Going Green - from a renters perspective

em

As a renter, I would like to know what I can do to "Go Green".

I am planning on switching my ConEd service to one of the alternatives (wind or hydro power). To me it's worth the extra few bucks.

I also want to replace my bulbs w/ compact florescent bulbs. Does anyone know a good neighborhood or on-line source? I have always lived with incandescent bulbs and I want to retain the "warm glow" and hopefully avoid the "cold glare" that I typically associate with florescent bulbs.

My apartment was recently renovated, so I believe my windows and appliances are pretty efficient.

What else can I do???

doctorj

* unplug transformers, appliances, when not in use
* ride a bike
* ask the city to put a tree out the front if there isn't one already
* shower with a friend

em

excellent ideas!! Thanks!

ak217

Subject: green suggestions

I applaud your desire to make an effort to go green! One thing I found helpful is to try to decide for yourself what priorities this desire comes from; the desire to protect your own health? or maybe the health of the environment or perhaps it's some idea of fair trade or sustainability, protecting small farmers and business people? Maybe its all of these things but it is good to sort out what is primary, secondary, tertiary. If you figure out what is most important to you it helps you prioritize what actions you want to take/what you can afford in terms of time, convenience and money, even aesthetics (see below discussion of compact flourescent lightbulbs). Here few suggestions that came to mind.

Buy local produce from the farmers market.
Start a worm bin or compost bin (if possible!)...you can get info on how to do this from dept of sanitation.
Recycle!
Try to buy recycled or environmentally friendly consumer products when possible, consider off-gassing and manufacturing practices.
Use public tranportation (congrats, you're already do this, probably.)
Use non toxic cleaning products, and buy organic food especially for the most high pesticide crops like apples and spinach and potatoes.
Wash your clothes in cold always. It's way better at getting stains/dirt out anyway! trust me. I wash clothes for a living.

I guess this is all sort of obvious. Hopefully, people will post more suggestions.

Now about compact flourescents. We're going through this now at our place...tried them all over our apartment, tried to get used to them and finally, in a few rooms we decided to switch back to incandescents...but we kept them other places in hallway, kitchen etc and wherever the slightly less appealing quality of the light didn't make a big enough difference. We found the warm ones are really kind of icky, the cool ones appealed to us more, but see what you like. Also they take a moment to "warm up" so having them in the lights you flick on when come home late at night to your dark apartment is not the most welcoming thing. In short, they are a bit of a compromise, they don't ever feel the same as incandescents, but we found a comprimise and use them in rooms where the lights are on the most.

doctorj

Subject: Re: green suggestions

ak217 wrote:
Buy local produce from the farmers market.

It probably tastes better, and it's better for small scale local farmers. It might have higher levels of heavy metals round here, and higher overall environmental cost (often reflected in the cost of the food, thus the energy needed to produce it and bring it to you).

ak217 wrote: Recycle!

Recycling feels good, but is energy intensive. Environmental benefit is marginal, depending on the material, though it helps slow landfill. Reducing and reusing is better. (e.g. choosing goods made from durable materials, avoiding packaging, owning a shopping bag).

ak217 wrote: Use public tranportation (congrats, you're already do this, probably.)

Or better yet, cycle.

ak217 wrote: Use non toxic cleaning products, and buy organic food especially for the most high pesticide crops like apples and spinach and potatoes.

Tricky. It'd take very careful analysis to work out whether the more effective but synthetic cleaning product was better or worse overall for the environment, taking into account the entire life-cycle. And this is a very small issue, comapred with e.g. taking a plane trip. But cleaning less often without sacrificing too much hygiene is sure to be good, especially if you can explain that it's part of your new green policy to guests.

Likewise weighing up the benefits and disadvantages of a particular pesticide on a particular crop is very tricky. But it's hard to argue with eating less overall, and smaller amounts of high input meat products in particular.

ak217 wrote: Now about compact flourescents... In short, they are a bit of a compromise, they don't ever feel the same as incandescents, but we found a comprimise and use them in rooms where the lights are on the most.

Another approach is to let some bulbs burn out and not change them for a while. For two-bulb fittings, making do with one higher wattage bulb is better. Don't get curtains; make more use of the daylight.

Of all the sins, sloth is perhaps the greenest.

primedawg

nothing wrong with going green its just the price that worries most people money speaks first sadly...

anyways check this out http://www.bignyc.org/ i saw them on the today show a while back

Who Are We?
Build It Green! NYC, is New York City's only non-profit retail outlet for salvaged and surplus building materials; sponsored by the Community Environmental Center (CEC) www.cecenter.org. Founded in late 2004, our warehouse opened in February 2005.
Check out our Presentation PDF (3mb)

Salvage & Surplus:
Build It Green! NYC sells salvaged and surplus building materials at the warehouse -- great products at half or below their new price. And you help keep perfectly useful material out of the landfill!

A Better NYC:
All proceeds help support CEC's environmental education programs at Solar 1.

We have over 75 tons of materials on sale:

• doors
• flooring
• sinks and toilets
• lighting
• windows
• trim
• cabinets
• metal studs

And much, much more...


Green Products: Build It Green! will be expanding its stock of building materials to include environmentally friendly and non-toxic materials.

Why Reuse?
Reuse is a logical and environmentally friendly alternative to simply discarding durable materials .

Where do the materials come from?
Salvaged materials have been taken from a variety of buildings about to be demolished in New York City. Surplus materials have been donated by building suppliers and contractors interested in protecting the environment and reducing their waste.

em

Wow - thanks for all the great tips everyone.

I feel like I am already "semi-green" and follow many of the suggestions. I attribute this to growing up in a hippy-dippy town and having my first part time jobs at environmental organizations and a natural food store...

My biggest hope is to try to have less environmental impact.

Now, even though I (try to) bring my canvas bag to the grocery store, don't own a car and try to buy recycled goods (easy thanks to Craigslist & other people's cast offs), etc., etc. I still feel my frequent travel for work and leisure is my biggest carbon contributor. I'm aiming to offset this in other areas.

Good to know about the CFL bulbs. I think I'll buy one at a time and try it out to get used to it. Hopefully I can phase them in.

Thanks again for the great ideas.

alafairnadia

I'm terrible - I love halogen light. it really kills me to like something so awful. but ... I guess that's my right as an obnoxious american.

doctorj

alafairnadia wrote: I'm terrible - I love halogen light. it really kills me to like something so awful. but ... I guess that's my right as an obnoxious american.

Halogen lamps are more efficient than ordinary incandescent bulbs, and very importantly, last longer. They should save you some money and power for the same amount of light in the long term vs. ordinary globes. Not as good as fluoro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy

alafairnadia

doctorj wrote: [quote=alafairnadia]I'm terrible - I love halogen light. it really kills me to like something so awful. but ... I guess that's my right as an obnoxious american.

Halogen lamps are more efficient than ordinary incandescent bulbs, and very importantly, last longer. They should save you some money and power for the same amount of light in the long term vs. ordinary globes. Not as good as fluoro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy

oh, good. sitting in a corporate office all day makes me basically despise the fluoro shit. seriously - I just can't stand that type of light. my co-workers make fun of me b/c I'd rather sit in the dark than sit in fluoro light. esp since I don't have a window office. hate that shit. makes me depressed.

and almost all of the light fixtures in my apartment are totally fucked b/c of cheap, ghetto light bulbs used before I moved in - the metal bit is fused to the fixture so they're unusable. literally nothing will get the metal bit out. so my halogen lamp is one of the only sources of light in my living room at night, which is fine with me. I like the dark, frankly.

doctorj

primedawg wrote: nothing wrong with going green its just the price that worries most people money speaks first sadly...

