8 weeks of clean living

In an earlier post I considered the difficulty of getting to the airport in a timely fashion via bus in San Diego. The main problem is that the MTS route 992, the only route that services the airport, simply follows a loop between the airport and downtown, and thus one must go all the way downtown and then back up to the airport if coming from the north. When I wrote the article, I had not actually tried taking the bus the whole way, however, and now I have several times.

It turns out that depending on when one is traveling, taking the bus is not too big of  a hassle. Specifically, if one is traveling around rush hour on weekdays the 150 runs every 30 minutes and gets downtown from campus in approximately 40 minutes where you can then catch the 992 (running every 12 minutes) to get to the airport. This is actually all fairly quick and costs just $2.50 without a student bus pass or $2.25 with (for the 992, which is inexplicably not part of the free bus zone). The story is different mid-day or on the weekends. Mid-day the 150 only runs hourly, which can waste a lot of time, and on the weekends it does not run at all, and one has to take the 30, which can take over an hour to get all the way up to campus.

I’ve actually taken to scheduling flights that fit well with the bus schedule and I’ve had good luck getting to and from campus quickly and inexpensively.

While I was on break I acquired a pair of shoes that I think fit pretty well with the goal of this site. Traditionally I have been partial to Adidas’ Rod Laver kicks, but they don’t exactly scream “environmentally friendly hippie” like I’d like. Enter Toemorrow! A member of Simple Shoes’ Green Toe line, the Toemorrow is made from materials such as bamboo, organic cotton and jute, among other environmentally friendly components. I’ve heard rumors that the Green Toe is completely biodegradable, though I imagine the brass lace holes would persist in the wild indefinitely.

I’ve been fairly pleased with the comfort and fit of the Toemorrow so far. I’ve felt some unpleasant friction on my right heel and ankle on longer walks, but nothing too drastic. Compared to the Lavers the sole of the Toemorrow is much thinner, giving me the impression that I can feel the texture of the surface that I’m walking upon. They were also a little slippery out of the box, but lately I’ve been feeling more sure-footed, perhaps because the sole has worn in a bit. If you can’t afford a Prius and want to project your green cred, these shoes are for you!

It’s been a while since my last post. In that time I finished a stressful quarter of graduate school and then spent about a month traveling around for the holidays. Ever since I finished my last eight week project I wanted to start another to investigate some topics that I didn’t get around to the first time. This quarter of my graduate program looks to be much more relaxed than the last, so I feel that this is a good time to get it under way. 

For the next eight weeks I’m going to do everything I was doing before (save the cold showers *shudder*), along with some new tricks that I think will be interesting. First, I’m going to focus even more on food, by practicing veganism instead of just vegetarianism (vegans don’t eat any animal products, including milk, cheese and eggs), as well as avoiding overly packaged or processed foods. I’m also going to be a bit more concrete in limiting my driving, by staying below some goal number of miles over the eight week period. One of the things I’m most excited about trying is vermicomposting, which involves starting a worm farm to compost one’s food waste.

I hope the results are helpful and insightful! 

Along the lines of what I mentioned in the previous post is this Greenpeace video, which I find particularly annoying and unproductive.

In an earlier post, I discussed how global warming is almost certainly occurring, yet the effects are not likely to substantially impact the lives of affluent people living today. Due to this fact, I think the truly scary component of the global warming debate (for most people) is the notion that somehow their lives and habits will have to fundamentally change in order to solve the problem.

Employing a dialogue based around fear for political means tends to be somewhat frowned upon. Of course, it is generally politically expedient to do so, especially concerning topics that lend themselves to just such a dialogue. Terrorism, for example, is an issue that is perfectly suited to fear based politics.

Despite the stigma, many environmentalists have attempted to create a culture of fear surrounding global warming. The Day After Tomorrow attempted to paint an unrealistically gloomy picture of a near future where the world is more or less demolished by meteorological events. More subtly, in An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore attempts to draw a very tenuous connection between Hurricane Katrina and global warming, in order to make the threat seem more immediate and real. If one wants to get people to change, the reasoning goes, one needs to scare them into doing so.

Unfortunately global warming is actually uniquely unsuited to fear based politics. It is very difficult to get people to do something scary (changing) by motivating them with something far less scary (some abstract future event caused by global climate change). In this regard, I think most of the loud voices in the current movement to stop global warming have done their position a disservice. (In particular, I think that the shrillest voices invite a kind of fatalistic despair amongst their audience that tends to prevent small positive steps from being taken. I’ve spoken with people seemingly gripped by such despair.)

One thing that I have learned from writing this blog is that many environmentally sound actions also have economic advantages. In other words, change can be in one’s own self interest as well as in service to the environment. In fact, in a perfect economy (one that reflected the true future costs and returns of every action, as well as those in the present) one would imagine that all increases in efficiency would be economically advantageous. I think it is a government’s job to ensure that the economy operates in a manner as close to this ideal as possible.

Given these considerations, I think the tone of the global warming debate needs to shift towards the pragmatic and away from the cataclysmic. I would like to see studies on the true cost of, let’s say, eating a McDonald’s hamburger, where the likelihood of future healthcare expenditures (perhaps subsidized by the government) and emissions produced by raising cattle are calculated, among other factors. Studies like this could create a pragmatic, economical argument for changing behavior (or perhaps taxing burgers in the same way that cigarettes are taxed) right alongside an environmental one. Until the environmentalist movement moves away from useless fearmongering, it will not succeed in swaying the majority of public opinion towards its cause.

The word is slowly starting to trickle out. Unfortunately it’s a non-starter of a debate for many people, so even the committed environmental groups aren’t too enthusiastic about the prospects for change.

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.