Friday Five: August 22, 2014

There are times when corporations do attempt to do the "right thing" even if that means adding costs. Note, that the only thing that drives this is consumer demand. When facing a threat of extinction, a company will do what it has to in order to survive. That process, however, takes decades, and not every issue has that long.
Nestle imposes animal welfare standards for suppliers
"'We know that our consumers care about the welfare of farm animals and we, as a company, are committed to ensuring the highest possible levels of farm animal welfare across our global supply chain,' said Benjamin Ware, manager of responsible sourcing for Nestle.
The commitment by the world's largest food and beverage company could potentially ripple across the industry and force smaller firms to adhere to the same practices, animal advocates said."

More often, companies will do whatever is most expedient to achieve or increase profitability (note: that is not a disparaging remark, for in our society and economy, that is precisely all we currently as of business, and all they are good at doing), regardless of the environmental impact. Only when the purchasing power of those affected reaches a critical mass will the companies act...or when something large enough to affect its business acts (hint: that's government).
Frackers are sending sludge to the Mitten State
"Now, the radioactive sludge that was being turned away by Pennsylvania was on its way to Michigan, home to 84 percent of the country’s aboveground freshwater supply. LuAnne Kozma began to do some digging. She had begun studying up on and organizing against Michigan’s nascent fracking boom two years ago, after hearing ominous stories from family in New Jersey. This was a new wrinkle."

Too often, governments require a catastrophe in order to see the need for action. Even then, as this case exemplifies, many favor taxpayer-funded solutions for the mistakes of the shareholders and managers. Letting companies off the hook for their mismanagement - and frankly, their negligent endangerment of people - is something we would never allow in treating an individual person who jeopardized the life of another. We should not tolerate it of companies.
NC lawmakers pass coal ash legislation; adjourn after very long short session
"Rep. Paul Luebke argued that state leaders needed to say, loud and clear, that Duke and its shareholders – not its customers – should at least pay to clean the highest-risk sites by removing the ash to a lined landfill, by using it in certain construction projects or by installing a liner beneath the ash.
“If they’re high risk now, it means for a long time they were risky to the public. For a long time the public was hurt by contamination in groundwater,” the Durham Democrat said on the chamber floor.
In response, Rep. Mike Hager, Republican majority whip, pointed out that the N.C. Utilities Commission would handle any request for a rate increase, with opportunity for the public to have its say."

One of the more broken features of the current utility model (especially in states where utilities still own electricity generating or energy producing assets) is that these monopolies have been allowed to assume that any cost associated with a current asset can be passed onto their rate payers (citizens who have no choice but to pay them or do without power). Kudos to OPU for demanding that the utility consider all alternative investments to the status quo...both to protect rate payers and public health.
Oregon Public Utilities Commission increases scrutiny on Pacific Power's coal plants
"In 2012, the Oregon PUC disallowed $17 million dollars that PacifiCorp was seeking from its customers for expensive retrofits on its aging coal plants without first fully vetting the alternatives. During the deliberations on their 2013 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) they were warned by the commission that they were headed for a 'trainwreck of a rate case' if they continued to invest heavily in out-of-state coal plants without first presenting their plans to the PUC for proper analysis. In July of this year, the PUC refused to acknowledge Pacific Power’s expenditures at two units at the Jim Bridger coal plant in Wyoming and one unit at the Hunter plant in Utah, a strong signal that the company will have a difficult time recouping those expenses, protecting Oregon customers from higher rates."

The great thing about analyzing the German governments three-year plan for energy transition, and debating some of its many shortcomings is...THEY HAVE A PLAN!!!!
There's a reason that countries like Germany and China will fly past the US economically if we do not act soon...they recognize the impact that energy has on their economy, and Germany specifically is doing something about it. I would LOVE to be debating the shortcomings of US energy policy....but we do not have one, so I cannot.
German government’s three-year Energiewende plan
"Germany could easily do more, as could the EU. Brussels repeatedly calls for greater cross-border power trading, but where is the call for EU transport policy? I can’t take a night train, say, from Frankfurt to Rome or Madrid. Trains continue to be stuck in national systems, and no one is complaining. Instead, Switzerland is the driver behind overnight trains with its City Night Line, but it has been reducing the number of connections in recent years, not increasing them.
So yes, the chart above does have a wide scope. But it is not exhaustive. There is still a lot of room for improvement."

Happy Friday!

Treating bikes like cars is idiotic

As our delayed spring quickly turns into summer, the signs of the long-awaited end of our hibernation abound: women breaking out summer dresses, playgrounds resembling ant hills, and perhaps most indicative...

Bikes are everywhere....and unfortunately politicans have no clue what to do about them.

Between the already vibrant riding community in Chicago and the continued growth in the use of bike share programs, we see bicyclists in every part of the city.  For those of us who love to ride, we have five months of freedom ahead of us.  No longer tied to public transportation schedules, or hampered by traffic jams, we can take to the road and run our errands, enjoy the lakefront, or even travel to work inspiring jealousy in the sardine cans of drivers that sit frustrated in traffic as we whizz by in the bike lane.

This freedom does not come without some challenges.  Especially early in the season, drivers do not always expect bikes, and often make turns or enter traffic without looking.  Pedestrians, used to having to only navigate cars, often overlook bikes as they make their jaywalking plans.  Even the regular bike commuters have to adjust their travel schedules as normally open winter roads clog up with more casual riders.

