Top 10 TED Talks - 6 - Getting Real About Renewable Energy

Number 6 in my Top 10 Sustainability related TED Talks, we have a serious and sobering look at what it would actually mean to produce all of our energy from renewable sources by THeoretical Physicist and generally brilliant person David MacKay (asside from physics, he has a Ph.D in Computation and Neural Systems).

MacKay uses some very rough and simple calculations in this presentation to show that there are some very serious constraints to renewable energy technology available today, and even assuming that we can improve the technology significantly some of those constraints will never go away.  For example: potential energy per unit area is drastically lower for renewables than nuclear, or coal.



I enjoy MacKay's candid, hard nosed look at what the options really are, and the practical return to what is really important: understanding how we use energy and trying to use less.  Only then are renewable energy sources even viable as a replacement for fossil fuels.

A Day with the Nissan Leaf - Electric Transportation Land

With my in-laws coming in via train for Courtney's graduation, they decided to rent a Nissan Leaf, one of the few fully electric cars on the market right now, to get themselves around town while they're down.  For various logistical reasons, I had to pick up the Leaf a day early, and had 24 hours to use it as my primary mode of transportation.

While I am not exactly "in the market" for a fully electric car (my goals are more oriented towards driving as little as possible and living in a walkable, bikable neighborhood), I recognize that they will play an essential role in an overall shift in private transit if we ever want to kick fossil and foreign oil-based fuels.  Also, I am a bit of a technocrat, and I just love new things.

There are a number of fun features on the leaf, many of them designed specifically to give you good feelings while driving it.  From the cute sounds it makes to let you know it is on (there is no engine noise while idling, and hardly any while driving) to the little trees that "grow" on your dashboard display when you drive efficiently, the car is made to make you feel good about yourself for driving it.  And it works, a little.  Until it backfires.

When I picked up the car, the dashboard display informed me that I had about 89 miles of potential charge on the battery.  It comes up with this estimate based on the car's individual driving history, which is personalized to you if you own it but for a rental car is all over the map.  As I started to drive I was intentionally being as efficient as I possibly could, and I watched as the potential miles crept up as I drove.  From the starting point at 89 miles, I got over a hundred within 6 minutes.  But then I made a terrible, unforgivable mistake.  I was brash and foolish enough to drive over a hill.  The Leaf handled the hill just fine, acceleration and responsiveness were great, but the potential miles plummeted as I ascended.  As I climbed the hill, I had a sinking, anxious feeling that I would get to the other side and not have enough charge on the battery to get back!

That panic was unwarranted, as it turned out, the car had plenty of charge to get me where I needed to go for the full 24 hours, but in about 1 quarter mile of steep incline I used up 30 miles of potential in the battery.  As I was born and raised in a town that is all hills, with only one moderately flat street, it struck me that electric vehicles would be impractical for entire cities such as Laguna Beach, San Francisco, or any other topographically challenged locale.

Also, the  eighty to one hundred miles of potential on a full charge is more than enough for the average commute plus jaunt around town (unless you live in a sprawling mega-city like Los Angeles), but it is extremely limiting once you start thinking about traveling, or work that requires a lot of driving (sales jobs, couriers, or taxis e.g.).  So in the end, the Leaf can be an excellent commuter, if you live in a moderately sized city with no hills, but it does not provide the all around one stop shopping silver bullet to all of your transportation needs that internal combustion does.

But there never is a silver bullet is there?  The Leaf is a cool car, and fun to drive, but if we are serious about kicking foreign oil and fossil fuels, we still need better public transit, design for walkable and bikable cities, more programs like flex cars, and some internal combustion run on bio-fuels, methane, or some as yet undiscovered other renewable energy.  In other words, the solution will be a patchwork, involving all of the technologies that have been presented as silver bullets.  As it has been said by many others (Grist, Wired, to name a few) silver buckshot is the solution, and the Leaf is one attractive little pellet in that mix.

Safety and Visibility - Biking in Weather and at Night

Biking is by far the most fun way to commute when the weather is clear, but in the winter you may be biking in darkness both ways and the weather is more likely to be rotten. Safety and visibility should your chief concerns when choosing to commute by bike at night, in the rain or in temperatures below freezing.

Just the other day I took my first spill in years. It was a light rain, and I was going slow, but rounding a corner I crossed a crosswalk, and both wheels touched the painted line at the same time while I was leaning into the turn. Suddenly my tires, which had been gripping the road so faithfully, lost all traction and I found my face in the asphalt. I wasn't injured, but it was a shocking reminder that biking in weather is different: it requires more attention and caution.

I like to ride fast and hard, but when the road is wet you have to slow down, especially on turns: use the handlebars a little more and lean a little less. If the temperature drops below freezing, you can get ice on the road, which is the same problem but much, much worse.

Closer to the planetary poles, the days get awfully short in winter, and many people will find themselves going to work before sunrise and returning after sunset. If you bike, this essentially means biking at night both ways. Some states (Oregon included) have laws that require bike lights, but most urban cycling veterans will tell you to do much more than the legal minimum.

The more lights, reflectors and LEDs you have, the more likely a driver is to spot you before there is any threat of collision. Also, front and back lights are essential but having plenty of visibility from the sides will keep you from getting sideswiped in an intersection. Spoke lights can be as cheap as $5, and they create arcs of light when you are moving.

High visibility clothing and self adhesive reflectors are a must, no matter how dorky you look.  I like to wear layers that I can easily take off and stuff in a bag, so the vest my In-Laws got me is perfect.  

There will always be accidents. On our last trip to Seattle Courtney's family all admonished us with stories of a cyclist, covered in reflective gear, who was hit by a drunk driver in Kirkland recently. The one thing you can never control is the other people on the road, but the same is true in a car or on a motorcycle. It is best to cycle on routes that other cyclists use.  People only look for bikes when they are used to it, so the more there are on the road the safer it usually is.

