mind when people hear this word: tree huggers, hippies, environmentalists, political suicide, activists, why bother? why me? pointless, asinine, etc. In the near future we will need to begin a concerted effort of conservation on a grand scale. Fact is, we cannot continue with our Western lifestyle. I would argue that the US (or at least the English speaking countries) is the envy of most of the developing nations. People from those countries see how we live, and they want to match (surpass, most likely) our way of life. Look at China and India with the demand soaring for cars as an example. As the global leader of extravagant lifestyles, we probably have a moral responsibility to lead the way in reducing our energy consumption via conservation.

A lot of the other ways to reduce your eco print already listed are a way of conserving energy (#'s 4, 5 and 8), but my idea of conservation goes further. We have to start thinking more about need versus want in all of our everyday actions right up to the grand scheme of things. For example, do I need or want to drive 6 blocks to the grocery store for a couple of things. Or, do I need or want to have the A/C or heating on today. I believe if we give a little more though to this concept we can change our resource consumption patters and still not suffer any sort of decrease to creature comforts and standards of living - Europe is able to! This is a population that has similar or even higher standards of living than us in the U.S. yet consume less oil/fossil fuels, water and other natural resources per capita (Richard Heinberg in his book Powerdown, and my own personal experience). I have my own disconnect between what I believe are necessary steps for the world to take and how I am living my life at the moment. Do I need or want to live around the world, flying from place to place (28 times in the last 18 months) and touring for extended periods of time, doing things that no doubt harm the environment? This is certainly a want - yet there are those who would not recognise this. Not because the are unable to but because they simply don't bother.

10) You, your mind and your creativity. I've come up with a few things here, and will no doubt continue coming up with new ideas and setting new goals for myself to use less energy. This year I want to take fewer flights, for example. I saw in a book store recently a title 500 Ways to Save the World or something like that, a lot of them having to do with conserving energy. Come up with a couple of easy changes to make to your lifestyle. Get used to those, then make a few more changes that may be a bit more difficult. I believe that Peak Oil and the coming energy crisis are bigger threats than global warming and terrorism. The Media, Academics and Politicians are not giving any attention to this oncoming storm. Because of their inattention, it will necessarily be up to us to make change. At the moment it seems our only available mechanism to make that change is with our pocket books. When all goods and services related to increasing energy costs rise in price, will we sit back and whinge about petrol prices and demand action from the government? Probably. Or we could start change while we still have that choice. Soon enough, that choice will be burnt off with the remainder of our cheap fuel.

Somebody Do Something About These High Gas Prices!

2007-05-21T23:19:00.000-07:00

Dispatches from a nation of addicts:

"It is time for Congress and the administration to do their part to help alleviate the pain consumers are feeling at the pump," said Mark Cooper...

* * *

The rising price of gasoline has certainly increased the amount of complaining from drivers paying $3 a gallon or more to fill up their cars, but it so far has done little to curtail how much people are driving.

* * *

Most Americans are locked into their driving habits and can do little to alter their fuel-buying patterns when prices rise, experts say.

* * *

"I drive 55 miles each way to work every day," Sandy Colden, of Medford, N.J., said one recent morning while loading groceries into her Honda Pilot SUV. "So I really don't have a choice, unfortunately."

* * *

Weekly gasoline demand in April increased as much as 1.9 percent over the same weeks in 2006, even as the average national price of a gallon of gasoline grew from $2.71 to $2.97 by the end of the month, according to Energy Information Administration data.

Only during the first week of May, when prices jumped to $3.05 a gallon, did demand for gasoline abate slightly — by about two-hundredths of a percent, EIA figures showed.

* * *

Eddie Engles, 37, didn't blink twice after he filled up his GMC Yukon at a gas station near downtown Chicago on Tuesday. At $3.71 a gallon, the fill-up cost the clothing distributor $83.89. "That's a new record. Every time I pump up, it's a new record," he said.

Engles, who uses his sport utility vehicle to haul his wares, said he has few options when it comes to cutting down on travel and gas expenses. "I just need it," he said. "What am I going to do? Not fill up?"

* * *

"People complain about higher oil prices ... but they still drive their cars, they still buy their SUVs, they don't want to carpool," said Fadel Gheit, an energy analyst at Oppenheimer & Co.

* * *

While higher gas prices haven't done much to cut demand, they also don't appear to have had much effect on consumers' car-buying behavior, according to Autodata Corp...Light trucks and SUVs continue to make up the majority of vehicle sales in the U.S., or about 53 percent.

* * *

William Hill, of Pittsburgh, said he'd consider downsizing from his minivan to a hybrid sedan if hybrids weren't more expensive.

"They charge you more for a hybrid to compensate for what you would pay for gas," Hill said while gassing his minivan along the Pennsylvania Turnpike one day last week. "So either way, you lose."

"Either way, you lose." Truly a nation that will keep the all the cars running at any cost, as James Howard Kunstler is fond of pointing out.

And no, it doesn't help that Saudi Arabia's production has fallen by 1 million barrels a day in a year, and that it's main supergiant oil field may have less oil left than we gluttonously dream it has.

Cell Phone Nation

2007-05-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

We are a cell phone nation, and it might as well start with me.

My bill for the last billing period was $136.00. It was supposed to be about $45, after taxes and fees. I have a plan with 200 anytime minutes per 30 days. I used 356. That's 156 minutes at $0.45/minute.

Next billing period doesn't look good either. I'm already 124 minutes over my limit, and I still have two more weeks before my minutes reset.

How the fuck did this happen?

Partially it was because I naively and stupidly thought incoming calls were not counted against my minutes. They are. Partially it was because there were a few peak periods when I needed to use my phone quite a bit. It revealed one of my flaws: I pretended I wasn't using as many minutes as I was. Thus I didn't bother to keep track. I convinced myself I was in the clear. Boy was I wrong.

Two hundred anytime minutes per month is low relative to a lot of cell phone plans out there today. I purposely bought only 200 per month to save money and to force myself to use less minutes. So much for that purpose.

Am I nationalizing my personal anger at myself with this blog post in order to cope? That's definitely part of it. But it is still very true and relevant to say that we are a cell phone nation.

We've only had cell phones for a short time. Ten years ago, only 34 million Americans had cell phones. Now, over 200 million do. (Source - PDF) That's what you call a cell phone nation.

Grade school kids have cell phones now. So do some elderly people. So does every member of my family. According to a survey (Ibid), 75 percent of people have their cell phones turned on and within reach during their waking hours. We have become addicted.

The art of making plans and meeting up some place is fading. We're sloppy about it now because cell phones afford us that sloppiness. If I want to meet you somewhere at 9pm, I'll call when I'm leaving wherever I was before, I'll call when I get close, and I'll call again when I show up. Whatever happened to both people just showing up at 9pm?

When I ride the train or take the bus, how often do I see people (mostly women) immediately pull out their cell phone and stare at the screen as soon as they sit down, if they are not already on it?

How important are all those calls or text messages that we make? Sixty-one million people have tried text messaging at least once (Ibid). Is even talking on the phone too direct contact for us these days, that we have to text people now?

T-Mobile markets a feature that allows you to create a "Fave 5" with whom you get special calling privileges. You know what is among many of our "Fave 5" friends? Our cell phones themselves. They have become our best companions, with I-Pods a close second. (I-Pods guarantee that we now have some electronic device keeping us occupied all of our waking hours. We now can distract ourselves while we're in transit.)

It's induced demand, just like induced travel. We don't need to make all those calls, but, now that we can, we do. A tragedy of modern/postmodern society is that we make ends out of the things in life that should really be lower-order means, if means at all. One of these things is the cell phone; we have made it an end in itself. It's what to do in our leisure time rather than a device that serves a purely practical purpose.

It was suggested that the glut of cell phone use might be related to the quite disturbing disappearance of honeybees. My emotions tell me the two are related: we better stop pretending that large-scale activities such as the burning of billions of barrels of oil and millions of tons of coal or the creation of radiowaves all across the globe don't have any effect on the earth's natural balance.

My emotions are also telling me, After you finish this cell phone contract, don't start another one. Simplify your life by at least that one thing. I'd love to, but who knows, in 1.5 years, when my contract is up, I'll probably just succumb to the "necessity" of a cell phone and get another plan. And then I'll continue to be a model citizen of our cell phone nation.

Bush Decides to Continue Risking American Lives

2007-05-01T20:44:00.000-07:00

George Bush, who started a war in which 3,350 American citizens and tens of thousand Iraqi citizens have needlessly lost their lives, vowed to continue the carnage by vetoing a bill crafted by Democrats in Congress that set a deadline for withdrawal.

George Bush has already done great harm to humanity and much to benefit himself at the world's expense. Why aren't we taking to the streets every week until the war is over?

Today in Chicago I saw hundreds of thousands of people protesting American immigration policy; why can't there be a similar protest every week to call for the safety of American and Iraqi citizens whose lives are in jeopardy because of the carnage Mr. Bush has started.

In Memory of David Halberstam

2007-04-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

I was sad to see that David Halberstam died in a car accident today.

He was a prolific writer and won the Pulitzer Prize for covering the Vietnam War for the New York Times. He also wrote several books about baseball.

In college I read The Children, a marvelously detailed account of the student leaders of the American civil rights movement.

America lost one of its great nonfiction writers today.

"When I am a medieval plunderer, I can do what I want"

2007-04-04T07:19:00.000-07:00

I couldn't pass this up. The International Herald Tribune reports that some Belgians are going medieval.

During the week, Ivonne Janssens, 57, is a hospital cleaner. But come the weekend, she climbs the narrow steps of a three-story medieval tower and turns into a 14th-century duchess with a faux-emerald necklace, a linen headdress, a leather satchel full of fake gold coins, and a retinue of mercenaries to fend off invading French knights.

Her husband, Daniel Grandjean, a 50-year-old furniture maker with a pot belly and bushy beard, becomes an axe-wielding soldier-for-hire.

[snip]

Across this country of 10 million, a growing number of Belgians are trading in their jeans for suits of armor. They are rubbing stones together to make fire, eating their dinners out of cauldrons, re-enacting heroic battles and participating in mock hangings.

[snip]

For Pol Malfait, an affable 53-year-old postal clerk from Ghent, the Middle Ages is not just a historical era but a state of mind. Every week, he becomes De Nevelaar, a 14th-century Flemish soldier who fought for the king of England against the French crown during the Hundred Years War and then became a full-time plunderer. His wife, Jeanne, a 49-year-old secretary, becomes a peasant woman.

"When I am a medieval plunderer, I can do what I want and I love the freedom," he says, showing off the chain-metal outfit he puts on before setting out on fictional rampages.

"You can be in big trouble if both you and your partner aren't into being medieval,"

Yeah, I'll bet. I wouldn't want to be returning from grocery shopping, only to be waylaid by a sword-wielding marauder.

Other Belgians, of course, are suggesting not taking this too far.

Not everyone here has embraced the medieval trend. Eduard Van Ermen, a professor of medieval history at the University of Leuven - who confesses he once pretended to be Emperor Maximilian I - argues that Belgians who idealize the medieval period are underestimating its challenges. These, he says, include an average life span of 40 years, the Black Plague, potato famines, torture for minor transgressions and the constant threat of bloody wars.

Plague, Schmague. Long live Maximilian I!

WTF, Burma?

2007-03-29T23:02:00.001-07:00

The new capital of Myanmar (BBC News)

Dictator Ne Win ruled Burma (now called "Myanmar") with an iron fist from 1962 to 1988, sometimes employing a style that had the strangeness that still characterizes Burmese rule. He was heavy into astrology, and would make important policy decisions based on the whims of his astrologer(s). To avoid assassination, he allegedly follow a superstition of stomping on a slab of raw meat while shooting his visage in a mirror with a handgun. He even changed the Burmese currency (kyat) denominations to correspond with his lucky numbers, which, needless to say, caused a financial crisis in a country that has always been poor in its recent history.

To this day, Myanmar is ruled by a military junta that "came to power" in a 1988 coup during uprisings where thousands of protesters were murdered. The coup was really just the retention of power by the old dictatorship (but not the old dictator) under a different name. Oppressive regime, Mach II, claims to have embraced democracy, but it is really just a shell game. In 1990, a parliamentary election was held in which the real democratic party, the National League for Democracy, led by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, won a vast majority of seats. The State Law and Order Restoration Council, as the junta endearingly called itself, simply declared the results void, claiming that it was not really an election. The SLORC has been ruling ever since (now calling themselves, even more endearingly, the State Peace and Development Council), the NLD has been kept under raps and not allowed to organize, Aung San Suu Kyi has spent much of her time under house arrest, and Myanmar is riddled with human rights abuses, forced labor, in-fighting, drug smuggling, severe poverty, and fear of government persecution.

It's hard to know exactly what is going on in Myanmar, though. Besides North Korea, it is perhaps the most secretive country on the planet. The media is largely state-run. It is hard for visitors to get far past the major city (and former capital) of Yangon (formerly Rangoon), and sanctions from most Western countries make it difficult anyway. If they do, it may very well be that they will be surveiled by government spies. The regime doesn't want to show outsiders what they already know: how poorly the country is faring in terms of economic and social indicators.

But now things may become even more secretive, because, in a move that has simply bewildered many observers, the regime is moving the capital from Yangon, on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, to near the town of Pyinmana, in the center of the country. More specifically, it is creating a new capital from scratch, called Naypyidaw.

Burma's decision to shift its seat of government has left many analysts at a loss to explain the move.

After all, why go to the huge trouble and expense of relocating thousands of officials to a remote mountainous region, when there is a well-established political infrastructure in the port city of Rangoon?

[snip]

[Analysts] said the real reason was probably still a mystery, but it was possible the country's hard-line military rulers were worried about foreign invasion, or wanted more control over ethnic minorities in the border regions, or were even following the advice of fortune tellers.

[snip]

Joseph Silverstein believes the most likely explanation for the relocation is advice by traditional Burmese fortune-tellers.

"Everybody listens to fortune-tellers in Burma," he said.

General Ne Win, who came to power in 1962, was totally dependent on their advice, Mr Silverstein added.

"He is once said to have decided to change the direction of traffic overnight [as a result of a fortune teller]. It caused a huge number of accidents," he said.

While all Myanmar government offices will be moving to Naypyidaw, diplomats and embassies have not been told to follow, which might pull the plug on the already tenuous awareness outsiders have of Burmese affairs.

George Will's Traffic Congestion Solution: Repackaging the Status Quo

2007-03-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

x-post: The Proving Ground

George Will has a keen ability to package ill-informed nonsense in a shiny wrap of apparent erudition.

Not that I disagree with all of the points in his recent article on traffic congestion entitled "Fighting the Real Gridlock." I am in favor, for example, of dynamic tolling on highways and reforming transportation pork. It's just that the spirit of the whole article contradicts itself by reaffirming the status quo it purports to shatter.

It starts off well by recognizing the costs of traffic congestion: monetary costs, family time, time for civic engagement, and so forth. (Will's occasional mention of transportation secretary Mary Peters, perhaps some politically-motivated hat tip, is awkward, as she is not really essential to the article.) Will notes that

[i]n the past 20 years, congestion in the 85 largest cities has caused the number of hours lost each year by the average driver in rush hours to increase from 16 to 47. In the 13 largest cities, drivers are stuck in traffic the equivalent of nearly eight workdays.

But then comes the call for "fresh thinking and departures from the status quo." Since the status quo has been building new highways and adding new lanes to old highways, it's exciting to hear what this "fresh thinking" might be.

There must be new highways and new lanes on some old ones.

Aw, what a letdown. The psychology of prior investment affects even the most erudite among us, for even they can't let go of the infrastructure that currently makes possible nearly half the world's automotive carbon emissions.

But there also must be new ways -- made possible by new technologies -- of using lanes.

No doubt we must forge ahead with new technologies to reduce congestion on existing highways, yet Will's big solution is just a refurbishing of the status quo. Or, as James Howard Kunstler would call it, "a desperate wish to keep the cars running by any conceivable means, at all costs."

To make this tired old scheme justifiable, Will must brush aside the formidable objection that is the theory of "induced travel": adding more car lanes to a highway only increases demand to drive on it.

The usual scolds -- environmentalists, urban "planners," [ouch, those quotation marks sting deep] enthusiasts for public transit (less than 5 percent of the workforce uses it) -- argue that more highways encourage more driving ("induced demand") and hence are self-defeating. But as Ted Balaker and Sam Staley respond in their new book on congestion, "The Road More Traveled," among the 10 largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles has the least pavement per person; Dallas has twice as much per person and half as much congestion.

Responding to conservative misinformation is like playing "Find the Fallacy." Here Will uses a single, flawed comparison, cited from a book by two conservative libertarians, in an attempt to disprove induced travel and implicitly argue against the fact that highway-heavy, transit-poor cities are recipes for congestion. Dallas does indeed have less congestion than Los Angeles, yet Will presents no evidence that it is because of its pavement levels. The fallacy is implied causality in the presence of mere correlation. In reality, there are many, many factors that contribute to, or mitigate, traffic congestion.

