Change.gov

Obama wins! Woo hoo!

Here's my first letter to the incoming administration on their change.gov website.

Thank you for building this site. It sends a great message to the grassroots that our voices will be heard. It is a huge change from the inaccessibility of the last, well, 216 years, and I look forward to more and more transparency in government. We have the right to spy on the government; the government does not have the right to spy on us.

Energy/Environment/Economy

These issues are inextricably linked. We cannot continue with the mindset that growth is sustainable, that mindless consumption and squandering of resources is "good for the economy." If we do, we run straight into the laws of physics. The earth is finite, and we depend 100% on the earth and the energy from the sun for our survival as a species. In the long term, the only wealth we can create comes from combining energy from the sun with available materials on earth. The more solar energy we waste, and the more materials we waste, the less wealth we ultimately create.

My simple proposal to require the seller or importer of any item to be required to accept all packaging, as well as any non-biodegradable material in the item itself, for recycling. This proposal builds in the true cost of the item, and makes it more financially beneficial to manufacture natural, biodegradable, and easy to recycle products and packaging. It does not solve the problem of placing man-made chemicals into the environment via consumable products (polypropylene "micro-beads" in facial scrub, chemicals in detergents, etc., etc.). There are some 20,000 man-made checmicals present in human breast milk, including hundreds of cancer-causing agents. Whether any or all of them are harmful according to the EPA is not really the point. The point is that we don't have a way to hold creators of molecules responsible for the complete cost of releasing those molecules into the environment. The environment on which we depend 100% for the survival of the species. Reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act would be a much better way to protect the "unborn" than removing Roe v. Wade. I'm speculating here, but it's possible that reducing toxins in our children's bodies would reduce the incidence of asthma and allergies. What is that worth to our society? It cannot be measured in the GDP.

My second proposal is to add to the goal of 80% reduction of U.S. CO2 production by 2050. The additional goal should be to reduce world CO2 outputby 80% by 2050, and we should invest additional money in carbon sequestration technology. This would provide more U.S. jobs, and the owners of the sequestration equipment/plants could sell carbon credits in the U.S. or especially overseas, if we can get an international cap and trade system going. Maybe this is already part of your cap and trade plans. I would like to see sequestration count as domestic production for the purposes of the tax credit.

As a scientifically oriented administration, I'm sure you will adjust your policies as the science progresses. Specifically, methane from the Arctic sea bed and from melting tundra is a 20 times more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. So we may need some way to capture and resequester that methane (or use it for fuel.)

The ultimate goal for survival and sustainability is cyclical processes, rather than linear processes. The traditional economic models assume unlimited growth and unlimited resources. We need new economic models based on limited resources, zero waste, and the big one, zero growth. Waste should become as unpatriotic as flag burning, and illegal as well.

Unemployment

As the economy contracts, we should not try to consume our way out of the recession. This is old, unsustainable, economics. Instead, we should learn to live with less and save more, investing those savings in a green future. To deal with unemployment, we should decouple health care and pension obligations from the employer, and make 401(k) plans mandatory, with company contributions mandatory. For small businesses, there should be a government-sponsored or adminitered plan that they can pay into, so that they can take advantage of group pricing. State and local pensions are in trouble, and pose a serious threat to the future of state budgets and services, especially in bad times. Those plans should be incorporated into thefederal pension plan. Rather than bail out GM, we should move its pension plan into the federal plan, decoupling those pension plans from the employer. This will increase job mobility, and increase the security of our retirees. The hundreds of thousands to millions of workers to be laid of by the auto industry should be put to work in the green sector, with good pay, health care, and a retirement plan that can follow them around.

In addition, I propose a 32-hour work week, with the extra day being a national "Get-R-Done" day, not to go shopping and mindlessly consume, but to accomplish the real work that needs to be done in this country (national service days to build windmills, install solar panels, build parks, plant trees, tear up decrepit roads, build open source software, help people with their taxes, replant mountaintops scraped clean by the coal industry, remove old unneeded heating oil tanks after district geothermal is installed, etc., etc.). This way, employers can hire or keep on 25% more employees (probably somewhat less, because of overhead and benefits.) We spread the work around, rather than having some of the people working 60- to 80-hour weeks, while others are unemployed or are working at low-wage McJobs.

The McJob should disappear. If a job is not worth paying a living wage, then that job should be eliminated, and the mega-corporation should go out of business. Yes, I'm talking about Wal-Mart, McDonald's, the Gap, and all of the other junk- and poison-peddlers out there. The minimum wage should be increased at a rate higher than the inflation rate until it is enough for a family of four working 64 hours per week to be above the so-called poverty line (which itself needs to be re-adjusted to reflect reality.) Once it reaches that level, it should be permanently indexed to inflation. Once again, if a job is not worth paying a living wage, then that job should disappear. We as a society should not value corporations, goods, and services that cannot survive by paying a living wage. To put it another way, the standard of living in our society is being reduced because of our wasteful lifestyle and consumption, and the rich and professional classes should bear more of the burden of that reduction. Sure, I may have to reduce my takeout ordering, but the employees at the takeout place will be able to eat out once in a while, and not have to work two or three jobs to get by.

Transportation

We should cut the federal highway budget (and unlink it from the ridiculous 21-year-old drinking age -- I am 43 and have two children, 10 and 8.) The money saved from the highway budget should go toward REMOVING highways and other roads, and replacing highway lanes with high speed rail lines. The remaining highway funds should only be used for maintaining existing lanes and bridges, not building new highways and bridges.

To help the auto industry along with its contraction, we should not pump billions into keeping the status quo. The status quo is unsustainable production and consumption of huge personal vehicles that burn liquid fuels incredibly inefficiently. The future should include penalties for driving: a higher gas tax, based on a percentage of the selling price of gasoline; fewer lanes with more high speed trains in their place; much higher excise taxes on personal vehicles, to discourage car collecting. People will respond to these incentives by moving to transportation hubs, not replacing their second or third car, and in general, driving fewer miles.

Taxes

You should consider adjusting taxes for inflation. If it can be accomplished without causing a huge drain on assets, a simple tax on consumption plus wealth, rather than income, would be very progressive and fair from an inflation standpoint. Tax at the point of consumption, and then tax whoever ended up "winning" in the economic game. This tax encourages investment, because if the rich person with wealth does not invest it, it will be taxed away. If he does invest it, he gets to keep the profits, and pays the wealth tax on all of his holdings. The consumption tax discourages consumption, which is better than taxing work, which discourages work. The consumption that is discouraged becomes investment, and helps us build more green technology.
I will stop there, and will post additional ideas on health care, "homeland security," defense, and foreign policy later.

Thanks for reading,
dino_burger

Living extra large

As I was hypermiling my way way home this afternoon, a giant SUV cut me off by making a right on red as I was making a left on a green arrow. Typical dickhead maneuver. I had to apply my brakes, which is the acid test for yielding -- if the other guy had to apply his brakes, you didn't yield. Then I noticed that Mr. D. H. was driving -- get this -- a Ford Valdez Excursion! He probably had to run the light just to make it to the next gas station without running out. The best part was when he pulled into the police station a few blocks away, and I looked at his license plate: LVNXLG.

Well, now we'll see if the surveillance extends to local police and bloggers. If you don't hear from me for a month or more, call the ACLU and inform the U.N. I used to live in that town, and felt extorted every year when the police union would call to request a donation. Which, as I found out, is not tax deductible. Which they didn't mention on their phone calls, which started out, "Don't worry, dino, your not in trouble [yet]..."

I hope he enjoys his $175 fill-ups. Dickhead.

Does fun always = wasteful?

The leisure activities that we enjoy come with a hefty price tag. For example, to go golfing, you first need a golf course, which takes up 150 acres of land, half of which is fertilized, watered, and mowed with big riding mowers. Then you need to purchase appropriate clothing - a golf shirt, shorts or pants, spiked golf shoes, and golf gloves. Then you need equipment: clubs, balls, tees, a bag to hold it all, and a cart to wheel the bag around. Next, you need to drive to the golf course (because the golf bag won't fit on the back of your bike, and besides, that would turn a six-hour morning into an eight-hour morning.) When you get there, each player is required to have his own set of equipment, so that players won't waste time waiting for a club. At some courses, you also must use a golf cart to further increase the throughput of the course.

The story is the same with skiing, boating, travel, major and minor league sporting events, or even Little League baseball. Why is everything fun so wasteful? And does it always have to be that way? Obviously not, but there does seem to be a high correlation between energy expended and units of fun. As energy gets more expensive, the price per unit of fun goes up. Finding less wasteful ways to have fun is a fun challenge in itself. Not quite as fun as zooming across Cape Cod Bay at 30 m.p.h. powered by 16 liters of gas-guzzling internal combustion chambers. Or zooming down a mountain in Utah or Montana, having flown on an airplane and been towed up the mountain to get to the starting point for fun. Just now, the kids are down at the community-owned pool (which is better than our previous private pool,) having a fun swim in 80-degree water, heated by ... propane! Doh!

I don't know where I'm going with this, so I'll just say that I'll be looking for green fun, and reporting it here.

Overwhelming

Sometimes the amount of work that remains to be done is overwhelming. I found the Zero Waste Alliance site [yesterday], just searching for "zero waste." Their goal is to transform all human activity from the linear "take, make, waste" path to a circular path that generates no waste. This is the kind of thinking that is required from today's and tomorrow's scientists and politicians to prepare us for the eventual realities of bumping up against the edges of the petri dish. It is going to take an incredible effort of education, painful social and political upheaval, and individual sacrifice to get there.

The concepts of luxury and consumption are anathema to sustainability and zero waste. Luxury is intentionally wasteful, and will not be possible at some point in the future. Taking a hot bath in potable water in the middle of the desert just doesn't make sense. Having millions of swimming pools in the desert doesn't make sense. It's very nice to take a dip in your pool when it's 115 F outside, and yes that whirlpool hot tub at the Rio is real nice. It's just not sustainable. The aviation industry makes (or loses) money by burning oil to fly people and goods from place to place. They have frequent flyer "elite" "status" "luxury" lounges and give away free seats to those who burn the most oil. That's nice, but not sustainable. I saw today that Amazon has a "green 3" program to help identify the most green products. Well, the products may be green(er), but they're still "products," and we're still expected to "consume" them.

With 6.5 billion mouths to feed, we need 10 trillion food Calories a day, or 20 exajoules (2 x 10**19 joules) of food energy per year. Photosynthesis apparently consumes about 3000 exajoules of solar energy per year. The same article says that worldwide energy consumption is 487 exajoules per year. There are good and bad sides to these numbers. On the good side, there is a tremendous amount of solar energy (3800 zettajoules, or 3,800,000 exajoules, 3.8 x 10**24 joules) added to the earth each year, so we have a great resource to use. On the bad side, to badly feed (and house, and transport, and amuse) those 6.5 billion people (How many people get 2000 Calories/day? How many get way more than that? How many get way less?), we use 25 x as much energy as the amount of energy required to feed the population.

Jeff Jacoby wrote about the coming population decline today, and I read his editorial with great interest. As usual with Jacoby, just when I think he kinda sorta almost gets it, he flips the topic on its head, and spouts ideological nonsense, providing more evidence that conservatives just stick to their ideological guns instead of evaluating evidence to form their opinion on the best way forward to meet their goals. Today, he was calling for the world, and especially the developed countries, to produce more mouths to feed. Yeah, that'll solve all our problems Jeff. Good one. He says that economic growth does not happen when population is declining, and that we need more people to keep up the growth of the economy. This is mathematical ignorance at its best. In fact, he links to an article that claims that "natural resources are not fixed, but are determined by advances in science and technology." OK, there's another good one. If we can just conjure up faster-than-light travel, we'll magically have an infinite number of perfect earths to use as feedstocks for our linear industrial processes. The fact that the earth is large compared to a human being does not mean that it is infinite. We need to deal with the fact that the earth is finite, and that everything we do as a species has to be non-consumptive, or we will use up the earth. Sure, natural processes would take over after hugely destructive wars or plagues, and rainforests and other environments would recover. However, we don't want to bump up against the edge of the petri dish -- that's where it gets uncomfortable. Population stability is a good thing, because it means that we are living in a sustainable cycle. Population decline is a good thing if it brings the species to the level of sustainability with the available technology.

We are so smart, and so good at using resources around us, that we automatically grow and consume all of the available resources. In fact, the processes that we design using our intelligence are vastly inferior to the processes that evolved in the earth's ecosystem. We have a long way to go before we can come close to a life that includes modern conveniences and comforts, but does not consume resources. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, and we will develop a hair tonic that turns our heads into phtosythesizing energy converters, and lets us multiply until we are standing each in our own hexagonal cell, covering the entire (much warmer) world, including the oceans. Won't that be fun? No. No matter what technology we develop, we need to realize the physical limits of the earth, or we will be back in the Middle Ages, except with too many people for the technology of that time (burning wood, vegetable oil, and tallow as fuel, riding horses, dying of the plague, etc.) Any technology that relies on rate of extraction that consume the resource faster than the expected lifetime of the species is inherently unsustainable, and forces the species to find another technology, perish, or revert to the evolved processes. Why not work on technology now that does not rely on extraction, and is permanently sustainable? We will be doing ourselves and all those children and great**4000-children a huge favor. If we need consuming technologies to rely on while we develop sustainable ones, that's fine, but let's recognize them for what they are: linear processes. Let's use them as crutches while we learn to walk using circular processes.

Jacoby says that wealth is not a zero-sum game, and I agree. However, with our advances in technology, we don't have to accept the old economic theories any more. We can advance our standard of living while at the same time maintaining a stable population, well within the limits dictated by natural fluctuations in processes that we rely on (rains, droughts, tough winters, floods, hurricanes, pests, sunspots, movement of the earth's crust.) Old economics (and Jacoby's pals) assumes infinite resources, requires "growth," and ignores the reality that we live in a finite world. New economic theories are needed to reflect reality and push us toward sustainability. I don't have those theories at hand, but I'll be looking for them.

Greensmoke

I checked out a few minutes of the new Planet Green channel yesterday, and I saw:

1) Someone supposedly teaching a family about how to reduce their carbon footprint take TWO MOTORCYCLES "out for a ride" after informing him that his motorcycle gets much better mileage than his gigantic truck or SUV or whatever else he was driving. First, TWO people can fit on ONE MOTORCYCLE! Second, if you want to save fuel, DON'T JUST GO FOR A RIDE!

2) A dick-swinging contest between a gas (or maybe diesel, don't know) truck and a hybrid truck. The two categories I saw were a speed competition around a rocky and hilly track, and an on-ramp pickup competition. Which one would I buy? NEITHER! And I wouldn't care how fast it goes on a rocky course either, nor how fast I can go from 0-60.

c) A "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"-esque blip about obscenely expensive handbags being available for rent. What?!

These people are just blowing green smoke up their asses. The remaining supplies of oil and gas need to be used to develop ways to make the energy industry sustainable, not "taking a ride" or "Look out! Big truck comin'" or making fashion statements. (For whatever reason, I can't find a video of that Ford ad. Maybe they removed all references to it. Or maybe it's a Chevy ad. But the customer says that line, and he's not a toddler.) How about a show where they teach us how to create a seasonal thermal store?

How about a steel plant that uses no fossil fuel? Or a glass plant that uses no fossil fuel? Apparently, the greenest glass making process still uses natural gas and oxygen to get the glass up to temperature. Without these plants, there will be no solar panel manufacturing process, and without that, all of the solar panels that will be installed over the next 20 years will eventually malfunction and stop producing electricity.

Speaking of unsustainable, our project to reduce the amount and cost of heating oil used is moving along. My wife sewed the first drape yesterday. A long, long way to go, but it's an encouraging start.

Drapes - first steps

We measured, marked, and 'membered everything for the thermal drapes in Coffee Jones' studio, which is a) the coldest place in the house, and 2) is out of sight, and so is an ideal test case. Coffee bought 12 yards of the insulating material, and a few other items, such as plastic rings, that we need for making the drapes. So far, we're in for about $30 of startup costs, and $640 in materials for the first window. That's a marginal cost of about $5.50/square foot of window. At a savings of 25 BTUs/square foot/hour (with a 40F temperature differential and $4.50/gallon heating fuel) that's a payback of 6844 hours, or 285 days. That sounds like about 3 years or so, considering that we use the heat for 7 months out of the year, and the temperature differential does not average 40 degrees.

We paid $6730 for heating oil this past season. We'll see how we do next season. Just as it was when I was growing up in New Hampshire chopping wood, there are two seasons: winter and getting ready for winter.

Water bill

The water bill just arrived for the last 7-1/2 months, and it is clear that we have plenty of work to do in this area. The main problem is that the pipes in our house have frozen in past winters, and the town tells us to run a faucet at a pencil-diameter stream from December through March. This keeps the water moving from the main into our line, and prevents freezing at that junction. They then adjust the bill for that usage. This mitigation has been going on since about 1980 or so. Apparently, it is cheaper for the town to do this than it is for them to dig up the street when the pipes freeze out at the street. So, we ran the water during the winter, and I couldn't really come up with a workable idea for using the water. We do have a large Finnish soaking tub where we could store a few hundred gallons, but, according to the town, we used 6800 cubic feet, which is 51000 gallons. We would have to fill and empty the giant tub at least once a day, and what to do with the water? Make a skating rink the size of Boston Garden? Buy 6 tanker trucks, and use the water to fill the community pool in the spring? Somehow run it down to the local farm for springtime irrigation? Disobey the town and let the pipes freeze? It makes me ill.

The second problem is that the town calculated our household's usage at 4200 cubic feet, or 31500 gallons, or 3-1/2 tanker trucks' full. Over 220 days, that's 143 gallons a day -- way too much. As a check, I just looked the water meter, and we've used 1215 cubic feet -- one tanker truck -- since April 1. That's 174 gallons a day -- we're getting worse! Or, possibly, the town uses a standard allowance for the winter offset, and we poured less than 51000 gallons down the drain last winter. If they use 450 gallons a day as the standard, that would make sense.

While I'm trying to think of ideas for using all of that wasted water, I might as well gather the low-hanging fruit of savings in our daily usage. We take an average of 4 showers a day, using probably 85 gallons. We do an average of a load of laundry a day, using about 15 gallons. We run the dishwasher once a day, using say 10 gallons. OK, that leaves toilet flushing, hand washing, and "rinsing". If we say 70 gallons are for flushing, then we could cut that down to 22 gallons, but only by replacing 4 toilets. At our marginal water/sewer rate of $13.88/100 cubic feet, we would save about $325/year (and almost two tanker trucks per year). But the savings would also bring our marginal rate down to $8.72/100 cubic feet, giving savings of about $210/year. So it would take several years to pay for itself. However, we have some pending repair costs for our existing antique modern toilets, so if I count those costs as saved, the payback time is shorter.