Welcome Relief, For Some of Us

A resident Mississippi Kite near its nest

Biblically large weather events are becoming the norm, it seems. But for once, our little corner has had some respite from the very hot and muggy, but otherwise very dry days we'd been experiencing for over a month.

The weather that caused the "thousand-year flood" that hit Dallas the other day produced drenching but moderate rain for us, and the soil was able to absorb it without causing any damage to the Farm. The nandinas that I thought I'd lost have greened up, and the grass has needed mowing twice in the last two weeks (after not growing a smidgen for the previous month)--which is about normal for fall. So maybe that's what's going on now. The windows are all open, and we haven't had the A/C on for three days, even at night. The animals (especially the Great Hairy Beast, Nylah, who has shed an entire coat's worth of fur this summer) are coping well. It's still muggy, but cool and breezy enough to keep things relatively pleasant. Especially compared to recent days.

Our mornings out of doors have included entertainment from a couple of Mississippi Kite pairs who've built nests in the same elm tree. We're not quite sure what we're seeing, because we didn't realize that there were probably young ones involved until recently, but we haven't been able to spot a fledgling. So we could just be seeing fledged babies hanging around and testing their wings (and making lots of noise) before they migrate south. There seems to have been another crop of bunnies as well, and a faithful new hummingbird or two, so our efforts to sustain them all appear to be paying off. It's actually been cool enough that the squirrels have stopped spending all day splooting and have resumed their mad scrambles across the yard and through the trees.

Because this is Texas, we have learned to enjoy good weather while it lasts, so I'm not going to count on many more days of this, even though more rain is forecast for next week. [An aside: is anyone but me bothered by the fact that a couple of my weather apps, including the one that comes with the iPhone, have started saying "forecasted"--as in, "more rain forecasted for this afternoon"? Ack!]

Once again, though, even our spate of uncomfortable weather needs to be appreciated with some gratitude for not being even hotter. I do hope that the experience will encourage folks around here to take advantage of upcoming assistance with upgrading to more efficient appliances, electric vehicles, and the like. We will be looking into replacing our gas furnace with an electric heat pump, even though it will be more expensive to do so. But we've been trying to reduce our dependence on natural gas for some time, and although the monthly energy bill will likely go up, we should at last be able to afford the shift. 

TBS's fondest wish, an electric vehicle, is probably not on the menu, however. We only have the one car now (a Jeep Gladiator for pulling our travel trailer), and since we don't drive much at all anyway, we'll wait until after the household energy situation has been modified. When Chevrolet launches its new electric Silverado, though, and if the range is good enough, we may well trade in the Jeep. And then we could use the truck as backup during blackouts. Our portable power station worked well during the heat wave, when we lost electricity for a couple of hours, but one of those trucks (Like the Ford F150 Lightning) can power an entire house for a couple of days. One of the favorite television programs around our house is Fully Charged (also available on  YouTube), where up-to-date, accurate information is available for anyone interested in the whole question of rethinking our grid.

Mind you, my technological skepticism drives me toward more traditional mitigation efforts--like window coverings, water-saving and reclamation efforts, and energy conservation. But as careful as we have been to reduce our use of air conditioning and other efforts to lessen our impact on the grid, we were pretty restricted in what we could accomplish. And we're retired, with no real travel obligations. And some of our food is delivered every week. So we don't have to get out much. Folks who have more energy-demanding lives have been facing enormous utility bills, without many options. Clearly, alternatives to the status quo will need to be explored by lots more people, and not just aging hippies like us.

The end of August is upon us. September is often our hottest month. We'll probably spend the rest of the month, if it stays cool-ish, getting done what we've been putting off--like getting some fall "crops" in. But we're not particularly hopeful that our good fortune will last, so we'll relish the respite while we can. Stay cool, People. Peace out.

Fracking the Future

Americans seem to be so deeply mired in oil culture that we're never going to escape.

As I wandered through various websites on my Sunday morning catch-up-with-the-news efforts, several stories caught my attention--from Good, Grist, the Times, and other sites that keep me apprised of the world's goings on (since I can't really rely on the Daily Poop to cover much that doesn't happen locally). I tend to focus on energy issues out of habit, and a number of stories resonated with what I've been noticing about a general reluctance to take alternative energy sources seriously in this country.

I was watching Bill Maher's Friday night show on HBO, Real Time, only because there was absolutely nothing else on, and both the Beloved Spouse and I were too tired to do anything but veg. I find Maher mildly amusing at best, and more often irritating, but his guest was Alexandra Wentworth who is both very funny and married to George Stefanopolis. We stayed with the show until the end, mostly out of inertia. Maher's peanut gallery (consisting of Eliot Spitzer, Erin McPike, and Steve Moore) went on to comment on various news items as Maher brought them up. Moore (a Libertarian, co-author of Return to Prosperity) [note: I originally, and mistakenly, referred to this as "Return to Posterity], when talking about clean energy (wind and solar) kept insisting that it's "not economical" and we have to keep fracking and pumping in order to fuel (pardon the pun) future economic recovery. But as any good logic teacher knows, simply asserting something over and over again doesn't make it true; and Moore lacked the time to back his assertion up with any evidence.

But this general notion--that the only "economical" solution to our dependence on foreign oil is to pump more of our own, or find a "bridge" (like natural gas) to tide us over--seems to be embedded in the "conservative" world view at the moment (which doesn't seem all that conservative, upon reflection). Pundits and politicians alike consistently dismiss renewable resources as not cost-effective, or uneconomical. Then they bring up Solyndra as a whipping boy: see what happens when you fund this sort of thing?

Well, according to David Roberts's article in Grist from Friday, the whole Solyndra episode seems to amount to nothing more than a bad call on the part of the Obama administration. The year-long investigation into the loan has turned up, in Robert's words, "Bupkis. Nothing." All efforts to locate wrong-doing have produced nothing more than evidence that it was "a decision made based on merits, undone by economic shifts in the international solar market, with embarrassing political optics. There has been no evidence of wrongdoing. There is no 'scandal.'"

Opponents to alternative fuel sources seem to want this to turn out badly for purely political reasons. Prove that the administration proceeded with this deal for corrupt reason, and it'll tar (again, pardon) the whole industry.

Another story that gave me pause (and reminded me that folks are constantly trying to invent alternatives to fossil fuels) came from Good: Fuel Gets Fruity: Converting Produce Scraps into Gas. Biofuel made from readily available materials seems to be popping up all over the place. Someday, perhaps, we'll all have home scrap-digesters instead of LP gas tanks or natural gas lines running into our homes. As much as I like cooking with gas, I'm working on eliminating the need for it, since I really do think we're running out, and it bloody well terrifies me anyway. Recent evidence also points to the possibility that natural gas isn't as clean as we're being told it is, and is thus much less promising as a cleaner "bridge" fuel that can help us wean ourselves from oil and coal.

The recent move to take another, closer look at the Keystone pipeline drew the ire of the right (we need the jobs and the oil, they say, even though most of the jobs would be temporary and the oil itself would be exported). But according to another article in Grist, by Jess Zimmerman, anti-Keystone folks are finding new allies in the Tea Party: those who don't like the fact that if the pipeline builders can't buy your property from you, they'll just take it via eminent domain.

If only people could see that reliance on fossil fuels is every bit as dangerous to our rights as the taking of property against our will. Don't basic rights to clean air and water come under the notion of a right to life and liberty?

Perhaps because there aren't measurable price tags attached to the breathability of air or the drinkability of water, we can't see them in the more concrete sense that we can property values (even though these are tied to issues of clean air and water). And how do we begin to attach economic value to the ability of future generations to grow crops on land radically altered by changing rain patterns and mean temperatures, or to make a living from polluted fisheries?

What if the idea of prosperity had more to do with well-being than with cash? A transformation in the national psyche from a monetary model of the good life to one based on sustainability and long-term viability seems to be in order. But there seem to be only small glimmers of hope that our national preoccupation with the cash value of what we're leaving our kids (rather than the kind of a planet they're going to inherit) is going to change any time soon.

Image credit: The photo is of the Urban Planet building at Shanghai's Expo 2010. According to its designers, "The exhibition was characterized by a dichotomous structure illustrating the two-faced character of the city as both a consumer of environment and as a place for innovation and technology in the service of an ecological renewal for the future." (via Wikipedia)

Why Are We Still Talking About This?

Actually, the title ought to read, "Why are we still talking about this?" Rather than doing something about it? Because we're getting stupider and stupider; that's why. Stupider (I know my grammar's off, but that's the result of getting stupider) in the sense that we aren't ignorant (the answers are out there and we know about them), but we collectively, and willfully, seem to be making really uninformed, unwise choices about very important problems.

For the last couple of weeks the news from the Gulf of Mexico has gone from horrific to potentially disastrous. The economies of all Gulf coast states--not to mention the economies of nations to the south, west, and east of the spill--are at risk of collapse as the mess inches toward vital fisheries, oyster beds, wetlands, and beaches. The coverage from the New York Times alone demonstrates the seriousness of the situation, and the potential for environmental apocalypse.

Back in March, President Obama caved into Big Oil in a compromise effort to convince bidness-folk that he isn't a tree-hugger, and so they should come on board with his pragmatic energy policy that will use oil, natural gas, and nukes to wean ourselves from foreign oil dependence and give us a chance to build alternative energy sources.

