Green Options

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In 2005, Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law Executive Order S-3-05 which sets a long term greenhouse gas emission reduction target of 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Reaching this ambitious target will require that California embark on a comprehensive strategy to make aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions over the next four decades.

Nationwide, electricity generation is is the second largest contributor to greenhouse gases. It is incomprehensible how the 80% greenhouse gas reduction target could be reached without tremendous amounts of renewable energy and energy efficiency. I am not saying that greenhouse gas reductions and renewable energy are the same but they certainly are not apples and oranges. I’d say they are more like oranges and tangelos. If we want significant greenhouse gas emissions, we’re going to need to ramp up renewable energy and quick.

The giant wind turbines on the west coast of Ireland stand not only on the geographical limits of Europe, but also on the cutting edge of a revolutionary technology that makes wind power more reliable and valuable. The 32 megawatt (MW) Sorne Hill wind park will be Europe’s first to integrate a large scale battery back-up system that ensures a reliable supply of electricity regardless of how the wind blows.

“The battery enables large amounts of energy from wind or solar power to be stored, managed, controlled and sent into the electricity grid when it is needed. It doesn’t matter whether the wind is blowing or not; the battery makes the electricity output predictable and reliable,” said Tim Hennessy, CEO of VRB Power Systems, the battery manufacturer based in Vancouver, Canada.

Nobody really knows what all was on the Cosco Busan when it sideswiped one of the supports of Bay Bridge, dumping about 58,000 gallons of oil into one of the country’s most famous and fragile ecosystems. That’s because globalization is grandfathered into our consciousness.

But at what cost? Solving the converging crises of climate change and peak oil, not to mention a plethora of others, would be an exceedingly difficult nut to crack even if we had full knowledge and information. Unfortunately, cracking this nut is probably impossible with our current level of thinking and understanding. We cannot hope to apply the necessary systemic thinking to our converging crises, because no one has a full view of the system. What we can’t see, we can’t consciously change.

Yesterday evening I went to hear a sobering talk in Berkeley by Five Colleges professor of Peace and World Security Studies, Michael Klare. Klare suggests in his newest book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, that we are now facing a new world order in which power transfers to net energy exporters (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kazakhstan) from net energy importers (e.g., the United States). He believes oil will peak between 2012 and 2015 at somewhere around 95-100 million barrels/day. Regardless of whether oil peaks then, he says supply will not be able to keep up with demand much longer.

From http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=76003

Klare points out that China will soon have the world’s largest fleet of automobiles - in decade or so - as they are following our model of auto-centric development. He had hoped that China would leapfrog oil to more sustainable mobility solutions but that is not happening.

There are a plethora of Earth Day events happening in the Bay Area over the next two weekends. Check out this comprehensive listing for a celebration near you!

Marine Science Institute Earth Day Celebration: Saturday, April 19, 2008
The Marine Science Institute invites one and all to come celebrate the Earth, San Francisco Bay and all things marine science. The day is jam packed with activities for the entire family, including four 2-hour discovery voyages on San Francisco Bay aboard our 90 ft. research vessel the Robert G. Brownlee, a lunch-time performance by the Banana Slug String Band, shark feedings, interpretive tables, fish and shark touch tanks, juggling and vaudeville presentation, ocean crafts, canoe demonstrations, environmental info faire, plankton shows, traditional Pacific Islander dancing, and much, much more.
Time: 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
For more information visit our website at www.sfbaymsi.org, or contact Aaron Tinker at (650) 364-2760 x16 or by email aaron@sfbaymsi.org. Entrance is FREE, but there is a cost for the boat trips. Pre-registration via website for the Discovery Voyages is strongly recommended.

I often ask myself why I continue getting the paper. Getting the newspaper is supporting an unsustainable practice of harvesting trees and manufacturing them into disposable items. And then something magical will happen.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to write tonight. A few minutes ago I found myself reading the book review section of the Chronicle. The article “Gender Identity and Phantom Genitalalia” initially caught my attention and ended with a great quote from V.S. Ramachandran, a neurologist and psychologist at UC San Diego and a leading authority on phantom limb sensations, who says it has long been known that some people who are born without arms have vivid phantom arms.

This post is a photo gallery from the East Bay Permaculture Guild’s Permaculture Bike tour in Berkeley this past Sunday. It was glorious day and a slew of people came out.

But first a little background on permaculture:

The word permaculture, coined by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren during the 1970s, is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture as well it is was permanent culture. Through a series of publications, Mollison, Holmgren and their associates documented an approach to designing human settlements, in particular the development of perennial agricultural systems that mimic the structure and interrelationship found in natural ecologies.

This tour shows what some folks in Berkeley are doing to live more sustainably: growing their own food, raising chickens, capturing, heating, and conserving water, and generating electricity.

Paul Fenn of Local Power called me first thing this morning. Paul wrote California’s Community Choice Energy law (AB117) and his firm is a finalist to operate San Francisco’s Community Choice Energy program, which will build 360 MW of local renewable energy. But thats not what he called about.

Paul was excited about Sonoma County’s plan to achieve “carbon-free” water by 2015 - that is, using renewable energy sources such as solar and geothermal to power the county’s entire network of treatment plants and pumps. The plan is close to being released and today the SF Chronicle reported on one of the key initiatives to take the waste out of wastewater.

I hope PG&E is not an advertiser on Green Options, because they almost certainly would want to censor this post. I feel compelled to do the post because a lot of folks in the Bay Area are concerned about PG&E’s effort to subvert California’s Community Choice Energy law (AB 117). So is the Attorney General; see the article below!
Community Choice enables cities and/or counties to pool their purchasing power and collectively bulk purchase electricity from their selected providers. It is structured as a private-public partnership in which cities do their own procurement, opting for greater quantities of renewable energy than they could with PG&E, and PG&E continues to do the transmission, distribution, metering, billing, and customer service.

This tour brings together two things that I think are very important - biking and permaculture. A $5 donation is requested, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. We’ll have a snack break around the middle of the tour, with light snacks provided. Please bring water, weather appropriate clothes, your favorite munchies and your thirst for knowledge. See you there…

That’s right, it’s time for this year’s East Bay Permaculture Guild bike tour in Berkeley.
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