Let them ride bikes  

The SMH has a report on a French plan to make bicycles widely available throughout Paris for short term rental - a little like a modernised version of the scheme in Amsterdam

On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance the city's image as a greener, quieter, more relaxed place. By the end of the year, there should be 20,600 bikes at 1450 stations - or about one station every 250 metres across the entire city. Based on experience elsewhere - particularly in Lyon, France's third-largest city - regular users of the bikes will ride them almost free.

"We think it could change Paris's image - make it quieter, less polluted, with a nicer atmosphere, a better way of life," said Jean-Luc Dumesnil, an aide to the Mayor, Bertrand Delanoe. Anthonin Darbon, director of Cyclocity, which operates Lyon's program and won the contract to run the one in Paris, said 95 per cent of the roughly 20,000 daily bicycle rentals in Lyon are free because of their length.


Cyclocity is a subsidiary of the outdoor advertising behemoth JCDecaux. London, Dublin, Sydney and Melbourne are reportedly considering similar rental programs.
The Cyclocity concept evolved from utopian "bike-sharing" ideas tried in Europe in the 1960s, most famously in Amsterdam. But in the end, the bikes were stolen and became too beaten-up to ride.


JCDecaux developed a sturdier, less vandal-prone bike, along with a rental system to discourage theft: each rider must leave a credit card or refundable deposit of about €150 ($250). In Lyon, about 10 per cent of the bikes are stolen each year, but many are later recovered. To encourage people to return bikes quickly, rental rates rise the longer the bikes are out. In Paris, for instance, renting a bike will be free for the first half-hour, €1 for the next, €2 for the third, and so on.


In a complex, 10-year public-private partnership deal, JCDecaux will provide all the bikes and build the pick-up/drop-off stations. Each will have racks connected to a centralised computer that can monitor each bike's condition and location. In exchange, Paris is giving the company exclusive control over 1628 city-owned billboards.

Crikey has an interesting look at "The water diet", noting that much of the water you use is via the food you eat (or waste). Crikey also thinks the oil companies are up to some funny business at the petrol pump.

So you think that your shower bucket is saving the planet. Think again. Most of your water waste is around your waist.

Through eating and drinking, the average Briton consumes about 3,400L of water a day, according to Hidden Waters, a recent report from Waterwise. Australian irrigation scientist Professor Wayne Meyer reckons it's more like 3,000L per meal, or 10,000L of water a day in the Western world.

Everything you eat and drink contains "embedded water" – the so-called hidden water it takes to bring produce from the field to your table. But not all foods are created equal. It takes a lot of water to grow food, and then "much more water to feed and service the animals that we eat", says Waterwise's head of research Joanne Zygmunt.

Which means vegetarians have a right to feel smug: a leafy diet contains about half the embedded water content of a meat-lovers regime. Not that anything is ever that simple. There's methane output too of course, and here, some might venture that vegetarians are bigger contributors.

Natural rainfall (green water) plays a large part in embedded water content – only 15% of crops produced worldwide are irrigation-fed -- but 70% of global freshwater withdrawals are for irrigation (blue water). And in Australia in 2003-04, the most extensive use of irrigation in agriculture was for pasture for grazing (ABS), not for crops. Despite being the driest continent on earth, Australia is a net exporter of embedded water. Water that we don't have.

So how do you trim your water use? The Crikey Water Diet can help. Our motto: A moment on the lips, a life of bucket trips. To kick off, here are some general rules, with expert commentary from Kelvin Montagu of the Cooperative Research Centre for Irrigation Futures.

...

Hidden Waters provides a useful starter table: Global average embedded water content of some major agricultural products (Data from Chapagain and Hoekstra 2004). Caffeine addicts may want to look away now.

Grist has a look at Goldman Sachs' move into the Texas wind power market. On the subject of wind, MonkeyGrinder has some calming thoughts on those who oppose wind developments.

