Author: rickpace1

Juneau, Alaska and Energy

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Earlier in the year, Juneau experienced avalanches that destroyed many of their major power lines. The backup generators cost nearly five times as much as the old power supply. Alaskans responded by cutting their power use by 40%, primarily through household-based conservation. Lights were used sparingly, dishes were washed by hand, clothes dried on a line.

The lines have now been repaired…but electric consumption has not jumped back to its former level.

For a brief report:

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/green-living/juneau-alaska-is-an-energy-star/1116

What is the Future of Suburbia?

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A few weeks ago I posted the cost-of-services economic analysis done in Rhode Island. It related the nine-fold increase in the State’s budget since 1950 to the ‘cost of suburbanization’.

From an infrastructure perspective, the suburb and the suburban subdivision are socially expensive. They have also used environmental services randomly and, until recently, without much ‘ecosystem service’ planning. Current energy costs put these already strained techo-social systems in more financial stress.

The New York Times did a forum addressing the ‘future of suburbia’. I recommend it…to start thinking of how ecosystem service perspectives can solve suburbia’s dilemma.

What is the Future of Suburbia?

The Shape of Things….

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The EU is working on changes to regulation on the shape, color, etc. of fruits and vegetables. Currently, there are measured standards…. leading to significant food waste. France, Spain and Italy are expected to oppose the changes, citing the positive impact standards have in market operations while protecting consumers.

Maryellen and I ate some pretty ugly zucchini (not to mentioned an orphaned cucumber) from our garden last night…we’ll report if we have any negative reactions.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4364217.ece

Endangered Species Act

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From an AP article:

Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct. The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.

New regulations, which don’t require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft first obtained by The Associated Press.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said late Monday the changes were needed to ensure that the Endangered Species Act would not be used as a “back door” to regulate the gases blamed for global warming. In May, the polar bear became the first species declared as threatened because of climate change. Warming temperatures are expected to melt the sea ice the bear depends on for survival.

The draft rules would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats.

“We need to focus our efforts where they will do the most good,” Kempthorne said in a news conference organized quickly after AP reported details of the proposal. “It is important to use our time and resources to protect the most vulnerable species. It is not possible to draw a link between greenhouse gas emissions and distant observations of impacts on species.”

It is one thing if the Interior Department wants to focus energies of FWS on protecting the most vulnerable species….but to say “it is not possible to draw a link between greenhouse gas emissions and distant observations of impacts on species” is uninformed and harmful language.

For the entire Article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080811/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/bush_endangered_species

Now that’s a wildlife market…

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This morning on NPR there was a report on today’s field bird (grouse, quail, partridge…) hunting day in England. Evidently a LOT of hunters go to these reserves on August 12th each year….the example being a group of 20 might well go out and kill 300 birds. The fee structure is around $200 each bird, so these twenty folks are spending $60k for the days hunt!

New England and Carbon Offsets

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Several of us in New England have been looking at the possibilities of small forest landowners (and even urban treeplanting projects) being able to receive carbon offset credits for certain forest management and treeplanting practices. The current Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) protocol only allows for afforestation projects….the New England states are heavily forested and therefore afforestation carbon credits have little utility.

A recent study by the Manomet Center in Maine and another study at the Harvard Forest both suggest that specific forest management practices could provide significant carbon sequestration….but caution that proper accounting protocols are critical to manage the issues of additionality and leakage.

Other conversations have also centered around the possible benefits of measuring other ecosystem services in terms of their carbon impacts…therefore creating a common currency for an entire set of ecosystem service benefits.

One of our colleagues, Kate Kilguss, is authoring a white paper that provides the basis to consider changes to the RGGI carbon offset protocol as well as explores how forest management (and soil management) carbon offsets might benefit New England farm and forest landowners.

The Limit of Property Tax Caps

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Anthony Flint of the Lincoln Institute writes:

California has been a policy innovator on a lot of things — coastal management, clean air, vehicle fuel efficiency, and now the connection between land use and greenhouse gas emissions. But in public finance and the property tax, the Golden State is a cautionary tale. Thirty years ago this summer, Proposition 13 was passed, setting a maximum rate of property taxation at 1 percent, and limiting annual increases in assessed values at 2 percent. The measure followed the property tax “revolt” in California through the 1970s, when some homeowners saw annual increases of 30 percent or more.

But assessment limits are not a particularly good instrument for property tax relief. Assessment limits leave some homeowners paying more than others, even in identical homes, and encourage families not to move, even to be closer to a new job, for example, because market value is reset in the relocation process. “Severing the connection between property values and property taxes creates a new set of problems,” said Joan Youngman, senior fellow and chair of the Department of Valuation and Taxation (at the Lincoln Institute). More effective paths to property tax relief include circuit breakers targeted on ability to pay, more deferral and exemption options, and truth in taxation to combat so-called “invisible” tax increases that occur when property values rise but nominal tax rates stay the same.

For the Lincoln Institute Report abstract:

http://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/PubDetail.aspx?pubid=1412

A New Shared Economy for Appalachia

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John Todd has recently published this report titled ‘A New Shared Economy for Appalachia: An Economy Built on Environmental Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, Renewable Energy and Ecological Design’.

It is an expansive….and bold…. suggestion to completely reform the economy and ecology of Appalachia. There are aspects of it that are very interesting and rational. It would require enormous political change, both in governments and in corporations.

The entire report (it’s worth reviewing):

A New Shared Economy for Appalachia