Phil Gutis's Blog: Solving Global Warming

Best of Green! NRDC Chosen "Best Political Watchdog" by TreeHugger!

2010-04-08T22:55:45Z

On behalf of all of NRDC -- our Board, our Members, supporters and activists and, of course, our staff -- a huge thank you to the editors and readers of TreeHugger. This afternoon, the NRDC family learned that NRDC was chosen as the “Best Political Watchdog” as part of TreeHugger's annual Best of Green competition.

Particularly gratifying was that NRDC was the choice of both the TreeHugger editors and its readers. Also gratifying were the very nice words that accompanied the selection:

The green movement equally needs people storming the barricades and walking the halls of power and working the lobbies in Washington, and there is no better example of doing the latter successfully than the NRDC. As environmental crusader and friend-of-TreeHugger Ed Begley Jr put it, "NRDC has been our tireless architects of change for decades. No one group does more for the environment than them."

What more could we say?

Unchopping a Tree: Videos from Maya Lin

2009-12-11T20:09:58Z

NRDC Trustee Maya Lin has a remarkable mind. The art and memorials that she's created have moved millions of people and left many of them speechless with emotion.

This afternoon CNN will air a story about one of her newest projects, a memorial titled What is Missing, which will be launched in several phases over the next several years. The CNN story this afternoon will preview a new video called "What is Missing: Unchopping a Tree," which will have its unveiling at the Copenhagen climate conference next week. It's aim is to stop the rapid deforestation of the planet.

You can see the video here:

Maya says that What is Missing will be her last memorial. It aims to motivate us about climate change and pollution in the way that only Maya can. You can watch the dedication ceremony for What is Missing at the California Academy of Science here:

We're proud to have Maya as an NRDC Trustee and I personally have tremendously enjoyed getting to know her and to see her mind at work as she tackles some of the world's most difficult issues.

Let us know what you think of her latest work in the comments section below. No promises, but I bet I can get her to respond to some of your thoughts or questions.

Liquidity Traps and Clunkers

2009-08-06T04:30:11Z

Late last month, we moved fast and became one of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who trashed a clunker as part of the government's Cash for Clunkers program. Thanks to the government subsidy, we received more than $4,500 for our 1998 Ford Explorer, well more than the $1,000 we would have received without the stimulus program. And we may have as much as doubled our gas mileage with our new Chevy HHR (pictured below with Max, who apparently likes his new cat toy.)

Increased fuel efficiency. Added economic stimulus. All of that I knew. What I didn't know until reading this week's Economist is that by taking advantage of the government program we may have helped burst what John Maynard Keynes called the "liquidity trap."

According to his theory, consumers may become so worried about the economy that they cling to as much liquid wealth as possible, cutting their spending sharply and thereby triggering precisely the slump they feared.

The Economist endorses the Cash for Clunkers program and says it is a piece of stimulus well worth its salt from an economic perspective. Less clear, the article says, are the environmental benefits of the program, but on this question let's look at the numbers (and related commentary) released by the Department of Transportation earlier this week:

Cash for Clunkers transactions are generating a 61 percent increase in vehicle fuel economy. The average fuel economy of new vehicles purchased under the program is 25.4 MPG, and the average fuel economy of trade-ins is 15.8 MPG. The average increase in fuel economy is 9.6 MPG, or a 61 percent improvement.

Thus far, 83 percent of trade-ins under the program are trucks, and 60 percent of new vehicle purchases are cars. The program is working far better than anyone anticipated at moving consumers out of old, dirty trucks and SUVs and into new more fuel-efficient cars.

Cars purchased under the program are, on average, 18 percent above the average fuel economy of all new cars currently available, and 63 percent above the average fuel economy of cars that were traded in. This means the program is raising the average fuel economy of the fleet, while getting the dirtiest and most polluting vehicles off the road.

We also paid almost $700 in sales tax on the new car. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of car buyers (if the Cash for Clunkers program receives new funding) and the cash infusion into horribly depleted state and local budgets suddenly becomes another powerful argument for the program.

The Economist ends its article by quoting NRDC friend Jack Hidary of SmartTransportation.org, who notes that "car dealers are now advertising the 'total cost of ownership' of vehicles, not just the purchase price, drawing the attention of consumers to differences in fuel efficiency between vehicles and estimating how much it would cost to fill them up with gas each year."

