Green Guru by Terry Tamminen

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Easter Island Comes to Detroit

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When I saw the photo on the cover of the NY Times this week of the congregation at the SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Greater Grace Temple in Detroit, rallying around three huge white SUVs (yes, there were gas guzzlers on the altar), I first thought of the scene in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” where Charlton Heston’s Moses finds his people worshipping the golden calf. Moses blasts them all and, as I recall from Sunday school, God makes them wander a few more decades in the wilderness as punishment.

Now I know the Detroit congregants weren’t exactly praying to the living-rooms-on-wheels, but they were asking some higher power to “save” the American auto industry, apparently because the people of Detroit could no longer think of more earthly exit strategies.

But the more I thought about that photo, the more I realized the image was not cloned from the Bible, but more appropriately reflected a modern version of Easter Island. The giant moai, those tiki-looking statues, were Easter Island’s version of the SUV, exemplifying the excess of a once-prosperous society that consumed its way to oblivion instead of addressing the root cause of its decline.

Like the forgotten artisans who carved moai, there was once a thriving horse and buggy industry in America, but I doubt you can name any of the companies that were household names in 1900. Instead of turning their skills to the new horseless carriages, those companies were eclipsed by the more efficient/relevant enterprises like Ford and GM. Unless the incumbents of today evolve fast, they too will go the way of Easter Islanders and buggy whip makers.

But there’s hope. The auto industry in America is actually alive and well. Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai and others operate more than two dozen assembly plants in the US and none of them are standing in line for specious bailouts. Thousands of American workers are producing cars people actually want, instead of those that can only find love in a Temple. Why? Because they have evolved to make fuel efficient cars that people need, not to mention the development and deployment of hydrogen fuel cell cars and the other 21st Century technology that people REALLY want.

The dialogue in DC hasn’t caught on to this yet. Everyone talks about either a bailout or the loss a million jobs. But a court-appointed receiver under a bankruptcy reorganization could sell off the profitable divisions of teetering car companies and streamline others, saving many thousands of jobs. Instead of giving tens of billions to modern day buggy makers, the feds could then pay those who actually lose work to learn new skills. Congress could also help 21st century technology companies expand production of wind turbines, solar panels, and alt-fueled cars in the areas most hard-hit.

Or, we could keep going along the same path and let future archaeologists wonder what happened to the society that mounted giant metal sculptures in its Temples. That chapter will likely be in the same one that features Easter Island.

02:07 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment

Higher Power, Higher Profits

Once upon a time, there was a farm in a town called Plainville. The farmer produced natural chickens and turkeys, free from antibiotics and fed with good, plain vegetable feed, avoiding the various “additives” that consumers feared. The result was a factory, jobs, and products that everyone was proud of and, by the way, that made more money for the smart farmer than his competitors.

In fact, this enterprise became so successful that it soon outgrew Plainville. The smart farmer found a bigger farm in another state that was less costly to operate, in part because it featured an energy-efficient processing plant, used renewable energy, and included new ways of reducing waste (remember I said this farmer was very smart!). The new farm employed even more Americans in sustainable, high-paying jobs that wouldn’t someday be outsourced.

But one dark cloud loomed over this great example of ingenuity, corporate social responsibility, and investing in the American dream.

The problem was that there was no longer a need for the facility in Plainville and therefore no longer a place for those workers to earn a living. Most entrepreneurs, even the smartest of them, would chalk that up to the price of progress and point to the net benefit of the enterprise, even though one community would now do better than another. But remember I said that this particular farmer - - and business owner - - was very smart?

“What would we do with that factory and those workers if we HAD to keep them in the company’s family?” the smart farmer asked himself.

Because it was already set up to process poultry, the farmer wondered if there was some other part of that industry that his company could service and keep the Plainville facility operating. He thought about everything from feather beds to hot wings, but nothing penciled out. Then, in what some say was a thunderbolt from a higher power, he came upon the answer.

Hundreds of thousands of people prefer kosher foods, including things like kosher chickens and turkeys. Because of strict processing requirements to produce any kosher food, there was a shortage of some of these products in the marketplace. The smart farmer realized that the Plainville plant was ideally suited to serve that unique segment of the market. Kosher foods often command premium prices, so by answering the call of a higher power, the smart farmer would keep the old plant operating, save hundreds of jobs, and reap the benefits of higher profits too.

Plainville is not a mythical land, but a town in upstate New York and this is no fairy tale or the product of wishful thinking in a declining economy. It’s actually the true story of the Hain Pure Protein Company and its President Dave Wiggins (aka “the smart farmer”). Whether he heard a whisper from a higher power or the lure of higher profits, Dave has boldly demonstrated the value of establishing corporate social responsibility values to guide his company, because when times are tough, if you stick to your principles, you can often find solutions that are great for your company and your community.

