Posted on December 2, 2008 @ 09:02:00 AM by Paul Meagher
I am starting into a book by Girvan Harrison called Nature's Way: An Introduction to Forest Ecology, 2006, Earthwood Editions: Gagetown, New Brunswick.
On page 5, in the "Pause, Ponder, Postulate & Participate" section, he suggests this exercise:
Sit by yourself for fifteen minutes in the forest. What did you: hear, smell, see, feel... think? Did you think the fifteen minutes would never pass? Why or why not?
I conducted this experiment at a waterfall area in a local park. The forest encroached on the waterfall from either side but the trees were in a mortal struggle with the terrain which consisted of heavy granite rocks on which a seemingly thin layer of soil clung to. Nevertheless there are many small spruce trees rooting in and growing in improbable places. The waterfalls, however, are an inescapable focal point for the location where I found a comfortable bench to sit at for 15 minutes. To get to this location requires climbing or descending fairly treacherous stairs so I was able to enjoy my experiment undisturbed for 15 minutes.
The time went by relatively quickly for me. I checked my watch about half way through, then again near the end, and a final time to confirm that I reached 15 minutes. During that time, what I noticed was a shifting of attention between stimuli in my immediate environment (jets of water spraying of the jutting rocks) and my day-to-day thoughts and worries. The fact that I was focusing on day-to-day thoughts and worries became a bit more obvious to detect, so I tried to focus outwardly on the environment on a regular basis. My time, however, was spent shifting between internal and external phenomonon. The time that I spent "in" nature consisted of:
Some dazzlement time watching the spray coming off the waterfall
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Some time being amazed at the purposefulness of water - rushing towards a point of lower energy with no time to waste.
Thought about the amount of water vapor that was coming off the falls and how significant a contribution it might be to the amount of water in the air. Also thought about how the vaporization process wasn't simply a matter of temperature differentials, but also the pulverizing mechanical force of falling water against rock surfaces.
I reflected upon how the water might have flowed before the top of waterfall found its current course. Huge mounds of heavy rock on either side of the waterfall mouth suggests that the water might have collected higher up at one point and eventually wore down the mouth to its current form. How did the rock get here? Volcanic action? Glacial action? What kinds of rocks are they?
This experiment is worth doing again. I learned a few things about nature by trying to be still in nature and observing and thinking about "nature's way". I'm interested in changing the venue and seeing what types of experiences and thoughts a new forest setting might evoke. I found that after the 15 minutes in nature were up and I was walking back to my bike, that there was was a period of hightened attentiveness to nature - I examined the plants that were growing on the thin layer of soil on the valley walls a bit more closely than I have before. I wondered if they were related to Sedums which I found out yesterday are used for green roof tops because they do well in a thin layer of soil like a green roof top. The valley wall was like a green rooftop in that respect. There is a variety of sedum that does well in moist climates called Sedum ternatum.
Before my experiment, I discovered "litchens" growing on some rocks. I've seen "litchens" before, I just didn't have the term to use for them. According to Girvan Harrison, a litchen is "a composite organism formed from the symbiotic association of a true fungus and an alga". They contribute to soil formation by breaking down rocks with their organic acids.
Posted on November 28, 2008 @ 01:33:00 PM by Paul Meagher
To address the current economic crisis, governments around the world are taking some drastic measures. Many are looking for the magic "stimulus package" that will help right the economy. I previously suggested that green infrastructure spending would be a good idea and the U.S. stimulus package looks like it will include this component. How are we going to finance this green infrastructure? I would argue that now is a good time for a carbon tax to fund infrastructure building and to bring in a market mechanism that sends clear economic signals about the real cost of carbon emissions to our atmospheric commons.
There are many ways to design a carbon tax. My preference is for a carbon tax that is simple, transparent, and sends the right market signals. My proposal would involve levying varying amounts of tax on carbon from coal, oil, deisel, and gas. Revenues collected from these carbon taxes would be split in half. One half would go back to taxpayer in the form of a monthly dividend where each person gets their equal share of whatever is in the carbon tax revenue pool. If you do not shell out for much carbon, then you would stand to make some money from this deal. If you shell out alot of money for carbon, then this dividend would offset some of your carbon tax payments but would not cover the amount of carbon tax you paid in. As it should be, we are living in an atmospheric commons and you are consuming more than your fair share. The overburden we are putting on the commons would no longer be hidden.
The other half of the revenue pool collected from the carbon tax would be used to pay for green infrastructure (infrastructure fund) and market leadership in new green products and services (technology fund).
I think that if we brough in a carbon tax now to 1) pay down green infrastructure investment, and 2) to start regulating carbon emissions through market mechanisms, that this would be the "economic stimulus" that would turn the U.S economy around AND make it more sustainable.
To get out of this mess we need to embrace Joseph Schumpeter's idea of creative destruction as the key to ecomonic growth. You can't grow in the context of the status quo, you need to destroy and replace one way of doing things with a new way. A carbon tax is the butterfly that could unleash the creative destruction required to stimulate the ecomony out of recession.
Posted on November 27, 2008 @ 09:48:00 PM by Paul Meagher
I subscribe to The Chronicle Herald news paper. It is the primary daily news source for Nova Scotia where I reside. One of the sections I often skim/read through is the "Obituaries". I often find interesting tidbits in this section.
