Environmental Disasters

As we're  on the edge of our seats about the BP spill in the gulf, the Nigerian Delta has experienced the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every year since the 1960's.  Foreign Policy lists 5 on-going environmental disasters, from underground coal fires in China and Pennsylvania, which produce 2-3% of global greenhouse gas every year to the Eastern Garbage Patch, which is a mess of garbage and plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean larger than the size of the continental US and about 100 feet deep.

Oil Spill

The oil slick may be reaching the shore of Louisiana today, endangering wildlife as well as an enormous oyster cultivation industry. BP has said it would welcome military/national guard intervention, which has been discussed by Louisiana's governor.

I've avoided writing about it because I just didn't want to think about it at all.

For more from NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/us/01gulf.html

From National Geographic: Gulf Oil Spill Pictures: Aerial Views Show Leak's Size

Green Meanie

You all know my green leanings and interest in energy security & conservation. This article in the Telegraph tells you about the real me.  (Just kidding, but it's quite funny.)
Hat tip: Dad.

Do Green Products Make Us Better People?, a paper in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science, argues that those who wear what the authors call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. Faced with various moral choices – whether to stick to the rules in games, for example, or to pay themselves an appropriate wage – the green participants behaved much worse in the experiments than their conventional counterparts. The short answer to the paper's question, then, is: No. Greens are mean.

The authors, two Canadian psychologists, came up with an intriguing explanation for this. "Virtuous acts," they write, "can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviour." It's the yin-yang theory of psychology, or "compensatory ethics", to give it its proper name. Buy an organic potato, then go home and beat your wife with The Guardian. Hop smugly into a green hybrid car, then use it to run over little old ladies doing their shopping.

This "moral balancing" argument, however, clearly has its limits. Most people are sufficiently balanced without having to swing to opposite ends of the moral spectrum. We can give money to charity without dipping into the company till at the same time. Every good act doesn't necessitate a bad one. To every action, there is not an equal and opposite reaction. Buying an expensive courgette with a bit of mud on it need not turn you into a tyrant.

...

As with the worst type of religious zealot, there is nothing more annoying than the zeal of the converted, especially when it is tainted with the hypocrisy of self-righteousness. As we report today, people are more likely to buy environmentally friendly produce in shops than on the internet. Being seen to be green is more important than anything else. I wonder whether that will change if it now becomes a case of being seen to be mean.

...

And now, at last, we have confirmation that they're tight as well. They might be willing to pay over the odds for a lovingly tended carrot, but in every other area of normal human activity, their greenness is merely a mask for miserliness. The wind turbine, the tandem bike with a dangerous little buggy on the back for the twins, the self-denying holidays in Wales… Get a boiler! Get a car! Get out of here!

We have been kind to these unkind people for far too long. Now that their halo has fallen and they can no longer boast their green credentials as a shorthand for moral superiority, it is time to fight fire with fire. How about a little compensatory ethics of our own? Double the tax on organic food as a deterrent; it is clearly a starter drug to a lifetime of amorality. Stop and search anyone in a Prius. Conduct dawn raids on north London allotments. Otherwise, one can only imagine the sort of dystopia that would ensue if these mean little green men were allowed to run amok.

Allegory

I hope that you have all seen the movie Avatar, preferably in 3D.  I've even thought about going back to see the IMAX version.

Most critics said, and I don't disagree, that with such emphasis on 3D visuals, you can't really expect the characters to be three dimensional as well. That aside, apparently the struggle of the Na'vi has been compared to a dizzying number of other causes and trends.

• Palestinian protesters in the town of Bilin dressed up as Na'avi recently to protest the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

• Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales has praised Avatar as a "profound show of resistance to capitalism and the struggle for the defense of nature."

• Chinese bloggers have compared the film's story to the exploitation of Chinese citizens by government-backed real estate developers -- a factor that may have contributed to the film being pulled from Chinese theaters.  

• Activists ran ads in the Hollywood newspaper Variety comparing the Na'avi to India's forest-dwelling indigenous tribe, the Dongria, whose territory is now threatened by a planned bauxite mine.

• Environmentalists Lori Pottinger compared the story of Avatar to the Brazilian government's plans to build dams in the Amazon Basin.

• Russian Communists described the film as an attempt to justify Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. 

• New York Times columinist Ross Douthat called the movie "an apolologia for pantheism."

