Full Circle Farm - CSA - First Pick Up

We got our first box of fresh, semi-local produce today.  We signed up to receive a box every two weeks.  The one we chose is a little different from most CSAs (Consumer Supported Agriculture) because the food isn't all local.  Some comes from the Pacific Northwest.

When I went to pick up the box yesterday about 4:30pm at the CH2MHill Building (we could go through a lot of possible interpretations about what it means that a CSA distributes its food at the company that took over from VECO, but I'll leave that for readers to do) I couldn't find anything.  It turned out that the distribution was in the cafe, but it was locked up and no one seemed to have a key.  I was told they closed at 3pm but the pickup was supposed to be from noon to five. 

I looked through the glass and saw a little white sign about Full Circle Farm  , and I could even see two boxes under the counter.  But I couldn't get in.  Phone calls later confirmed we could get it this morning.

J went and it's a little worse for having sat all night in the box, but looks ok.  Our partner in this is coming over soon and we'll divide the food up.  Here's the list of what we got.

J and our partner did most of the arrangements here, so I'm still figuring this out.  I don't know if it's all organic or not, I'll have to check it out.  And also figure out how much the equivalent food might have cost at the market.  This comes to $41 every two weeks.  I know it's a lot more than I would get for that at Rainbow Foods in Juneau, but what about Sagaya here.

Just posting this as a news item, I don't know enough yet to make any judgments.

Wait... here's a Yelp review.  The other two are similar.

Penny A.

Girdwood, AK1/21/2009

I have priced out the cost of purchasing the same amount of organic produce at the grocery store and have definitely found these boxes to be an excellent deal IF you use all of the ingredients!  Sometimes stuff included is really wilted in which case FCF is good about making corrections by adding extra to the next box or issuing a credit.
Sometimes it was a delightful treat to get our box and others it felt like a burden on my shoulders: all of this food that I had to cook and prepare!

Fresh Greens

A friend, whose garden is already doing really well, dropped a bag of fresh greens off the other day.  Since we didn't get back until the very end of May, we have no home started seedlings this year.  Plus where we used to grow vegetables has gotten pretty shady over they years. 

We did join a CSA this year - that's Consumer Supported Agriculture.  I learned about those when I was working in Thailand and wrote a long post about it then, including links to some Alaska CSAs.  

This is a way to support local farmers by agreeing in advance to buy a box of freshly grown food every one or two weeks.  J set this up and I think we pick ours up every two weeks.  We joined with other friends and we'll split the bounty. 

I'll post more about this option later.  This one we joined brings up food from Seattle during the winter so it's not really all local. Until we have more greenhouses using alternative fuels (such as the Seeds of Change program that will use steam from the Municipal electrical plant), we're not going to have many local vegetables here in the winter.

This bok choi and lettuce was fantastic.  Thanks D.

What You Can Do About the Gulf Oil Despoilation?

You have lots of choices.

You can fret.
You can curse at BP and call them all kinds of nasty names.
You can  wash oiled seabirds (probably doing more good for your ego than for the birds.)
You can send assistance to the people whose livelihoods are affected.

Or you can start using less fossil fuel.  Here's one simple thing you can do:

Hang Your Laundry Out to Dry

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy says

. . .dryers are the most energy-intensive "white good" in the house, so it pays to use them efficiently.

HA!  Even better is to use a clothesline.  Michaelbluejay writes on a page devoted to calculating energy use related to washing and drying:

The Japanese are way ahead of us on that one -- they use most of the modern conveniences we do, but clothes dryers aren't among them.  Even in the luxury apartments, you'll see the residents hanging their laundry out on their balconies.  I asked my Japanese friend what they do when it rains for a solid week, and she said, "We just hang the laundry up inside."

I wanted to be able to tell you exactly how much one load on the line instead of the dryer would impact US energy use.  It's not easy because it varies and because there are different ways to calculate.   Most sites focus on how much you save in dollars per year (assuming, I guess, personal gain is more appealing that doing general good.)  But here are some numbers.  The US Department of Energy has a chart which shows energy consumption per appliance.  It shows about 9000 Kwh/year for the average US household dryer use.

Note:  You need to have a sense of humor when you read all these statistics.  Earlier I had a quote that says that dryers use the most energy of "white goods" in the house, which this chart doesn't show.   And the The California Energy Commission says, "A dryer is typically the second-biggest electricity-using appliance after the refrigerator."  Maybe refrigerators come in more colors.


A March 2009 Wall Street Journal article that looks at the carbon footprint of five products (Cars, shoes, laundry detergent, jackets, milk, and beer)

The U.S. emits the equivalent of about 118 pounds of carbon dioxide per resident every day, a figure that includes emissions from industry. Annually, that's nearly 20 metric tons per American -- about five times the number per citizen of the world at large, according to the International Energy Agency.

