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Bicycling goal for 2007

I haven't said much about my mileage goal in 2007. Last year I fell short of the 4000 miles I had projected. This year, the weather has made it difficult to get many miles.

]]> I rode yesterday with a few friends and got rained on. In mid-40s weather. Not pleasant. But we got some miles in, anyways.

I have a particular motivation for riding this year: my older daughter was diagnosed with MS last year. She is in treatment and is doing pretty well, but I have a special reason to ride the Central PA MS ride this year. Here is my web page:http://www.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR?px=3221273&pg=personal&fr_id=3480. As you see, I'm seeking to raise $2000 for this ride. I've primed the pump with $200 myself.

So, what is my mileage goal this year? Same as last year: 4000 miles. I hope the weather starts cooperating; I'm a couple of hundred miles behind last year at this time.

NAHB says residential market is going green

We've been seeing references to green building practices in newspapers, popular magazines, and in the trade press for the past year or so. This year, the National Association of Homebuilders' green building conference in St. Louis attracted a good-sized crowd.

]]> Here's a link: http://www.nbnnews.com/NBN/issues/2007-04-02/Front+Page/index.html

Note that builders and home buyers are beginning to see beyond the usual high-efficiency appliances and insulation to the green residence as a complete system. This is an important mind shift: from "bolting on" green features to designing and building a green home through an integrated process.

Time to raise the volume

Well, it has been far too long since I posted an entry. Last week I attended the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association conference in Boston (getting out of town just before the snow). I guess I'd summarize my feelings as, "It's time to raise the volume."

]]> I've been convinced for many years that human activity would impose impacts on global climate. Probably about 10 years ago, I accepted that uncertainty persisted, but it seemed to me that it would be logical to decrease our eco footprints and control potential greenhouse gas emissions, because doing so would a) not be overly difficult (it still isn't), and b) be good for society in any event.

A couple of years ago, I was still taking some comfort in the 2001 IPCC report that, in good scientific fashion, expressed continuing uncertainty as to the drivers and potential ill effects of global warming.

But around 2004, my willingness to see "the other side" faded away as Europe toasted and as the Antarctic ice was seen to be melting and falling apart faster than the models had predicted. And the glaciers: is there one anywhere in the world that has not retreated significantly in the past few decadeshttp://www.architecture2030.org/global_impact/global5.html.

Now Greenland and Arctic ice. And ice storms in Pennsylvania, where we used to get good, honest snow. And bark beetles climbing the mountains to attack trees that they could not get to when winters were colder. And deer ticks (Lyme disease) overwintering, moving tick season toward year round. And on and on.

It's time to raise the volume. I'm going to try not to be strident, but just insistent. We are facing a situation that will threaten civilized society. Should I repeat? CIVILIZED SOCIETY WILL BREAK DOWN IN THE LIFE TIMES OF CURRENTLY LITTLE PEOPLE WHO ARE HERE ON THE EARTH NOW if we don't do something serious and quickly.

These are my grandchildren. I have five, ranging from 7 to almost 2. These little people will see massive struggles between people living in higher (or lower) latitudes and people living in regions closer to the equator, which will become inhospitable as this century progresses. Today, these people emigrate for economic opportunities. How much more intense will the struggle between those in place and those who want to (need to) join them when the motivation is survival?

So I'm going to get back to the mission of convincing my readers that climate change is a serious challenge, and that an essential part of our campaign to turn back from disaster lies in making our new and existing buildings far more energy efficient.

For now, look at the 2030 Challenge: http://www.architecture2030.org/home.html. It's a great website with information that lay people as well as technical people can understand and appreciate.

Wal-Mart tries again

An article in today's New York Times described Wal-Mart's intention to sell millions of high efficiency light bulbs, and the significant resistance the company is feeling from light bulb manufacturers that aren't particularly anxious for consumers to go in the high efficiency direction.

]]> It's hard for me to be skeptical about this, in spite of my automatic Wal-Mart radar warning buzzing steadily. I'm sure they plan to make money, but it seems maybe like win-win. Which is pretty unusual for Wal-Mart.

Here's a link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/business/02bulb.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I just stopped at Lowe's to pick up some things tools and noticed how prominent the compact fluorescents are. All over the store, at the front of the light bulb section and on a central aisle end shelf. This is surely a response to Wal-Mart.

I finally watched An Inconvenient Truth

Since I received An Inconvenient Truth for Christmas, I watched it, and came away with some useful insights.

]]> As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am firmly convinced that climate change is upon us, and that the effects will worsen - probably with increasing speed - over the coming years.

