A Sustainable Train of Thought

It was only a matter of time…

“In a case echoing the landmark litigation against tobacco and fast food companies, California is suing the car giants for damages flowing from climate change.” — The Age

The lawsuit claims “damages related to such issues as melting snow, rising sea levels, increased ozone depletion and bushfires.” Interestingly, there is no compensation amount listed, which in itself will be a difficult task to assess: how do you calculate the cost of melting snow, rising sea levels, increased ozone depletion, and bushfires?

I’m very curious to see how this plays out.

Quick post as I’m in the midst of preparing stuff for our exhibition at Salone del Mobile.

As I’ve mentioned before, I presented a concept during the review before Christmas which involved composting. The idea was to close the loop between consumers and farmers (consumers and producers), with supermarkets as intermediaries. (I cover this concept in greater detail in my thesis report.)

Sydney just sent me an article from Treehugger which describes a service currently running in San Francisco which takes food waste (primarily from restaurants) and turns it into compost which is resold to farmers.

My concept looked more at the individual’s contribution, and at the time I wasn’t looking at regulation or involving other parties…my focus was perhaps too narrowly aimed at supermarkets and only supermarkets. I’ve since opened things up in terms of stakeholders—while it may be hard to justify a supermarket’s incentives for collecting compost, a city can certainly benefit from such practices, and private companies would definitely be willing participants.

Another difference is that the actual composting in San Francisco occurs in Vacaville, whereas in my concept each individual was composting in their home. I think there would need to be an intense look at whether centralized methods of composting are better than individual composting, both in terms of convenience and in terms of material usage, and such things as transportation costs and emissions.

I think in the end, however, I wasn’t really interested in composting per se as I was the motivations for the individual to participate within such a system. It’s one thing if you have a recycling container which you dump things into: that’s easy enough to accommodate in your life. What’s harder is to get a sense of contribution and the role you play within the larger system and community. For those of us who get personal satisfaction from doing good, it’s enough to know you’re doing the right thing. But for others, a little more incentive and visibility is perhaps warranted.

The US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, signed by 205 mayors as of Feb 17, mandate that participating cities meet the Kyoto Protocol goal of 7% below 1990 emission levels by 2012. An ambitious goal, and one of the building blocks for my thesis, but it turns out that California has an even greater ambition.

Citing impacts to “water supply, public health, agriculture, the coastline, and forestry,” Executive Order S-3-05 mandates meeting the following Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reduction targets for California:

...by 2010, reduce GHG emissions to 2000 levels; by 2020, reduce GHG emissions to 1990 levels; by 2050, reduce GHG emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels.

This executive order was signed into law in June 2005, and I suppose it’s no coincidence that the California Climate Change Center and Center for Clean Air Policy reports just came out.

What I find interesting about this executive order is that Governor Schwarzenegger has effectively declared climate change a threat to the state’s economy and future well-being. Which is a roundabout way of saying climate change is a huge opportunity. As I tend to think (and as others have said), as California goes, so goes the nation. Or as Warren Buffet has said: “If California has trouble, the country has troubles. If California prospers, the country prospers.”

As the LA Times says:

California is one of the 10 largest economies in the world and the 12th-largest producer of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, which are byproducts of industry, agriculture and motor vehicle use.

One benefit of working on this thesis has been my shift in mindset: threats are now opportunities. Silicon Valley tech might be big, but innovation related to climate change action will be even bigger and certainly more diverse.

This San Francisco Chronicle article details how Governor Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency to speed repairs of levees in California. In this post I’m not so concerned with the accusations that this is a way to sidestep environmental requirements during the repair process. Rather, I’m interested in the following quote emphasis mine:

Previously, the corps of engineers in Sacramento has said that it doesn’t declare an emergency to speed deferred maintenance. Emergencies are called to “prevent or reduce imminent risk of life, health, property or severe economic loss.”

The question is when to declare an emergency over infrastructure, or more broadly, long-term concerns. In the short-term-focused world of politics, it’s quite natural to defer and defer and defer decisions, especially ones which carry political heat. Yet at some point these issues must be dealt with. And the above quote reveals quite clearly how the government would deal with most problems.

Turns out the Center for Climate Change in Berkeley wasn’t the only group studying the effects of action on climate change for California’s economy. The Center for Clean Air Policy (CCAP) also recently published a report (.pdf) outlining some of the benefits California can achieve by taking action on climate change.

...this study finds that carbon reductions sufficient to meet the Governor’s targets can be achieved at no net cost to consumers and likely at a net benefit in both 2010 and 2020. my emphasis

What I find interesting is that while CCAP originally used $30 per metric ton as a cutoff for determining the most attractive measures, they ultimately arrived at figures way below $30: $5.25 per ton and $5.77 per ton in 2010 and 2020, respectively. The reason is even more interesting:

A significant portion of the measures have a negative cost (e.g., the economic benefits of implementing the measure exceed the economic costs.). ... An even larger portion of the measures identified have a cost between zero and $10 per metric ton CO₂e.

While I’m not going to exclaim how wonderful these results are and jump on the bandwagon without thinking twice, I do think these results constitute a significant response to Bush’s excuse for not signing the Kyoto Protocol: “For America, complying with those mandates would have a negative economic impact, with layoffs of workers and price increases.”

