Blogger's Warning: This is part two in what I suspect will be a never-ending series of entries about juggling the issues of sustainability, affordability and historic preservation with green building techniques. I apologize in advance for its overly home-centric nature. Rants on various other environmental subjects will return shortly.

After reading my June 20 blog about old houses with green ambitions, my wife asked me what I would do, if we had money, to our house, built in 1916, to make it green.

It was something I've often day-dreamed about. (I know, I need to get a life.)

My first thought was that we could spray cellulose insulation (old newspapers, what could be more appropriate?) in between the brick exterior and the plaster and lathe interior.

But then I started thinking about the equally old "knob and tube" wiring in some parts of the house.

Before rubber insulation came into vogue for electrical wiring -- sometime during Truman's presidency I believe -- wiring was run on two sides of a beam, negative on one side, positive on the other.

The wires are held in place with ceramic "knobs" and often run through "tubes" which are often open, from knob to knob.

When I had local electrician Bud Lightcap come out and take a look at the wiring a few years ago, he said what there was of the knob and tube was in good shape and was just as safe, if not safer, than modern wiring because it kept the two sides separate.

But something tells me surrounding it with flammable cellulose to improve the insulation would do little to improve my fire safety rating.

I suppose the first thing I would do would be to set up photovoltaic solar power cells on the roof and generate my own power on sunny days, running my meter backward, while PECO executives wept bitterly into their beers.

A recent New York Times article, which can be read by clicking here, highlighted a project an old Cape Cod home in Elmsford, NY (near my old stomping grounds) in which many green improvements had been made.

This passage nearly made me drool: "From her new roof, shimmering rows of solar panels send her Consolidated Edison meter running backward, storing energy credits like a squirrel hoarding nuts. Some electricity goes to her basement, powering the geothermal unit of pipes and fans that keeps her century-old house temperate all year long."

And I started thinking, "old Cape Cod?," "century-old house?," hell, that's Pottstown. And folks, believe me, Elmsford is not the garden spot of Westchester. If it can be done there, it can be done here.

The piece also highlighted something I've encountered in my attempts to find a handyman to do small jobs at my house.

Reporter Nicole Neroulias described it well: "The biggest hurdles to turning a gray house green are not lack of awareness, the cost of labor and materials, or the months of construction, but finding contractors willing to do nitty-gritty work on small properties while soliciting approval from town officials."

Needless to say, the owner of this house in Elmsford did not get away cheap.

In fact her architect said in order to afford it, she skipped her intention to buy a BMW.

Seeing as I anticipate no German sports sedans in my future, it looks like an absence of green will keep any attempts to try this at my house green in my mind only.

But then hope appeared on the horizon; hope from, of all places, Harrisburg?!?

On June 27, I wrote a story in The Mercury about a pending bill that would provide grants to owners of historic homes to fix them up. (Unfortunately, due to the high degree of technical expertise we enjoy at The Mercury, I am unable to provide you a link to that story here because by the time you read this, it will have disappeared from our Web site never to be seen again.)

But it seems to me that if I could swing a grant of $15,000 from my friends in Harrisburg (that's the max for a residential property) some of this stuff might be doable, particularly if it could be combined with some grants for using green technology.

Since I'm writing this on June 26 (so I can have some blogs post while I'm on vacation next week. With my readership I can't afford to lose anyone by having old, dried up entries laying around gathering dust) I am not sure if it crossed the finish line with the legislature and Gov. Rendell duking it out in some back budget room.

Although given their past track record, I feel safe in predicting we don't have a budget yet, nevertheless, if it does pass, I'll be the first to thank them ... and then hold out my hand.

On June 19, I wrote (in extreme frustration I might add) about the likelihood that Congress, in its extreme ineptitude, will allow to expire a tax incentive to encourage the development of alternative energy.

The potential of a solar energy plant in places like Arizona was cited as an example of the kind of thing that might collapse if the tax break were not extended.

Then Tuesday, I received in my in-box my daily copy of Grist, an on-line magazine of sorts that includes links to the environmental stories of the day.

It included a link to this story about a new solar power plant on a former air base in the former East Germany.

In my blog I had noted that Germany is fast becoming the solar power king of the world and we (again) are being sadly left behind by a myopic energy policy.

A reader wrote, and I quote "that is BS."

The writer, identified only as anonymous, said his (or her) tax dollars were not needed to get a fledgling industry off its feet.

Fair enough. But in the meantime, here is what's happening in Germany.

"A solar power plant described by its operators as the biggest in the world began generating electricity at the site of a former East German air base on Sunday, June 22.

"The Waldpolenz Solar Park is built on a surface area equivalent to 200 soccer fields, the solar park will be capable of feeding 40 megawatts into the power grid when fully operational in 2009.

"In the start-up phase, the 130-million-euro ($201 million) plant it will have a capacity of 24 megawatts, according to the Juwi group, which operates the installation.

"After just a year the solar power station will have produced the energy needed to build it, according to the Juwi group.

"The eastern part of Germany is one of the forerunners of solar energy in the country. Three of the world's 50 biggest solar parks are located near Leipzig.

Folks, it's not even sunny there!

Two years ago, President Bush told the nation in his State of the Union address that "we are addicted to oil."

And now, rather than investing in the development of the clean technologies of the future, he wants to drill our way out of a corner into which we've put ourselves by refusing to make the investment sooner.

