The long term view on energy
Posted: 03/28/2011 Filed under: climate change, Sustainability | Tags: Electric power transmission, Energy policy, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, high voltage transmission lines, infrastructure, Sustainability, United States, United States Fifth Fleet Leave a comment »We have an energy problem in this country. Our government, like our businesses, looks to the next political quarter instead of the long term. A few weeks ago, President Obama spoke to reporters about the need to create a long-term energy strategy, and reduce our dependence on oil. Unfortunately, each of the last seven Presidents has said exactly the same thing. I personally defended Persian Gulf Oil in the Middle East, enforcing United Nations sanctions against Iraq, which amounted to an oil embargo. I saw the United States Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, up close. I can say that maintaining a base in Bahrain does not come cheap. Why do I bring this up? Our government spends a substantial amount of money subsidizing energy. Additionally, the government does not regulate carbon, which means the external costs of the greenhouse gas emissions are borne by the general public. Finally, fossil fuels have significant health impacts. Over 10,000 people a year die from the particles emitted by coal-fired plants. Additionally, hundreds of miners die quietly around the world. As we watch the nuclear calamity that is taking place in Japan, it would be wise for us to consider the role of the Federal Government in creating this energy policy, and the failure of President after President to chart a new course for the United States with regards to energy policy.
We have an elaborate electricity grid, an infrastructure that badly needs modernized. Consumers are ignorant for the most part about where their electricity comes from, they just want to be able to flip the switch and power their gear, without having to pay too much. Unfortunately, the myth of cheap energy has Americans convinced that it is our divine right to $.99/gallon gasoline and cheap electricity. Our development in sprawled across the country, and people still pine for that isolated lot with two acres and a great view. Unfortunately, without cheap energy, our house of cards will fall apart.
The Federal Government is positioned to help bring our country into the 21st Century. First of all, our electricity infrastructure needs updated. One agency that has a big role in the energy sector is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). FERC has jurisdiction over interstate electricity transmission, through the Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act (PURPA). FERC is attempting to build new, modernized high power transmission lines for renewable energy; however, they face opposition at both the state level as well as from utility trade groups like the Coalition for Fair Transmission Policy. The commission represents utilities that want to make sure the costs of those lines are borne by the folks getting the power. Ultimately, between NIMBY concerns over siting new lines, and fights over who will pay, these are many obstacles to creating a new infrastructure capable of empowering large-scale clean energy production. The Federal Government can also nurture decentralized, local renewable power generation through policies like Feed-in Tariffs.
With energy consumption in transportation, our sprawled development is problematic. Government needs to encourage smart growth, as it will pay dividends on lowering per capita energy consumption. For example, in Southeastern Massachusetts, a commuter rail line is being designed to consider smart growth when planning station locations. However, transportation consumption revolves around the automobile. The Obama administration did a good job of getting automobile manufacturers to support a significant increase in CAFE standards. While it is not as progressive as Europe or Asia’s standards, it is still a significant improvement over Bush policies, and the rare effort that is supported by all stakeholders. One long-term issue for our transportation sector is what fuel will be used, and the infrastructure to use it. Right now we are invested in a gasoline infrastructure. Electricity is a more sensible step, but the authors here advocate for hydrogen. Hydrogen would require a significant investment in infrastructure; additionally, as a fuel, to provide the range expected of modern consumers, it must be highly pressurized – making it very difficult to use as a transportation fuel, especially in automobiles. Whatever route we go, it will be incumbent on the Federal Government to work with stakeholders to build the infrastructure necessary to support whatever becomes the ‘new’ fuel.
Ultimately, the main hurdle to the Federal Government charting a long-term energy policy is political will. President Clinton hit the third rail when he proposed a Carbon tax early in his first term. Both parties define prosperity around energy consumption. The Democrats frame clean energy development as “Green Jobs” but haven’t challenged the Republican Party, or the American people, to seriously confront climate change, peak oil, or the various external costs of fossil fuels. The myth of cheap energy goes on. As it does, so does the piecemeal Federal energy policy, from President to President.
