May 29th, 2009 by Jess

Last Saturday, I  headed over to the West Seattle Edible Garden Fair to see the sights and learn some stuff.  There were booths, food, and even goats!  And, of course, tons of plants.  If I had been more prepared, I would have brought some home with me.  Probably way too many, so maybe it was a good thing that I had nowhere to put them.  And that my boyfriend went along for the ride to be a force of reason in the face of my over-enthusiasm.

The best part of the event was definitely the panels.  The event included a full day of panels and presentations on everything from gardening in small spaces to raising goats, bees and chickens (I wasn’t allowed to go to this one – we don’t need any more furry family members!).  One presentation was especially exciting for me, since I got to be a blogger fangirl for the first time ever!

Two of my favorite bloggers were there, giving a presentation on small space and container gardening.  And what a topic for them!  In case you are not familiar with them – and you should be! – the Shibaguyz are a pair of guys with a pair of dogs who are doing some amazing things with urban and community gardening in Seattle.  Once you take a look at their Jungle, you realize that you have no excuse to not grow things.

I came out of the day’s presentations reinvigorated and inspired to come home and take on My Project.  Time to stop writing about everyone growing their own food and actually put my shovel where my keyboard is.  But then we pulled into the driveway and my excuses sounded more like reasons again.

You see, while we are not technically “small space” gardeners, we are rental gardeners.  I can’t put a big square bed in the back.  I can’t build raised beds because it will kill the grass.  And we don’t know how long we are going to be here.

But what is most relevant at the moment is that our house has stood vacant for a year.

We inherited this.

And this.

And also this bed over there (notice the neighbor’s pretty beds in the background).

I know there’s a juniper in there.  I think that other thing may be a very unhappy rose bush.  That third thing – who knows?  Plus lots of clover, grass, dandelions, and those big tall spiky weeds.

We’re not short on space.  I just somehow have to take it back from the weeds.

community garden, edible garden, seattle, urban garden

May 26th, 2009 by Jess

EcoGeek recently posted a story on Toronto’s plan for creating a new sustainable “walkable urbanism” out of a sea of post-WWII apartment buildings.  It sounds like an impressive model for urban sustainability.  Which is important, because urban sustainability may be the key.  To everything.

I really admire people who choose to live off the grid today, from nuclear families like this family in Pasadena to intentional communities around the world that are making sustainability a priority.  It also makes me feel a little guilty, but I am just not there at this point in my life.

The fact is, even if we all wanted to, human beings can’t go back to living like we used to live.  There are too many of us today, and not enough space for us to adopt a hunter-gatherer, tribal model of survival.  Barring some disaster that wipes out most of us, if we are to continue to live on this planet, we need a model for urban sustainability.  And it necessarily will be very different from a successful model for living sustainably in a rural community, even a modern rural community.  The city of Toronto is taking a bold step towards adopting urban sustainability on a large scale.

Healthy communities are the building blocks of a sustainable civilization.  It is ironic that in this era of maximum population density, individuals are increasingly isolated.  In part, this is due to the “immersive ugliness” of our cities and, especially, suburbia.  In his TED talk on suburbia (seriously, take 20 minutes and watch it!), social critic James Kunstler explores how architecture and urban planning affect societal and individual development.  Humans are fundamentally social beings who need community in order to survive.  In cities all over the United States, our urban development virtually precludes the creation of healthy communities.

It is here where the Toronto Tower Renewal Project really gets it right.  Yes, the project includes very specific plans for making the tower communities energy efficient and environmentally friendly.  Two thumbs up!  But it also outlines a plan to build healthy communities around active public spaces.  For the individuals who live in and around them, these communities will be worth caring about and worth sustaining.  And that is what sustainable development is all about.

intentional communities, james kunstler, toronto tower project, urban sustainability, urbanism

May 22nd, 2009 by Jess

Today, in line with Speaker Pelosi’s promise to have climate change legislation ready for discussion by Memorial Day, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed H.R. 2454, previously known as the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, now known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES).

We did a brief summary of our likes and dislikes of the original draft discussion bill.  That was a long time ago in legislative terms!  But today, no normative statements – just some highlights from the summary of the bill.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act:

• Requires retail electric companies to source a percentage of their load from renewable sources, beginning at 6% in 2012 and gradually rising to 20% in 2020.  A portion of this requirement may be met with efficiency savings.
• Provides incentive programs for smaller renewable projects, such as rooftop solar, which are built into the electricity credit system.
• Includes a bunch of stuff on carbon capture and sequestration – since there is currently not a deployable technology, most of this section is geared towards figuring out how to make CCS deployable.  Investigation of state geological protections, creation of an incentive program for commercially deployable CCS, etc.
• Establishes technology standards for coal power plants built after 2020.
• Provides incentives for large-scale electric transportation programs, development of electric vehicles, development of and integration with smart-grid infrastructure.
• Provides incentives for a variety of energy efficiency projects across various sectors.
• Addresses adaptation measures.
• Outlines tons of funding for research.

