Friday Five: June 27, 2014

It's not that we do dumb things that screw things up...it's that we do smart, well-intentioned things...

That screw things up.
Everything we know about neonic pesticides is awful
"The pesticides don’t just affect pest species. Most prominently, they affect bees and butterflies, which are poisoned when they gather pollen and nectar. But neonics’ negative impacts go far beyond pollinators. They kill all manner of animals and affect all kinds of ecosystems. They’re giving rise to Silent Spring 2.0."

And then we push it to scale and screw it up even more.
The brutal cost of cheap chicken
"American meat eaters live, for the most part, in happy ignorance of the system that grows animals for slaughter. When that ignorance is interrupted with a bit of information about the meat industry, we typically respond with outrage."

And then we build culture around it so that we hold onto it far longer than is practical.
The death of the American mall
"Dying shopping malls are speckled across the United States, often in middle-class suburbs wrestling with socioeconomic shifts. Some, like Rolling Acres, have already succumbed. Estimates on the share that might close or be repurposed in coming decades range from 15 to 50%. Americans are returning downtown; online shopping is taking a 6% bite out of brick-and-mortar sales; and to many iPhone-clutching, city-dwelling and frequently jobless young people, the culture that spawned satire like Mallrats seems increasingly dated, even cartoonish."

Finally, we do everything we can to try to hold onto it, even when it has never made economic sense. (Although, I will say that two of the points of the article: that there might be a way to produce energy without the damaging waste component, and that nuclear energy has to handle almost all of its waste products...they both have merit.  **Most, because they do not have to restore mined areas to pre-mining condition, and they do not have to account for the impact of the waste heat.**)
Is nuclear power ever coming back?
"According to those in the business of generating nuclear energy, other power producers should have to pay full price for the risks associated with their waste products. The way they see it, they’ve made their plants safer by prohibiting the release of critical, planet-damaging byproducts, and others should too."

I find it heartening when simple, time-tested mechanisms provide a path to a healthier future.  We need more electricity cooperatives and clean energy "building and loan" models to expedite the move to clean, community-based energy systems.  We have the knowledge, the technology, and now the economic incentive.  The only obstacle now are well-funded, obsolete industries.
Buying into solar power, no roof required
"The shared approach has its roots in rural electric cooperatives, said Elaine Ulrich of the Department of Energy’s SunShot program, but has only begun to take off in recent years, and still accounts for a tiny fraction of solar production. There are at least 52 projects in at least 17 states, and at least 10 states are encouraging their development through policy and programs, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, the main trade group."

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: June 6, 2014

On the quality of life front, there was only one main story this week, and everyone has a different take on it.Some think that it merely codifies the direction the economy is already heading.
Hopes for impact of carbon rules in US are modest
"'I don’t think it’s a revolution because our carbon emissions are already going down because of cheap natural gas,' said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, a consultancy. 'It’s not Obama’s war on coal. It’s reality’s war on coal. Natural gas turns out to be better than coal in the marketplace.'"

Some – especially those in the fossil fuel industry – think it will increase the cost of electricity and could eliminate more jobs than it saves.
5 things to know about emissions caps
"As more wind turbines and solar panels are installed, jobs in fabrication, construction and sales will shift there. Ditto for new natural-gas-fired power plants, which could lead to more drilling jobs in gas-rich states from Texas to Colorado to Pennsylvania."

Others, even those who have railed against environmental protections in the past, understand that when taken in total, the benefits far outweigh the costs.
Obama acts to curb carbon
"The apocalyptic predictions have been made before, without coming true. In 1990, when Congress approved new measures to reduce acid rain, critics said they would cause electricity rates to climb without doing any environmental good. (I was one of them.) Some anticipated a 'clean air recession'.
In fact, electricity rates have declined in inflation-adjusted terms since the restrictions were adopted, and the favorable results — including lives saved — have been far greater than expected. The economy boomed in the 1990s. A 2003 report by the Bush administration's Office of Management and Budget found that the benefits of these and related air pollution rules were at least 11 times more than the costs."

And some see how the effects of carbon pollution go beyond economics, human health, or even the availability of energy…down to the issues of basic human and civil rights.
Climate change is a civil rights issue
"These vulnerable children end up missing more school because the air they breathe makes them sick. Their parents miss work they can’t afford to lose.
Utility companies have kept these plants running decades longer than they were designed to last because air pollution laws had loopholes that made it cheaper to keep old plants going than to replace them with newer, cleaner power plants. Profits were more important than people."

Meanwhile, others want you to know how far you could reduce the impact your lifestyle has on the quality of life of others.
Tiny-home-in-a-box will turn 200 sq. ft. into a sophisticated dining room AND trashy nightclub
"The CityHome was designed to be an all-in-one furniture module for tiny spaces: It can transform a room from a bedroom to an office to a kitchen, for example, with a literal wave of the hand. This is the future!"

Happy Friday!

