Green Leaf Report

T. Boone Pickens came out with the Pickens Plan  for reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil this week. It seemed to hit every newspaper, website and television station around.  I’ve written about him several times before- there are always parts of his plans that I agree with, and parts I’m concerned about.  But that’s all moot- I want to thank him for making energy a larger part of the media’s conversation in an election year. 

I know he’s had an impact because my mom called me the other night and told me she had heard about the Pickens Plan on the news.  She said, “I didn’t understand everything, but it sounded pretty good.” My mom, who sees my views as overly idealistic and youthful, heard a man that she’s willing to respect talk about reducing our dependency on foreign oil and making more investments in renewable and cleaner energy.  She heard the part about him being a lifelong Republican and oilman. She heard the part about his being worth $4Bm and being 80 years old, and how he thinks this is the right thing, and he wants to put his money where his mouth is and do the right thing for the country.

My mom may or may not be representative of the baby boomer generation.  She thinks climate change is an illusion of the liberal media; she thinks coal isn’t so bad and remembers when it was delivered to her apartment building’s basement as a child; she generally doesn’t see any need for disruptive change.  But she heard T. Boone Pickens and called me, and thought he sounded pretty good.  So thank you Mr. Pickens, for making more people aware of causes and possible solutions for our nation’s energy crisis.  Whether or not your plan is perfect doesn’t matter. The conversation has begun.

It’s become quite a popular movement to reduce your personal carbon footprint and minimize your impact on the earth.  But that isn’t the lack of impact I refer in my title- I’m concerned about our government’s apparent desire to do nothing of any importance to help the environment.  Please read Bucking Court, EPA won’t control climate gases about how our current federal leadership will not take any action on greenhouse gas emissions in spite of their court-dictated ability and the pressing need.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Friday rejected regulating greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, saying it would cause too many job losses.

In a 588-page federal notice, the Environmental Protection Agency made no finding on whether global warming poses a threat to people’s health, reversing an earlier conclusion at the insistence of the White House and officially kicking any decision on a solution to the next president and Congress.

Environmentalists criticized the move, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce worried it left open the door for mandatory reductions.

So the White House is making the EPA change their story and forcing the agency to deliberately not protect the environment.  Neither side of the issue is happy with the decision: environmentalists are worried that the false economic argument will continue to trump the environmental argument until we have no economy or environment worth saving. Utilities worry that if this administration doesn’t provide a workable template, the next administration will provide an even harsher set of restrictions.  The administration’s apparent desire to do absolutely nothing solves no problems and helps no one.

Back to the idea of this decision as some benevolent way to save jobs - which jobs are they talking about?  The automotive industry jobs that are imploding as American cars can no longer compete with more fuel-efficient foreign cars? The airline industry jobs that are quickly disappearing?  The mortgage and banking jobs that are disappearing because of vast corruption and mismanagement?  The administration seems to think that no regulation is the better path for our current economic situation, without recognizing that regulations could actually create a rush of new jobs as companies work towards compliance.

Our administration’s refusal to take action has created a problem for our utilities in a deregulated market: Those utilities that want to act to reduce emissions have a real risk of becoming uncompetitive in the market if their costs rise compared to their nearest competitors. So they all wait and hope the government forces compliance at one time.  Haven’t we learned anything from the automotive implosion?  If fuel standards had been aggressively put in place, the American automotive companies may have had temporary pain but would be more competitive today. Developing technologies to create clean and cleaner energy creates jobs; it would be nice to have some of those job created in America. Are we going to set up American utilities to also not be competitive in the world market because of a short-sighted leadership that doesn’t want to make any waves in the current, sinking status-quo?

I just received an email from a friend who has recently testified in front of the Texas government in support of wind energy.  The email text and attachment text is below.  I’m not sure if emailing this around is the most efficient idea, but this is a good time to contact your representatives and ask them to support CREZ and wind power:

Dear Friends:

We have reached a critical juncture in the wind industry in Texas. The Public Utility Commission of Texas will make a decision in mid-July on expanding transmission (power lines) to bring more wind energy into the Texas market.    