A simple look at the numbers casts doubt on Balaker and Staley's claim. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, in the 21-year period from 1982 to 2003, congestion in both Dallas and Los Angeles increased. But Dallas's congestion increased at a rate 61% higher than that of Los Angeles. This is because Dallas's congestion index increased 46 points over that time period, while Los Angeles's congestion index increased only 28 points. In fact, Los Angeles has held its congestion relatively steady since 1990, while Dallas's congestion index has risen 23 points.

What has been happening in Los Angeles to keep its congestion steady over the last 17 years? It might have something to do with mass transit, the real gridlock fighter. Los Angeles's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) opened the region's first light rail line in 1990, its first heavy rail line in 1993, and another light rail line in 1995 (Wikipedia). MetroLink, the regional rail system, began service in 1992. The Antelope Valley Transit Authority, covering the exurbs of Lancaster and Palmdale, was formed in 1992. And these are not all of the transit additions Los Angeles made in the early 90s.

Of course, back in the day, Los Angeles used to have an excellent streetcar before it was slowly killed by General Motors, Standard Oil, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, and other corporations seeking to force Angelenos to use their products to get around.

Today, the city is fighting the legacy of smog and congestion created by auto-dependent infrastructure and is embracing increased transit capacity and smart growth strategies. It has a long way to go, but LA has a chief planner, Gail Goldberg, and a mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, who recognize the importance of smart growth.

Public transportation, not selling toll roads to private companies, is what will relieve America's congestion, and Americans are beginning to recognize this, even if George Will doesn't. In 2006, 10.1 billion trips were taken via public transportation, the largest public transportation ridership in 49 years.

Public transit use is up 30 percent since 1995. That is more than double the growth rate of the population (12 percent) and higher than the growth rate for the vehicle miles traveled on our roads (24 percent) during that same period. In 2006, public transit ridership grew 2.9 percent over 2005.

The article noted that light rail use increased by the highest percentage (5.6 percent). Madison officials may want to take note of that figure, as the city considers building its own light rail line. Minneapolis's new light rail line continued its ridership success with an 18.4 percent increase. This is a rail line that was opposed tooth-and-nail by then--State House Majority Leader (and now Governor) Tim Pawlenty. Even Dallas residents are tiring of all that pavement: bus ridership in the city was up 8.3 percent in 2006.

And this is all only 1.5 years removed from the passage of SAFETEA-LU, the infamous pork-laden transportation bill steered primarily by Alaska Republicans, lopsided by massive highway allocations, including the notorious "Bridges to Nowhere," and relatively scant public transit and bicycle rations.

Besides relieving congestion, the huge benefit of public transit is the gas it saves. The APTA found that transit's record ridership saved 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline, which is enough to fill gasoline cans that could stretch to the moon (PDF). Traffic congestion, on the other hand, wastes 2.3 billion gallons of gasoline (FHWA).

Yes, there are some things we can do on the highways to relieve congestion, but focusing solely on highways misses the larger solution of increased alternative transportation. But seeing that solution will require actual fresh thinking and freedom from the pavement status quo.

Madison Walks the Walk

2007-03-11T15:34:00.000-07:00

x-post: The Proving Ground

In a nation with so many cities held hostage by car-dominated infrastructure, I am proud to say that Madison, Wisconsin has just been named the U.S.'s most walkable city by the American Podiatric Medical Association, aka foot doctors. (Actually, the APMA's title is "Best Fitness-Walking Cities," which I'll comment on later.)

Madison is reaping the benefits of its walker-friednly plan adopted 10 years ago. From the perspective of someone who has visited Madison many times yet never lived there, it really is enjoyable to walk around the city. Its walkability no doubt feeds off of its culture. UW obviously plays a big role. It has a strong local progressive mindset. It has one of the best local food systems in the country.

But its walkability also contributes to its culture. Try having a Halloween celebration like Madison's in Orange County, or Detroit, or Tuscon. You can't show off your Royal Tenenbaums costumes while driving an SUV on a collector road in suburban Atlanta.

Or...Miami? That's right, the warm-weather hub and home of New Urbanist pioneers Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk somewhat ironically is 98th, or third-last, on the list. I say "somewhat" because no doubt the percentage of elderly residents influences its low walkability. But come on, Miami, 98th?

The rest of the bottom five list sends a few shivers down urban planners' spines:

100. Newark, NJ: Has a high crime rate, few parks, and few people who take mass transit—as well as the third smallest percentage of people who walk for exercise.
99. Laredo, TX: Poor air quality and the least amount of people taking mass transit.
98. Miami, FL: The fifth highest crime rate may explain why very few people walk for health.
97. Hialeah, FL: Very few parks and schools per square mile and had the second to last number of people who walk for health.
96. Detroit, MI: With a high rate of pedestrian fatalities and high crime rates, is it any wonder Motor City had the smallest percentage of people who walk for health?

The crime rate--walkability causality goes both ways. High crime rates tend to discourage walking, for obvious reasons, but the contrapositive is also true: more walkable communities tend to have less crime. It's harder to get away with a crime when there are a lot of people walking around; the criminal's ideal setting is a dark, unpopulated street.

Madison's walkability no doubt contributes to its "friendliest city in the Midwest" ranking by Midwest Living in 2003.

Madison is no stranger to No. 1 rankings. People still talk about Money Magazine naming it the best place to live in 1998, although that ranking dropped to 53rd last year. Outside Magazine named it the best road biking city in August, and other high rankings have come for its being vegetarian-friendly, gay-friendly, environmentally friendly, and, well, according to Midwest Living in 2003, the overall friendliest city in the Midwest.

[snip]

Even with 40,000 students mostly walking to and from class — and bars at night — Madison has a remarkable bike trail system, with more than 30 miles of trails and 110 miles of bike lanes even on the busiest of streets. Not to mention the 6,000 acres of parkland. [AP article]

Here's the APMA's complete top ten list:

Top 10 Best Fitness-Walking Cities of 2007:

1. Madison, WI: Adopted a walker-friendly plan 10 years ago, and it shows.
2. Austin, TX: 50 trails, from a quarter to 10 miles long.
3. San Francisco, CA: The most parks per square mile.
4. Charlotte, NC: 40% of its residents walk for exercise.
5. Seattle, WA: Gorgeous views of Puget Sound and snowcapped mountains.
6. Henderson, NV: With an average yearly rainfall of 4.5 inches, you can walk every day.
7. San Diego, CA: A unique choice of beach, desert and mountain routes.
8. San Jose, CA: Perfect walking weather; average temp 61 degrees and low humidity.
9. Chandler, AZ: 6.5 miles of traffic-free walking on its Paseo Trail.
10. Virginia Beach, VA: A low crime rate and a boardwalk allow safe, fun strolling.

Austin may properly be called the "Madison of the South," and no doubt UT plays a similar role there as UW does for Madison. Henderson, San Jose, and Virginia Beach probably win on weather alone.

Which brings up a major flaw with this list: such factors as weather (which makes Madison's ranking all the more impressive) and athletic shoe sales say little about how walkable the community actually is. (I bet you there are tons of athletic shoe sales in the big box supercenters in Blaine, Minnesota, a sprawling Twin Cities exurb known for its gigantic athletic complex.)

That explains why a city like Las Vegas, which is about as walkable as the surface of Venus, reached #15 on the final rankings (PDF). Even on the Strip, where, of course, there are always a lot of people walking, you can't even cross a cross-street on the ground level. You are ushered up an elevator, across a skywalk, and down again to the other side.

The fact that Colorado Springs (13) is ahead of both Minneapolis (32) and St. Paul (26) is a joke. And Wichita (38) edging out New York (39)? Anchorage (18) beating Portland, OR (19)? The fact that Anchorage is in the top 20, much less the top 90, shows that this survey really doesn't get at the holistic concept of "walkable community." The Tony Knowles Coastal Trail notwithstanding, Anchorage, like Fairbanks, is a poster boy for auto-sprawl.

Actual walkable cities (Madison, Austin, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland) can do well on this list, and some walker-unfriendly cities are indeed ranked low (Newark, Miami, Detroit, Toledo, Tuscon, St. Petersburg, Oklahoma City, Houston, Tulsa) but other walker-unfriendly urban areas (Colorado Springs, Anchorage, Las Vegas, Phoenix (!), Reno) seem to be able to crack this list's top ranks just as easily as walkable communities. So this list has some use to it, but don't take every ranking at face value.

Third Party Organic Certifiers

2007-02-25T14:27:00.000-08:00

Bru's Note: This was originally posted as a diary on Daily Kos, as part of the excellent Recipe for America series started by Kossack OrangeClouds115. Recipe for America, along with OrangeClouds's popular Vegetables of Mass Destruction series, seeks to inform citizens about how to transform our food system into a sustainable one. They are some of Daily Kos's most useful and informative diaries, in my opinion, offering advice that can be carried out immediately to make the world a better place in which to live. I also recommend the Recipe for America website, which cross-posts the Daily Kos diaries and has a lot more juicy information.

Nearly 100 third party certifiers do the leg work behind that familiar green seal on the organic food you buy. They are farmers' associations, nonprofits, state departments of agriculture, businesses, and other organizations. They are accredited to certify different steps of the organic food production process.

Each organization is different. Their job qua certifier is to ensure that growers and producers stay chemical fertilizer- and pesticide-free, but that doesn't necessarily say anything about their positions on other food issues: source of food, treatment of workers, and so forth.

Below the fold is an introduction to third party certifiers.

~~Meat~~ Beets and Potatoes Info

The USDA calls third party organic certifiers Accredited Certifying Agents (ACAs). There are 95 total ACAs: 55 from the US and 40 foreign. Thirty-six different US states have at least one ACA. California alone, not surprisingly, has 13, almost 1/4 of all US ACAs, and they're all in Berkeley...juuuust kidding. The agriculture departments of 14 states (Colorado, Iowa, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Washington) are ACAs. In two other states, different government entities are certifiers: the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and the New Mexico Organic Commodity Commission.

One organization, Integrity Certified International (Nebraska), which became accredited (PDF) April 29, 2002, surrendered its accreditation October 31, 2006. I couldn't find any information on why they did this, but it could just be that they decided to focus on priorities other than running a certification program.

Another organization, American Food Safety Institute International (Wisconsin), had its accreditation revoked, the first revocation in the history of the NOC. AFSII "allowed an organic farm to use banned chemicals and broke several other federal regulations" (Dallas Morning News - PDF). More:

A report from the [National Organic Program] investigation said the company certified a seed farm that was treated with banned chemicals even after another certifier turned the farm down for that reason.

It also allowed a bottled-water company to use the USDA Organic label despite federal rules against designating water as organic.

Whoops! Now what kind of company would do stupid things like that?

American Food Safety is a four-person company overseeing about 30 organic operations in seven states and Mexico, according to USDA records.

It is part of the High Sierra Group, which also owns companies that make specialty chemicals for the food industry. [Ibid]

I'm not going to turn this into an investigative diary on a chemical company, but there are a few odd things about AFSI that I couldn't pass up. It was run out of the founder's car as late as 1999. In 2000, when its headquarters were finally located in something without wheels, AFSI (not to be confused with AFSII, which was separate) gave birth to The High Sierra Chemical Company. (Source: link below)

Now, the group could be a decent organization apart from its organic certification noncompliance -- I'm not going to pull a Seymour Hersh here and write a 10,000-word article on it -- but it certainly violated its own core principles on this one:

Be honest, forthright and candid with each customer. The customer may not always be right - we are straight forward!

OK, my penchant for tangents has manifested itself here. Back to the basic information on international certifiers.

The 40 foreign ACAs come from 19 different countries. (Keep in mind these are only certifiers accredited by the USDA.) Here is the breakdown by country, ordered by most to least ACAs:

Germany - 8
Italy - 6
Argentina - 4
Canada - 4
Australia - 2
Spain - 2
Switzerland - 2
Austria - 1
Bolivia - 1
Brazil - 1
Chile - 1
Costa Rica - 1
Greece - 1
Guatemala - 1
Israel - 1
Mexico - 1
Netherlands - 1
Peru - 1
Turkey - 1

Responsibilities

ACAs are responsible for (PDF):

1) Conducting certification activities according to the regulations.
2) Ensuring certified clients comply with all requirements of the NOP regulations.
3) Ensuring compliance with labeling requirements of products of operations they certify.
4) Approving organic systems plans for each operation they certify prior to onsite inspections.
5) Approving all inputs, ingredients, and other materials used by certified operations prior to their use.
6) Conducting annual onsite inspections of certified operations to verify implementation of an approved organic systems plan.
7) Issuing certification decisions and certificates in compliance with NOP regulations.
8) Issuing notices of noncompliance and suspending or revoking the certification of clients that do not comply with the NOP regulations.
9) Reporting adverse actions against certifiers to the NOP, including notices of noncompliance, proposed suspension, proposed revocation, suspension, revocation, or denial of certification to the AMS Compliance office.
10) Obtaining NOP approval for reinstatement of suspended or revoked operations prior to recertification.
11) Submitting annual updates of application information and annual reports of operations certified to the NOP.
12) Maintaining records as required in the NOP regulations.

Accreditation periods last for five years. Near the end of the period, the ACA must apply for renewal. ACAs must submit annual reports to the National Organic Program and correct any deficiencies found in their certification process. ACAs can become accredited to certify four different types of operations: crops, livestock, wild crop harvest, or handling (e.g. processing).

A Few Good Certifiers

Here are a few examples of popular organic certifiers.

Oregon Tilth

Oregon Tilth is a nonprofit research and education membership organization dedicated to biologically sound and socially equitable agriculture. Tilth's history begins in 1974, as an agricultural organization with a unique urban-rural outlook. Primarily an organization of organic farmers, gardeners and consumers, Tilth offers educational events throughout the state of Oregon, and provides organic certification services to organic growers, processors, and handlers internationally.

By including "socially equitable," Oregon Tilth addresses not only the growing process but also one of the issues discussed in OrangeClouds's recent VMD diary on organic standards. Here's more:

Oregon Tilth advocates sustainable approaches to agricultural production systems and processing, handling and marketing.

Oregon Tilth's purpose is to educate gardeners, farmers, legislators, and the general public about the need to develop and use sustainable growing practices that promote soil health, conserve natural resources, and prevent environmental degradation while producing a clean and healthful food supply for humanity.

[snip]

We provide speakers for groups and organizations interested in the work of Oregon Tilth or in specific topics such as gardening, alternatives to pesticides, composting, and food safety. Oregon Tilth coordinates conferences, produces events locally, and makes presentations at fairs, educational events, and trade shows throughout the region.

Oregon Tilth's organic program (OTCO) also works with retailers and restaurants (who do not need certification to sell organic products as long as they are not also processors, but who must nonetheless follow certain regulations).

Quality Assurance International

With a name that is on the other side of the "earthiness" spectrum from "Tilth," the San Diego-based QAI is one of the largest certifiers in the world. Their client list includes 976 operations! Here you'll find some of the large agribusinesses and their subsidiaries -- ConAgra, Nestle, Odwalla (Coca Cola) -- though needless to say they also certify independently-owned companies like Amy's Kitchen and Nature's Best. Don't think they're too corporate, though: they still wear flip-flops to staff meetings (or at least one guy does). I guess you can do that in San Diego. (You can even train for Antarctic marathons there.)

Bru's Soapbox

Organic certification says nothing about distance the food travels from land to plate, nor how workers on farms are treated, nor size of farm. However, ACAs can choose which operations they certify, and they can establish their own standards for which operations are eligible for their certification. Oregon Tilth, for example, clearly places an emphasis on smaller farms. According to their 2000-04 farms and handling statistics the average US farm certified by OTCO was 211 acres. About 66% of the 412 US farms they certified were located in Oregon, and they had an average acreage of 141. The farm size range with the most OTCO certifications was 10 to 50 acres, which included 121 farms. The third-highest range was under 10 acres (93 farms). Only 46 farms they certified were over 500 acres.

The problem is that large processors who get produce from long supply lines will still be able to find a certifier even if some certifiers emphasize locally sold products and smaller farms. The onus will still be on us, the consumers, to scrutinize labels, if we want to push organic foods up to even higher standards.

Among My Childhood Celebrities

2007-02-21T01:02:00.000-08:00

I'll take Raffi over Pat Sajak.

Don't Blame Environmentalists

2007-02-10T17:05:00.000-08:00

Grist recently interviewed the Iago-esque Republican pollster and message framer, Frank Luntz, who ended up saying a lot of things that were wrong. He also said environmentalists are "mean," which is a variation of the commonly-used conservative canard meant to deflect attention from the vast amount of harm the conservative mindset has wreaked on our natural environment.

In the interview, Luntz said the environment wasn't a big issue in the 2006 elections (baselessly dismissing Dick Pombo's demise as something other than his anti-environmental zealotry), implying that it was environmentalists' fault because Americans generally think of them as being too extreme.

