Cars now trump bikes in Beijing

Towns and cities that accommodate cyclists have always seemed more human and approachable to me. Davis, California comes to mind. Portland, Oregon is bike friendly and Minneapolis, Minnesota (when it's not bone-chllingly cold) is another good example. To me, it's a hopeful sign when people move outside the norm in our petroleum-fueled society and take transportation issues into their own hands (and industriously pedaling feet). 

As Noah Feldman notes in Bloomberg world, Beijing used to be a cyclist's paradise where bikes dominated the travel landscape. It was a less a case of intelligent city planning than pure necessity, as the economy of the region hadn't reached the explosive growth the prevails today and bicycles, for many, were the only affordable mode of transportation. Sadly, streets packed with bicycles have become a quaint memory as poor air quality and an massive influx of automobiles have transformed Beijing from cyclist paradise to nightmare. 

Of recent experiences in the city, Feldman said:

When I went to rent a bike upon my arrival in Beijing last week, people looked at me as though I were mad. As I tooled around the old neighborhoods near the Forbidden City, I was often the only nonmotorized thing in sight. There were bike lanes, all right, but they were populated only by motorbikers and the occasional fellow intrepid Westerner. On the back streets, I saw a few older Chinese cyclists, wearing expressions of thorough disgust. Meanwhile, Boston, like lots of other U.S. cities, has become a reasonable place to bicycle. I still wouldn’t recommend it to the faint of heart, but as long as you bike defensively, you feel like a member of a forward-looking tribe of change agents.

Initiatives are being launched in towns and cities around the world to encourage biking, but Beijing offers a clear example of what happens when automobiles trump bikes.

Electric cars slowly become a reality

Often praised for innovative engineering, but also maligned for over promising and and under delivering, Tesla Motors Inc. has realized two-thirds of their original vision with the release of the Model S. A flurry of reviews, including this one in the Los Angeles Times, put the car up on a pedestal with the likes of the Audi A7 or Mercedes-Benz CLS. But, reviewers also note the issue that continues to dampen enthusiasm for electric vehicles: range anxiety. 

Until we reach a consensus in the U.S. over the need for charging stations, we'll continue to lag behind nations that are aggressively deploying charging stations. The European Union is embarking on a plan to deploy 8 million charging stations by 2020. 

Part of the problem is that a large contingent of our society is in total denial about the reality that resource depletion is inevitable and that peak oil is just around the corner. A post from the Peak Oil  news site summed up the prevailing attitude neatly: 

Who cares about how many wells must be drilled almost constantly to maintain some semblance of increasing production? Costs per well? Who cares? Keeping oil prices high to justify all that extra drilling and investment? We’ll figure something out soon enough….Rapid depletion of new wells in the tight oil formations of the Bakken and elsewhere? Can’t be bothered to worry about that! We’ll just drill more! 

Electric vehicles could be part of our future (rather than the 1/10 of 1 percent of auto sales in the U.S., as is now the case) if we have the foresight and will to create the infrastructure that will allow them to flourish.

Impossible Conundrum: Nuclear Waste Storage

There are a multitude of reasons why nuclear fission reactors make no sense as a part of our energy future (without even thinking about it too much, you've got dwindling supplies of uranium ore; the impossibility of building enough reactors fast enough to cope with climate change challenges; the difficulty finding suitable sources of cooling water for new reactors; the demonstrated problems during heat waves, such as in 2003 when France was forced to shut down reactors when cooling water temperatures became too high; the element of human error that frequently complicates safety issues, as demonstrated mightily during the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster; and on and on).

Significantly, however, nuclear proponents have consistently dodged the issue that presents a glaring indictment of the entire technology: devising a long-term solution for the end of the fuel cycle, finding a way to contain and store the byproducts of 70 years of nuclear fission, much of it still residing in spent fuel pools—a storage solution that has always been deemed temporary, but with the lack of industry initiatives to move cooler fuel to dry casks and the absence of any progress toward a permanent repository, some 72,000 tons of nuclear waste exist with no plan for long-term storage.

Writing for Truth-Out.org, Gregg Levine analyzes the situation, tracing the initial enthusiasm of the nuclear industry to the present-day confusion.

As he points out in the article:

The crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi facility was so dangerous, and remains dangerous to this day, in part because of the large amounts of spent fuel stored in pools next to the reactors but outside of containment - a design identical to 35 US nuclear reactors. A number of these GE Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors - such as Oyster Creek and Vermont Yankee - have more spent fuel packed into their individual pools than all the waste in Fukushima Daiichi Units 1, 2, 3, and 4 combined.

In retrospect, it's completely insane that we've proceeded with nuclear power generation and proponents continue to present the technology as the solution to global warming when the most fundamental concerns—long-term isolation of the radioactive byproducts—have never been suitably addressed.

Unequivocal Evidence that Climate Change is Already Here

The draft summary of a new report, the National Climate Assessment, compiled by a 60-person team of experts, indicates that we're already seeing dire effects from human activities that have led to overall warming of the planet. An article published by Common Dreams asks the question Can US Government's Own Dire and 'Unambiguous' Report on Climate Change Spur Action? 

A raft of studies, predictions, and warnings from the scientific community has failed to produce the actions required to reverse the trend. From the article:

Despite the fact that an unending volume of climate science confirming that dangers of unregulated global carbon emissions has produced a well-observed policy failure, many still cling to the idea that the science will, in the end, play a decisive role in turning the tables on the fossil fuel industry's seemingly iron grip of the legislative process.

The hope is that the report will serve as a wake-up call.

“This could help restart a national conversation about climate change,” said Todd Sanford, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.  “It gives us a road map for climate change. And the road is much bumpier if we continue along a higher emissions pathway.” 

Is anybody listening?

The Greatest Crisis Faced by Humans

As society frets over relatively trivial problems—such as the debt crisis and unemployment—the breakdown of natural systems presents a scenario that could literally bring an end to civilization, says Paul Ehrlich in an article published by the Stanford News Service. But, instead of reacting to the dangers, nations around the world are essentially carrying on as usual. Ehrlich points to the need for a coupling of the human (socio-political-economic) system to the natural world—a relationship that has garnered a great deal of attention in the environmental science community in recent years. 

As Ehrlich describes the situation:

"In the absence of dramatic changes in human behavior relative to Earth's natural systems, gradual population shrinkage, an end to overconsumption by the rich and a redistribution of wealth and opportunity, it is likely the natural system will react in ways that will reduce the scale of the human system in a very unpleasant manner. Debt and employment problems can be solved entirely by negotiation; one cannot negotiate with nature."

Among the groups mentioned in his talk that are attempting to move along a more sustainable path:  Occupy Wall Street, Global Movement to Solve the Climate Crisis, GrowthBusters and MAHB: Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere.

Desalinization Powered by the Sun

Fresh water is scarce worldwide and growing scarcer. This adds even more importance to the achievement of Sundrop Farms, working in South Australia, to accomplish an impressive agricultural feat: using solar desalinization to produce vegetables in the desert. 

As Jonathan Margolis wrote for The Observer: 

A 75m line of motorised parabolic mirrors that follow the sun all day focuses its heat on a pipe containing a sealed-in supply of oil. The hot oil in turn heats nearby tanks of seawater pumped up from a few metres below ground – the shore is only 100m away. The oil brings the seawater up to 160C and steam from this drives turbines providing electricity. Some of the hot water from the process heats the greenhouse through the cold desert nights, while the rest is fed into a desalination plant that produces the 10,000 litres of fresh water a day needed to keep the plants happy. The water the grower gets is pure and ready for the perfect mix of nutrients to be added. The air in the greenhouse is kept humid and cool by trickling water over a wall of honeycombed cardboard evaporative pads through which air is driven by wind and fans. The system is hi-tech all the way; the greenhouse is in a remote spot, but the grower, a hyper-enthusiastic 27-year-old Canadian, Dave Pratt, can rather delightfully control all the growing conditions for his tonnes of crops from an iPhone app if he's out on the town – or even home in Ontario.

 The project is not without controversy. The originator of the process, Charlie Paton, objected to some of the techniques being used by Sundrop and received an undisclosed ex-gratia settlement for cutting ties last February.

The article captures Charlie Paton's parting words:

"We will absolutely keep on at this in our own way," he says, "but I don't really feel that proprietary about it. The heart of the technology is actually a bit of soggy cardboard. You can't patent or protect the idea of evaporative cooling. The idea of using seawater to do that absolutely was a major breakthrough, but again, you can't patent it. The main thing is that it's us that's still picking up the plaudits, and I think that makes Philipp really angry."

In this case, the purely commercial ethic and altruistic ideals operate on entirely different levels. Only by bringing these two viewpoints into closer alignment can the true benefits of this achievement be realized on a global basis.

Realistic Solutions for Combatting Climate Change

Naomi Klein, who is currently in the process of working on a documentary about climate change, is one of the most articulate, well-reasoned spokespersons on the environmental front. Her appearance on Bill Moyer offers a great example of how to address the issue in a persuasive, knowledgeable way.