Bill's Big Diamond Blog

Council Law: Bring Your Bikes in NYC Buildings

Closer to home, this is welcome news for bike riders in NYC (especially since we may not have money for subway fare in the coming economy).

In 2006, New York City Council Member David Yassky drafted the Bikes in Buildings bill (Intro. 38) which essentially requires that commercial buildings allow bikes to enter them and create proper storage facilities for said bikes…

…To date, 30 Council Members have signed onto the bill, so things are looking good. (NYC has 51 Council Members)

Link to the bill.

New We Campaign Ad

An Summer Energy-Saving Moment

Permit me to step away from the Veepstakes speculation for a moment, take no position on whether Obama will announce a Vice-Presidential pick tomorrow, whether McCain will begin running a series of Charlton Heston memorial ads, or whether Hillary Clinton will really answer the phone personally if you call at 3 AM.

I’d like to take a few moments to discuss energy. Yes, very exciting. In fact, while the cost of energy is driving decisions in our everyday life, from whether to fly off on vacation to how much our rent increases will be, it’s not so thrilling to read about. It’s even less thrilling to conserve. But in an era when our oceans are rising along with the cost of everything energy-related, it might be worth a couple of minutes to think about the savings one can achieve simply by wasting less of a precious commodity.

Let’s take heating and cooling: It’s not too cool to think about heat at this time of year, but the same principles apply to air conditioning. Heating and cooling account for 50 to 70% of the energy used in the average American home. That’s pretty significant. If your Con Edison bill is like mine, saving a portion of that by keeping your home better insulated and using efficient heating and cooling systems and appliances can add up over time.

Now imagine what that energy savings, over time, might amount to if you applied it to every low-income home in America. That’s the kind of savings that could be realized, at low cost, by supporting the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Legislation was introduced recently in the U.S. Senate that would have provided additional funding for the 38 million low-income households who qualify for assistance to actually receive that help towards heating, cooling, and insulating their homes. It failed to pass the Senate.

Next time you hear someone going on about drilling offshore for oil, tell them about the immediate savings that the Senate passed up. That's savings that would have helped lower demand for fuel now, not in ten or fifteen years, when the Earth will have passed a point of no return on global warming. Then ask them to imagine what that savings would have meant to the 38 million households living at or below the poverty line.

h/t Bob Herbert

America's Future and Clean Energy

Where ink is being spilled at all over Al Gore’s call for a carbon-free electrical grid in the United States, so far it’s mostly been used to ridicule the totality of the goal. It’s fascinating to see resistance and denial mount, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that humanity is in the throes of an unprecedented crisis. What is it that makes climate change so hard to face?

It’s been suggested that our denial stems from the more immediate challenges we must deal with, what with our tanking economy and a lack of public confidence in the direction of the country generally. It’s certainly true that the U.S. faces huge economic issues; rising joblessness, a housing crisis of unprecedented proportions, and huge increases in energy costs. But addressing these problems could easily dovetail with addressing global warming.

Here’s how:

An investment in clean energy development could spur major increases in employment— in the short term. If the federal government were to favor clean energy production in some of the same ways the Germans already do, a boom in solar and other energy companies would make for a hiring boom in this sector. Development of electric cars with higher MPG ratings would help Detroit dig out of the crisis it’s now in, fighting layoffs and factory closings. Additionally, increased investments in mass transit would require construction workers get to work now, rather than waiting for housing starts to come around again in the distant future.

The prospect that more domestic energy production is on the way soon would ease the leverage that OPEC countries have over America’s long-term strategic interests. The outflow of military money and diplomatic energy that currently goes towards keeping Saudi princes in power and towards securing oil fields in the Middle East and Persia, with all of the attendant exposure to tribal and religious conflicts in that region would diminish. This reduced security exposure could strengthen the struggling U.S. domestic economy.

The ever-present schism in American politics between those who oppose foreign intervention to protect domestic economic interests and those who unflinchingly support U.S. military strength would tend to lessen, as both goals would align more closely. The often tortured logic that separates human rights and self-interest would be less pragmatically attractive to our leaders. As our energy footprint became more independent of foreign raw materials sources, our security interests would change in a holistic way too.

The current cynicism and lack of enthusiasm for the future that plagues the American economy and political system would be tremendously lessened by a patriotic and forward-looking goal that addresses the biggest problems facing the world. If Americans look back with fond feeling on the optimism that built the post-World War II boom years in our nation, a fresh dedication to new challenges facing the 21st century world would provide a positive outlet for the can-do attitude that made that American era of prosperity possible in the first place.

The broad outlines of our choice are starkly clear. Either Americans embrace the challenge of clean energy— and national renewal— fully, or we retreat into denial and defensiveness, also limiting our future view to the immediate and pessimistic horizon. Either we divide further into haves and have-nots or look for common solutions together. The goals outlined in the climate change fight are up for discussion and refinement. The facts facing us are not. America has led the world, for better and for worse, to the crisis we now face. It’s up to us whether we choose to lead the way out of it as well.

