Operating costs are the buzz word, from fire departments and caltrain, to family budgets. But thats were the commonality between cites and families end. Cities look at the factors that lead to operting costs like employee salaries. There is no concept of an underlying structural defect leading to higher operating costs. Everyone was used to living off debt, the ATM of unlimited growth, untill energy prices, the proverbial rug under their feet, was yanked out. At $4/- per gallon home owners were made acutely aware to having overstepped their capabilities. Large homes are not only more expensive to operate and access, they also cost more in post Prop 13 California. Taxes, the very force that directly highlights the cost of conspicous consumption, is also the force that turns people against their government. Governments on the other hand behave like children- instead of recognizing the structural cause of the national malaize they hope that people will come to their senses and see the value of the services installed for a society built as if gas is fifty cents a gallon. Forgiving the vehicle license fee bankrupted the state and did nothing to insure people from the effects of higher gas prices caused by living at the edge of the driving economy. We can't grow ciites and by default their services as if gas was 50c a gallon. People realized that at $4/- gallon. Governments instead are trying to blunder through with a concept of regionalism vaguely consicous that people are bonded out and cannot absorb more debt. Regionalism by combining sevice overhead promises lower costs. But regionalism increases the size the government when all indications point to downsizing, a concept that homeowners have absorbed.
Instead of listening to the problems of higher operating costs governments are trying to pretend that nothing is wrong except the ability of people to pay for services.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Greywater
Recycling and reuse of greywater raises issues of pollution at the percolation level based on cleaners used by the household. A UCLA report writes: "The state revised 2007 California Plumbing Code has now eased previous permit requirements for certain untreated graywater delivery and distribution systems. Permit requirements are now based on daily discharge volume, number of household sources, and number of graywater system fixtures. According to the Draft 2010 California Plumbing Code proposed by the California Department of Water Resources expanded indoor and outdoor uses of graywater (e.g., toilet flushing, spray irrigation, etc.) are also possible if the source graywater is treated to meet the California Department of Public Heath statewide uniform criteria for disinfected tertiary recycled water. This implies that, for expanded use graywater (i.e., besides in underground irrigation systems), water quality of treated graywater from small-scale, on-site residential treatment systems would be held to the same regulatory standards as large-scale, centralized municipal water treatment plants."
Permitting greywater can lead to a number of benefits
- Shows an awareness of the toxic problem which until now is unaddressed
- May not be a problem at all if the average person is not growing anything.
- Localizes the pollution problem from what people use for cleaners. This will form a layer at where the water percolates into the soil. If toxic cleaners are used then vegetables should not be grown with this water. Fruit trees which get water from a deeper root system are ok. And over time the percolation layer would need to be aerated so that anaerobic bacterial process can deteriorate the polluted layer.
However note that localizing the pollution source means that greywater (toilet is black water) does not pollute the larger water bodies like the Bay and Belmont Creek.
- Provides an incentive for growers to shift to organic and bio degradable cleaners
- expands the market organic and bio degradable cleaners so that these products can be competitive or lower cost than toxics.
- Reduces the amount of water that needs to moved around the region. Landscape uses the same amount of water as interiors for single family homes (5% each of total freshwater.) In Multifamily homes interior use is 3% of total and external use is 1%! Water movement accounts for 30% of energy use. Reducing demand improves availability and energy efficiency.
Permitting greywater can lead to a number of benefits
- Shows an awareness of the toxic problem which until now is unaddressed
- May not be a problem at all if the average person is not growing anything.
- Localizes the pollution problem from what people use for cleaners. This will form a layer at where the water percolates into the soil. If toxic cleaners are used then vegetables should not be grown with this water. Fruit trees which get water from a deeper root system are ok. And over time the percolation layer would need to be aerated so that anaerobic bacterial process can deteriorate the polluted layer.
However note that localizing the pollution source means that greywater (toilet is black water) does not pollute the larger water bodies like the Bay and Belmont Creek.
- Provides an incentive for growers to shift to organic and bio degradable cleaners
- expands the market organic and bio degradable cleaners so that these products can be competitive or lower cost than toxics.
- Reduces the amount of water that needs to moved around the region. Landscape uses the same amount of water as interiors for single family homes (5% each of total freshwater.) In Multifamily homes interior use is 3% of total and external use is 1%! Water movement accounts for 30% of energy use. Reducing demand improves availability and energy efficiency.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Is garbage hauling sustainable?
Caveat: this is not a Recology problem even though they are the only named entity.
There are more than twice as many garbage trucks, 179,000, in the US as there are transit buses. These refuse hauling monsters get an average of 2.8 miles per gallon. Garbage trucks move at an average speed of 10mph, an incredibly inefficient pace for a combustion engine, but one that's necessary because of the garbage trucks duties. The average garbage truck guzzles 8600 gallons of diesel fuel a year. Together US garbage trucks use 1.5 billion gallons of fuel, about 4% of all the diesel used in the US, accounting for billions of dollars sent overseas. (from $20 per gallon by Christopher Steiner page 162.)
Now these trucks will also get to go load a train, with garbage from from the Peninsula to Marin, because we don't price out what we throw away. Senator Reid can fix this with a federal tipping rate fee of $100/ton. For the role of tipping fees see Understanding Dynamics of Landfill Gate Rates by Cary Pecket, page 32f. BioCycle, August 2009. Higher tipping fees enable business from recycling including home deconstruction. The money should go to Fish and Wildlife for enforcement of the Clean Water Act since a secondary problem of any dump is toxins leached into the water table.
The primary problem is garbage service as a mechanism to expand sprawl in existing polluted corridors; and roads into openspace, including the road to nowhere, which ends up creating a community by the dump (Steiner's point in the opening quote.)
Recology trucks in the Belmont area are biodiesel. But as Stanford Professor Jacobson showed, when their fossil fuel production component is factored in, biofuels are worse in most metrics.
Since Belmont just signed up with Recology (formerly Norcal) this article could be titled: Belmont boards for burial at Burning Man.
Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer
In the dusty Nevada desert, about 30 miles east of the playa where Bay Area artists and hipsters gather annually to build a temporary city at the Burning Man festival, a San Francisco garbage company wants to build a dump for Bay Area trash.
But a group of residents in the Winnemucca area, near where Recology seeks to build the 1-square-mile landfill, wants the company to leave the desert alone - and California to keep its garbage to itself.
"The notion that Nevada is some sort of wasteland because we don't have Ponderosa pines covering it is repugnant," said Jim French, retired wildlife biologist from the Nevada Department of Wildlife and a member of Nevadans Against Garbage, a group opposing the planned dump.
Article continues
There are more than twice as many garbage trucks, 179,000, in the US as there are transit buses. These refuse hauling monsters get an average of 2.8 miles per gallon. Garbage trucks move at an average speed of 10mph, an incredibly inefficient pace for a combustion engine, but one that's necessary because of the garbage trucks duties. The average garbage truck guzzles 8600 gallons of diesel fuel a year. Together US garbage trucks use 1.5 billion gallons of fuel, about 4% of all the diesel used in the US, accounting for billions of dollars sent overseas. (from $20 per gallon by Christopher Steiner page 162.)
Now these trucks will also get to go load a train, with garbage from from the Peninsula to Marin, because we don't price out what we throw away. Senator Reid can fix this with a federal tipping rate fee of $100/ton. For the role of tipping fees see Understanding Dynamics of Landfill Gate Rates by Cary Pecket, page 32f. BioCycle, August 2009. Higher tipping fees enable business from recycling including home deconstruction. The money should go to Fish and Wildlife for enforcement of the Clean Water Act since a secondary problem of any dump is toxins leached into the water table.
The primary problem is garbage service as a mechanism to expand sprawl in existing polluted corridors; and roads into openspace, including the road to nowhere, which ends up creating a community by the dump (Steiner's point in the opening quote.)
Recology trucks in the Belmont area are biodiesel. But as Stanford Professor Jacobson showed, when their fossil fuel production component is factored in, biofuels are worse in most metrics.
Since Belmont just signed up with Recology (formerly Norcal) this article could be titled: Belmont boards for burial at Burning Man.
Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer
In the dusty Nevada desert, about 30 miles east of the playa where Bay Area artists and hipsters gather annually to build a temporary city at the Burning Man festival, a San Francisco garbage company wants to build a dump for Bay Area trash.
But a group of residents in the Winnemucca area, near where Recology seeks to build the 1-square-mile landfill, wants the company to leave the desert alone - and California to keep its garbage to itself.
