Green in the First Person is the continuing story of my gradual move off the grid and away from a carbon footprint that is smaller than most Middle Tennesseans, but still too big for my comfort. 

(Author’s note:  The activist I referred to last week has had second thoughts about having their contribution to the discussion described here.  There are some compelling reasons for this decision that I respect.  Please accept my apology for the change of content in this week’s installment. )

This week the Jumbo Shrimp got his first solar powered haircut.  He’s no happier about it than he has been about a home spa day powered by more conventional means.  One the other hand, his human staff were quite happy to see the clippers buzz to life when plugged into a solar pack.

As of now, we are partially solar.  Here’s how that happened:

Shopping for new sources of energy was daunting to say the least.  Buying a roof-mounted solar array was out of the question.  The smallest system available that would only partially power our house was north of thirty-seven thousand dollars.  Not the kind of debt I wanted or was able to take on at this point in my career.    Leasing panels was also out of the question.  Every company I talked to mentioned that it was illegal in Tennessee.   There had to be some alternatives.

I hefted my old “Last Whole Earth Catalog” off the shelf and looked up solar energy.  Even though it was published in 1981, we were living like it was 1881.  Anything would have been an improvement.  What’s funny is that in all the flipping and searching I was doing, a couple of terms I’d neglected to use in my online searches jumped out at me.  I got out my phone, entered “portable solar power”.   what came back were three pages of affordable, plug and play baby steps.  We took the next week to think it over, think it over again, look for reviews and think it over once more.  After a particularly bad night that included a lot of dropped candle wax, we ordered a Goal Zero “Escape 150 Set”.

The Goal Zero Escape Kit

What arrived was, well, for lack of a better descriptor, it was kind of cute. The silver and green power pack, designed to hold 45 watts, looked like a prop from Star Trek Classic and a cafeteria coffee decanter had gotten together and made a baby.   The solar panel was a monocrystalline glass affair that maxed out at fifteen watts per hour.  Setting it up in one of the front windows to take advantage of the southern exposure made me feel like an eco-warrior.  With my trusty shih tzu by my side, I was a carbon emission fightin’ badass.

I would also like to note that it was raining when the set arrived and it was overcast for the next five days. Lucky for me, the Escape packs are pre-charged, so that night we plugged in a lamp, held our breath and turned it on.

Light!

We had light!

We could read after the sun went down!  We didn’t have to pee by candle light!  Suck it, Nashville Electric Service!

We were also able to charge up the computer and use the modem as needed until it was sunny enough to charge up the pack.  What we hadn’t figured on was what would and wouldn’t work on a 45 watt solar pack.   Want to watch Grimm on a small flat panel?  Twenty-five watts.   No sweat.  A few minutes online to send off my deathless prose about the Nashville Predators or Africanist survivals in Memphis?  Fifteen to twenty watts, tops.  Piece of cake.  A night of splendour with a six watt LED to illuminate David Mitchell’s latest?  Ten watts.   A cup of coffee in a single cup maker?

Um.

Two hundred and twenty-five watts.

And this was where the second rude awakening began.  For everything that sipped tiny amounts of energy and delighted us that we had regained the use of a modern convenience, there were two or three items that required far more energy than we imagined.  Even with the mindfulness we had employed towards our energy use before the blowout, the truth remained that we were using a heck of a lot of electricity.  If we were to go solar, we needed to think about what that really meant.  For every thought that we could use as much energy as we could store, there was the question of how much we could store and for how long.  It meant knowing that there was x amount of energy and choices would have to be made abut how to use it.

We have since purchased another “Mr. Coffee set”, as a friend of the family calls them, and two sixty-watt panels and a 350-watt generator and inverter that is roughly the size of a three pound sack of flour and weighs twenty-seven pounds.  I call it The TARDIS.

We are still experimenting, plugging different things into the packs and generators to see what works and what doesn’t.  When the indicators get low and deadlines are looming, I get by with a little help from my friends and the sweet, sweet jolt of caffiene from various coffee shops.

Next time:  The Jumbo Shrimp discovers the joys of solar oven cheese biscuits, I get my own contact person at Goal Zero and we have more fun with el sol!

This article was originally posted on A Sustainable City

by Jas Faulkner 

Whether you are just getting to know the particulars of the green movement or trying to refine your ideas about specific concepts of eco-conscious living, finding information about sustainability can be daunting.  Below  is a list of ten great video introductions to some of the key concepts that have driven the movement in the last decade.

Many of these are available via online streaming.  Some of these films have their own sites.  I have also listed the websites that offer streaming feeds after the titles and have included links to those sites at the end of this article.  If there is no site listed, that means the movies are available on disc only.

Food, Inc.   (Top Documentary Films, Amazon, Netflix)  When it was first released in 2008, many found this documentary to be shocking.  This expose of the politics of food production and the commodification of the plant biology includes talking heads from commentators like Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle’.  It is an excellent introduction to the scary reality behind the myths concerning food production in developed countries.

What Would Jesus Buy? (Top Documentary Films, Snagfilms, Amazon, Netflix)  Reverend Billy (performance artist and activist, Billy Talen) and his busload of Merry Pranksters visit temples of modern consumerism all over the US. During the time he was followed by the filmmakers, he performed an exorcism on the Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas and anti-shopping sermons and carols at department stores and malls in December, created a stir at Disneyland, and challenged a group of teen girls to find out about the human cost of their mass produced clothing. Behind the goofy TV preacher trappings is a very serious message about the wasteful nature of consumer culture.