• David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Institute says the movie is about "defending property rights".

• Last but not least, Cameron himself says the movie is an allegory about the U.S. war on terror. 

Green Buddhist School in Ladakh

More from BuddhistArtNews.com, my new favorite source, news of an award winning ultra-green school in Ladakh, which is quite a poor corner of India that borders China and is the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir. I visited there in 2004 for a week after a business trip to India. During one of my day trips from Leh, I crossed the 3rd highest pass in the world - serious altitude. There was an Indian Army post there and the soldiers from very warm Punjab were so delighted to see anyone that they invited us in for tea. But I digress...

Here's the cool school:

Barely 15 km southeast of Leh, the hilly headquarters of Ladakh district in Jammu and Kashmir, lies one of India’s most innovative “green” schools that operates on solar power and draws on natural elements to provide “sustainable education” to poor children.

The earthquake-resistant Druk White Lotus School, made of local sandstone, poplar and willow wood, steel, glass and solar panels, straddles a sandy stretch of cold desert in Shey village, flanked by barren mountains.

The school, a seat of education that blends the traditional Ladakhi culture, Buddhist philosophy and modern learning modules, is the winner of three World Architecture Awards - for the best “Asian Building”, the best “Green Building” and the best “Education Building”.

Cap & Trade $175/household/year

The Waxman-Markey bill which would establish a carbon cap and trade system in the US is coming up for a vote fairly soon. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will cost on average $175 per household.

By annually reducing the supply of these permits, the cap-and-trade legislation written by House Democrats Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts would lower the limit on greenhouse gases to 17 percent less than 2005 levels by 2020, according to Bloomberg News.

The CBO analysis estimates that the legislation will cost the richest U.S. households $245 a year, and the poorest will see gains of $40 a year. [environmentalleader.com]

Is it worth it? Is it worth it if we can prevent massive global displacement? One of the front page articles in this weekend's FT, contained the following:

Estimates of the number of environmental refugees in 2050, when the global population is expected to peak at 9 billion and the planet is forecast to be in the throes of a 2°C-or-more temperature rise, vary between 50 million and 1 billion people. But the most commonly repeated number – included in Britain’s 2006 Stern Review – is between 200 and 250 million, or around 10 times the number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world today.

Chicago at the forefront of environmental design

Really, Mayor Daley does a good job in promoting sustainability and all things environmental for this City. I think it's great. LEED-ND (Neighborhood Design) is still a standard that is under development by the US Green Building Council and I'm delighted that the City is taking its tenants for use in their planning for this south side area, which is pretty blighted. For more info click here (warning it's a 50 MB pdf.)

As part of an effort to stimulate sustainable and equitable economic development in one of the more socioeconomically distressed areas of the region, the City of Chicago is sponsoring one of the largest sustainable neighborhood revitalization developments in the country. Consisting of 1,140 acres in the South Chicago neighborhood, the Leadership for Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development (LEED ND) plan will serve as a guide to the city for sustainable redevelopment on the south side for the next 25 years.

Currently responsible for the redevelopment plan is City Planner Marilyn Engwall, who has been a part of the effort for nearly a decade. Engwell stresses the comprehensive nature of the redevelopment and the necessity to engage in sustainable community building. “This is a plan—a long range plan—and not a project,” she stated, adding, “This is an area that definitely needs development.”

Developed by the U. S. Green Building Council, LEED ND projects take the building standards of LEED and many of the hallmarks of new urbanism, and apply them to an entire area. In addition to requiring new homes in the South Chicago LEED ND to be certified as LEED Silver or better, the initiative incorporates LEED ND standards of easy access to transit, close walking distance to schools and parks, and the remediation of environmentally unsuitable sites. Plans exist for the integration of the three existing Metra stops in the neighborhood with an elaborate transit network reliant on the streetcar—a system that has already gained some traction and financing among local merchants. Whether this part of the plan will happen will take years to determine.

FT's take on Obama's car efficiency plan

Although a tax of $1 or $2 per gallon of petrol would be more effective in altering consumer behaviour and giving a clear demand signal to manufacturers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles, it would not get through Congress.

But it is an inefficient – and probably ineffective – way of meeting the twin aims Mr Obama has set out for the motor industry and the US carmakers: to curb fuel consumption and dependence on foreign oil and to help the Detroit three “once more outcompete the world”.

The corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) rules that Mr Obama wants to tighten have a history of causing unintended consequences. They were passed in 1975, following the oil crisis, to get drivers to buy smaller and more efficient cars, but instead gave Detroit an incentive to make sports utility vehicles.

The basic problem with the CAFE standards is that, rather than altering patterns of demand, they attempt to ration supply. This flaw is exacerbated by the divide in the rules between standards for “cars” and for “light trucks”, which Detroit has ingeniously exploited.

By the 1980s, petrol was cheap again and drivers did not want to buy the lighter, less powerful cars that were fuel-efficient. Instead, they switched en masse to people carriers and SUVs that were classified as light trucks, and so could be thirstier...

A petrol tax is a rare example of a policy that would be simple, let the market operate, and be likely to achieve Mr Obama’s aims. “This is a noble long-term goal, but a gas tax is an immediate incentive to change,” says David Gerard, an economist at Carnegie Mellon university.

Unfortunately, raising the federal petrol tax, which is currently 18 cents per gallon, to levels that would make it bite is not politically achievable in the US. Instead, the president has had to rally everyone around a clunky and leaky regulatory alternative. That really is extraordinary. [FT]

Sec of Energy Chu

Last week, Secretary of Energy Chu gave a lecture titled, "The Energy Problem and the Interplay between Basic and Applied Research." Here's the review of the lecture at Salon.com, where you can also find a video of the entire lecture.

Addressing a roomful of scientists and students at MIT on Tuesday, however, gave Chu a chance to let his geek flag fly. In a packed auditorium, he delivered MIT's Compton Lecture on the topic "The Energy Problem and the Interplay between Basic and Applied Research." It must have been a huge relief not to have to dumb himself down -- this was an audience primed to laugh appreciatively at jokes about microscopy involving the word "angstrom." I just spent a little over an hour watching it, and I had to marvel, once again, at the fact that a real scientist, a fervent believer in the fundamental importance of basic scientific research, is the man in charge at the Department of Energy. (Thanks to Greentech Media for the tip.)

His lecture ranged across a wide variety of topics, from the number of Nobel Prizes that have been granted for advances in fertilizer technology (two and a half) to the energy efficiency improvements in American refrigerators to the history of Bell Labs and how advances in quantum physics paved the path from the vacuum tube to the transistor. Through it all, he expressed confidence and optimism in the premise that technological progress will allow us to confront the challenges of climate change and energy constraints. There's a lot of "exciting" science to be done, he said more than once, and he seemed thrilled at the prospect of spending the government's checkbook funding the "dazzling" work of the future.

Perhaps most important, while he touted likely advances in battery technology and solar power and genetically engineered biofuels, he was very clear on one point: The crucial front to make immediate progress on is energy efficiency and conservation. Buildings consume 40 percent of the energy used in the United States each year: Making them more energy efficient might not win Chu another Nobel Prize, but it could easily save us from having to build a few more power plants that we can't afford.

He finished with a slide of a picture of the Earth rising above the lunar landscape taken by the astronauts on Apollo 8.

"It's our home," said Chu. "Let's take care of it."

It's about time

For years, Detroit has spent more money on lobbyists fighting higher fuel efficiency standards than they have on efficiency R&D. The Bush administration was on their side - hey, fat cars were good for W's oil buddies.

At long last, now that they've got no choice, US car manufacturers are going to have to do what's right. Too bad they couldn't manage to do it of their own volition, but had to be strong-armed.

Why, after decades of battling, complaining and maneuvering over fuel economy standards, did carmakers fall in line behind the tough new nationwide mileage standard President Obama announced Tuesday?

Because they had no choice. The auto industry is flat on its back, with Chrysler in bankruptcy, General Motors close to it, and both companies taking billions of dollars in federal money. Foreign automakers are getting help from their own governments. Climate change legislation is barreling down the track, and Congress showed last fall that it had no appetite to side with Detroit any more.

Simply put, Detroit and the other companies need Washington’s help, and they are powerless to block the rules Washington dictates.

“They can feel the political winds changing,” said David Doniger, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council who has faced the car companies in court many times. “They need government aid to stay in business. When you have your hand out for help, it’s hard to use the same hand to thumb your nose at the federal government.”

In 2005, car companies were able to stop fuel economy legislation. By 2007, with the country awakened to the realization that global warming was a threat, they were forced to go along with higher standards but managed to water them down.

This time, they arrived at the table so debilitated they could extract only the barest of concessions. The primary gift carmakers received from Mr. Obama in Tuesday’s proposal was the certainty of one fuel economy standard from California to Maine, rather than the patchwork that would have resulted from two sets of regulations, one by the 18 states that wanted tighter standards, and another for everywhere else. [NYTimes.com]

Car-free suburb in Germany

Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before: they have given up their cars.

Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.

As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here. “When I had a car I was always tense. I’m much happier this way,” said Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, as she walked verdant streets where the swish of bicycles and the chatter of wandering children drown out the occasional distant motor.

Vauban, completed in 2006, is an example of a growing trend in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to separate suburban life from auto use, as a component of a movement called “smart planning.” [NY Times]

So, what do you think? Is it the right thing to do, reducing emissions and oil dependency, while encouraging exersize? Or is it taking this whole green thing too far?

Market forces at work in China... for the environment

The Chinese capital of Beijing will increase water prices this year as it aims to restrict total water consumption to 3.58 billion cubic meters according to China News Service. [Environmental Leader.com]

3 Birds with One Stone

I love hearing about these ideas that solve several problems at the same time.

Kenya's huge and squalid slums don't have much of anything, except mountains of trash that fill rivers and muddy streets, breeding disease.

Now Kenyan designers have built a cooker that uses the trash as fuel to feed the poor, provide hot water and destroy toxic waste, as well as curbing the destruction of woodlands.

After nine years of development, the prototype "Community Cooker" is close to being rolled out in overcrowded refugee camps as well as slums around the country where the filth encourages diseases including cholera.

Chicago's Green Hotels

The City of Chicago began a Green Hotel Initiative, working to have the most green hotels of any city in the country. Given the incredible resource use that hotels represent, I love that the City is working on this. Thirty-some hotels have either gone through the certification process already or are on their way.

Slough cuts climate change emissions

The town of Slough cuts climate change emissions. Should TV's The Office be concerned?: Scientific American Blog

OK, this angle on this article isn't terribly serious, but I'm amazed that Slough (the Scranton of the UK, or perhaps the Schaumburg) has emissions targets for itself, even if they are making them less ambitious. Does Scranton? Does Schaumburg? Will non-major towns in the US keep up?

Clean Coal Ad

This ad is from Al Gore's Reality Coalition. Do you think it's effective? I'm not so sure. It asserts there's no such thing as clean coal, without giving evidence. I just saw it while I was watching This Week. I may not disagree, but I feel like the ad and the accompanying website talk down to the reader/viewer, not trusting we can handle actual information.

Knowing a bit about coal-fired generation, building new coal plants that would allow older ones to be shut down would help the environment. Given that a full one half of US electricity is produced through coal and that we have a lot of coal in the ground, what is Gore's suggestion as an alternative? The US needs a short term solution to its power issue, which can not be satisfied only through alternatives.

Global Warming: Bush Impersonation

This is awesome!

Games!

OK, this isn't quite in the spirit of the Super Bowl, which I'm now watching, but this game is a free on-line city building game in the vein of SimCity: electrocity.co.nz

I read about it on a NYTimes blog last week, which was suggesting that SimCity and other games like that could have more influence on environmental thinking than An Inconvenient Truth by actually demonstrating the pressures and trade-offs of industry, growth, prosperity and agriculture. SimCity will also throw the occasional natural disaster at you as well.

Try out Electrocity - you can play a game in 15-20 minutes. It's addictive.

Peace Prize

I have to say I'm disappointed with the choice of Al Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize. I've spent my career in the areas of environment and alternative energy, so a number of people approached me on Friday morning, smiling, to talk about it. Yes, it brings further attention to issues of the environment, which is good. But Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth is misleading and emotive. He lacks scientific rigor and just goes for the heart-strings. I'm not a big fan.

I was pleased to see that they tempered it by sharing the prize with the UN's IIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but the whole thing strikes me as political and Hollywood.

Ratatouille & Compact Florescent Bulbs

I came across this very nice little cartoon that I would like all of you to watch. I am an energy/environment conscious person, but those of you who know me, know that this is as preachy as I will get. Let your children watch this as well.
Also, has anyone seen the movie, Ratatouille? I know it's been out a while, already. I want to see it.