Oy!

Just a quick one here folks to make sure you know about this Saturday's hazardous waste and computer collection program, run by Montgomery County.

It will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the parking lot of the Spring-Ford Flex School, 833 S. Lewis Road just outside Royersford in Upper Providence.

Here is a brief rundown of the stuff that can be disposed of for free:

Automotive Stuff: Motor oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, antifreeze, gasoline, kerosene, car batteries.

Household Stuff: Drain and oven cleaner, spot remover, dry cleaning fluid, rug cleaner, rechargeable batteries.

Paint Stuff: Paint thinner, turpentine, paint remover, OIL-based paint, furniture stripper and finisher.

Miscellaneous Stuff: Dyes, lighter fluid, photographic chemicals, asphalt sealers, swimming pool chemicals.

Computer Stuff: Monitors, CPUs, mice (but no rats), keyboards, scanners, printers, fax machines, copiers, cameras, cell phones.

For more information, click here and click on the recycling and HHW links or call (610) 278-3618.

Getting rid of the mercury just got a little easier.

No, I'm not talking about the award-winning newspaper which employs me. That would be silly.

I'm talking about the mercury contained in the compact fluorescent bulbs I blogged about last month.

According to a New York Times, which you can access here, (yes folks I did it! thanks to step-by-step instruction from our savvy Web editor, Eileen Faust, this old dog has learened the new trick of putting those cool hyper-text links in without that fuddy-duddy method of posting the whole Web address) Home Depot has just announced that all its 1,973 stores will now accept used CFLs for recycling.

That's not nothing, seeing as Home Depot is the nation's second-largest retailer (after the mighty Wal-Mart, no doubt) and sales of compact fluorescent climbed to 75 million last year for the company.

As I wrote May 7, CFLs use up to 75 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs, but the small amount of mercury they contain has given many homeowners second thoughts about using them. The Times reported that their recycling rate has, until now, been a paltry 2 percent.

In response to that blog, I received an e-mail from a fellow named Nathan Nunez, who is the director of marketing and advertising for an East Windsor, CT company named NLR, Inc., which now stands for Next Level in Recycling.

His company (watch folks, I'm going to do it again!) Web site shows that you can recycle all types of things there, including CFLs.

For about $19, they will send you a "mini-COM-PAK" which is a package that holds up to 12 small CFLs or six to eight medium to large ones. The price includes the cost of a Fed-Ex return and recycling charges.

You just fill it up and mail it back to NLR, which recycles it on site.

A larger package is also available for businesses, schools or other locations which use many CFLs.

For $149, you can recycling up to 180 bulbs. But enough about NLR. I'll let Nathan sell you on any of the rest of their services.

Also in the category of people who have responded to the blog, I'd also like to share with everyone information I received from a fellow named Joseph Rotondo.

He was responding to a blog I posted on May 21 titled "Buy the Right Thing" which dealt with shopping to make the world a better (greener) place.

Mr. Rotondo works for a company called Sun & Earth based right here in King of Prussia.

As I wrote him in an e-mail, my wife and I had been buying their laundry detergent and dish soap for years assuming (without reading the contents and knowing for sure) that it would not hurt the Schuylkill River where everything that goes down our drain eventually ends up.

When the Giant in Pottstown began carrying Seventh Generation products, we switched because they had a reputation (and prominent labeling) indicating they were non-harmful to the environment.

But Mr. Rotondo's note (see how a blog helps you network with the world!) allowed me to query him on our recent decision to switch back after we realized Sun & Earth is a local company and, we hoped, therefore did not have to ship its products very far to reach us.

He confirmed this, as well as re-assuring me (and now you) that his company's products are made from "100 percent all-natural ingredients."
Seventh Generation is based in Burlington, VT, but their Web site indicates their products are manufactured all over the country.

For all we know, their dish soap and laundry detergent may be made around the corner, but for now, we plan on sticking with the one we know is made locally.

Supporting local businesses are one of the little things we can do that can add up to big changes.
The innovations small companies made to give themselves an adge, particularly in making more green products, are often what force the bigger companies to change their practices to keep up.

Let's face it folks, we're a consumer nation. Since we exercise our buying power far in excess of our voting power, we might as well use it to point things in a green direction.

Don't kid yourselves, Home Depot (which is to be commended to leading the charge on this) wouldn't be taking this step if not for companies like NLR.

So here I thought I could dash off a quickie blog (you readers really are insatiable you know!) about historic preservation, vs. sustainability, vs. energy efficiency and move on.

Sigh.

Instead, it turns out to be as frustratingly complicated as nuclear physics, or code enforcement as the case may be.

So instead, genetically incapable of over-simplifying, I suspect I am going to have to devote several blogs to the subject.

Don’t hate me because I’m compulsive (and let me know if I’m boring you.)

The way I look at it, this is all Tom Hylton’s fault.

Most Pottstown readers know the name and it was after interviewing Tom several times on a variety of subjects over the years that I came to understand, piece by piece, the philosophy behind his landmark book, “Save Our Land, Save Our Towns.”

Then I went and read it and, imagine, my understanding improved!

If you are unfamiliar, it’s easy enough to find on the Web – saveourlandsaveourtowns.org – and there you will find the basics.

