No Impact Man

Oh say can you see

It's Presidents' Day here in the United States, a national holiday and a day off for me. But here's an evocative song performed by the incredible Sufjan Stevens for the day and for the times (if you can't see the video below, click here). You like?

Addendum: Actually, I couldn't tell that the lyrics had been changed. If I had realized, I wouldn't have posted this song. I just liked the reworking of the melody. Anyway, I have removed the video.

Which candidate can launch us into world leadership in the coming energy revolution?

I've said this a thousand times. There are incredible opportunities in our climate change/dependence on foreign oil/economic crisis. I hold this true on both the individual and cultural levels.

In part, that's because creativity loves constraints. If we are constrained by the need to use less fossil fuel, we have the chance to create an entirely new way of generating and using energy that can both make us happier and healthier, reduce our damage to the planetary habitat that we depend upon, and increase national security and economic stability by depending less on foreign oil.

And since the world is going to move to sustainable energy either way, the United States can drag its feet until it is forced to buy its sustainable energy from elsewhere, or it can become the leader, ensuring the millions of jobs that will come with making our economy energy efficient and exporting sustainable technology to the rest of the world.

Each of us can do our part individually. I know. I've been trying for more than a year. Not as much as some, but all the same, trying. The thing is, to really get this kettle boiling, we also need a President and a Congress who are willing to apply some heat.

Individual action is hugely important, but individual action does not just mean lifestyle change. It also means political engagement. I want to help get the right president, and I want to help give him or her the electoral mandate to put our hugely promising climate/sustainable economy/renewable energy opportunities at the top of the agenda.

So who should be president?

If you want a quick answer, all I can really tell you is this: it's not John McCain. Sorry to the Republicans in the crowd. I'm not trying to be politically divisive. I'm just analyzing the candidates' energy/climate/renewable opportunity policies and their apparent priorities. If you want, you can do it yourself by reading Obama's energy plan here, Clinton's here, and McCain's here.

Also, I have boiled down the League of Conservation Voters' somewhat problematic summary of the candidates readiness to launch our economy into sustainable stability in the table below (you can also go here for Grist's chart comparing the candidates).

Candidates vs LCV positions:	Obama	Clinton	McCain
LCV lifetime score*	96	90	26
Mandatory emissions cap	Yes	Yes	Yes
100% auction of emissions permits	Yes	Yes	No articulated position
At least 80% reductions by 2050	Yes	Yes	Authored bill reducing emissions 65% by 2050
At least 40 mpg fleetwide standard in 10 years	52 mpg by 2026	40 mpg by 2020/55 by 2030	Supports increased efficiency/ No specified target
20% renewables by 2020	25% by 2025	25% by 2025	Opposed 10% standard in 2005 and 20% in 2002
Reduce energy consumption 10% by 2020 from current levels	50% reduction in energy intensity by 2030	20% reduction from projected levels in 2020	Supports efficiency/ No specified target.
Moratorium on all new coal plants unless they capture and store carbon emissions	Would consider if caps don't slow new plant construction	Phased in requirement to have new coal plants capture and store	Supports use of coal
Oppose any development of liquid coal	Supported investing in liquid coal if it reduced carbon by 20% over gasonline in 2007	Supported investing in liquid coal if it reduced carbon by 20% over gasoline in 2007	No articulated position

*LCV lifetime score measures percentage of a senator's votes that fall in line with LCV's environmental positions.

Why do I call the summary problematic? Because it contains only the candidates tightening of the energy belt policies without telling us much about how the candidates will take advantage of the tremendous opportunities in our crisis.

Because right now, I want to be inspired. I want to see how the candidates can motivate a somewhat indifferent electorate to endorse environmental policies that can prove to be a boon for this country and the entire world.

For that, for the inspiration, for the hope, for the opportunities, I have turned to the candidates' plans themselves.

