The world is whacked

Tuesday, 6:05 pm

By Kate

Nov

06

2007

I made the observation, today, that most of our trees still have leaves on them. Lots of green leaves. There are a few trees, here and there, sticking out like winter skeletons, but not very many. It’s my recollection that the landscape is usually pretty barren by Halloween and peak leaf season usually occurs by mid-October. Aside from the maple trees turning brilliant colors and dropping their leaves, that’s about it so far. At the rate things are moving along, the last leaves won’t fall until mid-to-late November. That’s pretty late.

I also noticed today that my roses are blooming like crazy. There’s a whole new generation of buds popping open. It looks strange to see bright blooms bursting out next to the mature rose hips that are ready for harvest. The grass needs to be mowed, too. Stupid grass. It should be asleep by now. It seems to me that the natural world is in a state of confusion.

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I read an article in the Worcester paper, a couple of days ago, about the high cost of heating oil. Many people in the northeast heat their homes with heating oil. There are a number of small towns and also rural areas where gas lines have never been extended, leaving homeowners a choice of heating oil, electric, or propane. Not one is a particularly appealing choice these days. Those using heating oil are looking at some really high heating bills this year. At around $2.90-$3.19 per gallon, filling a 500-750 gallon tank costs some serious bucks. Of course, the larger or less well-insulated a house is, the more often its tank has to be refilled.

Over the years, I’ve lived in two houses that were heated with heating oil. Even then, we didn’t keep the thermostat set much higher than 68° during the day and much lower at night, but still had to fill the heating oil tank a couple of times during the heating season. Price then were around $.60 a gallon. Now...I can’t imagine plunking down $1500+ for the first installment, with the possibility of heating oil climbing well beyond $3 a gallon by the time the next fill-up is needed. As the above article indicates, people on fixed incomes face some dangerous options this year. They can be really cold and eat and get medication or they can be sort of warm and not afford medications or much food. People tend to die in those circumstances.

And even if the consumer isn’t on a fixed income, that’s a big chunk out of the average income. Cheap fossil fuels are a thing of the past. Our relationship with heat is going to change in the coming years.

Although I have 3 cords of wood sitting out back, which should assure me of a comfortable winter, I have burned very little so far. My wood guy won’t have any more on offer until next year, so what I have out back is all I’m going to have this winter. I need to make it last through March. I do have a gas furnace to fall back on, if needed, but I really don’t want to use it. So, I’ve been curious to find out just how warm I really need to keep my house. Gradually, I’ve been able to adjust to much lower temperatures and still feel comfortable.

Yesterday, for example, the downstairs stayed a pretty constant 58.5° which seems rather cold. (The upstairs was around 54°.) But, I put on a cotton turtleneck shirt, thick cotton mock-turtleneck sweatshirt over that, with a thin polyester-filled vest over the top of everything. That’s a lot more clothing than many people are willing to wear in the house, but I was very warm and comfortable. The vest gives me additional warmth without inhibiting arm movement—just the turtleneck’s and sweatshirt’s long sleeves to deal with. There were several points during the day when I had to remove the vest for a while because I was too warm. When I got cold, I put it back on.

It’s a different way of looking at warmth. Speaking as one who’d much prefer to keep my house at 72°, this does represent quite a change in my relationship with home heating.

If I had to heat with heating oil, I’d not only be bundling up and closing off rooms, but also looking for other heating alternatives at this point. And that is happening already. My wood guy said his wood orders skyrocketed this year. In the coming years, I have a feeling that wood for the wood stove is going to be a lot less plentiful and a lot more expensive as more people turn to it for heat. I may need to find another alternative, too.

90 Percent Project - Week 6

Friday, 4:29 pm

By Kate

Jul

13

2007

Time for a recap of Week 6 of the 90 Percent Project. This week’s news was a reminder that, while this project may be fun now, in the not so distant future the things we’re learning to do with this project are going to become necessary for daily living. The International Energy Agency (one of the most respected and relatively conservative energy organizations in the world), is an energy advisor to 26 different countries and when they speak, everybody listens. This week they announced that the world is looking at really tight oil supplies by 2010 and declining oil supplies by 2012. That does not mean that we all run out of fossil fuels at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2012, but it does mean that cheap oil is pretty much gone forever. That means the price of everything goes up. That means some poorer nations may not be able to afford oil products (some are already experiencing that reality). That means gasoline is going to become even more expensive, perhaps prohibitively so. It also means that one well-placed hurricane or a flooded/broken refinery or rebels/terrorists blowing up pipelines become a catastrophe rather than a temporary inconvenience. That means we’d better learn how to conserve pretty fast to buy us some time or we may quite well end up looking like Cuba did after the Soviet Union fell or like Argentina after their economy collapsed a few years ago. It’s a sobering message from a well-respected energy agency. We’d do well to listen up and start conserving like mad while we have it to conserve. Technology is not going to be able to deliver us from this problem within five years. Probably not even in ten years.

