Friday Five: June 28, 2013

For the biggest news of the week, I think I will let the President speak for himself.
President Obama's Climate Change Speech: Full Text
"So the question is not whether we need to act. The overwhelming judgment of science – of chemistry and physics and millions of measurements – has put all that to rest. Ninety-seven percent of scientists, including, by the way, some who originally disputed the data, have now put that to rest. They’ve acknowledged the planet is warming and human activity is contributing to it.
So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late. And how we answer will have a profound impact on the world that we leave behind not just to you, but to your children and to your grandchildren.
As a President, as a father, and as an American, I’m here to say we need to act."

Amidst a tumult of news regarding the EPA's decisions to end a study of fracking-caused water pollution in Wyoming and in another announcement that they were delaying another report until 2016, a new study has found that although the contamination of drinking water is not at epidemic levels as some would have us believe, the industry and supporters are wrong that incidents are overblown. The truth is, like anything done quickly and on a large scale, there will always be problems unless significant resources are dedicated to minimizing them. Fracking deals with such volatile chemicals near water and food sources, that any number of problems can have cascading results that affect hundreds of thousands of people. Now that evidence shows that contamination happens with regular frequency, hopefully we can have a reasonable discussion as to how to improve the process.
Mixed results in study of water, fracking
"The findings represent a middle ground between critics of the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing who claim it causes widespread contamination, and an industry that suggests they are rare or nonexistent."

They say those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  We still have not learned how to handle the consequences of our last major "innovation" in energy generation that dropped prices to consumers, but left us with a heavy burden to bear.  Perhaps we should fix one problem before causing another. 
Quarrels continue over repository for nuclear waste
"Stored fuel requires guards and other continuing expenses, which are significant if there is no reactor nearby. Those expenses eventually fall on federal taxpayers because the Energy Department has defaulted on contracts it signed in the 1980s to begin accepting the wastes for burial in 1998. As a result, financial penalties the federal government must pay to the nuclear utilities for failing to dispose of the waste now amount to hundreds of millions of dollars a year."

This interview highlights that there is no one solution to the economic issues caused by the environmental damage we have all brought upon ourselves.  We like to remind others that there are consequences when they take the easy way out, however who will accept the same when it's our turn?
You want to ration my what?
"Economists have used mathematical models when they ask, “Does price or formal rationing perform better in getting basic necessities to everyone?” The conclusion is that if a society has a high degree of income and wealth equality, and large differences in preferences for different goods, then a price system works better. But if there is high inequality, which is the situation almost everywhere today, explicit rationing is better at ensuring that people can meet their needs. In the long run, what is needed is a massive redistribution of economic power."

This is the future of community economic development: the large scale delivery of resources to communities where they assemble and make the products they need.  We already do this with food, and with advances in communication, logistics, and manufacturing technology there's no reason your local grocer cannot be located next to your local, green furniture manufacturer.
The distributed future of manufacturing: Think IKEA without the furniture
"'It's like how you give away a recipe, but people still go to your restaurant,' says Anne Filson, co-founder of AtFAB. 'We feel the [do-it-yourself person] is always going to want to be curious and make our furniture themselves, while a consumer may have the aspiration to own our furniture, but may not have the luxury of the time or resources to do it.'"

Happy Friday!

The Myth of Rising Prices as a Call to Roll Back Regulation

These last couple of weeks have had some interesting reminders of how markets work, and how the way we talk about markets can vary so drastically from how they actually work. Take for example, two stories: the application by Texas corporation Dynegy to take over some dormant coal plants in Illinois, and President Obama's announcement of new rules regarding emissions at electricity generating plants. In both cases, industry complains to government that the regulations place too onerous an obligation on business, and if not rolled back, they will increase prices for customers. The statement is false, and it misleads people which then provides cover for politicians acting in ways that do not serve the best interests of the general population.

In any legitimate marketplace, there are only two things that affect price: supply and demand. Prices don't depend on or affect costs, they depend on supply and demand and affect the profitability of a company. As long as the marketplace will allow a company to charge more than their costs, the company profits thereby giving it the opportunity to invest and remain in business. Cost do not depend on or affect prices, they depend on supply and demand of the material and labor needed for the company to do business, and they only affect whether the company will survive. If costs climb above what the market will pay for a good or service, then the company will either have to reduce costs, improve the product to increase the price the market will pay, or go out of business. When costs go up, the company will not necessarily be able to increase prices to make up for it - or "pass the costs onto the customer" - as industry threatens will happen.