As Wall Street and Detroit roam the halls of Congress with tin cups in hand, Hain will keep making good products and profits the old fashioned way - - by harvesting the fruits of their very smart labors. Happy Holidays (and pass the cranberries!).

03:41 pm | 1 recommendation | 1 comment

Three Who Changed the World

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It almost sounds like the beginning of a joke or tall tale. An Austrian, a Hawaiian, and a man from China got together in Beverly Hills one day…

When I first envisioned a gathering of world leaders, hosted by US Governors who had taken their own bold steps to address climate change, my primary goal was to highlight the fact that a lot of work is being done to make our economy more energy efficient, to adopt renewables like solar and wind, and to reduce our carbon footprints. I thought if the 33 states that have “climate action plans” could showcase this progress, especially in a forum with the same countries that will meet over the next 12 months to craft a global climate action plan, we might demonstrate that the foundation exists for a real solution to the climate crisis.

I hoped that China, India, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, and Indonesia would also show the world that they too had taken major steps forward and that we might even sign an agreement to help each other do more, regardless of what our national and international institutions were undertaking. I even had the “audacity of hope” that a certain President-elect would see the benefits of such a gathering to stake out some goals for our country for a brighter, cleaner, more sustainable future.

Well, at last week’s Governors’ Global Climate Summit (November 18-19) in Beverly Hills, the Austrian-born Governor (California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger) introduced the Hawaiian-born President-elect (Barack Obama) to a SRO-crowd that included the Director of China’s climate change efforts (Gao Guangsheng) and, after Mr. Obama committed the US to bold goals on climate change solutions and renewable energy deployment, the Governor, the Director, and two dozen other world leaders grabbed the ball and ran way down the field with it.

Bottom line? In December 2009 in Copenhagen, when the UN gathers world leaders together to forge that new global climate deal, they now have a real chance to get it done. The world has now essentially committed to reducing its greenhouse gases 80% by 2050 (and by at least a quarter before 2020) and to democratizing our economies by democratizing the energy that powers them.

Yes, that’s the real benefit of a low-carbon economy, because everyone has unfettered access to the sun, the wind, the things that grow, the moving waters, and other inexhaustible sources of clean energy. That’s real democracy because it can lift everyone on earth to a better quality of life for themselves and their children. I couldn’t be more pleased with what our little Summit accomplished (and to see the entire thing on podcast, go to www.governorsglobalclimatesummit.org).

What more could you ask of a meeting between an Austrian, a Hawaiian, and a man from China?

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Call It America

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The day after Barack Obama was elected as our next President, Ethan Bronner wrote in the New York Times...

“There is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a black man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth - - call it America - - where such a thing happens.”

No matter who we supported in the election, I suspect that now each of us feels pride that our nation overcame its past and dared to reinvent its future. But in sending Mr. Obama to the White House, we did more than send “a black man of modest origin” - - we sent ourselves. Like Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” we sent a man that has some part in him that resembles something good and constructive in each one of us.

So why not go beyond metaphor and actually send ourselves to Washington? Given the economic crisis and the imposing challenges ahead - - from climate change to a widening gulf between haves and have-nots - - now is the time to answer the question posed to a nation more than four decades ago. Knowing that he will find his own soaring and inspirational rhetoric, I doubt Mr. Obama will repeat John Kennedy’s challenge, but it’s hard not to hear those words like a song we can’t get out of our heads - - “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

So let’s “go to Washington” with our new President by offering a literal answer to that question this time. If every American and every business volunteered to do one thing to make our communities safer, more prosperous, and more equitable, that would equate to over 300 million contributions to a better America. We could commit to spend a few hours a week helping out at a local school or senior center; we could pound nails for groups like Habitat for Humanity; we could adopt a classroom and help teachers get supplies and extra books; we could pledge a small % of our profits to charities that do many of these things for us.

If each of us does one small thing, to quote another great President “the world will little note nor long remember what we say here.” But the impact of those contributions will amount to more than any bailout plan Congress or our new President could devise. We will work our way out of the current challenges, economic and otherwise, much faster and with much more hope and joy in our hearts than by waiting timidly for Washington to do it all for us.

In the end, we will remind the world that is indeed America...”where such a thing happens.”

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WSJ Says BOO!

With Halloween just over, the Wall Street Journal jumped out from behind a hedge fund and tried to scare the business community right out of its Brooks Brothers boxers. Like most haunted houses and scary apparitions at this time of year however, WSJ’s was as fake as a Sarah Palin mask on your next-door neighbor’s pit bull.