Having grown up in a little village in New York, where the post office, deli, library, grade school and pizzeria were all less then a block away and required no gasoline to reach, I have watched with dismay our open spaces being consumed by redundant shopping malls and “McMansions.”

What I didn’t realize, when it came time for my wife and I to buy a house ourselves, was how much I had been programmed by advertising and the choices of my peers to want one myself.

Then I met Tom, who helped me see what I’m ashamed to admit I should already have known: That towns and country are the two natural states for human communities that have evolved over the centuries and the thing that tries to be both -- suburbs – are really just an aberration invented after World War II by former soldiers who had been trained to believe that everything can be compartmentalized.

But you don’t just buy a house with your head, and the urge to look at new construction was much stronger than I had anticipated.

Luckily, there’s plenty of blame to spread around here in Pottstown. I also happily blame Sue Krause.

Tom got my head, but Susie got my heart.

The house in that New York village having been an old one (built before the Civil War), I was pre-destined to appreciate older homes – particularly the craftsmanship I am (also genetically) incapable of re-producing myself.

One trip on the Historic Pottstown by Candlelight tour, or whatever it is Susie's organization, the Historic Neighborhood Association, calls their most excellent Christmas-time tradition, and my wife and I realized how much we would love to own a beautiful historic home – and that in Pottstown, we could actually afford it.

We were hooked.

Which brings us (the long way) back to the subject at hand.

How green are old buildings?

I’ve already blogged (I can’t believe that’s a verb now) about air conditioning and we’ll return to it when it gets hot again and on our minds. (Thanks to my three responders)

We’ll also get to things like replacement windows and heating systems at some point. (This whole blogging thing is not well-planned out people so cut me some slack. I have a real job you know!)

But I was taken recently, through a link in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer story, to an interesting point raised by someone named Knute Berger.

In an article -- http://crosscut.com/mossback/14832/Unsustainable+Seattle/f -- he wrote the following when writing about replacing old buildings with “green” buildings.

“But rarely do they factor in what is called ‘embodied energy,’ which is the energy used to build something in the first place. A building is the physical manifestation of all the carbon used to create it in the first place. Tear it down, you not only have a solid waste problem with all the debris (about 30 percent of waste comes from construction and demolition debris), but you waste all that embodied energy.”

He, in turn, quotes an expert named Donovan Rypkema, who gave a speech in Seattle which included the following: “Razing historic buildings results in a triple hit on scarce resources. First, we’re throwing away thousands of dollars of embodied energy. Second, we’re replacing it with materials vastly more consumptive of energy. What are most historic houses built from? Brick, plaster, concrete and timber. (Certainly true of my house here in Pottstown). What are among the least energy consumptive materials? Brick, plaster, concrete and timber. What are major components of new buildings? Plastic, steel, vinyl and aluminum. What are among the most energy consumptive of materials? Plastic, steel, vinyl and aluminum. Third, recurring embodied energy savings increase dramatically as a building stretches over 50 years. You’re a fool or a fraud if you say you are an environmentally conscious builder and yet are throwing away historic buildings, and their components.”

Adds Berger: “When you calculate embodied energy and building longevity, Rypkema says, it makes sense to save a less energy-efficient building that lasts 100 years, than a 24 percent more-energy-efficient building that will last only 40 years. And much new construction, as you may have noticed, is not built to last.”
Now THAT, is a truly interesting perspective, at least from my perspective; that fixing up old buildings is actually recycling of the highest order.

What do you think?

I’d like to continue this conversation.

Blogger's Note: For reasons more mysterious and fickle than White House global warming policy, a column I wrote for The Mercury recently was never posted on our Web site. (I suspect the hand of the Islamo-Fascists at work.) And so, being intrinsically lazy and not wanting any of the dozen-or-so people who are reading my blog to miss out on some of my insightful rhetoric, it is reproduced here in my blog space, no doubt to the delight of all cyber-space.

Sometimes I truly marvel at our collective stupidity in the face of our own brilliance.

Dennis Miller once said only in America, could you take something that falls for free from the sky, bottle it and sell it at a profit.

He was talking, of course, about rain, but the same observation could be made about another seemingly endless resource – sunlight.

The promise of solar energy as our primary generator of electricity is staggering, particularly in places like Arizona, where clouds all too often fear to tread.

When you think about it, all fossil fuels are merely converted solar energy anyway, so we’re already using it.

But would’t it be nice to use it without all that pesky carbon?

It could happen.

Solar panels that covered 100 square miles of Arizona dessert, where the sun shines 325 days a year on average, could theoretically power the entire country, according to Ardeth Barnhart, associate director of the Arizona Research Institute for Solar Energy at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

And guess what? In our brilliance, we’re nearly ready to try.

Plans for a huge, $1 billion solar energy plant near Gila Bend, Ariz. could be completed by 2011.

Now that sounds like the kind of thing the federal government should subsidize in some way, perhaps with a beefy tax break.

And guess what? We did – almost.

The federal investment tax credit was boosted from 10 percent to 30 percent for investments in solar systems in 2006, thus making the Gila Bend plant affordable for investors taking a chance on new technology that could transform the American energy landscape.

At three-square miles, Gila Bend would generate enough power to light 70,000 Arizona homes and help Arizona utilities to meet government requirements that utilities generate 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources.

Now that is the kind of innovation and know-how Americans can get behind.

But there’s a problem, and yes, it’s our own government taking aim squarely at its own foot.

