Persistence

Weather persistence is when today's weather is about the same as yesterday's. This explains why LA's carbon footprint is so small. Read more about this report at the Brooking's institute website.

Visit The Varying Impact of Gas Prices to see the percent of income spent on gasoline by US county. The recent jump in gas prices has increased the amount our household spends on gasoline to nearly 1% of our income. I guess this means I should drive less and bicycle more.

The Worst Idea Ever

OK, there are many bad ideas. But, is there a worse use of petroleum than banner towing aircraft (BTA)? Leave a comment if you can think of one.

On summer weekends, a BTA flies overhead every few minutes. We have to suspend conversations whenever that happens. For a few months after September 11, they suspended the BTA. They have started up again, and now there are more than ever.

I suggest a boycott of all businesses that hire those noisy, polluting and wasteful things.

Aside
When I was on bedrest during the summer of 2000, the FAA allowed the BTA to fly at 2500 feet instead of 4000 feet, in order to create more of a separation between them and the jets at LAX. I told Mark about the noise, and he told me I was only imagining that the planes were worse. He said it was pregnancy hysteria. Then we read in the paper about the failed experiment; the plane noise exceeded safe decibel levels on the ground. Hysterical indeed.

In the news

The carbon footprint from tourism

Tourism is a big and important business. It draws on the wealth of people in developed nations and helps transfer some of those resources to businesses and communities in emerging and some of the least developed markets.

But tourism also is responsible for about 5 percent of global greenhouse gases, according to Geoffrey Lipman, the assistant secretary-general at the United Nations World Tourism Organization.

Off the Grid, but Plugged In

“If it’s a nice, bright sunny day and you’re doing the laundry, instead of throwing the stuff in the dryer, you might decide to throw it on the line for a few hours,” he said. “You start adjusting your way of life around some of the natural rhythms of nature.”

I feel really guilty about the carbon output of all the trips I took in the last year. But, if you have lived through as many illnesses and close calls as I have in the past few years, you will understand why I felt like I had to live it up a little bit to celebrate. At least I use a clothesline and flew coach.

How did we get here?

Much ink and pixels have been spilled upon how the US became so dependent upon petroleum to move ourselves around. I've been looking around, thinking about my behavior and that of others. So far, the rising cost of gasoline has affected my family very little because of our housing choice, a townhouse close to a major employment center and a commercial district.

Why are there so few places like this in the US? Witold Rybczynski tried to explain in his book, City Life: Urban expectations in the new world. It's a very thought provoking book and I won't attempt to paraphrase it here.

I did want to mention that, once hostile natives were not a problem, American cities were laid out upon a much more spacious model than in the old world. In Europe, cities were compact because food production took place outside the city confines. In the new world of the gentleman farmer, even city dwellers grew some of their own food in their home gardens. (Not mentioned in the book is how these kitchen and flower gardens evolved into monocultures of Kentucky bluegrass from coast to coast.)

By the end of the book, I learned that Rybczynski and I both choose to live in former streetcar suburbs outside of major cities. It is a pleasant middle ground that is not readily available to other Americans, both because of their rarity in new metropolitan areas and because they are relatively expensive compared to newer suburbs. After investigation, he found no great conspiracies. People just preferred the independence of driving private automobiles over riding streetcars.

Links:

• City Life: Urban expectations in the new world
• The Red Cars of Los Angeles from the USC archives
• The Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California
• Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (You can preview portions of the book that deal with streetcars to Redondo Beach and the other Beach Cities.)
• Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn
• Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community

Aside:
People say we are lucky to live so close to work and to have such a convenient bus line. (It runs every 20-30 minutes and follows nearly the same route we would take if we drove ourselves.) Actually, luck had nothing to do with it. We made conscious choices with information that is available to everyone.

After earning my PhD, I landed two job offers. One was 30 miles inland from Mark's job. The other was at Mark's workplace. The farther job would have ensured a long commute for at least one of us.

When we bought a house, we checked the bus schedules. They are not classified state secrets, they are published. We took the buses to see if the schedules were fact or fiction--a very real problem in many areas. We checked out bicycle commute routes. I nixed neighborhoods that Mark preferred because I wasn't willing to bike so many hills on the way to work every day. (We also looked at school districts but that's too long of an aside.)

When we found we could not afford a house that we liked in an area that we liked, we looked at townhouses. After bidding on 3, we finally won a bidding war (even though we were not the highest bidder).

Free Range Kids 2

If you explore the FreeRangeKids link from my last post, you might have seen How children lost the right to roam in 4 generations.