The marketplace does not necessarily allow this because of the diversity of suppliers within the market. Requiring an energy company to do something that costs it more will only affect price if the absence of the company from the marketplace affects supply enough to raise prices. The company cannot pass on the costs to the customer if someone else in the market continues to charge the same price. In recent years, we have seen a significant shift in the marketplace for energy, whereby hydraulic fracturing has allowed for a boon in natural gas that has shifted the supply-demand curve for natural gas and electricity downward such that prices in the marketplace for both sit well below the price before the Great Recession. The price for electricity continues to drop, even as natural gas prices turn up slightly. This price shift has put coal and even nuclear in a precarious position where companies cannot line up the capital to invest in needed repairs and upgrades because the market for capital does not see that the investments will pay back at the prices these plants can charge for electricity. As these plants have closed, the price has not increased, it continues to decline. Prices will rise only if demand far outpaces increases in supply. We can blunt these increases by demanding fewer and fewer resources, both lowering our usage and the cost per unit for the usage that remains.

We have no problem requiring people to do things: from the basic "wear clothes in public" to "maintain your car emissions system". These regulations that affect the individual form what we might call “social norms” of society. However, if I do not want to wear clothes, I can stay in my home, and if I do not want to make repairs to my car, I can get rid of it. We establish laws protecting our land, air, and water in order to make sure that everyone has access to the opportunity to have a high quality of life. If a company cannot afford to meet reasonable standards in the marketplace, they can go out of business. If they cannot produce energy at a reasonable cost without polluting, then we need those technologies to move out of the marketplace and give up market share to those companies that can. Especially for mature industries that have been around for decades polluting our environment, ceding our ability to state as a people what we will or will not accept from a business in the market just to allow them to make a profit makes no sense.

Flashes: June 26, 2013

• Only in Chicago can politicians call Chicago a "capital for green jobs" by doing something other big cities have already done: require major buildings to benchmark their energy data.
• Do you think it's too much to ask the city to keep up with New York and also require major building owners to do a full scale energy audit of their buildings?  Or maybe to lead and require all major building owners to perform a retrocommissioning after 10 years, and recommission the building every other year?
• I only ask this because every other year I have to spend money to make sure that my car meets ever-increasing vehicle emission standards, and no one really seems to care how much that costs me.  Truthfully, I do not mind, because I know that the emissions monitoring protects the air and creates a better quality of life for me and my family.  Since buildings use 70% of the energy in the city, should we not require the same level of performance and monitoring from the owners of these buildings...especially since many of them put off necessary maintenance and repairs in order to improve their bottom lines?
• You know you're probably a little too focused on issues of resource use and environmental damage when one of the first things you think about after your hometown team hoists Lord Stanley's Cup is what the energy/carbon/water footprint of the Cup's journey this summer will be...having to go all over Canada, part of the US, over to Sweden and Slovakia.  Thankfully, the sports fan in me regained control and realized that there are bigger fish to fry.

We've a plan. Now what?

President Obama took to the bully pulpit today and delivered on his inaugural promise to address climate change.  Whether you believe this was only for legacy building, or simply a cover to environmentalists to allow him to approve the Keystone XL pipeline (an unfortunately likely state of affairs after the President invoked the phrase "significantly exacerbate" in his description of the litmus test he would use for fossil fuel projects), or more promisingly, a return to an issue he identified as a priority in the '08 campaign, but never got to see come to fruition because of the volatility created by the healthcare debate...

This is big.

Except for a brief blunting of the message to accommodate a nod to increased oil and gas production (which in the middle of a speech on climate change really does nothing but confuse those who might support the issue and pacify none of the detractors who will hate the plan anyway), the speech delivered on several key issues.

