Innovate This!

As my internship comes to an end, I want to give y’all something extra special. Which I’ve succeeded at brilliantly, if I don’t say so myself.

So without further ado, I give you my favorite ‘alternative’ energy solutions.

• Coffee: If people can run on caffeine, why can’t the world?

• Hamsters: Just imagine – millions of hamster wheels powering New York City. Keep your pants on PETA – it’s not forced labor or animal cruelty. They love it! It’s the ultimate harnessing of the forces of nature. And they’re so cute!

• People: Do you ever need that extra motivational kick to get yourself to the gym? Imagine if you could hook a bike up to a power generator and literally get paid for every calorie that you burn. That would be sweet.

• Heart: What exactly does this mean? It’s unclear. But on Captain Planet, it was one of five elements, and we’ve more or less done something energy-related with Earth, Wind, Water and Fire. So Heart needs to step it up and pull its weight. It has the added benefit of “taking pollution down to zero.” It’s right there is the theme song, so you know it’s true.

• Lasers: What can’t lasers do?

• Sex Panther: If you’ve seen Anchorman, you know that 60% of the time, it works every time. Which would actually make it way more efficient than coal.

• Beer and Banana Peels: Back to the Future! Unfortunately, this fuel only works in DeLoreans. The good news is that it’s emissions free.

• Hope: Okay, so it’s not that original. Everyone who makes a joke about Barack Obama talks about his hope-powered change-mobile, or some variation on that. But still…

Oh and if that doesn’t work, I would settle for powering the world on audacity.

So to all you engineers out there: I’m looking at you. This is the ultimate American Dream. Make it happen.

 

It’ll be a windy day in Nantucket before we solve global warming!

I’ve taken pretty much every opportunity possible this summer to rave about the motherland (Massachusetts for those new to my blog). And so, in the interest of fairness (and with a big, melodramatic sigh), I feel like I have to acknowledge this piece in Grist (which, as a caveat, says some kind of dumb things) and call out the Bay State on the Cape Wind project.

The Cape Wind project is a proposal to build some wind turbines off the shore of Cape Cod, in the Nantucket Sound. The distance of the turbines from shore varies from 4 to 11 miles, depending on where you’re talking about. Now, it appears as if this project will go forward. So, I suppose my forthcoming rant (consider this fair warning) is somewhat unnecessary. But the project has met with opposition and has just barely survived a number of attempts to block it over the years, from people all over the political spectrum. “Not in my backyard” seems to be the prevailing sentiment, though no one will put it in quite those terms. And I think that’s a crappy attitude to have.

Take, for example, my boy Ted Kennedy: arguably one of the most progressive people in the Senate, and someone who has generally supported renewable energy. Yet strangely enough, he is not a big fan of Cape Wind, located near-ish the Kennedy family compound. Ditto on his nephew Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who works as an environmental advocate and often talks about the social justice issues that will be exacerbated by climate change. But let’s not be stingy with credit where credit is due; Republicans have also tried to block the project. Former Governor Mitt Romney was against it, as was his Lt. Gov./aspiring heir Kerry Healey.

So, you might be wondering, how does a project with apparently bipartisan opposition get through? Well, maybe because over 80% of Massachusetts residents support the project, including 58% of those who live in Cape Cod. So while the Cape Wind project had the potential to be a fascinating case study in NIMBY-ism, it is actually more illustrative of environmental justice issues.

Oh yeah, The Daily Show did a segment on this last summer (as a caveat, some Massachusetts residents in this clip say some kind of dumb things).

For all of my idealistic cooing about how, “we’re all in this together,” we finally have a project that in many ways seems to reflect that. More than 80% support. That’s a lot. It’s like those Trident gum commercials that talk about 4 in 5 doctors recommend Trident, and then suggest various scenarios in which the fifth doctor accidentally incapacitated himself. You could hardly do better than that if the question was: do you support the general existence of weekends? Or, do you want fries with that?

The Grist piece uses Cape Wind to illustrate how corporate behavior is out of control. There is perhaps some truth to this, though the cynicism of the conclusion was a little sensational, as was the suggestion that not driving one day would fix it all.

