8 weeks of clean living

I’m certainly not a scientific expert on global climate change, but I’ve been thinking, reading and talking about the issue for quite some time now. During the course of this experiment, especially, I’ve had the chance to read many thoughtful essays and engage in many serious discussions on the topic. Here are the conclusions I’ve come up with.

I’m going to break this topic down into five sections (over time), each of which I think represents an important part of the global warming debate. I will go through the sections in the following order: Is Global Warming Real?, The Rhetorical Landscape, Personal Responsibility, Governmental Responsibility, Conclusions.

Is Global Warming Real?

This portion of the debate is slowly getting less and less contentious. Organizations that have traditionally denied the existence of global warming caused by human activity have now moved on to claiming that the impact of global warming will be negligible. Nevertheless, in personal conversation I still run into those who believe that global warming hasn’t been “proven” and that there is still significant debate amongst scientists on the issue. These opinions represent leftover successes from the old flat-out denial PR campaigns undertaken over the last couple decades.

As any honest scientist will tell you, global warming is not provable in some airtight abstract a priori mathematical sense. Of course, neither is the existence of the sun. Empirical science relies on a series of theories about the nature of the world, which are then either supported or insubstantiated by observable evidence. A theory that is supported by a tremendous amount of evidence is a good theory, and we can operate under the assumption of its truth (when we’re not researching the subject). Global warming is such a theory, as has been made clear by the most recent IPCC report along with basically every other bit of science on the topic, and we can therefore operate under the assumption of its truth.

Of course, if one is willing to ignore science in general then one might as well ignore global warming too. Certainly this post is not targeted at an audience that denies or selectively denies the efficacy of the scientific method.

What all this amounts to is that there is really no intellectually honest reason to deny the existence of global warming. Of course there are personal, religious, economical and political reasons to deny its existence, and thus people still do. Most of these reasons are obvious, but the most salient to me is a simple personal one. If one is leading a happy, affluent existence within this particular configuration of the world, then the notion of global warming, and the insinuation of drastic change, is fundamentally scary and a bummer. Basically everyone I know fits this description, and thus it is very tempting for all of us to look for a way out, which is the grist for any denial propaganda machine.

Another tempting thought, and one that I think is basically true, is that most of us won’t personally be affected in any substantial way by global warming. For older folks, this is almost certainly true. All they have to worry about is listening to all of the bitching and moaning. For us young folks in America, we (and the country) will presumably be wealthy enough to comfortably make whatever adjustments are required over the next 50 or so years. The brunt of the impact will probably be borne by the world’s poor, as is traditionally the case with environmental damage (wealthy people don’t tend to live next door to coal power plants or depend on some single fishery in Southeast Asia for their livelihoods). Given a hard-nosed appraisal of one’s situation (and it’s the rare one that’s not), then, global warming is on par with starvation, malaria and tainted water, which is to say that pragmatically it’s not that scary (again from the perspective of happy, affluent people).

I think that most people in the developed world, whether or not we would like to admit it, have either consciously or unconsciously internalized the lack of impact that global warming will likely have on our lives. Therefore, what’s really scary about global warming is the insinuation that our lifestyles have to drastically change somehow in order to combat it. In my opinion, the primary rhetorical failure of the environmentalist movement regarding global warming is its apparent inability to recognize this fact. I will discuss this topic in detail in my next post.

Well, my eight weeks are officially up tomorrow (let the hour long hot showers commence!). Unfortunately I have not had a chance to explore some of the issues that I am interested in, such as worm composting and veganism. To that end, I’m intending to start a second eight week project (same bat channel) that will focus primarily on practical and environmentally friendly eating habits (though I’m sure I’ll slip in some more general environmental topics from time to time). There are plenty of extreme examples of environmentally friendly foodie journalism, but those examples aren’t particularly achievable for the normal busy person. I will focus on the substantial changes one can make without living on a farm or learning how to hunt.

Over the next week I am going to write a few essays summarizing my experience, and then I will take a two week break to attend an academic “boot camp” that is a requirement for a fellowship I received. I hope to start my new project October 1st. Thanks for reading!

Having efficient public transit to and from the airport (in any city) is a great boon for travelers looking to save a few bucks and avoid driving or being driven. Despite this built-in demand, there is only one MTS bus, the 992, that services the San Diego Airport. This bus goes back and forth between downtown San Diego and the airport, and thus anyone trying to take the bus to the airport from north of downtown has to go well out of his or her way to do so.

I flew into San Diego on Monday morning and needed to get up to school quickly, but I was reluctant to pay the approximately $45 it takes to get to UCSD by cab. I also wanted to try and use public transit if at all possible. I came up with the following solution, which I think is the best compromise given the current transportation mix available at the airport. I hired a cab to take me to the Old Town Transit Center, which cost me $17 including tip. Then I caught the MTS 150 express up to campus, which is free for students. All told, I landed at approximately 9:20 AM, caught the cab at approximately 9:30 AM, caught the bus at 9:48 AM and arrived at school at approximately 10:05 AM (driving to the San Diego Airport takes about 25 minutes and taking the bus the whole way takes approximately 65-90 minutes, for comparison).

While this works pretty well coming from the airport, it does not work very well going to the airport because there is no taxi stand at the Old Town Transit Center. Ideally MTS would operate a bus on a loop between the Old Town Transit Center and the airport, Which would vastly simplify the project of getting to and from the airport. Cynically one might suppose that there is a strong disincentive for the airport to enable better public transit, given the revenue associated with airport-owned parking lots, fees garnered from private drivers and the like.

The other obvious option for somewhat mass airport transit is taking a shuttle bus (like SuperShuttle, with which I had some experience in LA), but they insist on arriving at the airport maddeningly early (around two hours before one’s flight), and take their sweet time doing it. For these reasons, I think they are even less palatable than an out-of-the-way bus route.

…and I for one welcome our new robot bus overlords.

While much attention is lavished on air quality issues, the majority of our concern relates to pollutants found outdoors, such as exhaust from cars and industrial emissions. Indoor air quality is also important, especially given the amount of time that one spends indoors. Chemicals that cause allergies, asthma and headaches (among other symptoms) such as formaldehyde, benzene and acetone are often outgassed by common household products. One solution to this problem could be to go to Sharper Image and pick up an air purifier. These purifiers likely do a reasonable job of filtering the air, but they are fairly expensive and require a steady supply of electricity to function.

A little while ago, I visited a friend’s house and was immediately struck by the awesomely sweet smelling air that greeted me upon arrival. It turns out that his roommate is a landscape architect, and had filled the house chock full of plants, which were the source of the fresh air. When I moved down to San Diego, my mom bought me a great book called How to Grow Fresh Air by Dr. B.C. Wolverton. Dr. Wolverton covers 50 different houseplants and rates them all based on their efficacy in filtering chemicals such as those mentioned above. I bought five different plans that were recommended as easy to maintain, and so far none of them have died on me.

My favorite plant by far is the Dieffenbachia (or Dumb Cane, see below); it has grown rapidly, and has big broad appealing leaves. The only gotcha is that it is poisonous, so don’t let your kids or small house pets around it. I’m hoping to buy more plants over the coming months (I might even construct a plant tower using wire shelving), and maybe one day my house will smell as good as my friend’s.

Everyone knows that the iPhone is the only reason to put up with AT&T as a wireless carrier. (Though to be fair to AT&T, basically every US wireless character is pathetic and stagnant.) AT&T’s latest misstep, however, hits very close to home. Apparently, bills being sent to iPhone customers are running over 50 sheets of paper in length (thankfully printed double-sided) due to the inane itemization of every single data transmission made during the billing period. I visit web sites and check my email on my iPhone all the time, and each individual data transfer results in a line item on the resulting bill. The iPhone comes with an unlimited data plan, so each of these line items is billed at $0.00. I can’t imagine a more useless waste of paper. I signed up for paperless billing as soon as I set up my online account, so hopefully I won’t have to find one of these monstrosities in my mailbox. I would imagine that I am in the minority in this regard, though, amongst the hundreds of thousands of iPhone users, and thus we can add millions of wasted sheets of paper to AT&T’s long list of screw ups.

