Flashes: July 10, 2013

• It seemed a bit too trite to do a Flashes post on July 3rd....while watching fireworks.
• In a further lesson in the economics - that price has nothing to do with cost and bulk buying improves efficiency:  Fresh, organic juice at a trendy, downtown healthy foods outlet is about $0.40 per ounce, at my local, small business health foods store it is $0.16 per ounce, and to make it at home is $0.22 (not counting my own time).  
• Bike share is a great idea to help make public transportation easier as long as stations are set up where people can get them, and they can use them to get to a rapid transit hub easily.  The annual membership, though, is priced just above a new bike at a big-box retail store, and significantly more than a bike at a reseller like Working Bikes.  For a person of middle-class means, the benefit of not having to lock and maintain a bike may win out on the price (and for a tourist, it's a no brainer to get a day pass for $7), but for the working class it's hard to justify the price even if stations were located in their neighborhood.
• Interesting to hear after the devastating loss of life fighting fires in Arizona that a voice of reason came to the forefront and questioned whether we should risk lives to protect foolishly built property.  Our ancestors moved where the water, food, and shelter made most sense, and cheap energy and technology made us think we controlled nature.  Hopefully we are finally waking up to the fact that those who thumb their nose at nature when building should bear the consequences.

      Enjoy the journey!

I will gladly pay you Tuesday for efficiency today

Two announcements in the last couple of weeks peaked the interest of the energy and environmental community in Chicago. A new ordinance seeks to require buildings over 50,000 square feet to benchmark their energy data, and certify it through a third-party system. The second announcement hopes to make easier a previously required requirement that residential property sales include information on the energy use of the property prior to sale. According to an article in the Chicago Tribune,

"Long term, the hope of the city and CNT Energy is that current homeowners will work to make their homes more energy efficient, and when it comes time to sell, more marketable to a 'green' consumer who is increasingly aware of energy conservation. That aligns with Mayor Rahm Emanuel's efforts to shrink the energy usage of Chicago's dated housing stock."

Both initiatives count on people paying a premium for efficient buildings either because of the cache of owning one, or the added economic value that comes from reduced energy prices.  Although Chicago follows Boston and New York into the energy benchmarking arena, neither implemented it so long ago that real data exists.  Chicago showed leadership by implementing energy information in residential real estate, so even less data can inform us as to whether that will effectively lower energy use.

In an article in the journal Applied Energy, researchers in Europe looked at the complex relationship among the various factors in a housing purchase decision - including efficiency - and came to the determination that on average, for the buildings in their study, the average price impact for a retrofitted, efficient building was a 2.86% increase over a comparable non-retrofitted building. The study also noted that only 60% of the retrofitting costs were recovered through the sale, and cautioned policy makers,

"to incorporate the sale value information in the financial analysis of investments in energy efficiency measures, but to do it with caution, only when and where, there are reliably proofs that the studied real-estate market reacts to energy performance."

It will be incumbent upon the city to transparently study the effectiveness of these measures in driving energy efficiency and home value.  

My hope is that this leads to a step where energy bills can be rolled into mortgage payments in the same fashion we currently combine property taxes into our mortgage payments through escrow so the consumer can see upon purchase and financing the value of utilities into their payment.  Then those determining and underwriting home value would have a built in mechanism to communicate and finance improvement.  Alternatively, we can build in energy efficiency investment into the property tax bills accomplishing the same result.

If benchmarking and listing energy convince owners to invest in efficiency on a large scale, it will be a welcome tool in the path to self-sufficient communities.  However, we need to follow through and make sure that investments are not the result of other programs, and that increases in value do not occur just because of market rebounds.  The City has taken some bold steps, and needs to follow through by tracking these performance metrics, then making sure that alternative solutions are ready to go if value does not follow as planned.

We are not free when we constrain another

A physician shall recognize a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health.

          - Principle VII of the AMA Code of Medical Ethics

Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.

          - Fundamental Canon 1. of the NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers

Ethics is about character and courage and how we meet the challenge when doing the right thing will cost more than we want to pay.

          - Michael Josephson, Josephson Institute of Ethics

Each year around this time, we hear frequent reminders about our good fortune to live in a country where we enjoy freedom. As we hear it, across the world, millions to billions languish under oppressive regimes, cultures, or economies, but in America, we have freedom. Recently, we have called into question much about the civil liberties portion of that freedom, especially as it pertains to electronic forms of communication that only in the second half of my lifetime have become ubiquitous enough to merit questioning whether they constitute public or private communication. In this debate, we consider how much freedom do we have to speak our mind, and how much privacy does a "free" society afford to our interpersonal communication. In the focus on wiretapping, email reading, and phone record scanning, we tend to ignore, either because we do not wish to know or because we cannot comprehend the scope and scale of the question, the other aspect of freedom: our choices. How much freedom do we have to make decisions that harm us? Does that freedom extend to decisions that would harm others? Should someone have the freedom to place before us an option that will cause us or another harm, placing the burden of understanding and recognizing that harm only on our individual shoulders? The first two quotes above state part of the ethics associated with two of the most important professions to our health and safety: medical professionals and engineers. We cannot understand the ramifications of these statements in isolation, but must consider them in the context of our personal choices in order to understand to what extent we rely on this ethical behavior for our quality of life. The third statement highlights that ethics becomes most important in a circumstance in which resources dwindle, and we must make hard choices about the best course for all.

As we read the ethics statements above, we can all fairly readily agree that doctors should not neglect the health of their patient, and that engineers should not design products or buildings that will knowingly or unknowingly injure someone. Similarly, in our personal lives, we accept that intentionally causing harm to another violates our collective morality and merits consequences ranging from limiting of economic freedom to limiting of physical freedom. What happens though, when we enter a more grey area? What do we think about doctors who want to further medical research that could save the lives of many, but will cost the lives of those in the control group of a study? To what extent does a doctor have an obligation to provide all of the information a patient needs to make the decision to participate in such a study? What about an engineer who designs a car that can move at speeds over seventy miles an hour, above which fatalities increase geometrically? Does relying on the actions of the operator to stay within a safe speed limit absolve the engineer of any responsibility to limit the car physically from traveling that speed?

On an even grayer level, can a doctor take on a patient load that hinders their ability to truly know their patients, a time constraint that may potentially jeopardize their ability to detect conditions that could lead to lower quality of life for their patient? Or can an engineer employ building systems that provide comfort to the occupants of the building, but rely on energy sources that jeopardize the lives of people located near the sources of that raw energy or the generating plants that convert it to useful form? In our own lives, how much freedom do we have to smoke around others with no opportunity for another to avoid the pollutants that result? If I go to the store and buy the ingredients to make sugary, non-nutritional cupcakes, does that differ from a company mass producing them with chemical additives and pricing them at a point where it is easier for a poor consumer to buy them than fresh fruits and vegetables? How do we reconcile our ethics, our laws, and our concept of freedom?

Thirty years ago, although we knew that the pollutants from smoking shortened lifespans even of those who did not directly smoke, people could smoke in the rear part of a plane on the theory that people in the front part were too far away. Nowadays, one cannot even smoke in the airport. Ten years ago, if anyone had said that we would live in a world where patrons in a bar can drink without having to breathe in second-hand smoke, that person would be laughed out of the room. College campuses have now gone so far as to ban smoking on the entire campus, under the guise that forcing smokers outside only pollutes the air around building entrances and that no one should have to encounter the pollutants. That begs the question: whose freedom is more important? The smokers to make their damaging choice where and when they want, or the non-smoker to know that they can go anywhere in public - including the sidewalks of a city - and not have to encounter pollutants they do not want. Our social ethics - as reflected by our laws - over the past three decades has moved dramatically on this issue, however we do not seem to recognize the error in judgment that led us to this point, even as we establish laws that impinge on one freedom to bestow another.

