Driving Stereotypes

Red-blooded Americans drive Ford pickups while crunchy-granola Californians drive Priuses. Blah, blah, blah. Care to deal in any more stereotypes?

Oh, wait. That one is true. The Los Angeles Times reports that while the bestselling vehicle in America is Ford's F-Series pickup, California's favorite car is the high-mpg Toyota Prius hybrid. In 2012, the Prius toppled the Honda Civic for the number one sales spot in the Golden State; nationally, the Prius ranks number 14. In fact, California accounts for more than a quarter of all Prius sales in the U.S. According to the Times, “Ford's F-Series pickup truck, perennially the national bestseller, placed seventh in California with sales of 25,434 — less than half of Prius sales.”

Yes, you can have sprouts with that.

Image of Toyota Prius v and the Golden Gate Bridge by Toyota Motor Corporation.

Reed McManus is a senior editor at Sierra. He has worked on the magazine since Ronald Reagan’s second term. For inspiration, he turns to cartoonist R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural, who famously noted: “Twas ever thus.”

The Fit and the Filthy

Some of the country’s most annoyingly fit and obsessively active outdoorspeople have crowded into Salt Lake City this week to take part in Outdoor Retailer, a twice-yearly convention where our favorite outdoor-gear stores place their orders for the coming year from our favorite outdoor-gear manufacturers. Salt Lake is an apt venue given the abundant outdoor-recreation opportunities in the right-next-door Wasatch Range (not to mention the 3.2 beer). What most OR attendees this year probably didn’t expect was finding themselves breathing the unhealthiest air in the country. 

According to Associated Press, the EPA “has singled out the greater Salt Lake region as having the nation's worst air for much of January, when an icy fog smothers mountain valleys for days or weeks at a time and traps lung-busting soot.” On Wednesday more than 100 doctors under the banner Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment petitioned Gov. Gary Herbert and other elected officials to lower highway speed limits, make mass transit free, and curb industrial pollution for the rest of the winter. "We're in a public-health emergency for much of the winter," said Brian Moench, an anesthesiologist and the group’s president.

Yesterday the greater Salt Lake region had up to 130 micrograms of soot per cubic meter, more than three times the federal clean-air limit. “That's equivalent to a bad day in the Los Angeles area,” notes AP.

Image from U.S. EPA Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards

Reed McManus is a senior editor at Sierra. He has worked on the magazine since Ronald Reagan’s second term. For inspiration, he turns to cartoonist R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural, who famously noted: “Twas ever thus.”

Lots of Things Make Sense If You Ignore Climate Change

Why is the government in the flood insurance business? That's the question considered this morning by David Kestenbaum on NPR's Planet Money. Lack of such insurance in the aftermath of Hurricane Betsy in 1965, he reports, led the federal government to establish the National Flood Insurance Program. The program worked great until Katrina, which exhausted the program's budget and sent it into deficit. He quotes Mark Browne, professor of risk management and insurance at the University of Wisconsin, Madison:

"This is why flood insurance is a tricky business. You can have a quiet three decades, then a huge hurricane plows into a major city. Suddenly you're back in the red."

In fact, Kestenbaum concludes,

"Over the past few years, the National Flood Insurance Program has had to borrow $17 billion from the government . . . . The head of the National Flood Insurance Program says the program plans to repay the money it borrowed from the government — but it may take 20 or 30 years to do so."

Unless, of course, there were another major hurricane--or two, or five, or ten--during that period. Here's the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007:

“Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical SSTs. There is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of tropical cyclones.  The apparent increase in the proportion of very intense storms since 1970 in some regions is much larger than simulated by current models for that period.”

So--the economics of federal flood insurance make sense--as long as you ignore climate change. Josh Laughren, climate and energy director for the World Wildlife Fund-Canada, makes a similar point in an editorial about the Keystone XL pipeline in Toronto's thestar.com. He's commenting on a letter written by Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall to U.S. President Barack Obama, urging him to OK the pipeline:

As always, the argument is simple, and narrowly framed: 1. Canada has a lot of oil and the U.S. needs oil. 2. We don’t have enough pipeline capacity to handle our ambition for unconstrained growth in oilsands production. 3. Building the pipeline will create jobs.

What could be simpler? Nothing --as long as you pretend climate change doesn't exist and don't make it part of the conversation."

Climate ignoring--it's the new climate denial.

