Growing vegetables

Several weeks ago Michael Pollan, author of books such as The Omnivore's Dilemma, had an article entitled Why Bother in the NY Times Magazine. The article starts by asking why we as individuals should bother to do anything about climate change. He outlines a number of reasons why it doesn't seem to make sense to bother ranging from the puniness of our efforts, to the negation of our efforts by others, to a lack of clarity on what exactly would help.

But then he proceeds to argue that given the seriousness of the consequences of not bothering, it is absolutely essential to do ones part to reverse climate change:

Going personally green is a bet, nothing more or less, though it’s one we probably all should make, even if the odds of it paying off aren’t great. Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can’t prove that it will.

Okay, so you've decided to do something about it. But what? Pollan has a suggestion:

But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food.

An interesting thought. My kids have been wanting me to garden with them for quite some time now. But having grown up in a high-rise in a big city, I didn't get to learn anything about gardening, let alone developing a love for it...:-( So I don't have a green thumb, and I've generally viewed gardening as a chore, and so have not obliged my kids.

But over the weekend, when reading the Google blog post on growing ones food, I was reminded of EarthBox. The EarthBox is a

... maintenance-free, award-winning, high-tech growing system controls soil conditions, eliminates guesswork and more than doubles the yield of a conventional garden-with less fertilizer, less water and virtually no effort.

Note particularly the "virtually no effort" clause and, of course, I'm a sucker for "high-tech systems"...:-) So I'm going to get one of these to see if I can at least grow some tomatoes for a few salads and the occasional pasta sauce. I'm not sure that using an EarthBox is exactly what Michael Pollan had in mind. But it's the closest I'm going to get to growing my own food!

Solar panels for the home

The San Jose Mercury News recently reported that Severin Borenstein, a business school professor at UC Berkeley and the Director of the UC Energy Institute, says that:

Installing solar panels on homes is an economic "loser" with the costs far outweighing the financial benefit ...
...
The technology, using photovoltaic panels to generate electricity, is not economically competitive with fossil fuels and costs more than other renewable fuels

The solar industry, naturally, disagrees with Borenstein's conclusions. But I have to say that, based on the little research I've done, I have not been convinced about the financial utility of installing solar panels. In my mind, the primary benefit of installing solar panels appears to be the good feeling one gets from doing something about climate change. Borenstein explicitly notes that

...he didn't take into account the feel-good benefit or societal value of installing a solar system on your roof.

But is there a different way to get these benefits without incurring the financial costs of installing solar panels? I think there is.

Some utilities allow you to opt for "green energy" alternatives; for a small premium one can buy energy from renewable sources. For example, Palo Alto Green is a program that allows you to buy your electricity from renewable sources for a premium of only 1.5 cents per kWh. Currently, 97.5% of the this renewable energy is from wind and the remaining 2.5% from solar. (Of course, the actual energy delivered to your home isn't guaranteed to be from a renewable source, but the utility promises to buy the right amount of electricity from renewable sources based on the usage by subscribers to this program.)

We've been subscribers to this program for some time now. And based on Borenstein's analysis, I don't think I'm going to rush in to install solar panels on our roof. Rather, I'll let the utilities install large solar farms or other renewable energy sources, and get the "good feeling" by supporting their efforts. Presumably, the utilities will ensure that these renewable sources are cost effective.

John Doerr's Call to Arms on Climate Change

Yesterday I attended a talk by John Doerr in which he issued a call to arms on climate change. This was essentially the same talk he gave at the TED and available here. Here's a summary of the talk, but I highly recommend you spend the 20 minutes it takes to watch him deliver the TED talk.