Yesterday I referenced a page put together by Chris Goodall, author of How to Live a Low Carbon Life. Goodall was also recently associated with an article that I find to be extremely disingenuous and misleading. You can find it here. The gist of the article is that driving may be better for the environment than walking, in certain circumstances. Basically the author assumes a beef diet, ignores the environmental cost of extracting and refining oil, along with that of manufacturing automobiles, and bungles in a variety of other ways (see excellent responses here and here) in order to come to a counterintuitive conclusion that reinforces an apathetic response to the environmental challenges of our day. A more thoughtful article would have pointed out how terribly inefficient our agricultural system/dietary choices must be to make walking even nearly as high impact as driving a car, since accelerating and decelerating a human body clearly requires less energy than accelerating and decelerating a car, which is a several thousand pound hunk of metal with a human body in it! (To be fair, the article does get to some of these points in a roundabout way later on.)

As an example of non-ridiculous journalism, this San Francisco Chronicle article (regarding charcoal versus gas for grilling) does a great job of admitting and embracing the complexity inherent in most emissions calculations without striving for the sensationalist headline. Would that all environmental journalism were like this.

In order to join my family for a weekend in Lake Tahoe, I hopped on a Southwest flight from San Diego to Reno. Despite the fact that air travel is a form of mass transit, it is extremely energy intensive, due to the large distances covered and the necessity of putting a huge steel pipe up in the air. For a quick overview of air travel’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions, check out the last couple paragraphs of this page.

Flying therefore represents a conundrum for environmentalists. Unlike driving, which often can be avoided through the use of alternatives such as walking, biking and mass transit, air travel has no reasonable substitute (unless you are John Madden). Thus the decision is ultimately between air travel and no travel. A couple air carriers have attempted to solve this issue by offering carbon offsets alongside plane tickets at the time of purchase, and Boeing is about to introduce its 787, which it touts as one of the most efficient passenger aircraft ever produced. These are positive changes, but it would still be better, environmentally speaking, to avoid a flight rather than take a flight in a 787 with carbon offsets.

Ultimately, then, I think air travel is one of the hardest activities to cut down at the source. On the other hand, certain attitude changes could make an impact. A friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, recently flew from Hong Kong to Toronto for acupuncture. Presumably he could have saved some money and the environment by finding a suitable (if not quite equal, apparently some of the best acupuncturists in the world are in Toronto) acupuncturist in Hong Kong. Further, I often find that short trips to Europe are often met with a bizarre form of moral approbation. When someone announces, “I’m going over to France to spend a couple weeks in the countryside,” one often hears in response, “Oh good for you!” I could be wrong on this, but I feel like travel for entertainment is morally equivalent to sitting on the couch and watching sports for two weeks (if not morally worse due to the substantial environmental impact). Both activities are simply entertainment.

In addition to some of the larger changes that I’ve been making, there are a host of little things I try to do that also have environmental consequences. Time for my first list!

I:

• Turn the water off while soaping my hands, brushing my teeth, and doing dishes (and generally try to waste as little water as possible)
• Turn the lights off whenever I leave a room
• Shop for groceries with a reusable bag, and when I do end up with a plastic or paper bag I use them as trash and recycling bags, respectively (I never have to use actual trash bags)
• Recycle everything that is recyclable, including electronic waste
• Unplug chargers and other electronics while not in use (also, I’ve turned off the circuit breakers for my electric heaters, since they draw power even when not in use)
• Use my cell phone in lieu of having an alarm clock
• No longer initiate or renew subscriptions to magazines or newspapers (they are painfully wasteful and obsolete these days)
• Never buy non-rechargeable batteries (they are awful for the environment, classified as household hazardous waste, and way more expensive in the long run than simply using rechargeables)
• Collect any extra unused napkins given to me at restaurants, etc. for later use, and use cloth napkins for dining at home (I never have to buy napkins)
• Take the stairs
• Reuse packing materials myself, or take the peanuts back to UPS/FedEx stores for reuse
• Pay bills online, and cancel all paper statements from financial institutions
• Try to stop as much junk mail as possible (see this helpful article)
• String as many trips together as possible if I have to use the car (and carpool when possible)
• Let my dishes air dry instead of using heated dry
• Buy environmentally friendly personal care products such as 100% recycled toilet paper, paper towels and facial tissues that are whitened without chlorine bleach, phosphate free dishwashing soap and laundry detergent etc.

There may be some small things that I should be doing that I’m not doing. Feel free to share some small green tips!

Today’s post comes in response to an excellent comment on an earlier post by Lauren titled “Environmentalism’s Socially Awkward Side.” Please read the comment here before reading this response.

Many of the changes that I have been highlighting in this blog have a win/win structure. That is, they tend to both benefit my health or finances along with the environment. For example, buying music online is normally cheaper than driving somewhere and purchasing it at retail, and also eliminates all of the energy waste involved in producing and transporting (essentially obsolete) physical media. It still took a switch in expectations and perspective, however, to change my pattern from buying CDs to buying digital files. Thus I think it is a great topic to write about because I believe that by pointing out the efficiencies involved I might encourage others to undergo a similar shift in perspective.

Not all environmentally friendly actions have this structure. Oftentimes purchasing an environmentally sound product results in a higher bill, not a lower one. For example, buying FSC-certified lumber will set one back a few more bucks than buying lumber harvested without regard to sustainability. (Note that in some grand sense the FSC lumber is probably less expensive to the future global economy when all of the externalities are factored in, despite one’s increased share of the burden.) In these cases it is necessary to draw a line past which one will not make the financial sacrifice for environmental gain. Other environmentally friendly actions come at the expense of quality of life or convenience. For example, taking cold showers or forgoing the use of a car are decisions that negatively impact one’s comfort and perhaps even happiness. Again, it is necessary to draw a line past which one will not make the quality of life sacrifice for environmental gain. Obviously, since I am engaging in this project, I should draw the line very close to the environmental gain side of the equation. In general, however, it seems unreasonable to expect even “concerned citizens” to make some of the financial and quality of life sacrifices strident environmentalism would dictate.

I have certainly compromised on cost over the course of this project. The most salient example of this occurred when I was purchasing some towels and bedding. Clearly the environmentally conscious behavior would involve buying organic cotton towels and bedding, as cotton is one of the nastier crops in terms of pesticide use, etc. Unfortunately, the substantial price difference moved me to purchase conventionally grown product. On the other hand, I have spent more in some cases in order to purchase a more environmentally sound product. All of the toilet paper, facial tissues and paper towels that I buy are made from 100% recycled material, whitened without chlorine bleach, and so on. The price difference in this case is much less significant, and therefore I feel better able to make the green choice.

Quality of life sacrifices are somewhat harder to analyze. Avoiding driving, hot showers and crab cakes can be frustrating at times, and the environmental benefits are intangible. I could go much further in my asceticism, though, and forgo things like refrigeration, movies and paper products in general, so clearly I am drawing a line. A good example of an approach without compromise is No Impact Man. His is an extreme example of environmental asceticism that I find fascinating if not broadly applicable (it’s difficult to bike to work from the suburbs).

In general, then, I think it makes sense for this blog to pay ample attention to the “no-brainers” like drinking tap water, driving more efficiently and turning off standby electronics. Hopefully, given the win/win structure of these activities, the barriers to changing one’s habits will be relatively low, and the changes will actually get made. The impact of these “easy” changes can still be substantial: if every household in America replaced just one lightbulb with a CFL, it would save enough energy to light over 3 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking 800,000 cars off the road (according to ENERGY STAR).

I certainly wouldn’t expect the general public to make many of the changes that I am making, but if they made a few, and saved some money and the environment in the process, that would be progress.