Animal Spirits
Posted: 03/23/2011 Filed under: Financial Reform, Sustainability | Tags: American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, animal spirits, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, George Akerlof, Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, neo-classical economics, Republican Party, Robert Schiller, stimulus, United States Leave a comment »
On the cover of the paperback version of George Akerlof and Robert Schiller’s Animal Spirits, the blurb, from Time’s Michael Grunwald, is “Animal Sprits [is]… the new must read in Obamaworld.” In March of 2011, two years after President Obama took office and Animal Spirits was first published, it is clear that the President and his economic team were reading from this playbook. However, it is also clear that the President missed an opportunity to communicate to the public why he took the actions that he did. As the United States moves forward in a so-called jobless recovery, and divisiveness and friction rule across D.C. and the country, our economic policy is hobbled and scattershot. Support for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has wavered in the last two years, and the public’s drop in support killed any political will for more stimulus spending. The public apprehension and political failures are ironic, actually, because in Animal Spirits, Akerlof and Schiller write about an earlier misinterpretation of Keynesian economics, during the Great Depression.
In 1936 John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money was published. Keynes charted a course between classical economists that argued that less regulation would allow private markets and rational actors, via the famous ‘invisible hand,’ to create jobs, and socialists that argued for the state to direct the economy. Instead, Keynes took issue with the idea that only rational actors governed the economy; he believed that noneconomic, non-rational, animal spirits actually caused involuntary unemployment and economic fluctuation. The government should not be too authoritarian, like the socialists argued, but it should also not be too permissive, like the classical economists argued. Unfortunately, in an effort to create consensus with classical economists, supporters of Keynes removed most of the animal spirits, hoping that they could convince the broad public as quickly as possible to adopt Keynes’ fiscal policy prescriptions (just like President Obama allowed political expediency to rule his economic platform). Unfortunately, this watered down theory was vulnerable to critique by neo-classical economists like Milton Friedman. The central thesis of Akerlof and Schiller’s book is that these animal spirits, cast off in the midst of the Great Depression, remain a prime cause of our contemporary economic difficulties. In fact, these ideas have emerged once again in the field of behavioral economics.
There are five animal spirits that the authors resurrect from The General Theory:
1) Confidence, the trust and belief that leads rational actors to make some irrational decisions, which amplifies business cycles
2) Fairness, often pushed to the backburner in economic textbooks, often trumps economic concerns and impacts both wages and prices
3) Corrupt Behavior and Bad Faith, economic activity with sinister motivation, was clearly evident in the recent economic crisis and recession, but can be clearly traced back through all of the major economic bumps in our past
4) Money illusion, disavowed by neo-classical economists like Milton Friedman, remains a contemporary concern as people continue to be confused about the impact of inflation and deflation
5) Stories, the narratives we create to describe human experience, often seem true and nurture speculative bubbles (like the housing bubble) until the bubble pops and the story changes
In the aftermath of the global economic shock, when many of the great economies of the world continue to stumble towards recovery, Akerlof and Schiller’s analysis is perfectly timed. They clearly trace the impact of these animal spirits on the economy, from the Great Depression through the stagflation of the 1970s, through the recessions and the Savings & Loans crises of the 1980s, the recession and the tech bubble of the 1990s, and finally to the Enron debacle, the housing bubble, and the jobless recoveries of our recent past. Akerlof and Schiller are true Keynesians; they appreciate the power of the free market to create economic opportunity, but they also appreciate the damage that these animal spirits can make in the economy. The vast neo-classical deregulation that started in the 1970s and continued through the last decade did not take into account these Animal Spirits, and the vast economic turmoil was the result.
Confidence is one of the most important animal spirits – it leads ‘rational actors’ to what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan described as “Irrational exuberance.” If one looks back to the stock market of the 1890s or the 1920s, or the tech and housing bubble of our recent past, confidence is clearly evident. Remember in 2004 when some of your friends said that housing prices could never fall? That is confidence gone astray, irrational exuberance. That is also a story that we all told each other, which seemed irrefutable logic, until it wasn’t.
Fairness has a big impact on unemployment. The neo-classical theories about how a labor market would clear itself revolve around wage efficiency, the idea that employers will pay the lowest wage and employ as many people as possible. Unfortunately, the labor contract is more complicated than that, and the transaction only starts when the wage is agreed upon. Schiller and Akerlof show that wages vary a great deal, and employers often pay more than they need to, to secure a motivated and skilled workforce. Fairness affects both the employer and the employee. The wage that workers deem fair is almost always above the market-clearing wage; this ensures that wages will remain sticky even during economic downturns, despite the fact that the ranks of the unemployed grow.
