No Impact Man

What if I'm right about climate change?

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about what I'd say if I turned out to be wrong about climate change and we'd erroneously made a huge effort to prevent it.

Well, a couple of years ago, I was messing around with Photoshop and I made the below. It pertains to what we might say if I'm right about climate change and we erroneously don't make a huge effort to prevent it.

What I'd say if I was wrong about climate change

I get emails from people, every so often, asking what I would say and feel if I was wrong about climate change. What would I say if, after dedicating years of my life to bringing attention to the problem, I found out there was no problem.

Well, first, of course, I would praise God in thanks that we have no catastrophe to contend with. Then, since many of the measures needed to deal with climate change have a lot of positive benefits, I will think:

1. I am glad we created 5 million or more new jobs here in the United States in the fields of energy efficiency and renewable generation.
2. I am glad we created a culture that relies less on foreign oil, so that our children can live secure lives, knowing that the energy rug can't be pulled out from under them.
3. I am glad we have found a way to save people and industry billions upon billions of dollars by making the use of energy more efficient.
4. I am glad the millions of children who suffer from asthma can now breathe easier thanks to the fact that we aren't pumping the air full of toxins from our exhaust pipes and smokestacks.
5. I am glad that, by no longer burning oil and coal into our air, we've put an end to acid rain and the devastation of our aquatic life.
6. I am glad that we created good, reliable, fun-to-use public transportation system so that families no longer have to raid their budgets to pay for cars and gas.
7. I am glad we've stopped building suburbs, which make people unhappy and [thanks to the happy suburbanites who wrote in] are designed for cars not people, and instead build villages where people can have strong community bonds that help make life fulfilling.
8. I am glad we now have fuel-efficient automobiles.
9. I am glad that we've learned as a culture to get off the work-more-to-spend-more treadmill which gobbles up resources and leaves us unfulfilled and instead turned to a way of live full of meaning and purpose.
10. I am glad we developed local, fresh food systems that care not just about filling bellies but what we put in those bellies.
11. I am glad that we have rejected the philosophies of survival of the fittest and competition for resources as driving philosophies and have instead embraced a philosophy of compassion and justice.
12. I am glad that we have understood that a sustainable society cannot work without supporting all of its people and that we looked for and found ways to improve the lives of everyone.
13. I'm glad that we've come to see people rather than things as our most valuable resource and that, in embracing the respectful and loving principles of not wasting, we have learned not to waste youth in prisons but instead to get them help for their drug addictions and alcoholism.
14. I am glad that, in realizing our resources are limited, we have come to use them to do what is important and to help each other rather than compete with each other.
15. I am glad that we have come to see education as the ultimate in sustainable industries.
16. I am glad that we have developed distributed, renewable energy technologies that allow kids in all parts of the world to have electric light so they can learn how to read.
17. The list goes on and on, but in short, I am glad that we have embraced the opportunities presented by the crisis of climate change in order to improve our society in ways we should have done anyway.

And now, to turn the question back on those who say that either there is no climate change or that it is not a serious problem:

What would they feel if we did nothing about climate change and they turned out to be wrong?

What would they feel if we buried our heads in the sand, ignored the problem, and then irreversibly damaged the planetary habitat that we depend upon for our health, happiness and security?

So how do we feel about the cap and trade bill?

As you know, the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) bill narrowly passed in the house on Friday. Here's what the New York Times said about it:

The vote was the first time either house of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change. The legislation, which passed despite deep divisions among Democrats, could lead to profound changes in many sectors of the economy, including electric power generation, agriculture, manufacturing and construction.

The bill’s passage, by 219 to 212, with 44 Democrats voting against it, also established a marker for the United States when international negotiations on a new climate change treaty begin later this year.

At the heart of the legislation is a cap-and-trade system that sets a limit on overall emissions of heat-trapping gases while allowing utilities, manufacturers and other emitters to trade pollution permits, or allowances, among themselves. The cap would grow tighter over the years, pushing up the price of emissions and presumably driving industry to find cleaner ways of making energy.

You may have read a post I wrote supporting the bill here.

But how do I feel now? Worried. We've notched one very small step forward on climate change, but the bill as it stands, has a lot of problems. In fact, Greenpeace even came out against it because it's so weak (read here). The job is far from over. We have a lot of work to do.