Busting the liquidity trap. Increasing the fuel efficiency of the national auto fleet. And changing the way that Americans look at the lifetime cost of their cars. Where's the downside?

Here's an Offer to Refuse

2009-07-20T17:39:28Z

During last year's election campaign, I often turned to FiveThirtyEight.com and its lead blogger Nate Silver for the best analysis of the electoral numbers and polling trends. Since then, I've seen Nate repeatedly on various MSNBC shows and he continues to impress me with his ability to clarify the meaning of often-slippery statistics (and his cool glasses).

I saw a new post from Nate today in which he takes on the climate skeptics and suggests they put their money where their big mouths are. He says he is way tired of the denier rhetoric and wonders "when pointing out the fact that it might be cool or rainy in your hometown one afternoon became subject for worthwhile blog material," but notes that we have started to see such ridiculousness "on certain conservative blogs, probably led by the example of Matt Drudge."

"Therefore," he says, "because I'd like to see more accountability on all sides of this debate and because I'm tired of people who don't understand statistics and because I'd like to make some money, I issue the following challenge:"

1. For each day that the high temperature in your hometown is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit above average, as listed by Weather Underground, you owe me $25. For each day that it is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit below average, I owe you $25.
2. The challenge proceeds in monthly intervals, with the first month being August. At the end of each month, we'll tally up the winning and losing days and the loser writes the winner a check for the balance.
3. The challenge automatically rolls over to the next month until/unless: (i) one party informs the other by the 20th of the previous month that he would like to discontinue the challenge (that is, if you want to discontinue the challenge for September, you'd have to tell me this by August 20th), or (ii) the losing party has failed to pay the winning party in a timely fashion, in which case the challenge may be canceled at the sole discretion of the winning party.

Shockingly enough, Nate hasn't received any takers. The offer is open through the end of the day today, however, so perhaps a denier or two will be willing to put up ... or perhaps they will just shut up?

The New Energy Economy: Stories from the Frontlines

2009-01-21T14:38:33Z

A few days ago, a tanker truck worked its way up my driveway and plugged into my propane tank. About a thousand dollars later, it pulled away and slipped off to make its next delivery.

Nothing newsworthy there. That’s typically how most fuels are delivered either to a home or a gas station. But Steve Cowell and Conservation Services Group, the firm he runs in Massachusetts, have long had a different vision for fuel delivery. CSG focuses on energy efficiency and, as Ashok Gupta, Director of NRDC’s Energy Program says, “CSG is one of the best at delivering energy efficiency, especially in the affordable housing sector."

“Delivering energy efficiency” is a new term for most of us and it can be a mind twister. The idea is that by making our homes more efficient, we can, in effect, give ourselves fuel. At very low cost. Instead of megawatts, some describe fuel efficiency as delivering negawatts or creating fuel from nothing.

I recently spoke with Steve, who is a member of Environmental Entrepreneurs, a national community of individual business leaders who, working closely with NRDC, advocate for good environmental policy while building economic prosperity. Like many of us, he's focused on the current recession and what it will take to revive the economy.

Steve traces much of the current economic turmoil to the energy prices that soared last year. “The housing crisis,” he said, “was begat by the energy crisis.”

“Energy prices pushed homeowners over the edge,” Steve explained, adding that he fears what could come next after the Obama Administration and Congress begin to pump money into the economy. “As we get out of a recession, energy prices are going to go up again,” he said. “We need to lop off the next spike. We can’t allow our economy to lurch from recession to an over-heated state.”

One way to get stability, Steve said, is through better energy policies. And one way to get to better energy policy is through energy efficiency.

Steve says that delivering efficiency – taking steps to weatherproof homes offices, install better insulation, smart thermostats and energy-sipping appliances – is equivalent to putting an oil rig in every front yard. “Compare efficiency to drilling,” he wrote in a recent Huffington Post blog, “and it's clear that we can save more oil by insulating and weatherizing homes in the Northeast than we could ever produce by drilling in the entire outer Continental shelf.”

