The Environment Is Politics

No time to blog. I have been taken by the energy of the Democratic Convention, and spent all my evenings glued to the TV. Nervously praying for no missteps. La Marguerite is an environment blog, not a place to share my political views. This time is different, however. I feel the big environmental challenges facing us are political issues. One only need to take a look at the past eight years, to be convinced. Eight years, during which we, the citizens of this great country, have been consistently ‘dis-inspired’, demoralized, and demobilized on so many fronts. Eight years, during which other countries looked up to us for leadership on climate change, and found nothing instead. Eight years of systematic obstruction to hundreds of good environmental proposals. Eight years of special fuel interests pulling the strings behind the scenes and imposing their wishes. Eight years, during which CO2 levels have risen steadily, past the 350 danger zone. Eight years of muffling the voices of climate scientists. Eight long years, that have dwarfed my efforts, and others’ efforts to try to heal nature.

I am ready for a change. Are you?

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The Curse of Air Travel

Starting tomorrow, I will be off to Europe for a two-week visit to my family, followed by a tour of the Tuscan countryside. If I was 100% pure, I would stay home, and use Skype to stay in touch with my loved ones. After all, air travel is one the most CO2 intensive mode of transportation:

This is where the power of emotional ties collide with my green conscience. The tragedy of my 86-year old mother slowly falling to Alzheimer’s, and the adorable pictures of my new six-month old nephew Amadeo, are stronger than all the carbon calculations. I have to go.

To ease up my footprint, I will, of course, buy carbon offsets from Terrapass. And dream of a not so distant future, when air travelling may not be such a curse on the environment.

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Oil Addicts Growing More Desperate

“That show last night was pretty depressing!” Hubby Prad did not sleep well after watching ‘We Were Warned: Out of Gas‘, the latest in CNN’s Special Investigations Unit series. Neither did I. Listening to most of the comments in the show, you would never know we are at the brink of a planetary disaster. Hardly any mention of conservation. No, instead it is all about looking everywhere in search of yet more oil, no matter what the cost. Cost in dollars per barrel. And more importantly, cost to our future in terms of carbon emissions.

Never before has the addiction to oil metaphor been more apt. Big Oil is leaving no soil unturned, no ocean unprobed, to satisfy our need for our daily oil fix.

Now, here’s the part that really, really got to me, best conveyed in trailer for new movie, Pay Dirt:

Just when I thought  coal mountain top removal was as bad as it could get . . . 

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89% Americans Feed World’s Biggest Pollution Factory!

For an edifying picture of China’s real status on the environmental front, I suggest you read Peter Navarro‘s latest article in Energy Bulletin. Peter is the author of the upcoming book, ‘The Coming China Wars‘. In summary:

• Every single week, China adds one new large coal power plant to its energy base.
• China is now adding 15,000 new cars a day to its roads, and it expects to have more cars than the United States — as many as 130 million — as early as 2040.
• China is expected to construct fully half of all the buildings in the world over the next 25 years. Beyond sheer quantity, the nightmare here is that these buildings will be electricity sinkholes because Chinese buildings are notoriously energy inefficient. 
• China plans to move almost a half a billion peasants off the farm into factories and cities over the next several decades. As a rule, urbanites introduced to the magic of refrigerators, TVs, and toasters use more than three times the amount of energy as their rural counterparts.
• Chinese manufacturers are extremely energy inefficient. To produce an equivalent amount of goods, they use six times more resources than the United States, seven times more resources than Japan, and, most embarrassingly, three times more resources than India, to which China is most frequently compared.

Guess who is feeding China’s gigantic pollution factory? Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, touted by Adam Werbach as the new corporate environmental hero, represents 30 percent of foreign purchasing in China. 27 billion dollars total. No greening strategy can make up for the fact that we, the 89% of American people who shop at Wal-Mart, are contributing in no insignificant terms, to China’s lethal gases spewing frenzy.  

More than ever, let us make ours, the old ‘Reduce-Reuse-Recycle‘

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US Gas Prices Are Still Too Cheap

I know, I know, the American people are suffering. 4$ a gallon, and rising. I should share our nation’s outrage, and feel sorry for my compatriots. At the risk of being perceived, once more, as a cold-hearted human being, I decided to take a look at these numbers – from here and here –

Makes me wish for $8 and up, a gallon . . .