What is Goldman Sachs doing in rural Texas? Probably some of its bankers have wondered that themselves, when they find they're three hours from the nearest latte.

One of Goldman's subsidiaries, Houston-based Horizon Wind Energy, is constructing a $600 million, 400-megawatt wind farm in the boonies west of Dallas. Financiers of other wind-power projects and explorations, spread across central and west Texas, include Wells Fargo; JPMorgan Chase; Macquarie, Australia's largest investment bank; and John Deere's credit division, which already has close ties to rural America.

To some extent, the lure of wind for such financial powerhouses is obvious. Bankers are always looking for high-growth sectors for investment or loans. Wind fits the bill, as the fastest-growing energy segment in the world. In Texas -- which last year passed California to become the largest wind-power producer in the U.S. -- the boom is sometimes likened to the gold rush. Energy giants such as BP and Shell are investing heavily too.

From the perspective of local developers, the interest is more than welcome. "It's nice to have steady financial backing," says Randy Sowell, a wind developer in West Texas. His company, Austin-based Fremantle Energy, has entered into a joint venture with Macquarie to start up wind and renewable-energy projects in the U.S. "You need to have that substantial muscle behind you to have that commitment."

...

Could the big boys lose interest? Texas may be poised for a slowdown. Not only are there turbine shortages, but construction of transmission lines has not kept up with growth -- so even though Texas needs all the energy new wind farms could provide (especially with plans for a number of TXU coal plants recently scuttled), the immediate potential of wind is limited. Another problem is that the Panhandle, with some of the fiercest winds in the state, is on a different grid system from the rest of Texas.

"We're getting ready to hit the wall on transmission all over the state by early next year or the end of this year," says Sowell. That's a problem the financial giants may not be able to buy their way out of.

The Energy Blog has a look at a Dispatchable Wind turbine System (which wouldn't help in West Texas give its grid connectivity problems but is an important piece of the global clean energy grid puzzle). Jim also has a look at a new wind turbine design from Sandia.

General Compression, Inc., the pioneer of dispatchable wind power, has successfully closed an initial round of funding for over $5,000,000. These funds will be used to accelerate the development of General Compression's revolutionary dispatchable wind technology.

The company focuses on collecting energy from the wind as compressed air, storing the compressed air in pipes and underground geologic features, and expanding the air on demand to make electricity. The company anticipates that this technology will lead to a dispatchable wind energy platform that will offer utility scale energy parks creating wind energy on demand at competitive prices.

Dispatchable wind energy can be sold when prices are high, and stored when prices are low.

Conventional turbines need to protect their generators from accepting too much energy. When the wind blows over 10 meters/second (m/s) most turbines feather their blades to begin shedding incoming wind energy. When wind speeds reach 15 m/s, most turbines stop accepting any new energy, and at 25-30m/s the machines shut down.

Their system is not limited in its output like a generator, and can accept much higher energy inputs and rotor speeds. In windy sites, this means that for the same foundation, tower, and blades, energy production can be substantially improved.

When the wind blows, lift is created on the turbine blades, spinning the compressor inside the nacelle. The compressor pumps air to over 100 atmospheres of pressure and sends the air down the tower into an underground network of high-pressure pipes.

The high-pressure pipeline network collects and stores 6-12 hours of energy. The energy collection system doubles as a storage system.

Electricity is very difficult and expensive to store on a utility scale. Capacitors can store energy efficiently on a scale of seconds, and flywheels and open flow batteries can store energy for minutes, but only compressed air and pumped hydro store energy efficiently on a time scale of days or months. If the project is sited near a geologic feature such as a salt dome, aquifer, limestone cavern, or depleted gas field, energy storage times can exceed weeks and even months.

Their expanders, that drive generators, are rated at four the power output of their compressors, greatly increasing the nameplate capacity of our windplants, and enabling us to offer the lowest installed cost per kW of any wind technology in the world.