Doerr starts by recounting a dinner conversation on climate change in which his daughter tells him that his generation was the one that created the problem, so it was his generation's responsibility to fix it. So Doerr and his partners at Kleiner went about learning about the problem and what could be done about it. Doerr highlighted four major lessons they learned:

• Companies matter: Doerr described the story of how how Walmart decided to go green and cut its energy consumption by something like 20% using a series of simple strategies (painting their roof white, installing skylights, keeping refrigerated food in a separate room). When much admired companies like Walmart take the green route, other companies are bound to follow.
• People matter: People need to make green choices. Doerr described Walmart's big push in selling CFLs: 65 million sold last year with a goal of selling 100 million this year. But consumers won't go green until they understand the full cost of their choices. In particular, consumers need to understand that the CO2 they generate with their choices is not free.
• Policy matters: Doerr talked about the impact that California's AB 32 and Brazil's national policy on ethanol are having. In the talk I heard (but not in the TED version), Doerr talked about how having the Energy Star standard has made household appliances much more efficient, but that the lack of energy standards for flat screen TVs makes those devices quite inefficient.
• Potential of radical innovation: Doerr talked about the promise of synthetic biology. He described how synthetic biology was used to get bugs to synthesize the crucial ingredient of an anti-malaria drug, thereby decreasing the drug cost ten-fold and saving a million lives. Amyris is now using this technique to have bugs synthesize much more efficient biofuels.

But through all of this, Doerr had this refrain: "It's not enough". The magnitude of the problem is enormous, and seemingly large efforts at tackling it (by giant companies like Walmart, by millions of individuals making green choices, and by giant states and countries like California and Brazil) are just not going to be enough.

Part of the problem is China whose green house gas production is now comparable to the US and growing much faster. When asked about his CO2 policy, the mayor of a major Chinese city responded by saying that the West produces seven times more green house gases per capita than China. Why then should China stop its growth while the West continues to lead its profligate lifestyle? Why indeed?

Doerr ended with some things one can do. The most important of these seems to be to lobby Congress to pass some carbon cap and trade legislation (see my previous post on this).

All in all a very fine talk.

Blog Action Day

Today, Oct 15, is Blog Action Day. The idea is to highlight a single important issue---the environment.

Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic.

So I thought I'd add my thoughts on this day. I'm not an environmental activist by any means. Rather, I'm much closer to being a lazy environmentalist. I like the idea of having:

...easy, stylish and super convenient ways to green your lifestyle.

So we own a Highlander Hybrid (okay, it's not a Prius, but it does carry 7, is a lot more spacious for the occassional camping trips, and has 4 WD for our Tahoe trips, all while giving 25-26 mpg). And we're signed up to get our home electricity from green sources (i.e., we pay a little extra and to have our utility increase the fraction of electricity they get from green sources). And I just used a non-toxic concoction (baking soda, white vinegar, and boiling water) to open up a slow drain instead of using some toxic chemicals. And we're considering installing water efficient toilet---either the dual flush Toto Aquia (1.6 gpf/0.9 gpf) or the Toto Eco Drake (1.28 gpf). All these nice "green" things without any sacrifices---being a lazy environmentalist is easy!

The latest thing I'm considering is getting photovoltaic panels on our roof. I'm not yet convinced that having these panels saves money (though there are various rebates and incentives in place). But they do free one from the guilt of using halogen light fixtures that don't take the new CFLs! Have any of you considered photovoltaics? If so, do you find them effective?

Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade

Global warming has become one of the key issues in this presidential election cycle. Various proposals have been floated to combat it, including alternate energy sources, carbon taxes, cap-and-trade policies. Greg Mankiw, Professor of Economics at Harvard and the Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005, is a strong advocate of a $1 per gallon gas tax. (Such a gas tax is a Pigovian tax levied "...to correct the negative externalities of a market activity.") Back in Oct, 2006, he wrote a manifesto for such a Pigovian tax for the Wall Street Journal (reprinted in his blog). He makes quite a compelling case, though he ends by recognizing the political hurdles in passing such a tax:

But don't expect those vying for office to come around until the American people recognize that while higher gas taxes are unattractive, the alternatives are even worse.

Interestingly, it seems that Barack Obama may be considering something that may be equivalent to this Pigovian tax. In a recent blog post, Mankiw points to an interview with Obama in which Obama says that he prefers a cap-and-trade system in which permits are auctioned of rather than being freely given away. Obama says that:

...as I roll out my proposals for a cap-and-trade system, I will price permits so that it has much of the same effect as a carbon tax.

I don't understand the cap-and-trade system or what it means to auction off permits. But the idea of using auctions seems like a good way to price things (cf. Google's auction for keyword ads). And if it has the effect of a carbon tax, but is more palatable because it's more market-driven, then this sounds like a good thing.