Green Tech Girl

One of our most challenging and scary environmental problems is the safety of our water supply. People are flushing so many drugs down the toilet – from the actual pills to the residue in urine – that drinking tap water often means you’re getting a slight homeopathic dose of anti-depressants. Now we have pollutants in the water creating mutant fish and “intersex” fish (meaning, what should be male fish now turning into females):

So, where do these estrogen enhancers that are creating intersex fish come from? Seems there are a wide variety of sources, from materials used in agriculture and industry to women’s urine flushed down the toilet, with the strongest dose from women taking estrogen pills. (Stephen Colbert recently suggested that women now just “have to hold it.”)

Estrogen disruptors appear to have their strongest impact on the developing male fetus. Nicolas Kristof is taking the big leap (based on real data summarized by the National Wildlife Service) by suggesting that sexual organs of human boys are already trending towards “intersex.”

Read more here…scary!

Fascinating warning coming from physicist Michio Kaku on how we’re in danger of losing our communications due to the next solar “flare-up” around 2012 (what is it about that year anyway?):

Sarah Palin has written an op-ed piece in the Washington Post about why she thinks Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan is bad for our economy. Responses to the piece range from the ridiculous (some folks are complaining to the ombudsman that she must not have written the article) to the fairly moderate (some people aren’t fans of Palin but aren’t fans of cap-and-trade either).

I consider myself to be a moderate environmentalist; meaning, I am pragmatic and think we need to compromise in order to achieve things. I always felt that Palin was a somewhat moderate conservative – while she’s not a proponent of global warming, she has seemed all too willing to try to reach out and say, “hey, let’s come up with solutions we can all benefit from.”

This is why I never got the extreme animosity towards Sarah Palin by many people on the left. I believe a lot of it is sheer sexism (she’s pretty, doesn’t speak like an Ivy-League snob, and must therefore be a moron), a good portion of it is outright hate towards anyone labeling themselves conservative, and then the rest is classism. (She’s a “snowbilly” and eats mooseburgers instead of tofuburgers.)

So that said, I’d like to take a look at precisely what it is that Palin is proposing, without resorting to knee-jerk reactions. I’ll comment on a few excerpts from her piece:

American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president’s cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

This is true, our prosperity has been built upon cheap oil. Without cheap energy, we would not have the lavish lifestyles we do.

Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.

The Americans hit hardest will be those already struggling to make ends meet. As the president eloquently puts it, their electricity bills will “necessarily skyrocket.” So much for not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

I have to admit, I am not happy at the prospect of paying more for my electricity. It is already my most expensive utility bill. And as a small business owner, I have seen – much more so than my friends with steady jobs – how bad the economy truly is. It is very bad out there. So I am concerned about cap-and-trade causing inflation at a time where we really can’t afford it. This is where my environmental pragmatism comes in – yes, we should cut carbon emissions, but if it ends up stalling our economy and creating havoc in people’s lives, maybe we should find another way to do it? Or a better time to do it?

I’m one of those folks who feels that environmental awareness is a by-product of prosperity. In other words, it’s my richer friends who have the luxury of shopping at Whole Foods. Poor people with no jobs aren’t going to be buying the more expensive recycled toilet paper. They aren’t going to be buying organic vegetables that sometimes cost twice as much when they are short on cash and have to feed their kids. Now, I have no statistics to back this up, but my feeling is, the more people struggle, the less time, energy and money they have to live a more “sustainable” lifestyle.

In other words, the only people I know with solar panels on their homes are rich people. Deepening a severe recession and putting people out of work just ends up creating tent cities – where people are using ravines as toilets. Not good for the environment.

Let’s continue:

In Alaska, we are progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history. Our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats.

Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.

I am all for the natural gas pipeline…I think it is a good idea, and I’m glad she’s pushed for it. I am not a fan of off-shore drilling and drilling in ANWR. I would like to see Palin push more for alternative energy sources. That said, my pragmatism tells me that we might need to engage in off-shore drilling and whatnot because we’re on our way to a peak oil catastrophe. America turning into a post-apocalyptic Mad Max world of energy wars is certainly not going to help the environment either. We may need to drill. It’s either that or we could see the collapse of Western Civilization as we know it.

As for coal and nuclear energy…I’m not a fan of either (and my grandfather was a coal miner!). But considering Obama’s EPA allowed more than 40 mountain-top removal permits for mining, I really don’t think he’s going to be protecting us from the environmental impact of coal mining too much. So same difference there.

We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama’s plan will result in the latter.

My pragmatism comes up here and I will agree with her – I think it is probably better that Americans drill for oil here in a more environmentally controlled environment than simply purchase oil from other countries that might not be so mindful. Let’s not forget the human cost of the wars going on in the Middle East because we need to secure our oil supply!

If you had a choice – America fully out of Iraq and the Middle East, but that meant we had to engage in off-shore drilling here, which would you choose? And let’s say, we set up guidelines to make sure the drilling here had the least amount of impact on the environment as possible? I’d say, take us out of Iraq and drill, baby, drill.

See, these questions aren’t so cut and dry in my mind.

My biggest beef with Palin is that she has not latched onto alternative energy sources. But given that we as of yet have no alternative source that can replace cheap oil, I do think an “all of the above” approach may be our only energy option for the foreseeable future.