Conventional wind farms need to reserve transmission rights based on their nameplate generating rating, even though on average they will only use 20-40% of this transmission capacity. This results in over-paying for transmission, and in over-allocating resources to the wind farm. Grid congestion during high wind periods can lead to curtailments in which conventional wind farms are ordered to shut down some or all of their energy production. The anticipation of grid congestion delays some wind farm projects for years until grid upgrades are completed.

A Dispatchable wind farm can be configured at twice the rating of a conventional wind farm and still fit through the same transmission corridor. It can also use 100% of available transmission capacity during peak price periods, and store energy rather than waste it during periods of curtailment. By shifting the time when power is sold, the wind project can sell power on peak at a higher price, be more compatible with the needs of the grid, and become eligible for capacity payments. This solution will double the profitability of wind farms.

Since intra-day peak and off-peak prices often differ by a factor of 4, substantial value is lost by not achieving peak prices. General Compression wind farms can be configured to earn peak energy prices, boosting wind farm revenues substantially.

TreeHugger reports the mayor of Austin, Texas wants to put in place a V2G system - see "Austin Powers Up Green: 'Plug In My Hybrid Baby'". I guess we shouldn't expect anything less of Bruce Sterling's hometown.

Via Wall Street Journal (subscription only) comes news that the Mayor of Austin Texas has a formal plan to have the entire city integrate plug-in hybrid vehicles into a load balancing scheme designed to satisfy daytime peak power demands. The kernel is this: Austin gets a good chunk of power from the Texas wind, which peaks it's output at night. Cars go home, charge up overnight; owners drive to work and plug back in to the local grid, sharing the wind-accumulated juice to help light and cool the daytime work experience. This sounds a lot like the scheme RMI has been talking about for a decade, with fuel cell powered vehicles sharing hydrogen power with the grid during the commuter workday. Might even go back as far as the 1960's with 'Plug-In, Turn-On, Walk-Out.' ...

"Austin, a city of 719,000 and the capital of Texas, is becoming one of the nation's biggest promoters of plug-ins. To give the market a push, it has launched a campaign -- called Plug-In Partners -- to line up people to buy the cars when they reach the market. Organizers say they've secured 8,000 pledges from individuals and organizations around the country to buy one when they're introduced".

"Plug-ins will have a niche market," says Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute, which represents the oil industry. "They're certainly not going to replace the family car." [Thanks for letting us know Red.]

"The city will have to install a computer-monitoring system to make sure the utility doesn't leave car owners without enough battery juice".

"This two-way process could be used on the nation's electric-power grid, according to a study released in January by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The national grid has enough spare capacity at night to fuel as many as 180 million electric cars, which is equivalent to 84% of the nation's current automobile fleet, the study says. Fuel for cars powered by electricity would cost customers only about 30% as much as fuel for gasoline-powered cars, the study estimates".

With the right incentives, parking lots and garages will take on an entirely new role in urban culture. Now we need to to make some serious progress with vehicle batteries: perhaps like this company is doing.

TreeHugger also has a post on "Canadian Tar Sands: a Hydrocarbon Hurricane".

A million barrels of oil per day are made from Alberta's tar sands. It is a difficult process; According to Andrew Nikiforuk in his brilliant article in Explore:

It is a mess of heavy tar trapped in sand and clay that requires Herculean engineering efforts to upgrade into oil. "You know you are at the bottom of the ninth when you are schlepping a tonne of sand to get a barrel of oil" notes CIBC chief economist Jeff Rubin. It uses enough natural gas to heat three million houses, and even oil analysts consider the use of a clean fuel to make a dirty one poor alchemy, its "turning gold into lead"

It is, like all of Nikiforuk's work, extremely well written and totally terrifying. Explore is a sort of Canadian Outside Magazine and its content is unfortunately not available online, silly because they are so proud of saving 200,000 pounds carbon by printing on 100% recycled paper and could save a lot more if they sold it by the byte, and real shame, as this is a shocking and important article.

