Though the day is beautiful, the news is not: a poor economy, a deflating housing market, and wrenching changes forced by high fuel prices. Add to that this background noise: a lack of action by our leaders on the most important issues (federal debt, health care, climate change, etc.) and a feeling that the United States has passed the peak of its power and is in decline.

However, I’m taking some small actions today that buoy my spirits. They involve my energy-efficient strategy to keep the house cool in hot weather. They aren’t perfect and they won’t work for everyone or every situation, but they generally work for us. Here are the steps I take:

• Open the windows at night to let cool air in
• Close the windows during the day when the outside temperature is higher than the indoor temperature
• Close basement air vents, open air vents elsewhere in house
• Keep the dehumidifier in the basement running
• Turn on the furnace fan to circulate air through the house
• Use other fans as necessary

This strategy moves cooler air in the basement and ground level up to the top floor. The other day it kept our house at 80 degrees or cooler on a 95-degree day.

It’s a bit like a thrifty groundsource cooling solution: naturally cool air in the basement helps to cool the rest of the house. It may also work to some extent in houses without basements.

It may work better in our house than in others, because we share walls with neighboring townhouses. But still, I think it can help many people to minimize their air conditioner use.

Two Minnesota organizations have released an important document, the Statewide Conservation and Preservation Plan. Created by the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment and the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR), the new plan makes policy and research recommendations that are intended to preserve the state’s natural resources in the face of increasing demands and impacts from our society, including climate change. Carbon emission reductions are one of the important goals of the plan.

I haven’t yet had time to do more than a cursory reading of the report’s executive summary and its transportation chapter. Here are a few excerpts from the executive summary:

The Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) funded a unique partnership among the University of Minnesota and the consulting firms of Bonestroo and CR Planning to evaluate the state’s natural resources, identify key issues affecting those resources, and make recommendations for improving and protecting them. More than 125 experts, including University scientists and public and private natural resource planners and professionals, participated in the 18-month effort. …

• The key issues for which recommendations are made in this report are:
• Land and water habitat fragmentation, degradation, loss, and conversion
• Land-use practices
• Transportation
• Energy production and use, and mercury as a toxic contaminant related to energy production

Here are the three recommendations from the Transportation chapter:

• Transportation Recommendation 1: Align transportation planning across state agencies and integrate transportation project development and review across state, regional, metropolitan and county/local transportation, land use and conservation programs.
• Transportation Recommendation 2: Reduce per capita vehicle miles of travel (VMT) through compact mixed-use development and multi- and intermodal transportation systems.
• Transportation Recommendation 3: Develop and implement sustainable transportation research, design, planning, and construction practices, regulations, and competitive incentive funding that minimize impacts on natural resources, especially habitat fragmentation and non-point source water pollution.

The report clearly deserves closer reading and the attention of state leaders. Note especially the involvement of leading state scientists and planners.

For more information, see the official press release and a Star Tribune article.

Earlier this month the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group (MCCAG) released its final report. This group of over 50 stakeholders was formed by Governor Tim Pawlenty to assist in developing a Minnesota Climate Mitigation Action Plan (that’s a lot of capital letters). It has some impressive names on it, including Will Steger, the polar explorer and climate change activist; Prof. David Tilman of the University of Minnesota, one of the most esteemed biologists in the world; and J. Drake Hamilton of Fresh Energy, whom I heard recently give an excellent speech on climate change and our response to it. The group also has many other prominent figures representing business, labor, churches, environmental organizations, and other groups.

I’ve read the executive summary and Chapter 5: Transportation and Land Use and was encouraged by what I found. The group has outlined policies for achieving a nearly 30 percent reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2025 (with 2005 being the base year), and most of the recommendations were approved unanimously.

The public can now enter comments about the report online (deadline is midnight on Sunday, April 27), and I encourage people to do so. At the very least, you can read the executive summary before doing so, though it is not all that short at 16 pages.

It wasn’t entirely clear to me whether the report claimed that enacting the policies would provide a net savings to the state and its people. It seems the policies would save the public money rather than cost them money, judging by the discussion on page 6 of the executive summary. The report does attempt to quantify the cost of various policies. The most cost-effective measure, for example, is improved statewide building codes; that’s the no-brainer. Read the rest of this entry »

Something very encouraging is happening at my church, the United Methodist Church of Northfield, Minnesota. A group of us have formed a church “Green Team” to focus on Christian stewardship of creation.

Another label we might have chosen for the group is “Creation Care Team.” In some ways I like that better, since it connects us more to our Christian roots. For some, the word “green” has negative political connotations.

We had mentioned forming a group such as this for a while, but then rather suddenly a few weeks ago, following an adult education forum on energy usage, we decided to meet informally during and/or following the church’s Wednesday night dinners. Many of us were already attending these dinners, and child care is provided, so the setting seemed to be a natural one. Thus we began to talk about environmental issues each week.

Last Sunday, the team made a group presentation at the Sunday education forum, each taking a few minutes to address a specific topic. One person made an impressive, well-substantiated presentation on “peak oil” - the concept that a peak in oil production has been or will soon be reached. Another, an engineer, spoke on his long-standing connection to energy research, including work on solar power and innovative window designs. He said the obstacles to making significant strides in energy conservation are political rather than technological or economic. Another engineer spoke of his work on our city’s energy task force and his use of a device to monitor real-time electricity usage in his home. Read the rest of this entry »

An excellent article in the January/February issue of MIT’s Technology Review magazine looks at the contributions of University of Minnesota researchers to biofuels research. Writer David Rotman interviewed Vernon Eidman, Stephen Polasky, C. Ford Runge, and David Tilman, U of M faculty members who have examined the economics and ecology of biofuels. “There may be no better place to get a realistic appraisal of biofuels than the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota,” Rotman writes (p. 2).