Living With Ed  For three seasons, actor/activists Ed and Rachelle Carson Begley opened their lives to tv crews so they could demonstrate ways to incorporate environmentally responsible choices into every day life.  Along for the ride were daughter Hayden, bent on keeping-up-with-the-Begleys neighbour Bill Nye, and a host of famous and should-be-famous Green movers and shakers.  The first two seasons and a couple of companion books (Living Like Ed and Ed Begley’s Guide to Sustainable Living) are available.  Light, funny, and thought provoking,  this series is a great way to get that cranky skeptic in your life to give some serious thought  to saving some green in every sense of the word.

Greasy Rider  (Hulu, Snagfilms, Amazon)  The sad irony of Greasy Rider is that the early prototypes were manufactured in one of the least Green-friendly states in the US.  The film follows early adopters of the diesel cars with systems that allow them to run on cooking oil.  While a french fry-mobile might not be the ultimate solution, this film presents an excellent example of how creative solutions to the problem of depleted resources can lead to thinking about bigger and better ideas.  The gorgeous cross-country footage is another argument for checking out this compelling eco-odyssey.

King Corn (Hulu, Amazon, Netflix)   King Corn focuses on one of the crucial talking points of Food, Inc., the power of the corn lobby to influence government subsidies and development dollars.  The industry’s role in decimating the presence of multi-crop family farms cannot be understated and King Corn takes a hard look at the role non-food corn plays in American agriculture.  As amusing as it can be at times, it is also an infuriating study of the corporatisation of a declining segment of North American culture.

Who Killed the Electric Car?  (Top Documentary Films, Amazon)  Once upon a time, some forward thinking auto execs signed off on the development and testing of an electric car.  Prototypes were sent to people willing to promote the zero-emission vehicles that ran on rechargeable  batteries.   Months later, the cars were seized and disassembled.  Accusations fly in this oral history of the change in car culture that might have been.

Fuel  (Top Documentary Films, Hulu, Snagfilms, Amazon, Netflix)  This flip, hip documentary feature is a crash course in where we’ve been and where we are going when it comes to our energy sources.  The filmmakers don’t candy coat the sobering facts, but they don’t stint on ways to make learning them entertaining, either.

30 Days  (Netflix)  Morgan Spurlock’s series may not be specifically about the environment, but environmental issues as they are both affected by and effect change on the human condition play a big part in this series of one-off documentaries.   The premise is simple, someone who is closely identified with one world view spends thirty days living the life of someone with a diametrically opposed viewpoint: a tech professional whose job is outsourced lives with a family in India, a conservative Christian from West Virginia spends time with a Muslim family in Dearborn, a Minute Man Supporter lives with a family of illegal aliens in Los Angeles, meat-eating bridge and tunnel types stay on a vegan commune.  The results are often surprising and Spurlock uses a light hand in this series.

Affluenza  (Top Documentary Films, Netflix)  Created in the same style as “Atomic City” this arch, funny documentary uses vintage footage and commentary from various experts to illustrate the need for a more conscientious approach to First World consumerism.

Dirt!  The Movie  (Hulu, Amazon, Netflix)  This study of the state of soil looks at a resource that is often taken for granted. A deft  combination of Earth Science crash refresher and quick cram of the high points in conservationist thought, Dirt! is a a great intro for tweens and teens who might be curious about the subject. Grownups will enjoy the sometimes breezy approach to this serious subject as well.  My only complaint is the overwhelming presence of talking heads.  At their best, they offer sidebars that are fun and informative, at worst, there’s a little too much preaching to the choir about subjects that have already been addressed in the film.   

Where to watch:

(Note, you may need to do a Google search of the film title + the site name to find the film.  Not all internal site search engines seem to work.)

Top Documentary Films  This website offers access to an impressive library of documentary films about a wide range of topics.  Viewing is free but donations to keep the site going are welcome.

Snagfilms  Snagfilms started out as a clearinghouse for progressive documentaries.  The site has expanded to include classic films, documentaries on a wider range of topics and a great archive of historic features and series.  Most if not all films are free.

Hulu  Hulu offers a variety of movies and television shows on their streaming service.

Netflix Netflix offers a wealth of documentaries on environmental issues.  Streaming is available for a low monthly fee.

Amazon  Many of Amazon’s video-on-demand features are available at no additional charge for Prime members.  They also have streaming videos available on an a la carte basis.

This article was originally posted on A Sustainable City

Green in the First Person is the continuing story of my gradual move off the grid and away from a carbon footprint that was smaller than most Middle  Tennesseans, but still too big for my comfort. 

The power surges hit our house with such violence that everyone present was left stunned and more than a little frightened.  No wonder people who paid a visit between Thanksgiving (25 November in the US, just a refresher…) and Twelfth Night thought we had a poltergeist. In spite of opened windows and fans blasting in the thankfully mild winter,  the smell of burnt-out surge protectors and appliances lingered for almost three weeks.  In case anyone reading is lucky enough to have never experienced a power surge, the smell is like a cross between an over-chlorinated pool and burnt plastic.* Once the shock and the odor had abated, there were a couple of things that became evident, things that should have been obvious before.

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone

Our household of three**  had always tried to be eco-conscious. We had made a serious effort to reduce our carbon footprint. We recycled, employed reusable items at every opportunity, bought locally produced goods when and where we could and made it a point to buy fair trade and environment-friendly items when we couldn’t find anyone producing it within the usual one hundred mile range.  We had taken for granted that conservative use of appliances and overhead lighting was sufficiently minimising our energy use.  In spite of all of that, we were still nowhere near being prepared to lose access to the power grid.  It was clear that no matter how green we thought we were, we still had a long way to go.

