It's cheap to be green

Friends & colleagues, please read Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman's column in the NY Times today, "It's Easy Being Green."

Last June, I gave a decision tree on global warming. The distinguished economist says my numbers are wrong - that it's much cheaper to avert disaster than I had assumed. Skepticism of global warming is like smoking. It's socially unacceptable. We have to fix this earth.

If you want good news on the subject, read up on biochar. It would be cool to merge a simulation of a region's farms with a transportation problem, to see if biochar would do against petroleum, examining requirements and emissions for water, nitrate, and carbon. I bet the farmers would come out ahead from all that transportation saved. But I'm too busy with the water market work to get to it this year.

I commissioned my talented niece Florence Kerns to create this image that represents some of my interests: the impact of business on the hydrological cycle; the interactions of water, energy, and nutrition; the impact of cities on ecology.

Agriculture produces demands of energy, water, and soil, and supplies of energy and food. These demands and supplies interact in complex ways. Agriculture’s supply of food also affects transportation, inventory management, and nutrition. Consumers' choices of foods produces demands on the food supply chain. Consumers' choices of habitat and transportation also produces demands on agriculture and the environment. It's a complex world!

How can we sending price signals to get commerce to back off its environmental impact? My research is to find ways to gently press business away from its environmental impacts. Toward that end, here is our proposal to solve part of the world water crisis.

If you use this image, please reference me and Florence.

Good news & bad

1. Bad. Best to get the bad news out of the way. Burning coal at home is making a comeback. Here is a suggestion for high school science teachers: get kids to analyze coal for its toxicity. Let them find out for themselves. From a business point of view, people are working for short term profits without thinking about the obvious mid and long-term risks.

2. Good. International law comes down on Mugabe. The rule of law is civilization's way forward. Somebody seizes power then starts stealing. Then someone else seizes power and starts stealing, plus revenge. The cycle breaks only by intervention, local or international, which installs democracy.

3. CNN has a video of a human-powered car. I've been thinking of this for ages.



Now if we can just get a cheap Chinese-made clone of it!

Once again: Save the world by going on a diet!

Four Japanese researchers have evaluated the impact of Japanese beef production on the environment. I would think that this large impact is partly due to the fat subsidies that the Japanese government lavishes on their agricultural sector. Their study is supported by an American one, Reducing Energy Inputs in the US Food System, by Pimental et al. (Hey, Springer, how 'bout making this article open access?)

But we don't need a study to know that meat has a big environmental impact. Just look at the price! The Christchurch Countdown yesterday had fresh boneless chicken breast on sale for NZ$15/kg, and also dried mung beans for NZ$4.5/kg. Interestingly, the chicken is from right here in Canterbury, while the beans came all the way from Canada. While not perfect, cost is a pretty good indicator of environmental impact.

You will be healthier, live longer, and help save the world if you would eat more wisely. Skip all junk food. Abandon all the chips, crisps, and lollies. Never have a carbonated drink again, nor an "energy" drink, nor bottled water. Schedule your meat intake for 2 to 3 times per week at most. The rest of the time, eat beans, rice, tofu, eggs, corn, whole grain bread, oats, potatoes, lots and lots of vegetables. Asparagus, beets, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage (red is nice), califlower, dandelion (the young leaves), egg plant (I confess I'm not keen on egg plant), fennel, green beans, kale, lima beans, mushrooms, onion, parsley, peas, silver beet (Swiss chard), spinach, zucchini. Seeds are good; sunflower seeds are cheap, fairly low fat (much lower than walnuts) and loaded with vitamin E. Please suggest some more foods!

Green wash, worst case scenario

CNN is promoting Cody's Big Bio-fuel Adventure. Let's look at the facts: a news and entertainment network sponsors an obese man to drive a truck across the US. The truck's fuel depends on government's consumption-inducing subsidies, a policy that is backfiring throughout the global supply chain into greater destruction of the rain forests and frighteningly higher food prices. Hurray! Let's all buy trucks and drive them across the country just to prove our commitment to the environment.

According to the article, "They are looking for your recommendations on where to eat, what to see, and how to fill up on bio-fuel." Here are mine: eat vegetables at home, watch your weight, and try not to fill up at all.

Choices - energy or food?

I read a disturbing article, "Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler," on the NY Times web site. Meat uses far more energy and water, and it causes far more damage to the environment through runoff, than does vegetable foods. Furthermore, we're eating too much of it for our own health. Yet meat production is subsidized - another very stupid anti-environment, anti-health, anti-free market policy by some folks in Washington, D.C.

As oil runs out, and we find the limits of the agricultural capacity, we will have to choose between producing meat or producing energy. It looks to me like we're all going to be eating a lot less meat in ten years time.