As far as the climate change/emissions section, we are looking at a cap and trade system that allows offsets.  Distribution will be by both allocation and auction, with a decreasing % of allowances allocated each year.  Reduction targets are from 2005 levels – 97% by 2012, 80% by 2020, 58% by 2030, and 17% by 2020.

The bill also includes an impressive worker adjustment assistance section, with substantial support for workers displaced as a result of the new energy policy and provisions protecting low-income families. 

All in all, not bad.  It’s long, it’s comprehensive, and I’m sure Congress will have lots to fight about.  But isn’t that what Congress does best?

ACES, American Clean Energy and Security Act, cap and trade, climate change bill, congress, Waxman-Markey bill

May 20th, 2009 by Jess

Ok, so maybe this isn’t the great ethanol debate.  But it was a tiny ethanol debate that consumed some spare brain space across several states on Road Trip 2 (so named by my dad, who came along for the ride).

The U.S. ethanol subsidy policy is once of the great ironically humorous tragedies of the last decade.  A poetic instance of the congressional machine reaching peak momentum and the inability to slam on the brakes once the process was in motion.  It was a big mistake.

I was reminded of all this when, upon pulling into a gas station in Iowa, I discovered that mid-grade fuel blended with ethanol was almost ten cents cheaper per gallon than the low-grade fuel I usually put in my car.  Excited to be burning more cleanly, I almost filled up with the E10.  Fortunately, I had my dad along for the ride to complicate this seemingly easy decision.

“You know,” he said.  “Your gas mileage is going to be lower with the ethanol.”

Great dad. Great.

I am not good at math.  I never have been and, at this point, I doubt I ever will be.  Even if I had at my fingers all the numbers necessary to figure out whether this cheaper fuel would be a) cheaper and b) better for the environment, I still probably wouldn’t have been able to do it.  And I was almost positive that this question was very car specific.  And boy, was I right on that one.

I have a 2008 Honda Fit.  Honda guarantees that the Fit will work with E10.

A rest stop somewhere in Oregon.

Usually, my Fit gets around 35mpg, and I was anticipating getting closer to 40mpg on the trip.  But then I realized I had to stick two people, two greyhounds, a cat, and the crew’s luggage in the car.  So we outfitted it with this thing.

The box.  Otherwise known as –8mpg.

Even with the box, we were packed in like sardines.

“The dogs are touching me!”

However, we did manage to get around 30mpg (sometimes slightly above) for the majority of the trip.  Not bad considering how heavily we were loaded up and how square and wind resistant the box was.

I hate to admit that I was not monitoring mileage closely enough on this trip to notice a significant decrease when using E10.  Additionally, while almost all of our miles were highway miles, the geography varied greatly through the trip.  My little Fit hauled us across plains, across snow covered mountains, and through wind and rain storms.  All of this would have had an effect on the mileage.

However, the general consensus is that using E10 reduces mpg by about 2-3% on the low end, 10% on the high end.  That would reduce my average mpg from just over 30 to just under 30.  Around 29mpg.  At ten cents per gallon cheaper, overall I don’t think I would see a huge difference in my gas bill either way.  (I might be able to do the math on that, but it would take me forever.)

So now emissions – what does it do as far as emissions?  I’m using 2-3% more gasoline to drive the same amount of miles.

The internet has so many answers to this question.  According to this blurb, carbon monoxide (CO) reduction can be 20-30% over regular gasoline.  Yay!  But for CO2 and other GHGs, we’re looking at 2%, which breaks even if I’m getting 2% less out of E10, but is a total fail at 10%.  And for some pollutants, it’s an increase – no good.  But other studies have other numbers, all of which I’m sure are to some extent dependent on the vehicle and the conditions of the test.

Conclusion?  I put E10 in my tank on the road.

