Ripples of intrigue

Space elevator graphic provided by wikipedia.

My suspicion is that we all dream to do great things. Some of us aspire to build marvelous structures that send ripples of intrigue through our fellow citizens. Some of us dream to conquer the unknown and live life on whim, tasting Gaia’s offerings without being held in check by a daily grind or compromised by a stifling economic situation. 

My suspicion is that our current technological grasp could create a near boundless world. We could solve climate change with two giant strokes: a nuclear energy infrastructure paired with a space elevator. What about Japan? A Space Elevator; that’s entirely impractical. Every great puzzle has incredible resistance and challenges, though with enough willpower our nation and world could do anything. 

Sanctions are working on Iran, Obama bested Congress with his recess appointments, 1.2 million jobs have been created since the bottom of the great recession. Things are starting to turn around right here in the United States. 

It’s not that far of a stretch to foresee an electric fleet of cars fueled by nuclear energy in the future. It’s not that far of a stretch to see a massive population stabilization. Brazil and most of Latin America have had their number of children shrink from 6.0 to 2.3 from the 1960's to the present. We could be trending well!

People live at this moment in history with the necessity to work. Our livelihoods depend on a wage that loosely correlates to our time being put into some form of work. That could cease to be the case in the future. Technology could be manipulated in such a way that our subsistence functions in society are met, and our purpose could transform from finding a career to finding happiness.   

I will be attending classes again soon. Come January 24, I will be enrolled in George Mason University’s Climate Change Policy and Governance course and it’s Culture, Organization and Technology course. I will keep you updated on any insights gained from these courses. If all goes well I will get my master’s in transportation, policy, operations and logistics, keep my soul intact, and get working on shaping a world where we can strive for happiness. 

Loyal blog readers take care, and may your New Year’s wishes start coming into fruition.

Jeff Zeiss drew the phenomenal picture that denotes the onset of the Badassazoic Era.

Happy New Year loyal blog readers! This is the year where anything is possible. In fact, we may all go extinct at the end of 2012. (I actually have $50 bet going that I will collect in 2013 as long as “life doesn’t change as we know it.”)

Anyhow, this year also brings in a little over a year of blogging! I’ve taken one walk around the sun in the shoes of an eco-reformer. Though my carbon footprint has gotten bigger, and I’ve eaten more meat this year than last, I’m actually progressing. (I’ll get into that.)

Thank you loyal blog readers for your support. Today’s post is about the 11 environmental strides of 2011 that I found to be most significant in my quest for true life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s also about the goals for the New Year. I wish you the best for 2012.

Below is a long mess of text. It may get shopping list-ish quick. In a nutshell if you want to feel really good about life, join the Kyoto Protocol as an individual, fight detrimental energy sourcing, and embark upon an homage to your personal Mecca.

2011’s Eleven:

1)      “SIGNING” THE KYOTO PROTOCOL: Instead of waiting for our government to get its act together, I decided that as an individual it was time for me to sign the Kyoto Protocol. By taking last year’s global population of 6.48 billion individuals and dividing it into 20 billion tonnes, the acceptable level of carbon emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, I found that each individual could emit around 6,424 pounds of carbon last year. (As the global population grows that number shrinks.)

2)      TRACKING TRANSPORTATION:  By tracking my driving and flight miles, I was able to tangibly grasp how much carbon dioxide I emitted into the atmosphere this year through transportation. I emitted 4,268.48 pounds of carbon driving and about 2,069 pounds of carbon flying. I now have a transportation baseline to best in 2012! 

3)      PROTESTING THE KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE: Joining 12,000 nationwide protestors, I became one of the links in the human chain around the White House, November 6, to stand in opposition to the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. The pipeline would transport tar sands from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The pipeline’s proposed route has been suspended and is in the process of being rerouted because of Nebraska’s vehement opposition to the pipeline crossing over an important aquifer. Expect another huge protest soon. As a concession to Republicans for railroading through the payroll tax cut, Obama will have to make a decisionregarding the pipeline before the 2013 election. 

