Blogroll Addition: GreenCouple

Geek Buffet’s own terrorfirma has started a new blog, GreenCouple.com, where he writes as his alterego, Will, along with co-blogger and fiancée Maggie. You can get a taste by reading Will’s cross-post below, Globalization is Green, and then check out the rest of their posts to date. They started posting in January, so the archives aren’t too daunting. Read them all!

They cover an interesting range of topics, from global economics to personal decisions about where to live, all with a focus on living green. Maggie’s personal and professional interest in eating both green and local promises to inspire any number of interesting posts related to food from them both. Will has already produced several good posts on some of the more personal economics of living green as well, such as alternative gift-giving and the pros and cons of purchasing “green energy” from the power company. I look forward to more!

-Dana

Globalization is Green

[cross-posted from GreenCouple.com, where my fiancee and I talk about how we're trying to live green(er) together]

I’ve stolen this counterintuitive title from a section in Tim Harford’s interesting economic book (and who thought that phrase would ever be used?), The Undercover Economist. The book as a whole is a great overview of economic thinking applied to a variety of topics, from finding a good used car to pricing coffee. Near the end, Harford attempts to debunk the idea that trade protectionism prevents globalization from damaging the environment. I find most of his arguments very persuasive, although there might be more arguments against globalization that he doesn’t cover. Hardford identifies three main anti-globalization arguments: a “race to the bottom,” transportation costs, and the idea that economic growth inherently hurts the planet.

How many children are ethical?

This has been an interesting couple of weeks for considering the ethics of reproduction. Last week, it seemed like there were suddenly people everywhere talking about how it just might be a great idea if Americans (and everyone else in the world, really) were encouraged, or possibly required, to have only one child.

As near as I can tell, a lot of the discussion got started with this article: Global Swarming: Is It Time for Americans to Start Cutting Our Baby Emissions? It is, in its turn, a review of the book The World Without Us, which is mostly about what the world would be like, environmentally speaking, if all the people disappeared. How long it would take the Earth to “recover” to a pre-human level, so on and so forth. But the author doesn’t really want to wait for people to suddenly become extinct; he’d like to see us start doing something that might conceivably save the planet in a way that people could still be around to enjoy it. The article summarizes his call for action like this:

Let’s cut the birth rate to one child per couple, for a few generations at least. The population would dwindle by about 5 billion people over the next century, he says, ensuring the habitability of the Earth for the 1.6 billion who remained. At that point, they could all reap the rewards of a more spacious planet, sharing in “the growing joy of watching the world daily become more wonderful.”

That Made in China label

Don’t you just love vilifying China?

Growing economy? (Check) Massive trade imbalance? (Check) And Commie to boot? (Check!)

Were you really surprised when they started poisoning our puppies? It’s a vast, Chinese, pink-o commie conspiracy against the American way of life people! Wake up and smell the green tea!

Well, ok, no. It’s not. But when it comes to buying things, why are we so anti-China?

You have books such as A Year Without “Made in China” by Sara Bongiorni and massive fear-induced boycotts of all Chinese goods, so maybe we do think it is a commie plot.

Oh! But Jennie! They all work in sweat shops! And only make 57 cents an hour! And their pet food/toys/toothpaste ARE all being recalled for poison/lead paint/whatever… China’s cutting too many corners! Chinese products are bad!

Well, no. They’re not.

Why are we blaming China for something that is fundamentally the fault of industry? American industry?

Getting back what you put in

Several weeks ago, I packed up all of my worldly possessions and moved them nearly 750 miles from Southeast Michigan to central North Carolina. Part of this process involved driving a seventeen-foot U-Haul truck, fully loaded and towing my car on a trailer, through the mountains. I found this process to be highly unsatisfying, but also thought-provoking.

For perspective, U-Haul lists this vehicle as being more than eight thousand pounds empty. Fully loaded, it weighs in at just about fourteen thousand pounds. In addition, the trailer is more than two thousand pounds empty, with a more than three thousand pound car riding on top of it. The effect is a fourteen thousand pound vehicle with a five thousand pound sea anchor hanging off the back. Driving a vehicle this size through the mountains is enough to make anyone develop a multiple-personality disorder. Going uphill, I would simply lay the accelerator flat against the floor, then listen to the engine roar even while the speedometer steadily dropped beneath the sheer mass of the vehicle behind it. Going downhill, I’d stand on the brakes and try not to think about the feeling of the massive, dead weight of the trailer cramming itself up into the small of my back.

Each time I rode the brakes down a hill and then listened to a huge, gas-guzzling engine wheezing as it struggled to heave itself back up the hill, I found myself thinking about regenerative braking. Even though it would not be the kind of thing that is even included on a vehicle of that type, such a thing felt like it would be exactly what I needed. I spent several hours thinking about the efficiency of regenerative braking systems.

World Without Oil

World Without Oil (WWO) is Jane McGonigal’s latest project. Like the name implies, WWO describes a world where peak oil has been reached and the world is quickly finding out that less oil means a lot more than less transportation. McGonigal was involved with I Love Bees, the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) produced to advertise Halo 2. It’s no surprise then that WWO has many classic ARG elements.

Many characters post to LiveJournal or the WWO site itself, which makes it possible to leave comments and speak to them directly. Some even hang out on IRC for some real-time interaction.

Most of the content is created by players, though. Players sign up to represent their area, helping the in-game reponse there. They can improve their area’s response (and their own ranking) by posting in-game blogs, podcasts, or video. Every day, dozens of posts are aggregated on the front page of the WWO site. In addition, the WWO team picks their favorite posts of the day and puts them in the summary for that “week.”