Photo by PickStock/iStock: A family evacuates during the flood in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 2008.

PAUL RAUBER is a senior editor at Sierra. He is the author, with Carl Pope, of the happily outdated Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress. Otherwise he is a cyclist, cook, and father of two. Follow him on Twitter @paulrauber.

 

Energy efficiency? Why bother?

You buy efficient LED bulbs and that just encourages you to leave the lights on longer, negating the environmental benefits. You buy a hybrid car and its high mpg just encourages you to drive more miles, again negating your do-good intentions. At least that’s the thinking of those who subscribe to the “rebound” theory and its extreme corollary, “backfire” (in which all efficiency gains are wiped out), in their criticisms of energy-efficiency efforts from a carbon tax to support for plug-in cars to efficiency standards for appliances.

The only problem is that any so-called rebound effect is relatively insignificant. “If a technology is cheaper to run, people may use it more. If they don’t, they can use their savings to buy other things that required energy to make. But evidence points to these effects being small — too small to erase energy savings from energy efficiency standards, for example,” said David Rapson, assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Davis. Rapson co-authored “The Rebound Effect Is Overplayed,” an article published today in Nature.

The concept that energy use rises as industry becomes more efficient because people will turn around and produce and consume more goods stems from “The Coal Question,” an 1865 analysis by William Stanley Jevons. The pre-oil-era economist was concerned about what would happen to Britain’s economy when the UK hit “peak coal,” which it did in 1913. (The pessimistic Jevons “did not foresee both the adaptation of the British economy in reaching higher overall efficiency in a high energy price environment, and the eventual large scale introduction of petroleum.”)

But the “Jevons paradox” (which might be referred to as the “Why bother? paradox”) lives on. For their part, Rapson and his co-authors, Kenneth Gillingham and Matthew J. Kotchen from the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Gernot Wagner of the Environmental Defense Fund, found that in the modern economy, the rebound effect is not supported empirically. “Even though increased efficiency may prompt changes in behavior, energy is still saved overall,” said Rapson. “Energy efficiency policies should therefore continue to be considered as a way to address greenhouse gas emissions.”

Illustration of Newcastle coal miners in 1855 by iStock/whitemay

Reed McManus is a senior editor at Sierra. He has worked on the magazine since Ronald Reagan’s second term. For inspiration, he turns to cartoonist R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural, who famously noted: “Twas ever thus.”

People Are Sick of Driving

Maybe it's the economy, and once things pick up everyone will hop back in the Chevrolet to see the USA. Or perhaps we've finally hit "peak car" and are going to try something different now. Whichever it is, after a three-year plateau following a peak in 2005, "vehicle miles traveled" started a long decline. It's now at about the level it was in February, 1995. One effect of the drop appeared in my newspaper this morning: "BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] struggling to meet surging demand." Ridership on the Bay Area's commuter train is rising three times faster than anticipated--up about six percent over the prior year. "The recovering economy, high gas prices and growing environmental conciousness are driving record ridership on BART." The growth is so rapid that the transit district is frantically trying to come up with quick ways to improve service so as not to drive new riders away.

My favorite explanation for the decline of driving--beyond the obvious one, that everyone is joining the Club's Beyond Oil campaign--is advanced by Justin Horner at NRDC's Switchboard blog. It's a useful concept known as "Marchetti's Constant": "the reasonable idea that people will, or are really even able to, travel for only a certain amount of time per day.  Marchetti says it’s an hour, regardless of your travel speed.  Americans may have found that they’ve reached their own personal limit and are sick of driving, choosing less driving or alternatives if they have the option."

Graph courtesy of the St. Louis Federal Reserve

PAUL RAUBER is a senior editor at Sierra. He is the author, with Carl Pope, of the happily outdated Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress. Otherwise he is a cyclist, cook, and father of two. Follow him on Twitter @paulrauber.

The Fiscal Cushion

Environmentalists heaved a sigh of relief earlier this month when, as part of its “fiscal cliff” legislation, Congress extended tax credits for utility-scale wind-energy projects. (The legislation also loosened the rules, covering projects whose construction began, and weren’t just “placed in service,” during the covered years.)

The funding bill also included other green-friendly provisions, many of which have gone largely unheralded. Most are merely extensions of existing benefits that had expired or were set to expire, but in this day and age, few greens are complaining.

