There’s a lot of bad information floating around on the Internet.  For instance, many conservatives blame environmental regulations, but this argument is way off base.   Why?  Because 75% of the cost of gasoline is in the cost of the crude oil, not in the refining.

At Salon.com, Andrew Leonard spells it all out succinctly:

But questions about refinery capacity, environmental regulations and Balkanization of the overall market shrivel when compared with the real force responsible for the dramatic rise in gas prices over the past eight years. Far and away, the largest factor contributing to the total price of a gallon of gasoline in California (and anywhere else in the United States) is the cost of crude oil.

Americans are increasingly complaining that the cost of food is going up. Two recent articles demonstrate that Americans are profligate wasters of food in at least two major ways:

1) Obese people consume 18% more food energy than lean people and more than sixty million Americans are obese. Simply put, it takes more calories to maintain an obese body than a slimmer body, assuming both of them engage in similar amounts of activity.

2) Americans throw away an incredible 27% of their food. According to this article in the NYT:

Americans waste an astounding amount of food — an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study — and it happens at the supermarket, in restaurants and cafeterias and in your very own kitchen. It works out to about a pound of food every day for every American.

These two problems suggest two solutions. To save money on one’s food bill: A) Bring your body down to its appropriate and healthy size and B) Stop wasting good food by throwing it away.

I was in a bad mood after I wrote a post summarizing a recent Harpers Magazine article demonstrating that the United States government is working hard to keep its citizens from knowing whether numerous commonly used chemicals are dangerous.

After all, our government is supposed to be there to protect us yet it appears that our government is, instead, kissing up to the chemical manufacturers, allowing them to dump highly questionable substances into the products American consumers purchase and use.

And now, I’m in a worse mood. I just finished reading an extraordinary article called “You Are What You Drink Out Of,” by Nadia Pflaum. This article appeared in a local alternative St. Louis newspaper called the Riverfront Times. Pflaum’s story is available online, and thank goodness, because this is extraordinary piece of writing and it serves as an illustration of just how corrupt the system has become. I’ll give just the basic outline here. You’ll want to go read the entire article, however, if you want to be prepared to pull out Exhibit A the next time you get into an argument with one of the many remaining Bush-loving purported free-marketers.

The story centers around Frederick vom Saal, a biology professor at the University of Missouri. He is one of the leading experts on bisphenol A, a chemical that is ubiquitous in the United States-more than six billion pounds are produced every year. The trouble is that bisphenol A contains a substance that acts as a synthetic hormone that has been suspected of being dangerous for human beings. Vom Saal’s research found that the synthetic estrogen that leeches out of bisphenol A can pass it right into human cells at doses 25,000 times lower than any toxicologist ever before studied, and it wreaks havoc with developing reproductive organs.”

Vom Saal and his colleague, Susan Nagel (a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health), found that bisphenol A is so potent that exposing a developing fetus to it could permanently alter crucial phases of development. Their experiments showed that tiny doses of bisphenol A could trigger breast cancer. Their experiments also showed that tiny doses enlarged the prostates of laboratory mice.

The problem is that humans are exposed to bisphenol A everyday. We are exposed to it in the form of food packaging, almost every water bottle, eyeglass lenses and the linings of aluminum food cans. Bisphenol A is a synthetic material that is commonly used to make plastic.

But this is where the story only begins to get interesting. Vom Saal and Nagel published their findings regarding the dangers of bisphenol A and they were about to publish a second article (announcing that exposure to bisphenol A lowered sperm counts in mice) when they received a visit from a scientist from Dow Chemical who offered to pay the University a huge amount of money to conduct a new bisphenol A “study” at the University. Here’s the kicker: the Dow Chemical scientist (who told the university scientists that he represented the Chemical Manufacturers Association) asked “Can we arrive at a mutually beneficial outcome where you withhold publishing this paper until authorized to do so by the Chemical Manufacturers Association?”

University scientists knew that they were being offered a bribe. (more…)

What? The White House is endangering us by withholding information?

This is getting to be a familiar story, right? Here’s the typical plot: There’s something going on that poses a serious risk to Americans, and the White House decides to protect big corporations rather than protect the people at risk.

This time, the protected industry consists of chemical manufacturers. The victims are American citizens, many of them recalcitrant admirers of the Bush Administration. Here’s an excerpt of the article by the Associated Press:

The Bush administration is undermining the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to determine health dangers of toxic chemicals by letting non-scientists have a bigger - often secret - role, congressional investigators say in a report obtained by The Associated Press.

The administration’s decision to give the Defense Department and other agencies an early role in the process adds to years of delay in acting on harmful chemicals and jeopardizes the program’s credibility, the Government Accountability Office concluded.

At issue is the EPA’s screening of chemicals used in everything from household products to rocket fuel to determine if they pose serious risk of cancer or other illnesses.

How many people are dying out there because they have been exposed to common chemicals of which most people don’t know of the dangers? How many of those people are children? Every time I hear of another person getting cancer (especially when I hear of a young child getting cancer), I wonder whether it’s because he or she has been exposed too long to that thick cocktail of chemicals in which we live. And we live our lives in ignorance thanks to a government which should be protecting us.

You might be thinking “Surely, the government is at least letting us know about the most commonly used risky chemicals?” That assumption would be wrong:

After years of stops and starts, the GAO said, the EPA has yet to determine carcinogen risks for a number of major chemicals such as:

-Naphthalene, a chemical used in rocket fuel as well as in manufacturing commercial products such as mothballs, dyes and insecticides.

-Trichloroethylene, or TCE, a widely used industrial degreasing agent.

-Perchloroethylene, or “perc,” a chemical used in dry cleaning, metal degreasing and making chemical products.

-Formaldehyde, a colorless, flammable gas used to making building materials.

Environmentalists say these chemicals have been widely found at military bases and Superfund sites and in soil, lakes, streams and groundwater.

Now . . . if you really want to know how bad things are, read this Harper’s article: “Toxic inaction: Why poisonous, unregulated chemicals end up in our blood.” (more…)

The best way to get people to neglect a cause is to dedicate a Special Day to that cause each year. On that one special Day, we will hold thousands festivals where we treat the cause in a trite way and we will ignore that cause the other 364 days. We’re just too busy with our amusements and distractions to give a damn about important things here in America. Earth Day fits the mold perfectly. You would think that at Earth Day festivals, people would take the purpose of Earth Day seriously. You’d think that people would feel the need to make substantial immediate changes in their lives in order to live and procreate in healthy and sustainable ways, leaving the planet in good shape for the following generations of humans and the other animals. What could be done on Earth Day? We could talk big. We could make real plans to take the actions suggested by visionaries like Lester Brown, who proposes that we cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2020. It could really be done. Here’s how Brown describes his plan in his book, Plan B 3.0:

First, dramatically and systematically raise the efficiency of the world energy economy; second, massive investment in renewable sources of energy; and third, increase the earth’s tree cover by planting billions of trees.

Really doing something on a big scale could “inspire awareness of and appreciation for the Earth’s environment.” But most people aren’t doing anything at all. They are content to live the same wasteful lives people lived 20 years ago.

I discussed Earth Day with several people recently (in stores, not at the Earth Day festival). They rolled their eyes when I suggested the need to actually change the way we live our lives. They think that Earth Day is run by a bunch of hippies and they don’t trust hippies.

Even those who don’t scoff at the idea of Earth Day mostly believe in belief in Earth Day (just like most religious believers, who often believe in belief). Many Earth Day’ers believe it’s sufficient to merely say and think responsible things, even if the way they live their lives are indistinguishable from those who don’t believe in Earth Day. Many of these people celebrating Earth Day drive to Earth Day festivities in SUV’s from their homes way out in the Suburbs. When they’re done shopping at Earth Day (and there are lots of non-essential things to buy at Earth Day), they drive back out to the suburbs. This inaction reminds me of a neighbor who mentioned a topic to which I responded “That really concerns me.” He immediately chastised me: “No it doesn’t. If you were actually concerned, you’d be doing something about it.” (more…)

Do you want to buy worm poop fertilizer in used soda bottles?  You can, thanks to Terracycle:

At TerraCycle we manufacture affordable, potent, organic products that are not only made from waste, but are also packaged entirely in waste! TerraCycle Plant Food™ is made by feeding premium organic waste to millions of worms. The worm poop is then liquified into a powerful organic plant food and bottled directly in used soda bottles.

The Terracycle idea is to find marketable uses for objects that used to be considered waste.  Where do they get the waste products (like the used soda bottles)?  They often pay school kids to gather them (doesn’t this method of fundraising make more sense than having kids sell you things you don’t need?).  Will they run out of raw materials (waste) with which they make their products?  Not likely:

Since almost every output that is produced through industry ends up as waste and growth is rewarded, we have been throwing out more and more waste each day. According to the EPA, in 1960 the average American, produced 2.7 pounds of waste per day and in 2003 that number had steadily increased to 4.5 pounds.

If you want to know more about these products or where to buy them (they are sold at many big box stores, such as Home Depot, as well as many smaller stores), check the TerraCycle website.

Tell them what Architecture 2030 says about coal:

Because coal is the only fossil fuel plentiful and supposedly cheap enough to push the planet to 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.  Because reaching 450 ppm (or possibly less) triggers potentially irreversible glacial melt and sea level rise.