I'm not against this interview in general. It's good to be open to what the opposition has to say, and try to learn from it. And Luntz did give credit where credit is due: complimenting Al Gore for bringing a concern for global warming into the mainstream. And I agree with the very first item mentioned in the interview - a 2003 Luntz memo stating that the environment was the "probably the single issue on which Republicans...are most vulnerable."

But I felt the need to address the implication that environmentalism is too extreme, and that that's what's keeping it a lower-priority issue. Below is an expanded version of a comment I posted in the comments section of the interview. I think it gets at a central point of environmental ethics: most environmentalists' message is reasonable; that it's seen as extreme is a function of people not wanting to change their lifestyle (rather than it being too difficult to follow the message).

* * *
*Everyone* cares about the environment

As long as they don't have to do anything about it.

See, the problem with saying that everyone cares about the environment is that it is so watered down as to not mean anything.

There is an infinite difference between a nebulous, nonbinding "care" (kind of like how everyone "cares" about starving children in Africa) and actually doing something about it.

It's more plausible that most Americans view environmentalists' message as too extreme because any message that calls for us to scale back our fossil fuel gluttony falls on the extremity of our probable action spectrum. If you tell a fat guy who eats potato chips and watches TV all day to run a mile, he'll see it as extreme. But running a mile isn't that extreme for younger people who stay healthy and active. It's a question of perspective. Watering down your message to fit the perspective of the average American will make the message ineffective in dealing with the environmental issues of our time. Sometimes, the best thing to do is difficult or radical. The fact that it's difficult or radical doesn't make it undesirable, which is the connotation of "extreme" when the label is heaped on environmentalists.

So I reject Luntz's implication that environmentalists are to blame for their message not being more popular. True (i.e. non-light-green) environmentalists have an uphill battle because what they're asking for -- conservation -- albeit ethical, is challenging. It's "hard work," as Bush is fond of saying.

American culture has shaped us to be hard working, but this applies to our work schedule, not our self-restraint. Especially since the hubris of World War II victory was channeled into the splurge of suburbia, we have been incapable as a people of restricting our energy and land use, and thus our deleterious impact on the natural environment.

That is why "efficiency" mitigations are now extremely popular, but conservation is lagging behind. There are 1,000 praises for hybrid vehicles for every praise for biking. There are 1,000 accolades for Wal-Mart's fluorescent light ambitions for every call to buy local food. There are 1,000 reminders to keep your tires properly inflated to every mention of Smart Growth. Don't get me wrong; I think efficiency mitigations are an essential element of a comprehensive solution, and that hybrid cars can be a good thing for people who are in situations where a car is convenient (especially if they used them through a car-sharing service rather than owning them). It's just that they are mitigations: they're much easier to implement in one's own lifestyle, but they are also less effective in the overall picture.

This uncovers the hypocritical juxtaposition of the term "conservation" in Luntz's formula. He stresses the political expedience of labeling oneself a "conservationist" while simultaneously stressing the political expedience of terms that are expedient precisely because they stop short of calling for conservation: "Energy independence. Energy self-sufficiency. Energy security. Energy diversity." When no one challenges this contradictory rhetoric, you can have people who call themselves conservationists without actually calling for an ounce of energy conservation.

In my mind the real rhetorical challenge for American environmentalists has been, and will continue to be, dissolving the Catch-22 whereby their message is only popular when it's insubstantial, and always unpopular when it's substantial. Their challenge is to dissolve it before it's too late.

As George Monbiot says, "My fear is not that people will stop talking about climate change. My fear is that they will talk us to Kingdom Come." Talking us to Kingdom Come: that sounds like an apt description of Frank Luntz's job.

From Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras: Wind Energy

2007-02-07T23:45:00.000-08:00

From Renewable Energy Access (via BloggerJohn at Daily Kos):

February 7, 2007
Mid-Atlantic Offshore Wind Potential: 330 GW
by Tracey Bryant

The wind resource off the Mid-Atlantic coast could supply the energy needs of nine states from Massachusetts to North Carolina, plus the District of Columbia -- with enough left over to support a 50 percent increase in future energy demand -- according to a study by researchers at the University of Delaware (UD) and Stanford University.

[snip]

The scientists examined current wind-turbine technologies to determine the depth of the water and the distance from shore the wind turbines could be located. They also defined "exclusion zones" where wind turbines could not be installed, such as major bird flyways, shipping lanes, chemical disposal sites, military restricted areas, borrow sites where sediments are removed for beach renourishment projects, and "visual space" from major tourist beaches.

[snip]

The scientists' estimate of the full-resource, average wind power output of 330 gigawatts over the Middle Atlantic Bight is based on the installation of 166,720 wind turbines, each generating up to 5 megawatts of power. The wind turbines would be located at varying distances from shore, out to 100 meters of water depth, over an ocean area spanning more than 50,000 square miles, from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras.

In comparison to the oil and natural gas resources of the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf -- the submerged land that lies seaward from 3 miles offshore and is under federal jurisdiction -- the researchers found that the shelf's reported energy sources would amount to only one-tenth of the wind resource and would be exhausted in 20 years.

Currently, the US gets about 6% of our energy from renewable sources. Almost all of this 6% comes from hydroelectric power and biomass, two somewhat controversial renewable energy sources. Wind power still accounts for only 0.14% of our total energy. Solar energy accounts for even less: 0.063%. (Remember, this is total energy, not just electricity generation.)

However, wind is the second largest growing energy source in the US, behind, unfortunately, natural gas. The investment wheel is starting to turn for wind energy, but it needs to speed up. With the finding described in the fourth paragraph excerpted above, on relative energy potential of oil and gas versus wind, this study challenges the assumption that fossil fuels are the rule and renewables are the exception. On the contrary, by definition, nonrenewable resources are burned up and become the exception, whereas renewable resources become the rule, by definition.

This study should be a huge eye-opener for the American public and those in the halls of Congress. It should be a huge eye-opener for those who have some vague skepticism which says that renewable energy cannot play more than a minor role in supplying our nation's energy demand. It should be a huge eye-opener for those that stubbornly maintain that nuclear power is the only way out of our energy and global warming crises. It is time to accept that renewable energy plus efficiency plus conservation can carry us into a sustainable future. It has always just been a matter of will.

Of Groundhogs, Shadows, Global Warming, and Winter (Or Lack Thereof)

2007-02-01T23:02:00.000-08:00

On Friday morning, at approximately 7:25 AM, day will break over the small Pennsylvanian town of Punxsutawney, and the world's most famous groundhog (envied by many rivals) will be called upon to make his yearly prognostication. Yet if Phil's great charge were retrospection, he would see his shadow just about as well as Bush saw WMDs in Iraq. (Remember the rubric: shadow = more winter; no shadow = spring is coming.)

[Insert cute, public domain closeup of Punxsutawney Phil here.]

That is because, save Denver, the first part of winter seemed more like a mere shadow in many parts of the country. Of course, far be it sensible to cite only a pushover half of one winter as proof of global warming (although in Pat Robertson's case, we'll take it), but far be it necessary as well, because much stronger evidence is available:

* every year since 1992 has been warmer than 1992;
* the ten hottest years on record occurred in the last 15;
* every year since 1976 has been warmer than 1976;
* the 20 hottest years on record occurred in the last 25;
* every year since 1956 has been warmer than 1956; and
* every year since 1917 has been warmer than 1917.

Ever increasingly, the public is seeing the light of global warming research and how the connection between our greenhouse gas emissions and the occurrence and future threat of climatic and meteorological disasters is begging us to take dedicated and substantial steps now to decrease their likelihood. In similar terms, we need to Step It Up.

Which brings me back to shadows, for they, unfortunately, have obscured some of that light, and I don't mean cute groundhog shadows. I mean a coordinated cavalry of shadows commanded by a few corporations and think tanks (exxonsecrets.org website down) and a few pundits and politicians (like Jim Inhofe taking on the dual roles of both shadow puppeteer and puppet). If you haven't lived the last few years in shadow, you know this is happening. But a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Atmosphere of Pressure: Political Interference in Federal Climate Science, uncovers the extent of it.

Out of concern that inappropriate political interference and media favoritism are compromising federal climate science, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Government Accountability Project (GAP) undertook independent investigations of federal climate science. UCS mailed a questionnaire to more than 1,600 climate scientists at seven federal agencies to gauge the extent to which politics was playing a role in scientists' research....

[snip]

At the same time, GAP conducted 40 in-depth interviews with federal climate scientists and other officials and analyzed thousands of pages of government documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and inside sources, regarding agency media policies and congressional communications.

These two complementary investigations arrived at similar conclusions regarding the state of federal climate research: while scientists hold a high regard for the quality of federal climate change research, there is broad interference in communicating scientific results.

The report shows that Jim Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist, is not alone. In fact, it now takes a whole periodic table to catalogue all the politically-motivated meddling in communicating scientific findings to the public.

Which is really bad, because, God forbid, petty politics can actually have dire consequences in real life. Living, breathing, loving humans live in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and New Orleans. Remember that, oh shadow casters. They would like to try to enjoy life and pursue happiness without the presence or increased threat of flood-and-hurricane, drought, and hurricane-and-flood, respectively. In the short and long runs, is a little bit of profitability really worth the sustained ignorance of the severity of global warming? Of course not. I hate to break it to you, but your shadows actually affect the state of the world. Negatively, we can reasonably conclude.

Fortunately, the rhetorical chunks of ice from which global warming skeptics cast their shadows are melting more and more every day (like, unfortunately, the real chunks of ice upon which polar bears depend for food.) One wonders how the skeptics will react this weekend, because Phil won't be the only one prognosticatin' on Friday. (In fact, Dunkirk Dave would be quick to interject that Phil won't even be the only groundhog prognosticatin' on Friday.) That is the day the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release the first part of its 4th Assessment Report.

The IPCC report due out on Friday is likely to contain stronger wording than its previous assessment, in 2001, on the likelihood that human activities are principally responsible for the climatic changes observed around the world. (BBC News)

There has been some uncertainty as to what extent of sea level rises the report will predict, but a recent announcement (see above link) by the World Glacier Monitoring Service that "[m]ountain glaciers are shrinking three times faster than they were in the 1980s" may have an effect on the wording.

So if Punxsutawney Phil or Dunkirk Dave or Shubenacadie Sam or Balzac Billie or Staten Island Chuck or -- you get the picture -- if any of our esteemed panel of rodent meteorologists sees his or her shadow and foreshadows (no pun intended) six more weeks of winter, it may be the only recourse left for climate skeptics. ("But Phil is correct 100% of the time," John Stossel could tell Fox and Friends. "But the groundhogs are American; that climate report is French," Glenn Beck could point out on his CNN show.)

Personally, I think it would be cool (albeit anti-climactic [albeit pro-climatic]) for Phil himself to present the final draft of the IPCC assessment to the anxious Punxsutawney crowd, and, by virtue of his fame, the American public at large. Who would listen to some boring UN spokesperson?

In lieu of that, we can use Friday's meteorological messages to spread the word about what each one of us can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:

1. Step It Up 2007 - April 14, 2007, save the date. It will be, by far, the world's largest collective rally on global warming. Individual rallies are springing up all around the country, 508 in 45 states, at the time I'm writing this.

2. Smart Growth - A key to more sustainable cities

3. Rethink our food system. Buy local, organic when and where you can. Visit Recipe for America.

A Look Down the Barrel of the Global Warming Gun

2007-01-25T19:03:00.000-08:00

Cross-post: Daily Kos

As many who follow global warming know, Bangladesh is one of the countries most vulnerable to the potential meteorological consequences of global warming. There are several good reasons why, which I detail below.

This diary serves to give a detailed profile of Bangladesh and what might happen if some of the events projected by climatologists due to global warming come true. Having spent a month in Bangladesh a few years ago, having experienced the genuine kindness and hospitality of many Bangladeshis, and having several friends there now, global warming's threat to the country is somewhat personal for me.

Three major rivers -- the Ganges (known locally as the Padma), the Jamuna, and the Meghna -- course through Bangladesh before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. Composed of, for the most part, the collective delta of these three rivers, the country's terrain (with small highland exceptions in the north and in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in the southeast panhandle) is mostly flat alluvial plain (i.e. low and wet). It has one of the lowest average elevations of any country. (Elevation map)

These geographical conditions place Bangladesh on the edge of the cliff. If the climate model results reported in the New Scientist in 2003 come even close to being true, the land will be pushed over the edge:

Flooding in the country is set to increase by up to 40 per cent this century as global temperatures rise, the latest climate models suggest.

[snip]

...heavier rainfall triggered by global warming will swamp Bangladesh's riverbanks, a previously unforeseen effect, flooding between 20 and 40 per cent more land than today, says Monirul Qader Mirza, a Bangladeshi water resources expert now at the Adaptation and Impacts Research Group at the University of Toronto.

...People can grow crops on land regularly fertilised by nutrient-laden silt from the rivers [see photo below]. But extreme floods cause considerable hardship and loss of life: in 1988 and 1998 over two-thirds of the country was under water at some point.

Granted, the 40 percent figure is the worst case scenario, but even

[i]f temperatures rose by just 2 °C, two of the models showed that the mean flow of the Meghna and Brahmaputra rivers would increase by 20 per cent. (New Scientist Article)

What will it take to give ourselves a good chance of (but not ensure) avoiding a 2 °C raise and increase the likelihood of sparing Bangladeshis great hardship? According to this seminal article by George Monbiot (related to his new book), it will take a 60% global reduction of greenhouse gases, a 90% average cut by rich countries, and a 94% cut by the U.S by 2030. If this reasoning is even close to the mark, things look really bad for Bangladesh.

The threat to Bangladeshis of a sea-level rise and increased river flooding is exacerbated by its population density, the highest in the world of any sizable country. Imagine half the US population living in Iowa; that's Bangladesh's population density.

When I visited, it was not the monsoon season, when one-third of the country is under water (CIA World Factbook). But even in the dry season, the amount of land available for farming can be scarce in some areas.

(Bru)

This is a view from the Bangabandhu Jamuna Bridge, a massive and modern bridge named after Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh's founding father. (His nickname was "Bangabandhu," or "Friend of Bengal" in Bengali.) The small dots near the sand chars in the middle of the river are farmers in boats. This is a telling example of the shortage of land in Bangladesh: farmers take advantage of any piece of arable land they can get, even if it bears a high risk of flooding and destroying their crops.

A significant rise in sea level may tighten the land crunch beyond repair. According to my Lonely Planet book, "A 1m rise in the Bay of Bengal would result in a loss of 12% to 18% of the country's land" (p. 35).

(Rice nurseries near water's edge - Bru)

Another threat of rising sea levels is infiltration of salt water in fresh water bodies and aquifers. This is especially troubling in a region where half of the tubewells are already contaminated with arsenic.

Already Bangladesh is experiencing an increase in urbanization as the rural poor and environmental refugees flock to Dhaka and other large cities.

Masuma's home is a bamboo and polythene shack in one of the hundreds of slums colonising every square metre of unbuilt land in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.

Masuma is an environmental refugee, fleeing from the floods which have always beset her homeland but which are predicted to strike more severely with climate change.

A third of Dhaka's population lives in slums (Source). While there, I learned that future increases in the city's slum population will help make it the world's second-most populous city by 2020.

(Bru)

The grey roofs you see in the foreground all make up one large slum. You can see how it stretches to the edges of the lake, even if the ground doesn't provide a solid foundation. If the migration into Dhaka increases according to projections, where will all these new people live? What will they eat and what water will they drink? These are huge problems that Bangladesh would have to deal with no matter what happens to the earth's climate, but global warming threatens to make them much worse.

Bangladeshis are used to flooding and natural disasters. Besides the normal monsoon flooding every year, they have been hit on occasion by excpetionally bad floods. This happened in 1999, 2002, and 2003 , to name just three recent years. In 1991, a cyclone killed over 130,000 people. In 1970, the Bhola cyclone killed at least 500,000 people, the deadliest tropical cyclone of all time.

In the wake of all these disasters, Bangladesh has improved its response system and disaster planning. But no amount of planning may prepare them for the potential consequences, and ripple effects, of a significant average global temperature rise.

I have been reading parts of Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac lately, and have been marveling at how ahead of its time it is, given that it was published in 1949. In "The Land Ethic," Leopold argues that our ethical systems must evolve to take into account the entire community of life, not just other individuals or human society in general.

In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.

For global warming, we have to fight our subconscious tendency to only pay attention to localized problems, and consider the effect on the global community. We have to treat a threat to people halfway around the world as a threat to our neighbor or ourselves, because that's what we would want people halfway around the world to do if the threat was to us or our neighbor, especially if we knew that our actions influenced this threat.

We don't have to wait for the government to do anything. We don't have to wait for CAFE standards to be raised or for Wal-Mart to sell a bunch of CFLs. We don't have to wait for utilities to add more renewable energy. We can adopt (or cultivate) our own Land Ethic, within ourselves. And if enough of us do this, we might find that we have saved Bangladesh -- not to mention Ethiopia or New Orleans -- from the worst global warming consequences.

