Friday Five: October 10, 2014...A New Hope

Although stories of hope appear regularly in the weekly news, this week saw an abundance of them, starting with improved air quality in Southern California...perhaps what we might call the birthplace of the modern air quality movement. Beijing 2014 reminds us of LA 1973...the moment of clarity when we figured out we couldn't just dump everything into the atmosphere and hope for the best.
Cancer risk from air pollution drops in Southern California
"The analysis found that exposure to dozens of toxic air contaminants could result in 418 cancer cases per 1 million people over 70 years, or a lifetime. That is down from an average risk of 1,194 cases per million found in the air district's study of the region in 2005.
Health experts recommend a limit of 10 cancer cases per 1 million people over 70 years.
Current state guidelines underestimate the true cancer risk, air quality officials acknowledged, and are expected to be revised upward next year based on new science that shows breathing toxic substances has more serious health effects than previously thought."

Economics does not improve without an increase in scale. An increase in scale does not happen unless there is a market. There is no market without education and innovation. There is no education without groundbreakers willing to change the way we do things. Thank you to all those who fought for a change in our energy systems....your efforts are finally paying off.
Two large forces moving business closer to climate action
"The We Mean Business report cites an internal rate of return of 81% (that’s a ridiculous payback) on energy efficiency in the U.S., and an IRR of 27% for those companies with the most aggressive, science-based goals and actions on climate. Even the most “expensive” options like renewables are becoming cheap so fast that it’s making CFOs’ heads spin. Even those hippies over at asset manager Lazard calculate that the cost of solar PV technologies has dropped nearly 80% in five years. Assuming that we’ll lose money by radically cutting carbon has become a radically outdated idea."

In 1999, the Chicago White Sox traded a young center fielder named Mike Cameron to the Reds. The Reds would turn around the next year and trade him to the Seattle Mariners who went to the playoffs that year. Mike would go on to win 3 Gold Gloves, make the All Star team, and finish in the top 25 in MVP voting twice. In return the Chicago White Sox got Paul Konerko...the Reds got Ken Griffey, Jr. Trades are good...especially when they benefit both parties.
Climate trades
"Liberia has much of what remains of West Africa’s rain forest, but logging is rampant. The initiative is not an act of charity but a trade: Liberia gets income, which it needs; Norway gets to preserve biodiversity and take a small step against climate change. A similar deal that Norway struck with Brazil years ago helped slow deforestation there. Economists call arrangements of this kind 'payments for ecosystem services,' and they follow a rationale known as the Coase theorem. In 1960, the economist Ronald Coase argued that bargaining between parties could, under certain conditions, produce a mutually beneficial and efficient solution to problems like pollution. Trying to force Liberia to stop chopping down trees (by using, say, sanctions) would be high-handed and probably ineffective. Paying Liberia to do so makes both sides better off."

We bet on humanity because we have an infinite ability to come up with solutions that allow us to adapt. The question is not whether we can, but whether we want to.
In virtual mega-drought, California avoids defeat
"Under that scenario, experts say, irrigated farm acreage would plunge. Aquatic ecosystems would suffer, with some struggling salmon runs fading out of existence.
Urban water rates would climb. The iconic suburban lawn would all but disappear. Coastal Californians would stop dumping most of their treated sewage and urban runoff from rain storms into the Pacific and instead add it to their water supply."

As we have had our faith shaken in government by the politicking of big business, we are left with only consumer-driven advocacy as our tool to combat unethical business practices. The irony is, sometimes, that advocacy works.
Bust out the LEGOs: The toymaker cuts ties with Big Oil
"LEGO’s move may prompt other companies to think twice about partnerships with Big Oil, but that doesn’t mean that everything is awesome quite yet. Shell still plans to drill offshore in the U.S. and explore off the coast of northern Alaska in 2015. Which makes us wonder: How many tiny, drowning LEGO fishermen would it take to put a stop to that?"

Happy Friday!

Friday Five: September 26, 2014

As over half a million people made their voices heard last Sunday, it is disheartening to know that it likely will have a minimal impact on the politics...and it desperately needs to have a significant impact on the politics. 
Why the (awesome) climate march won't change American politics
"The march slogan was, “to change everything, we need everyone,” which is telling, because it won’t change everything, because it didn’t include everyone. Specifically, it won’t change American politics because it didn’t include conservatives."

The politics are so difficult, not only for the demographic reasons noted above, but also because of how much those in control of the market stand to lose...enough to make it worth it to them to threaten the lives of everyone on the planet.
The new Abolitionism
"The last time in American history that some powerful set of interests relinquished its claim on $10 trillion of wealth was in 1865—and then only after four years and more than 600,000 lives lost in the bloodiest, most horrific war we’ve ever fought."

Even those who distribute the energy have much to lose, and without a political solution, they will continue to fight the expansion of renewable energy at a time when we desperately need their support.
Berkeley Lab report quantifies the financial impacts of customer-sited photovoltaics on electric utilities
"A core purpose of the study was to evaluate measures that could be pursued by utilities and regulators to reduce the financial impacts of distributed PV. The report considered a large number of such measures, including changes to utility rate design and ratemaking processes, mechanisms that allow utilities to recoup revenues lost due to distributed PV or to earn profits on distributed PV, and a variety of other strategies."

Because no matter what conventional industry may say, the substitution of one fossil fuel for another fossil fuel does not improve our chances of survival.
Natural gas is not a good climate solution, even without methane leakage
"The only case in which more abundant natural gas would take a bite out of emissions, according to our modeling, was with a renewable energy mandate. We looked at a case in which utilities were required to get a certain percentage of their electricity from renewables, rising year after year to reach 50 percent by 2050. In that case, the competition between natural gas and renewables would be minimized — so natural gas would compete primarily with coal, making cumulative emissions about 13 percent lower."

You know what does improve our chances of survival? Every one of these people...not only through their teaching, but also through their doing.
Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators (PIAEE) winners
"The Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators recognizes outstanding kindergarten through grade 12 teachers who employ innovative approaches to environmental education and use the environment as a context for learning for their students. Up to two teachers from each of EPA's 10 regions, from different states, will be selected to receive this award. The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers this award to nationally honor, support and encourage educators who incorporate environmental education in their classrooms & teaching methods."

Happy Friday!