JIM URQUHART / REUTERS

An exercise in utility: Don't tell the Mayor about my water bill

Over the past two years, our family has taken some steps to reduce the impact that utility bills have on our bottom line.  This partly came out of necessity, and partly to lay the groundwork for future finances.  In this installment, I look at the impact of our water bill on our family economy.

Talk to someone about water conservation in the city of Chicago, and the eyes glaze over, they look to the east, and get a look of, "What are you talking about?" on their face. We live next to the largest source of naturally-occuring fresh water on the planet, so thoughts of water conservation make little sense.

For years, the way that the City of Chicago billed citizens for water use reflected that relationship.  The City could have cared less how much water a building used, the property owner paid based upon the frontage (distance along the property parallel to the street).  Every year, the departments that manage the water and sewer pipes would put together their annual budgets, and that would get divided evenly over the length of street-front across the city.  This meant that two neighbors who used vastly different amounts of water would have the same annual bill for water and sewer.  We know that pricing a commodity in that way does not promote efficient use of the resource, but rather, it promotes waste.

We should care about the waste, not just because of the availability, but also the impact of what happens after we use the water.  Although we will not dry up Lake Michigan anytime soon, low lake levels influence the effectiveness of water withdrawals, and create issues with balance between the lake and surrounding bodies of water - namely the Chicago River and the I&M Shipping Canal.  In addition, the Chicago area sewer system does not process water for return to the Lake, but rather, toward the Mississippi River.  This means that we draw water from the Lake, and send it away, then when rain falls on the city, most of it gets swept away from the Lake Michigan - where it should recharge the source - and instead ends up in the Mississippi Delta.  This contributes to flooding along all the tributaries leading to, and including, the Mississippi, and damages the ecosystems of the Delta by introducing more freshwater than desired.

With all these impacts, we should focus on using water more wisely, and over the past decade, the City has moved to installing water meters on all properties and charging the owners not just for the infrastructure necessary to deliver water and transport sewage, but based on the total water consumed.  Whereas the old bill had two flat fees for water and sewer, the new bill has a per-gallon charge for each of water and sewer.  It is interesting to see the impact of this switch in fee structure.

In our home, we have 3.5 "full-time equivalent" occupants.  My wife, youngest child, and I live in the house full-time, and we have one college-aged child living mostly away from home, then two high-school aged children who live with us part of the time.  Over the course of a year, we consume approximately 12,000 gallons of water, which, when divided over the people who live in the house over the course of the year, equates to about 10 gallons of water per person per day of direct, at-home water use.  This puts us well below average, and so any pricing system should recognize that and charge use accordingly.

Please don't tell the Mayor, but it totally does.

Prior to metering, we paid approximately $900 per year in water/sewer bills, or about 7.5 cents per gallon of water.  Not bad, considering that bottled water costs about $5.00 per gallon.  Under the current model, however, we pay a whopping....$0.0028 per gallon, or about $70 per year.

The City made a smart consumer move and promised users that their bills would be capped at previous levels (with allowable rate increases), but it would seem that someday soon that will have to go away.  For every home like ours that uses one-tenth the water, another customer must be using more.  Right now, there is no guarantee that customer will pay enough to make up the difference.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out moving forward.

Flashes: June 4, 2014

Washington Post-ABC News Poll finds that majority of Americans think carbon should be regulated, even if it results in higher energy bills.

[BTW, there's no proof it will.]

Republican and Democratic pollsters find that by 2-1 margin, Americans believe controlling air pollution is important, AND it will lead to more jobs.

[BTW, it likely will.]

Opposition to fracking is growing. (Or in fairness, it grew rapidly in 2013. And the same poll finds majority support for Keystone XL.)

[BTW, it should until companies put in all the controls to make it 99.99999% safe for humans and the environment.]

Majority of Ohioans favor renewable energy (as long as it creates jobs) and want to end coal and nuclear. (Yes, poll was paid for by a clean-energy business association....but the "business" part of that means it's trustworthy...right?)

[BTW, since renewables create more jobs per $ than coal, it's a win-win for Ohio.]

Enjoy the journey!

A time to start repairing

I recently read the thoughtful and inspiring piece that Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in the Atlantic regarding his reversal on the concept of reparations for the African-American community.  Although I agree wholeheartedly with his arguments in that article and a subsequent defense, I write not to argue the merits of the case, but rather to offer a potential piece of the solution.  As Coates' article points out, governments and pillagers used housing as a way to extract wealth from the African-American community throughout most of the 20th century.  In order to begin to recognize this harm and make amends, I propose that we truly make the cost of living easier for those due these reparations...

Pay their energy bill for the duration of their time in the building.

The most optimal form this would take would include permanent installations of renewable energy systems and energy efficiency technology.  Although we can easily set up a trust from which regular distributions would pay for energy bills, we would soon find it much more lucrative to use the fund to invest in eliminating (or nearly eliminating) the energy bill altogether.  This would have three primary benefits to the African-American community:

First, it would provide relief to the resident.  For homeowners, it would immediately reduce the cost of ownership, freeing up resources to ease the cost of living and to allow for savings and future investment.  For renters, as long as the process included the proper oversight, it would mean immediate relief in out of pocket expenses.