From the Archives: Movie Review - Life as a House

2007-01-18T20:39:00.000-08:00

I somewhat regret removing all the Old Brudaimonia posts. There were some good ones there, and I wouldn't remove them from my blog without saving them on my hard drive. So below is a movie review of Life as a House from November 22, 2005, restored under the Decent Archival Filler (DAF) clause of the Brudaimonia bylaws.

Don't forget about my latest real post on Smart Growth (which is addressed to the Daily Kos community). And now let the bullying of banal feelgood flicks re-commence!

* * *

[Bru’s note: I’ve always thought reviewing a movie would be fun, and now that I’ve done it, it was quite fun, despite (or maybe because of) the fact it was harsh. Special thanks to IMDB for helping me sort between all the sub par actors’ and characters’ names.]

In the old, addicting computer game, "Oregon Trail," you could choose to play as a banker, carpenter, or farmer. Being the banker was the easiest, because you started out with the most money with which to buy supplies along the way, but if you made it all the way to the end you would get the least points for it. Conversely, being the farmer was the most difficult, because you started out with the least amount of money, but if you reached the end your points would be tripled. If you played the game a lot (as I did that one spring break of second grade when my teacher let me borrow his Apple IIe computer – computers still being quite the novelty at the time – and Oregon Trail disk, much to my elation), you automatically played as the farmer, because such an unchallenging attempt as a banker just was not very exciting.

Scratch your head no more if you are wondering how in the hell this has to do with the movie I am about to review. Making a movie like Life as a House is like playing "Oregon Trail as the banker. I don’t mean to say it was a budget-buster, because it certainly wasn’t. I say this because the movie exploits the popular "protagonist is about to die so he/she tries to make the most of his/her remaining life" theme. It’s hard to go wrong with a theme like that. I mean, who wouldn’t be uplifted by the heartwarming, life-affirming ambitions the protagonist inevitably assumes? Thus we should hold such films to a higher standard because right off the bat, they have a large cache of "story capital" to spend. Like the Oregon Trail banker who easily beats the game, it is not so impressive even if the movie ends up being above-average. If you’ve got a lot, you’ve got to impress a lot.

Having said that, with all its plot endowment, Life as a House doesn’t even make the "above-average" column. It fizzles into a mostly banal, predictable storyline that coasts on its advantageous theme. Not only does it add nothing, it actually squanders the significance of letting go and seizing one’s last days by pigeonholing them into a quaint suburban soap opera where the meaning of life is reduced to a material structure, just as the title suggests. In economic terms, it burns its great story capital for a net loss.

The movie begins, predictably enough, with our frustrated protagonist, George Monroe (Kevin Kline), waking up to an alarm clock, the default opening scene for these kinds of plots. The next scene has his even more despondent alternative/goth son, Sam (Hayden Christianson), also waking up to an alarm clock, leading us to ponder whether the script was written in a day, like the thrown-together, last minute result of an assignment in a film class from which the writer procrastinated for months. Sam’s presence brings to the table all the typical teen angst that has been shamelessly recycled in hundreds of American Pie-esque teen spinoffs, replete with actors with three first names, of which Life as a House has two (Sean William Scott and Kristin Scott Thomas). Of course, Sam has a pierced lip, gothic makeup, wants to kill himself, and is estranged from not only his dad but also his divorced mother, Robin (Thomas), whose melancholy expressions and Mercedes SUV pin her down as the archetypal high-upper-middle class suburbanite Californian divorcee mom.

George is an architect (perhaps the most original part of the movie) who hates his job and is fired (that’s the unoriginality we know and love). After a tirade in which he destroys all of his firm’s display models, he collapses and it is determined that he has some sort of life-threatening illness (I’m not sure if they ever bothered to say what it was, possibly cancer). It is at this time, after a sloppily directed intimate moment with the hospital nurse, that he decides to build a suburban house as his remaining life’s purpose. Now, building a house on one’s own is indeed a remarkable feat and I don’t intend to criticize this per se. But in this context it is a quaint avenue for avoiding any complex emotional affects among the film’s characters, relegating it to TV-sitcom—like dialogue.

This allows what was supposed to be one of the defining facets of the plot – the transformation of virtually every character from an antagonist to a protagonist, vis-à-vis one another, where at the end everyone shucks off their emotional skeletons like two-by-four sawdust and comes together to pitch in on the house – to be the capstone of hackneyed interactions throughout the movie. In a scene not much better than your run-of-the-mill porn, Sam’s love interest, Alyssa (Jena Malone), advances their acquaintanceship by unhesitatingly showering naked with him. In another sequence, Robin’s new corporate-asshole—husband (Jamey Sheridan), does a stunning about-face, going from a drunken stupor where he improbably elucidates everything wrong with him (arguably because the script-writer wasn’t confident his actions would get this obvious message across) to a compassionate and placid world’s-greatest-dad in less than a week’s time. One moment he’s too cold to hug his own kids and the next he’s close as can be with them, ready to roll up his sleeves and help finish George’s house. A similar, but more protracted, about-face occurs in Sam, who goes from the gothic apparel and lip piercing to jeans and a tucked in flannel shirt when he takes possession of the house after George’s death.

If you’re for wasting your time with two-hour, ultra-suburban soap operas that process impending-death inspirations into a way-overused theme, you might want to watch this movie. Otherwise you have no incentive to do so.

Smart Growth and the Future of Our Cities: A Photo Tour

2007-01-01T12:51:00.000-08:00

Cross-post: Daily Kos

As we look back on 2006, one milestone our country reached came in October, when the US population reached 300 million. This is a vast and beautiful country with ample room for all of us 300 million (and many more), but the milestone should remind us that we can ill afford to accomodate our future population increase with more suburban sprawl.

Fortunately, there is an alternative in urban planning that is growing in popularity. It preserves more open space, creates cohesive neighborhoods with distinct identities and local amenities, and reduces dependence on fossil fuels, to name just a few of its benefits. This alternative works because it combines established and time-tested principles of town planning, innovative ideas, and democratic participation in land-use decisions (i.e. people power). It is smart growth.

Note: This diary centers around a booklet entitled, "This Is Smart Growth," published by the Smart Growth Network (and assisted by an EPA grant), and the EPA's own Smart Growth Illustrated webpage. Quotes excerpted from the booklet are marked by page numbers. Photos from the Smart Growth Illustrated website are marked simply "EPA."

(Belmont Dairy, Portland, OR - EPA)

In plain terms, smart growth (closely associated with the planning and architectural movement known as New Urbanism) is a set of principles that guide how our neighborhoods, towns, and cities are built and-or rebuilt.

When communities choose smart growth strategies, they can create new neighborhoods and maintain existing ones that are attractive, convenient, safe, and healthy. They can foster design that encourages social, civic, and physical activity. They can protect the environment while stimulating economic growth. Most of all, they can create more choices for residents, workers, visitors, children, families, single people, and older adults—choices in where to live, how to get around, and how to interact with the people around them. When communities do this kind of planning, they preserve the best of their past while creating a bright future for generations to come. [p. 5]

Smart growth works because it is built upon principles that relate to positive aspects of community development.

Smart Growth Principles

• Mix land uses
• Take advantage of compact building design
• Create a range of housing opportunities and choices
• Create walkable neighborhoods
• Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of place
• Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas
• Strengthen and direct development towards existing communities
• Provide a variety of transportation choices
• Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective
• Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions

[p. 4]

Building our communities on a walkable scale is an essential component of bringing about energy security, energy independence, and sustainability. It is easy to conceptualize energy efficiency in terms of electricity use: compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) instead of incandescents, Energy Star appliances, etc. Smart growth, in a sense, is efficiency at an urban planning level. As I pointed out in a previous diary, it is not a foregone conclusion that we have to burn as much oil as we do in our everyday lives. The extent of our oil use is mainly a function of the extent of dependence of our built environment on the automobile. Smart growth incorporates the notion that common community amenities (such as grocery stores or restaurants) should be within a 5- to 10-minute walk (or, at most, a short bike ride or drive) from any given home.

Environmental Protection and Conservation

There is no better way to save the planet than planning our cities and towns sustainably from now on. It is rivaled only, in my mind, by actions such as purchasing local organic foods and bicycling/walking (both of which are influenced by city planning).

Smart growth protects the environment by allowing for greater preservation of open space, reducing dependency on cars while promoting biking and walking, improves water management by limiting the amount of paved or built-on land (and provides for water management and conservation measures on that land), mitigates threats to biodiversity, and allows for more arable land.

Examples abound of communities that have utilized smart growth to protect their natural surroundings, but two communities were highlighted in a recent article by Neil Peirce of the Seattle Times, excerpted below the photo.

(Prairie Crossing, IL, north of Chicago - Prairie Crossing website)

Prairie Crossing is proudly re-creating pockets of the wildflower-dotted prairies that once thrived across Mid-America; with its easy rail connection to the Chicago Loop and O'Hare, it aims to be a national model of transit-oriented development.

[snip]

Prairie Crossing brought back prairie grass to fields occupied for decades by conventional corn and soybean crops that depended on heavy pesticide use. Before, six species of birds were seen on the site; now there are 120. The re-introduced prairie grasses, their roots running as deep as 15 feet, now hold the soil better.

[snip]

To assure views for everyone, Prairie Crossing built its houses around common garden areas, and in one case a 22-acre manmade lake. All the buildings are constructed to high-energy-efficiency levels.

But Prairie Crossing's most startling feature is its farm — 50 acres, nestled in the community and producing, organically, beets, grapes, herbs and fresh eggs. With an on-site farmers market and one other outlet, the husband-wife farmer team avoids wholesale markets and grosses an amazing $14,000 to $15,000 per acre per year.

Prairie Crossing quells the temptation to conclude that suburbs themselves are bad; it's just that the way most suburbs have been built over the last 60 years - pavement-heavy, car dominant, inefficient from an energy standpoint, filled with over-commercialization and hosts of big box stores, socially isolating, etc. - has negative consequences. This is the irony of the suburbs: they grew out of the noble conception (first popularly articulated by Ebenezer Howard) of combining the benefits of both city and country while avoiding the downfalls, but today they ended up retaining the downfalls and missing the benefits. Prairie Crossing, on the other hand, has established guiding principles that are nearly identical with smart growth principles. This is no coincidence, as it was designed by New Urbanist mogul Peter Calthorpe.

The second community in Peirce's article is Habersham (note: website plays soothing guitar music), in Beaufort, South Carolina, not far north from Hilton Head Island.

Habersham, like Prairie Crossing, carefully constructed a system of swales and ponds to slow down and filter rainwater before it flows into the adjoining marshes and river. Its roads follow old cattle paths; at several spots one has to steer around a grand old oak or other tree left standing dead center in the roadway. In a prior developer's plan, rear yards of new homes would have occupied the land directly to the river; now the riverside features lovely walkways and roadways allowing grand views from the homes but keeping most of the riverbank and marshes open to all residents and visitors.

Habersham's plan (PDF) was created by New Urbanist pioneers Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. The community's design incorporates a sensitivity to the marshy landscape situated close to many waterways and the Atlantic Ocean.

Economic Growth

There is, of course, a strong opposition to community planning that takes on many forms. The 2006 election's four so-called takings initiatives (diaried by lokiloki and others, plus covered excellently in this Grist article) were just the latest manifestation to rear its ugly head. (Luckily for Washington, California, and Idaho, their initiatives failed. Sorry Arizona.) Another example is this sloppy website created by an ultra-conservative group opposing a light rail plan for Madison, WI (replete with straw person comparisons, falsehoods, and an appearance that suggests a 10-year-old could have created it, but lets leave these critiques for a future diary).

Anyway, the opposition is trying to peddle the myth that smart growth will destroy the economies of the communities it serves. In fact, the opposite is true: smart growth strategies are huge economic boons to communities, whereas suburban sprawl's unsustainability is leading it inexorably toward economic decline.

The Minneapolis–St. Paul Metropolitan Council found that by using smart growth techniques, “the region overall could save $3 billion..., 94 percent [of which] would come from local communities saving money on roads and sewers. These local savings could be even far greater by including lower spending on school construction and other services such as health care, public safety, libraries, etc.” [p. 12]

* * *

In Florence, Alabama, city leaders struggled with an aging downtown that was losing stores and residents. To make the most of investments in the area, Florence made a bold decision to build a state-of-the-art library in the heart of town. This investment reassured citizens and businesses that additional private dollars invested in the area would not be wasted, and now it is paying off: nearly 95 percent of downtown buildings are occupied. By working with what it already had to revive the downtown, Florence has given new meaning to its nickname, “The Renaissance City.”

The Mefford family played a role in the city’s recent turnaround. “We really wanted to stay downtown,” says Olin Mefford, whose grandfather opened a jewelry store there in 1945. Encouraged by the visible public investment and the commitment of business owners like the Meffords, other businesses have moved downtown, bringing hundreds of jobs. [p. 12]

One example of economic development (in Louisville) is described below, but for this section let's highlight a neighborhood in the next Yearly Kos host city (and now my own city of residence).

(Bethel Center, West Garfield Park, Chicago, IL - EPA 2006 National Awards for Smart Growth Achievement)

Bethel Center is a model of environmentally friendly design. The center was built on a former brownfield, and its transit-accessible, walkable location gives people transportation options. The development incorporates green building technology and features a green roof, photovoltaic cells, and recycled and non-toxic building materials.

Bethel Center is a first step to revitalizing the area. Bethel New Life has also built 50 affordable homes within walking distance of Bethel Center and the train station.

Employment opportunities are important for residents in the West Garfield Park neighborhood. Bethel Center provides employment counseling, job training, and placement services. Approximately 600 visitors seek help each month, and retail tenants at Bethel Center hire from the employment training program. (Same link as photo)

Bethel Center also has a bank, shops, and a daycare, all provided near public transportation (which will be easy to get to from McCormick Place, for Kossacks interested in green sightseeing). Because of these and other aspects of the innovative project, it won the EPA's 2006 National Award for Smart Growth Development in the "Equitable Development" category. (Note: Bethel Center is also near the Chicago Center for Green Technology, a must-visit LEED Platinum building for Kossacks interested in green sightseeing at the convention.)

Inclusive Decision-Making

(East Russell, Louisville, KY - EPA)

A wide variety of government, non-profit, and business organizations collaborated to revive the East Russell neighborhood in Louisville, Kentucky, by listening to the community's demands and responding to its needs. Like many traditionally African-American urban communities, East Russell declined as middle-class residents moved to other areas of the metropolitan region. With little investment, low homeownership, and scarce opportunity, the community was plagued by high poverty, unemployment, crime, homelessness, and school drop-outs.

In 1992, a progressive collaboration involving the University of Louisville; local businesses; federal, state, and city governments; foundations; philanthropic groups; local unions; and non-profit organizations began to revitalize the neighborhood. With the help of $3.5 million in federal grants and a matching donation of $1 million from local organizations, the partnership has supported the construction or refurbishing of more than 600 homes, with hundreds more in the pipeline. They have also supplied a wide range of critical services, including child care and health care. These efforts have improved the commercial areas of the community as pawnshops, liquor stores, and taverns have been replaced by a new bookstore, a movie theater, and an African-American museum. The partnership has been successful thanks to community empowerment. For example, when the initiative began, community leaders intended to provide a range of services along with a minimal number of rental units. However, when local residents expressed the desire to own their own homes, the partnership helped establish low-interest loans and other creative financing to provide former rental tenants with affordable 30-year mortgages. (EPA)

Affordable Housing

Two examples from Colorado, where two popular resort towns created distinct housing issues for lower-income residents, and how smart growth principles were put into effect to address these issues.

First, Breckenridge:

(Wellington, Breckenridge, CO - Poplar Wellington LLC)

Rising home prices were pushing workers farther and farther out, forcing some to brave a 45-minute commute over often-snowy mountain passes. To give Breckenridge residents more choices, the town government, citizens, and property owners worked together with state and federal officials to support the construction of Wellington, a neighborhood of more than 100 homes. Eighty percent of the homes are reserved for purchase by people who work in the county, who get them for about one-third
(or less) of the median home price in Breckenridge.

“You’ve got to find ways to keep the police officers, the teachers, the managers in the community,” says Sam Mamula, who was mayor of Breckenridge when the Wellington neighborhood was built. “These people are both the economic engine and the soul of the town.” [p. 9]

Aspen:

(Benedict Commons, Aspen, CO - EPA)

Benedict Commons creates an affordable housing option in high-cost Aspen, Colorado. The community is designed for residents earning approximately $17,000 to $38,000 per year. In Aspen, a resort community, the average home price is over $1.75 million. Most workers cannot afford to live in the city, so many commute long distances to work. Economist Robert Frank has labeled the traffic jams and associated air pollution caused by this imbalance between jobs and affordable housing "the Aspen Effect."

