"And the Band Played on..."

One of the most enduring images of the sinking of the Titanic is that of the orchestra, consigned to its fate, playing sonorously as the ship slips beneath the waves.

More than once, the slow-motion demise of printed newspapers has been compared to that ill-fated vessel, whose destruction was almost certainly assured the moment it was declared "unsinkable."

But what is missing from comparing journalism's crisis to its maritime counterpart is newspaper people.

One of our most enduring, irritating, maddening and, to be sure, necessary traits is our inability to just let things happen unexamined. We ask questions, we check the answers, we look things up. Like Columbo, we pick and pick and pick until we're satisfied with the answer.

Thus the title of this blog. Had there been any newspaper people on board the Titanic, they no doubt would have run around interviewing people about how they felt, writing down the order of songs played by the orchestra, trying to "get to the bottom of this story" before the ship hit bottom -- all while others twittered, or IM'd or texted unconfirmed and unverified messages to friends and family about their fate.

I can say this with confidence because as our own titanic ship of journalism flounders on the rocks of electronic competition, a slumping economy and, dare I say it, a growing national indifference, we are devoting as much time to dissecting our apparent demise (some would say too much) as we are trying to fix it.

In fact you might say, no one is declaring newspapers to be dying more loudly than newspapers themselves, due to our strong-jawed determination to be principled and seem objective even about our own death.

One of the best examples of this tendency I've seen in a while is this post on the "Green Inc." Web page maintained by The New York Times.

Enticingly headlined, "Skip the Newspaper, Save the Planet?" the subject is the recent decision by Marriott hotels to no cease providing free newspapers to guests who don't ask for one.

Obviously a cost-cutting measure, Marriott nonetheless chose to add some green spin to the move, saying they wanted to reduce their carbon footprint since not everyone used the paper that was provided.

This is where the picking comes in.

You see, the writer, one Tom Zeller Jr., couldn't just let that one go.

And so, like so many irritating newspaper people I love, Zeller digs in.

What he finds is that yes, it takes an awful lot of carbon and an awful lot of water to print a newspaper page, not to mention the trees it destroys. He then finds that if you're reading a newspaper on-line in Sweden, where most electric power is generated by hydro-electric and nuclear power, the carbon footprint is indeed less than picking up a printed copy.

But, if you're reading elsewhere in Europe or, presumably, the U.S. where coal figures more highly into the electricity profile, once you pass the 10-minute mark on-line, the footprint starts to pass that of the printed page.

If all this sounds like a giant rationalization to insist that we, the holy journalism industry, could NEVER be part of the problem -- we're always all about the solution aren't we? -- that's because it probably is.

Doesn't make it less true, of course, but it certainly feels like CYA to me.

What we should be focusing our efforts on is figuring out how we continue to provide our vital needling, examining, professional-skeptic-function electronically, and one that continues to rely on confirmed information from reliable sources and not just opinion -- you know like this -- without spending so much time chronicling our death spiral. That's what blogs are for and they seem more than happy to do it, although what they'll blog about when we're gone is bound to be less interesting.

But that is not our way. If we just left it alone, we would be ignoring a major shift in society and we wouldn't be true to who we are and why we're in this business. To be sure, newspaper people are working on keeping us afloat. But they're also being pestered by other newspaper people, asking them annoying questions and telling them (and the world) what we may be doing wrong.

Hey we just want to know -- and to tell you.

Now, if you'll excuse me, a source told me the tuba player on the promenade deck has an interesting story to tell....

Living on a limited budget as we do, we here at The Thin Green Line are sensitive to the fact that all too often, doing the right thing is not the cheapest thing.

Which is why we wanted to make you all aware of a couple of ideas out there in the idea-o-sphere (if this becomes Webster's new word of the year, we hereby formally lay legal and binding claim to it. Stuff THAT in your "truthiness" and smoke it Stephen Colbert!).

First of all, we'd like to tell you about an incentive from an industry long thought to be bereft of soul and all human feeling, unless of course you've been in a car crash or had your house burn down.

Yes, you've guessed it, we're talking about the insurance industry, which took us completely by surprise last month and announced discounts for folks who try to make their house more green.

According to this helpful release provided by the folks at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, at least one company, Donegal Insurance Group, will provide you with a 5 percent discount for installing solar electric panels on your house and another 5 percent discount for installing geo-thermal heat pumps to heat and cool your house.

(Shown at right is a geo-thermal plant, just a weeeeee bit bigger than the kind your house would use.)

And, if you own a small business, the state is offering 2 percent fixed interest 10-year loans for projects that reduce waste, pollution or energy use. The loans can be used to pay up to 75 percent of the cost, up to $100,000.

Click here for the link to that program.

If heating your hot water with the sun is your bag, consider that homeowners are eligible for a federal tax credit on solar heaters of up to 30 percent of the installed system's cost, with a cap of $2,000.

In this Feb. 9 Op-Ed piece for the New York Times, Amherst professor Larry Hunter argued that solar hot water is cheaper, simpler and more energy efficient than photovoltaic (in which solar energy is used to generate electricity for your house) and deserves a bigger slice of the stimulus pie.

Of course if you're devoted to photo-voltaic, The Thin Green Line has a morsel for you as well.

One of the frustrating things about being the first on your block with anything is you don't have a lot of bargaining power with the seller...unless if you got your whole block to buy it.!

Voila!

And so we bring you this link to a New York Times Magazine article about an entity called 1BOG.

So long as you are not so sensitive to the wave of "socialist" accusations sweeping out from the far right shouting machine, you may find savings from the "collective" purchasing of solar power. Just think of it like pitching in with your neighbor to share the cost of a fence dividing your two properties.

This how the Times described the company: "Owned by Virgance, a for-profit company based in San Francisco, 1BOG aims to make money by collecting what amounts to a referral fee from the solar installer, and some of the incentives it offers to consumers involve straightforward middleman functions: mastering the details of state, local and federal incentive programs that drastically lower costs; vetting solar-installation companies; and so on. Solar panels are, after all, a big-ticket item that few consumers know much about. (Costs vary, but under normal circumstances a $20,000 price tag is not unusual.) Finding the best installer and getting a fair price can be intimidating and bewildering."

Having seen "Obama-mania" sweep the country, the company collects customers through a campaign. "When 1BOG starts a “campaign” in a city, it relies on its consumer participants to recruit more consumer participants," the Times reports.

They've even hired a former Obama campaign coordinator to help. Whether or not this results in 1BOG-o-mania, it's too soon to tell.

In its first venture, with a group of 41 homes, it garnered a 20 percent discount in the price of installation, no small figure when you figure it can cost as much as $40,000 to install a 4.5 kilowatt system.

So far, the nearest the company has a group is Washington, D.C., but there is also one started in Bergen County, N.J., so Pennsylvania might be next.

We'll let you know...

In the meantime, consider this. If you think none of this affects you because you're just fine with the way things are, know that things will not stay the way they are.

The Obama administration and Congress are already moving toward regulations to reduce carbon emissions into the air, that means coal, currently the cheapest of the fossil fuels.

When coal gets more expensive, your electric bill will go up.

As this New York Times article shows, those worst hit by the price jumps may well be those least able to afford it.

It's hard to feel sorry for them.

Certainly, we here at The Thin Green Line don't want anyone to lose their job.

But as true believers in sustainability, we can't help but whisper a little "We told you so" at the looming demise of the auto industry's most conspicuous symbol of gas guzzling lunacy -- the Hummer.

Because the universe is rarely lacking in irony, we think back to the person who made the Hummer popular in the first place, now-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger who, as we all know, has transmogrified into one of the nation's greenest and most progressive governors. Go figure.

Anyhoo, as if we needed any more examples of the ripple effect the collapse of the auto industry can have on our economy, we recently stumbled across this article in The New York Times (from which we shamelessly stole the cool photo above, so cool it almost made us want a Hummer) about how Hummer's pending demise is affecting it's largest dealer, based in Missouri.

In reality, most people who bought Hummer's use them in places like in this photo at right, smoothly paved suburban streets on which even a scooter has no trouble.


Those are the people to whom dealers like Jim Lynch sold the illusion that you could create the persona of a rugged, outdoor lifestyle simply by spending enough money on the floor of a fancy showroom.

And now, as the Times article points out, the risk he took is turning into a big loss.

In the end, any bet that is placed on an unsustainable product or practice is destined to lose. And the idea that we could forever support a vehicle that gets 10 miles to the gallon when there is a finite supply of oil in the world and most of it belongs to people who hate us, is definitely unsustainable.

