Get Energy Smart! NOW!

At the Corporate ECOforum, Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a talk that looks well worth hearing. Schmidt began his talk with a Google Earth heavy discussion “of rising temperatures and government policies that are either speeding up or slowing down climate change.”

There’s a total failure of political leadership, at least in the United States, if not in the world.

His plan deals with three interrelated challenges: over-reliance on oil; sluggish world economy; and global warming.

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My beat is clear: Global Warming and Energy.

And, the choice come November could not be starker in these arenas (that is, at least in fact not media framing). The contrast could not be starker … across a wide range of issues.

Among these, John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin has added a searing issue to the table:

Do we want a separtist with easy access to the centers of power in the nation?

What would it mean to have a Vice President (likely President) sleeping with a separtist?

This question is essentially absent from the pages of traditional media.

Imagine if Michelle Obama were a registered member of the Black Panthers until 2002? Imagine the drumbeat of outrage that all Americans would hear. About Todd “My Guy” Palin’s separtist credentials? Crickets chirping in the night …

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Carbon offsets are something that trouble me, with the analogy to medieval indulgences clearly seeming relevant for at least some who embrace them.  On the other hand, Energy’s Three Rs make much sense to me:

• Reduce energy use (through efficiency and conservation)
• Use Renewable Power as much as possible
• Remediate for any remaining polluting energy use

Remediation can take many forms, with paid carbon offsets being one of them. 

Now, a question to ask (a soul-searching one) perhaps is how much individual action can count in the equation. Many evenings, I walk the office halls at the end of the day turning off lights. Turn off 5 kilowatts worth before a four-day weekend and I’ve probably “offset” my household’s monthly electricity use due to those reductions. Can I count it?  How about a different equation?

Mornings, I bike and increasingly so with my oldest child. Often just to feel the air in our faces but also the way to get that missing milk or some bread for breakfast. On these morning rides, one particularly energy hog habit stands out, shining in our faces so to say:  people leave their outdoor lights on.  This is not all homes, perhaps about one in ten in the neighborhoods we bike. And, not all homes are created equal.  Most only have on one or two bulbs, but there is one home we pass that has 24 bulbs (or nearly a kilowatt of electricity) on all night, every night.  Sigh … this sight has been an irritant on our morning rides.

Recently, we decided to try to do something about this. No, not using slingshots against the bulbs. We decided to ask people to “Consider the Impact of Lighting the Night Sky”.  I prepared a brief note (published in full at the end of this post). And, when we see a house, we fill in the relevant blanks and slip it into the mailbox.  While it is cutting into the distances biked, it is providing some math exercise for my daughter and providing a path for Energy Smart action. 

Consider those 24 bulbs.  Let’s rate them at 40 watts each, which is 960 watts for 12 hours per day.  That is 11.5 kwh/day or 4200 kwh per year.  Over 4 megawatt hours just for some exterior lights for a home which is lighted by county streetlights!    At the local utility rates, they’re paying roughly $275 for the electricity and those exterior lights are responsible for over three tons of CO2 emissions per year. 

So far, we’ve dropped notes in over 50 mailboxes in a few days. Over half the houses have either not had lights on or fewer lights on the days following a note.  Our rough calculation is about 2500 watts of less lighting so far on the morning bike rides.  Potential impact:  11 megawatt hours of reduced electricity use, saving people over $700 in costs, and over 8 tons of reduced co2 emissions.

Okay, back to the opening … Do we get to count those eight tons as carbon offset?  Does that mean that I can go out and drive an Hummer with a clear conscience?  Of course not … The point is that we should all be doing things to help the general society, not just ourselves, move forward to a saner and healthier Energy Smart future. 

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Beneath her warm and endearing facade, one could suspect that Sarah “Pit Bull with Lipstick” Palin is outraged at the audacity of Global Warming as it threatens the favored sport of Todd “My Guy” Palin.    “My Guy” has won the the “grueling 2,000-mile Tesoro Iron Dog [Pit Bull with Lipstick?]  snowmobile race four times.”  The now (in)famous Wasilla, Alaska, is the traditional starting point for both the Iron Dog snowmobile and Iditarod dog sled races.  Traditional, that is … The Iron Dog race start has been been permanently moved north of Wasilla 30 miles as they have been unable to start the race there since 2002. 

Why the disruption to “My Guy” and his favored sport?  Two words: Global Warming!