Benedict Commons is the product of efforts by the city of Aspen and developers Jim Curtis and Jonathan Rose of Curtis/Affordable Housing Development Corporation to provide housing within Aspen for local workers. The studio and one-bedroom units originally sold for $57,000 to $130,000. The units are deed restricted and must be sold to people making less than a specified income. In addition, the resale price of the units can only rise at the rate of the Consumer Price Index. This keeps the housing affordable over time while allowing owners a return on their investment.

To make Benedict Commons fit within the context of the existing neighborhood, the multi-family building was designed to look like a collection of individual dwellings that reflect Aspen's history and style. Each unit has a private, outside entrance and a roof deck, garden space, or small entry deck. The apartments are built above an underground parking garage and around a central, sunlit courtyard with mountain views. The project's downtown location, near work places, encourages walking, and bicycle racks on the site encourage residents to bike rather than drive. The well-executed, compact design allowed a density of 78.4 units per acre on a small infill site. (EPA)

Safety, Health, and Community

One of the most important principles of smart growth is creating walkable communities, which has, at the very least, a triple benefit: reducing carbon emissions due to less car trips needed, creating a sense of community where people come into personal contact with each other and can stop and talk (instead of honking, yelling, and giving the finger to each other in a traffic jam on a six-lane highway), and enhancing safety. This last benefit itself has at the very least two sub-benefits: walkable communities reduce crime (because you are never walking completely alone) and have streets with less dangerous traffic (Would you rather cross a two-lane main street with cars going 20 mph or a six-lane suburban collector road with cars going 55 mph?).

Children can get daily exercise by walking or biking to school, but many parents are concerned about safety. Many communities have come up with innovative solutions, like the “walking school bus,” in which adult volunteers walk groups of children to school. The Broadway-Slavic Village neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, instituted such a program to encourage children to walk to school. In another effort, local teenagers got training on bicycle safety and repairs and received free refurbished bicycles; the kids then toured every street in Slavic Village to map safe bicycling and walking routes. [p. 18]

Furthermore, when children walk to school, they get exercise on a daily basis. This is important when

one-third of U.S. children are overweight or at risk of becoming overweight. In total, about 25 million U.S. children and adolescents are overweight or nearly overweight. (Mayo Clinic)

In turn, this puts more American children at risk of developing type II diabetes and other health problems. Suburbs provide less opportunities for children to get everyday exercise. A recent study was only the latest to find a correlation between suburban living and obesity in youth.

Using data from a national health survey, researchers found that teenagers living in sprawling suburbs were more than twice as likely to be overweight as teens in more compact urban areas.

The findings echo those of a 2003 study by the same researchers that focused on U.S. adults. The researchers believe the same factors may be driving the link between suburban living and teenagers' weight -- the major one being reliance on cars.

(Birch Street, Brea, CA - EPA)

Finally, smart growth aims to foster a sense of community, where residents can take civic pride in distinct places, places where people can meet and hang out, places that attract tourists, places where people can feel a sense of belonging, places you'd want to stroll down when you don't have to be anywhere. This is the intangible side that is nevertheless essential to quality of life.

What We Can Do

I hope this diary provided a good overview of smart growth and its potential to positively affect our built environment in many ways. It's important to remember that smart growth is primarily a set of principles that can be adapted to fit particular locations' culture, climate, and history. There is no one way to build a smart growth neighborhood, but there is at least one way in every community. I hope that those familiar with some of the areas I highlighted above will provide additional insights into those communities, as I am only personally familiar with a few of them.

If you're interested in incorporating smart growth principles into your community's future, there are a number of ways to get involved. Every community has comprehensive plan reviews at some point. These reviews take citizen input. The next time your community reviews its plan, attend the meetings and advocate for smart growth principles. Urge newly elected mayors to appoint a planner who practices New Urbanism or is overtly dedicated to smart growth principles. The planning commission is also extremely influential in how communities grow. Know how members obtain seats on the commission, and provide input when a new seat on the commission is about to be filled. Attend public meetings for permitting of new developments, and scrutinize how the development will affect the community. And these are just a few examples.

So as we begin 2007, when the challenges of Energizing America will become more pressing, we can find in smart growth a more sustainable, valuable, safe, uniting, and democratic strategy for building the futures of our cities and towns.

Websites
Smart Growth America
Congress for the New Urbanism
American Planning Association (a smart growth advocate)
NRDC Smart Growth Page
Sierra Club Smart Growth Page

On Polar Bears and Scary Pols

2006-12-27T20:58:00.000-08:00

"Pols" as in the diminutive of "politician," referring to some environmentally-minded citizens' optimism (exemplified in this dKos diary) that a sea change in the Bush administration's environmental policy has accompanied the literal sea change that has occurred in part due to global warming, and which is threatening polar bear habitat due to melting ice.

It is true that Interior Secretary (and noted anti-environmentalist) Dirk Kempthorne has hopefully proposed adding polar bears to the 'threatened' list.

However, this was not some out-of-the-blue show of seriousness in response to the growing crisis of global warming. Rather, the Interior Department's hand was forced by a court order.

The decision from Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees endangered species, coincides with a court-ordered deadline. In February 2005, the Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace petitioned Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the polar bears. After Fish and Wildlife officials missed a deadline for deciding earlier this year, the groups sued and agreed on Wednesday's deadline. (Ibid)

Furthermore, at least two news articles (the Yahoo! article linked above and this one from MSNBC) did not have specific quotes from Interior acknowledging that greenhouse gas emissions were causing the warming that they acknowledged was melting arctic sea ice. Global warming deniers frequently make the latter acknowledgement these days, but they deny that human activities are affecting average global temperature.

Such a decision would require all federal agencies to ensure that anything they authorize that might affect polar bears will not jeopardize their survival or the sea ice where they live. That could include oil and gas exploration, commercial shipping or even releases of toxic contaminants or climate-affecting pollution.

Kempthorne, however, said his department's studies indicate that coastal and offshore oil and gas exploration — heavily promoted by the Bush administration, particularly in Alaska — shouldn't be curtailed.

"It's very clear that the oil and gas activity in that area does not pose a threat to the polar bears," he said. (Yahoo! article)

What more proof is there of the Bush administration's failure to overtly admit to greenhouse gas emissions causality, at least in this case, than a statement that denies oil and gas activities' guilt in the polar bears' plight?

This comes only 10 months after the largest oil spill in the arctic last March. Furthermore, any natural gas (methane) that leaks from wells and doesn't make it into the pipeline is emitted into the air as a very harmful greenhouse gas. Most obviously, continued oil drilling in Alaska is feeding the nation's gluttonous appetite for easy motoring, releasing over 300 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year. And that is just the U.S.

We can rejoice that at least the process (which will take at least a year) is being started to give polar bears their long overdue place on the 'threatened' list. But let's not think that the Bush administration has had a "Saul-to-Paul" moment when they reluctantly agree to something due to a court order.

It is always best to focus on ourselves: what can we do now, voluntarily, to mitigate climate change, as opposed to waiting for the government to force us to do something (or refrain from doing things)?

Green Buildings: The Need for a New Era of Architecture

2006-12-09T16:50:00.000-08:00

Modernist architecture came to the U.S. from Europe by force around the 1930s. Its main proponents decreed offensive the ornament that had been so characteristic to the Neoclassical and Neogothic buildings which represented the popular style in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In fact, one of the first rants against the status quo came from Austrian architect Adolf Loos in his 1908 essay Ornament and Crime.

Modernism sought openly to design buildings appropriate for the machine age that emerged from the industrial revolution. Machines were the symbol of rationalism, and it wasn't rational to hearken back to ancient Grecian or Medieval European times of non-mechanized living.

Not only did modernist buildings resemble machines, they also began to depend on them for their structures. Concrete and steel production that aided the tail end of the neoclassical period in building the nation's first true skyscrapers (with concrete and steel frames replacing brick, load-bearing walls) enabled modernist architects to go even higher.

Machines also made living and working in skyscrapers both possible and bearable. The invention of the elevator assured the former criterion. Doing away with brick meant ridding buildings of one of their primary heat storage components. But modernist buildings with their all metal and glass facades did not need to be climate-specific, because central air conditioning and heating mtigated the harsh edges of any climate, albeit at a high energy cost.

The result of Modernism that carries into the present day is a legacy of buildings that, in addition to expiring aesthetically not long after their heyday, suck up a lot of energy, a condition that is regrettable now that global warming and energy shortage solutions are urgently needed. The egotism of modernist architects is coming back to haunt their collective clientele, and it is only surpassed by the ludicrous egotism of postmodern architects, whose buildings (with some striking exceptions) are even more out of touch with anyone except their designers.

So what is needed is a new era of architecture that focuses on something on which no American architectural era has focused, but has guided almost the entire history of buildings in general. That is gentleness with the natural environment, or "green building." Despite the US Green Building Council's much-needed LEED certification system and its admirable advocacy efforts, green building is still a needle in the haystack of drab, mundane, energy guzzling buildings being erected today. There are only a handful of buildings in the US that have USGBC's highest (most environmentally friendly) "platinum" certification. (Two are in Chicago.) There should be thousands.

Still, green building is becoming more and more popular. Washington, D.C.'s decision to require all large private development construction and major renovation to achieve LEED certification by 2012 is the boldest step forward yet, and it comes in the wake of several cities' LEED targets for government buildings. These cities include Washington D.C. itself, Chicago and Pasadena, California. Even the new stadium for the Nationals is striving for LEED certification. Overall, over 500 buildings in the US have achieved certification, and thousands more could come in the near future, but green building is a still a small phenomenon.

Making the environment the central focus of building design not only requires a renewed focus, but a renewed kind of focus. For centuries, humans designed their humble dwellings in the context of their climates; they needed to. Alaskan natives built igloos that protected them from Alaska's harsh winters, with their sled dogs between their living area and the small opening serving as living insulation and sources of heat. Central Asians living in hot, dry climates built simple wind catching components on their houses to help cool them. But the focus of American architectural periods has either been aesthetic - Neoclassicism (altruistic) and Postmodernism (egoistic) - or functional - Modernism. Care for the environment falls outside these two substantial realms of architecture, but impending realities are beginning to demand such a focus, or else we may be left with many obsolete, inefficient buildings in thirty years.

2006 Election Results: Focus on the Environment

2006-11-08T20:15:00.000-08:00

Now we can all breath a sigh of relief...and then get down to work. The 2006 elections turned out to be a pretty big success. The Republican-controlled rubber stamp Congress that let Bush get away with the Iraq debacle, completely failed on the environment, and presided over huge deficits, to list just a few of its flaws, has sung its swan song.

Here's my list of the five most important results for the environment and what they mean.

1. The "Takings" Initiatives fail in 3 of 4 states. These extreme libertarian initiatives, whose campaigns were bankrolled by New York real estate tycoon Howie Rich, were on the ballots in Washington, California, Idaho, and Arizona. If passed, city, county, or state governments in those states would have had to "compensate" property owners for the profits they supposedly would have made if they had been allowed to do something on their property that a regulation prohibits. I recently blogged about these initiatives, which would have threatened to bankrupt governments due to all the claims that would have been brought against them.

The results? Luckily for Washington, California, and Idaho, the initiatives failed. Unfortunately for Arizona, the initiative passed. Don't be surprised if there is an increase in unhappy neighbors and bankrupted local governments in that state. Nevada also had a similar initiative but a state supreme court decision prevented it from reaching the ballot.

2. CA-11: Jerry McNerney defeats Rep. Richard Pombo in California. Jerry McNerney, Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress and former wind energy engineer, defeated by far the worst representative the environment has ever endured, Rep. Richard Pombo, by a margin of 53-47. Tonight I told my brother only somewhat jokingly that if Democrats had lost every seat in the House except Pombo's seat, I still would have been somewhat happy. It is hard to stress enough just how anti-environment Pombo was. Grist does a good job of listing the Abramoff crony's offenses against conservation and public lands: trying to gut the Endangered Species Act, trying to sell off millions of acres of public lands to mining corporations and private developers to pay for Bush's budget deficits, trying to "sell off drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to fund transportation pork," trying to say mercury isn't harmful, and other offenses. Pombo was in a position of great power as chair of the House Resources Committee, and he had the potential to do a lot of harm. It is a HUGE victory for the environment to have him gone. See ya, Dick. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

3. MT-Sen: Jon Tester defeats Conrad Burns. Former organic farmer and State Senate President Jon Tester has come a long way in a year, first defeating centrist Democrat John Morrison in the Montana primaries, then holding on to beat anti-environment curmudgeon extraordinaire and longtime incumbent Conrad Burns. Like Pombo, Burns is also an Abramoff crony and member of the League of Conservation Voters' "Dirty Dozen." Here's Grist's skinny:

It would be hard not to look green next to the Big Sky State's three-term GOP senator, Conrad Burns -- unabashed climate skeptic, advocate of human pesticide testing, beneficiary of $551,586 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry over the course of his career, and one of the "Dirty Dozen" members of Congress that LCV is most anxious to unseat.

[snip]

Burns has earned a lifetime environmental voting score of 4 percent from LCV. According to the group, he has consistently voted against increasing fuel-economy standards, repeatedly sought to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, and opposed numerous efforts to push the development of renewable energy. On the subject of global warming, the senator remarked in a recent Energy & Environment Daily interview, "[It] has been happening since the glaciers started to recede. You remember the ice age? It's been warming ever since, and there ain't anything we can do to stop it." As if that weren't enough, Burns was a leading recipient of campaign donations from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

As they say in the Big Sky State, "Fire Burns!" Yesterday Montana voters did just that.

4. PA-Sen: Bob Casey, Jr. defeats Sen. Rick Santorum. Bob Casey, Jr. soundly defeated notorious wingnut Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania's Senate race, 59-41. Yet another member of LCV's dirty dozen, Santorum let his extremist Christian delusions and campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry determine his environmental views, and they weren't pretty.

Santorum -- also a "Dirty Dozen" honoree, with a lifetime score of 10 percent from LCV and a zero score from Republicans for Environmental Protection for his voting record in 2005 -- doesn't put much truck in building a sustainable future. "Nowhere in the Bible does it say that America will be here 100 years from now," he said at a 1994 political rally. This spring, Santorum pushed for the failed GOP energy package -- ridiculed even by right-wing ideologues -- that proposed a $100 gas rebate for drivers in exchange for opening the Arctic Refuge to drilling. And yet strong fuel-economy standards don't strike Santorum as a good way to save drivers money: He has opposed efforts to increase them no less than six times. He's also opposed efforts to promote the development of renewable energy and voted against the bipartisan 2005 Sense of the Senate resolution acknowledging that global warming is a human-made problem in need of federal action.

Says LCV's senior vice president for political affairs, Tony Massaro, "Virtually every chance he gets, Sen. Santorum has voted for oil and gas interests and against the environment."

(Source: Grist)

Your family may be crying, Rick, but I can assure you environmentalists are not.

5. CO-Gov: Bill Ritter defeats Bob Beauprez. I know it's only one state, but Governors are extremely important as far as environmental protection goes, especially in large, resource-rich Western states like Colorado. It is getting less coverage than the Democrats taking control of the House and Senate, but the fact that Democrats also picked up six governor seats is refreshing (even some, like Jim Doyle in Wisconsin, are centrist as far as the environment goes). It was especially refreshing in Colorado, where Denver district attorney Bill Ritter defeated Rep. Bob Beauprez, 56-41. Beauprez's environmental record is so bad that he was the first ever gubernatorial candidate put on the League of Conservation Voters' "Dirty Dozen" list.

Rep. Beauprez holds a lifetime LCV score of 5%. In Congress, his record on energy and water demonstrates just how out of touch he is with the people of Colorado. For example, Rep. Beauprez voted for the oil shale and tar sands royalty subsidy, which would reduce potential revenues available to local Colorado communities for giving the right to drill on their land. In addition, while the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission continues to monitor storm water runoff from oil and gas development due to water quality concerns, Rep. Beauprez voted to exempt some oil and gas drilling activities from the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act.

Further, Rep. Beauprez voted to cut more than $20 million from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He also voted to give billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to oil companies at a time of record breaking profits, and opposed sensible clean energy solutions, such as requiring new cars to go further on a gallon of gas.

Ritter is somewhat of a centrist on environmental issues, but has acknowledged the importance of mitigating climate change and developing renewable energy in Colorado.

----------

I decided to focus on specific issues or races for my "Top 5." Obviously, overall I think that the Democrats taking control of Congress holds the largest potential for actually doing something to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, seriously pursue renewable energy, and protect our public lands. Being in my early 20s, it's weird to see even the potential for good environmental policy on the national level, but now that promise is there. Democrats need to get right to work on these priorities.

UN: Greenhouse Gases at Record High

2006-11-03T10:48:00.000-08:00

From BBC News:

Greenhouse gases hit record high
The steady rise in atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change shows no signs of abating, a UN agency has announced.
The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide rose by about half a percent in 2005, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has said.