Today I ready about Bill Silber 1918-2008. One thing that struck me when I read his obituary was his love of nature. Here is an excerpt from his obituary:
Bill and Kaye moved to the Dave Withrow farm in Avondale and continued about the business of farming as he had been raised to do on the neighbouring Will Withrow farm. Compelled to serve his country in the Second World War, he went to basic training in Yarmouth, but along with the other farmers, he was sent home. The farm where they lived and worked and raised their four children, Douglas, Brenda, Carl and Sharon, was a dairy farm. Bill also maintained several orchards, and grew apples, plums, pears, peaches and cherries. Bill loved his farm and toiled long and hard for it to flourish. He was an "old-time" businessman, whose handshake was his word, and he staunchly supported Farmer's Dairy, The Co-op and Avonian Motors. He was also fascinated with many other aspects of country life and enjoyed grafting trees, growing pumpkins, hunting, wood cutting, tapping maple trees, pressing apples for cider, and raising bees for their contribution to his crops and, of course, the honey. The farm bordered the Avon River and Bill owned several boats and spent many hours fishing, coming home with lots of "fish tales".
Posted on November 24, 2008 @ 07:59:00 AM by Paul Meagher
The final chapter in Micheal Pollan's book, "In Defense Of Food" (2008), discusses how to eat in a healthy way. The two main themes are to eat less and to eat whole foods. With regards to eating less, Pollan discusses a potpourri of ideas and research including behavioural strategies such as reducing the sizes of your plates and cups and buying cups that are long and slender to give the illusion of more volume. At a cultural level, Pollan discusses some of the history and ideas behind the Slow Food Movement and argues that some of this thinking might be helpful in getting us to eat less. Eating slowly and deliberately, in full knowledge of the the short food chain that delivered the food to your table, replete with whole foods, may be the type of antidote we need to our current drive-through go-yurt culture. For those who can afford to, he advocates spending more on quality food and that smaller portions of high quality food eaten slowly is a proven way to eat healthy. If you buy whole foods you don't have to look at nutrition labels because 1) they don't advertise the ingredients (why?), and 2) food is about more than nutrition and will take care of itself if you buy whole foods ideally from short food chains.
In one section of the final chapter, Pollan reflects upon the usefullness of blessing your food as a way to slow down and reflect on your food experience. While he doesn't do blessings himself, he sometimes recalls a couple of sentences by Wendell Berry, to get him in the mood to eat more deliberately:
Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehand.
To turn this into a blessing I might use, I would do these edits:
In this meal may we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehand. Amen.
Posted on November 21, 2008 @ 10:57:00 AM by Paul Meagher
It started snowing yesterday and snowed overnight and this morning. When I left on my bicycle this morning the snow was still coming down pretty hard. I realized after it was too late that I left without one piece of my usual winter biking attire: ski googles. Nevertheless I trekked on to the bicycle shop where I recently purchased my commuter slush bike. My main purpose was to replace the current pedals with some cheap pedals with more bite to them. The current flat plastic pedals can be comfortably peddled without any shoes. I found it easy for my foot to slip off during my offroad ventures and anticipated it would be more of an issue in the snow. I also got a rear view mirror installed in the end of my left handlebar.
My final purchase was an extra tire for the bike in case I had a blow out. The sales person mentioned the idea of buying a second tire so that I could make a pair of stud tires. I declined the suggestion at that time (limited room for transporting tires plus not entirely sold) but am mulling it over. The recipe for do-it-yourself bicycle tire studding he suggested involves driving screws through the inside of the tire into an awaiting nut that you use to fasten it from the outside. You can drive anywhere from 40 to 80 such studs into your tire according to whatever studding pattern you think is a good one. The studs add a notible weight to your tire. After you have studded the tire, then you can cut the sidewalls off any old tires you have lying around. You place these cutup sidewalls inside the tire against the studs to protect the tire tube from the inner tire stud ends.
Wonder if there is a stapling tool of some sort that would allow you to drive a "stud" into your tire more easily or effectively?
I had a few slips and slides today which is why I am giving this idea some credence. The tires on my new commuter bike are wider than a racing bike tire but slimmer than a mountain bike tire. The are not knobby, built more for easy gliding through suburbia. My mountain bike has cheap knobby Kendra tires which got me though last winter in one piece. So my next winterinzing project will be to change the front tire on my mountain bike from a flat street tire to a knobby Kendra tire. This should give me more traction and will probably be the bike I use if I encounter similiar conditions in the future. Other than the tire issue, my new commuter bike performed great in terms of plowing through snow, ability to recover from slides, braking system is excellent, and the internally-geared 3 speed hub performed nicely offering just the right mix of gears and no freeze ups.
Modding your ride is one of life's little pleasures.
Posted on November 20, 2008 @ 12:22:00 PM by Paul Meagher
Antioxidants are important to our diet, especially as we get beyond reproductive age and our bodies repair systems start to fail. Ideally, we would get our dose of antioxidants from a buffet of fresh vegetables and fruit. My dose of fresh vegetables for supper will be some loose lettuce that I will serve with Highliner haddock sticks and McCain Premium Fries. Fortunately for me, I have another food high in antioxidants that I often have with my meal, a glass of red wine.
Dr. Harvey Finkel goes into some of the science behind the beneficial effects of red wine consumed in moderate amounts.
Most intriguing are the poly-phenolic flavonoids, which can be referred to as antioxidants, according to their most attractive function. Found in grapes, chiefly the skins, their concentrations tend to be higher in red wines (when skins are included in fermentation) than white (when skins are culled). Their functions in the vine are only partially known, antifungal for one.
These antioxidants are less available in other alcoholic beverages. Among the best known, and most biologically active, are resveratrol, quercetin and the catechins.
The antioxidants with which we are concerned are a class of phytochemicals, compounds of vegetable origin. They are not exclusive to grapes, although grapes are richly endowed with them. They are also found in allium vegetables (onions, leeks, garlic, shallots), broccoli, spinach, blueberries, strawberries, tea and chocolate.
...
Some of mankind's most insidious diseases are suspected of being able to be relieved to some degree by antioxidants, among them heart attack, stroke, other complications of blood-vessel disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other dementias and degenerative disorders, immune dysfunction, cataract and macular degeneration. Aging itself may be retarded by antioxidants. Precise formulas for the relief of these conditions are not yet known. There is reason to believe that antioxidants may not always be entirely benign.