"The notion that Nevada is some sort of wasteland because we don't have Ponderosa pines covering it is repugnant," said Jim French, retired wildlife biologist from the Nevada Department of Wildlife and a member of Nevadans Against Garbage, a group opposing the planned dump.
Article continues
Saturday, January 10, 2009
A food shed on a walking perimeter
City Government has spent the last 60 years building bigger faster roads to the far reaches of the city with all the water and sewer and garbage that can be efficiently and unaffordably moved around. And now we can't walk and bicycling is too dangerous and look: we find ourselves chained to Al Queda and Saudi Arabia and unable to grow old in our own neighborhoods. So lets retire to the Sierras and leave it to another generation to figure out what to do with the bad air water and oil soaked soil.
Council members says that the roads are now too dangerous to bike and can we build separate bike paths- ceding the public space to Bush and Al Queda. Another network is needed to get around slowly without pollution and in peace.
But how to grade separate this new facility? And connect community scattered to the outer reaches of our jurisdiction? It will be expensive, so do we have to live with what we got? One way is to move services into the neighborhoods on an 1/8 mile walking radius and then connect these great neighborhoods via bicycles boulevards. Ideally Transfer of Development Rights would restore the food shed on a walking perimeter of a complete neighborhood. I suggest we think big how we want to use the FARTP and use ABAG's and MTC's priority development and conservation areas monies to get us started repairing our world in the next 25 years.
Council members says that the roads are now too dangerous to bike and can we build separate bike paths- ceding the public space to Bush and Al Queda. Another network is needed to get around slowly without pollution and in peace.
But how to grade separate this new facility? And connect community scattered to the outer reaches of our jurisdiction? It will be expensive, so do we have to live with what we got? One way is to move services into the neighborhoods on an 1/8 mile walking radius and then connect these great neighborhoods via bicycles boulevards. Ideally Transfer of Development Rights would restore the food shed on a walking perimeter of a complete neighborhood. I suggest we think big how we want to use the FARTP and use ABAG's and MTC's priority development and conservation areas monies to get us started repairing our world in the next 25 years.
Monday, December 22, 2008
TV and the four directions
There are four basic needs for a citizens- home, food, health care and a job. The last one because how else can you pay your taxes? The first two are easy to justify. The third is essential if you want to get to work so that the government can tax you for the scandals to warm to.
Quoting Stanley in the Times:
The nation is engrossed in an orgy of scandal, a 24-hour cable news burlesque of greed, graft, cronyism and corruption, with appointed villains so lurid and over-the-top they could be characters in “Bleak House.” (Even their names, Madoff and Blagojevich, have a Dickensian ring, like Skimpole or Pardiggle.)
Credit is frozen, the stock market looks perilously close to flatlining, and neither politicians nor economists can begin to predict the short- or long-term consequences of $700 billion government bailouts and a national debt topping $10 trillion. The root causes — an impenetrable tangle of derivative securities, heedless lending and binge corporate buyouts — are too vast and uncharted to examine for long. The solutions are insoluble.
As Neil Postman writes in Amusing Ourselves to Death we are distracted from the four basics by nonsense by the elites need to reduce taxes instead of jobs.
For one the government is not addressing jobs and homes or health care for all.
And maybe it can't, a whole new emphasis on where we are in the era of Peak Everything.
Quoting Uchitelle in the Times:
“It is not in the nature of a market system to have adequate private investment all of the time,” said Robert Pollin, co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “So we used public investment to smooth things over and improve the climate for private investment.”
That changed. In the 1970s, the public reacted against high taxes and growing budget deficits, and conservatives argued that putting money in private hands would lift the economy more effectively. Public investment tapered off, and was used less as a tool of economic policy as the economy experienced the increasingly sharp ups and downs of the 1980s, 1990s and the new century.
If shortages drive up prices, a good thing, then the pain of being unable to consume frivolously , like the paintings of Dahen, will be difficult to impossible. This will allow resources to go farther since shipping trash around will be impossible. China to the rescue? No but we can learn to live within our means- a concept presently unknown to government, the concept of business itself and us.
For example what's with the rootless society? If we really need a home why don't we settle down and build community and family linked to the neighborhood? Because GM has driven over the dream and created a gridiron of streets which imprison homes away from the community and neighborhood. Without the proximity of a walkable neighborhood there aren't any services, like dentists and farmers markets, wherein to meet and talk to neighbors, and so we move in search of "home."
What missing from this whole scenario? An acknowledgment that without equity we can't solve the peak everything problem and keep from deteriorating into balkanized walled rioting communities. Mumbai is a measure of how far the outside world penetrates comfort to create the trend to balkanized communities. In the movies we get tough on crime, poverty, and punishment delivered. Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood, can erase the margin between constitution and Guantanamo, squarely under the holy cross of Abu Grahib. On the front page America continues to get tough on black and Hispanic youth, spending a whole generation, on the slogan of a racially neutral class free society. Even a fiscal disaster in California won't stop our racist drive over the edge. "Class resentment is the rage" but it doesn't extend to equity in prison spending, education, keep the home economy with jobs, or health care.
Instead we knock charity for economically distressed communities, like community developers (remember Oboam versus McCain), without acknowledging the role of economic empowerment provided by the organizations nominated. In the Brundtland Report which gave us the common parlance of the phrase "sustainable development" we must overcome our elitist disregard for the conditions pf poverty under the mask of a sustainable meritocracy.
Brundtland laid out four principles in Our Common Future in 1987
1- the elimination of poverty is necessary not just as a human right but as an environmental issue.
2- we in the first world must reduce our consumption of resources and production of wastes.
3- Global cooperation on environmental issues is no longer a soft option.
4- Change toward sustainability can occur only with community-based approaches that take local cultures seriously.
Brundtland said they must apply simultaneously to achieve global sustainability.
Work toward the four basic needs is the only way to keep the goddess happy and the home from being nagged to death as any laid off fellow will tell you.
Quoting Stanley in the Times:
The nation is engrossed in an orgy of scandal, a 24-hour cable news burlesque of greed, graft, cronyism and corruption, with appointed villains so lurid and over-the-top they could be characters in “Bleak House.” (Even their names, Madoff and Blagojevich, have a Dickensian ring, like Skimpole or Pardiggle.)
Credit is frozen, the stock market looks perilously close to flatlining, and neither politicians nor economists can begin to predict the short- or long-term consequences of $700 billion government bailouts and a national debt topping $10 trillion. The root causes — an impenetrable tangle of derivative securities, heedless lending and binge corporate buyouts — are too vast and uncharted to examine for long. The solutions are insoluble.
As Neil Postman writes in Amusing Ourselves to Death we are distracted from the four basics by nonsense by the elites need to reduce taxes instead of jobs.
For one the government is not addressing jobs and homes or health care for all.
And maybe it can't, a whole new emphasis on where we are in the era of Peak Everything.
Quoting Uchitelle in the Times:
“It is not in the nature of a market system to have adequate private investment all of the time,” said Robert Pollin, co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “So we used public investment to smooth things over and improve the climate for private investment.”
That changed. In the 1970s, the public reacted against high taxes and growing budget deficits, and conservatives argued that putting money in private hands would lift the economy more effectively. Public investment tapered off, and was used less as a tool of economic policy as the economy experienced the increasingly sharp ups and downs of the 1980s, 1990s and the new century.
If shortages drive up prices, a good thing, then the pain of being unable to consume frivolously , like the paintings of Dahen, will be difficult to impossible. This will allow resources to go farther since shipping trash around will be impossible. China to the rescue? No but we can learn to live within our means- a concept presently unknown to government, the concept of business itself and us.
For example what's with the rootless society? If we really need a home why don't we settle down and build community and family linked to the neighborhood? Because GM has driven over the dream and created a gridiron of streets which imprison homes away from the community and neighborhood. Without the proximity of a walkable neighborhood there aren't any services, like dentists and farmers markets, wherein to meet and talk to neighbors, and so we move in search of "home."
What missing from this whole scenario? An acknowledgment that without equity we can't solve the peak everything problem and keep from deteriorating into balkanized walled rioting communities. Mumbai is a measure of how far the outside world penetrates comfort to create the trend to balkanized communities. In the movies we get tough on crime, poverty, and punishment delivered. Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood, can erase the margin between constitution and Guantanamo, squarely under the holy cross of Abu Grahib. On the front page America continues to get tough on black and Hispanic youth, spending a whole generation, on the slogan of a racially neutral class free society. Even a fiscal disaster in California won't stop our racist drive over the edge. "Class resentment is the rage" but it doesn't extend to equity in prison spending, education, keep the home economy with jobs, or health care.