See, this isn't easy.  (A lot of the 118 pounds per day is industrial, not household.) First kilowatt hours now pounds of carbon dioxide.  And this WSJ article focuses on washing, not drying.  But, hidden in the article is perhaps the most useful (though who knows how accurate?) bit of information:

The biggest way to cut the environmental impact of cleaning clothes, however, is to stop using a clothes dryer. Drying laundry outside on a line, Tesco says, will cut the carbon footprint of every load by a whopping 4.4 pounds.

It's clear that dryer use is an area where we can, without a lot of trouble, reduce energy use.  Yes, it will take up a little more time to hang up the laundry, but it will also provide some exercise, get you outside, and perhaps you can also notice the flowers and the birds.  Plus the laundry has that great outdoor smell. Though I've talked to some people who always got their laundry from a dryer and think the feel and smell of dryer clothes are natural.


So, big deal.  What difference will it make if I hang up the laundry instead of using the dryer?  It's the collective impact, not just one person.  But as you hang up a load and a million others do the same it starts to matter.  Just like the impact of one potato chip is no big deal.  It's the second and third and one hundredth potato chip that leads to headlines like in today's ADN for this NY Times story: "Plus-size trend grows on retailers."



Look, you don't have to stop using your dryer altogether.  But if one million households (the Census Bureau estimates  (p. 7) about 103 million households in the US,  so that is just under 1% of all the households)  dried one load a week on the line instead of in the dryer it would save 118 million pounds per year, which happens to be the same amount as the average American uses per day times one million.

It's a start.  It's a couple of potato chips less.  And once you get used to doing it once a week, adding a second load a week isn't all that hard. 

Technology was supposed to make our lives easier and there is no doubt that the washing machine has liberated American women from hours of hard work per day. (I know that might sound sexist, but when washing machines were introduced, women did most of the household laundry.)  But sometimes the old technology works better in the long run and the new technology isn't better, it's only better for corporate profits.  (OK,  corporate profits help the economy, except nowadays a much larger proportion of those profits are going to executives rather than to the workers and suppliers.)

My 88 year old mother has never had a dryer and to this day hangs her laundry to dry every load.  Now she does live in Southern California so that helps.  But you can hang things out to dry inside as well.  And in the winter when heating systems suck the humidity out of the house, hanging the laundry to dry adds a bit of moisture to the air.

And there are lots and lots of ways to hang out your clothes.  We have a 25 year old Cordomatic that we can use outside or inside.  

Tiptheplanet gives you more options for air drying racks than you ever thought existed.



And when you've gotten used to hanging out the laundry, here are some other things you can do:

Energy-saving strategies (from michaelbluejay.com)

Here's how much various strategies can save you.

Easy Strategies
Strategy	Up front cost	Savings per year
(1) Use space heaters to heat only the rooms you're in, (rather than a central system that heats the whole house), and turning off the heat when you're not home.	$80	$1023
(2) Use ceiling fans instead of the air conditioner	$100 if you don't already have ceiling fans	$438
(3) Turn off lights you're not using	$0	$274
(4) Use a clothesline or a laundry rack instead of a dryer	$20	$196
(5) Sleep your computer when you're not using it	$0	$178
(6) Wash laundry in cold water instead of hot or warm	none	$152
(7) Turn off a single 100-watt light bulb, from running constantly	$0	$131
(8) Replace ten 60-watt light bulbs with compact fluorescents	$32	$123
Total	$232 once	$2515 every year

And everyone is responsible for getting two more people to hang up their laundry once a week too.  This is something you can do and know that you are making a difference instead of fretting about the oil gushing into the Gulf. 

Brussels to Köln

As I wrote the title I wondered why I write the English version of Brussels and the German version of Cologne.  Probably because I don't know French, but I can get by in German.

We're in a tiny German town with a strange name visiting friends and I'll post on that next, but here are some pictures of the train ride.

We took a taxi from the hotel to the Midi Station in Brussels - about ten minutes for just under €10 [the symbol for Euros on the US Mac keyboard is option+shift+2].  (According to my computer's currency conversion, that's $12.64, the Euro really did lose value since we got here.)  All you have to do is ask and people tell you where to find your train.  English works fine. 

Here's a trash bin on the station platform.

Leaving Brussels.  That dome was visible on the picture I posted the other day from our Brussels hotel.

