Virescent

Speaking of relay races… last year about this time, the courts pointed out that the EPA had a duty to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, since they’re pollution, and hurt the environment, and allegedly the EPA is all about environmental protection or whatever.

The EPA promised to get back to the American people on that by the end of 2007, but we got nothing. Last week, a coagulation of groups and places (including Baltimore City, the state of Maryland, and Washington DC) filed a lawsuit against the EPA, seeking their proposed emissions limits, or really just any indication that the EPA is doing it’s job.

Meanwhile, some members of the House said it’d be silly to let the EPA write the laws, since they’d just get sued by anti-regulations types if they did. Instead, they think that legislators should pass some emissions laws, post-haste.

And today, rumors surfaced of a White House plan to control greenhouse gas emissions- maybe to be presented to the legislature by the end of the week (maybe take some people’s minds off that Colombia FTA, oof).

Well well.  Let’s start with the White House.  It’s not April Fool’s (I checked), and I don’t think it’s opposite day, so they might actually be serious.  Conventional wisdom has it (see resigned comments in other articles) that as long as Bush was in office, greenhouse gases would roll freely along.  Bush has proven himself to lack all sorts of foresight- has he just now caught up with the rest of the world?

Then the legislature.  After the biofuels silliness, will we really be so strapped as to ask our more posturing politicians to make coherent and helpful rules based on good science and a basic understanding of the economy?  Sends chills down my spine, that’s what.

But the bureaucrats, the ones who have the experience in drafting regulations, and the capacity to understand the research, and who had a great reputation for cleaning up America, will they even pay attention?

So, I can’t fathom that the president really has a plan (and even so it might go through the legislature), I don’t trust the legislature to get this right, and the bureaucrats are no-shows.

Regulation of greenhouse gases is the first, most basic step in tying pollution to a cost in the market.  If we assign pollution no cost, the market will never “correct itself” to stop destroying the ecosystem we know how to live in.  If we assign it the wrong cost, free marketeers will get to whine about interventionism, and the market will do insane things and freak everybody else out (see biofuels and food, rising costs of).

With these bozos vying (or not) for the chance at the prize, I don’t see a way for anyone to win.  They’re just thrashing around on the field, trying to figure out how to stand up.

My parents celebrated their 25th anniversary with us this weekend. It’s a good time to point out that a big chunk of my inspiration for all this sustainability stuff was their doing. I was raised composting, hanging washing on the line to dry, and freezing all winter since the thermostat was set so low. One of the big taboos at home was leaving the bathroom light on.

This was all very annoying when I was a child. Sweaters indoors seemed like a way lame plan- why did we invent indoor heating anyway?- and I got pretty sick of hearing about how much electricity the drying machine used. I just wanted fluffy towels like in the commercials.

Tonight I’ve got my washing on a rack in the spare room, and seeds soaking downstairs to be planted tomorrow, and the heat’s been off for weeks- I’ve been wearing a sweater all day. I shut off the lights in the kitchen and bathroom compulsively. This is all my parent’s fault.

Mom and Dad taught me to live frugally, to distinguish between my wants and needs, and to budget. They taught me how small things can add up- especially in electric bills. They taught me to keep myself busy without a tv. They taught me to make things with my own hands. They taught me to go outside and play. They taught me not to waste anything. They apparently taught me better than I realized.

So thanks, guys, for living together so wisely and well for the last 25 years. You’ve been the best role models we could want, and we’re working on living up to your example.

We drove less last year than in 2006- it was the first time in 20 years that we drove less. Granted, we only drove .4% less, and we still drove 3 trillion miles. 3 trillion! But hey, the budget deficit is still 9 trillion dollars, so at least it’s not the biggest Crazy Staggeringly Huge Statistic That Worries Me.

So it looks like fuel prices are changing the ways America behaves, right? Slowly, but it’s happening. BusinessWeek reported a couple weeks ago that consumers are buying more efficent cars (especially the cheaper ones), SUV and big truck sales are dropping, and we’re taking more public transportation. But they ask a pretty good question- if prices for fuel go down, will we stop being efficient and go back to our old ways? That’s exactly what happened after the last energy crisis in the 70s. For those of us who do the energy efficiency thing for reasons other than cost, no. But how many of the people economizing are doing it because they have to, and are just waiting for $2.50 gas to come back so they can buy that Escalade? (Are Escalades still cool?) Or is this a national shift- will the green wave make it past the breakers of the economic crisis and drift lazily onto the sunny shores of a new consumer paradigm?