When George Thomas was eight he walked everywhere.

It was 1926 and his parents were unable to afford the fare for a tram, let alone the cost of a bike and he regularly walked six miles to his favourite fishing haunt without adult supervision.

Fast forward to 2007 and Mr Thomas's eight-year-old great-grandson Edward enjoys none of that freedom.

He is driven the few minutes to school, is taken by car to a safe place to ride his bike and can roam no more than 300 yards from home.

This graphic is especially telling.

Free Range Kids

Remember the mom that let her 9 year old take the NYC subway alone? Lenore Skenazy started a movement and a blog. Go visit the FreeRangeKids blog.

Today is the second let her walk to school by herself Tuesday. Last Tuesday, I was running behind and let her walk to school while I finished the dishes. I was going to catch up with her, but discovered she was doing just fine. I hung back to give her the satisfaction of making the whole 3 blocks to school on her own.

Today, I ate a bit slowly so I could use the same excuse. I caught up with her in front of her classroom. She was positively nonchalant about it today.

I watched with smug satisfaction as a neighbor struggled to strap 2 of her 3 kids up in her minivan, both older than Iris, to drive them to the same neighborhood school. We live on a one-way street, pointed away from the school. She lives a block closer to school, only 2 blocks to our 3. Yet, because of the one-way street, she has to drive farther to get the kids to school. I offered to walk her kids to school with me, but she declined.

One boy used to be driven every day by his mother while she was rushing off to work. It was silly because we departed and arrived at the school at the same time. We offered to walk him with us each day, but he declined. His mother said it was because he was too cool to be seen walking with such a little kid (Iris). I noticed that, now that he is in the 5th grade, he is allowed to ride his bike or scooter to school each day on his own.

Another boy on our block also gets driven every day, even though the father says he would be happy to walk his son to school. His said that his wife wouldn't allow them to walk for some reason. We leave at the same time, but we arrive before them. Again, they live closer but drive further because of the one way street.

We used to walk with another mother and child, but the mother had to stop due to health reasons. Hopefully, she will be walking again after her illness.

Now guess which family is Black, Chinese, Hispanic and Jewish.

2008 El Segundo Bike To Work Challenge Results

The results are in and here's an excerpt from the press release.

The final total cycle commuters this year were: 416. The total includes Los Angeles World Airport's Westside Welcome Station/Pitstop at World Way West, Equity Office's Welcome Station/Pitstop at the Howard Hughes Center, and Playa Vista & Electronic Art's Welcome Station/Pitstop at Playa Vista. The breakdown was as follows:

1. Los Angeles Air Force Base (Military/Civilian) 81
2. The Aerospace Corporation 78
3. Raytheon 63
4. Boeing 55
5. Northrop-Grumman 38
6. Equity Office / Howard Hughes Center 31
7. Los Angeles World Airports 25
8. Electronic Arts 20
9. DirecTV 14
10. Playa Vista 5
11. Federal Express 2
12. ESMS 1
13. Linquest - TSAT 1
14. Mitre 1
15. Scitor 1

Last year's total cycle commuters were: 309. The breakdown was as follows:
1. The Aerospace Corporation 68
2. Los Angeles Air Force Base (Military/Civilian) 56
3. Raytheon 48
4. Boeing 39
5. Northrop-Grumman 25
6. Los Angeles World Airports 24
7. Electronic Arts 20
8. Carr America / Howard Hughes Center 19
9. DirecTV 7
10. Federal Express 1
11. Mitre 1
12. Scitor 1

A big THANKS to Aerospace, Boeing, Electronic Arts, Equity Office / Howard Hughes Center, DirecTV, Los Angeles Air Force Base, Los Angeles World Airports, Northrop-Grumman, Playa Vista, and Raytheon for donating the awesome giveaways!!!

Even though we lost, it was great to see a 25% year to year increase in bicycle commuters. Note also that LAAFB has 7000 employees and we have about a third as many. They beat us in raw numbers, but we have a higher percentage of bicycle commuters. We were saddened to see that ES major employer, Mattel, chose again not to participate.

See you at the bike fair tomorrow and at the MTA Green Line Nash Station on Thursday morning!

El Segundo Bike to Work Week Events

Media coverage of Bike-To-Work Week events in the South Bay has been sketchy again. Last year, I posted a schedule of Bike-To-Work Week events for 2007. Here's some info for Bike-To-Work Week 2008 in the El Segundo Employment Center area.

The 8th Annual El Segundo Bike-To-Work Challenge will be held from 6 to 10 a.m. on Tuesday, May 13, in The Aerospace Corporation's Visitor Lot/Gate C located on Douglas Street, just south of El Segundo Boulevard. Many of El Segundo's employers will be competing for bragging rights (and a trophy) to see who can bring in the most bicycle commuters. Free continental breakfast, t-shirts and goodie bags^* will be provided.

There will be a bicycle and commuting expo outside the cafeteria at The Aerospace Corporation at lunchtime on Wednesday, May 14. MTA, AAA, commuter services and bike club members will be on hand to help you find a commute route using public transit, carpool/vanpool or bicycle. Several area bicycle shops will also be present with special deals for Bike to Work Week.

MTA is sponsoring a Bike to Work Day on Thursday, May 15, 2008. Check their website for more details. South Bay Pit Stops at:

1. Aviation Station Metro Green Line
2. El Segundo Station Metro Green Line
3. Torrance City Hall 3031 Torrance Bl, Torrance

* I have written before about how much I hate goodie bags, but this one actually contains good stuff. Last year, they gave out LED lights for commuting after dark!

Bicycle commuting in the news links:

• Riding a bike to work is more than a healthy commute: It's a sign of adulthood via the LA Times
• Bike to work next week and win a folding bike via Emerald City Blog
• Catching Up results from the 2007 El Segundo Bike-To-Work Challenge

Maybe you are looking for a good used bike to use for bicycle commuting? You are in luck. As part of my stuff diet, I am selling two (out of 3.5) of my bicycles. Email me through my profile page for more info.

Bulk Goods

I sometimes shop at the El Segundo Whole Foods on my way to work. Shopping there need not to be "Whole Paycheck", particularly if you shop the bulk bins. They are the best value in the store.

The first time I brought in my own jars and asked the guys at the butcher counter to tare them, they looked at me blankly. Now, they don't even blink. Why put your food in a plastic bag, then go home and decant from the bag into a rigid container and throw away the plastic bag? I am lazy.

I do use plastic bags for wet produce, and I try to rinse out old ones and bring them back for reuse. I store them in the car inside one of several canvas bags that I use to haul groceries home. Mark argued that I waste water to clean the bags. But I lived in a student-run coop at Berkeley and the kitchen manager had thoughtfully posted the energy and water budgets for plastic bags as well as foods. The water you use to rinse that bag is much less than the water used to transform petroleum into a plastic bag.

If you are a new reader, you may want to read about a very real danger of "conventionally grown" food in What we eat. Whole Foods promised no antibiotics in their meats, ever. That's important if, like me, you are allergic to antibiotics commonly found in animal feed.

Aside:
Mark is usually in charge of cooking. His recipes are nutritionally sound and tasty, but I couldn't face the greatest hits night after night. I left work 2 hours early one night to shop, cook and store some different foods.

Southern style greens with onions, carrots and bacon. It's based upon a recipe from Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Vegetables cookbook.

My mother's "Double Soy" recipe with baked tofu and edamame.

Steamed and broiled baby artichokes.


I also made minestrone soup with the rest of the greens and beans from the Whole Foods bulk bins. Soak the beans overnight. Not only will that save 15 minutes cooking time, it will also save about 25-30% of the energy required to cook them.

Digression:
I learned to reuse plastic bags and to bring clean jars to the store for bulk goods from a former employer. As a nineteen year old, I ran errands for a disabled forty something woman in Berkeley. I think she paid me $7 an hour, but I learned priceless lessons from her.

She taught me how to live green and frugally. She taught me the importance of shopping locally to keep $ recirculating in the local economy as much as possible. She taught me how to take business to people whose values were a fit for mine.

She taught me about consumer rights when she had me return merchandise that did not work as advertised. She sent me to Kinko's to photocopy her financial papers, knowing that I would peek. Not only did she not mind, but she explained her investment strategies to me.

She taught me that a true rate of return has to factor in taxes and inflation. She even taught me an important lesson about preserving capital when she temporarily cut my hours because she had a bad investment quarter and needed to pare down her expenses across the board.

She taught me the importance of accumulating capital when young, to guard against disability and other setbacks later in life.

In retrospect, I could have worked for her for no pay and still come out ahead.