On October 20th 2008, the WSJ ran an editorial entitled “The coming offer you won't be able to refuse.” It blasted an Obama spokesperson for suggesting that the USEPA might set standards for reducing greenhouse gases without waiting for further authority from Congress. The WSJ argued that the world as we know it would end, stating among other hair-on-fire nonsense that “coal-fired power and other fossil fuels would be ruled out of existence” by such a move.

Well, let’s strip off the “gotcha” costume for a moment and examine the facts:

• The WSJ says any action by the nation’s primary environmental regulatory body would be “a faulty interpretation of the Clean Air Act.” In truth, the Supreme Court ruled last year that greenhouse gases are pollutants as defined by the Clean Air Act. That’s right, the nation’s highest court - - the one that awarded the White House to George W. Bush and that is currently stacked with Republican appointees - - has already concluded that the USEPA has an obligation under federal law to address greenhouse gas pollution. If it’s a “faulty interpretation”, then apparently the WSJ knows more about the law than the Supreme Court.
• The WSJ complains that “a blueprint released in July” by USEPA sets forth the manner in which greenhouse gases would be regulated and complains that it would “monitor and regulate the carbon emissions of…everything with an engine, like cars, planes and boats.” Yes, that’s true - - because burning fossil fuel creates the problem. What the WSJ fails to mention is that these sources are already regulated by the USEPA under the Clean Air Act for their other harmful emissions and such restrictions have not eliminated the use of coal-fired power and other fossil fuels as far as I know as WSJ warns would happen now. Instead, our air is vastly cleaner than it used to be unlike, say Beijing, which has no Clean Air Act and the pollution is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes daily. Oh, by the way, the USEPA that issued this “blueprint” works for President Bush, not presidential candidate Obama.
• The WSJ asserts that regulations have costs (duh!), but fails to note that there are almost always benefits and it goes on to say the “ costs would far exceed the burden of a straight carbon tax or cap-and-trade system enacted by Congress.” Considering neither USEPA nor Congress have issued estimates of fees, taxes, or cap-trade allowance costs, one wonders what crystal ball (or crystal meth) WSJ is using to make such a definitive statement (note to self: WSJ apparently favors new taxes!).

I don’t generally mind the fact that the WSJ gets a lot of its environmental and energy reporting wrong, because you can’t be good at everything. I assume those tiny-font charts and tables with stock prices and hog belly futures trends are accurate and isn’t that the main reason to invest a buck or two each day in the WSJ? But one would assume they’d ask their editorial writers to blow hard, but accurate.

Whatever side of the global warming solutions debate you are on, I think you’ll agree the last thing we need is more hot air.

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Bail-out or Build-out – Part 2

As the Presidential race nears the finish line - - with the candidates and voters both gasping for air amidst the ubiquitous onslaught of commercials on everything from lawn signs to Saturday Night Live - - there are no shortages of “new and improved” proposals for dealing with the current financial mess. Well, if politicians can constantly add to their repertoires, so can we.

Earlier this month I suggested we should consider investing in cleantech infrastructure as a way to help America (and the world) work its way out of the current fiscal crisis. That offering laid out a vision for a self-supporting revamp of our transportation system that would create jobs, wealth, and improve the environment. Here’s another suggestion, this time focused on our electricity energy systems.

What do schools, fire stations, hospitals, government offices, and city halls have in common? They are all vital public infrastructure buildings and many, if not most, are pretty old. The older they are, the more likely they are to be wasting electricity. How about a National ESCO Project, where we recruit energy service companies (“ESCOs”), engineering firms, electrical contractors, builders, and others to go into these buildings and identify the outdated lighting, HVAC, elevators, and other inefficient uses of electricity? While they’re at it, they could also audit water use and waste disposal.

What they will find, as we have in numerous private sector facilities, is that upgrading these things will save so much electricity, that the cost is reimbursed in 18-36 months, after which the owner (that means us, the taxpayers!) starts saving real money, not to mention lots of kilowatts and avoided pollution.

As part of the National ESCO Project, we recruit banks to lend money to these institutions to pay for the retrofits. Remember all of that money that the feds are pumping into banks in the hopes that it will find its way into lending to re-start the economy? This would be some of the smartest deployment of that capital, with multiple ROIs, that anyone could suggest. This is where the feds come in again though - - to ensure more rapid uptake of the offer, they could guarantee the loans, which would not be much of a stretch considering the underlying asset values, repayment revenue streams, and creditworthiness of the borrowers.