The real tragedy here is that when that bet finally goes bad, too often it is we, the taxpayers, who are holding the marker.

Last week, a mail miracle occurred.

I didn't get any.

Sitting on my front porch with a book (yes, made from paper), I watched in wonder as our friendly neighborhood carrier passed by and said "nothing today."

I was flabbergasted.

Dumbfounded.

Non-plussed.

We at Thin Green Line's Corporate Mega-Headquarters and luxury green spa were puzzled because we have not yet done what we put on our "to do" list months ago -- sign up with 41 pounds.org

We should. After all, what's not to like?

For $41, they stop all junk mail to your house for five years.

No credit card offers to shred or unwanted catalogs; one-hundred-plus trees not harvested to make the junk; 28 billion gallons of water kept clean.

And, more than two-thirds of the fee you pay is donated to the green charity of your choice.

(We are compelled to report here that, sadly, despite vociferous argumentation by the Thin Green Line's financial team -- all of whom have paid their taxes, for the most part -- those snobs at the IRS insist we are not a charity and you cannot name us at the "charity of your choice." Apparently, we also do not qualify for a government bail-out despite making many, many financial mistakes with other people's money. Sad as this no doubt makes you, believe you us, it makes US much sadder.)

Anyway, back to our over-burdened mailman. Despite his tendency to deliver unwanted bills, he's a great guy who unfortunately is tasked with carrying a whole lot of other stuff we don't want; in other words, junk mail.

Now those in the business like to call it "direct mail," as in mail that goes "direct"ly into the trash.

There is a little less of it these days, primarily because a national credit crisis has a tendency to dry up myriad credit card offers from companies that no longer feel safe giving credit to Fort Knox, much less environmentalist losers trying to make a better world.

But let's not kid ourselves, its out there...waiting... and, like an Arnold Schwarzenegger cameo in the next Terminator movie, it will be back!

So now comes the spot in our blog where we bombard you with numbers to prove our incontrovertible point; numbers carefully researched by a guy sitting at home in sweat pants reading The New York Times.

According to our crack research department, producing junk mail produces more carbon dioxide than nine million cars.

Now those readers who did not respond to Earth Hour's call last month to shut down all unnecessary lighting for one-hour by declaring in self-righteous (and mildly paranoid) defiance that you would turn on lights you don't even own, probably know that nasty old CO2 is the planet's number one greenhouse gas.

In fact, our (unwitting) research partners at the Times inform us here that a recent report by Forest Ethics -- with the fabulously clever title of "Do Not Mail: Climate Change Enclosed" -- found "mail advertisements create 51.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases each year — equivalent to the emissions generated by heating about 13 million homes during the winter, or mowing more than 20 billion lawns. "

Worse yet, only about 40 percent of junk mail gets recycled, probably because those of us who cannot afford to have our credit rating get any worse have to systematically shred each of those sounds-too-good-to-be-true-because-they-are credit card offers to prevent dumpster divers from stealing our slightly tarnished good name.

Those who (literally) bring you your junk mail, the U.S. Postal Service, are doing their part, installing 4,000 recycling stations near post office boxes so as much can be captured there as possible.

The Post Office is even urging direct mailers to follow their lead, providing a list of things they can do to green their product such as providing people the chance to "opt out" of being on their list and using recycled paper and biodegradable inks for their product.

But those direct mailers are a stubborn lot.

View here, if you have the stomach for it, an interview with Michael J. Critelli, 59, executive chairman of the mailing company Pitney Bowes, who uses a defense for junk mail that is as time-honored as it is disingenuous, best summarized as "we're not as bad as our competition."

Critelli argues that the trees used to make junk mail are replaced with new trees (so no harm, no foul); that junk mail makes up only 2 percent of landfill waste (what's 2 percent among friends?); and that spam, the bastard off-spring of junk mail, has an even greater environmental cost because of all the electricity those computer serves require.

All of which is completely true and, of course, completely besides the point.

To take the last point first, for this argument about spam to have weight, you have to assume that doing away with junk mail results in an increase in spam. We took a poll here at the Thin Green Line office tower complex and decided we could live with doing away with both. It also presumes we'll swallow in slack-jawed conformity that because the harm the other guy is causing is worse, we won't care about the harm you are doing.

This line of logic was dis-proved once and for all in the famous case of Crook Vs. Homeowner, renowned for the burglar's famous line, "hey pal, you should stop worrying that I'm stealing your TV, because I saw your neighbor kick your cat!"

Further, there is an environmental cost to harvesting those junk mail trees, replaced or not, and such mono-culture replants are rarely as diverse or as stable as old-growth forests; not to mention the greenhouse gases emitted by the chainsaws, loaders, helicopters (yes, we've seen it on The History Channel so it must be true) and paper mills.

Lastly, we doubt anyone would argue that reducing landfill waste by another two percent would be anything but a good thing.

Besides, how can you take seriously a guy who, when asked if some Americans like to get junk mail, replied "absolutely."

Forgive us, Mr. Critielli, if, when we ask ourselves this leading question -- "Do you think a guy whose salary is paid by junk mail will say anything to defend it no matter how damning the evidence of its harm?" -- we answer by saying "absolutely."

Now, if you all will excuse me, I have the clear the junk mail off my dining room table.

This here is one of them there good news/bad news/good news stories.

Now when I was a little tyke in green tights, long before I had conceived of the majestic literary masterpiece that is the Thin Green Line, I had a thing about whales.

It began when I was a lad at Copper Beech Middle School in the Lakeland School District of Westchester County, NY.

There, a super-cool music teacher whose name is now sadly lost in the rusted steel trap of my mind, introduced the close-packed class (music was taught in closets even back then) to the contemporary music of Gordon Lightfoot.

What captured my imagination was a song titled "Ode to Big Blue" which was about the Blue Whale. I was hooked at the first hearing.

For a brief and moderatly embarassing time, I thought I was hooked on Gordon Lightfoot, which led to many unfortunate hours for my family while I blasted greedily purchased Gordon Lightfoot albums in an attempt to re-capture the feeling of that first listen.

After a time, I came to realize the feeling came from a sense of wonder about whales, and not from Lightfoot's monotone singing style (although I still remember all the words to "Second Cup of Coffee" and the unfortunate hit, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.")

What followed was a period in my "tweens" and early adolesence during which I dedicated myself to whatever I could learn about whales. I learned a lot and tore photographs from articles about whales in National Geographic and glued them to incredibly heavy pieces of plywood I found around the house. These I hung on my walls using nails larger than some whale bones you might find.

(When my mother sold our house, I'm sure the hundreds of holes in the honeycombed walls of my room brought the price of the house down significantly.)

I decided I would be a marine biologist, combining my love of the ocean with my interest in cetaceans. (See, I was learning all sorts of scientific words and stuff).

Unfortunately, science turned out to require an understanding of math, a subject about which I had developed a phobia thanks to the public humiliation teaching style of a less-cool teacher in the Lakeland School District. (Her name I remember clearly, but I will spare her -- if she's still alive -- the shame with which she sought to motivate me.)

Regardless, I realized poor math skills would make my career as a scientist woefully lacking in accurate data.

Then I decided I would be an "international lawyer" dedicated to the preservation of the species in the world's courts of law, fighting the lonely fight to save creatures who would never know my name or touch. Damn noble of me don't you think?

Although I confess to being a halfway decent arguer, this ambition too fell by the wayside, probably because of how much work it threatened to require. (Noble, but lazy, the perfect description of my teen years.)

Then, having gently rejected my mother's fondest wish that I become a park ranger, I pursued her worst nightmare and became a writer, like my father, doomed to a life of flying fancies, past participles and empty bank accounts.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that throughout it all, I never lost my interest in whales, an interest which has been tickled by recent events.

The first was this article in The New York Times, which reports that conservation and protection efforts actually worked and this slow-moving cetacean is on the rebound.

"North Atlantic right whales, which can grow up to 55 feet long and weigh up to 70 tons, were the 'right' whales for 18th- and 19th-century whalers because they are rich in oil and baleen, move slowly, keep close to shore and float when they die," the Times sumarized: all terrible characteristics for a species trying to survive its initial contact with mankind. It was "right" for us, not them.

By 1900, it was estimated that as few as 100 remained, literally hunted to extinction, the dodo of the seas.

