No Impact Man

350: The number the whole world needs to know

The problem: 350.

One great solution: 350.org.

350. I should write it 350 times. We should all write it 350 times. Everyone on the earth should get out a pen, write down the number 350, and send it to their head of state. 350 times.

Now let me explain.

For the next two or three years, the nations of the world are supposed to be negotiating a successor treaty to the Kyoto Accord, the current international treaty on reducing the emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. In December 2009, heads of state will converge in Copenhagen to sign a new treaty that would forge a new international agreement on how we, as a planet, can limit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to a level that would keep us safe from global warming's worst effects.

What is that level? How much carbon dioxide can our planet safely withstand?

350. As in parts per million (ppm).

The United States' most senior climate scientist James Hansen and eight other senior climate scientists have recently deduced, by studying evidence from previous climate swings in our planet's history, that we must reduce carbon dioxide to 350 ppm or below to avoid rises in sea level, severe changes in weather, droughts, lost of coastal habitat, plagues of tropical diseases, food shortages and on and on.

"If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted," Hansen and his colleagues write, "paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm."

According to Hansen and his colleagues:

A practical global strategy almost surely requires a rising global price on CO2 emissions and phase-out of coal use except for cases where the CO2 is captured and sequestered. The carbon price should eliminate use of unconventional fossil fuels, unless, as is unlikely, the CO2 can be captured.

A reward system for improved agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon could remove the current CO2 overshoot. With simultaneous policies to reduce non-CO2 greenhouse gases, it appears still feasible to avert catastrophic climate change. Present policies, with continued construction of coal-fired power plants without CO2 capture, suggest that decision-makers do not appreciate the gravity of the situation. We must begin to move now toward the era beyond fossil fuels. Continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions, for just another decade, practically eliminates the possibility of near-term return of atmospheric composition beneath the tipping level for catastrophic effects.

The most difficult task, phase-out over the next 20-25 years of coal use that does not capture CO2, is herculean, yet feasible when compared with the efforts that went into World War II. The stakes, for all life on the planet, surpass those of any previous crisis. The greatest danger is continued ignorance and denial, which could make tragic consequences unavoidable.

The challenge is not scientific as much as political. Think about it. No electricity powered by coal. To institute these kind of policies, to achieve this goal on a worldwide level, to get the heads of state to put their names to 350 in Copenhagen in December, 2009 is going to take massive international political will.

The entire people of the world--including the Americans, the Indians, and the Chinese--will have to agree to the potential lifestyle change that working towards 350 may require.

Which brings me to 350.org. According to Bill McKibben, the writer, the climate activist, the hero:

A few of us have just launched a new [international] campaign, 350.org. Its only goal is to spread this number around the world in the next 18 months, via art and music and ruckuses of all kinds, in the hope that it will push those post-Kyoto negotiations in the direction of reality.

After all, those talks are our last chance; you just can't do this one light bulb at a time.

So tell everyone about the problem: 350.

And tell them, too, about 350.org.

Photo from The Day After Tomorrow, courtesy IMDB.com. I know it's not a realistic scenario but you gotta love a dramatic picture once in a while.

Who needs appliances anyway?

Yesterday, we talked about whether replacing old but perfectly good and working appliances with new, more energy-efficient models made sense (see here). We crunched numbers to do with the "embodied energy" and environmental impact of the manufacture of the new appliances versus the amount of energy potentially saved.

[This just in: I majorly screwed up yesterday's calculations causing the embodied energies of the steel to be over estimated by a factor of five. Ugh. So sorry. The argument is not as straightforward as I had hoped and I will have to look into it more for the future. I'm afraid I'm back, for now, to being unclear about the embodied energy versus energy saved balance. Anyway, yesterday's post and its conclusions are, for now, unreliable.]

Today, I wanted to discuss what we've done in regard to appliances here in the household formerly known as No Impact (but still, hopefully, low impact).