Because 53% of Americans live in and around coastal cities and towns and, beginning with just one meter of sea level rise, many of these cities and towns will be inundated.

Scientists are forewarning that at approx. 450 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, we will trigger potentially irreversible glacial melt and sea level rise “out of humanity’s control.” We are currently at 385 ppm, and are increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at approx. 2 ppm annually.  At this growth rate, we will reach 450 ppm in 2035 . . .

In the US, there are over 600 existing coal plants and 151 new coal plants in various stages of development.

Tell them that there is a smarter and better way.   And a cleaner way.  Tell them that mining coal is not only ugly, it’s dangerous for miners and everyone else.

Tell them to take a close look into a train car full of coal (as I did yesterday) and to ask themselves if coal looks like the fuel of the future. 

I thought about coal as I noticed a train loaded with coal go by (I took these photos).  I thought about how little most people know about coal yet how politicians and their constituents don’t have the dangers of coal on their radar.   Some of these dangers are set forth in my earlier post, The Banality of Burning Coal.   

I’ve been told by a man who works with the biggest electric company in St. Louis that each coal burning plant eats an entire train full of coal each day.  That is confirmed by Wikipedia:

Coal is delivered by highway truck, rail, barge or collier ship. A large coal train called a “unit train” may be two kilometers (over a mile) long, containing 100 cars with 100 tons of coal in each one, for a total load of 10,000 tons. A large plant under full load requires at least one coal delivery this size every day.

Most people I speak with resist serious energy conservation as a matter of principle.  Many conservatives belittle conservation, as though it is a matter of weakness.  They scoff at conservation.  When I bring up global warming, they deny it.  When I bring up peak oil, they have no logical response.  They resist energy conservation as if they were 3 year olds whining that they don’t want to try a new sort of food that their parents put on their plates.   It’s an irrational emotional resistance (not that emotions are always irrational) that is endangering our economy.  Conservation is one-half of the solution out of this big mess. (more…)

In the April 3, 2008 addition of Nature (available online only to subscribers), an article entitled “Architects of a Low-Energy Future” indicates that we can do a much better job in building energy-efficient structures.  This opportunity is critically important (as discussed in an earlier post regarding architect Ed Mazria of the highly accomplished non-profit Architecture 2030) because buildings worldwide account for approximately 45% of total energy consumption, more than “all the world’s cars and trucks put together.”

How much better can we design buildings?

The most efficient of the structures are almost completely passive, meaning they require very little, if any, traditional heating or air conditioning.  Yet the overall comfort they provide is, if anything, superior to existing buildings.  Nor is there necessarily a cost penalty: these ultra-energy-efficient buildings are often no more expensive to build than conventional structures, and they work out far cheaper if energy bills during their occupation are taken into account.

The hurdles to building these energy-efficient structures do not involve engineering challenges or lack of materials.  The major impediments to developing energy efficiency in buildings can be found in “our institutional barriers and market failures rather than technical problems.”

Another big problem is that high energy efficiency is too often not on the client’s radar, and architects are geared to simply giving the clients only what the client wants.  This is a shame, as the article points out, because “the biggest payoffs will come from new buildings, where ultralow energy can be designed in from the beginning.”  If it is not designed in from the beginning, the work of trying to make the building energy-efficient is much more difficult.  Retrofitting generally has to rely upon “bolting on energy intensive air conditioning, heating, and artificial lighting.”

Reading this article, I was astounded by how much energy a good building design can save.  Take, for instance, heating and cooling.  Most people pour lots of energy into their heating and air-conditioning systems.  It was eye-opening to learn that most of this cost is not necessary.  With high efficiency installation, glazing, and “thermal bridges” to prevent wasteful energy transfers to the outside, high-efficiency buildings show their “impressive gains in negawatts.”

The building can get its heating from the solar gains through glazing as well as through waste heat from appliances and even our bodies.

Another key technique for temperature control and passive houses is that first counterintuitive: simply let fresh air and from the outside.  A pump draws fresh air through a grid of pipes several meters underground, where the temperature is relatively constant throughout the year, 10-14 degrees centigrade . . .  When this fresh air arrives at the house, its temperature has already been modulated–warmed up or cool down by the ground, depending on the season . . . this system of air base cooling and ventilation not only saves energy by recycling heat, but vastly improves air quality.

Jeff Christian is the head of buildings technology Center at the Oak Ridge national laboratory.  His job is to design cheap and energy-efficient homes for low income families.  He is convinced that “cheap, low energy houses will take off in United States only if the government steps in:  “The financial incentives we need to drive this are not in place.”

Getting highly efficient buildings actually built sounds like another place where the invisible hand needs a hand.

