A few notes

A couple of things caught my eye this week so I thought I’d write a weekly-roundup post rather than being specific to one topic:

1. US gas consumption as seen by the rest of the world:

I saw this chart on treehugger.com, it comes from the BP by way of the Economist. I’m a pretty visual person so I find the information depicted to be rather jaring. I think everyone understands that US gas consumption is high, in fact the highest in the world. Its quite another thing to see it contrasted to the amounts consumed in a large selection of other developed countries.

I also think that its only by making people see this kind of easily digestible very visual information, within a context of better understanding of life in other developed countries, will we possibly effect consumption patterns. The silver lining? At least the 2007 Energy Bill passed last month dictates a that American car makers must build cars with higher mpg rates.

2. Climate Change actually not so good for the Northeast United States:

I think the conversation on Climate Change is getting a bit lost in a all the optimisim of Live Earth and pessimism of complex IPCC announcements. This article from the New York Times outlining a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists brings us back to a look at the real impacts of Climate Change.

It seems to me that acceptance of freak weather patterns has started to enter into our daily dialogue and because of this people might be starting to loose track of what is so dangerous about Climate Change. Ah, so there are a few more storms — will adjust. This report points out that the risks are much higher with the real changes being major coastal flooding in the big cities of the Eastern Seaboard, massive enough changes in weather that cold winters wont happen anymore — having a huge impact on natural habitats, wildlife and the economy of New England, and a lot more. Basically, its good to keep in mind that Climate Change isn’t something we can just adjust too — it is likely to have huge, unrealisable and dramatic effects on some very essential elements of the world as we know it.

3. Now for something cheerier, How cool are these shoes?

I came across this company and I’ve decided I really like these shoes. I also don’t know for sure how really eco they are, but hey, fashion can be good sometimes. Check out www.simpleshoes.com

 

 

4. On a more personal note:

I went for a hike with a friend in Rock Creek Park this weekend. For those not familiar with Washington D.C., it is a surprisingly green city with a very well kept, pretty wild and large park cutting right through the middle of it. I happen to be staying this summer in a house that abutes the park making it easy to go for walks there.

Last weekend, odb showed me the beginning of a few trails and I thought I would give them a try. Now if only more city planners understood the immense value of something like a non-manicured park in an urban area. Buildings can be beautiful, but quick access to nature definitely offers something special as well.

Lazyness can be a virtue whereas I’m not so sure about Live Earth

I want to start of this post with a big thank you to a certain odb for my birthday present of Terrapass offsets. I got the nifty little luggage tag in bright transluscent green plastic in the post yesterday (i hope the plastic is biodegradable, and i’m just going to credit TP by saying it probably is). It lists the amount of miles offset for my cross-continental travel. But best of all, I definitely felt a little less guilty for flying this upcoming August.

But speaking of guilty, I listened to a very interesting “Talk of the Nation” on NPR online this week on environmentalism. They had the Lazy Environmentalist guy speaking, defending his position on being a pro-active modern and yes, lazy environmentalist. I completely related to this guy for several reasons. First he is very frank about wanting to be a full fledged member of modern society — which involves all the luxuries and the nifty technology of our modern lives and he also thinks that for environmentalist to be truly effective and become a mass philosophy then it needs to step out of the “privation” mindset and into one of healthy creative solutions to respecting nature and fixing what we’ve done.

I suggest that if you are interested in being pro-active about the environment without turning all granola compost-loving no-car-ever hemp-only live-off-the-grid environmentalist (which is a valid way of doing things, just not my way) then this is a good source of information and motivation.

His basic premise is that we can all be environmentally conscious without having to “sacrifice” to the greater green. That notion of sacrifice, until very recently, was intimately intertwined with being an environmentalist — you couldn’t possibly be good, or do good, without giving up on a little or a lot of your traditional lifestyle. I would agree that that was definitely the case a few years ago, but with all the new technological resources now available and creative thinking, people can do a lot now without really having to alter some of their basic behaviors. I’m not talking about continuing to act in truly wasteful and destructive ways, those behaviors will never mesh with being ‘green’, but rather being able to continue with simple everyday acts that before would have to be altered or changed.

The Lazy environmentalist has a good illustration in his interview — he loves long languid hot showers, and is loath to give them up. These kind of showers, however, are particularly wasteful in water and energy. His solution: instead of taking shorter showers and depriving himself of something he enjoys, install a water recycler which takes his used shower water and uses it flush his toilet. This could save thousand of gallons a year in water.

And this brings me to my point about this new “lazy” generation of environmentalist: sure the impact might not be as great per person, but what this mindset drives is creativity and greater participation — i.e. its scalable. Looking for techy solutions to problems allows people to live (to a certain extent) a lifestyle they have been used by devising solutions that are both cheap, effective and possible scalable to lifestyles all across the globe.