In a new twist for ARGs, each real-time day counts as a week, including spikes in gas prices, riots, terrorism overseas, and mention of some of the things that players have blogged about. Players are also taking on a definite role instead of playing themselves as in other ARGs.

Can’t stand the heat? Get out of the engine.

I ran across an article not long ago in the Technology Review about improving the efficiency of the internal combustion engine. The technology it describes turns out to be nothing more than a particularly clever combination of several technologies that have been around for longer than I have been alive, but which when properly used in conjunction generate much larger increases in performance and efficiency than anyone has previously been able to extract.

I find such stories of people combining old dog tricks to obtain racing greyhound results very interesting reading. In addition, the very fact that people are still squeezing such remarkable gains in efficiency out of something as venerable as the internal combustion engine suggests to me that predictions of its imminent demise in the face of rising energy prices are likely to prove premature. It may well be with us for quite some time yet.

There is a strong tendency for established players to want to stick with those things that have already made them successful, and automotive manufacturers, especially in the United States, are nothing if not established. They got to be as big and established as they are on the strength of the internal combustion engine. It is a technology with which they are very comfortable. This means that if they have the option, they’re likely to stick with it for as long as possible, rather than risk venturing out into new and untested waters with some new system for powering cars.

Trip to the Zoo

This is not a blog [post] about whether zoos should exist. This is a blog [post] that questions whether our National Zoo should continue to exist.

Last weekend I flew up to Washington, DC to see my sister and brother-in-law, who were in DC for a professional conference. On Saturday we decided to go to the National Zoo for the afternoon. It was a cool but pleasant day and we were, like many provincial visitors, looking forward to a nice time. What we had instead was a somewhat disturbing and dispiriting experience.

The National Zoo actually is part of the Smithsonian Institution. It was established in the late 19^th century and occupies about 160 acres near Rock Creek Park. Entrance to the Zoo is free, and you can get there easily using public transportation (take the Metro Red Line to either Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan or Cleveland Park). Both the public areas and the animal areas were quite clean, and although obvious rat-and mouse-infestations have been reported in the past, we didn’t see any signs of such in the public areas.

The premier attraction at the Zoo of course is the giant panda family: Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their cub Tai Shan. Their “habitat” is the only one at the Zoo with a named corporate sponsor (Fujifilm). Although it is the nicest animal area at the Zoo, to me it still seemed small, shabby and sterile. Since it was a cool day, Tai Shan and his dad were outside. Tai Shan was eating bamboo in his yard, and seemed calm and totally absorbed by the task. We were told by a volunteer that the Zoo veterinarians had separated Tian Tian and Mei Xiang earlier in the week because Mei Xiang is ready to be bred again, and the Zoo will attempt this using sperm from a panda other than Tian Tian. Needless to say, Tian Tian seemed VERY agitated by this turn of events. He paced continuously around his small outdoor area as we watched, pausing briefly to aggressively strip some bamboo. We saw Mei Xiang inside, reclining on some fake rocks in a room much like a concrete cell. Call me naïve, but I thought the pandas would be rolling around happily outside, something like one imagines the stuffed “panda bears” sold in the Zoo gift shops would do. Perhaps we just caught them on a bad day. Or maybe every day is a bad day.

North Carolina hanami

From Wikipedia:

Hanami (花見, Hanami lit. “flower viewing”) is the Japanese traditional custom of enjoying the beauty of flowers, “flower” in this case almost always meaning cherry blossoms (桜 or 櫻, sakura), or ume blossoms (梅, ume).

Here in the great state of North Carolina, though, it would more properly refer to enjoying the beauty of the dogwood trees, which coincidentally bloom at about the same time as the cherry trees in the main part of Japan (and here, for that matter.) When I lived in Japan, I did enjoy the cherry blossoms, but spring didn’t seem quite real without those big white blossoming trees. Behold, below, the joy of spring in NC:

  

What defines spring for you, either where you are, or where you consider home?

What’s sprouting?

Unseasonably warm temperatures (it *is* still March, isn’t it?) have me in a definite springtime mood. Some friends speak of a new kind of SAD: not Seasonal Affective Disorder, the diagnosis of wintertime blues; rather Spring Affective Disorder, where the combination of nice weather and long daylight hours fill one’s mind with fun-filled nights and outdoor activities (this despite the early spring being one of the busiest times of the year work-wise).

I have to admit that the time change, which finally hit Europe this week, is a huge boon to post-workday activity, and my evening eating schedule has gone all wonky. Living on the top floor of a building with roof access, I spent many winter nights imagining how I would create there a summer sunshine paradise with my many plants and a reclining chair, where I would while away the hours of thesis research reading, lemonade in hand. The IKEA catalog arrived at just the right moments to keep the fantasy alive. You can see how that got me through the neverending madness that was January, right?

This week I took my first step towards building said oasis when a free shelving unit appeared on my university’s exchange bulletin board. And my plants are doing their part by sprouting from seeds I planted a couple weeks ago.

BBaron posted earlier this month about how far our food travels to land on our plates. Having grown up in a family with a passion for gardening and having survived three winters and springs in Russia, I have been socialized to spend part of one’s summer tending one’s own crop. Anyone who does it knows that you can’t beat the taste of a home-grown tomato. There is no better way to know where your food is coming from than planting, tending and picking it yourself. However, considering I only have planters at my disposal and that I have to carry all dirt used up five flights of stairs, my enterprise is limited. My dad starts his tomatoes in January to ensure an early harvest and already has tall plants. But then, when it’s just me, how many tomatoes do I really need?

I’m interested to know what everyone else is growing this year. My list is after the jump.