Virescent

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.

I’ve been inadvertently posting lots on handmade things and crafting in the past few days. It’s on my mind because with work, school, moving, and weekend commitments, I’ve currently got three or four projects started…and left. I am literally itching to continue them. Literally.

My current works in progress:

1) scarf, knit (3/4 inch done) (but I have the supplies and I’ve decided on the pattern and it’s sized right finally, so it’s less lame than it sounds) (still pretty lame, though)

2) quilt, sewn (numerous squares cut. need to learn to “quilt”)

3) Weighted Companion Cube footstool (frame built, fabric almost ready, lots of stuffing and sewing left) (I feel especially bad about the delay on this one, since it’s for the Gentleman Friend’s birthday, which was over a month ago)

That’s all I can think of now, but once I get my fabric scraps out I’m sure I’ll remember- or think of- a few more. Maybe I should block off some time this weekend to get started on a few of those again. Or one. I should pick one, and finish it. Or go back to the Salvation Army to find unravelable sweaters…no! I will pick one. One that I have started.

Clive Thompson at Wired wrote an interesting article on the pull of Doing It Yourself, and how the growing movement to make things may save our souls. Or the world, or at least some money.  I think he’s got a great point.  I’m a mechanical engineer, and instead of ever showing us machines and their workings, our curriculum was 95% math and book-learning.  If it weren’t for a particularly uppity and old-fashioned professor (he walked straight out of 1955, proudly, and insisted on hands-dirty labs) I might never have learned what a pump looked like, or seen one work.  When I talk to older engineers, I’m ashamed of my total lack of knowledge on useful things, and the rest of my shop and home-ecless generation probably feels (should feel) the same way.  Unless, of course, they were smart enough to learn it on their own.  Knowledge is pitched as books and computers now, and that’s not going to be very helpful when the apocalypse comes.  I’m hedging my bets by learning a few actual skills, so I don’t get eaten first…

What do you think- books and computer simulations vs knowing how and what to weld?  Do we have time to know the “old” skills and learn the new ones?   Will the new wave of DIY-building robots from toasters translate into an intellectual renaissance?

Sure, we’re all a bit jealous that they’ve got fantastic mountains and beaches and vineyards just laying around, and it’s easy to roll their citizenry into one granola-munching stereotype, but whatever you look askance at them for, you have to admit they sure come up with a lot of interesting ideas. Some better than others, of course. In a proposed set of building energy efficiency standards, due to be approved on January 30th of this year, the California Energy Commission mandated the installation in all homes of a “Programmable Communicating Thermostat”. The PCTs would be linked into a radio network controlled by energy utilities, and if there was an emergency or demand was too high, those utilities could remotely change the level of the thermostats to reduce loads on the power grid. Faster than you can say “Eric Blair”, people got all worked up about government interventionism. Rightly, I think- it’s an interesting technology, and it’s a useful application of it, but even if the mandatory nature of the box installation doesn’t bug you, the vagueness of the rule should.

The thermostat control would be exercised only in cases of need… said Adam Gottlieb, a spokesman for the California Energy Commission.

Utilities know how to interpret the new mandate, he said, and when to apply it, even though the definitions are not specified in the document.

Exemptions for people with health problems and other special cases were also promised, but no mention of them is made in the standards. As quoted in the IHT, a spokeswoman for the pilot program of the radio network controlling the thermostats said the network is secure and impossible to hack, which I think is spokespersonese for “Will you stop asking me technical questions if I say it’s foolproof?”

Since the kerfluffle, the standard has been changed, to make opting into the radio-control part of the program optional- but installation of the devices in new buildings remains mandatory.  What have we learned?  California isn’t as government-control-happy as some people like to imagine, and invocations of “Big Brother” are getting really boring.  Won’t someone please write a new definitive work of fictional authoritarianism so we can beat that to death for a while?

As much as I don’t like the idea of the mandatory participation in the fuzzily defined program, if I lived in California, I’d sign up to let them radio-control my thermostat.  Honestly, it won’t do them much good- my thermostat is accurate to within 10 degrees, and I lose all the heat or AC out of my unsealed windows 15 minutes after my unit shudders off, so I don’t keep it on much (and while it’s on, it sounds like someone is driving a dump truck up and down my hall- but that’s only annoying for me, really).  And if they worked the program out to be more specific and secure, to include the special exceptions, and to be more open to public debate in the first place, well, I’d probably be ok with doing it involuntarily.  After all, it’s a public utility- it’s not a right- and we’re happy enough paying to use its juice the rest of the time.   But when things get rough, we refuse to unplug the TV or put on a sweater?  Good grief, it’s not like they want us to pay for the electricity we don’t use- it’d even lower your bill some.