Instead we knock charity for economically distressed communities, like community developers (remember Oboam versus McCain), without acknowledging the role of economic empowerment provided by the organizations nominated. In the Brundtland Report which gave us the common parlance of the phrase "sustainable development" we must overcome our elitist disregard for the conditions pf poverty under the mask of a sustainable meritocracy.
Brundtland laid out four principles in Our Common Future in 1987
1- the elimination of poverty is necessary not just as a human right but as an environmental issue.
2- we in the first world must reduce our consumption of resources and production of wastes.
3- Global cooperation on environmental issues is no longer a soft option.
4- Change toward sustainability can occur only with community-based approaches that take local cultures seriously.
Brundtland said they must apply simultaneously to achieve global sustainability.
Work toward the four basic needs is the only way to keep the goddess happy and the home from being nagged to death as any laid off fellow will tell you.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Infrastructure change challenge and opportunity
Society pays for education in the hope of a reward that will benefit the larger public good. Resources undermine this goal because they offer the road to wealth through speed i.e quick ill-gotten-gains. Education produces Engineers who figure out how to use resources, like diamonds, to make a product that no one wants; and Marketeers who figure out how to get people to ask for it; and products from the schools of public policy who torture people far from the intended markets (because of local depletion which led to the formation of empires) to work in the resource industries and produce the goods and rules to keep competition from the product markets. AIG shows that private insurance is another such useless product.
That infrastructure of military and government and markets is overbuilt. The energy source of cheap fossil fuels is running out. If that was it we would be fine. But transferring them from the ground to the air, water, and our body tissue has given us the problem of global warming. Worse the intellectual edifice around the engineers has collapsed- the experts don't know what to do; their solutions try to retard innovation and entrench the past. The challenge is to build a coalition to address necessity is immense since the discourse around the topic is shrouded in the fear of the power of state inspired terror and the business elites- BAU. We need to go beyond the calling cards of power: entitlement and corruption.
However as long the challenges remain unaddressable and the discourse is limited there will always be the O'Tooles and GW Deniers who make an industry from seeming to be right.
The Guardian writes Wednesday December
Discussions in Brussels and Poznan this week will be decisive in terms
of setting the tone for next year, when the world must agree on a
successor to the Kyoto protocol or face irreversible and devastating
climate change. The signs do not look good: in Brussels, Italy, Poland
and Germany are trying to water down commitments on emissions
reductions, backed by shortsighted business lobbies. Meanwhile in
Poznan everyone appears to be waiting for someone else to move first.
Society needs to reevaluate its goal of economic progress. Everything points to the immense benefits of recessions and depressions including a lower population. Government needs to get out of the economic progress business so that we can live in a healthy depressed economy where we grow our own food and recycle our own trash. We need to address consumption. Without addressing the necessity of the demand side why put in (a different) infrastructure? Is it any different then?
A carpet showroom and a parking lot got bombed by ice- I would think that's just global warming deserts for melting the ice caps. But the fact that these losing enterprises are around, except powered by windmills, is not a long term solution. Government builds industrial blocs like autos through subsidization of land uses, easy money credit, and unethical thumb in the pot Congressional oversight which results in zeroed out 401ks. Shouldn't we know better?
If we go around wailing for leaders we are lost. We need to know how to grow our own food or support a local food system with a farmers market in walking or biking distance. And we need to figure out how to recycle our own trash including composting toilets. That is not leadership material. Its the end of asking for government to design in economic progress since we now know for most generations it leads to worthless 401ks.
That infrastructure of military and government and markets is overbuilt. The energy source of cheap fossil fuels is running out. If that was it we would be fine. But transferring them from the ground to the air, water, and our body tissue has given us the problem of global warming. Worse the intellectual edifice around the engineers has collapsed- the experts don't know what to do; their solutions try to retard innovation and entrench the past. The challenge is to build a coalition to address necessity is immense since the discourse around the topic is shrouded in the fear of the power of state inspired terror and the business elites- BAU. We need to go beyond the calling cards of power: entitlement and corruption.
However as long the challenges remain unaddressable and the discourse is limited there will always be the O'Tooles and GW Deniers who make an industry from seeming to be right.
The Guardian writes Wednesday December
Discussions in Brussels and Poznan this week will be decisive in terms
of setting the tone for next year, when the world must agree on a
successor to the Kyoto protocol or face irreversible and devastating
climate change. The signs do not look good: in Brussels, Italy, Poland
and Germany are trying to water down commitments on emissions
reductions, backed by shortsighted business lobbies. Meanwhile in
Poznan everyone appears to be waiting for someone else to move first.
Society needs to reevaluate its goal of economic progress. Everything points to the immense benefits of recessions and depressions including a lower population. Government needs to get out of the economic progress business so that we can live in a healthy depressed economy where we grow our own food and recycle our own trash. We need to address consumption. Without addressing the necessity of the demand side why put in (a different) infrastructure? Is it any different then?
A carpet showroom and a parking lot got bombed by ice- I would think that's just global warming deserts for melting the ice caps. But the fact that these losing enterprises are around, except powered by windmills, is not a long term solution. Government builds industrial blocs like autos through subsidization of land uses, easy money credit, and unethical thumb in the pot Congressional oversight which results in zeroed out 401ks. Shouldn't we know better?
If we go around wailing for leaders we are lost. We need to know how to grow our own food or support a local food system with a farmers market in walking or biking distance. And we need to figure out how to recycle our own trash including composting toilets. That is not leadership material. Its the end of asking for government to design in economic progress since we now know for most generations it leads to worthless 401ks.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
petition on globla warming
Save our Environment dot org has a petition to Obama saying "It's time to Repower, Refuel, and Rebuild America.
We need to get our economy moving by building a clean energy future. We applaud your efforts to make energy a top priority, and urge you to adopt these goals:
* Move to 100% electricity from clean small distributed sources such as wind and solar
* Cut our dependence on oil and coal by 95%
* Create 5 million new clean energy jobs
* Reduce global warming pollution by at least 80%
* Tax fossil fuel consumption not working America.
We call on you to introduce a plan in your first 100 days that will reach these goals, and to utilize the federal budget and any economic recovery package to get us started.
We need to get our economy moving by building a clean energy future. We applaud your efforts to make energy a top priority, and urge you to adopt these goals:
* Move to 100% electricity from clean small distributed sources such as wind and solar
* Cut our dependence on oil and coal by 95%
* Create 5 million new clean energy jobs
* Reduce global warming pollution by at least 80%
* Tax fossil fuel consumption not working America.
We call on you to introduce a plan in your first 100 days that will reach these goals, and to utilize the federal budget and any economic recovery package to get us started.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Infrastructure and pollution to end life
Worst crab season since the clean water act! The problems of unmitigated pollution and extraction clearly affects life itself on this planet.
Depleted coastal fish stocks displace sustainable farmers moving fuel intensive operations out with drag net fishing that causes havoc in the high seas which allows for pollution intensive hotel uses on the coast. A good resource is Save The High Seas.
Instead of treating symptoms with a blatant disregard for conformance goals we should use the successful energy model in CA to tier price the demand side and change the supply side infrastructure needs. The goal should be to shrink the footprint on the biosphere. Leonhardt writes:
Government agencies usually don’t even have to do a rigorous analysis of a project or how it would affect traffic and the environment, relative to its cost and to the alternatives — before deciding whether to proceed. In one recent survey of local officials, almost 80 percent said they had based their decisions largely on politics, while fewer than 20 percent cited a project’s potential benefits. Please, please don’t just pour more money into the current system.
The SF Examiner highlights one problem of our current infrastructure- permanently damaged lungs for our children.
Harvey Wasserman writes: So let's convert GM's infrastructure to churn out trolley cars, monorails, passenger trains, truly green buses.
The environmental justice result is that congestion management expands capacity at the expense of all other modes. Because of the low real estate cost expansion is disportionately in poor communities.
Depleted coastal fish stocks displace sustainable farmers moving fuel intensive operations out with drag net fishing that causes havoc in the high seas which allows for pollution intensive hotel uses on the coast. A good resource is Save The High Seas.
Instead of treating symptoms with a blatant disregard for conformance goals we should use the successful energy model in CA to tier price the demand side and change the supply side infrastructure needs. The goal should be to shrink the footprint on the biosphere. Leonhardt writes:
Government agencies usually don’t even have to do a rigorous analysis of a project or how it would affect traffic and the environment, relative to its cost and to the alternatives — before deciding whether to proceed. In one recent survey of local officials, almost 80 percent said they had based their decisions largely on politics, while fewer than 20 percent cited a project’s potential benefits. Please, please don’t just pour more money into the current system.
