Free Light Bulbs This Sunday

... a big "green" help for EARTH DAY, April 22.
Diane MacEachern of Big Green Purse has alerted her readers about a "green" bargain: Home Depot will celebrate Earth Day this Sunday by giving away a million free compact fluorescents. These bulbs normally cost $7.99. On the other hand, they could save you $20-$30 on your electricity bill over the life of the bulb. Where do the benefits come from?

Compact fluorescents last ten times as long and use 75% LESS energy than a regular incandescent.

They help improve air quality and reduce asthma rates, since utilities need to burn less energy (think coal-fired power plants) to power the light.

They save time. You can install a CFL and not have to worry about changing that light bulb again for years.

Because they use so little energy, they're a great way to reduce global warming.

WHERE NOT TO USE CFLs:

outside when temperatures are cold
in dimmer switches
on timers

HOW TO DISPOSE OF CFLs:

Compact fluorescents contain minuscule amounts of mercury (5 mlg, compared to the 500 mlg in a home thermometer). Check with your local waste management agency for recycling options and disposal guidelines in your community. Some recommend the bulb be disposed with hazardous waste. Others want it sealed in a plastic baggie and thrown in the regular trash. Best option: Recycle the bulb with www.lamprecycle.org. Some IKEA stores take back used CFLs, too.

WHAT TO DO IF A CFL BREAKS:

The Environmental Protection Agency recommends sweeping up (not vacuuming) the broken glass and loose material; mopping up the remnants with a damp paper cloth that you can dispose of in a sealed plastic bag; and ventilating the room.

P.S. This has not been a paid promotion.

Ethanol: A Tragic Diversion

"Ethanol will not be our clean, green savior!" So said an article by Murray Dobbin this week. He pointed out that we citizens in industrialized societies will continue to cling to our extravagant lifestyles and massive over-consumption. Why? Because "global climate change is still seen by most people -- even those who have no doubt of its human origins -- as something that can be fixed by legislation, tougher rules and punitive penalties on big polluters -- and that allegedly clean and green quick fix, ethanol. Yes, we can all keep our individual chunks of steel, rubber and glass, those symbols of 20th century excess and irrationality, so long as we shift to burning alcohol."

Dobbin called this a "mass delusion" which was "madness enough to inspire the still-ailing Fidel Castro out of his bed to write the first editorial he has written for the country's principal newspaper, Granma, since last falling ill last July. It's not as if there is a lack of issues for the grand old commander-in-chief to comment on. But this one he deemed the most important. Why? To quote Castro himself:

"More than three billion people in the world are being condemned to a premature death from hunger and thirst.... The sinister idea of turning foodstuffs into fuel was definitely established as the economic strategy of the U.S. foreign policy on Monday, March 26th last."

That was the very day President Bush met with the Big Three auto CEOs and "declared ethanol to be the next strategic fuel for the empire -- and a partial answer to its failed Middle East policies," says Dobbin. Let me quote the rest of the article:

Castro was talking about corn but this is not the only grain that the ethanol pushers are talking about -- wheat, sunflower seeds, canola and other foodstuffs are already being used and targeted by, amongst others, the big oil companies. The demand for ethanol will be so enormous that only the largest and best capitalized corporations in the U.S. will be able to take advantage -- driving smaller producers out by driving up the price of corn.

Bush proclaimed coming out the meeting with the Big Three that he is aiming at reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years -- a staggering number if it is to be taken seriously, requiring 35 billion gallons of ethanol. Of course Bush and his corporate allies talked about using wood chips and switchgrass, too, but corn is the key. To produce that much ethanol would take 320 million tons of corn. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organizations (FAO) says that U.S. corn production in 2005 reached 280 million tons and the U.S. produces 40 percent of the world's corn, controlling the market price. It doesn't take complicated math to see that just to meet U.S. ethanol demands within 10 years will take up 46 percent of the world's corn supply.

This is an obscenity. Because most of these billions of tons of corn are now eaten by the world's people -- most of them poor -- or fed to their livestock. Ultimately, it means that the world will have to produce more and more grain just to stand still and at the same time that the demand for ethanol increases the price of corn. The FAO says the competition between grain for fuel and grain for food is already happening and was the principal explanation for the decline in world grain stocks during the first half of 2006.

As Castro pointed out in his Granma article, not only will corn be priced out of reach for millions, "What is worse, let the poor countries receive some financing to produce ethanol from corn or any other foodstuff and very soon not a single tree will be left standing to protect humanity from climate change." He also pointed out, demonstrating that his grasp of world events is as acute as ever, that the increased demand for grain for energy will also greatly exacerbate the already critical water shortage facing two thirds of humanity.

Discouraging numbers

Despite this catastrophic scenario there are still those who will argue that the trade-off has to be considered, that global climate change due to carbon emissions must be tackled. But recently two Canadian studies raised serious doubts about what we actually get in this morally questionable trade. The U.S. may well get a strategic replacement for oil but there are serious doubts the world's climate will benefit. One study was done by the Library of Parliament's Frédéric Forge working in its science and technology division. Forge says the benefit of the massive effort required to use 10 percent ethanol in all vehicles will be minor: "In fact, if 10 percent of the fuel used were corn-based ethanol [in other words, if it were used in all vehicles], Canada's greenhouse gas emissions would drop by approximately one percent."

