Carbon Footprint

Dec 28

Top down or bottom up: One or the other or both?

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Last month Sarah Palin wrote an oped in the Washington Post urging Pres. Obama to boycott Copenhagen. “Without trustworthy science,” also calling it “politicized science” and “agenda-driven science,” it’s not worth it for the U.S. to cut a deal, which would amount to a “job-loss program,” she wrote.

In her article, she acknowledges the retreating sea-ice off Alaska’s coast, thawing permafrost and coastal erosion. “We recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends . . . .”

With half the population and half of Congress agreeing with her thinking, short-term economics and short-term elections will continue to rule the day. And any shift at the national-policy level, for better or worse, will shift back with every election cycle. Washington is not likely to lead on this issue, will likely never get out ahead of us. But they will follow the market forces that affect their local constituents.

Some things you can legislate, but can’t enforce adequately – like residential recycling, the speed limit, keeping your paint cans out of the town dump. There are many pressure points to create change, and regulations are one of them, though don’t always guarantee outcomes.

Some things regulate well from the top-down: exposing the public to radiation and no longer developing on wetlands. Some of these could be stronger, like limiting commercial carbon emissions, but nevertheless, these are natural top-down regulations.

Successful bottom-up movements leading to regulations include standards for drinking water and town-wide waste recycling, which is pretty much a norm for all garbage collecting, both things that didn’t really exist only 20 years ago.

Some studies claim that top-down costs more for industry and related markets than bottom-up movements. Partly because top-down happens rather quickly, bottom-up usually happens over a long, developing span of time. Incentives like taxes or fines play a role in outcomes and costs as well. Also, bottom-up grassroots movements that succeed also sustain themselves for the long term, since they come into their own with support already in place.

Human beings are in the unique position, for the first time in the history of the planet, to save or destroy the planet. No other species has had this position. It’s simply a choice we must make as a race. At the moment, it’s highly unlikely top-down regulation will mandate buying a Prius, installing solar power, or taking public transportation. It’s going to require leadership from the bottom, from those who care and understand about creating the infrastructure to make these changes

The more I watch Congress, or international politics, the more I see that little will change on a national or international level among industrial countries. We must lead the way from the bottom. The best things we can do, as individuals, is to do our thing, stay our course, talk it up, communicate together. No matter is too small during the holidays or any time. At home or at work or with family or wherever, every green act you do, everything you purchase, every comment you make sends a message. Send the right message.

Dec 05

Everyone cries economics, unless it’s convenient

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There are 22,000 buildings in New York City. Some, including the City, claim that these buildings account for 80 percent of total carbon emissions (alternative-transportation advocates would probably argue that autos are responsible for more than the unclaimed 20%, but that’s splitting hairs). The city’s mayor wants to reduce the city’s total emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Sounds like too little too late, but it’s something.

His recent proposal was to conduct energy-audits of all buildings more than 50,000 square feet, determine how to make them more energy efficient, and then for the owners to pay for some of those changes. He was forced to drop the part of the proposal that calls for building owners to make the recommended changes. You could imagine the roar of opposition from building owners, who see no financial benefit in any of this.

“Where’s the economics?” they cried. “We don’t have the money for this.”

The proposal didn’t even require the owners to make all the changes, but only the changes that would save them enough money on their energy bill after five years to make back what they spent. Apparently that’s asking too much.

So now the mayor wants to push for the energy audits, and not require building owners to do what the report recommends. That much seems to be acceptable to building owner organizations. And that’s a heck of a start. For one thing, the audits will recommend what owners and tenants can do to reduce their energy use – new windows, new boilers, insulation, etc. (Of course there are plenty of building owners opposed to paying for the audit. After all, why do they care about their carbon footprint? Let someone else deal with it.)

While it might not change the behavior of building owners, it might affect the behavior of the tenants. Good information like this is bound to raise consciousness, lead to new behavior and possibly real energy reduction.

(Sadly, the media reporting on this topic, like all the mainstream reporting on any energy-related issue, including the NY Times in this case, never touches the real impact – what it means to our future planet. Instead, the focus is on what it means to the city’s economics, the jobs it might create, the political fallout, etc.)