A few weeks after the blowout, the power seemed to level off and use of some of the overhead lighting and a few outlets came back.  Still, evening hours and weekends were times when the electricity seemed to trickle in.  We reserved what power we could get for the refrigerator and a charger to keep the phone going in case of an emergency.  The thought of what would happen if an entire community had to deal with this was sobering, to say the least.

At this point it was clear, we would have to either learn to party like it was 1899 or begin exploring options for alternative energy.  We learned quickly that ways to power your house independent of local utility systems are still almost all prohibitively expensive and that it is also a growing industry with more and more companies jumping in to the market to profit from the increasing demand for solar and wind collectors, storage, and inverters.

My first attempt at searching for a way to make that initial baby step (beyond those little solar lights everyone has in their gardens) was daunting.  Everything looked expensive and the wall ‘o’ jargon seemed insurmountable.  Couldn’t I just get a panel and plug in?   What was the difference between silicate, monocrystalline and polycrystalline panel coatings?  Inverters?  Batteries?  Wattage calculations?  Being on the grid was so simple and it was evident how spoiled we were on the ease it afforded us.

The literature of energy conversion is not exactly a bastion of comforting reading, either.  The shelves at the local Barnes and Noble contained volumes that were all about “creating your dream eco-home with roll of duct tape, an aluminum pie pan and only 1 million dollars!” or books with titles like, “What To Do When Society Collapses”, “All I Need For The Rapture: A Gun, My Breeder Sister Wives, A Solar Array, and Three Hundred Recipes For Grain-Cleaned Possum!” and “Up Yours! 500 Ways To Keep The Neighbors Out Of Your Tater Patch When The Republic Topples”.    There has to be a middle ground.  If I can’t find it, it looks like I’ll have to create it myself.

It’s oh, so quiet. It’s oh, so still…

The initial weeks brought about a change in the way we lived and worked. No longer able to just dig the remote out from under the Jumbo Shrimp and turn on NHL, I found other ways to see the games I needed to watch for my jobs.  Everyone’s internal body clocks seemed to get more in tune with the sun.  With illumination limited to candles and oil lamps, the entire house seemed to nod off once it got very dark and started stirring again at first light.  Without the visual and aural  noise that was the continual stir and clutter of modern conveniences that had seemed like necessities just a few months ago,  our house is becalmed.   I have to say, it’s nice.  It’s also oh, so quiet.

Well.  Almost.

The Jumbo Shrimp was accustomed to sleeping in the kitchen with the mud room light shining from around a corner.   Forgetting to turn on the light meant that in the wee hours of the ayem we would be treated barking tantrum that could only be abated with the light  and a can of tuna as reparations.  The mud room light was one of casualties of the Christmas Night blowout.   All of this was very hard on him.  During the power surges, he ran from room to room, alternately terrified and angry at whatever was making his house go crazy.  The loss of his nightlight was not a good thing.  More than a few nights I was awakened by a blast of lapdog breath and the sight of his teeny nose and saucer-sized eyes peeping at me at the edge of my bed accompanied by his irate buzzing at the lack of appropriate accommodations for his special needs.*** He has since adjusted to the dark and quiet and finds anything brighter than a soft LED to be an affront to his sensibilities.

(Note: That is not Niklas Lidstrom. Just another Shih on the net who does that distinctive lapdog “buzz”. )

Next week:  I meet a local green activist who has been there, done that, and has the panels and inverters to prove it and we get our first panel, my computer goes solar and…and  WE HAVE LIGHT!

,

*Quick tip:   Pick up your strip or outlet cube and give it the sniff test.  Smell anything?  No?  That means it’s still protecting your electronic devices.  Even the slightest whiff of the smell I described means that it has blocked a surge.  Even if you haven’t been hit by any big power surges, your protectors have probably been taking small spikes for a while. According to Terry, the local electrician who is now my go-to guy for all things sparky, surge protectors should never be used for that purpose after a year or two.  Cumulative wear will weaken their ability to protect your stuff and a really, really big surge could take everything out.

**Meet the fam:  I’m a former social worker turned writer (No, really, thank YOU, economic downturn and draconian cuts to clinical intervention programs for the poor!) my mother, whose role model is Ouiser from “Steel Magnolias”, and His Holiness the Doggie Lama Niklas Lidstrom the Shih Tzu aka the Jumbo Shrimp.

***To be fair, the little guy is an older rescue who had gone through a number of families who simply could not deal with this particular set of issues.  It took him a year to stop flinching when he was touched and as his reactive vocabulary to words that had always been clarion calls to my previous dog was nil.  This mystery was solved one afternoon when I was interviewing a Francophone player and Nik, who was sitting nearby, perked up.  After the interview, I turned to the dog and addressed him in French.  His response was something akin to “Finally!  You’ve stopped blabbering in gibberish!”  Since we are nowhere near Canada, it has been theorised that Niklas Lidstrom might be a “Noah’s Wish” rescue who was airlifted to Nashville after Katrina hit New Orleans.

This article was originally posted on A Sustainable City

The disturbing news about working conditions at the factory in China responsible for assembling IPads, Nooks and other handheld devices has inspired many people to rethink the eco-friendliness of their entertainment media storage.  The human cost as well as the plastic-heavy composition of these devices is troubling and consumers, who are getting increasingly eco-savvy, want to do the right thing.

