Commercial Buildings

Last entry I talked about how updating our homes and offices to be greener can help reduce the emissions that ooze from buildings. Unfortunately, the equivalent of the energy saved by your efforts at home can be gobbled up by a department store or factory in under a second. Yet don’t forget that you, the consumer, are for whom these businesses exist. So if you are concerned about climate change then do your best to support only businesses who employ sustainable practices (of course it is better to avoid consuming much at all, then support these businesses for your needs). Last week I went to Hopworks Brewery in Portland to meet some Oregon Environmental Council people, which gave me the idea for another pledge. Other OEC interns had organized this event at Hopworks because the brewery implements sustainable building practices. Their website describes these efforts as:

• Building professionally deconstructed- all useable material recovered and sorted
• 1/3 all framing material used recovered from deconstruction
• Ceiling blasted with corn cob instead of sand-eliminates risk of silicosis for blasters
• Booths constructed entirely from ceiling joists
• Finish trim constructed from recovered trim
• Bar base constructed from recovered framing, office paneling, and ceiling joists
• Bar foot rail made of old boiler pipe
• Tables recovered from restaurant remodel
• Low and zero VOC finishes
• 93% efficient gas furnaces
• Insulated, low-E window and door upgrade

• Low flow toilets- 1.28 GPF
• Native species used exclusively for landscaping
• South Parking lot features 5000 gallon retention/settling pond
• Rain barrel captures roof run-off used for irrigation, general wash down, and future green house

My pledge for the week of July 26 is to support green businesses whenever I can. I found a great directory online for sustainable businesses in the Portland area: http://www.redirectguide.com/Portland_Vancouver/index.asp . Another green pages directory for locations across the U.S. can be found at http://gengreenlife.org. You can also keep your eyes out for LEED buildings (stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a government-certification for energy-efficient buildings. I couldn’t find an online directory for LEED-certified businesses in the U.S., but it is a very coveted certification that businesses will certainly show off.

The other thing you can do to influence the commercial world is to encourage businesses to turn off their lights at night. It’s estimated that they lose $5-10 billion dollars a year to stay lit up at night, so it’s in their financial interest to flip the switch. I couldn’t find any nonprofits currently working toward this, but I did find out about Earth Hour, a WWF-sponsored event where buildings across the world turn off their lights on March 31 every year. Sign up to turn off your lights during Earth Hour here: http://www.earthhour.org/Homepage.aspx#, and watch the official video for Earth Hour here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FovYv8vf5_E#at=61.  I signed myself up, also as part of this week’s pledge.

While I encourage supporting green business over plain old-fashioned business, it's more important to remember, as Mahatma Gandhi said, "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed."  We have to be able to think for ourselves and exercise restraint to avoid excess. But when we do inevitably seek what we need, there are ways to do it more sustainably.

The nature photo for this week comes from Klamath Falls, Oregon and was taken in 2010.

(This blog is inspired by the summer internship I am doing with Oregon Environmental Council. Their website has a plethora of resources for becoming greener, from making non-toxic cleaning products to choosing more sustainable wines: www.oeconline.org)

Greener Homes

In a previous entry I stated that 30% of carbon emissions in the United States come from the transportation sector. Yet the biggest chunk of all, about 40% of emissions, comes from buildings. So quite possibly the best way to address climate change would be to redesign our buildings and the appliances in them to emit minimal carbon.  As I’ve stressed before, policy change and federal regulation are crucial in making this happen.  Yet earlier this week, the majority of U.S. Representatives demonstrated their regular contempt for this idea by voting to repeal a proposal by the U.S. Energy department to improve energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs by 30%. The predominantly Republican group of Representatives dubbed the bill an affront to personal freedom: the notorious Rush Limbaugh decried, “Let there be incandescent light and freedom - that's the American way.” And he’s right in one sense- until now incandescent light has been the American way. But 100 year-old technology cannot be the future American way or we will surely go dim (pun intended). Fortunately, although the majority of Representatives voted for the repeal, they did not garner the 2/3 majority needed for the repeal to continue on to the Senate. This means that the new American light bulb standards will succeed in saving consumers 14 billion dollars a year, as estimated by the Natural Resources Defense Council, and will help reduce carbon emissions and thereby improve our health and quality of life in America.

Half of my pledge for the week of July 18, then, is to purchase only CFL (compact fluorescent) or LED (light emitting diode) lights. But this is really a no-brainer once you find out that Amazon.com sells CFL light bulbs for $0.75 that last eight times as long as the $0.50 incandescent light bulbs, and use 80% less energy (granting you a cheaper bill).

Based upon facts I found in reports by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, I estimate that if we, as consumers, eventually updated all our appliances in our homes and offices with Energy Star certified products (like CFL light bulbs), we could cut our total national energy consumption by at least 15%, equivalent to the amount of energy we could save if we removed all passenger cars from the road.

Yet it’s not just the appliances in the buildings, but also the buildings themselves that are inefficient. While we have the ability to power our homes and offices with more energy-efficient appliances, not all of us can have direct influence over designing and constructing these buildings to save energy. Yet there are still things you can do to update your home. I obtained a few simple, start-up measures from the Oregon Environmental Council website and added some of my own commentary:

• Get a free energy audit from the Energy Trust Oregon: learn about and adopt additional energy efficiency measures that will save energy and money and curb CO2 . Visit www.energytrust.org. If you don’t live in Oregon, look into getting a free or discounted (using tax rebates) energy audit in your state (start by contacting your utility to see if they have special offers). Or you can do a simple, free, online energy audit at the Government Energy Star website here.
• Buy green power. Call or look on your utility’s website to find out if they offer green power.
• Weatherize your house by sealing doors and windows, cutting CO2 by up to 20%.
• Wrap your hot water heater with a blanket, cutting CO2 by up to 5%.
• Set your thermostat at no more than 68 degrees in the winter and no less than 78 degrees in the summer, cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) by 10% to 20%.
• Install water saving devices. These include low-flow showerheads, on/off sink spigots, and toilet dams. Showerheads average five gallons per minute. Switching to a low-flow showerhead (around two gallons per minute) can save even more.
• Keep cool with shades and blinds, cutting CO2 by 10% to 30%.
• Landscape with native plants, which require fewer chemical pesticides and fertilizers, nurture wildlife, and keep carbon in the soil and out of the atmosphere.
• Use a grass lawn alternative. Researchers at Oregon State University developed a mixture of grasses, flowers, and herbs that requires less frequent mowing, watering and fertilizing than grass.

This brings me to the other half of my pledge for this week, which is to achieve the first measure on the list by completing an online energy audit for my parent’s home in Santa Cruz, California. Our local energy provider, PG&E, has a free energy analyzer on its website: www.pge.com/myhome/saveenergymoney/analyzer/

This should reveal some problem areas in the home due to inefficient appliances, and I’ll see if I can convince my parents to upgrade those appliances as necessary.

Next week I’ll expand on the topic of buildings and energy by looking at how businesses consume energy and how we, as consumers, fuel that consumption. But in order to leave this entry on a serene note, I hope you’ll enjoy the first of my weekly nature photos, taken at Salmon Creek, California in June of 2008. See you next entry.

(This blog is inspired by the summer internship I am doing with Oregon Environmental Council. Their website has a plethora of resources for becoming greener, from making non-toxic cleaning products to choosing more sustainable wines: www.oeconline.org)

American Standard

I was washing my hands last night (of all the carbon dioxide from the day), when I looked down and saw this:

American Standard. And I got to thinking about the 1950's in America, when the symbol for our newly attained position as global leaders was our household appliances; and the energy to power these appliances was viewed as inexhaustible and without implications.

Take this conversation between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khruschchev in 1959:

Nixon: There are some instances where you may be ahead of us, for example in the development of the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer space, there may be some instances in which we are ahead of you-- in color television, for instance.

Khruschchev: No, we are up with you on this, too. We have bested you in one technique and also in the other.

[A few minutes later, they stand in front of a model kitchen in a model house.]