Price Of Oil
Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

Our Saudi Friends
Keefe, The Denver Post

Tanking Economy
Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner

Iraq Milestone 4000
Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons

McCain and the Iraq War
Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

Marc Gunther created his blog to probe Corporate America for signs of social responsibility.   Hence, the name of his blog: “Marc Gunther - Corporate America: Making the World a Better Place . . . or Not.”

My sister-in-law (an architect who specializes in green issues) referred me to his site.   Marc’s posts are thoughtful and he has some impressive contacts with high-placed corporate types, giving him lots of good insight into the conscience (or not) of some huge and powerful organizations.

I especially enjoyed his post on the struggles of some well-to-do folks who are tired of even more well-to-do folks building houses bigger than theirs (the site of this squabble is the Hamptons).   This post is titled “Green Monsters.” The reference is to the so-called “green” luxury homes in the Seattle area (4,500 square feet) that were recently burned to the ground by eco-terrorists.  Though Gunther is sympathetic with the message of the eco-terrorists, he rejects their method. 

I do mean to suggest that those of us who are privileged ought to think and talk more about how much consumption is enough. Personally, I wish someone would find a way to raise questions about the morality of monster homes without burning them down. It’s probably too much to expect of the mainstream environmental groups that rely on donations from people living in big homes. Just look at who sits on the board of Environmental Defense or NRDC. Religious leaders could play a role, but they, too, depend on gifts from the well-to-do. Any thoughts?

Gunther is highly sensitive to the American consumption epidemic.  Although he is delighted to see some promising moves being made by some corporations, he is distressed that it is unsustainable business-as-usual for too many consumers.  The evidence?

I’d bet you didn’t spend any time at the malls or watching TV this past holiday season. Or realize that, for all the talk about climate change, roughly half the vehicles purchased in 2007 were SUVs and light trucks. Or see that despite the so-called credit crunch, millions of Americans continue to spend more money than they can afford to buy things they probably don’t need. Consider, for example, this shocking Los Angeles Times story about auto financing that, says, among other things that Americans are “slipping into a perpetual cycle of automobile debt,” that 45% of car loans are written for longer than six years, that the average loan is more than $30,000 (!)

The solutions need to happen at the grass roots level, but those solutions need to be inspired by those who are in positions to make a difference.   Will any of that happen?  It’s not going to be easy, because consumers appear oblivious and the big donors to prominent environmental groups “drive SUVs and own vacation homes.” 

I’ve added Marc Gunther to my favorites.   His driving interest in sustainable living, his unrelenting social conscience, his ability to write clearly, and his ability to serve as liaison to big corporations all put him in a unique position to communicate his worthy observations to us.

Wouldn’t it be horrible if our American suburbs starting turning into slums?

It’s already happening, according to this article from The Atlantic:  “The Next Slum?”

For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay . . .

The experience of cities during the 1950s through the ’80s suggests that the fate of many single-family homes on the metropolitan fringes will be resale, at rock-bottom prices, to lower-income families—and in all likelihood, eventual conversion to apartments.

This future is not likely to wear well on suburban housing. Many of the inner-city neighborhoods that began their decline in the 1960s consisted of sturdily built, turn-of-the-century row houses, tough enough to withstand being broken up into apartments, and requiring relatively little upkeep. By comparison, modern suburban houses, even high-end McMansions, are cheaply built. Hollow doors and wallboard are less durable than solid-oak doors and lath-and-plaster walls. The plywood floors that lurk under wood veneers or carpeting tend to break up and warp as the glue that holds the wood together dries out; asphalt-shingle roofs typically need replacing after 10 years. Many recently built houses take what structural integrity they have from drywall—their thin wooden frames are too flimsy to hold the houses up.

This article documents that many of yesterday’s suburban Pleasantvilles that are already tipping into decay.  The elephant in the room is the inexorable increase in energy prices.  Cheap oil created the suburbs.  Expensive energy will destroy their affordability.  

Why am I convinced that the rise in energy prices is inexorable?  Because even though we are starting to have a national dialogue that “something” needs to be done about energy supplies, very few Americans are taking this crisis seriously.  We continue carving out new suburbs, encouraged by pipe dreams about corn being solution to the energy problem.  Yet we are doing almost nothing to develop sustainable ways to replacing the 5,000 gallons of oil Americans use each second.   We are in deep denial while conservation is still ridiculed by many Americans (e.g., those who vote with SUV’s and new suburban and exurban houses).

The coming years are not going to be kind to many of those Americans who bought into unsustainable versions of the American Dream.