And at a fraction of the cost. With the economic benefits accruing here in the United States as opposed to the Middle East or Venezuela. One of the most interesting things about CSG and others like it is that they are hiring. “Our workforce has increased 30 percent this year,” Steve said. “Fifty jobs in the last two months. And many of them are refugees from the construction trades.”

After talking with Steve – and getting that propane bill -- we went on a bit of an efficiency tear in our house. We covered some of our draftier windows, bought gaskets for our electrical outlets and unplugged a VCR that hasn’t been used in years. I put my home office on power strips so that when I’m done working, I hit one switch and everything powers down, including my new and adored printer/scanner/fax.

Sitting at my desk talking with Steve, I realized how idiotic and wasteful we’ve been about energy. I’m optimistic that increasing numbers of us – from regular folks like me to our new President, state and business leaders across the country -- are coming to that same realization. In fact, I’m pretty sure that smart energy will be the story of the early part of this century. The technology is there, the political will is increasing and as a people, we’re ready. Very ready.

Why We Need a Good Obama Speech and Soon

2008-12-17T15:10:33Z

Call me a masochist. I've been doing some reading of Jimmy Carter's speeches lately and I'm struck by two points: he called for all the right stuff when it came to energy policy, but, and most importantly, he fell completely flat in inspiring us as a nation to rally and cut our energy use and our dependence on foreign oil.

I heard last night from an influential environmentalist and NRDC trustee. She wondered if NRDC is truly pleased with the environment and energy officials chosen by President-elect Barack Obama and said: "I just don't feel the urgency from this group....where is the fire?"

A very valid question and one that should give us great pause. The Blogojevich pay for play investigation, the continuing fallout of the various financial scandals and the bailouts are dominating the news.

But we also haven't heard much inspiration from Obama lately.

Now to be fair, this is a time for putting together a team, for the endless news conferences with soon-to-be government officials who tend to -- appropriately? -- seem rather scared and sober about the responsibilities they are soon to take on. And as Obama himself has noted, we only have one President at a time.

But I wonder -- worry? -- if governing will strip Obama of his ability to inspire. I know I could use a good Obama speech right about now, one like he delivered election night. One like he gave at the Democratic convention. Hell, I'll even take a version of his standard stump speech.

I do believe that the President-elect is picking an excellent team to lead. And I hope that he won't be so lost in the nuances and challenges of government that he'll lose his ability to inspire.

I can't even begin to say how tragic it would be for Obama to turn into Jimmy Carter 2.0. Right on the policy yet so lacking on the inspiration.

Google's Schmidt: "Solving Every Problem At Once"

2008-12-02T13:38:05Z

A few days ago, a bunch of us left NRDC's office and walked a few blocks downtown after work to hear a talk by Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt. The event -- organized by NRDC Trustee Wendy Schmidt -- was billed as an opportunity to hear what one of the leading voices in the business world is thinking about the new Big Three: economy, energy and the environment.

Eric is a forthright and engaging speaker. The stories he tells are rooted in experience, "real conversations" as he says. And he grounds his arguments in another reality, the reality that his day job requires him to make money for Google shareholders. Lots and lots of money.

But Google is also known for its corporate enterprise, for thinking big thoughts and pushing really big goals. And as chairman, Schmidt must be in charge of setting the biggest and boldest goals. Here's one:

"Is there a way," Schmidt posited, "is there a way to solve every known problem at once?"

"I'm tired of everyone complaining," he continued. "I've learned something here: do the right thing and you can solve multiple problems."

Let's go through the list: energy prices are too high, energy security, how many wars are being fought over oil now and in the future, what about job creation, especially in the rural areas? What about building businesses that are exportable outside of the United States to create wealth for Americans ... oh and yeah, why don't we solve the climate problem at the same time.

Watch the following video to get Eric's answer. And to hear from Dan Reicher, a former NRDC staffer and former Assistant Secretary of Energy for renewables and efficiency (who is on the lists of possible nominees for Energy Secretary in the Obama Administration). Also joining the conversation is Ralph Cavanagh, Co-Director of NRDC's Energy Program, and NRDC President Frances Beinecke. You can also read Google's thoughts at transforming our economy through clean energy at this Google Knol.

