Living the American Green

Terror V. Warming: everyone can agree that there will probobly be a lot of flames.

It’s all so clear now.  Verily, the scales have dropped from my eyes.  I never realized the problem with global warming until Big Hollywood pointed it out!  The site asks the all important question: Ever notice how as the threat of global terrorism reaches a crescendo, so apparently does the threat of global climate change?

That’s right: according to Big Hollywood, I am worried about global warming because I am too much of a pussy to fight terrorists.

First of all, let me say that I am ashamed for linking to the site that brought us such insightful social commentaries as “rap is crap“, but in the same way that I find myself unable to stop watching the Republican leadership bumble about, I am also unable to stop reading what passed for insightful commentary out there.  Or… was that humor?  The author is a comedian, and she is peppering that piece with delightful Ann Coulterisms about abortion, guns, and liberal spending.

Ok, so lets look at this thang.

(more…)

Ok, so we missed it.  Being out of the city for 8 days, I stopped checking every single environmental blog ever, and somehow missed this Earth Hour thing.  

For those of you also apparently living under a rock: Saturday the 28th we were all supposed to turn our lights out, starting at 8:30 pm and lasting for one hour.  By doing this, we were voting on who would win in a match up between Earth and global warming.  I guess that means I voted for global warming?  Clearly, mistakes were made.

According to PR, they were expecting 1 billion people to participate, but since no one has gone back and counted em we will have to be happy with some really beautiful pictures from major monuments around the globe going dark.  If you have a moment, this slide show is worth the time.  Especially nice: Vegas Strip unplugged:  unlike anything you’ve seen in the desert for quite some time.  It’s down at the bottom at #17.

So, big sweeping symbolic gestures being what they are (mostly pointless, in my mind), I am glad to see that some big companies are getting on board with this stuff.  Coca-cola turning off their sign for an hour means something to me: not that corporations are being more responsible, but that they are susceptible to being pressured by large numbers of people into doing something, however symbolic.

But did we really have to call it “Vote Earth”?  Who came up with that?  Right, because we are so good about voting that we really want to tie turning out the lights to that boat.    The two things Americans do so poorly: get out and vote, plus conserve electricity.  Now, we can ignore both civic and social responsibilities at the same time!

Seriously though: why dosn’t congress get in on the symbolism race?  It would be a pretty cool and symbolic gesture of federal buildings started turning out their big sweeping nightlights until someone can figure out how to run them all on alternative energy.  How about Earth Until-we-solve-this-shit?

Capitalism Ruins everything... but it is SHINY

Capitalism, she is a tricky business.  Yessir.  The simplicity that comes with making profit the bottom line in all things is both aggravating and secretly attractive to me: if only life were as simple as to make those measurements the be all and end all!

Even as I profess to shun capitalism (it does ruin everything), I recognize that the engines that drive this country are capitalist ones, and that the best way to get all environmental up in this piece might be to tie it to a capitalist bus and prove that following the money to glory is a good idea.  Though, yelling slogans at Coal plants is also a good option, don’t get me wrong…

Anyway, to this end, I was considering attending the 2009 Wallstreet Green Trading Summit.  After all, someone is going to be making a lot of money in the next few years if they could

• Learn the ins and outs of carbon trading and finance
• Learn from companies implementing the new green business model
• Find out why forestry is primed to accelerate as a carbon funding vehicle
• Investigate how demand response is becoming a fungible market for trading white tags
• Find out from the pioneers in environmental finance what the investment opportunities are in GHG, Renewable, Negawatts and Energy Efficiency

Man, sounds exciting!  And Practical!  I don’t even know what a fungible market is, but it sounds delicious!  Maybe Capitalism doesn’t ruin everything, if you can only inject a modicum of humanity into the business world!  A three bottom-line model, with environment and public health weighing in on the dis… wait.  What?  it costs HOW much to attend?  $1400 for two days, plus $900 for the opening evening seminar??

Man.  Capitalism ruins everything.

With apologies to my friend Mark, the sage that allows us to continue to LtAG to our little heart’s content, it is time for another streaming video of awesomeness.  Everyone: only watch this when other people aren’t using the Internet for useful things.  Bandwidth is at a premium these days.  Also, Sorry Mark.

Now, on to the important things.  Who wants to take a field trip to the Science Barge?  It’s in New York, and it looks really exciting.  It’s like they are hippies, but they are the most productive hippies of all time.  Prippes?  Sci-ippies?  Scippies?

When the question of converting a home or business to solar power arises, often another “green” question comes into play. What about the money? Solar Power is a tricky business. It costs a good deal up front, but it does offer the chance of monetary savings, and even gain, in the future. Chance, however, is the key word in that sentence for most people in this economy.  A recent New York Times article covers the problems with which co-op boards are grappling when it comes to this form of alternative energy.