Money illusion also impacts wages; neo-classical economists argue that there is a Natural Rate of unemployment, but wage rigidity is partly due to the fact that people are largely unaware of the impact of inflation or deflation on their purchasing power. A survey they conducted with a group of economists and a second group representing the general public shows the money illusion clearly: reacting to the statement “I think if my pay went up I would feel more satisfaction… even if prices went up as much,” 90% of the economists disagreed, while 59% of the general public agreed. Fairness and money illusion clearly affect the setting of wages, behind the scenes of economic logic. Akerlof and Schiller argue that we should “fire the forecaster,” and forget, once and for all, the myth that capitalism is pure. They argue that safeguards must be built to protect the general public from the excesses of capitalism. They also make clear that the stories that we tell each other are often irrational and exaggerated, and we must be protected from these exaggerations.
Like I mentioned above, it is clear the Obama Administration used Animal Spirits as a playbook in their efforts to prevent the economy from falling into a Depression. Schiller and Akerlof advocated the use of the Discount window, as well as other provisions taken by both the Federal Reserve as well as the Treasury Department to prop up the banks. To their credit, they also predicted that “the injections may make the banks richer, and therefore less likely to become insolvent, but they will not necessarily lend more money.” As a result, the Government ended up taking extraordinary measures to ensure that money was available for mortgages and loans.
Ultimately, the actions taken by the Administration fell short of what Keynes, or Schiller and Akerlof would advocate. The stimulus was insufficient, and the government did not act aggressively enough to regulate the banks. But like the Gulf Oil spill last summer, I think the biggest loss was the failure to take advantage of the moment to educate the General Public of the external costs of our capitalist economy. If a better effort were made to explain to the general public the Animal Spirits, how they impact the economy, and the logic of the stimulus and TARP, our response could have been more sustained, more consistent, and less contentious. Keynesian economics could have stepped into the clear light of day, but instead the lessons of these animal spirits and their impact on the economy remain lost to much of the general public. Because the problem of Too Big To Fail was not confronted, we will undoubtedly once again be in a position to deal with the consequences of leverage and risk that these global institutions create.
Not In MY Backyard (NIMBY)
Posted: 03/17/2011 Filed under: climate change, Sustainability, wind power | Tags: Clean Energy, Coal, earthquake, Energy, external costs, Gwyneth Cravens, high voltage transmission lines, hydraulic fracturing, Japan, Marcellus Shale, Natural Gas, NIMBY, Nuclear Power, Renewable, Solar Power, Sustainability, Talk of the Nation, tsunami, Wind Power, Wind turbine Leave a comment »We have an energy problem. At the end of the day, no energy source is free. We all want energy that is readily available, reliable, and without external costs. We want to be able to cheaply power our HDTV, our car, and our furnace. We want our supply chains to be affordable, so prices will be low. In short, we want the magic elixir that will allow us to carry on in our current configuration without having to change.
Unfortunately, we are painfully unaware of the external costs of the energy we produce. Gwyneth Cravens, on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, spoke about the cost of coal:
“But I would just like to remind people that over 10,000 people a year die in the United States alone from fine particulates from coal-fired plants, which, incidentally, spew out more – it’s a low-dose radioactive material, but burning coal concentrates uranium and radon – radium, and so on. And so in the coal ash, the waste which lies around in unlined pits, there’s enough in the coal ash of one big coal-fired plant to make about six atomic bombs, uranium 235. So the – and the stuff coming out of the stacks looks – you know, you don’t see the soot anymore so much, but you see – or you don’t – what you don’t see are these invisible gases, sulfur and nitrogen gases which turn into fine particulates when they’re combined with water vapor and get into the airways of our lungs and kill people with lung cancer and heart disease. So this is an ongoing catastrophe, along with ocean acidification. As the ocean takes up more carbon dioxide, the water becomes more acidic. This is beginning to affect shelled organisms like corals. They can’t make the calcium carbonate shells in the acidic waters. And so – and about three million people a year die from fossil fuel combustion pollution worldwide. We have to think about how to provide base-load electricity – that is 24/7, around-the-clock electricity. We are witnessing in Japan what happens when you don’t have electricity and how terrible that is for people from the health point of view alone.”