I ran across this little poetic proverb this week...I don’t recall where.

We don’t buy more than we need,
We don’t need more than we use,
and we don’t use more than we need to get by.
until we learn to need less.

This week’s results:

Electricity
Week 6: 35 kWh

US Average: 11,000 kWh per household per year (avg. of 900 kWh per month, 211 kWh per week)
90 Percent reduction goal: 1100 kWh per household per year or about 90 kWh per month.

We’re still making some adjustments and cuts. There is an average of 2kWh per day to cut to reach the 90% reduction goal. Those last two are going to be the hardest, I think. At least while the lad is home. When he’s gone, it shouldn’t be too difficult. I’d like to get as close as we can while he’s home, just to be able to say it is possible (bearing in mind that it’s a luxury to be able to even make that statement).
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Gasoline purchased (for 2 people)
Week 6: 0 gallons

US Average: 500 gallons per person per year.
90 Percent reduction goal: 50 gallons per person per year.

Last week’s purchased gasoline carried us through this week. That pleased me. One of the suggestions on the 90% Project list is to try to keep the car’s engine under 3000 rpms at all times. Doing so saves a lot of gas. I’ve tried to be mindful of that all week and it really does make a big difference. Amazing. I’ve also been cruising slowly up to red lights rather than rushing to one and slamming on the brakes. I’ve read in a number of places now that this actually does save some fuel. I don’t know the whys and wherefores, but it sounds like a reasonable thing to try. It surely does seem to annoy the people behind me, though. What is the psychology of that? You can rush up to a red light and wait longer or gently cruise up to one and wait less. But you’re still going to wait. People do seem to like to hurry up and wait.

__________________

Water (for 2 people)
Week 6: 359.08 gallons

US Average: 100 gallons per person per day, 700 gallons per week.
90 Percent reduction goal: 10 gallons per person per day, 70 gallons per week.

Obviously this was an improvement over last week, but I didn’t do any lawn watering either. Still higher than previous weeks. I believe most of the extra water use came from toilet flushing. We have not been very careful about that this past week. It adds up very quickly.

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Natural Gas
Week 6: 5 cu. ft./5.35 therms

US Average: 1000 therms per household per year.
90 Percent Reduction Goal: 100 therms per household per year.

Back to the average 5 cu ft weekly flow. Not too many cool showers this week, either. Makes a measurable difference, evidently. I really, really want a tankless on-demand hot water heater.
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Trash (for 2 people)
Week 6: 5 lbs.

US Average: 4.5 lbs per person per day, 31.5 lbs per week.
90 Percent Reduction Goal: .45 lbs per person per day, 3.15 lbs per person per week.

At this point, my goal is to stop using plastic trash bags. I’d be so happy to not need them anymore. I’m getting closer to that goal now.

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Consumer Goods
Week 6: $0

US Average: $10K per household per year.
90 Percent Reduction Goal: $1000 per household per year.

I don’t believe that I bought anything this week. There were no receipts in the journal, so I’m pretty sure that I didn’t buy anything and nothing has slipped my mind. Terry didn’t need a bag of dog chews this week. For once.

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Food
The Farmer’s Market still continues to be my main haunt. Fresh blueberries and early sweet corn just arrived yesterday. What riches, indeed. At some point, I should probably start thinking about preserving some of the summer produce for winter.

Blow drying sand

Wednesday, 3:29 pm

By Kate

Jun

20

2007

It was another work day for the lad. We arrived at the country club at 2 o’clock, just after a rousing rain ‘event’. There was still mist and about 120% humidity in the air. Nevertheless, as we wound our way through the greens and lush landscaping, my car received an extra shower from the sprinkler system that was going full blast. And...even more perplexing, there were employees on the golf greens with their leaf blowers strapped to their backs. They waved the nozzles of those things around over the sand in the sand traps. Blow drying the sand? Removing the rain droplet pockmarks in the sand? What?

I assume the sprinkler system is set to timers and they may, unfortunately, click on just at the time of maximum rainfall. Or rainfalls. Or three day storms (as I’ve noted in the past), but don’t these things have some kind of manual override? I dunno, it may be deemed impractical to mess around with the timer system even when it’s pouring rain. It’s a wretched waste, in any event.

The sand blow drying just amazed me, though. How many gallons of fuel were these things sucking up? A tidy bundle of it, I’m sure. Every sand trap had some hapless employee doing the important job.

I’m not a fan of golf. I try to be reasonably polite about it and not step on golf aficionado toes. Golfers are a passionate lot and can make case after case for the importance of the game. But you know what? I feel just a little too cynical to restrain myself today. Golf may be everything a passionate golfer says it is, but it’s also one of the most worthless endeavors on the face of the earth. There. I said it. For the privilege of chasing a little white ball around expansive greens, the maintenance of those greens requires copious amounts of water, thousands of gallons of fuel to run the dozens of riding lawnmowers all over them and to run the silly leaf blowers, and the electricity to recharge the umpty zillion golf carts every night so no one has to walk. Oh, and the sprinkler system is run off electricity, too.  Multiply that by how many hundreds or thousands of golf courses across this country (or planet) and there we are.

Every doggone golf course should have big signs that say “Your continued golfing pleasure made possible by the thousands of responsible citizens who are conserving resources so that you don’t have to. You’re welcome.”

So, how many toes did I just stomp on? Sorry about that. Blow drying the sand was the last straw.

The 90 Percent Project

Thursday, 1:48 pm

By Kate

May

31

2007

A couple of days ago, I stumbled across an experiment in conservation. It's called the Riot for Austerity 90% Emissions Reduction Project. With a name like that you know the person who thought it up has a sense of humor. But how interesting, indeed. The idea is

...to cut [our] emissions by 90% of what the average person in the US consumes - the approximate amount people in the rich world need to reduce by in order to avoid the worst effects of global warming. The eventual goal is to reach the 94% that George Monbiot calculates would represent a fair share of the world’s emissions for Americans, but we’re starting slow.

We’re doing this for several reasons. First, because it is necessary - if we want to bestow a decent world on our children, we have to cut our emissions, and much harder and faster than any government has proposed. The reason governments do not propose it is because they believe it is politically infeasible. So we want to present our leaders with as many people as possible who will stand up and say “I did it. Our nation can too.” We’re excited that people want to join us, and we invite anyone who is ready to participate!

It's an ambitious project and I've been mulling over whether I want to join up or not. The rules of the game say that we are allowed 50 gallons of gasoline per year per person, 100 therms of natural gas per year, 10 gallons of water per person per day, 90 kWh of electricity per household per month (yikes!), and a couple other categories of savings.

The idea is to try to reach these goals by the end of a year. The thought in the back of the mind is that, eventually, we won't have a choice.

Beyond global warming, I also have concerns over Peak Oil which is coming, like it or not. There is a lot of question over when it will arrive -- next year, ten years or twenty years -- but not much question about if it will arrive.

Of all the solutions that are tossed around in the media and by government types, the one thing we don't hear about is conservation. It's a dirty word. Asking people to cut back is unthinkable. Unpopular. Even politically suicidal. Most of the solutions being proposed are simply replacements for what we already consume and come with a high energy cost. Truthfully, I don't think that's feasible, either.

I think we're on a runaway train. We're having an orgy of consumerism where we're always looking for the next thing to acquire. The bigger the better -- houses, cars, toys. More and Bigger is the American way. Like Darth Cheney says...our way of life is not negotiable. Well, not until there's no choice in the matter, anyway.

That just isn't a moral way to live. The idea of I've Got Mine And I'm Entitled To It Because I Deserve It (and it's there to take) is killing our planet. Those of us who are living in a first world nation are wealthy by much of the rest of the world's standards. If we have running water (or even water), enough food, electricity, and a solid roof over our heads, we're doing okay. The rest is icing on the cake. But we take for granted that "enough" will always be there and if our salaries are large enough, we are entitled to much more. What happens in the ambiguous "over there" doesn't really seem to be our problem. And we're generally not gifted at thinking too far ahead about what we're facing.

But what happens when we begin to run out of the things that make enough and more than enough possible? Like oil, for example? It is running out. Almost all the major oil fields in the world are beginning to decline, some more precipitously than others. The world is run on oil. Our economies are based on oil. Our lives are made possible by oil. Everything is connected to oil -- the fuel we put in our vehicles, the fuel we use to heat our homes and cook with, the lights we use, the plastics we use, the foods we eat, our medicines, the cosmetics we smear on our faces, the toiletries we depend on, the clothes we wear, the materials needed to produce the alternative energies that we think will save us, our infrastructure, our computers even. And that's just the really short list. What happens after we use it all up in our orgy of consumerism...because we're entitled and we earned it and it's the American way?

Our planet is finite. It doesn't provide inexhaustible resources. There is an end to it somewhere. It's probably a lot closer than most of us want to think. And yeah, that's pretty awful scary. But I don't think the planet really cares if we deny it or not. What is, is.

I think we were provided with the intelligence to husband our resources. But somewhere along the line, we've decided to ignore that. I don't think there is anything written in the bylaws that excuses us for stupidity and greed.