Adrees Latif/REUTERS

Friday Five: September 19, 2014

This next week will be a telling one for the movement to stem the effects of climate change. Ahead of an international meeting in New York next week, environmental organizers have gone all in by collaborating with previously un-tapped partners to try and pull off the larges climate march in history. If they succeed, it could be a watershed moment for the movement, if they fail, it could spell the end. Or, it could just be another Sunday in NYC.
How to define success for the People's Climate March
"Organizers of the march have set themselves a high bar—two high bars, actually. First, they’ve proclaimed that this will be the biggest climate change demonstration yet. That means organizers have to turn out no fewer than 100,000 people—the estimated size of the Copenhagen march—or be judged a failure; a lower turnout would send the signal that the movement is waning rather than growing. Further, organizers have declared that the People’s Climate March will be “historic,” meaning it will be looked back on as a key moment in the climate struggle. This definition in turn requires that the March lead to more and better things down the road—that it be not merely one day of protest."

The numbers have been coming in, and it looks like somewhere between saving us 10% and costing us 5% is the range of net impact of addressing climate change on the economy. If you believe that eliminating fossil fuel emissions will do absolutely nothing, then it's a 5% add. If you believe that clean energy will eliminate most energy bills, improve human health, and increase property values, then it saves 10%. My best guess is probably not a 10% savings, but a measurable one.
Fixing climate change may add no costs, report says
"While the commission found that the requisite steps may make economic sense, that does not mean they will be politically easy, the report says. For instance, the group will recommend that countries eliminate subsidies for fossil fuels, which cost about $600 billion a year but are vigorously defended by vested interests.
It will urge nations to take a fresh look at the potential of renewable energy, whose costs are plummeting, and also recommend the adoption of initiatives to halt destruction of forests, use land more efficiently and limit wasteful urban sprawl, among many other steps."

As a bit of forewarning, the article does not deliver on the headline (which is rarely the author's fault), but it does raise particularly interesting issues relative to the conversation around almost every environmental issue...or for that matter, every economic issue. It paints an image of people on all sides who claim factual impartiality, but only from their decidedly isolated point of view.
How to talk about climate change so people will listen
"In the best of times, this problem—given its apocalyptic stakes, bewildering scale, and vast potential cost—would be difficult to resolve. But we are not in the best of times. We are in a time of legislative paralysis. In an important step, the Obama administration announced in June its decision to cut power-plant emissions 30 percent by 2030. Otherwise, this country has seen strikingly little political action on climate change, despite three decades of increasingly high-pitched chatter by scientists, activists, economists, pundits, and legislators."

Meanwhile, on a particularly practical front, consumer and environmental advocates in Illinois have teamed up to call for transparency on carbon emissions. Instead of pounding the table for widespread action, they ask just to know what is happening at each of Illinois' electric utilities.
CUB, EDF push for comprehensive smart grid metric on carbon emissions
"The greenhouse gas petition, filed by CUB and EDF Wednesday, is related to major power-grid upgrades, collectively called the "smart grid," that were approved by the Illinois General Assembly in 2011 and are now being launched by Commonwealth Edison and Ameren Illinois. The improvements, including new digital electric meters, have the potential to make Illinois' electricity system cleaner and less costly."

And while we stage protests, denigrate scientists, and do so from the comfort of our 99.999% reliably electrified homes, people in non-electrified parts of the world are showing us the truth about solar economics...solar is cheaper.
There's a place in the world that is fighting poverty with solar panels.
"He laughed. It’s much simpler than that, he said. 'I just wanted electricity.'"

Happy Friday!

Tim McDonnell/Climate Desk

The two biggest myths about a sustainable future

For the past fifteen years, I have worked to improve the ways our buildings improve quality of life, not just for those that use them, but for everyone whose lives are impacted by them. The past two years especially have shown me how much I did not know or understand about the ways in which we have organized ourselves as people. Even with all that I have seen people accomplish, with all the great innovation and passionate discourse, we have made little change in the path of our potential destruction. If anything, with the natural forces of population growth and economic development, we have increased the rate of our damage to the environment. Watching this happen, it has become abundantly clear that we have been misguided on two major fronts of the battle to save ourselves from ourselves.

First, it is not about human behavior

So much of the dialogue about the sustainable energy future, one where we do not harm anyone with the way we use energy, has focused on the individual choice. We celebrate devices that give the user more information to make their own choice, or that learn our patterns and adapt our choices for us. We create campaigns that teach - or sometimes shame - people not to do things that are wasteful or harmful, placing the blame for the harmful outcomes on the fact that someone made a choice in their home or place of work. "The fish in the Atlantic are getting poisoned with mercury because I fell asleep in front of my TV and wasted all that electricity."

The sustainable future has nothing to do with the individual choices we make to save energy, recycle, conserve water....it's all about infrastructure.

There are a small number of people who have gone "off-grid" and have found ways to create sustainable existences, but their success is not about the day-to-day choices they make, but rather in how they have changed the infrastructure of their lives. They live in smaller, more manageable spaces that do not need energy to supply the comforts of living. If we powered our planet completely off the sun, we would not have to reduce one lick of energy use...the sun provides many, many times the amount of energy we all need to survive in comfort.

Instead of building a civilization around systems that fully sustain life, we have created the infrastructure of our existence around systems that destroy one part of our world in order to prop op other parts of our society. Especially in America, where our entire infrastructure was built during the Industrial Revolution, when energy was cheap, we have not even remotely considered how wasteful we are until very recently. If we are to make things different, protect all people from the dangers associated with the depletion of resources and the environmental damage that comes from the ways we process them, then we need to focus all of our efforts on infrastructure. In many ways, focusing anything on human behavior creates a negative feedback loop that causes more harm than good.

Only by making large changes at the infrastructure level will we have any hope of creating a civilization that supports life.

Second, and most importantly, social equity comes first

The mantra of triple bottom line has worked its way successfully into the corporate world. We now hear people talk regularly about the economic, environmental, and social bottom lines. Somewhat more colloquially, we hear leaders talk about people, planet, profit, but if we are to be truthful, the former triad is more accurate. Our current political and business models focus most if not all their efforts on the economic bottom line. The leaders of industry were educated by mentors who had no concern for anything other than profit, they have operated in and furthered a system that rewards profit above all else, and even when faced with mounting evidence of the harm being caused, their focus is on how to value people and the environment within the system.

The current political-economic system does not value people or the planet, and it never will.

In creating this modern economic system that rewards only profit, we have made money the equivalent of power. Those with money have the ability to shape policy and infrastructure, and only through mass action within the economic system - purchasing certain products while avoiding others - can people of limited economic means have any say. Outside of that, people have only limited ability to shape the future, as even the electoral choices we make come between options that are presented to us by those with power and capital.