The toxic tailing ponds hold more contaminated water than will be behind the Three Gorges dam. People downstream are dying of cancer. The highway into Fort McMurray is the most dangerous in Canada. The article concludes:

"The tar sands are a man-made hydrocarbon hurricane still gathering irrational force. Given that only three percent of the accessible bitumen has been recovered to date, experts agree that one of the most destructive energy projects on the planet is on a roll.

These days, whenever I fill up my gas tank, I think of toxic tailing ponds, Highway 63, dead caribou, cancer-ridden elders, weather-making clouds of carbon- and 50 more projects to come.

I have started walking more."

Back at The Energy Blog, Jim reports that BP Solar has announced two mega solar cell plants.

P Solar today announced that it has begun constructing two mega cell plants, one at its European headquarters in Tres Cantos, Madrid and the second at its joint venture facility, Tata BP Solar, in Bangalore, India.

For phase 1 of the Madrid expansion, BP Solar is aiming to expand its annual cell capacity from 55 MW to around 300 MW. The Bangalore expansion could add another 300 MW to BP Solar's total capacity. The new cell lines use state-of-the-art screen printing technology,much of it proprietary to BP Solar. By fully automating wafer handling,the lines will be able to handle the very thinnest of wafers available and ensuring the highest possible quality. ...

This announcement brings BP's total announced capacity to 690 MW, second behind Sharp. Sharp currently has three expansions underway which will bring their capacity to 820 MW per year.

These plants will bring us closer to being able to produce PV power at costs nearer that of conventional electricity. Several pundits have said that when production capacity reaches 1 GW at a single facility solar PV will be competitive with conventional electricity. Between the proprietary processes of several producers and the experience and expertise that AMD AMAT is bringing to the field, reaching this goal is approaching faster than I had expected.

One last post from The Energy Blog, this one looking well into the future and asking "Is 2025 the Year for Fuel Cell Cars?" - if it takes that long I hope we'd all be on electric cars using batteries (or ultracapacitors) well before then.

ydrogen is being touted as an environmentally friendly fuel of the future, but the road to hydrogen-powered vehicles will not be easy, industry experts said at the National Hydrogen Association (NHA) Annual Hydrogen Conference this week.

BMW, Toyota, Honda, GM, DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen had hydrogen-powered vehicles on display at the conference, some costing up to a million dollars a piece and having limited range on a hydrogen fill-up. Topics raised include the cost of the cars themselves, the cars' limited ranges, hydrogen storage and difficulties of establishing hydrogen refuelling stations.

BMW vice president of clean technology Frank Ochmann predicted that fuel cell-powered cars would be commonly sold and produced by 2025.

He also revealed that the German manufacturer was working on an insulated tank to keep hydrogen in its liquid state. He claimed: "If you put in this tank a snowman, it would take about thirteen years to melt down."

Some of you may remember some news items from a few months back when there were synchronous bird die-offs in Texas and Western Australia. The results are in from the Esperance WA investigation and it seems that lead poisoning is the likely culprit.

Western Australia's government expanded a pollution probe that halted lead exports from Ivernia Inc. after finding metal levels in the seabed at Esperance Port were as much as 100 times more than permitted. The investigation, began after large numbers of birds died near the port, found lead and nickel levels ``well above environmental standards'' in the seabed, Robert Atkins, a spokesman for the Australian state's Environment Department said in an e-mail statement last night.

Lead exports from Ivernia's Magellan mine, which accounts for 3 percent of global output, via the port were suspended two weeks ago on concern over possible lead poisoning, helping send the metal to its biggest gain in 17 years. ``The prospect for a quick resolution has been swept away,'' said Andrew Harrington, a commodities analyst at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., over the phone from Brisbane. ``You have had environmental concerns with the birds, then water for consumption, and now it's broadening.'' Lead futures on the London Metal Exchange fell $9, or 0.5 percent, to $1,891 a ton yesterday. The metal has risen 14 percent this year.