4)      GETTING INTO GEORGE MASON’S SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY: I’ve been looking to make some serious advances in the environmental movement, and George Mason’s master’s program could be the start. I’m taking courses in transportation policy with a smart growth bent. In 2008 our transportation sector was responsible for around 33 percent of our total greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation policy is an area where I could potentially kick ass and take names. 

5)      TAKING TRIPS INTO GAIA’S VAST BEAUTY: I’ve discovered a happiness bubble, found true life in the myriad of stars above Idaho’s Thompson Pass, and walked where some of the world’s greatest minds got lost in the beauty along the Appalachian Trail. The pristine world is so immensely glorious. I could get lost in her majesty. I love that even our concrete urbanscapes are now trending toward artistic bio-infusions.  

6)      HONING IN ON ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS: With the launch of Envirowire, I’ve been proactively working to grasp our world’s environmental trends and make them accessible to you, loyal blog readers. Knowledge is power, and information is the arsenal. In 2012 I’m looking to catalogue this information in a more user friendly format.

7)      BIKING OR BOARDING TO WORK: “You take your car to work, I’ll take my board…” Weezer hit the nail right on the Schlobodan.  I’ve found my life so much less stressful and have also stayed in much better shape by biking or taking my longboard to work. I’ve done well at sticking to this every day of the work week except for Tuesdays, where I must pick up Food bank supplies for our site. This has saved up to 112 miles and 90 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. 

8)      BECOMING A GREEN ENERGY PURCHASER:  I opted into Dominion’s Green Power program. The program costs one cent more per kilowatt hour, but it puts the extra revenue generated into renewable energy projects that will soon connect to its power grid. 

9)      BECOMING FOOD CONSCIOUS: Watching and reading Food Inc. was a great start for understanding the widespread atrocities of agribusiness and factory farming. For a moment in time I tried to dumpster dive to remove food from the waste stream, but I soon found I was stealing from local charities and stopped. At work, when we get unpopular foods from the Food Bank, I try to send them home with the kids, but if they won’t take the foodstuffs I eat them, so they don’t get landfilled. I started going to a farmer’s market last summer that accepted foodstamps and I look to continue to do the same this year. 

10)   ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION: As part of an AmeriCorps service project about 30 of us (Americorps members, Greenbrier Learning Center staff, kids, and their family members) took part in an environmental beautification project, in other words a trash pickup, at Barcroft and Glencarlyn parks in Arlington, Virginia. The kids at the Virginia Gardens site learned about the water cycle and the Potomac Watershed. During Greenbrier’s summer program the kids took part in some experiential learning with Longbranch Nature Center, as a Master Naturalist showed how insects fit into their habitats. 

11)   VOWING TO MAKE THIS DECADE THE BADASSAZOIC: When I returned to Chicago for my first winter break, with stories of Ileana adventures and life out east, I sat down with my friend Jeff and under the oath of supreme friendship vowed to make this decade the best decade of our lifetimes. He shortly thereafter quit his fulltime job, and I ramped up PlanetWisely. Next year will be year two in the Badassazoic. To living life well.

Now that you’re all ready to die because of the length of this post, I promise that it will end soon. But as the end of the year is a time of reflection, the onset of a new year is the time for anticipation. If you have any environmental subjects you think that I should explore please let me know. Here are my goals for 2012.

o   Post a “route to influence policy” map which shows the most effective route to improve the US’s domestic energy policy

o   Learn about the carbon impact of the following and convert it into CO₂ pounds emitted:

§  Water usage

§  Breathing

§  Recycling

§  Garbage collection

o   Meet the Kyoto Protocol – 5,900 pounds of CO₂ emitted during the year

o   Learn about the ratio of oxygen created vs. carbon released in the life cycle of plants and trees

o   See 10 new natural places

o   Learn the top five ways to cut back greenhouse gas emissions our transportation sector

o   Make my content more applicable to the everyday lives of all the good people out there

Steve signs the Kyoto Protocol

"I promise to meet Kyoto standards or buy carbon offsets!"