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After a month of occupation of a darkened House Chamber, Republican Representatives held a press conference to claim that American stands squarely behind them in their false prophesy of DRILL! DRILL! DRILL! as some form of solution to America’s greatest challenges. Their gleeful truthiness and deception did not, however, go unchallenged. Some 100 or so protesters showed up at the press conference help on the West Front steps fo the US Capitol. While trying to sell the Republican quick silver, Drillusion, the Republicans braved chants of:

Of course, what the Republicans wanted to sell was “Drill, Baby, Drill!” To earn some more cash from fossil fuel donations as these fossil fools wish to drill the hole deeper in America’s oil addiction and worsen the situation of catastrophic climate change.

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Tom Friedman is on a roll. He has, clearly, decided that the United States faces a pivot point. Either we will figure out smart energy policies and prosper, or we will fry.  As he looks to the election campaign, he has decided that the choice are clear. We might (MIGHT) prosper with Obama-Biden. However, WE WILL FRY with McCain-Palin.
And, here is a TV interview worth watching, absorbing, and sharing as Friedman lays McCain’s failures out on the table.

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Amid skyrocketing oil, gasoline, coal, and electricity (coming to a neighborhood near you) prices, 2008 offers Americans quite serious and stark choices between knowledgeable, impassioned, and thoughtful candidates when it comes to finding paths toward a prosperous 21st century economy, on the one side, and Fossil-Fool candidates focused on tightening our shackles to the ever-more costly (pollution, financial, otherwise) and archaic oil-coal based energy system.

One of these clear choices comes in America’s ‘energy capital’, Houston, Texas, where former wind power executive Michael Skelly is challenging far-right winger John Culberson.

Michael was an easy choice for membership in the ranks of the Energy Smart Act Blue page. Join me after the fold for some indications as to why.

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The McCain campaign and Republican Party have both been aggressive in their use of music, clips from movies, etc without, it seems, even bothering to seek copyright permission despite the promise “to protect the creative industires from privacy.” They have gotten pushback, multiple times, for their unauthorized use (read “theft”) of intellectual property. In many of these cases, the involved artists are actually quite Green and environmentalist in their donation streams and stated interests.

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In the past, I asked what I saw as a stinging question: Whose “environment” is Environmental Defense defending? When it came to the Lieberman-Warner Coal-Subsidy Act, Environmental Defense and I were clearly on far different sides:

With restraint, I’ve held my tongue and my fingers since then about ED. But, I am wondering why.

A few days ago, I read about how an environmental leader sent a long email to the leaders of the environmental community arguing that everyone should avoid linking Hurricanes Gustav and Hannah (which I am preparing for right now) to Global Warming. While I wondered who it came from, My reaction (to put it politely as possible): WTF!!!!!

Reality: Hurricanes are natural events. But, time is long past in which they (or other ‘natural’ weather events) occur absent consideration of Global Warming. Storm intensities are increasing as scientific analysis and modeling said would occur. And, the real-world data is suggesting ever more clearly that frequency of major storms are increasing as well.

Let us be clear: damage from storms (or wildfires or floods or …) cannot be isolated to Global Warming’s impact. There would have been storms (even if weaker and perhaps less frequently) even without humanity playing a role. And, taking out wetlands, poor building codes, and other human activity help foster ever increasing potential for damage from storms.

But … BUT … BUT!!!!!!!

The reality is that these storms are related to Global Warming. And, with great focus given to them, these storms provide an opportunity to educate people about the very real impact that Global Warming is already having on our lives and the impacts that will come and the catastrophic changes that might come if we do not change course.

But, this message is bad even beyond the comments re Global Warming. It also argues that storm damage on the Gulf Coast should not be used as an opportunity to question how federal flood policy has encouraged societally reckless building decisions. Nor should the storms be used to discuss how additional offshore continental shelf (OCS) drilling could be a bad idea.

Okay, let me repeat myself: WTF!!!!!!!!

These are moments to message …

In any event, since reading that first analysis of the email, I have had the email forwarded to me by multiple people from multiple institutions and now know who authored it: Fred Krupp, “Environmental Defense”. And, having received it from so many sources, I’ve decided that the full material (without email addresses) merits publication for others to see. Thus, after the fold, you make the read and you decide whether you wish to join me in screaming WTF? If this is what supposed environmental leaders are writing, thinking, advocating, should we be wondering why Congress cannot find its way to passing adequately strong legislation to deal with energy and environmental challenges?

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John McCain has made the choice. Already a hypocrite in talking the talk when it came to Global Warming, but taking the oil walk, choosing Sarah Palin put the nails in the coffin as to any shred of a claim that John McCain represents change in the Republican Party when it comes to acknowledging anthropogenic causes for Global Warming.

Let us be clear, very clear, John McCain had a choice. He could have gone ‘green’ (or at least light green) when choosing a female Republican governor. He actually had multiple ‘light green’ options in front of him.
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