Moving Like Water

So why can’t I go out and buy an electric car today?

The truth is I can. Kind of. Recently I promised to write about the lack of reasonable choices for full electric solutions. It’s time.

First the good news. There is more and more news about electrics hitting American streets, including the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf. The bad news? These cars always seem just out of reach or ridiculously expensive. We’ll see in a year or two if we have some real choices.

In the meantime, we occasionally get to see an electric car in a parking lot and we all walk up to it and marvel. But if you’re like me and don’t have a lot of friends with Teslas, most of the electric cars you’ve seen up close are glorified golf carts such as the GEM.

Why is this? Because without proper safety equipment, the law limited many of these Neighborhood Electric Vehicles to roads with posted limits of 35 mph or less and the speeds limited to 25 mph. Weak! There is a Medium Speed Vehicle classification as well and many NEVs can be modified to go 35 mph. But the crux of the issue remains the same. Electrics are at a power disadvantage compared to internal combustion-based cars and thus have a harder time pushing the weight of all that safety equipment around. This might be the second greatest irony of Ralph Nader’s life.

Now don’t get me wrong. This safety equipment has been a positive development. It’s probably saved my own life and lives of many people I know. And no wants to scrape brains off car batteries, so of course safety laws make sense.

But we already have various classifications of vehicles. For example, motorcycles are already allowed on public roadways, including highways. No one would argue that they’re safer than a large SUV in a collision. People accept the risk and the law requires the minimum safety equipment such as helmets and headlights. Should people who want to drive electric cars should be allowed to accept some larger amount of risk in exchange for some loosening of safety requirements? Or should larger vehicles pay more in taxes and in insurance rates since they’re doing more damage?

I’m not sure what the solution is, but it’s obvious that we’re in a vicious circle right now where vehicles continue to get larger and heavier to defend themselves from other large, heavy vehicles. Would we even need, for example, side impact air bags if cars had evolved to be smaller and lighter in stead of bigger and heavier? As bumpers get heavier, more padding and beefier car frames go up in defense. At some point this has to stop.

That’s why this news today came as a welcome development:

TACOMA, Wash. – Two Washington legislators are looking to move golf carts from fairways to roadways. A bill by Rep. Tami Green of Lakewood would let people drive golf carts in bike lanes and on sidewalks throughout the state.

I’m not sure about the sidewalks part, but this is the future. I can easily envision cart paths separated from normal roadways for longer distances and allowed anywhere cars are allowed on roads of 25 mph or less. Recently on a trip to Catalina Island, I tooled around in a golf cart, mingling with traffic just fine. (OK, a little scary at first, but it was fine once you get used to it.)  

I don’t claim to have all the answers, but it’s clear to me that the dynamic we’ve been operating under for decades needs to shift. My job is a relatively short 9 miles from my house. I drive to work since I sometimes need to drive during the day, although I carpool, which definitely helps keep the carbon down. But it just feels silly to haul all this metal around everywhere I go. So it’s not going to be enough to simply replace gas engines with electric motors. Cities need to adapt now to face a gas-free future. Those that don’t face up to this procrastinate at their peril.

Well, this should at least get my brother fully motivated to engage in climate change issues. And hopefully a lot of other people.

It seems it’s more than just our lives at stake here. Now it’s our beer.

Scientists in the Czech Republic have announced that the quality of Saaz hops – the variety used specifically to make pilsner lager – has been decreasing in recent years.

Like a lot of things related to climate change, it comes down the matter of disrupting a very delicate balance. These hops apparently rely on a precise acid ratio that is being affected by a warmer climate.

So now the question is, will this get people involved? Or will we need to lose our beloved wine as well?

Here in Seattle we have a healthy obsession with waste management. We’re nuts about recycling. The simple act of putting an aluminum can in the regular garbage will pretty much make a Seattlite break out in hives.

But some say this fetish may have gone a little too far with the August ballot measure on whether a fee should be charged for each new disposable bag used when purchasing groceries.

Now I haven’t decided how I’m going to vote on this one so you can truly call me neutral right now. On one hand I hate just about everything made of plastic and certainly have no love for plastic grocery bags. On the other hand, the implementation of this rule is pretty dumb. First of all, it’s a fee, not a true tax, so essentially it’s the government telling stores to charge more and then they can keep (some of) the money. I find this approach odd because we’re ALREADY paying for the cost of the bags when we buy food. If you need proof, just note that some stores already give you a discount for bringing your own bag.

I’d feel a lot more comfortable with a straight-up tax that is then used to support effective environmental measures in the city. Instead this fee feels like too much of a buy-off to the grocery stores. And while it may lower the number of bags used in the city, it’s really not going to make much of an impact on climate change. And really, at this point, if you’re not targeting climate change you’re just wasting everyone’s time. Is the bag fee REALLY going to move the needle on climate change or is this about politics and looking “green”? It’s about focus and prioritization.