Posted on November 19, 2008 @ 09:07:00 AM by Paul Meagher
I am just finishing up Micheal Pollan's book "In Defense of Food", 2008, Penguin.
Pollan's last book, "The Omnivore's Dillemma", 2006, was a best seller. After reading this book I want to read this earlier book so I would call that a recommendation to read this one.
This is a book that critiques the foundations of "Nutrition Science" and its corresponding ideology of "Nutritionism" - the idea that we can achieve a healthy diet by making sure we get the proper amounts of nutrients indicated on the food labels. I must confess to being of this viewpoint before I read this book; now I am much more skeptical of this approach. An alterantive approach is summarized by the book's byline "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants".
By food, Pollan means "whole" foods, not foods produced from refined sugar, corn, rice or other methods that eliminate any nutritive goodness in our foods. The shift to eating foods made from refined flour, sugar, and soy allows food processors to better store their "food products" and make more money off the end products. Consumers like these "food products" but nutritionally they are bereft of much value. To compensate for the nutritive bankruptcy of their "food products", the food industry "supplements" their "food products" with vitamens, minerals, omega 3's, and other goodness; however, there is good evidence that the benefits of many of these supplements are only achieved in the context of delivery via a whole food and cannot simply be injected into a food and expected to deliver the anticipated health benefit.
Whole foods, such as we find around the perimeter of a grocery store (food products tend to reside along the inner isles), have a very complex chemistry that nutrition science is just beginning to understand. While we may think that a designed food product is complex because it has a list of 20 ingredients, it is comparatively simple when we examine list of ingredients we would find if we analyzed a leaf of thyme - a variety oils, acids, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and fats working synergistically to produce their benefit to our health. Once we realize the complexity and co-evolution involved in the whole foods we eat, we might be inclined to seek them out more just as our evolutionary forebears did. Indeed, the diet of our evolutionary forebears is just the diet that we might hold up as our ideal for how to eat - we are optimally adapted to that diet. We are not yet adapted to eating "food products" (witness rates of obesity, diabetes, teeth problems, etc...) and Pollan argues that many of our western diseases are attributable to the refining and nutrutionism that has become ascendent in the western diet.
Pollan's book can be used by agricultural and nutrition entrepreneurs to anticipate what types of foods we might expect consumers will want more of in the future. It can be read as a modern analysis of the science and trends in nutrition science and offers green entrepreneurs data and insights to use in business plans. It is a very well crafted book by an authoritative voice in this area. Pollan has written a number of well-received books about food and his bibliography contains a useful up-to-date listing of resources useful for exploring many aspects of the food industry in more detail.
Posted on November 14, 2008 @ 08:00:00 AM by Paul Meagher
As the economy tetters towards a recession there are calls to increase infrastructure spending. One good form of infrastructure spending would be to create a high-speed bullet train system like California is doing:
California voters are green-lighting the nation's most ambitious high-speed rail system, approving a nearly $10 billion bond to put speeding bullet trains capable of topping 200 mph between the state's major metropolitan areas.
The measure, which passed with 52 percent support Tuesday, will fund the first phase of what is projected to be a $45 billion, 800-mile project built with state, federal, local and private money.
Posted on November 13, 2008 @ 08:22:00 AM by Paul Meagher
The concept of Green Computing has been on my mind of late. Rasmus Lerdorf, who pioneered the PHP programming language (which this site utilizes), mentioned Green Computing in his keynote speech Simple is Hard (Aug 20, 2008). The talk focused more on optimizing web applications using various debugging tools and it was in this context that the Green Computing remarks below were made.
Attendee, meyers, summarizes Rasmus's views as follows:
if we could take all the web apps in the world and speed them up by 100, we could have a lot less data centers and servers - we used to count cycles when writing c code, and no one tracks that level today. Green computing - we need to save the trees (and kittens) by writing cleaner code - we'd need fewer servers...
Green Computing consumes fewer computational resources which reduces the need for more servers, power, physical space, retail cycles, etc.... A more fleshed out concept of Green Computing might be capable of acting as a powerful guide to best practice in computing? Green Computing is not wasteful of computational resources, is biomimetic, and is sustainable. These Green Computing principles can perhaps be applied to all levels of computing from hardware to software.
Posted on November 7, 2008 @ 08:39:00 AM by Paul Meagher
I have not examined Barack Obama's energy and environment policies in too much detail yet. I scanned a clip in which he discussed green ecomomy ideas. One part that I did not resonate to was Barack's advocacy for subsidizing the automotive industry to retool so that the industry can become "green". Given that Barack is from the epicenter of cartown U.S.A. it is hardly surprising that he would be advocating a future in which we get a 100 miles to the gallon in our Jetson mobiles. Unfortunately, I don't think the CO2 math is on Barack's side. Heavy support for the renewal and expansion of historically unsustainable U.S. automotive industry and its players will in all likelihood not help the U.S. to achieve a declining CO2 output.
The next big players in a quickly transforming transportation sector may not be a familiar names like Ford, GM, or Toyota, but rather names like Norco, Specialized, Giant, and other innovative bicycle design, manufacturing, distribution, retailing, and repair shops.
I think we need to allow the transportation sector to evolve in the context of government advocacy of active and public transport alternatives, rather than propping up an unsustainable automotive industry. Many european cities have evolved away from cars and traffic into different work/living arrangements and transport modalities. The bicycle is often the primary mode of assisted active transport in those cities.