The SF Examiner highlights one problem of our current infrastructure- permanently damaged lungs for our children.
Harvey Wasserman writes: So let's convert GM's infrastructure to churn out trolley cars, monorails, passenger trains, truly green buses.
The environmental justice result is that congestion management expands capacity at the expense of all other modes. Because of the low real estate cost expansion is disportionately in poor communities.
Equity in infrastructure pricing
Set an equitable cost distribution on pollution. Infrastructure pricing should reflect the burden of polluting the biosphere. The model is tier pricing in energy.
Examples:
CA needs to develop a model off-street parking ordinance that implements "Intelligent Parking" similar to what SF wants and Redwood City may have the begining off (from Mike Bullock).
Traffic impact fees, estimated at 40k per car per ten year period would fund zero pollution changes to the way the air and water basin are destroyed.
PAYD road financing should replace the highway gas tax using GPS or license-plate RFID tags. Roads should be priced so that they produce an agree-to rate of return on the VALUE of the lane. Note that I said value. Value is the price of land plus construction, at the time of collection. Privacy concerns should not allow drivers to permanently impact growing lungs by large roads (Mike Bullock).
A revenue neutral carbon tax to address imports. The market partially addresses this but the impact varies with the price of CO2 intensive fuels like gasoline. Without an extraction fee 96% of fossil fuels won't stay in the ground through 2250 for 350 ppm of CO2.
Universal single payer health care to address pollution through environmental justice.
Tie Federal funds to a tangible goal like reduced traffic or carbon emissions.
Examples:
CA needs to develop a model off-street parking ordinance that implements "Intelligent Parking" similar to what SF wants and Redwood City may have the begining off (from Mike Bullock).
Traffic impact fees, estimated at 40k per car per ten year period would fund zero pollution changes to the way the air and water basin are destroyed.
PAYD road financing should replace the highway gas tax using GPS or license-plate RFID tags. Roads should be priced so that they produce an agree-to rate of return on the VALUE of the lane. Note that I said value. Value is the price of land plus construction, at the time of collection. Privacy concerns should not allow drivers to permanently impact growing lungs by large roads (Mike Bullock).
A revenue neutral carbon tax to address imports. The market partially addresses this but the impact varies with the price of CO2 intensive fuels like gasoline. Without an extraction fee 96% of fossil fuels won't stay in the ground through 2250 for 350 ppm of CO2.
Universal single payer health care to address pollution through environmental justice.
Tie Federal funds to a tangible goal like reduced traffic or carbon emissions.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Landuse efficiencies for sustainable communities
When evaluating landuse Efficiencies needs to have their total impact evaluated. For example saying a Prius is efficient leaves out the landuse element. A Prius is more efficient than a Ford F150 in fuel consumption; but the issue of fuel consumption arises because of the poor landuse choice of living out in what used to be the sequestered carbon of open space. Politically moving policy in favor of a Prius thus means we can continue to expand usage of air and water and food and land basins, i.e the biosphere, that we pollute.
The efficiency is thus only relative to the reduced variable of fuel consumption and not the total impact of the biosphere disruption. The sustainable state would go beyond what architect S. Mouzon called Gizzmo Green in The Original Green. Growing Cooler points out that if VMT continues to grow three times faster than population growth any improvements in fuel mileage will quickly be negated. Without a competent urban strategy gains from technological improvements will be overwhelmed by suburban inefficiencies leaving us less sustainable in the future.
A combination of strategies are necessary taking advantage of efficient building types, efficient locations, reused infrastructure, efficient goods and service movement, rebuilt carbon basins, efficient technologies, and equity efficiencies to attain a sustainable state. As Zack and Lyon say the important indicator is lower per capita resource consumption, not necessarily deploying flashy new machines.
The efficiency is thus only relative to the reduced variable of fuel consumption and not the total impact of the biosphere disruption. The sustainable state would go beyond what architect S. Mouzon called Gizzmo Green in The Original Green. Growing Cooler points out that if VMT continues to grow three times faster than population growth any improvements in fuel mileage will quickly be negated. Without a competent urban strategy gains from technological improvements will be overwhelmed by suburban inefficiencies leaving us less sustainable in the future.
A combination of strategies are necessary taking advantage of efficient building types, efficient locations, reused infrastructure, efficient goods and service movement, rebuilt carbon basins, efficient technologies, and equity efficiencies to attain a sustainable state. As Zack and Lyon say the important indicator is lower per capita resource consumption, not necessarily deploying flashy new machines.
Monday, November 10, 2008
GW GHG solutions
Worldwide agriculture is the largest generator of green house gases partly because carbon sinks are burned for vast mono cultures sold into the industrial food markets for packaged food like substances (Pollan's words) or feedstock. Indigenous self sufficient subsistence farmers are displaced to acquire the land thereby entering the "economy" as poor peasants or landless slum dwellers. I been thinking that's what's really needed is the right to land to feed oneself. It seems counterintuitive that a human on this planet does not have the right to plant his food and feed himself. And if we feed ourselves the CO2 footprint from food would go to zero but the desire to work would also be reduced thereby reducing the availability of funds to spend recklessly toasting the planet.
Solving climate change will need to change the way we consume which means a sustainable way to get by. Right now only taxes and death are certain which means we have to be part of the consuming society to earn money to pay taxes and its killing us as a planet. So if we could feed ourselves we can ignore all the fuss around the latest ipod etc.
The carbon tax is just a way of moderating consumption and cap and dividend is a way of providing an incentive to consume differently. But land reform, through community gardens or whatever, can be a fundamental change.
1- Sign the ILO which recognizes right of indigenous peoples to their lands.
http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/indigenous.htm
2- Enact land reform to allow creation of farm belts around cities with Traffic Impact Fees and Congestion Charging going toward Agland preservation and the right to community gardens.
3- A revenue neutral carbon tax that replaces a portion of the income tax and DOES NOT TOUCH FICA.
4- A cap and dividend on emissions including other sources like methane which is returned to all Americans and not used as a extension of predation on the public commons by renting out our lungs.
5- Enable existing technologies with 15mph neighborhood and collector streets in the city and 20 mph in city arterials to make Neighborhood Electrical Vehicles viable. The goal should be to reduce pollution of the air and water sheds and expand environmental services outside the urban boundary. Vehicle tracking for Pay As You Drive insurance should be required for engines that generate CO2.
6- Require green building standards to address locations.
7- Make a $1/kwh excess feed in tariffs and allow choice within 300' of a renewable location to dramatically expand renewable power and reduce the cost of transmission from non co2 sources.
8- Allow Transit Agencies (like Universities) to control landuse decisions within 1/4 mile radius of a transit center to achieve sustainable revenue streams.
9- Tax gasoline with a ladder to bailout fossil fuel intensive industries like auto.
One and two can address imports but can address the need for solar overs elsewhere if the equity issues are taken into account. The carbon tax on extraction and processing should go to viable solutions from agriculture, landuse, and fuels.
Solving climate change will need to change the way we consume which means a sustainable way to get by. Right now only taxes and death are certain which means we have to be part of the consuming society to earn money to pay taxes and its killing us as a planet. So if we could feed ourselves we can ignore all the fuss around the latest ipod etc.
The carbon tax is just a way of moderating consumption and cap and dividend is a way of providing an incentive to consume differently. But land reform, through community gardens or whatever, can be a fundamental change.
1- Sign the ILO which recognizes right of indigenous peoples to their lands.
http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/indigenous.htm
2- Enact land reform to allow creation of farm belts around cities with Traffic Impact Fees and Congestion Charging going toward Agland preservation and the right to community gardens.
3- A revenue neutral carbon tax that replaces a portion of the income tax and DOES NOT TOUCH FICA.
4- A cap and dividend on emissions including other sources like methane which is returned to all Americans and not used as a extension of predation on the public commons by renting out our lungs.
5- Enable existing technologies with 15mph neighborhood and collector streets in the city and 20 mph in city arterials to make Neighborhood Electrical Vehicles viable. The goal should be to reduce pollution of the air and water sheds and expand environmental services outside the urban boundary. Vehicle tracking for Pay As You Drive insurance should be required for engines that generate CO2.
6- Require green building standards to address locations.
7- Make a $1/kwh excess feed in tariffs and allow choice within 300' of a renewable location to dramatically expand renewable power and reduce the cost of transmission from non co2 sources.
8- Allow Transit Agencies (like Universities) to control landuse decisions within 1/4 mile radius of a transit center to achieve sustainable revenue streams.