One of Al Gore's points related to the "balance" that the non-scientific press brings to the debate. This balance is truly out of kilter. Gore cites a sampling of nearly 1000 scientific articles (out of a pool of many thousands of articles), noting that not a single one of them suggested that the earth is not undergoing climate change brought about by human activity.

But in the popular press, 53% of a sample noted that the matter remained uncertain.

This "balance" seems much like the free pass the press gave the Bush administration in the build-up to the Iraq invasion (which persists to this day among some popular press sources).

Newly discovered IPA

I have been waiting for Troeg's Brewery in Harrisburg to make a new batch of Nugget Nectar, the triple-hopped IPA they released early in 2006. Vainly, so far.

]]> A good choice to fill the gap - and at a similar price of $36 a case -is Two-hearted Ale from Bell's Brewery in Comstock MI. It is said to have scored 100/100 in IPA testing, whatever that is.

http://www.bellsbeer.com/default.asp

It compares well to Nugget Nectar. If you like a hoppy beer, try this one.

Nuclear power

As global consensus regarding the threats of climate change gathers, nuclear power seems to be moving toward a come back. The industry is claiming that reactors will be much safer this time. Really.

]]> Let's just imagine that reactors really are safer, even fail-safe. We still have the little matter of waste disposal. If we insist on setting a cost for everything to facilitate our decisions, how do we set a cost for waste disposal? Perhaps the cost should be the present worth of infinity? Half of infinity?

William McDonough http://www.mcdonough.com/ had a great rejoinder for people who confront him with the false choice of global climate change or embracing nuclear power. He says that he does indeed support nuclear power. He believes that existing fusion technology is just perfect for us, and the reactor is at just the right distance: 93 million miles.

Cost of Green -- Part MCMVII

I seem to be one of few (if any) green building professionals advocating a different way of framing the "cost of green" discussion.

]]> I'm back from Greenbuild 2006, where one speaker after another compared the cost of a green building with a conventional building by expressing the cost of the one building against the average cost of how many? conventional buildings. Often, the green building is a few dollars higher per square foot than the average of conventional buildings. That number is then adopted as "this year's" green building premium.

The CEO of the Enterprise Foundation did it in the opening plenary, observing that Green Communities houses cost 3% or 4% more than conventional houses.

Maybe it's part of the progressives' fairness doctrine: we feel the need to fully disclose the down side as we present the up side. But what, exactly, are we disclosing? I suggest the comparison would be far more valid if we express the cost of a green building - say in $ per square foot - and place it in the range of conventional buildings.

Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen http://www.carlhiaasen.com/ is a novelist and columnist for The Miami Herald. His novels are populated by charaters who are hard to describe. But the casts work well. A Hiaasen novel is hard to put down.

]]> Hiaasen seems to appreciate the irony of a captive exotic animal killing the bad guys. In Stormy Weather, an African lion eats a mobster (as the mobster is preparing to crucify his second victim...you have to read the story). And at the end of Sick Puppy, I'm not going to tell, because it's too good. So read it.

Hiaasen has a serious message to convey: the miserable mess that humankind has made of Florida. But you could name just about any state or place.

Take comfort. Nature wins.

I'm working on Strip Tease now.

Greenbuild closing plenary address

The closing address was made by Jeffrey Sachs, the director of Columbia University's Earth Institute http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/. He was a principal author of the UN's Millenium Project.

]]> Sachs drew the Greenbuild attendees into the mission of eradicating extreme poverty, pointing out the relative simplicity of this mission (given some fairly modest investment by the rich world) and the importance of sustainable development to solidify the poverty program.

One of the most obvious contribution of sustainable development in the rich and developing world is that it will go a long way toward slowing - and eventually stopping - climate change. Climate change threatens the rich world, as well as the developing world. Coastal cities will be threatened by rising sea level, agriculture will be upset, etc. But Sachs feels that, as usual, the heaviest burden will fall on those living in extreme poverty.

Failure of meager crops and desertification are forces that will force those barely hanging on over the edge into starvation.

I have only one quibble with an excellent and inspiring speech. I believe Sachs offered too much hope for technology to get us out of the mess we're in. Of course, technological solutions - solar power, etc - will be of paramount importance to living more sustainably. But he missed an opportunity to drive home the message that most everyone in the world, and particularly in the rich world, and particularly in the US must change life choices to reduce resource consumption. Maybe I missed it, or maybe he considered it to be implicit, but it needs to be said, repeatedly.

We are not going to slow, and eventually arrest, climate change unless we consume less.

2006 Greenbuild conference

I spent last week in Denver, attending the Greenbuild conference. The opening plenary address was delivered by Bill McDonough http://www.mcdonough.com/full.htm. It set the tone for the conference.

