Nuclear Ester, nuclear Alaska

Jamie Smith sent me this cartoon back in 2005, when Galena was considering Toshiba's offer of a small-scale, self-contained nuclear power plant. More recently, when John Reeves started a bit of a ruckus out here by proposing to install a similar underground self-contained nuclear power plant on his property near Ester, Jamie sent me another cartoon. One of the hazards of living in Alaska is that we are on the Ring of Fire—and that same summer, coincidentally, Ester was plagued with a LOT of earthquakes.

So, it may be of interest to Mr. Reeves and various Esterites that the Alaska Center for Energy and Power is holding a community lecture at the Blue Loon next Tuesday (January 18 at 6 pm) on the very subject of nuclear power in Alaska. Here's their blurb:

The lecture is titled “The Nuclear Option: Are Small Scale Nuclear Power Plants an Option for Alaska.” It will provide an overview of small-scale nuclear technology and its potential applications in Alaska. Design and permitting considerations, safety and security, economics, ownership, resource and environmental issues will be discussed.

Ought to be entertaining, at the least…
ACEP conducted a workshop on the feasibility small-scale nuclear power in Alaska in early December. The link provides some more info on the presentations, including both summaries and a full transcript.

Ester, contrary to previous thought, is not officially a nuke-free zone. The Ester Community Association has never revisited the question. Perhaps we'd best make it so?

GVEA bylaws vote

I have yet to sit down and thoroughly examine the packet GVEA sent us regarding the bylaws, but I did receive an opinion piece from the group GVEA Ratepayers' Alliance. Nancy Kuhn, the author, evaluates GVEA's power generation priorities--and the Healy 2 coal plant should not be among them.

The Golden Valley Electric Association Issues blog recommends voting no on lifting or expanding the debt cap, and I agree. We're in too much debt already. He also gives some information about the subsidy that the Eva Creek wind project would be eligible for, plus a few PowerPoint presentations on the project that GVEA created (but doesn't seem to have on the GVEA website--go figure).

Battery technology and life forms

Here's an interesting little piece in the Economist all about a biological battery based on the biology of electric eels and other electricity-producing animals:

David LaVan of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland and his colleagues wanted to study the operation of living cell membranes and their proteins. They began by experimenting on artificial “protocells”. These, like real cells, were surrounded by membranes made of fatty molecules. Proteins “floating” in the membranes would let only certain ions pass. Using this system, the researchers realised that they might be able to copy the eel’s electricity-generation mechanism.

Earlier this year, there was a report in Chemistry World about using viruses to create electrodes:

Angela Belcher and colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, however, have found that electrodes based on viruses are a feasible alternative. They have manipulated the genes of the simple 'M13' virus so that it is equipped with certain short polymers known as peptides. On one end of the virus the peptides can bind with carbon nanotubes, while on the rest of the virus the peptides can help instigate the growth of amorphous iron phosphate (a-FePO4). Although a-FePO4 is not usually a good conductor, the nanotubes work together to enhance conductivity across the entire virus.

Not your tommyknocker, but interesting.

Mike Musick meet and greet

Your intrepid blogger is here at the Golden Eagle, blogging live from the scene of a political fundraiser/gathering for Mike Musick, who is running for re-election to borough assembly. (The election is October 6.) Mike arrived a few minutes ago and is looking cheerful, chatting with Joe Thomas (that's state senator Joe) and Maggie Billington. I'm not close enough to eavesdrop, but I can step away from the computer and butt in on the conversation, I think. Northern River is tuning up for their next song--wait, they've started. Hoo! Great stuff. Beth is going to town on the fiddle.

Spoke briefly with Joe Thomas about the Ester library plans (new and improved).

So: who's here? Don DeWitt, Ray & Jill Cameron, JD Ragan, Nancy Burnham, Bob Grove, Charley Gray, Bob Siftar, Kate Billington, Jeff Stepp, Pete Bowers...Mike is out there mingling.

Aha. Mike Musick has just come over and I plan to query him on a few items (seeing as I didn't get to this for the Republic).

(Don DeWitt) Q. Have you heard about the plastic bag that dissolves in sunlight?

A. No. I'm not setting policy. I'm just working on setting up a recycling commission; I'm sure they'll they'll be happy to look into that.

(DeWitt and Musick discussed the relative merits of photodegradable plastic bags, on whether the degraded product--a powder after four months, according to DeWitt--is toxic or not)

This question related to the one I planned to ask him, as a Facebook user was curious about how he had voted on the plastic bag fee/tax ordinance and why.