The issue of smoking highlights one of our primary human fallacies: we assume we know everything we have to know in order to make a decision. This happens especially when we look at issues of materials that improve quality of life: lead in paint and gasoline, asbestos in ceiling, flooring, and insulation, cigarettes. In each of these cases, we considered that because the material brought us comfort or pleasure, and worked excellently in doing so, that we had the freedom to use it as we would. We under-calculated the risks, or ignored them completely, because of the increased utility. Our economy rewarded this thinking, our society accepted the utility as an entitlement, and our government fought action until we had already lost lives in large numbers to the consequences. In each one of these cases, we not only took the life and freedom from those who knew the risks and still made the free choice to expose themselves, we affected those who either did not understand or in many cases did not know.

This joust with freedom has significant consequences in today's society. Within forty years we will have nearly four-hundred-and-fifty million people living on the space and resources we currently allocate to a little over three hundred million Americans. In that same timeframe we will grow as a world population from seven billion to almost ten billion, and within that ten billion, almost five billion looking to develop from an impoverished or semi-impoverished standard of living to a "nearly-Western" standard of living. The demand on resources will challenge every facet of our society, and will cause us to innovate and push boundaries in order to maintain or grow our standard of living. We can either continue the cycle of expanding the freedom of one segment of the population while limiting the freedom of another, or we can make smarter choices. We can create a truly free world, where lack of access to clean water, clean air, and clean earth no longer constrain the ability of any individual to make choices that will better their lives.

It starts with our choices now. It starts with recognizing that the freedom to make bad choices does not mean that it is ok to make them. It starts with our most trusted professionals standing up and refusing to participate in any decision that will limit the freedom of a human being. Almost anything we do to ourselves and for ourselves gets reviewed, approved, and certified by a medical professional or an engineer. If medical professionals and engineers not only refused to endorse decisions limiting quality of life and freedom, but also called out those making the decisions, we could stop detrimental behavior within five years and begin restorative action within this generation. Holding those professionals to those standards starts by each one of us holding ourselves to a higher standard, and accepting the real definition of freedom…the absence of necessity, coercion or constraint in choices…and making sure we are working for the freedom of all.

Friday Five: July 5, 2013

The history of our country, and the growth of our prosperity, has come from innovation, ingenuity, and a belief in the ability of science to improve our quality of life.
An Independence Day tribute to science and democracy
"Admittedly, not every American president is remembered for his eloquence. More than a few, however, have spoken insightfully and inspiringly about the inseparable relationship between science and our democracy. From George Washington to Barack Obama, in the words of both Republicans and Democrats, our presidents express continuity in their thinking about the essential role of science in American society."

Projections of how much of our future energy will come from renewable sources relies on assumptions about the way technology will develop.  In our country, and around the world, we constantly find new ways to improve the transfer, storage, and utilization of energy.  
Too much wind energy? Save it underground in volcanic rock reservoirs
"Focusing on subterranean basalt reservoirs in eastern Washington State, the authors of this new study have examined the feasibility of deploying a system known as compressed air energy storage, or CAES. They analyzed geological data from petroleum exploration to identify a pair of sites where these volcanic rocks could store enough energy to power a total of about 85,000 homes per month."

The future looks bright if we can inspire and cultivate the next generation of inventors and entrepreneurs.
15-year-old creates flashlight that runs on body heat
"The concept is pretty simple. The flashlight gets its power from plates that create electricity using a heat differential — one side needs to be hot and the other cool. In this case, the heat comes from the palm of a person’s hand. The flashlight is hollow, so that air can cool the other side of the plate."

We have seen that even at a city level, politicians can support the implementation of technology to maintain quality of life while reducing environmental impact.  The solution for each city varies based upon the resources available to it, but we can make it happen if we want.
Villaraigosa leaves office with his key goals for L.A. accomplished
"Environmentalists welcomed the utility's growing reliance on renewables, along with the drop in truck pollution at the Los Angeles Harbor, synchronization of city traffic lights and installation of energy-saving LEDs in city streetlights. Evan Gillespie, a deputy director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, called Villaraigosa's record 'phenomenal,' particularly in addressing climate change. 'We now have a road map from the largest public utility in the nation for how you rapidly cut carbon pollution,' he said."