The thinking for the last decade was that the movement to a sustainable future would create one of social equity, but we have it backwards. Only by focusing first on social equity can we achieve a future that is sustainable for all.

When threatened with security, loss of food and shelter, or separation from those we love, we retreat to the easy and comfortable - namely the systems that already exist. Only by freeing people of these fears can we create a populace that collectively makes choices in everyone's best interest. A society that rewards active participation in the systems that support life by compensating with enough resources to give each member a voice in that society creates equality. This does not mean everyone has the exact same, it just means that we all have enough to influence the decisions made that affect us all. Especially in our modern society where the economic choices sometimes have more influence than even our votes, balancing the flow of capital so all can participate stands as imperative.

We glimpsed this after World War II in this country. We did not reward equally across racial lines, but we did reward across class lines within the population of white Americans. In that system, we saw greater potential for equity. In making some strides over the past decades against systematic racism, we have lost much ground on overall social equity. Only by creating equity across all social systems can we hope to create a sustainable future. This begins with movements to raise the minimum wage, or to create a similar system whereby people who work get the capital to have a voice in what happens.

A sustainable future will not create social equity or improve our infrastructure. Our challenge is to work that in reverse. We must fully realize the vision of a nation in which all are created equal if we are to create a sustainable society. If we leave power only to those who profit from the existing infrastructure/systems, then the choices they make will dominate everything. Only after we establish that everyone, regardless of race, gender, preference, or class has equal say, and eliminate the wasteful systems...only then will we truly have a sustainable future.

Valuing labor and leisure

I think that we have the order of summer holidays almost perfect. It is absolutely right that we honor those who have given their lives to protect the right of self-determination for all people, and I personally extend my Memorial Day thoughts to those first responders who have also sacrificed their lives to protect the lives of others. The giving of ones life to protect others sits high in value in any civilization. In the middle of the summer, we recognize the value of thought, and how organizing principles can bring people together. Independence Day in the US is more than just a statement about freedom or quality of life (look at Canada, they have freedom and high quality of life and never fired a shot in independence). The simple statement that every person had equal standing in society stood against almost every successful civilian organization of people since the dawn of agriculture. For those individuals who said it in the face of death, it is right that we remember and honor their efforts. Then we come to the penultimate celebration of the summer, and the one that rightly holds the highest place....

The celebration of labor.

Without labor, no sacrifice or grand statement means anything. Without those who toil, slowly sacrificing their bodies through years of stress and strain, we do not have food on the table, a place to rest our heads, or clean water to drink. Without the struggles of those who have labored previously, we not only would have no infrastructure on which to build our quality of life, but we would not have the concept of the weekend, the virtual elimination of child labor, or the idea that a sick person best serves the market by recovering rather than working themselves to death.

Over the past four decades, there is no question that the great majority of our country, as expressed through the political system, has shown - at best - disrespect, and more likely utter contempt for those who labor. Economically, as a country, we have invested less and less in the productive labor of our own people, and created more and more opportunity for those who work for the accumulation of capital than for those who work to improve the quality of life of people.

Even our economic system devalues the individual who works. We speak of increasing profitability, improving productivity, and chasing efficiency as though they are the greatest accomplishments that we can achieve. Every time we shift capital from production to profit, every increase in productivity, ever efficiency realized means that someone either loses a job, loses wages, or loses freedom. Businesses has no measure of success that seeks to improve the employment of the individual or their access to health and leisure.

This does raise a question, however. Outside of the reasons or intent behind this disrespect toward and devaluation of labor, we need to ask ourselves, how much do we really need to work. As our economy has advanced, little attention has been paid to the thought that as we move toward a more productive economy, that means that we may need to work less. At the turn of the 20th century, almost 12,000,000 people were employed in the agricultural industry...a whopping 16% of the population (not just the workforce). Today, that number sits at around 750,000, or 0.2% of the population. At that same time in history, people died from water outbreaks on a regular basis as we rapidly urbanized our population. Today, approximately 50,000 workers in the water and sewage industry keep us supplied with safe drinking water and separate us from harmful waste. Less than 1% of our population keeps us fed and watered. Since air is free, that means that three out of four of our basic requirements can now be met with almost no labor input.

The last need, shelter, has a more complicated story to tell. Of the entire construction/service workforce of 10 million, it is difficult to separate out how many work directly in the building of residential shelter or support the water and food industries. Some estimate residential construction at as many as 2.5 million, but it is probably safe to say that around 3 to 4 million work directly or indirectly at supporting these basic human needs. Even at that number, and assuming 50 hours of labor a week for each of those individuals, the amount of time each American needs to work in order to maintain the basic necessities of life is about one hour per year.

Although this assessment does not include education or healthcare, it points toward the fact that our efforts to improve quality of life have succeeded. The idea that we have to labor and work hard to provide a basic quality of life no longer holds. We can move away from an economy that seeks to punish us with work, and move toward one in which we all maximize our potential. We will still need farmers, construction workers...labor of all sorts, but in this future, those who sacrifice some of their freedom to pursue those endeavors will receive appropriate compensation for it. We will value labor more highly precisely because we will need to fewer people to do it, and will need to entice those who do away from other pursuits.

Each Labor Day, I thank those who have shortened their lifespan by choosing to use their strength to support a high quality of life for all. More importantly, I hope for a future in which we recognize that we all can work less and still enjoy that quality of life. I look toward a future where the celebration of Labor Day, like the celebration of Memorial Day or Independence Day, recognizes the past sacrifices of a small number so that the larger population can work toward the improvement of our species, and not just its mere survival.

A perverse incentive? The economics of repair or replace.

UPDATE 4:05 p.m. 8/25/2014: In a Tweet publicizing this article, I included Whirlpool in hopes of drawing their attention to the opportunity in the "service economy" as opposed to the "extractive economy" - something with which I am sure they are aware, but it always helps to prod. I should have expected what I received, which was an excellent customer service response looking to help with my issue. It prompted me to note that the issues I am having are not with the quality of this specific product, the customer service of Whirlpool, or even the desire of Whirlpool to deliver a high quality product to customers so that they will get good, repeat business. Whirlpool, like other manufacturers, has to do what they can to survive in the current economic climate. I wish I knew the immediate answer to how they can make the shift...if I did, I would certainly be selling it to them and their competitors. I just want to make clear that the following is a call to question the value of our economy, not at all questioning the value of this manufacturer or their product.


