A Tale of Two Buildings
President Bush's energy program favors fossil fuel production and the oil and coal companies that made contributions to the Republic party while slighting conservation and renewable energy. In support, Vice President Cheney, a former oilman, was to belittle energy conservation:
| "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy." |
President Bush decided to withdraw the United States from the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty that seeks to slow global warming - claiming that it is bad for the economy. His claims stands in stark contrast to the Western European experience, who enjoy an economy twice as energy efficient as that of the United States.
A just issued European Commission report finds that even the more efficient European Union nations could achieve an 8 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emission under 1990 levels in ten years - and with
an investment of only 0.06 percent of their gross national product.
Energy Savings Without Cost
Almost 2/3ds of the proposed fossil fuel savings could be gained at a profit or at no net cost.
A case in point is the modular solar house illustrated in the picture. (above) The house was commissioned as an exhibit for the Forum 2001 solar energy conference in Washington DC by the Sustainable Building Industry Council. Temporarily erected on the Washington Mall, the house cost $170,000 for 3,000 square feet and is totally energy self-sufficient with passive solar design, solar electric and hot water panels, solar roof shingles, Energy Star appliances, rugs made of recycled plastic and the like. (The building was purchased for permanent erection on another site after the exhibition.)
Another example of what can be done in a short order to reduce energy use is the Chesapeake Bay Foundation new headquarters building south of Annapolis. The building received the platinum award from the
U.S. Green Building Council - based on their LEED building rating system. It's their highest award.
 | North Entrance of Chesapeake Bay Found-
ation Headquarters.
- Cisterns to collect rain from roof
- Solar water heaters on roof
- Passive solar wall and solar electric to south, and windows that open
- Recyclable materials, without formaldehyde
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Dramatic reduction in energy use is achieved with daylighting, passive solar, solar electric and hot water, Clivus composting toilets which don't smell, collection of rainwater from the roofs in cisterns for fire control and non-drinking use, and geothermal heat exchangers.
And there is also no lack of technology for cars. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute spoke at the Forum 2001 conference about progress in bringing the hypercar to market. Built with lightweight composite materials strengthened with carbon fibers, and powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, this Explorer-sized vehicle can seat six people and will get 99 miles per gallon and run 330 miles on electricity made from 7.5 pounds of compressed hydrogen.
Electric Power Waste Can Power All US Transport
President Bush would rather dramatically increase electric power plant construction and power lines - even seeking federal eminent domain for powerlines. Yet, as Thomas Casten points out, the old fashioned isolated fossil fuel plants of the United States located at the end of powerlines typically waste two thirds of their fuel energy. Waste heat from the cooling water could be piped to heat and cool buildings and other processes,but is usually just thrown away into the environment. In 1999, inefficient US electric power plants wasted 27 quadrillion BTUs of energy (QUADS) - enough to run all the cars and trucks on the road and planes in the sky - which together consumed only 26 billion QUADS, including those wasteful SUVs.
The secret is to locate these power plants closer to urban areas where waste heat can be used. District energy systems with combined heat and power plants (CHP) that are located closer to urban areas or users of heat, turn 90 percent of fuel into useful products - electricity, steam and chilled water. In Germany CHP plants supply 54 percent of the power for 900 small municipalities. What's wrong with the US?
Blok, Kornelis et at, Economic Evaluaton of Sectoral Emission Reduction Objectives for Climate Change, http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/enveco
Casten, Thomas, Turning Off the Heat. Prometheus Books: NY, (1998)
Hunger Strike By Elizabeth May -
Asking
Action On The Sydney Tar Ponds
Elizabeth May, Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada and a board member, went on a hunger strike in front of the Canadian Parliament in early May, to protest lack of governmental action to address the Sydney Tar Ponds at the eastern tip of Nova Scotia.
It is the site of a steel mill and coking plant, formerly owned by the government, that has left contamination similar to what one would see in Eastern Europe. The site is 20 times larger than Love Canal with 700,000 tons of toxic sludge on land and in estuary. Over 125 acres, arsenic, lead, PCBs, benzene and other toxics contaminate the site up to 80 feet deep. Part of the site is covered by a residential area today. After 17 days without food, she got results. The government agreed to permanently relocate residents.
President Bush Authorizes POPs Treaty Diplomatic Signing
On May 23rd, the United States diplomatically signed the "Stockholm Convention" - the treaty that will phase out 12 organochlorine chemicals worldwide, including PCB's, and eventually DDT and dioxins. The language of the treaty is reasonably good, despite efforts by the Clinton administration to sabotage it. Most of these chemicals have been already banned or severely restricted in the United States and Europe.
We started on this project in 1994 with a petition to the Secretary General of the UN. It is a program that came out of the Agenda 21 treaty at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
It is wonderful to begin to see light at the end of the tunnel. Ratification by fifty nations will be needed to bring the treaty into effect. The Canadian Parliament has already ratified. The next step will be to work with a number of other citizen groups to persuade the US Senate to ratify it.