NRDC estimates the expected savings to consumers from energy efficiency the State of California are expected to result in aggregate savings of nearly $527 million in 2010.

I was curious about what $527 million can get you these days. Turns out that it’ll get you a little less than three days in Iraq at $122,820 per minute.

The California Climate Change Center at the University of California at Berkeley recently released Managing Greenhouse Gas Emissions in California. The report analyzes the risks to California posed by climate change and the opportunities present within those risks.

I’m going to crib directly from the executive summary because the following points are incredibly relevant for my thesis:

Climate action in California can yield net gains for the state economy, increasing growth and creating jobs. Preliminary modeling indicates that just eight policies that were analyzed in detail can achieve almost half of the Governor’s 2020 targets while increasing Gross State Product by about $60 billion and creating over 20,000 new jobs.

While $60 billion is a lot, the model isn’t complete: “We also know that there are many more low-cost options for the 2020 goals that are not included in the scenarios evaluated here by the BEAR model.” In fact, the model factored in only eight policies—if the economic gains outweigh the costs of the other twenty-two policies which weren’t included in the study, then that $60 billion gain would likely be much higher.

There are numerous additional climate action initiatives beyond those that have been modeled, many of which will also improve California’s economy. The analysis thus far indicates that California can likely reach the Governor’s 2020 targets with a net gain for the state economy.

I’m not as interested in the part about reaching the governor’s targets as I am in the part about “net gain for the state economy.” My feeling is that the more this point is hammered home, the more people will jump on the energy efficiency bandwagon. Positioning the issue of climate change as an issue only environmentalists care about is, in the end, not a very smart strategy. Nobody likes to be called an enemy of the environment.

However, everyone likes to make money—this was something Aram and Alejandro made clear in their service design presentation last year when they said that McDonalds never saw itself as selling burgers forever. It will sell whatever makes money. It’s a business. And in my opinion, smart environmentalists will use this tendency to their advantage by aligning and positioning their goals with those of big business. It’s not about selling out: it’s about communication.

The idea of a location efficient mortgage (LEM) has been around since at least 1995, but I just read about it the other night. Basically, LEMs propose to help people buy houses in communities which are conveniently located to nearby supermarkets, public transportation, schools, and the like. The idea is that people who live in location efficient communities have less need to drive, which saves them money in terms of car payments and insurance, which they can then use to repay the loan.

LEMs also provide a variety of side-benefits:

• Increase home purchases in a variety of location efficient communities;
• Boost public transit ridership;
• Support neighborhood consumer services and cultural amenities;
• Reduce energy consumption; and
• Improve local and regional air quality.

What I find interesting about LEMs is the idea that you can encourage certain behavior in one area of society (driving less) by providing incentives in another area of society (home ownership), with the net result providing ancillary benefits. Of course it makes sense when you think about it, but I haven’t seen too many examples of such thinking.

That said, one example does come to mind: ShoreBank, which I ran across while reading GreenMoney Journal. What’s interesting about ShoreBank is that they promote energy efficiency among their customers. The bottom line, again, is money. An energy efficient home reduces heating and cooling costs, which frees up money to pay back the bank.

I think the important point from both of these examples is that we can find common areas of interest between seemingly disparate topics.

Anyone know of similar examples?

An article in today’s Salon.com looks at “the intimate connection between Americans expressing their free will at Wal-Mart (or Target or Home Depot, etc.) and the ripping up and shredding of American jobs…”

My thesis is gravitating towards this area. Specifically, I’m looking at combining the idea of storytelling with information streams. Naturally, as Salon.com points out:

More information won’t necessarily lead to a more perfect world, of course—when one doesn’t have a whole lot of dollars in one’s pocket, the lowest price makes a compelling argument. But it’s an essential part of any comprehensive solution, a place where government and the media both bear a clear civic responsibility.

The question of civic responsibility brings to mind the City of Berkeley in California, which has a ban on polystyrene foam. Many of the reasons for imposing the ban cover civic issues such as urban blight and solid waste management:

A. Solid waste that is non-degradable or non-recyclable poses an acute problem for any environmentally and financially responsible program of solid waste management. Such waste covers the City’s streets, parks, public places, and open spaces.

G. The City of Berkeley has the duty to responsibly dispose of its solid waste, yet existing landfill sites are rapidly approaching capacity, and additional sites are increasingly unavailable.

The question of stakeholders popped up during the last thesis review in December, specifically around the compost economy concept. This subject is related to regulation, and I think it’s more productive for me to talk about them in my thesis report.

Catching up on old news from GreenBiz, I found the following quote in one of the GreenerBuildings articles which brought to mind again the idea of pressure points for change:

Whatever the motivation, the lesson learned is simple but elegant: get to the right person inside the retailer’s world and the right things begin to happen. The big question of course is how you find this virtuous insider? Sometimes it’s sheer luck. Sometimes, in the course of doing research on a potential tenant, you discover that they’ve done projects elsewhere that don’t fit the retailer’s typical prototype – and you look for the particular team members responsible for these atypical projects. And in a few cases, the retailer is actually on record as promoting eco-friendly practices. Whatever the case, once you find alignment between your team and that of the tenant’s, instead of a vicious cycle of ongoing resistance to green, you find a virtuous cycle of collaboration.

And since I’ve been looking at supermarkets, I was also interested to see the following: