Ships of the Desert

It seems that the price of oil is driving up the price of the camel in some parts of the world. Quadrupled in the last three years.

Paul Krugman said it on Saturday in his blog at the Times, quoting an article in the Financial Times from the day before.

There was a pice on Talk of the Nation on NPR a little while ago that spoke with businesses that were doing well because of the changes in the economy. Pawn shops -- hookers ... and camel sellers!

I've been thinking about alternative modes of transportation lately. I can't help but wonder what I will do if it really costs $100 a week to fill up my tank with gas.


photo link

I learned today that camels live to be about 60-80 years-old. That's a long time to serve.
I'm glad to learn that camels will eat their owner's tent if they get hungry enough.

"“It’s very good news,” says Mr Singh, whose organisation aims to dispel the image of backwardness associated with camel ownership and tries to promote higher economic returns for breeders. “We had started to see camels, even female ones, being slaughtered for their meat. Now they are replacing the tractor again.”

It is too soon to say that the future for camels is bright. Shrinking grazing areas and a lack of investment in fodder trees may thwart a sustainable revival. Inadequate nutrition undermines the resilience of camel herds, making them vulnerable to disease and lowering birth rates."

You can try to go back to where you came from, of course. Of course you are always going there with your new self.


"Camel 2005"
photo by Chuck Henderson

The question is how do we sustain ourselves ...
what kind of world do we want for the future and the future or our children.

No News is Good News

I was reading this story this morning -- and I kept waiting for the news... there doesn't really seem to be any. But it's a good story, none the less.

There are, in fact, biologists and chemists working to create fabrics, materials, glues and fillers that are made out of alternatives to oil.

Harnessing Biology, and Avoiding Oil, for Chemical Goods.

"'As petroleum prices go up and climate change becomes a serious concern, the economy will have no choice but to switch to a chemical base derived from plant materials,' said Dr. Richard Gross, director of the Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing of Macromolecules at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn."

Dupont is a leader -- I think that's sort of ironic -- and gives me a little bit of a bad feeling -- as in, well, we've been giving you toxic products for years, but now that that's confirmed we have the technology to make a new generation...

"The chemical industry is beginning to make that transition, at least for a few products. One success story is a method developed by Du Pont, with Genencor, to ferment corn sugar into a substance called propanediol. Using propanediol as a starting point, DuPont has created a new polymer it calls Cerenol, which it substitutes for petroleum-sourced ingredients in products like auto paints."

In a way it's a relief; there was an article I read earlier that said we were going to need to go back to wearing more and more animal fur -- somehow it sounded like a lot of carnage. This non-news offers a glimpse into the realm of a future generation of products.

On the other hand, and maybe it's just the moon, I have to wonder what we will concoct next.

A Vast Spiderweb of Pipelines

Having tired a bit of the news lately, I've been looking at more industry sites. My newest find is OilOnline. "Your on-line source for the oil industry."

I don't know -- I guess I'd heard of off shore drilling plenty -- just never really thought about what this would mean.

"Strip away the water and sands from the Gulf of Mexico’s Outer Continental Shelf, and you’ll find a vast spider’s web of pipelines – some 28,000 miles of pipe crisscrossing the Gulf from Texas to Alabama. Although deepwater pipelines currently account for a small fraction of the total, that’s where the industry’s focus has been for the past decade."


Source: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

In college, two of my best friends and I went camping on Corpus Christi. We camped right on the beach and listened to the waves and the sand. It's one of my favorite places in the world, I think -- though it was a very rough camping night. It was so windy we thought we were going to blow away until someone had he life-saving idea of putting the spare tire from the rental car in the tent. I remember warm Lone Star beer being part of the scenario too... That was 18 years ago, I guess. I went back on my camping trip with my dog a few years later. There was a seafood joint called Snoopy's there. I'm always a sucker for Snoopy. I wonder if it looks different now. If our tent would be sandwiched now between the rattlesnakes and an enormous oil rig.

In 2006 the National Geographic reported on "the successful discovery of oil at a staggering depth beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico."

"The well delves through 7,000 feet (2,134 meters) of seawater and more than 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) of seafloor to strike oil in the lower tertiary formation—a layer of rock laid down between 65 million and 24 million years ago."