This is a second class car.  This is one of those sleek trains.  It never seemed to go all that fast, but it was wonderfully quiet.  The sign on the door to the next compartment announces wifi, but I'm still not going to pay their rate for two hours of wifi.  I noticed it continues to be true that the fancy hotels charge exorbitant fees for wifi and the less fancy hotels offer it for free.  Our hotel in Brussels had free wifi.

I'm not sure if this is Liege or Aachen, the two places I remember the train stopped.

You can tell we're near Köln because you can see the famous cathedral.

I didn't realize how close the train station was to the cathedral until we got there.  But we only had twenty minutes until we caught the next train on to Wuppertal, so we didn't wander out of the station to see the Cathedral.  (We have been there before.)  This is from the train platform.

We crossed the Rhein and were soon in Wuppertal (30 minutes from Köln) where we were picked up by HG and his daughter A.

Tide's Changing And I'm Feeling Inadequate

Our Juneau sojourn is coming to a close before long.  We're staying until almost the end of the session.  But our daughter's in Berlin for six months and this is a good time to go see friends and relations on that side of the Atlantic, plus our son's in DC, and I have a conference at the end of May which is pushing us to have a much shorter stay at home than I would have planned.

I wandered off to some committees I don't normally go to yesterday and today and I'm a bit overwhelmed trying to write about them.  I went to Sen Resources yesterday and House Resources today.  I'm telling myself that no one can keep up with everything and to relax.  The video will give you a sense of what I listened to for over an hour.

  It's not as though I couldn't understand what they were saying, I just don't know the larger context and history in this area.  The man sitting to the right a Marcia Davis in the video is Acting Oil and Gas Division Director Kevin Banks who I know through the Alaska Returned Peace Corps Volunteers group.  He did say that the goals in setting up tax incentives are:
1.     To find incentives that will affect the behavior the way you want (to develop Alaska oil and gas)  AND
2.      To find the right level of incentive so you are[n't] giving away more than you have to.

Easier said than done, I'm sure.

I've been coming to believe that without the Legislative staff - both the Legislative Affairs Agency and Leg Legal as well as the legislators' individual staffers - and the career staff in the Executive Branch agencies, the state would be in deep trouble.   There are some very knowledgeable legislators and some that I have serious questions about.  But even if they were all good, the shear amount of work and the rapid pace preclude a lot of thoughtful review and analysis. 

I'm not in a position a judge how well the two bureaucrats who were testifying yesterday perform their jobs, but minimally, they know the regulations well.   I was impressed.  

Another incentive discussed was for gas storage.  Rep. Hawker testified on his bill that had just passed the House and was now being taken up by the Senate.  Fortunately, there are people far more knowledgeable on these things than I who are reporting.  Here's the beginning of Wesley Loy's piece in Petroleum News the other day:  

Gas storage bill passes

Alaska House votes 38-0 for act to encourage Cook Inlet gas storage, exploration

Wesley Loy

For Petroleum News

The Alaska House of Representatives on March 24 passed the Cook Inlet Recovery Act, which provides tax credits for construction of natural gas storage projects plus incentives for gas explorers.
The legislation, House Bill 280, could emerge as one as one of the state Legislature’s top energy initiatives for the session, which ends April 18.
The bill addresses a major and increasingly popular concern — a looming shortage of Cook Inlet gas, long the primary fuel for heating homes and businesses and for generating electricity for the state’s main population center including Anchorage.
The vote in favor of HB 280 was a resounding 38-0 with two House members absent. The prime sponsor was Rep. Mike Hawker, R-Anchorage.
The bill now moves to the Senate, where similar legislation is pending, Senate Bill 203. Its sponsor is Anchorage Democrat Sen. Hollis French, who is part of the Senate’s bipartisan majority. [The rest of Loy's piece is here.]

Today I sat in the House Resources Committee.  While the topics overlapped somewhat, it was a very different presentation.  Consultant Mary Ann Pease presented a Commonwealth North Report on rail belt energy - particularly the declining natural gas production compared to the need and ways to be sure the need can be met.

This was in the Ramona Barnes Conference room and I sat below this 82 pound salmon.  

And this is just a tiny bit of what's happening.

SB 220 Alaska Sustainable Energy Act Lunch Overview

Senate Resources Committee Co-chairs Senators Bill Wielechowski and Lesil McGuire hosted a pizza lunch as their staffers Michele Sydeman and Mike Pawlowski discussed SB 220 and what they learned during a summer trip around the state - alternative energy projects that worked, state programs people liked, and what's in the current bill.
[This was last week, but it took a while to get the video done.]




The report was quite detailed and I looked in vain for the power point online where they suggested to look.  But here's a link to all the documents up with the bill on BASIS.

I was impressed by the quality of the presentation - it gave a clear overview of the bill and various projects around the state, plus it gave a fair amount of detail.






The first video offers some snippets from the presentation, enough to give you a sense of it.




Given the fast pace of the legislature, where no one seems to be able to put more than a few minutes together before they are interrupted, I was curious how this report and the bill had gotten the quiet time necessary to put something like this together. So, when I saw Sen. Bill Wielechowski in the hallway after the presentation I asked him.




I'd also note that one of the peculiarities of the bi-partisan majority in the Senate is the amount of cooperation between the Republicans and Democrats, as with these two co-chairs, a Democrat (Wielechowski) and a Republican (McGuire).

NYTimes Suggest US Iran Divestiture Is Complicated

House Bill (HB) 241, sponsored by Rep. Gatto and co-sponsored by Reps. Ramras, Keller, and Lynn, calls for state funds (retirement, permanent fund, etc.) to divestinvestment in Iran has passed the Alaska House State Affairs Committee and is now in the Finance Committee.  It is modeled in part after similar federal legislation. 

But the New York Times today says the federal law isn't working very well because, among other things, companies doing business in Iran also do business that helps US.  Here are some exceprts:

The government can, and does, bar American companies from most types of trade with Iran, under a broad embargo that has been in place since the 1990s. But as The Times’s analysis illustrates, multiple administrations have struggled diplomatically, politically and practically to exert American authority over companies outside the embargo’s reach — foreign companies and the foreign subsidiaries of American ones.

Indeed, of the 74 companies The Times identified as doing business with both the United States government and Iran, 49 continue to do business there with no announced plans to leave.

One of the government’s most powerful tools, at least on paper, to influence the behavior of companies beyond the jurisdiction of the embargo is the Iran Sanctions Act, devised to punish foreign companies that invest more than $20 million in a given year to develop Iran’s oil and gas fields. But in the 14 years since the law was passed, the government has never enforced it, in part for fear of angering America’s allies.

That has given rise to situations like the one involving the South Korean engineering giant Daelim Industrial, which in 2007 won a $700 million contract to upgrade an Iranian oil refinery.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the deal appeared to violate the Iran Sanctions Act, meaning Daelim could have faced a range of punishments, including denial of federal contracts. That is because the law covers not only direct investments, such as the purchase of shares and deals that yield royalties, but also contracts similar to Daelim’s to manage oil and gas development projects.

But in 2009 the United States Army awarded the company a $111 million contract to build housing in a military base in South Korea. Just months later, Daelim, which disputes that its contracts violated the letter of the law, announced a new $600 million deal to help develop the South Pars gas field in Iran.

You can read it all at the New York Times.

This issue did arise in the State Affairs committee as members asked how the bill would affect our relationship with large oil companies or oil support companies who might do business, through a subsidiary, in Iran.  The answer?  The bill only requires retirment pension funds, etc.  to divest.  We can still do business with the companies. 

Rep. Harry Crawford Wants To Buy Steel

Rep. Harry Crawford was sitting on a bench in the Capitol as I was walking by, so after a brief exchange of pleasantries, I asked what his current hot issue was.  In the video below, he explains HB 8 which would have the State buy 100 million tons of steel while the price is low to have ready for building the gas pipeline.



I really don't know anything about buying and storing steel.   I did look for five year steel prices on line and found these charts from metalprices.com.

I hadn't looked at anything like this before the 'interview,' so I didn't ask Crawford about the fact that while it is true that prices are low now after a recent spike, that spike appears to be an anomaly, at least over the last five years.  According to the chart, the end of January 2010 was relatively high not counting the spike. 


Or is the spike the future that was simply interrupted by the current economic downturn?

There are a lot of questions I didn't ask and this was a pretty impromptu encounter where Crawford, understandably, kept to an overview. 

Below is the heart of HB 8.  I don't see any instructions about price ranges.  Would the State be obligated to buy the steel even if the price were no longer 'low?'

In any case, Crawford is showing original thinking and is willing to take a risk.  Assuming that he's already looked into all the unasked questions and found answers that confirm this proposal, it probably deserves some serious attention.  If not, it only proves that he's thinking in broader terms than most, but whether it's a good idea is yet to be demonstrated. 

From HB 8:

  PIPE FOR A NATURAL GAS PIPELINE.

a) The Department of Transportation and Public Facilities shall, under AS 36.30, enter into a contract for the purchase of pipe suitable for a natural gas pipeline project under AS 43.90(Alaska Gasline Inducement Act) in a quantity sufficient for the portion of the pipeline to be constructed within the state. The department shall store the pipe until it is delivered to a licensee in accord with an agreement  entered into under (b) of this
(b)  After a license is issued under AS 43.90.190(b), the Department of Revenue shall enter into negotiations for the purchase by the licensee of pipe acquired by the state under (a) 14 of this section. The terms of the purchase may include an exchange by the state of some or all of the pipe for a state interest in the natural gas pipeline to be constructed by the licensee and any other terms that the department considers necessary to protect the interests of the state. The Department of Revenue may enter into an agreement negotiated under this subsection and arrange for the delivery of the pipe to the licensee under that agreement.