The article expands beyond this Minnesota connection to look at the work of other researchers and venture capitalists such as Vinod Khosla. It examines future biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol and novel hydrocarbons. The latter would most likely be created by “superbugs,” yet-to-be-discovered or -engineered microbes that would break down feedstocks into hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons would have more energy per unit than ethanol.

Reading about such genetic engineering, my mind always wanders to uncomfortable thoughts about superbugs that have unintended consequences. Should I be so worried?

So much is happening now on the issue of our response to global warming. Here’s a quick overview of a few major developments:

� The United Nations Climate Change Conference is occurring in Bali, Indonesia, December 3-14. The conference will look at changes to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, including the Kyoto Protocol. Here is a description of the goals of the conference, taken from its web site:

What is needed is a breakthrough in the form of a roadmap for a future international agreement on enhanced global action to fight climate change in the period after 2012, the year the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires. The main goal of the Bali Conference is threefold: to launch negotiations on a climate change deal for the post-2012 period, to set the agenda for these negotiations and to reach agreement on when these negotiations will have to be concluded.

A very important meeting indeed.

� The U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee approved a landmark bill that would call for a 70 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, partly through the use of a cap and trade system. (Environmentalists favor cuts of 80 to 90 percent.) The bill would need the support of ten or twelve Republicans in order to pass.

The legislation is sponsored by Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and John Warner of Virginia, the latter a Republican. Warner’s rationale for taking action, stated yesterday, is good: if we don’t take action on this, then China and India can hide behind us, saying that they don’t need to take action. See a New York Times article for more info.

Contact your senators, folks, and tell them to pass this bill. This is one of the most important issues of our times, and we can’t sit on our hands.

� Here in my state, the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group continues to meet and has approved its first recommendations for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, I didn’t see a comprehensive list of those recommendations in the media, but the group is not scheduled to conclude until early February. See the Transportation and Land Use Technical Work Group document for more info on that topic.

I’m happy to say that the City of Northfield, Minnesota, has created a nonmotorized transportation task force, which will exist for one year. The city council approved the resolution creating the task force (2007-051) on Monday, May 7, and the Park and Recreation Advisory Board approved 10 members the next evening. To see the text of the resolution, go to the city council packet for May 7, and see pages 23 and 24.

The task force members include myself, Bruce Anderson, Anne Bretts, Kirsten Cahoon, Dan Kust, Neil Lutsky, Randy Perkins, John Stull, Richard Vanasek, and Peter Waskiw. While some members identify themselves simply as interested citizens, others represent groups and organizations such as RENew Northfield, Northfield Public Schools, Northfield Rotary, the Park Board, St. Olaf College, Carleton College, and the Mill Towns State Trail. One interested citizen is an employee of the Minnesota Department of Transportation, another works for northfield.org, and one, John Stull, is a former mayor of Northfield. We do not as yet have members from neighboring communities such as Dundas and Bridgewater, though we hope that will change.

Here are the mission and goals of the task force, quoted from the resolution: Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a simple idea I’ve been using to reduce energy use in our house. It goes into the “duh” category of energy efficiency: in light fixtures that use multiple light bulbs, use fewer bulbs. For example, in our bathrooms we have light fixtures that use three or four bulbs, the kind that are right above the mirror, where the bulb is not covered by a larger glass fixture. In our larger bathroom, with his-and-hers sinks, we have 8 light sockets! What I’ve done there is simply slightly unscrew the two outer bulbs in each four-bulb fixture, so that they turn off. This leaves only the inner two bulbs on. When bulbs go out, I rotate the burned-out bulbs to the outer sockets.

There is still plenty of light, and by leaving all the bulbs in place you don’t have an unsightly and dangerous empty socket. Besides using less energy, we also save on replacement costs for bulbs.

In other parts of the house, where bulbs are covered by a larger glass fixture, I’ve simply put in one bulb and left the other one or two sockets empty. And there’s still plenty of light.

Of course, when light bulbs go out I generally replace them with compact fluorescent bulbs.

This environmentalist is laughing all the way to the bank - at least until they raise the electric rates.

On March 7 the Star Tribune published a good article by reporter Laurie Blake entitled “Movement grows to get us out of our cars.” Here are the opening paragraphs

With hundreds of miles of off-road trails, Minnesota is already a national leader in recreational biking and walking. But that is no longer enough.

Concerned about obesity and worried about higher gasoline prices and global warming, people are pushing for more day-to-day walking and biking options.

Community workshops on strategies for making it safer and more inviting to walk or bike are drawing some of the largest crowds in the country. A few developments friendly to walking and biking have been built in the past five years.

Now two new programs will aim millions of dollars at getting Twin Cities residents out of their cars. Read the rest of this entry »

President George W. Bush gave his state of the union speech last night, and I was both surprised and not surprised by its contents. I was somewhat surprised by the opening, which was conciliatory toward the Democrats - including an acknowledgment of Nancy Pelosi as the first woman Speaker of the House. The president also expressed hope for the recovery of Democratic Senator Tim Johnson, whose ill health could lead to a return to Republican control of the Senate. Read the rest of this entry »