I've been looking for about 20 minutes now and I can't seem to find any reports on the environmental effects of the drilling. The National Geographic doesn't mention it -- and I can't seem to find anyone else mentioning it either. This seems strange to me.

I did find a site called the Gulf Of Mexico Foundation -- that says it's purpose is to promote conservation in the Gulf of Mexico. See now, don't try this at home. It looked like a lovely site from the start -- with pictures of coral and clams and things. But when you look at the partners there are lots of big oil dollars attached -- and while the site reports on problems in the Gulf with fish and coral, it doesn't mention oil at all and offers up many negative stories about drug companies, wind farms, biofuels and why coastal residencies.

The ocean is being mined. I'm remembering again my friend Michael, the oilman and deep sea diver warning that we are killing the oceans. That we could reenter a time when the oceans cannot sustain life at all...

Vast spiderwebs of subterranean pipelines abound.


photo by Richard Ling
link

One Love

I've been interested in the rise of coal production -- I've noticed a few bad signs in my readings over the last few months -- law exemptions, plant openings... the kinds of murmurings that are single lines in disparate stories from time to time.

I wrote my favorite friendly climate scientist, Dr. Andrew Dessler to ask what he'd heard of late. All he said was that "coal production is an unmitigated disaster and should be halted immediately."

Of course, that's not what's happening.

A report from the Energy Information Administration, the official energy statistic site from the US government, projected coal production for the next many years. "In the IEO2007 reference case, world coal consumption increases by 74 percent over the projection period, from 114.4 quadrillion Btu in 2004 to 199.0 quadrillion Btu in 2030 (Figure 54). Coal consumption increases by 2.6 percent per year on average from 2004 to 2015, then slows to an average increase of 1.8 percent annually from 2015 to 2030."

Furthermore, " Although coal currently is the second-largest fuel source of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions (behind oil), accounting for 39 percent of the world total in 2004, it is projected to become the largest source by 2010. The two key factors underlying the increase are a more rapid projected growth rate for world coal consumption than for oil consumption and the fact that carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy output are higher for coal than for oil or natural gas. In 2030, coal’s share of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions is projected to be 43 percent, compared with 36 percent for oil and 21 percent for natural gas. "



I still keep thinking of Dickens -- and illustrations from his books of coal filled air. (This is one of the originals from Bleakhouse.)

One of the biggest factors right now is China -- where the country is changing so rapidly and is searching for ways to keep up with their own population.

But all over people are seeking alternatives to oil. I was reading another story in the Times today about wood heat -- it seems that all over the North East folks are dragging out their wood stoves to combat heating prices. Sounds good to me -- when I was younger, I lived with my mom in the middle of nowhere Maine -- we used an old Russian fireplace for heat -- a wood burning chimney that heated the whole house by conducting heat through bricks and tile floors.

"Air pollution is still a major concern, particularly with wood boilers. A 2006 report from the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, a nonprofit association of Northeast air quality agencies, found that average particulate emissions from one outdoor wood boiler equaled that of 22 wood stoves, 205 oil furnaces or as many as 8,000 natural gas furnaces."

That I did not know. I didn't want to know it, either.


(From A Tale of Two Cities.)

Yesterday I talked a little bit about the pitfalls of two opposing motivations finding themselves with the same goal -- I was referring to the desire to find an alternative for oil -- those who would like to find an economic relief from the price of oil and those who would like to find an environmental relief from the price of oil may both move to further the production of ethanol. Still, because their motivations are different, should something go wrong, one group may no longer find the solution palatable. What then?

My friend Debbie said the question reminded her of a protest she saw in downtown Boston a few years ago -- there, Orthodox Jews and Nazi skinheads were protesting along side each other in condemnation of Israel. The Jews believe that Israel is an error because it is the requirement of Jews to live in peace with all living things. Not so much the Nazis.

Is one group glad of the others' success? Do the ends justify the means?

For me, it made me think of a very different situation -- but one, too, where opposing motivations wind up in collaboration of sorts. If one person is pursuing love and another is pursuing sex and the two find themselves together...


(Bleakhouse: The morning.)

What we want is not the same. What we need ...