Second, it would create value in the community.  Buildings that use little energy and have renewable energy improvements have greater value than those without.  In addition, extending the opportunity to all black-owned buildings would incentivize the movement of capital to black-owned buildings.  This could provide an opportunity for some communities to fight off gentrification by encouraging black investors to take advantage of the opportunities in real estate.  When selling these buildings, those black owners can receive a greater return, and use the marketplace to their financial benefit.

Third, it would provide several ancillary opportunities to increase capital flows into the black community.  Fearing the inefficiency of governmental program management, the funds that provide the capital for this program would best use community cooperatives to manage the development of energy assets.  The community would then set the parameters for which technologies get adopted, who performs the work, and how the profits get invested and dividends get distributed.  These cooperatives can make sure that local contractors and businesses get the opportunity to do the work, that local community members get the opportunity to invest, and that capital flows to manufacturing jobs that maximize the return to those for whom the reparations are intended.

We have debated the case for reparations for over a century, and will continue to do so for a long time to come.  In the meanwhile, we have the opportunity to start recognizing that we as a country have taken wealth from one race to the benefit of others.  This is not a chance occurrence, but one specifically executed by our society for hundreds of years.  Investing in the clean energy and energy efficiency can improve quality of life, and in this case, can begin to heal the wounds that 300 years of racism have inflicted.  More importantly, it respects those who receive the benefit, because it trusts them to turn the investment into permanent wealth.  Lastly, it provides the tools to end the erosion of communities so that we might finally deliver on the promise that all are created equal.

Carbon rules are coming...and they will be easy to meet

Today, the President Obama and the EPA – bolstered by recent court rulings - will announce rules for carbon dioxide emissions targets.  Reports vary from 20% reduction by 2020 to a 30% reduction by 2030.  Regardless of the actual target chosen, we should all remember one thing…

We will beat that target easily.

Politics, we should all remember, has as its foundation the “art of the possible”.  Most everyone in industry, except for those whose commodities will have less value because of reduced demand for carbon-based fuels, recognizes that energy efficiency and renewable energy have a better economic trajectory than fossil fuels or even nuclear.  In setting this goal, the current administration simply identifies where industry easily thinks they can get.  Just as they did with the automobile efficiency standards, they have put in place a benchmark that we will meet far before the target date.

Lest pure political analysis prove unpersuasive, consider the economic argument.  For years, analysts claimed that we needed to tax fossil fuels in order to capture externalities and make renewable energy more competitive.  What we got instead was an energy market that remained depressed by a combination of stagnant demand and temporarily increased supply.  That should have spelled a death knell for renewable energy.  Instead, we have seen wind and solar have their most successful years economically in a time when low energy prices should push them out of the market.  Recent long-term contracts and court rulings in the Midwest have bolstered this fact that even as of today, renewable energy-based electricity generation betters coal and nuclear, and competes with natural gas.

On the technology front, current building codes currently restrict energy use in new buildings to levels about half of what they were a decade ago.  Over the next ten years, we will see this decline even further, and that will carry over into the existing building marketplace.  We will see even more efficient use of energy in buildings (a sector that uses about 1/3 of the energy in the economy), and continued reduction in vehicle emissions.  Industrial use (the final 1/3) already has stagnated as industry continues to find excellent investments in efficient ways to update equipment and processes to use less energy.  Our economic growth no longer relies on increased energy use, and in fact, we may see the opposite hold true for decades to come.

On an even more important front, most politicians recognize that energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies create more jobs per dollar than the fossil fuel industry.  Few groups take the “sky is falling” approach to carbon regulation, but the some continue to flap their wings and claim that regulating carbon will cause economic collapse.  Thankfully, most recognize that pollution limits actually create jobs by shifting capital (human and financial) from extractive industry to productive ones.  Spending money on new wind turbines, smart-grid technology, weatherization of homes, or pollution capture technology…these all put people to work and shift expenses from one sector to another, but it does not threaten the economy as a whole.

One need look no further than the acid rain policies of the 80s and 90s to see a parallel.  Back then we sought to reduce sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants because these reacted with the atmosphere to produce rain that damaged crops, buildings, and communities.  Industry predicted it would create a $1,500 per ton drag on the economy.  What happened instead was that it cost only $250 per ton, and the savings from increased property value, reduced medical expenses, and job creation more than paid for the investment.

For years, we have had to choose between the more economically stable sector and the higher-priced, but better-for-us sector.  Especially in tough economic times, asking anyone to make that choice is tough.  Now, we have reached a tipping point where we do not have to sacrifice anyone’s quality of life in order to cost-effectively provide the energy that supports our lives.  Challenges lie ahead, but we should take solace in the fact that the Obama administration is taking this step today.  If there’s one thing we know about politicians….

They rarely stick their necks out unless they’re certain of the outcome.