9- Tax gasoline with a ladder to bailout fossil fuel intensive industries like auto.
One and two can address imports but can address the need for solar overs elsewhere if the equity issues are taken into account. The carbon tax on extraction and processing should go to viable solutions from agriculture, landuse, and fuels.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Bailing out the fossil fuel economy
Bonds have been the traditional instrument for government to spread the cost of installing a fossil fuel intensive infrastructure. The fight over road building and reconstruction on many of the nation's inventoried but undeveloped areas is an example.
In San Jose the RDA (with projects in light rail, 87, etc.) offices are across the hall from Merrill Lynch. Its ironic that the AB32 governor pushed bonds; and then gas prices raised family expenses 25%, stretched by debt to benefit Vehicle Miles Traveled, on the outer suburbs of the job intensive cities, and threatens his legacy. Bonds were necessary because the governor got his job by bankrupting government so commuters could own a planet toasting car with reduced vehicle license fees.
Banks Albach in the Palo Alto Daily News notes that, only from Lehman, Belmont Redwood Shores school district will lose about $3M in construction monies. The San Mateo Community College district lost $25M.
In another write up on the melting planet of bond financing Mark Olbert, a trustee on the San Carlos School Board of Trustees, observes:
I found it interesting that Lehman was almost the only investment discussed. The fund invests in many other names that have been in the news lately. As of Sept. 24, more than 80 percent of the investments are in what I think of as the financial services sector, a fascinating concentration given what’s been unfolding over the last year or so. I hope the Treasurer’s Office knows what it’s doing... and I personally hope it diversifies the portfolio as soon as it can.
In other words business as usual at least as long as gas stays under $4/- a gallon.
In San Jose the RDA (with projects in light rail, 87, etc.) offices are across the hall from Merrill Lynch. Its ironic that the AB32 governor pushed bonds; and then gas prices raised family expenses 25%, stretched by debt to benefit Vehicle Miles Traveled, on the outer suburbs of the job intensive cities, and threatens his legacy. Bonds were necessary because the governor got his job by bankrupting government so commuters could own a planet toasting car with reduced vehicle license fees.
Banks Albach in the Palo Alto Daily News notes that, only from Lehman, Belmont Redwood Shores school district will lose about $3M in construction monies. The San Mateo Community College district lost $25M.
In another write up on the melting planet of bond financing Mark Olbert, a trustee on the San Carlos School Board of Trustees, observes:
I found it interesting that Lehman was almost the only investment discussed. The fund invests in many other names that have been in the news lately. As of Sept. 24, more than 80 percent of the investments are in what I think of as the financial services sector, a fascinating concentration given what’s been unfolding over the last year or so. I hope the Treasurer’s Office knows what it’s doing... and I personally hope it diversifies the portfolio as soon as it can.
In other words business as usual at least as long as gas stays under $4/- a gallon.
Friday, October 3, 2008
bail our of the fossil fools economy
People would consider it ludicrous if we suggest that we privatize the air. But there is a company today in Japan that is selling oxygen in China where the air pollution is very bad. People also surprisingly would consider it ludicrous if we suggested that they must buy water. But in the US we essentially do that today paying Coca Cola and Pepsi 10,000 times more to buy bottled tap water which doesn't have to meet any of the quality tests for municipal water (and a third of a bottle of water equivalent in gas to ship it around.)
Surprisingly people today won't look back and say we have a right to growing our food the way we have a right to air and water. And yet that's what's happened two hundred years ago when the right to land was privatized and a bank system to finance purchase was setup. The creation of the federal reserve and the privatization of the creation money put in place the ability to enforce property rights on privatized land.
What sprawl did was extend the area of where banks could function. The result was exponentially larger consumption of resources like water and wetlands and deterioration of both the commons and the resource basins (like air) and their ecological services. For example Rice harvest in CA was delayed because smoke from the fires stunted growth. Even in sparsely populated areas fire departments were restricted by sprawl to "save lives" instead of keeping large tracts from burning.
The larger question to address concerns this corporate warfare state; that cannot sustain itself; and is taking the country to a similar post soviet union Russian debacle; which we can see in the story of GM, Ford, etc.; primarily because the end game around declining oil resources for the range of banks will place unequal down-spirals on the value of money.
Instead Congress in the pocket of the fossil fuel special interest is betting that the fossil fuel era can be extended with a global decline in fuel prices from decreased consumption due to the ongoing credit crisis and praying that the effects of peak oil can be postponed.
Surprisingly people today won't look back and say we have a right to growing our food the way we have a right to air and water. And yet that's what's happened two hundred years ago when the right to land was privatized and a bank system to finance purchase was setup. The creation of the federal reserve and the privatization of the creation money put in place the ability to enforce property rights on privatized land.
What sprawl did was extend the area of where banks could function. The result was exponentially larger consumption of resources like water and wetlands and deterioration of both the commons and the resource basins (like air) and their ecological services. For example Rice harvest in CA was delayed because smoke from the fires stunted growth. Even in sparsely populated areas fire departments were restricted by sprawl to "save lives" instead of keeping large tracts from burning.
The larger question to address concerns this corporate warfare state; that cannot sustain itself; and is taking the country to a similar post soviet union Russian debacle; which we can see in the story of GM, Ford, etc.; primarily because the end game around declining oil resources for the range of banks will place unequal down-spirals on the value of money.
Instead Congress in the pocket of the fossil fuel special interest is betting that the fossil fuel era can be extended with a global decline in fuel prices from decreased consumption due to the ongoing credit crisis and praying that the effects of peak oil can be postponed.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Not this bailout
When you add the interest, because this make and sold $700B money is borrowed from the banks, and then add in the fees they'll charge to figure out what home values are relative to their toxic mortgage, the cost will be $3T.
Gas prices by raising costs 25% pushed stupid negatively amortized keeping-up-with-the-jones families over the edge on the outer rings of sprawl nation. And as these home compete in the foreclosure market, and future gas prices and related food and energy prices rise, the effect of increased poor quality inventory, will continue to be felt in declining home values.
So if a bailout is to occur it should change the way we do business, particularly the fossil fuel economy of the warfare state, that brings us to this stage, with incentives for walkable cities and penalties for a jobs housing imbalance. Interesting to see that houses on the outskirts of the driving economy, like Modesto, Merced and even the suburbs of Sacramento, if you google foreclosure and put in a destination like North Fairoaks, will show houses in the 50ks which is no where near where housing prices are in San Jose or SF, are, an equivalent price decline putting values at 220k; while Cheney is still having wet dreams over sending our kids to Iran. The papers are full these days about hedge funds. If I draw up a list of the first hundred people I'd care to talk to tomorrow not one is in a hedge fund. So who are we bailing out and why not do something useful to help people get local jobs and walking access to services and food.
We actually have affordable housing these days. And 5 to 7% unemployment is not horrific. And there are many good solutions out there. For example the government could take a house before foreclosure and negatively capitalize it. i.e. take the loss in value plus 10% (for a down payment if necessary)and park it, until the house is sold (the same way a senior can borrow from a house until they die and then the sale pays back the loan). Simultaneously reduce the mortgage by the parked value and fix the rate to the new mortgage less 10%. Very little out of the government's pocket, it keeps people in their homes, and when the market stabilizes (not recovers, because just as pets.com is not coming back, so this housing bubble is not going to realize the same high prices as before in our life time; and on another topic its all relative) the government can share the loss with the lending authority. Amortize and defer in other words.
There are other more complicated schemes out there like this one by Stiglitz who projects in addition that the $3T cost of the Iraq war will hamper future generations for decades.
The majority of the "market drop" is not related to the fundamentals but to hope that this administration's scorch and burn policy can once more allow their funders on Wall Street, of what Norman Solomon in Made Love Got War calls the Warfare State, to once more bank on their irresponsible actions.
This looks like the Japanese Economy (which looks like it foretells us by about 5 years), the bubble in the late 80s and 90s was similar to the 1920s. Many sane heads have been saying for twenty years that we should reduce debt and address the consequent ecological problems like dead seas and fish stocks and poisonous air, and depleted resources like oil and water, which lead to conflicts like Iraq, and Darfur.
Gas prices by raising costs 25% pushed stupid negatively amortized keeping-up-with-the-jones families over the edge on the outer rings of sprawl nation. And as these home compete in the foreclosure market, and future gas prices and related food and energy prices rise, the effect of increased poor quality inventory, will continue to be felt in declining home values.