In one stroke, you create thousands of jobs, sell lots of efficient new goods/services that generate sales taxes and other revenues to government, reduce pollution, reduce strain on the electrical grid, deploy capital into the marketplace - - and save a lot of money.

If you’re among the remaining undecided voters that both candidates seem so eager to please in the next few days, perhaps you would consider supporting whichever candidate backs this “new and improved” economic stimulus plan!

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Postcard from Beijing

What do Starbucks and smog have in common? Opportunity. As I walk around Beijing, the signs of the 2008 Olympics fading into memory, I am struck by the fact that every corner has a Starbucks, not to mention other ubiquitous American iconography - - Sizzler, Nike, 7-11, Hummers, and CNN to name a few. I’m also struck by the fact that the smog problem remains untamed, despite efforts pre and post Olympics to reduce pollution from traffic and smokestacks. So why do these two forces - - American companies and smog - - have anything to do with opportunity?

The Chinese apparently love our American products and lifestyle (yes, the line out the door for soy lattes is mostly Chinese, not American tourists). That has created opportunities for business here. The smog is a problem that we have technology to address - - so why isn’t that also an opportunity?

Some smart entrepreneur could rent a storefront here in Beijing and feature every cleantech gadget that America has to offer. We have tech companies that make diesel particulate traps, energy-efficient lighting, wind micro-turbines, building-integrated solar panels, software to manage energy use and a lot more. I’ll bet that even our green consumer products that are showcased in places like Whole Foods markets (note to self - - find out if Whole Foods has any stores over here!), from sustainable/organic cosmetics and clothing to household energy-saving devices and luggage made from recycled materials, would be at least as popular here as the latest iPod.

Wouldn’t it be great to hook 1.5 billion people on American cleantech and greentech before the goods and services of some other country does it? Maybe on my next trip to Beijing I’ll see a line out the door of a store that’s flying a flag of red, white, blue, and green.

12:28 pm | 1 recommendation | 1 comment

How Would You Spend It?

Congress passed the bailout plan with a price tag of nearly a trillion dollars, but the ink was hardly dry on this new Monopoly money when quite a few experts began to predict it wouldn’t be enough. Some estimates hope the “investments” that taxpayers will make in bad debts could ultimately turn a profit, but how likely is that?

Government has tried its hand at business management before with very mixed results. A few years back, I recall, the feds confiscated a brothel in Nevada as part of a law enforcement action. It soon went broke. It’s hard to imagine how our government will do better with complicated financial instruments than it did with the oldest, most reliable money-making business that ever existed!

So what might the feds buy instead (or at least in addition, given how much money we suddenly seem to have at our disposal) if ROI (return on investment) is the real metric? How about 600 wind farms or 400 solar power plants (at 500 megawatts each) - - about ten times the capacity of nuclear plants that Senator McCain has suggested we build (although no one knows how to handle the waste, security concerns, or global warming impacts that would be associated).

Everyone needs power, so we know how much money we could make on this investment, but better still, the construction projects would employ thousands of Americans and generate business taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, and other revenues for local, state, and federal treasuries, returning even more on the original investment. The added benefit of dramatic reductions of greenhouse gases would be an ROI beyond estimation.

Business groups also tell me frequently that what the most want is certainty. The fuel cost for the solar and wind generators is far more predictable than the cost of coal, oil, uranium, or natural gas. Oh yes, one more thing. Given that these powerplants will last fifty years, we can also predict they will not run out of fuel - - something those incumbents can’t say.

Not a bad investment. Got a better one?

11:57 am | 1 recommendation | 3 comments

Bail-out or Build-out?

As Washington and Wall Street dicker over a financial rescue plan, everyone is missing the real opportunity to fix the problem. Some see the variously proposed plans as bailouts of dumb borrowers and dumber lenders, while others view it as a chance to restore liquidity to the marketplace so we can all have access to credit again, whether it’s for student loans or to finance the acquisition of industrial machinery.

But when the “Great Depression” struck America more than 70 years ago, we didn’t just make more money available and hope people would borrow it to jump start the economy. President Roosevelt put us back to work, building bridges, highways, schools, and water projects. All of that infrastructure has served us well over the years, although at the time it must have looked like a lot of pork barrel spending designed to keep workers off of street corners and out of soup kitchens. What if we could do something like that again, but this time, make it a build-out that had fantastic economic, environmental, and social return on the invested capital?

In 2003, President Bush spoke about hydrogen cars in his State of the Union address. Shortly thereafter, the American Petroleum Institute (API) warned that building a hydrogen fueling infrastructure that could reach all Americans would cost $140 billion. Although I’m sure the API had no reason to use scare tactics and biased estimates (well, OK, maybe I’m not THAT sure), let’s assume that’s an accurate figure.