In an earlier post, I argued that people need to better appreciate that dollars are fungible (see here  and here).  Why is it important to understand that dollars are fungible?  A case in point is the new American enthusiasm for turning food into fuel. Consider this report from Fortune Magazine:

The growing myth that corn is a cure-all for our energy woes is leading us toward a potentially dangerous global fight for food. While crop-based ethanol -the latest craze in alternative energy - promises a guilt-free way to keep our gas tanks full, the reality is that overuse of our agricultural resources could have consequences even more drastic than, say, being deprived of our SUVs. It could leave much of the world hungry.

We are facing an epic competition between the 800 million motorists who want to protect their mobility and the two billion poorest people in the world who simply want to survive. In effect, supermarkets and service stations are now competing for the same resources.
 
This year cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in world grain consumption. The problem is simple: It takes a whole lot of agricultural produce to create a modest amount of automotive fuel.

The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol, for instance, could feed one person for a year.

And consider this additional bad news from Earth Policy Institute: 

We are witnessing the beginning of one of the great tragedies of history. The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before.

The world is facing the most severe food price inflation in history as grain and soybean prices climb to all-time highs. Wheat trading on the Chicago Board of Trade on December 17th breached the $10 per bushel level for the first time ever. In mid-January, corn was trading over $5 per bushel, close to its historic high. And on January 11th, soybeans traded at $13.42 per bushel, the highest price ever recorded. All these prices are double those of a year or two ago.

As a result, prices of food products made directly from these commodities such as bread, pasta, and tortillas, and those made indirectly, such as pork, poultry, beef, milk, and eggs, are everywhere on the rise. In Mexico, corn meal prices are up 60 percent. In Pakistan, flour prices have doubled. China is facing rampant food price inflation, some of the worst in decades.

Here’s are a few rhetorical questions to consider:  Can Americans justify filling up any more of those big SUV fuel tanks now that there is solid evidence that doing so will cause families on the other side of the world to suffer and die?  Can we justify cranking up the heat in the winter to stay toasty warm?  Should we merrily take long trips without considering the effects of burning this extra fuel on food prices (and thus food availability) to those people who are living on the margin?  Can we justify building more houses in the exburbs? 

We are now witnessing a collision between A) our desire to have fun and feel prestige through the discretionary buring of fuel, versus B) our ability to honestly look in the mirror to see ourselves as kind, decent and caring people.

“The free market–the invisible hand–will take care of everything.”

I’ve addressed this topic of the free market as alleged panacea several times before.  I’ve referred to this blind faith in the market as unsubstantiated.  I’ve mockingly referred to the common belief in the wisdom of the invisible hand as a belief in the Fouth Person in the Holy Quartet.  Why mock?  Because stark shortages of critically important natural resources loom in every direction.   And yet we’re in denial. You deny the denial?  Then how is it that we tolerate, this year, big U.S. metropolitan areas like Raleigh-Durham and Atlanta had only a few weeks left of their municipal water supplies?  We tolerate that we are drawing down unreplenishable water sources throughout the desert southwest.  Intelligent civilizations don’t deny such dangers.  They consciously deal with their problems.

I’ve just read a well-phrased description of why the modern version of the free market can’t save us from our problems regarding impending shortages of essential natural resources.  The following quote is from a new book available free on-line from Population Connection: PLAN B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, by environmental analyist, Lester R. Brown (2008).

Now with the economy as large as it is, the indirect costs of burning coal—the costs of air pollution, acid rain, devastated ecosystems, and climate change—can exceed the direct costs, those of mining the coal and transporting it to the power plant. As a result of neglecting to account for these indirect costs, the market is undervaluing many goods and services, creating economic distortions.

As economic decision-makers—whether consumers, corporate planners, government policymakers, or investment bankers—we all depend on the market for information to guide us. In order for markets to work and economic actors to make sound decisions, the markets must give us good information, including the full cost of the products we buy. But the market is giving us bad information, and as a result we are making bad decisions—so bad that they are threatening civilization.

The market is in many ways an incredible institution. It allocates resources with an efficiency that no central planning body can match and it easily balances supply and demand. The market has some fundamental weaknesses, however. It does not incorporate into prices the indirect costs of producing goods. It does not value nature’s services properly. And it does not respect the sustainable yield thresholds of natural systems. It also favors the near term over the long term, showing little concern for future generations.

Dick Cavett once said: “It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.”  Plan B 3.0 is the kind of information that those rare people ambivalently clamor to hear.    It’s clearly written and well documented.  There’s nothing shrill in Lester Brown’s book; just the facts—lots of facts that paint a dire picture.  Over and over, humans are overexploiting precious resources, and the situation is getting dangerous in many ways.  What’s at stake?  You name it.  Oil, food, water, forests, health, fisheries.   On the topic of fisheries, did you know that there are essentially no cod to be caught in the North Atlantic Ocean any more?   Gee, how did that happen?  Why didn’t the “free market” protect the North Atlantic Ocean?

