Still Dirty, Still Coal

Hat tip to Shadoweyes for a "truth in advertising" look at clean coal:

Soft on your bum or light on the planet

Toilet paper is an obvious end to the recycling chain, so why are so few toilet paper varieties made from recycled paper?  At least with today's recycled paper, re-used fibers mean rougher stuff and Americans are fans of softness for their undersides.

Just how bad do Americans need to wipe with a virgin tissue?  Up to 20 percent of toilet paper in Latin America and Europe is recycled.  In the U.S., it's 2 percent.

It's not just the trees that suffer, but less waste is generated and fewer chemicals used in the processing of recycled tissue. 

It's the Environment v. the American bum. 

Coal: an increasingly clean energy source

In the case of the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant, the waste had been accumulating for half a century. The mountain of sludge covered more than 100 acres and rose 65 feet into the air before an earthen dam burst, spilling 5.4 million cubic yards of ash that fouled homes and about 300 acres, as well as a river...

"The prevailing myth is that it's safe," Schaeffer says. "We have EPA buying into that for years and really refusing to regulate this material for what it is, which is highly toxic ash that leashes metals like arsenic, cadmium and mercury into drinking water and rivers and creeks."

The danger (and cost) of carbon markets

This post at Triple Pundit notes that a study of the largest carbon market, the Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism, finds that most of the carbon offset money is being sent to coal and oil companies and that "much of the market does not reflect actual reductions in emissions."

This is why a world offset market - as opposed to a local offset market - is a really bad idea. And why we shouldn't be giving carbon emissions credits away for free.

Book review: Deep Economy

I recently finished reading Deep Economy by Bill McKibben and it was an excellent book. The overall theme is that Americans have come to be obsessed with more. More economic growth, more material goods, bigger! better! McKibben begins his analysis by noting that for most Americans, wealth and material goods are not related to happiness and that we need to refocus on a "deeper" economy.

First, the main point. McKibben notes that once a country's per capita income exceeds $10,000, there is not a commensurate increase in the happiness of the population. Once basic needs of food and shelter are met, little happiness (if any) is gained from additional wealth. Economists call this the diminishing marginal utility of income (pdf).

One of the other main issues McKibben addresses is the issue of agriculture, health and the environment. Modern food systems generally involve large monocultures (a single plant covering thousands of acres), massive processing and packaging, and long-distance shipping. Thus every visit to the supermarket can offer local vegetables or exotic fruits, in any season. And it also serves up a healthy dose of pesticides, herbicides, and a massive carbon footprint.

McKibben notes that both our health (in terms of nutrition) and our land's productivity suffer. First, health suffers because when modern agriculture comes to the developing world, it tends to displace sufficiency farming. The former involves large monocropping of corns or soybeans or other commodities for export, the latter a mix of vegetables and grains to serve local nutritional needs. Modern agriculture actually reduces the self-sufficiency of the developing world and increases malnutrition.

Modern science has helped combat this with discoveries such as golden rice (infused with vitamin A) that replaces the vitamin A lost when other vegetables are not longer planted alongside rice. It's ironic, though, that it is really just a fix to another solution of modern times, the green revolution.

Even more intriguing, organic small-scale farming is actually more productive per acre and per unit of energy. That's right, you get more food for your land and inputs farming in a more traditional style, where corn can be planted in the same field as beans, instead of lined up for mechanical harvesting. And that is the tradeoff, of course. This more natural style of farming is labor-intensive and more expensive in dollars per pound of food, but more productive per acre of land.

The other big issue McKibben addresses as part of his exploration of happiness is community. Americans have a society committed to maximizing individual time: houses with more bedrooms than people, cable TV instead of movie theaters, cars instead of mass transit. The tradeoff is that people feel more alone and depressed than their parents.

McKibben suggests that community is a balancing act. Too much feels repressive, like having your parents or neighbors constantly at your door or in your space. To little leaves people vulnerable to anxiety and other products of social isolation.

Overall, I thought his book an interesting look at how to re-envision the modern economy to better respect the environment and the sense of human community. Highly recommended.

Environmentally tracking your product: The Footprint Chronicles

Patagonia, an excellent outdoor gear organization, has had a longstanding commitment to environmental sustainability. Their straightforward and honest Footprint Chronicles allow you to track the earth impact of any of their products.

Thanks to Triple Pundit for the tip.

Water in the news

Two items on my RSS reader feed today look at the scourge of bottled water. The first repeats the debunking of the "8 glasses a day" myth and the second explores the environmental impacts of producing tons of plastic for bottled water.

You can read previous MoldyBlue coverage of bottled water, including the revelation that most of it comes from the tap and the ridiculous price markup (a few thousand percent).

Where does your tire tread go?