Whatever is green should really save you money, at least in the long term. Waste and overconsumption are always expensive. If a particular choice isn't cheaper over say 30 years, it's probably not much greener. If a so-called green option is much more expensive, the technology is wrong or immature or worse than status quo. Either that, or someone else is temporarily getting away with paying much less than they should. This will only become more clear as the cost of different kinds of pollution are increasingly included in the bottom line, e.g. via emissions trading. All that's needed therefore is cheap financing for the upfront costs of genuinely green choices, and education about what saves you money and the planet in the long run.

doctorj

alafairnadia wrote: my co-workers make fun of me b/c I'd rather sit in the dark than sit in fluoro light. esp since I don't have a window office.

You can tell them straight out, that you're saving the firm money and helping save the planet, and why don't they grow up and get aware.

alafairnadia wrote: I like the dark, frankly.

Me too. Dark is the new green.

alafairnadia

doctorj wrote: [quote=alafairnadia] my co-workers make fun of me b/c I'd rather sit in the dark than sit in fluoro light. esp since I don't have a window office.

You can tell them straight out, that you're saving the firm money and helping save the planet, and why don't they grow up and get aware.

trust me, I've tried it. since I'm already the 'rebel' that doesn't wear a suit every day, being the 'rebel' that sits in the dark is totally unforgivable. it helped when I had an officemate, but when I was given my own space, everyone commented, disparagingly, on my lack of light. I kinda want to keep my shit, well-paying job, so I flip on the obnoxious light. it's horrid, though.

doctorj wrote: [quote=alafairnadia]I like the dark, frankly.

Me too. Dark is the new green.

I think that's my new mantra.

kristina

I keep all compostables in a lg ziplock bag in the freezer and take 'em into union sq farmer's market. There's some sort of cooperative mini farm in the east village that collects it and uses it. look for the big tupperwares or pile of bag with clippings.

Also condensing the meals you eat out (esp. breakfast and lunch where you rarely eat on re-useable dishes) saves a lot in packaging/waste... Packing your own in tupperware is a great alternative!!

doctorj

kristina wrote:
Also condensing the meals you eat out (esp. breakfast and lunch where you rarely eat on re-useable dishes) saves a lot in packaging/waste... Packing your own in tupperware is a great alternative!!

Good idea. I wonder what would happen in this country if it was the rule that you had to pay a little extra for disposable stuff? Like plastic cutlery, dispoable chopsticks, plastic bags, sauce in a sachet, etc. As it stands, if you want to do the right thing, your labor is just subsidising everyone else's environmentally expensive behavior. Even 10c for a plastic fork would make people stop and think.

caxixi

Subject: getting green

back in the day, people that lobbied against energy conservation/efficiency legislation often called the movement "freezing in the dark", so careful with your "dark is the new green" - it could stir up old memories

unfortunately what was true then is still true today - all our greening/emission curbing/renewable portfolio standards/carbon market talk is all focused on supply side fixes. as if profligate energy consuption is an unalienable american right. for those of you who acknowledge the need to live differently in order to pass on a recognizable earth to future generations, i commend you

as ak217 said, "green" means lots of different things, but if we're talking about climate change, then we're talking about energy use. i don't know too many people in the nhood who have control over their thermostats, so thats out. which is a shame by the way. so if you're interested in climate change mitigation then the best thing to do as a renter is to use less electricity.

one great way is to turn down your air conditioner in the summer. this has a huge impact on carbon emissions because the peak electric load occurs at 3 to 4pm on the hottest day of the year. and that is entirely driven by the AC load. if you can turn down your AC (or turn down heat-generators in your apartment like fridges, computers, light bulbs) during the summer this has a huge impact. if you can get your employer to do that even better. and if you can get your landlord to start thinking about an energy star fridge thats also great.