Ivernia had to halt exports on March 12 after tests found some birds near the port had died of lead poisoning. Ivernia said March 20 it may seek an alternate port for export. Patrick Scott, Magellan's managing director, couldn't be immediately reached for comment.

The SMH is opining that its time for the Rodent to move on over his performance on global warming and Iraq.

The poll numbers are bad enough, but they are not the reason why Howard should step down as a matter of executive responsibility.


Last week Howard addressed Parliament to explain and justify Australia's role in the military occupation of Iraq. His argument was utterly unconvincing. Opinion polls show that the public, by an overwhelming majority, has concluded that the Government made a historic blunder engaging in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In so doing, Howard turned his leadership into an adjunct of the discredited presidency of George Bush.


He has made Australia a bigger target for terrorist attacks, for no discernible strategic pay-off. While the terrorist threat is real, and growing, the rhetoric and tactics of the "war on terrorism" have been a series of blunders. Howard can no longer fight a "khaki election".

On the other threat to Australia's security, climate change and global warming, he is finally mobilising after 10 years, but his engagement with the issue is so belated it remains hollow.

While I treat the "Free Energy" world with a little less skepticism than I used to, I'm highly doubtful that Irish free energy promoter Steorn is going to come through with the goods - it sounds more like a made for TV media event. From the wittily named Steorn tracker blog:

Sean hasn't posted to the forum in 6 days. Is this the quiet before the storm? We'll hopefully learn a lot this coming week, with a jury update and also some technical specifications being released. It will be interesting to track how Steorn's news spreads out over the Internet, just like their initial Economist Ad and also their January Press Release.

We had some really great replies to The Czech Dream Theory post. I figured I should let Sean have a say in this debate. I personally think this is a more plausible theory then a scam or the idea that they are just measuring things wrong. Sean posted this message back in November 2006:

Hi Folks,

Just to be clear, Steorn have funded the documentary but own no rights to it at all (editorial or otherwise), so if it is ever shown or if it happens to be a big hit there will be no financial reward for Steorn.

Thanks,

Sean

It is very clear in this message that Steorn doesn't benefit from the documentary, which is strange. You'd think they might just say "All profits go to charity" or something. I was thinking today, who knows of any other startups with revolutionary technology (Google, EEStor, etc) who actually hired a film crew to document their progress?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

What Sean says can be technically true.

A separate entity, Steorn Nominees LTD. can be holding the interest.

Or Unison Consultants can hold the interest.
http://unisonconsultants.com/WhoWeAre.html

In addition, funds could pass through either of them to cover costs.

To heck with the physics, match the money flow against Steorn's known connectons to decode this cipher.

Does the name Citigate, Dewe Rogerson ring a bell with anyone here?

It's one of the most influential PR firms in the world.

It is also ITV's PR firm.

Check out the article on their site, "Strengthening ITV1 the key to success"

It just so happens Citigate, Dewe Rogerson is the firm that Steorn retained to launch it's web site, the Economist ad and this whole PR champagne.

Past Peak has a post on Republicans stacking the deck of a committee looking at global warming in the US. He also notes that the UK Ministry of Defence has concluded that the methodology used by "The Lancet" last year when estimating Iraqi civilian casualties at over 650,000 was sound.

A Maryland paper reports that Republicans who want to serve on the global warming subcommittee have to have decided in advance that humans don't cause global warming. Otherwise, the Republican leadership won't let them on the committee:

House Republican Leader John Boehner would have appointed Rep. Wayne Gilchrest to the bipartisan Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming — but only if the Maryland Republican would say humans are not causing climate change, Gilchrest said.

"I said, 'John, I can't do that,'" Gilchrest, R-1st-Md., said in an interview. "He said, 'Come on. Do me a favor. I want to help you here.'"

Gilchrest didn't make the committee. [...]

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a research scientist from Maryland, and Michigan's Rep. Vern Ehlers, the first research physicist to serve in Congress, also made cases for a seat, but weren't appointed, he said.