My hope is that, instead of extremism on the right and left causing us to fight over these issues without giving some thought to compromise, we can find a middle ground that works for America. The fact is, most Americans are going to care more about their wallets more than the environment. I know, I grew up in the Midwest. I get where average people are coming from. If you push them too hard and too fast on environmental laws that hurt their wallets too much, then people are going to backlash. And then going green could be as “out” as pet rocks.

Nothing like hearing a review of an old Sony Walkman from a 13-year-old kid to make a Generation Xer feel realllllly old. After trying a Walkman for a week (in lieu of an iPod), the modern teenager conclusion is this:

Throughout my week using the Walkman, I came to realise that I have very little knowledge of technology from the past. I made a number of naive mistakes, but I also learned a lot about the grandfather of the MP3 Player. You can almost imagine the excitement about the Walkman coming out 30 years ago, as it was the newest piece of technology at the time.

Perhaps that kind of anticipation and excitement has been somewhat lost in the flood of new products which now hit our shelves on a regular basis.

Personally, I’m relieved I live in the digital age, with bigger choice, more functions and smaller devices. I’m relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born, as I can’t imagine having to use such basic equipment every day.

Having said all that, portable music is better than no music.

Geez oh pete. I’m a dinosaur! I still have a Walkman lying around as well as a portable CD player! And those CD players are actually bigger than the tape players.

I’ve kept a Walkman because I do have some cassettes I like to listen to once in a while. (At this point, mostly self-help things, as my audio as moved to MP3 for the most part.) The “Walkman” in question is actually a Panasonic cassette player, a “sports” version, in bright yellow with black rubber grips. It’s one of those you could throw into a pool and it would still work.

So I guess I have some nostalgia for those rugged Walkmans and clones that were designed to withstand places like the beach and your neighborhood pool. iPods are almost too slick and technological. I’ve dropped that darn Panasonic cassette player 50 times or more and it still plays 15 years later. I seriously doubt my iPod would survive such a beating.

So should we just chuck our old electronic portable devices out the window and fill up more landfills? Or gift them to our progeny, giving them a taste of electronics gone by?

The Onion came out with this hilarious satire on Taco Bell, touting a new “green” menu that would recycle garbage and reconstitute it into “tomorrow’s lunch”:

What’s truly funny is the comments for this video on YouTube – a lot of people took the video seriously and were righteously offended at the thought of eating recycled junk.

I actually like Taco Bell (guilty pleasure), though I think recycling garbage into food is where I might draw the line. Thankfully, that technology does not exist yet.

“Stuff your mouth – not a landfill!”

I was having a conversation with a friend today who was saying that the lifecycle of a Prius was actually worse than that of a Hummer due to the batteries. He cited a nickel mine where nothing grew for miles around due to the toxicity. I have yet to look this up to substantiate his claims, but what do you think? Do you think the environmental benefits of better gas mileage are outweighed by the toxic batteries in electric or hybrid cars?

I realize this is completely anti-environmental of me to say, but when I hear something like “there will be no more tuna in a few years,” there’s a big part of me that feels I should go out and eat as much of it as I can before it’s gone. Reverse psychology. So is telling people this going to help lower tuna consumption, or increase it?

Flint Michigan is responding to the shrinking of the city by razing old neighborhoods that have fallen into disrepair and returning the land to nature. Some folks are up in arms over this, thinking mistakenly that the city is taking over people’s property, but the property in question has been abandoned. So I think it’s a great idea! More here…

There’s a lot of resistance to San Francisco’s new recycling law:

Throwing orange peels, coffee grounds and grease-stained pizza boxes in the trash will be against the law in San Francisco, and could even lead to a fine.

The Board of Supervisors voted 9-2 Tuesday to approve Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposal for the most comprehensive mandatory composting and recycling law in the country. It’s an aggressive push to cut greenhouse gas emissions and have the city sending nothing to landfills or incinerators by 2020.

My question is: Is it in anyway feasible to send “nothing” to landfills? Seems like a pipe dream to me. I would actually prefer that cities put energies into reclaiming methane gas from landfills as a viable alternative fuel source. If that were done with all landfills, there would be no need to sort out organic waste from the trash. Why waste a good fuel source?

The thing that really ticks me off about Obama is that he’ll say or do one thing that will make liberals really happy (like announcing better fuel standards for cars) and then when you’re not paying as close attention, try to swindle some piece of crap under your nose. In an extremely egregious example, last week the EPA approved 42 our of 48 mountaintop removal permits, more than in the entire history of two terms of G.W. Bush! These mountaintop removals are extreme forms of strip-mining as a means of accessing coal. Coal? Why coal? Where’s our solar power? Where’s our wind power?

From the Huffington Post:

Have 42 out of 48 permits for mountaintop removal — the process of blowing up our nation’s oldest and most diverse mountains, razing historic communities, poisoning watersheds, and causing massive erosion and flooding, which Vice President Al Gore has termed “a crime, and ought to be treated as a crime” — cleared as “environmentally responsible” by the Obama administration’s EPA?

In effect: Residents in the mountaintop removal areas have been subjected to a kind of waterboarding environmental policies.

Here is another article on the subject:

‘Appalachian Apocalypse’: Obama Permits Mountaintop Removal Mining

All I have to say is, environmentalists need to keep a strict eye on the Obama administration. Environmental platitudes sent out in the form of headline-making press releases do not equate to a real commitment to the environment or solving our energy problems as cleanly as possible. Shame on them for actually making Bush look better when it comes to this issue.