Even in my hometown, we stand as the first city to use transparency to allow consumers to make better decisions about the homes we purchase.  This hopefully will lead to market choices that force home sellers to improve their homes in order to compete in the market.
Mayor Emanuel announces Chicago is first city in the nation to include energy costs in home listings
"Mayor Rahm Emanuel in partnership with CNT Energy and Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) announced today that Chicago home listings on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) will display annual and monthly gas and electric cost to help home buyers make more informed purchasing decisions. Chicago will be the first city in the nation to provide this information on home listings. The new system launched this week on the Chicago MLS. Residents should talk to their realtors®to see this information online on MRED’s connectMLS site. Realtors can also provide potential homebuyers with a detailed energy report; a sample can be viewed at retrofit.cityofchicago.org/report."

As a bonus to the five, proof that even in America, we can have a city where we do not need cars in order to survive.  It is time for our communities to look to each other for ways to improve quality of life for all.
Meet the one city in America where cars have been banned since 1898
"Although the small island is home to only around 500 people, in the summer, that number swells to 15,000 during tourism season; aside from a couple of emergency vehicles, there's nary a car to be seen. Transportation on Mackinac is limited to walking, horse-drawn carriages, and bicycling -- a pleasant departure from the car-centric society that exists beyond its borders."

Happy Friday!

A family decision

It may seem weird for a person so intent upon protecting the ecology on which our life depends, but I love fireworks.

They stimulate the senses, bring people together, and remind us of magic that we see in movies or read about in books.  Every 4th of July, our family travels to Kansas to visit with family and experience fireworks with family and friends.  Starting with the town's nighttime fireworks display, and continuing through daytime and nighttime fireworks with our family, we eat, drink, and share stories with family, some of whom we have not seen since the previous 4th.

On one level, the fact that fireworks release carbon, metals, and perchlorate a into the atmosphere raises concerns.  However, with all the fireworks allowed in the state, studies that found perchlorate in over twenty other states found none in Kansas.  My wife having to move from Kansas to find work forces us to release much more carbon into the atmosphere by driving or flying her home than we do through the entertainment.  On the other side of the ledger, the town where my in-laws live has 100% of their electricity from wind energy.  The local community college uses geo-exchange and on-site wind to stay "off-grid".  A recent housing development uses a shared geo-exchange system to provide heating and cooling with minimal utility service.  

The benefit of maintaining family connections, and of the community building and sustaining the connections among neighbors counterbalance the limited environmental impact.  Eliminating fuel and explosive dumping from the military, and converting our national fleet to electric vehicles would do much more for the environment than banning fireworks.  If our only environmental damage was from fireworks, we could handle the impact fairly easily.

For our family, we will continue to push for community energy systems, electric vehicles in car share and public transportation systems, organic food grown without harmful chemicals, packaging and household materials that are 100% recyclable, livable and walkable communities, and green manufacturing...among other similar innovative solutions to our consumer economy.  Once a year, we will spend the better part of 24 hours lighting and enjoying fireworks with family, feeding our bonds, reminding us of the value of community, and celebrating both the independence of our country and the strength of our family.

Insure a sustainable future

Arguments abound as to how best to bring common sense to our decision-making regarding the environment.  Some recommend tighter government regulation, while others call for market-based solutions.  There are advocates for more transparency, increased valuation of natural resources, and "seals of approval" of all shapes and sizes. This week we heard some disheartening news from an industry that might just create the tipping point needed to finally get us to make better decisions.

What allows a chemical company to put people's lives at risk without fear of bankruptcy?

What allows financial institutions to gamble with other people's money with only passing regard for the risks?

The same thing that allows me to have a teenage driver without fear that one accident will put me in the poorhouse or deprive me of the transportation necessary to work....

Insurance.

This past week, I read a story about how the insurance industry has deemed portions of the planet uninsurable against risks from climate change.  Recent concerns about record payouts from the last couple of storm seasons in America have raised questions about premium hikes for those who look to rebuild in areas hit by major storms.