"Roy Blunt said he didn't think there was enough evidence to suggest that humans are causing global warming," Gilchrest said. "Right there, holy cow, there's like 9,000 scientists to three on that one."

Hey, here's an idea. How about we actually look at the science and try to come up with constructive public policy solutions. You know, like grownups.

Meanwhile, the Republicans seem to revel in being the Flat Earth party. They diverge farther and farther from reality. It's weird. And dangerous.

The BBC has a look at What's happened to Iraq's oil? - just one more article obliquely hinting at the value of the greatest prize of all.

Iraq's descent into violence, coupled with paralysis and corruption in government, has stymied efforts to rebuild the infrastructure of roads, schools, hospitals and industry. In many cases, there is little to show for the billions of dollars spent on reconstruction since the American-led invasion in 2003.

The oil sector is a good example of what has gone wrong. Fixing it has been seen as a high priority, as the revenues from oil exports provide the bulk of Iraqi government income and underpin the entire economy. Yet crude production is currently still below the pre-war level.

"The Iraqi oil industry has been stuck for the last couple of years." says Manoucher Takin, an analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies in London. "Nothing has really changed. "It's not that officials have done nothing. The problem is, they can't do much because of the security situation."

Mr Takin says the single biggest drag on the industry's recovery has been the failure to get a key export pipeline operating properly. Iraqi oil leaves the country through two main routes. Production from the Southern oilfields is taken by sea from a terminal near Basra. Oil from the Northern wells is transported by a pipe that runs to the port of Ceyhan in Turkey. The Northern route is extremely vulnerable to sabotage, and has worked only intermittently since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

It means a third of Iraq's production capacity is effectively cut off from overseas markets. There have also been many attacks and other problems with the Southern oilfields, but they have at least continued to function.

There was nothing inevitable about this. In Baghdad soon after the war, US officials confidently predicted that with a bit of effort production would reach 3.5 million barrels a day within 18 months, and five or six million barrels a day within few years. At that level, Iraq's output would be second only to Saudi Arabia. No wonder it was widely assumed that once things settled down, Iraq would easily be able to fund its own reconstruction.

Those hopes have been dashed.

At the moment, crude production is stuck at around two million barrels a day. The only saving grace has been the recent strength of international crude prices. Iraq gets nearly twice as much money from each barrel sold as it did at the end of Saddam's time.

It was always clear that rebuilding the oil sector would be a difficult task. The American-led invasion did not cause a great deal of damage, but the industry suffered badly in the looting that immediately followed the war. This came on top of years of neglect and under investment while Saddam fought his other wars and Iraq was under international sanctions.

Many of the worst problems are in refining and distribution: the part of the industry that supplies finished products like petrol, diesel and heating fuel for use internally in Iraq. There is a chronic shortage of refining capacity. It is one reason why Iraqis often have to queue for hours to fill their vehicles with fuel, despite living in a country flush with underground crude.

Mr Takin says Iraq's refineries had hardly been modernised in several decades. The technology was ancient. He says that before the war, some Iraqi refineries were in such a state they simply were not capable of producing the highly-refined products that people actually wanted for their cars. Instead there was an excess of heavy fuel oil, which has few uses. He says there was so much of it the Iraqis started pumping it back into the ground to increase the pressure to get new oil out - hardly an efficient use of resources.

Commentators tend to say there was a window of opportunity for reviving the Iraqi oil sector soon after the invasion. A lot of money and effort did go into improving things. The problem was not enough was done to really get on top of the issues before security concerns became paramount and the country began its descent into near civil war.

Meanwhile, the oil sector has also been affected by the general chaos and corruption of Iraqi government. Under Saddam, the oil ministry generally had a high reputation. It was seen as staffed by competent technocrats who got on with the job. That is not the case any longer. As with other ministries, experienced staff have often been replaced by less qualified political appointees.