A couple of paragraphs that give me hope from Obama's plan:

• "Obama will invest $150 billion over 10 years to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, promote development of commercial scale renewable energy, invest in low emissions coal plants, and begin transition to a new digital electricity grid.  A principal focus of this fund will be devoted to ensuring that technologies that are developed in the U.S. are rapidly commercialized in the U.S. and deployed around the globe."
• "Over the longer term, we know that the amount of fuel we will use is directly related to our land use decisions and development patterns, much of which have been organized around the principle of cheap gasoline.  Barack Obama believes that we must move beyond our simple fixation of investing so many of our transportation dollars in serving drivers and that we must make more investments that makeother transportation alternatives."

And a couple from Hillary's:

• "A $50 billion Strategic Energy Fund, paid for in part by oil companies, to fund investments in alternative energy.  The SEF will finance one-third of the $150 billon ten-year  investment in a new energy future contained in this plan."
• "Hillary’s plan lays the foundations of investment and incentives to encourage private sector innovation that can move us toward this jobs goal. The U.S. has an opportunity to lead in the development of new green technologies, creating new companies, spin-off enterprises, and entrepreneurs who are creating wealth while moving us toward a carbon free future. Hillary’s plan will help catalyze an efficiency revolution in buildings, homes, appliances and utilities; spur rapid growth in the domestic renewables industries; and invest in energy innovation and R&D, all of which will drive productivity and additional job growth. And her plan will help the private sector create “green collar” jobs—in research and development, manufacturing, construction, engineering, consulting and a variety of other areas—that will help ensure strong growth of America’s middle class over the next decade."

What I'm left with here, when confronted with the only two candidates who I think will actually grasp the nettle when it comes to the climate/renewable energy/sustainable economy opportunities, is not many differences by which to differentiate them. When it comes to the Democrats, it turns out, I'm spoiled for choice.

Grist's political columnist David Roberts, who also thinks we're spoiled for choice, writes:

"It comes down to these questions:

1. Who will be more effective at getting a green agenda past the many obstacles it faces?
2. Who will do more to help downticket races and usher more Democrats into Congress?

There's been a lot of chatter about "theories of change" this election, but if you ask me, personal style matters a hell of a lot less than the number of reliable votes in Congress. So who'll get more downticket Dems elected? I think, as his recent endorsement by a string of red-state Dems attests, Obama will. He's got broader appeal with the Independents and wavering Republicans that will make the difference in close Congressional races." 

What David doesn't mention, though, is something that I discussed with Bill McKibben by email the other day. Whether Obama or Clinton have the policies or win the election, there will be incredible pressure for them to turn their attention to other, business-as-usual issues. We still need to make sure that they make our tremendous opportunities in sustainable, stable economics one of the top three agenda items of the next presidency.

And I can think of only one way to do that: good old-fashioned political engagement. Those of us who look forward to the future with the same tremendous hope and optimism as I do, need to become 1960s-style activists all over again. What we need to believe that what we say makes a difference and that our voices, if we use them, will be heard.

Some think of the 60s as a flop. They weren't. Because of the work of the idealists of the 1960s, we won huge progress in civil liberties. We won progress in civil rights. And with the legacies of the Clean Air and Water Acts, we won the chance for healthier and happier futures.

Let's win more chances. Let's call our representatives. Let's call our candidates. Let's call them every day. Let's gather on the streets. Let's join the 1Sky campaign, where we can, with one, easy click, write to the candidates. And let's convince Obama and Clinton that we will support the centrality of their energy policies in order to help take us into a future of hope, happiness and well-being.

To escape city life, embrace it

If 16 million New Yorkers moved to the countryside to escape from city life, the devastation would be terrible. But what if the way to improve life is not to move the people to the countryside but, in a way, to move the countryside to the city? That is part of the idea behind the happy city and livable streets movement.

Making cities excellent for living in, by the way, is a crucial step forward if we are to maintain the planetary habitat that people depend on for their health, happiness and security. Indeed, "smart growth" and compact living are central pillars in the energy policies of many environmental organizations.