If you want a steady supply of electrons to keep your fishtank and lights and Cuisinart and AC on all the time, build your own plant, and suck off that- no one is making you connect to the grid in the first place.  Duuuuude, if we all had solar panels or windmills or biomass collections for our composters, the grid wouldn’t be stretched so thin already.

A thought-exercise: An Indian company, Tata, has developed a super-cheap small car. Are we pleased?

Pro: The car costs less than $3000.

Con: That’s still more than 3 years pay at average Indian wages.

Pro: It’s safer than a motorcycle.

Con: It’s not much safer.

Pro: It’s got relatively low emissions- a byproduct of tiny.

Con: It’s not got the technology to keep emissions low after actual road use.

Pro: It will take up less space in a traffic jam.

Con: More people able to afford small car-> more small cars on the roads-> more traffic jams.

With dreams of being Model-T revolutionary, the Tata’s people car could do much for the new middle class in developing countries. Like, it could give them access to a car. A car engineered to the least expensive possible standard of functionality- the steering shaft is hollow, and at speeds over 45 mph, the wheel bearings wear quickly (great, so it’s a disposable car?). No worries about it being unleashed on American roads- it wouldn’t meet our safety or environmental regulations. And in a couple years, when India has environmental and car safety regulations of it’s very own, it probably won’t meet them, either. In the US, safety requirements cost generally add $2500 to the cost of making a car- about double the People’s car price.

Sure, it sounds hypocritical to wish that developing countries not develop into the same gas-quaffing, road warrioring, driving maniacs that the US already has become. Without widespread usable public transportation, most of the US isn’t left a choice. Owning a car has becomes a basic need, to work and get groceries and go anywhere. In most of the developing world, though, it remains a status symbol. I’m not bemoaning the role of efficient transportation in development- a car certainly goes faster than a donkey or a bike- I’m just saying, personal cars aren’t the most efficient method of transport, and if countries develop in a manner dependent upon them, they’ll only trap themselves in the same nasty emissions and oil-dependency cycle we’ve gotten ourselves into.

The US should try and set an example by, say, developing a viable train system, or encouraging investment in mass transit in cities- make a metro pass a status symbol. Or maybe we could go with the Cadillac flow, and make clean cars the new status symbol. Pardon me, while I covet the Provoq.

Really, though: Hey, India, we’re not a great example. Try something else.

As my early gift to you all, a few stories to help you while away your last workday before Christmas:

The Energy Bill was signed into law yesterday morning, so a decade from now cars will be more fuel efficient, appliances will be more energy efficient, and we’ll be driving more on ethanol. I remain less than thrilled about the final draft, but hey, it’s better than the Energy Bill we used to have. ZDnet reports on what the legislation will and won’t do, and what it means to regular people.

Toshiba is installing one of their tiny nuclear reactors next year in Japan. It would fit in my living room with room left over for a sofa or two, and provides energy for half what it costs to pull it from the grid here in America. They’re billed as “fail-safe” and “totally automatic”, which is always what people say in those sci-fi stories about three paragraphs before the thing fails catastrophically. Before we get all NIMBY (or rather, NIMLivingRoom) about it, let’s take a deep breath and remember that nuclear power is the most inexpensive, reliable, efficient source of renewable energy out there right now, except for that whole thing where we have no idea how to deal with the long-lived and very dangerous spent fuel. Actually, why haven’t I been writing more about nuclear power? It’s pretty interesting. Chew on this, and I’ll have more later.

Finally, click around this Wired slideshow on 2007’s “10 Craziest Ways to Hack the Planet”. In pictures and short summaries, they detail how a few scientists are proposing radical solutions for fixing environmental problems. Not enough agricultural space? Build skyscraper farms. Too much sunlight warming us up? Let’s seed the sky with clouds/shoot giant mirrors into space. Environment not soaking up enough carbon? Let’s invent new kinds of trees or fertilize plankton! Some proposals are interesting in their just-crazy-enough-to-work panache, but a few hit that why-would-anyone-ever-consider-that-ever chord. At the end, the scientists all throw back their heads and laugh maniacally. Not really, but they do end on perhaps the craziest- and only ongoing- world hack of all: our effort to change the balance of the planet by dumping gimongonourmous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

I’ll be away for a while for the holiday, so have a good one.

