Imagine what a difference this would make in so many U.S. cities. In the San Francisco Bay area there are two main highways to get from San Jose to San Francisco, 101 or 280. On the rare occasions that I need to go to S.F., I always pick 280, because it has no billboards. And because it goes through one of the most beautiful landscapes around here:
 

101 is a mess of billboards and ugly urban sprawl. 280 is a fresh breath of open space and rolling hills.

I hope that Sao Paulo can become a model for cities in the U.S. who want to improve on their physical environment.

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But.

Aluminum?

Yes, it’s recyclable. And it’s highly desired by recyclers.

You know why?

Because it’s one of the most energy-wasting metals to extract from the ore. The more recycled aluminum you can get your hands on, the more money you can make.

And now they make the entire iMac shell out of the stuff? Ugh.

So Steve touts the recycling aspect in his presentation, making everyone think “Wow, Apple is doing a great thing. Great for the environment.”

They’re not doing a great thing. And it’s not great for the environment.

But of course they don’t tell you that.

See my previous post for more details on how much energy goes into making aluminum, illustrated by soda cans.

Now, this is about the only bad thing I have to say about the new stuff that came out of the buildings down the street today. Everything else sounds and looks fantastic. One of these days I’ll have to break down and get one of these JesusMachines.

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Talking About The Weather, Part One

Talking About The Weather, Part Two

I’ll have to go back and read these one more time. Fascinating.

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One way to accomplish this is installing low-flow shower heads and installing drip irrigation systems instead of the sprinkler systems that are so ubiquitous around here. That got me thinking about how we can contribute to saving 10% of our water consumption. We already have low-flow shower heads installed. So the only thing to do extra there is turning off the water while soaping up, which should be doable.

But what about the watering system? We’re renting the house we live in, like so many people here in this hyper-priced area. We could ask our landlord to upgrade the system, but why should he? There’s not really anything in it for him. We pay the water bill, not he. It would only cause hassles. And cost him money. You can imagine how this plays out for other areas where it would be a good idea to improve the house to lessen your impact on the environment. Double-paned windows, attic and wall insulation, light fixtures that allow for energy efficient lighting to be installed (our house has the first two already, luckily). Usually there is no reason whatsoever for someone to make these improvements to a rental house.

This line of reasoning extends to a lot of other areas as well. Think about what we consider a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (and global warming) - cars. There are millions and millions of cars on the streets that spew out tons and tons of carbon-dioxide, but work just fine, thank you. Ours does (so far, knock on wood.) There is no incentive for people to suddenly sell their old car and buy a new one. And imagine what would happen if everyone wanted to do that at the same time, owing to some miracle. Due to the enormous supply of cars, the price you could get for your old car would plummet. That would make it even less attractive, even if everyone had a change of consciousness suddenly.

All if this leads me to believe that one of the large problems that has to be solved politically to work on environmental issues is how to deal with the “installed base” (to use a software development term.) I have no idea how to do that without using taxation. It’s not like you can just push down an update over the Internet. And I know very well that talking about taxes in the U.S. is almost the same as committing political suicide. So if you are concerned about issues like this and have some bright ideas that don’t involve taxes, let’s hear them!

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Today, we have no idea how our actions impact the environment or society around us and far away. Machines powered by fossil fuels enable us to extract as many natural resources as we want, crave or desire from the planet. Industrial processes turn those resources into “stuff” for us to buy and use, and often use up and throw away. And machines transport our waste away from our communities.

Most of us are completely disconnected from the natural world by using money to buy stuff. All we know is that this widget or that gadget costs X.

We don’t know how much energy was used in making it. We don’t know what raw materials went into it. We don’t know how the raw materials were transported. We don’t know how production affected the environment. We don’t know how much the people working on it were paid, and whether that was a fair payment. We don’t know how discarding it will impact the environment.  

We don’t know anything except the price. And very often the people making the gadget externalize lots of costs. Especially the costs of throwing it away and how that contributes to slowly making our planet a pigsty for us to slowly suffocate in our own waste. Along with all other living beings. Everything we use and throw away still stays on the planet. It may not be in our neighborhood because it gets transported “away”, but it goes somewhere. We don’t know exactly where. We don’t know exactly how.

Since money is all we know, money seems to be the only answer to modifying behavior. That means that if a society wants to influence the way its members behave, the only way to do that is through taxation. If buying gas for your car causes the atmosphere to heat up, tax it some more to make people think of other ways of getting around. If buying a computer will cause toxic chemicals to leak into our water supplies once it’s discarded, tax it some more so people will think of other ways of accomplishing what they think they need a computer for. And use the taxes to support responsible re-use and final disposal, to support research into ways to design products with re-use in mind, to support mindsets that encourage living sustainably and lightly on the earth.

I know that lots of people bristle at the idea of taxes. It just seems to me that we as a society don’t understand anything but money, so we need to use monetary means to get to societal ends. The biggest of which is our obligation to future generations of the human species to enjoy life as we enjoy it right now.

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Take a wild guess at how much of the energy in the gas you put in your car actually goes towards transporting you. Don’t be afraid to lowball it. Write it down.

How did you go about it? Did you use the fact (which is fairly common knowledge) that car engines are about 30% efficient? Good. But 30% is not the answer. Did you pay attention to how the question is worded? “Towards transporting YOU”?

How about idling, energy lost in the driveline, energy lost on powering accessories in the car? With all that, about one-eighth (12.5 %) of the energy reaches the wheels. Around half of that heats the tires, road and air that the car pushes aside. That leaves about 6% or so applied to moving the car forward. When you figure in that your mass compared to the car’s mass is about 5%, that leaves less than one percent of the energy in the fuel for transporting YOU. Let’s be generous and say it’s actually one percent. Here’s a little visual of that number for you:

That’s a scary waste in my book.

Here’s more to make you think: A friend of mine, Stan King, did some calculations based on a discussion we had at a recent simplicity circle meeting at our house. I had wondered how bicycling compares to driving in terms of energy efficiency. He took on the task of figuring it out. When you convert the amount of energy needed to bike a mile and convert that to the car’s miles-per-gallon equivalent, riding a bicycle has a “miles-per-gallon” of about 650. That number makes hybrid cars pale in comparison.

When you consider that 99% of the energy in the gas is wasted on things other than transporting you, the passenger, riding a bicycle has a “miles-per-gallon” of over 6500.

Compared to that, hybrid cars seem almost like stone age technology.

This is the thinking behind our family’s decision to stick with one car, even though it creates some inconvenience. It’s also why I bike to work practically every day.

And just so you won’t think I pulled these numbers out of thin air, there’s a Wikipedia article that states a 653 mpg for bicycling, which matches Stan’s number well. The calculation on the efficiency of cars can be found in this article by Amory Lovins from July 2006. The journal this was published in can be downloaded here (3.17 MB PDF).

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It’s this:

Almost every result talks about how much energy is wasted when you don’t recycle a soda can! It’s the equivalent of filling the can halfway with gas and pouring it out. If that idea won’t make you think more about recycling aluminum cans, maybe this calculation will:

Half a soda can is 6 oz. A gallon has 128 oz. So 21.333 empty cans thrown away equal a gallon of gas wasted. My car has a tank capacity of about 15 gallons (I think). So it would take 320 non-recycled cans for me to waste a tank full of gas. My car can travel about 300 miles on a tank of gas. I certainly don’t want to waste energy like that. Especially energy coming from our dwindling oil reserves. We’ll need that oil for lots of other things besides burning it for transportation. For example, most plastics are based on oil, and I wonder how many cool and wonderful gadgets and gizmos (needing plastic enclosures and parts) we won’t be able to produce in the future if we run out of oil. Pardon the digression.

Anyway, now I’ve used my illustration and even given it a little surprising Google story to go with it.

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——————

The free market economy of boundless growth is unsustainable, since we live on a planet with finite resources.

Future generations have just as much a right to enjoy life as the current generation.

Future generations have just as much a right to enjoy a life of the same quality as the current generation.

Conspicuous consumption, as demonstrated by American consumers, will destroy our natural resources if adopted by countries such as India and China. A lot of people in India and China are already aspiring to the lifestyle of American consumers.

The only way to change things in the world is by changing personal behavior.

Once you’ve changed your personal behavior for the better, get others to follow.

The only chance you have for getting someone to do what you want, is to demonstrate that you do it yourself.

Voluntary Simplicity is about living more purposefully with a minimum of needless distractions.

People who practice Voluntary Simplicity realize that more material possessions do not equal increased happiness in life. Often, the opposite is true. More material possessions can actually diminish happiness in life.

Voluntary Simplicity does not dictate how or how much you simplify your life. Only you can decide when you’ve reached the point of “enough” in your life.

Voluntary Simplicity is not about depriving yourself, living in poverty or lowering your standard of living. It is about living more consciously, focusing more on “inner life” than “outward appearance”.

By practicing Voluntary Simplicity you can become a role model for a new lifestyle that will enable future generations to enjoy life.

By practicing Voluntary Simplicity and spreading the word you can help change America’s conspicuous consumption philosophy. You can help people in other countries see that there is another way to live besides consumerism.

——————

To find out more about Voluntary Simplicity, check out the links in the sidebar on the right, and also take a look at these links:

• Excerpts from the book “Voluntary Simplicity” by Duane Elgin (http://www.awakeningearth.org/books_bvs_excerpts.asp)
• Soulful Living (http://www.soulfulliving.com/voluntarysimplicity.htm)
• The Northwest Earth Institute (http://www.nwei.org/)
• Simple Living America (http://www.simplelivingamerica.org)
• The Simple Living Network (http://www.simpleliving.net)
• Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska (http://www.simplelivingtv.net)
• Simple Living Resource Guide (http://www.gallagherpress.com/pierce/index.htm)

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There’s been a big problem with e-coli infested spinach lately. Apparently this was tracked to a big company in California, which markets pre-washed, bagged spinach to a lot of supermarkets. I’m not sure if the FDA has pinned down exactly what the root cause of the problem is, but Andy, one of the farmers of the CSA we are a part of, says it may have a lot to do with the industrialized processes they employ to get the product out there. That, and the bags make a nice little greenhouse for the bacteria to grow in. For full details read his article on the matter. If you belong to a CSA, particularly twosmallfarms.com, you don’t have to worry about things like this.

The CSA farmers make sure that your food is grown organically and delivered to you in safe condition. One more reason to bypass big, industrialized processes and go small and local.

Go find a CSA near you (Search engines are your friend) and say goodbye to worries about food safety.

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