To make such policies successful, though, requires not only vision and imagination, but better yet, reliance on an increasing body of real-life experience. As to that experience, Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives, sent me an excellent article by Charles Mongomery, published in Air Canada's in-flight magazine enRoute (of all places). The following are quotes from the article:

• "Changing the way we design and use public space can change the way we move, the way we treat other people and ultimately the way we feel."
• "In recent years, [Paris] residents have become so sick of noise, pollution and congestion that they have thrown their support behind a radical plan by Mayor Bertrand Delanoë to reclaim their streets. By 2012, suburban cars will be banned entirely from the city’s core."
• About the new Paris bike-sharing program: "Making the road seem more dangerous by injecting thousands of bikes into traffic may actually be making it safer. Bike accident statistics have flatlined, even as the number of cyclists has jumped in Paris by nearly 50 percent in the last six years."
• "Encounters we have on foot or by bike [as opposed to in cars] tend to build trust. It’s in the eye contact we make as we choreograph our movements. When it works, we become just a little less fearful of each other...So the more we meet outside of our cars, the kinder and gentler we’re likely to become."
• "As a bonus...happy folks are more likely to volunteer, to vote and to return lost wallets to strangers."
• "Bogotá [Columbia] was mired in poverty, chaos, violence and crippling traffic when [Mayor] Enrique Peñalosa decided to redesign it using lessons from happiness theory nearly a decade ago...Peñalosa declared war on cars...He pushed cars off prime road space in order to make room for an efficient rapid bus system so that the city would feel more fair."
• “What are our needs for happiness?” Peñalosa said in explaining his policies. “We need to walk, just as birds need to fly. We need to be around other people. We need beauty. We need contact with nature. And, most of all, we need not to be excluded. We need to feel some sort of equality.”
• "The number of road fatalities fell by a third. Traffic began moving faster as people switched to the mayor’s rapid bus system."
• "The shift in priorities had a psychological effect on the city. Polls found that optimism shot up. The murder rate fell by 40 percent. By the end of Peñalosa’s term, residents had voted to ban private cars from rush hour by 2015."
• "The more time we spend on foot, on bikes or even on public transit, the more we slow down and the more we fuel this kind of social alchemy. Ironically, it may be the crisis of climate change – and the push for carbon austerity – that reinvigorates street life around the world."

The thing is, I know how much we all love our cars. The thought of not having them horrifies us. But is that because driving around alone in steel boxes is so great, or is it because not having a car in a society so completely structured around the automobile is so difficult?

What if we envisage a better society that did not depend on cars? What if our towns and cities were structured in such a way that the expense of having a car just plain wasn't worth the hassle? What if we designed our cities in such a way that you didn't need to drive to the countryside but could just hang out on street with lots of neighbors, lots of trees and no exhaust fumes?

Isn't there a chance that might be better? 

Image courtesy of enRoute.

New Yorkers, let's please breathe easier

Apropos of today's earlier post about the problems with cars, two easy steps you can take, if you're interested, to help reduce car traffic and air pollution in New York City, and in making the City more livable.

First, if you're a New York State resident, click here to send a fax to State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in support of Congestion Pricing, a measure that will both reduce automobile traffic and fund public transportation (read more here).

Second, you can join Transportation Alternatives, an excellent New York organization that campaigns to make the City safer and better for pedestrians and bicyclists (here is the membership page).

Just a thought on how we can all make a difference when it comes to getting away from cars! Thanks!

Is making a better car like making a better cancer?

The thing is, we're looking for the better automobile, but couldn't we do much better for ourselves by finding ways not to have to spend so much time in them in the first place?

Here's a list of thoughts. Some of them are my own. Some of them are sparked by WorldChanging's Alex Steffan's recent post "My other car is a Bright Green City" (but references you'll find to the beauty and intelligence of my wife are my thoughts alone).