But an unpublished study by Environment Canada says even this estimate is questionable. A recent CBC report -- it came and went with no one else touching it and was not repeated -- revealed that scientists at Environment Canada studied four vehicles of recent makes, comparing normal emissions with a 10 percent ethanol blend and using a range of driving conditions. The study revealed that there was virtually no statistically significant difference in greenhouse gas tail pipe emissions. Some of the hydrocarbon gas emissions actually increased under some conditions.

The delusional thinking that tells us we can maintain our current lifestyles and save the planet will, sooner or later, be relegated to history's dustbin. The sooner we dispose of that part of the delusion embodied by "salvation by ethanol" the better.

Murray Dobbin writes his State of the Nation column twice monthly for The Tyee. © 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/50189/

Wind hole

Wind power, yes. I have long known about windmills providing power, but this concept is something new, or at least newer. In this scheme it's the air pressure that does the work.

This week I learned from a Stateline.org article that a consortium of Iowa power companies is planning to fill a big underground hole with pressurized air which would then be released to generate electricity. The graphic below shows how it would work. (Click on the picture to enlarge it.)


Obviously, it isn't a brand-new concept, as two other air-storage caverns already exist, one in Alabama and one in Germany. But the "Iowa wind hole" (as the writer called it) would be "the only one to use wind power to pump air under the earth."

Wind-powered turbines would pump air into a porous rock formation roughly 3,000 feet below the earth, and that compressed air would later be released, spinning turbines that would generate electricity. "Air also could be pumped underground using conventionally generated power at times of non-peak demand for electricity, such as at night, and released to generate power when electric rates are high. That’s how the air storage sites in Alabama and Germany operate."

You can read the whole article by clicking here: http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=188977

Iowa's governor is also pushing to develop the state's renewable energy industry, now based largely on producing ethanol from corn. Ethanol is perceived by some to be the next way we power our cars, but ... take a look at my post above this one.

"We have met the enemy..."

This famous Earth Day poster from 1971 seems appropriate today as 1420 Step-It-Up groups gather today to encourage the Senate to push through legislation lowering carbon emissions 80% by 2050.

Thinking Blogger Award

Many thanks to Stephanie for nominating me for this Thinking Blogger Award. I have already found a spot to put it for now. See it over there at the top of the sidebar? Now I am required to nominate five others and link this post back to the award's originator HERE. I have thought for two days, trying to decide whom to tap. My decision has been made the more difficult because most of those I read regularly have already received the award, making me a Thinking Reader, as well.

My choices, should they decide to accept the award, are these excellent bloggers who give me a lot to think about:

Margreet of Margreet's Musings
Ursi of Ursi's Blog
Isabella of Magnificent Octopus
Sharon of Bibliobibuli
Matthew and friends of Chattanooga Energy Hub

You, my friends, shall receive either a gold or a silver award, your choice. The award, which has been traversing the blogsphere, comes with a challenge. Those who have been awarded are asked to name five others they would pass along the “thinking blogger” torch to. I read other people’s blogs for many reasons: good writing, a sense of humor, a glimpse into a lifestyle unlike my own, or the blogger’s unique personality. I read to learn, to be inspired, and to enjoy good pictures. Now it's your turn to choose five. Go for it!

Earth Day 2007

Earth Day is April 22. I took part in the FIRST Earth Day in 1970 and brought home some literature and at least a couple of buttons I can remember. One button showed a balance on an upside-down V, and the other said "Stop at 2." My son David was interested, so I showed him that the balance had a stick person on one side and a tree on the other, meaning we should balance our human needs with the needs of the planet. The "Stop at 2" button was about population growth and the overpopulation of some parts of the earth. If two parents have only two children, they would not make population growth any worse. After giving it some thought, David said he agreed with the idea. I said, "David, think about it." Suddenly his 6-year-old eyes widened as he realized the personal implications for himself, the third child. Just for the record, I never wore that button.

New Global Warming Warning from U.N.

Scientists See Hunger, Disease, Extinction

WASHINGTON – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of alarming threats to the planet in a new report on global warming. The United Nations organization detailed dangers ranging from hunger and disease to species extinction in the report based on voluminous scientific data collected in the last five years.

“Time is wasting,” said Senator Bernie Sanders. “There no longer is any debate among serious scientists that our planet is in grave danger unless we undo the man-made damage to our environment from carbon dioxide pollution and from other greenhouse gases,” added the lead sponsor of the most sweeping Senate legislation to counter the effects of global warming.

Sanders also called it “disappointing and embarrassing” that the United States, according to reports from Brussels, joined representatives of China and Saudi Arabia in raising objections to the report and trying to water down the more serious warnings.

The same U.N. panel in February issued a report that concluded with virtual certainty that humans have been the main cause of warming in the past half century. The latest report examined the impact on animals, water supplies, ice sheets and regional climate conditions.

The report is available online at http://www.ipcc.ch/. It said that up to 30 percent of the Earth's species face an increased risk of vanishing if global temperatures rise 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the average in the 1980s and '90s. Dry areas will become even more parched while other places on the planet will become more vulnerable to flooding, severe storms, and coastal erosion.

Sanders (I-Vt.) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, are sponsors of the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act, which calls for a reduction of emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

The bill is cosponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and by Sens. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), Frank R. Lautenberg, (D-N.J.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.). Former Vice President Al Gore, a leading figure in the fight against global warming, has called the Sanders-Boxer bill is “an excellent piece of legislation.”

Sanders also said it is imperative that the United States devote significant resources to greatly increase the use of solar power, wind turbines, geothermal energy and other forms of sustainable and renewable energy. “The United States is lagging far behind other countries in this area and we’ve got to turn our policies around.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
APRIL 6, 2007
1:36 PM