NYT: Enjoy your green stay. "Hotels now are rolling out all sorts of green programs, in part because their business guests in particular are demanding it, and in part because the hotels are finding that going green saves money."

2007 U.S. energy bill: update

A modified version of the energy bill (which I talked about briefly earlier) has passed the Senate (but must pass the House to become law!) - you can read about it here.

One provision that I thought was interesting, to say the least:

Price Gouging: Makes it a federal crime to charge an "unconscionably excessive" price for oil products — including gasoline. Also gives the federal government new authority to investigate possible manipulation of the oil market. Oil companies and the Bush administration strongly oppose this provision, which has prompted a veto threat from President Bush.

So basically, Bush might veto this whole thing, and throw away all this progress, because he doesn't think it should be illegal for oil companies to charge excessive prices on gasoline. Wow.

Freeganism: thinking outside the capitalist box

This article about the growing "freegan" movement in New York is #1 most emailed on NYTimes.com. (Freegans, according to freegan.info, can be defined as "people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.")

According to Bob Torres, a sociology professor at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., who is writing a book about the animal rights movement — which shares many ideological positions with freeganism — the freegan movement has become much more visible and increasingly popular over the past year, in part as a result of growing frustrations with mainstream environmentalism.

Environmentalism, Mr. Torres said, “is becoming this issue of, consume the right set of green goods and you’re green,” regardless of how much in the way of natural resources those goods require to manufacture and distribute.

“If you ask the average person what can you do to reduce global warming, they’d say buy a Prius,” he added.

I may not be all over dumpster-diving, but there's certainly some thought-provoking stuff here about how incredibly wasteful our society is, and how much capitalism is really a part of that.

Wikipedia has more about freeganism here.

2007 US Energy Bill

Here's an informative NYT editorial on the upcoming US energy bill and its components; here's NPR's coverage. The coal industry's push for coal-to-liquid power plants is a terrible idea, and even a goal of 20% renewable energy by 2020 is underestimating the American economy, not to mention American ingenuity. The fuel economy goal of 35mpg is unfortunately going to be one of the most necessary and possibly the hardest for the auto industry to swallow.

I really hope they don't mess this up.

AlterNet on Rising Tide

A good (but again, short) article from AlterNet on Rising Tide (link to the North American site), a group promoting nonviolent protest and resistance to advocate "a no-compromise approach of stopping the extraction of more fossil fuels and preventing the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure." I have a feeling we'll be hearing more from them in the future.

NYT Barry Commoner interview

A short but sweet New York Times interview with Barry Commoner, the "Paul Revere of the environmental movement."

Ask MetaFilter: what practical difference can I make for the environment?

From Ask MetaFilter: What can I do, from the big changes on down to the minutae, to make a difference to the environment?

It's a great thread of practical advice which is probably best that you just read instead of me summarizing it. Some of these things I've already started to talk about - eliminating bottled water and using energy-efficient lighting were two of the first suggestions - while others, such as home insulation, "food miles," flying, and all kinds of other things are topics which I plan to cover in the future.

How to keep your PC energy efficient

The New York Times offers some practical advice on saving the massive amounts of energy consumed by computers and other electronics each day. There's some really useful tips here for keeping your PC or Mac from becoming an energy hog. The Readers Digest version:

• Try the Kill-A-Watt EZ Plug Power Meter ($25, available online at places like this) to help show you how much power is being used by each appliance. The author of the article discovered his PC was using 134 watts all night every night. (Think about it - that's a 60-watt incandescent on for two hours, or a compact fluorescent on all night.) This was in addition to the TiVo, digital cable, cable box, etc.
• An insane statistic from the department of energy: "40 percent of all electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off." So basically, if there was no such thing as "sleep" or "standby" mode, our electronics would only consume 60% as much power.
  
• The author offers the CO2 Saver as a good way to ensure your computer sleeps when it should be sleeping, since Windows seems to be pretty unreliable when it comes to powering down like it's supposed to. I tried it out on my computer, and it seems to be pretty effective without hogging computer resources. My only complaint is that I wish it would start minimized, since it takes up a pretty big chunk of the desktop when it's maximized, and I'd prefer it to just run in the system tray quietly by default instead of having to press 'minimize' every time.
• The article also has a bunch of little tips when it comes to buying new computers, suggesting that buyers go for the new Energy Star requirements that go into effect in July, and saying it's better to generally go for smaller computers with less parts (like an iMac or a laptop) than a bigger, less efficient tower PC.
• In the end the results were significant: "Tweaking can pay off. Annually, my desktop PC is now using 73 percent less energy — saving me $119 a year and depriving the earth of 1,405 more pounds of CO2." Wow. Think about the thousands of pounds of CO2 you could save from the atmosphere just by changing some PC settings. It's worth it.
  

Photo by Flickr user meido*.

yikes!

Sorry I took so long to update - I decided to extend my blogging vacation since it was a pretty busy week.

Anyway, here's a few interesting news stories...

Quebec just introduced a carbon tax. "Quebec will implement Canada's first carbon tax in October, collecting just under one cent a litre from petroleum companies in the province, which will raise about $200 million a year to pay for energy-saving initiatives such as improvements to public transit." Hopefully it will work as a successful model for everyone else.

Wind power will supposedly make 20% of US energy by 2030. That's what "industry" people say at least. That's compared to the ~1% it makes today.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg is gaining support for his proposed congestion tax. Basically, he wants to tax all cars entering Manhattan below 85th (?) Street with the London congestion charge (as well as an existing system in Singapore, I think) as a model. It's a pretty good idea - I hear he also has plans to help out the city's green image with city hydro and solar power as well.

Carbon capture and storage: the new way to quickly and easily cut back on emissions? "Carbon capture and storage, also called carbon sequestration, traps carbon dioxide after it is produced and injects it underground. The gas never enters the atmosphere." The article makes it sound pretty safe, but I feel like this couldn't be a great idea for a long-term solution. Still, pretty interesting stuff.

And of course there was the G8 summit, where the 8 leaders of the G8 countries agreed to cut emissions significantly (or at least agree to talk about it more later this year) but I'll believe an agreement when they make some sort of actual pledge - let alone tangible results.

downtime...

Taking a vacation to New York for a few days - I'm seeing Animal Collective at the Seaport Music Festival tonight. (If you're in the area, call me - the show's free!) I'll start posting again sometime early next week.

Photo by Scott Foy.