 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the level of greenhouse gas emissions in 1990 was adequate for sustaining lifesystems on this planet. Due to improved carbon emissions accounting individuals like myself can now be a part of the Kyoto Protocol.


Sweet spankin’ sustainability Batman, I’ve joined the ranks of the Kyotoers. No longer do I have to parade around in uncertainty wondering if I’m an envirobaron. We’ve reached a point in our civilization where I can now pretty accurately gauge how much greenhouse gasses I am personally responsible for emitting.

By the end of this year, I will have emitted around 11,000 pounds of carbon dioxide according to an average of National Geographic’s and Terrapass’ carbon calculators. (NG had me at 10,018 and Terrapass had me at 12,000 pounds of CO₂ released this year.) That isn’t great, but it’s not too shabby for an aspiring environmentalist.

According to my calculations last month, I found that last year individuals emitted around 15,418 pounds of carbon dioxide on average and the acceptable level of CO₂ emissions was around 6,424. So with the global population steadily increasing I figured that people could safely emit around 6,000 pounds of carbon this year.

Obviously I didn’t make that target, however, I did purchase 5,000 pounds of carbon credits to make up for my overage. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to purchase carbon credits. Our existing infrastructure would allow us to live our lives as close to carbon neutral as possible, but because our energy infrastructure is assy and ailing, purchasing carbon credits are a good start for offsetting greenhouse gas emissions in the future.

How carbon credits work: You spend money today to purchase green infrastructure projects for the future. For example, I gave my money to the company, Terrapass, so that it could divvy up my contribution into the various clean energy projects it provides capital for in the future. Like a microfinancing scheme, a bunch of people pool money together to purchase or invest in a good. Under the leadership of Terrapass a bunch of people and I are investing in greenhouse gas trapping projects or clean energy projects that will exist in the future.

Terrapass sells credits in 1,000 pound increments for $5.95. To be honest, that price tag seems a bit low and arbitrary to me, but how do you know? At the moment I’m taking a small leap of faith, assuming the money truly gets funneled to the places it’s supposed to get funneled to and that the carbon credit prices are fair and logical.

One day we will live in a world where there is a global cap and trade, or carbon credit market, where prices will fluctuate depending on supply and demand. Until that day comes, voluntary carbon purchasing for venture capital projects will have to do for me.

Fun Fact: “Between 1990 and 2006 Sweden cut its carbon emissions by 9%, largely exceeding the target set by the Kyoto Protocol, while enjoying economic growth of 44% in fixed prices.  

One step closer to perfect information

Image obtained from treehugger.com

Sometimes I get the feeling that I’m operating in a closed system. Like there’s an upper bound on the amount of mental or physical resources I can devote toward the seemingly limitless goals and aspirations that flood my everyday life. It’s like you can grasp your own glass ceiling and you want to shatter it to bits, but you’re worried that your world will shatter with it. Or worse, you’re ready to shatter your world and aggrandize, but you’re not sure how. 

This is what the music binge is for. You listen to a song you like on Pandora, type the name in YouTube, paste the link in Zamzar, and then voila you have a sonic boom of expression waiting in your email inbox. Do it twenty times over, and you’ve got the match, the spark, the chitty and bang, bang of a verifiable  personal renaissance.

I love the music binge. It shakes up my present and gives old hopes a new spin. The current hope is a quest for perfect information, but it starts small with my everyday choices. I want to be able to understand what it means to dry clothes on a clothesline instead of a dryer, to take the bus instead of driving, to compost instead of throwing away biodegradables, etc. Screw the abstract numbers, I need tangible figures that an everyday Steve can grasp. 

Okay. Carbon dioxide emissions are a good start. I did a little research to figure out how much carbon dioxide I can responsibly emit each year to be able coexist in our natural heritage.

I reasoned that by taking the total amount of environmentally acceptable carbon emissions and dividing them by the global population it would yield the acceptable amount of carbon emissions per person. I found out that last year every human being should’ve emitted around 6,424 lbs. of carbon. (People actually emitted around 15,418 lbs. on average.) To see the math, click here. 

