Earth Lessons 101

Galveston, Texas is a skillet-flat island, “protected” by a seawall 10 miles long and 17 feet high. Nestled between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, New Orleans is a bowl, half of it below sea level. Fly into or out of Los Angeles, and look down; what you see is an oven, a desert that is home to more than twelve million people, America’s most populous metropolitan area.

None of these places is really year-round habitable for large populations in any kind of a sustained way.

I grew up taking for granted the idea that we could do whatever we wanted to do: meaning not just Americans, but people in general—or perhaps, more clearly defined, Industreo-Sapiens.

The idea that weather, of whatever kind, would stop us from doing what we felt we needed to do was silly. I can recall one or two blizzards that brought my world to a standstill—a cool kind of snow globe effect—that’s about it.

Wind? Rain? Water?

That was Three Little Pigs stuff.

We didn’t live in houses made out of straw or sticks.

If rivers were in the wrong places, or didn’t behave civilly, they would, of course be moved. If we wanted to live someplace where there wasn’t water, water would be brought to us—endless water at no real cost, gushing from the tap whenever we wanted it.

Roads went over or through mountains or we just took the mountains down.

For a good hundred and fifty years or so, from the end of the Civil War to the end of the 20^th Century, industrialized countries had their way with the world, remaking it, just one big sandbox to play in.

And now the world seems inclined to restore (dis)order and go back to business as usual, which is the planet having its way with us.

What allowed us to control the sandbox, of course, was the freewheeling use of relatively cheap energy. That era is coming rapidly to a close. At the same time, the environmental bill is coming due for the atmospheric impact of that energy use:

Galveston’s seawall isn’t going to do well as the oceans rise; ditto New Orleans levees, arrayed against an increasingly surly climate; LA is heading for the opposite problem—it’s going to be drier than prohibition ever made it.

I’ve never been particularly comfortable with the “live in harmony with Mother Earth” strand of environmentalism. It isn’t that I much disagree with the principles; rather, I find it too easily merges into a judgmental stance that treats the way we live as “sinful” rather than “unsustainable.”

We can put together equations to argue about sustainability (I hear LA has five years of water left, then comes the real crisis). Arguing about who or what is sinful is rather more nebulous and a lot more personal.

I’m under no illusion that people are going to begin—calmly, rationally, and in organized fashion—migrating away from the (very popular) parts of the country that are increasingly unsafe or where the population levels are unsustainable.

But part of growing up is learning that you can’t do anything you want to do. And mostly, unfortunately, that’s a lesson learned the hard way.

Mayor Bloomberg and the Utility of Futile Proposals

I didn’t start out inclined to like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Billionaire Biz Guy basically buys mayor’s manse—and then doesn’t live there because it isn’t swank enough. What’s to like?

But I’ve come to a position of grudging admiration. He’s a bland technocrat, but he focuses on getting things done. And, unlike his fellow Republicans (elected as a RiNO—a Republican in Name Only—now identifies as an Independent) he actually matches rhetoric about balancing budgets with—gasp!—consistent work to actually balance budgets, including raising taxes (!) when that’s what’s required to provide the services that people demand, without running a deficit.

What I especially admire, however, is Bloomberg’s willingness to move forward in the face of resistance and/or failure, particularly with regard to energy and environmental proposals.

In April of 2007—for Earth Day—he rolled out 127 proposals for “greening” New York City, from Brownfield cleanups to energy efficiency programs to park expansions.

He proposed congestion pricing for automobiles in mid-Manhattan—modeled on the program that London put into place in February 2003, and expanded in February 2007.

Most recently, he has focused on expanding wind energy production in and around New York City, on bridges, skyscrapers, etc.

Congestion pricing was shot down by the politicos in Albany who exercise unconscionable authority over what the city can and cannot do.

In at least some quarters, urban wind energy is being derided as everything from impractical to dangerous.

Bloomberg is right about congestion pricing; and alternative energy sources should be pursued wherever and whenever they can be—if they don’t prove out in certain contexts, they should be abandoned.

But it’s particularly laudable that Bloomberg is willing to FIGHT for things he believes in; it’s easy enough to give people what they want or to do things that enjoy broad and uncritical support. It’s more difficult, particularly for politicians, to buck trends.