But is there a takeaway point about corporate control, special interests, and all those other buzzwords that have been riling up anarchists for generations? I choose to be comforted by the Cape Wind project’s success. Eighty percent support proved to be something not easily overcome by the boogie men of big corporations and the like. If anything, I think this teaches us that there is value in education – and that establishing consensus is truly powerful.

Well, I guess this ended up being a “Yea Massachusetts!” post after all. But the Red Sox have fallen out of first place as their road woes continue, so we’re really only breaking even. No need to get too jealous.

-Diana

P.S. Some of the details about the Cape Wind project came from the Wikipedia entry.

P.P.S. Today, a TV crew came to our office to film a statement from our executive director about offshore drilling. Go into energy policy, get famous.

 

Making the Climate Coolio

Thank you to Grist for giving me an excuse to listen to my old Jock Jams CD.

(Giving a whole new meaning to ‘recycling.’)

 

Prairie Politics with a European Flair (ND 2.0)

Happy Bastille Day!

On Thursday I summed up some of the speakers that I thought were particularly interesting in their policy insights. A glaring omission, however, was my failure to mention any of the politicians – you know, actual policymakers – who spoke. First off, we had a teleconference with North Dakota’s Congressional caucus: Representative Earl Pomeroy and Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad. They spoke briefly of the failure of the Lieberman-Warner legislation. Sen. Dorgan called it a ‘dress rehearsal’ for next year, and Sen. Conrad used the phrase ‘spring training.’ All were optimistic that in the next year, something substantial on the energy legislation front would be done, regardless of the outcome of the presidential election. Sen. Dorgan, however, also spoke freely of his own decision to vote against cloture on L-W. He identified the fact that the bill had been closed off to amendments as fundamentally weakening the potential for that legislation from the very beginning.

The consensus among the Congressional delegation – perhaps not surprising for representatives in a state that produces coal – is that whether we use coal moving forward is not really a question; rather we should be looking at how we will use coal. While this is a somewhat close-minded and premature conclusion, it does reflect political realities at least in the short term. Though I would also add, it is short term thinking that has got us into this mess in the first place.

Later in the day, the North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner gave his perspective, followed by the state senator I quoted in my last post. Governor John Hoeven echoed their remarks, the theme of which was: North Dakota is very well situated as the energy revolution moves forward. The state has the greatest wind potential in the United States, large swaths of land that is prime for carbon sequestration, and all sorts of perennial grasses that could be converted into biofuel.

Perhaps the most interesting political perspective of the day, however, came from Her Majesty’s Consul Annabelle Malins (the British have the sweetest titles!). Even the motivation for her coming to North Dakota speaks volumes. The British government, discouraged and frustrated by Washington’s inertia, has started working with state governments and the various regional accords in order to encourage and support positive climate legislation in the United States. (And they came to this stance even before the administration decided to punt regulation of CO₂ to the next president.) The UK, she said in her charming accent, sees climate change as a top priority both domestically and internationally. Moreover, all of their needs – satisfying energy needs, reducing warming, improving energy security, creating good jobs – point in the same direction. And they have already managed to reduce their emissions to below 1990 levels, all while growing their economy 45% during that same period. Sounds good to me.

Unabashed Anglophilia aside, it seems that there is quite a lot to be learned from the Brits and North Dakotans. A strange pairing to be sure, but now is the time to move beyond the conventional. How appropriate, on the 219^th anniversary of the storming of Le Bastille, to talk about the potential for cooperation and expansion in the clean energy movement. Vive la revolution!

 

A Lot Can Happen in the Middle of Nowhere

I’m writing today from windy Bismarck, North Dakota. Before I get to details about the Prairie Climate Stewardship Conference, which has so far been pretty interesting, let me first talk about this New England girl’s experience in the Great Plains. North Dakota is beautiful, but also, well, every bit as sparse as you might expect. When we arrived in Bismarck, having driven about six hours from the Twin Cities region, civilization was denser than the past few hours of driving, to be sure, but it was hard to identify any sort of ‘city.’ The Bismarck airport, which we drove past, was minuscule, and I don’t think I have yet seen any building higher than six stories.