In honor of Thanksgiving, I have a metric to be thankful for. The world speaks in pounds of carbon dioxide and it turns out when cars burn one gallon of gasoline it releases about 20 lbs. My Annabel drives about 25 miles per gallon. By checking my trusty driving log I see that I’ve driven about 5,252.6 miles. To date I’ve burned about 4,202.8 pounds of carbon. To see the math, click here.

 

This is good news for our planet because I drive a lot of miles to see family, friends, and to bolster quality leisure time. I haven't crashed through the 6,424 pound average yet, so I think it would be very possible to emit carbon at the responsible environmental levels provided in the Kyoto Protocol.

I kind of want to hug a koala or high five a polar bear, but this is only a small step. I know that I have a long way in my quest to better understand how each of my habits plays into my overall carbon footprint. I know that transportation is only a portion of my energy budget, however, this knowledge is taking me in a direction that I like. The closer I get toward perfect information, the sooner I can get better, freer, and chart a course to true life, liberty and happiness. 

Carbon and population figures were given by the following websites:

http://www.thinkglobalgreen.org/CARBONDIOXIDE.html

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762181.html

Thus began the Financial Crisis

I recommend the first 8 pages.

Never have I had a bulls-eye appear so readily, nor have I been so misinformed. I’m beginning to wrap my head around the origins of the financial crisis, after I found out something pretty enlightening. Check this out:

Today Bill Clinton is synonymous with deregulation. He signed the Financial Services Modernization Act into law, which effectively repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a law that prevented commercial banks from merging with investment banks. 

The truth of the matter is Bill Clinton was hamstrung when he signed the Act. Earlier in his presidency he rebuffed an attempt to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, and he was always against deregulation. 

However, on April 6, 1998, Citicorp took the Glass-Steagall Act into its own hands. Citicorps announced its merger with Traveler’s Insurance to become Citigroup, the largest financial conglomerate in the world. It was empowered to sell securities, take deposits, make loans, underwrite stocks, sell insurance, and operate an enormous variety of financial activities, directly violating the Glass-Steagall Act. 

Citicorp knew that it was in violation of the Act when it merged with Traveler’s Insurance, yet it merged anyway because of a loophole. The new Citigroup was allowed a five-year window for the law to change or be repealed.

It was after this merger where the most powerful banking lobbies in the country bombarded politicians with millions of dollars’ worth of contributions. They seduced Congress and won. 

In November 1999, the necessary bills were passed 54-44 in the Senate and 343-86 in the House. In the ensuing days the final bipartisan bill moved through the Senate, 90-8 and the House, 362-57. Those margins made it veto proof. 

Even if President Clinton wanted to stop the legislation, we would have gotten overrun by Congress. I still think he should have vetoed the damn thing anyway to exonerate himself, yet we’d be in trouble either way.

I highly recommend reading “A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Lehman Brothers.” I haven’t read much of it yet, but it’s elucidated a festeloon’s worth already. 

Also, I’m new to this game, but I can’t help the feeling that a collapse round two is coming our way. I hope that I’m wrong, but we when I look at the recent bankruptcy of MF Global and its criminal ledger level, and note the impending collapse of Italy and Greece, I see blustery weather coming straight towards us.  

I personally believe we don’t have the kind of political system anymore that could fix an economic downturn. I say this because I understand that money buys policy in this nation. Money will probably continue to do so until the Supreme Court’s decision for permitting unlimited campaign contributions is reversed. 

Just a question, do any of you loyal blog readers know anything about purchasing gold? Not investing in it, but actually buying the real thing.

P.S. I know this is an environmental blog, and I will get back to that soon. This just blew my hair back and I felt like sharing. Kind sentiment for kind people.

Appalachia brings in the year!

The Appalachian Trail stretches for 2,181 miles and is within 550 miles of two-thirds of the US population. It is on this trail where Pomp, Sacagawea's firstborn son invented bowling.



Ostensibly it’s about the exercise, making an event out of a new hike. But the reality is, I go hiking to breathe again. Where the clutches of man are few and far between, I feel my senses wake up. The deleterious ether that clouds my awareness somehow dissipates when I’m out there in the throes of beauty. 

