Green Guru by Terry Tamminen

03:49 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment

Call It America

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The day after Barack Obama was elected as our next President, Ethan Bronner wrote in the New York Times...

“There is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a black man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth - - call it America - - where such a thing happens.”

No matter who we supported in the election, I suspect that now each of us feels pride that our nation overcame its past and dared to reinvent its future. But in sending Mr. Obama to the White House, we did more than send “a black man of modest origin” - - we sent ourselves. Like Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” we sent a man that has some part in him that resembles something good and constructive in each one of us.

So why not go beyond metaphor and actually send ourselves to Washington? Given the economic crisis and the imposing challenges ahead - - from climate change to a widening gulf between haves and have-nots - - now is the time to answer the question posed to a nation more than four decades ago. Knowing that he will find his own soaring and inspirational rhetoric, I doubt Mr. Obama will repeat John Kennedy’s challenge, but it’s hard not to hear those words like a song we can’t get out of our heads - - “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

So let’s “go to Washington” with our new President by offering a literal answer to that question this time. If every American and every business volunteered to do one thing to make our communities safer, more prosperous, and more equitable, that would equate to over 300 million contributions to a better America. We could commit to spend a few hours a week helping out at a local school or senior center; we could pound nails for groups like Habitat for Humanity; we could adopt a classroom and help teachers get supplies and extra books; we could pledge a small % of our profits to charities that do many of these things for us.

If each of us does one small thing, to quote another great President “the world will little note nor long remember what we say here.” But the impact of those contributions will amount to more than any bailout plan Congress or our new President could devise. We will work our way out of the current challenges, economic and otherwise, much faster and with much more hope and joy in our hearts than by waiting timidly for Washington to do it all for us.

In the end, we will remind the world that is indeed America...”where such a thing happens.”

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WSJ Says BOO!

With Halloween just over, the Wall Street Journal jumped out from behind a hedge fund and tried to scare the business community right out of its Brooks Brothers boxers. Like most haunted houses and scary apparitions at this time of year however, WSJ’s was as fake as a Sarah Palin mask on your next-door neighbor’s pit bull.

On October 20th 2008, the WSJ ran an editorial entitled “The coming offer you won't be able to refuse.” It blasted an Obama spokesperson for suggesting that the USEPA might set standards for reducing greenhouse gases without waiting for further authority from Congress. The WSJ argued that the world as we know it would end, stating among other hair-on-fire nonsense that “coal-fired power and other fossil fuels would be ruled out of existence” by such a move.

Well, let’s strip off the “gotcha” costume for a moment and examine the facts:

• The WSJ says any action by the nation’s primary environmental regulatory body would be “a faulty interpretation of the Clean Air Act.” In truth, the Supreme Court ruled last year that greenhouse gases are pollutants as defined by the Clean Air Act. That’s right, the nation’s highest court - - the one that awarded the White House to George W. Bush and that is currently stacked with Republican appointees - - has already concluded that the USEPA has an obligation under federal law to address greenhouse gas pollution. If it’s a “faulty interpretation”, then apparently the WSJ knows more about the law than the Supreme Court.
• The WSJ complains that “a blueprint released in July” by USEPA sets forth the manner in which greenhouse gases would be regulated and complains that it would “monitor and regulate the carbon emissions of…everything with an engine, like cars, planes and boats.” Yes, that’s true - - because burning fossil fuel creates the problem. What the WSJ fails to mention is that these sources are already regulated by the USEPA under the Clean Air Act for their other harmful emissions and such restrictions have not eliminated the use of coal-fired power and other fossil fuels as far as I know as WSJ warns would happen now. Instead, our air is vastly cleaner than it used to be unlike, say Beijing, which has no Clean Air Act and the pollution is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes daily. Oh, by the way, the USEPA that issued this “blueprint” works for President Bush, not presidential candidate Obama.
• The WSJ asserts that regulations have costs (duh!), but fails to note that there are almost always benefits and it goes on to say the “ costs would far exceed the burden of a straight carbon tax or cap-and-trade system enacted by Congress.” Considering neither USEPA nor Congress have issued estimates of fees, taxes, or cap-trade allowance costs, one wonders what crystal ball (or crystal meth) WSJ is using to make such a definitive statement (note to self: WSJ apparently favors new taxes!).

I don’t generally mind the fact that the WSJ gets a lot of its environmental and energy reporting wrong, because you can’t be good at everything. I assume those tiny-font charts and tables with stock prices and hog belly futures trends are accurate and isn’t that the main reason to invest a buck or two each day in the WSJ? But one would assume they’d ask their editorial writers to blow hard, but accurate.

Whatever side of the global warming solutions debate you are on, I think you’ll agree the last thing we need is more hot air.

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Bail-out or Build-out – Part 2

As the Presidential race nears the finish line - - with the candidates and voters both gasping for air amidst the ubiquitous onslaught of commercials on everything from lawn signs to Saturday Night Live - - there are no shortages of “new and improved” proposals for dealing with the current financial mess. Well, if politicians can constantly add to their repertoires, so can we.

Earlier this month I suggested we should consider investing in cleantech infrastructure as a way to help America (and the world) work its way out of the current fiscal crisis. That offering laid out a vision for a self-supporting revamp of our transportation system that would create jobs, wealth, and improve the environment. Here’s another suggestion, this time focused on our electricity energy systems.

What do schools, fire stations, hospitals, government offices, and city halls have in common? They are all vital public infrastructure buildings and many, if not most, are pretty old. The older they are, the more likely they are to be wasting electricity. How about a National ESCO Project, where we recruit energy service companies (“ESCOs”), engineering firms, electrical contractors, builders, and others to go into these buildings and identify the outdated lighting, HVAC, elevators, and other inefficient uses of electricity? While they’re at it, they could also audit water use and waste disposal.

What they will find, as we have in numerous private sector facilities, is that upgrading these things will save so much electricity, that the cost is reimbursed in 18-36 months, after which the owner (that means us, the taxpayers!) starts saving real money, not to mention lots of kilowatts and avoided pollution.

As part of the National ESCO Project, we recruit banks to lend money to these institutions to pay for the retrofits. Remember all of that money that the feds are pumping into banks in the hopes that it will find its way into lending to re-start the economy? This would be some of the smartest deployment of that capital, with multiple ROIs, that anyone could suggest. This is where the feds come in again though - - to ensure more rapid uptake of the offer, they could guarantee the loans, which would not be much of a stretch considering the underlying asset values, repayment revenue streams, and creditworthiness of the borrowers.

In one stroke, you create thousands of jobs, sell lots of efficient new goods/services that generate sales taxes and other revenues to government, reduce pollution, reduce strain on the electrical grid, deploy capital into the marketplace - - and save a lot of money.

If you’re among the remaining undecided voters that both candidates seem so eager to please in the next few days, perhaps you would consider supporting whichever candidate backs this “new and improved” economic stimulus plan!

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Postcard from Beijing

What do Starbucks and smog have in common? Opportunity. As I walk around Beijing, the signs of the 2008 Olympics fading into memory, I am struck by the fact that every corner has a Starbucks, not to mention other ubiquitous American iconography - - Sizzler, Nike, 7-11, Hummers, and CNN to name a few. I’m also struck by the fact that the smog problem remains untamed, despite efforts pre and post Olympics to reduce pollution from traffic and smokestacks. So why do these two forces - - American companies and smog - - have anything to do with opportunity?

The Chinese apparently love our American products and lifestyle (yes, the line out the door for soy lattes is mostly Chinese, not American tourists). That has created opportunities for business here. The smog is a problem that we have technology to address - - so why isn’t that also an opportunity?

Some smart entrepreneur could rent a storefront here in Beijing and feature every cleantech gadget that America has to offer. We have tech companies that make diesel particulate traps, energy-efficient lighting, wind micro-turbines, building-integrated solar panels, software to manage energy use and a lot more. I’ll bet that even our green consumer products that are showcased in places like Whole Foods markets (note to self - - find out if Whole Foods has any stores over here!), from sustainable/organic cosmetics and clothing to household energy-saving devices and luggage made from recycled materials, would be at least as popular here as the latest iPod.

Wouldn’t it be great to hook 1.5 billion people on American cleantech and greentech before the goods and services of some other country does it? Maybe on my next trip to Beijing I’ll see a line out the door of a store that’s flying a flag of red, white, blue, and green.

12:28 pm | 1 recommendation | 1 comment

How Would You Spend It?

Congress passed the bailout plan with a price tag of nearly a trillion dollars, but the ink was hardly dry on this new Monopoly money when quite a few experts began to predict it wouldn’t be enough. Some estimates hope the “investments” that taxpayers will make in bad debts could ultimately turn a profit, but how likely is that?

Government has tried its hand at business management before with very mixed results. A few years back, I recall, the feds confiscated a brothel in Nevada as part of a law enforcement action. It soon went broke. It’s hard to imagine how our government will do better with complicated financial instruments than it did with the oldest, most reliable money-making business that ever existed!

So what might the feds buy instead (or at least in addition, given how much money we suddenly seem to have at our disposal) if ROI (return on investment) is the real metric? How about 600 wind farms or 400 solar power plants (at 500 megawatts each) - - about ten times the capacity of nuclear plants that Senator McCain has suggested we build (although no one knows how to handle the waste, security concerns, or global warming impacts that would be associated).

Everyone needs power, so we know how much money we could make on this investment, but better still, the construction projects would employ thousands of Americans and generate business taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, and other revenues for local, state, and federal treasuries, returning even more on the original investment. The added benefit of dramatic reductions of greenhouse gases would be an ROI beyond estimation.

Business groups also tell me frequently that what the most want is certainty. The fuel cost for the solar and wind generators is far more predictable than the cost of coal, oil, uranium, or natural gas. Oh yes, one more thing. Given that these powerplants will last fifty years, we can also predict they will not run out of fuel - - something those incumbents can’t say.

Not a bad investment. Got a better one?

11:57 am | 1 recommendation | 3 comments

Bail-out or Build-out?

As Washington and Wall Street dicker over a financial rescue plan, everyone is missing the real opportunity to fix the problem. Some see the variously proposed plans as bailouts of dumb borrowers and dumber lenders, while others view it as a chance to restore liquidity to the marketplace so we can all have access to credit again, whether it’s for student loans or to finance the acquisition of industrial machinery.

But when the “Great Depression” struck America more than 70 years ago, we didn’t just make more money available and hope people would borrow it to jump start the economy. President Roosevelt put us back to work, building bridges, highways, schools, and water projects. All of that infrastructure has served us well over the years, although at the time it must have looked like a lot of pork barrel spending designed to keep workers off of street corners and out of soup kitchens. What if we could do something like that again, but this time, make it a build-out that had fantastic economic, environmental, and social return on the invested capital?

In 2003, President Bush spoke about hydrogen cars in his State of the Union address. Shortly thereafter, the American Petroleum Institute (API) warned that building a hydrogen fueling infrastructure that could reach all Americans would cost $140 billion. Although I’m sure the API had no reason to use scare tactics and biased estimates (well, OK, maybe I’m not THAT sure), let’s assume that’s an accurate figure.

If we built those fueling stations, we would also need vehicles that run on hydrogen. It takes about $5,000 to retrofit a car or truck to run on hydrogen. Yup, almost any car or truck (or bus or train for that matter) that currently runs on gasoline or diesel fuel will also run on hydrogen gas. It’s not the most efficient use of hydrogen (a fuel cell, which converts hydrogen to electricity and thereby powers an electric motor in an all-electric car is far more efficient), but anything is more efficient than digging oil out of the ground and making it into transportation fuel. Let’s say we convert 50 million cars and trucks nationwide to run on hydrogen - - that’s $250 billion more.

So for just under $400 billion, we could eliminate the need for all of the oil we now import (and a lot of the domestic supply for that matter). We would have given tens of thousands of Americans jobs in the design, building, and servicing of hydrogen fueling stations; and tens of thousands more would be working in the new retrofit business. Detroit could now start making new hydrogen powered cars, knowing that the marketplace accepts these products, so we would simultaneously revitalize our domestic auto industry.

We could recoup 100% of this investment when retailers sell hydrogen fuel with a few cents per unit sales tax, just like the gasoline tax. But we would recoup it even faster with the payroll and business taxes generated from all of the new employment and businesses created with this program.

So there you have it - - a domestic jobs program that will kick the oil addiction, solve global warming, create new industries and jobs that can’t be outsourced to India or China, eliminate billions in annual subsidies to oil companies and billions more that we now spend on defense costs to protect our oil supply. For half what we will spend on Wall Street and 20% of what we have spent securing oil in Iraq so far, we will have social, economic and environmental prosperity for as far as the eye can see.

This build-out sounds crazy at first blush until you realize that we already produce 3 trillion cubic feet of hydrogen in America every year, but use the majority of that to strip sulfur from petroleum to make gasoline instead of just putting the hydrogen right into our cars. How crazy is that?! No, make no mistake, we can do this and reap all of the benefits.

Now if we just had another Roosevelt around to get us started…

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When Coal Makes You Thirsty

Much is written about our oil addiction, but we are addicted to another fossil-drug - - coal. And while oil steals the breath from our kids and incentivizes our bad behavior around the world, coal is the major contributor to global warming and one other surprising side-effect - - thirst.

The Hopi Indian tribe in Arizona has long relied on Peabody Coal for a large part of their income. Several decades ago they were tricked by their own lawyer (as described in the great Island Press book “Fire on the Plateau” by Charles Wilkinson) into selling water from their underground aquifers. As you can imagine, water in the Arizona desert is a precious commodity, especially when it is tens of thousands of years old and pristine, derived from ancient glaciers. Moreover, the Hopi were paid around $3 million a year for the water. Based on what we pay for natural spring water sold in bottles, that water was actually worth over $1 billion a year.

The water, which Peabody assured everyone was a relatively small amount and would never harm the sustainability of the aquifer, was used to slurry coal (a process of dumping coal into a pipe full of water to flush it from one place to another) from a mine to a power plant, across 250 miles of desert. In fact, Peabody was draining the precious resource right out from under the Hopi people. Springs were running dry and experts estimated that the water would be gone in 30 years.

Vernon Masayesva, a tribal elder, figured this out and started a battle to save the water and, in doing so, the life of his tribe. Peabody fought back, but ultimately this fossil-fueled “Goliath” lost to the persuasive wisdom of the community’s “David”. Vernon won temporary reprieves. But now the Bush Administration’s Office of Surface Mining is trying again to help Peabody to steal water from the Hopi and move coal by manipulating the science around environmental reviews and permits.

Corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders and the concept of making a profit. Those that convert natural resources to cash have a right to do that and, let’s be honest, we all benefit from having wood to build homes or fuel to power our lives. But corporations don’t have the right to use those resources in a way that diminishes their value to others - - it’s called the Public Trust Doctrine and is the bedrock of our environmental laws. Corporations also don’t have the right to destroy a civilization that has lived in the same place, peacefully and sustainably, for tens of thousands of years.

When this kind of outrage occurs, we have an obligation to speak up, especially because the Peabodys of the world claim they’re doing these things for us - - the consumer. They say consumers want cheap power, but never tell us the true price of switching on the lights. If you want to learn more, go to www.blackmesatrust.org and get the details. Make a contribution. If enough of us do so, we can move to more sustainable sources of energy and make sure that we’re not the next ones to go thirsty.

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When Politics Kill

When Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed me to serve as the Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency in 2003, my first challenge came not from the smoggy skies of Los Angeles or the pesticide-laden drainage from irrigated fields near Fresno, but from a small town in Missouri. Well, actually it came from the tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions made to Missouri Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond by Briggs & Stratton in exchange for the lives of about 1200 Americans.

My CalEPA air quality team had concluded that small, highly-polluting engines should be required to reduce emissions, using off-the-shelf technology, the same as your car or a refinery’s smoke stack is required to do. Doing so, the science showed, would reduce asthma and save lives. Briggs and Stratton had an engine assembly plant in Missouri, so they turned to the Senator, whose election campaigns they had generously supported, and cooked up a scheme to sneak a provision into a bill before Congress that would prevent any state from regulating these potent polluters.

After much wrangling, Governor Schwarzenegger and Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) protected California’s unique rights under the federal Clean Air Act to regulate these small engines, but Bond managed to force the other 49 states to wait for the USEPA to take action if they were going to do likewise. Bond, and the USEPA at the time, said there was a greater threat to the economy than our lungs from such regulation, because it might hurt the factory in Missouri.

Last week, after stalling for nearly five years, the USEPA finally agreed with California and imposed regulations on small engine pollution. Californians are already protected from these smog-makers, but the federal rules for the other 49 states won’t take effect for three more years, despite the fact that the USEPA now admits that “…the total estimated public health benefits range between $1.6 and $4.4 billion by 2030. These benefits outweigh estimated costs by at least eight to one, while preventing over 300 premature deaths, 1,700 hospitalizations, and 23,000 lost workdays annually."

The additional delays in regulating this significant source of pollution nationally means that about 1200 Americans will die prematurely for absolutely no reason - - other than politics. Meanwhile, Briggs and Stratton lost the business anyway, because the rest of the world wanted cleaner engines too and started buying the ones produced by Briggs’ competitors, like Coleman and Honda, who were smart enough to produce cleaner versions of the same thing at competitive prices.

Yes, politics kills people, jobs, and even the economy it pretends to protect. I hope this small battle in the long war for clean air will serve as a teachable moment for our Presidential candidates and the voters who will make their choices later this year. If so, then perhaps those 1200 will not die in vain.

05:55 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment

Cap, Baby, Cap

Political conventions are largely mass entertainment for the party faithful, punctuated by self-serving interpretations of both current events and history. Like summer big-budget movies, this year’s Democratic and Republican sequels were replete with familiar heroes and villains, funny costumes, and predictable dialogue. But instead of “I’ll be back” or “Make my day”, this year’s installments will be remembered for a punchline of a different kind - - “drill, baby, drill.”

More than once during the Republican convention, the crowd chanted that slogan in response to the numerous calls for more oil drilling in the US. Like some mystic initiation rite, those intonations and chanted responses highlighted the degree to which a significant part of the American public still suffers from the delusion that our energy supply - - and prices - - will be bent to our will by some wave of a magic wand. Make no mistake, this is not solely the fantasy of Republicans, but the choice of oil drilling as the theme for their week on center stage merely highlights the need for a reality check for us all.

First, let’s get one thing straight - - there’s almost nothing that politicians can do about the price of oil or fuel. They can investigate “speculators”, but there’s nothing illegal about investing in commodities and reselling them at a profit - - and we call them “investors” when the same methods are applied to gold or stocks - - while these kinds of transactions add little to the price of gas anyway. They can facilitate drilling along our coasts or in wildlife preserves, but it takes nearly a decade to bring new resources to market (so no short-term price relief) and there are no untapped reserves that would offset so much of our 80 million barrel per day global addiction that prices would be affected.

But there might be one rationale for more domestic exploitation of oil. If we capped our use and then started incentivizing the alternatives, so demand would be reduced every year, it would make a lot of sense to move our oil supply chain closer to home until we just wouldn’t need it anymore. Without the cap, we’re trying to cure the addict by increasing the supply of the drug, but as long as we are using oil, perhaps we should bear all of the impacts - - despoiled landscapes, impoverished villagers, and destruction of air and water supplies. If our communities and coastlines suffered the same fate as those of Nigeria or Ecuador, perhaps more people and politicians would support a cap and whatever else it took to break the addiction once and for all.

In four years, when the party hats are donned and balloons are again released from the rafters, perhaps the chant will evolve - - perhaps we will evolve. If we do, the chant that fills the halls then might just be “cap, baby, cap.”

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The America Price

Commentators have coined a term that is being hotly debated in business, political, and social settings these days - - the “China Price”.

A quick Google search shows that the China Price is variously defined as:

- The cost to America, in terms of jobs (mostly manufacturing) and boarded-up storefronts in rust-belt towns, of cheap imports made in China where labor, land, and energy costs are far cheaper than in the US.

- The cost of cheap goods expressed in terms of Dickensian labor conditions for Chinese workers, pollution, and the destruction of families and their ancient social fabric.

- The cost to human rights, in places like Tibet, when we propel an authoritarian government into the ranks of the world’s leading economic powers and thereby provide tacit support for their policies.

The recent Olympic Games that China hosted gave talking heads the opportunity to examine this question from all perspectives, but much ink has been spilled on the issue of human rights in particular. So what is the inherent cost, in terms of human dignity and the intangibles that we call “inalienable rights”, of a plastic lawn flamingo bearing the label “Made in China”?

Having asked the question, I should offer an answer. In fact, I don’t have one, because although I recently visited China for the first time I have not spent time in factories there, nor have I talked at length to policy makers or Tibetan activists. But the concept of a China Price has made me think about the hidden costs of products sold around the world that bear the label “Made in America”.

Let’s start with transportation costs, a large part of any business budget and therefore a cost built into our products. Although our fuel prices have risen recently, they remain significantly lower than the market would otherwise dictate, because of the hundreds of billions in annual subsidies we pay to the oil companies. And a cost in terms human rights? How about the tens of thousands of Iraqis - - and over 4,000 US soldiers - - who gave their lives to protect oil? We save a nickel on a gallon of gas and someone else pays the “America Price”.

Another example of the America Price can be found in our agricultural fields, rich with “amber waves of grain.” Farm workers, mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America, toil in sub-human conditions sanctioned by Big Agriculture and our federal government. Workers labor for what amounts to less than minimum wage with few sanitary facilities, no health care, illness and death from heat stress, and often their children laboring by their sides. We save a nickel on a head of lettuce and never calculate - - or ask - - about the true America Price.

Moreover, those who live in glass McMansions shouldn’t cast stones. America is 5% of the world’s population and we consume 25% of its natural resources. When anyone uses more than their fair share of something, doesn’t it place a burden on everyone else?

I can’t defend or criticize China’s hidden costs of doing business without a lot more information, but as an American, I think we need more blunt self-evaluation to go along with our examination of others. Then, perhaps, we can create a tide of global economic and social justice that lifts all boats, no matter what part of the world the label on the plastic flamingo says it comes from.