One Book One Northwestern » Conservation

Why Are We Selling the Future?

One Book One Northwestern — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:18:31 +0000

One Book is excited to present an excerpt of George Nassos’ essay, “Why Are We Selling the Future.” Nassos is a Northwestern alumnus as well as the associate director of the Environmental Management & Sustainability Program and director of the Center for Sustainable Enterprise, both at the IIT Stuart Graduate School of Business.

During the past few years, we have been reading more and more about organizations and people over-extending themselves with respect to their financial situation. People without the necessary means were committing to purchase homes they could not really afford. We had the collapse of Merrill Lynch, AIG and numerous banks. The Obama administration recently announced a budget deficit of $1.56 trillion – that is trillion, not billion – for 2010 and a 2011 budget of $3.83 trillion.

Even countries, like Greece, are going broke. Greece continues to spend 13% more than it brings in. A few years ago, it sold future airport fees and lottery proceeds for current cash to meet its needs. Basically, we are spending our future assets.

This unfortunate pattern is exactly what we are doing with the earth, and the deficit is growing rapidly. The Earth can be considered a living organism that provides all of our needs in terms of food, clothing, shelter, energy and waste disposal. These resources are either renewable, such as topsoil, fresh water, fish, and forests; or nonrenewable such as oil, ore deposits, and coal. As recently as 1960 we were consuming the Earth’s resources at a rate of 50% of what it could provide. In 1980, we were consuming the resources at the same rate as they were being generated. Unfortunately, today we are consuming 40% more than what we have. Like Greece, we are borrowing from the future, but unlike Greece, there is no one that can bail us out.

It is critical that we take action now, as later will be too late. We must revert to a sustainable world, “meeting today’s needs without sacrificing the needs of future generations.” The world’s current population is about 6.8 billion and it is expected to peak at 9 billion within 50 years. Achieving sustainability will not be easy when we are already consuming 40% more than we have and the population expected to increase further by one-third.

We don’t need large homes – most families can live comfortably in a 2000 sq. ft. house. We don’t need automobiles with large engines consuming gasoline that we don’t have. Europeans consume half as much as we do and their quality of life is considered better than ours in many respects – longevity, child mortality, vacations, retirement, et al. We need to add renewable energy, like wind, solar and geothermal, to our electric grid in order to meet the growing demand as our old nuclear plants are being shut down.

We must all do our part to protect God’s gift – a sustainable earth. For the sake of our grandchildren, let’s change our spending habits.

To download the full version of this essay, click here. Additional articles can be found on the IIT website here.

Save the Mountains!

Kristin Landry — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:52:38 +0000

The coal underlying the Appalachian Mountains is a valuable resource for the United States, but this beautiful region is set to become a desolate moonscape of mountaintop coal mining. However, there is another way to get the energy we need from these mountains while creating sustainable jobs for hundreds of Americans. Mining the coal responsibly would allow us to build a 328 MW capacity wind farm on top of Coal River Mountain, which gets constant wind at great altitude. This farm would be able to power 70,000 West Virginia homes and provide $1.7 million in taxes every year. Mountaintop mining pollutes the headwaters of rivers that provide drinking water to millions of Americans. These toxins are increasing the mortality rate in these areas. You can help.

Why GREEN House will win Green Cup

Dan Q. Tham — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:19:57 +0000

For the month of February, when passersbys tread the space between Sigma Chi and Foster House, they will have entered a black hole.

A hole that used to be called GREEN House. For the intrepid, the building is now DARK House, an eldritch structure located in a ‘frat’acular North Campus quad.

For DARK House’s inhabitants, the building is a lightless beacon of team-effort environmentalism and a pugnacious zealotry for trees.

Inside the little-known GREEN DARK House, unwashed, vitamin D-deficient vampires stir. Some are sissy boys like Edward Cullen, Twilight megastar. While others are beauties who belong on the runway like Count von Count from Sesame Street. Others, still, are too old to live in the freshmen-infested dorm like Bill Compton of True Blood.

The point is, there’s something vampirically seductive about this haunted house.

The hallways are redolent of sepulchres for the doomed Republicans who supported Scott Brown a couple weeks ago. (Conservatively) red EXIT signs brood menacingly at the end of each hall; there is no actual escape from the Leviathan of Political Bureaucracy. But that’s for another snarky, conceited, mawkish article.

Armed with wind-up flashlights, the DARK House creatures mince down the hallways, tripping on recycle bins and accidentally stumbling into rooms not their own. But that’s OK. They love the dark.