In Japan, we are seeing at Fukushima Daiichi what a 9.0 Earthquake and a massive tsunami can do to the best laid plans of mice and men. Opposition to wind turbines remains strong here in New England. In Rhode Island, where I live, there is ongoing opposition to a Liquid Natural Gas terminal in Mt. Hope Bay. More broadly, opposition is growing to hydrofracking of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and across the country. Large scale renewable energy projects are challenged by environmentalists (like the large scale solar project in California) and by parents (opposition to the construction of high-power transmission lines). In individual communities, wealthy homeowners fight the construction of wind turbines and solar panels.
Does anyone else see this? We live under the myth that there is a cheap source of energy without cost out there. Our gasoline, which we import mostly, must be defended by the Fifth Fleet (in Bahrain, where Shiites are rising up against the Sunni king) and heavily subsidized. The greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles are not without cost, as much as denialists would like to believe. Because we remain under the spell of the cheap energy myth, some of us remain willing to accept the costs of hydrofracking (water) and coal (see above quote). We compare the cost of renewable energy to the cost of natural gas and coal, and ignore the external costs, and say that renewable energy is too expensive. Unfortunately, our cheap energy is simply not sustainable.
If we were smart, we would realize that 1) there is no perfect, cheap, elixir out there. We need to take into account the external costs and start planning a smart, renewable energy future. We would also realize that 2) NIMBY is the enemy of planning a smart energy future. People want to plug in their laptop or their iron, and remain ignorant of where that power comes from and how it arrives at their outlet. People want their homes to be just the right temperature in the summer and winter, and not recognize the cost of doing so. People want to live in the suburbs, and commute long distances to work, to karate practice, to visit Disneyland. Yet, people get upset when a wind turbine goes up, or when talk of a new transmission line starts. NIMBY is simply not sustainable. If we truly understood the costs of the energy we use, we would use less of it, we would be much more efficient, we would plan for the long term instead of just one quarter ahead.
What do we need? We need a smart grid, decentralized power generation, a diverse mixture of renewable energy, state of the art nuclear power, and some fossil fuels, and above all else we need to place a price on carbon. Energy will not be cheap, but we fool ourselves if we believe it is cheap today. We need to embrace the future, instead of wishing we could return back to 1890. If we don’t of course, we will eventually fall out of the cheap energy spell, but we will start kicking ourselves for not recognizing it sooner.
Is the Earth sacred?
Posted: 03/07/2011 Filed under: Sustainability Leave a comment »Today the unsustainable behavior of one species now impacts the entire planet Earth, from mountain glaciers to the depths of the oceans. We humans don’t really consider ourselves to be one species among many; rather, we consider ourselves as nations, races, ethnic groups, even economic functionaries. The Book of Genesis frames our power over other species when it states, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, sacredness is “the power, being, or realm understood by religious persons to be at the core of existence and to have a transformative effect on their lives and destinies.” The Oxford American dictionary defines sacred as “connected to God (or the Gods) and dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration.” Is the Earth a sacred place, and if so, are we treating it like one?
Thomas Berry, in his essay “Earth as Sacred Community,” examines the Biblical context of the sacred and the divine, and finds that, “Within the Biblical context, the continuity of the divine presence with the natural world was altered by establishing the divine as a transcendent personality creating a world entirely distinct from itself… Only the human really belonged to the sacred community of the redeemed.” That distinction is important, because in the Biblical framework, the primary human concern is to find Eternal Salvation in a Heavenly Kingdom. The earth, then, is merely a way station on our journey to Salvation, not necessarily a place to live in a divine presence.
Within the Biblical context, we may have exercised our “dominion” a bit too far. Wendell Berry, in his essay “A Native Hill,” writes that “We have lived by the assumption that what is good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed the standard of our behavior towards the world – to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and everything living in it.”
However, can we find in our religious traditions a sacred connection to the world around us? Certainly, we can find it in various Native American and Asian religious traditions. Today, many Christians are reconsidering their view of the sacred, from the growing Interfaith Power and Light movement, to the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative. The Southern Baptist declaration reads that, “There is undeniable evidence that the earth—wildlife, water, land and air—can be damaged by human activity, and that people suffer as a result. When this happens, it is especially egregious because creation serves as revelation of God’s presence, majesty and provision. Though not every person will physically hear God’s revelation found in Scripture, all people have access to God’s cosmic revelation: the heavens, the waters, natural order, the beauty of nature (Psalm 19; Romans 1).” As we reconsider our giant footprint on the Earth, that notion of sacredness is an important part of our efforts to live sustainably.