the generation infrastructure is built based on the peak load in a given region. if you can shave off that peak, it means not only fewer carbon atoms in the atmosphere, it also means we need fewer power stations on the east river, it means inefficient gas turbines don't have to be dispatched to meet summer peaks, it means coal plants don't have to be ramped up and operated in off-design conditions and it means conEd might slow down their rate hikes (ok - now i'm dreaming)

someone said that curtains are bad, but during the summer curtains are great. they keep your place that much cooler. but during the cold months, keep them drawn as much as possible (if you want to be fancy you can call it "passive solar heating")

and by the way - avoid using space heaters - using high quality energy (electrity) to generate low-grade heat is probably the most wasteful thing you can do

remember - all energy on the planet comes from the sun (ok, except nuclear) - we started out as a solar society, i think the faster we get back to relying on the sun directly for energy the better. our coal beds, gas reservoirs and oil fields are just millions of years of archived sunlight. lets get back to the source

ak217

Subject: carbon credits for travellers.

em wrote: I still feel my frequent travel for work and leisure is my biggest carbon contributor. I'm aiming to offset this in other areas.

EM,

I don't know too much about this but there are organizations that you can "buy" carbon credits from, or that you can donate too and they will plant trees on your 'jetsetting' behalf or something like that...

terrapass.com allows you to buy credits when you purchase your airline tickets..might be hard if you employer books your flights.

carbonfund.org (non profit?)

If you google around you'll turn up more...

Thanks DoctorJ good posts in reply to my suggestions. You bring up REALLY good points about the "hidden" costs and false "economy" of some of the typical green solutions. It's true that the best thing is to to reduce demand on the environment in all areas...

Interested especially in your ideas about the down side of buying local, can you discuss more?

doctorj

Subject: Re: carbon credits for travellers.

ak217 wrote:
Interested especially in your ideas about the down side of buying local, can you discuss more?

So I know nothing about farming, and the short answer is I have no idea whether buying a particular product sourced locally is good, bad, or indifferent to the environment.

Some things to think about:

Environmentalism and Economics are basically the same discipline. They're both about conservation, getting maximum utility with minimum waste. Any apparent conflict between the two is an argument about what time scales matter most, and how to price / discount future risks.

What this means is, on a level playing field, with appropriate pricing of pollution, deforestation, land degradation, etc. (which as yet it we do not have) consumers can tell which of two equivalent products is less environmentally damaging by the price: it's the cheaper one. How does the cost of a particular item compare between the farmer's market at GAP and the Met on Vanderbilt?

Now back to the farms:

1) The most important environmental cost of agriculture is opportunity loss. Loss of forests, habitat, etc. So the most important factor is yield per acre, as everyone has to eat. The higher the yields, the less land needed. If large industrial farms further from town are higher yielding, that's better than inefficient local operations.

2) #1 is only true so long as the agriculture is not conducted in such a way as to make the land infertile. If industrial scale famers are allowed to destroy the land, that's much worse than a local sustainable operation. But I don't know whether large scale is in general currently destroying their land faster than small scale. Where I come from, pretty much all European-style agriculture, large and small, local and remote, is very bad news, has been allowed to continue far too long, and with a little help from global warming is rapidly farming itself out of existence. Yields on my father's small farm are now basically zero, where once you could have trucked produce to a local market. There, the best option for the environment is to walk away and import more food.

3) Pesticides, herbicides, etc. etc. are easy to point to as baddies, but their danger to health is generally way overestimated, and their benefits easily ignored. See #1. Yield matters.

4) Economies of scale make a difference. It costs energy to buy and maintain all the equipment used in farming; a larger scale operation probably has a smaller carbon footprint associated with its infrastructure, because one large operation can own and use that equipment more efficiently than many small operations.

5) Labor costs the environment something. An operation that spends more money on labor for the same goods at a given price point has less to spend on infrastructure that can increase yields or lessen environmental impact. People tied up in farm labor are not available for other kinds of jobs that may be better for the environment. Local small scale may be more labor intensive.