Dreaming of Less Driving - Car Free Living

Eugene Area Bike Paths

Driving, as you probably already know, is not fun. Biking, on the other hand, is.  Driving is not relaxing, walking is.  Driving is not healthy (being essentially sedentary and stressful, it is about as healthy as a desk job), both walking and biking are.  I have been dreaming of driving less (or ideally not at all) for a long time, and slowly working to achieve that dream.

Now that Courtney and I live in a highly walkable neighborhood, in the middle of a very bike-able city, we have been seriously considering a car free lifestyle, and how we could drive so little that it would cost less to rent than to own.  There would be some bike related expenses (a Burley trailer, e.g.), but the revenue from selling the car would more than cover them.  We would need to plan any required car trips carefully in advance, and sign up for a benefits program with a car rental company (Eugene does not currently have an affordable flex-car program).  But mostly, we would have to get accustomed to building just a little more travel time into our daily schedule.

Carport of the Future

We have some experience with this already, as we have been biking and walking as often as possible since we moved last April.  A little over a month ago, we began keeping a log of how often we actually use the car.  So far, the car has been used approximately 2 times a week, and most of those trips could have been avoided with better planning.  About half occurred when we were running late and decided to drive to save a few minutes.  For the rest, it was logistically easier to use the car (though it would have been possible to make other arrangements for most of them).  So basically, most of the time it was laziness or carelessness that led us behind the wheel, which leads us to conclude that if the car just wasn't there, we would be forced to plan better.

As long as we can combine several trips into a day and hold our automobile use down to about two or three days per month, renting a vehicle for those trips is actually much less expensive than paying insurance and maintenance on a vehicle (we pay the gas either way).  We also get the added benefit of always driving a car in perfect repair, and having the option to choose more fuel efficient vehicles as soon as they are available.  In fact, it might not be long before rental companies are offering electric vehicles.  In a way, this means we can vote for the most efficient vehicle as often as possible.

There a number of problems that having a car seems like the best solution to, but car ownership brings a whole mess of problems of its own.  By avoiding the need for a car as much as possible, and renting on the few occasions that it is really necessary, we hope to avoid all of the problems of car ownership, save money on insurance and maintenance, and reduce our carbon footprint all in one fell swoop.

Bicycle Security: how to protect your green commuting investment

Image via Wikipedia

Commuting by bicycle is one fun way to reduce your transit related carbon footprint, but theft is a huge problem in any metropolitan area.  Proper bike security is a must for the urban cyclist, and there are a few simple best practices that everyone should know.

Last month, I got an email from the U of O Transit Group about precisely this issue, in which a former peace officer and current Bicycle Coordinator at the University of Maryland Transportation Services expressed very clearly everything I had ever heard about good bike security.  After asking his permission, I have decided to post what he wrote almost exactly (with some omissions, he describes in detail why certain lock types are not very effective, and that is information that we don't need to be spreading through the inter-tubes).  This info will be particularly useful for anyone who has just switched, or is considering switching to commuting by bike.

So here is what John Brandt has to say about bike security [stuff in square brackets = my commentary]:

I thought I'd weigh in on the conversation about locking bicycles because I may have some experience and/or information that some of you might not.  I was a cop from 1980-2010 and ran a police bicycle unit and a crime prevention unit for a lot of those years.  I was also on a cut-team that was responsible for removing demonstrators that locked themselves to things.  Lastly, my college is inside the Washington D.C. “beltway” and we’re not too far from Baltimore, either.  As a result, our bike theft problem may be more severe than for many of you.  Regardless, I believe that as gas prices rise and biking becomes more prevalent, the problem will become greater for all of us.  I apologize for the length of my comments, but I hope I can help some of you.

Here’s what we’ve found about cable locks:

·         3/8” to 5/8” cable locks (coated or uncoated) just plain don’t work as a primary locking device.  Thinner cables are even more worthless.  Cables can be a good device for preventing opportunistic, walk-off thefts, but if your bike is out of your sight, they’re practically worthless.  Don’t believe any hype from manufacturers or dealers about how “their” cable is stronger or better than all the “others.”  They can all be easily beaten in four ways (two by easily concealable tools):

  [Specific methods omitted at John's suggestion]

Cable locks are a nice secondary lock, when used with a u-lock.  Most thieves won’t bother defeating them just to steal your front wheel (unless it’s REALLY pricey).  There are just too many unsecured front wheels lying around on bike racks.

Here are the key facts we’ve found about u-locks:

·         You generally need power tools to defeat a u-lock and that makes them less likely to be attacked, but they’re not a perfect solution to bike theft and the bike owner is still their own worst enemy when they don’t use the lock properly.

 
[Specific methods omitted]

·         U-locks are only as good as what you attach them to and how you attach them.

o   The best you can do is to lock your u-lock through both wheels, your frame, and a substantial bike rack.

§  Almost no one does this because they don’t want to take the time to remove and replace their front wheel.

§  When you do this, all this stuff in the u-lock makes it very difficult, even for bike thieves who use ‘spreader-tools’ to defeat the u-lock.  There’s no room to get any tool in the right place without damaging what you’re trying to steal.

§  In 30 years of police work, I’m unaware of ANY bike ever stolen on my campus if it was locked with a u-lock, through both wheels and the frame, to a real bike rack.

o   If you attach your u-lock through your frame, but not any wheel, your bike can still be ridden off if what you’re secured to can be defeated.

§  People ride around with u-locks hanging from their frames and handlebars all the time.  Cops don’t pay any attention to this.

o   If your u-lock is through your bike frame and at least one wheel, your bike is less likely to be stolen than almost any other bike around.  Every other bike is easier to steal and get away with so that’s where the thieves go. 