For years, those in the middle of the environmental debate have sought mechanisms to include all the costs associated with damaging industries into the marketplace.  This line of thinking supposes that industries that have traditionally profited by abusing the environment or human health would either make changes or go away when forced to price all their effects into the cost of doing business.  We may have reached the point where the insurance industry can accomplish what human politics would never allow to happen. 

It starts with coastal residents that have large ticket homes being denied flood or homeowners insurance.  This may render properties unsellable, creating a mirror of traditional urban blight.  In the next step, automobile insurance for heavy fossil fuel consumers outpaces that of better performing models (or disappears altogether) adding another component to the individual cost of car ownership.  It could culminate in an insurance product that governments and corporations pay premiums into based upon their contribution to the degradation of natural capital.  These premiums would fund reinsurance to the industry to hedge the risk of large payouts, meanwhile providing incentive for governments and corporations to make changes so as to improve their bottom line.

Much work remains to create this possible reality.  However, unlike erecting walls against storm surge, relocating cities and infrastructure, and changing the functions of our watersheds, we can make this simple change to a man-made financial system quickly.  Hopefully it is quick enough to be a part of he solution and not just part of assigning blame.

A promise unfulfilled for 237 years

Two hundred and thirty years ago this week, our founding fathers declared in unison that

"all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".

These most-famous words of our Declaration of Independence form the foundation of what we have come to term The American Dream: that anyone, given the freedom to do so, can build for themselves a high quality of life surrounded by others doing the same. For the better part of the last two-and-a-half centuries, we have sought to improve upon the imperfections of the Republic that have prevented us from realizing this lofty goal. Some of these fights to make things better have been social, some political, and some technological. In almost every case, each generation has sought to make life better for the one that follows, and each step - however small - has been a step forward. We sit on the precipice of being the first generation to enshrine a step backwards and our last great opportunity to rectify this lies in finally removing the barriers created by the environmental damage that supports a high quality of life for some while limiting the quality of life of many others.

We first dealt with the damage of the plantation economy through expansion. Then Civil War caused us finally to face the exploitation of people that our founding fathers had enshrined in our constitution. As our nation moved from agrarian to industrial, we saw the growth of the labor movement, the end of laws that had codified the ability of business to dominate the working class, and the protection of lands. We granted people of all genders equal access to a voice in our nation's policies. As we lost connection with the land, the focus on wealth led us to collapse, and that generation had to rescue the country from the ramifications an economy focused on wealth attainment instead of improving quality of life. For the sixty years hence, we have ignored the dangers - even though forewarned - of rebuilding our economy around the perpetuation of war. We finally established a legal foundation for protecting air and water. In each of these times, we tackled the shortcomings of our Republic and gradually created a more equal society where achievement depends only on our own desire and ability. Although many factors feed into the continuing push for equality, the issue that we ignored for the first almost two-hundred years of our country's existence, pollution and environmental damage, still permeates our society even four decades after efforts to eliminate it.

The equality of opportunity promised by the American Dream requires that each person born into our society has equal access to the fundamental tools to pursue happiness. Each person needs to breathe, drink, and eat to support the systems within ourselves that allow us to think, learn, and work. Unfortunately, many of the technologies that we currently use to support a high quality of life for some of us create conditions that are not conducive to life for others. We still farm largely in monocultures that extract resources from the soil at unsustainable rates, forcing us to replenish those resources through unnatural means. This monoculture provides an environment conducive to pests, requiring us to engineer plants and introduce chemicals into the growing cycle that we hope harm the pests without harming us. The fertilizers we use to replenish our soil require intense amounts of energy to create them, and the chemicals contained within these fertilizers often leave the soil through run-off and end up in our waterways. In order to create a low-cost food economy based upon quantity of sale and not quality of sale, we introduce chemicals into the preparation process without proof that those chemicals support health. We rely on energy systems for the fertilizer and to support the buildings, vehicles, and industry that give us the shelter, mobility, and utility that allow us to work.  These systems also release heavy metals, particulate matter, and unnatural chemical compounds into our biosphere. These compounds change the quality of air, the natural composition of the atmosphere, and the way in which nature handles air and water. The industries that provide an ever-expanding array of products to entertain us, link us to each other, and enhance our culture, also rely on the same extractive, plantation economy that rips apart the earth, takes whatever resources it has to offer, then leaves it barren with no productive use to the rest of us or our children. Then, while producing the products that fuel our consumption, the unused materials are released into our air, water and earth in ways that make both the material and the surrounding environment useless to us.

