Thomas Friedman: The US Senate and the Gulf oil spill

The US Senate has thus far been unremarkable with its response and immediate actions to the Gulf oil spill. Friedman tells us that diminishing America's addiciton to oil and providing insurance against climate change by reducing US carbon emissions have not been very popular topics in the US Senate. Now, the test will be whether the US Senate will provide federal funding to restore America's critical ecosytems.

"The Senate’s failure to act is a result of many factors, but one is that the climate-energy policy debate got disconnected from average people."

More from Thomas Friedman's NY Times article here.

Are you Green or Congreenient?

I certainly hope you are genuinely green and not congreenient.

Thanks to urban dictionary for providing a hilarious and clever word for the day:
Congreenient: The practice of recycling, or being green, only when convenient. A person who only recycles when it is convenient to do so.

Used in a sentence: I really dislike recycling my glass bottles because recycling is a futile act. Luckily, it is congreenient that my neighbour recycles bottles and pays me 10 cents for every bottle I don't throw out in the garbage.

Climate Change Politics: United States

Matt Kahn, who blogs at Environmental and Urban Economics, provides a fascinating story about the partisan bickering and continuous politicization of climate change in the U.S. Debates over fuel efficiency standards, cap & trade and energy policy more generally, have required lots of time and effort and have ultimately impeded progress on policy formulation. It is hard to find consensus or unity on these issues unless there is a "salient shock" to the nation (BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, anyone?). Won't these environmental policies/programs cost a lot of money? Perhaps not as much as you think, at least in the long-term.

Check out Professor Kahn's post here.

A balanced perspective on Fiji Water

One of my friends, ES, sent me a link to an article on Fiji Water. The article presents a balanced perspective (certainly more balanced than my previous blog post) on Fiji Water discussing the importance it plays for economic development. Some quotes:

"Even though it's shipped from the opposite end of the globe, even though it retails for nearly three times as much as your basic supermarket water, Fiji is now America's leading imported water, beating out Evian."

"Rakiraki has experienced the full range of Fiji's water problems—crumbling pipes, a lack of adequate wells, dysfunctional or flooded water treatment plants, and droughts that are expected to get worse with climate change. Half the country has at times relied on emergency water supplies, with rations as low as four gallons a week per family; dirty water has led to outbreaks of typhoid and parasitic infections."

"When such practices are criticized, Fiji Water's response is simple: "They don't have a ton of options for economic development," Mooney told U.S. News & World Report, "but bottled water is one of them. When someone buys a bottle of Fiji, they're buying prosperity for the country." Without Fiji Water, he said, "Fiji is kind of screwed."

Read more here: http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/fiji-spin-bottle?page=1

Also, check out the website of the Fiji Embassy in the US. At the top of the page, you can see an image of a Fiji Water bottle: http://www.fijiembassydc.com/

Apps from Google Maps...

The Planning Pool blog recently published a post on the top ten google map tricks that you should know; from planning a bike trip (as Chris is doing) to getting real time traffic information in your area. "My Maps" has an application called Roof Ray, which lets people find their house on Google Maps, draw their roof, and then calculate the cost and payback period for installing solar panels. I found this application the most intriguing.

You can view more "tricks" here.

Bottled Water from Fiji

I went to a coffee shop today in Hong Kong's Central Business District. While waiting in line, I saw some guy buy two bottles of Fiji Water priced at HK$19 a piece ($2.57 CAN per bottle). Yeah, that's right, I actually walked over to the bottled water section after I purchased my coffee to check out the outrageous prices of these products.

Of all the forms of bottled water, I think Fiji water is the worst in terms of its negative ramifications on the environment. Not only that, but the price is exorbitant (you pay a premium for this stuff, it cost more than Dasani and definitely more than Volvic). Also, it has a high energy intensity.

As Peter Gleick demonstrated in a paper, the energy intensity of bottled water is measured by manufacturing the plastic bottle, treatment, cooling and transportation. In the transportation category, Fiji is probably the worst. Indeed, North American cities like LA have high demand for Fiji water. The transportation energy cost of getting the water from Fiji to LA is 4 megajoules (MJ). To put that in perspective, producing tap water requires about 0.005 MJ for treatment and distribution. Transporting Fiji water from Fiji to Hong Kong has a smaller transportation energy cost, nonetheless, it is still an issue worth discussing.