§  To be honest, I accept this as my best compromise on my campus.

o   If you choose to include only one wheel in the u-lock, putting a cable through the other wheel also makes your bike more trouble to steal. 

·         Yes, an old model of Kryptonite u-lock could be defeated with a Bic pen, but I’m unaware of any new u-lock model that has this particular flaw.  Yes, I’ve seen the video on the web. [link here, it's pretty nifty!]

·         Yes, you probably can freeze them in liquid nitrogen and then shatter them with a hammer, but I’ve never heard of it actually being done and the ability to transport and use liquid nitrogen is WAY beyond our bike thieves.  If yours are this sophisticated, I think you’re better off banning bicycles on your campus except inside secured and monitored facilities.  If you have a video-link of this lock-defeating method, I’d love to see it.

Image via Wikipedia

Here are the most common locking mistakes we see:

·         Locking only the front wheel allows the thief to steal an unsecure front wheel from a similar, nearby bike and attach it to your bike.  You’re left with your front wheel and your lock.  Someone else, nearby, has a bike, but no front wheel. [!]

·         The front fork is not a frame element.  If you lock your bike through the front fork, the thief will remove the bike from the front wheel and pull the fork up and out of the lock.  The bike and wheel are then re-connected and they ride away, leaving your lock, alone and empty, on the rack.

·         If you lock your bike at an inverted-u rack, but the rack has become loose in the ground, the thief will just pull the rack out of the ground to free your bike to steal.  Trust me, they’ll put the rack back in the ground and hope to get more bikes off it in the future.  If you have this style of rack, please check them occasionally.  If you see someone shaking one of these racks, they’re probably a thief, trying to break a new rack loose for future use. [!!]

·         If you lock your bike to something other than a bike rack and whatever you’re locked to can be defeated easily, don’t expect your bike to be there when you return, unless you’ve run your lock through at least one wheel.

o   Thieves just rip bicycles up and off of most landscape items. 

o   If your lock fits over the parking meter head, they can just lift your bike off the meter (or sign post).

o   Wrought iron is actually quite weak at each weld-point; you may not even notice that it’s already broken and bends easily.

o   Chains that stretch between bollards are horrible.  The chain can usually be cut or just pulled out from one end and every bike along that chain is now loose.

o   Arms and legs of decorative lawn or patio furniture are easy to separate.  Our thieves then push them back together so they look secure for the next bicyclist.

Image via Wikipedia

 Of course, most bike thefts could have been avoided if the owner had just run their u-lock through at least one wheel.  Thieves don’t want to CARRY a bike away, this attracts unwanted attention, they want to RIDE it away and blend in with every other nearby cyclist.  This is why I say that encouraging bicyclists to use a u-lock through their frame and at least one wheel is a compromise that I’ve decided I’m willing to accept.  They may not be willing to take off their other wheel each time they lock their bike, but it only takes a moment more to make sure you include one wheel with the frame as you lock up. 

In the past few years we’ve given away hundreds of u-locks and sold hundreds more at wholesale cost.  The theft rate for bicycles on my campus has dropped dramatically, but the remaining thefts still have one thing in common, around 93% (it varies) of them were only using cable locks.  Many of the remaining thefts were unsecured bikes taken from inside buildings, cars, etc.  I’m aware that there are probably other factors that reduced the theft-rate, like CCTV cameras, the economy, etc.  I can’t factor those into the equation, but it seems obvious to me……lots of good racks and lots of u-locks =  less theft of bikes.

I know, I didn’t address component or parts-theft, so here are a few thoughts to ‘minimize’ that problem:

o   If it can be removed without tools, it can be easily stolen; fix that:

o   Change your seat post quick release to a bolt; how often to you really adjust your seat height.

o   You can replace wheel quick releases with bolted axles (yuck) or with locking mechanisms ($$), or you can put a fat zip-tie on the spoon to hold it tight against the frame or fork.  It’s not perfect, but it makes it harder to open the spoon.  If you carry tools to do road-repairs on your bike, you should have something that can pop the zip-tie if you get a flat.  If not, you can still fix the flat with the wheel still on.

o   Lights?  Buy lights that bolt or screw on, take them with you, or buy cheap enough to not worry about the loss.

o   Computer?  Pop it off and take it with you.  It’s unlikely that a thief wants your old model, but why tease them or provide a target for a vandal?

o   Panniers or other bags?  Take them with you or switch to a courier bag.

Lastly…….here’s the additional advice we should give to everyone………..please, please, please…….register your bike with somebody, record your serial number somewhere, be able to give a detailed description of your bike, and always report it if it’s stolen.

P.S. If you’re a bike thief, please forget everything you just read; there’s just no way to beat any bike lock.  Find another profession.  There’s no profit in stealing bikes because the cops recover EVERY bike and arrest EVERY thief; EVERY time.

So there you have it folks, the definitive guide to bike security.  Or at least a good gloss.  One last note, John also told me via email that in any good talk about security, one should mention environmental security.  In other words, lock your bike in a place that is well lit and frequented by pedestrians.  Even a fast bike thief will be a little wary of working on a lock in broad daylight, with lots of bystanders.  Also good is any area patrolled by bike cops, they tend to be more savvy about bike security and suspicious bike behavior, and their presence can deter theft.

Recap: U-locks are good, cable locks only good as backup/ component protection, and any lock only as good as the rack you are locking to.  Don't let thieves make saving the planet harder, secure your bike, and Ride On!