Politicians, as expected, do not know what to do.  On one hand, they get pushed by activists to increase bicycle infrastructure, while simultaneously getting lobbied by others to reign in "aggressive riders" in the name of public safety.  As cities start to invest in bike share programs as a commuting option to reduce congestion, drivers push for concessions to maintain their dominance on the roadways.  In Chicago last year, increase funding for bike infrastructure got tied to language that would treat bicyclists like automobiles in terms of traffic violations.  This most idiotic of legislations shows a lack of understanding of basic physics....

Bikes are not cars.

Traffic control devices...stop signs, traffic lights, one way streets...exist to promote order and create a safe environment in which people on foot can exist safely with multi-ton machinery that even at low speed can inflict serious damage.  Agreeing on social norms like lane markers, the "double yellow line", and turn signals gives us a measure of comfort and a basis for mutual understanding in an environment where we cannot communicate easily with another person behind the wheel.  The results of breaking these vehicle-related social morays range from hundreds of dollars of property damage on one end to significant loss of life at the extreme.  Our lives are better - and more importantly safer - because we have and follow traffic laws.

Making the stretch to regulate bicyclists like cars takes the concept of public safety to an absurd extreme.  In purely physical terms, the amount of momentum (the physical property that measures how much energy a moving item can transfer to another) developed by an average car measures twenty-five times that of the average bicyclist...and almost twenty times that of an extreme bicyclist.  Compare that with the ratio of an average bicyclist to a pedestrian, which calculates out to somewhere between three and eight, and we see that bicyclists have much more in common physically with pedestrians than motorists.

This similarity extends to maneuverability as well.  Communities love to install stop signs as traffic calming - and let's face it, traffic deterring - devices so that residents can have some assurance that drivers are looking out for pedestrians, and especially children, as they drive through neighborhoods.  Without getting into whether those same residents obey their own signs, these make some sense as drivers sit isolated from their surroundings, have a limited field of vision, and react relatively slowly to actions around them.  Bicyclists, on the other hand, do not have anything separating them from the world around them.  They have a full field of vision, and can easily communicate with someone else around them.  Because of their relatively low momentum, they can stop quickly, and more importantly, they can maneuver much more efficiently to avoid collisions.

The numbers bear this out.  While over 4,000 pedestrians a year are killed by motor vehicles and another 75,000 injured, we find fewer than 10 pedestrians killed and fewer than 5,000 injuries.  Pedestrians suffer less serious injuries in collisions with bicyclists as well, even though statistics lump injuries together without significant discernment. Meanwhile, vehicles kill about 500 bicyclists a year.  

This is not to say that bicyclists should get a free pass.  The 2012 case of a San Fran bicyclist who blew several stop signs and a red light on way to killing a pedestrian while going 35 mph appropriately resulted in a felony conviction against the rider.  But incidents like these are the exception, not the rule.  A bicyclist pausing at a stop sign, or rolling through a red light at an empty intersection does not pose anywhere near the threat that a motorist does in the same circumstance.  

Unless we are ready to start pulling over groups of twelve year olds who blow through stop signs on their bikes in residential neighborhoods, we need to take a step back and use some common sense.  While extreme and dangerous people in any vehicle need to be dealt with appropriately, that is no reason to punish the average bicyclist.  And make no mistake, threatening to ticket bicyclists as motorists is a punishment inflicted to preserve the dominance of the motor vehicle.  We need to be encouraging more cycling, not less.  More bicycling reduces congestion, increases health, and promotes a feeling of safety in our neighborhoods.  

Treating bicyclists like motorists will not improve safety...and it just makes no sense.

Friday Five: July 20, 2012

Do we really need apocalyptic consequences to take action?
Wildfires ignite debate on global warming
"For some, climate change will become a fact only when its effects hit close to home. For this reason, perhaps we should expect an awareness of the need to adapt to climate change to precede a wider commitment to mitigating climate change itself. If that is the case, reporters are, finally, asking the right questions."

Do so few of us really care that we threaten our future with inaction?
Why Do Generation X Americans Not Care About Climate Change?
"Sociologist Jon Miller, the study's author, sees this as a sign of victory for the climate disinformation campaign. "I was optimistic beacuse this group of people is more scientifically literate; they've grown up in an era of of science and quantitative discussion, unlike their grandparents," Miller says. But the complexity of climate science, the long time scale it takes to play out, and seeds of doubt sown on the nightly news have caused many Gen Xers to simply tune it out."

The fact is: we can develop an energy system with no harmful emissions that is 100% renewably based within 20 years, and reach a 50% level in 10....while growing our economy.
Why do ‘experts’ always lowball clean-energy projections?
"Every time there’s a new air or water regulation proposed, industry predicts a level-10 economic apocalypse. EPA counters by saying it will only be a level-5 economic apocalypse. Invariably, it’s a level-0 economic apocalypse — low costs, lots of lives saved. Yet the political class approaches each new regulation with a peculiar Zen-like no-mind, as though it is the first such argument and all perspectives are equally supported by past experience. Same with projections of energy efficiency and renewables."

It will take some policy level decisions....
Illinois Net Metering Law Helps Grow Residential and Small Business Solar Energy Systems
“The net metering law Governor Quinn signed leads the way to more solar energy development in Illinois,” said Howard Learner, Executive Director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC). “It provides a common-sense, economic incentive for businesses and homeowners to invest in solar and small-scale wind power systems.”

And some simple choices at home.
Cooking On The Sunny Side: How Solar Chefs Put Food On The Table
"McArdle lost power at her home in Arlington, Va., for four days during the infamous 'Snowpocalypse' that hit the Northeast in 2010. Fortunately, the retired Foreign Service officer had multiple solar cookers in her house from training sessions she had done in Afghanistan and the U.S."

Happy Friday!