My question for you is, how do you feel about the passage of ACES? Do you feel pleased or worried? Where do you think we go from here? Please leave your comments here at the blog.

Where I stand on the current climate change bill

There is a climate bill that has the potential to come to the floor of the House of Representatives by July. It is called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (HR 2454), known as ACES. Read a summary here. In this post, I'm going to tell you why I support the bill.

Let me first address myself to those of my friends and readers who are not fans of government intervention and regulation:

There is no way to make the necessary reductions in our carbon use by individual action alone. Even if we use no electricity in our homes, buy nothing new, eat only local, we are still responsible for the carbon emissions of the society we live in--those caused by our local, state and national government, the military, the corporations we buy from, etc.

There is no way to get all these institutions--including the electricity companies--to adequately reduce their carbon emissions unless we the people tell them they have to. Wherever you stand on Big Government, we have to agree that there are times when government does have a job to do. Reducing carbon emissions to ameliorate the effects of global warming is one of those times.

Now, allow myself to address myself to those of you who are upset that ACES has been and will be further weakened by industrial interests in Washington. I was told by a Washington insider that Exxon Mobil alone has 5,000 lobbyists crawling around the Capitol trying to water down the bill.

As the 1SKy analysis of the bill says:

It is clear given recent changes since the discussion draft was released that Big Oil, Dirty Coal, and other polluters are continuously working to riddle this bill with loopholes, water it down, and keep America dependent on dirty fuels like oil and coal. In the last three months alone, fossil fuel companies have outspent environmental groups 16 to 1 on capitol hill. The industries spent $79 million to lobby Congress, outspending the green community’s comparatively meager $4.7 million in the same time period.

Lots of folks are justifiably concerned that if ACES passes, then the United States will be able to falsely reassure itself that it has done its job on climate change when it has not. Therefore, these people believe, ACES should not be passed. We should wait until we have something better.

I sympathize, but I disagree.

ACES is the only chance we have to pass a climate bill before the international negotiations to finalize a worldwide climate treaty in Copenhagen in December of this year. If the United States--one of the two largest emitters of greenhouse gasses--does not demonstrate that it is willing to get serious about climate, then there is diminished incentive for anyone else, like the Chinese, to get serious.

Secondly, if ACES fails, then there is unlikely to be another attempt to do something about greenhouse gas emissions for an entire year, until the 2010 midterm elections have passed. In other words, ACES, as compromised as it may turn out to be, may be our only chance to do something about climate as a nation before November 2010.

For these two reasons, I support ACES, warts and all, and I hope all of you--Democrat and Republican included--will support ACES, too. It's not perfect for a lot of reasons. But it's a first step. We can do more later.

Here, by the way, is what the New York Times says about the bill.

Nice music, good thoughts

Keeping cool with no air conditioner

People always ask what we still do from our no impact year, and one thing is that we got rid of both our air conditioners. There are seven or eight nights in the summer where it's really hot in New York City, but we keep a tub of cold water ready to hop into and that gets us back to sleep.

Today, though, was the first of New York's 85 degree days in 2009 (in April!). What we do is close all our windows during the day and keep all our shades closed so the sun and hot air can't get in. The result? We needed long sleeves in the apartment.

If you decide to take this approach once the summer hits, here's what you have to remember: if you forget to close your windows and blinds on just one hot day, you're pretty much done for. Once the apartment or house gets hot, you can't get it cool again until there is cool air outside.

A primer on what it would take to fix climate

We've all been seeing what Obama believes is necessary for the economic bailout, but what is needed for the climate bailout?

Here are the five policies that, according to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, the new CEO of ClimateWorks, Hal Harvey, says we need:

1. First, building codes: "California’s energy-efficient building and appliance codes now save Californians $6 billion per year," Harvey told Friedman
2. Second, better vehicle fuel-efficiency standards: “The European Union’s fuel-efficiency fleet average for new cars now stands at 41 miles per gallon, and is rising steadily,” he added.
3. Third, we need a national renewable portfolio standard, mandating that power utilities produce 15 or 20 percent of their energy from renewables by 2020. Right now, only about half our states have these.
4. The fourth is decoupling — the program begun in California that turns the utility business on its head. Under decoupling, power utilities make money by helping homeowners save energy rather than by encouraging them to consume it.
5. “Finally,” said Harvey, “we need a price on carbon.” [Meaning some form of a carbon tax] Polluting the atmosphere can’t be free.