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Living Small and Walking Tall - The Big Move

Moving is never easy, but when you choose to move into a smaller space it is nearly impossible.  Courtney and I, in an effort to put our money where our mouths have been, have opted to move into a home that is half the square footage of our last place, in a neighborhood that is vastly more pedestrian friendly.  Let me repeat that: HALF the square feet.  We now share, with our two dogs and two cats, a 550sq.ft. two bedroom home just west of Amazon Park, which has a Walk Score of 91.


You may think that we are crazy to willingly, and not for monetary reasons, choose to live in a much smaller space (and some days recently I would be inclined to agree with you).  But the fact is that most of us, by far, have much more space than we need.  As you may remember from my Dream of Less, we have been thinking about fitting our lives into less space for some time.  The goal is to find out how much space we really need instead of constantly trying to "upgrade" to a space which is bigger than the last.  This time, we upgraded to a home that is better and smaller, so we are really getting a lot more for our money.  Why would we endeavor to do this you ask?  Aside from forcing us to pare down, keep less junk, live more simply, etc. there is a primary environmental motivation: smaller spaces consume less energy, by far, than larger ones.  The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (or DEQ for short) recently published the results of a long study on housing types, and living small was on the top of their list of ways to reduce your carbon footprint.  To take a look at the whole report, click here.  A few other quick take-aways from the report: carpet has the highest embodied energy of any building material and sharing walls, whether in a duplex, townhouse, or apartment, drastically reduces your carbon footprint.

As you can imagine, the process of paring down to fit in a space half the size has been pretty intense.  It began weeks before the move, as we went room by room through the house, measuring furniture and emptying storage spaces to sort what we would keep and what we could fit.  About a hundred Craigslist posts and one garage sale later, we thought we had done a pretty good job.  As we began to bring our stuff into the new place (with much needed help from Courtney's parents, who came down to Eugene just to give us a hand), it quickly became clear that we had not done nearly enough.

We are now about 80% done getting rid of stuff and fitting in the new space, and as soon as it is presentable (currently there is at least one half empty box per room, except the bedroom which is actually coming along quite nicely), I will post some pics with explanations of what we did to fit our oversized lives into this undersized space.

That may sound like a lot of unnecessary stress to you, but there are two things that have made it not only bearable, but actually quite rewarding: one is the sense of elation and freedom that comes from getting rid of something after deciding that it is not adding any value to your life.  On the day we had our garage sale, some kids who came by regularly to request the presence of our dogs in the common area came to pick over our wares.  Courtney made a decision in that moment about a box of toys that she had been carrying since her childhood.  They served no purpose in our life right now, but she couldn't bare to just drop them at Goodwill.  She brought out the box and one by one gave her teddy bears and trinkets to the kids as a kind of reward for exercising our puppies so many times.  Everyone involved was quite pleased with the outcome.

Second, the ability to walk to everything has been a constant source of joy.  We now live across the street from a butcher shop that carries only meat from local, sustainable farms (as well as some provisions like artisan cheese, olive oil, beer and wine, both local and from afar).  We are literally next door to a fantastic cafe and deli, which serves delicacies rarely seen on the west coast like knish and bialies.  On our block there is a sushi restaruant, a hardware store, a high end kitchen store and, should we ever feel the urge, a knitting store.  Just around the corner is a very well reviewed veterinary office, a bicycle supply and repair shop, and a few more boutique shops.  Within a 10 minute walk is a dog park, a Market of Choice (like Whole Foods with Ralph's prices, for those not from Oregon), a liquor store, and more restaurants than we could eat at in one week, ranging from McDonalds (which are not likely to frequent) to Rabbit (which we wish we could afford to frequent more frequently).

Living where we do, on the edge of a residential/ commercial zone change, being able to walk to everything, makes both of us immensely happy.  We have moved from having to get in the car, for some reason, almost every day, to going for four or five days in a row without starting the car once.  I have been promoting small living and car free living for some time; I have been dreaming of having less space and using less energy.  Now I really feel that we are beginning to live the dream.

Electic Vehicles: the Pros and Cons and Pros and Cons...

Image via Wikipedia

Re-Posted From the iPinion Syndicate

It’s  complicated.  Cars are complicated.  First, we want to stop burning fossil fuels, and for most of us the gasoline going into our tank is the only fuel that we actually come into contact with directly.  You can look at a light bulb glowing and think abstractly about coal burning in a far off plant, but when you refuel your car you can smell it.  So most of us have a visceral feeling about how our cars use fossil fuels which is somewhat disproportional to the actual carbon emissions they generate.  Cars get vilified more than A/C units, even though cooling big office buildings generates much more pollution.  Not to downplay the carbon emissions from cars; transportation (as a whole) is still among the top 3 sources of green house gasses.  The result, however, is that we tend to feel worse about our cars than anything else.


Still, most of us can’t get around without a car.  In other words, we want to be better but we feel like we can’t.  Enter the electric vehicle; drive all you want and never deal with gasoline again.  The trouble is, you haven’t actually solved the problem.  Now your car is just one more light bulb; you plug it in and it juices itself up, but you are really just burning the fuel somewhere else.  All you have done is stopped smelling it.


So we’re back to feeling like there is nothing we can do, right?  Well... maybe.  There is one thing that electric cars can do which conventional cars cannot, and never will.  They can get their energy from anywhere.  Most places in the US coal is the only option for energy generation, so that point can seem moot, but it isn’t.  Where I live in the Pacific North West for example, a substantial percentage of the power comes from hydroelectric plants, so driving an electric car up here is really vastly more sustainable than an internal combustion vehicle.


In many states like California, the legislature has made a commitment (and appears to be keeping it against all odds) to steadily increase the percentage of energy production from renewable sources.  So if you buy an EV in CA, it will get greener every year.  That is a really big deal when you think about the fact that the sustainability movement is gaining steam.  If more states commit to green energy, then EVs are suddenly a really great alternative.