Posted on November 6, 2008 @ 12:38:00 PM by Paul Meagher
I decided to add another bicycle to my collection (I have three so far). I wanted a bike that I could use as a commuter bike in winter. In my east coast climate, that means I need a bike that will perform in slush. What I ended up purchasing was a bike from the manufacturer Specialized called the Globe Centrum Elite IG3:
I added some front and rear mud flaps that will hopefully handle some of the slush I will be encountering this winter. One of the features that makes it a good winter slush bike is that it is internally geared. It has 3 speeds with all shifting occuring internal to the rear hub. This protects the shifting mechanism from freezing slush which completely disabled my shifting a few times last winter. The jury is out on how the disk brakes will handle the slush. They look like a good set of front and rear disk brakes so they probably won't fail due to poor quality components.
Another feature I liked about the bike was that for an internally geared bike it seemed to have a good range of tensions/speeds. The slowest gear is good for really steep hills while the fastest gear gives your legs a good workout and offers decent speed. The bike is very light - seems about half the weight of my 5 year old CCM mountain bike.
It is an easy bike to ride. I had it out for a couple of rides today. It was great weather for biking. One favorable impression that I am getting so far is that it is an efficient bike - it can get me to where I want to go in suburbia with more efficiency (and less shifting) than my mountain bike. A bit less efficient than a road racer style bike, but I can't navigate my local side walks with a road racer bike whereas I feel comfortable using the commuter bike for this purpose (wider tires, sturdier rims, but not as wide, sturdy and knobby as my mountian bike tires).
I had some regret after I bought the bike yesterday but when I picked it up this morning, got some nice looking slush pads installed, and started riding it I've been very happy with my purchase ever since. I also noticed that the bike shop that sold me the bike sold quite a bit of inventory in one day. This is because the owners and staff are excellent to deal with (30% off 2008 models), carry an excellent selection of higher end bikes, and the market for bikes is probably getting hotter as more people green their commuting or seek a healthier lifestyle through active transportation.
Posted on November 5, 2008 @ 11:28:00 AM by Paul Meagher
From Greentech Media, "Denmark's Photosolar has a window that can block out heat from the sun as well as those ugly exterior shades. Next up: a window that can generate power":
Posted on November 5, 2008 @ 10:17:00 AM by Paul Meagher
Barack Obama has convinced voters that electing him is the best way to establish hope for the future of the U.S. and the world. The Obama-Biden policies on Environment & Energy are a good starting point for accessing this claim.
Posted on October 31, 2008 @ 09:44:00 AM by Paul Meagher
Lately, I've become more convinced that the solution to many of our problems lies in the devolution of power to the local level. Connecting a green energy source to the power grid can be a very expensive undertaking which often requires the approval of multiple levels of government, not to mention the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of the energy industry to retain their fossil-fuel monopolies.
The paradigm shift I think we will need if we want to modernize our power systems is to design our energy futures in such a way that 100% of the power is generated and consumed locally with a large chunk of the financing for local power generation initially coming from municipal taxes. These municipal taxes would be reduced as revenues from local power consumption flows into the municipal level of government. There is no reason why the municipal power system can't be financially self-sustaining as green power technology improves and costs go down. Going local with our power systems would also be a stimulus to consumers to monitor their power consumption so that your community as a whole can try to eventually achive 100% sustainable power.
A sustainable local power system would be a great legacy to leave our kids rather than the truely spooky future (war, disease, famine) that Jared Diamond predicts we will be facing within 20 years if we proceed on our present course.
Posted on October 29, 2008 @ 08:36:00 AM by Paul Meagher
As an amateur wine maker, you will be occasionally subjected to my revelations about wine. My latest revelation came about last night when I attended a local wine tasting event in which we were given 5 comparable commercial wine samples (New Zealand Merlot, New Zeland Gewurtraminer, South African Cabernet Sauvignon, Alsatian Riesling, Atalian Docettto) and five small morsels of food (chocolate, egg role & plum sauce, chocolate, cheddar, smoked salmon & lemon) to pair them with. Confession: I generally don't mix my food and wine as I often prefer to "wash my food down" with skim milk.
The revelation part came when I became uncertain as to how exactly I was supposed to properly judge that a morsel of food and wine pairs well. Was I supposed to observe whether the wine accentuated the taste of the food, whether the food accentuated the taste of the wine, or whether the combination somehow brought about the best in both? The term "wine pairing" is agnostic with respect to which of these possibilities we should be looking for.
I asked one of the other wine tasters at my table (we had some experienced wine makers and tasters at the table) what possibility I should be looking for. He said that what he was looking for was whether the food affected the quality of wine, so, for him, pairing was more about how the food impacted upon the taste of the wine. This would explain why cheddar "pairs with" high-tannin reds (old black tea also has high tannins) because it smooths out the astringent finish associated with high-tannin wine. The quality of a well-paired wine should change before and after you eat a food as a result of the interaction of the residual flavors on the food and the wine. It could, for example, smooth out the mouth-feel or finish and not affect the initial taste of the wine. I'm not claiming that this is the only interpretation of the term "wine pairing", but it is one interpretation of "wine pairing" that one would expect wine afficianado's to use.
One other observation I made is that if you do a little ritual where you take a small sip of wine, consume a morsal of food making sure to coat your mouth and tongue with the flavor, and take another small sip of wine then it will take you quite awhile to finish your food. It may be a way to achieve "slow food" if you would like to spend more time enjoying your food and company at the dinner table.
Posted on October 28, 2008 @ 07:54:00 AM by Paul Meagher
One way in which "green marketing" differs from traditional marketing is that proportionally more successful green companies engage in "green cause" marketing, by which I mean they sponsor/participate in a range of activities that benefit the planet, social justice, biodiversity, children's education, human health, etc...
