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Sitting my own little slice of heaven on board this MD-80, I’m still dwelling on an event that happened earlier today. Maybe this is an indicator of how little I fly (or how I usually fly), but I had to check a bag today (due to the TSA’s fear of syrup in large quantities), and in doing so I had to pay Delta Airlines $15.

Now, I’m not really miffed about having to pay the fee, I’m miffed about why I’m paying the fee in the first place. In forking over 15 bucks I’m supporting Delta’s bad business model.

Yes, I just passed judgement on something I know nothing about, but there is ample evidence all around me. Like I said before, I’m on an MD-88, as in MacDonald Douglass, as in a company that hasn’t existed for years, as in a fuel-guzzling jet that is subject to the binge-and-purge oil market much more so than other, newer jets.

Delta decision-makers, with their vast resources must have had the opportunity to phase in a newer jet fleet at somepoint. Of course, the economics of jet-buying may make it much cheaper to service old planes than buy newer, more efficient ones, so the blame may reach past Delta, but in the long run, it is never smart to allow a large part of your business to be dictated by forces that you cannot control.

But is their model really that bad? Or is Delta just another victim of past success. This is a capitalist expand-or-perish society we live in, isn’t it? So Delta’s once tiny fleet had to go farther, fly more, and price lower, right? Different planes, different mechanics, different pilots–more money. And just by being around all these years, the company put itself at risk to supporting retirees some day, didn’t it? (Another reason why government-sponsored healthcare would be the best way to bail out our troubled businesses while passing on benefits to ordinary Americans at the same time, but I digress.)

Back to bags. I want to make it clear that I have no problem paying for the real cost of something. If the airline industry got together as a whole a while before fuel spiked and told us that a bag charge was necessary, I would have supported that. Bags are heavy, after all, and planes have weight restrictions. Charging by weight or by the number of bags is a great way to have consumers pay the real cost of the service that Delta is providing. But tacking these charges on as a way to deflect irresponsible energy consumption is like a cabby charging me a few extra bucks because he drove me downtown in a Tahoe.

Another example of not paying the real cost can be seen on most streets in the nation. I’m talking about parking meters. Even in areas where the charges are considered high the amount motorists pay is nowhere near the actual cost of maintaining that spot in the city. The rest of the cost comes out of tax revenue, so in a city like New York, where many don’t drive, the few are subsidized by the many, and no one has a say in the matter. This happens in other cities that have more drivers. The gulf is not as wide, but it is still distinct. The difference between cheap parking and, say, a homeless shelter–where the few are also subsidized by the many–is that car ownership is a lifestyle choice, poverty is not (Though I can think of more than a few Republican pundits who would like to convince you otherwise).

You can extend the “real cost of” thing further. We’re big fans of hiding the true costs of things in developed society. And if you factor in the environmental costs [read: unrecoupable losses], then we’re actually talking about most of industry. Sure, JetBlue had a more profitable business than Delta, same with Toyota vs GM, same with Wal-Mart vs Sears, but these companies, and many more with them, are all pushing us into the red when it comes to the environment. The problem is when it comes to global warming, there is no negotiation, no bankruptcy protection, no write-downs or divestments. And there is definitely no bailout in sight.

So far, in the month of December, 55 people have accessed my site via google searches using phrases (more than one word).  Now that I think of it, I posted on my ability to track these occurrences in this post a while back.  Anyway, of these 55 searches, 20 of them were eggnog-related; everything from coupon requests, to annual consumption information, to whether it’s safe to use eggnog past the expiration date (No!!).

And though my site does not appear within the first 15 pages when I google ‘eggnog’ by itself, I surmise that my habit of bandying about eggnog in casual conversation seems to have an affect those who search for eggnog and include any other word.  I think that if I can surround the word eggnog with enough prepositions or holiday-themed words such as wire-frame deer or public drunkeness, that I can corner the market on this one.  Christmas 2009, look for me to break into the top 15!

It’s been forever since I cleaned out my comments bin, so I just spent half an hour deleting a couple of months worth of depraved, quasi-legal, unabashedly sexual spam comments.

You think that barnyard-themed adult websites have to clear Victorian literature or Shakespearean sonnet comment spam out of their bins?