The Electric Horseman

You have to hope that we’re seeing the advent of an era of challenge and effort on clean energy and cleaner transportation. If we aren’t, we’re all surely cooked (literally). Perhaps, Al Gore’s declaration about moving to a carbon-free energy grid in the coming decade will set down a piece of the challenge.

Gore has demanded an Apollo-scale effort towards changing the energy grid over. As the former Vice President laid out in his address yesterday, our geopolitical and economic problems have a direct overlay with our climate problems:

…when you connect the dots, it turns out that the
real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same
measures needed to renew our economy and
escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices.
Moreover, they are also the very same solutions we
need to guarantee our national security without
having to go to war in the Persian Gulf.

Al Gore says what politicians who are running for office can’t— that our culture is running out of time to change our ways. He can afford to point out the drastic nature of the energy shift required. If we don’t stop burning up all the carbon on the planet for electricity and transportation, heating it up and disrupting the climate, our progeny won’t be around for long. While transportation is a huge portion of the problem, the energy grid is related. Gore’s goal addresses this important piece of the carbon puzzle and the economic needs of consumers:

We could further increase the value and efficiency
of a Unified National Grid by helping our struggling
auto giants switch to the manufacture of plug-in
electric cars. An electric vehicle fleet would sharply
reduce the cost of driving a car, reduce pollution,
and increase the flexibility of our electricity grid. At
the same time, of course, we need to greatly
improve our commitment to efficiency and
conservation. That’s the best investment we can
make.

The economic fallout of the climate crisis is huge— and getting Americans in line with facing it also means supporting economic justice in the process. Gore is cognizant of this:

Of course, we could and should speed up this
transition by insisting that the price of carbon-based
energy include the costs of the environmental
damage it causes. I have long supported a sharp
reduction in payroll taxes with the difference made
up in CO2 taxes. We should tax what we burn, not
what we earn.

According to Gore, there’s even more good news for strapped consumers in electric power renewal from a transportation perspective:

…there actually is one extremely effective way to
bring the costs of driving a car way down within a
few short years. The way to bring gas prices down
is to end our dependence on oil and use the
renewable sources that can give us the equivalent
of $1 per gallon gasoline.

One can hope he’s getting through to enough decision-makers to open up some political space for discussion about the biggest crisis we face as a species. However, if press and blogosphere reaction to Gore’s speech yesterday is any indication, we have a long way to go in the U.S. before we take climate change seriously. Gore himself may be partly responsible for the mixed reaction to his speech (with comments like those on tornado activity), but largely, it’s the inertia in our political system that’s to blame for a lack of MSM-ruckus today.

Gore’s yardstick— a total, decade-long shift to carbon-free energy production, may not be totally achievable, but it’s only possible to motivate the nation with a complete goal (50% of something only inspires people halfway, no?).

In the end, with due respect for honest critiques and realistic qualifications, any goal to clean up the energy grid has to aim high and take the risk of falling short. The only way to put this challenge in context is to consider the other option:

To those who say 10 years is not enough time, I
respectfully ask them to consider what the world’s
scientists are telling us about the risks we face if we
don’t act in 10 years. The leading experts predict
that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic
changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose
our ability to ever recover from this environmental
crisis.

Gore points out that a decade may be as far away as Americans will believe in a goal being meaningful, especially to a political system which responds not at all to longer-term goals, but at least has experience with the space program:

Ten years is about the maximum time that we as a
nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target.
When President John F. Kennedy challenged our
nation to land a man on the moon and bring him
back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we
could accomplish that goal. But 8 years and 2
months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
walked on the surface of the moon.

The telling factor for energy success may be seeing how much Gore has learned about realpolitik since the 2000 Florida debacle. Whether the We Campaign creates enough leverage as a movement to address climate crisis depends heavily on whether the once-would-be President Gore is still willing to step politely aside for those who would grab power more rudely— or whether he’s learned what a street fight is all about.

Whether Gore is the perfect leader or not, we ought to hope he’s ready to fight and win this battle. When it comes to global warming, the loser won’t be around long to look dignified in defeat.

Retooling America to End Oil Addiction

Care of the lovely folks at Gristmill, I’m excerpting today from a piece by Jack Hidary of SmartTransportation.org about what’s needed to address the oil crisis and our economic woes in Detroit. Read the entire post at Gristmill:

To decrease the use of oil in our cars we need the
kind of retooling we did for World War II. In 1941 we
asked Detroit to refit all their factories from pumping
out cars to manufacturing planes and tanks.

Now we are in another war. A war against this
debilitating addiction. We must ask Detroit and all
automakers in America, foreign and domestic, to
retool immediately to make cars of more than 30
mpg, hybrids of 40+ mpg and the mass scaling of
plug-in hybrids that connect to our electric grid.