As Friedman writes: "All of [these measures] would pay long-term dividends, because they would foster massive U.S. innovation in new clean technologies that would stimulate the real Dow and much lower emissions that would stimulate the Climate Dow."

Joe Romm of ClimateProgress offers an in depth explanation of all these measures here.

How to skip the work travel, have a more leisurely life and save the planet

Want to know how to climb out of the cramped airline seats and stay home? Below is a guest article by Lloyd Alter of Treehugger, but by way of introduction, here's a little excerpt from a New York Times piece by Joe Sharkey about his friend, Mr. Allen:

I spoke with [Mr. Allen] a few days ago by cellphone. He was with his two children, ages 5 and 10, at a playground. It was a Friday, which in the old days was when he would be stuck in some dreary airport, hoping to make a connection home for some time with the family before dragging himself back to the airport on Sunday afternoon.

Mr. Allen is not retiring from his consulting job. He is merely retiring from the business travel grind...

Last year, Mr. Allen and a small group of other road-weary consultants he knows from all over the country formed an informal network linked mostly by videoconferencing technology. They were enabled by the proliferation of cheap (and sometimes even free) social networking tools — wikis, podcasts, and computer video and teleconferencing systems like Skype and ooV00.

But how does it all work? Here, by Lloyd Alter, is a a little about the practicalities of how online networking tools can be used to make a virtual water cooler:

In October, 2007, three of us from Brooklyn, Seattle and Toronto were working full time out of our home offices on content for Planet Green, then a new website. We had never actually met, so I thought we should have a better way of communicating among ourselves and started what I called a "water cooler" on Skype--a chat that was always open, where we could share ideas, whines and complaints. I didn't even tell our editor in Quebec--this was like a real water cooler, a no-holds-barred place to share gripes and ideas.

About a year ago we got a new editor for TreeHugger and Planet Green; I thought it might get her up to speed more quickly if we included her in the water cooler. Suddenly it was public; the President wanted in, the founder, the ad guy out west. Names that I never heard of appeared on the members list. I thought well, it was nice while it lasted, but the water cooler is over.

I could not have been more wrong. It is no longer a water cooler where we hang around and gripe; it has become an essential part of the operation. It isn't really a conference room either, but is more like a virtual cube farm, with us as virtual prairie dogs poking our heads up above the partitions when there is something to discuss. It isn't as freewheeling as it used to be; Essentially, we are at the office and have to act like people do at offices, constrained in our discussions by the fact that there is a record of what we are saying and a lot of eyes listening.

And we have been doing it continuously for over a year.

A virtual cube farm, like a real one, has its problems. With Skype you can leave the beepers on and not miss a message but go nuts from the distraction; you can turn them off and miss important messages and threads. Skype also has its own issues; there is what I call the Roach Motel or Hotel California problem- you can come in any time you like, but you can never leave. If we invite someone in and they do not voluntarily leave the chat, we cannot cut them off and have to start all over. Consequently we are really on water cooler 3.01 and are very circumspect about who we let into the virtual room.

But when it works, what a revolution. Here is a three minute sequence discussing a line in a post that we are trying to divine the provenance of a phrase:

chris tackett
9:54 AM
this turn of phrase, is odd- "Something fishy and confusing, this way comes."
yoda-speak?

Lloyd Alter
9:54 AM
it is from a famous phrase

chris tackett
9:54 AM
ah
or is that a line from an obscure movie i should
ya, i was just going to ask that/

Lloyd Alter
9:54 AM
something wicked this way comes

chris tackett
9:54 AM
ya, that's right

Lloyd Alter
9:55 AM
Something Wicked This Way Comes is a 1962 novel by Ray Bradbury

Ben Boyd
9:55 AM
Macbeth is the original source, I believe

Lloyd Alter
9:55 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Wicked_This_Way_Comes_(novel)

chris tackett
9:55 AM
ya, macbeth sounds right

Lloyd Alter
9:56 AM
The phrase "something wicked this way comes" originates in Act IV scene 1 of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth. The speaker is the second witch, whose full line is, "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes." The wicked thing is Macbeth himself, by this point in the play a traitor and murderer.

chris tackett
9:56 AM
i love it when my blogs quote shakespeare in their bolded subheads.

