Livestock's Long Shadow

A recent report by the UN and a story in the NY Times raise some issues about food. As a triathlete, food is very important to me (eating is commonly known as "the fourth sport"). As an environmentalist, I now know to take it seriously because of the UN Report "Livestock's Long Shadow." The takeaway message from this report is that you can reduce your carbon footprint more by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius.

The argument goes as follows: getting your calories from meat is much more energy intensive than getting the same number of calories from plants. Because animals need to breathe, move a little, chat, or whatever else they do to pass the time while they get fattened and prepare to meat their maker, they are inefficient converters of plants into protein. After you consider all the methane released in cow farts, the energy it takes to fatten a cow, move it to the slaughterhouse, cut out the bones and fat and skin, package the meat, and get it to the grocery store, you've released 10 times as many greenhouse gasses as if you'd just eaten the corn yourself and skipped the middle-pig.

The NY Times article doesn't touch energy issues, it addresses health. In notes the twin key trends over the last 30 years: 1) people have become increasingly health- and diet-conscious, leading to a proliferation of health foods and nutritional products and 2) people have become less healthy, more prone to diabetes, fatter, more oft-stricken by heart attacks. The recommendations made are essentially to eat less, eat unprocessed food (produce), and eat less meat.

If you aren't yet concerned about eating meet, check out the webiste www.goveg.com, which, while a little heavy-handed, may give you second-thoughts next time you buy a sausage.

Finally, I'd like to argue the 80% case: even meat lovers can stand to eat less meat. The average American diet includes far more protein than is necessary or healthy. So if going "whole hog" is too much to ask (it is for me), try to become an 80% vegetarian. Or any percent vegetarian. Every so often, try to order something without meat when you would have otherwise gotten meat.

How We Are Hungry

After a few blog posts, it is time to explain the name and theme of this blog. How We Are Hungry is a tribute to my favorite book by Dave Eggers. Though I don't think Eggers meant for the title to mean what I use it to stand for, perhaps he won't be offended at this tribute. This blog will be about our hunger, and the things we hunger for. It will be devoted to, in roughly equal parts, the things I am hungry for (triathlons, music, efficiency, food, cycling), and the things many others are hungry for (electricity, luxury, entropy).

As past readers may have discovered, this blog will be primarily concerned with energy: alternative energy, technology, and energy conservation and efficiency. It will address the climate change "debate". Such blogs can hopefully increase the awareness of the problems resulting from future climate change as well as some easy things we can all do to help in mitigation. I will highlight the degree of consensus among scientists that global warming: is happening, is caused by humans, and will harm us in the future. Such publicity is important as the public perceives there to be disagreement on this issue, and criterion for political action include

1. awareness
2. consensus: if the situation is complicated, voters need to at least believe that the experts agree
3. efficacy: a feeling that by acting, we can improve things

So, I hope to keep writing about these issues, and I hope you'll keep reading up on them. After all, it is hard to open a newspaper these days without seeing stories about energy. We clearly reached a tipping point in the last year, energy is no longer a fringe issue. Let's keep up the momentum.

Vampires that suck us dry at night

The "vampire load" on the grid consists of those little electronic devices we leave plugged in that glow and get slightly warm to the touch. DVD players, computers on standby, phone chargers, really anything with a transformer consumes energy even when turned off. Sometimes they use 75% as much power as when they are on! In Australia, these account for 10% of residential power use, according to a government survey. I'd guess it is a bigger share of commercial use, as printers, Xerox machines, lights, and computers are routinely left on every night.

To some energy wonks, this is a well known problem. There was some attention devoted to it during the blackouts in NY, including a NY Times article and an appleal by Mayor Bloomberg to conserve. There is a contest for copy machines that use the least amount of power when on standby. And one fantastic suggestion by another blogger is that Microsoft set all its machines to default to the highest energy saving mode, thereby saving the an estimated 45 million tons of CO₂ emissions per year. But for most of us, this problem is not high on our priority list.