Okay, apparently, the EPA now has its own ‘most wanted list’ now, full of baddies who dump, dupe, or spray illegally.  First of all, I want to say how happy I am that eco-villans are no longer just the stuff of James Bond or Captain Planet.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s much more worthwhile to make sure that our farm fields are not tainted or our atmosphere is protected for future generations than it is to catch bank robbers or murders (not making light of murder, but when it comes to the long term survival of our species, a bad atmosphere will be significantly more detrimental than a high murder rate).

But back to the Ten Most Wanted: Green Edition.  If you check out the list now it’s full of, well, criminals, because we’re applying our present social laws and values to populate the list.  Namely, if you dump diesel fuel into the ocean, there’s a law somewhere that says you can’t do that.  So Mr. John Karayannides, who dumped 487 tons of wheat tainted with diesel fuel is a criminal because what he did was illegal, case closed.

It’s interesting to think what this list might look like in 2108.  Picture a greatest hits list of eco-villans running back for the hundred years that the list was in existence.  Who would be on that list?  Remember, the decision makers would probably be using an enlightened 2108 criteria, shaped by lessons learned and scientific insight from the past 100 years.  It’s safe to say that a heck of a lot more would be illegal to do in 2108, than in 2008.  This is not an assumption, this is fact.  If we keep our current practices unchanged, we won’t have a civilization left to wax philosophically about green law in 2108.  So, using the enhanced futuristic criteria, who would be on that list?  Monsanto?  George W. Bush?  The Auto Industry?  Jack Welch?

Jack, and his doomsday device of choice, General Electric, are an excellent example of those hoity-toity treehugger values I’m talking about.  GE (before Jack) dumped tons and tons of toxic pollutants into the Hudson River when it was all good and legal.  But when CERCLA and the Superfund was created in the 80s, not only did it became illegal to do stuff like that, now GE was liable for the clean-up.  Jack and GE fought their mandated clean-up for years and years, delaying the inevitable and leaving millions of people exposed to the conditions that GE had caused. 

Getting back on track, aside from a few people who, apparently would like the tax payers to clean up the toxic mistakes of corporate America, most people I’ve talked to are pretty happy with GE’s fate concerning the Hudson.  Now, this isn’t some ivory tower living, capuccino drinking, soft-handed pinko-leftist society that thouht up CERCLA.  CERCLA was signed into law by Reagan, the most wonderous president ever (provided you’re not poor, a minority, or a breather of air).  So if the social values of the single most admired conservative politician in 50 years were enough to recognise that what GE and hundreds of other companies did was wrong, what do you think will happen in 100 years?

So, yeah, lets make that list, and check it twice.  But we shouldn’t let a little thing like ‘legality’ determine who we think is naughty or nice.

While procrastinating the inevitable completion of the last in a long line of keynote presentations this semester, I happened upon this gem amongst my ‘Rapid Bus’ google results.  From Alan Hoffman, a San Diego transportation consultant.  (Read the whole article here.)

“It’s what I call the ‘AYF Factor.’ Attractive young females are the
canary in the coal mine of public transit. They’re sensitive to safety,
and they want to be in a nice spot. If you draw them in, you are
reaching a broad market. A whole lot of transit systems, when you look
around, you notice certain populations are missing.”

In lieu of a doomsday budget, perhaps the MTA should adopt a new slogan…  The MTA: Where Every Night is Ladies Night.

But seriously, being a young man with a healthy social life (oh so many years ago) I always found it odd that there’d be so many pretty ladies in the bar, and tons more flouncing around the streets, but once I got to the 3 am R train platform it was a sausage party clear on to Brooklyn.  (Later I learned that cabs are pretty much standard for a pretty young thing at that hour.)  Looks like the AYF Factor may have some legs.  Long, silky smooth legs…

It had to happen sometime and it finally has…  The U.N. is going green.  Sort of.  According to the New York Times, the glass curtain of the famous East River Headquarters will be redone with new super-insulated glass and windows that are designed not to open, which, combined with other improvements in the heating and cooling systems of the building will make it 44% more energy efficient.  Quite an improvement!  Of course, the price tag, which is approaching the 2 billion mark for the whole kit and kaboodle, may be seen by detractors (or members of the coal and oil lobbies) as yet another financial argument against the current rash of green buildings going up all over the world.  Especially with the current global meltdown in full swing, the question must be asked (again, probably by the coal and oil lobbies), is this green renovation really worth all the cost?