At the moment, it is hard to find anyone who is optimistic about the oil industry's immediate prospects. But no-one doubts the long-term potential: Iraq is sitting on the world's third largest proven reserves. It is widely believe there is a lot still to be discovered. What is more, Iraqi oil is generally easy to extract.

That is why so much store has been set by the terms of a new oil law. Its purpose is to set the terms to attract outside capital and expertise to develop Iraq's vast energy reserves. A draft law was approved by the Iraqi cabinet at the end of February after months of haggling between politicians representing the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities. A finalised law is supposed to be ready by the end of May.

Mr Takin says the big international oil companies are wary of investing in Iraq while the country is in such a mess. But he reckons many of them have developed quite detailed plans for what they will do when the situation improves. Significantly, he says there is no shortage of demand for consultants' reports costing thousands of dollars on the technicalities of Iraq's oilfields.

Cryptogon has a look at "No Impact Man" which would be classified as extremely cynical if it appeared elsewhere, but is actually kind of optimistic for him - he seems to be getting the "cities are the future" idea.

I read, The Year Without Toilet Paper, a New York Times piece about the “No Impact Man” media circus, and I sunk down into my chair and held my head in my hands. Are people just cracking up? Is it an inability to look the situation we’re facing in the eyes? Is it an effort to paint people who think about the environment as dimwits and hopelessly out of touch?

“No Impact Man” seems like a sort of limited hangout for limousine liberals who are going with the clean, green meme at the moment. There are designer clothes and vaguely hip, wealthy people who live in a fashionable part of Manhattan. At any moment you think it’s going to turn into an ad for a new iPod, or maybe Paris Hilton will show up in a greasel Hummer. They’re not doing anything even remotely substantive, but they’re going about it in a slick manner. There’s a blog, a book and a movie… And, as mentioned, the ridiculous New York Times has initiated coverage. In short, “No Impact Man” seems like a green version of Jackass.

But is that all?

I’m really trying to see a positive side to this. Let’s face it: Most people won’t consider a reality based approach to sustainability. It’s just too damn hard; dealing with dirt and weeds and shit, etc. My guess is that backbreaking labor is only an abstract idea to the HDTV crowd.

Maybe the gestures demonstrated by “No Impact Man” can serve as a germ that will grow into something more substantive than a blog, a book and a movie. And coverage from the New York Times…

In theory, cities should be able to innovate quite a lot in this area. As obscene consumers of energy and resources, cities have lots of opportunities for improvement. I would think that even incremental changes could produce significant results. In any city, you will have some number of people who get it, even if they represent only a fraction of a percent of the population. These people have many face to face opportunities to win the hearts and minds of the zombie consumer/polluter class, which is virtually everyone, rich and poor alike.

Another aspect of cities that’s interesting is money. Most of the money is in cities, even if it’s concentrated in very few hands. Therefore, if city dwellers decided that they wanted to implement clean technologies, they might be in a better position to do that than rural, back to the land types like Becky and I.

So, I don’t know. On the one hand, “No Impact Man” seems like a silly joke, hardly worth serious consideration, given the dire situation we’re all facing. On the other hand, if it convinces even a small number of people to modify their zombie consumer/polluter ways, what the hell, more power to these people!

Cursing the darkness is of limited use, and while lighting a single candle in a vast, blacked out wasteland isn’t good for much, at least it starts to give you an idea of how vast the blacked out wasteland is. Manhattan is one of the weirdest places on the planet. (Tokyo is probably weirder, although I’ve never been there.) You can exist, in that thing, totally abstracted from the underlying reality of the natural life support systems of the planet. (The thing I noticed most about Manhattan, besides the smell in the subway stations, and chained and padlocked potted plants, was that, anywhere or time of the day, there seemed to be no escape from the unnatural sounds of the city.) I can see how Colin and Michelle might think that they were taking radical action by not getting their food and coffee delivered to their apartment and buying organic vegetables.