The file-based mercantile that could lead to decreasing the amount of plastic and paper used to create packaging for prerecorded music and movies would be good for the environment.  The question remains:  As technology continues to change at such a rapid pace; what are we going to do with the handheld gadgets that fall out of currency, sometimes within a year of their release?  The answer has to be some variation of recycling.  Just as recording and transmission technology have changed the way we purchase music, movies and now books, the technology that drives recycling is also undergoing improvements.

The evolution of music as a commodity reveals an industry where the product itself has skewed towards the heavier end of resource consumption. The concept of buying and selling music had its origins in the late nineteenth century.  Traveling vaudeville shows and musicals which usually originated in New York and San Francisco featured songs that would gain popularity outside of the context of the source material.  Recorded music was still a generation away and most households owned at least one musical instrument.  The family sing-along was a common way to spend the evening hours.  In response to this, publishers sent salesmen on the road.  Many of these gentlemen were skilled musicians who demonstrated the sheet music they were offering.

The first (non-liturgical) mass produced sheet music was fairly plain, and often featured the music itself, the title, the names of the composers and occasionally the name of the show or a notation about the actors who originally performed the song.   As time wore on and songs became more closely associated with theatrical personalities and shows, the  sheets were sometimes bound in ornate covers that featured elegant graphic design (Alphonse Mucha, Maxfield Parrish  and Toulouse Lautrec were just a few of the artists who kept wine and cheese on the table by doing commercial illustrations.) Off-set presses that stamped the sheets firmly enough to make the notes as readable by feel as by sight were replaced by the ornate beauty of lithographed sheets.

The invention of the gramophone in 1887 meant that the family who sang together was eventually replaced by the family that sat around the Victrola and cranked up everything from Enrico Caruso to Spike Jones. The original discs were heavy affairs.  Constructed of metal and coated with a heavy, brittle plastic, they were meant to last forever.  The sleeves of these early records were made of heavy pasteboard with the recording company’s logo stamped on one side.  Sold door to door or in dry goods stores,  they were sometimes packaged as a set in large binders of sleeves, from which comes the term “album” to signify a recorded disc of music.

Over time recording technology became even more refined and the devices used to play it became less cumbersome and appliance-like.  The advent of commercial radio and small personal transistors contributed to musical tastes to becoming  balkanised.  Teens emerged as a new market for prerecorded music and with it, the concept of the teen idol.  Elegant, understated covers gave way to splashy, colourful jackets for LPs and 45 RPM singles.  The printing processes for these also changed.  Offset printing on heavy rag and pasteboard gave way to slick, photographic productions, often printed in lead-based inks and coated with lacquers to encourage permanence.

The 1960s’ to 1970s’ are considered by many to be the golden age of LP cover art.  Developments in playback technology also brought about the rise of the audiophile, who wanted to enjoy his music free of the pops and skips that sometimes showed up after the second or third play of the now much thinner and far more fragile vinyl records.  Prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes became popular for this niche market and with them came their own set of environmental concerns.  The often cumbersome tapes required more delicate handling and a greater degree of mechanical dexterity than LPs.  From an ecological standpoint, they were more costly than vinyl.   They took quite a bit of non-renewable mylar and needed larger nesting lidded boxes for storage.

The desire for even more portability brought about the next generation of prerecorded tapes, first in the form of the plastic-heavy 8 track tape.  The ecological advantage of the 8-track cassette was its self-contained nature.  Little of the tape was exposed and the packaging was limited to an adhesive label displaying cover art and a track listing.  Unfortunately the playback devices for the 8-track were difficult to use and tended to break down easily.   They were eventually replaced by cassettes.

The rise of the audio cassette in the late seventies seemed like the perfect solution from a standpoint of eco-conscious consumption, portability and sound quality.  Unlike earlier recorded music, cassettes could be erased and used again.  The biggest drawback was that cassettes were often overpackaged, coming in plastic cases that were sometimes wrapped in paper sleeves.

The almost grail-like quest to find a media that was less fragile and subject of degradation of sound quality led to the next wave of technological change.  Compact discs and the short-lived mini-discs were still very plastic-heavy.  Relying on digital rather than analog sound reproduction, their primary appeal was the increased amount of data they could hold and their status as a solution to the fragility issue.  However,  serious music fans decried the coldness of the audio quality.

Resource consumption-wise, the compact disc, at least in the first ten years or so, was a nightmare. Retail outlets were often fitted with bins that were sized for the disappearing LP.   To accommodate the retailers existing fixtures, CDs within their hinged cases were packaged in tall cardboard boxes that were constructed to be the same height and half the width of an LP.  Artists made their concerns about the environmental impact of this known.  In 1989, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt were among the musicians whose releases were packaged in “digipacks” that combined the cover art, booklet and nesting case in one unit as an answer to what they saw wasteful overconsumption.

The waning days of the twentieth century saw the advent of the internet.  As computers became a common household feature and the internet replaced the mall as the marketplace of choice for new music, file sharing all but replaced the compact disc as the medium of choice for prerecorded music.  The digital marketplace grew even stronger with the increase of low-cost devices available.  Now the market has multiple industry giants competing for the attention and dollars of music consumers.

Are the days of a tangible product and complete ownership of prerecorded copies of music numbered?  While it would seem to be the case, niche markets exist and show no sign of going away.  Many specialty retailers such as Starbucks, Old Navy and American Apparel offer seasonal discs, often packaged in eco-friendly jackets that are printed with soy-based inks.  Rhino/Rykodisc, Blue Note and Putumayo are among the leaders of very specialized catalogs that continue to produce a product that is very specific in its asthetic and appeal while continuing to seek ways to lessen the environmental impact of their manufacture.  Consumers are also asserting the desire for handheld music that exists as more than a mere byte or two of DRM.  Many if not all used media stores and thrift shops are dusting off their LP bins and selling vinyl albums again.  Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s a way to use up something that was seen as a disposable.  To the people who watch our collective carbon footprint, the sound of all of those fans reusing resources that have been sitting in attics and garages for decades has to be music to their ears.