And you guessed it; this is where the stupid comes in.

The tax break expires this year and, if it does, so too do hopes of building this large-scale solar power plant that could serve as a model for the future.

And while we hear no end of permanently extending the tax cuts for the rich which have bankrupted our children’s future, we can’t seem to extend one that might actually save the future.

According to a write-up in The Christian Science Monitor, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, is trying.

Her idea, novel in its simplicity and common sense, is to extend the credit to 2016 by cutting back on the tax credits we’re giving oil and gas companies.

You may have heard of them, they are the ones which have made more than half a trillion dollars in profits since Mr. Bush moved into the White House.

“In the next five years, (oil and gas companies) are slated to receive about $117 billion. That money instead should be going toward renewable energy,” Giffords told the Monitor.

And where is John McCain in all this? You would think this would present a triple pander opportunity few would miss. He gets to tout his home state, bring jobs there, and call it part of his green energy initiative.

If you’re not worried about how this short-sightedness will leave us behind – again –consider this passage from the May issue of Fortune magazine: “Germany has invested $1.3 billion in photovoltaic research over the past decade, creating a $5 billion industry that accounts for 52 percent of the world’s installed solar panels. Of 45 producers in Germany, 33 are start-ups in the former East German, employing 70 percent of the industry’s 8,000 workers, with 2,000 new jobs on the way.”

Wouldn’t it be nice to say that about an up-and-coming American industry?

But once again, our unwillingness to recognize that oil is a dying industry, and oil’s unwillingness to recognize it and invest in a new technology, will doom us to be capitalist dinosaurs in another burgeoning technology.

Last week, Senate Republicans blocked an energy bill that would have imposed a windfall profits tax and ended $17 billion in tax breaks for oil companies.

Bush, who has overseen a doubling in gasoline prices since he took office, threatened to veto the bill, which would not have imposed the windfall profits tax on any company that invested in renewable fuels or electricity production.

The clock is ticking here folks, and we keep ignoring it like it will all work itself out by itself. It's time to do something different.

Do we want to be left behind again by short-sighted politicians? Or are you OK with buying all our solar panels from Germany?

A few days ago, I wrote a column quoting Dennis Miller as saying only in America could you take something that falls for free from the sky, bottle it, and sell it for a profit.

He was talking about water and so am I.

Let's set aside, for a moment, the ecological costs and just talk about the monetary costs of bottled water.

Folks, it's freakin' expensive!

A story last month in The Seattle Times reported buying bottled water costs 2,400 times as much as drinking tap water.

The story was about Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and a new initiative of his to convince residents of the rainiest city in America to stop using bottled water.

His city charges one third of a cent for a gallon of water, compared to an average 79cents for a pint of bottled water.

Here in Pottstown, water has recently been in the news as outraged residents complained about estimated water bills.

And they're right, it is pretty silly and came about because the borough needed to settle a nettlesome lawsuit from a perfectly good meter reader who kept making them look foolish by pointing out inefficient and wasteful practices (oh the Horror!), but that's another story.

Borough Manager Ray Lopez reports the new meter reader is on-board and getting brought up to speed, so presumably things will settle out after a time. (Don't hold your breath waiting for a big refund check though. A credit for over-payment is about the best you can hope for.)

But missing from the big picture part of this little tale is that even at inflated prices, borough water is still hundreds if not thousands of times cheaper than the bottled water at the Giant, water whose price will continue to rise along with the price of the gas used to transport it.

Don't like the taste? OK, buy a water filter for the tap, or a Brita pitcher. It's still cheaper in the long run.

In my house, I once filled an empty spring water bottle with tap water and put it in the 'fridge. (Yes, we're having this battle in my house as well. So far, I'm losing. That's why I need your help people. The guilt is killing me!)

Sure enough, as you've no doubt guessed, nobody noticed the difference. And that was without a filter!


In addition to being cheaper for your household budget, it's also cheaper for society and the environment society must maintain to survive.

"Americans used 60 billion pint bottles of water last year," Nickels said. "That required one million tons of plastic and generated 2.5 million tons of greenhouse gases."

In Seattle, residents there used the equivalent of 354,000 pint bottles of water each day. That equals 41,000 barrels of oil, creating 5,400 tons of greenhouse gases.

Putting taxpayers money where his mouth is, Nickels directed the city to stop buying bottled water in March, saving taxpayers as much as $57,000 a year.

Pottstown's numbers may not be as impressive, but they are certainly similar in scope if not in scale.

Millions of human beings around the world are literally dying for lack of a water system like the one we love to complain about here in Pottstown. The ability to provide clean water to every household is yet another blessing that we are taking for granted.

Don Read, the treasurer of the Pottstown Borough Authority -- which produces water for folks in Pottstown, Upper Pottsgrove, West Pottsgrove, Lower Pottsgrove and North Coventry -- heads up the authority's marketing committee.

He and fellow authority member Doug Dilliplane are constantly looking for new water customers and talk about the need to talk up Pottstown's cheap potable water.

Perhaps one way would be a campaign of cost comparisons to point out to customers and potential customers how much less expensive their tap water is. How about a taste test?

Even when you add in the cost of a filter, either attached to the tap or resting coolly in your 'fridge, I'd be willing to bet a six-pack it would still be cheaper over the cost of a year if you eliminated all bottled water.