Hormones and Antibiotics

In the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle post, I didn't mention my little food experiment in New Zealand. Remember the What we eat post in which I learned that some of my nighttime skin rashes might be caused by tetracycline in livestock feed? I spoke to my immunologist about that and she recalled reading journal articles about people who are deathly allergic to penicillin coming down with hives after eating meat laced with penicillin. I am only moderately allergic to tetracycline and sulfa and okay with penicillin. Perhaps that is why my symptoms, while still unpleasant, are milder.

Penicillin, tetracycline and sulfa are common antibiotics fed to livestock, including farmed fish. If you are allergic to any common antibiotics, you should stay away from "conventionally-raised" livestock. (I wonder why anyone would want to eat antibiotics unnecessarily?)

Barbara Kingsolver wrote that the American food production system is unsustainable. If we were to stop force-feeding the livestock in the factory farms antibiotics, they would all die of disease in a matter of weeks. That fits the definition of unsustainable all right.

Back to the story. On the drive to Akaroa, we marveled at all the livestock we saw. One of our hosts, the one who studied agriculture and land management at university), told us that NZ raises all their farm animals on pasture. They do none of the factory farming you see in the states or in Europe. I asked if antibiotics are used. He replied rarely.

I decided to make the trip a culinary experiment. I ate lamb, beef, chicken and fish without fear. There was no night-time rash. If my skin itched, it was because of sandfly or mosquito bites. I ate a great deal more protein than I normally do at home. I did no exercise other than daily stretching and walking in the service of sightseeing. When I returned home to my scale, it showed that I gained less than a pound, but my body fat decreased by more than a percentage point. I think I will be visiting the hormone-free and antibiotic-free meat counter at Whole Foods more regularly.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Virginia and I discussed how both of us have been attracted to the turquoise and brown color combination. How do certain colors and color combinations hit the collective consciousness? Can Pantone take all the credit? I will leave it to her because she writes about that for a living.

I just thought that the apple/persimmon cake I baked last evening looked nice. Unfortunately, I ran out of cooking oil and substituted low fat yogurt to mixed results. It really could use more fat. I used the Swedish Apple Cake recipe posted in Recipe Meme and used a combination of 1 chopped apple plus enough Hachiya persimmon pulp to make up 3 cups.

By the time I added enough flour to make a stiff batter, there was a huge amount. I also baked 3 mini-loafs not pictured above. They were all given to families that help us keep Iris occupied (along with fruit from the flats we bought at Costco yesterday).

With the help of Google, I discovered another recipe for Persimmon Cake that reads very similar to my cake. The ingredients are largely the same, save for small variations in spices. I used only cinnamon; she added nutmeg and cloves. Rachel has gone to cooking school while I have a BS in Chemistry. Maybe her cake will taste better. ;-)

I was on a cooking roll yesterday, also cooking black beans. 2 pints were frozen for another dish, and the rest went into Best Black Bean Soup from Learning to Cook with Marion Cunningham. I added 2 carrots to her recipe. Notice the cilantro garnish from our garden? The great part of being a messy gardener is all the "volunteers". Who wouldn't want fresh, young cilantro volunteers?


This was supposed to be a post about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the book I read for the Apartment Therapy Re-Nest Book Club. In the beginning, I didn't think I would want to read another book nagging me to eat locally and organic. As I wrote before, I thought I was too busy add more to my workload. I was even chastised by reader mmadden for saying that "Farmers' markets are great, but they are not convenient for a harried working mom." (Go read her criticism and my response.)

I can say that I changed my mind (about the book, not about farmers' markets). Barbara Kingsolver has made some valid points about our nation's messed up relationship with food. Even if I don't have her real estate, I can still grow more of my own food. I can also eat more seasonally and locally, even within the time constraints of shopping only before and after work and childcare duties.

I used to think it horribly unfair that I was so heavily penalized in footprint calculators for not eating more locally. After all, I eat very little meat and that takes a lot of energy and water! My lifestyle is really green! I drink filtered tap water! I recycle! I re-use! I am on a stuff diet! Look how little trash I generate relative to my neighbors! How can my footprint be marginally better than average?

I forgot about the poop.

In modern life, we don't pay attention to what goes in and out of our bodies. We pretty much assume that there will be some food to eat when we are hungry and that our bodily waste will disappear with a flush. It is not so simple. Anyone who has ever backpacked understands how much they eat and poop. Barbara Kingsolver reminded me that, for most people, our greatest consumption, measured by mass, is in the food we put in our bodies. The greater the mass, the greater the amount of energy it takes energy to move it around. It is time to eat more local.

Kingsolver moved across the country to a place where with more land and water. I need to live close to work, in one of the densest regions of the US with some of the priciest real estate and very little water. Even so, with a little creativity, there is room to improve.