Also, if consumers are buying more efficient cars and not buying trucks and SUVs so much, why are car companies still saying they have “no idea” if consumers even want more efficient cars? And more importantly, why does BusinessWeek publish articles wherein car company executives whine about the CAFE standards and this supposed lack of consumer interest, with no attempt at investigation of consumer interests (or even perusal of their own archives)? That article has some interesting analysis of how the car companies are dealing with CAFE, actually, but man, it irks me that auto executives use that tired “nobody wants efficient cars” refrain.

One of the most popular arguments against government “intervention” in alternative energies and the green economy is that government regulations are always inefficient, they slow the natural progress of the economy, markets work best when they’re totally unfettered, etc. Stuff like that. The jatropha-in-Myanmar post a couple of days ago might even lend that argument some support.

But the capitalism-loving, -touching, and -squeezing heads of huge companies like BP, GE, and Dow Chemical disagree- they’re urging the government to come up with a coherent energy policy that favors energy efficiency, clean fuels, and even carbon taxes. They contend that the piecemeal regulations the Bush administration half-heartedly doles out are costing America jobs, and US companies the chance to compete internationally. Apparently, since European countries tend to take alternative energies like nuclear and wind seriously, their governments have created favorable investment climates around those technologies- and the clean tech money is settling abroad.

GE’s Chief Executive Jeff Immelt makes a case for government subsidies, carbon trading, and investments in clean technology from a purely business standpoint- and to the free-market crowd, he has a response. From the WSJ’s “Environmental Capitol” blog:

And government largess helps drive progress—like in GE’s aircraft engine division half a century ago. That admission riled free-market types in the audience (and on stage) who took him to task for subsidy-hunting and accused him of—gasp—betraying his capitalist credentials.

“Don’t worship false idols,” he countered. “The government has its hand in every industry. If we have to have them, I’d prefer they were productive rather than destructive.”

Defending the “free” market is quixotic in the most literary sense, as the pure market is the pure Dulcinea: entirely a product of fevered imaginations. I’ve ranted about it here before, but observe that very successful capitalists realize this, and gamely play the market (and government) by the existing rules. There’s money to be made in clean technology (even capitalists who think global warming is a fraud know this and invest accordingly), and there would be even more of it if the US government stopped noodling around.

Last month, BusinessWeek reported on how the Bush Administration’s failure to lead on clean energy policies has left it to the states to invent their own. The magazine pointed out that a sustained federal push was essential for bringing the US up to speed in a clean tech economy already dominated by foreign companies- but not to hope for that push from Mr. Bush.

Maybe next year your dreams will come true, practical capitalists.

The leaders of Myanmar’s Junta have formed a plan to reduce their country’s $600 million dependence on oil imports- reductions in oil subsidies sparked the popular uprising last fall- with biodiesel. They’re relying on hearty, drought-resistant jatropha, which produces nuts that may be processed into a vegetable oil, and which displaces no food crops. Since requiring farmers to plant them in unused spaces in 2006, much of the country has got jatropha growing wherever they can fit it, even in window boxes in the sometime-capital, Yangon. So far, so good, right? Energy security, no loss of food supplies, widespread public participation…

Except, with their busy schedule of oppressing their own people and making meaningless gestures toward democratic change, the Junta hasn’t actually gotten around to building the refineries necessary to turn the jatropha nuts into fuel. Whoops! What with having a centrally planned economy and all, you’d think they’d have remembered to actually plan.

The American government messed up biofuel by putting all its eggs into corn. The Myanmar Junta messed up by blustering their way into the project and not funding the necessary infrastructure. There are plenty of ways to do biofuel wrong- how many such predictable failures will we see before a government gets it right?

I can take a deep breathe and come back to post regularly now, since I finally only have one apartment again, and most of my boxes are empty and their contents distributed. It’s been a long move, and I’m very glad it’s over. I’ll give you a summary along with the six-month review and March monthly goal I owe you, but not yet.