Sure, your water bill would go up, but your grocery bill would go down more.

This Father's Day I am not in Pottstown.

Having written this ahead of time I am, as you read this, spending it with my father.
He lives in Sag Harbor, which is out on the northern side of the southern fork of Long Island. About as far out as you can get without spending Christmas in the Atlantic.

Like father like son, my dad is a writer.

However, he's braver than me. He eschewed a regular paycheck to live as a free-lancer, writing books and magazine articles for folks like American Heritage, Esquire, Connoisseur and, of course, The Atlantic.

He does not know how to blog and I doubt he'll read this one, which is just as well. He's not much for maudlin sentiment. I'm the mope in the family that tears up during "Extreme Makeover, Home Edition."

Father's Day is when we celebrate dads and, this being an environmental blog, I promise there is a green shade to this entry.

As a lad, my parents often took my sister and I on weekend hikes. OK, every weekend it wasn't raining and sometimes when it was. We considered them to be more in the line of a Bataan death march.

I will never forget my sister, about age 13, with a water-soaked handkerchief on her head to keep away the feasting mosquitoes swarming in the pine swamp we were hiking through, sitting down on a rock and refusing to go on. Hey, I never promised this trip down memory lane would be pretty.

I grew up north of New York City and the hikes were mostly in state parks in the area, everything from Sterling Forest to Fahnestock State Park to even a few in the Catskills.

Twice we drove across country and everywhere we stopped, there was a hike.

National Parks with names like Rocky Mountain, Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Acadia, Mount Rainier, you name it, we hiked it.

At the time, my sister and I were not what you would call thrilled to be there. Like all kids, we were suspicious of anything our parents endorsed.

And, as with most kids, it was only as I got older that I realized the value of those experiences.

When you've seen eco-systems as varied as high desert, low desert, seaside, deciduous forest, conifer forest, the plants and animals that survive there and the adaptations they make to do it, you begin to appreciate the patterns of nature -- and to decry how humans tend to run roughshod over them.

You don't look at a desert as a wasteland. Just something different from what you know.

Not surprisingly, as someone who spent his childhood summers on Long Beach Island, my dad has always tended to drift toward the seashore, which is how he ended up on Long Island.

In fact one of his books is titled "The People Along the Sand."

In the preface to this book, my dad (Anthony Brandt for you Googlers out there) caught the nature of the beach in a way that I have adopted as my own.

He wrote: "An architect friend of mine describes the beach as not so much a place as the transcendence of place, a border between two realities, and another friend calls the people attracted to it, who feel they must live next to it or very close to it, edge people."

The changeable nature of the beach is what gives it its magic. When I visit, I picture myself living there year-round, yet can't shake the feeling that would be impossible, that I don't deserve it, that the beach would never stand for it.

His understanding of natural systems, fueled by his vast and insatiable reading habits, fostered an environmentalism in me based not soley on fervor and passion, although it did not forestall those attributes, but on understanding and practicality.

Don't save the forest just because you love it -- because you will never convince those who don't to join you -- save it because you and the people you are trying to convince need it. Explain to them why they do. Help them appreciate its value to them and then, often enough, they too will come to love it and thus help you preserve it.

By way of example, my dad helped me understand what many real estate agents do not; that in so many places, the beach is what geologists call "high speed real estate."

Eventually, the sea changes everything it touches.

"When I was a child a hurricane deposited a 35-foot power boat in our front yard in Brant Beach, New Jersey. You do not forget these things," he wrote.

He's right.

As I have not forgotten all those hikes and the quiet thrum of the Shawngunk forest audible only to those with the patience to listen for it; or the wind whistling across the twisted granite of Breakneck Ridge, my favorite mountain if only for its funky name and its unbelievable view of the Hudson Valley.

And yes, I remember those two-week stints, always in August, at my grandparents' tiny house at Brant Beach, with the outdoor shower, the splintery porch always in need of paint and breakfasts, the house now finally cool from the ever-present morning breeze, at a dining room table so big it seemed to me to have been salvaged from a schooner.

I remember the evening walks along the salt marsh on the bay side, and my parents pointing out the birds that lived there.

Each day there, I now realize, was a day stolen from some time in the future when the Atlantic steals away the sand that makes up Long Beach Island and decides haphazardly to deposit it somewhere inconvenient to us.

All of these experiences which he and my mother made possible, have shaped the way I see the natural world.

In fact I found I treasured them so that I have tried to duplicate some of them.
So, when my mother suggested a few years ago that my family and my sister's vacation together with her, I did not hesitate (despite the inherent inter-personal volubility of that oil and water mix) to agree and further, to suggest that the place we do it be at Long Beach Island, hoping to give my son, as my parents had, memories of a place on the edge.

Each year we can manage it financially, the more successfully we will have passed down an experience to a fourth generation, stubbornly struggling to further root a tradition in a place that is ultimately transitory by nature.

If nothing else, it may teach him what I learned during those hikes with my father, always striding inpatiently far ahead of us stragglers: How learning about those woods made it hard to watch the heavy hand of man fell them for yet another shopping center, much as is happening in West Pottsgrove right now.

I hope my son learns, as I did at my father's knee, to be watchful of what society too often foolishly throws away.

Having just finished covering what I roughly calculate to be my 30th high school graduation for The Mercury, I can tell you I have heard just about every cliche that can be earnestly uttered in those circumstances.