So if a bailout is to occur it should change the way we do business, particularly the fossil fuel economy of the warfare state, that brings us to this stage, with incentives for walkable cities and penalties for a jobs housing imbalance. Interesting to see that houses on the outskirts of the driving economy, like Modesto, Merced and even the suburbs of Sacramento, if you google foreclosure and put in a destination like North Fairoaks, will show houses in the 50ks which is no where near where housing prices are in San Jose or SF, are, an equivalent price decline putting values at 220k; while Cheney is still having wet dreams over sending our kids to Iran. The papers are full these days about hedge funds. If I draw up a list of the first hundred people I'd care to talk to tomorrow not one is in a hedge fund. So who are we bailing out and why not do something useful to help people get local jobs and walking access to services and food.
We actually have affordable housing these days. And 5 to 7% unemployment is not horrific. And there are many good solutions out there. For example the government could take a house before foreclosure and negatively capitalize it. i.e. take the loss in value plus 10% (for a down payment if necessary)and park it, until the house is sold (the same way a senior can borrow from a house until they die and then the sale pays back the loan). Simultaneously reduce the mortgage by the parked value and fix the rate to the new mortgage less 10%. Very little out of the government's pocket, it keeps people in their homes, and when the market stabilizes (not recovers, because just as pets.com is not coming back, so this housing bubble is not going to realize the same high prices as before in our life time; and on another topic its all relative) the government can share the loss with the lending authority. Amortize and defer in other words.
There are other more complicated schemes out there like this one by Stiglitz who projects in addition that the $3T cost of the Iraq war will hamper future generations for decades.
The majority of the "market drop" is not related to the fundamentals but to hope that this administration's scorch and burn policy can once more allow their funders on Wall Street, of what Norman Solomon in Made Love Got War calls the Warfare State, to once more bank on their irresponsible actions.
This looks like the Japanese Economy (which looks like it foretells us by about 5 years), the bubble in the late 80s and 90s was similar to the 1920s. Many sane heads have been saying for twenty years that we should reduce debt and address the consequent ecological problems like dead seas and fish stocks and poisonous air, and depleted resources like oil and water, which lead to conflicts like Iraq, and Darfur.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
population consumption and equity
Paul Ehrlich and other population experts debate the consequences of a crowded world, and how a McCain administration could set back decades of progress.
Its good that in the beginning they all agreed that the problem is consumption not population and in particular the type of consumption. Connell solution of living in larger households was mentioned by the Archbishop of Cantebury. And they all agree on the need for women's education.
The most interesting aspect of the discussion, is this kernel of equity, that floats through the discussion and is not really fleshed out. That challenge is before the world community today- that a workable climate treaty must bridge the gap between the affluent and the aspiring. Erlich hits on equity on page 2 of the salon article, but from a charitable standpoint- the generous american "We need to see that all the people have enough to eat and have decent shelter, water and medical care."
The third world is far more aware that the imperial consumption of the west brings resource supplying dictators and storms and droughts into their part of world and creates poverty by displacing sustainable systems for resource annexation. Charity is not what they need with the coddled Musharraf's of the world; they need an equal share of the resource basins, like air, which sustain life. If the cost of polluting (i.e. development) the biosphere (i.e the sum total of resource basins) were equitable, then we have a solution to Erlich's followup posit: A much tougher problem is what to do about everybody wanting to consume like Americans, and have an SUV.
The rest of what they say on education etc is just more details, but without bridging the gap, its not going to work, because some will make money of poisoning someone else's food or water or air basin and in the process offer the wrong model of development for the survival of the species.
Erlich comes across as a rabid right wing social engineer and Connell as a leftist pro human rights social engineer. Without equity you have an imbalance that requires engineers! And its also where these guys go overboard- instead of preserving the natural wealth (benefits of wild lands) in the resource basins of subsistence societies with an ownership model, like ILO 169, they see poverty and want their development model imposed on it. Though to their credit they don't quite say that- I'm reading it in between the words wealthiest and subsistence- when they agree to "take the wealthiest lawyers and bankers and send them to subsistence societies."
Erlich's defense of the Population Bomb was very forceful- applied to the US. Don't preach, practice. A home grown solution to a domestic problem. It put Connell on the defensive- and arm chair quaterback who though that the study was his end all. At which point the discussion actually turned into a debate.
Its good that in the beginning they all agreed that the problem is consumption not population and in particular the type of consumption. Connell solution of living in larger households was mentioned by the Archbishop of Cantebury. And they all agree on the need for women's education.
The most interesting aspect of the discussion, is this kernel of equity, that floats through the discussion and is not really fleshed out. That challenge is before the world community today- that a workable climate treaty must bridge the gap between the affluent and the aspiring. Erlich hits on equity on page 2 of the salon article, but from a charitable standpoint- the generous american "We need to see that all the people have enough to eat and have decent shelter, water and medical care."
The third world is far more aware that the imperial consumption of the west brings resource supplying dictators and storms and droughts into their part of world and creates poverty by displacing sustainable systems for resource annexation. Charity is not what they need with the coddled Musharraf's of the world; they need an equal share of the resource basins, like air, which sustain life. If the cost of polluting (i.e. development) the biosphere (i.e the sum total of resource basins) were equitable, then we have a solution to Erlich's followup posit: A much tougher problem is what to do about everybody wanting to consume like Americans, and have an SUV.
The rest of what they say on education etc is just more details, but without bridging the gap, its not going to work, because some will make money of poisoning someone else's food or water or air basin and in the process offer the wrong model of development for the survival of the species.
Erlich comes across as a rabid right wing social engineer and Connell as a leftist pro human rights social engineer. Without equity you have an imbalance that requires engineers! And its also where these guys go overboard- instead of preserving the natural wealth (benefits of wild lands) in the resource basins of subsistence societies with an ownership model, like ILO 169, they see poverty and want their development model imposed on it. Though to their credit they don't quite say that- I'm reading it in between the words wealthiest and subsistence- when they agree to "take the wealthiest lawyers and bankers and send them to subsistence societies."
Erlich's defense of the Population Bomb was very forceful- applied to the US. Don't preach, practice. A home grown solution to a domestic problem. It put Connell on the defensive- and arm chair quaterback who though that the study was his end all. At which point the discussion actually turned into a debate.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
People suffering environmental harm are also consumers
The environment and consumer benefits from Pay-As-You-Drive insurance. A 30% participation rate reduces carbon dioxide by 55 million tons, equivalent to taking 10M cars off the road. Transit revenue increases because drivers exercise choice. All the benefits of reduced driving recur. But the Examiner article goes on to say that participation and reporting are voluntary, making PAYD ripe for gaming, because of opposition from consumer groups.
Why is Richard Holober, Consumer Federation of America's Executive Director, on the wrong side of the environment? Consumer groups have championed narrow rights against corporations, as both of them are locked in a buyer-seller pact, to toast the planet. The last thirty years has been a wash for injury prevention. Dangerous jobs have shifted to illegal "unrepresented" immigrants. The injuries has come at the expense of a resource expended planet and a deterioration in privacy rights across the board; and deprivation of life, liberty, and happiness without recourse for groups, like pedestrians and cyclist, on the wrong side of the consumption paradigm. Senator Leland Yee too bought into this resource depleting pollution centric position. Worse driver behavior that has a clear social harm like reckless driving, which uses more gasoline and kills more people, will not be tracked.
Not tracking irresponsible driving behavior sells more cars and allows for more dangerous roads since cities have to accommodate wider streets because of the speed creep law. This in turns sells bigger more polluting engines which can't go slow enough to be safe. The general ignorance of traffic and priority by tree hugging environmentalists is a problem which allows them to continue their polluting behavior that's strangling the biosphere.
We can’t buy ourselves out of global warming and protect consumers in the process and be successful on AB32. The planet suffers and exporting pollution to hapless consumers elsewhere doesn't cut it. We need to strengthen our environmental laws with a carbon fee on imports, not allow loopholes as big as the Global Accord on Tariffs and Trade. Poisner's plan tries to mitigate the harm of auto externalizes by offering consumers an alternative that they can measure in pocket book savings while seeking to preserve our common resources like the biosphere.
Why is Richard Holober, Consumer Federation of America's Executive Director, on the wrong side of the environment? Consumer groups have championed narrow rights against corporations, as both of them are locked in a buyer-seller pact, to toast the planet. The last thirty years has been a wash for injury prevention. Dangerous jobs have shifted to illegal "unrepresented" immigrants. The injuries has come at the expense of a resource expended planet and a deterioration in privacy rights across the board; and deprivation of life, liberty, and happiness without recourse for groups, like pedestrians and cyclist, on the wrong side of the consumption paradigm. Senator Leland Yee too bought into this resource depleting pollution centric position. Worse driver behavior that has a clear social harm like reckless driving, which uses more gasoline and kills more people, will not be tracked.