• Societal obsession with inventing a high-efficiency vehicle obscures the fact that using our land to live in suburbs instead of compact villages and cities deprives ourselves not only a sustainable but a much more satisfying solution.
• Cars cause about 20% of our greenhouse gas emissions.
• The more we drive the fatter we are, the fatter we are, the more heart disease we have, the more heart disease we have the quicker we die.
• If everyone in the United States deserves a car, then everyone in the world deserves a car. If everyone in the world gets a car, we're toast.
• As our population grows, traffic will only get worse.
• Studies show that building more roads only causes more traffic.
• Where, in major cities like, say, New York, are you supposed to fit more roads anyway?
• We need to help developing countries create better alternatives.
• As Alex writes: "The single best way we can do that is to lead by example. By embracing our own models of sustainably prosperous living, we would do two things: we'd help change the cultural messaging about what prosperity really means, and we'd create some (perhaps many) of technologies and designs other countries will need to invent their own models."
• Commuting by car, in traffic jams, breathing in the fumes, getting mad, and honking horns, like cars themselves, sucks.
• 3.5 million Americans now spend the equivalent of a month a year in their cars, according to Alex.
• Not being able to walk to our neighbor's house, not being able to ride a bike to the store, not being able to let your kids play on the street--all these things are alienating. They make us lonelier and sadder.
• According to Alex, "procurement of the materials used to make and maintain that car (and then dispose of it at the end of its life) may mean that almost half of the direct climate impact of a car never comes out of its tailpipe."
• So even if you come up with a car, based on the same materials, that gets infinity miles per gallon, you'll only have cut your footprint by half.
• Imagine if the huge amount of public space sandwiched between the buildings in cities, often known as streets, was dedicated to people instead of to cars.
• Imagine if 90% of Manhattan's air pollution did not come from automobiles and if the 95% of the island's residents who don't even own cars didn't have to breathe it.
• Imagine if we didn't have to pay $29 billion a year to clean up the water polluted by cars.
• According to Alex, "the greenhouse gasses emitted while building and maintaining roads add an additional 45% to the average car's annual climate footprint."
• Alex, quoting the Baltimore Sun, points out: "The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects total miles driven to increase by 59 percent by 2030, which the report's authors say would cancel out whatever reductions in carbon dioxide might be achieved by improving the gas mileage of cars and trucks."
• Meanwhile, people who live in the newer fringe-burbs are reportedly the least happiest of Americans, and the long commutes they endure are the major reason why, writes Alex, quoting an article in BusinessWeek Magazine.
• By the way, the BusinessWeek article he quotes, "Extreme Commuting," is by my wife, Michelle Conlin, the smart one in our partnership. Wicked cool!
• A commuter who travels one hour, one way, would have to make 40% more than his current salary to be as fully satisfied with his life as a noncommuter, writes my beautiful wife.
• According to Smart Growth America, if 60 percent of new developments were even modestly more compact, we'd emit 85 million fewer metric tons of tailpipe CO2 each year by 2030 -- as much as would be saved by raising the national mileage standards to 32 mpg.
• Alex points out, "the amount of density the study's authors call for is extremely modest. They encourage building new projects at a density of 13 homes per acre, raising the average national density from 7.6 units per acre to 9 an acre."
• In other words, instead of figuring out how to replace the United States's 226 million cars (2003 figure) with high-efficiency models, how about if we eliminate the need to drive them everywhere we go?

When economic growth isn't progress

Policy makers and even the voting public make the mistake of thinking that growth in gross domestic product (GDP) is an indicator of societal progress. In reality, though, GDP is nothing but an indicator of national spending with no distinctions between those transactions that add to our well-being and those that diminish it.

• Chop the top off the mountain to take its coal, and you'll get economic growth in the area. Question is, if you taint the water to the point where people can't even touch it safely, can you call that progress? (By the way, there's a great, new film on this subject called Burning Our Future)
• If community earnings rise 20%, but the time parents can spend with their children drops 40%, can you call that progress?
• If the washing machine industry grows by 20%, but that is because their products are engineered to last only 50% as long, can you call that progress?

All of these scenarios would contribute to a growth in GDP, but a decline in human happiness and well-being. That's why Redefining Progress developed the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI).