6) Transport. On the face of it, this is a big winner for local production. Much better that the goods don't need to travel large distances. However if the comparison is between every farmer driving his/her own truck to market, vs. importing on an enormous ship or by rail, the differential in emissions vs. distance will be substantially reduced.

7) Local toxins. Pesticides and herbicides don't bother me, but heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium tend to hang around a long time. I expect land around here has higher levels of these things than in say Iowa or Brazil, due to the industrial history.

caxixi

doctorj - you made some good points - but you assume at the start that we can come up with a good emissions price thats going to make this all shake out. i'm not so optimistic

the idea that you can monetize all externalities though emission pricing is great in theory, but it rarely works in practice. the sulfur trading market worked great for acid rain, but when you talk about CO2 - a greenhouse gas that persists for decades or centuries in the atmosphere, then the whole notion of putting a carbon price becomes hugely complicated by the timescale of the problem and the economic instruments used to determine the conclusion. this is exemplified by the differences between the conclusions of the recent UK stern report on climate and the national comission on energy policy report a few years ago. the two reports give you *vastly* different recmendations on the price of carbon because the most severe effects of co2 emitted today are felt ~100 years later and this means your choice of a discount rate decides whether or not it is (and i hate this phrase) "economically optimal" to take on the more stringent climate change mitigation measures

the economists are not even convinced its "economically optimal" to stabilize co2 concentrations at all (!!). they claculate the damage on the economy due to this and that, discount by 10 to 15 percent per year and come out with some carbon price that supports the agenda of the administatration in power.

and thats assuming you can even monetize the damages. how do you monetize loss of biodiversity? how do you monetize the loss of the family farm and small rural communities? how do you put a price on the impact of huge intensively farmed monocultures and what that does to the fact that although we can eat any fruit any day of the year, it all starts to taste like the same flavorless crap?

don't even get me started on agricultural subsidies or gas subsidies (e.g. iraq war)

following "economically optimal" is tempting, but thats exactly what drives suburban sprawl, car culture, strip malls and a country full of faceless chains. (you want to talk about the loss of US industrial manuacturing capacity?) it would be great to think we have perfect markets, perfect information and rational consumers, but its all smoke and mirors. you pick the discount rate or any other set of assumptions that lets your model support your policy and you roll. economists want you to think its a science - but be skeptical of assertions. read the fine print. understand assumptions

but there is no way the transport emissions of farmers back and oth to the store would balance out the emissions of flying food in from thousands of miles. in terms of personal travel, the emissions per mile for car versus airplane are about equivalent. in this case local food is a big big winner. and if you have a carbon tax of $27/tCO2 (which is what you would need in order to make some kind of impact on climate in the near term), that would make a big price impact.

doctorj

caxixi wrote: doctorj - you made some good points - but you assume at the start that we can come up with a good emissions price thats going to make this all shake out. i'm not so optimistic

I am optimistic. For a number of reasons. I think we have to be optimistic, because the alternative is war, famine, drought, flood, fire, mass migration, and needless to say, bad for business. Bad for business means that probably sooner rather than later the corporate world will join the public and politicians in agreeing on an international mechanism and price, so that everyone knows what to expect. The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report released a couple of days ago is really getting down to specifics on this and is pretty optimistic; what level of reduction is necessary to restrict warming to what temperature at what cost to growth. With the EU leading the way, the market is set up and ready to happen. What we're waiting for is a few hold-out countries to come to terms with the inevitable. One of them, my birth country, a worse emitter per capita than the US and to date a worse global citizen on this issue, is likely to vote out the climate change deniers this year and elect a new government on a promise of mandatory reductions and joining carbon trading. The turnaround has been rapid and overwhelming, because climate change is plainly and clearly affecting people's lives now, and it features daily in the media. I expect that the same will happen in the US once a critical mass of people understand the issue, what action vs. inaction costs. A few really extreme weather events are enough to make people take notice and demand action. Another reason I'm optimistic is that I've also lived in a country that is in some ways is further towards free market capitalism than the US, in terms of efficiency, transparency, depth of markets, but where pollution and polluting forms of consumption are very heavily regulated and taxed. People there maintain a very high standard of living and economic growth, but the place is clean, few people drive, and a large and growing fraction of their energy is renewable. All because the cheap choices there are the green ones.