Brown argues that we need to dramatically change the way we live and consume.   He argues that the “free market” is not a cure, unless we first make the true costs of over-exploitation visible and force purchasers to pay the full price.   We need to “Get the market to tell the ecological truth.” For example, the true cost of a gallon of gas is not $3/gallon, but more like $12/gallon. (more…)

Here’s a composite photo of the Earth at night, published by NASA:

The brightest lights correlate with the densest populations. No political boundary lines are visible, of course.  

I once had a framed poster of this sort of image in my office.  One of my co-workers asked: “Did they take that amazing photo in one shot?  “No,” I explained.  “The earth is round, so only one side could be taken at once (at most) and only half of the earth is dark at the same time. 

For higher resolution versions of this photo, visit the NASA site.

There are hundreds of other terrific satellite photos to view at the NASA site, including this false color composite of the Island of Hawaii, (explained here).

The NASA site includes many shots of many other places on Earth.  Lots of geography through photography, as well as evidence of human impact on this small planet.  It’s well worth a long visit.  Here’s the home page for NASA’s Visible Earth collection.

This fellow claims to have lots of important statistics displayed on a big real-time dashboard.   Assuming his data to be accurate (I don’t have any reason to dispute it), it’s especially interesting to hit the “Now” button to reset this “World Clock,” then to watch the numbers grow from zero.  

Though I’ve often discussed world oil depletion, I’m amazed to see the number of barrels of oil pumped every minute.  

This article by Alex Williams covers a lot of territory, including:

The environmental costs of suburban life, which evolved around the highway system, cheap oil, and the automobile and now typically consumes several times more energy per person (and thus fossil fuels) than urban living. There’s all that driving. There are the chugging mowers and fertilizers and pesticides used to keep all those lawns lovely. Lighting, heating and cooling those ballooning homes consumes vast amounts of energy compared to a city apartment — or a house half a century ago. ncluding the environmental costs of suburbia.

See, also, the trailer of “The End of Suburbia,” here.   And here’s a good read:  My other car is a bright green city. 

Here are the major differences, set forth by Harvey Wasserman of Free Press:

As we stumble toward another presidential election, it’s never been more clear that our political process is being warped by a corporate stranglehold on the free flow of information. Amidst a virtual blackout of coverage of a horrific war, a global ecological crisis and an advancing economic collapse, what passes for the mass media is itself in collapse. What’s left of our democracy teeters on the brink. The culprit, in the parlance of the day, has been the “Mainstream Media,” or MSM.

But that’s wrong name for it. Today’s mass media is Corporate, not Mainstream, and the distinction is critical. Calling the Corporate Media (CM) “mainstream” implies that it speaks for mid-road opinion, and it absolutely does not.

You know that life is out of balance.

If you are looking for a provocative film that allows you to feel this problem, I have a classic video to recommend.  I just saw it tonight for the first time: Koyaanisqatsi. The 1982 film was directed by Godfrey Reggio.  Ron Fricke provided the memorable cinematography and Philip Glass provided the haunting music.

In a documentary that accompanies the current version of the DVD, Reggio explains:

[T]hese films have never been about the effect of technology, of industry on people. It’s been that everyone: politics, education, things of the financial structure, the nation state structure, language, the culture, religion, all of that exists within the host of technology. So it’s not the effect of it’s that everything exists within [technology]. It’s not that we use technology, we live technology. Technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe.

The title of the film comes from the Hopi language. At the end of the film, Reggio provided a multi-part definition based on the Hopi etymology: 

1. crazy life; 2. life in turmoil; 3. life out of balance; 4. life disintegrating; 5. a state of life that calls for a different way of living.

Jared Diamond is a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as the author of  “Guns, Germs and Steel” and “Collapse.”  In an op-ed piece in the January 2, 2008 NYT, he reports that American rates of resource consumption are horribly out of wack with the rates of other inhabitants of the world and that Americans are due for a substantial adjustment:

The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences . . .

Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies — for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy — they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people . . .

[W]hether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable.Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life.

I ran across a site I’m really enjoying, No Impact Man.  Who is “No Impact Man”?  He is a fellow who got tired of only talking about living an ecologically responsible lifestyle:

I am no eco-expert. I am just a liberal schlub who got sick of not putting my money where my mouth was. In a way, the whole project is a protest against my highly-principled, lowly-actioned former self. I’m fumbling through, trying to do my best and doing the research as I go along. This blog is my attempt to tell you how it’s going.

Ok.  It’s time to walk the walk.  But what is the plan? 

Stage one was figuring out how to live without making garbage: no disposable products, no packaging, etc. Stage two was figuring out how to cause the least environmental impact with our food choices. Stage three is figuring out how to reduce our consumption to only what is necessary and how to do that sustainably. The whole thing gets harder and harder as we add each stage.