From the expert at AskPablo, pretty much everywhere:

Well, some of it ends up in the air as PM10 (particulate matter that is 10 microns in diameter) which we might breath in. Some of it ends up as that dark grime on your rims (although some of that is brake pad dust) and windshield. The rest waits by the side of the road for the next rain storm to wash it away. Once in the storm drain the little rubber bits probably make their way to the ocean where they happily float around.

Unfortunately for the little critters in the ocean these little bits look a lot like food. In fact in some areas of the oceans man-made particles outnumber plankton and other microscopic critters by an order of magnitude! When these bits make their way into an animals belly they don't break down and can't be digested. This means that they accumulate, leading to eventual starvation. If a larger fish eats it first the rubber may than accumulate in its belly until it is eaten by a seabird or mammal, and so on...

Paper or plastic (or ceramic or steel)?

Pablo of AskPablo takes on the question of disposable v. reusable drink containers for coffee (or your beverage of choice). While the results aren't unexpected (for repeat use, reusable is more sustainable), some of the details are interesting:

At 46 uses, the ceramic mug becomes the environmentally responsible choice [over styrofoam]. And after 369 uses, the stainless steel mug also become a better choice than styrofoam.

That's right, it takes a year for that daily cup of joe in a stainless steel mug to even out with the disposable styrofoam, thanks to high resource and production costs. And then there's the paper cup, seemingly more environmentally benign:

24 paper cups are equivalent in material intensity to a stainless steel mug

Wow. 15 times more resource-intense than styrofoam. But as with most environmental choices, it's not even that black-and-white.

Additional dimensions include the recyclability of the materials, their toxicity, the biodiversity of the raw material extraction site, and the working conditions along the supply chain.

And one other thing: you save a lot less environment if you have many reusable mugs. After all, each stainless steel mug you own takes a year to beat a 1-a-day habit of styrofoam.

Locavore, grab your gun

An insightful op-ed piece in the NY Times today examines how hunting for game meat may be the ticket to being a green carnivore. He notes that all it would take is a little name change.

But, in keeping with the times, it might be better to relabel it as free-range, grass-fed, organic, locally produced, locally harvested, sustainable, native, low-stress, low-impact, humanely slaughtered meat.

There's something to it.

Co-opting green

At the Los Angeles Auto Show this year, the Chevy Tahoe hybrid won the "green car of the year" award. The irony?

The Chevy Tahoe gets 20 miles to the gallon. Outside, several plug-in hybrid Toyota Priuses were featured: with capability to get over 100 miles per gallon.

Nice try, Tahoe.

Unleaded gasoline lowered violent crime by 56%

According to a recently released study, examining the effects of removing lead from gasoline, unleaded gas substantially reduced lead poisoning in children. Because lead poisoning is linked to more aggressive behavior is linked to violent crime, the study finds a substantial reduction in violent crime associated with the removal of lead from gasoline.

This is in addition to the substantial reduction in violent crime from the legalization of abortion.

It's crazy how things are linked together...

Snooty suburbanites resist clotheslines

Motivated by the potential energy savings and the reduced environmental impact, many people are looking at hanging their laundry to dry outside. After all, the wind and sun are free.

The clothesline was once a ubiquitous part of the residential landscape. But as postwar Americans embraced labor-saving appliances, clotheslines came to be associated with people who couldn't afford a dryer. Now they are a rarity, purged from the suburban landscape by legally enforceable development restrictions. (emphasis mine)

These are the same covenants that require "medium to dark tones" of house paint and a minimum of a two-car garage (preferably a large, bland edifice dominating the street face of the houses). And it's costly policy:

Clothes dryers account for 6% of total electricity consumed by U.S. households, third behind refrigerators and lighting, according to the Residential Energy Consumption Survey by the federal Energy Information Administration. It costs the typical household $80 a year to run a standard electric dryer, according to a calculation by E Source Cos., in Boulder, Colo., which advises businesses on reducing energy consumption.

Homeowners who are looking to do good by the environment and their pocketbook have been threatened with legal action from their associations.

Facing the threat of legal action, Ms. Taylor has in recent days resorted to hanging the laundry in her garage, with the door open slightly. But she says that denies her laundry the direct benefits of the sun and the fresh mountain air. She is thinking of moving to a less-restrictive neighborhood.

Good idea. Anyone who thinks a suburban subdivision represents the pinnacle of sightly design deserves a smack in the face.

Energyville: what's your energy mix?

Want to try your hand at developing a practical and environmentally-sound energy mix for a city of the future? Check out Energyville, a simulation by Chevron. You can select from several conventional and renewable power sources and the game rates your selection by its economic, environmental, and security impact.

Natural oils repel bugs?

From one of my green technology RSS feeds, a biotech company finds a low toxicity way to kill insects, by discovering natural oils that disrupt the bugs' chemical receptors.