Musick: I really wanted a grassroots, bottom-up recycling movement so I voted [against the ordinance] because I understand this community and that this would create a divisive situation...

[Musick said that he wanted to address the questioner directly about this (the bag ordinance and the fee). Mike has been instrumental in reviving the recycling commission (not yet officially voted on). I spoke with Layne St. John, a former assemblyman and chair of the Solid Waste Committee about this earlier--Hans and I ran into him and Janice at the Blue Loon earlier tonight where we had gone out to dinner. Layne described how the recycling commission/program idea has resurfaced over the years again and again but has never been able to stick. We talked about land fills, municipal composting, and methane gas reclamation from landfills, and the economics of recycling in such a small population base. I believe we need to get this thing in gear; shipping raw materials outside ends up being too expensive, but perhaps we can do the ol' value-added product thing.]

Okay, time to do a little mingling of my own. Will be back shortly.

Possible location and industry for the first oceangoing arcology

Arcology: portmanteau of architecture and ecology. There's only one arcology in existence right now, that I know of: Arcosanti, a village in the Arizona desert. This was originally conceived by Paolo Soleri, who wrote Arcology: The City in the Image of Man.

It seems to me that the perfect location for the next arcology would be the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific Trash Vortex.



Numerous architects have experimented with the idea of a city-sized ship (or an artificial, ship-like island), although the floating city in as massive a form as envisioned by science fiction writers and visionary architects such as Soleri, Eugene Tsui, Jean Philippe Zoppini, and others has yet to be designed beyond the art concept stage. From Artect.net:

Despite increasing stresses on our existing societal structure and a world population rapidly growing to unsustainable levels, land based arcologies appear unlikely in the foreseeable future. The answer may reside with the remaining seventy percent of the Earth’s surface, our oceans. Ocean arcologies could utilize ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) or derive energy from the ocean’s perpetual motion to provide abundant pollution-free energy. Fresh water would be available via desalination. Despite the inherent dangers and high expense, the surface of Earth’s oceans are already littered with surprising structures from Sea Forts in the Thames Estuary to the famed remnants of Florida’s Stiltsville and of course the ubiquitous oil rig.

A few problems exist with dotting the oceans with cities like this, however, one of which is a lack of resources. Undersea mining, of course, is one way to deal with a lack of solid raw resources, but garbage pickup is another. And there's plenty of garbage out there. So, a city floating in its midst could harvest that resource, and thereby improve the health of the surrounding fisheries and the also the beaches of the world.

Sustainability is a big issue with cities like this, so renewable energy and urban agriculture--not to mention fresh water collection or distillation--are factors to consider. Vincent Callebaut is another architect looking at the feasibility of the oceangoing urban structure, as a response to climate change. The illustrations of his Lilypad city are beautiful and very interesting. Worth a look! He also has a concept for another type of floating island/cities.

Updates on Ester nukeage

The public hearing at the Planning Commission on the permit for Reeves' nuclear power plant has been moved to June 16, per Dermot Cole (glad he's keeping an eye on this one).

On the question of being a nuke-free zone

Memory is a tricky thing. In 2003, three resolutions were introduced to the Ester Community Association at the spring meeting. They were published in the Republic and a poll conducted during the Fourth of July Picnic, where they were overwhelmingly approved by poll participants. However, the actual vote on them did not take place until the fall meeting, at which point two of the three were withdrawn and the one remaining, on making Ester a PATRIOT Act-free zone, was passed.

So when Mike Musick spoke at the GVEA meeting recently (fourth video in the member comments), saying that Reeves' plan to install a modular nuclear power generator might require a bit of discussion with the community association because Ester had declared itself a nuclear-free zone, he was only partly correct. Although the formal resolution was introduced and a public poll conducted, the resolution itself was not passed.

Mark Simpson referred to these resolutions as "hare-brained" in his August 2003 piece in the Republic, "Assemblies and Agendas," but now we are faced with the actual possibility of nuclear power in our neighborhood. Mark's main issue was with what he saw as the politicization of the ECA:

You see, it’s not the anti-PATRIOT Act stance I’m disgusted with—it’s the hijacking of an honorable, useful, apolitical association of people to fulfill the aims of some short-sighted political activists. It puts the ECA on a level with the Berkeley City Council, forever passing wacky pronouncements, rather than the Peace Corps, actively engaged in bettering lives. The ECA could host a forum, a debate, or a “teach-in,” or rent its hall to others to do so, but it best serves its members by remaining above the fray.