This article was originally posted on A Sustainable City

Green in the First Person is the continuing story of my gradual move off the grid and away from a carbon footprint that was smaller than most Middle  Tennesseans, but still too big for my comfort. 

Making big, ecologically friendly changes is like writing.  Almost everyone talks about it.  Some people swear they’re going to take those first steps towards actually doing it very soon, but few actually ever get beyond the talking stage. To be fair, weaning oneself away from the familiar comforts of relatively cheap and easy to get energy and the consumption of items that are costly from an environmental standpoint isn’t easy.  The majority of the people who make the transition fall into two camps. The first group, the Type A people, have marshaled their resources and educated themselves on the process and approach it in an orderly, methodical fashion.  They often relocate to areas that are less polluted and cluttered with temptations to lapse.  The second group consists of people who have found the need to green it up thrust upon them.

I wish I could say that I was part of the first group.  I had every intention of living la vida verde as soon as I could afford it.  Really. But that’s not how it happened.  I am living a life that has a radically reduced carbon footprint.  Where I used to take for granted that flipping a switch would produce light, a cup of coffee or the power to write articles, watch hockey games and run my carving tools; I am now thinking hard about how to budget the power I harvest from solar panels to cover games, write up my ethnology field notes and light the living room so I can spend a quiet evening reading a book.  It sounds harsher than it is.  I love what I’m doing but have to admit that I wouldn’t be where I am green-wise if not for a kick in the pants from my house.

My home is situated in a quiet, working class neighbourhood somewhere near Nashville,Tennessee.  All of the houses are roughly forty years old and so is the grid that powers them.  Over the years the system has been showing signs of wear and a decreasing ability to cover the needs of my small neighbourhood.  As more people began to work from home, as more people bought computers and household electronics have become nonstop electricity sippers and gulpers, as everything electronic got bigger and/or more powerful, brownouts got to be more common, especially during the holidays and evening hours.  Some residents have attempted to remedy the problem by installing bigger switchboxes.  Others have attributed the barely glowing bulbs and erratically blinking indicators as the sign of otherworldly interference and employed the services of prayer circles.

Two different electricians assured us that everything in the house was just dandy electricitywise.  They suggested we contact the local power company, NES (Nashville Electric Service).  They insisted the city power hardware was not able to support the houses it was supposed to power.  This  led to a few years of doing the laundry before six in the morning or after ten at night so there would be enough electricity to run the washing machine and dryer.  At least that was the way it was until Thanksgiving of 2011.*

The usual Thanksgiving brownouts were more severe than they had been in the past.  Lights blinked or didn’t come on at all.  Sometimes everything seemed to rev to scary, near blowout levels.  A visit from (yet another) electrician brought the same news: everything was fine.  The night after Thanksgiving, I saw smoke pouring from the living room.  A surge had hit our desktop computer, and there were flames and smoke coming from the tower.  The same surge took out almost everything else that was plugged in and all of our overhead lighting ceased to work for a few weeks.  Later that evening, another surge took out our gas oven which continued to burn on high even when turned off.  The emergency tech from the gas company looked around as I held a flashlight so he could see what he was doing and asked if we had considered bringing in an exorcist.  We assured him we would be calling an electrician or NES** on Monday.  As he left he turned to me and said, “If you hear a voice saying ‘Get out!’ you’d best do it!”

Shell-shocked and exhausted, we loaded all of the photos and  important papers into the trunk of my car.  I slept fully dressed on the couch, my computer and camera packed as if I was set to cover a game and the Jumbo Shrimp*** on a leash so I could grab him and go if the house caught on fire. This went on for almost two weeks.

The electrician who had come on thanksgiving rerurned, checked every outlet, the meter, the fuse box and everything in between and could find nothing wrong.  He told us to call NES, who promised to come out and take a look at their end of things.  We didn’t see them until a month later after a second set of calls.

Oddly enough, things got quieter between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We ate a lot of sandwiches and bought an electric griddle that we used on the one outlet in the kitchen that sort of worked.  At night, we used oil lamps and candles and sometimes felt brave enough to try an electric lamp if things weren’t blinking too badly.  Things were, if not normal, a little better.  In the mean time, one of our rather holiday-mad neighbors who happened to share a transformer with us had covered every inch of his front yard with Christmas lights, which stayed lit from sundown until the next morning, often causing us to switch off our sputtering CFLs and get out the matches and candles.   By December 25^th, all was calm and (relatively) bright. At least  it was until our neighbour followed his tradition of turning off his lights Christmas night.  The resulting power surge took out the TV**** and DVD player, every surge protector in the house sparked and melted and the CFLs in every room lit up even though the switches were turned off.   I expected Tangina the medium from “Poltergiest” to wander in from the back of the house and declare it possessed.

NES finally showed up, looked everything over, told us the transformer had been turned up as high as it would go and they had turned it back down.  They also informed us that our house needed rewiring and the electricians we had employed were of questionable skill levels or parentage or both.

At that point, we had no choice but to look for other ways to power our house.

Next week:  Casa Faulkner gets all zen, the Jumbo Shrimp learns to live without his night light, and I shop around for solar power.  

*That’s US Thanksgiving, which takes place in November sometime around the ¼ mark of regular hockey season.