Nixon: You had a very nice house in your exhibition in New York. My wife and I saw and enjoyed it very much. I want to show you this kitchen. It is like those of our houses in California. 

[Nixon points to a built-in washing machine].

Khruschchev: We have such things.

Nixon: This is the newest model. This is the kind which is built in thousands of units for direct installation in the houses.

Nixon made an argument for American dominance by way of our superior kitchen appliances, color televisions, and washing machines. He tried to prove to our main competition, the Soviet Union, that the American standard for these items was the greatest in the world, and therefore made us the greatest country in the world.


Today, the debate about the American standard is taking place right here in America between those who want to conserve the dated standards and those who want to create new ones. Recently in a House floor speech, GOP candidate Michelle Bachmann called the efforts at capping carbon emissions an "arbitrary" attempt to "reduce the American standard of living." In the GOP debate last week, she claimed that as President she would repeal the Environmental Protection Agency. But Ms. Bachmann errs by failing to recognize how organizations like the Environmental Protection agency exist to enable better standards of living through improving American citizen's health and quality of life, and reducing our dependence on and financial support for foreign regimes who foster a great threat to national security. Just today, the EPA finalized the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule to reduce power plant emissions in 27 states. It described the health benefits for all American citizens that would follow:

The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule will help avoid tens of thousands of premature deaths and illnesses, achieving billions of dollars in public health benefits. By 2014, the required emissions reductions will annually avoid: 

13,000 to 34,000 premature deaths 

15,000 nonfatal heart attacks 

19,000 hospital and emergency room visits 

1.8 million lost work days or school absences 

400,000 aggravated asthma attacks 

Pollution reductions will also lead to improvements in visibility in national and state parks, and increased protection for sensitive ecosystems including Adirondack lakes and Appalachian streams, coastal waters and estuaries, and forests.

The report also showed how being greener will save money for the treasury:

The final rule yields $120 to $280 billion in annual health and welfare benefits in 2014, which far outweigh the estimated annual costs of CSAPR of $800 million in 2014, along with the roughly $1.6 billion per year in capital investments already under way as a result of CAIR. 

To bring this all full-circle, it was Republican Richard Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency during his presidency. Unfortunately, most Conservative platforms today, like that of Michelle Bachman's, hold a dangerous double standard for Americans by conserving the dated American standards that pose a threat to our nation, and denying agencies like the EPA any room to improve those standards and extinguish that threat.


If we want to remain the leading country in the world, as Nixon so eagerly implied we were in his 1959 meeting with Khruschchev, we have to address the energy-efficiency of the system used to create and power these devices, as it is now clear that our resources are not finite nor without implications. 
But in the meantime, there are steps to take that can drastically reduce emissions without requiring a totally revamped system. I read an article in the New York Times today about the energy-sucking cable boxes and DVRs we have in the United States. These run full-fledged for 24 hours a day, which makes them one of the top energy drainers in American homes, moreso than even a refrigerator:

Some European companies have created a deep-sleep mode for these boxes, that saves 95% of their energy when not in use. The EPA encourages providers to offer this setting, yet none of the major providers have done so. Until this is changed through EPA's policy, the consumers themselves should turn off their boxes at night or when not using them. You not only reduce carbon emissions, but you save money: in the average American home, this reduces the monthly energy bill by about $10. This is a mid-week mini-pledge of mine to do this, and I am also writing to the EPA and the top three cable and DVR box providers in the U.S., Cisco Systems, Motorola, and Samsung, to encourage them to offer boxes with a deep-sleep mode. The format for my letter is below, followed by the appropriate email addresses. Please feel free to copy my letter and simply sign your name at the bottom:


For the EPA:

To Whom It May Concern: 

I recently read the New York Times article about the inefficient, energy-draining cable and DVR boxes available to consumers. Many of these same boxes in Europe offer a deep-sleep mode that saves 95% of energy while not in use. I urge you to start regulating and requiring boxes to save energy in this manner.  

Thank you for your time.  