One Love, One Heart
Let's get together and feel all right
Hear the children crying (One Love)
Hear the children crying (One Heart)
Sayin' give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Sayin' let's get together and feel all right

Let them all pass all their dirty remarks (One Love)
There is one question I'd really like to ask (One Heart)
Is there a place for the hopeless sinner
Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own?
Believe me

One Love, One Heart
Let's get together and feel all right
As it was in the beginning (One Love)
So shall it be in the end (One Heart)
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
One more thing

Let's get together to fight this Holy Armageddon (One Love)
So when the Man comes there will be no no doom (One Song)
Have pity on those whose chances grove thinner
There ain't no hiding place from the Father of Creation

Sayin' One Love, One Heart
Let's get together and feel all right
I'm pleading to mankind (One Love)
Oh Lord (One Heart)

Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Let's get together and feel all right

-- Bob Marley

Back to the Future

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal's Environmental blog "Environmental Capital" ran a post discussing a new type of vehicle featured at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show in January. "Flex-fuel." As the name would imply, these cars can run on either ethanol, petroleum or a mix, I believe. According to the blog, GM hopes to make half of its production "flex-fuel" by 2012.

2012. I find myself asking again what the future will look like...
Who will be running for re-election; will there still be snow storms like the one we had last night...

As a total aside, I was watching "Meet the Robinsons" last night with my kids. It's such a sweet movie -- one of the best parts of it is the idea of a rejected orphan looking into the future and seeing huge happy playful family. May our futures be happy... At any rate, I started wondering how much of my theory of time -- of how everything in time is linked inexorably and every tiny thing leads to the present -- a theory that gives me much peace -- I wonder how much of my philosophy of time and faith in the past has to do with growing up with shows like "Star Trek" and "The Twilight Zone" I watched with my dad when I was really little -- and later movies like "Back to the Future" and "Groundhog Day..." Charles Dickens must have really shocked people in his day.

I digress.

First of all -- "Flex-fuel" cars fulfill all requirements of being a hybrid vehicle despite the fact that they need never run on anything but petroleum. Loophole much?

Also necessary -- Right now, ethanol isn't widely available enough to count on. Jane Huckabee owns a "Flex-fuel" car -- but can't find corn oil anywhere...

Furthermore, when you do find ethanol, the $.40 or so savings per gallon is canceled out by a possible mpg reduction of over 25%, according to a December story in the Times.

Some of this argument has to do with the pursuit of ethanol as a monetary relief. $1/gallon ethanol is shimmering on the lips of the future...

And then there are the environmental warnings... in the last year many stories have been written about the environmental dangers of growing corn enough for real fuel consumption -- and the pressure on food production -- of ethanol.

Even if we give car companies the most sympathetic of motives -- that they really do want to be part of the solution and are trying to be flexible moving forward to adapt to changes as they might arise... even then we've got issues.

Maybe part of it is that groups with different motivations coming at one problem for entirely different reasons are linked in an unnatural way...

Money and the environment.

If some people are looking for an alternative to petroleum based solely on price -- and others are looking for an alternative based on the environmental situation the use of petroleum worsens -- can those people really work together without the needs of one group ultimately outweighing the other.

Does investment on future promise eliminate our being able to really look around to see what's not working as we go -- do we get into a track we can't find our way out of through momentum...

If the only real purpose of finding a new energy source is to save money we need a time machine to look at that future... the air, the water, the fields...


The Twilight Zone Gallery at SCIFI.com

Energyville

Well, I started out writing about a court case -- Environmental groups and local officials up in Alaska are suing to block the development up there -- and it looks like Shell has to wait for the court case to begin exploration on its lease of some 29 million acres of land... I may get back to this tomorrow -- in the meantime I've been playing a game...

Energyville.

I clicked on a paid advertising link on the New York Times article page and came across a very elaborate web site of the Chevron Corporation.

Energyville is a game where you (I) make energy decisions for the future of an imaginary city -- I didn't realize it was imaginary at first though; you put your own town's name in and it calls your city that name. I was really impressed until I noticed the plan and stats are the same for Cambridge and Dallas and Afdser. Energy levels, the site asserts for each city (2007-2015) are based on projected production patterns and lifestyles of prosperous countries in North America, Europe and Asia. There, factories consume/will consume 41.59 percent of the energy consumed; vehicles 19.83%; trucking and freight 9.05% airplanes 2.7%; single family homes 9.09%; apartment buildings 6.53% and commercial buildings 8.48%.

Anyway -- you go through the city and you substitute different energy sources for the current usages -- wind, solar, nuclear, coal hydro and bio fuels -- there are buttons for a few emerging energy sources -- but those options are unavailable because they haven't been discovered yet. The game supposedly tracks cost, environmental ramifications and security risks.

Not surprisingly, this game is an advertisement. After a few substitutions it tells you you need petroleum, and it makes sure to mention the problems with each alternative energy source along the way. I had never thought, for instance, of the issue of sea storms with off shore wind farms -- seem like black outs could conceivably go on for a little longer than usual... If you only load your city up with petroleum, on the other hand, it tells you that you need to work on diversification. Man cannot live on oil alone.

But what alarmed me most about inside of the game was the down play of the environmental effects of coal and nuclear power. The lead story in the Times today is about languishing nuclear waste sites -- waste hasn't been buried -- "The federal government is at least 20 years behind schedule on its obligation to bury nuclear waste." The addressing of our current state solely as a production and energy issue, and not as an environmental one seems to me the most damaging issue before us presently.

The other disheartening thing on this site was a link to the Kyoto Protocol. I spent some time reading some of the text of that agreement. I like the fact that I now have a PDF of the entire thing on my computer...

Elsewhere on the site, Chevron had a set of e-cards that was a print advertising campaign in the New Yorker:







Well, while I would certainly support us all going out and getting tandem bikes, driving a little slower, and downsizing out need for more more more, it seems to me that by offering this focus to consumers Chevron is saying one thing -- the need for larger changes are out of our control -- focus on what YOU can change and trust us to take care of the rest...

Since beginning this project I have made a lot of changes to my life - I've been quite happy about them, and keeping up with them to varying degrees. But I certainly don't think they are going to save the polar bears.

(As an aside I think someone needs to take a look at the health effects of florescent lights.)

Well -- I feel a little badly, but I'm not going to link the Chevron site here. If you really want to play it should be easy enough to find...

They also have a cool little counter on the front of the front of the page ala MacDonalds:
4.57 million gallons of oil were consumed during the writing of this post.

Essential Human Elements

Robert Bateman, Canada
Antarctic Evening – Humpback Whales

I'm still needing art. And I think it's interesting -- at a time when there is so much money being generated by and for oil in this country alone -- that there is no money for the arts. Some of this is a philosophical issue of what we choose as our values and what is important -- other is just logistics. Artists can't afford to do their work and live in this culture. In talking about funding for the arts -- and I include poetry and performance in this term -- we have to look at the role and purpose in art. Politics? Entertainment? Meaning? If we starve the arts what conversations do we end...

Yesterday, Andrew C. Revkin of the New York Times bemoaned the lack of initiative in this country. Hard to imagine I could possible be more cynical than a New York Times reporter, but really -- we don't even back the UN...

Following the environmental tenants of that organization is this statement:

Internationally co-ordinated work on the environment has been led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), since its inception in 1973. UNEP has provided leadership and encouraged partnerships to care for the environment, for example, through Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) which have addressed issues such as species loss and the need for conservation at a global and regional level. UNEP has created much of the international environmental law in use today.

The three environmental principles of the Global Compact are drawn from a Declaration of Principles and an International Action Plan (Agenda 21) that emerged from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janerio in 1992. Chapter 30 of Agenda 21, identified that the policies and operations of business and industry can play a major role in reducing impacts on resource use and the environment. In particular, business can contribute through the promotion of cleaner production and responsible entrepreneurship.

The UN is a supporter of the arts in this endeavor.

"Science informs the mind, music and the heart but art connects with the human spirit," said Achim Steiner, Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UNEP.

I love that. The human condition, right -- great art explores the human condition. Maybe that is part of what makes this particular topic so compelling, and so easy to integrate in terms of aesthetics and politics in a way that doesn't alienate one from the other -- demise is not foreign to the soul at all...

Steiner goes on to say: "We urgently need to empower all three of these essential human elements if we are to rise to the challenge and seize the opportunities for economic, environmental and social renewal glimpsed through the lens of climate change."

25% of the worlds oil reserves are believed to reside in the Arctic.
The icebergs are melting at a rate that far exceeds all expectations.