American politicians and activists have often been at their best when they took those risky but principled stands: That’s what the anti-slavery movement did for decades; that’s what women’s rights movements have done going back at least as far as the founding of this country; that’s what mainstream politicians today (like Maverick McCain and Changeling Obama) seem to have so much trouble doing.

“We are AGAINST drilling offshore drilling!” they both told us.

Oh. . . public opinion has changed?

In that case. . .

From Obama: We are willing to look at drilling.

From McCain: “Drill Here! Drill Now!” Drill, Drill, Drill!!

Perhaps Bloomberg would be the same (constructively intransigent?) if he were only a millionaire politician—like McBama. But it looks more like it takes billions for a politician to actually stand firm.

Sad.

I’d Like to Take the Train, But. . .

I commute by car, a hundred mile round trip—forgive me Mother Earth, for I have sinned. I usually don’t have to do this more than two or three times a week (lots of telecommuting), and I drive the highest mpg car ever offered to consumers. Still. . .

Worcester, Massachusetts where I live, is just over forty miles due west of Boston/Cambridge. And there is a mass transit connection. . . sorta. A little while back, I thought I would take the train in. An experiment, to see how that would work. Because it’s easy to pester people about how “we” need to use mass transit more. Lots of places, when you actually try to use mass transit. . .

Well, here’s how it worked.

I was dropped off at 10AM at Worcester’s Union Station (a gorgeous old building, from the hey day of rail travel, vacant and crumbling for years, then revived in the late 1990s—with mixed results—as an “intermodal transportation center”). Amtrak service is almost nonexistent; the Lake Shore Limited comes through twice a day: heading west, on the way to Chicago; heading east, on the way to Boston. There’s a bus port, served by Greyhound and Trailways. Commuter rail is run by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA)—or just “The T,” the greater Boston transit system: ten trains in (six before noon) and ten trains out (eight after noon) on weekdays.

How late was the 10:30 train I was trying to catch? It NEVER came.

First there were digital sign updates: Train Late; Track Fire. Then there were public address system announcements to the same effect. After almost an hour, there was an announcement that a bus would be sent to take train passengers to Framingham, about halfway to Boston.

I should pause here to note that, while the early morning trains may be populated by business people commuting in to Boston, the people waiting for the 10:30 train appeared to be mostly poor, a good percentage of them speakers of languages other than English, and a sprinkling of people with physical disabilities. Almost half of the passengers simply wandered away; they didn’t seem to know where they should go or what they should do.

I went downstairs to the bus port, where I assumed the bus would pull in. The long distance bus people yelled at me irritably, said they had no idea what bus I was talking about and it wasn’t their problem anyway.

I tried to find an MBTA employee to ask for information. Couldn’t find one anywhere in the facility.

Finally, I called MBTA Central, in Boston, to ask where I should go. It was news to them that there was any problem with the Worcester train, but they put me on hold and gamely pursued information on my behalf. After ten or fifteen minutes, I was told the MBTA bus would pull up in front of the train station.

Around noon, it did. It took (fewer than half of) us to Framingham, where they were holding a Boston-bound train. Slowed by track work in a few places, the train eventually got us to South Station; from there, I took the subway to Kendall Square; from there, I walked to my office.

Time, door-to-door: four hours. Door-to-door time, on the way home, without incident: two hours. Time, door-to-door, when I drive (off peak, without traffic or weather problems): one hour.

I would like to say “I am sure,” I’ll say instead “I hope” this was a freakishly unusual problem. But it just reinforced my feeling that taking mass transit to work isn’t an option for me right now. I could adjust to a four hour roundtrip commute; I’m not much on working on the train, but I guess I’d have to learn.

But I can’t fail to show up at meetings and classes. How much time would I have to allow to give myself a reasonable margin of error? Three hours each way? On my test trip, four hours would have been just enough.

The MBTA’s Worcester Line has a variety of problems. At the top of the list, the MBTA doesn’t own the tracks. The freight operator CSX does, so their trains have priority. But the frequency and reliability problems feed a vicious cycle that has long crippled mass transit: there aren’t enough trains and they aren’t reliable, so lots of people won’t take them.

Few riders, few trains; few trains, few riders.

Personally, I’d like to see a maglev train from Boston to Albany, along the right of way of the Mass Pike, stopping at rest stop Park & Ride lots, with either buses or light rail creating feeder lines to city centers along the way.

Not holding my breath. . .

The Bizarre and Depressing Politics of Energy Production

Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats are in the process of doing a slo-mo cave, on opening up parts of the US continental shelf to oil drilling. John McCain did that reversal sooner, faster, and better, quickly turning his rallies into DrillFest ’08: “We’re gonna drill here! We’re gonna drill now!”

Another nail in the coffin of John McCain the Maverick Truth Teller; the will or capacity of the Democrats to stand up for principle was cremated long ago, a thin envelope of ash on the national mantelpiece.

The reasons for these shifts are not obscure: a majority of Americans turned on a dime as the price of gasoline soared and now (sorta) favor drilling. While we might see the political reaction to this as “responsiveness to the electorate,” however destructive the result, it’s worth noting that the fact that a majority of Americans also favor universal healthcare has not made politicians snap to in quite the same way.

Could this be because when you do what the energy companies want on drilling, you get money, and when you do what the people want on healthcare, you lose money from the insurance, pharmaceutical, and healthcare companies?

It’s almost not worth rehearsing the reasons increased domestic drilling won’t meaningfully impact the price of oil or gasoline (certainly not quickly, likely not ever): it would take a decade, under the best of circumstances, to bring new sources on line; the amount, in relation both to domestic and to (growing) global demand would be trivial.

The arguments for not drilling are also not terribly new or different: despoiling coasts BAD (including the economic danger to fishing and tourist industries); extending and increasing the use of fossil fuels STUPID (if your basement is flooding, it doesn’t make sense to run down there and see how many more spigots you can open).

I apologize for attempting to look at these things with a modicum of logic; I know that’s not cool. The Republicans have built a substantial industry, going back three decades now, of responding to conservation (and other) issues not with measured rational responses but with ridicule. This is the Bully in the High School Cafeteria political strategy.

Jimmy Carter is arguing that we save energy?

Nice sweater Poindexter!

Logging is endangering ecosystems?

Namby Pamby lefties favor owls over jobs!

Obama suggests efficiency measures?

Here’s Obama’s energy policy: a tire gauge!

I’m not much of a (lesser of the two evils) Obama fan; he’s begun to hedge on drilling as well. But it seems (again, I apologize) logical to me, that we would do better to rely on measures that we can take today, on our own, and at no significant net cost, rather than trusting that feeding more of our environment to ExxonMobil and friends will help us on the energy front.

Less Money for Mass Transit?

We’re driving less. And that’s good. This has reduced gas tax revenues. And that’s unfortunate. So the Bush Administration has proposed taking money out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund’s mass transit account to make up the resulting shortfall in the highway account. And that’s insane.

Taking this step would require Congressional approval, so, again, we will see if the Dems have a modicum of spine and can stand up to the president. The house has already passed a bill that would provide $8 billion in general revenue funding for highways—but, of course, the administration is threatening to veto that bill. The president considers that latter alternative irresponsible spending.

Bridges to Nowhere aside, I don’t have a problem with reasonable highway funding. We have ignored our infrastructure to the point where it is literally collapsing. We need a Manhattan Project to blanket the nation in high speed rail, but we will still need roads.

Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters has said that she will soon announce a plan to fund highways using private capital and increased (and variable) use of tolls. I don’t have a problem with that last part. We ought to pay more to drive; varying that cost, day to day, hour to hour, is a good way to work toward “balancing the load,” encouraging people to drive less at peak times.

Don’t like the smell of “private capital” in this context, though. For a number of years now deals have been both proposed and consummated to give 99 year leases to private road operators in exchange for either cash up front or regular rental fees on highways, bridges, and turnpikes. Foreign companies like the Australian toll-road operator MIG and the Spanish road operator Cintra have been heavily involved in this practice—as have the Iraq War pirates at KBR. This list may be a little out of date, but gives a quick overview.