**Nashville Electric Service

***The Jumbo Shrimp, aka Niklas Lidstrom the Shih Tzu, is an absurdly lanky, 20 lb Asian lapdog.

****Irony of ironies, we were watching “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” and had gotten to the part where Clark Griswold was warbling “Joy to the World” in front of his own house full of Christmas Lights.

This article was originally posted on A Sustainable City

So your neighbor has a Leaf in the driveway and a turbine spinning merrily as the bank of batteries in his garage stores away all of that renewable energy.  He wheels his cart of sorted recyclables to the curb and gives you a cheery wave as he pads back to his front door in bamboo pajamas.   You  look at your own, oh, so very eco-incorrect house and think…

Hang on.  Hold those dark thoughts, please.

Before you get all mean girl on Ed Begley, Jr over there,  keep in mind that you don’t have to change everything at once to make a difference with your carbon footprint.  Everyone has to start somewhere and before Captain Planet was walking around on his roof with a dust mop singing the love theme from “An Inconvenient Truth”, he was taking that first step towards becoming green.

The first step?  It could be an array or a hybrid or it could be something as simple as this little guy to the right:

Congratulations.  You’ve just had your first eco-lightbulb moment.  That funny looking, gadgety little globe  is the next generation in low-watt, low eco-impact lighting .   Commonly called LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) they use even less wattage than the curly compact fluorescent bulbs that have become a staple of every household makeover to-do list.  Inside these bulbs are the same diodes that were designed to illuminate indicator lights on computers and other items that needed small, low-energy illumination.

Like their predecessors, they are still a little on the spendy side, ranging from around ten dollars all the way up to thirty-five dollars per bulb.  Much of this depends on the brand, wattage and features you are looking for.  So why should you spend ten dollars for a light  bulb?  Let’s take a look at the numbers:

From an eco standpoint, LEDs leave incandescents and CFLs in the dust.  CO2 emission figures reveal the potential for a huge impact  that could be achieved if each household replaced just a couple of their current bulbs with LEDS.  A conventional incandescent bulb uses energy that puts out 150 pounds of CO2 annually.  CFLs are considerably better with an average of 35.3 pounds.  The LED?  In that same period of time your funny-looking bulb will have consumed energy that put out just a little more than fifteen pounds of CO2.  Quite a difference.  Even though there is a considerable energy savings that comes with using CFLs, they contain from one to five mgs of mercury, making them a nightmare to dispose of once they’re used up.  LEDs contain no hazardous chemicals and if the university studies looking for better ways to recycle them are on schedule, will be almost completely reusable by the time this generation of lights is due to be replaced.

Think the good news is all on the conservation side?  Think again.  LEDs are also great for your wallet.   CFLs and incandescents are extremely fragile and have a much shorter lifespan.  The average 60 watt incandescent lasts for 1,200 hours.  Its CFL equivalent at 15 watts lasts for 8,000 hours.  You can expect your 6 watt LED to stick around for 50,000 hours.  Breaking it down in kilowatt hours, dollars and cents, you may find that goofy-looking bulb gets prettier and prettier:  An incandescent bulb uses 109.5 KWh and costs 10.95 annually This price does not include original implementation or replacement, which is likely as turning them on and off causes significant wear.  The CFL is better with an annual usage of 26 KWh and costs 2.60 per year to operate.  That sounds great until you consider the fact that they may last a long time, but household wear and tear and extreme temperatures can cause failure, not to mention a hazardous mess.  LEDs  use about ten KWhs per year and cost around 1.10 to operate.  Impervious to on and off wear, abuse, being possessed of a long life means this this bulb will pay for itself long before its six years are up.

Bottom line:  LEDs are eco-friendly and make good economic sense.  So what’s stopping you?    They’re available at most home improvement stores and from online retailers like Amazon and Gaiam.  Time to take that first step towards a cleaner, greener life.

This article was originally posted on A Sustainable City

If everyone on Earth lived like North Americans, humanity would need four more of these (NASA)

Environmental indicators of our gross misuse of Earth’s resources are aplenty. Reduced air and water quality have been attributed to millions of human deaths per year. The world has seen an unprecedented number of extinctions since the year 1900 because of anthropogenic impacts. Food shortages have already arrived in many areas of the planet – the list of negative impacts could go on for days. Some things will simply not change in our lifetimes because of the throwaway culture that societies around the world have adopted.

Despite all of the things we are doing wrong, though, are things that we can do to mitigate our impact on the Earth.

Sustainable is a word that is often associated with the green movement. However, one does not need to look beyond their own daily habits to see sustainability, or the long-term maintenance of well being, in motion. For example, to sustain oral health, a person will regularly brush their teeth and floss. To get good grades, a student cannot receive an A and then fall behind as the semester continues, and so on. Much like a person’s well-being, the planet’s health (and our fate on it) ultimately relies on sustainability. The main premise of economics is how we manage the Earth’s scarce resources to achieve the most wants. With humanity’s population topping seven billion, our demands on resources such as clean water will only continue to grow, which is reason enough to continue to open up the discussion on sustainable development.

The landmark definition of sustainable development was established in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development’s (or the Brundtland Commission) report titled Our Common Future. The United Nations body defined it as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

What Does Sustainable Mean?

In trying to answer the question ‘what does sustainable mean?’ Dr. Gordon Hickey, a professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, relates five principles of sustainability that, if implemented, will greatly reduce our ecological footprint:

1)      Intergenerational Equity, or care for future generations, represents a belief that by reducing the ability of future generations to meet their needs is that, although future generations might gain from economic progress, those gains might be more than offset by environmental deterioration. It is in the future population’s best interest that we take action now.