However, when you really think about it, why does transportation require any energy at all?  Sure, it is just about impossible to imagine getting across the country without burning fuel, but why is it that most of us can’t imagine getting to the grocery store and back without driving a car?  Or to work?  Or just out to a restaurant?  Have we forgotten how to walk?  Does anyone own a bike anymore and use it to get places, not just to exercise?  Have middle class white people forgotten how to ride buses?  It certainly seems so.

Image via Wikipedia

Of course this is not true.  Some of us still use the bus.  Some of us bike.  Some of us, even in LA, walk (I did when I lived there).  Some people do it just because it is convenient, or they even enjoy it.  Some people walk into town without even thinking about the fact that they are saving the planet, maybe without even believing in global warming.  The fact is, once you get out of your car, you realize that life is more fun when you’re not driving.  Every time you walk instead of driving, you are choosing not to burn that fuel at all, which is much better than burning it somewhere else.  In other words, the simplest solution is avoiding cars and the complications that they bring entirely.

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To Dream of Less Oil

 From Wikimedia Commons

I think everyone in the USA can sympathize with this dream right about now.  With a tropical storm looming over the collection operations, we are all dreaming of less oil in the gulf, in the ground, in the water, everywhere.  But timely discourse aside, dreaming of less oil is a very appropriate place to begin a series of discussions about the dream of less.

We use oil for everything.  Primarily, we burn it to move everything around, but some of the oil is used to make the plastics that we package everything in, the lubricants that grease the wheels, and the synthetic fertilizer that grows our food.  So when I say everything, take a minute to look around you, I mean EVERYTHING.  If it came from someplace that you couldn't walk to (or it is too heavy to carry), it used oil.  If it came wrapped in plastic, Styrofoam, or both, it used oil.  If it grew in a conventional farm, it used oil.  When you really think about how much we use oil, how pervasive it is, using less of it seems a little like free diving.  You can do it, sure, but you have to come up for air eventually.

Lets put plastics aside for a moment and talk about the oil that we burn.  Everyone owns a car, right?  I think it is a requirement of citizenship in this country.  I don't care how great your MPG is, unless your car is fully electric you burn oil every time you drive.  Hybrids are great and all, but driving a hybrid is not nearly as effective at reducing your oil consumption as walking anywhere that is close enough instead of driving.  The next best alternative is riding a bike, third is public transit.  But not everyone has these options.


The trouble is, most of us need oil to conduct our daily lives.  Our towns and cities, our lifestyles, our entire culture is built around the personal automobile, and for many giving up their car would be equal to giving up their access to the entire world.  Unless you live on a self sustaining farm, which you likely don't, or live in a city with excellent public transit and walk-ability (which you well might: SF, NYC, Boston), your car is an essential part of your survival, getting you to and from the grocery store, work, school, and everything else.

But still, we can dream.  And wanting a better situation is the first step to attaining it, so I am dreaming of a life that does not burn oil.  I dream of walking or biking to work, and not owning a car at all.  I dream of a commute so short that driving would be ridiculous.  I dream of living in a city with top notch public transportation, whether that means moving or advocating public transit where I live.  I dream of a network of electric trains (both local lines and high speed rail), trams, trolleys and buses, eliminating the need for automobiles and airplanes (domestically at least).

I dream of living in a neighborhood that has everything I need within a 15 minute bike ride.  I dream of walking to a Farmer's Market, a bakery and a butcher shop, all in the same trip.  I dream of a life in which a trip of 20 miles feels like an excursion into unfamiliar territory.

I dream of living in a community that is rich enough and prolific enough to provide everything I need.  I dream of never buying another Chilean berry, Mexican tomato or middle eastern date.  Of buying furniture, new or used, from local shops and local individuals.  Of things made with local resources utilizing local labor.

Much of this is a long way off, but some is attainable very soon.  Courtney and I are most likely moving to Portland next year, as the University of Oregon has a satellite campus there, and it is a wonderfully walkable and bike-able city.  We won't be selling our car the day we arrive, a new lifestyle must be tested and eased into, not jumped into blindly, but we hope to use our car less immediately, to burn a lot less oil.

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One Important Lesson to Learn from the Gulf Oil Spill

 May 24th, the Oil Slick has clearly hit ground in the

Mississippi River Delta, and an arm reaches towards the Gulf Stream

There are many lessons to learn from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, some of them technical, some of them philosophical, but there is one lesson which I have not heard mentioned nearly enough.  It is voiced occasionally, and sometimes in high profile media like the New Yorker, where it was recently mentioned in their "Talk of the Town" section.  That lesson, which is perhaps the most important, is simply stated: oil ain't what it used to be.

In a recent post I talked about peak oil and what it means for the future of our society.  In a nutshell, the oil that we can get out of the earth is finite, and at some point production will take a very sharp downward curve.  What I did not mention, however, is that on the downside the oil is more expensive to find, harder to get to, much harder to get without significant ecological impact, more difficult (and energy intensive) to process and refine, and more difficult to transport.  So as reserves are diminished, supply will decline even faster unless discoveries are ramped up even more, hastening the end of oil (assuming demand remains constant).

The first oil wells were drilled on dry land, but off shore drilling has a long history as well.  First in lakes and shortly after in very shallow coastal waters, rigs were built to drill oil below bodies of water.  However, up until about 1947 the deepest water that we could drill under was about 20 feet.  But necessity drove us further and further out to sea, and into deeper and deeper waters.

Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig on Fire, Shortly Before Sinking

As long as the history of drilling for oil is the history of accidents in drilling oil.  Beginning on land, explosions and fires claimed many lives in early years.  By now most of the safety issues have been worked out for drilling on land, but most of the operations in this country today are offshore, and every time we push the limits of what our technology is capable of we increase the risk of a devastating spill.  In fact, all of the largest oil spills in the history of drilling have occurred since 1969, when an oil rig drilling under 188 feet of water had a blow out resulting in 80,000 barrels of oil spilled into the Santa Barbara Channel.