But something the Pottsgrove High School valedictorian said last Wednesday struck me through my indifference for its marvelous simplicity.

"We face our future with our past," Victoria Mitchell said.

And I realized it's true, of course.

Without those hikes, I would never have realized the truth of the fact that forests provides us an economic benefit by cleaning our water and the more we fell those trees for sub-divisions, the more expensive it will become to make clean water.

I would not have so readily believed the cooling power of trees as Pottstown debates the value of street trees.

And without those days at the beach -- or my own hurricane memory of the man paddling a flat boat down Farragut Avenue -- I might not have had the insight into how the economic benefits of over-development along barrier islands disappear when the inevitable hurricane flattens them. The storms are not necessarily worse, I realized, but there is certainly more there to destroy.

That past with which I face our increasingly uncertain future was shaped in large part by my father, and I just wanted to take the day to thank him for the strength it provides me. I urge you to do the same.

Happy Father's Day Dad, and thanks.

So other than toying with the idea of a high school pal doing motorcycle donuts on my grave (as urban legend tells us Dan Akroyd did for John Belushi), I've never much taken to the idea of being buried.

A great philosopher, George Carlin, once said the biggest waste of real estate is golf courses and cemeteries. (I think Rodney Dangerfield said the same thing in the original "Caddyshack.")

Now I know speaking of golf courses this way in Pennsylvania is sacrilege, so don't hunt me down, blame George.

But as for cemeteries, I'm starting to agree.

As Mike Snyder recently wrote about in The Mercury, gravestones often hold important information and I agree. I'm not talking about getting rid of the ones we already have.

But I think we can find a way to store that information from this point forward without setting aside 30 acres of prime real estate to do it.

And yes, memories of the deceased are important, but I'm not sure we have to keep the actual corpse around to maintain them. A photograph would do nicely I think.

Up until last month, I had always envisioned my remains being burned to a crisp and then scattered in some spot of which I'm overly fond, the beach most likely. Cap Cod at sun down or some cliche like that.

But hey, that means a carbon footprint to run the incinerator right? Not to mention the dangerous emissions from the mercury in those silver dental filings I'll no doubt have by the time I kick.

And while burial requires no burning, there's the expense of the coffin, the embalming fluid soaking into the groundwater, the emissions from the mile-long funeral train of slow-moving cars...OK, perhaps I'm getting a swelled blogger's head here ... the emissions from the three hybrids driven by those who show up, or get caught behind the electric-powered hearse.

Anyhoo, last month the Associated Press brought me a whole new option -- liquidating my assets -- and I mean ALL my assets.

Sixteen years ago, a process called alkaline hydrolysis was developed to get rid of animal carcases. And hey, let's face it, charming idiosyncrasies aside, my dead body is essentially an animal carcass.

The process essentially uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60-pounds of pressure per square inch to pressure cook your corpse down to liquid that could be flushed down the drain.

Talk about total recycling!

This process is legal for human corpses only in Minnesota and New Hampshire, but apparently some New Hampshire legislators are having second thoughts.

I don't see why.

Maybe they're in agreement with the Roman Catholic Church, which thinks the process of being flushed down the drain is "undignified."

No argument there, but then the procedure for coming into this world ain't all that dignified either, so what's the problem?

"I'm getting near that age and thought about cremation, but this is equally as good and less of an environmental problem," said Barbara French, an 81-year-old New Hampshire legislator who supports the bill legalizing it.

"It doesn't bother me any more than being burned up. Cremation, you're burned up. I've thought about it, but I'm dead," she told the AP.

The coffee-colored liquid has the consistency of motor oil and a strong ammonia smell, but proponents say it's sterile and can, in most cases, be poured down the drain safely, according to The Associated Press.

It also leaves a bone dry residue similar to what you get with cremation, that could just as easily be stuffed in an urn and set on the mantle.

"It's not often that a truly game-changing technology comes along in the funeral service," the newsletter Funeral Service Insider said in September. But "we might have gotten a hold of one."

Too true, particularly for that part of your life called "game over."

Not that it truly comes as a surprise, but it always hurts when those close to you finally face reality and make a change from tradition.

Sometimes, tradition can be expensive.


Consider the choice faced by county commissioners in Schuylkill County, who are considering a proposal to replace the heating system in their prison and county courthouse with natural gas.

Why? Because it's cheaper.

Seems like a no-brainer right? It would be if this weren't Schuylkill County.

Everything but the milkshakes in Schuylkill County is made from coal and event those have a touch of the ambient coal dust that fills the air. The heart of Pennsylvania's "coal regions," coal is the only game in town -- anthracite coal to be exact.

Called "black diamond," anthracite coal is harder and burns cleaner than its more sulphuric cousin, bituminous coal.

It gets that way by being deeper under the mountains, and thus being under more pressure. This, however, makes it even harder to get to and thus more expensive and more dangerous to extract.

And in Schuylkill County and its environs, they have paid a bittersweet toll for the resource that defines them. Since 1870, more than 30,000 people have died to bring those black diamonds to the surface.

Without that sacrifice, America would be a different place.

Pottstown and Phoenixville and Royersford all would be different places.

Coal was the foundation of the Industrial Revolution that transformed us from a backwards oddity in Europe's shadow, to a world power whose "white fleet" of battleships sailed round the world under Teddy Roosevelt's order, signalling to all that there was a new kid on the block.