The good news: clean tech companies landed venture capital investments of 4.2 billion dollars last year. The bad news: weapons manufacturers, surveillance, and private security companies got 6 billion. Venture Business Research, a company that informs investment by groups like Goldman Sachs, expects the ‘exciting’ trends in the “sneakiness and things that go bang” sector to continue, and promote it as a better investment than clean energy.

In an article for The Nation (reposted at the Huffington Post), Naomi Klein pegs the trend in investments preferring disaster response to disaster prevention. She says it best:

According to Lloyd, despite all the government incentives, the really big money is turning away from clean energy technologies and banking instead on gadgets promising to seal wealthy countries and individuals into high-tech fortresses. Key growth areas in venture capitalism are private security firms selling surveillance gear and privatized emergency response.

Do read the article, it’s fascinating and short, and it’s not full of scary economic-speak. It is full of the scary way the “free” market is going to handle the climate crisis. In my debate with the Conservative Amazon, I challenged her assertion that the “free” market will fix the climate with the simple truth is that there is no real incentive for them to do so- carbon pollution and resource waste is not only free, it can significantly boost company profits. By the way- I’m using the term “free” market since the current economic system we have is not a free market at all: it merely pretends to be while accepting some government regulation (no child or slave labor) and lots of government subsidies and tax cuts- those incentives that Klein’s quote talks about.

Klein doesn’t address the sick little twist that clean technology is a security investment- as long as America is dependent on a limited resource purchased at very high and very volatile prices from foreign countries whose populations and governments tend to hate us, we will never be secure- no matter how much we invest in “security”.

I can’t fathom any good reason that “security” is now a better investment than clean tech, since they are so fundamentally related. Of course, maybe I just shouldn’t be expecting cohesive, long-term logic from people who generate money fast for a living- there’s just a better return in things that explode, I guess. Making money from clean tech requires large initial investments and can include long waits until the technology pays off. There is no way that a system based solely on “making the most money now” can solve real problems like climate change.

Government regulations mandating a clean energy future are the only reasonable way to maintain a secure country. Ok, so the typical conservative or libertarian argument is that government (which subsidizes energy businesses) shouldn’t regulate Big Energy (to produce energy that doesn’t harm the American people)- government regulation, is, after all, Bad, and anti-”free” market. If conservative/libertarian types who rely on this “free” market are as interested in security as they claim to be, they need to suck it up and regulate the market.

Well, at least there is some money headed towards common sense and the common good. Google’s not being evil now by investing in clean technology. And when Al Gore isn’t making self-deprecating movie and TV appearances, he’s working on a clean tech venture capital company in Silicon Valley. So there’s the hope to hold on to.

PS, the debate with the CA blogger is continuing- she said she’ll reply to my arguments from two weeks ago eventually, but she’s busy right now. I’ll let you know when that goes up.

Note: This post has been edited from its original version- some of the sentences have been rearranged and a few added for clarity.

I spent a while today blogging, but not here- I was responding to another blog’s article on technology and the environment. The exchange is here, if you’d like to take a gander (just leave my alpaca alone) or jump on in.

As a reminder that we’re not doomed yet, here are a couple of articles on large investments in research and development in clean technology. Both are from Wired.

First, especially to please the conservative/free market types, Formula One car racing is requiring its teams to make their cars more energy efficient and look for alternative sources of power, by banning engine development for the 2008-2018 seasons. Hybrid technologies, alternative fuels, and recapture of heat and exhaust to be converted to power are some of the systems to be developed to make the race cars racier in the future. Formula One is to the world like NASCAR is to Middle America, it would seem, and they’re sponsored by some major car companies to demonstrate cutting-edge technology, which then quickly trickles down into the everyday-driver market. This could have a pretty fantastic impact on the efficiency of cars available to the public, and it’s a great demonstration that efficient cars aren’t lame, for those more interested in smoking other cars at stoplights than conservation.

For those interested in the viability of government investment in research and development of new technology, Russia’s $5 billion investment in a state nanotechnology center is worth watching. Nanotech is good for lots of things (everything, according to those involved in nanotech research), but the director of the facility Mikhail Kovalchuk is mostly interested in the applications of his research on efficiency and clean energy technologies. Even more exciting, since Russia’s budget surplus that allows them to make this investment is mostly due to their incredible gains in the oil and natural gas markets (holding Eastern Europe over the barrel, har). The article points out that this investment is at least in part meant to stave off the effects of the certain collapse of the fossil fuel economy on Russia’s economy.

Well, it’s less a parade than a squat, but however you trumpet it the Solar Decathlon has it’s competition homes on display this week, through Saturday. You can tour the homes, which are built by students from the US and a few international teams. Awards are given for architecture and a bunch of other measures of efficiency and usability. The overall winner will be announced today, but the homes will be open for tours through Saturday. Lectures on how homeowners can take advantage of solar technologies and other “green renovations” are also going on all day Saturday. I visited last weekend, and was most interested by the range of styles each team used in their home. Some looked like traditional ranch homes with a solar panel plunked on top, one appeared to have been eaten entirely by solar panels, and a few looked like shoe boxes with funny attachments. My favorites were from Colorado (left), Cincinnati (right), and Texas A&M: pictures of each home labeled by school are online, and team overviews and links to other team websites are also at the Decathlon homepage. Right now the team from Maryland is 1st in overall standings, but who knows what drama could occur by this evening! Anything under the sun, that’s what. The Decathlon homepage also includes tons of links to basic information (check under the “Teachers” heading) about solar and other renewable energies, and a link for “Consumers” if you’re interested in finding out ways to actually use some of the solutions on your own home. It’ll be a nice weekend, so check it out in person if you get a chance.

The lectures and informational materials are great, but they’re mostly directed at people with homes. For us renters, there are a few feasible, portable solar options. The Solio is a portable device charger with 4 (4!) color options, and the Eclipse line of bags will carry your stuff and charge it too- one of their bags was reviewed in Wired. I can’t personally recommend any of these products, but they sure look cool, and they get pretty good reviews. And Christmas/Eid/Diwali/Hanukkah/Festivus is sneaking up and all…

I don’t dryclean clothes often, but after an entire winter’s worth of run-ins with mud and soup, my coat needed a bath. A few alternatives to the perc-full traditional dry cleaners now exist, and the two most discussed are the Greenearth franchise and “wet cleaners”.

Wet cleaning is a real thing, and if you want to know more about it, read the wikipedia article. I couldn’t find any locations in the area that do this kind of cleaning because there aren’t many places that do. It involves possibly deconstructing clothing, washing it carefully in biodegradable solvents, then maybe reconstructing it. Most “dry clean only” clothing actually can be cleaned in water and soaps, very very carefully. With computers. Still, hard to find a place that does it, and I don’t know any geishas (read the article), so I looked into the Greenearth people.

Greenearth cleaning uses a silicon based solvent that, in very very high concentrations, causes cancer in lab rats. The same chemical is also found in many personal care products, like shampoo, and has been very widely used for about 30 years, and no studies have definitively linked it with people cancer. NPR reported on the cancer findings, but several other reports dismissed the link with assertations and even some science. Whatever the health effects it’s generally agreed that the chemical is less harmfull than perc- making it easier to get approval to use it on location and cheaper to clean up for franchise owners- plus by all reports the Greenearth process is gentler on clothing and doesn’t have a telltale smell. More importantly, stores that do this actually exist in the greater DC area. It appears their franchises are springing up everywhere- they have a pickup service in Kingstowne, Springfield, a branch on North Quaker in Alexandria, presence in Arlington on Washington Blvd, and locations in Bowie MD and Silver Spring MD. The storefront on North Quaker is large and very professional- looking, with uniformed staff and lots of signs posted about safety processes and environmental credits. Prices range from fine to really good- less that 20$ for my long cashmere-blend coat. Shirts are $2.70, according to a sign. No other prices were posted. While they did swathe my clothing in plastic upon return, they didn’t give me all-new hangers, so that was a nice little conservationist “perk.” Har.

My clothes smell nice and look good- all the unscientific tests say that Greenearth treats your clothes much better than normal drycleaners- and the prices seemed ok to me. If you’re balking at paying more for shirts, consider that the shirts will probably last longer with the Greenearth people.