caxixi wrote: the idea that you can monetize all externalities though emission pricing is great in theory, but it rarely works in practice. the sulfur trading market worked great for acid rain, but when you talk about CO2 - a greenhouse gas that persists for decades or centuries in the atmosphere, then the whole notion of putting a carbon price becomes hugely complicated by the timescale of the problem and the economic instruments used to determine the conclusion. this is exemplified by the differences between the conclusions of the recent UK stern report on climate and the national comission on energy policy report a few years ago. the two reports give you *vastly* different recmendations on the price of carbon because the most severe effects of co2 emitted today are felt ~100 years later and this means your choice of a discount rate decides whether or not it is (and i hate this phrase) "economically optimal" to take on the more stringent climate change mitigation measures

the economists are not even convinced its "economically optimal" to stabilize co2 concentrations at all (!!). they claculate the damage on the economy due to this and that, discount by 10 to 15 percent per year and come out with some carbon price that supports the agenda of the administatration in power. and thats assuming you can even monetize the damages.

Do you have a better solution than trying to monetize the damages? I really think economic concensus is building rapidly on this, just as scientific concensus did. Putting dollar value on risk is something we're pretty good at and have been doing for a long time, e.g. the insurance industry. Bush-style voluntary reductions simply aren't going to cut it. Companies and the voting public are going to demand a clear plan with concrete numbers and timelines, and administrations that don't respond are going to be out of office. Sure you can arrive at different numbers by calculating different ways, and there's much uncertainty so far in the future, but the important thing will be to pick targets and prices and stick to them.

caxixi wrote: how do you monetize loss of biodiversity?

That is already starting to happen by means of credits to countries that save their forests from being chopped down. There will be an agreed price on the value of forested land, and money will be transferred from rich countries to poor accordingly. A portion of the price you pay for goods in the US will go to saving a rainforest somewhere else. That's the only way we're going to get developing countries to sign on and contribute. The same sort of thing has been in place for managing fisheries for a while and will be extended; mandatory limits on what can be taken, and then auctioning off the licenses, in order to price in sustainability.

caxixi wrote: how do you monetize the loss of the family farm and small rural communities?

You don't. If it's no longer economic because it's too environmentally costly, then it should cease; it's even worth paying people to shut up shop. You put in a safety net to help people adjust, and you give them 10 years to get it over with and move on. There's all sorts of communities, professions and cultures whose time has passed whom we no longer mourn. I'm not sorry that every household no longer spins its own cloth, I'm not sorry slave-driven plantations could no longer compete, I'm not sorry that the British coal mines had to close in the 80s, and I'm glad that where I come from small rural communities on denuded land are dying fast.

caxixi wrote: how do you put a price on the impact of huge intensively farmed monocultures and what that does to the fact that although we can eat any fruit any day of the year, it all starts to taste like the same flavorless crap?

Again, I think yield is the more important issue; simply feeding the world's population sustainably is more important. You have to be rich before you can afford to worry too much about flavor, and I'm sure that the rich will continue, for a price, to be able to purchase something resource intensive that tastes better. Just as you can buy a superior hand crafted version of many other items.

caxixi wrote: don't even get me started on agricultural subsidies or gas subsidies (e.g. iraq war)

Or me. We'd probably agree about these evils.

caxixi wrote: following "economically optimal" is tempting, but thats exactly what drives suburban sprawl, car culture, strip malls and a country full of faceless chains. (you want to talk about the loss of US industrial manuacturing capacity?) it would be great to think we have perfect markets, perfect information and rational consumers, but its all smoke and mirors. you pick the discount rate or any other set of assumptions that lets your model support your policy and you roll. economists want you to think its a science - but be skeptical of assertions. read the fine print. understand assumptions