Here's another source which shows a peak in  mid 2008 and then quickly back to normal ranges.  As I say, this is not an area of expertise for me at all.  I'm just raising questions. 

Steelmaking Raw Material and Input Costs

Year/ Month	Thermal Coal $/tonne	Coking Coal $/ton	Iron Ore C/dmtu	Natural Gas $/1000m3	Steel Scrap $/tonne	Electric C/KwH
2007 M1	55.0	94.3	84.7	302.0	264-270	6.09
2007 M2	56.7		84.7	302.0	280-285	6.18
2007 M3	59.3		84.7	302.0	295-310	6.16
2007 M4	60.1	94.6	84.7	281.9	315-320	6.19
2007 M5	60.0		84.7	281.9	295-305	6.20
2007 M6	66.0		84.7	281.9	295-300	6.51
2007 M7	72.1	95.1	84.7	280.4	280-290	6.61
2007 M8	74.3		84.7	280.4	275-285	6.83
2007 M9	73.3		84.7	280.4	280-290	6.55
2007 M10	80.2	97.8	84.7	308.2	275-280	6.44
2007 M11	90.6		84.7	308.2	280-290	6.22
2007 M12	97.5		84.7	308.2	295-310	6.25
2008 M1	98.3	106.1	140.6	369.7	385-400	6.39
2008 M2	141.4		140.6	369.7	390-405	6.38
2008 M3	126.7		140.6	369.7	490-510	6.54
2008 M4	131.8	113.9	140.6	428.4	510-530	6.64
2008 M5	142.7		140.6	428.4	570-580	6.80
2008 M6	171.2		140.6	428.4	635-660	7.40
2008 M7	192.9	122.0	140.6	517.0	630-640	7.78
2008 M8	169.7		140.6	517.0	385-390	7.63
2008 M9	160.7		140.6	517.0	240-245	7.35
2008 M10	115.7	129.1	140.6	576.7	220-225	7.23
2008 M11	98.8		140.6	576.7	205-210	7.04
2008 M12	84.3		140.6	576.7	230-235	6.88
2009 M1	85.7	137.1	101.0	576.7	270-275	6.90
2009 M2	80.8		101.0	520.9	200-205	6.98
2009 M3	65.4		101.0	412.9	195-200	6.84
2009 M4	68.1	143.4	101.0	309.6	220-230	6.78
2009 M5	69.1		101.0	309.6	220-225	6.89
2009 M6	76.5		101.0	309.6	230-235	7.18
2009 M7	79.1	151.2	101.0	244.4	245-250	7.11
2009 M8	77.7		101.0	222.5	320-325	7.17
2009 M9	72.5		101.0	222.5	285-290	6.99
2009 M10	76.1	n/a	101.0	232.2	260-265	6.68
2009 M11	84.4		101.0	232.2	290-300	n/a
2009 M12	87.9		101.0	232.2	310-320	n/a

"Seeds of Change" Local Food, Alternative Energy, Foster Care Transition

[Update, July 25:  While the legislature appropriated money for this, I heard that Governor Parnell vetoed the appropriation for this project.]

I bumped into longtime friend, Eleanor Andrews (Probably half the state would say they're longtime friends of Eleanor) on the fourth floor of the Capitol Building Monday.  She was there with Dr. Mike Sobocinski - he and I took a while to figure out when we met before - to talk to legislators, and to raise a significant chunk of money to build a greenhouse near the Anchorage power plant where they would use the steam from the plant to heat the greenhouse.  They are planning a commercial quality greenhouse that would grow vegetables that would sold to local markets and restaurants.  Plus they would also make it as part of a  program for kids in foster care or institutionalized as they transition out into life on their own.  [As I reread this, I realize my description doesn't convey the amount of research that's gone into the business plan for this.[

Eleanor has had a long career that has included working at Mclaughlin Youth Center, being a union organizer, Director of Personnel at the Municipality of Anchorage, Commissioner of Administration for the State, and for many years now, the CEO and President of the Andrews Group.  She's working on this project as a member of the board of the Anchorage Urban League.  Mike is a psychologist who has worked with residential kids in public programs and now is an assistant professor at UAA.

So as they were going in to pitch their program to Rep. Berta Gardner I asked if I could come along.  The video shows the kind of thing that happens a hundred times a day in Juneau as someone visits law makers to discuss a program they are working on.