The short answer is ‘Yes,’ for the simple reason that even though the economic factors are very real to many people, they’re still just made up.  Yes, the whole world works with currency, but when you really think about it, isn’t currency just a value that has been assigned to something that is completely worthless. (Can we breathe or eat gold?)  A building that uses less energy (no matter the cost of production) saves resources with actual long-term value–namely the ability of our atmosphere to provide us with a climate we can live in and air we can breathe (notice I didn’t say oil or coal, which are just as valuable as gold or gravel when you think about it).

And while I’m on the subject of using less energy, let me give you my long answer.  Yes, we’re spending huge amounts of money to make a single building more energy efficient, but what if I told you that there was a completely free way to have made the building much more efficient when it was first built–but that was ultimately not adopted.

It’s true.  The 38 story U.N. Secretariat Building, with it’s striking presence along the East River is a sliver of a structure with its two broad glass sides facing East-West.  This means that every morning, the AC has to kick into overdrive to keep the East Side cool in the face of the rising sun, and then every afternoon, the same has to happen on the West side as the sun sets.  This condition is compouned by the fact that the Secretariat Building is at least seven times as wide as it is deep (if the width is North/South and the depth is East/West).  With a simple 90 degree change in orientation, the two expansive sides could have been shielded from the sun, thus saving untold amounts of money in cooling costs.

Of course, the building was built to be an architectural statement in the heady years just after World War II, where we’d won an entire war mostly on the strength of our technology (not knocking American servicemen, but if you took a combat pilot out of his P-51 and put him in a biplane he wouldn’t be nearly as effective).  Also, at that time fuel and power seemed endless, the concept of pollution was not what it is now, and thus, energy consumption was not high on anyone’s list.

But it sure is now…  Taking advantage of passive design techniques (like building orientation or the lay of the land) represents the cheapest (but least flashy) way we can save energy, and thus our way of life as we know it.  The Secretariat Building is a permanent reminder of our pesky tendacy to try to dominate nature, not to embrace it.

Apparently, of the 50,000 or so chemicals commonly used in this country almost all of them have not been tested for, ahem, negative health effects.

In twenty years, when we all have cancer of the digestive tract from eating too many Doritos, I guess we’ll know why.  (Or maybe we still won’t!)

But seriously folks, take a couple of research or scientific graduate classes in a hand-full of universities and have this be part of their curriculum for a semester.  Who knows what they’ll find lurking…

I read a New York Times article over the weekend (which I’ve been trying to find for about ten minutes without success) about how it’s getting increasingly more difficult to sift through all the trumpeting green messages out there.  Indeed, even after you tune out the plain old greenwashers, even if you ignore advertising completely, it’s still a tough job to try to live sustainably.

The article raises some good points. In addition to discussing the din of green marketing, it profiles several people who are faced with such conundrums as: New Hybrid or a used car with good gas mileage to save the extra energy that would have gone into producing a new one?  And…  Recyclable milk containers or reusable glass ones that need to be washed repeatedly and took much more energy to make?

And what I have to say about that is…  At that point, pick something and be happy with it already!  The way I see it.  Living sustainably is like having a balanced stock portfolio.  You try to make the best decisions that you can as much as you can.  But no matter how much research you do.  No matter how many people you talk to about carbon footprints, or embedded energy, or anything like that, you’re always going to find out that you were wrong about something.  The best thing that you can do is to try, and to keep trying.  And while you’re trying, keep reading.

As one person, none of your choices are going to have a drastic impact on the condition of the planet.  However, your attitude will have a much bigger impact, as even if you aren’t doing the best job at living more sustainably, you might impress your values upon your neighbor, or the town you live in, or a local member of government.

A couple of summers ago I bought a book on biodiesel and without even getting a chance to read it, loaned it to my roommate, who wanted her cousin-in-law to read it.  Her cousin-in-law is a Connecticut State Senator and see what came of that?  Though I can’t take full credit, it’s nice to think that my choice as a consumer played a small part in helping to reduce Connecticut’s total emissions.