I should start by saying that before we started No Impact, our little apartment contained the following appliances (I'll explain the numbers below):

• 46-inch, rear projection TV (1)
• TiVo box (1)
• Laptop computer (N/A)
• Under the counter fridge (4)
• Under the counter freezer next to the fridge (1)
• Food processor (0)
• Electric rice cooker (0)
• Blender (0)
• Air conditioner in the bedroom (4)
• Air conditioner in the living room (2)
• Electric dishwasher (4)
• Vacuum cleaner (6)
• Natural gas stove and oven (N/A)
• Laundry machine (10) and dryer (5) in the basement of our building and shared with 95 other other apartments.

During the course of the No Impact project, we turned the mains electricity off and put away or didn't use all of the appliances except the laptop computer and the gas stove. We powered the laptop from a single solar panel we sneaked onto the roof of the building in order to maintain this blog. We did our laundry by stomping it in the bathtub and hang drying it in the bathroom.

What I've done, for fun, is put numbers in parentheses above indicating, on a range from 0 to 10, how much we missed the particular appliance. 0 means I wouldn't destroy a snowball for the amount we missed this appliance, leave alone a planet. 10 means we missed this appliance so much that I believe we should we should find a sustainable way for everyone on the planet to have access to one.

Looking at the numbers, I gave the TV and TiVo box a 1 because once in a while we missed it, though overall we were and are happier without it. The fridge got a 4 because our food spoiled quickly in the summer, though it still wasn't terribly hard (just a bit like camping). As for the A/C, none in the bedroom made it hard to sleep a few nights. The dishwasher grade comes because Michelle dislikes washing dishes by hand.

As for the laundry machine's 10 rating, we hated washing our laundry by hand. It was long, hard work. Maybe if we had had different equipment it would have been ok. Trying to squeeze it dry particular bugged us.

Anyway, as a result, now that No Impact is over, here's what we still have or use:

• 46-inch, rear projection TV (1)
  
• TiVo box (1)
  
• Laptop computer (N/A). I bought a second laptop computer (an Apple PowerBook, which I love) because the other one is on its last legs. I bought the computer second hand in an effort to save resources (and also saved $1800). Isabella gets to watch a couple of DVDs a week on the old computer.
• Under the counter fridge (4) We turned it back on, but we've adjusted the thermostat to keep food cool not cold. We still eat largely local and so buy our food frequently.
  
• Under the counter freezer next to the fridge (1) It's still in the apartment but we haven't turned it on. Believe me, our tummies don't miss the Ben and Jerry's
  
• Food processor (0) Given to thrift store.
  
• Electric rice cooker (0) Given to thrift store.
• Blender (0) We never use it but couldn't, for some reason, part with it on the day we were taking things to the thrift store. Probably next time.
  
• Air conditioner in the bedroom (4) Air conditioners were by far our greatest use of energy. The bedroom unit is the one thing that feels like a mild sacrifice, but one we're willing to make.
  
• Air conditioner in the living room (2)
  
• Electric dishwasher (4) We intended to use it but it died. We went out to buy another one but couldn't bring ourselves to do it. I don't believe that the water saved--hot or not--would equal the embodied energy. We have a flow restricter on our kitchen faucet (.38 gallon per minute).
  
• Vacuum cleaner (6) Cleaning the house is much easier with the vacuum cleaner and it doesn't use that much energy.
  
• Natural gas stove and oven (N/A)
  
• Laundry machine (10) and dryer (5) in the basement of our building and shared with 95 other other apartments. The laundry machine is the one appliance I believe makes the difference between a life of drudgery and not. If cars are the Devil, as I think they are, then laundry machines are God. Sadly, we use the dryer, too, because we find it hard in our 750 square foot apartment to hang dry with three people and a dog. I'm still hoping we might get back to hang drying.

Apropos of the question of replacing old appliances with more energy efficient versions, I can't bring myself to believe that, the way we operate our fridge, the embodied energy and impact would be recovered by the energy savings. As Vicki commented on yesterday's post:

"If it is broken and the repairman can fix it then he fixes it. If he just shakes his head then you buy a new one. Seems simple to me."

I just prefer the wear-the-old-one-out-first philosophy. It seems to me to have the most respect.