We have reached a bit of a crossroads with our washing machine. It is about 6 years old...well within what I would consider to be a "normal" life, and it needs what Whirlpool considers to be a major repair. The control board that turns all the myriad user entries into the customized washer cycles, well, it has crapped out on us (to use the technical term). Not as catastrophic, the drain pump has developed a leak. The factory-authorized repair service will replace both for the tidy sum of $850.  The interesting thing is...

A new comparable washer would cost about $800 from a Whirlpool authorized dealer.

This puts me in a quandary as a person who wants to make the most environmentally conscious decision. The labor aside (approximately $200 of the $850), there is no way that two parts of a device that retails at $1,000 or less cost anywhere near $650 to make. This means that Whirlpool has one of two reasons to do this:

1.  They make the bulk of their money on new product sales and make it financially unbearable to make the decision to repair, or
2.  They want their name associated only with high-quality products. Since this model does not provide the best service, they want to get it back, repurpose the parts, and get a new model in the hands of an existing customer.

I would love to believe that the latter were the answer, but given that the service technician who came out did not push that on us, nor did they make an offer that would dissuade me from considering another brand, I am guessing that the manufacturer only makes money when they can sell a new product from extracted resources...not by providing a service.

That is at the heart of what is wrong with the current economy.

We have so many ways to extract materials, turn them into something of value and then put them to use over long periods of time....but instead, we find the fastest way to put them in the ground and sell another bulk of materials to perform the same service. This "extractive economy" as we know it exists on the shaky foundation that a planet of 7 to 9 billion people, all demanding a high quality of life with the capital we currently use to provide it, will have enough resources to deliver all these goods. We know that for a large portion of our economy, this cannot happen.

The smarter move would be for manufacturers to move from the extractive economy to the service economy. Whirlpool would sell me the service of clothes cleaning - including water and any necessary detergents - for a monthly price (in this case, for something that should last 10 years that they would prefer to sell to me today at $800...let's say $144 per year or $12 per month). In this great internet of things, they could use communication technology to see the washer performance over time, and would see the need for repair to keep it performing as they have contracted to do. Additionally, if they maximized profit based upon how little it cost to maintain, they would likely build a more lasting product in the first place. If the device did need replacement, they would do it within the same fee. When given the responsibility to determine whether to repair or replace to deliver the same service, they would definitely use the method that used the fewest resources and least amount of labor. They would also have full responsibility for the used equipment, and would maximize the reuse of materials and minimize those materials that get wasted.

This "cradle-to-cradle" concept of manufacturing comes from the work of William McDonough, Michael Braungar, and others. It already works in the software market where we have seen the shift from the purchasing of a pack of CDs with pre-loaded software to web-based platforms where we purchase the service the software provides for a regular fee. AT&T recently moved to this format for cell phones where one can upgrade at any time as long as they keep making monthly payments. 

In the ideal market, these manufacturers would enter into the agreements with local energy and water utilities, who would collect the total fees for the services of all appliances from the customers, including the cost of consumables such as energy and water. This would give the customer one place to pay, and would add the further incentive to the utility to minimize the energy use for the level of service provided. In this case, utilities would still get revenue to help maintain infrastructure, and they could make the appliance repair marketplace more efficient by sharing resources across brands and services.

However we tackle this, we need to move away from these incentives to extract as quickly as possible...and I would love it if you could make this happen by Wednesday before I have to make my decision.

Friday Five: August 22, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Friday!

The (dangerous) fracking Ponzii scheme

Product manufacturers know all to well one of the primary rules of the marketplace: incumbents cede market share only when something costs less or has a greater "cool factor". That is why the new competitor to my favorite brand of juice drink cost $0.30 less, or why when Apple asked me to spend $400 on something that comes free with my cell contract, it has to do all this "extra stuff". Over the long haul, these new entrants to the marketplace have to raise prices or cut back on product in order to remain competitive, but their investors will tolerate losing money for a couple of years if the long-term viability of the product will lead to profits and return on investment down the road.

Such is the state we now find ourselves in the market for natural gas in the United States. For the better part of the past decade, we have enjoyed historically low prices for natural gas fueled by a huge expansion of supply from hydraulic fracturing (fracking), notably in Northeast, the Southern Plains, and the West. Under normal circumstances, companies would limit how much they distribute of these resources to ensure long-term production and viability. However, when this technology started to produce, the market had three competitors that could scuttle any long-term adoption:

Cheap electricity from coal and nuclear.

Renewable energy technologies.

Energy efficiency. 

In order to compete, and win, natural gas had to drop prices in order to create a challenging market for coal/nuclear, stave off investment in renewables, if possible, and keep demand as high as possible. And that they did: From 2006 to 2012, the price of natural gas dropped by 75%, with a number of ramifications.

US electricity generation by source (EIA)

The timing of this drop could not have been better in the electricity marketplace where natural gas trailed coal and struggled to top nuclear. Coal plants that had avoided the necessary investments needed to comply with decades' old regulations were reaching the point where they had to upgrade. A large portion of the nuclear fleet was entering the timeframe where they needed to re-permit, and therefore make investments into the facilities. In order to justify these investments, the industry needed certainty about the level of energy prices they would receive. A glut of natural gas in the marketplace changed the economics, and coupled with a new ability for the EPA to regulate carbon emissions and a tragedy in Japan at Fukishima, coal and nuclear plants have started closing. Meanwhile, natural gas plants continue to come online. As a result, the share of electricity generated in the US from coal has dropped from 50% to about 35% over the past 15 years, while natural gas has doubled its position from 15% to 30%. Nuclear, after holding steady for the better part of the last two decades has started to decline.

Meanwhile, the US energy consumption per capita - which sits at twice that of nearly all of the developed world - that saw a significant downtick when the Great Recession hit in 2008, has now started to rebound. Instead of taking advantage of ridiculously low rates of borrowing to establish a solid foundation of low energy use on which we could rebuild our economy, we as a nation chose to cut back on investment and instead, put our stock in a hope that for the next two decades, prices for energy would remain low. Science and economics tell us that we are in for a rude awakening.

The fracking industry has sold the US that we have a large amount of extractable resource sitting under the US, that we can sustain this production for decades to come, and that natural gas does not harm the environment anywhere near as much as coal. All of these claims are starting to unravel. A recent EIA report drastically dropped the projected resources available in the Monterey shale deposit by 96%. Although directly related to the oil from fracking and not natural gas, this calls into question the estimates of economically attainable resources in other shale deposits. Along those lines, for the better part of the last five years, the industry itself has questioned the long-term economic viability of fracking. Fracking wells drop off production significantly in just two years, necessitating that industry build more and more wells to justify pipeline development and meet production goals. Meanwhile, the mantle of environmental benign-ness that the fracking industry touted against a small number of detractors ten years ago has crumbled as more and more research suggests that the environmental benefits lag while more and more issues result from the whole process of extracting fossil fuels from rock formations.