Blogged with Flock

Is that a word?  Just googled it, guess it is…

Okay, now that the mic-check is over, I’ve got something to say.

I’ve been reading a lot about biomimicry lately.  Biomimicry, in a nutshell, is looking to nature for cues on how to design something.  The Wright brothers did a lot of this when they studied birds for years before building the first airplane, termite colonies offer us a lot to learn about temperature and humidity management, and infomercial producers have a lot to thank to the Venus Fly Trap.  But I’m not here to wax philosophic about whale fin-shaped fan blades, or bug-shaped cars.

In my web-travels the other day, I was introduced to this video:

Pretty cool, eh?  Solar towers look to be made of much cheaper materials then conventional photo-voltaic solar energy collectors.  Looks to be just a bunch of concrete and plastic sheeting (with a very expensive turbine inside, of course.  I’m fairly certain that it’s pretty expensive in its own right, but I’m positive that it earns out a lot faster then a PV system.

However, as I was checking the thing out, it struck me.  There’s a huge concrete stack outside of my bedroom window.  And more throughout the city.  In fact, they’re ubiquitous in this great country of ours.  So why not start building these puppies all over the place, or converting existing stacks in buildings that have outlived their usefulness.  Take an industrial complex with a couple of huge stacks, use the roof of the buildings to collect heat (hell, even plant low maintenance seedums under the plastic canopy and you’ve got yourself a lot better something from nothing.  The trick would be to retro-fit the stack to allow the air inside, house the turbine, and still not impinge upon the structural integrity.   Easy problem to solve, engineers love challenges.

Or better yet, think of this structure.  (Photos courtesy of this very cool airport.) Imagine building the center of this thing hollow and using the very air that is superheated on the tarmac around it to power all its systems.  Sure, you’d have to build it a little bigger and keep the area around it clear, but if you’re already building the thing, you might as well make it work for you too.

Bout time someone finally turned the stack effect to our advantage.

I’ve been on the fence about hybrid cars for a while.  Not that I don’t think they’re a great leap forward from SUVs, rather, I’m worried about how the auto makers are selling them.  The story of car ownership is often marked by a series of buck-passings, and make-it-throughs as a car goes from owner to owner.  “Gotta make it to the end of the month for the oil change.”  “These shocks need to last through the winter before I replace them.”  “That dealer has no idea how much work this car is going to need before they can re-sell it, lucky it started when I went to trade it in.”  Any car owner who’s ever dealt with a car that is over 8 years old can probably sympathize with at least one of those phrases.  And since hybrids have only been around for about that time (about the car equivalent of the required colonoscopy age), only now are we as a society about to be faced with this question:

What happens when a hybrid gets old?

When my friend Johnny and I were younger (circa 2002-2003), his parents went away for a week, leaving us both to watch the house.  They left him with one simple request, try to sell his mom’s old car, a 1990 Honda Civic with upwards of 150,000 miles on it.  As Johnny and I were typical lazy guys, we spent the week lounging about, drinking beers, grilling hamburgers, and goofing off.  The day before his parents were to return, Johnny realized that he’d done absolutely nothing to sell the car.  In an effort to show that he’d at least accomplished something he drove it out on the lawn, and put a “For Sale” sign up in the window.  Now, to truly appreciate the denouement of this tale, you have to know that Johnny lived on a dead-end off of Route 9.  Even though his house was pretty close to the main road, it was at such an angle that no one could even see the car unless they were driving down his road.  And since it was a dead-end, you only drove down there if you lived there.  He knew that putting the car in the yard probably wasn’t going to move it.  He’d need to make flyers, go to Kinkos, hit up grocery stores and community boards all over the place.  But we were drunk at 2 in the afternoon with party plans that would carry us into tomorrow.  There was no way we’d be able to start any of that before his parents returned.

By the time they got home the next day Johnny had received three offers on the car.  In the eyes of his mother, Johnny looked almost responsible.  But, as we learned from that experience, even when the odds are stacked against it, a 12 year-old Honda for $1000 sells itself.  Any one who knows anything about cars knows that they’ve got another 100,000 miles of light-maintenance driving before the car really goes south.  For an initial investment of $1000, that’s a bargain.