Don't worry, I am not forgetting about the economic side of this argument. Fiji water is in high demand and thus profitable for those who make it. Instead of going on a huge rant about why bottled water from Fiji is problematic, I'll leave you to read David Zetland's blog post (which is hilarious and bang on) and touches more on the economics of the issue. I just thought I would point to a few facts.

Could green energy take a hit from Ontario's government probe?

The Ontario government is in trouble. Again.

The Ontario Provincial Police is conducting a criminal investigation in some dirty business dealings between public sector staff and private sector firms. The public sector staff in question belong to the Ontario Realty Corporation, a corporation that lies under the authority of the Ministry of Energy & Infrastructure.

Uh oh. For proponents of green energy in Ontario, this could be worrying. A friend of mine, SH, posits that if any of the alleged improper business dealings are focused on the province's renewable energy program, the whole green energy movement in Ontario could be sunk beyond repair.

There is a chance that renewable energy could be involved. The government has given plenty of exclusive renewable deals to major private firms, most notably Samsung. The rhetorical push for community energy has not been followed by approvals for such projects, while private sector firms are receiving everything they need. These events have pissed off a lot of people. But have they been illegal? Time will tell.

If so, it is likely that green energy in Ontario would take a massive hit. The streamlining of approvals, reduction of effective public participation and the provincial supersession of municipal authority under the Green Energy Act have triggered opposition exponentially. Try to find an area in rural Ontario where opposition to a wind farm is not strong. Politically, the Progressive Conservatives have called for a moratorium on wind turbine development.

As ambitious as the government's program is, it has done much to help their popularity. This is far from the government's only concern. People are already angry about the HST, the deficit, scandals at E-Health and OLG and a plethora of different issues. Even other green programs have taken a hit, most recently the new Eco Fee, resulting in the government and Stewardship Ontario pointing fingers at one another.

Let's hope that green energy isn't involved in another government scandal, especially a criminal one.

Some Links on High Speed Rail in China

High Speed Rail (HSR) is major source of discussion today in fields such as Urban Planning, Transportation Engineering, Public Policy and Economics to name a few. Several countries (with the exception of Canada) are currently constructing or expanding their high speed rail networks. China has the world's longest high-speed rail network with 6,920 kilometres (see map) and will expand to 13,000 kilometers within the next three years. This won't be cheap.

Spending billions of Yuan on HSR construction should mean that ticket prices should be high to recover operating and maintenance costs, right? Well, in theory, but prices need to be competitive with airlines otherwise people won't use HSR. This will prove to be a challenge for the Chinese government as they will have to consider a number of incentives such as subsidizing fares to ensure that HSR is affordable for its citizens. Some argue that fares should be high at first to recover revenue to pay for operation and maintenance. An interesting debate indeed.

I blog about this and share links because HSR growth in China will help stabilize the country's greenhouse gas emissions in its transportation sector. It will (over the long-term) decrease demand for airlines services, it will advance China's transportation network, foster a greener ethic in its citizenry (insofar as HSR prices are affordable). The infrastructurist blog writes

"high speed rail has fully infiltrated the population, and it’s only getting bigger — by 2020, there will be HSR lines connecting every Chinese city with more than 500,000 residents, meaning that 90% of the country’s population of 1.3 billion will have HSR access." This is good, but will it be affordable?

To read about HSR competition with airlines, see here.

A blog post on HSR vs airlines in China, see here.

An interesting financial analysis criticizing HSR in China, see here.

For a critical commentary from HSR riders in China, see here.

Key message: HSR has the ability to drastically ameliorate China's national transportation system and significantly cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. It is a very sustainable transportation solution as we have seen in Europe and Japan. However, if tickets prices are too high and made unaffordable, ridership will be low and the billions of Yuan spent on HSR will be seen as a waste of money and hence anger a lot of people. HSR ticket prices need to be comparable (or cheaper) than airline tickets, this will require a lot of work on the policy front.