For UN World Environment Day 2007, the Natural World Museum in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme produced an exhibition that addresses the theme of Climate Change from a global perspective - the melting and thawing of ice, snow and permafrost are environment-altering changes taking place around the world- from the Andes to the Himalayas to the melting ice caps of the Poles. "Change" the transition that occurs from same to different, the moment of transformation, a change of position or action. Change used in reference to our environment can describe the transformation of material substance -- from ice to water, liquid to gas - the changing conditions of our rivers, our rapidly melting glaciers,, and the overall changes in the earth's climate. Change requires organisms and organizations alike to adapt to new environmental conditions. Metaphorically, change can also refer to the transformation of society's mindset to act in a positive way individually and collectively to work toward a more sustainable future.
Press release from the Natural World Museum.

The Exhibit will be at the Field Museum in Chicago from April to October of this year.
I want to go.

Justice Is Blinded 2

I'm going to cheat today.

The article that caught my eye this morning is about a coal company. In my defense, I never do this -- in my other defense, this relates to a post earlier this week that was about oil -- and in my other other defense, coal and oil are inexorably linked, as the use of coal begins to rise based on the threat of oil supplies tightening...

Furthermore, it's about a court case -- and I don't think any discussion of a court case and an energy law stands alone against the backdrop of the Supreme Court, which this spring is slated to hear the damages case against Exxon Mobil for the Valdez crash.

“In West Virginia, there is a proverb that says that everything is political except politics, and that is personal,” said Conni Gratop Lewis, a retired lobbyist. -- The New York Times.

The story comes out of West Virginia, and has to do with a case that was thrown out in November -- a $50 million dollar fraud case against Massey Energy Corp. That judgment was declared on a 3-2 vote. The case is being reopened after photos surfaced of the chief justice and the CEO playing golf.

On Thursday, several plaintiffs in the case — mining companies that say they were driven out of business by Massey — filed a separate motion seeking the disqualification of a second judge in the original majority, Justice Brent D. Benjamin. Justice Benjamin was elected to the court in 2004 with the help of more than $3 million in advertisements and other support from Don L. Blankenship, Massey’s chief executive and Chief Justice Maynard’s dining companion in Monte Carlo.

The judges don't think there's a problem. They say they remain impartial -- and that the scrutiny is unwarranted. Two weeks ago, Massey settled another suit:

CHARLESTON, W.Va., Jan. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Massey Energy Company (NYSE: MEE) today announced that it has settled a Clean Water Act lawsuit filed in May 2007 on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The $20 million settlement avoids expensive litigation, resolves questions about the company's potential liability and enhances Massey's environmental protection efforts.

I said in the older post that the judgments in these cases were so high, they dwarfed the price of elections... it worse than that -- the profits of these energy companies dwarf the expenditure of governments. Massey alone holds $3 billion in assets -- with sales in the neighborhood of $200 million. Exxon Mobil made 39.5 billion in profits in 2006 -- and that was before the increases in oil prices last year. Annual numbers should post soon for 2007...

It makes me really dizzy. It's one thing not to think of our politicians as justice oriented, but to think of how political our judges are -- it's a level of undermining the authority in this country I simply don't know how to reconcile.

Justice. A justice. Language again -- just the title "justice" trains us from the beginning of our education to expect good from them.

I am thinking this morning -- what if everyone walked around as the personification of their job -- that which they are charged to impart. We could call a teacher "a knowledge," a doctor could be, rather than a healer, "a healing." A poet would have to be called " a truth." Geez I'm glad that's not my title. We argue about the nature of truth all the time...

What can we really expect of each other? What can we really expect from them?

Paint The Town Green

I used to be an interior house painter. Well, maybe that's true -- and an exaggeration at the same time. I used to paint houses -- it was my summer job for a number of years -- and I think I did it after college for a while too.

I was the youngest on the crew -- I was probably 17 when I started -- maybe younger. We painted with oil-based and Latex paints. We used oil-based mainly for woodwork -- which, as we were painting primarily in Cambridge and Brookline, in big old houses, some of which were on the historic register, there was a lot of.

Because I was the youngest, and also the least experienced, I did a lot of the sanding. So much so that I usually couldn't shower when we were prepping a job -- my hands were so raw and red that I had to wear tape and gloves all the time. I also painted the insides of closets. It's funny the things you do that you don't really think about...

The inside of a closet is a good place to learn, as no one is going to look carefully for inconsistencies of weight and line. I would end the day in a closet kind of high and nauseous -- often having forgotten to take breaks, so entranced by the task -- and the chemicals -- at hand.

Oil-based paints -- they work better, spread better, have richer tone and quality. I imagine they are used far less frequently than they were then -- two decades ago.

Today I read a line in the New York Times which took me back to all of this -- in sort of an alarming way:

The Gaia’s list of green features is inspirational: solar panels, low-emission paints, adhesives and sealants; certified sustainably harvested wood; recycled-content carpets; recycled tiles and stone; low-energy windows; tubular skylights; a chemical-free landscape of native plants.

Cars have emissions. Trucks -- planes -- Paint?!

Here's a quote from an environmental site, which sites as its source the EPA.

House paint is quite a cocktail of chemicals, and these chemicals become a permanent resident in your home once spread all over your walls. That strong and pungent odour is a perfect example of what's being added to your indoor air. These chemicals, called volatile organic compounds (VOC) continue to be released into your home long after the initial smell has disappeared.

VOC fumes can cause headaches, dizziness, as well as irritation of the eyes, nose and throat. Combine paint fumes with all the other chemicals in your home (cleansers, air fresheners, bath & beauty products, pesticides and more), and you can have indoor air that is 2 to 5 times more polluted with organic compounds than outdoor air.

Turns out, the time in the summer when all the college students are home painting houses has its own name -- "peak painting and smog season." According to the Air Quality Management District, an office of the government,

Emissions from the application of architectural and industrial maintenance coatings during the summer months, typically known as the peak painting and smog season, are estimated to be more than 38 tons each day.

The good news is there are new paints being formulated. There are hotels in San Francisco that use them. And today, I don't feel so bad about letting the paint peel unattended on the front of my house... although I do have a little fear there is some lead paint up there, which is now falling to the ground and leaching into the soil...

Backwards

Backwards: at or towards the back or rear. in a manner or order or direction the reverse of normal.

I looked up the definition of this common word this morning because I wanted to try to get at the relationship between actual movement and the nature of movement. I guess I need to pull out the OED, but at least this is a start -- in any event, the idea of powering things with coal seems "backward" in both regards.

An administrative judge on Friday affirmed a controversial permit granted to Longleaf Energy Associates LLC for a coal-fired power plant in southwestern Georgia, the first to be approved in the state in 20 years.

This from Energy Law 360 -- which, it turns out, costs $3,000 a year after the first trial week -- so it's only headlines from here on out.

The language of the story --

The Energy Law headline reads:
Ga. Judge OKs First Coal-Fired Plant Permit In 20 Yrs.

The headline in the article in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution reads:
Environmentalists Lose Bid To Stop Coal Plant.

Language -- Energy Law puts the issue in context -- history -- they put it into the legal realm with the word permit.
Atlanta Journal and Constitution puts the emphasis on the negative -- they get the environmental issue right up front.

The thing about headlines is -- they are often misleading -- they are almost never written by reporters, and it is their job to get you to read the story, not to report the story. Still they can often give away a lot about emphasis and goal.

This from the legal abstract:

VIII.
That granting this petition will prevent waste, avoid the drilling of unnecessary wells, promote orderly development and protect coequal and correlative rights of all owners in the Mobley Creek Field.

Coal. I sort of try to imagine the pollution of Dickens' streets magnified to the level they would be given our daily energy requirements now. In the last few days I've been noticing a cropping up of stories about nuclear energy plants. It's scary -- there would be the hope that we would move forward with our new understandings about global -- environmental and resource -- energy consumption. What if that's not where we are headed at all?

We go back to what is known -- places, objects, people -- what we know how to do, where we know we can find fuel and power. We go back despite the dangers -- despite the known effects. What is known is always less scary than the abyss of the future we can't fathom or recreate.

Backwards.

In my pursuit of definition this morning, I came across a site where a guy recorded Led Zepplin's "Stairway to Heaven" in both directions. You can listen at http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking.htm
I'd always heard about this, but never heard... very strange... I swear language and information have a life of their own...

Forward
“If there’s a bustle in you hedgerow, don’t be alarmed, now, it’s just a spring clean for the May queen. Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run there’s still time to change the road your on.”

Backward
Oh here’s to my sweet Satan. The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan. He’ll give those with him a 666, there was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.

Owing to Bad Oxygen

The General Theological Seminary in Manhattan is going green.



The seminary was founded in 1817 and is a New York city landmark. The Seminary is undergoing all sorts of renovations, and one of them will be to dig a geothermal well in the parking lot. There's an article about it in the Real Estate section of the Times. I know, I really have to read some other papers...