By the way, here's what some other sites have to say on these and related issues:

• Treehugger: Should I replace my old cooker and fridge
• Grist's Umbra: On replacing appliances
• Casaubon's Book: What to do with your appliances when you get over them
• Ecogeek on refrigeration systems that work by pumping cold air from outside
• Sietch Blog on seven ways to save water at home
• GreenOptions on using off the grid energy-saving principles while still on the grid

When to turf out an old appliance for the energy efficient model--The New York Times is wrong [Except that I made a big mistake in my calculations so they may be right]

[This just in on May 13: I majorly screwed up yesterday's calculations causing the embodied energies of the steel to be over-estimated by a factor of five and therefore throwing this whole post off. Ugh. So sorry. The argument is not as straightforward as I had hoped and I will have to look into it more for the future. I'm afraid I'm back, for now, to being unclear about the embodied energy versus energy saved balance. Anyway, this post and its conclusions are, for now, unreliable.]

Fair warning: there's going to be a lot of math in this post, so if you just want to get the gist, skip to the bold bits in the middle and at the bottom.

We'd all like to think that if you walk into a store and see a washing machine that uses 20% less electricity than the one you have at home--yippee!--you get to buy yourself some new home gadgets and at the same time do the environment a favor.

The problem is that the appliance you're thinking about requires a lot of energy to manufacture--"embodied energy." Plus, you have to factor in the habitat damage caused by mining the metals, the water pollution caused by smelting them, the energy of transportation of the appliance and on and on.

Of course, if you've already decided to buy a new appliance, it's best to buy the most energy-efficient model. The question is--and it's a complicated one--is there ever a time when it's actually better to buy a new appliance than to keep an old one that works perfectly well?

That's the question the New York Times tried to answer on Sunday with its story "If Your Appliances Are Avocado, They Probably Aren't Green," by Alina Tugend. According to the story:

“It takes energy to make a product,” said Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “You don’t want to replace perfectly good products.”

He gave me his rule of thumb for refrigerators.

“If it’s avocado or brown-colored, it’s time to retire it,” he said. Refrigerators from the 1970s, the last time I believe those particular appliance colors were in vogue, use three to four times the power of today’s models.

A spokeswoman from the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the Energy Star program along with the Department of Energy, told me that, generally, any appliance over 15 years old probably should be put out to pasture.

Tugend then goes on to write:

"It turns out that clothes washers and dishwashers have pretty much the same criteria as refrigerators — they have become much more energy-efficient. So if yours is inching toward 15 years, consider replacing it."

And while she's right about the 15-year-old fridge--replace it--it turns out she's wrong about about the 15-year-old dishwasher and laundry machine--use them till their dying breath.

Because, as you'll see below, only in the case of the refrigerator do the energy savings outweigh the embodied energy and other environmental impacts of manufacture (not to mention the impact of disposing of the old appliance).

To figure this out, I noodled around the internet but was unable to find studies giving the embodied energies of even a single appliance (if you know of a source for embodied energies of appliances, please email me or leave behind in comments).

What I did find, though, is a Australian government study on solid waste management that gives the weights of different materials in a variety of average appliances (154 pounds of steel, for example, for a refrigerator, 55 pounds of steel for a dishwasher, and 33 pounds of steel for a laundry machine). I also found this Tufts University web page which gives a range of values for embodied energy of the production of steel, the major material in most appliances (I'm taking a figure of 40MJ/kg or about 25 kilowatt-hours [5/13: should be 5 kilowatt-hours and that figure should follow throughout] per pound of steel).

In other words, according to these figures, the embodied energy of the steel alone in an average refrigerator is:

154 lbs x 25 kWh/lb = 3,850 kWh.

The embodied energy of the steel in a dishwasher is:

55 lbs x 25 kWh/lb = 1,365 kWh.

And the embodied energy of the steel in a laundry machine is:

33 lbs x 25 kWh/lb = 825 kWh.

If my figures and math are anything near correct, to make it worth replacing your old appliances with new ones, those are the amounts of energy you would have to save, just to recoup the energy used to produce the steel. This, of course, doesn't include the energy of the other materials in the appliances or of the energy of the manufacture or distribution of the appliance itself. The actual embodied energy of each appliance is likely much higher than the figures above.

Now, considering refrigerators, today's models use about half the energy of a 15-year-old model, according to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (the ACEEE). Since, according to the Consumer's Guide to Effect Environmental Choices (a book), today's average refrigerator uses 1,100 kWh per year (suggesting that a 15-year-old model uses 2,200 and that the annual energy savings would be 1,100 kWh per year).

