solutions « Global Change

Archive for the ‘solutions’ Category

Lindsey Graham on climate warming: “I am doing something different”

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

In a previous post, I mentioned that it’s worth listening to Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to understand what might move conservative politicians towards a serious conversation about climate warming.

Tom Friedman does just that in Sunday’s NY Times.

Graham’s reasons for taking climate change seriously: politics, jobs, and legacy. His story is unusual and refreshing:

“I have been to enough college campuses to know if you are 30 or younger this climate issue is not a debate. It’s a value. These young people grew up with recycling and a sensitivity to the environment — and the world will be better off for it. They are not brainwashed. … From a Republican point of view, we should buy into it and embrace it and not belittle them. You can have a genuine debate about the science of climate change, but when you say that those who believe it are buying a hoax and are wacky people you are putting at risk your party’s future with younger people.”

….And for those Republicans who think this is only a loser, Senator Graham says think again: “What is our view of carbon as a party? Are we the party of carbon pollution forever in unlimited amounts? Pricing carbon is the key to energy independence, and the byproduct is that young people look at you differently.” Look at how he is received in colleges today. “Instead of being just one more short, white Republican over 50,” says Graham, “I am now semicool. There is an awareness by young people that I am doing something different.”

Posted in behavior, climate economics, energy, solutions | No Comments »

Energy breakthrough? Have fuel cells for the masses finally arrived?

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Huff Post is running a story on a recent 60 Minutes piece about a new kind of fuel cell—the “Bloom Box” —that is already powering companies like Google, Fed Ex, and EBay (click on the link for video of this story).

It runs on natural gas, and two of these little boxes (about the size of a shoe box combined) could conceivably power your entire home.

Estimated cost: $3,000 for off-the-grid electricity.

It will be interesting to see if these are commercially viable and what else Silicon Valley has in store over the next five years. Along with electric cars, which roll into showrooms in a matter of months, we are on the cusp of some pretty big technology transformations.

Update: An educated guess from one of my colleagues, Andy Price, in the energy business:

I hope I am wrong, but the Bloom Box looks like it suffers from the same problem that all fuel cell companies are suffering from: their systems are really expensive per KW.

If Ebay paid $700,000 to $800,000 per unit for 5 units, as was suggested in the story, this would be $3.5 to $4 million. If they saved the stated $100,000 in 9 months this would be a 26 to 30 year payback – and with a fuel cell using natural gas you still need a natural gas pipe and have associated carbon emissions.

If Bloom can somehow deliver the dramatic cost reductions that they claim
this could start to look more attractive but until Bloom provides additional
details, it looks like more hype than substance. Many other well funded
companies including UTC, Honda and GE are working on similar technology and none have been able to deliver the big breakthrough. Yet.

Update 2: Wired comes to a similar conclusion–too pricey.

Tags: fuel cell
Posted in energy, solutions, sustainability, technology | No Comments »

Science Magazine considers whether decreasing meat consumption can increase global food security

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

12200621_740d218a53

In this week’s special issue devoted to food security, Science asks what it will take to feed 9 billion people by mid century.

Food insecurity—the inability of people to feed themselves—may rise if food supply cannot keep pace with population. This is a concern that goes back over 200 years to Thomas Malthus.

One theme shows up in a few articles: Can reducing meat consumption help in the battle to feed more people?

Erik Stokstad’s news feature (subscription required)¹ provides a nice lead:

The United States, for instance, has just 4.5% of the world’s population but accounts for about 15% of global meat consumption. Americans consume about 330 grams of meat a day on average—the equivalent of three quarter-pound hamburgers. In contrast, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that most people consume just 142 to 184 grams of meat and beans daily. In the developing world, daily meat consumption averages just 80 grams. Those numbers suggest that people living in the United States and other wealthy nations could increase world grain supplies simply by forgoing that extra burger or chop.

However, he interviews researchers and cites studies that raise a number of issues potentially complicating this story…

(more…)

Tags: meat and diet
Posted in behavior, food and agriculture, population, solutions | 2 Comments »

The humanities are key to environmental messaging

Friday, February 12th, 2010

article_spooky

It’s been an incredibly busy week, which explains the dearth of posts. But good things are happening, which I look forward to sharing.

As most of you know, there’s an energetic, ongoing debate about environmental messaging. With polls showing waning interest in climate warming as a serious issue, there’s a sense that the battle is being lost.

I mentioned in an earlier post that it’s often assumed that climate change science speaks for itself. All we have to do is publish good science and show the public a bunch of data, and this will lead to a collective consciousness demanding action on climate warming.

It hasn’t worked out that way.

One main problem is the failure to connect with people on a personal level. Thinking about the environment is not just about climate or wild nature; it’s about human nature, human experience, the intersection of nature and culture, how we interact with one another—things squarely in the domain of the social sciences and humanities. In order for society to connect with contemporary environmental issues, it’s critical that these voices become part of this conversation.

Yesterday, we brought back to campus Bowdoin alum Paul Miller (a.k.a., DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid) to perform his major work, Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica.

Paul’s work is a beautiful illustration of how one artist has been able to put a human touch on climate warming. His show was packed with a hyped-up audience that cut across a wide swath of young and old.

Try doing that with a science seminar.

Amanda Little reminds us that there are no silver bullets for solving climate warming, only silver buckshot. Paul’s work (and the work of other popular artists like him) is a great example of one of those buckshot.

____

Photo Credit: Tiffany Gerdes, Bowdoin Orient

Posted in behavior, communication and framing, nature and culture, polar ice, solutions | 2 Comments »

Is a post-Copenhagen roadmap emerging?

Monday, February 1st, 2010

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM ANNUAL MEETING 2010 DAVOS Over the past few years, there have been a couple of major approaches for dealing with climate change:

Use political tools to set emissions targets (e.g., 80% reduction by 2050);
Invest heavily in green technology to drive green energy prices lower. Only then will these technologies take hold. Carbon reductions are an important byproduct but not the main goal.

Of course these are not mutually exclusive, but they might as well be given the way they have played out on the political stage.

With a lot of people down on political solutions to deal with climate change, strong advocates of the latter approach may now gain the upper hand. Folks like Shellenberger and Nordhaus have been arguing that green energy needs to be produced as quickly and cheaply as possible—forget all of the games with cap and trade or carbon taxes. Tom Friedman has also argued the need for swift action on energy, while also endorsing political solutions like carbon taxes.

If you look for areas that are gaining or have the potential to gain traction, there seem to be two levers that may work:

the link between fossil fuel dependency, climate change, economic stability, and national security;
the fact that China is eating our lunch with respect to clean energy development.

Both of these general concerns have attracted Republican support for green energy and climate change mitigation, including Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

This may be a signal of potential game changers and the clearest path forward that we’ve seen in awhile.

_____

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Tags: Copenhagen
Posted in climate economics, conflict, energy, policy, risk analysis, solutions | 1 Comment »

Can we alter climate by installing white roofs?

Monday, January 11th, 2010

white

When reviewing the most popular words of 2009, I was surprised to see that “albedo” didn’t crack the top 5—Tweet, Obama, H1N1, Stimulus, and Vampire. I bet you were equally shocked.

Albedo is a simple concept—the reflectivity of a landscape—but it’s hugely important in understanding how the surface of the Earth impacts climate. As we saw in a recent post, things like thawing sea ice, northward advancing treeline, and asphalt paving all darken landscapes, causing more solar radiation to be absorbed and temperatures to climb—one of the reasons for the so-called urban heat island effect.

So what would happen if we were to install white roofs? In a forthcoming article¹ in Geophysical Research Letters (subscription required), Keith Oleson and colleagues use biophysical models to address this.

Their answer: White roofs reflect more sunlight and cool buildings. Averaged over all urban areas in the world, the urban heat island effect declines by 33%, causing maximum and minimum daily temperatures to decrease by 0.6 and 0.3 degrees C, respectively.

At face value, this sounds great. But, there’s a potential hidden cost of cool buildings—heating. Interestingly, they found that white roofs caused space heating to increase more than air conditioner use declined, suggesting that energy use might actually increase with white roofs!

¹Oleson, K. et al. (in press) The effects of white roofs on urban temperature in a global climate model. Geophysical Research Letters.

______

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/ / CC BY 2.0

Tags: albedo
Posted in behavior, climate adaptation, climate change science, energy, solutions, sustainability, technology | No Comments »

This week’s good ideas in campus sustainability: 1/11/10

Monday, January 11th, 2010

bikes-at-bowdoin1-300x240

This week’s spotlight is on the University of Minnesota and the University of Florida. Also, sustainability education makes USA Today and the NY Times.

1. U of M Energy Conservation Campaign Collects 10,000 Energy Pledges

Growing sustainability from the bottom-up in any community is challenging. Here’s one way that the Golden Gophers are working on it:

Getting 10,000 people at the University of Minnesota to agree on any one subject is difficult. But 10,000 students, faculty and staff do agree on one thing: saving energy on campus is important.

The U of M has just met its goal of collecting 10,000 energy conservation pledges from students, faculty and staff as part of the It All Adds Up campus energy conservation campaign. The 10,000 pledge marked was topped early Thursday after a flurry of pledges came in response to a university-wide e-mail from President Robert Bruininks asking the Twin Cities Campus to take the pledge.

The university rolled out It All Adds Up last spring in an effort to increase campus awareness about how each person at the U could play a part in saving energy. The energy conservation pledge asks individuals to take seemingly small actions – like turning off lights or powering down computers at the end of the day – with the understanding that if each member of the 80,000 person campus community did those small actions, it would all add up.

2. One Less Car Wraps As Alternative Transportation Increases

Here’s another bottom-up approach, and the FL Gators get a gold star for doing it with one of the hardest behavioral modifications—driving:

The second annual One Less Car challenge was a success, with nearly 1,000 people participating. More than 100 teams represented students, faculty, and staff from departments and units across campus. Together, One Less Car participants avoided over 260,000 miles of driving during the challenge. Through alternative transportation commutes, such as busing, biking, and walking, approximately 246,370 pounds of carbon dioxide were kept from entering the atmosphere.

The teams that used alternative transportation for the most miles were: The Office for Student Financial Affairs, The Florida Museum of Natural History, and The College of Dentistry. Final prizes were awarded to the teams with the highest average points per member: Extreme Backroads, Los Tamales Calientes, Radical Gainesville, Geography, and No glass on the bike lanes. Individuals also earned prizes for logging the most trips and avoiding the most miles of driving. Final prizes included: lunch from Satchel’s Pizza, bike tune-ups, Hippodrome Tickets, Gator Dining meal coupons, and tickets to the Butterfly exhibit at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

____

For more information: AASHE bulletin 1/1/10

Posted in behavior, higher education, solutions, sustainability, transportation | No Comments »

How do I find a green job?

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

3500294448_920a47aaaa

That’s the title of a column over at Grist by Bowdoin alum, Auden Schendler.

What I like about it is Auden’s emphasis on not waiting for sustainable jobs to slap you in the face. Rather, work to turn any job—your life—into a greener enterprise. Those entrepreneurial skills are tremendously important (Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat forever).

His book, Getting Green Done, is a case study on his doing just that at the Aspen Skiing Company.

_____

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/18767293@N00/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Posted in behavior, solutions, sustainability | No Comments »

The promise and perils of algae-based biofuels

Monday, December 28th, 2009

4150749229_b2791ab286

In a forthcoming article¹ in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Val Smith and colleagues describe why biofuels produced from algae have many benefits:

The current production of biodiesel (~2 billion gallons in 2006) is far lower than annual consumption of diesel fuel (44 billion gallons per year). Simply put, biodiesel crops can’t keep pace with demand. We would have to grow significantly more biofuel crops, which would affect land use by reducing the acreage of food crops or natural habitats.
Algae fats (lipids) can serve as the feedstocks for many types of fuels, including aviation fuel, which would be a major benefit because airline travel is a huge part of most people’s carbon footprints. Algae fuels are potentially carbon neutral. Making air travel carbon neutral would be a game changer.
Algae grow extremely fast—much faster than terrestrial plants (which are made into biodiesel or ethanol). They lack anatomical parts like roots, flowers, and woody stems that don’t help plants photosynthesize (making them more productive than plants).
One of the most amazing statistics in this paper is how much less land it would take to make algae based fuels compared to terrestrial plants because of the increased productivity of algae. To produce an amount of fuel equivalent to the global demand for oil, we would only need an area of land equivalent to 3-20% of current croplands. If we were to use biofuel plant crops instead, we would need about 2-8 times the amount of current global cropland. That’s so amazing I did a double take when I read it.
Algae can be grown in tanks on lands that are marginally useful for crops so that we don’t have to sacrifice croplands.
They can serve double-duty by removing excess nutrients from wastewater, thereby linking energy production and wastewater treatment.
Algal production virtually eliminates the use of herbicides and insecticides and uses much less water than growing crops for fuels.

They also point out an interesting pitfall:

Bioreactors containing algae are often unintentionally invaded by zooplankton that eat the algae. This can lead to predator-prey-type cycles in algae biomass, which is not good when you want to maximize algal biomass production.
The solution? Add fish that eat the zooplankton. This would cause “top-down” pressure on the zooplankton, keeping their populations in check.

¹Smith, V. et al (in press) The ecology of algal biodiesel production. Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

_____

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandialabs/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Posted in biofuels, energy, solutions, sustainability, technology | 3 Comments »