In order for the industry to continue its current rate of market penetration, it must continue the myth of environmental benefit, invest in more and more wells to get that boon of production from the first year, and build more infrastructure around natural gas so that high enough demand exists when prices will inevitably go up. That is the scheme on which investors have been sold in order to make it work: Keep investing in new wells now, even though they will not produce, because we can keep America hooked on gas. 

The problem is, it's a lose-lose for the country.

If prices do not go up, then investors will lose money and back out in droves, drastically cutting supply and increasing the cost to the average American. If natural gas gains market dominance, then prices will do up to compete with larger profits to be gained from exports, and increase the cost to the average American.

The window is closing. Our last great hope is to reduce our dependence on all forms of energy, but especially fossil fuels, and increase the penetration of renewable energy into our electricity market. If we do that, we drop demand drastically, and introduce energy sources with much lower operating costs into the marketplace. These create downward pressure on prices, and provide us a measure of resiliency against future prices shocks.

If we do not make the necessary changes...well, we all know what happens to the people left standing when the pyramid scheme collapses.

Flashes: July 16, 2014

Top 4 Most Energy Efficient Baseball Stadiums

1.  Marlins Park

"Its energy-efficient building envelope – and its mechanical, electrical, lighting, heating, and cooling systems – cost the ballpark 22% less on energy compared to similar structures."










2.  Target Field

"Upgrades to equipment, lighting, and HVAC in 2011 reduced electricity use by more than 12%, despite a new video board and added radiant heating units."








3. Nationals Park

"Energy-efficient lighting uses 20% less energy than typical field lighting."











4. AT&T Field

"Upgrading to a high-definition scoreboard that is 80% more efficient than its predecessor."








Enjoy the journey!

Source: Alliance to Save Energy/NRDC Sports Greening Project

On our only day of rest from team sports, some thoughts

The Monday of the Major League All-Star Break offers us one day to breathe from an otherwise 24/7/364 cycle of scores, highlights, and analysis. Primarily due to baseball's marathon, and the overlap with hockey's equally grueling season, this stands as the only day on the calendar without a professional team sport competition.  It used to share that distinction with the day after the All-Star game, but Major League Soccer snatched that up (presumably to have ESPN Sportscenter all to itself for one day). So we have one day to reflect and ponder how these activities - and the social and economic impacts - fit into our lives.  I offer the following, ecology and health-based thoughts.

1.  Professional sports survives on unhealthy food and audience manipulation.
Would a professional sports team remain profitable if the only sources of revenue allowed the team consisted of the ticket sales and pay-per-view television? Would this result in a spiral by which the salary structure of each league would fall to a point where many talented athletes at the lowest rungs of the pay scale would find more lucrative work in other fields? What a great irony it is for the demonstration of great human achievement only makes financial sense when people eat large amounts of food that lead to degraded human health.

Our other alternative, and the one that perhaps leads to a greater ratcheting up of the industry value, comes in the form of manipulative advertising. What relationship is there between the driving of a car and the shooting of a basketball? Only that a willing audience of sports enthusiasts will watch a commercial for that car while waiting for their game to come back on. The sports fan's basic human desire to belong to something greater than themselves gets turned into a source of profit for those who own sports franchises and a way to sell product to manufacturers.

Without either of these revenue sources unrelated to, and in some ways contradictory to, the reason for sport, what would the modern team sport industry look like?

2. The sports-industrial complex rivals that of the military-industrial complex
As a parent of teenagers, and a willing participant in the S-I complex as a coach and parent, I constantly find amazement in the lack of economic sense placed on decisions related to children participating in sports. Parents spend significant amounts of money on equipment, league fees, camps, training, and uniforms with no hope of seeing any return on that investment. Of the hundreds of thousands of young people participating in sports each year (and whose parents spend large amounts of money to do so), tens of thousands of them will continue to play beyond the age of 14, only thousands of them will continue past the age of 18, and each year maybe one thousand of them will participate in a professional team sport making a salary that justifies the years of effort. Certainly,  many work within the sports industry encouraging and supporting the next generation of athletes, but do we want 1/40th of our national worth to be dedicated to the sports industry as it sits now.  Can we obtain the health and (tenuous) discipline benefits from a better expenditure of resources? Especially given the pain caused by a small but damaging percentage of the participants in major college and professional sports, is the value worth it?

3. The more we know, the more we risk
In the days of loosely-wound baseballs, wooden bats, leather helmets, and water/banana rehydration/nutrition we saw injuries of all kinds, but not on the scale we see now. At the forefront, we have a burgeoning field of research into the effects of concussions from major sports (most notably American football), and especially the repetitive, non-concussive impacts that occur every day in sporting activities. Add to that the knee and ankle pains of American football, international football (soccer), and basketball, and we see a potential crisis as a generation of people that grew up playing these sports for the better part of two decades reaching the age where their impacts create the greatest strain on the health system. When kids would go out and play sports on their own in pickup games for fun, they would get the health benefit without the repetitive contact and intensity found in team sports participation and training. Like the impact of concussions on professional players of American football, we will not know for some time whether our obsession with sports at a young age has positive or negative long-term effects.

4. Do we really have the energy for sports?
We really do not have a definitive analysis of the total energy impact of sporting activities, but the combination of electrical energy use in outdoor arenas, combined with the total energy use of indoor arenas, plus all of the vehicular energy required to transport spectators from home to stadium and back provides a significant foundation for a finalized analysis. Add to this all the energy required to transport budding athletic scholarship recipients to and from their various sporting activities, and we have a gold mine of emissions reduction opportunities. When I was a kid, we biked or walked to every practice, and piled into the coach's wagon whenever we had a "road game". We did not have a procession of minivans and SUV getting us from place to place. On the stadium front, Fenway, Wrigley, Yankee, and Comisky have great access to public transportation, but the norm is a stadium surrounded by field and fields of empty parking lots that do nothing for 75-95% of the year. We can do better.

I enjoy watching people excel both intellectually and physically, so I absolutely love sports. My children and I have enjoyed the experience (despite the occasional lesson in decorum), and I hope we all continue to include team competition as a part of the cultural foundation of our society. Within this positive connection, I recognize that we can go too far. Making sports such a huge part of our economic system, and placing such an importance on it relative to other areas (science, mathematics, agriculture), we threaten the long-term development of our society.