GPI starts with the same personal consumption data that GDP is based on, but then adjusts it by assigning monetary values to factors that affect human happiness and well-being. Those factors include, among others:

• The impact of economic growth on happiness, depending on how much of it actually ends up in the hands of the poor people who need it
• The amount of "leisure time" available within the culture for things like childcare, housework, volunteer work, etc.
• The negative costs of crime-associated legal fees, medical expenses and property damage. Perversely, an increase in crime, because of these costs, can actually increase the GDP, a clear case of economic growth not indicating an increase in happiness.
• The economic externalities like long-term environmental damage associated with carbon emissions, ozone depletion and deforestation.

The point is that if policy-makers adopted a metric like GPI, they would be guided toward adopting agendas that much more tightly focussed on the happiness of the electorate than on far-less-meaningful growth in the economy.

"We believe," Redefining Progress says on its website, "that if policymakers measure what really matters to people—health care, safety, a clean environment, and other indicators of well-being—economic policy would naturally shift towards sustainability."

Biofuels far from a silver bullet

You may know that biofuels produced from plant matter such as corn and soybeans have been touted as the great hope for replacing petroleum to fuel cars and heat buildings. But though policy makers have rushed to the technology, it's turning out that the costs may far outweigh the benefits when it comes to global warming and other environmental damage.

According to a New York Times article by Elisabeth Rosenthal, "Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat," published February 8:

• Two recent studies show that "almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these 'green' fuels are taken into account."
• The conversion of forestland and grassland to cropland, in order to produce biofuels, "not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions."
• Indeed, "the clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy."

Additionally, a previous New York Times article by James Kanter, "Europe May Ban Imports of Some Biofuel Crops," published January 15, said:

• "Not only is native vegetation, including tropical rain forests, being chopped down in places to plant the crops, but fossil fuels, like diesel for tractors, are often used to farm the crops. They also demand nitrogen fertilizer made largely with natural gas and consume huge amounts of water."
• "Already, the draining and deforesting of peatlands in Southeast Asia — mainly to make way for palm plantations — accounts for up to 8 percent of global annual carbon dioxide emissions, said Adrian Bebb of Friends of the Earth, an environmental group."
• Perhaps there is some good news in the fact that "experts say certain types of fuels, particularly those made from agricultural wastes, still hold potential to improve the environment, but they add that governments will have to set and enforce standards for how the fuels are produced."

Cartoon courtesy of Car Advice (click image to enlarge).

Sustainable development vs reducing consumption

Michael Shellenberger of The Breakthrough Institute sent me a post from his blog that is written by Siddhartha Shome and starts like this:

Car A gets a fuel efficiency of 46 miles per gallon. Car B gets about 50 miles per gallon. Car A is called the Toyota Prius and is hailed by environmentalists as a step towards solving global warming. Car B, a new car called the Tata Nano unveiled by an Indian company, is reviled by environmentalists as disastrous for global warming. The New York Times devotes an entire editorial condemning the Tata Nano. Columnist and author Tom Friedman calls for the Tata Nano to be "taxed like crazy." The reason for this extreme criticism? The Tata Nano is cheap - very cheap. It is a revolutionary new car design that will cost only about $2,500 and will bring car ownership within reach of millions of new people in the developing world.

Now, I don't dig Shome's post in its entirety, but I will say this: the No Impact, tighten-your-belt approach clearly doesn't apply in the developing world. That is to say, I won't be going to India or Kenya and bragging about reducing my impact.

Here in the United States, where we waste resources to the point of making ourselves unhappy and unhealthy (remember my quality of life vs resource use curve), focusing on impact reduction through reduced consumption may well be part of the equation. That doesn't follow where consumption hasn't even begun and people are still living on that part of the quality of life curve where increased resource use will make them happier (again, see the curve).