The President was dead right to invoke economic issues...we are leaving next generation more costs associated with climate than any deficits.  Every fiscal conservative should leap at the opportunity to shift capital away from the insurance industry and into more productive markets that promote sustained jobs and support high quality of life.  We need only look at the EnergyStar program for refrigerators to see how smart regulation that challenges industry, but also includes them in the process, can deliver real energy savings, performance improvement, and better economics.  If we look at CFC reduction, acid rain prevention, leaded gasoline prohibition - every one of these had detractors that said it would kill the economy, but none of them did.  Removing lead from gasoline cleaned up the air, and had the secondary effect of reducing crime rates.  Scrubbing of emissions for sulfur oxides that cause acid rain cost less than projected, and provided health improvements and property savings that more than paid for the cost of implementation (a cost which employed manufacturing and construction workers).

In a continuation of a hallmark of the Obama administration, the President took a inclusive approach to the world's role in solving this problem.  In contrast to previous administrations that drew a line at making progress until developing economies agreed to make cuts, this President committed to leading on the issue, noting that developing countries were already paying more dearly than the US for the damage largely created by the West.  However, he added that the US would expect active participation by developing countries.  To make this happen, one of the most important ideas presented promoted worldwide free trade in clean energy and environmental technology.  By allowing developing countries around the world to have unfettered access to technology, and to incentivize companies with unfettered access to developing markets,  the US can create a "race to the top" that should reward innovative companies that can scale-up deployment.  Add to this an end to investment in coal plant development across the world (as long as there exists a viable alternative - an ambiguous loophole that needs tightening), and we see a straightforward vision for engagement.

The art of the possible was on full display in the speech as well.  Department of Defense is most outspoken against fossil fuels due to security threat, so it came at no surprise that they held a prominent spot.  Mr. Obama highlighted wind production, noting that seventy-five percent of US wind power is generated in GOP districts.  In an era of declining government expenditures and legislative gridlock, ending subsidies to (and hopefully undervalued royalty payments from) extractive energy industries forces these mature industries to compete in the marketplace on their merits.  Although this will not address the unpriced externalities associated with healthcare, severe weather, and crop-yield decline, it will at least get the government out of the business of polluting.  The carbon emissions standards proposed will hit coal the hardest, but this only confirms the decline of an industry that cannot afford to build new plants, retrofit old ones, or build new export terminals because of the market price for natural gas.  Even China, once seen as an emerging market for American coal, has seen significant degradation of air quality and now looks to become the world leader in clean energy.  All in all, everything proposed today requires - at best - a nuanced rebuttal from opponents.  Nuance does not play well in a democracy.

In an ideal world, Congress would have already created either a cap-and-trade system or imposed a carbon tax offset by reduction in income or corporate tax.  Either market solution would provide an equal result to the domestic ideas proposed today.  Add to that a permanent feed-in tariff instead of the production tax credits, and Congress could lead the way.  However, we do not live in that world, and the one we do has dangerous issues to address: declining crop yields, increased volatility from storms resulting in ever-increasing insurance payouts and destruction of cities, threats to military bases around the world.  I said before that democracy does not deal well with nuance, and the message today drove home one of the most un-nuanced ideas to which we as humans can relate: we do NOT have to choose between "the health of our children and the health of our economy".  How many people living in a neighborhood next to a power plant, or a community near a mountaintop mine, agree with the industry assertion that we cannot afford environmental protection?  How many of the nation's poor hear that we cannot afford electricity if we impose pollution limits that would benefit the poor most of all, and then read that electricity and natural gas prices remain near historical lows?  How can we say that improving or maintaining the quality of life for one portion of our population, while degrading the quality of life for another portion, reflects our pledge to be "one nation" in which we have "equality of opportunity" and in which "all are created equal".  

We finally have the opportunity to turn our gaze from the past, and look toward a future where we will not have to worry if our grandchildren will be able to raise a family, or if we will live to see the mass exodus of my fellow citizens from cities like Miami, New Orleans, Norfolk, or Long Island, or if nations teetering on the verge of development will fall into ruin on the back of a collapse of agriculture.  Today's announcement was not perfect, but it is necessary.  I hope that we have passed the point where we still feel the need to argue "if", and only have a conversation about "how".  As for me, I am ready to find out how I can help make this plan happen.