Its tempting to dismiss this audacious goal, as Eric does jokingly, with a big ole "yeah right." But as with so much else that comes from the brains of Google, there's real there there. And that's really good news for Google shareholders, the economy and oh yeah the planet.

Getting Preachy

2008-11-30T16:17:05Z

Maybe it's the start of the holiday season, which has long been recognized to increase stress. Or perhaps it was the news from India where terrorists killed almost 200 people and injured hundreds more. Whatever the cause, I've found myself getting preachy of late.

In my day job, I counsel my colleagues to stay positive, to focus on the solutions that each and every one of them is putting forward to generate real progress for our environmental challenges. And I've tried to do the same thing with my writings on Switchboard.

But it is all too easy to slip into anger and preachiness when reading about last-minute land grabs and regulations proposed by the Bush administration or continued intransigence by the dirty fuel and auto industries. Earlier this week, it was a piece in the Washington Post titled "The Car of the Future -- but at a Price" that made me question the future.

The story by reporter Steve Mufson includes a colorful quote from James Womack, a longtime management expert who has written extensively about the auto industry.

"You'd think from reading the media that we have had a burial ceremony at Arlington cemetery for the last pickup truck," Womack said. "I can easily imagine three years from now when the public is focused on a new set of priorities . . . that this whole thing would go poof."

Our national attention span is indeed short. And perhaps that most of all is makes me feel a bit preachy. The idea that all of the promise that has been inspired by technological change and new business leadership and the pledges of energy and climate action by President-elect Obama could in fact all dissipate into nothingness. It has happened before: Jimmy Carter, for example, had solar panels installed on the White House roof. Ronald Reagan instantly took them down.

What's different now? Will a worldwide economic crisis take us into a new future? Will technology make the difference? A President of my generation? All of the above?

It is my bet that it will be President Obama harnessing the opportunity of crisis and power of technology. As he told delegates to a climate meeting in California a few weeks ago:

"Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high. The consequences, too serious. Stopping climate change won't be easy. It won't happen overnight. But I promise you this: When I am President, any governor who's willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that's willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that's willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America."

Those realistic yet hopeful words more than anything else should be enough to counter any feelings of stress or negativity. Whenever I start sounding all preachy again -- and I will -- please feel free to remind me to reread them once again.

San Francisco to Detroit: Drop Dead?

2008-11-23T00:53:30Z

On the same day that congressional leaders threw in the towel on a bailout for the auto industry, three Bay Area mayors joined an innovative startup in backing a $1 billion plan to create the modern day Detroit.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, the startup Better Place pledged to build the "re-charging infrastructure that must be in place before most consumers would consider buying or leasing an electric car."

The report continued:

Better Place, headed by former high-tech executive Shai Agassi, plans to install about 250,000 charging ports, 200 battery-exchange stations and a control center to service Bay Area electric car drivers. The goal is to have most of the system in place by 2012.

"We need to put together a new industry, and it needs to scale very fast," Agassi said at a press conference in San Francisco. He was flanked by San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed as well as Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Perhaps the timing of the collapse of the talks in auto bailout Washington and the announcement from Better Place was simply a coincidence. Or perhaps the press conference with the three mayors was quickly pulled together as it became clear that the congressional talks were going to fail.

Either way, the message is pretty clear: Bay Area innovators are once again ascendant and what's left of the Big Three and a good portion of the Michigan economy is in the bullseye. Anyone willing to bet that Silicon Valley will miss? Not I.

Yes We Can

2008-11-05T14:54:03Z

I'm not much of a party guy so my husband, our laptops and assorted dogs spent last night sprawled around our family room watching the election returns. We'd often speak over the drone of the talking heads to blurt out an interesting statistic from some website or another or to remark on how the evening was going.

But when Barack Obama spoke around midnight, we quietly watched the Democratic candidate transformed into the President-elect of the United States. And when Obama began his "yes we can," I found myself silently chanting along.

I chanted not because NRDC had endorsed the President-elect. As a non-partisan organization, we cannot -- and do not -- endorse candidates for political office. Instead my "yes we can" was aimed primarily at the thought that we now would have the leadership necessary to meet our energy and climate challenges, at building a clean energy economy by manufacturing plug-in hybrid cars, growing dedicated fuel crops and developing clean power sources like wind, solar and geothermal.