Tonight, you get a few links to stories from the past week I’ve been itching to put up for days. Guiding theme is legislative.

The EPA released their actual reason for denying a waiver to California and about 16 (or maybe 18, depending on which article you read) other states so that they may pass their own emissions laws, the same week as memos from the EPA’s staff opposing the decision were made public. The agency said in December that they’d deny the waiver, for reasons that would be forthcoming. After over two months, they’ve come up with

“While I find that the conditions related to global climate change in California are substantial, they are not sufficiently different from conditions in the nation as a whole to justify separate state standards,” Johnson [the EPA head] wrote.

The policy director for the National Resources Defense Council called that statement “both factually and legally wrong”. Johnson’s own EPA agrees with the NRDC.

“It is obvious to me that there is no legal or technical justification for denying this,” Margo Oge, director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, warned in talking points prepared for a meeting with Johnson in October 2007.

While the EPA is taking their bold, defenseless move, the House has passed a bill with a much less certain future. A plan to shift funding to renewable energy resources, paid for by removing tax breaks given to oil and gas companies, passed the House Wednesday. No idea on when the Senate will get to it, but Bush has of course threatened a veto. After all, American oil companies (who are hitting year after year of record profits- not just records for them, but records for any American business ever- and record profits, not just record income, straight-up profits) are suffering badly, and may not survive much longer without those tax breaks. Limping along, suspended by a thread, suffocating under the weight of their own cash, etc. You know how it is. The NYT article on the House bill highlights Republican reasons for opposing it (besides the poor, poor oil companies) (ok, “poor” is a bad word choice), and what doesn’t boil down to “taxes==evil” goes along the lines of “energy prices are high enough, and this will increase our dependence on foreign energy supplies”. I’ll go ahead and call that laughable, considering how dependent on foreign oil resources we already are, and considering that the main gist of the bill is to shift energy production to sources that Americans control, on US soil. Let’s see how the Senate takes the idea before we get all excited, though.

And in a Wired piece, recycling at the Obama campaign! Not speeches (har-dee-har), no, but campaign materials themselves. For those of us who’ve been hankering after a teeshirt, you know that the Obama campaign is trying to fill such a huge demand for their merch that their orders are being delayed by weeks, and the ObamaCycle site is emerging as the most effective way to get posters where they’re needed fast. Considering the political litter all over our corner of Alexandria, I hope more campaigns pick up the idea. Of course, since total inundation seems to be the general goal of the posters, perhaps the best I can hope for is that all those signs end up in a recycling pile by November.

It should probably tell me something that my most popular post so far has been about Valentine’s day and looooove, but I’m going to ponder that later and talk about biofuels now. A new study by the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy adds up the total life cycle impact of crop biofuels- like corn and whatever else is grown specifically on converted or agricultural land to make fuel, not food- is actually worse than fossil fuels in terms of carbon production. Yup, apparently ethanol is bad (please remove corn subsidies already, Washington?).

So if biofuels- or at least the ones we’re growing now- are such a bad idea, how come we didn’t notice before? Partly it was due to a failure to predict the effect of converting huge areas of land from food production to fuel production- drives up food prices worldwide, and invokes deforestation and land clearing to create new agricultural land to grow more of the displaced food crops or the new fuel crops- which tend to be heavily subsidized, thus very profitable.

The NYT article on the studies doesn’t heavily emphasize the different types of biofuels used as energy resources, so it’s easy to come away with the impression that all biofuels are bad.  Not so! The Nature Conservency interviews an author on the paper, Joe Fargione:

Although there is no silver bullet to solve climate change, there are many silver BBs. Biofuels can be a silver BB if produced without requiring additional land to be converted from native habitats to agriculture. For example, biofuels can be made from waste from agriculture and forests, and from native grasses and woody biomass grown on marginal lands unsuitable for crop production.

We not only have to consider how we produce biomass, but how we convert it to energy. Producing liquid transportation fuels may not be the most efficient way to use the energy contained in biomass.