2)      Intragenerational Equity, or care within a single generation, must be met in order to reach basic social and environmental needs. Gross disparities exist between the social and environmental quality of life of individuals, and it is in the current population’s best interest that we take action now.

3)      Conservation of Biodiversity is a core objective of sustainable development. The Biological Diversity Advisory Committee of Australia states that biological resources provide us with food, medicine and industrial products. Without our protection, the basis of our economies will falter because of depleted resources.

4)      The Precautionary Principle states that a lack of full scientific knowledge should not be used as an excuse to not take action in stopping potential serious or irreversible environmental damage. It also states that decisions should be guided by careful evaluation and that risks should be weighed.

5)      Internalization of Environmental Costs means that companies willing to invest in technologies and equipment that aim to minimize their environmental footprint should be rewarded with either tax breaks or compensation.

This article was originally posted on A Sustainable City

Organic Farming Pros and Cons

Unfortunately, industrial farming has now become the norm.

Organic farming as we know it today developed as an alternative to industrial farming as soon as industrial farming itself was developed. Some people realized immediately that industrial farming would be a dangerous path to take, both on the environment and on society. It gained momentum in the 1960s and 70s, but only appeared in government policy in the United States in 1990.

The natural world has a wonderful way of keeping itself in balance, until humans interfere too much, usually with the intent to exploit its resources for profit. Organic farming requires that humans work together with nature and do not control it. It is more labour intensive than industrial farming by not relying on heavy machinery and it requires limiting the number of external inputs and relying on the natural systems to control pests and disease.

There is one key difference between industrial farming and organic farming – that is that the concept of industrial farming is based on the notion that nature is insufficient and requires human intervention in order to be of any real value. Crops are seen as requiring synthetic pesticides and fertilizers in order to produce huge yields, despite declining nutritive value and damage to the environment. Organic farming is counter to this and its ideals extend beyond the application of particular farming practices to environmental conservation and social justice for both the producer and the consumer.

Organic farming has been found to be a better method of pest control than conventional farming. By not focusing on the absolute number of species, or the species richness, of organic fields, but the “relative abundance” of species, both pests and pest controllers, it was found that not only did organic fields have a more even number of species, but that these even numbers resulted in fewer pests and larger yields.

What About GMOs

One of the most controversial issues in contemporary agriculture industry is genetically modified foods. Proponents view vast possibilities as to what foods we can create, bounded only by technology. Some believe that this would provide the answer to world hunger, and some altered species have already been introduced in developing countries. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been shunned from the organic community based on the precautionary principle. We have no idea of the consequences of introducing altered organisms and their interaction with the environment, and the results could be catastrophic.

Soil quality, one of the most important factors in agriculture, can be sustained at a healthy level through organic practices. Crop rotation and natural fertilizers provide the proper ratio of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, and organic matter, which can often be destroyed through the use of chemicals.

One of the main problems associated with organic farming is the lack of universal standards to regulate what should be declared organic. Countries must develop their certification criteria and with globalized food markets, it is very difficult to be certain that products are wholly organic.

The USDA Organic label is one of several organic labels one might find on a product in the US.

Large-scale operations have begun capitalizing on the organic label, threatening smaller-scale farms and defying what is commonly thought to be the true ideals of organic farming. This can also be attributed to disparities between the legal definition of “organic” and what is commonly known to be organic. Lobbyists can convince governments to amend policies regarding organic farming in their favour. By doing this, some companies are allowed to legally call their products organic, even if they haven’t used true organic methods.

Some farms even aim to be self-sufficient, producing their own compost, feed for their livestock, and manure from their livestock. This plays into a school of farming called biodynamics. Although the science behind biodynamic farming has been characterized as dubious (it sometimes associates itself with astrology and other mystical beliefs), the practice itself is very sustainable. As the certification for a true biodynamic farm is much more stringent than for organic farming, it remains true to its core values of self-sufficiency and zero industrial intervention.

Organic farming is a much lower-impact practice than industrial farming. Greenhouse gas emissions are considerably reduced, food is more nutritional, and ecosystems and humans are much healthier. Considering it is a more natural way to feed ourselves, it is only a matter of time before organic farming becomes conventional farming.

This article was originally posted on A Sustainable City

Is Water a Renewable Resource?

Can the same be said for clean water? With the amount of freshwater lost due to pollution, poor irrigation methods, and intensive groundwater extraction, a shortage of water is a present day crisis, going hand in hand with climate change. However, these shortages are often localized, and large reservoirs of fresh water still exist on the planet; it might just be a matter of getting the water to where it is needed.

China faces one of the largest water crises in the world. With about one fifth of the world’s population, yet only 6% of the world’s freshwater supply, many of China’s largest cities face water shortages. Harmful agricultural practices are one of the most common causes of water loss, and Chinese water supplies are plagued by the runoff of fertilizers and the resulting consequences, such as blue-green algae blooms. Policy changes and infrastructure investments are the strategies implemented by the Chinese government, but it is going to take a long time and big changes for significant progress to be made.

A result of poor agricultural practices, large amounts of bacteria have collected in Lake Taihu in Eastern China.

Many northern and alpine communities around the world rely on the runoff from nearby glaciers as water sources. Water was always seen as a renewable resource but glacial retreat caused by climate change is threatening these supplies, as is happening in the Pamir mountains in Central Asia and in the Peruvian Andes, where 70 per cent of the world’s tropical glaciers are found. With a lack of water comes a depletion of food, as they can’t maintain their crops and their livestock. These communities do not always have many options for alternate water supplies and will eventually have to retreat to more water secure areas.