Perhaps if we had more than one day off from professional sports, we might get a better chance to reflect and decide.

UPDATE: 7/14/2014...2:00 PM Totally forgot to include energy use and transportation.

Friday Five: July 11, 2014

It is said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  After dealing with smoking, leaded fuels and paints, asbestos, and other things harmful to human health, we do not learn how to better predict and manage these things.  Economic value does not tell the whole story...ever.
Pesticide blamed for bee deaths now linked to bird declines
"The researchers found a strong correlation between pesticide concentrations measured in surface freshwater and lower or negative local population growth rates of 14 species of birds since the introduction of the pesticide imidacloprid in the Netherlands in the 1990s, according to a study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature."

The consequences of our dangerous and addictive relationship with energy and chemicals often fall on those at the margins.  If this plant and all the pollution generating industry in this town were located in the posh suburbs of our major cities, we would move more quickly to eliminate them.
Mysterious blast at Chevron plant shakes pollution-weary Texas town
"When the smoke clears from this incident, Kelley and the Port Arthur community will still have other pollution problems on their hands. Besides the pollution cluster that already exists there, and the planned terminus for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, Kelley said the city just took a contract to take in chemical weapons waste from Syria. A few years ago, Kelley was instrumental in stopping tons of waste from Mexico from coming into the city to burned off in a city incinerator."

On a more positive note, the economics of solar continue to improve...
Hendersonville plaza to add solar parking canopies
"The systems at City Square are part of the TVA’s Green Power Providers program, which means TVA will buy 100 percent of the solar electricity generated for 20 years and pay a premium for the first 10 years.
Smith hopes the prominent solar canopies at City Square will spur more solar installations in the community."

...and improve.
Some go solar for savings, not the planet
"A December 2013 study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found a premium of roughly $25,000 on homes in California with rooftop solar panels. Ben Hoen, a staff research associate at the lab who co-authored the study, said that figure was market dependent and likely different in other parts of the country. Still, he said 'it is reasonable to assume' that houses in other markets with solar power could fetch a premium."

Anyone looking for the best financial ROI of any major investment should find a company that will replace rigs for major transportation companies.  The ROI over ten years exceeds that of any savings account, money market account, or even the equity market.  It is not the economics or logistics of energy improvements that prevent us from making them happen, it is just the entrenched inertia of a few doomed industries.
Big fuel savings available in new trucks
"The technologies to improve fuel efficiency are cost-effective. For example, a new truck that includes an advanced engine and transmission, new axle design, and improved aerodynamics to the tractor and trailer could save average tractor-trailer owners and drivers about $30,000 per year in fuel. In 2025, these new efficiency technologies would increase truck purchase costs by about $32,000, which is recovered by fuel savings in just 13 months."

Happy Friday!

End the Green Economy

For the better part of the last fifteen years of my career, I have spent much time among advocates of the "green economy": one where we consider the triple bottom line of economic, environmental, and social performance.  This has spawned a whole new language of economic development around the word green including "green jobs",  "green materials", "green practices", etc.  For the most part, the industry has applied these labels in an attempt to convey that certain products or services have more value to a consumer, and therefore, can justify higher costs.  In some cases, these higher costs come from small implementation that has not yet reached scale to create economic advantages, and in some cases, the new strategy or technology avoids producing harms that conventional approaches do which means higher costs.  On the other hand, sometimes, people just want to charge more, and hope that labeling something "green" will motivate people to spend more than they might.  Regardless of the motivation, there is one thing that now becomes clear to me.

We must end the green economy.

By advocating for a green economy, we automatically set up a conflict between the current economy and another one that challenges it.  This sets up a debate where those succeeding in the current economy control the conversation by constantly challenging the new economy (or subset of the economy) and proposing all types of calamitous consequences if we follow this new path.  People naturally resist change and cling to the comfortable, so this line of reasoning has great traction and creates roadblocks to achieving the goals of better quality of life.  Instead of presenting this new economy - rife with unanswered questions about the true implications of full implementation - with its "green" moniker and advocating for wholesale revolution, we should consider a better path.

Those who advocate for a "green economy" out of altruistic reasons seek better quality of life for all.  This means that in making one person's life better by providing access to reliable energy, we cannot reduce the quality of life for another by polluting their community.  For those that advocate on this level, the more desirable plan should focus more on challenging the failings of the current economy rather than presenting a wholesale collapse and rebuild.  The current economy is supposed to distribute resources adequately and fairly.  When it does not, we need to challenge that.  The current economy is supposed to assign all of the costs and consequences associated with a product or service to that product or service.  When it does not, we need to challenge that.  The current economy is supposed to provide clear information to all parties in a transaction so that each may make a rational decision.  When it does not, we need to challenge that.

One of the failings of the discussion of the green economy comes from the instant association that many have with "green" meaning increased regulation.  Although any time we discuss asking more of industry, we often devolve to regulation because of a combination of industry resistance and political posturing, the changes in the economy can come in many forms.  For every significant benefit realized by improving CAFE standards through regulation, we have equal benefit through Energy Star labeling that allows industry to determine the method of performance.  Whereas intense scrutiny of power plant and refinery emissions for toxins has protected waterway and airstreams effectively over the past generations, we have achieved equal successes through market-based forces like cap-and-trade (specifically for sulfur and nitrous-oxide emissions from power plants).  In all of these cases, the most important part of the discussion was not the IF but the HOW.  The current debate on implementing a "green economy" still centers on the IF...we need to move it to the HOW.

How do we do that?  It starts by demanding more of the current economy.  We should pepper our leaders - both industrial and political - with questions about performance.  Why do people in West Virginia have to suffer the negative effects of coal ash dumping in order for people in DC to get power?  Why can companies spend millions of dollars lobbying against technologies such as rooftop solar that compete in the marketplace, while avoiding making required changes in their power plants to reduce emissions?  Why do industries not have the requirement to maintain the atmosphere, waterways, and earth at the same level of natural state as it was before their operations?  Why should an employee accept endangering their life for reasons unrelated to the job they do?

The time has come to turn the debate from one about "why a green economy?" to "why the current economy?".  Over the past several decades, we have seen quality of life gains plateau or even recede. While other countries continue to grow across classes, we see the large portion of our population less well off now than they were twenty years ago.  Those of us who advocate for the results of the green economy know that it will not only improve our quality of life, but produce a more stable economy.  In order to get there, though, we need to drop the conversation that puts us on the defensive, and instead make the advocates of the current way of doing things defend their system.