There is, however, method to the madness. The nocturnal critters are fighting for something they believe in. Sacrificing physical light for a more metaphysical light: A bright, sunny future of sustainability and harmony between artifice and the natural world. Not just harmony, but symbiosis, interdependence among all things.

For all the darkness of the house, a green, lit future awaits. Be patient.

Real-Time Electricity Update #7

Michael Kennedy — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:20:11 +0000

For the third and fourth consecutive months, we continue to save cash on ComEd’s Residential Real-Time Pricing Program (RRTP). Our savings in December was $6.33, followed by $8.53 in January. If you want to catch up on the RRTP program and what it’s all about, here’s a link to my RRTP posts.

In our first four months, we’ve saved an average of 10-15%. It’s been as simple as moderating use of our electric space heater in the basement, and setting our dishwasher to run at 2 am, rather than 8:30 pm. It’s been surprisingly easy.

Another key factor in our cost savings has been the text messages that ComEd sends when the price of electricity rises above a set threshold. My wife asked to be the recipient of the messages, and totally changes her energy use when alerted to high prices. There’s no question it works.

All the Small Things

Kristin Landry — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:15:14 +0000

Going green doesn’t have to mean you have to stop consuming and live off of next to nothing. (Although, anything close to that would be very helpful to the environment.) There are plenty of things you can do rather inconspicuously that still have great impacts on the planet. Use a water bottle instead of purchasing a new Styrofoam cup of coffee every morning. Carpool! Recycle whenever possible. Save your grocery bags- lots of stores now have collection bins so you can give them back if you won’t reuse it- but the best thing to do is not to have to use them in the first place. Remember: reduce, reuse, then recycle. (The order does matter!)

Real-Time Electricity Update #6

Michael Kennedy — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:01:01 +0000

For the second consecutive month we saved money on ComEd’s Residential Real-Time Pricing Program (RRTP). In November we saved $15 on our bill – that’s more than 17% compared to the standard rate. So in the first two months we’ve saved an average of 15% without a whole lot of effort on our part. If you want to catch up on the RRTP program and what it’s all about, here’s my original post.

Part of the savings is that we’ve been careful to run our big-load appliances (washing machine, dishwasher, etc.) during off-peak electricity hours. Our dishwasher has a 6hr delay button. If we load the dishwasher in the evening and set the delay, it runs at 1 or 2 am, when the electricity price is low – on 11/24 it was $0.002 per kilowatt-hour (kWh). Compare this to a rate of $0.03 per kWh that same day at 11 am, making it more than 10X cheaper. Granted, running the dishwasher during a peak energy time might only cost a quarter in electricity, making the real savings minimal. But it does add up.

One big question for me was whether being on a real-time pricing program would result in lower electricity use overall. Looking at my household’s 2008 vs 2009 data, we appear to be using about the same amount of electricity as last year.

Oct 2008 – 763 kWh; Oct 2009 – 679 kWh

Nov 2008 - 705 kWh; Nov 2009 – 736 kWh

This is an imperfect measure, though, because of year-to-year differences in climate, different length of billing cycles (which can vary by as much as 5 days month-to-month), etc. We also just purchased a new fridge mid-November, which is Energy Star-certified.

Looking forward, I was curious about what to expect for electricity use over the winter months. ComEd’s website, which allows you to easily look at your historical use, revealed some surprising results.

For 2008-09, our highest electricity use was NOT in the summer as I had expected, but in the months of Dec-April. Over this period our electricity use ranged from 920-1250 kWh per month. Though our house uses natural gas for heat, hot water, and the clothes dryer, we have an electricity-hungry space heater in the basement that I suspect accounts for much of the added cost. Shorter days obviously make a difference, too, with household lights turned on more often.

So it may well be that our make-or-break months in terms of cost savings will be the next three.

The Sustainable Shopper (by Paige Humecki of GREEN House)

Dan Q. Tham — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:36:33 +0000

Rock the thrift store. This is probably the ultimate green shopping experience. It combines so many things environmentalists love: reusing, buying local, and cheap stuff. Plus, lots of thrift stores benefit some great causes. (The one I frequent donates everything to the local animal shelter.) Garage sales and eBay are equally awesome.
Beware of “greenwashing.” In a December 2007 survey, more than 99% of consumer products were guilty of using false advertising to appear green. So, read your labels carefully and use common sense. Some common things to watch for: “100% Natural” (arsenic and formaldehyde are natural) or “certified organic” without a certification, “energy efficient” products that contain hazardous materials, and packaging designed to make the product appear green (like BP’s flowery logo).
Stick to brands built on being green. Lots of brands have been coming out with more eco-friendly lines (Clorox Green Works, anyone?). However, only brands that started with green as a core philosophy try to limit their impact in all aspects of the manufacturing process, not just in the end product. Some of my favorites include: Dr. Bronner’s soap, Simple Shoes, and Solio.