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Live Earth:

I don’t quite know what to thing of this event. Maybe I should start off with saying I’ve never really understood the rationale behind any of these Live ***, except maybe the first one done for Africa ( I think) back in the 80s.

Live Earth, all the concerts, promotions etc seem like a very hollow attempt at trying to get people engaged in environmental action. I just don’t see how the message gets across in an effective way by getting a bunch of very rich, very wasteful (the wealthier you are, the bigger your carbon footprint) celebrities up on a stage singing songs about money, love, sex, and lots of other topics totally unrelated to the environment.

Either way, the cumulative negative environmental impact of such an event is pretty massive no matter how much they might “offset the concert”. They aren’t offsetting the carbon effect of people getting to and leaving the concert — not to mention all the waste these things usually produce. I think I’m being a little mean now, but you get my thinking.

Can I really offset my lifestyle?

Ah carbon offsets! Can you imagine life before them?

I find it particularly fascinating how a brand new term and concept has so easily slipped into the present reality of so many people. A year ago, even less for some people, very few people knew or understood what offsetting was or that they even had a carbon footprint. But within that time suddenly everyone wants to offset their entire life — travels, car, shopping, eating, farting… (yes you could theoretically offset your farts, they are methane after all).

So what is offsetting? How does it work? Who benefits? How do people make money from it? Is offsetting the same as trading?

The best article I’ve found in a while on the subject comes, unsurprisingly, from the Economist. The article explains how credit emissions are created and how they are priced and where they are traded. It also covers the sources of emissions and how they are being brought into the larger carbon offset market.

The author also provides a very good definition for what  the trade in carbon credit is about:

“The trade is not actually in carbon, but in not-carbon: in certificates establishing that so many tonnes of carbon dioxide (or the equivalent in other greenhouse gases) have not been emitted by the seller and may therefore be emitted by the buyer.”

There you go. This means that when you decide to offset your traveling you are in essence paying someone not to pollute for you. Its a nifty idea but does it actually happen?

This article dates back to March, but I think its a good snapshot of how carbon offsets work for the regular consumer.

[Treehugger.com is a good site for all sorts of up to date and relevant information and news on living a more sustainable life.]

I guess the question I’m left with, beyond the ones offered up in the Economist article on the workings of future carbon markets, is whether its really possible to just offset your life and keep living as we have for the past 150 years? I.e. could you just buy lots of relatively cheap — they are really affordable — and drive your fast car, fly to bermuda and not recyle?

The answer to that is probably no. Its not a zero sum game, its more like Commener’s closed circle. This offsetting business is offering us a nifty way to clean up our atmosphere, but for it to be really effective we do have to change our lifestyles. I’m not advocating for a radical change or that offsets aren’t a good idea. But a lot of the money that is getting poured into offsetting could maybe be better placed in developing new technologies that immediately reduce our carbon footprint.

This brings me to the current debacle in the Congress on upping CAFE standards.  Its been an interesting debate to observe, mostly because of the American car industry’s switch last week from full on misinformation campaign directed to keeping standards at the level they are now to a sort of half-hearted compromise.

The way the bill stands now by 2020 US car CAFE standards would increase to 35 mpg (currently at 25 mpg) with a 4% increase in mpg every year. The American auto industry (I specify American on purpose, Japanese and EU car makers are are already building cars with that level of mpg, it seems only Detroit lacks the techy know-how to catch up) changed its tack from all out opposition to support for an admendement to the bill. They are agreeing to the hike in CAFE standards but don’t want the 4% annual increase.

That kind of politics and lobbying makes me sick to my stomach. Some of the ads the car companies screened were full on misleading and pandered to American’s sense of fear. My personal favourite was one that went along the lines of “I want a safe car, not one with higher mileage” implying that you sacrifice safety for better mpg efficiency. I can read or hear that and think how misleading that is, but there are consumers out there who don’t see through the mixed messages and truly walk away thinking an SUV must guzzle to keep me safe.  Argh!!!

So back to what set me off down this road. Offsets are good, the markets are struggling but I think will work, however they are not a replacement for innovative technology and atmosphere-friendly choices.

Carbon diet

Last last year Blair’s Labour government put Climate Change on a policy pedestal. Basically he made it a central part of his governments agenda in the (hopefully) last year of his premiership.

Having lived in England I can safely say the brits, if you measured just by behaviour, are the least environmentally conscious people in northern Europe (the French are probably a close second). However, you wouldn’t be able to tell from their newspapers.

This week the piece that caught my eye was the Times of London ‘Carbon Diet’. Polly Ghazi and Rachel Lewis are giving readers the tips on how calculate their CO2 impact and how to cut back on it.