“When we’re able to disconnect our two boilers that run off gas and oil, we’re able to eliminate 1,400 tons of carbon emissions” in a year, said Dennis Frawley, project manager for redevelopment of the campus.

Geothermal heating systems, I've been attempting to vaguely understand this morning, draw on the core heat of the earth for both heat and cooling systems. There is an entire city in Iceland, Reykjavik, that runs on this type of energy. I'm thinking at least a pilgrimage is in order -- to see the Northern lights and swim in a hot spring. I knew when I said I wanted to move to Greenland I meant Iceland. (Language! One of the earliest propaganda campaigns is still working.)

The master plan for the seminary is “green.” The idea is to install geothermal wells for all 19 buildings.

“There’s no other way to go; it was the right thing to do for the earth,” said Dean Ewing, who is renovating his historic Tennessee homestead in a similarly environmentally conscious manner. “The economic payoff in energy savings won’t come for more than a decade, but it’s worth it.”

The coolest thing I found was in an article about the original groundbreaking of one of the seminary's buildings. An article from the Times, published on January 26, 1884, the paper reported:

Assistant Bishop Potter, remarking that any ecclesiastical occasion like the present was incomplete without the presence of a foreign Bishop, introduced Bishop Scarborough of New Jersey, who believed that architecture had a great effect upon men and upon students. He also believed that when students felt their lecture was dull it was owing to bad oxygen...

Okay -- now once we get past the fun thinking of New Jersey as foreign, or simply being able to access articles on-line from 1884, it's so great that these are the people digging geothermal wells in the middle of Manhattan nearly 200 years later.

And the last line made my day. Owing to bad oxygen... What if all of our feeling of dullness in regards to what we take in is owing to bad oxygen? What if we could fix the air, one room and one building at a time? What if, then, not only would the air be clean and food be more reasonably priced, but our interactions, too, would take on a new luster? Isn't it a thought -- anything in our lives lacking in intensity, force or brilliance, suddenly, with that new air, could take on saturation and sensory life...

Corn Dump Hours

When I was between the ages of 8-11 or so, I lived in Maine, on 17 acres of land. I have been thinking about that time a lot lately -- about the ghost in the woods, the small old family cemetery near the brook, and the snakes that lived in the wood pile.

My mother designed the house we lived in and built it together with a carpenter whose name I can't remember, but he had a great laugh. The house was heated by a Russian fireplace, fueled with trees cleared for the building. We used water from a well in the front yard.

My mother also gardened. Down by the road, about a quarter mile from the house, she had a whole acre garden. I hated it -- though there's nothing like the taste of corn picked, then eaten immediately, raw for breakfast. Corn is hard on the earth though, and you have to rotate where you plant it each year because it sucks all the nutrients out of the earth.

The sugar in corn is what makes it such a good fuel.


Lynn L. Walters for The New York Times

Today I strayed a bit, to begin to learn about ethanol. Ethanol is not oil. Ethanol is seen as the leading replacement contender to oil. Ethanol production -- energy made primarily from corn -- is on the rise. It's so on the rise that there's been a bit of a glut on the market this fall.

The Times reported in September:

About 1,000 pumps at the nation’s 179,000 gasoline stations offer gasoline blended with ethanol...Congress essentially legislated the industry’s expansion by requiring steadily higher quantities of ethanol as a gasoline blend, a kick-start that was further spurred by the proliferation of bans on a competing fuel additive used to help curb air pollution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/business/30ethanol.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


Nate Hagens, a PhD student at the UVM Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, reported on The Oil Drum this morning:

Recent increases in oil prices in conjunction with subsidy policies have led to a dramatic expansion in corn ethanol production and high interest in further expansion over the next decade. President Bush has called for production of 35 billion gallons of ethanol annually by 2017, which, if achieved, would comprise about 15 percent of U.S. liquid transportation fuels. This goal is almost certain to result in a major increase in corn production, at least until marketable future alternatives are developed.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3285#comments

Recently, a book was published by the National Academy of Sciences about the implications on the environment of the growth of these programs. It's not good. Both water use and degradation will be huge -- fertilizer and pesticide use. The taxing of the land.
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12039

I think it's time to invest in a tandem bike for commuting with the kids.