Think Before You Ink

Dan Q. Tham — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:48:27 +0000

Printing accounts for a significant portion of the college student’s paper expenditure. But more often than not, much of what we print ends up in the recycle bin. Considering the superfluous paper usage, we should do what’s in our power to curtail waste and encourage others to follow suit. If you need to print, do so on both sides of the page. Make sure you set your printer to a low quality setting when you don’t need a high print quality, thereby saving ink, which I have always found to be egregiously over-priced anyway. While you’re at it, consider what really needs to be printed. Do you really need a print-out of that web page, or can you just bookmark it?

The following is an interesting, albeit shocking look at the inflated ecological and budgetary price of ink cartridges brought to you by Chicagoland-based group Mighty Acorns. After glancing over the image, look into refilling your ink cartridges rather than buying a new one altogether when you run out of ink. Walgreens and Cartridge World, among others, offer such ink-refilling services. “Not only do you save a bunch of money for refilling old cartridges as opposed to buying new ones, but it’s more environmentally friendly, i.e. less plastic is produced” says Mighty Acorn associate Victor Fimbres.

Green Musicians

Dan Q. Tham — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:57:19 +0000

Who’s green in your ears? Who cares about the environment just as much as they do about making great music? What follows is merely a sampling of such artists. There are many more!

Pearl Jam tours with biodiesel, donated $100,000 to organizations committed to sustainable energy, and renewed a Madagascan rainforest.
The Roots avidly promote PETA, organize green benefits/jam sesshes, and give away graf-ed out compost bins that look so fly I’d compost all day if I had one.
Thom Yorke (famously of Radiohead) is a long-time vegan, part of U.K.’s Big Ask campaign to counter global warming, and cites climate crisis as inspiration for solo album “The Eraser.”
Willie Nelson sells his own “BioWillie” fuel and supports hemp clothing and accessories, as well as locally produced food.
Sheryl Crow wants you to soak up the sun and use only one square of toilet paper as per her Stop Global Warming college tour.
The Ditty Bops tour the US on bikes.
Björk and Sigur Rós are spearheading the green movement in Iceland through documentaries and benefit concerts.
Green Day makes YouTube videos declaiming their support of the green movement.
Samamidon is an Appalachian folk musician with a fervent support for environmentalism (sounds Sufjan-esque, check him out).
SHAKE YOUR PEACE! is a Utah-native, SF-based band that powers their amps via pedal-power and are really, really good to boot. They also recycle their pee and live in a tent.

Meet Meatless: Why Vegetarianism is Green

Dan Q. Tham — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:21:51 +0000

The following three items highlight three major reasons why adopting a meatless diet may spell all the difference in our environmental impact.

1. Exorbitant use of fossil fuels: More than a third of fossil fuel usage in the United States goes to animal production. Producing one calorie of animal protein expends ten times the fossil fuels it takes to produce one calorie of plant-based protein. This roughly translates to this: with the status quo, ten times the carbon dioxide gunk than is necessary is being hurled into our atmosphere. A recent study in the New Scientist posits that going vegan does more to reduce emissions than driving a hybrid car!
2. Bye Bye Rainforests: As the US annually imports upwards of 100,000 tons of beef from Central America, more and more rainforest area is depleted. According to a Smithsonian study, seven football fields of biodiverse, oxygen-producing rainforests are destroyed every minute for grazing land to sustain the meat industry there. In the US alone, 260 million acres of forest have been cleared for America’s almighty, insatiable appetite for meat. With rising populations, this trend can only increase.
3. What water?: Sustaining the meat industry demands about the same amount of water as it takes for all other water uses combined. One pound of beef requires an input of 2500 gallons of water, while one pound of soy needs only 250 gallons and one pound of wheat expends a meager 25 gallons of water. Not only that, the EPA cites the meat industry as a major water pollutant. The manure, agricultural pesticides, and nitrates (all linked in meat production) create toxic “dead zones” visible in space.