They include:

Cleaner fuels: The legislation included tax credits and depreciation rules that support cellulosic ethanol and revived a biodiesel tax credit that expired at the end of 2011. Algae has also earned a spot as a favored biofuel. 

Plug-in electric motorcycles: A 2009 tax credit was extended for electric motorcycles and scooters that gives buyers a break of up to 10 percent of the purchase price, up to $2,500. 

Green remodeling: Homeowners can get a $500 tax credit on personal taxes for making certain energy-efficiency improvements to their primary residence. The provision expired in 2011, but has been extended retroactively to 2012 and forward through 2013. It covers 10 percent of your tab for energy-efficient upgrades -- from air conditioners and refrigerators to home insulation and new windows --  up to the $500 cap.  

New green homes: The Business Tax Credit for New and Renovated Energy Efficient Residences offers a $2,000 tax credit to contractors or developers. It also expired in 2011 and has been extended retroactively to 2012 and forward through 2013. 

Transit deductions The fiscal cliff legislation restores a provision that allows transit commuters to take a pretax deduction of $240. In 2012, commuters who drove a car and parked could take the $240, while transit users were limited to $125. 

Just in case you were beginning to think Birkenstock-wearing legislators had taken over Capitol Hill, Congress also helped out the oil and gas industry by keeping dividend tax rates equal to capital gains tax rates, and extending tax credits for coal produced on Indian tribal land.

Image by iStock/deliormanli.

Reed McManus is a senior editor at Sierra. He has worked on the magazine since Ronald Reagan’s second term. For inspiration, he turns to cartoonist R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural, who famously noted: “Twas ever thus."

News That We’ll Lose?

The New York Times is dismantling its topnotch 9-person environment department and reassigning its reporters and editors throughout the newspaper. The announcement was cause for alarm among some environmental journalists. “If you don't have the editorial structure to support the kind of commitment needed to do both daily coverage and deeper investigative and explanatory work, it is hard to imagine that you could keep the same level of intensity," Dan Fagin, director of New York University’s Science, Health, and Reporting Program told Inside Climate News. 

But Times management insists the change is not a bad thing: “Coverage of the environment is what separates the New York Times from other papers,” Dean Baquet, managing editor for news, told Inside Climate News. “We devote a lot of resources to it, now more than ever. We have not lost any desire for environmental coverage. This is purely a structural matter."

Times Dot Earth blogger Andrew Revkin says he believes top editors’ claim. “In a century when the roots of environmental problems often lie half a planet away (consider the ivory trade, or the contribution of greenhouse gases and soot to Arctic ice melting) what's needed most is collaborative post-departmental journalism, not individual desks and editors competing for the front page,” he writes. (Revkin is more alarmed by shrinking revenue at news operations in general: “These background financial pressures building around the industry the same way that heat-trapping greenhouse gases are building in the atmosphere are what will erode the ability of today's media to dissect and explain the causes and consequences of environmental change and the suite of possible responses.”)

The Times stands out when it comes to environmental coverage, consistently leading 5 national papers in number of climate stories published, according to the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado--Boulder. What’s troubling, though, is that when the group compares U.S. newspaper coverage of climate issues to papers around the world, at the end of 2012 --the hottest in U.S. history -- U.S. papers’ climate coverage lagged, besting only South American and African publications (graph above).

Graph by CSTPR. 

Reed McManus is a senior editor at Sierra. He has worked on the magazine since Ronald Reagan’s second term. For inspiration, he turns to cartoonist R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural, who famously noted: “Twas ever thus.”

Turning Purple

Hot enough for ya? In 2012 the U.S. set a heat record and Australia’s hottest spring and summer on record has turned that country purple. Facing forecast temperatures that were literally off the charts, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology recently added new color bands to its forecast maps. The old maps went only as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). The new ones go to 54 degrees Celsius (129 degrees Fahrenheit), adding the colors pink and deep purple.

Australia’s average temperature on Tuesday was 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), the highest since record-keeping began in 1911. “This is the largest heat event in the country's history," David Jones, manager of climate monitoring prediction at the agency told the New York Times.