We must give the automakers the means to do this.
Automakers are in trouble and cannot retool on their
own. We should offer them loan guarantees and
give incentives to private capital to invest in an
immediate restructuring of all car plants.

…Our national energy labs have concluded that we
could replace more than half of all cars in the U.S.
with plug-in hybrids and not have to add even one
power plant. There is plenty of spare capacity at
night.
We should give the utilities the ability to make the
same profit off of efficiency gains as generating
electrons and give them the capital to upgrade our
to a smart network. This will create millions of high
and low-tech jobs as we move to a 21st century bit-
enabled electricity grid.

... let's leverage private capital to build out
public transport. While replacing cars is critical, we
must move more Americans around using shared
systems. High gas prices have already pushed
public ridership to new highs. Let us meet this
demand by putting at least $100 billion of public and
private money into this infrastructure.

…We need to get U.S. workers back on the job and
retool our economy now for this new reality. We are
up to this challenge, but we must act now.

A Sustainable Refrigerator for the Developing World

Here is venture capitalist Adam Grossner's brief TED talk on an inexpensive refrigerator for the people, utilizing only exposure to heat, which will cool a liquid container for 24 hours. This item, which his crew believes can be manufactured for $25-40 each, could radically change the lives of millions of poor people globally. It uses no electricity, only the campfire so many people light daily to cook with.

All that seems to remain is financing the manufacture and distribution of the product to people who need it. Maybe you know someone at a development non-profit who would like to underwrite a test program.

Links: Adam Grossner TED bio, David Roberts' Gristmill post and reader discussion

Hansen's Warming Warnings: Twenty Years Later

From Dr. James Hansen’s HuffPo piece:

Climate can reach points such that amplifying feedbacks
spur large rapid changes. Arctic sea ice is a current
example. Global warming initiated sea ice melt,
exposing darker ocean that absorbs more sunlight,
melting more ice. As a result, without any additional
greenhouse gases, the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the
summer.

More ominous tipping points loom. West Antarctic and
Greenland ice sheets are vulnerable to even small
additional warming. These two-mile-thick behemoths
respond slowly at first, but if disintegration gets well
under way, it will become unstoppable. Debate among
scientists is only about how much sea level would rise by
a given date. In my opinion, if emissions follow a
business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two
meters is likely within a century. Hundreds of millions
of people would become refugees, and no stable
shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that
humanity can conceive.

James Hansen and 350.org

James Hansen has spent a good deal of his career as a climatologist sounding the alarm about global warming and climate change. Now he’s convinced that we’re almost, if not already, out of time. Hansen isn’t waiting for others to suggest solutions anymore. He’s blunt and clear about what has to be done.

Hansen wants the oil industry turned into the 21st century equivalent of tobacco kings, frequently charged with hiding the effects of their products on the health of consumers. His accusation is that the heads of companies like Exxon Mobil and Peabody Energy consciously spread disinformation about the causes of global warming in the interest of keeping regulation at bay and profits huge.

Hansen first testified twenty years ago before Congress that global warming, caused by man-made carbon emissions, was threatening to cause planetary upheaval. Today, his prescription includes a moratorium on new coal-fired plants, the transformation of the US power grid to include renewable sources, and an Apollo-like program to discover and improve technologies for storing and accessing renewable energy sources.

Hansen has also moved into the political arena. He finds it necessary to call out legislators who stand in the way of finding solutions and will work to list legislators who do so as worthy of defeat. His new organization, 350.org, has a full-page ad in today’s NY Times and in other newspapers, calling for a pledge to reduce the carbon emission levels in the atmosphere to levels below those when he first signaled the danger to our Congress in June of 1988.

Check out the links below to learn more about Hansen’s new effort to put global warming at the top of our political and social priority list.

Grist Magazine

NY Times

Firedoglake

350.org

Nova Highlights German Renewable Energy Incentives

Nova’s episode, “Saved by the Sun” is a fascinating study of the solar power industry and its potential to help combat the climate crisis that threatens human civilization on planet Earth.

One part of the program that is of significant interest is the piece on German legislation, designed to stimulate the growth of renewable energy. The German Renewable Power Act, intended to increase the percentage of renewable energy sources in the country’s power supply to at least 12.5 per cent by 2010 and to at least 20 per cent by 2020, is already ahead of target after a few years in effect.

How did the Germans do it? Financial incentives. They offered power producers, large and microscopic, a fee for the power they generated by renewable means which was higher than the going rate consumers paid. They also guaranteed the selling price over time, making investments in solar and other renewable generation infrastructure safe to finance for anyone with the resources and the will to do so.

While Germans pay more for power than most Europeans, the legislation remains popular and has created a thriving solar industry, putting back money into the economy and cutting into the cost of cleaning up the environment, as well as cutting the health costs which inevitably accrue from using dirty power. Imagine what kind of solar energy industry the US, with more available space and desert areas ideal for solar power generation than Europe, could support with incentives like Germany's.