G-coupled proteins, which are often targets for pharmaceutical developments, pick up chemical signals from outside a cell and relay them to the inside. The disruption of receptors can repel or kill insects.

Yeah, I don't know what half of that means either, but this part makes sense:

The company's first product, TyraTech All Natural Crawling Insect Killer, will be made with active ingredients on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's exempt list...Because the ingredients are natural oils, that means the products are safe to drink.

Tell that to your can of RAID.

President Bush: codifying environmental degradation since 2001

Coal mining has been in the news with the trapping of six miners in a collapsed Utah mine and the subsequent death of three rescuers in a second collapse. The federal government has joined the fray, with an announcement that new rules will expressly allow the longtime practice of mountaintop removal for coal mining. The tradeoff is that this method of mining is substantially safer than underground mines, but significantly more destructive to the environment.

The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams...Mountaintop mining is the most common strip mining in central Appalachia, and the most destructive. Ridge tops are flattened with bulldozers and dynamite, clearing all vegetation and, at times, forcing residents to move.

...From 1985 to 2001, 724 miles of streams were buried under mining waste, according to the environmental impact statement accompanying the new rule. If current practices continue, another 724 river miles will be buried by 2018, the [Army Corps of Engineers] report says.

As always with this administration, however, the stink of corruption lies heavy about the decision.

The early stages of the revision process were supported by J. Stephen Griles, a former industry lobbyist who was the deputy interior secretary from 2001 to 2004...The regulation is the culmination of six and a half years of work by the administration to make it easier for mining companies to dig more coal to meet growing energy demands and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

Gee, the industry writes its own rules. That's new.

And then there's the bogus note about oil dependence. Coal is for electricity, oil is for cars. But thanks to the excellent journalism at the New York Times, that lie talking point on energy independence will reach thousands of readers. Bravo.

Eat local, save the environment?

This article looks at the term "food miles," how far your food has traveled from farm to plate. In an era where environmental impact and carbon emissions are important components of the price of food, distance matters:

On its face, the connection between lowering food miles and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions is a no-brainer. In Iowa, the typical carrot has traveled 1,600 miles from California, a potato 1,200 miles from Idaho and a chuck roast 600 miles from Colorado. Seventy-five percent of the apples sold in New York City come from the West Coast or overseas, the writer Bill McKibben says, even though the state produces far more apples than city residents consume. (emphasis mine)

And yet, as it turns out, focusing on shipping distance alone obscures the overall environmental impact of a given meal:

Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other energy-consuming aspects of production — what economists call “factor inputs and externalities” — like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.

Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit. (emphasis mine)

Buying local does have other advantages. Shopping at an independent retailer keeps 45 cents of every dollar spent in the community, versus 14 cents for shopping at a chain or franchise store. There's probably a similar payback on local food. But if you're out to minimize environmental impact, it's probably better to grow food where it grows best, and to pay a fair price for shipping (e.g. such as a carbon tax on fossil fuel used in shipping).

The idiocy of designer thirst quenching revealed

Thanks to public pressure from organizations like ThinkOutsidetheBottle, Pepsi Cola will now add this statement to their crystal clear, mountain-scape Aquafina label:

From a public water source

Translation: tap water.

Aquafina isn't the only company charging you 6,000 times more than your local municipality for identical water. Dasani by Coke is also tap water. Other bottled waters aren't much more up front. Poland Spring isn't tap water, but it's not from the actual Poland Spring in Maine, which dried up in 1967. It's well water.

I blogged previously about other side effects of drinking bottled water, from the rising incidence of cavities when kids stop drinking fluoridated tap water to the exorbitant cost. The Natural Resourced Defense Council has more on the lower health quality of bottled water (bacteria?) and the different levels of federal regulation of municipal (lots) and bottled (little) water.

Politics trumps science (again)

President Bush's executive order 13422 (pdf) took effect yesterday, guaranteeing that political appointees of government agencies will have final say over government regulations. The implications are widespread. This analysis from an environmental law firm notes that the executive order also requires that agencies identify the "specific market failure" that their regulation addresses. In other words, the review by a political appointee will have the potential to derail health and safety regulations, even if the best science has found them necessary or in the public interest.

January 2009 can't come quickly enough.

Respecting the climate means living locally

Residents of Las Vegas - one of the fastest growing cities in America - are learning that living in the desert means living a bit differently from their prior ways. In particular, a severe water shortage - the worst drought in recorded history - has created a new interest in xeriscaping - landscaping that minimizes water use. In Vegas, that means less grass and more cactus.

The New York Times has a nice 5-minute video on xeriscaping and water conservation in Las Vegas.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority is also finding ways to raise awareness of the water issues, with some clever public service advertisements: