Being Green More Efficient ain’t Easy

There is no doubt that Green is now in vogue–or Vanity Fair–but there is much work to be done that is not quite as fashionable. This month’s article “Waste Not” in The Atlantic highlights the fact that the American energy economy wastes about 55% of the energy it consumes. Japan in its entirety could be powered by our wasted energy.

Wasted Potential.

Essentially, our inability to harness the steam, furnace gases, heat and pressure that are all involved in our domestic energy production, allows $50 billion to float away in a cloud of smoke. And what is most surprising is that the technological fixes we need to combat this inefficiency are not new, or very expensive for that matter. There has been widespread reluctance to implement these advancements if the pay back period extends two years. Talk about short sighted…

Business as usual remains unchanged for a multitude of reasons. Ranging from technical to cultural, there are certainly some self imposed barriers to entry in this field. But there are some exemplary plants outlined in the article. ArcelorMittal steel mill in East Chicago, Indiana, has capitalized on technology from Primary Energy/EPCOR USA. The results: Purchase of coal-fired power has been halved,  carbon emissions have been reduced by 1.3 million tons a year, and they saved more than $100 million. It seems that they are far more equipped to deal with the current energy crisis and the coming energy transition. Their green is a hint grayer.

They suck your energy!

Ya know those little lights that illuminate your house even when everything is off and you are not using an appliance? They are everywhere from your dvd player to your sleeping computer, from your cell phone charger to your microwave. Turns out those lights aren’t so little after all.

The good people at GOOD magazine have put together a nice video reminding us of the amount of energy those miniscule green and red stand by lights waste.  Video highlights: “Phantom” loads cost Americans $4 billion a year and account for 1% of US green house gas emissions.

Time to get a smart strip.

Not the Kind of Break We Need

We Americans are not known for our vacation taking culture. In the summer of 2006, The Conference Board, an independent research group, conducted a study that found that, 60% of those polled had no plans to take a vacation over the next six months. And about 25% of Americans employed in the privates sector get NO paid vacation time.
We need more gas taxes, not less.

So, John McCain’s plan–supported by our very own Junior Senator, Hillary Clinton–to have a gas tax holiday during the summer months, when gas might reach $4 a gallon, tickled me a bit. Is this the holiday we are settling for? You won’t pay taxes on your gas for 3 hot months, saving a few hundred dollars. Come fall though you will probably feel that sting even more.  Gas prices are not going down any time soon. This plan is presented to us at a time when the economy looks grim, the democratic candidacy battle is growing old, and gas prices are a lot higher than they have ever been. Both John McCain and Hillary, whether you love them or hate them, are intelligent people who know that this is nothing but an attempt to grab some votes before November. Very little will be done to address the larger problems of our gas guzzling nation and how we are paying dearly to support this habit.

Do yourself a favor: Take a real holiday instead. Your rest and relaxation might get the creative wheels turning on how we might actually mend the much deeper problem we face. Those solutions are not necessarily sound bite friendly and perhaps are hard to hear, but very necessary nonetheless.

Because We Need to…

Every once in a while, someone so eloquently reminds me of something that I already know: Our environmental problems–and how we tackle them–are simply symptoms of a larger societal and globalized “character flaw” that accompanies the way we have come to live today. But generally we think of character flaws as something we can’t fix and must simply accept. Somehow when Michael Pollan talked about this in his piece in the New York Times Magazine, it appeared as if there is still hope; like we have the ability to change that character flaw, with the decisions we make.
lotta love for that planet.

What is refreshing about the piece is that it is not only talking about the environment, as if it exists in a vacuum. He does remind us that climate scientists looks very worried these days. But really, he goes back to the invisible hand and how it effects our everyday lives. And not in the sense of jobs being shipped over seas, or free trade agreements, but in what we do every day.  Essentially, the process of occupational specialization has removed us from the ability to feel in control of anything. Whether it is fixing our homes-literally, or fixing our home-as in the earth, we need a specialist, or law, or policies. And without entirely denouncing the need for certain people to be experts–or laws or policies–he reminds us that when 70% of our economy is based on consumption expenditures, we do make plenty of choices about what kind of “stuff” we “need”.

By next earth day, we will have a new leader in the White House and I think it is safe to say that we will have more progressive environmental policies. But that is no reason to leave it to the experts. Read the article. Think about some decisions that you could make that actually would make a difference. Report back in the comments section! Happy Earth Day from CISC.

Or On My Sidewalk Either

As April comes to an end…crazy I know, it seems like a good time to reflect on the new branding of this month as 1 Million Trees Month. What actually happened during this month, in terms of advancing the plan to increase our urban “forest” by 1 million trees? What is the projection of the plan for the future? And most importantly, what do New Yorkers think about these new neighbors?
A healthy East Harlem street tree.

Well, to date 54,484 trees have been planted. The 14th annual Hands On Day, in which over 6,500 New Yorkers volunteered to roll up their sleeves and participate in community gardening or greening, planted 20,000 trees in one day alone. This was the largest turn out ever for Hands On Day.  As far as the future plans go, it seems that there is much reliance on hope…sounds familiar. But really, the commitment by the city to plant 1 million trees seems to have no specific timeline or benchmarks; just a beginning and an end–2017. This is not to say that the plan is moot, but it relies heavily on community participation–people requesting trees, suggesting a good location and stewardship projects between the public and private sector.  Perhaps though, it needs to be community driven as certain urban foresters have learned the hard way. New Yorkers are not always excited about new trees. One man decided to plant himself in the hole where a tree was supposed to take root, in protest. The city eventually decided they would not plant there.

What is most interesting about that anecdote though, is that the situation occurred in Harlem, an area of the city that houses many public open spaces and parks, but also suffers some of the worst asthma rates in the country. Harlem would certainly benefit from more trees if we solely looked at quantitative assessments and the benefits that more trees can bring to an area. But sometimes, concerns over branches falling on cars and who will clean up the leaves trumps the benefits of them. Perhaps the Million Trees Initiative needs to have more of a community education emphasis, maybe even focusing on young people, so that people view trees as part of the solution, rather than the problem.