For the companies:

To Whom It May Concern: 

I recently read the New York Times article about the inefficient, energy-draining cable and DVR boxes you sell to American consumers. European providers of these same boxes are already a step ahead of you in offering a deep-sleep mode that saves 95% of energy while the boxes are not in use. I urge you to start offering boxes that can save energy in this manner.  

Thank you for your time.

EPA: hotline@energystar.gov
Motorola: responsibility@motorola.com
Cisco Systems: astokes@cisco.com, ddahlin@cisco.com
Samsung: samsungha@talktocurrent.com


This is just one example of how home appliances can be renovated to save you money and help the environment. The best way to know whether or not your appliances are relatively green, is to buy only government-regulated "Energy Star" models of appliances. You can easily search within the models available for various products at The Energy Star Product webpage. 


I hope it is clear from this entry that there are three main components necessary for being greener: you, governmental agencies and policy change, and green, innovative technology. This is the only formula that will allow for a new American standard to emerge that is innovative and intelligent, and eventually leads to a new energy system of carbon-neutral appliances and resources. As nostalgic as we may be for our janky, old, noisy, energy-slurping washing machine that grandpa Nixon so adored, we are overdue for updating his generation's promise with a clean, green American dream. 


(This blog is inspired by the summer internship I am doing with Oregon Environmental Council. Their website has a plethora of resources for becoming greener, from making non-toxic cleaning products to choosing more sustainable wines: http://www.oeconline.org/)

350

As I drove home from the grocery store yesterday (don't drive! It's bad!), I heard a public service announcement for an organization called 350. That number is the maximum amount of carbon parts per million we can risk having in our atmosphere without the threat of extreme weather conditions, a rise in sea level, depletion of our resources, and more. CO2 is currently at 392 parts per million. Tune into the weather channel right now and you will see the evidence as droughts, floods, wildfires, and hurricanes plague the country. I checked out 350's website, www.350.org, and saw that they have accomplished quite a lot to bring millions of people together from around the world in protest to the increase of CO2 in our atmosphere. Their website says:

In October of 2009 we coordinated 5200 simultaneous rallies and demonstrations in 181 countries, in what CNN called the 'most widespread day of political action in the planet's history.' On 10/10/10, we organized a day of climate solutions projects--from solar panel installations to community garden plantings--and changed communities from the bottom up with over 7,000 events in 188 countries. And at the end of last year, we coordinated a climate art project so large it had to be photographed from a satellite in outer space.

You can see a video about the incredible climate art project here.

There are many ideas available on their website for reducing your carbon emissions. I am using one of these as my pledge for the week of July 4, called the "2 Mile Challenge." It is a challenge to use your bicycle instead of your car for at least all trips within two miles of home. Roughly 30% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation sector, so one of the most effective ways an individual can contribute to a more energy efficient system is by choosing to ride a bike or walk over driving a car. The website says that 40% of all urban travel is 2 miles or less per trip, and 90% of that is by car. So you can cut your transportation carbon emissions almost in half by taking this challenge with me, if you will! The 2 Mile Challenge website allows you to first join a team (pick the blue team to support 350.org), quickly register, and then log your miles periodically (I am going to add walking as a mode of transportation in that challenge, because I also enjoy putting one foot in front of the other). At the end of the challenge, 119 days from now, Cliff Bars will donate $100,000 to the winning team. At least 76,000 car trips will be avoided and 80,000 pounds of CO2 prevented from entering our atmosphere.

That's right, for every mile you drive, one pound of CO2 is released into the air. Imagine if for every mile you drove, you threw a pound of trash out the window. You would feel pretty guilty, wouldn't you?  Well, just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. I've tried to keep that little fact in mind as I drive or decide not to drive, and it has really helped me to understand the harm that driving a car causes.