And that’s why I’m torn. More than likely I’ll probably vote for the measure because I suppose it gets us a little bit closer to where we need to be. But, wow, what else could we be doing instead?

I decided to take a quick stab at some things I think the city could do that would have more impact on CO2 emissions than the bag fee and involve about the same scope as this fee. Here’s my top 5.

1. Modernize the city building codes to address climate change.
Codes across the country have been gradually tightening with respect to energy efficiency but there is opportunity here for Seattle to become a leader. And way too much emphasis is being put on LEED designs where things like recycled tile are allowed to make up for energy usage weaknesses. (Yes, it’s getting better, but it’s not there yet. I have some friends that work in a new state-of-the-art LEED building in Bellevue and they think it’s ridiculous their company can brag about its “green” status because of it’s recycled material usage while there are fans and swamp coolers running in nearly every cubicle.) We should encourage new office buildings to produce as much of their own energy as possible. For new homes, we should at least require they be ready to be add solar/wind to the mix by including wiring for inverters. Let’s require sloped roofs to be oriented to take maximum advantage of solar in the future. You could write books just on this topic, but you get the idea.

2. Ban leaf blowers.
It isn’t just the noise, although that is completely aggravating. They blow around spores, dust and germs, all while spitting out CO2 through the two-stroke exhaust. Read more. Yes, cleaning up leaves and cut grass may take a little longer with this crazy invention called a RAKE, but we are trying to LIVE here! As an added benefit, I’m pretty sure a good portion of my spring allergies are caused by these stupid devices so the sooner they’re banned the better. And we wouldn’t be the first.

3. Separate street garbage.

Yes, we’re totally anal about our home recycling, but Seattle’s downtown city garbage cans are still just one-stop cans. (The ones near my work at least.) If you visit Canada (I thinking of my last visit to Toronto), you’ll see some of the most complex garbage cans in the world, helpfully indicating where to put each type of garbage. But wait, you say, weren’t you just saying this waste management obsession was a misplaced focus? You’re right, but in this case, basic recycling would (I think) save the city quite a bit of processing time and fuel, so in the case of public garbage catching it up to home sorting standards would probably save quite a bit of carbon.

4. Tax bottled water.
OK so you want to attack a big source of plastic and actually have an impact? Let’s fish where the fish are — the water. I have no idea how much bottled water we’re consuming here, but I know it’s a lot. Everything from producing the bottles, trucking it in, driving it home in the trunk and disposing of the bottle has a cost — in dollars and carbon footprint. And that pile of empty water bottles filling our recycle bins is also a potentially big revenue driver for the city. And, unlike the bag fee, it has no impact on lower income residents, unless they’re buying bottled water, and please tell me they’re not. And it’s been done before. Shall we start with 10 cents? And even if that takes awhile, hopefully no city money is going toward buying bottled water for staff.

5. Lower the overhead.
So as we get ready to enter a clean energy century, we have to do some prep-work to get ready. Given that we’re in a very rough job market, I think spending some money on this preparation will never make more sense than right now. And before everyone jumps on my ass for noting that we’re already trying to figure out what services to cut, perhaps this is what we can spend all our bottled water tax revenue on. 
Above I mentioned updating our building codes. But that only affects new construction and possibly major remodels. We need to get our older housing (and commmercial buildings) ready for modern energy. Now we can certainly spend a lot of money to generate a lot of power and not worry about it. But until energy generation gets MUCH cheaper, it’ll be much more cost-effective to lower the consumption of energy of each structure and then build out the production side to match. That means windows and that means insulation. It will mean converting oil and natural gas to electric heat. Yes, even natural gas.
So let’s prioritize. If we could come up with a sizable chunk of money, where would be the best place to spend it? The answer is we don’t know until we audit. Fortunately the data should be readily available via our utilities. I suspect through a very basic exercise of applying the home square footage against energy usage, we can target the homes most in need of upgrades. (It’s probably the same way the man tracks down grow rooms.) I believe that the old 80/20 rule applies in most cases and I think we can probably find and tighten up the worst homes within five years and have a massive impact.

Personally I believe if you did nothing but tax bottled water and turn those funds directly into home energy improvements, you’d have a measurable impact on climate change and position the city to take advantage of clean energy expansion in the future.

Recently I was stopped late at night at a Seattle intersection. It was dark out, not a car around except for mine. And the light stayed red and stayed red. Then, almost as if the stoplight could read my mind, I was about to give up and go anyway when it finally changed to green.

There’s something programmed in us from when we first started driving that freezes us in place if that little red circle is showing. We sit there. And sometimes sit and sit. And now we need to fear photo-based traffic tickets.

