"Cheap-Energy Mind"

Over the weekend, I read a fantastic article by Michael Pollan (Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food) in the NYtimes about the "why bother" question that many seem to be asking. Why bother switching out incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescents, if a country like China is headstrong in its industrial revolution? Why bother going local when we don't know for sure what our impact on the environment really is?

The real question is, why should we bother changing our lifestyle when we can go about the way we live cheaply? What Pollan and almost every scientist agrees upon is that the way we live currently does not factor in such environmental costs. Yes my power costs $0.10/ kwh but surely that does not reflect the erosion mining causes, the trace amounts of heavy metals in my drinking water, and the gradual replacing of agricultural land for housing developments.

What is required of us (in the next 8 years actually) is a complete change in mindset. Perhaps we should forgo our TV for an hour and take a walk, become vegetarian for a day because the meat we consume costs an enormous amount of energy to generate, or drive a bit less because the ethanol in our gasoline is indirectly contributing to the current world food crisis.

These are not easy connections to make. But we owe it to ourselves and those less fortunate to find out. So change a light bulb and be happy you made a difference.

Comments...

A few people have said they had trouble leaving comments on my blog. I'm not sure if this was user error or if I had some setting wrong, but I decided to make it so anyone could post. I also got rid of that pesky validation code thingy. So unless I start getting people posting about 0% financing on a new home, the security details will be gone. Hope that helps!

Lots of Sustainable Things

Tuesday might have well been Sustainability Day. As soon as I got off my plane from California I jetted off to the Sustainable Products Trade Show at UF (yes, I recognize the irony in that statement). Remember my post about the 7:1 garbage bin to recycling bin ratio at UF? Well apparently, Florida is doing some things to lessen their environmental impact. Shocking. I failed to take some pictures of the event despite having brought my camera, but here is a list of some of the cool products that UF is actually buying:

- PLA (corn-based plastic) cups
- Biodegradable plates, plastic-ware, and cups for Gator Dining Services
- Electrical load management for the dorms (so you can see which dorm room is using the most electricity)
- Reusable, compostable, and recyclable, carpet made from sustainable resources
- "green" chemicals/reagents and water filtration systems for labs

As if that wasn't enough action for one day, I then scurried off to my department's weekly seminar, which featured a professor from UMich who spoke about Organic Photovoltaic fibers. Now, I'm not really sure about the practicality of this research, but it is encouraging to see someone trying to think about ways we can actually scale up solar research to make a real impact. Even at 40% growth a year, solar technology still has A LOT to make up to be competitive with fossil-fuel based technology.

My day concluded with my monthly GRU (local utility) meeting for Gainesville Energy Advisory Committee. Here I get to see how energy policy is crafted (or not) and implemented (or not) albeit at a local level. This month I discovered that its pretty difficult to enact energy conservation programs. The problem is that most energy conservation programs are difficult to measure, so their benefits are muddled. The utility would have a pretty large incentive to conserve more energy if they knew quantitatively what each measure would do. For example, how much do CFL's (those swirly energy efficient bulbs) actually save the utility, and who is using them?

One thing is for sure though. When I talked to a company spokesman for NatureWorks at the Sustainable Products Trade Show, I asked him if these seemingly obscure products were actually finding a way into the market. He replied, "The demand is absolutely huge. 10 years ago all this stuff was a fad or a fringe movement, but now it is serious money. These products are here to stay." That seemed like an accurate statement, especially after he pointed to the new biodegradable Kentucky Fried Chicken bag.

CA High Speed Rail

This is a sweet potential project for high speed transportation in CA. I'm not foreseeing it getting built anytime soon, especially in the midst of a recession. Perhaps when Obama is President, it will get done :)



P.S Thanks Travis for unknowingly letting me rip this off of your Facebook profile.