Of course, this report shows nothing out-of-the-ordinary. It just confirms that the world is not doing nearly enough to curtail its emissions. That's one more reason that it will be refreshing to take control of Congress from the ineptitude of the GOP: they have done nothing substantial to deal with climate change.

Their legacy of an energy bill with huge subsidies for the oil industry and only token renewable energy appropriations looks like a high crime in the face of reports like the one above.

Incredible

2006-11-01T12:54:00.000-08:00

Let me get this straight: John Kerry makes a comment about our disaster in Iraq that has a certain truth to it, and the Bush administration wants him to apologize to our troops? John Kerry is a decorated Vietnam War veteran who has experienced the horrors of war while George Bush is a sniveling coward who sidestepped Vietnam duty by piggybacking on his daddy's privilege. George Bush is responsible for the deaths of 2,800 U.S. troops - almost another 9/11 worth of Americans killed - and thousands more injured, and he wants John Kerry to tell them he's sorry?

In what kind of a cruel bizzaro world is this utter failure of an administration trying to pull us? We cannot let it happen, if quality of life means anything to us.

Nation's Extra Fat Requires Nearly One Billion Extra Gallons of Gas Guzzled Per Year

2006-10-25T15:42:00.000-07:00

A sign of the times, to be sure.

Non-commercial U.S. vehicles are using at least 938 million more gallons of gasoline annually than they did in 1960 because drivers and passengers are considerably heavier and are dragging down fuel economy, says a University of Illinois study to be published in The Engineering Economist.

Either Let Me Have a Pumice Mine Next to this National Monument or Give Me $203 million: Property Rights Initiatives Threaten Western States

2006-10-18T23:45:00.000-07:00

I highly recommend reading this Grist article by Dan Whipple on how mostly-absurd property rights initiatives in four states, backed by Libertarian front groups and property rights zealots, are threatening land use and environmental protections. These initiatives are based on the now-infamous Measure 37 that passed in Oregon in 2004, and is already wreaking havoc on people's properties, government budgets, environmental protections, and land management.

The long and short of this issue is that the aforementioned property rights zealots are trying to capitalize on whatever national furor exists over Kelo v. City of New London, the Supreme Court's landmark 2005 decision defending the Connecticut city's use of eminent domain to take over private houses in order to develop commercial property, to demonize all land-use regulations. They want these crazy initiatives passed that

would require taxpayers to pay landowners if a zoning rule or environmental law reduces the speculative value of their property. In some places, if a government couldn't pay, it would have to waive rules that limit what, or where, a landowner may build. [Grist]

They have been dubbed "takings" initiatives, because property rights zealots see almost any regulation of what they can do on their property to be "taking" value from them. But the essential flaw of this position is best articulated by David Goldberg of Smart Growth America:

"These takings initiatives say that when you change a regulation and it reduces the speculative value of my property, you have to pay that," Goldberg says. "The absurdity of it becomes clear when you look at the inverse: if you change a regulation that increases the value of my property, I owe [the government] the total amount of the profit."

Of course, no one's filing a claim in Oregon under the latter principle. [Grist]

Proponents of these initiatives either fail to see or are intentionally ignoring the fact that land-use regulations also increase property value. Herein lies the classic conservative fallacy of detesting government intervention only if it hurts their pocketbooks. But if government creates a public good that raises the value of their property, they'll be the first to piggyback on it.

Where do initiatives like this lead? We can already see the negative effects of Measure 37 (see "wreaking havoc" link above):

Since Measure 37 passed there, nearly 3,000 claims have been filed for compensation, totaling more than $5 billion, according to Portland State University's Measure 37 database. The most notorious of these claims, which was profiled in The New York Times, is for $203 million for a parcel of private property that's surrounded by the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. The owner of the property wants to be compensated for a pumice mine and power plant that he can't build. [Grist - link added]

If you know someone in California, Idaho, Arizona, or especially Washington, make sure they know about this issue. If these measures pass they will spell trouble for local governments (think billions of dollars of compensations), community development, and environmental protections. We need to make sure we don't sacrifice the public good on the pyre of private profit.

A Long Time Coming: Muhammad Yunus and the Nobel Prize

2006-10-13T17:12:00.000-07:00

Cross-post: Daily Kos

(Photo: AFP via BBC News)

It's been a long time coming for Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. I would venture to say that many people who knew about Mr. Yunus's work felt that it was only a matter of time before the Grameen Bank founder and microcredit pioneer became a Nobel Laureate. He had already received numerous other awards, including the the 1994 World Food Prize, the 1998 Sydney (AUS) Peace Prize, the 2006 Seoul Peace Prize, and many other awards (listed on his Wikipedia entry).

I traveled to Bangladesh a few years ago as part of a one-month research program that split time between Dhaka, the capital city, and a rural village. In the village we witnessed first-hand the involvement of Grameen Bank and other microfinance NGOs such as Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). It wasn't perfect. One villager we talked with was deep in debt with a high interest rate from a loan he used to refurbish his small home's roof and pay for his son's wedding (non-capital expenses). There were also some reports of husbands taking over the decision-making process from their wives once the loan payments had been handed out. But overall the presence of Grameen Bank seemed to be a huge asset to the village's community development prospects.

From the meetings we attended, we found out that over 90% of participants met their installment payments. It was inspiring to see women taking charge, scrutinizing their ledger books and conversing with the loan officer. We talked to villagers who bought animals, improved their crop production, or did other useful things with their loans. Mr. Yunus's legacy was alive in the small sense of control the villagers who took part in microcredit programs had to improve their well-being.

The promise of this legacy made it no shocker that Mr. Yunus was thus honored. The somewhat surprising thing is not that he and his organization won a Nobel Prize, but that he won the Peace Prize, instead of the Prize for Economics: surprising, not in the sense that he did not deserve the Peace award (I think he did), but that economics is the primary avenue of his work, though it has important ripple effects in women's empowerment, community development, democracy, health, and peace throughout the developing world. A Nobel Prize in Economics would have better amplified the notion that small-scale, grassroots-based programs are more effective and more democratic in alleviating poverty than large-scale "structural adjustment"-type programs commonly implemented by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

As this BBC article notes, the face of the Nobel Peace Prize has been changing in recent years to include possible candidates who are not directly involved in peace work, but whose actions still indirectly help bring about peace and empowerment. One example is Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Laureate from Kenya, whose work involved human rights and equality but primarily concerned environmental stewardship. Making the connection between sustainability and peace is vital, and Maathai's recognition is a valuable example of this.

Mr. Yunus and Grameen Bank certainly qualify under this broadened window of the Peace Prize. But his work's value is that it provides a new economic model for the developing world. Granted, the Prize in Economics, sponsored by the Bank of Sweden, seems more targeted towards scholars, its criteria certainly fit Mr. Yunus's contributions:

When considering what should be regarded as a "worthy" contribution, it is probably correct to say that the selection Committee has looked, in particular, at the originality of the contribution, its scientific and practical importance, and its impact on scientific work. (Source)

He didn't achieve recognition by writing a seminal journal article, but what better example is there of originality and practical importance than Mr. Yunus's work? This is probably why Mr. Yunus has "more than once [been] recommended for the Nobel Prize for peace or economics" (Source).

The most important thing, however, was that Mr. Yunus finally received the award he deserved, which will not only further support his microfinance programs (He plans to use at least some of the cash award "to 'find more innovative ways' to help the poor launch businesses [Source: original BBC article].), but will also raise the international profile of microfinance and its role in improving the lives of millions of people around the world.

Michele Bachmann Unaware It's 2006

2006-10-11T11:54:00.000-07:00

Ha ha! Michele Bachmann, right-wing extremist fighting Patty Wetterling in Minnesota's 6th Congressional District, gets laughed at by a debate audience for denying the existence of global warming.

This is the same anti-gay Michele Bachmann who was photographed watching a gay rights rally, hiding behind some bushes at the Minnesota State Capital (see #9).

The Fallacy of Inevitability in Energy Demand

2006-10-10T00:11:00.000-07:00

Cross-post: Daily Kos

One of the more fallacious assumptions of our energy discourse is that our excessive energy consumption is inevitable. A corollary of this assumption – that demand-side solutions to impending energy crises are of no more than secondary importance – has led the discourse to an undue bias towards supply-side mitigations that carry with them negative connotations for sustainability, environmental protection, and national security.

I must admit that I have been surprised how much support two of these mitigations – coal gasification and nuclear power – have received on Daily Kos. It’s not that I expect everyone to agree with me that these two mitigations and others should be avoided as much as possible in our effort to right our energy ship. Nor do I think each is devoid of any positive aspects. It’s just that I tend to subconsciously (and perhaps unduly) associate them with what I call develop-at-all-costs conservatives: those that put extraction of resources ahead of other innovative ideas (usually to please their energy industry donors). But that is beside the point.

Of course, I agree that we should have an honest debate about each supply-side mitigation, whether it be in the realm of transportation or electricity generation, as to its feasibility, scale, upsides, and downsides. Such a debate, however, should be subsumed by a broader discourse about our level of energy demand in general. Our current level of energy use is certainly not inevitable. If we were to commit to using less energy, then it would be much less stressful to think about how we will be able to supply that energy in the future.

As of the present moment, many Americans talk as if we cannot help but use the amount of energy we use, which turns out to be around 8,000 kilograms of oil equivalent (kgoe) per person per year (according to the World Resources Institute [2001 figures]), much more than double that of Europe (3,600), and nearly double the average for developed countries (4,600). The trick to convincing oneself of this compulsion is to make it a condition of the modern lifestyle and all its conveniences. “If we don’t build more nuclear plants,” an extreme argument goes, “then we’ll all be sitting naked in trees eating nuts and leaves.” But just because we can be grateful to a cheap, constant flow of energy for important contributors to our well-being, such as advanced health care or computers and the internet, doesn’t mean that we must acquiesce to the monumental task of having to supply the ravenous future energy demand indicated by projections. We can and should use less energy, while at the same time making massive investments in renewable energy until it supplies the vast majority of all of our energy demands.

In short, I feel that with enough knowledge, innovation, and effort, a threefold plan consisting only of conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy can solve our impending energy crises. But here I am digressing a bit into a corollary of my own. This post is to focus on the fact that we don’t need to use so much energy.

Consider the familiar punching bag of suburbia. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that our built environment would be developed that way, so it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that we would have to use so much oil for suburban transportation. Market conservatives like to contend that the suburbs are the epitome of efficiency, because they represent what the housing market has generally dictated over the last sixty years, but they mean “economic efficiency” (a contention I doubt anyway). In terms of energy efficiency the suburbs perform abysmally, and they are a major reason why we’re heading towards such a mess in the near future. Sure, the booming post-WWII population needed somewhere to live, and the emerging middle class needed places to call their own, but their living spaces didn’t need to be constructed in such a fossil-fuel-dependent manner.

The U.S.’s current energy demand is certainly not a necessary condition of a high quality of life. Several countries use much less energy per capita than the United States yet have better quality-of-life rankings. Norway (5,921 kgoe per person per year), Ireland (3,876), Switzerland (3,906), Australia (5,975), and Sweden (5,762) all rank higher than the U.S. in both the UN Human Development Index of Most and Least Livable Countries and The Economist’s 2005 quality-of-life index (PDF). I’m not trying to say these countries are “better than” the U.S. – I would rather live here than anywhere else in the world – just that they can generally live well using less energy per capita.

A couple weeks ago I satisfied a growing interest to learn more about American architecture by picking up a couple books from my local library. One is entitled Architecture and Energy by Richard Stein, which can be visualized as an excellent and comprehensive predecessor to the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating system. Indeed, Stein himself was known as a pioneer in energy-conserving architecture. Though written in 1977, in the midst of the 1970s energy crises, I was impressed by how relevant it still is today.

One paragraph, in particular, has so many uncanny parallels to today that I will digress from my argument in order to cite it here. (I was going to intersperse today’s parallels in brackets, but I decided that it would disrupt the flow of the excerpt, and I’m sure readers will be able to point them out.)

The attacks by the oil industry on environmentalists and environmental controls as the reason for the shortages has been carefully organized and has had some success in speeding through federal authorization of the Alaska North Slope oil development and pipeline. There is now mounting industry pressure for access to the continental shelf off New England. There has even been a counterattack by the oil companies in defense of their inordinate profits…on the grounds of their being in the realm of public welfare, since these profits gave the companies the possibility of more rapid expansion of their productive capacity. Continental Oil, whose former chairman, John McLean, had been the most articulate voice of the petroleum industry for the removal of restrictions as the basis for the petroleum industry’s growth, recorded profits for the first six months of 1974 as $209,601 million as compared with $99,180 million in 1973. (p. 18)

Though referring to a different time period, Stein’s discussion of a disconnect between profligate energy usage and quality of life very much applies to our generation’s energy situation.

Twenty-five years ago, or about 1950, when we were beginning to fill our housing and other building needs, we were satisfying our national requirements with one sixth of the amount of electrical energy we now use and less than half of today’s total energy expenditure. Since then, our population has increased by about 45 per cent, while our use of electrical energy has increased by 600 per cent and our total consumption by 250 per cent. If there had been a dramatic improvement in the quality of life proportionate to the per capita increase in energy use and if the perspective for the future was for an endless extension of that improvement – assuming endless reserves – there would be no reason to characterize our present condition as a crisis. However, if we discover that we are only doing things differently and that a good part of our effort merely corrects or offsets the damaging byproducts of these processes, then we are truly in a crisis of the gravest sort.

Stein's book provides a shining example in our nation's buildings of how we waste energy. Even today we could retain the function and modern amenities of buildings while drastically reducing their energy usage. At this point, I will highly recommend that those unfamiliar with the U.S. Green Building Council to visit their website.

It is important to keep in mind that there is a middle ground between Luddism and gluttony on the energy demand spectrum. The cursory statistics I provided above on selected countries’ energy demand and quality of life lend support to a hypothesis that more and more energy use provides, at best, diminishing returns on our well-being, and, at worst, increasing deficits.

A claim that we "need" to extract and burn the equivalent of x amount of BTUs depends on the assumption that it is not worth conserving x BTUs, or that it is better than generating x BTUs with renewable energy. Future discussions on energy should take this truth into account and ask how much we value the higher elevations of our energy demand. Do we value them so much that we are willing to put aside the many caveats of nuclear power or coal gasification (to name just two mitigations) and mischaracterize them as inevitable? I hope that this is not the case.

Happy Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples Day

2006-10-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

He didn't discover America. He wasn't even the first European to sail to America. He was 2000 years removed from being the first to think the Earth was a sphere.

The aim [of Columbus's second expedition] was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans' intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad [Columbus's first military settlement] had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.

Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town...Columbus later wrote: "Lut us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

The Indians had been given an impossible task. They only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.

When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island. (Zinn, A People's History of the United States, pp. 4-5)

Columbus, of all people, should not have a holiday in honor of him.

North Korea Apparently Conducts Nuclear Test

2006-10-08T22:04:00.000-07:00

This is not good news at all. North Korea is now claiming they have conducted a test of a nuclear weapon.

A South Korean official said an explosion had been detected in the north-east of North Korea, measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale.

It seems all but confirmed at this point.

Monday will see a lot of scrambling and speculation. The issue of how this will help or hurt the Bush administration is already being discussed. Potential reactions from other east Asian countries are already being hypothesized. These important discussions should not detract from the possible environmental consequences of an underground nuclear test, if it did, in fact, occur.

...one study...found that North Korea's shallow ground water table would make it very difficult for an underground test to be carried out without polluting the country's water system.

Tiger Stripes are Mightier than Pinstripes

2006-10-07T23:21:00.000-07:00

(Photo by Elsa/Getty Images, from Yahoo! Photo Gallery)

Major League Baseball today is hardly the closest thing to perfection, to paraphrase Red Smith: steroids, salaries that net some players more money per game than I've made all year, encroaching and innocence-stifling commercialism, and the Yankees getting away with a $200 million payroll few other markets could support.

Included in this $200 million was "Murderers' Row and Cano," quite possibly the best lineup ever assembled outside of an All-Star Game, which the Yankees trotted out for their "sure thing" quick dispatch of the Detroit Tigers in the ALDS. Oh, how the analysts gushed that nothing would stop the Bronx Bombers.

Yet for all its imperfections baseball still gives you an overwhelming reason to smile every once in a while: the Tigers players engaged in the coolest celebration I've ever seen on a baseball field - scattered along the track, spraying overjoyed fans with champagne, fans that had endured the Tigers' 19-year playoff drought, their 13-year winning season drought, and their 119-loss season only three years ago. Kenny Rogers, Game 3's hero, even saved one champagne bottle for a police officer standing on the Tigers dugout (after, no doubt, confirming that he wouldn't be arrested). (The cop smiled and hugged Rogers.)