The current disaster happened on a rig drilling at a depth of 5000 ft below the ocean surface, which is just under 1 mile.  Drilling at that depth is difficult and complicated by many factors such as high pressure.  Although we theoretically have the technology to drill safely at that depth, and deeper, the recent disaster highlights the fact that the margin for error is so slim as to make it effectively unsafe.

In short, we have drilled and burned much of the oil that is easy to get, near the surface, and can be drilled with relative safety.  As long as we continue to burn oil for fuel, another spill is not only possible, it is probable.  I don't harbor any illusion that we could flip a switch and all suddenly be driving electric cars, or using bio-diesel instead of gasoline, but I do think that it is incumbent upon each of us to think long and hard about how we use oil and how much we want to be using oil.  Change is not easy, nor immediate, but in this case it is important that we affect it as soon as possible.

The 2,385 Watt Lifestyle: expressing your life in terms of wattz consumed

I read a really great article in the New Yorker magazine last week about Saul Griffith (who I mentioned in connection to his guest blogs on Boing Boing a while back).  It was a really good article, but what I want to mention now is that it led me to one of Saul's ongoing projects, a site called WattzOn.  Here, after filling out a pretty brief questionnaire, the site lets you know how much energy your lifestyle is consuming, and puts it into terms that help you visualize what that means.

I discovered that my lifestyle consumes 2,385 watts (although there are a few things left out of that figure, the site is not perfect) which is below average for an American, and a little below average for a WattzOn user.  That wattage equates to burning 2 gallons of oil per day, or the power required to run 40 incandescent light bulbs non stop.

Mostly, my energy savings come in the housing category, as I live in a very efficient town house.  My biggest consumer, however, came as no surprise to me.  It was my car.  We live in a kind of suburban area right now, which is far from my ideal lifestyle, and as a result we end up driving a fair amount.  On balance, living in a very efficient house saves more energy than the extra fuel consumed by my car living in the suburbs, but I really wish that I didn't have to drive and lived in an efficient house.  Then I could easily get that wattage down below 1800, which would equate to the power generated a 26x26 ft. solar panel, or a wind turbine with a diameter of 16 feet.  That is actually a reasonable amount of energy for one person to use from renewable resources only.  Much more than that, and you're gonna need coal fired electricity.

So in summation, check out WattzOn, it is a great site and it will really help you understand the way your lifestyle and power consumption interrelate.

The End of Oil and the Future of Transportation - from planes and cars to trains and buses

National Train Day was last Saturday, and cities across the country celebrated.  In the spirit, I thought it would be a great time to follow up on my previous post about Anthony Perl and the future of transportation.  The second edition of his book Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil is out this month, and I think it is a very important work.  When Mr. Perl presented at the HOPES conference, he outlined the concepts of his book and painted a picture of the future that we face whether we like it or not, whether we plan for it or not, and whether we accept it or not.  The fundamental principle which drives his vision of the future is the end of oil.

That end is a long way off, by any measure, but before the end there will be a steady decline in oil production which will raise prices likewise steadily until the average person, even in the richest nations in the world, will not be able to afford to drive.  Basically, the amount of oil in the earth is finite.  We are burning through it at a steady rate, which will only increase with a growing population (although improvements in fuel efficiency could offset this somewhat).  At some point, the discovery of new reserves will decline and eventually stop.  At some point each individual well will reach its peak and begin a rather rapid descent in production.  At some point, the amount of oil being produced world wide will stop increasing, and will begin to decrease at a rather fast pace.  At some point after that, we will have got all we can get, and we will have burned through it.

You may be thinking right now that I am talking about some far off future, some backdrop for a Sci-Fi story, but in reality most of the analysts put the time frame for peak oil within my lifetime and many of yours.  Some analysts say that we have already peaked, and the decline is about to begin.  That is actually the case in the US and Mexico, and the OPEC nations have some interesting ambiguities in their reporting of reserve levels.  The estimates for exactly when the world as a whole will reach peak oil are pretty disparate, but everyone agrees that the peak will come, and we probably won't know that it has happened until we are looking back at it with about 5 years of good data.  That being said, it does look pretty likely that we will peak before mid century, and probably within the next 10 or 15 years.  So while I may not live to see the end of oil, I may live to see it recede permanently from my price range.

So what does a world without oil look like?  Since almost half of the oil we produce goes to making gasoline, we would have to find some alternative to gas powered cars, buses, motorcycles, scooters and go-carts, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, generators, and chainsaws.  That 'almost half' does not include, unfortunately, jet fuel, which means an alternative to travel by plane, or diesel fuel, which means an alternative to shipping things with trucks and container ships.  So in other words, every method of getting stuff from one place to another place would have to be re-figured, along with a few of our favorite methods of cutting things into smaller pieces.

While fuel accounts for most of the uses of petroleum, there are a number of other products that it is hard to imagine being the same without petrochemicals that are byproducts of the fuel industry.  Primarily, if you like having stuff made from plastic, you should start recycling now because it will be very difficult to match current plastic production rates with nothing but orange peels as raw materials.  A number of mechanical lubricants are also made from petrochemicals, as well as some personal hygiene products (anything made with petroleum jelly, e.g.).  Petrochemicals are a prime ingredient in synthetic fertilizers and pesticides as well, so organic farming will be basically foisted upon us.  Are you a painter?  Because you can kiss acrylic paint goodbye too.  In short, petrochemicals have worked their way into just about every industry on almost every level.  For a more comprehensive list of stuff that we can't make without oil, follow the links on this page (there are a lot of them).