You can listen to the whole presentation to the Senate Health and Social Services Committee Monday March 1, 2010. First the committee hears a bill from Sen. Kookesh.

The White Canary in the Inlet?

Mayor Sullivan is concerned that about the Cook Inlet beluga whale getting an endangered species designation.  From Don Hunter's Wednesday Anchorage Daily News article:

"Virtually every department in the city and every business in the region has a stake in this," Sullivan said, citing potential restrictions on discharges from Anchorage's water and sewer utility, noise limits at Stevens International Airport, air quality issues, oil and gas development, expansion at the Port of Anchorage and a proposed Knik Arm bridge.

"All those things come into effect with this beluga designation," Sullivan said. "Every one of those projects could be in jeopardy, and we cannot allow that to happen."

Let's see now:  sewage dumped into the inlet could be a problem, the noise at the airport could be a problem, oil and gas development, port expansion, and the Knik Arm bridge, just to name a few.

If all these things cause serious harm to the belugas, what are they doing to the people of Anchorage.  We may not be dying off quite yet, but if sewage and oil contaminated salmon and hooligan could be harming the belugas, what might they be doing to humans who also eat them?   How might the airport noise be affecting the hypertension levels of people living in Anchorage?  How is our cancer rate affected by the oil and gas development that is threatening the belugas?  It's true, we aren't swimming in the sewage and oil and gas that is contaminating the inlet and salmon makes up a much bigger proportion of the beluga diet than even the most avid human salmon killer.

But we also know that the collective human garbage is threatening the whole planet.  Instead of a mayor who's vision is to continue doing what we have always done, I'd like to see a mayor who recognizes that we can't go on the way we have been.  Who's looking for people with imagination to start us working on the economy of the 21st, not the 19th and 20th Centuries. 

The mayor did support the Anchorage International Film Festival.   I doubt that that he saw the documentary Tapped which examines the bottled water industry and what it is endangering people's inherent rights to water and how the bottles are among the worst international contaminents.  Or if he saw A Sea Change, which explores the acidification of the world's oceans and how this threatens the food chain.  Or if he saw My Toxic Baby which is a mother's exploration of the chemicals in the foods and other products marketed for her baby.

 I know. From the mayor's point of view, these are simply alarmist left wing propaganda.  But when I got to Anchorage in 1977, the conservative Anchorage Times was railing against the environmentalist who they saw as holding up the building of the pipeline.  But all they did was make sure that there were environmental protections set in place.  Protections that didn't stop the Exxon Valdez from spoiling Prince William Sound.  And that aren't stopping BP from having spill after spill on the North Slope this year.  But today's oil company ads recognize the importance of protecting the environment and BP even changed its logo to be green and gave BP a new meaning - beyond petroleum. 

Those pesky liberals also made a big deal about smoking and now smoking and lung cancer rates as well as other smoking related illnesses are down. 

But all these issues were strongly fought by those who wanted the status quo to remain.  Just as Mayor Sullivan's answer to environmental degradation is to call for full speed ahead.  And 30 years from now when the beluga is gone, people will tell their children  how,  like the canary in the coal mine, the beluga was a warning that human health was also in jeopardy.

Should we shut down and Anchorage and have everyone move back to where they came from?  No.  But before we spend money on bridge to Matsu, let's put people to work building a sewage plant that actually cleans our sewage before it goes into the inlet.  Let's look at the impact of noise pollution on humans too.  And let's get Costco and the other big box stores to recycle the plastic and other packaging that can't be recycled in Anchorage and ship it back where it came from.  Let's look for jobs cleaning the environment, developing products that are environmentally friendly, business practices that are sustainable.   Be a visionary, Dan.  Bring Anchorage to a better future.  Don't simply prolong a past that plundered our natural beauty for a quick buck and keeps pushing more garbage and noise into our community.  Learn why economists call these things externalities and list them as one of the failures of the free market.

Ahab let his white whale drive him crazy.  Mayor Sullivan will you handle your white whale better?  Let's hope so. 

Solar Power

I used to think that my time as a Peace Corps volunteer made me realize that we really don't need all that much stuff to live a decent life. Living with much less and being happy gave me a different view of things when I got back to the US.

But as I was hanging up my mom's laundry this morning, I realized that she had probably prepared me to get the message.

She has a washing machine, but she never got a drier. She's always used a clothesline. She also never bought a dishwasher. It's not that she can't afford to buy them, but she never saw the point. I wonder if my mom could sell carbon offsets for all these years of using the sun to dry her laundry and washing the dishes by hand.