That's why the investment in the development of new and the implementation of existing renewable energy and technology is so important. Because I sure ain't going to be the one to tell the Indians they shouldn't have cheap cars. Besides, think of the jobs we would have created for the American economy if we innovated a car like the Tata Nano that did even better on emissions or maybe didn't even run on gas at all? There's no reason we shouldn't have.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not turning my back on the importance to American happiness, health and security of wasting fewer of the planetary resources we depend on--reducing consumption. And I'm also not a fan of the automobile. But in this case, the problem is not Indian entrance into consumerdom, but the United States's non-entrance into sustainable development.

What it's like being me

Fun. Tiring. Exhilarating. Depressing. Interesting. Worrying.

Way back when I started this whole No Impact thing, I felt so frustrated with the political process and so voiceless that the only thing I felt I could do about what I considered to be an international emergency was change the way I lived. I wanted to shout from the rooftops: LET'S FIX THIS PROBLEM!   

But who would have listened to me? So what I decided to do was just what I could. I worked really hard to reduce my impact and to learn a lot about the issues. I started writing about what I learned on this blog. The weird thing was that once I started to work towards living a lifestyle that had integrity with my values, people started asking me what I had to say.

That's lesson number one: that if I demonstrate what I believe in, people are more likely to listen to me than if I just talk about what I believe. People respect integrity. I'm not saying that I have that much of it. There are a lot of people--and I mean a lot--who have way more of it than me. It took a book contract and a blog to get me to really stick to my guns. Of course, if I'd stuck to writing history, I would have earned a much better living, but I just couldn't anymore (refer to lesson number one).

Lesson number two: we all can make a difference. We all really matter. The way we live our lives and what we have to say has consequences for everyone else. The only difference between someone who makes a difference and someone who doesn't is whether they believe they can make a difference. That, at least, is what happened to me. I suddenly got the inkling that I could make a difference and I like to think, these days, that I can.

And now the No Impact project proper is over. Having lived it has given me the wonderful privilege and terrible responsibility of being listened to.  I'm spending three quarters of my day writing the book about the project, which is due on May 1, God help me. I spend the rest of the day writing the blog and corresponding with people who know a lot more about this stuff than I ever will. I'm constantly working to know what I want to say.

But today I know what it is I want to say. That I'm no one special. We all can make a difference if we believe we can. We need to talk to everyone we know. We need to march into the offices of our congressional representatives and tell them that we want more done. In fact, I'm going to do that myself soon--march into the offices of my congressional representatives.

I'm going to tell them that there are tremendous opportunities in this climate change/national security/economic crisis that comes from our overdependence on fossil fuels. I'm going to tell them that the United States could easily become the world leader of a new renewable energy industry. We could create good jobs. We could solve the climate problems. We could cease fighting over oil. We could help recession-proof our oil-dependent economy. To hurry this process, we need government action and investment.

And we also need emissions capping. We need to find a ways to reduce our dependence on automobiles and build real communities where we can walk and visit with each other. We need to weatherize and sustainably design our buildings so that we keep our heat in. We need appliances that conserve their energy. And we need a more resource-effective industry. In short, we need regulation that encourages us to waste less.

Will my visiting my congressional representative make a difference? Only under one condition. That all you visit your congressional representatives too. And that brings me to lesson number three: each of us needs each other if we hope to make a difference. I need you. You need me. We all need to join our voices together to let our representatives know that we see a wonderful new frontier ahead. And that we want to move towards it, not lag behind it.

Persuading the presidential candidates

Obama, Clinton and even McCain have decent proposals on climate change. The question is, what will it take to make climate change one of the defining issues of the next presidency? How can we convince both the presidential candidates and our congressional representatives to make this the most important item of the coming term?

From the 1SKy blog:

"If you’ve been following the news recently, you know that we’re in the thick of a tempestuous primary season for Democrats and Republicans alike. Despite the fact that the Presidential candidates give four or five speeches a day, journalists and pundits seem determined to ignore substantive questions about climate change and green jobs. The League of Conservation Voters calculates that out of 2,830 questions asked of the candidates by TV reporters over the past year, only six covered global warming."

You can send the candidates each a letter by clicking here. But that's not enough. What else can we do?