I saw the no-nukes resolution then not as a political issue, but as a health and safety issue, and I still do. And now is when having our community on record about it in the form of a resolution would have been a good thing.

The few people I've spoken with out here or conversed with via Facebook about the nuclear power plant aren't taking it seriously. They seem to see it as a quack idea with no real merit. However, two other commentators at the GVEA meeting besides Musick spoke about it, and they seemed to be taking it quite seriously. (The first spoke in favor of it, the second pointed out the hazards of it.) I think it's a mistake not to treat this as a genuine possibility. From what I've read, the Hyperion power plant would be an order of magnitude of improvement over the large-scale types that are causing such problems around Fort Greely [PDF] (not to mention the big headline-grabbers like Chernobyl).

Even if Reeves decides the price tag is too steep, the fact remains: small-scale nuclear power is fast becoming the Next Big Thing, despite the ever-present and apparently intrinsic drawback to this kind of power: mind-bogglingly long-lasting deadliness. It is becoming cheaper, more accessible, and more tempting to communities across the world as a power resource, and Reeves won't be the last Alaskan to think about it as a reasonable option.

Note: Bill Stringer wrote a letter to the editor in yesterday's News-Miner about the waste heat problem a small generator might cause. In the comments, it is quite clear that there are many people who see nuclear power as a feasible option for Alaska. A few useful links in the comments include:

New Commercial Reactor Designs, a list from the Energy Information Administration of the US government;

"Galena Electric Power—A Situational Analysis," the draft final report prepared for the Department of Energy by ISER and dated Dec. 15, 2004;

and a list of civilian nuclear accidents from Wikipedia.

Reeves wants to do WHAT!?, or, nuclear power for Ester

Oh good god.

Found this first on Fairbanks Open Radio, and now in an article by Dermot Cole in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: John Reeves has applied for a permit to install a portable nuclear power plant on a 4-acre lot near Ester. He makes the following nonsensical claims: that nuclear energy is the "cleanest, safest, cheapest form of energy available" (um, yeah, when it's 93 million miles away).

Before I get into the details of this, here's the date for the public hearing on the permitting:

Tuesday, May 19, 7 pm, FNSB Planning Commission. You can e-mail the entire commission at planning@co.fairbanks.ak.us.

Hyperion Power Generation, the company Reeves would like to work with, is creating small, self-contained modular power plants, rather like the Toshiba company's proposed modular power plant for Galena. (As of last year, this power plant was still scheduled for permitting approval with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.)

Hyperion's modules are smaller than Toshiba's by quite a bit (only about two meters cubed) and use no weapons-grade material. Here's how the Guardian describes them:

The reactors, only a few metres in diameter, will be delivered on the back of a lorry to be buried underground. They must be refuelled every 7 to 10 years. Because the reactor is based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use, few countries are expected to object to plants on their territory.

Let's see: "clean".

The biggest problem with nuclear power is the waste, both mining waste and power industry waste. The Star (Toronto) describes the problem succinctly:

The fact is the units would still produce nuclear-fuel waste – a football-sized amount for each reactor – and while it would be collected by Hyperion and managed at a central location, a large part of the population believes it immoral to create and leave behind highly toxic waste for future generations.

Can a company like Hyperion be trusted to transport, collect and manage this waste from potentially thousands of sites?

And will Hyperion be around for thousands of years to look after its mess? Will the governments of the countries in which these potential sites are to be located be stable enough to properly regulate the nuclear industry and plants within their borders, again, for thousands of years?

To claim that they are "greenhouse gas-emission free" is nonsensical, just as it is for anything these days. Transporting the module back and forth every 7 to 10 years is going to require something in the way of fuel, and there is no industrial equipment manufactured today that doesn't rely on fossil fuels somewhere in its creation. Mining uranium, of course, has its own set of problems above and beyond greenhouse gas emissions (the uranium mining industry has a lousy health and safety record).

Side note to Alaska's political bloggers: any of you recall the Elim student protest and Palin's mining plans for the Seward Peninsula? The student blog doesn't appear to have been updated since September 2007, but there's some more news items that showed up in 2008. Northwest Alaska isn't he only place that needs to be thinking about this question, though: Bokan Mountain near Ketchikan is described as Ucore Uranium's "flagship property".