I thought yes we can unleash American ingenuity and regain our national competitive edge in this global economy. I thought that yes we can find the solutions to what President-elect Obama called a "planet in peril."

We can do all this through responsible governing and smart planning and by encouraging our new leaders to express an inspiring vision of a better American economy based not on elaborate financial transactions but on the production of cutting edge technology and the delivery of high value services.

And finally, I thought yes we can because I remembered the mailing we received from Rep. Patrick Murphy, our local first-term member of Congress who won wide re-election last night. His mailing featured a huge picture of a wind turbine under construction at a former U.S. Steel site in nearby Fairless Hills in Bucks County, PA. "Quickly," Murphy writes, the abandoned factory "has become a green energy hub, supplying the area with jobs that were lost when U.S. Steel stopped manufacturing at the site."

Over the summer, when chants of "drill baby drill" echoed around the country, many environmentalists were near tears. Being a glass half full kind of guy, I tried to remind my colleagues (or anyone else that would listen) of the often soaring rhetoric we heard from politicians of both political parties about transforming our national infrastructre for the clean energy economy.

Last night, as I closed the laptop and headed off to bed, it felt absolutely wonderful to know that the voters had put into office those who spoke most passionately about seizing the energy and climate opportunities before us. And then I smiled and thought, yes, we can.

Oily, Day Two

2008-09-18T15:30:00Z

Day two and the feeling of being dunked in oil hasn't lifted. In fact, given the financial news rocking Wall Street and the soaring price of oil futures, I'm left feeling greasier than ever.

The latest reports from Washington find the Senate not sure what to do about the House energy bill and the many proposals rising on that side of the Capitol. And unlikely voices are getting louder. This morning's Washington Post has an opinion article from Henry Kissenger and Martin Feldstein:

"The tripling in the price of oil from $30 a barrel in 2001 to around $100 today represents the largest transfer of wealth in human history. The 13 OPEC members alone are expected to earn more than $1 trillion this year from oil sales. Inevitably, this will bring with it major political consequences. Not the least significant aspect of this political and economic earthquake is that it is being exacted upon the world's most powerful nations by some of the world's weakest. Yet the victims stand by impotently as if the price of oil were some natural event determined by a competitive economic market that is not and cannot be influenced by political forces."

In some ways, the solution is quite simple. We need to end our dependence on Big Oil, invest our petrodollars instead in rebuilding our infrastructure. The jobs -- blue, white and green -- that would be created could never been outsourced and would result in real American wealth, not the fantasy Monopoly money that much of Wall Street seemed to be built upon.

NRDC's new friend, Oily, is making his latest appearance on the website of Politico. This time, he's more animated about his message to Washington: Big oil corrupts our government, pollutes our oceans and beaches and leads to national insecurity.

The alternative: clean energy alternatives and efficiency. Tom Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded is an instant bible for those of us who believe we can do much economic good -- and reverse global warming -- by improving our energy policies. In the interestingly titled chapter, "If It Isn't Boring, It Isn't Green," Friedman quotes Rick Duke, the Director of NRDC's new Center for Market Innovation.

"If we do enough to scale energy efficiency, the money we save would be enough to pay to clean up -- to decarbonize -- the remaining supply of electrons and fuels so we could power our economy in a way that is consistent with containing climate change," Duke says.

There's much more to explore on this topic and in Friedman's book. But as we await an awakening from our political leadership, I wonder what day three will bring.

Oily

2008-09-17T15:30:09Z

I woke up feeling more than a bit greasy this morning. It was almost as if I someone had snuck into my bedroom and dumped a barrel or two of oil on me. And my shower didn't help all that much.

Why? Last night, the House passed an energy bill that the Los Angeles Times termed a "stunning political turnabout ... aimed at rebutting Republican election-year attacks that the Democratic majority wasn't doing enough to try to ease the public's pain at the pump."

To be fair, there is much good in the House bill. Tax incentives for renewable energy and efficiency and a requirement that utilities to generate 15 percent of their electricity by 2020 from cleaner sources, such as the sun and wind.

But the drilling provisions represent another huge giveaway to Big Oil, as NRDC says in an advertisement featuring our new friend "Oily" that are running this morning in the print version of Politico, Congress Daily AM and Congressional Quarterly Today. And they represent the culmination of a campaign designed to dupe the American public into believing that new domestic drilling will do anything to end spiraling energy prices.

The truth is that drilling offshore our coasts will only make things worse. Offshore rigs have a long history of oil spills and there's no guarantee that any oil found on our coasts will be funneled to Americans. We don't need to risk permanent damage to our beaches so the oil companies can make even more profit selling oil to China and India.

Increased drilling only prolongs our dependence on oil and will not lower gas prices. Instead of trying to drill our way out of this problem, we need to act now to become less dependent on oil.

We need to improve energy efficiency as well as invest in renewable energy and new energy technology. We need more choices for energy efficient cars, and ways to make our houses and offices more energy efficient. Where it will work, we need more choices for ways to get around, like buses and trains. We need to build our communities so people have more transportation choices.

Interestingly enough, the few paragraphs above represent not just NRDC policy. They are drawn from the words of voters -- moderates and those more liberal, low and moderate income, from representative communities in the midwest and east coast -- from focus groups in recent weeks.

These voters were quite angry and resigned to the fact that Washington seemed unable to break its addiction to oil.

They believed, as do I, that the American people are resourceful and innovative and that we can build a new energy economy and in the process create a new energy economy with good, well-paying jobs that cannot be shipped overseas.

Let's hope that yesterday's vote in the House marked a low point in the ongoing energy debate and that a new Congress and administration will finally begin to break our addiction to a finite resource that the world is consuming at a rapidly increasing rate.

For the real facts on energy policy and gas prices, see this collection of NRDC materials. They make for a good read, hopefully we can persuade more policy makers in Washington to give them at least a cursory review.

Where Do I Sign?

2008-09-12T18:32:34Z

If your husband is a tennis fanatic like mine then your television is going to be commandeered for much of early September as the world’s tennis superstars slam their way through the U.S. Open. And this year, in addition to some really great tennis, we saw a barrage of advertising from IBM promoting its green server business. (We also saw a healthy dose of the US Open itself going green -- thanks to some excellent work by my NRDC colleagues and Billie Jean King, but I'll leave that for another post.)

Now it is true -- as noted on the Green Data Center blog -- that the IBM ads are marketing material through and through, but I have to say that it is some of the best marketing material I've ever seen. The ads (see below for an example) make a strong financial argument that we all need to hear.

The concept is simple: a young woman brings an energy efficiency plan involving the firm's data centers to her boss who all but ridicules her as a tree-hugging, granola-eating idiot. When the boss asks why in the world he should sign off on her plan, she calmly responds: "This plan could cut our energy costs by 40 percent and we spent $18 million on energy last year."

Mr. Bluster can't sign the papers fast enough.

Luckily business leadership is listening and turning marketing material like the IBM ads into reality. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that big computer makers are spotting a trend.

"Rising electricity prices, coupled with new computer servers that run hotter and require more power, has corporate technology buyers looking for ways to cut back," the article by William Bulkeley says. "Power use in data centers -- the large, climate-controlled rooms that house a company's computer servers, storage devices and communications switches -- doubled from 2000 to 2006 and now accounts for about 1.5% of U.S. electricity consumption, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. A recent McKinsey & Co. report says that world-wide, the centers' carbon emissions exceed those of Argentina."

And growing quickly. Forbes.com today has a story about Cisco and its plans for worldwide data center domination. "The giants of the Internet--Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Amazon--plus fast-moving Chinese upstarts like Baidu and TenCent, are building more of these giant centers. Microsoft figures it will expand its network of data centers 64-fold over the next few years, just to handle some 200 services, including Xbox online gaming, video and corporate software rented over the Web."

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: Congress will adopt global warming legislation once enough states and big business interests see the "green" light. Until then, sound energy policy will too often be ridiculed as nothing more than good PR.

Crack Cocaine and Oil

2008-07-23T20:56:49Z

Last night, as I drove home from the train, an SUV came speeding up behind me and sat on the tail of my hybrid. I was in the mode of seeing how high I could get my gas mileage -- a near record of 47.6 by the time I got home! -- and couldn’t be bothered as the SUV crept closer and closer. In a few minutes, though, I watched amazed as the SUV driver hit the gas and used a tiny patch of a passing line to zoom by me.