The way that Stonyfield Farm CE-Yo Gary Hirshberg put's it in "Stirring it Up" is that in "green businesses" you need to figure out what your "customer handshake" is which Hirshberg defines as"marketing with a mission that appeals to significant groups of like-minded people" p. 103. When growing a green business, that customer handshake often involves supporting green causes where you literally shake hands and give out free samples. Hirshberg never found traditional advertising grew his business that much, and the other successful green entrepreneurs he does case studies on in his book didn't attribute much of their success to regular paid advertising. Instead they achieved marketing success via green causes they sponsored/participated in and innovative approaches to marketing their products. Regarding the latter, Gary Hirshberg once sent a load of Camel manure to a popular radio station when one of the hosts said he would rather eat camel manure than the Stonyfield Yogurt the other host was eating. The "stunt" gained free and positive media attention for his organic Yogurt brand and increased sales. "Stunt-based marketing" is also frequently used in green marketing and shouldn't be underestimated as a way to make like-minded people aware of your green product/service and mission.
Posted on October 27, 2008 @ 08:00:00 AM by Paul Meagher
Spent quite a bit of my time sunday night trying to absorb a review article in Bioscience on the thawing permafrost and the carbon cycle. The thawing of permafrost increases the ability of microbes to release carbon contained in permafrost organic matter. The international group of scientists estimate that permafrost C pool is double the amount of the atmospheric C pool. A significant transfer of C from permafrost into the atmosphere is something we need to be concerned about because 1) the shear size of the permafrost C pool (permafrost covers 22% of the northern hemisphere landmass), and 2) the potential for a positive feedback cycle between C release, further heating, further C release...
One issue of particular concern to the scientists is the fact that water goes through a phase transition as it switches from ice to water. The scientists worry that because of this, and with larger temperature increases expected at higher latitutes, we might hit a threshold point where permafrost system dynamics change rapidly. The dynamics of permafrost thawing still needs more research to know exactly how events will play out.
Thawing permafrost is the largest "vulnerable" C pool, however, there are 4 other major C pools that potentially are vulnerable to climate change:
One talk that caught my attention was a Google-sponsored talk about using Google Earth for environmental activism:
Google showed how Google Earth has been used by activists to influence policymakers and the public by making impacts visible. One example painted a proposed logging site onto the map, showing it to be within a football field's width of an elementary school, and tagged photos of the area so people would see what would be gone, which ended up defeating the plan. Another showed before-and-after mountaintop removal for coal mining in Appalachia, using historical aerial photos for the "before" pictures that were seamlessly overlaid on the map; the activists also used video and text to tell geo-tagged stories about the area. Even a pre-industrial Amazon tribe learned how to use computers and the internet to put themselves on the map, showing the outside world how illegal logging was encroaching on their land.
Posted on October 23, 2008 @ 08:45:00 AM by Paul Meagher
In Gary Hirshberg's 2008 book,
Stirring It Up, he discusses some innovations at Timberland. One type of green innovation that Timberland is in the forefront off is eco-labelling. Eco-labelling aims to educate comsumers about the impacts of the apparel products they are purchasing by indicating how much energy was used to produce the product, how much renewable energy was used, where the product came from, and how it affected the community where it was produced (i.e., not child labor in a third world country). Eco-labelling is ideally complemented by using "boxes made of 100 percent post-consumer, recycled-waster fiber. Boxes that use water-based solvents in place of chemical glues, and labels printed with soy-based, rather than traditional petroleum-based inks." ~ p. 77
In Timberland's case, they go a bit further and use the tissue wrap to communicate environmental calls to action and educational info about animals.
At the end of the day, Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz believes these innovations helps his bottom line by giving him a competitive advantage with consumers (as judged by his year-to-year growing sales). He claims that this is not his primary motive and would ideally like to see all apparel retailing companies using such eco-labelling.
Posted on October 14, 2008 @ 09:46:00 AM by Paul Meagher
At one time, I believed that the carbon offset market would be a good opportunity for smaller North American forestry offsetters to make some extra money providing a valuable ecosystem service (i.e., carbon scrubbing and sequestration). I still believe that the carbon credit market needs to be viable for forestry landowner entrepreneurs, however, we need to be realistic about the costs and hoops required to register a legitimate offset in North America. The two biggest hoops to jump in my opinon are:
Historically it has cost between 50,000 and 200,000 to complete the process required to register an offset. Lawyers will be required to help prepare the legal aspects of the offset document, verification of the offset will cost time and money, and the registration process itself will cost money (an official registry for your offset transactions will be needed so that businesses can claim credits through the purchase of your offset).
In the North American market, you will need to address the "Additionality" consideration. You can't expect to register your land as a carbon credit if you are just going to do "business as usual" with that land. The credit is for you to do something "additional" such as planting seedlings, urban greening, protecting a wetland, and conserving habitat to name a few aspects that might be considered "additional". If you are going to plant seedlings and improve the ecosystem, then the cost to registering the project might balloon up to 200,000 if you are financing some of these costs in the start-up phase of the project.
One way to make the offset market work for smaller offset providers is to join forces with other offset providers so that you can register a larger offset and share costs and revenues. If you can put together a large enough offset with an investment proposal that addresses verification, registration, and additionality then your proposed offset would likely generate interest among investors on this network to provide seed capital.
Posted on October 10, 2008 @ 06:41:00 AM by Paul Meagher
Carbon monoxide is a tastless, odorless, and invisible gas. It is often around us in fairly high concentrations. Carbon monoxide can be formed when gasoline is burned without enough oxygen. 75 percent of CO emissions are from automobiles. Cigarette smoke also releases fairly high concentrations. The U.S. governement has set a danger level for CO at 9 ppm over 8 hr and 35 ppm over 1 hr. If you take a reading in many urban areas of the U.S. you will get a reading between 7 and 8 ppm. If you are close to the street then these levels are exceeded much of the time.
CO binds to hemoglobin and interferes with its normal function of transporting O2. The result is drowsiness. It also forces your heart to work harder as it requires more effort to get an oxygen supply. Chronic exposure to high levels of CO may result in physical and mental impairment.