I have been very involved in this initiative, and I have filed documents on the public record on behalf of Horizon Wind Energy about the environmental benefits of wind power (no pollution, no CO2 emissions, no water consumption) as well as the important fact that the wind is a FREE fuel source, and more wind power on our electric system will lower electricity prices for all of us.  Attached you will find a letter from Representative David Swinford that has been signed by twelve West Texas Legislators supporting this transmission initiative not just for wind, but also for other types of generation that will be able to utilize the new infrastructure as well. 

This is important to me not only professionally, but also personally. Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and increasing our fuel diversity is of critical importance as we look toward the future of Texas and of the country in terms of electricity use, environmental challenges, and energy independence. I ask that you please open the link below and sign the petition from State Representative Mike Villarreal, and forward this to EVERYONE you know in Texas.  I understand that Rep. Villarreal intends to present the petition results to the PUC TOMORROW and we hope to demonstrate to the PUC that wind power and this transmission initiative enjoys broad-based public support. This is a critical time to support the growth of the wind industry in this state, and your input will be immensely valuable.

Thank you for your time and attention to this.

Attachment text:

Commissioner

Barry

Smitherman

Commissioner Paul Hudson

Commissioner Julie Parsley

Public Utility Commission of Texas

1701 N. Congress

P.O. Box

13326

Austin, Texas

7871 1-3326

Dear Commissioners;

First, we want to thank you and your staff for the concentrated effort you have given to the CREZ process. This month marks the three year point since we passed SB 20. This deliberate process has served to educate the many stakeholders that have been involved, but we must move ahead in a significant step and proceed to the construction phase. We appreciate your dedication to the people of Texas in thoughtfully evaluating the infrastructure options for meeting our energy future.

Certainly, you have determined the great wind resource we have in Texas and have validated that the West Texas, Panhandle, and South Plains regions of the state can provide world class wind resources that can produce abundant clean, renewable energy for the State for many years to come.

We write today to encourage you to stay the course, be bold, and make the decisions that best serve the people of Texas. Many Texans are very concerned about high energy prices that result from the rapidly increasing cost of oil and natural gas. We must find ways to provide additional energy supplies that are affordable. The cost of transmission lines have doubled since we saw the first estimates. Unless you have inside knowledge showing the cost of copper, steel, and concrete will be going down soon, we maintain that the longer we wait, the more expensive these lines and fuel costs will become. These lines we ask you to support are not just for wind, At least three communities in our areas have plans for coal plants. We have some folks that are considering gas plants and others solar plants. While your discussion is currently about wind transmission lines, these in reality are energy lines. We can tell you that putting coal plants next to the state’s metro areas compounds the serious air quality problems that now exist. All regions of the state are affected by the cost to comply with our state air quality programs.

As we have studied this issue and as we travel our districts, there is no doubt that our constituents want to work with you, the wind companies, and other energy providers for economic reasons as well as being good neighbors to the rest of the state because we can supply huge amounts of energy. This is evident by looking at the map that is attached that identifies communities that have passed resolutions. There are over 170 total resolutions asking you to approve a robust transmission system and pledging you their help in location these lines.

As a group that has worked with difficult issues for many years, we assure you it is rare to find this level of widespread passion for any issue.

Thank you again for the valuable contributions you are making to the people of our region and throughout the state. Your service to Texas is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

David Swinford, State Representative, District 87

Warren Chisum, State Representative, District 88

John Smithee, State Representative, District 86

Delwin Jones, State Representative, District 83

Carl Isett, State Representative, District 84

Rick Hardcastle, State Representative, District 68

Joe Heflin, State Representative, District 85

Buddy West, State Representative, District 81

Drew Darby, State Representative, District 72

Robert Duncan, State Senator, District 30

Susan King, State Representative, District 71,

Kel Seliger, State Senator, District 31

Fast Company and BusinessWeek are currently running opposing articles on T. Boone Pickens and his wind/water plans for North Texas. The Fast Company article addresses his plans for a $10B wind farm in the panhandle and mentions the water project as almost an afterthought, while the BusinessWeek article talks about the $100M Pickens’ has already spent on his $3B water project and calls the wind power plans an afterthought:

“The wind is meant to sweeten the deal,” says Representative Chisum. “The big money for Pickens is in the water.”