Ed Lloyd, the president of the board of a Washington Heights co-op, summed up the issue of solar power in one tidy quote: “I don’t want us to be all caught up in green and end up in the red,” he said. “I’m as environmentally conscious as the next person but we can’t base it all on that.”  While I understand Lloyd’s concerns, I think that our country, and even the world, has come to the point where we can’t risk not investing in alternative energy. It has to be less about money, and more about responsibility. For too long humans have been operating in the paradigm where money rules, and the repercussions are shuffled to the perimeters of our consciences. Not to be extreme, but I don’t think a few extra dollars will make a difference when global warming eliminates most of Manhattan as we know it.

Luckily, many federal and state tax breaks have been designed to encourage co-ops and individual homeowners to invest in solar panels and green roof technologies. In the case of Lloyd’s co-op, River Arts, the tax breaks mean that the co-op would make up its initial investment in 1 year, rather than 10. With numbers like that, it’s hard to argue that the financial burden of green technologies is too big to undertake. Especially when numbers show that in New York City, “residential buildings produce more carbon dioxide emissions- 30 percent- than any other large sources of emissions, such as commercial buildings or transportation. Nearly two-thirds of those emissions come from the use of electricity and natural gas.”

So, when looking for a way to donate to environmental efforts, perhaps we should all start by thinking on a local scale. What can I do to make my home run more efficiently using alternative energy methods? Also, support of the federal tax breaks and non-profits who help people utilize them, are extremely effective efforts in which we can all participate.  I will end with that old, yet extremely inspired, adage: If not us, who? If not now, when?

Cross-posted on www.philanthromedia.org

Sarah Palin: a Truth within a (fairly important) lie

During the campaign in 2008, a lot of people said a lot of things.  I remember the night that we were all introduced to Sarah Palin, at the same event that brought us Micheal Steele and Drill Baby Drill, and I remember being very impressed with the way Palin delivered.  She was strong, aggressive, and completely willing to roll up here sleeves and attack.  And she sounded like she was an expert in the one issue that the democrats have dominated in for years: Energy Efficiency.  She talked (at least vaguely knowledgeably) about energy independence, about oil and natural gas, and about the need (once the Drill Baby Drill chants had subsided) of looking at alternative forms of energy to go along with destroying some more Alaskan Wildlife.  Then, she said this, about her own roll in Alaska Energy markets:

“… and we began a nearly $40 billion natural-gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.”

Well, according to Conde Nast, she has since been found to be lying.  Or, if not lying outright, taking some big liberties with the word “Began”.

In fact, she got together a lot of money to start looking to see if a Natural Gas line was feasible.  So get this: apparently, Alaska is cold and unforgiving.  Wild, right?  As a result, it is hard and expensive to build a major pipeline from the Natural Gas to the Civilization, and everyone needs to be on board for a long, arduous and expensive building process to get to the promised land.  Also, everyone needs to hope real hard that Natural Gas is still worth the investment… oh, 20 years down the line when this pipeline thing starts to turn a real profit.  (not my numbers, BTW.  Cribbed, loosely, from the Conde Nast article).

Generally, this has always been my concern with the whole Drill here and Drill now mentality.  Because of the time it takes to get infrastructure set up, oil or gas out of the ground, and then oil and gas into the market, not only are you wringing the last little bits out of obsolete fossil fuels, but your also taking a huuuge risk that the entire process will still be cost effective way down the line.

Specifically, Sarah Palin totally exaggerated how far along the project was, and what her role in it had been.  She didn’t get a pipeline started… in fact her platform made the project much less likely to ever get off the ground. (more…)

Micheal Steele continues to be an enigma to me. 

I think I get what he is trying to do, and while I don’t like his chances for rousting the GOP out of their current across-the-board funk, I do think that Steele gets points for his cojones and his scorched earth/ speak first ask questions later rampage through the first few months of the Dem’s ascendancy.

Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed when Steele stopped doing press: not only was I enjoying his redefinition of conservatism (and his pro choice “gafs”) but I would by lying if I said the Schadenfreude of watching angry old southern white men realize what was happening to their Grand Ol’ Party wasn’t off the charts.  I feel a little sorry for Steele, actually.  His ideas are all over the place, but I think some of his stuff, were the rest of his party members willing to listen, could actually get the Republicans back to a modicum of relevancy.

But, not sorry enough to avoid making fun of him when he goes Wingnut.  I guess it’s also needless to say that I was overjoyed when a two hour radio show hosted by Steele from before his self imposed hiatus leaked out a few days ago.  Verily, he is the gift that keeps on giving!

If you missed it, check out Sam Stein’s write up (and audio link) at HuffPo here.

Shooting From the Hip

The relevance to us here?  This little gem, in response to a caller mocking the idea of climate change:

“We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? Not very long.”