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Here Comes Manodo

It was featured in engadget, ecogeek, treehugger, and gizmodo. The Manodo Display comes to us from Sweden where it is currently in beta testing with fifteen households. What it is: a smart home device that keeps track of your green-ness in real time, down to the details of your CO2 emissions for each daily activity. The Manodo also gives information about the next train or bus near you.

And if you are good, you get a smiley!

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Will You Go 350 With Bill McKibben?

Thanks to Meryn Stol for pointing me to Grist and 350. Building upon his earlier Step it Up initiative, Bill McKibben is asking us all to participate in his new 350 international grassroots climate campaign. For those of you wondering, 350 is the absolute limit we should not go past, in terms of CO2 parts per million. We are already at 385 parts per million . . .

Seems like fun and easy. I urge you to bring the 350 initiative into your community. You can make it as big, or as small, as you want.

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From Gas Tax Holiday to Conservation

First was this picture in the San Francisco Chronicle, of a ‘Pray-in at San Francisco gas station asks God to lower prices’. I almost choked!

Then came Hillary Clinton and John McCain‘s joint request for a “gas tax holiday“:

Hillary will impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies and use the money to temporarily suspend the 18.4 cent per gallon federal gas tax and the 24.4 cent per gallon diesel tax during the upcoming peak summer driving months.

I understand Hillary is trying really hard to get elected, but still . . .

I have to join Thomas Friedman in his ‘Dumb as we wanna be‘ lament:

The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious – the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.

At the roots of this environmental policy fiasco is a lack of understanding of some basic economics principles, and malicious efforts on the part of politicians to appeal to the crowds’ dumbness. Maybe someone should take the time to explain, in plain English, why artificially lowering gas prices is not such a good idea. Robert Reich summarized it best:

McCain and HRC are proposing a tax holiday on gas – so this summer you wouldn’t pay the 18 cents a gallon that would otherwise go to Uncle Sam. Talk about dumb ideas. This will only encourage Americans to drive more, thereby increasing demand and causing gas prices to rise even higher. Driving more will also put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which fuels global warming. And this will cost taxpayers some $10 billion. It’s a cheap political gimmick that does nothing to stem the rising price of oil.

Someone needs to sit down with Americans, and treat them as intelligent people, and explain how things really work. The answer is not in lowering gas prices. The real solution is in conservation, and learning new ways to deal with gas, as in carpooling, driving less, biking, walking, taking public transportation, shopping less, better planning, living more locally, buying more fuel efficient cars, etc.

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When Blogging Is Not Enough

Tonight I am feeling impatient, and tired of ‘just’ writing. I want to step into action, and shake things up. This is a recurrent feeling I have. How can I best help bring about some of the changes that we keep discussing and advocating in this blog?

Tonight, I am feeling powerless, and I don’t like it. Earlier today, I drove my daughter to see a ballet at the San Francisco Opera, and I got mad again. My head went spinning as we stayed stuck in traffic on the 101 freeway. Nothing has changed. The traffic is still congested, and every second that passes we are sending out more tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Tonight, I am feeling restless. I want to grab one little piece of the big monster, and start gnawing at it. Then comes the question of where to start? It seems that short of getting involved in policy making, nothing I can do will make much difference. I wonder how many people feel the same way.

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Why Bother?

Why bother with a green blog? My earlier enthusiasm is waning. And so is my sense of urgency for the whole green problem. Too wrapped up in my own world, I lose sight of CO2 and all those other bad gases. I find it hard to sustain my awareness for things that I cannot see or feel. Here in beautiful California, life is good and nature has not snapped back yet, except for an occasional outburst of heat in the middle of winter. I feel guilty. I imagine all the green do gooders reading this blog and pointing fingers of contempt for my lack of conscience. And yet, this is my truth, and I am convinced there is some gold in there. What if part of the answer lied in the honest acknowledgement of one’s reality. Global warming is a man made problem, said the latest report. Man made starts with the person.

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