Our hostess in Christchurch threw together a light supper the evening we arrived. Amongst other things, she served a salad made with lettuce from her garden. How did she do that in a townhouse with a garden the size of ours? The next morning, she showed me her vegetables, interspersed with her flowers and other ornamentals. She only had 1-2 heads of lettuce in two varieties, but it was enough if she picked a few leaves each day from each head.

I already grow rosemary, thyme, bay and several varieties of chives and mint. Our Meyer lemon tree is groaning under the weight of this winter's crop. I already sowed some lettuce and pea seeds before I left home so I should have plenty of salad greens for a couple of months.

I started eyeing the insipid baby's tears ground cover in the shady areas. Wouldn't that be a good habitat for spinach, lettuce or watercress? Can I tuck some more herbs in other areas?

In the book, Barbara Kingsolver and her family spent a year eating local foods, most of it in season and organic. The first early spring of their experiment was bleak. They hadn't preserved food yet. They shopped farmers' markets, but the pickings were slim. In a few months, though, their garden started to reward them. My mouth watered as she described the arrival of each new food that came into season. Morels. Asparagus. Berries. Stone fruit. Tomatoes.

She reminds us that food tastes best when it is in season and has been freshly picked. You can't get fresher than your own garden. Lacking that, a farmers' market where the food was picked a that day is a good alternative. Unfortunately, I still find it difficult to go to a farmers' market for reasons I elaborated elsewhere. I explored alternatives.

At the recently remodeled supermarket 300 feet from my house, I spoke with the produce manager. He appears to be sansei (3rd generation Japanese american) with longtime ties to the community. He has been trying to convince the regional produce buyer to allow him to buy more Asian and Hispanic produce. He says they didn't believe him when he said he could sell those "specialty" items in his mass-market supermarket. Slowly, he is convincing them otherwise. The variety is increasing but quantity is still a problem. To my frustration, he can't keep enough white turnips (lobo in Mandarin) in stock. You can get beaver tail cactus there along with advice on how to cook it. I need to support his efforts by buying his produce.

Because of my commute route, it is easier for me to go to Whole Foods on my way to the office instead of on the way home. I started bringing in an extra bag for all the things that need to stay cold. I pop them into the fridge at the office while at work and bring them home later. Whole Foods doesn't necessarily have to be expensive. The bulk bins are a relative bargain. All their meats are guaranteed not to have antibiotics or added hormones. They even have a case near the front of the produce section of "in season and local" foods.

I also shop Trader Joe's on the route home. When we buy fresh food at Costco (a warehouse store with that sells food in bulk), we share them with other families. That way, we can have a greater variety.

I am planning meals more and using the food we buy more efficiently. I cook in large batches, freeze some and share some. Yesterday, my next door neighbor came over to help herself to snips from my rosemary bush (there is no way we will ever run out). I brought her over some mangoes and oranges from Costco. She sent her daughter over with some rosemary focaccia bread and challah and I sent her home with some apple persimmon cake. Another day, I sent over some cream of mushroom soup and scored some home-made pasta sauce.

It is time to send over some of our Meyer lemons. I remember fondly a few months ago when the neighbor on the corner gave away his excess avocados.

Attitudes and Latitudes

First, a gratuitous picture of Iris on the drive between Christchurch and Akaroa.

Now let's talk about the difference in attitude towards energy between the US and NZ.

Look at this cool clothes dryer that came with our first host family's new "spec" home. The smaller portion ratchets up for a small amount of laundry. The lower portion ratchets up for a big wash day. This family doesn't even own an electric (or natural gas) clothes dryer. (If it rains for an extended period of time, the hostess uses a small clothes rack in the garage.)

What builder in the US would put a clothesline, much less a cool and space-saving one such as this, in a spec (speculative) home, built with no particular buyer identified yet? In the US, builders of spec homes put in tons of energy-wasting appliances, vaulted ceilings and install marble or granite (or some other labor-intensive to maintain) finishes throughout.

We stayed with two families and went to a party at a third. There was not a single vaulted ceiling in sight, even in the two newer homes. Hot air rises. With the ubiquitous American great-room with vaulted ceilings, you have to heat a lot of air to sustain a comfortable temperature at people level during the winter.

Homes were built for easy maintenance. New Zealand has a labor shortage. (An island nation, they don't have desperately poor neighbors who will do their dirty work for them for next to nothing.)