The site is a bubbling ferment of practical tips on living an ecologically responsible lifestyle.  Here are a ton of tips, in a post called “Cure the Planet’s Fever.”  And why vacation far from home?  After all, there are “Opportunities in the Crisis.”  And here are a bunch of tips for not making trash. 

But can you take this living responsibly stuff too far?  No Impact Man says “yes”:

This point, “the goal,” is really just the place where you are really conscious of what you use. You don’t take things for granted. You understand that your actions have consequences for other people and the planet. It is the point between asceticism and waste, between self-denial and self-indulgence. It is the place of balance.

I can already see many people scoffing at this site, the same people who are going to be doing many of these things in ten years.  That is the way the (warm) wind is blowing.  We’re all going to have to live smarter and lighter if we’re going to thrive.  

I’ve been long-intrigued by Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil.  Philip Zimbardo turns that concept on its head in an article from Edge, “The banality of evil is matched by the banality of heroism.”   (you’ll need to scroll down to the z’s).  Zimbardo’s article appears as one of a series of articles responding to the question: “What is your dangerous idea?”  [Here's a more elaborate version of Zimbardo's article; a careful reading will be richly rewarded.]

Those people who become perpetrators of evil deeds and those who become perpetrators of heroic deeds are basically alike in being just ordinary, average people.

The banality of evil is matched by the banality of heroism. Both are not the consequence of dispositional tendencies, not special inner attributes of pathology or goodness residing within the human psyche or the human genome. Both emerge in particular situations at particular times when situational forces play a compelling role in moving individuals across the decisional line from inaction to action.

This view implies that any of us could as easily become heroes as perpetrators of evil depending on how we are impacted by situational forces.

Zimbardo makes a good point, but why stop there? Why assume that only great moments of good or evil are banal?  Isn’t banality of conduct another instance of “universal acid” (Daniel Dennett’s term for a concept that seems to have widespread application in untold domains of experience–natural selection was Dennett’s favorite example)?  Couldn’t we actually expand Zimbardo’s idea and talk about the “banality of everything,” and wouldn’t that actually be a backdoor way of challenging that most hallowed of human constructs: free will?

After all, there are an infinite number of constellations of environmental triggers out there and it might thus be impossible to run a controlled study to isolate “our” influence in any action we take, to the exclusion of the complex panaply of environmental triggers surrounding us.  We love to think that we are in control of our actions, but what if the our surroundings play us with environmental triggers like a jazz player brings out lush chords by striking complex patterns of keys on a piano?  When the music sounds good, we inevitably get greedy and claim the “good” result as our own.

When we notice our own good behavior, we do convince ourselves that our decision and or behaviour was totally our own.  Most of us can’t deal with any other possibility when we are proud of ourselves.  Same thing with the greatness of our heroes.  We can’t bear to think that our heroes are puppets with millions of strings stretching out in all directions out into the environment and down into their biology, and that our heroes’ admirable conduct was not meaningfully their own.

Zimbardo’s point is a good one because it points out how inconsistent we are when it comes to attributing responsibilty for human conduct.  It’s funny how readily we explain those moments when we act foolishly by blaming numerous factors external to ourselves (bad luck, bad education, bad peers, bad circumstances).  When we do well, though (or when our heroes do well), it’s all about internal character.  We love to take (and give) the credit but not the blame. 

Zimbardo doesn’t merely identify the phenomenon of the banality of heroism.  He advocates the need to study the psychology of heroism.  He argues that we ought to be studying ways to design social environments in such a way as to encourage heroic actions–encouraging ordinary peole to act in heroic ways.  Here’s his basic plan to study the banality of heroism:

My research reveals how easy it is to create environments that will bring out the worst in people. Now the time has come examine the other side of the coin and discover how we create environments that bring out the best in human nature, that truly enable ordinary people to go beyond resisting temptation to challenging its domain.

I’m in Chicago with my nine-year old daughter and Shedd Aquarium was an important destination for us.  We spent much of our Aquarium time at the Wild Reef exhibit. 

The coral reefs of the world support about a quarter of our sea life, so they are immensely important, yet humans are destroying them in a wide variety of ways. 

As important as the reefs are to world ecology, reef life is also stunningly beautiful.  You can see these communities up close at Shedd.  The irony is hard to ignore whenever you can view warm water life in Chicago while it’s bitterly cold outside. 