Paul Greenberg’s Four Fish
Posted: 02/24/2011 Filed under: Rhode Island, Sustainability | Tags: barramundi, bass, bluefin tuna, cod, Connecticut, Fish, Fishery, Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, Japan, Kona Kampachi, monkfish, Paul Greenberg, Rhode Island, Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, salmon, sashimi, soft-shell clams, stripers, sushi, Sustainability, sustainable consumption, tuna Leave a comment »
Paul Greenberg’s fascinating new book Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, examines the reasons why humans chose to seek out salmon, tuna, bass, and cod, the four staples of our seafood diet, and questions the sustainability of our efforts to continue doing so. I recently lived in Japan for three years, and had my fair share of Toro sashimi, fatty blue fin tuna, along with other delicacies. Having lived in that seafood-based culture, and having fished for salmon myself, I understand the appeal of the current staples of seafood. I was really impressed with the background and the framework with which Greenberg examines these fisheries.
Greenberg grew in Connecticut, fishing along its namesake river (Connecticut comes from the Algonquin word quonehtacut, or ‘long coastal river’), and developed a love of fishing from an early age. He understands fisheries management and aquaculture, and deftly explains how our fisheries came to be in their current state. At root, the book is examining four fish, “Or rather four archetypes of fish flesh which humanity is trying to master in one way or another, either through the management of a wild system, through the domestication and farming of individual species, or through the outright substitution of one species for another.” In fact that is where Four Fish is particularly insightful – Greenberg identifies some potential sustainable aquaculture candidates that are efficient and safe (for both humans and the marine environment), that you probably never heard of, like barramundi and Kona Kampachi.
I recently attended a public hearing about proposed fisheries regulations in Rhode Island, and what became immediately apparent to me was that most of the audience, stakeholders in the fisheries industry, spoke an entirely different language than the fisheries scientists, employees of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM). There were both commercial and recreational fishers of a wide range of aquatic species, ranging from soft-shell clams to cod, stripers to monkfish. Their individual economic incentives often conflicted with each other; party boat captains relied on a large bag limit of tautog, because the state regulations were more liberal than in neighboring states; divers and waders for shellfish fought for different season opening dates, to get an advantage on each other. The fisheries scientists spoke of maintaining sustainable fisheries through regulation, while the fishermen complained they would be unable to make a profit with ‘micromanagement.’
Greenberg’s Four Fish examines the economic aspects of fisheries as well, and he recommends that artisan fishers replace factory trawlers; subsidized fishing fleets should go away and in their place, respectful fishermen-herders who will steward the species as well as catch them. He also argues that blue fin tuna and other species that travel across oceans are unmanageable, and should be protected like tigers and whales. Having seen the Japanese fish markets, I know how difficult that will be, but mercury-laden tuna is simply not sustainable or manageable. Here in Rhode Island, fishermen at the hearing spoke of resources and jobs; while they may sometimes disagree with the fisheries scientists, both will need to work together in the long term to create sustainable fisheries, sustainable jobs, and sustainable seafood. Ultimately, that will require “a profound reduction in fishing effort,” and open-minded consumers.
Democracy in action
Posted: 02/23/2011 Filed under: Rhode Island, Sustainability | Tags: Fisheries, Fishery, New England, Rhode Island, Sustainability Leave a comment »Last night I attended a public comment hearing on some proposed fishing management regulations, and I could hear the tension that exists between our economy, reliant on steady growth, and our diminishing resources. The proposals, presented by RI Department of Environmental Management (DEM) administrators, were framed by scientific assessments of the health of fisheries. The fish were referred to mainly as biomass and resources. The hearing was attended by 50 people, mainly fishermen and women, but also citizens concerned about sustainable fisheries.
Critics of DEM regulation presented arguments about the rising cost of fuel, and the need to maintain a high harvest in order to make a profit; many of them did not agree with the DEM about their fishery assessments. Ultimately, the administrators and the fishermen seemed to be speaking two languages, much like our national political discourse. When the DEM administrator chairing the hearing referred to ‘management,’ fisherman recoiled as if the word meant ‘closure.’ The DEM assessed fishery populations scientifically, whereas the fishermen offered anecdotal evidence about days when the fish come and days when they don’t. One shellfisherman asked a DEM scientist to explain where the evidence of soft-shell clam underpopulation was.
The hearing was an exercise in democracy, one that both sides seemed familiar with. The DEM administrator chairing the hearing knew many of the fishermen by name, including several leaders of trade associations. Those trade associations take different positions on DEM regulation, but the word ‘micromanagement’ came up many times. Several members of an Advisory Panel, which worked prior to the hearing to offer recommendations to the DEM on the proposals, spoke of the long hours spent trying to identify the best path forward. Several veterans, involved with RI fisheries and regulation going back to the 1970s, spoke of the ‘give-and-take’ that happens with these regulations over time. The process itself offered by the hearing gave me some hope about the ability of our system of government to work ‘for the people and by the people.’ Ultimately, that is the only way we can move forward, especially with the great challenges we will face in coming years.
Sacred spaces
Posted: 02/15/2011 Filed under: Sustainability | Tags: Death Valley National Park, Joshua Tree National Park, sacred spaces, Sustainability Leave a comment »
I was born in a trailer park, and my family did not have resources to provide me with the latest technology, or to travel to exotic destinations around the world. In fact, while I have since travelled to several ends of the Earth, to this day I have still not set foot in Europe, I have not gazed upon the fine art in The Louvre. However, my family did impart upon me an affinity with the Natural world, apart from human civilization.
As a child, in Northwest Pennsylvania and Western New York, I spent summers in the woods, in hills and preserves named after Iroquois tribes, gaining an understanding of the interconnectedness of life. I was raised in the Episcopal Church, but my church introduced me to the wonder and spectacle of landscapes like Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Park. To this day, I consider those deserts to be the most sacred space I have encountered.
The human technological construct is a bubble that we lose our selves in, that we tend to divorce our actions from their consequences. I spent several uninterrupted weeks in Death Valley, and that experience was the first that burst that bubble, that construct, and made clear the extent of which we fool ourselves. The scale of humanity becomes clear in a landscape as grand as that one.
In the last ten years I was fortunate enough to travel across the Pacific and Indian Oceans; once again the bubble was popped, because the bubble of our vessel was so insignificant and vulnerable as compared to the massive oceans, and yet the crystal clear sky, with its infinite stars, made clear the vulnerability of all life on Earth. These spaces, apart from human civilization, wild and open, I hold to be sacred. While I don’t get to travel to them as often as I would like, these spaces hold more spirituality for me than any church or human construct. Despite all the trappings of our technology, I cannot forget them.
Smart meters and stakeholder engagement
Posted: 02/08/2011 Filed under: Sustainability | Tags: California, California Public Utilities Commission, New York Times, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Real-time data, Smart meter, Stakeholder Dialogue, Stakeholder Engagement, Sustainability, sustainable consumption Leave a comment »
You may have missed it last week, but there was an excellent piece on the opposition to smart meters in California in the New York Times. PG&E has installed 7 million smart meters in California since 2006; they transmit real time data on consumers’ electricity use to the utility, helping them to allocate power more efficiently. The goal is to give consumers information about how they use power, and incentivize them to use less of it. However, opposition to the smart meters comes largely from two different constituencies: Tea Party conservatives and consumers afraid of EMF. Initially, you may remember, opposition to smart meters came when electricity bills increased; critics first charged that the meters were inaccurate, but it soon became apparent that the old meters were undercharging. Now, opposition from Tea Party conservatives to smart meters is predictable; doubtlessly PG&E is just the latest Big Brother out to destroy their lives. However, the anti-EMF opponents are a constituency that PG&E can work with, and should have worked with. After all, it would be easy enough to find a way to connect these meters to broadband lines.
However, if we step back and examine this problem, a lot of the fuss comes down to stakeholder engagement. Both Santa Cruz and Marin Counties put up obstacles to these meters because PG&E did not effectively engage with them beforehand. Ultimately, we are going to have difficulties adapting to our warming climate; as we make policy changes, it will be more important than ever to properly engage and address concerns before and during rollout. Unanimous consent is probably an unrealistic goal, but acknowledging and working with people is a must.