Let's Make a Deal

I have selected you at random from a live studio audience to play a game I am calling, "What's for Lunch?"  We open the curtain, and in front of you are four lunch bags (I know game shows love threes because of the potential to do the "we'll-show-you-one-you-didn't-pick" thing in order to make things more interesting.  By the way, always switch your pick, because your odds of winning double.).  Each bag contains 625 calories worth of food - about as much as the average adult should have for lunch each day, and if you pick the right lunch, you get to eat that for free every day for a year.  If you pick the wrong lunch, you have to pay for it every day for a week.  I proceed to give you a series of pieces of information about the lunches to help you make your choice.

First piece of information:  Price

A= $0.95        B = $6.67         C = $10.05      D = $1.99

You have thirty seconds to make your choice.  It's tough, because on one hand, one of the pricier options could be a really fancy lunch, and if you win it, you could end up with a great prize.  On the other hand, if you have to buy it yourself for a week, you want to make sure you can afford it.  You fall back to make your decision on what you would do in normal life.

Second piece of information:  Embodied energy

A = 1,425 Btu   B = 11,257 Btu    C = 9,550 Btu    D = 5,300 Btu

This includes the typical energy needed to grow the base components, including feed for meat products, then process the food, transport it, and prepare it for sale.  It does not include the energy needed for you as an individual to prepare, transport, dispose.  We now have a bit of a shift, and there does not necessarily exist a one-to-one relationship between the cost and the energy content.  Although this may not affect your one-year outlook as to the value you win, those diets that have a greater reliance on energy will also exhibit greater sensitivity to increases in energy prices, and specifically the cost of fertilizer as oil prices increase.

Third piece of information:  Water content

A = 64.5 gal     B = 517.4 gal      C = 193.9 gal    D = 119.1 gal

Water follows the same path as energy, with the highest to lowest energy matching the highest to lowest water.  As water becomes scarcer in certain areas, and as we start to drive competition among energy generation and agriculture for water resources, the price of water will increase, and those foods most dependent on water will see further volatility in pricing.  However, we should make one adjustment to this information: since energy generation itself relies on water, and water flows require input energy, we need to adjust the water numbers to include the water necessary to provide the energy for processing the food.  That would result in the following shift:

A = 64.6 gal     B = 518 gal      C = 194.2 gal    D = 119.4 gal

Not a huge shift relative to the other life-cycle costs, however, if spread over a fifty-thousand-person population of a small city, or even over an eight-million-person city like New York, that increase makes a difference.

Fourth piece of information:  Carbon footprint

A = 0.65 gCO2e B = 3.47 gCO2e C = 1.70 gCO2e D = 1.77 gCO2e

This includes the carbon associated with growing, harvesting, processing, and selling the food product.  This is net of any carbon that contributes to growing the plant, but does not include the carbon equivalent associated with the energy and water that feed the plant.  With those included, we would see the following:

A = 97.0 gCO2e B = 765.5 gCO2e C = 649.4 CO2e D = 360.4 CO2e

Prior to including the energy impact on carbon, the greatest and least impactful mimicked the energy and water usage, however, now the middle two options switched.  Does anything other than price change your mind?  Or are you going to stick with your first choice?

Now we know the cost, energy, water, and carbon impact of each of these 625-calorie lunch options.  The least expensive option also has the lowest energy, water, and carbon impact.  The most expensive option has – on its own – a low carbon impact, but a significant energy and water impact.  You are still not sure what you should do, so I ask if you want me to eliminate a couple of the options.  When you agree, I eliminate the extremes in price leaving you with two options:

·      A $6.67 meal with high energy, water, and carbon impact.

·      A $1.99 meal with significantly lower impacts all around.

I give you one last piece of information before making you choose:

The $6.67 meal is the most popular in the country.

So which is the “right” choice?  What will you do?