Everyone saved their kitchen scraps for composting. The hostess of the townhouse pictured above had a very compact compost system that originated in Japan. (If I could get it in the US, I could fit them in my side yard and still have room to walk by. I gotta figure out a way to get a pair of those.)

Many people grew vegetable gardens. Even in small yards, people would tuck some edible lettuces or a few tomato plants among the flowers. They used their home-made compost. They talked about the thin topsoil and high winds in New Zealand and the need to constantly amend and improve their soil. They talked about soil in terms of stewardship of a precious resource. We hose our soil down the storm drains in the city and I am going to leave ranting about American farm practices to others.

New Zealanders import every drop of oil that they use. You won't find many gas guzzling cars on NZ roads. (Though you will see many diesel-powered camper vans like the one we rented; they are surprisingly economical with fuel.) Lacking a domestic car industry, they had no problem recently banning the importation of large trucks and SUVs.

About 2/3 of their electricity comes from hydroelectric projects. Another fraction comes from geothermal sources. Electricity is enormously expensive to store, and impossible to store on a large scale. Thus, electricity costs vary greatly by time of day. Homeowners are highly incentivized to use electricity after peak demand hours. One host family heated water only after 9 pm. If they use up the 240 liters they heat up each night before the following night, too bad. They plan their daily activities so that they don't run out of hot water.

Imagine that. Planning your daily activities in advance. Prioritizing energy and water use. Doing your own dirty work.

Doesn't the first picture of Iris remind you of the ads that energy companies in the US run? She already lost her new glasses. They were adorable, as you can see.

Greenwashing

Remember my post on the unlikely choice of "green car of the year"? The post was up for only an hour before someone from greencar.com left a comment about how Dan Neil and I missed the significant advance... blah blah blah.

Notice that the use of a generic name like greencar.com that sounds sort of like greenercars.org, a website of the veteran non profit, The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy? ACEEE has been working to enlighten the public about the environmental impact of cars for years.

Back in high school physics, we had to calculate the speed at which two vehicles with two different centers of gravity (approximating a passenger vehicle and a truck) can safely take a turn before tipping. The takeaway lesson was that the truck tips over at half the speed that would tip over a passenger car. This lesson stuck with me for life. I am very careful when driving around trucks and I would NEVER, NOT EVER ferry my kids around in a truck. (The SUV hadn't been invented yet.)

The insanity of driving a car on stilts, endangering myself and my passengers. The waste of carrying a ton (or 3) more weight around in stop and go traffic than necessary. The increased emissions of surface level air pollution and greenhouse gases. The antisocial attitude of blocking the sight lines of everyone else, thus endangering them even further...

The worse part about it is that the SUV/truck craze has forced the passenger cars to get taller and fatter as well, just to protect their occupants. This causes all vehicles to use more fuel. It also makes passenger cars more top heavy and tippy as well.

Greenwash that!

Green Car of the Year?

How does a gigantic SUV become "Green Car of the Year"? I am not the only one wondering that. Read Dan Neil's Doing well, not good.

It seems to me the objections to the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid's being called "green" fall into three categories:

Symbolic: The Tahoe Hybrid is not merely a Prius that can tow a boat. It is a 5,716-pound supertanker of a vehicle that is still twice the mass necessary to do the job it's typically assigned to do, that is, move a person or persons in and out of the suburbs. The Green Car Journal award seems to enable the continuing American fixation on super-sized vehicles.

Practical: The charge is "greenwashing," which is to say, the Tahoe Hybrid program will be a painfully small-volume effort that will net more positive media than real economy.

Strategic: This is the strongest objection. In a time of surpassing urgency -- whether your pet issue is global warming, oil security or economic disruption -- we are accepting, even rewarding relatively modest and incremental changes in efficiency that require no sacrifice, no change in consumer behavior at all. This isn't going to get it done, people. The notion that American drivers can sally on as before, driving the miles and tonnage they do, and only the technology under the hood has to change, is complete bollocks. We will incrementalize ourselves to the crack of doom.

Gold

Iris' favorite color is gold. We live, after all, in 'the Golden State'. So take a look at Studio Forbes' blog entry and slide show in celebration of gold (and orange). I am especially smitten with the photo below. (Click to make the photo large enough to see the pulley contraption in detail.)

Anyone here know where I can buy one of these laundry pulley thingys stateside? If you believe the realtors, and the home owners' associations in cahoots with them, visible laundry lines bring down property values. Mark and I want to do our part to keep Los Angeles affordable.