The 100-plus wildfires raging in Australia have grown so large that they are visible in images taken by the International Space Station, frustrating climate experts who note that extreme weather events like punishing drought are exactly what we should expect with long term climate change. “We are well past the time of niceties, of avoiding the dire nature of what is unfolding, and politely trying not to scare the public,” Liz Hanna, convener of the human health division at the Australian National University’s Climate Change Adaptation Network, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

The U.S. heat record in 2012 beat the next highest year, 1998, by a full degree Fahrenheit. "These records do not occur like this in an unchanging climate," Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., told Associated Press. "And they are costing many billions of dollars."

Image from Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Reed McManus is a senior editor at Sierra. He has worked on the magazine since Ronald Reagan’s second term. For inspiration, he turns to cartoonist R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural, who famously noted: “Twas ever thus.”

Crowdfunded Solar Is Here

Looking for a way to support the spread of solar power and earn a good return on your investment while doing so? If you live in California or New York, your moment has arrived, as Oakland, California-based Mosaic has opened its first projects to general investment. I wrote about this innovative organization in my story on community solar power, "Solar for All," in the current issue of Sierra:

Mosaic crowd-funds solar projects, enabling people to invest directly in small to midsize solar projects while earning annual returns of 4 to 8 percent.

Financing is a major hurdle for community-scale solar. Very few banks finance solar projects, and those that do favor big ones—either utility-scale solar operations or solar-leasing companies that front thousands of rooftop projects. When it comes to serving the needs of Oakland's Asian Resource Center or St. Vincent de Paul Society, or the Murdoch Community Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, it's not worth the banks' time to do the risk analysis involved.

Enter Mosaic. In the case of St. Vincent de Paul, it rounded up 80 supporters who kicked in a total of $88,000 to finance 26 kilowatts of solar panels to power the organization's kitchen, where volunteers prepare a thousand meals a day for Oakland's homeless and indigent. All those walk-in freezers and refrigerators require a lot of electricity, says St. Vincent executive director Philip Arca. The solar panels are saving about $1,200 a month, he says, adding, "We want to get as much assistance to people as possible, so for us every dollar counts."

At the time of that writing, Mosaic was waiting for approval from the Securities Exchange Commission for its crowdfunding business model, and had to limit its offerings to small numbers of "non-accredited" (i.e., non-professional) investors. While a decision from the SEC is still awaited, Mosaic has obtained permission from regulators to offer investments to anyone in California and New York--the states where it has offices--who is willing to invest $25 or more. "As a nimble, online maketplace, we're able to source capital from the crowd and lend it to clean energy developers at lower rate than they could get from banks," said Mosaic founder Billy Parish in a morning conference call. "And we're able to offer it at a rate of return better than most other investment products available to the general public."

Mosaic's initial projects--solar arrays atop three affordable housing projects in California--offer a 4.5 percent annual rate of return for a term of about 9 years. Investments can be made online, in an easy process that only takes minutes. Mosaic hopes to offer future projects to investors in other states soon, with rates of return expected to range from 4 to 8 percent. As communtiy solar guru John Farrell of the Institute of Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis notes, a working crowdfunding model could change the face of solar power in the United State. "If it becomes relatively inexpensive to raise capital for community-based projects," he says, "that really blows the door down."

Photo: Mosaic staff and investors with an early project, an 8.6-kilowatt project atop Oakland's People's Grocery. Courtesy of Mosaic.

PAUL RAUBER is a senior editor at Sierra. He is the author, with Carl Pope, of the happily outdated Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress. Otherwise he is a cyclist, cook, and father of two. Follow him on Twitter @paulrauber.

 

Big Red Bicycle Christmas

It's easy to get caught up in the wonkery of fighting climate change: cap and trade and feed-in tariffs and vehicle miles travelled. It's important stuff, and our bread and butter here at Sierra Daily, but we admit: It's not a whole lot of fun. On the other hand, what is a whole lot of fun--and is protecting our beautiful planet at the same time--is riding your bike. Preferably that big red shiny bicycle you found beneath the Xmas tree. (Sorry, the Sierra Club's limited edition Public Bike comes only in green.)

Sierra's offices will be closed next week while we all go out and focus on the the second part of the Club's motto: "Explore, Enjoy, and Protect the Planet." Meanwhile, here's a holiday treat: Nora and One Left's ode to the joy of riding your bike. Happy holidays from all of us at Sierra.

 

PAUL RAUBER is a senior editor at Sierra. He is the author, with Carl Pope, of the happily outdated Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress. Otherwise he is a cyclist, cook, and father of two. Follow him on Twitter @paulrauber.