Your suburban sprawl, car culture, etc., are only there because there was no price on damaging the environment. There are Scandinavian countries which are highly economically optimized, but put a high price on environmentally damaging goods and practices, and you see the opposite outcome. Nothing affects consumer choices like price. The loss of US industrial manufacturing capacity is part of an ongoing process and a healthy sign in my opinion (though I wish there were better provisions in this country for protecting the minority who are losers rather than winners in globalization).

caxixi wrote: but there is no way the transport emissions of farmers back and oth to the store would balance out the emissions of flying food in from thousands of miles. in terms of personal travel, the emissions per mile for car versus airplane are about equivalent. in this case local food is a big big winner. and if you have a carbon tax of $27/tCO2 (which is what you would need in order to make some kind of impact on climate in the near term), that would make a big price impact.

I agree, flying food in for the masses is environmentally costly. Rail and supertankers are more efficient, though I don't know what the ratios are. I don't know whether a high price on carbon will cause locally sourced food to become a winner again; if it does, that's nice, though not so good for people living far from land suitable for agriculture. The point is we need to get an agreed price on carbon in place asap, so that consumers start making whichever choices turn out to be best.

caxixi

great responses - i wish i had time to go through each point you bring up - theres a lot to respond to. I'm pressed for time though, so let me throw out some thoughts quickly

* I think we both agree that perfect pricing leads to perfect consumer behavior and we both agree that pricing is not perfect right now. But I think we have a major overhaul to do (not just a few prices fixes here and there) and so with a system full of opaque, indirect subsidies and projects being funded off congessional earmarks and other undemocratic practices tilting the tables, don't think that you can gauge anything about energy intensity or greenness from cost. its just a mess.

* my slant on the transport thing is that its alot easier to decarbonize the electricity system in the short term that the transport sector, so i'm a pretty big fan of reducing the transport intensity of goods overall. it just seems like the simplest solution and the most obvious one in the long run.

* your point about carbon credits for reforrestation is different from biodiversity and species loss. you can bank credits in terms of co2 fixed, but thats diffferent than accounting for loss of species diversity - just a minor point, but wanted to clarify that

* and yes - carbon markets will happen one way or another and the momentum is definitely headed that way. the problem is that the economic/political cycle and the carbon cycle have really different time scales so the feedback system is going to be funny until we get it right. a lasting policy will be the hardest challenge i think - "sticking to [targets]" like you said. carbon markets are good but insufficient - gov corzine had some good ideas on this in his testimony to congress a few months back. i'll post again if i can find a like to the transcript or a relevant quote

* consensus is def not building on the economic approaches to climate change. if anything, it seems that as scientific consensus builds and more people acknowledge that "something" has to be done, the diversity of viewpoints in the climate change discussion is getting broader so that the notion of what that "something" is is getting broader. you can see that in the diversity of legislative proposals out there
http://images.wri.org/USEmissionsBills-2020_large.gif
the economic models are even more all over the place. we're good at putting costs on things but again, the tricky thing is the timescales

wish i could write more - thx!

doctorj

So I'm with you caxixi on just about all the above.

I happened to read this in a newspaper today: Eco: A green guide for tenants. It's not geared to renters in NY, but covers most of what we've talked about.

ben

I just opened a new bank account and in the process of going through the disclosure materials came across a link that can help reduce junk mail. By cutting down on the unwanted credit card solicitations, catalogs, etc. you will help to lower you carbon footprint.

The Direct Marketers Association allows you to register to not receive this unwanted mail. They charge $1 in order to verify your identity - or at least that's what they say - but you can do everything online. The address is http://www.dmaconsumers.org/consumerassistance.html

It only stops the unsolicited mail from companies that are members of the DMA, for those that are not you'll have to call them directly to get taken off of their lists.

ekeckert

doctorj wrote:
* shower with a friend

Haha.