But recently, the good news came fast and furious, as the Times outlined:

• Recent changes in shipping lanes, some compulsory and others voluntary, seem to be reducing collisions between whales and vessels.


• The Bush administration agreed last year to lower speed limits for large vessels in coastal waters where right whales congregate. (Yes, Bush deserves credit. You heard it here first!)


• Fishing authorities in the United States are beginning to impose gear restrictions designed to reduce the chances whales and other marine mammals will be entangled in fishing lines. Canada is considering similar steps.


• In December, researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spotted an unusually large aggregation of right whales in the Gulf of Maine. A month later, a right whale turned up in the Azores, a first since the early 20th century.


• And last year, probably for the first time since the 1600s, not one North Atlantic right whale died at human hands.

We shouldn't be surprised that it took so long. The Right Whale does everything slowly: slow swimmer, slow breeder; slow to make a comeback.

All of which is part of what so fascinated me as a kid. They are so different from us and, quite possibly, smarter than us (something which a regular reading of The Mercury's Sound Off column quickly convinces me is easily achieved).

The ratio of the size of a cetacean's brain, in relation to its spinal cord -- one way scientists measure a species' intelligence -- is actually greater than mankind's. They are evolved from creatures who went back to the sea after living on land for a time. And their slow grace underwater is a wonder to behold.

And no sound more perfectly captures the spirit of the ocean itself, than the mournful mysterious sound of whale calls underwater.

But before I could go down to the basement and dig up my old Gordon Lightfoot records, I made the mistake of reading The Mercury.

There I found this article from the Associated Press, about how the world's financial crisis had had an unexpected victim -- a program that monitored these very creatures just as their comeback so desperately needs to be documented.

The monitoring program, which tracked whales as they passed New York Harbor on their way to their New England feeding grounds, is run by Cornell University and it quite simply ran out of money.

If you want to know more, click here.

(Geek Alert!: And no, the above link does not bring you to a Web site for Star Trek IV! Fellow geeks will get this joke.)

I am realist enough to know that as we fend off a Depression, making a pitch for more public money to monitor whales is unlikely to make it to the top of the priority list.

But rather than lure me into despair, the universe conspired to provide a dollop of hope, in the most unlikely of places -- a Pottstown School Board meeting.

As it does every month, the meeting began with the winners of the writing awards reading their work, and this month's readers were from Barth Elementary School.

I did not hear them all, arriving late as usual, but I did arrive in time to hear a composition by a young man whose name I did not catch at the time and have not yet discovered. (I will however.)

His essay was about how important it is to protect Humpback Whales and laid out all the reasons, not the least of which is how little we know about them.

I realized another generation is picking up the torch and this time, might succeed in becoming a scientist, an expert rather than just an enthusiast.

I wonder if he would be interested in my Gordon Lightfoot collection....

UPDATE:

This is the essay written by the Barth student, Carlos Fuentes-Brown, seen at left reading his essay:

My favorite animal is a humpback whale. A humpback whale can weigh roughly
30,000 pounds. It can have gray or blue gray skin. It eats krill and small fish and it can
eat 1000 pounds of food a day. The humpback whale is a large mammal that can grow
50 feet long. The humpback whale can be found in all oceans, but is an endangered
animal. It can sing songs that can be heard far away. Sometimes a pod of them sing and
can be heard far away. Humpback whales are the best animal.


Carlos Fuentes-Brown

Who says we at The Thin Green Line don't have a little grease under our fingernails?

Everyone? O.K., you're right. We can barely check our own tire pressure without help.

But that's OK. Living and writing in a car town and trying to convince car folks, who judge a vehicle by things like horsepower and torque, that they should also be worried about emissions is no easy task.

Not that we're complaining.....OK, maybe we are a little bit.

Anyway, in attempt to convince car folks that green can be cool, we present this link, to a slideshow on the New York Times web site, from which we have shamelessly and boldly copied the above photo. No, it's real and it's green baby. Go check it out.

But also, because we cannot completely deny our inner geek, we also present the below photo which, we confess, we think is cool too. It was dubbed "the itty bitty city car."

Come on. You have to admit, it's kind of cute, like the car equivalent of a kitten, but a kitten you can drive!

This New York Times photo shows how cardboard once bound for recycling is piling up as a result of the crashing recycling market.

For a while there, it looked like a stagnant economy would be a recyclers best friend.

With energy prices sky-rocketing and the price of raw materials going through the roof, making things with with other things was starting to look like a smart move economically as well as ecologically.

But what an economic slow-down giveth, a full-blown recession can take away.

Just as Pottstown tries to bolster its struggling budget bottom line by recycling its way to garbage pick-up parity, it looks like you can add recyclables to the list of markets bottoming out in this God-awful economy.

Many green types, like those populating the corporate offices of The Thin Green Line, have always argued municipalities should recycle because its the right thing to do, reducing the amount of trash we bury in zip-locked landfills, ecological time-bombs we've kindly set for future generations.

Then the economy went crazy and suddenly, there was a whole new argument for increasing recycling, it would save you money like crazy. This was the kind of argument even the most landfill-loving politician could get behind.

But the market is a harsh mistress and now, um, not so much.

According to this Dec. 7 article in The New York Times, "trash has crashed."

"There are no signs yet of a nationwide abandonment of recycling programs. But industry executives say that after years of growth, the whole system is facing an abrupt slowdown.
Many large recyclers now say they are accumulating tons of material, either because they have contracts with big cities to continue to take the scrap or because they are banking on a price rebound in the next six months to a year," the newspaper reported.

“We’re warehousing it and warehousing it and warehousing it,” said Johnny Gold, senior vice president at the Newark Group, a company that has 13 recycling plants across the country. Mr. Gold said the industry had seen downturns before but not like this. “We never saw this coming.”

Poor guy is starting to sound like an auto industry exec.

In the meantime, poor Pottstown is gearing up to increase its recycling stream, preparing 65-gallon toters for distribution around down and preparing what they're saying will be a massive public education campaign to increase participation.

The selling point has been that the more we recycling, the less we landfill, the lower our trash bill will be; all of which makes sense so long as there is a market to take the recyclables to.

Sadly, if the market stays collapsed so too will that argument, and just as people are being urged to recycle more to save money, it won't save money and that extra motivation will evaporate just at the moment when people's habits stand to be most permanently changed.

I suppose it's too much to hope for that recycling will increase simply because it's the right thing to do.

So it's a question long overdue in the asking: Will President-elect Obama be able to enact his ambitious plans for energy independence in the midst of a financial meltdown?

We here at The Thin Green Line polled our extensive staff -- including field researchers, laboratory assistants and policy wonks -- and concluded the answer to that question will depend as much on the man as the circumstances.

But since the man is not even in office yet, and because we won't fully know what kind of president he is until he is president, over-stuffed with turkey as we are, we have decided to confine our effort today to examining the circumstances.

This in and of itself is no small task as, like the issues, they are complex.

It was going to be hard enough to wean Americans off the easy and familiar energy sources of oil and coal in the best of circumstances.

Add to that the tension, fear and volatility of a collapsing economy and "hard" just went to "harder."

How to you jumpstart a new energy matrix when the financial resources required just got flushed down the proverbial de-regulation toilet?

Oddly, it seems, this question makes stark the observation that the world is full of basically two kinds of people, optimists and pessimists or, in this case, entrepreneurs and bean counters.

The bean counter argument is not hard to imagine and has many good points to its credit, not the least of which is "is now the time to invest what little money is available for lending in an untested industry?"

This is being seen already as it relates to wind power, hence our symbolic windmill photo at the top of the page.

Initially, the fastest growing of the major green energy initiatives -- the others being solar, ethanol and, to a lesser extent, geo-thermal -- wind power is now suffering from the collapse of its financial backers, like Lehman Brothers.

As this article in The Christian Science Monitor indicates, projects already underway in wind-rich places like Wyoming and Michigan are now becalmed by a lull that has nothing to do with wind-speed.

"Financing for wind projects is likely to shift more to deep-pocketed utilities and other companies far from Wall Street – including big foreign companies searching for a foothold in the United States," the now solely on-line newspaper reported. "Until this fall, plowing billions into new wind farms from North Dakota to Texas to California had been the epitome of renewable-energy investing for hedge funds and big banks."

Once, the second-fastest growing source of electricity generation after natural gas, wind has hit the perfect storm: Falling fossil fuel prices, especially in natural gas, rising steel prices and a paucity of investors.

And there is another, more integral matter with which green energy must contend in the electrical arena -- the infrastructure itself.