That last paragraph aside, however, transportation really is the biggest issue.  Not just moving people, but moving stuff quickly and efficiently all over the world.  As an example: unless you live near a train line in California, you may have trouble getting fresh vegetables year round.  Fresh seafood will also be difficult unless you live in a city with a big port.  And even then, the fishing boats will have to be sail powered, because diesel is out, which means your seafood supply will be somewhat weather dependent

But ultimately, the ability to get in your car and go wherever you want whenever you want will be gone forever.  Likewise, the ability to visit your relatives and friends across the country or around the globe will be severely reduced since airplane travel will be effectively over.  So what do we do in this bleak post apocalyptic world to travel, ship, and eat exotic foods?  Well according to Anthony Perl, we had better start building trains now, cause that is going to be our best option.

If this country was connected with a comprehensive network of high speed trains, powered by electricity, we could cut our oil consumption by, well, as much as we wanted to right away.  More importantly, as oil becomes more scarce and less affordable, high speed trains will provide a viable alternative to long distance freight and travel, while light rail can provide an alternative to commuter vehicles.  Of course, these will be powered by electricity, but there are already a number of very bright people working on making electricity more sustainable (check out what these guys are doing with wind).  By hooking trains up to the power grid instead of burning fuel, they are poised to run on green energy as soon as it is supplied to the grid.

The Obama administration has approved 8 billion dollars to build new high speed train lines, and that is a really great start.  Unfortunately, it is not nearly enough.  Trains are expensive to build, operate and maintain, and the revenue from fares is unlikely to provide a profit model that is favorable to the private sector in the short term.  This means that any new train lines are unlikely without government funding, and to get a train system that is up to the job of replacing airline travel, we will need many times more than the 8 billion currently allocated to train funding.  It is worth it, however, because the alternative is that in 20, 30, or even 50 years, we will be back to the 1700s in terms of transportation.

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• Peak Oil: What To Do When The Wells Run Dry (forbes.com)
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HOPES conference was a huge success (except for getting really sick)

The HOPES conference was very successful, and I will be posting about some of the talks I attended soon.  I haven't posted anything yet because while I was at the conference I got a really nasty bug which has been keeping me from doing anything above baseline productivity for the past several days.  However, I am now feeling much better and ready to get back to projects which, like this blog, give me no direct monetary reward.

The atmosphere at HOPES was very exciting, it was great to see so many energetic young students mixing with researchers and working professionals, all brought together by their common interest in sustainability.  It was a pleasure to be part of the program, and it was a much greater pleasure to hear other panelists and speakers share their ideas with the community.  The speakers came from as far away as Florida, and there were many from all over the west coast.  The audience, though more predominantly local I think, also had several individuals from out of state.

I will talk a little bit more in depth about this in a future post, but one of the most interesting keynote addresses was by Anthony Perl, Director of Urban Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver BC.  He is co-author of the book Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil, the second edition of which is available later this month.  Basically, it outlines the argument for building high speed trains in this country, along with light rail, all electrified.  When you look into it, it is really hard to imagine a good argument against building high speed passenger and freight trains in this country, especially since they could quickly provide a cheaper alternative to travel by airplane, which I think everyone agrees is a very unpleasant experience.

That is it for today, but I will try to add a few more posts this Sunday.  Tomorrow I am off duty, because it is Courtney's B-day, and I have to spend the entire day doing whatever it is she wants me to, which includes trying to come up with what that will be ahead of time and planning for it in advance.

Urban Gardens and Homesteads: efficient, local healthy food

I saw this post on Treehugger about rooftop greenhouses on new affordable housing units, and I was a little surprised by some of the comments.  While I was not at all surprised by the conservative comment about tax dollars going to "people who are unable or unwilling to work" (right or wrong, a blog about sustainability is not the right forum),  the general doubts about the value and efficiency of these fairly simple fixtures was puzzling to me.

There should be no doubt about the value of producing food in the middle of the city, where most of the food has to be trucked in from very far away.  Intensive urban gardening improves air quality, reduces heat island effects, and provides fresh local produce to urban dwellers.  It is also easier to grow organic in a greenhouse, because the environment is more controlled and there is less need for herbicides and pesticides.

What is not quite as obvious, however, is that a green house attached to a residential space can be, if managed correctly, extremely energy efficient as well.  Greenhouses naturally absorb heat all day long from sunlight, and that heat is trapped in the air inside the greenhouse.  That is why a green house can grow plants through the cold seasons in most climates.  That heat can also be used, however, to augment the heating system in an attached residential space during the cold months (a process called isolated gain), and can be an important part of a general passive heating system.  In the summer, when there is waste heat in the residential spaces, they can be vented to the rooftop greenhouse for some passive cooling as a result of the passive-stack effect.  In short, rooftop greenhouses can have a huge positive impact on building efficiency.

While the gains in energy efficiency can be significant, the issue of food production in urban centers is just as important.  For as long as cities have existed we have had problems with getting enough food to city dwellers (think of the Roman Empire shipping in tons of grain from Egypt).  In the latter half of this century we thought we had solved those problems for good by cultivating produce that transports well and shipping food all over the world with cheap fuel.  Now that we know about global warming and pollution, we have realized that our solution to the problem of 'enough' has generated a number of new problems related to 'how.'  Urban homesteads help mitigate this issue, whether in a greenhouse, a backyard, or in planter boxes on a 20th story balcony.  If even a percentage of produce can be home grown instead of trucked in, the reduction in fuel consumption is directly related to the reduction in demand for transported goods.