A climate change movie that doesn’t care if you believe in climate change
Posted: 02/04/2011 Filed under: climate change, Sustainability | Tags: Carbon Nation, Climate change, Environment, Peter Byck, Sustainability 2 Comments »A remarkable new documentary is out this month, called Carbon Nation. Director Peter Byck bills this film as a “climate change movie that doesn’t even care if you believe in climate change.” All I can say is you’ve got to see this film. Take your conservative friends and family, too. Byck really frames the challenges and opportunities of climate change in an elegant and open-minded way – this film is not preachy, it is straightforward; it drives home the point that people are confronting this problem already, with solutions that can be adopted on a much larger scale. This film is a game-changer.
Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex leads on sustainability
Posted: 01/28/2011 Filed under: climate change, Sustainability | Tags: Chamber of Commerce, Clean Energy, Climate change, Climate Science, Cross of Iron, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Koch Industries, Lockheed Martin, Military–industrial complex, Sustainability, United States Department of Defense, wave energy Leave a comment »
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In the current issue of The Atlantic, BU history professor Andrew J. Bacevich revisits two famous speeches by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. One of them, his farewell address delivered on January 17, 1961, in which Eisenhower warned America about the dangers of what he called the “military-industrial complex,” gained a lot of attention in light of our latest wars:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Bacevich ties the farewell address to an earlier speech, delivered on April 16, 1953, known as the “Cross of Iron” speech. Bacevich identifies a constant theme in the two speeches, that investment in the military-industrial complex is undesirable:
“The essence of this theme was simplicity itself: spending on arms and armies is inherently undesirable. Even when seemingly necessary, it constitutes a misappropriation of scarce resources. By diverting social capital from productive to destructive purposes, war and the preparation for war deplete, rather than enhance, a nation’s strength. And while assertions of military necessity might camouflage the costs entailed, they can never negate them altogether. “Every gun that is made,” Eisenhower told his listeners, “every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Any nation that pours its treasure into the purchase of armaments is spending more than mere money. “It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
In light of the calls for austerity and the reduction of our budget deficit, any reduction in military spending remain controversial; however, recent investment by both the Department of Defense and the military contractors in sustainability initiatives has also been heralded as a positive contribution towards fighting climate change. The military is investing in biofuels, clean energy, and innovative new efficiency technologies. Contractors like Lockheed Martin are investing in innovative new clean energy technology:
“There’s a concentrated solar array whose curved mirrors move to follow a light that mimics the passing sun. There are a pair of small buoys that show how energy from waves can be converted to electricity and sent back to shore through underwater coils. And there’s a model of a town and military outpost that demonstrate how micro-grid technology can better manage energy use and reroute supplies during outages. [Matt] Kier doesn’t work for a alternative-energy startup. He’s an engineer for Lockheed Martin, one of the country’s largest defense contractors. And the display room, which the company calls its Energy Solutions Center, is nestled near fighter, space, electronics and cybersecurity displays just down the road from the Pentagon. Over the past two and a half years, the Department of Defense has undertaken an ambitious effort to cut its energy use, start tapping renewable sources and understand the impact of climate change on its operations. Each military branch has laid out energy targets and has goals for reducing fuel use in vehicle fleets and feeding bases with alternative energy. For example, the Navy has committed to getting half its energy from alternative sources by 2020 and by then expects it will use 8 million barrels of biofuel a year. As the military gears up to meet its energy goals, it will rely on defense companies to help plan, engineer and build a leaner, greener force.”
Interestingly, while Eisenhower worries, in his farewell address, that government direction of research and technology might endanger the “solitary inventor” and the “free university,” he also warns of a greater danger:
“As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.”
While Eisenhower was arguing against the 1950s belief that we could have our guns with our butter, he also worried that we might waste our precious resources. In light of our runaway greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, and growing resource scarcity, the investment by the DoD and our military defense contractors in sustainability and clean energy technology is true leadership. While the Chamber of Commerce and companies like Koch Industries spend billions of dollars each year to fight climate scientists and confuse the public about climate change, the Department of Defense and its contractors are investing money in the technologies that will make significant contributions outside the realm of defense, like algae produced biofuels. Eisenhower would surely be disheartened by the power that the defense industry holds over the public purse and policy, and yet I think he would be equally disheartened at the American failure to confront climate change seriously. These initiatives by the DoD and defense contractors will not solve all of our problems, but they are a step in the right direction, one that Eisenhower would have applauded.