Lloyd Alter
9:56 AM
shit, that would have taken how long before wikipedia and google?
and water coolers?

chris tackett
9:57 AM
a while

Lloyd Alter
9:57 AM
three minutes of people working together--that goes in my no impact man post this weekend

It wasn't a big issue and didn't amount to much, but in just three minutes, four people in San Francisco, Alabama, Brooklyn and Toronto use Wikipedia, Google and Skype to discuss an issue and come to a conclusion.

In fact, I find more communication and interaction via the water cooler than I ever did in conventional offices. In one minute recently three of us announced variously that we were going to get lunch, go to the doctor and to get our hair cut; none of us had to, but it just has become a habit to let each other know.

Editor Meg says "I don't think I could do my job without it at this point. It's become an essential tool in my work-from-home kit, to the point where I tell people in 'real life' stories about things we talk about in the water cooler as if it were a real meeting place. My husband frequently interjects to explain that I'm talking about a virtual place, but to me it's as concrete as anywhere i go, except i only have walk up the stairs of my house to get there."

I have never actually met many of the people I work with, but I know about their dogs and their surgery. Meg is right; when you have this level of communication it quickly becomes as real and concrete as any place you have ever worked. We are not web workers or home workers or telecommuters;  when the water cooler is on, I am at the office.

How to cut out home heating oil--Japanese style

This is a guest post by my friend Sean Sakamoto, who blogs at www.idratherbe.tv/injapan.

"It's so weird that you heat your whole house," my wife said one winter. She's Japanese, and when we first got married, here in the United States, we got a lot of mileage out of the "I can't believe you people actually do this" conversations.

Recently, we moved to Japan and the tables have turned. It's my turn now and, among other things, perhaps my biggest culture shock was, at first: "I can't believe you people don't heat your houses." That's right: there is no heat in our new Japanese home, and in this culture, that is not remotely unusual.

Despite growing up in Michigan, I have always been a total wimp about the cold. That's why, when we decided to move, my biggest worry was surviving the winter. The language barrier, the food, the culture shock, all seemed manageable, but not the cold. I have always hated being cold, especially indoors.

It's been four months, now, and we're in the dead of winter. We live in a rural village. Our apartment is concrete with no insulation. My breath clouds the air; it condenses on the windows and turns into a sheet of ice. I wear a wool cap to bed, to breakfast, and everywhere else. I've always thought that it's just not supposed to be cold inside, but as far as the Japanese are concerned, I thought wrong.

Like the fish for breakfast, I've adapted to the situation much faster than I expected. As is usual for me with most things I used to dread, I've even come to see some great benefits my new situation. There is an upside to having a freezing cold home. The best part about it is a something called a kotatsu.

The kotatsu is a low table with a small electric heater underneath. There's at least one in every home (that's my wife and little boy sitting at one in the photo). The top of the table lifts off, and a quilt goes over the legs. Then you put the top back on. Everyone sits around the table with the quilt over their laps, and the heat keeps your lower body warm. It's cozy, like sitting by the fire.

Because the rest of the house is freezing, the kotatsu gets a lot of action. It's the first place I go in the morning, and the last place I leave at night. We eat at the kotatsu. We enjoy nabe,  long family meals with a pot of boiling water on a portable burner. We dip meat, veggies, and noodles into the pot and then scoop them onto bowls of rice. The boiling water heats the room, and the hot meat and veggies taste great.

When we're not eating, we play board games around the kotatsu, or just sit quietly and listen to music.

Another strategy for surviving the cold is the hot bath we share at the end of the day. We have a tiny, but deep bathtub. We fill it up with freezing cold water, and then fire up the propane heater next to it to warm up the bath water.