Shedd Aquarium does a wonderful job displaying its marine life.  It’s difficult to stop taking photos, if you have a digital camera. I took more than 100 photos, then deleted many of them, leaving about a dozen photos I liked.  The challenge is not finding beautiful scenes to photograph.  The Aquarium is full of such opportunities.  The challenges are the low light conditions (no flash photography allowed, for the protection of the animals), combined with the quick movements of some of the creatures.  Note:  I took all of these photos with a Canon A700, a modest consumer-grade digital camera that is about 2-years old.  Also, these photos are only minimally retouched.  Comparable scenes await anyone interested in traveling to Chicago to visit Shedd Aquarium.

Many of the organisms living at a reef look like underwater plants, but they are actually animals.  Those animals include the corals themselves, as well as sea anemones, sea urchins. crinoids and sponges (for more on our sponge cousins, see here–actually all living things our the cousins of humans).  Some of the reef animals simply sound like plants, such as sea cucumbers.  To learn more about the lives of corals, wonderful footage and explanations are included in David Attenborough’s Blue Planet series, which costs $43 at Amazon.  As an aside, I can’t believe the large number of people who consider $43 to be too much to spend on a educational documentary of breath-taking beauty, yet they will spend more than $100 many times each year to take their families to watch their favorite sports team play games.

Without further ado, here are some more of the incredible (and incredibly beautiful) things you can see at an ocean reef (or at the Shedd Aquarium):

This display includes several jelly fish pushing up against the glass and against the bottom of the display (the jellies are about 5 inches in diameter).  Members of this species of jelly fish hold their tentacles out (rather than dangle them down) to capture prey.

My daughter viewing one of the elaborate displays of coral at Shedd Aquarium.

Garden eels stick up out of the sea floor.   

My favorite animal counsin, the sponge. (more…)

In October 2007, James E. Hansen testified with regard to an application to build a new coal-burning plant in Iowa.  Hanson is the Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and senior scientist in the Columbia University Earth Institute.  He said some harsh things about our substantial dependence on coal:

Global warming from continued burning of more and more fossil fuels poses clear dangers for the planet and for the planet’s present and future inhabitants. Coal is the largest contributor to the human-made increase of CO2 in the air. Saving the planet and creation surely requires phase-out of coal use except where the CO2 is captured and sequestered (stored in one of several possible ways).

Hundreds of millions of people live less than 20 feet above sea level. Thus the number of people affected would be 1000 times greater than in the New Orleans Katrina disaster. Although Iowa would not be directly affected by sea level rise, repercussions would be worldwide. Ice sheet tipping points and disintegration necessarily unfold more slowly than tipping points for sea ice, on time scales of decades to centuries, because of the greater inertia of thick ice sheets. But that inertia is not our friend, as it also makes ice sheet disintegration more difficult to halt once it gets rolling. Moreover, unlike sea ice cover, ice sheet disintegration is practically irreversible . . .

The biologist E.O. Wilson (2006) explains that the 21st century is a “bottleneck” for species, because of extreme stresses they will experience, most of all because of climate change. He foresees a brighter future beyond the fossil fuel era, beyond the human population peak that will occur if developing countries follow the path of developed countries and China to lower fertility rates. Air and water can be clean and we can learn to live with other species of creation in a sustainable way, using renewable energy. . .

Coal will determine whether we continue to increase climate change or slow the human impact. Increased fossil fuel CO2 in the air today, compared to the pre-industrial atmosphere, is due 50% to coal, 35% to oil and 15% to gas. As oil resources peak, coal will determine future CO2 levels. Recently, after giving a high school commencement talk in my hometown, Denison, Iowa, I drove from Denison to Dunlap, where my parents are buried. For most of 20 miles there were trains parked, engine to caboose, half of the cars being filled with coal. If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains – no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.

[Emphasis added]. Hansen’s comments led to these comments by David Roberts of Grist:  (more…)

How can we save up to 6% of our total electricity usage? Dry our clothes outside–hang them on clothes lines.  Unless the neighbors try to interfere, as described by this article from Time Magazine. 

Yes, there are people who want to do their part to lower their carbon footprint.

But on the other side are people who oppose air-drying laundry outside on aesthetic grounds. Increasingly, they have persuaded community and homeowners associations (HOAs) across the U.S. to ban outdoor clotheslines, which they say not only look unsightly but also lower surrounding property values. Those actions, in turn, have sparked a right-to-dry movement that is pressing for legislation to protect the choice to use clotheslines.

The article notes that 3 states limit the ability of Homeowner Associations to ban clothelines (Florida, Hawaii and Utah).  North Carolina is working to be a fourth state, but the effort is drawing opposition from HOA’s and the real estate industry.

Imagine the excitement if scientists suddenly announced that there was a new as-yet-undiscovered energy source that would provide six percent of all the electricity in the United State without any environmental drawback.   It would be the front page of every newspaper.  Here’s an equivalent idea that, unfortunately, meetin