Besides the bizarre historical antidote about Greenland V. Iceland, the logic of Warming being simultaneously part of a Cooling process is hard to fathom.  So, let’s write that off to the misspeaks that happen when one is on the radio for a two hour stint, and assume that Steele means to echo the current denier line: the climate change is not man made, that it’s a natural cycle, etc. etc. etc.  (more…)

So last week I was all grooving on Michelle Obama’s praise for the USDA’s support of community gardening…and this week, look what happens: ground has been broken on the White House’s own produce garden on the south lawn. 

In my mind the most exciting part of this is not that the Obamas will have even more organic food (arugula included) to shovel down their gullets. The exciting part is that Michelle plans to have area public schoolers invited to serve as gardening manpower. On LtAG we’ve been musing periodically on the value of getting kids especially involved in urban agriculture, not only for the Calvin’s-dad-esque character building but also to plant the seeds (yuk yuk yuk) for further involvement in community greening activities. And here’s the first lady echoing our sentiment, according to the NYT: ”My hope,” Mrs Obama said in an interview in her East Wing office, “is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”  Of particular interest to me, an agriculture education partnership between the White House and the public schools means that schools may actually start taking it seriously.

And to those naysayers who maintain that gardening is an elitist pastime, please note the startup cost of this executive garden with 55 kinds of produce: $200. Not even close to prohibitive if you’ve got an entire neighborhood ponying up – and it’ll pay itself back in a season when you’re not buying your tomatoes from California. The remaining question, though, is the time needed to tend a community garden…and that’s a very real concern in a society with ever-decreasing leisure time.

But the moral of this story? The Obamas are reading LtAG. You heard it here first, kids.

Watch this space.

Normally the telemarketing calls I receive are automated services that try to scam you into taking a cash advance loan that gets paid back through credit card transactions at like 33% interest or something ridiculous, but a few months ago I actually got a USEFUL telemarketing call. It was a real person who informed me that as a Delaware business owner, who had been buying power from the public utility Delmarva for over two years, that I qualified to search for my own supplier of energy out there in the big wide world of the free market. I felt like a fish that had been living in captivity and was now free to swim in the oceans of competitive bidding…ok so it was nothing so exciting as that, but I was interested to get a bid.
In Delaware we can choose from over 20 suppliers. Each gets their energy through a slightly different mix of energy sources. Delmarva provides their customers with a breakdown of their energy mix that is as follows:

Coal             55.9%
Gas             7.3%
Nuclear            34.2%
Oil            0.5%
Captured Methane*    0.2%
Hydroelectric        0.9%
Solid Waste        0.6%
Wind            0.2%
Wood or other biomass    0.2%

I haven’t yet called all of the other providers to see what their energy mix is, but I have received quotes from two of them. One called Integrys Energy quoted 10.1 cents per KWH and another, which claimed to be a “green” energy provider said they could lock our company in for 8.5 cents a KWH (although when I faxed them a copy of our usage history I never heard back from them). Currently Delmarva charges somewhere around 10.5 cents per KWH I believe, but it varies from month to month. Our monthly electricity bill is around 800 dollars. This isn’t really the kind of usage that will get you a significant discount, but maybe if I shop around I will get a good deal. I am also interested to see if the companies that have a high renewable energy percentage to their mix are more expensive. Keep an eye here for posts as I get more quotes!!

*Chickens outnumber people in Delaware by about 3:1…that’s a lot of chicken shit!!

-Also, I used to telemarket for Bank of America in college and let me tell you, it sucks…

<<This post originally appeared on Red Green and Blue.org, a part of the GO network>>

For all President Obama’s rhetoric of science being back in the White House spotlight, it sounds like much of America hasn’t quite gotten that message.  A new poll from Gallup suggests that 41% of Americans think that the threat of Global Warming is exaggerated, the highest such number in a decade.  Well, at least people now mostly accept that it’s happening, even if it’s not a big deal…

Take that, Science!

Not surprisingly, the numbers on urgency seem to be based on political party: 66% of Republicans now think the Global Warming concerns are overblown, whereas people who identify as Democrats are holding at around 20%.  The political party that supports old energy doesn’t believe we need new energy… hmmmm…

It’s very easy for me, and for everyone else who clearly sees the logic behind the climate change science, to be frustrated by the war being waged on these facts by a coordinated series of commercial campaigns, and by the political factions who are allied with oil and coal interests.  At the end of the day, I’m not even sure I know what “exaggerated” means.  The people who are the most intense about Global Warming are those decrying the “hysteria” around climate change, but in my mind this is a straw man all it’s own.  Most scientists I’ve talked to are rational and sober about this stuff, and they ain’t setting themselves on fire or throwing around red paint.

(more…)