Some would argue that home grown vegetables, especially heirloom varieties preserved by seed bankers (many seed bankers will give you a few seeds for the cost of postage, just to keep their favorite varieties in wide circulation), can greatly improve your quality of life as well.  The taste of freshly picked vegetables is distinctly different, and many people will tell you (though I don't know enough about it to unequivocally agree) that they are much more nutritious.  Whether or not the health benefits are true, keeping a vegetable patch is worth it just for the flavor.  And while maintaining a quarter acre lot requires a large amount of work, keeping a little patch inside or on your porch requires very little maintenance.

A while back I made a sauce from different heirloom tomatoes for a braised oxtail, and reserved two slices from each one for a caprese appetizer.  Both the sauce and the caprese were delicious.  The sauce was much more complex for the variety of tomatoes, and the Caprese really highlighted the unique and different flavor of each variety.  It was one of the more amazing culinary evenings at Chez Cross.

Oxtail braising in Heirloom Tomato Sauce

Heirloom Tomato Caprese

Homegrown Electric Vehicles

So, yesterday I went to a little social event for greenies at Davis' Restaurant in downtown Eugene (I would have put a link to their website, but they have not one). It was hosted by Helios Resource Network, and co-hosted by Arcimoto, and the CEO (who I kind of hate for being successful at 23) gave a brief speech about their company.

Arcimoto is a start up producing electric vehicles, and they are doing it a little bit differently. They are working with technology that has been around for long enough to be cost effective to produce an affordable car, one that you can plug in to a conventional wall socket for all of its juice needs (they claim it charges fully in 6 hours), and they are making it look pretty spiffy too. While most electric cars have specially designed engines and crazy battery technology in order to move the weight of a full sized vehicle, Arcimoto is solving the problem by making a much smaller car!

This is a really simple, elegant and in hindsight obvious solution to the problem of engineering an electric vehicle. They went with a three wheel chassis (the car registers as a motorcycle, technically), and made a body just big enough to fit two comfortably. The result is a much lighter car that can be moved by a much smaller motor, and powered with a much more simple battery.

Now for the next part, which is possibly even cooler: they plan to manufacture and sell the cars locally. You may wonder (as I often have) why there aren't already electric cars everywhere, if it's so easy to make them. The answer is really stupid: big car companies can't figure out how to make a profit off of them. Currently most of the money in the car business is in service, and electric cars don't need any much service at all (a DC motor may need the brushes replaced once every seven years, and other than that it is good to go). Conventional autos need tons of service, so the car companies are willing to deal with marginal profits on the vehicles with a guarantee of years of necessary repairs (this is a gross over simplification, but it captures the basic idea).

So the Arcimoto solution: side step the existing auto industry entirely. Figure out the local market, set the price point for a decent profit, and let the consumer drive maintenance free for 7 years. Ford and the others are so locked into their current (lack of) profit models that they can't imagine doing anything like this (which is why they love hybrids so much: call it green without actually changing much).

The Arcimoto Pulse is not exactly perfect, a brushless motor would be better and the lead acid battery has its own ecological issues, but it is leaps and bounds ahead of an internal combustion vehicle in the sustainability department. Especially when the whole local production thing is taken into account. So I give the Pulse a huge thumbs up. If every city a company like this, generating electric cars locally, we would see a lot of innovation, a much more interesting market, and better air quality. Now if we could just stop getting our electricity from burning coal...

MPG = N/A

I am sure you have heard people talk about biking and how great it is for the environment before, and most of you have likely thought, for some reason or another, that it would never work for you. I went through a similar process, living in Los Angeles, and I have to say, I was surprised at how easy it was.

When I started biking, I had a 7 mile commute, and I had my doubts that it would be possible. I was out of shape, having worked a desk job for about a year and half prior, and I had no idea how long it would take to bike seven miles, how fast I could expect to go, and whether or not I would be able to breath when I got to work. In short, I had drastically underestimated how easy it is to ride a bike.

Pretty much the first day I got on the bike I was averaging 10 miles per hour, and that is including traffic lights. The first week, after no working out for almost two years, I was a little winded after 7 miles, but the slight adrenaline rush and extra energy of a morning work out made up for it. It wasn't until a month of biking to work every day that I realized, driving in the city had slowly and quietly been ruining my life.

Everyone complains about driving in Los Angeles, and they are all right. It is stressful, and as most doctors will tell you, stress can lead to all sorts of health problems. Also, when you drive everywhere in Los Angeles, everywhere you go you arrive in a really bad mood. Biking, on the other hand, is really fun! Every time I get on a bike, for the first few minutes I feel like I am 15 again (only without all the social awkwardness, insecurity and acne).

On the green front, the only way to be more green than riding a bike is walking, and that is truly not a viable option for most people. More people biking, even part of the time, is a trifecta for LA: reduce emissions and improve air quality, reduce congestion on the roads, and improve your health both mentally and physically.

Los Angeles, despite what you may have heard, is a great city for biking, especially if you commute during rush hour. You might be surprised how easy a 10, or even 15 mile commute can be, and at the peak of rush hour, you might get to your destination faster on a bike than you ever could in a car. If you live in LA, I would get down to Orange 20 Bikes right away, and find out what it would take to commute by bike. While you're there, get lunch at Pure Luck (who knew vegan food could so, so, so, SO delicious), and then check out Scoops (not really green, but mmmmm).

DISCLAIMER: My wife and I used to live around the corner from Orange 20, and I just need to pay back that awesome little community for the many good meals and deals they have given us over the years we lived there.

Ironically, since deciding to become a green consultant, I have found it increasing difficult to avoid driving. My schedule is totally up in the air, and sometimes I need to get across town on short notice in the middle of the day. In that situation, riding is not really an option. For that reason, I have come up with the crazy plan of building an electric motorcycle (or more realistically converting an old motorcycle to electric), but that is the subject of another post.