My primary discomfort with both deals is that Pickens’ discusses the wind and water projects as necessary to meet future demand increases for a city like Dallas.  I don’t want to support an already wasteful city with more sources on top of the currently wasted energy and water.  I want those wind turbines in the panhandle to start supporting Dallas so we can remove some of our dependency on coal.  We’re already warned not to go outside most summer days in Dallas because the air quality is so bad; if this wind farm can help, it’s a good idea.  If we still cannot go outside but have more energy available, well, so what.

The water deal is the flip side of the sustainability argument.  I’ve written about the Texas “Rules of Capture” before, and I still find it distasteful.  Removing nonrenewable groundwater from an arid part of the state and shipping it into Dallas to support big city water usage just feels to me like giving a pile of endangered animal burgers to a 500 pound man because he says he’s still hungry.  Enough.  Yesterday morning I passed two flooded streets on my short commute to work.  It wasn’t raining, those two different streets were flooded by broken sprinkler heads.  We need to work on stopping the waste before depleting a nonrenewable feature of the state.

For both the wind and water projects, adding more supply to an already wasteful city isn’t the optimal solution.  I like a two pronged approach for the wind project: reduce consumption in Dallas while bringing renewable resources online.  For the water, I’m afraid too much of the valuable resource will end up in our storm drains.  Either way that Texas decides on the projects, this should be quite a debate.

  Dr. James Hansen originally spoke in front of a Congressional committee on global warming in 1988.  He’s updated his warning with an eye-opening report on the current risks facing our planet.  The part that keeps running through my mind is where he suggests the heads of fossil fuel companies should be tried for their campaigns of disinformation:

Special interests have blocked the transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil fuel companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, just as tobacco companies discredited the link between smoking and cancer. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming.

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of the long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.

Certainly there have been plenty of warnings and our population is also to  blame for believing those who stand to profit from fossil fuel consumption.  But tobacco companies never actually forced lit cigarettes into anyone’s mouth and they were still found liable for deliberately spreading misinformation and incomplete information.

The biggest thing I have to wonder, though, is whether our civilization is following the WWII example of Germany: As long as my family isn’t harmed, I’ll do what the leaders say.  It doesn’t matter if later reflection shows the murderous immorality of the holocaust; at the time, people followed because they didn’t question, didn’t want to be isolated or separated from the society they knew, and maybe, deep down, believed it must be the correct thing because it was what they heard from leadership.

Maybe this is what is happening now: Our western civilization is continuing down a path of pollution and over-consumption that we know will leave the world in dire straits.  But, maybe if the sea levels rise, maybe it will only affect the poor who don’t have the means to relocate.  Maybe droughts will impact those at the bottom of society, those in undeveloped nations and not the rest of us…Maybe we need to look more closely at ourselves and our capacity to behave morally in the face of needed change.

I’m a little surprised at some of comments I’ve received on my recent wind energy posts.  The engineer in me cringes at the description of the technology as “useless.”  In the past decade or two I’ve seen some pretty lame applications of technology, and wind energy just doesn’t fall into that category in my mind. Anything that’s designed to kill a person more efficiently - well, yuck.  Anything that’s intensively designed to give a better Superbowl viewing experience - pretty lame. Anything that’s designed to specifically not pollute the air we all breathe - not so lame.  And anything that’s designed to to try help keep our economy from a significant breakdown - keep on trying, maybe we can make it work.

Against the ideas that companies are only in the wind power market because of tax credits and subsidies, well, I can’t speak to the comments from other countries, but I can say that in America, to get the effects of a tax credit (such as the PTC), the company must first have a revenue stream related to the technology.  I don’t see a government give-away of money; I see the recipient of the revenue not having to pay quite as many taxes.  This isn’t a welfare industry- it’s a developing marketplace that deserves government support.  The alternatives of remaining dependent on fossil fuels are just too dangerous.

We can ask - why should renewable energy get this special treatment?  But it isn’t special- various other industries are already getting plenty of tax credits.  From the R&D credits that multi-billion dollar technology companies get to the various tax credits across the oil and gas industry.  We’re a rich nation; we can afford to offer tax incentives to alternative energy producers.  There’s no good alternative to alternative energy.