I’ve added my emphasis. Europe is trying to fix the newly-discovered ill effects of their plans to increase biofuel use by maintaining that it must not come from former rainforests, and no word on how the US will change it’s recently passed ethanol provisions in the 2007 Energy Bill. Energy policy should go back to the drawing board, to maximize research funding for waste biofuels, and seriously, no more corn ethanol subsidies, not even if you call it a tax cut! Pretty please?

This is the first time in years that I’ve been excited in a good way about politics, so let’s ride this wave.  Now, even though we’ve all got pet issues (guess what mine is!), hopefully we’re all making voting decisions based on an array of candidate stances.  The candidates’ plans and views on energy and/or the environment are highly indicative of how they’ll handle issues like national security and the economy, so they deserve a second look, no matter your pet issue.

First off, quick overviews are available at the League of Conservation Voters and at Grist (LCV advocates certain specific environmental stances, and Grist is just full of lots of hippies, so their rubrics differ some).  Grist also has a more detailed review of each candidate still in the race, and an article specifically on the differences between Clinton and Obama’s plans.  I imagine they’d have compared Republican plans directly, but none of the Republicans have specific plans- they have some interesting talking points, but no numbers or enumerated ways to reach their goals.  This is not a swipe at Republicans, it’s just the truth.

Beyond the quick reviews by hippies, though, check out the candidates at their own websites- it’s more revealing to see the way they talk about their plans/visions (I’ll use visions for Republicans- again, no plans).  As a quick rundown, Environment/Energy (labelled as such) make the top 3 or 4 issues on the lists for Obama and Clinton.  McCain lists an Environment issue toward the bottom of his issue list, Romney lists “Ending Energy Dependence” toward the middle (after “Latin American Allies” and way before “Education”), and Huckabee lists “Energy Independence” toward the middle (after “Faith and Politics”, “Marriage”, and before “National Security”).

The plan that makes me personally the happiest is, well, Clinton and Obama’s- specifically, the part where they both want to invest $150 billion dollars over 10 years in clean technology, which would build robust American infrastructure, create jobs, reduce energy dependence, inspire investment by private businesses…you know, my dreamworld.  If you feel like that’s too much, remember, we spend $500 billion a year buying oil.  Also, Bush just found $150 billion he wants to mail to us over the next couple months, so.  $150 billion over 10 years to generate real economic growth?  Ahhhhh, back in my happy place.

Romney and Huckabee both say a lot about how renewables are a good idea, and say they have plans to make it happen, but don’t get as far as saying what the plans are.  McCain features a video and a short blurb on conservation and Teddy Roosevelt, even though he’s sponsored energy bills and gets the best ratings from Grist and LCV in the Republican field.  I am aware that Ron Paul is also still a candidate, and I’m not purposefully leaving him out- but his plan is, he has no plan.  That’s hardcore libertarians for you.

But Huckabee’s issue brief also ranks on my personal happiness factor.  He sounds so excited about his plan!  A section:

The first thing I will do as President is send Congress my comprehensive plan for energy independence. I’ll use the bully pulpit to inform you about the plan and ask for your support. I’ll use the bully conference table to meet with members of Congress until I have the votes. The plan will get underway during my first term, and we will achieve energy independence by the end of my second term…

We think of globalization as primarily an economic issue and the war on terror as primarily a military issue. Yet the same key unlocks the door to success in both, and that key is energy independence.

None of us would write a check to Osama bin Laden, slip it in a Hallmark card and send it off to him. But that’s what we’re doing every time we pull into a gas station. We’re paying for both sides in the war on terror - our side with our tax dollars, the terrorists’ side with our gas dollars.

Our dependence on foreign oil has forced us to support repressive regimes, to conduct our foreign policy with one hand tied behind our back. It’s time, it’s past time, to untie that hand and reach out to moderate Muslims with both hands. Oil has not just shaped our foreign policy, it has deformed it. When I make foreign policy, I want to treat Saudi Arabia the same way I treat Sweden, and that requires us to be energy independent. These folks have had us over a barrel - literally - for way too long.