It might be an instructive science project to measure CO levels in your neighborhood. Or, go to a busy street with your carbon monoxide detector and see if it goes off :-) TSI Inc. offers a Q-Trak device which monitors CO and CO2 levels. The Beijing 2008 Olympics used TSI Inc's services to monitor air quality during the Olympics but I'm not aware of the results.
Posted on October 9, 2008 @ 08:55:00 AM by Paul Meagher
Zoë Chafe and Hilary French, in "Improving Carbon Markets", offer this succinct description of the current carbon market:
In sum, carbon trading can be described as either allowance-based (under a cap-and-trade scheme) or project-based, and it can be part of a compliance market (such as the EU-ETS) or a voluntary transaction. ~ p. 93
When implementing a cap-and-trade scheme there are two critical considerations:
What industries will be capped?
Will the emission permits be given to these industries based upon current levels of emissions (with deminishing permits over time), or should the permits be auctioned off to the emitting industries? In the European Union they have been largely been granted based upon historical emission levels, whereas the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which represents Northeast and MidAtlantic U.S. states, are opting for 100 percent auctions.
It would be a mistake to characterize the carbon market as being "mature" at this point as there are market dynamics for the UE Emission Contracts that makes the stock market plunge of the recent weeks look like a walk in the park. I'm referring to the precipitous drop in EU Emission Contract prices from a peak of $34 in May 2007 to $0 by early 2008. This incident is now referred to as "December 2007 contracts". Although the big drop happened in December it had been in free-fall since May 2007 with a huge initial drop, small rebound for a few months, then free-fall again. One of the events that is offerred to explain this drop is the announcement that more permits were allocated through the EU National Allocation Plan.
Nevertheless, the carbon market will grow rapidly in the next few years as the EU goes into the 2008-2012 phase of their Koyoto committment. This is when the pedal needs to hit the metal in terms of reducing CO2 emissions. The EU-ETS is the biggest carbon trading market in 2008 and will likely continue to be as a result of their committment to the mechanisms of the Koyoto protocol.
Posted on October 8, 2008 @ 08:40:00 AM by Paul Meagher
The economy is shifting. Jobs are being lost in some sectors of the economy and being created in other sectors of the economy. One sector of the economy where jobs are being created is in the "clean energy" sector:
Venture capital and private equity investment in [U.S.] clean energy totalled $8.6 billion in 2006, 69 percent above the 2005 level and 10 times above the 2001 level. By early 2007, these investments had helped create 146 clean energy start-up compaies with names such as Nanosolar, Celunol, SunPower, E3 Biofeuls, and Miasole, most of them working to develop and commercialize new energy technologies.
Christopher Flavin, president of Worldwatch Institute, makes the interesting point that venture capital, private investment, and private companies contributed much more money to clean energy R&D ($8.6 billion) than the U.S. government ($600 million) in 2006.
There is still an enormous amount of growth that will occur in the clean energy sector as clean energy begins to dominate fossil-feul based energy as the primary energy source supplying homes, businesses, and transportation systems. The role of government is arguably not to become a major financier of this sector of the ecomomy but to devise a regulatory framework that strongly promotes clean energy R&D and rapid commercialization. Carbon taxes can have this effect.
Posted on October 7, 2008 @ 08:54:00 AM by Paul Meagher
EcoFish is a seafood distributor based in New Hampshire that has become a leading business promoter of sustainable fisheries. It sources fish products from fisheries that it considers sustainable and prefers to buy types of fish that can be more sustainably harvested. EcoFish's poducts are availble in more than 1,000 stores and 150 restaurants throughout the U.S.
I've never been that hip on Mission statements but many of the successful green companies that I've reviewed consider it a core part of their business. Here is the EcoFish mission statement:
Provide only the most sustainable, highest quality, healthiest, all natural, most delicious seafood to our customers.
Help support sustainable fisheries (wild & aquaculture), and their fishing communities by featuring their sustainable seafood products and adding value to their catch.
Help reverse the decline of marine bio-diversity by encouraging a shift in consumer demand away from over-exploited fisheries.
Offer a level of customer service unmatched in the seafood industry.
Accentuate the positive — highlight fishery success stories by increasing demand for these products, creating an incentive for others to adopt sustainable fishing practices.
Support marine conservation efforts through collaboration with conservation, research and educational organizations worldwide.
Raise consciousness of the threats to the world's oceans by providing a credible source of environmentally responsible seafood to the rapidly growing consumer demographics seeking environmentally sustainable products.
Set a good example for corporate America by striving for the "Triple Bottom Line" — operate a profitable business that's also responsible to its community and the environment.
CleanFish.com is another leading supply chain player in the U.S. sustainable fish products market.
A couple of facts should also be noted - the amount of seafood we are catching each year has been increasing every year since 1950. We will be taking more fish from the ocean this year than last year. Some believe this is because harvesting technologies have improved even though fish stocks are being depleted. If this trend continues we will likely be discussing collasping fisheries rather than sustainable fisheries.
The second fact that should be noted is the enormous amount of fish product that is used as "feed" (37%) for non-humans including carnivorous fish (salmon, tuna, cod) raised in large open-ocean pens. It is perhaps a waste of resources to harvest so much for "feed" purposes.
Posted on October 1, 2008 @ 09:00:00 AM by Paul Meagher
Previously I discussed macroeconomic indicators of sustainability. Today I will discuss microeconomic indicators of sustainability. These are metrics that individual businesses can use to assess their sustainability. In the list below, we have the economic objective the sustainability metrics are trying measure followed, in parenthesis, by indicators of whether these objectives are being met with the desired directionality in square brakets:
Community vitality (Local procurement [+], Local economic impact [+], Community support [+], Living wage ratio [+]).