And it's not like she was a stay at home housewife. (Nothing wrong with that either.) She only retired from her job when she was 85 a couple years ago.

"Palin in Australia"

The email I got from my son was titled "Palin in Australia." This comes via Andrew Sullivan's blog at the Atlantic. It says this is a Senator Collins from the Australian Parliament. Don't have a mouthful of anything when you watch this.

Palo Alto Robots, Gardens, Downtown

I went with J1 and Kona to J1's office today. He's still not going full time, but we got there in time for lunch. Sitting out in the garden patio area was a bit like having lunch in Thailand. There, I knew what the topic was but was never sure of the details. Today I understood the details, but wasn't completely sure of the topic. Lots of jargon.







Essentially, they are making robots. Fortunately for them and for me, the New York Times scooped me on this story by one day, so I can use them to explain what the company's doing.

. . . a Silicon Valley robotics research group, said that its experimental PR2 robot, which has wheels and can travel at speeds up to a mile and a quarter per hour, was able to open and pass through 10 doors and plug itself into 10 standard wall sockets in less than an hour.

When J1 told me the robot could open doors and plug itself in, I was less than impressed. I've seen enough robots on television and movies to 'know' that ain't no big deal. But, apparently it is:

But roboticists said that the Willow Garage robot was the first to integrate the ability to do a number of operations in a real-world environment.

“There are other groups that have opened doors before,” said Andrew Ng, a Stanford roboticist with several students who have gone to work for the company. But, Mr. Ng said, this seemed to be the first robot able to repeatedly and reliably open doors and plug itself in.

William L. Whittaker, a Carnegie Mellon University roboticist and the winner of a Defense Department urban challenge robot driving contest last year, said it was “unprecedented” for a robot to navigate in a building reliably and repeatedly recharge itself. “These guys are the real deal,” he said.

I did some writing after lunch and then walked round Palo Alto while J1 had a meeting.



















































A lot of the homes in the area do not
have lawns. But most look like they have pretty pricey gardeners to keep these alternative landscapes looking good.













Where the ground isn't watered, the grasses are totally dried out.



Here's Kona waiting to go home.













And apparently Anchorage is no longer the most expensive city for gas.

Business of Clean Energy in Alaska Conference 2

1:30-3:00pm
Industry Perspectives: Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Capital Investments
A look at the capital market for the EE/RE sectors. panel will include industry and investment experts. Panelists will discuss how policy incentives impact their business decisions.

• Moderator: Justin Klure Pacific Energy Ventures

• 
  Ed Feo Partner, Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy, LLP, Los Angeles CA
• Alan Kirn Director-Renewable Energy Solutions, Johnson Controls, Inc, St. Louis MO
• Dorthe Nielsen Manager of Government Relations, Vestas-American Wind Technology, Inc, Portland OR

Dorthe is reading her company's commercial. Very disappointing after two info rich presentation. But she will have succeeded in making people aware of wind company Vestas.

But my impression from the earlier panel was reinforced by the first two speakers. The first, an attorney, talked about the radically changing financial market and incentives that support energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, and cleaning the environment. The model, according to his talk, is definitely changing toward green, in fact has changed.

The second speaker, from Johnson controls, also emphasizes how fast things have changed in just the last year. "I've never seen as much change as in the last year." He went on to talk about things like how decision making on projects used to be 90% based on economics, and now often more than 50% of the decision making criteria relate to social and environmental impacts.



Alan Kirn had this slide showing Alaska to be the be the highest energy using state per capita in the US. But a questioner at the end pointed out that the oil production on the North Slope had a lot to do with that level of consumption yet that oil isn't for Alaska's consumption, but everyone else's. He also said that our high carbon production was associated with all the cargo jets that merely stop here to supply others in the world.

It would be interesting to separate that out and to see how much Alaskans consume in a more appropriate comparison to other states.

[Click on pictures to enlarge.]

And Kirn also offered this slide suggesting ways Alaska could improve its record.

If it wasn't clear before, it is now, that our Governor is so lacking in understanding of these issues. I don't know where she is today (for all I know she opened the meeting when I wasn't here). But it's a shame she hasn't been here listening.

Business of Clean Energy in Alaska Conference 1 -

I came into as the panel had just started:

10:45-12:15pm
Attracting Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Businesses: Effective Policy and the Impact On the State’s Economy
A discussion of the means by which Alaska can attract EE /RE businesses to the state through policy design.

• Moderator: Larry Flowers National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

• Lori Bird Senior Analyst, NREL, Golden CO
• Noah Long National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), San Francisco CA
• Thomas J. Tuffey Director, PennFuture Center for Energy Enterprise and Environment, West Chester PA

The pictures show the speakers in order. The moderator is on the right of the podium.


