Basement Office

Do-it-yourself fun

I love Chevrolet.

Not really.

But I do love their new promotion for the 2007 Tahoe. You can make your own Tahoe love-fest commercial and submit it to win a bunch of shit that would make SUV owners everywhere drool (more than they normally do, anyway).

Or you can use the tools to make something more meaningful. It’s ripe for subversive use. And it takes only a couple of minutes.

I am especially pleased with my creation. Pass it on.

You can say that again

Taken out of context, this quote from a defender of the Administration’s environmental policies speaks the truth forcefully. In its original context, it’s just another sad case of self-delusion.

“With regard to what the United States is doing on climate change, the actions we have taken are next to none in the world.”

Context here.

It’s the little things that count

I’ve been reading a book called The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists. As the title implies, it’s a look at what the typical consumer can do to lessen the damage being done to the environment.

The automobile, unsurprisingly, was overwhelmingly found to be the largest threat. Since we drive far less than the 20,000+ miles that was cited as a yearly average (7,000 is probably stretching it for us), I’m feeling pretty good about our relatively small environmental footprint in that regard.

Then there’s the matter of meat consumption. The processes required to support large-scale feedlots was found to be another source of environmental damage, particularly to water supplies. Luckily, we stopped with that nonsense several years ago and have no plans to resume our carnivorous ways. Why more people don’t get in on it is beyond me.

Then tonight, a new line was drawn in the sand as I changed our electricity generation company to Community Energy, Inc. Nearly all of our energy will now be supplied from wind turbines nestled among the green hills of Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. It’s worth the additional $7.50 per month to know that my energy needs are no longer met by the crude practice of burning coal, for which Pennsylvania is known to have some of the highest polluting plants in the nation.

The view from the top

The Presidential debates are over, and instead of going out with a bang, things ended in a quiet whimper. All the worse for us, as far as I’m concerned.

The debate last night capped off an evening that, for me, also involved the screening of a movie called The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream. The showing was sponsored by several local clubs and university organizations and attracted nearly 20 individuals who actually understand the magnitude of the problems we face in the next decade. It’s nice to know I’m not the only crank who gets off on this topic.

Oil production is at or near its peak. Forever. This is big stuff. Think about it: pretty soon, no matter how hard we try, we will not be able to extract as much oil from the Earth as we do right now. Obviously this has major implications for the health of a nation such as ours that relies so heavily on oil for virtually every facet of life. With this increased dependence on oil also comes an increased dependence on natural gas for electricity generation and home heating. We’ve come to rely on unstable energy sources for a way of life that is, at best, an unrealistic fantasy and at worst a doomed clusterfuck.

The simple facts are that neither resource is in great abundance worldwide, the United States certainly is not self-sufficient in either, and our dependencies put us in a most precarious situation. We are subject to the whims of the Middle East oil powers that be (hence, our war to stop the terrorists, find WMD’s, liberate the Iraqi people secure the oil supplies), and face increasing competition from larger nations such as China and India that are beginning down the same sad path of industrialization that we have already trod.

The United States uses 25% of the world’s oil. And we have about 4.5% of the world’s population. This is a sickening imbalance. China and India alone make up about two-fifths of the world’s population — 40%. What happens when their economic engines start demanding oil and other fossil fuels at the kind of levels we affluent Americans have grown accustomed to?

Something has got to give. And like it or not, it’s going to be this impossible way of life we have set up for ourselves. Our ridiculously long supply chains that keep the Wal-Marts of the world packed from sea to sea with the most useless mass-produced consumer goods are going to disappear. It will no longer make sense for lettuce grown in California to be shipped across the country and consumed in New York. Our suburbs will become ghettos, islands of asphalt and monotony, strangled by the realization that their “American Dream” is one of the greatest hoaxes ever pulled on the American people.

And what have will our illustrious presidential candidates do to address this issue? Judging by their performance last night, not much. The environment was mentioned in passing exactly once, by Kerry, and rising gas prices were mentioned twice, again by Kerry. And, truth be told, I don’t know if he gets totally gets it. With the way things are, rising gas prices are inevitable. The gas prices in America are not even close to those in Europe. Our subsidization of cheap oil hides the real market of supply and demand.

Blame the president for bringing us to a war that threatens our relationships with oil-producing countries, yes, but look deeper and point the finger at the American populous too. We’re the worst offender of them all, and the SUV-owning Kerry is no exception. His senate record paints him as a friend of the environment. But he has been too silent on the issue while on the campaign trail.

I was hoping for more last night. But the questions went unasked and the words remain unspoken. It’s the silence that’s killing us.

Saved?

I’m torn in my reaction to two stories I saw yesterday on Wired News. The first is about a procedure that can supposedly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere while simultaneously providing an ultra-rich fertilizer as a byproduct. Great stuff. The other is about a team of researchers in Dublin that has discovered a strain of bacteria that can break down styrene (a toxic product of the polystyrene [i.e. Styrofoam] industry) into a biodegradable plastic. Again, chalk one up for science.

I’m encouraged by these kind of developments. It shows that although we have the power to screw up our environment, we can also take steps to make it better. What bothers me, though, is the uncanny ability of the human race to make a mess of things faster than they can clean things up. I’m afraid that these kind of developments will encourage further reckless growth on the argument that science will figure out a way to clean it up later.

To me, it’s like the hybrid SUV or the much-vaunted hydrogen car of tomorrow. Are all better than what’s out there? Yes. Should more research go into perfecting the technologies behind such innovations? Without a doubt. But a car is still a car (and a SUV is an ungainly car at that), and just because it’s better for the air we breathe doesn’t mean we can pat ourselves on the back and consider the problem solved. As our cities burn out and our farmland is plowed under to make way to townhouses, golf courses, and shopping malls, things will continue to deteriorate. Sprawl, whether fueled by complex chains of hydrocarbons or simple molecules of hydrogen, is still sprawl.

Just because we can fix one mess doesn’t mean we can ignore another.