In many ways stoplights have been an amazing invention. They’ve certainly saved many lives and keep traffic generally moving. In fact, long streets with a series of traffic lights are often better bets in heavy traffic compared to freeways that typically suffer complete system collapse once volumes pass the levels they were designed to handle. That’s why certain freeways are absolutely guaranteed to come to a near halt at certain times each day.

Which brings us back to the classic American traffic light. First used in narrow downtown cores where space was limited, the traffic light has spread to every suburb and has become a point of pride for small towns rolling out their first traffic light to great fanfare.

But as I sat alone at that intersection getting zero miles per gallon, the dark side of traffic lights became quite apparent. Multiply the minutes I spent sitting there across the other drivers sitting across the country and you’ve got a heck of a lot of carbon being produced unnecessarily. Fortunately there’s a solution: The Traffic Circle or Roundabout.

It can be amusing watching an American encounter one of these for the first time. They’ll sometimes freeze, panic or make an erratic move as they try to figure it out. It’s understandable, really. They’re relatively rare and often not signed well. And if you’ve ever gone through one in another country, you know the locals don’t slow down or tolerate unexpected movements. I had quite the experience on a Vespa in Rome trying to get to the outside lane so I could jump out at the street I wanted.

That said, roundabouts are remarkably efficient, really just a circle with a road wrapped around it. They do take more space so it could be problematic converting some intersections to this solution. But, best part? No stopping and no idling. And they’ve got to be cheaper to create. Maybe not ideal for every situation, but it’d be great to see city planners embrace this solution wherever possible.

Throughout the presidential election campaign, we endured endless ads from two unusual sources. One was the endless loop of “Pickens Plan” ads and other other was the heavy rotation of nonsensical “We” ads.

If you’ve been near a TV at all during the last few months, you’ve seen both of these ads. In some ways the similarities are more telling than the differences with these ads. Both are focused on sustainability in their own way, both claim to be demanding renewable energy and both at least seem to be aimed at moving opinion leaders toward their approach.

But what are these plans and organizations all about? You certainly can’t tell from these 30 second ads. I decided to take a look.

The We campaign is being run by the WeCanSolveIt.org group, founded by Al Gore (full disclosure: big Al Gore fan here and I joined the group when it was first organized). The We group’s goal is to get the U.S. to 100% clean electricity in 10 years. The goal is so aggressive that you could be forgiven for assuming that their position is nothing more than a clever use of the Overton window. I, however, think it is an attainable goal. And, like Al Gore would probably say, it’s a goal that we can’t afford to miss. Sadly it is an expensive goal as well; although we could certainly use some infrastructure spending in America to kick-start our economy.

I’m excited about We because it puts our focus where it should be: moving to electricity for energy wherever possible and creating that energy with clean, renewable sources. And for those of you who are regular readers will note, that means you’re not burning anything. The technology is here today, but it’s not the cheapest energy in most cases. For example, let’s say you wanted to move your house to solar. You would probably pay something above $20,000 on panels and an inverter. Plus you’ll likely need a new furnace if you live in a colder part of the country. With an electric bill of, say, $100ish per month, you’re looking an incredibly long payback. There’s no way to move massive numbers of people to these solutions with those economics. This is why RE<C is such an important concept. In fact it’s the entire basis of this Web site.

Which brings us to the Pickens Plan.

Now I’m doing my best to give the plan an honest look, but readers should note that I’ll never forgive this sleazeball for financing the Swiftboat ads against John Kerry in 2004. Simply disgusting and immoral.

So with that bad taste in my mouth ignored, let’s look at Pickens. T. Boone PIckens rightly highlights the fact that our foreign oil consumption has risen for decades now under both political parties. He doesn’t mention how much money he made off that oil importation, however. His plan calls for a bold move to renewable energy, such as wind. But, as you’ve seen in his commercials, he notes the “technology isn’t there yet. We need a bridge.”

His bridge? Natural gas, or as he calls it, CNG. CNG stands for compressed natural gas (don’t kind yourself into thinking the C stands for clean. It doesn’t. Now natural gas does work in cars. Governments and taxis have used it for years. Now, what you may not know is that Pickens is the largest shareholder in Clean Energy Inc., a natural gas distribution company. Stations are already popping up around the country.

So is this “bridge” really just a bridge from your wallet to Pickens’ bank account? Hard to say, but it’s clear Pickens stands to make a fortune. Not that I mind someone making money from their ideas. I’m a proud capitalist and nothing would make me happier than making money by driving greater sustainability. But is there something else going on here? This Business Week article seems to show that there is. It seems Pickens is snatching up midwest land and driving toward a pipeline pointed toward Texas. For oil? No, this time water. Could Pickens be getting ready to step on the drinking water hose? Yikes! Could the plan to build a massive wind farm in the midwest actually be a water rights grab? I’m sure I’m not qualified to say, but the speed at which Pickens’ wind power plans were shelved puts quite a bit of weight on the wrong side of the scale.