All of use the same bath water, but it's much better than it sounds, because before we get in, we scoop the water over our heads, soap up and rinse off. Then we take our turns squeezing into the tub. That heats us up enough to make the transition into bed, carrying a hot water bottle to keep our feet warm all night. We don't drain the tub, we pump it into the washing machine the next day do to the daily wash, which we hang up in the hallway. Even in the winter, our clothes dry in a couple of days.

We're not alone. Part of what makes this situation bearable is that everyone does it. We're not making some sacrifice that everyone else forgoes. I have no one nearby to envy. At the high school where I teach English, all the students and teachers have a kotatsu at home, they each bring a hot water bottle to bed, and they all wake up to the same freezing cold air. We're all in it together, and I'm the only person who even knows anything different.

There's another reason I appreciate this new experience, too. It is what the Japanese call "Gaman." It means "endure," or "tolerate" but there's more to it than that. It ascribes value to enduring something difficult. To Gaman is a principle, its a virtue. It's a cross between hanging in there and fighting the good fight.

There are times when gaman is a pain. Sometimes enduring hardship as a virtue when the situation could just as easily be made more comfortable seems nuts. But as a cultural value, doing your best and enduring hardship is refreshing. I won't speak for other Americans, but my experience has often leaned too far the other way when it comes to putting up with difficulty without complaint.

I like finding the easy way, I seek comfort, I reach for whatever might soothe the least bit of discomfort I feel. This wouldn't be so bad if it actually worked. But too often I've emerged woozy from another day of escapism and wondered if there wasn't another way. The connection between comfort, consumption, and happiness seems to be more tenuous than I once thought. Here I am in Japan, my fear of a heatless winter come true, and I'm happier than I've been in years.

The unintended result is that I'm consuming less resources, though that was never really a goal of mine, spending much more time with my family, and feeling a strange satisfaction in knowing that I'm taking the more difficult path and doing just fine. It's got me wondering about the value of gaman and how it fits with living a more sustainable lifestyle, and how maybe it's not that foreign a concept.

Wasn't there a time in America when hard work was valued just for the fact that it was hard? Weren't we more stoic in years past? I'm really asking because I have no idea, just a feeling. I always mocked the scorn of the old timers when they told me how they walked miles in ten feet of snow uphill both ways to school and back. The Grandpa Simpson's of the world whose quaint sacrifices seemed hopelessly outmoded.

Still, there was a pride in their voices that I didn't really understand. Now, maybe, I do. I like huddling around the kotatsu, the simple pleasure of a hot bath at the end of a cold day, and the hot water bottle at my feet. I like putting up with the winter chill.

And the great news is, I don't have to worry about leaving the milk out.

[No Impact Man comments: Meanwhile the greenhouse gas emissions per Japanese citizen is only 40% of the average American's]

 

The true cost of our cars

I've said before that if our automobiles really make us happy, then to hell with the planet. The thing is, I don't think they do.

Listen:

• American adults average 72 minutes a day behind the wheel of a car, according to the WorldWatch Institute.
• That’s more than twice as much time as the average American father spends with their kids, according to the United States Department of Labor.
• It’s the equivalent, if you do the math, of just over one eight-hour workday a week or just under 11 40-hour work-weeks a year.
• According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 17 percent of the average American’s income goes on the costs of owning and running a car.
• That means, in other words, that we spend eight weeks of every year working to pay for our cars.
• Putting it all together, we Americans spend the equivalent of nearly five work-months a year either driving our cars or working to pay for them.
• And a lot of the time, reports the Texas Transportation Institute, we aren’t even getting anywhere, since we annually spend the equivalent of 105 million weeks of vacation sitting in traffic jams.
• Every ten minutes we spend commuting, according to Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, means 10 percent less connection with our friends and communities.
• Even if you don’t own a car, research also shows that the more traffic on our city street the fewer friends we have, because the traffic causes to spend less time hanging out in our neighborhood.
• You don’t need to own a car either to breathe the 70 to 80 percent of air pollution that automobiles and trucks contribute in New York, Los Angeles, and Dallas, according to the Environmental Defense Fund
• Meanwhile, studies show that the more a nation’s citizens commute by walking, biking and public transportation, the less obese they are.
• To top it all off, people who ride bikes or walk to work are 24 percent more likely to be happy with their commute than those who drive their cars.