An abandoned ship and salt are all that remain where the Aral Sea once existed.

Central Asia’s Aral Sea is one of the most extreme examples of an anthropogenic water catastrophe. Devastating irrigation practices (which included canals on the surface of the land, allowing water to simply evaporate and runoff) to transport water to the desert to grow cotton cash crops for the Soviet government essentially drained what was once one of the world’s largest lakes. It is now less than 10% of its original size and the water that is left has extremely high levels of salinity and pollution, making it inhospitable for fish and unusable for humans. The now-exposed land that was once covered in water is now a desert – ripe for research, but useless as land.

It is not only the people who directly feel the impact of water scarcity who are the victims. The global population becomes a victim as agricultural lands which were once fertile dry up and are abandoned. In turn, more forests (which as carbon sinks for the world) are cleared and converted to produce crops and raise livestock. People abandoning their rural lives as a result of unstable water supplies contribute to the rapid urbanization seen around the world and all its associated problems.

Water is commonly thought of as a secure, renewable resource in developed countries, but it could potentially be the cause of serious conflict in the not too distant future. The Great Lakes contain one fifth of the world’s freshwater supply and transporting the water to more arid areas remains controversial. But if a country is desperate enough for water, will they be willing to fight for it?

We are often left with the idea that we have to rely on world leaders to solve all of the problems we are faced with, when in most cases, it is political inaction which is largely responsible for creating them. There has been no international agreement on securing water resources, as many hoped there would be during the 2009 COP 15 in Copenhagen. Even if global cooperation were to take place, it would be almost impossible to develop common and general water management policies and practices that could apply at a local level. Situations should be evaluated regionally, with a common set of principles to guide the process.

The impact of water crises are broad and far-reaching. Water depletion can destroy entire ecosystems, while “fierce national competition over water resources has prompted fears that water issues contain the seeds of violent conflict,” as former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan put it. There are no simple solutions, but one thing is clear, that water is a necessity and humans will have to ensure its availability for our survival.

This article was originally posted on A Sustainable City

In 1997, returning to California from Hawaii after completing the annual Transpacific Yacht Race, oceanographer Charles J. Moore and his crew aboard the Alguita made a startling discovery. Veering off course in an isolated stretch of the Pacific Ocean to investigate, the sea captain found traces of civilization surrounding his vessel.

“Every time I came on deck to survey the horizon, I saw a soap bottle, bottle cap or a shard of plastic waste bobbing by,” relates Moore. “Here I was in the middle of the ocean and there was nowhere I could go to avoid the plastic.”

The purported size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch within the NPSG (Flickr/The Sun and Doves)

Captain Moore and the crew of the Alguita found themselves in what was later called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of plastics and other pollutants located within the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG), one of the most remote regions on Earth. Centered by the Hawaiian Islands, the NPSG is made up of four major ocean currents and by some estimates is roughly the size of Latin America, while the Garbage Patch has been estimated to be the size of Texas, residing in a slow-moving zone of accumulation. Because the currents that form the gyre flow along the highly populated coasts of the North Pacific, pollutants (usually in the form of plastics) are lifted from these areas and, over a period of several years, are transported thousands of miles to the middle of the ocean.

The length of time the pollutants spend at sea coupled with degradation caused by sunlight takes its toll on the physical composition of the inorganic debris, breaking it down to the point where it largely becomes invisible to the naked eye. Because of plastic’s unique molecular composition, its polymers act as a sponge to harmful biological toxins such as PCBs and DDT. Studies by researchers at Tokyo University have revealed that pelagic, or ocean surface, plastics can concentrate these poisons to up to a million times their concentration in the water as free-floating substances.

Because the plastic particles and other marine debris are pelagic, they collect near the surface of the water…just like the North Pacific’s abundance of plankton and other microorganisms. In a zooplankton trawling expedition to find just how polluted the surface of the Pacific Garbage Patch had become, Moore and his crew collected more plastic and garbage than they did organic life.

“It’s not hard to make the connection that fish are getting tangled up in this,” says Moore.

Indeed, marine life has been greatly affected by the Garbage Patch. Laysan Albatrosses, birds that are best known for their sustained flight periods high above the Pacific, have been regurgitating bottle caps and other debris to their chicks as they nest in the northern Hawaiian Islands. Jellyfish and other consumers of pelagic plastics poison themselves, and in turn, poison their predators.

At the end of a hauntingly poignant circle, humans end up consuming the fruits of their polluting.

Captain Charles Moore holding a sample of water taken from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

This phenomenon regarding accumulated pollutants is not isolated to the North Pacific. Throughout the world’s ocean systems, gyres similar to the NPSG can be found in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Researchers are finding “plastic soups” comparable to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in these areas because of the proliferation of plastics in the world’s societies.

Unfortunately, cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other marine pollution would adversely affect the delicate nature of ocean ecosystems. Plastics rest in the pelagic zones of oceans – extensive surface skimming and near-surface trawling would be monstrously expensive and would remove lower life forms such as plankton from the ecosystems, severely depleting the food source of countless marine organisms.

While Captain Moore has become one of the foremost experts on this global issue, his view on how to mitigate humankind’s environmental impact on the world’s oceans is to adopt a radical new approach to the way we live. He suggests abandoning the “throwaway culture” society has adhered to for the last half century – which includes the way we package foods – for more sustainable living.

This article was originally posted on A Sustainable City