Where are the "creative financial instruments" to reduce resource consumption

The financial tools of our economy are supposed to find the most efficient way possible to deliver the priorities of our society.  In that sense, they can provide one of the most democratic tools to improving our quality of life.  All to often, however, the financial industry seeks only to creat wealth for the sake of increasing wealth and not to promote the furtherance of societal good.  As we saw in the financial collapse of 2008, the financial sector - free from the constraints of Glass-Stegall - found more and more complex ways to manipulate the economy in ways that increased risk instead of lessening it.  The time has come for us to put the creativity of the financial sector to use in promoting increased quality of life across all economic classes, while minimizing the need for commodity resources to attain that high quality of life.

For the past several years, Elevate Energy (formerly CNT Energy) has worked across disciplines to promote conversations that will lead to financial instruments readily available to all consumers that will allow them to reduce energy consumption cost effectively.  As summarized in a recent post, the challenges still remain, most notably in the areas of scale and delivery.  To address this we need creative risk-takers and willing communities to blaze the trail. Some opportunities include:

1.  Extending the utility energy efficiency portfolio requirements to include on-bill financing of any improvements that deliver a positive return on investment within five years.

2.  Utilizing property-assessed clean energy (PACE) financing whereby municipalities and other units of government can leverage future property taxes to make improvements to a property that deliver energy savings that provide a net positive ROI within ten years.

3.  Provide financial stability through loan guarantees to neighborhood building & loan-type entities that fund energy efficiency efforts.

4.  Utilize the existing network of home-improvement retail outlets and service professionals to aggregate a customer base, then fund the work through service contracts.

Any of these alone or in combination minimize risk and create opportunity.  As the Elevate Energy piece notes, demand has to lead supply, so options like the third and fourth allow for a gradual building of the marketplace to a point where the first and second can accelerate to scale.

This list only scratches the surface.  We need more people working on this effort, and finding opportunities to ease the lives of middle-class and lower-class renters and owners.  This will improve not only our national economy, but our quality of life.

An exercise in utility: real-time electricity

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 the next couple of weeks, I will review how these performed, and hopefully give you some idea as to whether they might make sense for you as a consumer.

About two years ago, we changed our electricity service from ComEd's flat-rate program to a program called Residential Real-Time Pricing.  We did this for two reason.  First, at the time, the City of Chicago had moved to aggregate all residential customers under a single, flat-rate managed through the City, and second, a local community member had just a year previous mentioned that she worked for the program and gave me some details on how it worked.  This combination of opportunity and familiarity made the decision simple for us.

From my point of view as a consumer, the straightforward program looks no different when paying my bill.  Like either the ComEd flat-rate program or the City's flat-rate program, I receive only the one bill from ComEd that I pay each month.  The difference comes from how ComEd computes the supply portion of the bill.

Taking a quick step backward, each bill you receive as a utility customer has charges for the electrical energy you use (supply) and for the maintenance of the cables and infrastructure that bring the energy to your home or business (delivery).  Except for a few municipalities, ComEd delivers all the electricity to the residents in Northeast Illinois, and that delivery charge only changes when ComEd gets approval from the Illinois Commerce Commission to change it; otherwise, the consumer has no way of changing it.  The supply portion of the bill has changed greatly in the last decade or so.  Prior to 2000, residents paid for the supply of energy the same as delivery - through a rate set by the utility and approved by the ICC.  When the state deregulated the electricity market, that changed, and the utilities no longer produced electricity, they merely provided the infrastructure.  For a long time, they entered into contracts on behalf of their customers, but still did not own the assets.  In recent years, energy suppliers have marketed directly to residents, or to cities through aggregation, to completely sever the utility from all supply issues except for billing.  It is this supply portion that consumers can affect.

Back to my bill, on a flat-rate bill, the total energy used for the month gets multiplied by a flat-rate (or sometimes two rates...one for "peak" times and one for "off-peak" times) to determine the supply portion of the bill.  In the Real-Time program, the usage for each half-hour gets multiplied by rate for that specific half-hour in order to determine how much we pay.  This means that for some half-hours, we pay much more than the flat rate, but that for many, we pay much less.  It also means that if we have information on when rates most likely will top out over the flat rate, we can decide whether or not to use certain energy-consuming equipment like dishwashers and washing machines.  Instead of paying 5 cents (the flat rate) or 14 cents (a high-demand peak rate), we can pay as little as 2 or 3 cents per kilowatt-hour for the electricity.

So how did we do with this volatility of pricing?  All in all, pretty well.  For calendar year 2013, we spent about $500 for the year on electricity....or about $0.015 per square foot per month.  If we had remained in the ComEd flat-rate program, we would have spent $580 for the year (or $0.017 per square foot per month), meaning we saved about 14% on our annual bill.  [Side note, since we started the program in May of 2012, we have saved about 35%, but that comes from higher prices from old ComEd contracts in 2012 that changed in 2013.]  We have been happy with that savings, but the average ComEd RTP customer has done even better.  Over the same time period, the average customer has saved about 28% on their electricity supply through the program or about $240 per year.

Our performance relative to the average does not affect our satisfaction with the program.  First, the lowest aggregation rate saves somewhere between 2 and 8% relative to the ComEd flat rate, so we have not missed any opportunity.  Second, the average usage by a resident in the program sits around 12,000 kWh per year; on average, we use 3,500 kWh per year, so although they save more, they also spend more.  Given that the average sized home in the City sits somewhere between 1,400 and 2,000 square feet, they pay approximately $0.03 per square foot for the year.  Because much of this comes from equipment we do not generally use - air conditioners and second/third televisions - we have fewer items to shift, and therefore realize less savings.

I will talk more about home efficiency (which leads to why our usage sits far lower than average), but even at our low usage, real-time pricing makes sense.  The program sends us text messages when prices will exceed our threshold so we can take action, and provides us with a web portal to view our usage and day-ahead predictions of price.  I have used it only as an occasional check on our lifestyle, so it has not added any real work to achieve the savings.  If one has a larger bill, they can realize significant savings, even without significant effort; if one wanted to put more time in, they could far exceed the average savings of 28%.  An additional $240 to $500 a year can be an additional .5% to 1% increase in available cash for a median family.  In a tight economy, that makes a difference.