It's not enough to just build graceful wind farms across the plains and stand back to admire our tardy-but-necessary initiative.

The power grid that must carry those busy electrons from the plains to the cities is already seriously over-taxed and not designed for the task at hand.

A recent report by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation notes that switching over to more wind and solar power plants without upgrading the transmission capacity would result in more blackouts and less reliability -- not the kind of thing on which a thriving, high-tech economy is built.

And, as this report in The New York Times makes clear, the issue puts two green constituencies as odds.

"The report calls for construction of new power lines, which has become more difficult in some regions because of the diminished clout of utilities and the growing strength of preservationists trying to protect rural areas. "

Just such an effort is underway here in eastern Pennsylvania and is meeting with stiff resistance.

Even potential measures to ease this pressure, like voluntary shut-downs in exchange for price breaks, will not be enough to alleviate the shortage of transmission capacity however.

All of which brings us to the optimists or, as we fashioned them earlier, the entrepreneurs.

Some of the nation's most successful entrepreneurs succeed by seeing opportunity in difficulty, solving new problems in new ways.

Not being entrepreneurs here at The Thin Green Line (where wage slavery crushes our inner creative capitalist on a daily basis) we cannot propose those solutions, only have faith that they exist and that those so inclined will be able to find them.

One way to encourage them, argue some, is for a President Obama to enact a "Green New Deal" and use what financial fortitude the U.S. Government has left to support those efforts.

"Such a Green New Deal, woven into the economic stimulus package being crafted for early next year, could create millions of government-subsidized jobs and build a new energy infrastructure," The Boston Globe reported in this Nov. 24 article.
"It's a smart thing to do for the economy and a strategically wonderful thing to do for the environment," said David Foster, executive director of the Blue Green Alliance, a partnership between the Sierra Club and United Steelworkers that works to develop green jobs. His group points to a University of Massachusetts report earlier this fall that said a $100 billion investment in clean technology could create 2 million new jobs in the next two years. "It leads us down the path for energy independence. It's a historic opportunity," he told the newspaper.

Supporters of Obama's $150 billion energy plans, including the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council, say such a plan could include federal financial incentives to quickly build large-scale solar, wind, and other renewable projects. It could also include massive investment in new transmission lines to bring renewable power from rural areas into cities, creating a new electricity grid, according to the Globe.

But it won't be easy. Any reduction in carbon emissions from coal-fired plants are likely to raise electricity prices at a time when deregulation is already set to do that, at least in Pennsylvania, just when most consumers can't afford it. That will make it politically unpopular, requiring an effort to educate the country on why its necessary.

“In times of economic stress, the last thing you want to do is increase peoples’ energy costs with something like cap-and-trade,” Anne Korin, cofounder of the Set America Free Coalition (SAFC) of energy-security hawks and environ­mentalists, told The Christian Science Monitor in this Nov. 12 article which examines Obama's plans in some detail.

"SAFC calls for policies that would disconnect the US from imported oil. 'There’s a lot of talk about that, but a congressman who wants to be reelected would be very wary of that,' Ms. Korin says."

If you ask him if he can do it, Obama would likely say it is not him, but all of us that must accomplish this. "Yes WE can" was the mantra of his campaign.

But with the campaign over and his presidency looming, he must also recognize that while we may indeed be able to do it, we won't be able to do it without him.

This weekend we will have "game night" at my house with two or three couples and their children.

When we bought our house, we fell in love with the beautiful hardwood floors so we haven't put down too many rugs.

So when the six or seven children go tearing throughout house, often yelling at the top of their lungs, the sound can be cacophonous.

And more than once, I have said aloud, "if only we could bottle that energy, we could solve the energy crisis.

Well damn if someone didn't go and do that -- sort of.

Leave it to the Dutch.

As this article in The New York Times shows, they did something ingenious. They figured out a way to harness all the energy from the stomping, gyrating and bouncing that goes on in a Euro-dance club and turn that mechanical energy back into electric energy.

Called, appropriately, "Clubb Watt," this Rotterdam club is partly party powered.

This from the Times article: At Watt, which describes itself as the first sustainable dance club, that electricity is used to power the light show in and around the floor. “For this first club, we thought it was useful for people to see the results,” said Michel Smit, an adviser on the project. “But if the next owner wants to use the electricity to power his toaster, it can do that just as well.”

Watt is in large part the creation of the Sustainable Dance Club, a quirky company formed last year by a group of Dutch ecological inventors, engineers and investors now headed by Mr. Smit.

More than a year in the making, Watt is a huge performance space with not just the sustainable dance floor, but also rainwater-fed toilets and low-waste bars. (Everything is recycled.) Its heat is harvested in part from the bands’ amplifiers and other musical equipment.

It's like a bizzare mixed clone of Danny Terrio and Ed Begley Jr.

Anyhoo, kudos to the Dutch for thinking outside the club. Maybe we really can innovate our way out of global warming.

Why do I suddenly hear The Bee Gees singing "You should be dancing yeah....?"

Let us for a time turn our gaze from Washington, dear reader. It is a depressing view.

We at The Thin Green Line have written quite a lot about solar energy and other alternative forms of energy like geo-thermal and wind power.

What is encouraging to note is that as we scan the information landscape about these subjects, primarily in other newspapers around the country, we find increasingly that the subject is not dealt with in special "environmental" sections of the paper or Web sites, but rather in the "business" section.

We are becoming convinced that this is because green building practices and practices of sustainability are increasing in popularity not because of marketing, or because of some sense of moral obligation on people's part, but because it makes sense -- period.

Back in June, The New York Times ran a story about how high fuel prices were making the old suburban ideal of the big-house-with-the-cathedral-ceiling-in-the-big-subdivision-at-the-new-exit-off-the-big-highway harder to sustain.

Of course, since then the housing market has collapsed (or perhaps, in part, because of that) and there are all sorts of reasons why the building of such megaliths has stalled.

But the underlying conflict remains.

People like us who read planning journals call living an hour or two away from the city or town in which you work so you can live "in the country," living in an -exurb or "on the fringe." It's like a suburb on steroids. Twice the square footage, twice the lawn and six times the commute."

"Before it was ‘we spend too much time driving.’ Now, it’s ‘we spend too much time and money driving,’” was how one ex-urb resident described it in the story.

"In Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis, homes beyond the urban core have been falling in value faster than those within, according to an analysis by Moody’s Economy.com," the Times reported.

"More than three-fourths of prospective home buyers are now more inclined to live in an urban area because of fuel prices, according to a recent survey of 903 real estate agents with Coldwell Banker, the national brokerage firm."

Now please excuse me while we cut and paste even more shamelessly from the Times article, because it's relevant and, well they've already written it more clearly than we would.

-- “It’s like an ebbing of this suburban tide,” said Joe Cortright, an economist at the consulting group Impresa Inc. in Portland, Ore. “There’s going to be this kind of reversal of desirability. Typically, Americans have felt the periphery was most desirable, and now there’s going to be a reversion to the center.”

-- In March, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles on public roads than in the same month the previous year, a 4.3 percent decrease — the sharpest one-month drop since the Federal Highway Administration began keeping records in 1942.

-- Long before the recent spike in the price of energy, environmentalists decried suburban sprawl a waste of land, energy and tax dollars. Governments from Virginia to California have in recent decades lavished resources on building roads and schools for new subdivisions in the outer rings of development while skimping on maintaining facilities closer in. Many governments now focus on reviving their downtowns.

-- In Denver — a classic Western city, with snarling freeway traffic across a vast acreage of strip malls, ranch houses and office parks — the city has had an urban renaissance over the last decade.

-- A $6.1 billion commuter rail system has been in the works over the last four years, drawing people downtown without cars, while stimulating swift sales of densely clustered condos near stations.

Imagine, building a commuter rail system to take cars off the highway and revitalize downtowns along its route. Are you listening Pennsylvania?

Of course, if you have enough money to have a second home (and who doesn't? Umm, us?), you may also have enough money to operate that home "off the grid."

In this August article in "Great Homes/Great Destinations section of The New York Times, readers learn about a new trend in getaways epitomized by Lake Bill Chinook in Oregon where second homes have evolved from tents and trailers to giant homes. What makes them significant, is they are all, by necessity, "off the grid" and have to generate their own power, water and waste disposal.

Imagine if the rest of us had to do that. We would find out what we are capable of.

To help us learn, we now can turn to a growing number of consultants who specialize in teaching how to practice sustainability.

The trend was documented in this August article in The New York Times Business section.

"It reported that at the end of 2006, the Green Building Council’s membership included 679 consultants. By July 31 this year, there were 1,590."

"This mirrors the rapid increase in the number of buildings certified by the council: In 2005, there were 404 buildings that met LEED standards. Midway through 2008, 1,705 buildings have been certified," the article notes.

For the uninitiated, LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. And, because Americans love to quantify things, it of course has a rating scale that lets you brag to the neighbors about how much your greener your house is than theirs.

In fact that is undoubtedly part of the motivation for houses like this one, highlighted in another New York Times article about how LEED is "the new trophy home." This California home they used as an example is priced at $2.8 million.

For those without the time or the inclination to click on the link provided, allow me to provide you with a sampling of what it reveals:

"Its rating was built into that price. LEED — an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the hot designer label, and platinum is the badge of honor — the top classification given by the U.S. Green Building Council. “There’s kind of a green pride, like driving a Prius,” said Brenden McEneaney, a green building adviser to the city of Santa Monica, adding, “It’s spreading all over the place.”

"Devised eight years ago for the commercial arena, the ratings now cover many things, including schools and retail interiors. But homes are the new frontier.

"While other ratings are widely recognized, like the federal Energy Star for appliances, the LEED brand stands apart because of its four-level rankings — certified, silver, gold and platinum — and third-party verification. So far this year, 10,250 new home projects have registered for the council’s consideration, compared with 3,100 in 2006, the first year of the pilot home-rating system. Custom-built homes dominate the first batch of certified dwellings. Today, dinner-party bragging rights are likely to include: “Let me tell you about my tankless hot water heater.” Or “what’s the R value of your insulation?”

What can I say, "we've come a long way baby.

But we should probably make sure we don't go too far.

While all of the previous examples show the power of persuasion and peer pressure at work, there are other methods and this one being practiced in the city of Marbug, Germany, is probably a step too far for most Americans.

There, in a city in which is already a "model of enlightened energy production and consumption," the leaders took things one step further. Instead of encouraging the installation of solar panels on new construction and significant renovations, it is now requiring it, or pay a $1,500 fine.

The law is being challenged, as well it should be.

One opponent, who calls the law the beginning of a "green dictatorship," makes the very relevant observation that compelling people breeds opposition to green practices whereas encouraging them and helping them instead breeds support.

After all, we say, why compel when the trends, circumstances and market all seem to be pointing us in the right direction anyway?

Suddenly, solar power is hot.

And no, I don't mean the special oil heated by fields of mirrors in the Mojave desert (although that's hot too).

No, what I mean is that perhaps Malcolm Gladwell's famous "tipping point" may have been reached.

Prodded, no doubt, by the constant pleas on this blog and the mighty influence of the Thin Green Line's 13 regular readers, both the House and Senate this month passed by large margins, legislation that will extend tax breaks for investment in renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

Of course, this being Washington, the bills are different so the two houses of Congress have to negotiate something they can both agree on, never a sure thing in this day and age when everyone talks the bi-partisanship talk, but almost universally fails to walk the walk.

According to this Sept. 26 article in The New York Times, "the tax credit would increase domestic investment in the solar industry by $232 billion by 2016 and generate 440,000 jobs, many in manufacturing, construction and engineering."

But now that we have Washington on board (we hope) with taking advantage of the most free, most renewable, most dependable energy source in the solar system, we turn around to find our fellow tree huggers raising a fuss.

What am I talking about?

Well according to this Sept. 23 article in the Times, environmentalists in the southern California desert are protesting massive solar projects planned for flat land where the sun shines 364 days a year.

Their problem? The Mojave ground squirrel, the desert tortoise and the burrowing owl. (Why is it always an owl?)

Time for a little hypocrisy.

Yes, this blog supports protecting old-growth forests from logging for the spotted owl. Yes, this blog, with some reservations, believes hydro-power (another green source) needs to take the needs of migrating fish into account.

So do we need to worry about the squirrel, the tortoise and the owl too? Aristotle would argue that we cannot support the preservation of one habitat and support the disturbance of another only because it's hot and dry and only crazy people would want to live there. (Sorry mom).

But Aristotle, hemlock and all, lived in a world of theoretical absolutes and we live in a world where even crazier people live in an even hotter desert half a world away and sometimes you have to choose the lesser evil.

Condemn me if you will green purists, but I'm afraid I have to come down on the side of massive solar power installations on this one. And for justification, I will turn to a justification so often over-used by the administration I love to criticize.

The answer, folks, is national security. This country can simply no longer afford to depend on a fossil fuel technology. When Barack Obama talks about building a new energy infrastructure in ten years, he is talking about a necessity, not a frill.

If you doubt me, ask the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, it's not just in California's deserts that such projects are being proposed.

According to this Sept. 24 article in The Mercury (written by yours truly), one use being championed for the former OxyChem site in Lower Pottsgrove is a solar power park.

The proposal comes within the framework of a joint project of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Dept. of Energy. It is a push to put alternative energy projects on former industrial sites, often called "brownfields," on which it is often difficult to attract redevelopment. Talk about a win-win.

(Click here to learn more about this program.)

Meanwhile in the win-win department, and also to show that not all Californians lean toward lunacy, I point to yet another article in the Times which is cause for hope.

In the far-left bastion of Berkeley, the city council is doing something innovative.

As this Sept. 17 article illustrates, the city is starting a low-interest loan program to encourage the installation of solar power in its homes.

"The loans, which are likely to total up to $22,000 apiece, would be paid off over 20 years as part of the owners’ property-tax bills," according to the Times. This will make solar power more accessible to people who cannot afford the up-front costs and thus cannot benefit from the usual tax-break incentive government favors.


Already cities from San Francisco to Annapolis, Md., and Seattle, to Cambridge, Mass., are calling to get the details.

Here in Pottstown however, we're actually trying to limit solar power installations under the rationale that they could ruin the lines of our historic architecture.

According to this Sept. 13 article in The Mercury (also written by yours truly), the Pottstown Planning Commission has proposed changes to the zoning law that would regulate how solar panels could be installed. Borough Council has agreed to hold a public hearing on the subject, but no date has yet been set.

This may once again be an occasion for hypocrisy as I am not sure, despite my love for old homes (I live in a house built in 1916 after all), whether its wise to deny energy-efficiency to those whose homes are least likely to have it.

We may even have to get the police may have to get involved.

For it seems that solar panels are popular not only with city councils and other law-makers and law-abiding citizens. According to this Sept. 23 article in the Times, solar panels are now in such demand that people are stealing them!

"Police departments in California — the biggest market for solar power, with more than 33,000 installations — are seeing a rash of such burglaries, though nobody compiles overall statistics," according to the Times.

"Investigators do not believe the thieves are acting out of concern for their carbon footprints. Rather, authorities assume that many panels make their way to unwitting homeowners, sometimes via the Internet," the paper reported.

So (wait for it....) when I said solar power is "hot," I meant it in more ways than one!

(Oh come on, don't groan. That one was sweet!)

As Hurricane Gustav putters out of steam over the Great Plains and Hurricane Hanna sets her sights on raking of the eastern seaboard, thoughts turn once again to the connection between fiercer hurricanes and global warming.

Although, despite what Alaska Gov . Sarah Palin thinks, the (scientific) jury is NOT still out on whether centuries of pumping carbon into the atmosphere is helping to drive climate change, scientific opinion on whether or not that change is driving worse hurricanes is much less unanimous.

While it seems intuitive that a natural phenomena whose engine is heat might become stronger if we're generating more heat, science isn't based on intuition, but on provable facts.

And up until now (and perhaps beyond), those provable facts as they relate to the connection between hurricanes and global warming have been debated.

New fuel for that debate was issued with the Thursday release of a scientific paper which analyzes satellite data on hurricane wind speeds and ocean temperatures over the past twenty years.

According to the scientists who wrote it, they see a correlation between higher ocean temperatures and a corresponding increase in the winds of the strongest storms.

If you were looking for evidence that the atmosphere is a complicated place and using science to figure it out can give you a mother of a headache, however, consider that the study found that weaker, more typical storms, were not getting any stronger, only the super storms, like Katrina.

More complications arise in the form of "wind shear," fast winds moving at different directions at different altitudes, which can shred a storm before it can begin to coalesce into the deadly turbine we see so frequently on The Weather Channel.

Wind shear also can be affected by climate change.

So, it seems, the variables are many and the complications more variable still.

Still, the study's authors conclude that the coming years will see more category 4 and 5 hurricanes, the most powerful, as outlined in this article in The New York Times.

Unlike previous studies, this one is not being attacked on the basis of its methodology, which Christopher Landsea, science and operations manager at the National Hurricane Center, praised.

Landsea (can you believe that is the name of a hurricane scientist!?) is a skeptic of the connection, but praised the study's method, basing his skepticism primarily on the fact that the period of time the ocean temperatures were studied coincided with a particularly active storm period.

I'm no scientist, but I must point out that an increase in storm activity level seems like no basis to dismiss a study that says there is going to be an increase in storm activity level. But I must be missing the nuances of the data or something.

Another skeptic, Thomas R. Knutson of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton, said the period of time studied is too short to be definitive.

He told the Times, “One is left with a very suggestive result and a very interesting result, but it’s not a definitive smoking gun for a greenhouse warming signal on hurricanes.”

While that may be true, I hope we can exercise the precautionary principle on this and nevertheless site this study as more evidence in favor of reversing global warming.

Because while science may want a "smoking gun" before it is willing to declare a conclusion, there are people in places like Florida and the gulf coast who have that gun pointed at them, and I suspect they would just as soon not wait until its smoking.

Like that ubiquitous Energizer bunny, talk of oil prices and energy production is threatening to overtake talk of the economy on the campaign trail this year.

One of the less-discussed aspects of John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate is her street cred in standing up to the oil companies that essentially own the state.

Of course, she was demanding that they do more drilling, but anyone who can be said to have a reputation for staring down big oil brings something to the table in this strange and historic election year.

What is increasingly lacking at the table, however, is common sense.

I know you all hate it when I constantly quote The New York Times, but they haven't been the "newspaper of record" for 100 years by being wrong all the time.

An Aug. 9 editorial concluded with this irrefutable truth -- "Here is the underlying reality: A nation that uses one-quarter of the world’s oil while possessing less than 3 percent of its reserves cannot drill its way to happiness at the pump, much less self-sufficiency. The only plausible strategy is to cut consumption while embarking on a serious program of alternative fuels and energy sources. This is a point the honest candidate should be making at every turn. "
(Click here to read the full editorial.)

I find it hard to argue with this statement, although I have learned that anybody can argue with anything at any time.

Nevertheless, if we are to bring this country back from the brink, it is time to recognize a few realities and stop arguing for argument's sake.

Some of my regular correspondents like to argue that "the market" will solve this problem in a more effective way than government interference ever could.

Not one to blindly trust government at any level, I nevertheless continue to believe that good or ill, government can be a democracy's clearest manifestation of the public will and it's time we started exercising that will over the corporate interests that have hi-jacked it.

On the same day The Times published the above-cited editorial, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Thomas Friedman made some interesting observations about a place where government saw the writing on the wall and changed the course of a nation for the better.

(Hint: It wasn't here.)

Like the U.S., Denmark was hit hard by the Arab oil embargo of 1973. Unlike the U.S., which breathed a sigh of relief when it was over and started building SUVs, Denmark decided it would never again allow itself and its economy to held over a barrel (pun intended) by sheiks in Saudi Arabia (the country where our attackers actually came from).

Instead, the Danes "responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent," Friedman wrote.

"Danes imposed on themselves a set of gasoline taxes, CO2 taxes and building-and-appliance efficiency standards that allowed them to grow their economy — while barely growing their energy consumption — and gave birth to a Danish clean-power industry that is one of the most competitive in the world today. Denmark today gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind. America? About 1 percent."

They pay $10 a gallon for gas, but it has not crippled their economy because they undertook a green revolution, the kind Barack Obama has outlined. If you want to know what that might look like eight years from now, just look across the Atlantic.

"In the last 10 years, Denmark’s exports of energy efficiency products have tripled. Energy technology exports rose 8 percent in 2007 to more than $10.5 billion in 2006, compared with a 2 percent rise in 2007 for Danish exports as a whole.

"It is one reason that unemployment in Denmark today is 1.6 percent," Friedman wrote. In 1973, Denmark obtained 99 percent of its energy from the Middle East. Today it is zero.

"Because it was smart taxes and incentives that spurred Danish energy companies to innovate, Ditlev Engel, the president of Vestas — Denmark’s and the world’s biggest wind turbine company — told me that he simply can’t understand how the U.S. Congress could have just failed to extend the production tax credits for wind development in America," Friedman wrote.
Why should we care about Denmark? Friedman asks.

“We’ve had 35 new competitors coming out of China in the last 18 months,” said Engel, “and not one out of the U.S."

But instead of continuing those incentives to innovate and make us energy independent and thus break the chain that lashes us to the global madness that is the Middle East, we give subsidies to oil companies enjoying record profits and consider giving them leases to drill in our struggling oceans when they aren't even drilling in the places on dry land which we gave them for a song.

And in case you were wondering, those subsidies may be killing us.

This article in Reuters notes that a recent U.N. study has concluded that fuel subsidies envisioned as a way to bring energy to poor countries not only benefit the rich instead (SURPRISE!) but are hastening global warming.

As Alister Doyle writes, "Abolishing subsidies on fossil fuels could cut world greenhouse gas emissions by up to 6 percent and also nudge up world economic growth," the report showed.

"Some countries spend more on subsidies than on health and education combined ... they stand in the way of more environmentally friendly technologies," Kaveh Zahedi, climate change coordinator at UNEP, told a news conference.

"Smarter subsidies such as tax breaks, financial incentives or other market mechanisms could generate benefits for the economy and environment if properly targeted, it said. It pointed to subsidies to promote wind energy in Germany and Spain aimed at helping to shift from fossil fuels," the report said.

Hello! Are we tired of being the dumbest people in the world yet? Why are we hesitating to do something that countries all over Europe are already demonstrating can be done, with a little focus, a little backbone and a little faith in ourselves?

If hundreds of thousands of small personal donations can overcome the grip large donors have on politics, why can't the same strategy overcome the grip fossil fuels have on our economy?

Surely, it can't because it is beyond our reach. We've reached the moon. The only explanation is that we're too lazy to try, and that does not seem terribly American to me.

As Barack Obama said, we're a better country than that.

That seems like the sort of drumbeat that bunny should be setting.

I know, I know, I've been neglecting you.

I last posted before jetting off (O.K. driving my hybrid off) to the Jersey shore to snatch a few hours of relaxation from what is turning out to be an awfully hectic summer.

And now, guess what? I'm doing it again.

I leave tomorrow on yet another abbreviated vacation, but feel guilty about doing it without another quick posting. (Is "blog guilt" a certified psychological condition yet?)

It occurred to me that at this time of year, elementary and secondary school students are busy denying the looming start of school, but that college students can no longer deny the inevitable.

So as parents and student alike prepare for the trek to whatever far-flung school junior has chosen drain you bank account, consider the following.

First, and most important on my blog, is the fact that my alma mater is number three.

The rank is courtesy of The Princeton Review's latest college rankings which now includes the "greenest colleges" in addition to other important rankings like best party school and school with the quirkiest mascot.

The greenest of them all, according to Princeton, is Arizona State University at the Tempe campus. Second is Bates College in Lewiston, Maine and then roaring in at third is my old school, Binghamton University (known formally as the State University of New York at Binghamton).

As any Binghamton alumni can immediately recognize, our school never really "roared" in anything. But anyway, the remaining schools on the list are, in order: College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia Institute of Technology, also in Atlanta, Harvard, University of New Hampshire, University of Oregon, University of Washington and Yale.

No doubt it galled Princeton to have to name Harvard and Yale as being better than them in anything. No worries through, Princeton ranked third in having the happiest students, a top-ten list that neither of its other Ivy League rivals even made; as well as being ranked first in students happy with their financial aid.

You can see all the rankings by clicking here.

And, as this article in The New York Times indicates, a green ranking is increasingly important to the up-and-coming generation.

As the Times article notes, the Princeton Review survey this year asked 10,300 college applicants about what was important to them and "63 percent said that a college’s commitment to the environment could affect their decision to go there."

But while all this awareness is exciting, there is doubt about how meaningful some of these labels are.

"Some higher education officials worry that campuses are taking easy steps to win the label rather than doing the kind of unglamorous work — replacing air exchange systems, for example — that would actually reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. Some campuses are changing little more than their press releases," the Times reports.

