Saudi Arabias US Backed Nuclear Program

I guess this is really for anyone out there who still wonders whether we are running out of oil. Saudi Arabia has now rejected Bush's request to amp up oil production 3 times (well on the levels that he has requested anyway) and now it looks like the US is going to help the Saudis build a nuclear power program.

So riddle me this Batman, if oil prices are through the roof, and there is enough of it to bathe in and no end in sight, why not amp up production and cash in a bit?  Furthermore, if you've got more oil than you can imagine, why the move to Nuclear?

Unreal.

Live Sustainably

Dave

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They're Trying to Kill The Electric Car....Again!

For those of you who have seen Who Killed The Electric Car you already know that the EV1 was made because of the California Zero Emission Mandate tht called for each car maker to make a certain number of electric cars. The car companies sued the state of California and had the mandate repealed, and the cars were destroyed.

Well, believe it or not, it's happening all over again. CARB (California Air Resources Board) just voted to drop the previous requirement of 25,000 EVs by 2014 to a little over 5000. That's nearly a 70% reduction!!! What are they pushing in it's place? Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Absolutely unbelievable! You can read about it here if you want more info. And feel free to email the board and tell them what you think of their decision here.

In the meantime, here's a speech that a friend of mine Paul Scott gave at the CARB hearing yesterday. It's quick, well thought out, and I think more than makes it's point.

Live Sustainably (and get an EV anyway)

Dave

It’s been about 5 years since EV proponents stood here and unsuccessfully pleaded with this board to keep the original ZEV program numbers for electric cars. So what has happened in those 5 years?

According to the World Health Organization, tens of thousands of Americans died as a result of auto related pollution in each one of those 5 years.

Since 2003, the US has spent over a trillion dollars for foreign oil. The burn rate is well over a billion dollars a day and climbing fast.

The price of gas 5 years ago was $1.40. It’s now $4.00. Even the oil industry has agreed that peak oil will occur within the coming decade. Bush’s multiple entreaties to the Saudis over the past three months to increase production have all been denied. In times of both record prices and record demand for oil, the only possible reason that the Saudis will not increase production is because they cannot. According to Matthew Simmons in, “Twilight In the Desert”, if the Saudis have peaked, the globe has peaked.

We’ve spent close to a trillion dollars fighting a war in Iraq, and we all know we’re there because of the oil under their ground. The Chinese are buying oil contracts all over the world with the intent to lock up as much of this resource as possible for their own growing needs.

Over the past 5 years, the scientific evidence of climate change has become widely accepted, and according to NASA’s James Hansen, we are rapidly approaching a tipping point, after which, we cannot stop significant climate change.

If 100% of the vehicles sold every year were ZEVs, it would still take over 20 years to convert the American fleet to zero emission. The auto industry sold about 85 million vehicles in the US over the past 5 years. Not one of those vehicles was Zero Emission.

Carmakers say they cannot build EVs fast enough to meet the goals in the current regulation, but I’ll remind you that in 1941, the entire auto industry switched inside of 12 months to making tanks and planes for the war effort. I submit that the problems we are facing today are every bit as crucial as then.

The consequences of delaying implementation of ZEVs, means more Americans will die from pollution, we will move closer to the devastating tipping point of climate change, and more billions of our dollars will go out of the country, with much of that money going to buy the bombs and the bullets that will kill our soldiers.

The decision you are making today is historic. Whether you choose to continue down the hydrogen highway on the hopes that fuel cells will solve these problems is a huge gamble. The clock is ticking, however, and I’ll remind you that the capital you are using in this gamble is the environment, our national security and human lives.

I ask that you please vote with this in mind.

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Bush Calls For Americans To Embrace EVs

Seems to me that if Bush has jumped on the bandwagon, we must really be in trouble.

Welcome to the Party!

Live Sustainably

Dave

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Shell's CEO Says Peak OIl Is 7 Years Away

In a startling bit of honesty, Shells CEO Jeroen van der Veer wrote an inter company memo in which he states that Peak Oil is a mere 7 years away. It's an amazing read, not because it is so startling in what is says, but because it's coming from a source who should know what he's talking about and who has nothing to gain by saying this, and everything to lose. And yet, there are still those who will say that he's off his rocker. Mark my words.

Live Sustainably

Dave

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LA's Transpo Chief Drives A Hummer?

"Lead By Example"

I posted this article a while back elsewhere but I think it's worth revisiting. Los Angeles has a huge problem with smog and traffic congestion and yet Jaime de la Vega, LA's Transportation Chief drives a Hummer (or did, not surprisingly I have been able to find no follow up to this article). It's a great snippet of how far we need to go, and a good example of do as I say not as i do mentality. I think my favorite part is when the guys assistant tries to explain that it's not the largest Hummer they make. Classic. We need more journalists like this who will ask uncomfortable questions to illicit truthful responses.

Transit boss' SUV is too big to ignore

January 21, 2007
LA Times Corespondent Steve Lopez

Questions about the Hummer would be off-limits. That's what the mayor's press secretary told me as we headed to a City Hall meeting with transportation chief Jaime de la Vega, whose vehicle of choice seems odd for a man in his position.

No way, I told Matt Szabo. How can I not ask about it?

What de la Vega drives is a private matter, argued Szabo.

No it isn't, I told him. It's now a public matter, and I don't know how Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa can have any faith in a transit chief who drives a 2-ton monster in a city with notorious traffic and smog.

It's like having a surgeon general who smokes unfiltered Camels while snacking on Cheetos.
I felt a little sorry for Szabo, a decent enough chap who had arranged the meeting after I complained that de la Vega didn't answer my call.

But not sorry enough to pull punches. What's with the Hummer? I asked as soon as we were seated in de la Vega's office.

De la Vega gave me a cold stare, his lips sealed. Then he looked at Szabo, who said we were there to talk transportation.

I asked about de la Vega's background and he dropped the mummy act, telling me he'd gotten a master's in urban planning from UCLA. He was also Mayor Dick Riordan's traffic chief and a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board.

So you'd think he'd know better.

I just can't get past it, I told de la Vega. A Hummer?

And then I noticed a quote on his wall from Rosa Parks.

"Every person must live their lives as a model for others."

I read the quote to de la Vega, who clammed up again.

"Should we all drive Hummers?" I asked.

Silence.

Szabo, meanwhile, looked like he might have some kind of a breakdown. He argued that de la Vega's vehicle is not the largest in the Hummer line.

"It's smaller than a Yukon," he said.

Wonderful. So is the Queen Mary.

The polar caps are melting, we are at war in the oil fields and Mr. Transit is driving a hog that says who cares?

De la Vega said he's looking at everything from charging people to drive in congested areas to creating one-way thoroughfares to synchronizing every light in the city.

But the larger plan is to "maintain a first-class bus system" and get the Exposition light-rail line going, extend the Gold Line to the San Gabriel Valley and the Eastside, take the Green Line to the airport and the Red Line to the sea.

Sounds lovely, except that the city doesn't have $27 billion sitting around, and even if it did, the mayor hasn't sold me on whether rail would be the best use of that money in a city where people go in a million different directions to get here and there. Even at that, it would take years to get any of those lines in place, and we've got a crisis now.

De la Vega said the city is looking at twisting the governor's arm and turning up the heat on Washington as well as considering a sales tax or a bond.

"There is no magic wand," he said.

Yeah, no kidding. There's not even a formal transit plan for the city to begin debating.

It would help, I told de la Vega and Szabo, if the mayor and other public officials stopped taking huge campaign checks from developers and rubber-stamping their projects until we get some of the transit in place.

Villaraigosa, if you ask me, is now testing the limits of big ambition. How much more might he have accomplished by now if he hadn't devoted so much time to a school takeover bid that so far has been a disaster? We didn't elect him to run the school district, and he already has a full plate with homelessness, housing and public safety.

Before he takes on the schools, too, he should use his popularity and gift of gab to step up on traffic, which affects millions of people every day and is redefining our lives, wasting time, money and productivity. An uninspired City Council is asleep at the wheel on this issue, by the way, offering the mayor little or no help.

But it's Villaraigosa who should use his million-dollar smile to charm people out of their vehicles at least one day a week, encouraging them to use transit, bicycles, carpools and flexible work schedules. And given the depth of its problems, Los Angeles and the surrounding region ought to have the smartest and most enviro-friendly innovations in the world rather than having to read about what works in London or Bangkok, Argentina or Brazil.
I don't want to hear that it can't be done, and I can't think of a better way for City Hall to show it's serious than to have Villaraigosa take de la Vega's Hummer and ship it to the troops in Iraq, where it might come in handy.

Or he could trade it to the governor for a bigger chunk of state transit funding. I told him if they can't work a deal, I'll be happy to drive his tank back to the dealer and trade it in on a nice Honda or something.

De la Vega didn't respond, but I could tell he was beginning to see the wisdom of unloading this thing.

All right, I told him. We'll trade vehicles for a week. He can gradually warm to the idea of a car that's smaller than Half Dome, and I'll be high enough off the ground to get a better look at just how awful the traffic has become.

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Oil, it's not just for transpo anymore

"We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on." -Kurt Vonnegut

Most people think of their cars when they think of the world running out of oil. Well, it's time to think again. While transportation is the main use for imported oil in this country imagine what life would be like without all the things in this picture.


Taken from a National Geographic article entitled The End of Cheap Oil it shows a family of 7 from Stowe, Ohio sitting on their front lawn in front of all the things in their house that were made using petroleum based plastics. Now you may be able to adapt to riding your bike as opposed to driving your car, but seriously, no large yellow rubber balls? I'm sellin' my car.

Live Sustainably

Dave

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The Story of Channukah - A Modern Day Parable

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

I recognize that the story of Channukah is not the average fodder for a sustainability blog, but sometimes, what's old is new again.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the story, here it is in a nutshell. Around 2200 years ago Antiochus IV, fresh from an unfinished war with Egypt and fairly peeved about a rebellion in Jerusalem, ordered his army to ransack the Jewish Temple and force the jews to partake in idol worship. A small group of rebels led by Judah Maccabee and his brothers fled to the hills and basically engaged in guerrilla warfare eventually turning back and defeating the 40,000 plus army and retaking the city. Sort of "300" with a menorah if you will. When they finally got back into the temple, they found that the menorah, which was a ceremonial lamp, had only enough pure oil for one day. They lit it, and the oil lasted for eight days, just long enough for them to make more.

It's interesting to me that after all these years, we're sort of right back where we started from. Back in the day the problem was that Antiochus had sacked the city and ruined the temple. Well today, the problem is that we have sacked the planet and ruined our environment. By burning fossil fuels with reckless abandon, we have not only altered the atmosphere, but we have created political instability and caused peoples all over the world to suffer so that we may have cheap power.

They found one nights worth of oil and miraculously it lasted for eight nights. We're presently at or nearing peak oil. And for those who don't agree, ask yourself this. If it takes 100,000,000 years for oil to form, and we are pulling it out of the ground at an ever increasing rate, isn't the question when we are going to run out, not if. And if that is the question, perhaps we should not hope for an "8 day" miracle, but demand that our government work towards switching us to renewable energy now before it does run out.

So all that seems a little dark, I hear ya, dark, but true. But the greatest part of the story to me is that a small group of plucky brothers led an untrained militia and defeated one of the greatest armies on the planet. Why? Because they were fighting for something that they believed in, something they were passionate about, something important. That to me is what makes the Channukah story relevant today. There are huge seemingly insurmountable obstacles ahead of us, but if we band together and show others the way, our voices will be heard. It's going to take action, and I believe that we have not only the will but the power to see this through.

Who knows, in 2000 years, maybe they'll add on a postscript to the story and talk about how close we came.

Thanks to my Dad for sending me "A Green Menora" by Arthur Waskow that got me thinking along this track.

Live Sustainably

Dave

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