In other words, recouping the embodied energy of the steel alone in a new refrigerator when replacing a 15-year-old refrigerator would take:

3,850 kWh / 1,100 kWh per year = 3.5 years (this means, to be explicit, that the energy savings of your new fridge would have to pile up for 3.5 years before it equals the energy costs of the steel in the fridge you bought).

On the other hand, according to the ACEEE, a modern dishwasher only uses 30% less energy than a 15-year-old one. Since a dishwasher according to the Consumer's Guide, only uses 299 kWh a year, that means a new dishwasher would save only only 90 kWh a year.

In other words, to recoup the embodied energy of the steel alone in a new dishwasher by replacing a 15-year-old dishwasher would take:

1,365 kWh / 90 kWh per year = 15.2 years.

Considering, finally, the laundry machine, the ACEEE doesn't seem to offer a energy efficiency comparison to older models, but I'll assume a 30% improvement over 15 years, the same as for dishwashers. The average laundry machine, according to the Consumer's Guide, uses only 99 kWh a year, which means a new laundry machine would save only about 30 kWh a year.

In other words, to recoup the embodied energy of the steel alone in a new laundry machine by replacing a 15-year-old laundry machine would take:

825 kWh / 30 kWh per year = 27.5 years.

What does all this mean? Well, first of all, let's be clear that the sources of my figures aren't the best and that I'm not a manufacturing analyst and that this analysis should be regarded more as a thought experiment than anything else. On the other hand, since all we're considering is the embodied energy of the steel content of the appliances, it would likely actually take more than the estimates I've made to recoup the energy of the new machines.

Regardless, what I conclude is that, if environmental impact is your chief concern, than your best bet is to keep using all but your most energy intensive appliances until they wear out.

In other words, when it comes to residential dishwashers, laundry machines, vacuum cleaners, and microwaves (the analysis would be different in business or industry where machines are used more consistently) , keep them till they keel over.

For more energy intensive appliances, like refrigerators, stand alone freezers, clothes dryers, hot water heaters  and air conditioners, assuming you make regular use of them and that they're not turned off six months a year such as in a summer home, it may be worthwhile to follow the EPA spokesperson's advice and consider replacing those that are over 15 years old.

Energy scientists, especially, please weigh in on this post. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Meanwhile, tomorrow's post will be not about the science of appliances, but about the approach we're taking in the formerly No Impact household.

Photo courtesy of the New York Times.

Try

We need a peaceful revolution in thinking and living.

The problem is that the revolutionaries are otherwise engaged. They're delivering Fedex packages, waiting tables, driving taxis, entering data and countless other tasks--including, yes, writing books and blogs--for 12 hours a day.

They're working their butts off to afford the gas and the car payments and the Christmas presents. They're worried about whether their kids are safe, whether they'll be able to afford the mortgage, how they'll pay if they break a leg.

So when the news comes on and some newscaster starts droning on about the climate, they care, yes. And they think we ought to take care of it. Just as soon as we take care of the health care system and the economy and national security.

It's not that we don't care. It's that we're more scared of today than we are of tomorrow.

The way modern life is set up in these United States, so many of us feel like we could fall off the tightrope at any moment and there's no safety net. What happens to an American who loses a job and gets sick? Without some sense of security, how can we risk taking our eyes off our daily tightrope long enough to worry about the problems of the future?

It's not selfishness. It's not apathy. It's not mindlessness.

It's busyness.

We're too busy to think.

**********

But however we define the problem, the question stays the same:

How can we help?

The worst and the of best corporate efforts on climate change

Climate Counts, a non-profit that scores the commitment to reversing climate change of 56 major corporations in well-known consumer sectors–from apparel to electronics to fast food–today released their second annual company scorecard (read the full report here and the summary here).

Climate Counts gives scores from 0 to 100, based on 22 criteria used to determine if companies have measured the carbon footprint, reduced their impact on global warming, supported progressive climate change legislation, and publicly disclosed their climate action.

According to the Climate Counts web page, "our goal is to motivate deeper awareness among consumers-not only that the issue of climate change demands their attention, but also that they have the power to support companies that take climate change seriously - and avoid those that don't."