Next up:  Energy efficiency and our natural gas bill

We are our own worst enemy

Last week, I spoke at a conference that addresses the ways we can build better buildings and do it in a way that means better, more stable business opportunities.  My presentation focused on ways that we can look to nature for inspiration to overcome the obstacles to designing and building structures that have no net negative effect on our quality of life.  Thanks to my friend and business partner Amy Coffman Phillips' help, the audience and I had a great discussion about the opportunities and challenges with improving our buildings.

In our discussion, we identified the largest perceived obstacle to zero-impact buildings...

Economics.

We did not leave it stand at that, however.  Economics must have some basis in reality, so we looked further at some of the underlying root causes for increased cost of buildings that fully support quality of life over those that provide comfort for occupants, but cause quality of life issues for others.  In that analysis, we decided that the availability of materials drove costs up.  This natural influence on prices - the limited availability of materials - gets to the heart of why we have an economy...the distribution of scarce resources.  After that, however, we found that almost all the other limitations had roots of our own making.

Two of these man-made economic drivers present obstacles without easy solutions: first, that we all want to belong to something bigger than ourselves, and second, that we crave consistency.  One could argue - as we did - that although these fall under "man-made" as opposed to "natural" phenomena, in some ways we as humans have these traits as part of our nature.  That said, we also noted that part of the reason these traits form such a rigid economic obstacle comes from the exploration of them by the marketing and advertising complex in our country.  In many ways, the traits themselves do not lead the economics of life-centered thinking to look bad compared with more conventional ideas...but the entrenched marketing of the status quo plays on our desire to belong and to have stability.

Overcoming these obstacles presents no easy task.  In part, we need regulation to force us away from damaging activities and toward beneficial ones.  Also, business can play a role by following industry ethics and being transparent about the effect their activities have on human quality of life.  Lastly, we must continue to expand our definition of community and belonging.  One thousand years ago, we thought in terms of clans and tribes.  Then we moved toward city-states, and eventually nations.  That evolution continues as we seek a more global idea of what it means to have connections with others.  Hopefully, along with this expanding idea of community, we can also expect of ourselves actions that will protect all people.

Otherwise, we may have "good" economic decision making that leads to our collapse.

Flashes: March 5, 2014...Spring ahead

Envisioned by Benjamin Franklin, and "tested" during WWI and WWII in Britain and the US, Daylight Savings Time became law in 1966 under the Uniform Time Act.  The law did not require DST, but required that if a state followed it, it had to start and end at the same time across the country.  In 2007, we began following extended DST moving the start date forward to the beginning of March when it originally started at the end of April, and moving the end date back a couple of weeks from the end of October to the beginning of November.

Originally envisioned as an energy savings strategy to reduce nighttime electricity use for lighting during periods of long daylight, it is interesting to note whether and how much is saved:

• Some studies suggest it might be around 0.02% of total consumption.
• Some studies suggest it costs as much as 1% of additional consumption.

Interestingly enough, although there is no agreement on whether DST saves energy, most agree it saves lives...reducing fatal car crashes and pedestrian strikes.

Also, we seem to spend more thanks to DST...not that economic benefits drive decisions.

Enjoy the journey!

The shrinking economics of suburban living

This last weekend, I had occasion to drive through the suburbs around my part of the city. Truth be told, my community comes as close to suburban living in the city as you can get: tree-lined streets, two SUV in every driveway, commuter rail instead of the “L”. Every time I drive through these suburbs, I see more and more examples of the level of automobile-dependency they have. Every task requires a car. Except for a few, rare cases, even a trip to the park requires a car. Little league, a run for ice cream, a trip to grab a gallon of milk…all these require firing up the minivan.

It came as a bit of a surprise, then, to see the Holly Richmond’s post in Grist yesterday that highlights a Sightlines Institute’s map comparing the layout of Seattle with the layout of Bellevue, WA. The stark contrast in the map highlights the suggestion that getting places in the suburbs takes too much time and effort to allow for walking. Even getting one-half block as the crow flies could take as much as a mile’s travel. This places a strain on resources, and requires that those who live there have the means for both the home ownership costs and the cost of multiple vehicles to support their family of four.

Sightline Institute

This would pose problems enough for the middle, upper middle, and upper classes as the cost of maintaining roads and providing fuel continue to escalate ahead of inflation. The biggest issue comes from the fact that – as Marty McFly experienced – today’s shiny new suburb houses tomorrow’s lower and lower-middle class worker. Cities (and Chicago is definitely one of them) want to push their poor away from crumbling neighborhoods so that new money can come in and rebuild. This forces long-time residents of these communities to less desirable areas, and today, we increasingly see these isolated and transit-poor communities fitting that bill.

This phenomena starts with the generation coming into its own not wanting the same trappings their parents wanted, and ends with a new generation forced to deal with a future they do not have the resources to support. A majority of millenials (although not so easily pidgeon-holed) desire to live in areas where they can easily walk to meet their needs, and take transit to gain experiences. They like the energy of dense communities, and they increasingly see the value of raising families in these locations. As older Americans seek to retire and more to points more comfortable, they face the reality of selling their homes at depressed values, which means those getting pushed out by rising prices in the city must succumb to life in the suburbs to make ends meet. Unlike the city, however, the support infrastructure for lower-class survival does not exist. This places more strain on those who can least afford to cope.

The answer comes in two coincident activities: include the working class in neighborhood revitalization, and abandon the suburbs. The suburban experiment has failed, and many of them need their own form of revitalization - the kind that comes from a bulldozer and a wrecking ball. Several, especially older, suburbs actually once stood as small towns, with beautiful main streets, and all the joy of small-town life. I do not speak of these, for they generally allow for people to survive with limited vehicle transportation, and they can easily adapt to modern, economic living. Those, like Bellevue, that form nothing but a rat's maze bent on isolation instead of integration, they need to go. This only happens if those whose neighborhoods feel the weight of gentrification have the opportunity to participate in the growth of where they live. The safest and most resilient areas of the country mix incomes in housing and development. The grand failures of public housing that sought to isolate classes contributed to the failure of communities, but when people of different classes coexist, their communities tend to survive.

We must fairly judge each time on its own merit. When the suburbs started to develop, fuel was cheap, and we had little (but not no) idea that we would create unmanageable behemoths. The point is not to denigrate those who moved there or live there, the point is to realize that we are at a point where we need to plan for how to abandon them and turn them into productive land again: whether that means land for growing, manufacturing, or living in a much more efficient way. We cannot, however, hold onto them as if they must be saved - our urban centers must be saved...our suburbs must be allowed to peacefully fade away.