[I really don't get why Palin is so pro-mining and so unfriendly toward renewable industries like fishing (which bring in more money than mining!).]

"Safest":

I'm not sure what these companies think they are doing, trying to sell nuclear power plants to people in a state riddled with fault lines and volcanoes and flooding rivers. I read a ludicrous claim somewhere (can't find it now...) that because an item is buried, it would be safe from earthquake. Um, what? the earth moves, and not just on the surface—down for miles! And radioactive material, if it gets loose, is decidedly unsafe. In any quanitity.

There are a couple of big advantages that these small modular-type power generators have over the traditional sort of nuclear power plant. One of them is no mechanical systems: no moving parts, nothing to break down and cause havoc thereby. The other is that the expense in building and maintaining them is considerably less than with a big plant. The uranium hydride used as fuel is far less nasty than the fuel typically used in nuclear power plants. And it's not going to be useful for people intending to make their own nuclear weapons.

Now let's address "cheapest."

Typical large-scale nuclear power has been heavily subsidized. There's no way it could compete with oil, coal, wind. solar, geothermal--any other method. It's the most expensive form of power generation out there, excepting maybe using a gadzillion mice on excercise wheels...and most estimates of cost never even touch the expense of guarding the waste properly from 260,000 years...mostly because the plan is to bury it in the ground and forget about it. The mini-nuke option is cheaper, by a lot, but it still doesn't address this long-term problem and expense.

I'm wondering. The borough didn't have any zoning plans for wireless phone transmitter towers, so they popped up all over and caused a fuss. I'm betting they don't have any zoning in place regarding nuclear power plants, either.

A note for our legislature on renewable energy

I've been subscribing to Solar Nation's newsletter. Very interesting little tidbits come through that way, for example, updates on the solar tax credit (both Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens voted to block this).

Clean energy businesses are being attracted to [North Carolina] in part because of imaginative energy policy there, and numerous citizens’ groups have had a role in steering that policy in the right direction.

Some of the milestones in the state’s road to renewables include:

• 12.5% Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (2007/2008)
• 35% State renewable energy tax credits
• Improvements to State interconnection standards (2008)
• Solar access law (2007)
• State Green Business Fund

It’s this kind of legislative and regulatory climate that has helped make North Carolina attractive to clean energy businesses. Last month Sencera International Corporation of Charlotte announced it would construct a $36 million facility in Mecklenburg County for production of solar cells and assembly of PV modules. The State’s forward-looking energy policy, as well as a $62,000 One North Carolina Fund grant and other incentives, were instrumental in the company’s decision.

Now here's what I don't understand. The state of Alaska spends gobs of money on attracting what is, essentially, a dying industry, rather than where all the breakthroughs and excitement are: renewable energy. Yes, indeed, we have lots of oil. But it's only going to get more valuable as time goes on. Why spend money to burn it? Let's get our energy grid off of fossil fuel, and spend that cash on encouraging the new industries to come here.

But no, from our local utility on up, our incentives are pretty minimal. Organizations like REAP are working hard to change this, though, so maybe we'll get this turned around.

Solar-powered car in Fairbanks today

The Power of One project, featuring a solar-powered experimental car that is making a trip across the world, will be at the Cold Climate Housing Research Center today at 10:30 this morning, in about 15 minutes.

I got a call at about 10 pm last night about this, and then forgot all about it. Alas, I am not able to go see it.

Addendum: there's a story in the News-Miner on the car.

Why coal as an "alternative" fuel is a stupid idea

In a recent bill I received a note about an upcoming monthly member meeting at GVEA--after the meeting had already occurred. Then I got a letter saying how GVEA had decided to go ahead and try to "get control of" the Healy Clean Coal Plant. This thing is a millstone, a big weighty expensive block of polluting cement that GVEA is trying to attach to our feet prior to throwing us into the sea of debt and backward thinking. There is no such thing as "clean" coal, and I think we should bag it and go for something truly clean, like wind, or solar. Amazing things are happening every day in clean and renewable power, like this research at MIT:

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

Things like this are what we should be looking at, not some hideously expensive, faulty plant that runs off an extremely carbon-heavy fuel.

More on solar energy

The Senate bill that will extend the solar tax credit (and do a lot more good besides) is S 3335, Jobs, Energy, Families and Disaster Relief Act of 2008, which would replace HR 6049 (Rep. Don Young voted against that one). Senators Baucus and Reid have introduced this bill and it could be voted on as early as Tuesday, July 29. Solarnation has an Action Alert on it: write your senators! Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski need to know Alaskans support this.