If we built those fueling stations, we would also need vehicles that run on hydrogen. It takes about $5,000 to retrofit a car or truck to run on hydrogen. Yup, almost any car or truck (or bus or train for that matter) that currently runs on gasoline or diesel fuel will also run on hydrogen gas. It’s not the most efficient use of hydrogen (a fuel cell, which converts hydrogen to electricity and thereby powers an electric motor in an all-electric car is far more efficient), but anything is more efficient than digging oil out of the ground and making it into transportation fuel. Let’s say we convert 50 million cars and trucks nationwide to run on hydrogen - - that’s $250 billion more.

So for just under $400 billion, we could eliminate the need for all of the oil we now import (and a lot of the domestic supply for that matter). We would have given tens of thousands of Americans jobs in the design, building, and servicing of hydrogen fueling stations; and tens of thousands more would be working in the new retrofit business. Detroit could now start making new hydrogen powered cars, knowing that the marketplace accepts these products, so we would simultaneously revitalize our domestic auto industry.

We could recoup 100% of this investment when retailers sell hydrogen fuel with a few cents per unit sales tax, just like the gasoline tax. But we would recoup it even faster with the payroll and business taxes generated from all of the new employment and businesses created with this program.

So there you have it - - a domestic jobs program that will kick the oil addiction, solve global warming, create new industries and jobs that can’t be outsourced to India or China, eliminate billions in annual subsidies to oil companies and billions more that we now spend on defense costs to protect our oil supply. For half what we will spend on Wall Street and 20% of what we have spent securing oil in Iraq so far, we will have social, economic and environmental prosperity for as far as the eye can see.

This build-out sounds crazy at first blush until you realize that we already produce 3 trillion cubic feet of hydrogen in America every year, but use the majority of that to strip sulfur from petroleum to make gasoline instead of just putting the hydrogen right into our cars. How crazy is that?! No, make no mistake, we can do this and reap all of the benefits.

Now if we just had another Roosevelt around to get us started…

02:56 pm | 2 recommendations | Be the first to comment

When Coal Makes You Thirsty

Much is written about our oil addiction, but we are addicted to another fossil-drug - - coal. And while oil steals the breath from our kids and incentivizes our bad behavior around the world, coal is the major contributor to global warming and one other surprising side-effect - - thirst.

The Hopi Indian tribe in Arizona has long relied on Peabody Coal for a large part of their income. Several decades ago they were tricked by their own lawyer (as described in the great Island Press book “Fire on the Plateau” by Charles Wilkinson) into selling water from their underground aquifers. As you can imagine, water in the Arizona desert is a precious commodity, especially when it is tens of thousands of years old and pristine, derived from ancient glaciers. Moreover, the Hopi were paid around $3 million a year for the water. Based on what we pay for natural spring water sold in bottles, that water was actually worth over $1 billion a year.

The water, which Peabody assured everyone was a relatively small amount and would never harm the sustainability of the aquifer, was used to slurry coal (a process of dumping coal into a pipe full of water to flush it from one place to another) from a mine to a power plant, across 250 miles of desert. In fact, Peabody was draining the precious resource right out from under the Hopi people. Springs were running dry and experts estimated that the water would be gone in 30 years.

Vernon Masayesva, a tribal elder, figured this out and started a battle to save the water and, in doing so, the life of his tribe. Peabody fought back, but ultimately this fossil-fueled “Goliath” lost to the persuasive wisdom of the community’s “David”. Vernon won temporary reprieves. But now the Bush Administration’s Office of Surface Mining is trying again to help Peabody to steal water from the Hopi and move coal by manipulating the science around environmental reviews and permits.

Corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders and the concept of making a profit. Those that convert natural resources to cash have a right to do that and, let’s be honest, we all benefit from having wood to build homes or fuel to power our lives. But corporations don’t have the right to use those resources in a way that diminishes their value to others - - it’s called the Public Trust Doctrine and is the bedrock of our environmental laws. Corporations also don’t have the right to destroy a civilization that has lived in the same place, peacefully and sustainably, for tens of thousands of years.

When this kind of outrage occurs, we have an obligation to speak up, especially because the Peabodys of the world claim they’re doing these things for us - - the consumer. They say consumers want cheap power, but never tell us the true price of switching on the lights. If you want to learn more, go to www.blackmesatrust.org and get the details. Make a contribution. If enough of us do so, we can move to more sustainable sources of energy and make sure that we’re not the next ones to go thirsty.