The worst of the companies (scoring 5 or less): Amazon, 5; Burger King, 0; Darden (owner of Red Lobster, Olive Garden and other chains), 0; eBay, 5; Jones Apparel Group (Anna Klein, Nine West and many other brands), 0; VF Corporation (Lee and Wrangler jeans and others), 4; Viacom (4), Wendy's (0), Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and many more), 1.

The best of the companies (scoring 65 or more): Canon, 74; General Electric, 71; Hewlett-Packard, 68; IBM, 77; Motorola, 66; Nike, 82; Proctor & Gamble, 69; Sony, 68; Stonyfield Farm, 78; Toshiba, 70.

The good news is that the Climate Counts scoring approach attracts a lot of press attention, effectively rewarding those companies that make worthy efforts and chastising those who don't. Last year, for example, Climate Counts was among the organizations that helped bring attention to Apple's slow start when it comes to environmental commitment (the company scored a lowly 2 last year and only 11 this year).

According to Wood Turner, Director of Climate Counts, this kind of scrutiny, through Climate Counts or by other means, can encourage corporations to make real efforts. In an email to me, he told the story of how Levi's made the effort to climb from a score of 1 in 2007 to 22 in 2008:

We got their attention with a score of 1 pt (out of 100) on June 19 [2007] and got a call from them late that afternoon.  They were bewildered but motivated.  They acknowledged that they were behind on climate change and that the score had very much gotten their attention.  They said simply, "You got our attention. What can we do?"  And we were more than happy to take them through our 22-criteria scorecard and our key benchmarks. 

They quickly moved to begin reporting much more openly about their concrete activities and future plans, expanding their environmental reporting on their website including information about their efforts to measure their climate impact and set goals to reduce it.  These are clearly just first steps, but on the pathway toward deeper corporate climate responsibility, they are absolutely important ones because they indicate a willingness to face even greater scrutiny from an increasingly engaged consumer -- to us, that's one of the hallmarks of climate leadership.

You can read what others think of the Climate Counts report at the Wired blog and the Environmental Leader. I'm thinking the Climate Counts approach is no replacement for legislation and a regulated cap and trade system, but until we get some politicians with backbones, by finding a way to focus and aggregate the power of consumers, Climate Counts is making a start.

What do you think?

Bottlemania

An excellent new book tells the story of our drinking water crisis by focusing, in particular, on the bitter dispute that erupted between the townspeople of Fryeburg, Maine, and Nestle's Poland Spring, which wanted to bottle their water. Bottlemania, by Garbage Land author Elizabeth Royte, will be out in bookstores in the coming weeks (you can pre-order it at Royte's website, Bottlemania.net).

Royte and I spoke on the phone, yesterday, about the most recent drinking water scare, the Associated Press report that traces of a variety of pharmaceuticals can be found in our tap water (you can find my response to that report here). Here are Royte's thoughts on what can be done about the drugs in the water:

• To put the problem into perspective, there are much higher levels of hormones and antibiotics in our meat and milk.
• None of us should put our unused drugs down the toilet and pharmaceutical companies should institute some sort of take back scheme so drugs are safely disposed.
• Municipalities, with help from the federal government, should invest in existing drinking water treatment technologies that can remove the drugs.
• To offset the costs of the use of these technologies, rain water collection and gray water reuse systems should be established so less water requires treatment.
• Drug makers should be encouraged to reformulate their products to break down quickly and harmlessly in the environment so they can't end up back in our drinking water in the first place.
• Since 90% of antibiotics are used on farm animals, new regulations must be put in place to ensure that antibiotics excreted by them don't end up in our drinking water.

Lastly, here is a paragraph from Bottlemania, which encapsulate Royte's good, balanced approach to the question of public tap water versus privatized bottled water:

"I come away from my investigations," she writes, "with at least one certainty: not all tap water is perfect. But it is the devil we know, the devil we have standing to negotiate with and improve. Bottled water companies don't answer to the public, they answer to shareholders. As Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman write in Thirst, 'If citizens no longer control their most basic resource, their water, do they really control anything at all?'"