The refreshing thing about the postseason is that it is the best check on the barreling inertia of the Yankees' battleship. They can buy their way in with little anxiety, but once you get to a best-of-five series, anything can happen. "Anything" was the hundred MPH dominance of Joel Zumaya in Game 2, the perfectly-located junk of Rogers in Game 3, and Jeremy Bonderman taking a perfect game into the 6th inning in tonight's clincher, an 8-3 Detroit victory.

Now the lot of us die-hard baseball fans can watch the rest of October baseball with a relative peace of mind, knowing the Evil Empire has been sent golfing by a Tigers team that you cannot help but love.

I even saw Jim Leyland smile. :)

Turning Up the Heat on Lee Scott, Wal-Mart CEO

2006-09-30T17:34:00.000-07:00

If you read my last post, you may be familiar with George Monbiot's new website, turnuptheheat.org, started in the wake of his new book on global warming, dedicated to exposing the tokenism of corporations, celebrities, politicians, and other public figures who claim to be on the good side of the global warming fight.

Most of turnuptheheat's targets, however, have been British. In the United States, perhaps nowhere is a better target for an expose than Wal-Mart and its CEO, Lee Scott. To his credit, Scott has made some bold commitments for reducing Wal-Mart's environmental impact, but Wal-Mart's retail model -- including its sprawling, big-box stores and multi-thousand-mile distribution lines -- has always been the penultimate environmental offender. So it would be prudent to balance Wal-Mart's dubious environmental track record with the pretty substantial claims (albeit only claims) of its Chief Executive Officer.

Brudaimonia will undertake some of this expose, but it would be helpful to get some outside input, so keep on the lookout for developments in Wal-Mart's so-called greening strategy.

My Reply to Grist's Article on Sir Richard Branson

2006-09-29T22:03:00.000-07:00

Grist just wrote a softball piece on Sir Richard Branson's recently announced plans to take on climate change by investing in renewable energy.

I'll reprint my reply to the article below.

-------

Hmm, how to deal with the recent wave of corporate greenwashing seeping into the environmental discourse? It sure is tempting to gush over each token commitment by heretofore-notorious climate offenders. But we must continually ask the question as to whether such commitments are enough, because an "at-least-they're-doing-something" attitude is out of the question this late in the climate change solutions game.

From what I know of Sir Richard Branson, he has failed this test. Yes, he plans to invest in clean energy over 10 years. But, as George Monbiot has pointed out on his new website, Turn Up The Heat,

The problem is this: that the climate change crisis has to be addressed right now. We can’t wait for a new fuel to be developed in the unspecified future. Unless massive steps to curb carbon emissions are taken immediately, it will be too late to prevent some of the worst effects of global warming.

In the meantime, Branson's airplanes will only be worsening global warming. He plans to expand the number of business class seats over the next three years, making his planes less efficient per passenger.

This is really bad news for global warming, since Monbiot calculates that "Virgin Atlantic’s planes [already] produce 7.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year," or the equivalent of 6.2 million times the sustainable level of carbon dioxide emissions per person per year.

If he really wanted to do something substantial about climate change, he would begin phasing out airline routes right now. Flying is one of the worst forms of transportation as far as global warming goes, not only for the carbon dioxide each flight spews out, but also because of the water vapor it leaves in the atmosphere (which almost certainly exacerbates global warming). But of course, that makes no sense from a profit standpoint. After all, he admits that his greenwashing is "less a charitable endeavor than a brand-building, revenue-producing tactic."

Furthermore, since when is it responsible environmental journalism to uncritically report on $400 million biofuels investments and "state-of-the-art ethanol plants"? I know Grist has rightfully shed a critical light on biofuels in the past (for example, just a week ago), so why not here? Don't want to burst Branson's light green bubble? The article did not report whether any of the $400 million will be connected to destructive palm oil plantations (PDF) in Indonesia or Malaysia.

The article also failed to critically analyze Vinod Khosla's ethanol plants, despite the fact that at least one reliable blog, The Oil Drum, has thoroughly debunked his ethanol panacea.

Nor are questions raised about whether cellulosic ethanol (which, I agree, is a much better alternative than corn ethanol) can actually be implemented on a broad scale. As biofuel expert John Bennemann points out to the contrary,

these visions of tens of billions of gallons ethanol per year from biomass must, by all reasonable analysis, be considered a distant possibility not an imminent accomplishment...

Moreover, if Branson expects the airline industry to smoothly transition to a new fuel that probably can't even come close to satisfying the fuel demand for the world's automobile fleet, his level of optimism should at least be noted with a critical eye. In this article, it wasn't. In its place was the cornucopian belief that ethanol can reasonably be made into a "mainstream phenomenon."

Even if airplanes could be powered by ethanol, there are major safety issues to overcome, as Monbiot mentions:

A long and detailed report by researchers at Imperial College, London looked into the potential for using ethanol as an aviation fuel. It has a flashpoint of 12°C, which “would present major safety dangers.” It also emits acetaldehyde at low power settings, “bringing localised health problems around airports, especially for ground support staff.” For these reasons, ethanol is “unsuitable as a jet fuel”(12).

I am a pretty faithful Grist reader, and believe that it is unsurpassed on the internet in terms of the breadth plus depth of its reporting, but the more I read articles like this (of the "at-least-they're-doing-something" variety), the more it acquires the feel of a corporate press room.

I'd suggest everyone read Monbiot's entire article on Sir Richard Branson as a counterpoint to the uncritical, pat-on-the-back journalism displayed here.

Public Transportation Ridership Increase

2006-09-28T18:04:00.000-07:00

Public transportation ridership increased by 3.2% in the first six months of 2006, according to a report by the American Public Transportation Association.

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) today announced that public transportation ridership has increased by 3.2% in the first six months of 2006, as Americans took nearly 5 billion trips on public transit.

Most notably, light rail had the highest ridership increase: 9.4%.

The light rail systems in the following areas showed double digit increases from January through June 2006: Minneapolis, MN (23.4%); the state of New Jersey (15.1%); Boston, MA (13.4%); Buffalo, NY (12.2%); Los Angeles, CA (11.9%); Philadelphia, PA (11.9%); and San Diego, CA (11.9%).

Minneapolis's new light rail line, for all the criticism it took from Tim Pawlenty and other conservatives, has been a huge benefit for the city.

What should this suggest to Milwaukee, which has a public transit system worthy of most southern cities? It's time for this city to wake up and smell the coffee. (On the bright side, my last ride on a MCTC bus was sans those annoying TVs. Perhaps the Journal-Sentinel forwarded my unpublished LTE/diatribe against the TVs straight to the County, or it was published without me knowing about it.)

Sustainability, Obesity, and Urban Planning

2006-09-27T21:06:00.002-07:00

In the (tediously) growing public discourse on environmental consciousness in America, the realm of urban planning has sadly not reached the mainstream. Myriad mitigations and semi-solutions have been proposed for surviving or averting the natural resource shortages and potentially drastic climatic events of the next few decades, but fundamentally changing our business-as-usual approach to urban development is rarely mentioned.

That approach has for over half a century sacrificed efficiency for other goals (such as convenience and isolation) in a laissez faire manner, but with all the talk of increasing energy efficiency with regard to home appliances and so forth, talk of increasing the efficiency of our cities is unfortunately absent. One way of defining an efficient city in the realm of sustainability is one that provides relatively abundant public and private goods compared to the energy that is needed for its normal functioning.

As I pointed out in a post on the old Brudaimonia, American society today is perhaps the most inefficient society at fulfilling our desires in the history of the world. We use up a vast amount of resources per capita compared to most of the rest of the world and yet our quality of life leaves much to be desired.

What do we get for all of our suburbanization? For one, we get obesity.

Poor town planning which limits opportunities for children to take exercise has been blamed for fuelling an increase in obesity.

Leading US paediatrician Professor Richard Jackson called for a rethink in the way towns and cities are developed.

He said living in a walkable neighbourhood helped people keep off an average of seven pounds (3.17kg).

The suburban landscape dissuades us from using the most readily available, cheapest, and easiest to use renewable energy that we have: our own energy.

Humans were designed to keep active, [Jackson] said, and they were not designed for the modern, sedentary lifestyle that had become the norm.

He said the environment should support people to make healthy choices, but increasingly children were not given the option of walking.

These children have earned the nickname "cul-de-sac kids," and obesity is not the only result of having few places to walk. They become shut off from most of city life other than what they hear about through the distorted lens of the television. This is one of the causes of the latent racism which is quite prevalent in mostly-white suburban and exurban areas.

"In 1969, 48% of American students (90% of those who lived within a mile) walked or bicycled to school.

"In 1999, only 19% of children walked to or from school and 6% rode bicycles to school."

What is needed in the future is development of cities and towns that refocuses on community development, so that each neighborhood can, among other things, have a strong school nearby to and from which kids can walk. Then they can use their own energy to get around, and come into contact with the world around them, an opportunity of which most cul-de-sac kids are deprived these days.

What George Says

2006-09-23T00:17:00.000-07:00

I neglected to mention a couple weeks ago that I would be taking a break from posting for two weeks. This was because I was volunteering in New Orleans during that time. I am back now and will be writing a lengthy piece on the situation down there once I have time.

In the meantime, read Monbiot's latest. Refreshing, as always.

"Hang On to [Your] Hybrids": Tempering Chevron's Big Announcement

2006-09-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

The California-based oil company Chevron announced Tuesday that it had a successful test of the productive capacity of a deep sea oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

The successful test of one of the deepest oil wells ever drilled showed such promise that some believe the undersea oil pool could rank as the largest discovery of crude since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay began producing nearly 40 years ago.

The estimated reserves range from 3 billion barrels to 15 billion barrels. The breadth of this range suggests the uncertainties associated with deep sea drilling, a relatively new technique.

While Cornucopians are reveling in their rare helping of good news, and cable news outlets are gleefully reporting on "tumbling" gas prices (which, these days, means $2.50/gal), there are still many questions about "Jack," the name of Chevron's deep sea resevoir. From the original (LA Times article):

Although the discovery suggests that the undersea region holds more oil than previously thought, experts say the crude will be expensive to extract and years in coming.

What's more, growing demand in the U.S. and elsewhere could quickly eat up the production gains. And there is the uncertainty that comes with trying to figure out how much oil lies so far beneath the surface.

"It's phenomenal, if it's there," said Matthew Simmons, who heads Simmons & Co., a Houston investment bank that specializes in energy. "But until you get a field on production, you don't really know what's there…. It's a roll of the dice."

Simmons said the gulf had yielded several highly touted oil finds over the years that fell short of expectations.

Furthermore, as blogger Heading Out mentions on The Oil Drum,

Today's find was a record in a number of ways
More than a half a dozen world records for test equipment pressure, depth, and duration in deepwater were set during the Jack well test. For example, the perforating guns were fired at world record depths and pressures. Additionally, the test tree and other drill stem test tools set world records, helping Chevron and co-owners conduct the deepest extended drill stem test in deepwater Gulf of Mexico history.
The oil that was found was thus expensive to find, and will also be expensive to produce. It is also far enough out into the Gulf that the platforms that will produce it will run into the same risks that hit Thunder Horse and the Mars platforms, and which, should more hurricanes hit the area, may make it more difficult to find insurance.

The LA Times article gives official measurements of Chevron's well:

Chevron's well extends through 7,000 feet of water and then 20,000 feet below the sea floor. From the rig to the bottom, the well measures 28,175 feet — more than 5 miles

It is important to remember that this was just a test well.

Chevron, the largest holder of leases in the deep-water gulf region, would not estimate the cost of the project and would not say when the group might give the final go-ahead for building the massive and costly production rig needed to extract the oil. If the partners decide to develop the field, production will follow in six or seven years, Chevron said.

Given all these uncertainties, there is considerable reason for caution as to how this will affect production, and whether it will even matter in terms of making up for all the depletion of current oil fields from many different countries. But "caution" must not be in the vocabulary in the Fantasyland where Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is hanging out these days.

Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas), a longtime backer of increased offshore drilling, hailed the announcement.

"The discovery of oil that isn't half a world away and that might increase our country's petroleum reserves by billions of barrels in one swoop will do wonders for assuring American drivers can get gasoline at a price they can afford to pay," Barton said in a statement.

Good God. This has got to be one of the most ignorant statements ever uttered in Washington, and that's saying something. Just about the last thing on the entire planet that can be extracted "in one swoop" is oil five miles below sea level. The delusions generated by our auto-dominant society are truly something at which to marvel.

Like an Addict

2006-09-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

Mr. Bush rightfully said that we are "addicted to oil," but the ways in which we will satisfy that addiction in the future are just as chimerical as the chances that the Bush administration will do anything about it, save handing out large subsidies to his oil cronies.

Consider, for instance, the research going on at Shell's Exploration and Production Centre in Houston, according to this BBC article.

They are developing new technologies such as electromagnetic waves to peer through rock and silt for precious reserves of oil thousands of feet below the sea bed.

Like the addict who searches deep within the couch cushions for a few coins -- anything -- to help pay for his addiction.

Geophysicist Rocky Detomo's job is quite simple: to tackle the technologically impossible.

We're so addicted to oil we think we can beat the realities of geology and physics.

"We're looking deeper, we're looking in deeper water, we're looking at deeper depth, we're looking in countries we have never looked before, environments that are very had to get to," [Detomo] says.

"We have to bring all the technology we can to bear to be successful."

It should be clear by now that the US will stop at nothing to get our hands on more oil. Well, that should have been clear on a March night in 2002 when we began an illegal war on false pretenses in a country with some of the world's largest oil reserves.

And then there are submarines.

Roger Anderson, of Columbia University in New York, is working on fitting drills equipped with seismic imaging to submersibles, which could drill miles underground with gyroscopes to orientate themselves towards "the jackpot".

Oil would not need to be brought to the surface - but would be taken straight to shore through pipes across the sea bed.

Gee, I wonder what benthic ecoystems and other affected sea life would think of submarines with huge drill bits dredging up the ocean floor and then miles of pipeline along the seabed itself.

"The reason we're in ultra-deep water is that that's the last frontier," says Mr Anderson.

"We don't go there because we want to. We go there because it's the last place on earth where the elephants live."

As interesting as this technology may be, it's nothing compared to marveling at the persistent sense of inevitability we place on oil consumption. We just have to get more of it. This is like the twilight zone Ockham's Razor, and it makes crystal clear the irony of ridiculous comments like these:

Given all the potential advances, petroleum geologist William Fisher from the University of Texas believes we have a long time to go before any kind of peak emerges.

"Peak oil's been predicted a number of times over the years, and it continually moves forward," he says.

"Even people on the lower end of it increase their estimates over time, because technology and know-how improves. My own sense is that we won't find a peak, and that there will probably be a demand peak that will probably come in 25 or 30 years."

We "won't find" an oil production peak? To call this a delusion would be the Understatement of the Year. The irony begs the question, "If peak oil is so far off, why are we laboring to implement all these chimerical technologies like deep sea drilling, submarines with drill bits (!), tar sands, oil shale, and so forth? You don't dig for coins under the couch cushions if you have a cache of cash in your wallet.

I'll recommend once again Stuart Staniford's "Why peak oil is probably about now" for a primer on the coming oil production peak.

The Stories of the Hurricane

2006-08-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

("Flooded I-10/I-610/West End Blvd. interchange and surrounding area of northwest New Orleans and Metairie, Louisiana." Photo source: U.S. Coast Guard, via Wikipedia)

One year later, some NOLA-area residents tell their stories to Grist writer Piper Hanson. Here are a few quotes:

"Words alone could not describe what we saw. The entire area looked as if a bomb had exploded. It was utter devastation."

"There are so many items large and small just sitting out there in the sun that have memories attached to them, even though they are now completely unsalvageable. I hate to see them removed just the same because they represent my past and all the memories I have of growing up."

"I could smell the city before I ever saw the skyline. It was the worst scent I have ever experienced. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to encounter visually."

"I had never seen firsthand destruction on this scale. I was overcome with emotions, partly because this is where I grew up. All the connections to my childhood were lying in ruins."

"The inrush of saltwater had chemically burned and killed the trees, grass, and other plants. All the people, plants, insects, and animals were either dead or gone."

Upon Finally Seeing An Inconvenient Truth

2006-08-24T15:29:00.000-07:00

I finally saw An Inconvenient Truth this past Sunday. It took me so long to see it because I felt no urgency to see it, having already accepted the message therein. That message, of course, is that global warming is indeed happening, and that humans are a significant cause of it through the greenhouse gases we release into the atmosphere at alarming rates.

For some Americans, this is obvious, as they have accepted the wealth of evidence being put forth by climatologists and scientific organizations around the world. But another section of Americans has rejected this evidence in favor of the discredited findings (often from studies funded by resource extraction corporations such as Exxon) of a few climate skeptics and their pundit progenitors. This group contains many conservatives, members of the Christian right, and probably a good deal of mainstream Americans who are on the fence, not ready to accept the evidence of global warming because they have been kept skeptical by the aforementioned discredited findings.

These findings have probably given justification for many Americans to decide that it wasn't urgent to do anything to slow down the negative trends of global warming, even when scientific evidence was right in front of them.