Now being passed isn’t all that amazing. I definitely watch my speed these days as I try to maximize each gallon of gas. The amazing part was that we were blocks away from a series of red lights and lo and behold, who but my friendly SUV neighbor was sitting at a light as I pulled up 10 seconds behind him.

I don’t criticize my SUV driving neighbor for his car choice; I too have a legacy SUV still sitting in my driveway. But his need to hit the gas to pass me (and, I should note, I was driving the speed limit), was indicative of an addiction that Tom Friedman wrote about this week in the New York Times.

In his piece, 9/11 and 4/11, Friedman talks about our addiction to oil. Saying that drilling is not the answer to our problem, Friedman writes:

We don’t have a "gasoline price problem." We have an addiction problem. We are addicted to dirty fossil fuels, and this addiction is driving a whole set of toxic trends that are harming our nation and world in many different ways. It is intensifying global warming, creating runaway global demand for oil and gas, weakening our currency by shifting huge amounts of dollars abroad to pay for oil imports, widening "energy poverty" across Africa, destroying plants and animals at record rates and fostering ever-stronger petro-dictatorships in Iran, Russia and Venezuela.

Friedman continues to say that price increases are not the crack addict’s main problem. "His problem is what that crack addiction is doing to his whole body. The cure is not cheaper crack, which would only perpetuate the addiction and all the problems it is creating," Friedman says. "The cure is to break the addiction."

How? Today’s op-ed page in the Times offers one alternative: space solar power. Author O. Glenn Smith, a former manager at NASA, says that technology already exists for collecting solar power in space and beaming it back via wireless radio transmission to cities and other places where large amounts of power are used.

The cost: "Government scientists," Smith writes, "have projected the cost of electric power generation from such a system could be as low as 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is within the range of what consumers pay now."

I’m with Smith. I too am an addict and I so badly want to break my oil addiction through plug-in hybrid cars (powered by space solar?) and other alternative technologies. Yet all I see is a government proposing to bump up the supply of my drug through drilling. I truly don’t understand how that is supposed to help. Do you?

The Best vs the Good

2008-06-30T22:37:04Z

I recently wrote about NRDC's public opinion research program and promised to tell additional tales from the often-humbling land of surveys and focus groups.

In the category of humbling, we were recently told that the American public is deeply skeptical about the environmental movement; folks believe environmentalists, writ large, to be deeply impractical beings.

This finding came from the same researchers who worked on the global warming project I detailed in Pascal's Wager.

In a slide titled "The Best is the Enemy of the Good," the researchers told us that theoretical debate "turns off" large numbers of Americans and that scientific back and forth is inherently considered theoretical and thus impractical.

That opinion is even held by many of what are considered to be "thought leaders," the people who tend to be the most engaged in current affairs and those whose opinions tend help shape public perceptions.

So how do we fix our bad reputation? The researchers told us that environmentalists must talk about concrete solutions that can be quantified and measured. We need to talk about jobs created, dollars saved and lives improved.

They told us that we must make the idea of "practical" our benchmark for success. Its a message that we at NRDC are taking to heart and that is increasingly being reflected in our work.

Take the ads we developed and placed in Washington on behalf of many environmental groups during the recent debate on the Climate Solutions Act proposed by Senators Lieberman and Warner.

As you can see from the sample above, the ads featured the faces of American workers and spoke of jobs that can be created by global warming solutions. And we supported our advertisements with practical analysis such as that presented in a report -- Job Opportunities for the Green Economy -- published by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and in a series of fact sheets by NRDC.

Furthermore, we will work to bring our message of practical solutions to ever broader swaths of the American public. Solutions like those presented by a group formed to give unemployed vets of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the training they need to get so-called green jobs.

NRDC excels in science, law and policy. And our advocacy for the last 40 years has also been deeply rooted in practicality. It's one of the things that most drew me to the organization three years ago and it's what our members constantly tell us they admire most about NRDC.

Our challenge then is to persuade those who are not NRDC members. I shudder to ask, but anyone out there have any ideas how we at NRDC and in the broader environmental movement can shake our bad rep when it comes to practicality?