These metrics can again be used to discover and justify investments, however, these investments would be geared towards moving the business towards a more sustainable path. Green entrepreneurs can anticipate these business objectives and supply products and services to meet the increasing microeconomic demand from businesses to become more sustainable. It is critical in such cases to be able to actually measure the degree to which these objectives are being by individual businesses and to track achievement over time in light of implemented initiatives. It is also critical that businesses report to its stakeholders the scores on these sustainability metrics along with more traditional metrics of business performance.
Posted on September 30, 2008 @ 08:00:00 AM by Paul Meagher
In "A New Bottom Line for Progress", John Talberth discusses a variety of macroeconomic and microeconomic indicators of a sustainable economy. Today I will discuss macroeconomic indicators. Talbeth classifies macroeconomic indicators according to the economic development objectives they are meant to measure. The 5 sustainable development objectives, along with their indicators (in parenthesis), and desired directionality (in brackets), are:
Genuine human progress (Genuine progress indicator [+], Happy planet index [+], Well-being index [+], Human development index [+])
Renewable energy platform (Carbon footprint [-], Energy return on investment [+], Energy intensity [-])
Social equity (Index of resentational equity [-], GINI coefficient [-], Legal rights index [+], Assess to improved water and sanitation [+])
Protect and restore natural capital (Ecological footprint [-], Genuine savings [+], Environmental sustainability index [+])
Economic localization (Local employment and income multiplier effect [+], Ogive index of economic diversity [-], Miles to market [-])
Currently, all of these economic indicators are taking a back seat to the almighty GDP indicator which has nothing to say about whether economic performance is sustainable or not. Each of these economic indicators has an academic literature associated with it and claims to better reflect important aspects of our economic health and performance than a single GDP score.
Note that when these indicators are moving in the wrong direction, where there is a gap between how the rest of the world is performing and how the U.S. is performing, there is an opportunity for a green entrepreneur to propose a project to help move that macroeconomic indicator in the correct direction. These sustainabiliy indicators have a role to play in discovering and justifying the need for various types of green projects.
Posted on September 26, 2008 @ 09:00:00 AM by Paul Meagher
You can't just use the amount of co2 in the atmosphere to estimate the probable degree of global warming we might expect in the future. What you also need to factor in are the effects of the other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The other greenhouse gases in our altmosphere that we are concerned with have a Global Warming Potential (GWP) greater than co2 which is used as the standard and has a GWP of 1. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the GWP for some other significant greenhouse gases are:
Carbon dioxide has a GWP of 1
Methane has a GWP of 21
Nitrous oxide has a GWP of 310
Halocarbons (HFC) has a GWP of 140 to 11,700
Sulphur Hexafluoride has a GWP of 23,90
This means that a ton of methane has 21 times more ability to trap heat than co2. Thankfully there is less of it so it does not have as large effect as co2 currently does; neverthess it does have a significant effect as there is alot of methane going up into the atmosphere from various sources.
The bottom line is that it is co2e that we need to be more concerned about as it is the value that we would probably plug into our models to predict the degree of global warming to expect. There probably needs to be more general education to the public about the co2e concept, how it is calculated, and where we are at now.
Posted on September 24, 2008 @ 07:00:00 AM by Paul Meagher
The United States Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) has a catalog of biobased products that they have certified. It appears that the USDA has declared a preference for such products and refers to this database as the biopreferred database.
Some of the products in this database are interesting and worth investigating further. One bio-based product is a soy-based polyol that is meant as a replacement for petroleum-based polyols. It is marketed as a replacement for polyurethane which is less ecologically friendly:
Over 2.1 pounds of CO2 are removed from the atmosphere when producing one pound of soy polyol. Producing 1 pound of petroleum based polyol adds 3.59 pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere. Therefore, the replacement of 1 pound of petroleum polyol with 1 pound of soy polyol, results in approximately 5.6 pounds of CO2 positive impact to the atmosphere.
The market use for soy polyol that sparked my interest was its use as a replacement for insulation that uses a polyurethane formulation (most current foam insulation). The manner in which soy-based insulation degrades and it's long term impact upon the enviroment is better than polyurethane-based foam insulation. National geographic addresses the question of whether polyurethane insulation is safe.
Another product in the USDA catalog that sparked my interest was a bucket made from compressed soy that is meant as a replacement for one-use plastic buckets that are used frequently in the animal feed industry. Seems like a great idea to me and something that you could follow up on by looking up the contact info (in the USDA's catalog) for the person offering a biobased alternative to plastic buckets.
This brief survey of the catalog leads me to be wonder whether any product made of petroleum-based plastic might be reformulated in a biobased way that 1) uses fewer fossil fuels, 2) is less harmful to the environment, and 3) is less harmful to human health. Innovation in biobased-products offers a range of potentially profitable and ecologically sustainable green opportunities. Agrol, a leader in this area, lists a range of applications of biobased polyols.
The richer the world gets, the farther it wants to travel and the less carbon efficient the means it chooses. As the wealth of a nation rises, its citizens change from walking and cycling, through buses and local trains, to cars, high-speed trains, and air travel. (p. 110)
Overlain on this tendency towards travelling further using less carbon efficient modes of transport, is the imperitive that "bigger is better". Given this mentality, cycling is often perceived as either not progressive or reflective of a low wealth status.
In much of the consumer imagery around automobiles is the idyllic green nature scene with the vehicle comfortably situated in it. The imagery is meant to suggest that buying this vehicle is either good for the planet or better for the planet relative to another vehicle. But is it?
Perhaps one of the options that we should be advertising is the choice between buying a vehicle and not buying a vehicle. To sell the null purchase option might require a more aggressive approach towards the automobile industry in which vehicles are situated in less appealing surroundings, some atmospheric facts and societal trend data are quoted, and the real option is put to the consumer: purchase a vehicle which may spew more co2 and pollutants than your moral quota, or investigate and spend your money on alternative methods of transport.