Lest this vision of our society sound unrealistic, we only need look at something as simple as establishing urban farms. If you live in a city, and want to establish a plot of land to grow vegetables, test your soil to see if it is capable of safely growing food. You will find that almost none of our urban green space safely provides nutrients fit for consumption, but instead provides a dangerous dose of metals from urban pollution. If the view of farming sounds like a tree hugger's hyperbole, ask a farmer if they can grow on a monocrop farm without fertilizer, water, herbicide, and pesticide...then ask them if they will allow you to taste either of the latter. Whether or not you think that any of this has an impact, consider the following:

Lead poisoning, caused largely by placing lead into paint and gasoline, affects poor and minority populations at rates far exceeding those of white and middle-class families. As levels of lead decline in urban populations, not only have we seen stark drops in crime, but we have recently begun to see gains academically for those in minority schools relative to their white counterparts.  Asthma rates for poor and black communities exceed those middle-class and white communities by fifty percent, which does not surprise since people of color make up thirty-nine percent of residents near coal-fired power plants (as opposed to twenty-nine percent of the population) and eighty-two percent of residents of inner-cities - where transportation pollution predominates.

We need our hearts pumping, lungs working, brain functioning, and digestive system delivering nutrients in order to survive and grow. On top of these basic needs, we need a quality education to provide the cognitive development necessary for us to become productive members of society, and physical development to make us strong enough to sustain that contribution over the course of our natural lives. A significant segment of our population still does not have equal opportunity to that development because of the decisions that another group of us makes. Even those that can develop to the point where they can work manual labor jobs to sustain themselves and their family, and make our lives richer, live shorter and less healthy lives than those that work in traditionally "white-collar" professions. A society that truly provides equality of opportunity will eliminate all of these disparities, will provide a foundation that recognizes that degrading one life for the sake of another is morally wrong, and will not rest until we truly recognize that "all...are created equal".

The most important piece of this discussion, is that we already know how to do this. We know how to deliver energy with little or no pollutants harmful to this or future generations. Our architects and engineers can deliver buildings that need little energy to provide the basic services. Our designers and biologists can create products based on materials that support life, and our chemists know which elements can provide a service without degrading life-supporting systems. Most importantly, we know how to grow food in such a way as to nourish the fields and create cycles of growth that do not require the chemical or energy inputs our current methods do; and we know how to do this and still feed a planet full of people all looking for a better life. It is not a matter of knowing, it is simply a matter of doing.

To truly deliver on the promise of our Declaration, we must tirelessly fight to deliver a society in which any community - urban, suburban, or rural - can grow its own food without fear of what it might contain. We must create a country where no parent need worry that when their child leaves the house, the air they breathe will stunt their growth physically, mentally, or spiritually. We must strive every hour of every day to ensure that when a person reaches down to a source of water, that we have not transformed a source that gives life into a source that damages life. Until we can guarantee this, we have not delivered an America where anyone can apply their gifts to their own benefit, take personal responsibility for their own success or failure, and determine their own quality of life. Oft forgotten amongst the great language of the Declaration, the last line seals our commitment to how we will attain the society that delivers on the promise of the ever-famous first line of the second paragraph,

"...we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

The minute we fulfill this pledge by ensuring that no action of business, person, or government damages the earth, air, and water that sustain us...that is the moment we truly establish a free America. We have all the knowledge, all the resources, and all the technology necessary to make this America real, but until we do, the words of our Declaration are just words, and our pledge unfulfilled.