Here's what I got out of this session:

Three key terms we should know:
Feeding Tariffs
Net Metering
Decoupling

I'll try to put links up to these later.







The basic issue is mental. People are so used to the old way of doing things, plus large traditional energy companies have set up regulatory environments that favor themselves and the status quo. But these panelists convinced me that there are very feasible alternative futures if we can let go of the old models.





And that's happening everywhere. California was Noah's subject. He said his presentation was online, and I'll try to link to it later.





Tuffey impressed me the most. He talked about the nitty gritty work of getting organized, getting credibility through expertise, and working with the key players, including businesses to help them understand their opportunities. Go to all the utility rate setting meetings and be involved in all work on regulations and lawmaking. He spoke without slides and spoke with conviction and with connection to the audience the other two speakers didn't have.

As always, this is just a snapshot to give you a sense of what is going on here at the Denaina Center in Anchorage. Given my bandaged together fingers I decided to had write my notes (right hand is ok).

Looks Like Pete Kelly was Right

Situations like this are why I try to qualify everything I say. The world is complex. I think we like sports because at the end of the game, things are resolved. There's a winner and a loser. Decided. But the rest of life isn't that simple. And with the various drug and other scandals in sports, sports isn't that simple either. Thus making categorical statements can easily lead to foot-in-mouth disease.

Unbeknownst to me, when I posted about the BP-ARCO charter on February 2, Dermot Cole had the previous day published an article in the Fairbanks Newsminer on the same topic. But he'd done a lot more checking of the facts. (Thanks to the person who emailed me that article.)

The charter does not spell out an expiration date for the contribution plan and the other commitments.

The document does have language, however, which says that as of this month, no one can go to court and allege that charter is being violated.

It amounts to a backhanded expiration date.

After Jan. 15, 2009, there can be “no action alleging a failure of performance,” the charter says.

BP and ConocoPhillips will continue to make contributions to the university and other causes in the years ahead, as they value the good will this engenders.

But it’s worth pointing out that their recent change in policy is linked to the 10-year expiration of the charter agreement. . .

I have asked Attorney General Talis Colberg for clarification on the issue and for his view of the significance of the expiration date on the various elements in the charter.

The agreement says that while the state could have brought legal action to enforce the environmental stipulations, the provisions on Alaska Hire and charitable giving are “corporate citizenship commitments to the Alaskan community at large.”

“The parties do not intend for these other commitments of Section II to be enforced by lawsuits and no right of action is created with respect to them,” the charter says.

In a second post on this topic, I was way too emphatic on this. But I'm glad to see that I did put this qualifier in there:

Maybe I'm wrong, but what was the point of the State signing an agreement with the oil companies outlining conditions for BP's purchase of ARCO if the conditions are not mandatory?

I still find it strange that the then Governor, Tony Knowles, would agree to something that isn't enforceable. But I have no idea of what all was going on in the negotiations over this. Perhaps the oil companies flat out refused to sign the agreement without that clause.

I, of course, should have read the whole charter carefully. But at least I wrote at the time:

But we were in high gear preparing to go to Thailand and what with the traveling and getting into things here, I didn't get around to posting that agreement. (It's down below) I haven't had a chance to study the whole charter, but I expect there is plenty to chew on. [emphasis added]

For the time being, let's just look at the part that discusses community charitable contributions:

Lesson for next time: Even if you can't read the whole document, you can at least use the search feature to see if your key terms (in this case "charitable") show up again somewhere else in the document.

So, Conoco-Philips folks, when your blog bot got you to the previous posts, why didn't you just make a comment to clarify things?

So, sorry Pete, I was wrong and you were right on this.

Petchabun Trip 2 - Keeping Warm with Bio Fuels

As I said in the previous post, it was cold by Thai standards. Mornings and evenings there were always several fires going with people sitting or standing around. To a certain extent, Thais are enjoying the cold as a chance to wear their winter fashions, even among this low income group. There were lots of ski caps and jauntily worn scarves and other cloth shawls. I notice watching the inauguration last night that the men wore their scarves, mostly, discreetly under their overcoats, just barely showing Not here. As in India, men as well as women wear the hats and scarves with flair. Watch the pictures in the coming posts.





While there was some firewood involved, used up corn cobs were the major source of fuel for the fires. They had big plastic bags of the cobs. In the meetings one of the topics was how the price of corn had fallen sharply when oil tanked and this really hurt the farmers who had switched to corn because of the previous high costs.




The corn kernels had been scraped off the cobs and sold or eaten[I was told today this kind of corn is not eaten by people] - this is also an animal food - and so they had lots of cobs to burn.