Finally, because today is American Independence Day, I want to offer a patriotic reminder for why making these efforts is so important. It is imperative that America attempts to be greener through individual lifestyle changes, policy changes, government regulation, and scientific innovation. With carbon emissions at their current levels and rising, there is no other option than to be greener if we want to remain a wealthy, sustainable, and healthy society. We are currently lagging in that department, as you can read in this recent New York Times article: "U.S. Said to Be Falling Behind in the Business of 'Green." It's up to us Americans as incredibly influential global citizens to step up to the plate, innovate, and illustrate our ability to solve a global crisis. I hope you have an optimistic Fourth of July by thinking of ways to support our country in a red, white, blue, and green way. ;p

(This blog is inspired by the summer internship I am doing with Oregon Environmental Council. Their website has a plethora of resources for becoming greener, from making non-toxic cleaning products to choosing more sustainable wines: http://www.oeconline.org/)

This Blog's Focus: Climate Change

A good friend of mine told me about how some of her students, who are all adult scientists, are convinced that humans have not caused global warming. To that, I scoffed, and she responded, “I can’t say whether or not I believe that humans are to blame for climate change because I haven’t looked into it myself.” And not only was she right to avoid forming an opinion before doing her  research, but I realized that I had not educated myself properly, either. Yet after reading Friedman’s summary in Hot, Flat, and Crowded, I have confirmed to be true what I had only had faith in before:

The composition of the earth’s atmosphere "has been relatively unchanged for twenty million years,’ noted Caltech’s Nate Lewis… On the eve of the Industrial Revolution—according to ice core samples that have trapped air bubbles from previous eras and can provide us a snapshot of climate conditions going back thousands of years—the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stood at roughly 280 parts per million by volume. "And it had been stable around that level for about ten thousand years before that," Lewis added. It started to surge in the 1950s, tracking the broad global surge in energy consuption, led by the Western industrial powers after World War II… In 2007, the CO2 level in the atmosphere stood at 384 parts per million by volume and appeared to be climbing at a rate of 2 parts per million a year.

The general agreement among climate experts is that the earth has already warmed on average by 0.8 degrees Celsius above its level in 1750… "Your body temperature is normally 98.6 degrees Farenheit, and when it goes up just a few degrees to 102 Farenheit, it is a big deal—it tells you something is wrong," says John Holdren, who is professor of environmental policy at Harvard and the former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "The same is true with changes in the global average surface temperature."

From our ice core samples, Holdren explained, we know that the difference in global average temperature between an ice age and an interglacial period like we are in now is a mere five to six degrees Celsius… According to the World Meteorological Organization, the ten hottest years since thermometer records became available in 1860 all occurred between 1995 and 2005. 

At the request of the United Nations, the scientific research society Sigma Xi also convened its own international group of climate scientists and produced a report in Februrary 2007, "Confronting Climate Change," in which it noted that even the relatively small rise in global average temperature, 0.8 degrees Celsius, that we have seen so far since 1750 has been "accompanied by significant increases in the incidence of floods, doughts, heat waves, and wildfires." 

Since we can’t stop CO2 emissions cold, if they continue to grow at just the mid-range projections, "the cumulative warming by 2100 will be between 3 and 5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial conditions," says the Sigma Xi report, which could trigger sea level rises, droughts, and floods of a biblical scale.

As you can see, not only is the evidence there to prove that global warming is real and created by humans, but it also unequivocally suggests that we do something about it now. It is the most pressing issue of the era, if not of all human history. 

Because climate change is such an important issue, I’ve decided that this blog and my pledges will be specifically dedicated to reducing my (and hopefully your) carbon emissions. I’ll explain why each pledge is directly related to climate change, which shouldn’t be too difficult to do considering that almost all human activity since the industrial revolution has contributed to this problem—from producing food to cooking to washing up to reading a book at night. This blog, then, will be a holistic approach to reducing carbon emissions by including various ways to contribute to a greener world. As John Muir said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." Our actions, as human beings, are not exempt from this web, and taking responsibility for them and finding more sustainable alternatives is the best way to help our environment and ourselves.

I'll post tomorrow on what this coming week's alternative action will be. Once again, I really hope you join me! 

(This blog is inspired by the summer internship I am doing with Oregon Environmental Council. Their website has a plethora of resources for becoming greener, from making non-toxic cleaning products to choosing more sustainable wines: http://www.oeconline.org/)