"Sustainability is far more than recycling and “Do It in the Dark” competitions to see which dorms use the least water and electricity. Sustainability is a complex concept, expensive and difficult to achieve. It involves an entirely new approach to day-to-day living and the reappraisal of the existing infrastructure," Kate Zernike writes in The Times.

(And now pardon my continued laziness as I try to do a week's worth of work and still leave for my vacation on time by shamelessly cutting and pasting two paragraphs from the Times story that really encapsulate the scale of the challenge and also manages to suck the joy out of any exuberance you might have felt about people finally starting to "get it.")

“It’s important that we focus on the significant rather than the symbolic, or at least recognize the symbolic for what it is,” says Sarah Hammond Creighton, the sustainability coordinator at Tufts. “I think the commitments are generally real, but I worry that the translation into the depth of the challenge hasn’t hit people.”

The most high-profile effort, and the most debated, is the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, signed over the last two years by more than 550 institutions representing about 30 percent of American students. Those who sign promise that within a year they will inventory their greenhouse gas emissions and within two will formulate a plan to arrive at carbon neutrality — that is, zero net CO2 emissions — “as soon as possible.” They also have to agree to at least two of seven measures, including buying 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources and building to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards, a certification developed by the nonprofit United States Green Building Council.

Certainly, let's hope our nation's institutions of higher learning can meet those lofty goals.

In the meantime, let's also hope you parents out there with kids in college manage to avoid a conversation with them about what "Do It In the Dark" really means.

Understand, generally speaking, I'm a big fan of democracy.


Citizens electing their leaders to decide what is best for the country (and the world) within a framework that protects the rights of the minority it a pretty awesome system.


But the key flaw in all this is, or course, the word "elections." Because at election time, the thing that most often concerns these alleged "leaders" is their own reelection.


So as we all drown in $4-per-gallon gas and heating oil bills that may mean our kids won't go to college, energy has become an election football.


As I blogged on June 26 and July 3, the tax break for alternative energy sources is set to expire soon unless Congress gets its act together.


(Did I just say the words "Congress" and "act together" in the same sentence? Somebody slap me.)


Well, as Reuters reported in this article, an attempt to move a Senate bill extending those tax breaks forward, which needed 60 votes but received only 51, was foiled by Republicans convinced the way to move away from our addiction to oil is to drill for more oil, particularly in environmentally sensitive places where it is currently banned.


Never mind that oil companies hold hundreds of leases to drill on public lands that they are not utilizing, the Republicans believe voters will believe that a crisis is the time to decide what to let oil companies do with our future, and have said as much -- publicly!

These same companies seem to be doing OK without the Senate's help.


As CNN reported here Exxon Mobil just posted the largest quarterly profit in U.S. history Thursday, posting net income of $11.68 billion on revenue of $138 billion in the second quarter.


That profit works out to $1,485.55 a second. That barely beat the previous corporate record of $11.66 billion, also set by Exxon in the fourth quarter of 2007."The fundamentals of our business remain strong," Henry Hubble, Exxon's vice president of investor relations, said on a conference call. "We continue to capture the benefit of strong industry conditions."


That's an understatement if ever I read one. I can see why Senate Republicans feel moved to rush to their aid.


The extension of the tax breaks isn't dead yet, but I think "on life support" is not an unfair way to characterize them.


But as the Senate Republicans try to convince voters we can drill our way out of an energy crisis, those tax breaks will expire (I wonder how John McCain will vote on this matter?) and our nation's nascent entrepreneurial attempt to get ahead of the curve on energy will suffer a setback, perhaps a fatal one.


And so elections will imperil all of us to live with the consequences of the need to curry favor with oil companies in order to increase campaign donations.


But fear not oh faithful reader, all hope is not lost. Some vision remains.


This story by McClatchy newspapers that says the U.S. will soon be the world's number one wind power producer, suggesting that we may be succeeding without tax breaks.


But be careful of jumping to too many conclusions. As Mark Twain is said to have said, "figures don't lie, but liars figure."


The American Wind Energy Association is expected to release a survey next month that calculates that the US wind industry now tops Germany in terms of how much energy is being produced from wind. But that has more to do with how windy America is than any visionary investment level by us. Maybe all those senate blow-hards are a natural resource we should begin taking advantage of.

Germany still has more installed capacity - 22,000 megawatts compared with 17,000 in the US at the end of 2007. But the average wind speed is stronger in America, which means more energy is being generated, the group said.

Not surprisingly, the newspaper group also reports that many of the world's leading wind companies are not US companies, and they will need to move manufacturing jobs to the US as the wind industry grows, Swisher said. His group says 4,000 wind-related manufacturing jobs have been added in the US since 2007.


Before you get too excited, you should know that currently, wind provides about 1% of US electricity.

The cost of wind power is almost comparable to fossil fuels such as coal, at between 4.5 and 7.5 cents per kilowatt hour, but building a wind farm costs more than a fossil-fuel plant - between $1.5m and $2m per megawatt of capacity compared with $800,000 for a natural-gas plant.
Once constructed, though, wind plants have no fuel costs compared with coal and natural gas plants.


Since Germany far surpasses the U.S. in solar power generation, despite our sunnier weather patterns, I'd call this one a draw.


But also in the promise for the future category, consider this idea. What if the weather didn't matter?


As O. Glenn Smith, a former manager of science and applications experiments for the International Space Station at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, writes in this New York Times opinion piece, maybe the best idea is to harvest solar energy from space.


Smith, who seems to know what he's talking about, said it's not as James Bond as it sounds. As solar panels get lighter and thinner, this idea is more and more financially feasible.


Basically, you launch a bunch of solar collectors into space, which is a much more efficient way to collect solar energy, and then beam it back to earth. (Yes, I said "beam it.")


Smith writes: "Once collected, the solar energy would be safely beamed to Earth via wireless radio transmission, where it would be received by antennas near cities and other places where large amounts of power are used. The received energy would then be converted to electric power for distribution over the existing grid. Government scientists have projected that the cost of electric power generation from such a system could be as low as 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is within the range of what consumers pay now."


And if you want justification for what would surely be an expensive undertaking, Smith urges us to consider that: "Over the past 15 years, Americans have invested more than $100 billion, directly and indirectly, on the space station and supporting shuttle flights. With an energy crisis deepening, it’s time to begin to develop a huge return on that investment."


Now if only we could figure out some way turn that into a campaign contribution, then it might actually happen. (Sigh.)

As we have explored in this here blog oh faithful reader, it seems like there are few aspects of life that the green revolution doesn't touch.



There's your house, your car, your job so why not, your food?



There are a couple green things to consider while chomping away at the table, and I mean more than the broccoli you're pretending to enjoy.



One of the most important aspects of what we eat is the consideration of whether we'll be able to eat it tomorrow.



In other words, sustainability.



As we learned once (and then forgot) in the years of the dust bowl, there are sustainable and unsustainable farming practices.



We are entering a food crunch brought about the perfect storm of several aspects.



The first, as with everything in the American economy, has to do with fuel.



Higher fuel costs are making it more expensive to move food great distances, making locally grown produce suddenly more attractive not only for its diminished carbon footprint, but also for its diminished impact on your wallet.



For several years, some places, like Maysie's Farm Conservation Center in Ludwig's Corner have espoused a sustainable practice called Community Supported Agriculture, as I mentioned in my May 6 blog entry.



The idea is that you buy into a local farmer's crop ahead of time and when the crop comes in, you collect your share.



Another old idea that's new again is to have a backyard garden and actually (gasp!) grow some food of your own.



Of course some people, (me for instance) have a brown thumb and can only seem to grow weeds. For those, and those who haven't the time or the inclination but do have the desire, there are people like Trevor Paque.



As this article in The New York Times outlines, Paque is a new kind of farmer, the kind who comes to your house to tend your garden for you.



According to the article, "even couples planning a wedding at the Plaza Hotel in New York City can jump on the local food train. For as little as $72 a person, they can offer guests a '100-mile menu' of food from the caterer’s farm and neighboring fields in upstate New York."
"Locally grown food, even fully cooked meals, can be delivered to your door. A share in a cow raised in a nearby field can be brought to you, ready for the freezer — a phenomenon dubbed cow pooling. There is pork pooling as well. At Sugar Mountain Farm in Vermont, the demand for a half or whole rare-breed pig is so great that people will not be seeing pork until the late fall," the Times reports.



Then there's the issue of ethanol.



As well-meaning, but misguided officials try to push ethanol as an alternative to Middle East oil, they fail to recognize that growing food crops for fuel, creates a food shortage and further drives up the cost for food.



By next year, biofuels are expected to consume 30 percent of the corn crop.



Grain shortages are also being caused by the improving economic fortunes of billions of Chinese citizens who, newly wealthy by comparison, want to eat more meat.



Cornell University estimates that the U.S. could feed 800 million people with the grain eaten by livestock. Each year an estimated 41 million tons of plant protein is fed to U.S. livestock to produce an estimated 7 million tons of animal protein for human consumption.



For every kilogram of high-quality animal protein produced, livestock are fed nearly 6 kilograms of plant protein.



As a result, consumers and food suppliers are turning increasingly to fish for their protein.



Of course, we've treated the oceans like our farmland by which I mean we've nearly fished it into extinction, giving rise to another new industry, aqua-culture.



In the past, these operations, often experimental at first, have been criticized for clustering fish too closely together, fostering disease and causing problems at their locations, which are often too close to shore.



And so, sustainable agriculture has also spread to the seas.



As this article in The Washington Post shows, "Supermarkets are introducing new standards for the farmed fish and shrimp that make up roughly half of U.S. seafood consumption, riding a wave of consumer demand for environmentally friendly products. "



Whole Foods, Wegman's and even Wal-Mart are all getting in the act, consulting with the organizations which once criticized overly consumptive and practices to certify suppliers as farming fish in a way that doesn't harm the environment, damage sensitive eco-systems or over-use antibiotics.



However, although the nonprofit Marine Stewardship Council provides certification for suppliers of wild-caught seafood -- the labels are used in stores from Whole Foods to Wal-Mart -- there is no widely accepted standard for sustainable farming practices.



Don't be surprised to seen see labels on your flounder and tilapia.

So every once and a while I get mad.

Don't take away my liberal membership card here, but there are aspects of the free market with which I agree, primarily that an organization whose primary purpose is to make money is going to make decisions based on what makes it the most money.

So when I read this Reuters analysis in Forbes Magazine, which essentially states that exports of refined American petroleum products have soared in the same year that gasoline is topping $4 a gallon, I got mad.

Now don't get me wrong, they have a right to sell their product wherever it will get the highest price.

Consider this paragraph from the Reuters piece: "Also, while U.S. gasoline demand is down due to high prices and a weak American economy, there is 'strong economic growth outside the United States' where fuel is often subsidized and demand is high," said John Cook, director of Energy Information Administration's Petroleum Division.

He's right; go crazy; this is a global economy right?

Here's the rub though, these same oil and gas companies -- joined by the Bush administration, our friends at Fox News and a goodly portion of The Mercury's Sound Off callers -- are arguing that if only the tree-huggers hadn't prevented our friends in Big Oil from dilling on our coastlines and in Alaska, gas would still be $2 a gallon.

"We can help alleviate shortages by drilling for oil and gas in our own country," President Bush told reporters this week, according to the Reuters story. "We have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home."

But a one-year increase of 33 percent in exports of refined petroleum products says otherwise. Apparently, even if we were to put our coastal and natural resources at risk for what is, at best, a year's worth of supply for our insatiable appetite for oil, one-third or it might be shipped overseas if the price was right.

"While the administration argues that more supplies would help to bring down prices, U.S exports of diesel fuel in April averaged 387,000 barrels per day, up almost seven-fold from 59,000 barrels a day in the same month a year earlier," Reuters reported.

"U.S. gasoline shipments in April averaged 202,000 barrels a day, the most for the month since 1945, when America was sending fuel overseas to ease supply shortages in other countries during World War II. Gasoline exports in April 2007 were almost half at 116,000 barrels per day."

Hey we're no capitalists though, so no problem.

Go ahead and make the money you were founded to make, Big Oil, that's what you're there to do.

But do us a favor please, don't ask the American taxpayers to take the risk. Because as Exxon's recent Supreme Court triumph demonstrates, the one that lowered their penalty for the Valdez oil spill, if things go bad, and a bad spill occurs off Florida's coast, or in Alaska, we know who will be paying the bill.

These same companies already have leases to drill for oil on public land in the U.S. that they are not acting on, so if our own resources are the key to success, why aren't we drilling there?

Answer, they want it all and a crisis atmosphere makes it more likely we will give it to them for free.

Instead of drilling where they already have leases and producing oil more quickly, Big oil/the White House (there's really little difference is there?) keep pushing for permission to lift the flimsy protections put in place to protect fragile areas that belong to us all and will take decades to recover, if at all, when the inevitable accident occurs.

Where we should be putting our public resources people, is into alternatives to oil. Even Chevron is doing it, as this New York Times article shows, investing in technology that would allow us to convert algae into oil.

The relevant paragraphs are as follows:

"If the price of production can be reduced, the advantages of algae include the fact that it grows much faster and in less space than conventional energy crops. An acre of corn can produce about 20 gallons of oil per year, Dr. (Roger) Ruan (of the University of Minnesota) said, compared with a possible 15,000 gallons of oil per acre of algae.

"An algae farm could be located almost anywhere. It would not require converting cropland from food production to energy production. It could use sea water and could consume pollutants from sewage and power plants."

Talk about a tricfecta! What's the hold up?

This is pretty basic folks. I can only say it so many times.

We're behind on this. Oil is the steam technology of our generation. It entangles us in wars and disputes that are none of our business. It's emissions are destroying our atmosphere.

Hey if Chevron or Exxon want to be the king of the next energy source, I could give a sh*t, more power to them. They're already an energy company and know more about distribution and pricing than I ever will.

But it's time to move on, and even the almighty market is heading that way. Let's give the coasts, the polar bears, the elk, the birds and the rest a rest. We have alternatives. Let's show our patriotism by showing by American can do when we put our minds to it.

And we do that by putting our tax dollars where they will work for us, not for companies who are, by their very nature, compelled to send that energy overseas if that's what the market demands.

Anything else is just infuriating and counterproductive. Haven't we had enough of that?

NOTE: One encouraging sign this week, the Dept. of the Interior lifted it's ill-conceived ban on new applications for solar power plants located on public lands, which I blogged about July 3.

Could it be we're starting to see the light? (no pun intended).

You've all heard about green weddings right?

The wedding gown is spun from local sheep;s wool; the gazpacho from a local tomato farm; the champagne flutes from bio-degradable cellulose, etc.

Certainly, despite the smirk I can't help wearing, this is admirable.

Americans, as a rule, live beyond their resource footprint and any couple willing to dedicate themselves to lessening that inequity in their first day together are to be commended.

And now, according to this recent story in The New York Times, they don't have to stop after they drive away in their Prius with cans (soon to be recycled) tied to the back.

Now your honeymoon can be green too!

And it's not just granola-crunching, Teva-wearing, vegan tree huggers doing it either.

In fact EVERYBODY's doing it! Who knew?

My eyes popped a bit when I read the following sentence in the Times story: "An online survey conducted by Brides magazine in 2007 showed that 60 percent of the respondents believed that the environment was an important factor in planning their wedding."

And here I thought it was color theme, or the caterer. Well that's what it was in that Steve Martin movie. So sue me!

This-whole-"let's-not-be-known-as-the-generation-that-finally-ravaged-the-planet-beyond-redemption"-thing must be catching on.

According to the story, places all over the country are cashing in on the (what I hope will be a permanent) trend.

Some, like a hotel in Spain, run entirely on solar power and have couples stay in locally-made yurts. Seriously, I'm not making this stuff up. Go ahead and click on the link I provided and read it for yourself. I'll wait. Seriously, go ahead, I'm not going anywhere. Time is different here in cyberspace.

...

NOW do you believe me?

Anyway, for those of you who believed me the first time and don't have time to go linking (is this a verb yet? If not, then I claim it as my invention!) all over the Internet, the article also tackles the issue of all that carbon it takes to fly to your honeymoon destination.

And it offers two solutions, the old carbon offset routine (which I continue to have doubts about) or something simpler, stay close.

According to the article, you can just have a good old time down on the farm, Blackberry Farm in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee to be exact.

It's a privately run organic farm that just added a barn to accommodate wedding parties. Can't you just smell the romance?

Who knows where this will all go, but its hard to argue with people trying to do the right thing in the midst of the psychological and scheduling maelstrom that is sometimes called planning a wedding and honeymoon.

But where ever it goes, here's hoping it goes green.

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.

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.