Closer to home, it was that coal -- filling canal boats that came down the Schuylkill River Navigation toward Philadelphia, and later in the cars of the Reading and Pennsylvania railroads -- that transformed our towns from the farmer's markets they were into the industrial hubs that defined them.

Without anthracite, there would have been no Bethlehem Steel, no Phoenix Steel, no Glasgow Iron Works or Doehler-Jarvis.


Anthracite was the choice of those industrial boilers and furnaces. It burns hotter because it's sulphur content is low, meaning it makes less of the sulphur-based gas that forms acid rain.

That's good.

But it also has a higher carbon content, which means it is no slouch in the production of carbon dioxide when it's burned.

In these days of global warming, that's bad.

I have a piece of "black diamond" sitting on my desk that I picked up at a mine during a visit to Schuylkill County several years ago while covering one of the first Schuylkill Watershed Congress meetings.

I keep it there in recognition that this rock made us. It warmed our homes and fueled the jobs that fed our families.

True, that should not be taken lightly, but it also should not be carried as a burden into a dead-end future based on an outdated and unhealthy technology.

Time, like the river that cleaned the coal and carried the boats that carried it to market, has moved on. Those industries no longer define us -- nor should the rock that fueled them.

Nowhere is that lesson having more trouble taking hold than in Schuylkill County, where James J. Rhoades, a Republican state senator, has objected to considering the use of natural gas to power the courthouse and prison.

"Heritage should account for something," he told The New York Times for a June 10 article.

He's right. And it does. But heritage is not a plan for the future.

Fossil fuels are finite.

Period.

They are undoubtedly our heritage, but there is much doubt about whether they can sustainably represent our future.

Eventually, we will run out, either because of the difficulty of obtaining it, or because the market makes it too expensive to use.

We are long past the time when we should have begun working on alternatives, the next wave of energy.

Before coal, we burned wood and the forests fell.

Then, after coal, we burned oil and have ever since.

But we are now living in the age of oil's decline and anthracite's last gasps should serve as a warning of what's to come. And because we've put off recognizing this reality for so long, we have just about missed the opportunity for a smooth transition.

Instead, the blinders we've worn as a nation have guaranteed us a rocky road over the next few years.

We should let Schuylkill County's example be a lesson to us all. It makes no sense to cling tenaciously to an industry -- promises of "clean coal" aside -- for which we can no longer afford the environmental price, anymore than we can afford a gallon of gasoline.

And we are paying the price of transition as we stagger through the wrenching ups and downs in search of alternatives like ethanol and geo-thermal and solar in an atmosphere of crisis instead of the calm starting eight to ten years ago might have allowed.

As the gas price crisis gets worse, each mistake we make in the field of alternatives becomes much more costly and seems to undermine its viability out of proportion to the technical problem it represents.

Surely, oil encountered technical problems along the way, but it was allowed to perfect its technology while the world chugged along happily on coal power, each mistake just part of the process of perfecting the process.

What Schuylkill County is going through now is merely a microcosm of what the rest of the nation faces.

Their proposed solutions -- protectionist laws that banned natural gas pipelines from crossing their borders, requiring that all public buildings use coal in order to preserve local jobs -- are not for the long-term.

They are a denial of the coming changes, not necessarily natural gas but definitely not coal, based on fear of any change.

Times change and we have to change with them.

So, like usual, I'm feeling guilty about something, and it's making me all hot under the collar (literally).

Years ago I wrote a column for The Mercury about how air conditioning helped to undermine civilization as we know it.

Far be it from a veteran newspaper guy to sensationalize anything, but the idea, not my own, was that before air conditioning, when it was hot, everybody suffered together.

And we all sat out in front of our houses at night, trying to grab as much cool as the evening offered.

As a result, in a close-built town like Pottstown, everybody ended up up close and personal with their neighbors and, as is only right and proper, had a polite conversation with them. (Or, just as likely, passed on some nasty gossip about the lady down the street).

But then along came the miracle of air conditioning and make no mistake, despite the relatively simple science behind it, it is a miracle.

It is a miracle, as far as I'm concerned -- and let's face it, it's all about me right? -- because I am not built for the heat.

Hauling around a beer-gifted layer of fat that would make a harbor seal jealous, when it gets hot I feel like I'm sitting inside my mother-in-law's overheated house in May with a down jacket on.

To make matters worse, when I get hot I get irritable -- really irritable.

So come May or certainly by June (I still have one to install), I begin systematically installing the five air conditioners we use to keep our brick oven of a house tolerable through August.

To make matters warmer, our neighbor, in an understandable effort to keep squirrels out of his bedroom, cut down (legally) the flowering pear tree in front of his house which also offered our house some shade.

So here's my dilemma, only one of the air conditioners is new and therefore energy efficient.

The rest are old clunkers we've inherited from a variety of sources. They work well enough in concert with the two ceiling fans in the house, but their energy draw is staggering.

In our defense, one is for the guest room and, as such, is used maybe two or three times a year, so I'm not sure we could even count that one.


When we first moved in, we worried about whether our wiring could even handle it.

Central air conditioning is probably more efficient, but installing it in a home that was built when Woodrow Wilson was president and which uses hot water heat, is about as practical and affordable as me buying a beach house in Maui.

So what to do?