Energy independence will ease the effects of globalization because the future energy demands of countries like India and China, as their middle class grows, are going to be tremendous. Even if Middle East supplies remain stable - a huge if - that increased demand will drive prices up dramatically, which will hurt our economy by making everything more expensive here. But if we are energy independent, we will be able not just to take care of our own needs and protect our economy, we will also create jobs and grow our economy by developing technologies that we can sell to the rest of the world to meet their needs.

Huck’s thought it through, and he’s dead on- it’s the best summation on any website of how the energy problem ties in with all of our other issues, and Republicans and Democrats can appreciate it (can’t you?).  But goodness, I wish he’d tell me what his plan was, and that it turned out to be a good plan, and that he didn’t espouse other positions such that I would never, ever, vote for him.  But hey, as long as he’s got the gist of it, more power (though not necessarily more delegates) to him.

Before you read the real part, do something quick for me? If you’re running Windows, go to the Start Menu, Control Panel, and click into Power Options. Set some power-saving options for when you aren’t using your computer, if you haven’t already- no reason to keep it on full power when you abandon it for something more interesting.

Ok, that was pretty easy, right? But don’t you wish there was a green colored button with a picture of the world on it that you could just push to make it happen? None of that annoying dragging the mouse all across the screen and clicking on a thing then dragging the mouse again and more clicking?

Rejoice, lazy ones, the EcoButton is here. Engadget covered the big green thing today. Just plug it in to a USB port and then push it, and your computer goes into “ecomode”. Press any key on the keyboard, and it will return from that happy green yonder and tell you how much carbon you saved while it was away. Their website is astounding. I don’t mean the good kind of astounding. Green logos and sidebars, a picture of children planting trees, and a prominent mention of carbon emissions on every page? This isn’t just greenwashing, it’s greenbashing you over the head with greenwashing.

No amount of green plastic or planting children will hide the fundamentally silly idea: spend 30 seconds and set up your computer to do this all the time, or buy a manufactured plastic thing and waste a USB port and push a button every time and then get a distracting screen when you start up again. This doohicky is for sale in bulk to cooperations as a promotional item- like the pens and key chains and stress things you get at job fairs or the end of a fiscal year, if your company pretends to love you. Now, they can give you the ecobutton! It’s a green worthless giveaway!

No, it is not. Well, ok it is worthless, but not green. Do not be seduced by the ecobutton at your next job fair or trade event. It has betrayed its stated principles, and you need that USB port for your rocket launcher anyway.

These doodads and gadgets to make your life greener rile me up. They make a mockery of the considered thought and purposeful effort that are the basis of sustainable decisions. An “ecobutton” to put an “ecomode” on your PC? How wonderful! Is ecobutton 2.0 the one we push to reduce dependency on fossil fuels? I’ll wait for the upgrade, thanks!

You feel like an easy green change? The easiest I know of? Do the power saving thing I talked about at the beginning. If you’re not running Windows don’t rely on those directions, but I promise you it’s easy even if you have to figure out how to do it yourself. Better yet, turn off your computer when you’re not using it, and unplug it from the wall. Unplug doohicky chargers and your TV. Put them all on the same surge protector and unplug it- make it really easy. These things all draw power even when they’re not being used, and it’s all wasted.

Note- Unplugging the Tivo/DVR will result in it not taping MacGyver reruns for you, so leave it in. And my Gentleman Friend, a computer type, is of the opinion that turning off computers more than once a year is bad for them because then they die? I don’t understand this idea, and I do feel like if your computer dies because it hated being turned off so much, maybe it’s best to just let it go, but fair warning.

Abu Dhabi announced plans for a $15bn state investment in clean energy technologies, including the world’s largest hydrogen plant and a new sustainable city. All this while I was dumping my closets on the floor yesterday in a search for sustainability. It’s thrilling that the capital of the UAE, whose fantastic wealth is based squarely on oil and natural gas deposits, is the one taking this huge, important, exciting step. After all, they have the money to burn- but their government also understands that dependency on oil is not a desirable political or economic strategy.

In a moment of dramatic irony, Bush visited the sustainable city last week and thought it was just great. Maybe if the UAE doesn’t need all that oil now, they’ll sell it to us cheap! Maureen Dowd put it well:

You know you’re in trouble when your Middle East oil pump is greener than you are.