If Colin and Michelle are serious, they will start looking at the decades old square foot gardening strategies and composting toilets as nitrogen sources for groundlevel and rooftop gardens. Who knows? In time you might see “Green Buildings” where residents outfit entire buildings with wind and solar systems. The immediate priority should be solar hot water systems, the best bang-for-the-buck in terms of solar energy conversion. Hot water is the single biggest use of energy in domestic environments. Solar hot water systems are relatively cheap, simple and yield very tangible results.

You can talk carbon, rooftop gardens and solar hot water all day, but without a major consciousness upgrade—a philosophical pole shift, or whatever you want to call it—governments will increasingly be pouring old fascism into new, green bottles. People have to want this, and they have to build it themselves.

In cities, though, very few people want this. Why are they in cities to begin with? Lots of people say they like cities because of the “culture.” In reality, it’s about the money, honey. (Not necessarily the Money Honey.) There’s a perception that great opportunities to make money exist in cities. It’s a trap, of course, because the cost of living in those places is extreme to the point of being absurd. The reality of cities is mostly about chasing money in an effort to pay rent and keep the heater turned on in the winter. Is a substantive, bottom up, green epiphany possible under these circumstances? I doubt it, but for people who won’t (or can’t) abandon the sinking ship, bailing water furiously with Dixie cups provides a sense of purpose and, perhaps, a satisfying distraction from the grim political, economic and social aspects of the situation.

And to close, here's some tinfoil from Webster Tarpley, quoting the Russian military who are saying a US attack on Iran will occur in early April. I wouldn't lose any sleep over this report, but I still find this bubbling pot of some interest.

Webster G. Tarpley is a journalist. Among other works, he has published an investigation on the manipulation of the Red Brigades by the Vatican’s P2 Suite and the assassination of Aldo Moro, a non-authorized biography of George H. Bush, and more recently an analysis of the methods used to perpetrate the September 11, 2001 attacks.

WASHINGTON DC, -- The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 am on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly “Argumenty Nedeli.” Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.

The attack is slated to last for 12 hours, according to Uglanov, from 4 am until 4 pm local time. Friday is the sabbath in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.

The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out.

The attacks will be mounted from a number of bases, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is currently home to B-52 bombers equipped with standoff missiles. Also participating in the air strikes will be US naval aviation from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, as well as from those of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Additional cruise missiles will be fired from submarines in the Indian Ocean and off the coast of the Arabian peninsula. The goal is allegedly to set back Iran’s nuclear program by several years, writes Uglanov, whose article was reissued by RIA-Novosti in various languages, but apparently not English, several days ago. The story is the top item on numerous Italian and German blogs, but so far appears to have been ignored by US websites.

Observers comment that this dispatch represents a high-level orchestrated leak from the Kremlin, in effect a war warning, which draws on the formidable resources of the Russian intelligence services, and which deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness by pro-peace forces around the world.

Asked by RIA-Novosti to comment on the Uglanov report, retired Colonel General Leonid Ivashov confirmed its essential features in a March 21 interview: “I have no doubt that there will be an operation, or more precisely a violent action against Iran.” Ivashov, who has reportedly served at various times as an informal advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is currently the vice president of the Moscow Academy for Geopolitical Sciences.

Ivashov attributed decisive importance to the decision of the Democratic leadership of the US House of Representatives to remove language from the just-passed Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill that would have demanded that Bush come to Congress before launching an attack on Iran. Ivashov pointed out that the language was eliminated under pressure from AIPAC, the lobbing group representing the Israeli extreme right, and from Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni.

“We have drawn the unmistakable conclusion that this operation will take place,” said Ivashov. In his opinion, the US planning does not include a land operation: “ Most probably there will be no ground attack, but rather massive air attacks with the goal of annihilating Iran’s capacity for military resistance, the centers of administration, the key economic assets, and quite possibly the Iranian political leadership, or at least part of it,” he continued. ...