More species extinction means more global warming

A week or two ago, I wrote about how if environmental damage is hurting other species, it's hurting us. I wrote about how the massive number of extinctions that are occurring--some 20 to 50% of our species are expected to be gone within 100 years--cannot occur without fundamentally weakening the planetary systems we depend upon for our health, happiness and security.

Other bloggers left some excellent comments behind, explaining why human well-being is dependent on the well-being of other species.

Sharon Astyk wrote:

"Most species enable or carry over 100 other species - that is, there are at least 100 other species on which the survival of one depends. But we've never considered which species we truly depend on. Is it honey bees? Frogs? Bacteria? Are we killing them? We simply don't know our world well enough to know what we're costing ourselves."

Greenpa wrote:

"Each critter in the web is connected to others.  They eat each other, basically, or change the environment for each other. Reality is a lot more than the 4 connections that are usual in a spider web; but the concept still works, and it's a lot easier to visualize the spider web than the reality of critical ties to 40 other organisms...

So, get out your scissors, and snip out- not a connection, but a node. You now have 4 loose threads. (or 40, in the real world) The web is not greatly disturbed. Yet. Keep snipping.  The web gets weaker, and weaker, and eventually, just a slight breeze may rip the whole thing down."

But also, Jeremy Hance emailed me his  Mongabay story about a new study out of Brown University that showed a direct link between increasing extinctions and global warming. The study shows that protecting biodiversity in our eco-systems may prove to be another key in fighting climate change.

As Jeremy writes:

"The Brown scientists conducted their study for six years in Patagonia. They divided an area into ninety plots then began to systematically remove native species from each plot and chart the changes in the plot's productivity. Productivity dropped as species were removed."

"Productivity," as the researchers call it, refers to the amount of biomass growing in the plot. So fewer species means less biomass which means less carbon dioxide sequestered in the plant matter and soil and therefore more global warming.

"It's a double whammy," explained Osvaldo Sala who led the study. "We not only are disturbing our planet by putting more carbon into the atmosphere, but we're reducing the ability of ecosystems to capture and store it."

Photo of the Patgonian steppe, courtesy of Osvaldo Sala, Brown University.

A No Impact Mother's Day note

The folks at 1SKy, whose mission is to focus the power of millions of Americans on the goal of federal action to reduce global warming, is coordinating a special, nationwide Mothers' Day action to bring lawmakers' attention to out concern about government inaction. 1Sky asked me if I might write a special, Mothers' Day post for their blog. What I gave them was a public Mothers' Day note to my wife, Michelle. It starts like this:

To my wife, my love, my partner, my Michelle (and to the House of Representatives, the Senate, the current President, and the soon-to-be 2008 candidates for all of those offices),

A year and a half ago, I was desperately worried about the declining health of our planetary habitat and its consequences for human health, happiness and security. I worried about the kids caught up in Katrina and the kids in our hometown of New York City who have asthma because of the number of garbage trucks driving through their neighborhoods and the kids all over the world, born and unborn, who will suffer from the damage we have done and continue to do to our climate, air, water, and earth.

Because I was worried about all these things...

Click here to go to 1Sky and read the rest. While you're there, click on "Act Now" to get involved.

Is there a U.S. candidate with the backbone to do something about climate?

Back in February, I wrote about about what the U.S. presidential candidates' said about  mitigating climate change. At that time, McCain's proposals were the weakest while there wasn't much air between what Clinton and Obama proposed.

The question remained, however, about what each of the candidates, if they won the presidency, would actually do about climate change. Good climate policy will mean standing up to special interests and leading us through some potentially unpopular policy changes.

And we all know, that when it comes to politicians, there are those who will spend their political capital to help them do what is right and, on the other hand, there are those who will do what is wrong thing to help them win political capital. The question, when it comes to the issue of climate change, was which candidate was which type of politician.

Well, this week, it became clear.

As the New York Times said today in an editorial (with my emphasis):

Senators John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton have hit on a new way to pander to American voters: a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The proposal may draw applause and votes from Americans feeling the pain of nearly $4-a-gallon gasoline. But it is an expensive and environmentally unsound policy that would do nothing to help American drivers... Fortunately, Mr. Obama has not caved to the rising calls for cheap energy and has refused to follow his rivals down this misguided path...

Joseph Romm, a progressive, who worked for the Clintons as acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy, writing critically of the gas tax on his blog, Climate Progress, says (again with my emphasis):

I write this post with some sadness. I would not have expected a major progressive politician who obviously cares about global warming to propose a gas tax holiday, which has no public benefits whatsoever, but at the same time undermines the entire rationale behind a national climate strategy that includes, as it must, a pricing mechanism for greenhouse gases. I try, however, to be as consistent as possible — and if such a proposal was cynical and hypocritical for Sen. McCain, it is equally cynical and hypocritical for Sen. Clinton. Kudos to Sen. Obama for opposing this absurd proposal — double kudos because it might cost him a few votes.

According to the Washington Post, meanwhile:

Harvard professor N. Gregory Mankiw, who has written a best-selling textbook on economics, said what he teaches is different from what Clinton and McCain are saying about gas taxes. "What you learn in Economics 101 is that if producers can't produce much more, when you cut the tax on that good the tax is kept . . . by the suppliers and is not passed on to consumers," he said.

Which makes the move by Clinton and McCain all the more cynical. While the measure will cost the federal government $9 billion and send entirely the wrong message on climate change, McCain and Clinton know as well as anyone else that oil companies won't pass the price break onto consumers but instead will pocket it.

They are paying $9 billion in our money, in other words, to make a false promise. They are trying to trick voters into voting for them.

Environmentalists said, according to the Post:

[that] stoking ire about the cost of gas undermines efforts to build a case for limiting carbon emissions, which could raise prices at the pump. "It sends a confusing message," said Kevin Knoblauch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "What's more helpful is if [politicians] help consumers understand that this isn't about near-term gas prices, it's about a comprehensive and smart approach to energy policies."

The sad news is that this whole mishigas is a first indication of how McCain or Clinton would treat the climate issue if they became president. The good news is that it is also and indication of how Obama would treat it.

PS You might also read Sam Stein's critique of the gas tax vacation at the Huffington Post.

LV GRN: Keeping our drinking water fresh

Yesterday, I wrote about "peak water," and how we could eventually pay out our noses for drinking water if we continue to allow water sources to be privatized while letting our municipal water systems degrade.

To help preserver our water systems, one of the things we did during the No Impact project, and continue to do, is try to avoid allowing toxins and sewage from entering our waterways.

Sewage, you say? Yes, sewage. Because here in New York we have a system of nearly 700 "combined sewer overflows" (CSOs) that occasionally dump raw sewage into New York Harbor and the surrounding waterways. The good news is that there are only 70 such emissions a year. The bad news is that that amounts to 27 billion gallons of untreated wastewater in New York City waterways annually.

What happens is that both the household sewage from our homes and the storm water drainage from the streets and rooftops of the buildings come together in underground drainage pipes that take it all to wastewater treatment plants (click on the above diagram for a larger version). During a hard rain, however, those underground sewage pipes get overwhelmed and, to keep the sewage from backing up into our sinks and toilets, it gets dumped, untreated, through the CSOs into the rivers and waterways.

Want to go swimming?

Not in New York, right? Well, it turns out there are a lot of other places you may not be rushing to don your bathing suits either. According to the EPA:

"Combined sewer systems serve roughly 772 communities containing about 40 million people. Most communities with combined sewer systems (and therefore with CSOs) are located in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions, and the Pacific Northwest (see map)."

And the discharge isn’t just poo. It can contain industrial waste and just about anything people pour down their toilets or into the sewers: car oil, bleach, ammonia, antifreeze, bug repellent, rat poison and every other toxin you can imagine (picture of a CSO in Pennsylvania courtesy of the Larson Design Group).

Here are some measures each of us of can take to stop the pollution that flows from CSOs:

• Reduce water use so less wastewater enters the sewer system and it is less likely to overflow.
• Manage storm water so that less of it enters the sewer systems.
• Develop “end of pipe” innovations that prevent the overflows.
• Don’t put anything but water, pee and poo and TP down the drain (recipes for low impact soaps and household cleansers here).

Finally, here is my New York City water activist friend Kate Zidar's really cool video project (made in partnership with the Center for Urban Pedagogy), The Water Underground, a 25-minute student-led exploration of where water comes from, where it goes and what happens along the way.