Of course, we do not make this choice in a vacuum without knowing what we are going to eat, and although the game show format is fun, it does not really simulate life.  Interestingly enough, the last piece of information about popularity does have some effect on our choice.  For others, knowing how healthy the meal is might sway their choice one way or another as well.  Before I show you what the items are, extrapolate the numbers to see what the impact of three-hundred million Americans eating each of these meals daily for a year:

Meal A               Meal B               Meal C               Meal D

$285M              $2,000M           $3,015M            $597M

427.5BBtu         3,377BBtu          2,865BBtu         1,590BBtu

19.38Bgal          155.4Bgal           58.26Bgal          35.82Bgal

14,500tCO2e    114,825tCO2e   97,410tCO2e     54,060tCO2e

Although no one person generally eats the same thing every day for a meal (Elvis notwithstanding), you can see how impacts add up when we spread it across the entire population.  Eating meal C on a countrywide basis will take a larger chunk of the economy (although with $15T in yearly GDP, it barely makes a dent), but eating meal B will have serious impact on water use and carbon output.  As I mentioned previously, meal B is the most popular in the country.

All of these will get improved if we find less energy intensive ways to grow food, or if we find ways to use renewable energy instead of carbon-based energy for the support services (processing, transportation, preparation).  So let’s make a deal: besides starting to make healthier choices, let’s also commit to promoting and choosing options on a regular basis that reduce energy and water impacts.  In the long run, it will save us money, and will reduce the likelihood of huge price spikes and water shortages.  We do not have to eliminate variety and taste from our diet, but we should be more judicious about our choices looking at the full range of impacts, both personal and societal.

So here’s what we had:

Meal A:  3.75 Little Debbie’s Zebra Cakes

Meal B:  Elevation Burger and fries (1/2 order)

Meal C:  Salad with cheese, nuts and poppyseed dressing

Meal D:  Peanut butter and jelly with apple and Veggie Straws

Which would you pick now?

Friday Five: June 21, 2013

As we learned all too poignantly last summer in the Midwest, food, energy and water have such an interdependence, that we can no longer make decisions about one in a vacuum and ignore the impact on the others. Resolving our food waste issue in our country - nearly 40% wasted each year! - has enough importance just on its merits. Add to that the water that gets displaced and buried, and the crisis takes on extreme importance. If we can reduce our waste by even 10%, and get that waste to people who need it, we can solve the hunger issue in this country. Eliminating all of it will take a combination of policy and behavior changes, but given that our population will grow by 40% over the next 30 years, we have a great opportunity to maintain food production and still feed our citizens.
When you waste food, you're wasting tons of water, too
"According to the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank, inside the 1.3 billion tons of food wasted every year worldwide is 45 trillion gallons of water. This represents a staggering 24 percent of all water used for agriculture. And agriculture is already the world's biggest user of freshwater: The sector accounts for 70 percent of all use around the world, according to the World Water Assessment Program. Those freshwater resources are diminishing fast, just as demand for them rises from millions of hungry and thirsty people joining the global population."

Meanwhile, as we are wasting water through discarded food, we treat the rain and water resources we have in the Midwest as if they are a pollutant to be avoided or quickly thrown away. When we "throw away" water in northern Illinois, it makes its way into the Mississippi (even in Chicago when our rainwater should find its way into Lake Michigan) and eventually to the Delta. This dead zone results directly from the choices we make here in Chicago, and we must hold ourselves accountable for this if we are to truly take personal responsibility for our actions.
Dead zone could break records in Gulf this year
"NOAA warned Tuesday that a dead zone the size of New Jersey could break records this summer in the Gulf of Mexico. Heavy rainfalls are washing a stew of pollutants and nutrients into the Gulf, feeding outbreaks of algae that will rob the waters of oxygen as they die and decompose. In these oxygen-deprived waters, marine life either flee or die."

As a consequence of the historic lows in electricity prices, and the impact of current and proposed regulation, coal plants have reached a state where they no longer make economic sense to maintain. Now, we see that the market is having a similar impact on nuclear. This causes experts to fear for the near future of electricity generation, and environmentalists to cheer the end of two major obstacles to clean energy - cheap coal and nuclear. Both have enjoyed such heavy subsidies, that hopefully this marks the beginning of the revolution that will accelerate the development and deployment of renewable energy and passive building design technologies.
Nuclear plants, old and uncompetitive, are closing earlier than expected
"Such is the fate of all old power plants. As the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s main trade association, pointed out when San Onofre closed, of the power plant retirements since 2010, 41 percent were coal and 33 percent were natural gas. Ten percent were nuclear. Old power plants lead conditional existences; they may not survive new environmental rules or other circumstances that require expensive retrofits."

A first step toward understanding the possibilities in improving building performance is to first and foremost, know how much energy a building consumes and where. We would never accept a business as legitimate if they could not produce a profit-loss statement or tax return that accounted for the management of money. Nor should we accept a building that does not have an accurate accounting of its energy resources, and the impact of those resources.
Energy benchmarking and why it matters
"Benchmarking benefits entire cities, too. Building performance data helps cities strategically meet energy efficiency and climate change reduction goals, by targeting energy efficiency rebates and incentives for buildings that have the most potential for savings. Which is one reason why, to date, several U.S. cities—including Philadelphia, New York, Washington, D.C, and most recently Boston—have adopted energy benchmarking and disclosure ordinances that require large buildings to benchmark energy use."

I do not normally link to propaganda directly from businesses, but this release from Ford highlights the possibilities inherent in the marriage of our energy delivery and management systems with modern communication and engagement tools. If we can develop tools like this, and make them as easy to use as it is to play Farmville or use SnapChat, then we have an opportunity to completely change our society's relationship with energy...and for the better.
Ford teams up to save energy with MyEnergi Lifestyle
"As unlikely as it seems, simply updating outdated appliances, adding a renewable energy source like solar panels and switching from a vehicle that gets 25 miles per gallon to a Ford C-MAX Energi plug-in hybrid can yield significant savings. According to a computer model created by the Georgia Institute of Technology, this could result in a 60 percent reduction in energy costs and a savings of over 9,000 kg of CO2 for a single home."

Happy Friday!

The Most Sustainable Energy

Today I joined some middle school teachers on a tour of Argonne National Laboratory.  We heard about cutting-edge research at the laboratory:  nanotechnology, various forms of X-ray imaging, and of course, solar, wind, and other renewable energy technologies.  Throughout this discussion, the tour leaders discussed limitations of renewables, and the need for increased nuclear energy and fracking to make the transition to a renewable energy future possible.*

What struck me throughout our four-hour stay at the facility among all the discussion of electron accelerators, limitations of solar arrays, and developing drugs that use nanotechnology to target cancer, they missed talking about the most sustainable energy:

The energy that you do not have to use.

Argonne has many examples of energy efficiency, energy storage and passive design technologies.  However, when showing a group of middle school teachers the best approaches to solving a future of energy and resource limitations, our guides did not mention this most sustainable way to improve our energy picture.  Using natural daylight instead of artificial light, thermal mass to reduce the size of heating and cooling systems, and earth tubes to treat ventilation air, we can create new – and retrofit old – buildings to require less energy.  We can eliminate coal- and nuclear-based electricity, and let renewables take on new loads that result from adding another one-hundred-and-twenty-five million people to our country over the next forty years.

Argonne has one of the best examples of using natural forms of energy flow instead of relying on fossil-fuel-based energy sources to provide solutions to problems.  In an area where previous activities had deposited metals and other environmental contamination into soil and eventually groundwater, the damage threatened to spread to the surrounding forest preserve.  The standard method of containment includes concrete barriers and a pumping system to continually remove groundwater and treat it.  This method would have cost nearly seven-million dollars over twenty years, and only provide containment.  A more natural solution, phytoremediation, uses plants to harvest contaminants, break them down in the plant or soil, trap them in the root structure, or transpirate organic contaminants in a harmless form.  The specific site uses willow and poplar trees – because of their fast growth times – with casings to force root growth down into groundwater twenty-five feet below the surface.  Phytoremediation will cost only four-and-one-half-million dollars, and not only prevent the spread of contaminants, but will extract a significant amount…all with a minimum of conventional energy sources.

The research at Argonne will allow us to find ways of harnessing energy and employing materials.  Since a person living in 1950’s America used an average of about ninety-five million Btu a year to power their life, and today, the average American uses about one-hundred-and-sixty million – even with major advances in vehicle and refrigerator efficiency, there is much to do about our relationship with energy.  We need to maintain our quality of life, but change our technologies, behaviors, and expectations to maximize the use of the most sustainable energy…

The energy we never have to use.

*(We can talk another time about what a transition based on nuclear and fracking means for long-term quality of life.)

Flashes: June 19, 2013

• One of the problems with sports' impact on our culture is that inherently, we examine issues through the lens of offensive performance in sports.  In baseball, a batter is great if they have a success rate of about 35%.  In basketball, 50% is pretty darn good.  Last year's best quarterback in American football completed 2/3 of his passes.

         Last year, we as a country consumed only 60% of the food grown...wasting 40%!!

         And no one seems to be really batting an eye about this!

         Meanwhile, 3% of our fellow citizens are underfed.  

         Not hard to imagine we could solve both problems at no cost...

         Stop paying tipping fees at landfills to throw out wasted food and use 

         the savings to transport food to those who need it.

• The use of energy to power "modern conveniences" was supposed to revolutionize our lives and give us more freedom.  In 1950, we used 95.1 million Btu per person to power our homes and move us and our goods around, and worked - on average - 4.06 hours per day.  In 2010, we used 160.7 million Btu per person for living and transportation, and worked - on average -......4.06 hour per day.  At the same time, we spend 2.5 fewer hours per day socializing with people and volunteering than we used to.   Is this supposed to be progress?

• Is there anyone else out there who reads up on 3-D printing technology, especially as it relates to food, and can't help but think of Star Trek?  Once they have a Keurig that can make "Tea.  Earl Grey.  Hot." at my beck and call, I'm signing up for Starfleet.

• Good environmental practices may not be the solution for every problem in society, but consider this: every study of 20th century that looked at the impact of lead in the atmosphere on crime rate,  has displayed a significant correlation between the presence of lead and the rate of crime.  As we continue to remove a poison that interrupts brain development, we get citizens who have better judgement.  We also learned in this "experiment", that our original acceptable level of lead in the body was at best six times higher than was actually safe (and likely infinitely higher since now we see almost no level as acceptable).  So when industry tells us that we can tolerate an acceptable amount of radiation, or benzene in the water, or mercury in the ground, etc., etc., etc., are we supposed to assume that industry has gotten smarter in the last 90 years, or that industry assumes that we are still getting dumber?

Why Midnight Movies are a Priority in Our House

I am known as a strict parent.  My kids need to check in, cannot go to a friend’s house if the parents are not home, and must do chores before going out on the weekend.  Most egregiously, they cannot watch TV from Monday through Thursday during the school year.  It is understandable that I am considered a strict parent.

Except there is one thing that I let them to do…nay encourage them to… that call this title into question.

We see the midnight movie release whenever we can.

My son and I have done this since he was thirteen.  We plan ahead so that school, work, and family responsibilities are prioritized.  We know in advance which movies merit the attention, and when it involves a sequel, we watch any previous films.

Why place a priority on a passive media when anything else I encourage them to do focuses on active participation in learning or doing?  Why cater to abject commercialism when we normally support local business, museums, and parks?

Simple.  There is nothing like doing something with a community.

Watching a movie like Man of Steel in a movie theater two weeks after its release, with about 75 people, and in the new comfy chairs with popcorn that tastes more and more like the stuff we can buy at our local grocery store, feels like watching a movie at home with a big screen and cool sound.  Nothing about a midnight show feels that passive.

Waiting for the DVD fits more into my typical modus operandi of giving media a lower priority, with the bonus of watching in my pajamas and pausing to go to the bathroom.  Compared to this “soft rock” version of movie watching, midnight movies are Metallica.

Sure, going to the midnight show means being one of the first to see a movie, but more importantly the people who go have a passion both for movies and the subject.  At the midnight showing of the final Harry Potter, wizards and witches of all shapes and sizes appeared.  When we saw the midnight release of Avengers, we attended most of the lead-up showing of the series of five Marvel movies that preceded it (putting family first to see my daughters’ chorus concert and missing two features), sitting next to the same four guys wearing various Avenger masks for the better part of fourteen hours.  These crowds knew when to cheer, laugh, and jeer.  They caught the in-jokes and references that only die-hards know.

Watching a midnight movie exemplifies the best part of humanity – the shared experience.  Sports fans know this….theater goers know this….live music lovers know this….

And the midnight movie crowd knows this.  As long as this community continues to thrive, I have hope.  Hope that passionate people from many different backgrounds can get together and put aside everything else, however briefly, to celebrate life.

Plus, it’s a great way to spend time with my family.  I like being this kind of strict parent.