Incidentally, the title of this post comes from the tagline of the movie Fargo, and was quoted by the CEO of a Bismarck-based power cooperative. So telling you all this is not (entirely) my way of being snarky. Rather, it should highlight the fact that North Dakota has not beat nature into submission in the way that I’m used to seeing. True, there are big box stores and asphalt expanses, but developments seem to be interspersed with nature, as opposed to the other way around. While I don’t know that much about North Dakota politics and policy, it’s hard to imagine that this has not had an impact.

The conference opened this morning by discussing the faith perspective of climate change. The speakers on this topic did a good job presenting the scope of the issue, as well as the moral implications of a failure to act. While I had heard similar arguments before, I found their approach nonetheless enlightening. Father Paul Schuster addressed a particular interesting issue. On the one hand, by emphasizing the scope of the issue, people tend to get overwhelmed and then despair. On the other hand, people like to think about fighting battles on an epic scale, not least when they are thinking about their faith. But he concluded, “It’s not about good versus evil. Oftentimes, it’s about doing good versus doing nothing.”

For me at least, this was a humbling start. Moving on, speakers over the next few hours covered a whirlwind of scientific and policy issues. I found Steve Brick, Manager of Environmental Programs at the Joyce Foundation, to be particularly interesting. Firstly, he asserted that fossil fuels, an inherently limited resource, are going to continue to become more expensive as worldwide demand grows. Any measures taken to lower prices are short term solutions that cannot possibly be sustainable. If anything, this will merely postpone the inevitable. The second thing he said that really caught my attention is that the limiting factors in the move to cleaner energy are not technological or economic. Rather, we are ready on those fronts, and the true impediments are behavioral and ethical. Green architecture, more efficient industrial processes, mass transit and carpooling: all these things could make a substantial difference in energy use and even prices, but people are not doing it.

The other area of discussion that I found especially illuminating was the talks on agriculture. Growing up, my idea of a farm was an apple orchard that had animals. So, needless to say, I have a lot to learn about the way in which agriculture can affect greenhouse gases. My extremely un-nuanced summary of today’s panels on agriculture is this: agricultural processes emit quite a bit of carbon dioxide, but they also have the potential to capture and reduce atmospheric carbon. Which means that agricultural policy is going to matter a great deal.

I will leave you all with this, as my incredibly finicky laptop battery starts to give me attitude. (Dear Laptop: I’m trading you in in a month. So bite me.) But expect further updates from the conference either later tonight or tomorrow. Wooot North Dakota!

 

Obligatory Freedom-Inspired Post?

There’s a chance that this post is going to be construed as lazy. So be it. I’ve found all sorts of awesomeness on blogs and newspapers in the last few days, and I’m a big fan of giving credit where credit is due. (Speaking of which, thank you, Stephen Colbert, for Americone Dream: arguably the best way to pay tribute to freedom on the Fourth of July.) The following are things that caught my attention and really got me thinking.

First, yea Massachusetts! (The Red Sox right now? Not so much.)

The second comes from Grist. It’s a little bit wonky, but offers an interesting alternative to cap-and-whatever. Specifically, it talks about a system that taxes carbon but then returns the money to energy companies for investment based on how efficient they are. The one point that I think it misses with a general carbon tax (versus cap-and-trade that has declining permits built in, or I guess versus the system that the article describes) is the problem of counting on politicians to raise the tax every so often in order to continue reducing demand for carbon-based fuel. Congress doesn’t even like voting themselves a raise because it’s so unpopular, and there at least they get something out of it (in fact, in the late 1990s they finally indexed their salaries to inflation). Unless the tax increases automatically, it seems likely that such a plan would stagnate.

This article by Time presents 10 upsides to high gas prices. This does not mean that I think that high gas prices are unequivocally good, but there are some neat insights here that are at least worth thinking about.