Conservative Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska is a strong supporter of the treaty, because many of the persistent organic pollutants (POPS) are condensing into the cold environment of Alaska from air pollution.
Swedish Prime Minister Goram Persson, in a recent
address to delegates from 120 nations, hailed the treaty
but proposed that: "We have to go farther. Dangerous
substances must be replaced by harmless ones step by
step. If there is the least suspicion that new chemicals
have dangerous characteristic it is better to reject them."
Slovakia Bans Polyvinyl Chloride Plastics (PVC)
The largest sources of dioxin environmental emissions are incinerators burning municipal trash containing
PVC plastics. In May, the Eastern European nation of Slovakia banned PVC plastic. Undoubtedly, industry lobbyists will swarm to the nation, and World Trade Organization pressure will be applied to force Slovakia to back down. But theirs is a pioneering national action.
Greenpeace has campaigned for many years for the ban of "chlorine" in manufacturing and use of substitutes. A ban of PVC plastics has been at the top of their list.
High Mercury Levels in 10% US Women
The US Center for Disease Control has found that about 10 percent of American women have mercury
tissue levels within 1/10th of hazardous levels.
We Will Petition The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Over Genetically Modified Food
In 1998, Swiss Re, which is one of the world's largest reinsurance companies, issued the report, Genetic Engineering and Liability Insurance, The Power of Public Perception, in which the company concluded that the open ended and even cascading risks posed by genetic engineering makes it impossible for the insurance companies to offer coverage. Furthermore, insurability is "a long way off".
Similarly in 1999, two analysts from Deutche Bank concluded that the biotechnology industry "is going the way of the nuclear industry in this country . . ." And they urged investors to sell their shares.
Will the future liabilities of GMO companies be large enough to cause bankruptcy? Quite possibly. Yet, companies like Monsanto who manufacture and sell GMO products have not been disclosing their environmental and health liabilities to investors when they issue stock registration statements or quarterly reports to the SEC.
We believe that the law regulating securities requires disclosure, and that these liabilities appear large enough to pose bankruptcy risks for the GMO companies.
Swiss Re, Genetic engineering and liability insurance, (1998) www.swissre.com
Poultry Scientists Make Breakthrough on Alzheimer's - EPA To Test Animals on Aluminum
Last year, Brian Berg and colleagues, some from the Department of Poultry Science of North Carolina State University, reported on their experiments with a genetically altered mouse - designed to mimic Down's Syndrome. Virtually all persons with Down's Syndrome develop Alzheimer's before the age of 50.
It was first discovered that this genetic alteration resulted in a three fold increase in brain aluminum, compared to diploid control mice on the same diet as well as an elevation of brain ammonia and brain swelling - all characteristics of Alzheimer's
In addition, it was found that infusion of these animals with Peptide YY, an enzyme that controls appetite and the functioning of the gut, reduced brain aluminum by 73 to 86 in both types of mice over a three day period. Animal scientists have been interested in PYY for many years because it may offer an opportunity to fatten up animals faster on the same diet.
PYY is such a good aluminum chelator that that it could be used in a human clinical trial to remove brain aluminum as a therapy for Alzheimer's. We plan to put such a clinical trial together.
The US Environmental Protection Agency, Health Canada, and the National Institute for Environmental Health Services (NIEHS) have decided to move ahead with a testing program of the neurological effects of aluminum using laboratory animals. While this testing program will postpone regulatory action on a drinking water safety standard for about five years, it guarantees a regulatory decision. It is good to see some movement on the issue after our decade of work.
Particularly interesting was the letter we received from EPA's Office of Drinking Water that they think that enough data exists today for a regulatory program. But animal testing is needed to scientifically set an actual drinking water safety standard. (Translated, that means EPA is trying to avoid or win the inevitable lawsuit.)
Berg, Brian Metal, "Peptide YY administration decreases brain aluminum in the Ts65Dn Down Syndrome mouse model". Growth, Development & Aging 64 (2000) 3-19
Taking Us To The Texas Poorhouse?
As already noted, the US economy is about half as energy efficient as that of Western Europe. Even our most energy efficient states, New York, Connecticut, Hawaii and Massachusetts are still two-thirds as energy efficient as Switzerland.
President Bush as well as former President Clinton come from states that are wasteful of energy. As Figure 1 illustrates, the energy intensity of Texas, or the amount of energy required to create a dollar of gross state product ranks the state as eight worst in the nation. Likewise, Arkansas ranks 13th from the bottom.
Energy Waste Produces Lower Per Capita Income
Statistical studies by Paul Templet of Louisiana State University, find that energy intensity and energy waste are significant predictors of per capita personal income. For example in Figure 2, more energy efficient 
Connecticut had a per capita personal income of $19,000 in 1989 compared to only $12,000 in Texas.
States that waste energy generally tend to have simplified and less diverse economies. Templet concludes that some of the poorer states of the United States are beginning to resemble developing nations.
In New Jersey with its more diverse economy, more product stays within the state, and is remanufactured and refined - spinning off employment and income. In a state like Louisiana or Texas, much of this energy is just pumped from the ground and exported. Income flows into a very few hands leaving poverty and unemployment elsewhere.
A sign of a high energy waste economy is a price disparity between what a residential consumer pays for fuel and the lower cost paid by industry. In Louisiana in 1995, an average residential user paid almost 4 times higher energy prices than paid by industry. In return, the the subsidized industries return part of their income flow to politicians - fostering both corruption and rich political campaign funding.
Secondly, energy waste generates greater pollution, which discourages the entry of other businesses into that high pollution state - again reducing diversity and lowering incomes.
Cleveland and Kaufman Predict Bush's Failure
Can the US can drill itself out of its energy problems as proposed by Vice President Cheney? Can Alaska oil make any difference, considering that US oil production peaked in the 1970s, and gas production is also beginning to show signs of peaking?
In a study published on the worldwide web, Cutler Cleveland and Robert Kaufman, top-notch energy economists from Boston, conclude that the Bush oil and energy policy will fail. The authors note that drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve would at best produce 152 days of US supply at economically recoverable rates, "dust in the wind of the global oil market . . ."
In 1970's US Oil Drilling Lost Money For Nation
The authors also question whether fostering domestic oil production will be good for the US economy, citing what happened during the last oil price shock due to the
Arab oil boycott between 1970 and 1980. The United
States then as now was simply running low on potential
oil reserves in the ground.
| "Between 1973 and 1980, the total footage of wells drilled increased three fold and the fraction of new
capital investment in the US economy going to the oil industry increased from 2 to 7 percent ... What did the nation get in return? During the same, US production declined from 7 percent and the oil industry's share of GDP declined from 4 to 2 percent. The gap between
investment and production totaled more than 100
billion dollars from 1975 to 1987 ... The reason for the poor performance of the US oil industry is simple: the domestic oil resource base is depleted to the point that large investments in drilling cannot generate a
commensurate increase in oil supply." |
US taxpayer subsidies made up for the losses of the
oil industry. The authors note that the nation could invested the same money somewhere else with better prospects - such as in energy conservation or windmills.
www.oilanalytics.org/policy/policy.html
|
Maryland's Governor Glendening Signs Executive Order Promoting Energy Efficiency
In March, Governor Paris Glendening signed an executive order: "Sustaining Maryland Future with Clean Energy, Green Buildings and Energy Efficiency". We and Maryland groups joined in January to petition the Governor to consider matching the program of New Jersey.
Under former Governor Christine Todd Whitman, New Jersey has embarked on a program to meet the Kyoto Protocol goal of a 7 percent reduction of greenhouse gases by the year 2010 - on time. They plan to be half-way to that goal by the year 2005.
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Civic Participation At New Low in United States
Two books by Robert D. Putnam examine civic traditions in Italy and the United States, and their
consequences for economic prosperity.
The author finds that Americans are engaging in civic activity, attending meetings, voting, having dinner with friends, visiting socially, and volunteering at all time low rates. People who report that TV is their primary form of entertainment volunteer for community projects much less frequently, and have a much reduced social life. More mandatory student civic programs may be necessary to get American youth engaged.
There are consequences to civic neglect. In his book on civic traditions in Italy, Putnam found that regions with the most civic participation and less top down governmental traditions, are regions with the most economic prosperity today. In Italy, civic tradition is a matter of centuries. It is possible to predict civic participation and regional prosperity today from a civic traditions map drawn in the year 1300AD.
Putnam, Robert D. Making Democracy Work, Civic Traditions in Modern Italy@. Princeton U. Press: Princeton, NJ (1993); Putnam, Robert, D. Bowling Alone, 7he Colla-12se and Revival Collapse Community. Simon & Schuster. New York (2000)
Death of Two Great Environmentalists
David Brower, executive director of the Sierra Club from 1952 to 1969, and founder of Friends of the Earth and Earth Island Institute died last November 5th. Among his many achievements, he was a leader in preventing the damming of the Grand Canyon.
Donella Meadows, who wrote the best seller, The Limits to Growth, died this February. Taking on world trade, she commented in 1997: "..So one day I was sitting in a meeting about the new global trade regime, NAFTA and GATT and the World Trade Organization. The more I listened, the more I began to simmer inside. This is a huge new system people are inventing ... They haven't the slightest idea how it will behave..It's cranking the system in the wrong direction - growth, growth at any price. And the control measures these nice people are talking about ... are puny." Whole Earth Mag. Winter 97