Would the above scenario apply to a hybrid car?  Probably not.  Toyota offers an 8 year/100,000 mile warranty on the Prius, but take a look around the next time you’re out driving.  The amount of Toyotas on the road that are over 8 years old or have over 100,000 miles on them is probably not a lot different from the amount that have 150,000 miles on them, or 200,000.  The point I’m making is that the Prius may be a little too well engineered for its own good.  Mechanics have a hard enough time dealing with imports (Ever need to get work done on a Volvo?), so imagine approaching your average garage with a twelve year-old hybrid and a problem anywhere in the electricial system.  The battery pack alone costs between $4000 and $5000, and that’s just for the part.  Even if they could afford one, would a 16 year-old kid want to take on the Russian Roulette-like responsibility of owning a 12 year old Prius?  And as more and more hybrids get old, who’s taking care of all these spent battery packs?  That’s a lot of dead cells to properly dispose of.  Are we sure that we’re doing this as well as it could be done?

None of my resale qualms are really about the hybrids themselves.  Rather, I believe that the fault is not in the product, but in the distribution.  The business model, namely ownership, that works so well for traditional automobiles is a completely irresponsible one for the distribution of hybrids.

It wasn’t until I read a book called Natural Capitalism, that I really felt better about hybrid ownership, and that there was a win-win way that would benefit car companies, customers, and the environment.  In the book, the authors postulate that the business model that works for selling copier machines to offices should be adopted by the auto industry.

When Xerox first made their 914 model copier, it was a revolutionary product in terms of efficiency, materials used, time invested, and many other measurable aspects.  However, it cost six to seven times more than it’s competition.  Instead of changing the product, Xerox invented a new business model to be competitive.  They leased the copiers at substantially lower cost to the consumer and instead charged a per-copy fee for copies over 2000 per month to supplement their revenue.  Obtaining a copier became easy for the consumer, and they only had to pay if they used it heavily.  In other words, Xerox didn’t sell copiers, they sold a service.  If a copier broke, they sent someone to fix it.  Old copiers were returned to Xerox, who was responsible for the proper disposal.  This did a lot to spur Xerox to make a better product.  Since they had to handle maintenance, it paid to make a copier that wouldn’t break down all the time.

Now let’s apply this model to the Toyota Prius.  Instead of selling you a Prius, Toyota leases it to you long term.  This means that all maintenance is handled by Toyota, all replacement parts are handled by them, and when you’re done with the car, you hand it back to Toyota.  Instead of a free warranty (which lasts for a limited amount of time and ultimately bumps up the sale price of a car), the owner pays a per-month maintenance fee, which lasts the lifetime of the vehicle.  If a car is given back to Toyota, they could lease it again and the new owner would pick up the maintenance.  Toyota could charge less for the car initially because they would know that each car sold would be a guaranteed revenue stream for the next ten years or beyond.  And because of this guaranteed stream of cash, it would be incredibly advantageous for Toyota to build a car that rarely broke down and lasted forever (which is something that they already do anyways), as they’d keep making money on the cars as long as they were on the road.

And this would work for any car, with any car company.  Imagine that twelve year-old car out on Johnny’s lawn.  We could have driven down to the nearest Honda dealership and given it back.  Sure, we’d get nothing for it in trade, but I’m pretty sure that at least $1000 dollars of the price of the car would have been knocked off when it was new.  Plus dealers could probably cut some sort of deal that would hack a chuck of the down-payment cost off a newer vehicle if you kept with their brand or stayed with their lot.  How’s that for encouraging customer loyalty…

So now, using this model, a twelve year-old Prius sitting on a car-lot with an ultra-low lease cost, the typical maintenance fee, and no looming threat of an electrical apocalypse looks like a much better buy for young driver.  Pile on the fuel efficiency and sweeten the pot even more.  And what does Toyota care if you lease new or old.  They’re still making money off of a car that rolled off the assembly line before the driver was in kindergarten.

I’m sure there are parts of this cockamamie scheme that I haven’t thought of, details that I’ve neglected, etc, etc, etc, but the underlying point is this.  To make aging hybrid cars appeal to a wider range of people, more action and attention is required from the companies that built them.  However this happens, it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.