So it is unfortunate that a movie such as An Inconvenient Truth had to be made. At this stage of climate change, we shouldn't still be trying to convince people that global warming exists. We're 20 years behind. The first step in dealing with a problem is recognizing that there is a problem. So Al Gore's documentary is valuable in that it helps expedite the recognition stage, but it's too bad we're still at that stage in the first place.

Corrosion of Business-as-Usual

2006-08-21T23:30:00.000-07:00

The BP Alaska pipeline corrosion problems were not isolated. They are part of a larger trend that spells more bad news for the global oil situation.

Oil Poised to Climb 20% as BP Shutdown Shows Industry Distress

By Tom Cahill and Sonja Franklin

Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc's shutdown of the largest U.S. oil field may be the first of many, as decaying pipelines threaten to add 20 percent to energy prices in the next decade.

``We'll look back on this event as the Pearl Harbor Day in energy,'' said Matthew Simmons, chairman of energy investment bank Simmons & Co. International in Houston. The chance that the leaks and corrosion found at Prudhoe Bay by BP, Europe's second- largest oil company, are an isolated occurrence is ``zero,'' said Simmons, who's writing a book on aging oil infrastructure.

A growing minority of analysts, oil executives and government officials say the current system for producing and transporting crude will be unable to deliver the energy needed in the next 10 years. Repairs and replacement of pipes, valves and refineries will help push oil to $93 a barrel by 2015, from around $70 today, says Barclays Capital analyst Kevin Norrish in London, the most accurate price forecaster in a survey by Bloomberg News last year.

Regarding the Oil Spill from Last Month's Israeli Bombing of a Beirut Power Plant

2006-08-08T11:46:00.000-07:00

The death toll in Lebanon has reached 900. UN aid convoys are now having trouble getting aid to South Lebanon. And to make this horrible crisis even worse, new information from the BBC News about the massive oil spill that resulted from an Israeli bomb dropped last month on the Jiyyeh Power Plant in Beirut predicts a long cleanup time and extensive damage to the coastal ecosystem and fisheries.

Lebanon's coastline could take up to 10 years to recover from a massive oil spill, the nation's environment minister has said.

Yacoub Sarraf said it was impossible to tackle the problem while the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel continued.

Marine experts have warned the spill could pose a cancer risk to people living in the affected areas.

The oil slick caused by Israeli bombing of a power station now covers 120km (75 miles) of the region's coasts.

The fishing community could take two to three years to recover. The current conflict in Lebanon is making cleanup efforts much more difficult.

The spill has increased in area. At the end of July, it had covered 80 km of coastline. Frighteningly, the spill may be comparable in volume to the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Initial reports indicated that 10,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil had escaped from damaged tanks, but the eventual total could be 35,000 tonnes.

By comparison, spillage from the Exxon Valdez accident totalled just under 40,000 tonnes of crude oil. [Ibid]

Prince William Sound's fisheries in Alaska are still feeling the impact of the Exxon Valdez spill, 17 years later, which suggests that predictions that the Lebanese fishing economy will recover in only 2 to 3 years, given the comparable volume between the two spills, may be overly optimistic.

What Condition our (Air) Conditioning's In

2006-08-07T13:56:00.000-07:00

An eye-opening piece by William Saletan of Slate on another one of society's comfort drugs: air conditioning. Strongly recommended.

More Bad News for Oil Prices

2006-08-07T01:02:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this on Sunday night (really early Monday morning), wondering what will happen to oil prices once the US markets open later this morning, based on this disquieting news (via the Oil Drum).

Because of severe corrosion in one of the pipelines, BP is temporarily closing the production from the Prudhoe Bay oilfield, and, in the process, cutting off some 400,000 barrels of oil a day, some 8% of US production.

Several news articles are already reporting jumps to $76/barrel in Asian markets.

Pipeline problems are nothing new this year for BP. Recall that there was a huge spill back in March on Alaska's north slope.

The temporary shutdown of Prudhoe Bay, the tensions in the Middle East, reports of Gulf States' inability to significantly boost output. Get out your bikes and walking shoes, folks.

Bush Administration's Questionable New Interpretation of Clean Water Act Upheld

2006-08-05T17:40:00.000-07:00

There was bad news - and potentially very bad news - for the environment and water quality on Friday. A federal court decision (PDF) is allowing a gold mine to dump millions of tons of mine tailings into a freshwater lake just north of Juneau, Alaska.

A federal district judge rejected a legal challenge by three environmental groups (Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, Sierra Club, and Lynn Canal Conservation) of a permit granted by the US Army Corps of Engineers to Coeur Alaska, a subsidiary of the international mining corporation Coeur d'Alene Mines, to dispose approximately 4.5 million tons of tailings into Lower Slate Lake, a freshwater lake that empties through a creek into Berners Bay, a wildlife-rich and ecologically sensitive area about 45 miles north of Juneau.

A legitimate question is how, over 30 years after the Clean Water Act was passed, does a mining corporation get to dump tailings directly into a freshwater lake? Wasn't the Act passed to prevent this sort of thing from happening? The answer to the first question is that the Bush administration, through the Corps of Engineers, has redefined mine tailings as "fill" in its regulations. Under the Clean Water Act it is permissible under certain conditions to dump "fill" into bodies of fresh water.

In general, permitting for the discharge of effluents is vested in the EPA, the granting of which must meet strict standards. Congress has, however, carved out an exception, vesting primary permitting authority in the Corps for the disposal of "dredged or fill material" into navigable waters at specified disposal sites. [Court decision, page 8]

To be fair, the processing method for the ore is not cyanide leaching, one of the worst kinds of mining. Therefore the central issue of this case - the toxicity of the tailings - was not obvious. However, it is a common anticipation (admitted even by Coeur Alaska) that

most aquatic life in Lower Slate Lake will be lost during mining operations, primarily due to being covered with the discharged material. [Court decision, page 4]

It is also true that the tailings will be toxic at the time of discharge.

Tests on the tailings show that they will not generate an acid discharge or metals leachate. While the pH around the discharge pipe is expected to be toxic to the aquatic environment, it is anticipated this will dissipate very rapidly. [Court decision, page 4]

Interesting to note is that the mine has not applied for a mixing zone permit, which usually is needed when effluent is toxic, turbid, or otherwise harmful, but is expected to dilute once discharged into the water.

You can read the detailed argument given by the district judge in the rest of the decision, but I will elaborate as follows. The Clean Water Act did not expressly define "fill material," which leaves it up to the EPA to do so in its regulations. A pro-mining EPA such as the current one would obviously be inclined to establish regulations that define fill material as broadly as possible, and a broad definition is exactly what came about. "Discharge of fill material" under 33 C.F.R. § 323.2(f) (Corps) or 40 C.F.R. § 232.2 (EPA) includes "placement of overburden, slurry, or tailings or similar mining-related materials." One of the plaintiffs' arguments was that including mine tailings in the definition of fill material violated the CWA, but the judge rejected it by arguing that the specific sections cited by the plaintiffs in the CWA were "inapplicable" if the permit nonetheless accorded with Section 404 of the Act. As I understand it, it is kind of like the regulations turning the power of definition granted them by the CWA back on the Act itself to trump other sections that seek to prohibit this kind of definitional chicanery on the part of federal regulators in charge of interpreting the statutes.

Disturbing is the fact that the mine tailings are toxic, and were admitted to being toxic in the court decision. So the assertion that they are simply "fill material" is dubious at best and a clear transgression on the progress the U.S. has made in safeguarding clean water since the Industrial Revolution. The scary thing about this decision is that it could have a foot-in-the-door effect for future mining operations to use fresh water as dumping sites in order to make more profit. (It's worth keeping in mind, for this case, that Coeur Alaska originally had a permit for a dry-stack tailings disposal facility in the 1990s, but found that dumping the mine's waste directly into a freshwater lake was much cheaper - and suddenly potentially permissible once the Bush administration took office.) As the press release from the plaintiffs reminds us,

The Kensington Mine will be the first mine in a generation allowed to dispose of its waste in a lake or stream.

[snip]

If the decision allowing the use of Lower Slate Lake as a waste dump at the proposed Kensington Mine stands, it will set a major precedent, state-wide and nation-wide, for future mines. Allowing a mining company to dump tailings in a lake at Kensington could have a strong effect on approval for the massive, controversial Pebble mine near Bristol Bay, which [even] Senator Ted Stevens [!] and many Alaskans oppose because of the harm it could do to the $100-million-dollar fisheries there.

This unfortunate decision could have a ripple effect when combined with the current ramping up of mining activity across the US, such that the future of our clean water, the many victories for water quality that have been won through tireless organizing by many evironmental groups and concerned citizens, could be despoiled.

Pat Robertson Now Believes in Global Warming

2006-08-03T15:11:00.000-07:00

It took the nation's blistering heat wave to convince Pat Robertson of global warming.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said on Thursday the wave of scorching temperatures across the United States has converted him into a believer in global warming.

"We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels," Robertson said on his "700 Club" broadcast. "It is getting hotter, and the icecaps are melting and there is a buildup of carbon dioxide in the air."

This week the heat index, the perceived temperature based on both air temperatures and humidity, reached 115 Fahrenheit in some regions of the U.S. East Coast. The 76-year-old Robertson told viewers that was "the most convincing evidence I've seen on global warming in a long time."

Word has it he was on the road to Damascus (actually New York) when the incredible heat struck him down and a voice called out to him from the heavens (actually the atmosphere): "Pat, Pat, why hast thou denyeth me?" Overwhelmed with this epiphany, he vowed to preach the gospel of global warming to his enraptured television audience.

Seriously though, you could cut the irony with a knife. A man builds a gigantic fortune from belief in something for which there is no evidence, while simultaneously denying something (at least in public, up until now) for which there is plenty of evidence. The reason for belief in the former is supposedly word of mouth (or "tradition") passed down from generation to generation over 2000 years, yet Robertson rejected similar "word of mouth" messages from his contemporaries (aka scientists conducting peer-reviewed studies) on global warming, and only believed it when it smacked him - personally - in the face.

Rails to Trails

2006-07-22T12:06:00.000-07:00

I experienced the Glacial Drumlin State Trail a week ago when I biked from Sullivan, Wisconsin to Madison last Saturday and from Madison to Milwaukee last Monday. I had stayed up late Friday night taking apart and reassembling my bike's two wheel hubs, cleaning off each individual part of the hubs (including the bearings), and repacking each one with new grease. This along with some other maintenance and cleaning ensured that my bike ran smoothly on the way to Madison and back.

I recommend checking out a rails-to-trails bike trail. They have the advantage of being relatively isolated from traffic (only at cross intersections) and have a gentle grade characteristic of rail lines (so no serious climbs). They work well for the bike commuter if the trail happens to be in the right place. The Midtown Greenway in St. Paul, a trail I used frequently in my last year of college, is also a former rail line, and it takes one conveniently from one side of Minneapolis to the other.

Indonesian Palm Oil and Its Threat to the Rainforest

2006-07-12T20:16:00.000-07:00

There needs to be a major debate within governments and in the general public about what most environmentalists already aware of: the limits and downsides of biofuels as solutions to the growing global energy and environmental crises. I suspect that the prevalent assumption in these realms about biofuels is that they will somehow play a major part in a seamless transition from oil as a fuel for our transportation sector.

The long list of concerns with biofuels, including, but not limited to, EROEI (Energy Returned over Energy Invested), water use, soil degradation, and, perhaps most problematic, land use, proves that this assumption is oversimplified to the point of being dangerous if it continues without modification.

The Christian Science Monitor has one of the latest articles addressing the land use problem in one of biodiesel's production hot spots: Indonesia.

...the government plans to spend tens of millions of dollars to build four biodiesel plants and develop hundreds of thousands of acres of palm oil plantations every year using a total of $1 billion in government funds.

[snip]

[Environmentalists] have long suspected that palm oil production is a ploy to log rainforest areas, destroying habitat for such threatened wildlife as orangutans, Sumatran tigers, and rhinoceros, as well as land used for local livelihoods.

"They're going to solve one problem by creating another," says Rudi Lemuru, executive director of the palm oil industry watchdog Sawit Watch. "They say biofuel is to minimize air pollution, but when they cut the forests, they create a new problem."

The situation may be worse in neighboring Malaysia, as George Monbiot pointed out last year.

In September, Friends of the Earth published a report about the impacts of palm oil production. “Between 1985 and 2000,” it found, “the development of oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of deforestation in Malaysia”(8). In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest has been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares is scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5m in Indonesia.

Almost all the remaining forest is at risk. Even the famous Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan is being ripped apart by oil planters. The orang-utan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos, tigers, gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species could go the same way. Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted from their lands, and some 500 Indonesians have been tortured when they tried to resist(9). The forest fires which every so often smother the region in smog are mostly started by the palm growers. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic vegetable oil field.

Before oil palms, which are small and scrubby, are planted, vast forest trees, containing a much greater store of carbon, must be felled and burnt. Having used up the drier lands, the plantations are now moving into the swamp forests, which grow on peat. When they’ve cut the trees, the planters drain the ground. As the peat dries it oxidises, releasing even more carbon dioxide than the trees. In terms of its impact on both the local and global environments, palm biodiesel is more destructive than crude oil from Nigeria.

Think about that last line for a second: more destructive than crude oil in Nigeria.

Fortunately, thanks in part to environmentalists' efforts, there is both awareness and a search for alternative solutions back in Indonesia.

The government earlier this year scrapped plans to create the world's largest palm oil plantation - nearly 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) - in one of the world's most diverse forest areas in the center of Borneo after it was shown that most of the land was too high and steep for palm oil. Government scientist Utami says there are more than 20 million hectares (49 million acres) of "unproductive land" the government could use to grow more palm oil for biodiesel. Environmentalists are wary of what the government means by "unproductive."

[snip]

Officials are also looking at cheaper alternatives to palm oil-based biodiesel. The seed of the jatropha tree, for example, can be processed into biodiesel more cheaply than palm oil. The trees grow well in places where little else can, and the crop might even be able to ease poverty in remote areas with marginal farmland.

"If jatropha can meet the demand, we will use that for biodiesel," says Nenny Sri Utami, head of research at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.

But while jatropha was grown during World War II in Indonesia to fuel Japanese tanks and airplanes, the plantations fell into disuse afterward. Redeveloping them into a viable fuel option would take years, and energy technologies might evolve in the meantime.

It would be worth a couple more years of R and D to save Indonesia's rainforests from being eliminated for good. I don't know much about the jatropha tree, but insofar as it can be and is grown in places where few other crops can (and where rainforests don't grow), then it is a way around the land use problem. Here is a PDF for more info.

Much Ado about Coal Gasification

2006-07-10T20:23:00.000-07:00

David Roberts over at Grist provides a summary of recent articles on coal gasification, an alt fuel idea of rejuvenated popularity due to high oil prices. The latest hubub has centered around Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer's nationally-scaled promotion (with posts on Daily Kos) of allegedly clean diesel for automobiles derived from coal through the Fischer-Tropsch process. The process is only clean if the carbon dioxide emitted from the process (which amounts to about twice as much as when petroleum is burned), is sequestered, i.e. not released into the air.

Schweitzer's zeal in pushing coal gasification -- motivated greatly by Montana's huge coal resources -- has yielded some pretty compelling pros to gasifying coal at a time when we need to free ourselves from our dependence on oil and when cleaner coal-to-gas plants would be a better alternative than the upcoming wave of conventional coal power plants proposed to be built in the U.S. in the near future, but Roberts is still rightly skeptical.

Having read a good bit about all this, my skepticism has not been overcome. Here are what I see as the big limitations on gasification/sequestration:

- Coal boosters say we have 250 years worth of coal in this country. But as Jeff Goodell argues persuasively in Big Coal, this number is wildly exaggerated. Much of that coal lies under inhabited or wilderness areas; the estimate is based on outdated studies; it assumes our usage won't increase, but the whole point of "energy independence" would be to increase it substantially. In short, if we replace all oil with liquefied coal, we'd burn through the coal quickly and do immeasurable damage to our natural landscapes in the process.

- Schweitzer brushes off concern about mining, saying the surface mining in Montana is safe and landscapes are reclaimed. The truth is a bit more complicated.

- Right now, the only demand for CO2 sequestration comes from enhanced oil recovery. Do we really want to enable the recovery of tons more oil, which would bring the price of oil down and, oh yeah, get burned and release CO2?

- Who's going to pay for all the sequestration that doesn't help recover oil? Remember, if coal-to-liquid is to replace any substantial percentage of our oil, there's going to have to be a lot of it, and that means a lot of sequestration. Sequestration requires a great deal of money and a particular set of geological features. How will it scale up?

The more fundamental problem with the push to gasify coal is that it shows how unwilling we are as a nation to find alternative means of transportation than personal, motorized automobiles. Our stubbornness in trying to maintain our unsustainable lifestyles is directly proportional with how chimerical our energy solutions are.