Not tracking irresponsible driving behavior sells more cars and allows for more dangerous roads since cities have to accommodate wider streets because of the speed creep law. This in turns sells bigger more polluting engines which can't go slow enough to be safe. The general ignorance of traffic and priority by tree hugging environmentalists is a problem which allows them to continue their polluting behavior that's strangling the biosphere.
We can’t buy ourselves out of global warming and protect consumers in the process and be successful on AB32. The planet suffers and exporting pollution to hapless consumers elsewhere doesn't cut it. We need to strengthen our environmental laws with a carbon fee on imports, not allow loopholes as big as the Global Accord on Tariffs and Trade. Poisner's plan tries to mitigate the harm of auto externalizes by offering consumers an alternative that they can measure in pocket book savings while seeking to preserve our common resources like the biosphere.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Why has personal virtue got us in such a bind?
It hasn't worked since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring because
1- the government takes all our money and through the lobbyists that underwrite them turns the subsidies into pollution.
2- The majority of people are looking for the cheapest buy. That means the most heavily subsidized pollution will sell. Unless there are regulation like the Clean Air Act to regulate pollution we will not get Priuses that the few personal virtuers can use to make a difference.
3- The underwriters of government will always benefit from our consumption. Just driving increases the need of oil companies to grab land in Santa Barbara and drive the Gwitchen in Alaska to extinction and lobby against the polar bears.
4- The underwriters of government want to sell us crap we don't need and the government in turns calls it progress and "the economy" and our kids go to school and get brainwashed in becoming consumers.
5- The government will promote consumption rather than ask for sacrifices that can will save our kids blood and treasure instead of war for more pollution.
1- the government takes all our money and through the lobbyists that underwrite them turns the subsidies into pollution.
2- The majority of people are looking for the cheapest buy. That means the most heavily subsidized pollution will sell. Unless there are regulation like the Clean Air Act to regulate pollution we will not get Priuses that the few personal virtuers can use to make a difference.
3- The underwriters of government will always benefit from our consumption. Just driving increases the need of oil companies to grab land in Santa Barbara and drive the Gwitchen in Alaska to extinction and lobby against the polar bears.
4- The underwriters of government want to sell us crap we don't need and the government in turns calls it progress and "the economy" and our kids go to school and get brainwashed in becoming consumers.
5- The government will promote consumption rather than ask for sacrifices that can will save our kids blood and treasure instead of war for more pollution.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Change needs get-real-change
Lots of talk about change these days. Here is a five point program for letting people keep more of their money, breathe clean air, get good local jobs, and have time for their families and community.
1- Congress can pass HR 676 - One plan; one nation. Its the least we can get for our taxes- not wars in Iraq and protective policy give aways for overseas jobs. Welfare for the public is in the constitution. War for oil and corporations is not. Without the security of health care people are wage slaves tied to jobs they don't like taking time away from their families and community. We can join Healthcare-NOW
2- Carbon tax on poisons replaces all or part of the income tax- Gore proposed replacing FICA as a means of reliving companies and the tax on work. But FICA pays for our social security, our retirement, and should be the consequence of our labor. The income tax on the other hand seems to go to many things like wars and poisons that are and is and should be unpopular. We can walk and ride a bike until that happens.
3- Cap and dividend- Congress and the governor want to cap carbon as well we should and at 350 ppm of CO2. But they want to leave the pollution out there for us to filter through our lungs without compensation and make fatter cats of Goldman Sachs. Instead return the money to Americans in a flat payment. Hansen and conservatives have also embraced this idea. More than a revenue neutral tax on poisons, cap and dividend allows us to right the wrong to the planet from vaporizing fossil fuels into the breath-o-sphere and what should be the life giving waters. We should know 350, the most important number on the planet, and pursue a low carbon lifestyle- grow a garden, reuse, stay away from toxins and plastic, take the bus, beware of the consequences of packaging.
4- Carbon fee on imports- take away the incentives to move jobs to polluting distant lands and disenfranchised peoples. Change will come if we dump Economics 101 on its head. We shouldn't have dead cats for Chinese pet food or medicines and ecolie on Mexican peppers to know we have a problem and they are suffering more than we are. There is a reason why McCain praises the nasty excess of the Ahmed Chalabi, Pervez Musharaf and Mikheil Saakashvili-s. We know the dangers that can cause and the world it leads us into and need to heed the call to stop now. We can buy and eat local. Use sustainable lumber and water.
5- Enable existing technologies now with carbon credits for cities. Instead of pursuing the siren call of new highly polluting technologies and poisons like hydrogen cars and lithium batteries lets make our cities smaller, slower, and walkable. For moving goods and services lets use golf carts and electric trucks and freight to rail. Most important lets give local government the incentive to make it happen. We can go to city hall and ask for 15 and 20 mph streets.
1- Congress can pass HR 676 - One plan; one nation. Its the least we can get for our taxes- not wars in Iraq and protective policy give aways for overseas jobs. Welfare for the public is in the constitution. War for oil and corporations is not. Without the security of health care people are wage slaves tied to jobs they don't like taking time away from their families and community. We can join Healthcare-NOW
2- Carbon tax on poisons replaces all or part of the income tax- Gore proposed replacing FICA as a means of reliving companies and the tax on work. But FICA pays for our social security, our retirement, and should be the consequence of our labor. The income tax on the other hand seems to go to many things like wars and poisons that are and is and should be unpopular. We can walk and ride a bike until that happens.
3- Cap and dividend- Congress and the governor want to cap carbon as well we should and at 350 ppm of CO2. But they want to leave the pollution out there for us to filter through our lungs without compensation and make fatter cats of Goldman Sachs. Instead return the money to Americans in a flat payment. Hansen and conservatives have also embraced this idea. More than a revenue neutral tax on poisons, cap and dividend allows us to right the wrong to the planet from vaporizing fossil fuels into the breath-o-sphere and what should be the life giving waters. We should know 350, the most important number on the planet, and pursue a low carbon lifestyle- grow a garden, reuse, stay away from toxins and plastic, take the bus, beware of the consequences of packaging.
4- Carbon fee on imports- take away the incentives to move jobs to polluting distant lands and disenfranchised peoples. Change will come if we dump Economics 101 on its head. We shouldn't have dead cats for Chinese pet food or medicines and ecolie on Mexican peppers to know we have a problem and they are suffering more than we are. There is a reason why McCain praises the nasty excess of the Ahmed Chalabi, Pervez Musharaf and Mikheil Saakashvili-s. We know the dangers that can cause and the world it leads us into and need to heed the call to stop now. We can buy and eat local. Use sustainable lumber and water.
5- Enable existing technologies now with carbon credits for cities. Instead of pursuing the siren call of new highly polluting technologies and poisons like hydrogen cars and lithium batteries lets make our cities smaller, slower, and walkable. For moving goods and services lets use golf carts and electric trucks and freight to rail. Most important lets give local government the incentive to make it happen. We can go to city hall and ask for 15 and 20 mph streets.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
All things green buildin
The Sierra Club priority is 30% efficiency in buildings though codes.
Quote: A comprehensive, integrated campaign to boost new home model code energy efficiency by 30% Because homes and other buildings consume almost half of America’s energy, they must play a significant role in any successful effort to improve energy efficiency. The 30% Solution before the International Code Commission is an ambitious, yet achievable and affordable proposal to reduce wasted energy from our homes.
San Mateo Green Building Ordinance was passed in February 2008
Quote: Homeowners and developers who use green building techniques like environmentally-friendly materials in the unincorporated area will speed through the approval process faster under a new program approved by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday to encourage the practice.
The new policy, spearheaded by Supervisor Mark Church, awards points for green options used during new construction and remodels. After a minimum of 50 points is achieved, builders will receive incentives like fast-tracked application processing from 10 to 12 weeks down to four weeks when 75 to 100 points is reached. After 100 points, the county guarantees to reduce building inspection from three to four working days to two working days.
California passed SB811 which Belmont should adopt. As a result California law allows cities to give loans for energy-saving improvements with a financial structure similar to a utility tax.
The new California Green Building Code pdf for new construction is available here and read the associated writeup.
Quote: It goes into effect in 180 days, will be voluntary until 2010, when its provisions are expected to become mandatory, commission leaders said. The voluntary period gives builders, local governments and communities time to adapt to the new rules, the commission said.