The idea that “private is always better” has never made sense to me. Paul Krugman has written extensively about the relative efficiency of the VA medical system versus private insurance, for example.

If private companies expect to reap substantial profits by “taxing” drivers and paying for road maintenance, the government should be able to do the same at a significant savings. Market ideology aside, perhaps they are hoping to avoid the backlash that might be expected if governments, local, state, or federal, began routinely charging us to drive.

Given the growing rage at illegal immigration, outsourcing, and matters of national sovereignty, hard to see how there won’t be one helluva backlash from people who have to pay Australians for the right to drive through Indiana.

I’m willing to buy train technology from the Japanese; I don’t like the idea of renting anyone our roads. And the idea that we ought to fund highway projects by further impoverishing our sparse mass transit infrastructure is. . . just insane.

Is Climate Change More Controversial Than Religion?

You may already know that various companies will now let you design and print out your very own, usable-on-letters, US Postage Stamps: pictures of your new baby, your kitten walking the piano keys, your dog playing poker, all of that is fine.

But there are limits.

Turns out—surprise!—I went beyond the limits. I wanted to produce a stamp along the lines of the image on the right margin there—the logo with the green bars on the sides.

NOT ALLOWED.

The rejection cited alleged federal regs which purport to ban the production of any stamp which, “Incorporates material the primary purpose of which is to advocate or protest any particular religious, social, political, legal or moral agenda of any person or entity.”

Hmmmmm. . . .

That’s kinda funny. Cuz every year, the postal service puts out a Madonna and Child Christmas stamp. Here’s the most recent one:

http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2007/pr07_ma1019.htm

I will leave aside broader issues of church and state and entanglement and the degree to which this might diminish both government and religion (because that’s not what I am here to rant about).

Having more than a little trouble, though, understanding, how this doesn’t amount to “advocating a particular religious agenda” and how it is a more grave, and therefore impermissible, violation to argue against. . . pollution?

I’m in touch with the USPS Legal Department, the ACLU, both of my senators and my congressman. We’ll see. . .

We Really Do Need Gummint Action

There’s all sorts of stuff we can and should be doing individually to create more sustainable energy systems and lifestyles. But in the end, the important changes that have to take place are systemic. We need gummint.

President Bush, in comments yesterday about the wonderful state to which his policies have brought the US economy said, in response to questions: 1. The government should not interfere in the economy by bailing out private investors, (“If your question is, ‘Should the government bail out private enterprise?’ the answer is no, it shouldn't.”) and; 2. Don’t worry, the FEDERAL Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will continue to resuscitate failed banks (“My hope is, is that people take a deep breath and realize that their deposits are protected by our government”).

Well, he got that last part right, anyway (even a broken clock is right twice a day).

The VP, Lord Cheney, has famously derided conservation as “personal virtue.” While I applaud his willingness as a politician to publicly come out foursquare against virtue, this says a lot more about the real attitude of the hydrocarbon(aholic) industries than a New York Times full of pious ads about how they are diligently working to transition us off oil, coal, and gas, into a bright, clean, sustainable future.

The allegedly market-driven conservatives (subsidies for me, the bill for you) seem constitutionally unable even to get “incentivizing” right. Attempting to burnish both his green and bidness credentials, John McCain has suggested a $300 million dollar prize for the next gen battery capable of powering a plug-in hybrid.

News Flash: The company that develops this battery is not going to need the money once they succeed!

It would make a lot more sense to parcel this money out for research, cut any way you want. For purposes of comparison, MITs Technology Review reports that, “In 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) devoted nearly $50 million to research and development for vehicle-related energy storage.”

We have inflated and popped any number of alternative energy bubbles in the last three decades (recall Uncle Reagan, upon taking office, tearing the solar panels off the White House roof—take that Saudi Arabia!).

We don’t price energy to reflect its true cost; we consistently and heavily subsidize rich, polluting, unsustainable energy companies, and; we turn on and off the trickle of subsidy to alternative energy companies—giving and then taking away tax breaks, for example.

We need government policies that support and help create a sustainable future rather than pouring money down the rat hole of the unsustainable hydrocarbon-based technologies of the past. We need politicians willing to do more than simply mouth supportive but empty platitudes.