From a marketing perspective, kudos to Pickens for a very clear, powerful marketing campaign. I’m a member of We, have seen dozens of their ads and still can’t figure out what their core message is. Do they want volunteers? Investors? Donations? I can’t tell! Weak! Pickens also shows how shooting some video of yourself in front of spinning windmills can’t help but make you look like an environmental hero. It’s a lesson John McCain used quite a bit during the campaign.

So the bottom line? Pretty simple, really. They just have different goals. Al Gore’s We group is 100% about climate change issues. He wants us to drop the carbon output of this country and fast. And rebuild our economy in the process. Pickens, if taken at face value, is focused on escaping the clutches of middle eastern dictators. An admirable goal, but one that is also solved with the We approach. Unfortunately, if Pickens’ plan were to work, it would actually extend the climate change challenges by extending the timeframe that our economy is based on burning a natural resource. Add in the worries over water issues and with Pickens you have the exact opposite of sustainability. Just more short-term corporate thinking from a billionaire.

Decision: We.

Well, the new Planet Green network has gone live. I guess this is a positive development in terms of raising environmental consciousness.

I watched a few minutes of Renovation Nation, which seemed pretty interesting. It features a fashion-upgraded Steve Thomas (from This Old House). The show, from my five minute viewing, looks like This Old House with an eco spin. Pretty good idea and had some interesting topics.

On the other hand, I had to turn away from “Alter Eco,” which is basically a product placement extravaganza masquerading as a reality show.

Which is unfortunately why I welcome the arrival of Planet Green with some trepidation. Aside from just being annoying, these shows that feature a lot of “eco” products and toss around the word “green” every 2 minutes cause a lot of confusion among the public. Or rather, it reinforces the idea that slapping some sort of eco-friendly label on a product frees consumers from any guilt or deeper thinking about what they’re buying. And the constant sales pitch is exhausting:

Character 1: “Are those sunglasses eco?”

Character 2: “Why, yes, as a matter of fact they are.”

Me: “Yawn.”

We’ll see where things go. Hopefully there are at least enough decent shows to give Planet Green a fighting chance. And if you guys at the network want to see my treatment, let me know!

In honor of Earth Day, the latest slide presentation from Al Gore. I find this talk completely inspiring and even better than the Inconvenient Truth. Enjoy!

As expected, my personal hero Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize early this morning, sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Great news, of course, but what does it mean?

I must admit to simultaneously feeling a burst of hope and resignation. Hope that this might be the moment Gore’s been waiting for. That one pregnant moment in life when one chooses a direction that affects the remainder of one’s existence. Sadly, though, it’s sinking in that this may instead be the moment that a mere Brahmin’s son reaches enlightenment. We may have just witnessed a man reaching Maslow’s self-actualization. Or maybe just Ben becoming Obi-Wan. And that means no ideal candidate for me.

I want Gore to run. The other candidates aren’t terrible, but Gore is operating on an entirely different level. But I must now admit that I doubt he’ll get in. If he wanted to, he would have by now. Nevertheless, I’ll cling to my hope until October is through. From there, I’ll weigh my options.

The Rude Pundit, as usual, sorts things out more clearly than I ever could. I’m tempted to quote the whole article here, but instead, just a snippet. Please go read the whole thing.

Gore v. Bush:
Now that Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize (along with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the clearest difference between the former vice president and the current president is placed into even starker relief. In essence, Gore has elevated the world as a whole above the United States as a single entity within it. George W. Bush has placed the United States above the world. And Gore’s non-electoral ascension, concomitant as it has been with Bush’s descent into the miasma of low poll numbers and a destroyed party and disgrace in the world, reveals just how untenable the Bush position is: a nation can no longer succeed in this world unless its ultimate goal is to be part of the world.

Or, to put it another way, Gore won. Again.

…

It’s the difference between a man who traveled and studied the world by choice in his life and a man who has to be dragged to different countries like a particularly incontinent dog is dragged out to the sidewalk on a snowy day.

Gore’s not gonna run. Give that up. To go from speaking out about melting icecaps to being asked what he thinks about, say, a flag-burning amendment would be a degradation of what he’s worked for the last six years. And had that statewide recount in Florida happened and Gore had become president, Republicans would have simply worked night and day trying to destroy him, and his causes would have been washed away in a tide of worthless investigations of Buddhist monk phone calls and worse. And let’s not even get into how Republicans would have exploded in berserk, ape-like rage over 9/11 if it had happened under a Gore presidency.

It’s not that we’re not worthy or that he’s too good for us or any of that hyperbolic nonsense. We got the president we deserved, twice, and we realized too late that we didn’t get the president we needed. As with so many things, our own temptation to that latent American selfishness has done us in.