The green movement has recognized the need for eco-justice lawyers to defend the earth against unsustainable development, however it does not seem to have recognized the need for eco-advertisers to help shift the consumer mindscape into more sustainable directions.
Posted on September 18, 2008 @ 08:00:00 AM by Paul Meagher
Some scientists think we have gone beyond the tipping point with respect to runaway climate change or that we will lack the political will to carry out the necessary steps to reduce our usage of fossil fuels in time to prevent catastrophic outcomes. When all hope is lost where you gonna turn? Carbon-busters, otherwise known as Geo-engineers.
The idea behing geo-engineering is that we can engineer our way out of the global warming problem. I am familiar with two geo-engineering schemes for doing this.
One sheme put forward by atmospheric scientist and Nobel Laureate, Paul Crutzen, involves injecting clouds with sulpher dioxide to reflect sunlight back out into space and offset the effects of global warming.
A second scheme put forward by Klaus Lackner from Columbia University involves gigantic chimneys that would pump polluted air from the surroundings, scrub the carbon from it, and then prepare the collected material for sequestration. This idea is being proposed as a way to win the Branson prize of 25 million for a way to eliminate 1 billion or more tons of co2 from the atmosphere.
The second scheme seems much more promising to me especially if you imagine each major city in the world with enough carbon scrubbers to offset the amount they are putting into the atmosphere. Actually, each major city in the developed world would probably be obligated to operate more scrubbers than would be needed in order to help the less developed world - or finance the installation of scrubbers there.
Posted on September 17, 2008 @ 08:00:00 AM by Paul Meagher
In the article Buyer Be Good, Sandra Odendahl uses the following criteria for determining whether a company is green:
Green companies strive to be green through and through. In addition to offering environmentally preferable products or services, they also understand how their business supply chain and operations affect the environment, and are making efforts to minimize their impacts;
Green companies allocate resources to improving their environmental performance;
Green companies have objectives and targets for improving their overall environmental performance, not just in the marketing area; and
Green companies are not afraid to report on their environmental performance. They don’t just publish glossy brochures filled with smiling children and nature scenes.
Posted on September 12, 2008 @ 08:00:00 AM by Paul Meagher
In a TheStar.com interview, well-known venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, claimed that an important investment area would be "next-generation, ultra-high-voltage DC transmission technologies and infrastructure".
In his mind, getting off coal and other fossil fuels means playing to our clean-energy strengths and connecting our energy sweet spots to a large, trans-national grid that can efficiently carry power over long distances.
Such a grid would mean that renewable energy from solar and wind power sources, for example, would still flow throughout the country when one part of the country has decreased solar or wind inputs. Scaling up means the sun always shines and the wind always blows.
It will be interesting to see how the grid for solar power evolves over the next few years. In a press release for the Massachussett's Green Communities Act, they nod in the direction of rooftop solar power grids:
The measure also authorizes utility companies to own solar electric installations they put on their customers’ roofs – a practice that was previously prohibited – up to 50 MW apiece after two years. If utilities take full advantage of this new opportunity, it will poise Massachusetts to meet Governor Patrick’s goal to harness 250 megawatts of installed solar power by 2017.
An ultra-high-voltage DC transmission infrastructure allows ones to imagine a solar-house in Boston collecting the renewable energy required to provide lighting for a clouded over solar-house in Minneapolis and vice versa.
The report does alot of useful legwork in comparing the standards and is a useful reference document for making sense of the inhabitants of carbon offset land.
This is why in 2006, I suggested that the UK and Guyana could work together to identify bold rainforest solutions that could be used as models for the world.
For our part, we are willing to place almost our entire rainforest - which is larger than England - under internationally verified supervision if the right economic incentives are created.
This does not mean sacrificing sovereignty over our forest or restricting the development aspirations of our people. It simply means allowing globally recognised supervision to verify that activities within the forest are sustainable.
I recommend visiting their website and reading a bit about their process. What particularly interests me about New Belgium Brewing is that brewing 400,000 barrels of beer a year requires a massive amount of energy and is a water intensive process. To claim a green footprint in this business, and at their scale, you need to be doing alot of things right which they appear to be doing (e.g., goal of being entirely wind-powered, good waste water treatment practices, energy efficient, high job satisfaction, etc...). New Belgium Brewing is a good case study for operating a green business.
It is easy to read and offers an interesting business perspective based on the author's experience running a successful green business, Stonyfield (makers of a line of Organic yogurt and milk products), as well as case studies on the business practices of other successful green businesses (e.g., Patagonia, New Belgium Brewing, etc...).
One way Stonyfield "saved the environment" was by doing an Eco Audit of their business to 1) identify and quantify the eco impacts of their business, and 2) to track them over time. This lead to a number of initiatives:
Invest in self-generated renewable energy (solar panels)
Invest in converting waste to biofuel
Invest in co-generation; capturing and reusing heat from their manufacturing process and from waste
Numerous energy-efficiency investments
Offsetted when they couldn't avoid fossil-fuel usage (e.g., product distribution)
Worked to get toxic chemicals out their products, packaging, and marketing materials
Continuous work on minimizing packaging and selecting the right packing materials. Stonyfield's Eco Audit pointed to packaging as the second largest fossil-fuel comsuming component of their business.
One of the main points that Hirshfield makes is that these eco-investments were also excellent business investments. For example, increased energy efficiency and reduced consumption of fossil fuels have reduced Stonyfields operating costs substantially and allows it to be competitive and profitable. Their workers (and workers in other green businesss case studies) experience alot of job-satisfaction when they work in an enviroment where eco-friendliness is actively practiced. And last but not least, consumers are buying tons of their products (second in Yogurt sales in the US) in part because it is an organic product that comes in eco-friendly packaging from an eco-friendly business.