Trouble is, what makes the compromise necessary at all is that the United States is so mired in fossil fuel dependence we're like oil junkies who can't bring themselves to go into treatment. Withdrawal is too scary, and we're afraid to even try.

The oil industry is, as Joe Romm points out on his Climate Progress blog, one of those "too big to fail" operations--and BP is rather like the Goldman Sachs of fossil fuel production.

The reason we need to wean ourselves from this who approach to energy now is precisely because it's too big to manage, it's too destructive to the environment, and it's completely unsustainable.

People who scream at anti-Obama rallies that we're leaving our grandchildren trillions of dollars of debt don't seem to mind that we're also leaving them a substantially damaged planet and atmosphere, and we're failing to educate our kids well enough for them to be able to solve the problems we're bequeathing them.

Just this morning I read in the Daily Poop about Neil Armstrong's claim that President Obama's new space policy will remove us from our position as the leader in space exploration, and we'll end up taking a back seat to foreign countries' efforts in the development of big space-related projects. But as much as I love the space program, I don't particularly see why we have to be the biggest players. If the Russians, the Chinese, the European Space Agency, or private investors can do the job, I don't have a problem with that. We're not exactly preparing our own kids to go mine asteroids or visit Mars, anyway, so why not let somebody who can steer take the helm.

Where we should be striving to be first and best is in the area of energy policy, innovation, and transformation. We use huge amounts of energy (take a look at the World Bank's data to see how we compare to others, using several indicators), and we emit pollutants of all varieties at an alarming rate, so we should be the ones who focus our remaining big brains on this issue. If this country can't properly manage offshore oil wells, I'm not really all that confident that we won't screw up something in space.

Alternative energy sources already exist, and the technological means to design, manufacture, and distribute non-petroleum-based power is available. There are still smart scientists and engineers out there perfectly capable of coming up with ways to fix things. But we, as a voting populace, lack the political will to loosen the hold oil companies and related businesses have on the national economy.

Perhaps the gulf spill will open some eyes. The oil execs sitting in their posh office towers and lounging by the pristine pools in their mansions aren't really the ones being hurt here. BP will end up shelling out a huge chunk of change to help mitigate what it's unleashed, but the fisherman, the tourist industry, the retirement communities, the beach lovers, the shrimpers, the oystermen, the brown pelicans, the wetlands, the estuaries, and the cities all along the perimeter of the Gulf will suffer the impact of this mess for years.

Forty years ago, Earth Day was born in part as a result of an oil spill near Santa Barbara. We should have really learned our lesson after the Exxon Valdez disaster, and after several decades of fighting oil-related wars in the Middle East. We know what oil dependence costs. But in spite of all this, the word out today is that the problems in the Gulf notwithstanding, gasoline prices will be going down over the summer, encouraging more and more people to drive their Hummers around town.

Even if going cold turkey isn't an option, we should now be doing everything we can to wean ourselves not only from oil itself, but from an economy that is clearly doing more harm than good. If alternatives did not exist, the situation would be different; but they do, and investors need to start pulling their money out of petroleum and using it to build a home-grown, future-conscious alternative to messy gobs of crud, toxic fumes, dead birds, ruined lives, and environmental degradation.

One doesn't have to be a Peak Oil "believer" to see that we're in trouble. I'm not naive enough to think that choosing a 100% wind-based source of electricity is going to change the world. But the more subscribers sign up companies like Green Mountain, or with "green plans" through other local distributors, the faster distributors and politicians get the idea that we want out of the oil business.

What really saddens me about the whole situation is that it takes an actual or potential disaster to make us change our ways. We should be altering our way of life significantly because it's the right thing to do, and because it makes moral and practical sense--not just because the economy collapses or because the oil slick is lapping at our front door.

Image sources: Both shots are from NASA; go to the Image Gallery page on the oil spill for more.

Power to the People

It seems to me that there are a number of ways in which to address community energy needs, so I’ve been thinking about local power sources for some time (see my earlier post, Not-So-Bad News from Nowhere) and was pleased to read about Hawaii’s efforts to do just that in yesterday's New York Times.

Of course, “local” in this sense is easy to identify, since we’re talking individual islands in a small archipelago. But the state's program to reduce its dependence on foreign sources of fossil fuels is laudable, since there are so many ways to generate power in this particular venue.

Wind, geothermal, wave, sun, algae: all provide potentially useful ways to run the fridge, without inflicting damage on our lungs, genes, or the environment, and they’re wonderfully diverse. One of the major stumbling blocks to alternative energy on the mainland seems to be a lack of imagination. It always seems to come down to one or the other, or maybe a couple of things. But fossil fuels are still big in the mix; nobody appears to be interested in completely phasing out the use of coal or oil or natural gas. Not when there are millions and billions to be made in fostering dependence on these sources. And don't forget nukes--the only "clean" alternative, as long as you don't count the problem of waste disposal.

Several things occur to me that might help solve our collective problems. One is to reduce our population, and thus our future power needs. Folks who are understandably worried about the debt we’re leaving to our grandchildren might want to consider reducing the number of people who will potentially suffer from our current profligacy (and this isn't just about energy, or even The Deficit). Some people like having lots of kids, and I can understand that. But having a couple of kids instead may be a much more sensible option these days, given not only the cost of providing a passel of young’ns with a decent education and standard of living, but uncertainties about the future as well. I guess it's a sign of optimism that I see so many three- or four-kid families these days, and that was probably okay in the past, when a parent (read: Mom) could stay home with the little ones during their early years. But having big families in problematic economies, when steady jobs with a future are still in question, seems at the very least unwise.

In most developed countries, populations are staying fairly steady, or even dropping (causing problems with maintaining ways of life that have been supported in the past by large numbers of offspring, and requiring influxes of foreign workers). This, of course, opens a huge can of lumbricids, and requires its own set of solutions. But one of these solutions leads to the second of my recommendations for the power problem.

We really need to re-think consumption patterns: not only our use of power for electricity, heating, transportation, and the like, but also our expectations about stuff. How much stuff (plastics come to mind immediately, but all other consumer goods should be under the microscope, too) do we really need?

Now, I’m an avowed materialist. I’m also a packrat, a family historian, a passionate recycler, and a lapsed archaeologist. I tend to keep stuff. Which means that I shouldn’t keep getting more stuff, but I do. Books and notebooks are stacked on either side of this laptop as I type, and I show few signs of beginning to manage my addiction. But if I were, according to my own advice, to think carefully about how much I really need that new book on marine algae formation and climate change, I might be able to reduce my related needs, such as more bookshelves to hold the books and magazines (which I’m really reluctant even to pitch in the recycle bin) that keep ending up on my desk .

Happily, I’m not also addicted to buying clothes or tchotchkes, and have long been able to resist buying stuff just because it’s cute, even though I sometimes rue not having picked up the funky bird bath at Tuesday Morning that would have looked great in my silly garden.

Cheap stuff is, in the end, no bargain. We should all be following William Morris’s rule about having nothing in our houses that we don’t know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. That might not exclude the birdbath (it does, after all, bathe birds), but maybe it would keep us from buying some piece of useless crap just because it’s cheap. It also costs energy and resources to produce, and if it isn’t useful or beautiful, it probably shouldn’t have been made in the first place. After all, I can always make a birdbath out of the bent-up copper fire pit the neighbor’s tree fell on, or an old bowl and a tree stump.

In addition to not having so many kids and not buying stuff we don’t need (I know, putting those two items together seems heartless and unsympathetic, not to mention somewhat crass; but I simply must maintain my reputation as a snark), we really do need to be less single-minded about energy production in the first place.

Source diversity is a really good idea in its own right. Why can’t we all have nifty wind generators or solar collectors on our rooftops, or small windmills in our yards? (Well, here's one reason why the latter might not be the answer.) Why can’t we go back to using waterwheels to grind grist where it’s practical, or steam generators in places with geothermal activity? Why can’t there be smaller, less-centralized power plants that reduce the possibility of widespread blackouts?

If the problems are complex, I see no reason why complex solutions can’t be viewed as a challenge to entrepreneurial imagination and embraced in their multiplicity. As I rail to my students every quarter (to explain why lots of people make houses that look like pueblos, and why it didn’t take aliens to inspire pyramids in so many cultures), similar problems lead to similar solutions. But those solutions don’t have to be one thing. They can be many, and regionally appropriate, and focused on the actual needs of the community.

And if we stopped thinking that the only way to reflect progress is to “grow” bigger and broader suburbs with outrageous power needs, we might already be on our way to energy independence through a practical combination of conservation and innovation.

I know I’ve left water out of this disquisition, but it’s a different (although related) problem. And right now, after more than a week of rain, I’m up to my nose in it—so I’ll save that issue for another time.

If I've piqued anyone's interest in either alternative energy sources, increased energy efficiency, or distributed power generation (a term in wide use that describes the decentralization I'm talking about), here are some sources:

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory
The New Rules Project: Designing Rules as if Community Matters, especially its article on Distributed Generation in Local Plans (also linked above)

The Survival of and Potential for Decentralized Power Generation, by Harry Valentine, at Electric Energy Online

Image source: Landscape with Windmills, by Ivan Constantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900), via Wikimedia Commons. Check out windmills around the world on Wikimedia while you're at it.