However, after reading up, I probably won’t next time.  Financially, it is more or less a break even.  For emissions, it’s up in the air.  But even if it was slightly better on the emissions front, the environmental and economic ramifications of increased corn production for use in ethanol outweigh the benefits.  Ethanol is not a viable solution for our energy issues and is not what I want to be supporting with my hard earned dollars.

e10, ethanol, ethanol subsidy, honda fit, mileage, mpg, road trip

May 19th, 2009 by Jess

In spite of the fact that climate change is taking a back burner to unemployment, the financial crisis, and the global recession (*cough* depression *cough*), there’s still an awful lot going on right now in the world of climate change policy.  Indeed, we should be looking for a House climate change bill by the end of this week.

It can be easy to get lost in the sea of technical jargon accompanying any detailed discussion on climate change.  While they are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, knowing these ten climate change terms will help you to understand what everyone is carrying on about.

Greenhouse Gases (GHGs)

Naturally occurring compounds in the Earth’s atmosphere that allow sunlight to enter the atmosphere.  When sunlight is reflected off the Earth’s surface, these gases trap the heat in the atmosphere.  Six GHGs – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride – will be classified as pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

CO2

Of the greenhouse gases, CO2 is receiving the most press these days.  Our cars and factories breathe it out.  Plants breathe it in.  The problem is that these days, we have more cars and factories and fewer plants.  There is some debate if other GHGs will be addressed in climate change legislation.  There is no debate about CO2.

Tipping Point

“The levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable.”  In climate change terms, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 at which some scientists argue there will be no chance of preventing negative consequences of climate change.  Some refer to it as a scenario of “irreparable change” – for example, the loss of polar ice sheets that might never be regained.  There is still debate about whether a tipping point exists and, if so, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere at which this would occur.  However, some scientists are concerned that we are approaching the tipping point more quickly than originally predicted.

Mitigation

The process by which human beings attempt to prevent or reduce climate change.  Emissions reductions, a shift towards renewable energy, reforestation and prevention of further deforestation, and carbon capture and sequestration all fall under the broader term of mitigation.

Adaptation

The process by which human beings adjust to global changes brought on by climate change.  One extreme example of adaption is can be found in the Maldives, an island nation which is preparing to relocate its entire population in the event that the country is submerged by rising ocean waters.

Business As Usual (BAU)

The current emissions level and trajectory for emissions growth.  Many models have a projection for results based on BAU emissions.

Carbon Capture & Sequestration (CCS)

Also known as carbon capture and storage, CCS is an umbrella term for the theoretical process by which CO2 is collected from the atmosphere or at the emission source, and then stuck somewhere not in the atmosphere.  While this technology is not yet deployable, it is getting a big chunk of money.

Renewables

Add it to your spellchecker, because this new word is here to stay.  Renewables are sources of energy that are continually naturally replenished, such as wind, solar, geothermal heat, rain, and tides.  In contrast, while fossil fuels are natural, they are not naturally replenished in a reasonable time for our species.

Cap & Trade

The type of climate change policy proposed by the draft House bill released in April.  A cap and trade program is based on a government-mandated ceiling of sector/industry emissions with a system of permits allowing companies a certain amount of emissions, generally measured in millions  of metric tons.  (For reference, the average carbon footprint of a U.S. resident is 20 metric tons per year.)  Companies can then buy and sell permits, which should create a market mechanism for the pricing of carbon.

Copenhagen

The Copenhagen Climate Conference in December 2009 is the last meeting of the members of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change before the renewal of an international agreement on climate change.  At this conference, world leaders will come to an agreement to be adopted upon the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 – or they won’t.  Only time will tell.

cap and trade, clean air act, climate change terms, Copenhagen, tipping point

May 14th, 2009 by Jess

The TNTeam blog has now returned from a brief hiatus – it was much longer than I had expected when I embarked on my latest adventure!

I have been living outside of Washington, DC for the past several years.  Recently, I decided it was time to move on.  So my crew and I packed our bags and took to the road. 

The crew relaxing after a hard day on the road.

I optimistically thought a cross-country road trip would be an excellent opportunity to catch up on blogging, website maintenance, and general news.  Boy was I mistaken.  Instead I caught up on sleep!

We turned up in Olympia, WA, one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.  It is so green here (double entendre intended).

This was my third coast to coast road trip.  Each time I have taken a different route.  I firmly believe that every American should be required to drive across the country at least once.  I think there is no other way to truly understand the enormity and diversity of our country.  The United States is a heterogeneous experience.  I forget sometimes that the many viewpoints held by fellow citizens can be a result of their own, very different lives.  I often think with politics, “How can they not be seeing what I’m seeing about this issue?!” when, really,  how could they be?  Their lives and their realities look nothing like my own.

I am glad to be back on the West Coast, glad to be settled and mostly unpacked, and very glad to have internet all hooked up and running again.