But far better than reawakening my senses in an isolated Walden Pond sort of way, I shared my most recent hike along the Appalachian Trail with the woman I can’t stop thinking about. Through the course of our relationship, Ileana has come to be the glorious goofball who makes me laugh, the patient listener who seems to always find the right words to say, and an inexorable source of energy for me.

If you’re rolling your eyes over the mushy sentiment, then you can put on sunglasses, or wear two pirate eye patches, because I don’t want to see it. Ileana and I just celebrated our one year anniversary and it’s been a year filled with moments that I’ve spent my whole life searching for. 

She’s not only put up with my Gaia cravings like camping in December, my lack of an extant garbage can, my distaste for heat in the winter or air conditioning in the summer, she’s openly embraced the sentiment…she likes my eco-quirks, and for the record she might be more of an environmentalist than I am – I know this to be true when it comes to her ethical food purchasing. 

Vink visits, Mourning Wood, the trail's somber grove.

So, I left the Midwest a little over a year ago, and though I love and miss my family and the people to death, I will never fully miss the place. Highways and arterial byways carve up the flat landscape, while strip malls and poorly insulated dwellings rise along their dissections.  Where the land hasn’t been claimed by cement or residences, corn and soy trample over anything that once smacked of glorious untamed grassland. (Chicago’s an enjoyable exemption, but anyhow)

That’s not to say that there’s not sprawl or land use change out here, however, there are vast patches of untamed land relatively nearby where people like me can regain their breath.  And this past weekend, I breathed so vigorously that I realized, I could spend my life trying to defend and experience places like this. These wild spaces are where people build their dreams. It was here in the Shenandoah’s where I first found the unquenchable spark for adventure in my woman, where my best friend and I nearly scared each other senseless sharing ghost stories in the pitch black, and where I felt my happiness bubble go Sumo. 

I may never acquire the prescience to see the future before it unfolds, but it’s sure damn brilliant getting to enjoy the present in Gaia’s country with the woman I love.

Known for their communal spirit and their striking ability to be still in the presence of danger, blades of Shenandoah switch grass huddle together through the onslaught of wind, water, and sun scorch.

Ring around the Housie

 Starting in Lafayette Park, a band of good-natured individuals and I surrounded the White House to protest the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. We rallied behind the fact that we were a significant portion of Barack Obama's base, and are optimistic at our chances of getting him to shut down the pipeline.

Thousands of my kind of people wrapped around the White House today, to raise their voices (and their posters) in opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline. 

People could be heard chanting, “Hey Obama, We Don’t Want No Pipeline Drama,” and “Stop the Pipeline, Yes We Can.”

Joining in the latest saga of American Politics: Jobs vs. Justice, I protested by raising the question: “What would Sweden do?”

Basically, hoping to evoke a little humor and raise the question, “If the Swedes wouldn’t do it, then why should we?” I got a lot of laughs, six people stopped and spoke Swedish with me, I may be featured in two environmental blogs, but on a more important note, I got a taste of the fervor that is coursing through Americans lately. 

At the moment, I’m one of many who feels that social justice in our nation is being held in check by the dismal economy. The only thing any politician wants to talk about are positive economic indicators, like new jobs created or lower unemployment rates. Yet, there are people like me everywhere that are questioning the smoke screen of economic indicators. 

Today was so refreshing, because I was surrounded by thousands of people who were able to voice their opposition to indicators that only told one side of the story. In unison, we protested to bring down a vessel for dirty energy and we demanded that Obama reaffirm his support to his constituent base. 

See videos soon. I wish I had a Mac, because the videos would be up right now.

The Pipeline Picture

The pipeline would transport tar sands from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, creating somewhere in the realm of 6,000 jobs, according to Cardno Entrix, the contractor hired by the State Department to run the pipeline’s environmental review process. 

Yet environmentalists and people like me vehemently oppose this proposition, because the tar sand extraction process has extremely adverse ecological impacts. Tar Sands extraction requires the clear-cutting of Canadian forests and the refining process releases more carbon dioxide than traditional petroleum.