The code sets targets for energy efficiency, water consumption, dual plumbing systems for potable and recyclable water, diversion of construction waste from landfills and use of environmentally sensitive materials in construction and design, including eco-friendly flooring, carpeting, paint, coatings, thermal insulation and acoustical wall and ceiling panels.
"By adopting this first-in-the-nation statewide green building code, California is again leading the way to fight climate change and protect the environment," Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement released Thursday. "This is literally a groundbreaking move to ensure that when we break ground on all new buildings in the Golden State we are promoting green building and energy efficient new technologies."
Marin acknowledged the efforts by saying the process brought together groups with "very disparate interests" to develop the building code. The code "sets a floor, not a ceiling," she said, adding that builders, cities and counties are encouraged to exceed the standards.
The standards cover commercial and residential construction in the public and private sectors as well as schools of all levels, hospitals and other public institutions. The green thresholds include a 50 percent increase in landscape water conservation and a 15 percent reduction in energy use compared to current standards. All the measures if acted upon would at least be comparable to the requirements of a "silver rating" under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), commission representatives said.
Article continues
We should be pushing for LEED ND because the commute can blow a green building's carbon budget. This is currently a pilot project endorsed by Smart Growth America and the National Resource Defense Council.
Quote: A comprehensive, integrated campaign to boost new home model code energy efficiency by 30% Because homes and other buildings consume almost half of America’s energy, they must play a significant role in any successful effort to improve energy efficiency. The 30% Solution before the International Code Commission is an ambitious, yet achievable and affordable proposal to reduce wasted energy from our homes.
San Mateo Green Building Ordinance was passed in February 2008
Quote: Homeowners and developers who use green building techniques like environmentally-friendly materials in the unincorporated area will speed through the approval process faster under a new program approved by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday to encourage the practice.
The new policy, spearheaded by Supervisor Mark Church, awards points for green options used during new construction and remodels. After a minimum of 50 points is achieved, builders will receive incentives like fast-tracked application processing from 10 to 12 weeks down to four weeks when 75 to 100 points is reached. After 100 points, the county guarantees to reduce building inspection from three to four working days to two working days.
California passed SB811 which Belmont should adopt. As a result California law allows cities to give loans for energy-saving improvements with a financial structure similar to a utility tax.
The new California Green Building Code pdf for new construction is available here and read the associated writeup.
Quote: It goes into effect in 180 days, will be voluntary until 2010, when its provisions are expected to become mandatory, commission leaders said. The voluntary period gives builders, local governments and communities time to adapt to the new rules, the commission said.
The code sets targets for energy efficiency, water consumption, dual plumbing systems for potable and recyclable water, diversion of construction waste from landfills and use of environmentally sensitive materials in construction and design, including eco-friendly flooring, carpeting, paint, coatings, thermal insulation and acoustical wall and ceiling panels.
"By adopting this first-in-the-nation statewide green building code, California is again leading the way to fight climate change and protect the environment," Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement released Thursday. "This is literally a groundbreaking move to ensure that when we break ground on all new buildings in the Golden State we are promoting green building and energy efficient new technologies."
Marin acknowledged the efforts by saying the process brought together groups with "very disparate interests" to develop the building code. The code "sets a floor, not a ceiling," she said, adding that builders, cities and counties are encouraged to exceed the standards.
The standards cover commercial and residential construction in the public and private sectors as well as schools of all levels, hospitals and other public institutions. The green thresholds include a 50 percent increase in landscape water conservation and a 15 percent reduction in energy use compared to current standards. All the measures if acted upon would at least be comparable to the requirements of a "silver rating" under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), commission representatives said.
Article continues
We should be pushing for LEED ND because the commute can blow a green building's carbon budget. This is currently a pilot project endorsed by Smart Growth America and the National Resource Defense Council.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
What does 350 world look like?
Bill Fulton asks: So what’s the Carbon-Free Futurama? Can you really create a compelling alternative vision for the future that’s about walking and bicycling and golf cart type vehicles and so forth.
In Global Cooling from the Urban Land Institute the answer is compact development. More below.
But doesn't Bill McKibben's most important number on the planet gives us a hint? Its us in 1960. Kennedy on the campaign trail. The planets population at 3B. And consumption rates staying at the nutty levels of the 1950s after being amortized over the planet's population. Houses were a 900 sq ft with large families and people were just beginning to build 1200-1600 sq ft monster homes for the nuclear family.
But it this isn't as bad as it sounds at least for 1950. The cold war and resource predation was just round the corner. People lived in sustainable villages in the third world that were the preferred destination of Americans. Then came the resource wars between communist and capitalist proxies that drove these lifestyles out of existence and by the 70's connected them up with the new roads that symbolized development. That's not an eden we can go back to now.
But high gas prices are forcing a new relationship to the road and the role of cities. People are resourceful and adaptive. The Venezuelans and Saudis must see the benefit of forcing the established power structures to adapt to really high gas prices, $20-$50/- per gallon, so that people can use their resources to better ends. Compact development where all services are located within an 1/8 of a mile or a 1/4 mile are a type of city that used to exist on the Peninsula and were connected by the UP train now Caltrain. We need to move beyond resource consumption because the economics are taking us to a new level.
How resource intensive are we now? Californians consumed: 15.67 billion gallons of gasoline last year, about 1 percent less than in 2006. Demand during 2006 dropped to 15.83 billion gallons from 15.94 billion in 2005, the first decline in 14 years. Diesel fuel use fell 7.8 percent in April from a year earlier, the agency said. Consumption was down 4.7 percent from March.
The decrease "reflects both the impacts of higher diesel prices and the slowing economy, which is associated with less freight movement on California roads and highways," the agency said. California drivers used 1.257 billion gallons of gasoline in April, down 2.2 percent from a year earlier and the lowest for the month since 2001, California State Board of Equalization said. Consumption was down 52 million gallons, or 4 percent, from March.
Phillip Lagdon writes: Defenders of sprawl — and they have been legion — failed to see what was coming. Sprawl’s defenders insisted that no matter how many flaws might be ascribed to dispersed, low-density development, a large number of Americans like it, so it will just keep on growing. James Howard Kunstler was much more prescient. He repeatedly said and wrote, in his thundering cadence, that it doesn’t matter if people like it. If you can’t afford it any more, the energy-intensive style of life doesn’t have a future.
In Global Cooling from the Urban Land Institute the answer is compact development. More below.
But doesn't Bill McKibben's most important number on the planet gives us a hint? Its us in 1960. Kennedy on the campaign trail. The planets population at 3B. And consumption rates staying at the nutty levels of the 1950s after being amortized over the planet's population. Houses were a 900 sq ft with large families and people were just beginning to build 1200-1600 sq ft monster homes for the nuclear family.
But it this isn't as bad as it sounds at least for 1950. The cold war and resource predation was just round the corner. People lived in sustainable villages in the third world that were the preferred destination of Americans. Then came the resource wars between communist and capitalist proxies that drove these lifestyles out of existence and by the 70's connected them up with the new roads that symbolized development. That's not an eden we can go back to now.
But high gas prices are forcing a new relationship to the road and the role of cities. People are resourceful and adaptive. The Venezuelans and Saudis must see the benefit of forcing the established power structures to adapt to really high gas prices, $20-$50/- per gallon, so that people can use their resources to better ends. Compact development where all services are located within an 1/8 of a mile or a 1/4 mile are a type of city that used to exist on the Peninsula and were connected by the UP train now Caltrain. We need to move beyond resource consumption because the economics are taking us to a new level.
How resource intensive are we now? Californians consumed: 15.67 billion gallons of gasoline last year, about 1 percent less than in 2006. Demand during 2006 dropped to 15.83 billion gallons from 15.94 billion in 2005, the first decline in 14 years. Diesel fuel use fell 7.8 percent in April from a year earlier, the agency said. Consumption was down 4.7 percent from March.
The decrease "reflects both the impacts of higher diesel prices and the slowing economy, which is associated with less freight movement on California roads and highways," the agency said. California drivers used 1.257 billion gallons of gasoline in April, down 2.2 percent from a year earlier and the lowest for the month since 2001, California State Board of Equalization said. Consumption was down 52 million gallons, or 4 percent, from March.
Phillip Lagdon writes: Defenders of sprawl — and they have been legion — failed to see what was coming. Sprawl’s defenders insisted that no matter how many flaws might be ascribed to dispersed, low-density development, a large number of Americans like it, so it will just keep on growing. James Howard Kunstler was much more prescient. He repeatedly said and wrote, in his thundering cadence, that it doesn’t matter if people like it. If you can’t afford it any more, the energy-intensive style of life doesn’t have a future.
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