Recently a senior executive I interviewed went on a long spiel about a study that showed telecommuting could cause job dissatisfaction among the employees not telecommuting.  The idea he stressed was that employees don’t like feeling that they’re covering for other employees and having all of their meetings pushed onto a certain day when the telecommuters are in the office.

I think this sounds like a study based on a poorly managed telecommuting program.  The study the executive referred is the one by Timothy Golden examining 240 employees at a single company. Certainly including other companies in the study could provide different results, but either way, telecommuters should strive to make it seem as if they are one row away in the office, even when working from home.  Companies must support this through fast connections and possibly cool Cisco webcam setups, but the meetings should not be pushed onto one day and shouldn’t require drives into the office to be effective.

Overall, though, the comments reminded me of an old joke:

Three men were trapped on a desert island.  One day a bottle washed onto the shore and when opened, out came a Genie who said: “I will grant you three wishes for freeing me from the bottle.” The first man immediately wished he was home, and *poof*, he was gone.  The second man also wished he was home, and *poof* he was gone.  The third man looked around for a little while and said, “Man it’s lonely here without the other two guys. I wish they were back.”

My point is that just because some people want to be in the office surrounded by colleagues, it doesn’t mean telecommuting programs should be cut.  The telecommuting programs must be managed effectively to minimize disruptions to the normal workflow.

Today for the first time, US gas prices reached an average of $4/gallon.

Over the past 15 years, many companies have been moving more of their content onto web platforms and secure electronic processes.  The companies that have embraced these developments are well positioned now to reduce operational costs and employee out-of-pocket expenses by minimizing their exposure to rising oil prices.  A well thought out telecommuting process can now be a competitive advantage.

On the employee side, a telecommuting option can be a strong recruiting and retaining tool. In the last decade, inexpensive housing built further from the city centers has enticed many employees into longer commutes.  Now many are stuck with houses that they cannot sell, and gas bills that are devouring larger portions of their budgets.  Add in the increasing costs of food and other staples due to the rising fuel costs, and the sum could be employees that are becoming so stressed about meeting bills that they are distracted from their jobs.

On the employer side, allowing employees to telecommute to meetings instead of paying for flights for face-to-face meetings can save on increasing plane fares.  Letting employees work from home can reduce energy and rental expenses in building costs, if less space is needed.  Retaining the best employees with flexible working practices can save on search costs for replacing experienced employees.

When times are tight, the companies that emerge the strongest are the ones that retain talent, reduce costs, add efficiencies and continue to grow.  This could be the first recession where telecommuting can be used as a tool to meet all of these initiatives in savvy companies, and I’m interested to see what happens.

At the WindPower 2008 conference I spoke with a University student from North Carolina manning the North Carolina Renewable Energy booth.  He was part of a community outreach program for solar and wind; when I asked him how that was going for him, he said people in North Carolina tended to complain in the community meetings that the wind turbines would kill birds.

I’ve written about this bird/wind energy issue in the past, and we should also mention the cat/building comparison - where in the US cats are estimated to kill one billion birds annually, and buildings are estimated to kill 100 million to one billion birds annually.  Wind turbines are estimated to kill around 10,000 birds annually, with much of that effect from older turbines, and much due to the fact that birds tend to crash into any physical structure.

But since this student was from North Carolina, I asked him if anyone compared the possible risk of bird deaths to the effects of mountaintop mining for coal in the Appalachian mountains.  I was alerted by a fellow blogger recently that North Carolina was considering a ban on this practice of removing the topography of a mountain to acquire the coal below the surface.  Certainly the wind turbines are preferable to coal, with every stage of the coal process extracting such an environmental cost. 

If the North Carolina birds are quivering in fear over anything, I doubt it’s the possible addition of wind turbines near the coast.  I imagine the loss of habitat from the disappearing mountains and the plumes of pollution released from coal plants hurt a little bit more. 

Sign the petition to end mountaintop mining today, and write your congressperson.

One of the things that surprised me about the WindPower 2008 show was that so many of the exhibitors primarily serve the oil and gas industry, and are now moving into wind.  I expected to see a lot of pretty serious environmentalists- I’m not sure if I thought everyone would have long hair, beards, and Birkenstocks but I only saw about 2 people out of the 12,000 that fit that image.  Mostly it was a sea of business people in suits.

We spoke with Cinco at length about this- Cinco is an land acquisition company in Houston that normally serves the oil industry.  After decades of experience in this area, they’ve been moving into wind and geothermal- according to their representative at the booth, land acquisition for oil and gas vs. wind or geothermal is almost the same game.  This same mantra was repeated over and over at multiple booths- some vendors told us the turbines in the wind industry weren’t so different to sell into than oil and gas turbines.  Others told us the control panels were similar designs, still others talked to the legal issues, the environmental issues, the logistical issues and other power issues as very similar among the different types of energy generation.

I definitely got the feeling that the conference this year was so large for this very reason: It’s not that so many wind companies are being formed from scratch, it’s that so many traditional fossil fuel companies are now salivating over this market.  Perhaps renewables have had a marginalized, outsider reputation, but now many serious, traditional companies are taking a hard look at this growing market.  With 29 states now required to provide some portion of their power with renewable energy, the market should only continue to grow.

We’re surrounded by big and small wind companies at the WindPower 2008 show, but many of the exhibitors at the show are also from the non-profit, educational and government realms.  This huge cross-section of the industry really inspires hope that a lot of very intelligent people together will help break some of the dependencies on fossil fuels. The national is combining with the local to make large investments: NREL, the DOE and the University of Houston announced the opening of a Blade Research and Test Facility on the Gulf Coast today.  U 0f H will lead the private sector consortium, and hopefully will continue to create local jobs.

Many states have sent representation to pitch their availability as a great location for wind turbines- it’s a great strategy for continuing to attract jobs from a growing industry.  At the “Texas Wind” booth, we spoke with a gentleman from Texas A&M who also explained the University’s credit program for wind, and gradual entrance to the market.  While he pitched their current engineering programs as good bases for wind careers, he did believe that a degree curriculum specifically in Wind and Renewable Energy might be coming, just as Petroleum Engineering was a popular degree path in the past.  I’d like to see this conversion happen.

Today, on the first full day of the WindPower 2008 conference, we attended press conferences and worked the exhibition floor some more.  The expiring federal production tax credit (PTC) is getting a lot of attention and a lot of press.  If this tax credit does not get extended this year, the wind energy industry is expected to shed 70,000 to 125,000 jobs, depending on which estimate we use.

Alexander Karsner, the Assistant Secretary at the US Department of Energy, was very animated on his panels today that the time to change the entire PTC structure is now.  He argued that it is an archaic accounting set that is too unpredictably available.   Executives from GE, Vestas, Horizon Energy, Babcock and Brown, and FPL also spoke to this issue.  The erratic nature of US public policy on renewable technologies and rebates is causing a lot of concern- an actionable solution is missing, though.  The best solutions the large companies have to offer to prevent massive layoffs appears to be diversification of their portfolios into markets outside of the US.  But all of the executives claimed that the US had the best wind resources available.

Walking the exhibition hall, I spoke with multiple companies that are hiring.  After hearing all of the executive concern about the expiring tax rebates, I asked recruiter after recruiter if they were also concerned about the tax rebate and upcoming layoffs.  Across the board I was told, “No.”  The demand seems to be so high - maybe they feel a little less business wouldn’t be noticed for a while.  A lot of people are asking for resumes here.  I was actually surprised- I expected the recruiters to be flooded with people looking for a job in a recession market, but most of the recruiters looked a little desperate to talk to more people.  The hiring section of the exhibition floor was almost barren compared to the crowds around other booths. I take it as a good sign:  Many people are already employed in the industry and are not looking for jobs or job changes.  That leaves room for more people to hire in as the industry continues to grow.  The conference has attracted over 12,000 people already in 2008, blowing out the earlier estimate of 10,000, and more people are showing up every day.

I arrived today at the WindPower 2008 conference in Houston - I’m so excited to attend!  So far we’ve only attended for one partial day, but I’ve already met some great new people and learned things about wind that I didn’t know I didn’t know.

After our registration, we headed over to the poster exhibit- this was the most technical display I’ve seen in a long time.  It was a very well laid out exhibit- grouped by Operations & Maintenance, Project Development, and many other categories: exhibitors showed both theoretical and practical wind applications on their posters.  I learned about the reasonable hurricane risks for on-shore Texas coastal wind towers, as well as the Delaware perceived tourism risk for off-shore wind development. 

I liked the dampening controls dreamed up by Clipper engineer Khanh Nguyen to reduce wear on the wind turbines, and I also enjoyed hearing an Engineering Professor for Milwaukee give me an esoteric explanation of his on poster, and then tell me that the poster of the gentleman across the aisle was ‘impossible.’  Maybe we’ll see fists flying tomorrow.

In the exhibition hall, Vestas has a two story booth that I might like to live in- they also have a truck out front of the convention center holding an enormous single wind blade.  This convention is just huge, with over 10,000 listed attendees.  there’s a separate job fair area also- I’m building a list of skills under demand.  I’ve also asked multiple vendors their feelings on the political risk associated with tax rebates for the industry.  More will be coming tomorrow…

Unfortunately, the Exxon Mobil shareholders meeting in Dallas yesterday was unsuccessful in splitting the chairman and CEO roles, achieving only 39.5% of the vote.  Several shareholders groups are angry at Exxon Mobil’s lack of investment in alternative fuels, and think Exxon Mobil is short-sighted in its reliance on oil.  Shareholders - including members of the Rockefeller family, whose ancestor John  D. Rockefeller founded what later became Exxon Mobil -  were trying to bring in a new chairman that would concentrate more on alternative fuels. Rex Tillerson will now continue to hold the roles of Exxon Mobil CEO and chairman.

So it was close, but no cigar.  Now we’ll see if the next attempt gets a greater percentage of the vote, or if shareholder lawsuits begin.  It’s great to see that shareholders are trying to protect the environment, whether or not Exxon Mobil’s internal management agrees.  I’m impressed this initiative already managed to get 39.5% of shareholder vote - perhaps this will also send a message to Mr. CEO that he may well be evicted sooner than he’d like if he doesn’t listen to the shareholders now.

When I bought my house about four years ago, we took advantage of the interest rate effect on home prices:  when interest rates are low, the monthly mortgage payment will be lower for a more expensive home. While the interest rate effect is established and known, a new factor coming into play is the energy price effect. 

Last weekend my family evaluated an out of state move for a new job opportunity.  As we drove around this other city with the real estate agent, we were firm- we don’t want a long commute, even if the house is cheaper.  Because, of course, the house then wouldn’t really be cheaper- the higher gas costs required for commuting would cause big increases to our monthly bills.  We’d rather spend more money to live close to the city center, where we can bike or walk to work.

I have to imagine this same conversation is happening with real estate agents around the country.  Energy costs should affect home prices in the far flung suburbs.  Even if interest rates are low, the required energy costs to access those homes daily adds a significant cost to the homes.  So the value of those homes is less in times of high energy costs than in times of low gas prices.

This also creates an interesting catch-22 for fuel prices: so many homeowners that bought new homes with long commutes now are unable to sell those homes for the prices they paid when gas prices were low.  So they sit on those homes, waiting for the market to turn, and drive long commutes with high gas prices.  By continuing to drive long commutes, those same homeowners are keeping the gasoline demand high, and helping keep gas prices high, which continues to depress their home values.  This is happening in million of households across America.

The gas prices certainly cannot be blamed entirely on Americans, but these practices are not helping to reduce the demand for oil and bring gasoline prices down.

Recently President Bush mentioned a rise in the Indian middle class as a cause of the increasing food prices in the US.  The responses from India were pretty funny, and true  - how did our culture get to the point where so many people use surgery to remove the signs of overeating?

For instance, Pradeep S. Mehta, secretary general of the center for international trade, economics and the environment of CUTS International, an independent research institute based here, said that if Americans slimmed down to the weight of middle-class Indians, “many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates.”

He added, archly, that the money spent in the United States on liposuction to get rid of fat from excess consumption could be funneled to feed famine victims.

Mr. Mehta’s comments may sound like the macroeconomic equivalent of “so’s your old man,” but they reflect genuine outrage — and ballooning criticism — toward the United States in particular, over recent remarks by President Bush.

With the “Obesity Epidemic” part of our American vernacular, can we really point a finger at other countries for causing problems in our access to cheap food?

At a time when traditional technology firms, mortgage companies, home builders and more are laying off employees, wind energy, solar energy, and various alternative fuel companies are actively recruiting.  I see articles repeatedly touting green jobs as a great growth area.  But how do we balance the green industry growth opportunities with the risk of 100,000 jobs projected to be lost in the green sector if the Senate doesn’t pass the tax credit extension by the end of this year?

Write and call your Senators and demand the extension of the tax rebates for renewable energy.  The renewable energy industry has been picking up needed momentum over the past few years- let’s not throw a wrench in the gears now.  This isn’t only about providing more jobs to stimulate the economy, this is about linking our economy to something that has a potential to improve our world.  Bailing out the subprime mortgage mess may get all the press, but supporting the fledgling green industry needs more attention.

Sometimes the small things in life can be the most annoying. For example, when visiting the local cafeteria, why do they serve meals onto Styrofoam clamshell packages instead of onto washable, reusable plates?  A friend of mine asked one day, and was told: “We can’t use these Styrofoam containers in California anymore, so they were all shipped to Texas.” 

Good job, California- it looks like someone took an initiative there to reduce the Styrofoam consumption.  What a shame the foam nightmares were then just shipped out to us.  We’re working on getting them removed from our cafeteria here.  Look out Rhode Island, these containers might be coming to a cafeteria near you!

A coworker recently emailed me with a burning request - I’ve never heard an environmental word from her in all the years we’ve known each other, but it seems that she’s just snapped.  It was a very long email that she sent, but the gist of it was she and her husband are inundated with credit card offers in the mail; she received 14 separate offers in the last three days and felt somehow responsible for the destruction of at least one forest.  She wanted to know how to get the unsolicited offers to stop.

I referred her to the FTC website and phone number: 1-888-5-OPTOUT (567-8688), and also asked her to sign the petition to create a ‘do not mail’ registry similar to the ‘do not call’ registry.

100 million trees are destroyed every year just for junk mail (New American Dream Calculation from Conservatree and U.S. Forest Service Statistics).  And a 2% response rate on direct mail marketing is considered successful (what I learned during my MBA marketing classes).  So that’s 98 million trees destroyed every year for absolutely no expected return.

Cutting down trees destroys natural habitats- now I want Noah to come back and save our animals from the flood of American consumerism. Maybe we can be Noah.

So President  Bush has been out stumping in Saudi Arabia asking them to pump out more of their non-renewable oil resources so that America can have temporarily lowered prices.  I guess if the Saudis complied, that plan would work for lowering prices at least until the Saudis ran out of oil and/or Bush was no longer in office and high gas prices could be blamed on a later chump/president.

I cringed when I read this, as if ANWR and more more more consumption is the only option:

Bush’s domestic energy plan includes opening a coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration and production and making it easier to build new oil refineries and nuclear power plants in the United States. Even if Congress decided to approve them, the moves would not offer short-term relief to families.

I regularly receive emails and letters from our two Texas Senators on the actions they’re taking to fight our nation’s dependence on foreign oil- unfortunately these actions also seem primarily dependent on drilling in ANWR

It’s too late for short-term relief.  We saw gas prices near our house, in the cheap-gas state of Texas, at $3.99 9/10 per gallon yesterday.  Maybe we’ll hit $6/gallon or more this summer- for the sake of changes in consumption practices; we can only hope…but if this price-point is used by the oil industry as leverage to finally get into ANWR and other protected areas, well, the short-term solution really does place the problem back into our children’s laps.

So we’ll let future generations deal with the plundered wildlife reserve, a nation still dependent on oil, and increased climate change because all we can do is more of the same?  We’re all capable of making moral decisions, let’s hold our politicians to that.

Longer term solutions are needed: greater availability of public transportation, alternative fuels, conservation.  Change your practices, stop commuting 80 miles roundtrip to work every day in the oversized-SUV-house-on-wheels, and write and call your elected officials to support funding clean energy and increased availability of public transportation as a preferred solution to the energy crisis.