Intellectually, I know that every minute of that blessed oasis of cool is purchased to some extent, with emissions from the Cromby coal-powered power plant down the road, which is just ensuring that the next summer will be even hotter and require me to use the infernal but beloved machines even more.

And then I look at my 9-year-old and ask myself if I'm such a bad parent that I'm not willing to suffer a little heat rash to try and keep the planet he'll inherit from being a hell-on-earth -- or a future where those two words become synonyms.

All to often, the needs (or wants?) of the day outweigh the dangers of a future I'll likely not live to see.

I rationalize that it's for his and my wife's good too for I know deep down that if we forgo the comfort, I might kill someone during a heat wave. I've grown quite fond of my family over the years and really hate to put them at risk.

Not to mention that without the air conditioners, my overly generous metabolism ensures that I'll never have a dry shirt for one quarter of every year -- not something any of us want to contemplate very closely.

If only I could win the lottery and cover my roof with those nifty new photo-voltaic shingles, then I could use the sun against itself, and power those AC's guilt-free.

But sadly, I have not chosen a profession that allows the accumulation of large sums of disposable cash in the bank. Eating always seems to take a front seat,

So I'm left to stew in my own guilt in a pleasant 72-degree living room, unless a reader out there can come to my aid.

What do you do?

There is a difference between an honest difference of opinion and a deliberate effort to hide facts which might change or inform those opinions.

A recent report by the inspector general’s office at NASA concludes that while the Bush administration would have liked you to believe doubts about the veracity of global warming were a difference of opinion among experts, they were part of a desperate effort to keep us from hearing what those experts had to say.

As amazed as some of you might be to learn that an administration led by two former oil executives would appoint to the NASA press office flunkies who found reason to suppress data about the effects the by-product of the oil industry is having on our world, it now appears that the impossible happened.

Two years after New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin – who spoke this year to students at The Hill School – revealed that science supporting evidence of global warming was being suppressed by the NASA press office, an investigation has confirmed that report.

It further confirmed that that same office restricted the press’s access to James Hansen, NASA’s leading climate scientist and the man who ultimately blew the whistle on the practice.

This is really no surprise to those of us who hold the position that global warming is real – as does the vast majority of the scientific community who studies this very subject.

From war, to torture, to disaster relief, to threats to the entire planet, history shows that the current administration does not believe you should have all the facts, just the facts that fit their needs.

But as the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan so famously said, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.

In an honest debate, everyone works from the facts, or data, available, and makes their best case. But if you can’t win that debate because the facts are stacked against you, the only solution is to suppress the information to keep the other side from using it to convince the judges (voters).

This brings us to the reason for suppressing those facts – making sure the public didn’t start demanding policy changes on global warming in numbers the vote splitters in the White House could not afford to ignore.

It was not to keep those of us already convinced of the reality of global warming in the dark, it was to prevent those facts from illuminating the opinion of folks who are focused on other priorities.

I e-mail with a man in Berks County who is extremely thoughtful about a good many things. We are of different political persuasions, but have found common ground in any number of unexpected places. We even occasionally admit to each other that we were wrong about this or that.

For example, every day the evidence mounts of the effectiveness of “market forces” in driving Americans to new and better driving and car buying habits no amount of pleading, cajoling or legislating could accomplish, convinces me he was right about that.

He kept telling me, "when gas goes over $3 a gallon, hybrids will sell themselves." He was right.
But when it comes to global warming, he continues to cite evidence of things like sunspots and the possibility that Mars is also warming as reason to refuse to concede we have something to do with what’s happening on Earth.

There is good precedent for “manufacturing doubt.” Just ask the tobacco companies.

Science is an open ended proposition and its proper practice requires the consideration of any plausible theory until it can be proven false, thus opening it up to all sorts of mischief from people whose purpose is not the pursuit of truth, but the delaying of its revelation.

(After all, we’re still debating evolution 100 years later, not because there’s a pile of evidence disputing its tenets, but because there are people who find the facts it presents in conflict with their beliefs.)

So when government scientists with nothing at stake in studying the effects of cigarette smoke concluded it damaged your health, scientists paid by companies with everything at stake began unraveling those conclusions any way they could.

The result? Millions of people died who might have made a different choice if they had known all the facts.

Was that criminal?

A raft of state attorneys general thought it sounded an awful lot like fraud and sued to punish those who perpetrated it.

If you are in possession of information that can save someone’s life and you knowingly withhold it, is that not criminal as well?

Predicting the future is always a tricky business, but there are many global warming models which suggest effects of a warming planet will include the northward progression of deadly tropical diseases, a decline in food production and more drought and more flooding of coastal areas.

The suppression of information supporting the reality of global warming meant seven years of inaction by the global leader in greenhouse gas emissions; seven years during which nothing was done; seven years in which the risk of death from disease, famine or flood increased while millions were prevented from making an informed choice to try to head it off.

Now that it’s too late for The White House to show leadership on an issue which threatens the only planet on which we know we can survive, even the Oval Office has grudgingly given way to the mountains of evidence.

But isn’t the harm already done?

Resolve can quickly (and often does) cross the line into willful stubbornness, but the willful suppression of information every resident of Earth has a right to consider in making daily decisions about how to preserve their lives is as criminal as shouting “fire” in a crowded movie house.

But of course, we could just have a difference of opinion on that.