Finally, this week The Onion put out their “Obligatory Green Issue.” Though it is a little bit sad when real life is almost as funny as the fake news The Onion does (see The Daily Show’s clip on the EPA email from June 25).

In other news, stay tuned for some exciting stuff next week. I’m going to NORTH DAKOTA for a conference (the Prairie Climate Stewardship Conference), and I will hopefully have all sorts of juicy energy insight to tell y’all about. Until then, Happy Fourth!

-Diana

 

As promised:

 

Terminator IV

Tomorrow, residents of the Twin Cities area will have an opportunity to star in their very own action movie.

By ‘star’ I mean watch, and by ‘action movie’ I mean the implosion of the High Bridge generating plant’s 570 foot concrete stack, which previously spewed coal juices into the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, I will probably not be there to witness it because, well, it’s happening at 7:30 in the morning. But still, it’s pretty cool. The coal-fired plant is being retooled to run on natural gas, which is much cleaner and much more efficient. It is still not an ideal fuel source, perhaps, but it is certainly nothing to turn our noses up at while we develop other technologies to help us move toward clean energy.

For more information about the plant’s renovation, check out this page by Xcel Energy.

Even better, I used my mad artistic skillz to draw this sweet picture. Consider it a preview of coming attractions. (I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an implosion before, but fairies actually come and paint a magic red X over the building.)

Hopefully on Monday I will be able to find a video to post and also present different commentary about the event. The only things still needed to make this a truly AWESOME eco-action movie? Arnold Schwarzenegger and a 55-mph Prius chase.

I’ll be back.

 

Energy Policy and Rocket Science

In the past two days I’ve come across some really fascinating articles that I wanted to pass along.

First, this provocative post on DailyKos presents some policy ideas that are (probably) politically unfeasible but which nonetheless have a lot of potential to affect our energy outlook for the better.

And this article on Huffington Post is written by NASA climatologist James Hansen. He offers a succinct and eye-opening summary of the science of global warming and what he thinks needs to be done about it. And this isn’t some guy off the street talking: Hansen is kind of a big deal in the scientific community, and is world renowned for his work on climate change.

In other news, I spent an embarrassing amount of time today trying to come up with something snarky or otherwise humorous to tack on to the end of this. But um, that’s all from me for now.

 

Repeating is Believing

Call me naïve, but I find it frustrating when people lie.

I didn’t post on Friday, because the House of Representatives had gotten me all angsty. (Though not to be outdone by my almost blog post, Tom Friedman this week was just about as mad as I’ve ever seen a columnist.)

I understand that I have different beliefs and values than a lot of people. I think that most of the time, these are healthy disagreements to have. But, in my Bambi-esque innocence, I thought we were all operating, more or less, with the same facts.

Yeah, I know.

A number of Congressmen on Friday advocated for increased offshore, claiming, as Sen. McCain did, that “not even Hurricane Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston.”

Below is a picture taken by satellites of the oil spills in the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

Tell me that you think the benefits outweigh the risks. Tell me that you believe that increasing oil production will help more people than a resulting oil spill will hurt. BUT DON’T SAY THINGS THAT ARE UNTRUE. The American people aren’t stupid. They want to have an honest discussion about our future. Finding common ground when people approach issues from different ideological places is hard enough. Let’s not compound it by eliminating the circumstances that would facilitate these important conversations.

The media is not doing enough to fulfill their responsibility to present the public with the facts. They report conflicting claims in the name of journalistic balance, rather than investigating which version of a story is accurate.

This is not a partisan issue. Those who would obscure the facts, whatever their ideology, are either intellectually lazy or opportunistic. I firmly believe that clean energy advocates must acknowledge the potential difficulties that might accompany the transition to smarter energy policy. This is the only way to prepare for the challenges and ultimately avoid them. However, if one side of an issue is willing to talk about the dangers of their policy preference, and the other side presents an artificially rosy option, then those who try to really engage with the tough questions will be the ones to get burned.

Okay, so even three days later I was still a little rant-y. But people who bemoan an increasingly polarized country need to understand that the existence of two conflicting versions of events is a primary cause.