]]> McDonough offered a rejoinder to the question we hear often: "So if you don't want to burn fossil fuel, how do you feel about nuclear power?" His response: he is all for nuclear power, produced by fusion. The reactor is at a good distance from where we live. 93 million miles distant.

McDonough wants us to resist the concept of waste; to use all waste products as food for another process. Or change the process to avoid creating the waste.

This is where we need to go if we are to avoid exhausting the earth's resources. McDonough tells us that we are not going to succeed simply by finding energy to replace the fossil-derived energy we use today. We must decrease our energy use, and our resource use in general.

One of the session speakers used globes to define the world's and the US's consumption. He suggested that the world has an ecofootprint of about 3 globes (the world's population consumes resources at about 3x the sustainable rate). A pretty daunting picture. But he suggests the US consumes at a 5-globe rate.

That fits my general impression: we Americans have to reduce our consumption by something like 5 or 10-fold.

Tom Whipple comments

Tom Whipple, the editor of Peak Oil Review and member of the advisory board of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil - USA http://www.aspo-usa.com/index.php made the keynote presentation at the Richard Alsina Fulton Conference on Sustainability and the Environment at Wilson College in Chambersburg, PA. He started with some statistics:

* The world average petroleum consumption is 190 gallons per capita per year (gpcy)
* US petroleum consumption is 1000 gpcy
* Western Europe consumes about 500 gpcy; eastern Europe somewhat less

]]> A few other numbers:

* It takes about 10 calories of energy to put one calorie of food on our plate
* The world uses 85 million barrels of oil a day, and 31 billion barrels a year
* The world is using 30 barrels for every 4 barrels newly discovered

Whipple predicts that between 2008 and 2012 the US will experience a sufficiently large supply perturbation to impose a significant impact on our economy (and our habits).

The greatest impact, of course, will be on our transportation choices. We will have to drive less. All other areas of our lives will be affected, since petroleum is pervasive in our society.

It is not too soon to be thinking about the far-reaching impact of decreasing petroleum availability. More to the point, petroleum will become increasingly expensive, and therefore less 'available' for many of its current uses. Personal transportation is relatively easy to envision (remember air transport -- it won't take too great a rise in fuel cost to put most of the airlines out of business). Then there is the transportation of our 'stuff'. All of the things we buy, which come from great distance via supply chains fueled by cheap petroleum. Stuff will become more expensive, since the subsidy of cheap oil will decrease.

Our infrastructure will deteriorate, because it will become increasingly costly to maintain. Highways and bridges, water and sewer lines, electric power distribution systems. These systems are already degraded. It will get worse. I am most concerned for the electric power system. The blackout of August 2003 was aggravated by maintenance lapses over the years since deregulation.

Local or organic

This question has been getting a lot of attention in the green media lately, particularly as large agricultural interests (and large retailing interests) have entered the organic food market. I find myself more inclined toward local, if I have to make a choice.

Here's an article from the Green Guide on the topic (I hope the link works; Green Guide is a subscription service)http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc.mhtml?i=116&s=local

]]> My reasoning is that 'local' is probably 'small' and that small is less likely to be highly dependent on petrochemicals. I think this point of view is tending to be how many people who think about the subject feel.

Can you say 'dissonance'?

Check this link: http://www.planetark.com/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=37637 GM, Beemer, and Daimler Chrysler plan to put a lot of money into hybrid research and development. So far, so good.

]]> Scroll down the article and see into which models GM plans to introduce a hybrid option: the Tahoe and the Yukon in 2007(aren't those great names? Fill up your Yukon on oil wrenched from the Alaskan wilderness). And Daimler Chrysler plans on outfitting the Durango with a hybrid drive by 2008.

Hey! Dummies! What about something a little smaller?

Do they even think mega-SUV buyers would be interested?

Each year it gets worse

You may recall my fretting about the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps. Scientists are surprised over the past couple of years that the ice is melting quite a bit faster than climate change modeling had lead them to predict.

Check this link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/10/AR2006081001557.html

]]> The brush off by Myron Ebell at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (can you say 'rampant capitalism'?) is pretty droll. And the popular press's fixation on sea level rise misses the point, as far as I'm concerned.

That point is that climate change will be inhospitable to humans and the flora and fauna that share the globe with us, for many reasons. Some of them, we are probably seeing today: hot, dry conditions. A cooling Europe would be a real kick in the head ('Hey! I thought you said global warming!') Add population pressure and increasing demands for higher level foods by societies that are developing economically, and we have a major mess on our hands.

So I'm back to my adaptation mantra. Let's visualize as best we can what our part of the world is going to be like as climate change and liquid petroleum depletion progress, and do the best we can to prepare for those effects.