Since energy efficiency and conservation should be a high priority, what are some steps we can all take? Here are a few cloves of garlic to keep the vampires away:

• Set your computers to power saving modes that turn off the display and harddrives after some idle period
• Turn off lights and devices when not in use. Weren't we all taught this as kids?
• When possible, unplug things when not in use. Phone chargers, IPod docks, and laptop power adapters don't suffer when they are unplugged

Bikers: friend or foe?

A friend recently sparked a debate on cycling as a form of transportation. The superficial notion that biking is always better for the environment is not necessarily correct, according to a recent study done by a business school prof. The situation turns out to be more nuanced when you consider that by cycling, people will become healthier, live longer, and therefore use more energy and emit more greenhouse gases. He concludes that the longer lived but more efficient people will end up polluting about as much as the car drivers, give or take.

There was much subsequent debate on whether he did the study correctly, etc. Even if we assume he was correct, the choice becomes: bike and live longer or drive and die young. I think the answer is obvious.

Another interesting conclusion is that the worst people, in terms of pollution, are those who exercise but don't cycle. They will drive, thereby polluting, and live longer, thus polluting more.

While I'm at it, I'd like to share a real-world biker vs. driver confrontation. I was on one of my favorite rides, involving climbing, descending, rolling hills, forests, lakes, fellow cyclists and the usually very polite drivers. On a technical descent with no shoulder, a driver started tailgating me, honking several times. We were going about 40 in a zone marked with "caution 25mph" signs, and I was busy trying not to die, so I didn't pay too much attention to the impatient driver behind me. Usual protocol is to wait for a safer place to pull to the side and let the driver past. This lady didn't give me time to do that and practically brushed me as she ripped past my in a steep curve with cars coming up the other side. As she did so, she gave a blast of the horn that nearly scared me off the side of the cliff. My cycling friends will not be surprised to hear that she was driving a SUV--experienced cyclists are well aware of the correlation between car size and jerk-to-cyclist. At the end of the descent, I caught up to her at a stop light, pulled next to her, and motioned for her to roll down the window. Most drivers in this case ignore me, so I have to decide between doing something violent to their car, yelling, and fuming silently. Luckily, she obliged me and rolled down her window.

"Do you realize you almost killed me, and didn't save any time? What were you doing on a Saturday that you'd risk manslaughter to try to save a minute or two?"
"You didn't pull over to the shoulder."
"There wasn't a shoulder. It's just like going uphill behind a truck--you just have to go slower until I can pull over."
"But you didn't pull over to the side."
"Haven't you ever heard the phrase 'share the road'? That's because roads are built for bikes and cars."
"Well, not bikes."

The light turned and she drove off, undoubtedly thinking she was right all along.

CA Voters Say, "Tax Grandma, not Exxon"

Overlooked due to the Democrats’ victories on the national level, the votes on CA state propositions provided two victories for Big Business: No for renewable energy and No on a cigarette tax. Oil companies spent around $100 million fighting against Proposition 87 to avoid paying a tax for extracting oil in California. The proposed 1.5% to 6% tax would have brought California in line with other states and raised between $200 and $500 million annually to be spent on alternative energy research.

Big Tobacco splashed out $55 million on the fight against Prop. 86, which would have taxed cigarettes to fund hospitals, tobacco-use-prevention programs, and cancer research. It appears the days are over when major tobacco companies were hauled to Washington DC and made to pay $200 billion.

While voters declined taxes of $4 billion over the next 10-20 years on oil companies that earned $286 billion last year and are set for another record year, they passed Propositions 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, and 1E, that will cost taxpayers an estimated $74 billion.

These results are a boon to the Economics professors, who have been provided with a textbook example of revealed preferences to use in classes this year. Despite all the talk of climate change, including Britain’s headline-grabbing Stern Report on climate change and Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, even relatively progressive Californians aren’t prepared to put their money where their mouths are: guzzling gasoline at the pump.