Enough of big picture policy-talk looking down from the Hubble. Let’s get closer to the planet and look at one person: my friend. My friend took the bus from Boston’s Chinatown to New York’s Chinatown for $15 on Thanksgiving weekend. That means he saved on gas money, no wear and tear on the car, no tolls, he got to read, nap, listen to music, meet someone new – and yes, save the world a little pollution. The outcome: he’ll never do it again. Too much hassle, not worth the effort, he thinks he caught a cold from the people, etc. I didn’t get into a debate with him. In fact, I can understand: We’re American. We need convenience, we come first and everything else second. So I didn’t argue.

But after reading about the New York City building energy issue, and then talking to my friend, I thought: these are people somewhat tuned in. These are people who understand the issue, but still don’t feel engaged. What about the billions who are unaware of the issue, and have not even reached the starting point to form a judgment?

Which leaves those of us who care to take this on by ourselves, to continue to raise the alarms louder, until everyone can hear it – even the deaf ones — and then we raise it louder so that they can’t hear anything else, until every sound they hear is the sound of the planet suffocating.

Too often those are the only sounds I hear.

Oct 18

The Carbon Footprint – One Small Step for Humans, One Giant Step for Earth

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When you buy a can of soda, a pound of meat, a pair of sneakers, a few gallons of gas, cat food, the newspaper and a stick of butter, you mark the end of a long line of events that occurred before you purchased the item, and the start of a continuum of activities that will occur afterwards.

You have a carbon footprint. We can trace it back from where your steps have come, and we can trace it forward, to where your steps will go.

The trail starts with the extraction of the raw material itself. The trail widens with the processing of the raw material into the end product. Each step in the transition from raw material to end product requires things to move from place to place.

To bring this point home, let’s trace one small purchase on a given day of your life.

The path of Aluminium Foil

the mine
to the processing plant
through the processing plant
to the manufacturing plant
through the manufacturing process
to the warehouse
to the retailer
to the store
to the home to be consumed
to the garbage collector
to the landfill – or hopefully to the recycling plant to start the process all over again starting at the processing plant instead of the mine.

This is not including the paper material that makes up the packaging, which has its own trail starting with the fall of a tree, which moves to a printing plant that uses colored ink to cover the paper.

We can do this with the fast-food hamburger someone in your family ate this week, which may have involved clear-cutting parts of the Amazon for cattle grazing.

It’s quite simple to disregard – keep out-of-mind– this concept, since we are so far removed from the process. So we ignore it. It takes effort to comprehend the ramifications of every act. Afterall, a bike ride to work is not a political statement, it’s just a bike ride. Buying local fruit, local milk and local clothes is not a protest against national products. Or is it?

Shrinking your carbon footprint requires very active living.

Even the consumption of water contributes to your carbon footprint, since water systems need energy inputs to pump water – whether it’s town water or well water.

Think Global Footprint, Act on Local Footprint

We can’t do it all, we’ll drive ourselves crazy. Our kid wants a Nike sweatshirt with a hood more than the hand-made sweater you saw at the crafts fair Saturday. You don’t have much choice if you want to participate in mainstream America. Some people are able to opt out, head to the hills of Maine and never return. But for those of us who want to live in the system, there’s ample room to improve our footprint without a lot of effort.

Becoming aware of your footprint is the first step. From there you can diminish the direct, obvious products.

driving the automobile
powering the lawn equipment
powering the electrical devices in the home
heating and cooling the home
using any electrical appliance
shutting computers at night
shutting lights

If we all did this little bit . . .

It is a mind-boggling amount of lives that consume a mind-boggling amount of products that sustain the ostentatious lives we all live. Today, in America, we each enjoy the luxuries of, say, a royal prince from the ‘30s.

There is no end in sight. There’s no finish line. In fact, it’s inherent in the system to have no finish line. There is no established point where we will say, “Ahhh, we’ve reached maximum speed. Let’s all agree to stay at this pace and enjoy ourselves.” The alarming speed of commerce is bent on getting speedier; the constant increase itself nourishes our economy. Consume more, produce more; consume faster, produce faster. A steady pace is considered no growth, and the corporate power-structure then jolts the system to increase the pace of spending.

We can slow it down, we can gain control of our own pace, even act thoughtfully. But it takes work.

Your carbon footprint directly relates to the speed of our consumption and activity. We are far over the speed limit. Collectively, we can slow down, and eventually, catch our breaths, walk a little, maybe even rest. That’s the power of paying attention to your personal footprint.

One small step for humans, one giant step for the earth.