Aside: Iris passed her Tae Kwon Do belt test yesterday. She is now an orange belt with black stripes. She has markedly improved her skills and attitude since last spring, when she failed a belt test. Mr Anton (Kasabov) has a genius for bringing out the best in kids. I just wish his official website was viewable in Firefox. IE and Safari work, though.

If you are a design hound, you may want to visit the Studio Forbes blog of Design Within Reach founder, Rob Forbes. I don't always agree with him, but his blog makes good reading.

I am still at home, still sick. The leaves outside our bedroom window are turning gold. I will take a photo and post it later.

Ahead of the (energy) curve

Mark has this annoying habit of taking the food out of the microwave when there is 1 second left on the timer. Because the microwave faces a window, it is hard to see the display. Thus, the next person who uses the microwave oven will enter in the time, wonder why it isn't working, realize why, then hit clear and reenter the time. This makes that person (usually me) very cranky. He couldn't wait one more second?

It turns out that there is method in his madness; even he was not aware of his brilliance. According to Action Earth, "The average microwave oven uses more energy powering its digital clock than it does cooking food."

When Mark leaves the oven at 1 second left on the timer, he is leaving it in the most energy conserving state, short of unplugging it. Think about it. 3 or 4 numerals to display the time or a single digit? And it's the one formed out of the fewest light bars!

Thanks to Bek's Friday enviropostings for the heads up. See more tips at Action Earth.

I have one more tip that Action Earth omitted. The energy usage on refrigerators is just an estimate, based upon typical usage. You can improve the energy efficiency of any refrigerator by keeping it full.

Why? Because, when you open the door, the cold air spills out and warmer air from the kitchen flows in. After you close the door, the refrigerator has to cool all that air down. Empty refrigerators use more energy than full ones. (Unless you keep nothing in your fridge and never open it. In that case, maybe you should unplug it altogether.)

As you use up the food in your refrigerator, put bottles of water to displace air. This is akin to placing a brick in your toilet tank to conserve water when you flush. While you are at it, fill your freezer with containers of water, too. As a bonus, all that ice and cold water will minimize food spoilage during power outages.

While I am enviroblogging, I might as well add a link to the story about the Great Plastic Garbage Patch aka the North Pacific Gyre.

Charles Moore, the marine researcher at the Algalita Marina Research Foundation in Long Beach who has been studying and publicizing the patch for the past 10 years, said the debris - which he estimates weighs 3 million tons and covers an area twice the size of Texas - is made up mostly of fine plastic chips and is impossible to skim out of the ocean.

Thanks to Here in Malibu for the heads up. Also, read more about the Great Plastic Garbage Patch in the Synthetic Sea. They find 6 pounds of plastic for each pound of zooplankton in the North Pacific Gyre. See the pictures of the junk on the Algalita website.

Aside: They do the analysis in Redondo Beach's very own SEA Lab (a good place to tour with your kids).

Green Party

I found this on the Prius' windshield after lunch today. An identical one was placed on it a few weeks ago, when it was parked near our house. The (glossy, non-recyclable) flyer promises, "Drive a hybrid and save more than the planet."

Why does this bother me? Let me count the ways.

This is nothing more than marketing gimmickry. "Green" is just another affinity group and market segment to these folks. This guy is trying to sell car insurance (which is required in CA), but most "green" marketeers are trying to sell goods that people don't really need. The greenest choice is NOT TO CONSUME SO MUCH STUFF. But, then, what would all the marketing folks do for work?

Most "green" marketing is fairly transparent, and this is no exception. Flip the car over and there is a guy washing his SUV in the driveway. (I already wrote about the environmental damage caused by driveway car washing.) Why would an advertiser shoot himself in the foot like that? Not terribly bright. Is this the kind of guy you would want for your insurance agent?

A t-shirt on the cover of a 'back to school' circular said, "Green is the new black". The young girl/woman wearing the shirt looks so cute and happy in that shirt. And why shouldn't she? This has become a common catchphrase. (Type it into your search engine of choice and you will see many articles, some quite thoughtful.) But I feel uneasy about all this green consumerism. Buying a shirt made of organically grown cotton won't help the environment as much as wearing out the clothes that you already own (and using a clothesline instead of a dryer). The best thing we can all do is to consume less, a lot less.

Thomas Friedman put it most eloquently in the Ideas and Consequences page in the Atlantic:

I am not a skeptic about global warming. It’s happening. I am a total skeptic that we are really doing anything about it. I think we are in the middle of a huge green bubble …
[snip]
Did you ever study a revolution in history? You ever seen a revolution in history where nobody got hurt? That’s the green revolution. In the green revolution, nobody gets hurt—we’re all winners … Exxon’s green. They give $100 million to Stanford … Dick Cheney’s green. He’s for alternative fuels, yeah. He’s for liquefied coal. Dick Cheney’s green. We are all green now. Welcome to the green revolution, where nobody gets hurt.

… This isn’t the green revolution, friends. This is a party … [snip] And ladies and gentlemen, today the old-legacy industries, they control this story; they control that policy mechanism in Washington. They are tough, and they will fight dirty. They are not going anywhere.

And that’s why we are having a green party, not a green revolution. Do not kid yourself for one second.

If you follow the Ideas and Consequences link over to the Atlantic, you will see billionaire Richard Branson at the top of the page, talking about his new commercial space venture, Virgin Galactic. Branson is no stranger to green marketing. His airline, Virgin Air, will sell you carbon offsets with every plane ticket. How many trees will need to be planted for every joy-ride into space?

This is not an idle worry as lifting things into space takes enormous expenditures of energy. There is a reason why space launches are so expensive. But marketeers pick their target price point and design their product around that. So, how do they bring the price of the ride down to $200,000? For starters, they get someone else to pay for the infrastructure.

Oh, I digress again. This is a post about seeing through feel-good green marketing. But I can't resist this quote from the above article.

Carol Garcia, 52, of Las Cruces, said: “It’s just a rich man’s dream that he needs us to help pay for. If it’s your dream, build it yourself.”

Waste Couture and Made in LA

Wardrobe Refashion posted a link to Waste Couture: Environmental Impact of the Clothing Industry. The Environmental Health Perspectives article pulls together a great deal of information about the social and environmental cost of fashion, especially fast fashion. It is really worth reading. One of the photos accompanying the article showed a 10 year old boy using a sewing machine with the factory owner threatening him with a club. The boy works every day, 10 hours a day, for about $1/day, in order to bring relatively rich people in the west cheaper t-shirts.

Tonight, PBS will air Made in L.A. Check your local TV listings for time.

Like Lupe, Maura and María, many immigrant women around America struggle to make a better life for themselves by working in garment factories with low pay and unsafe working conditions. P.O.V. asked activists and policymakers in the fields of immigration and labor to comment on the film and on the opportunities and setbacks that immigrants encounter in America.

The same subject has been popping up in the media lately. The NYT published Love It? Check the Label, an article describing how both nativists and liberals have been searching out clothing made in the U.S.A. While I applaud the movement, I think the rationale of some of the customers profiled is shaky. Buying locally produced clothing changes the carbon imprint of the clothing very little. As Waste Couture points out, 60% of the energy used in the life cycle of a t-shirt is from laundering and drying.

[I use a clothesline and treat myself to that long-staple cotton from South America or Africa. I also help women around the world help themselves. Iris and I are very fond of the Bolivian Co-op sewn clothes sold by Dharma Trading at Fair Trade prices. It is difficult to describe their irresistible softness. They come both undyed and colored now! The only downside is that Iris is on the tall side and the clothes are better suited for petite kids.]

Archives:
How 'Green' is Your T-shirt?
Goodie Bages and the Wealth of Nations

The Bubble Bath

How else do you corral those exercise balls? What other use do we have for a huge jacuzzi bathtub in the middle of an extreme drought?

Bike to Work Week Info

I searched the web and found that the info for Bike to Work Week in the South Bay, our local area, is somewhat sketchy. In particular, there are several "Bike and Breakfast" events. I lifted some info from email circulated by my company's transportation coordinator.

The seventh annual Bike-To-Work Challenge will be held from 6 to 10 a.m. on Tuesday, May 16, in Visitor Lot/Gate C located on Douglas Street.

A number of other El Segundo employers will participate in this event. All cyclists who ride their bikes to work that day, regardless of their starting point or whether they ride with a group, will receive a continental breakfast, t-shirt, and promotional items.

Thursday, May 17, Pit-Stop, 6 to 9:30 a.m. at the El Segundo/Nash Green Line Station in recognition of Bike-to-Work Day. All cyclists are invited to stop by for refreshments and giveaways.

So you can get free breakfast both Tuesday (Douglas street south of El Segundo Blvd.) and Thursday (El Segundo and Nash Green Line station). But t-shirts will only be given out on Tuesday on Douglas street. I would like to add that, in past years, pedestrian commuters were also given free breakfast and t-shirts. Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns. ;-)