For the past several months, I've been rather pleased with myself for the amount of energy I've stopped using. With regard to electricity, I was really pleased with myself for whacking our daily usage down to 6 or 7 kWh per day. With the lad home, we're clocking something like 7 or 8 kWh per day on the old meter. That's down considerably since the lad's first week home. He is now careful and has been pretty agreeable about it.

But then along comes this new challenge. The 90% challenge. I had a pretty funny response to it. First I read the rules and thought, "What a cool idea." Then I read a little more carefully and thought, "This is nuts. No one can do this." Then, to my surprise, a little bit of anger. And then I reminded myself, "Within my child's lifetime (and possibly mine), there won't be a choice."

And then I stopped. The word choice reached out and grabbed me again. Our choices, whether for justifiable or unjustifiable reasons, are still the choices that we make.

It is about choice, isn't it? Rather than thinking that it's impossible to cut that much use, I turned it around. If I only have 3 kWh of electricity to use each day, what would I choose to spend them on? What's the most important to me?

If I only have 10 gallons of water to spend a day, what do I want to spend them on? What's the most important to me?

At least these two things are places where I can make changes now. Hard choices, but possible.

But I am less sure with regard to gasoline use. Funny that. This is also about choice and I'm no more inclined to make the hard choices than the next person. Now, I have a 7 year old car that just turned 50,000 miles two days ago, so I am not a profligate gasoline spender. But according to the rules of 90%, I should only be using 100 gallons of gasoline a year (at least until the lad is no longer part of this household or a dependent). I've already spent 15 of them this month. It was a choice we made for the lad to work two or three towns away rather than in this town for three dollars less per hour. That was a conscious choice based on some good reasons. But the planet and remaining quantities of oil in the ground really don't care about our good reasons, do they? What is, is. Nevertheless, I don't think we're going to undo that choice. It seems to be an important one. So I guess what that means is a lot more walking for activities close by that I used the car for before. And a lot more careful planning and combined trips.

Natural gas use, though. That's a problem. I don't heat my house with gas except for a couple of times in the autumn and spring. It's almost entirely used for hot water and cooking. My use last year was 465 therms. And according to the rules of 90%, I'm only supposed to be using 100 therms? Sheez. If I turn my hot water down any lower, we might as well be taking cold showers. If I could eliminate pilot lights, that would help. They use about 70 therms per year, each (I called my gas company and asked). I have three. That's something to work on over the next year. It's still about choice, but a bit more difficult because the choice involves whether to replace wasteful appliances. Of course, I also consider what I'd do if I didn't have a choice and gas was rationed. Someday that may happen. I'd rather figure it out before that happened.

So, yeah, I think I am going to join the 90% challenge and see where it leads. I have a feeling it will be an interesting, frustrating, experimental, and even a surprising year of good choices, bad choices, and some downright nutty ones.

Progress

Wednesday, 5:51 pm

By Kate

Mar

07

2007

It’s electric bill time again. Whee!

As expected, after the utility’s grossly over-estimated bill last month, my bill this month was the lowest it’s been in at least 20 years. A modest $14. But that’s for an even more modest 53 kWh.

My eyes about bugged out of my head, however, when I saw that our cost per kilowatt hour took a gigantic leap upwards this month. From last month’s already high 17¢ to 27¢ per kWh!!! That’s a huge hike in prices. Since our electricity is produced using natural gas and I suspect that’s where the major price jump came from, I can hardly wait to see my gas bill this month. Geez.

Anyway. Time for another pretty electricity usage graph. I like the developing trend.

Once again, graph is free, courtesy of the National Center for Education Statistics, Kid’s Zone.

Grow barley, get rich

Wednesday, 6:19 pm

By Kate

Feb

28

2007

In the annals of unintended consequences, this one is bound to be a blockbuster. Beer drinkers beware:

The rapid expansion of biofuel production may be welcome news for environmentalists but for the world’s beer drinkers it could be a different story.

Strong demand for biofuel feedstocks such as corn, soyabeans and rapeseed is encouraging farmers to plant these crops instead of grains like barley, driving up prices.

Jean-François van Boxmeer, chief executive of Heineken the Dutch brewer, warned last week that the expansion of the biofuel sector was beginning to cause a “structural shift” in European and US agricultural markets.

One consequence, he said, could be a long-term shift upwards in the price of beer. Barley and hops account for about 7-8 per cent of brewing costs.

Barley, which is used for making beer, whiskey and animal feed, has seen prices prices soar over the last 12 months.

Futures prices for European malting barley, which is used for brewing and distilling, have risen 85 per cent to more than €230 ($320) a tonne since last May.

Barley feed futures have risen by a third to C$180 ($155) a tonne on the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange over the same period.

Meanwhile, barley production in America fell to 180.05m bushels in 2006, the lowest level since 1936. The value of the crop was the lowest since 1970 – at $498m.

Fun times ahead, eh?

(via The Oil Drum)