In the summertime, we've got oodles of light. And we have a heck of a lot more of it in the wintertime than Lower 48ers would suspect, simply because of reflection off of all that snow.

Solar North Cooperative

As recently reported in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, a group of neighbors on Spinach Creek Road have started up a power cooperative that will generate electricity from the sun.

In an update e-mail sent out on Monday, Solar North described the results of their July 18 meeting. The group hopes to get more pledges for shares in the cooperative ($500 a share):

We are close to the final decision of building the largest solar panel (photovoltaic) system in Alaska.... A land lease is prepared, an ideal site is selected, permits are in hand, borough support is strong, an operating agreement has been prepared with the help of a lawyer, a management team is in place, 5 bids are in, the most appropriate materials are selected, etc. Under current assumptions (which are full of variables difficult to predict), the revenue for the share holders will not be very high (partly due to the increased number of producers in the SNAP program) and there may be years with a bit of a minus initially. However, this - we feel - is a very timely project and a great example of alternative energy in the land of oil.

For more information, contact the organizers at solarnorth@yahoo.com or call Franziska Kohl at 452 2916.

One of the problems the organizers are having is that if they build this year, then a 30% solar tax credit is available--until the end of 2008. This means that they have to raise the money AND build in a very short time frame. The tax credit was not renewed for 2009. This has Greens, the Solar Energy Industries Association, and sensible people everywhere hopping mad. The Solar Energy Industries Association breaking news page has information on an extension bill and other legislation that will help keep tax incentives to invest in solar power.

(cross-posted at the TY-Greens blog)

Making those massive changes now

More than a year ago, two years ago, actually, I was thinking aloud on this blog about trying to go solar with the Republic, or how to make changes in our energy use on our house, but somehow, we Never Got Around To It. And now, of course, it's even more expensive, and we still don't magically have piles of loose cash lying around that we could spend on it. I am of the opinion that it will never get any easier to do what needs to be done, and really, the time is NOW. It's only going to get worse.

When Kenneth Deffeyes came up here to talk about Hubber's Peak, I remember that one thing he said seemed a bit odd at the time but now makes an immense amount of sense. He said that we ought to grow gardens, eat root vegetables in the winter. Do some canning. Stop importing our food from halfway around the world--or at least, stop relying on it. The idea of eating locally and in season wasn't so strange, of course, but it was the direct connection between oil and agriculture that I didn't viscerally understand quite yet. It was more an intellectual comprehension, a bit abstract. Yet now the news is full of stories about food riots, rising food prices and food shortages, impending starvation—all because the cost of oil is going through the roof.

So I'm looking at my garden a little more critically. How, I ask myself, can I store this over the winter?

And I'm looking at that list of things I came up with last year and thinking that we'd better get on it. And add a few more:

• get ourselves a masonry stove or some other sort of decent house-heater
• quit being lazy already and start biking in to work
• get an energy audit
• replace the damn leaky window and put the trim around the other unfinished ones (I can do that)
• FINISH THE STUPID CURTAINS!
• take care of the greenhouse/septic line repair
• get the gutters and water buckets set up

Palin's shortsighted energy plan

The Energy Debit Card is indeed as described, a short-term pain reducer. It "can only be used for energy purchases from authorized energy vendors in Alaska, such as electric utilities, natural gas utilitie, heating oil distrubtors, gas stations, and other retail fueling stations." It has a limit of $100 per month. So, in effect, it will do nothing for the long or even medium term, and it certainly won't reduce the actual costs of energy.

And what about those who would like to invest in, say, triple-pane thermally insulated windows to replace their leaky double-paned or single-paned windows? (Don't laugh--there are people in Anchorage living in houses that have single-paned windows—I've seen them with my eyes. This month.) Or maybe buy some insulation? This energy card can't be used for that kind of thing, or on long-life low-energy florescent lightbulbs, or all in one chunk on, say, solar heaters or small wind turbines.

What about those of us who (I blush) forgot to fill out our PFD forms in time? or who chose not to fill them out? or who haven't been here quite long enough to qualify for a PFD? Or those who make so much money that they really don't need a handout from the state for something like this? There's no qualifications regarding income level.

I'm sorry, Governor Palin, but I think this energy card idea is seriously flawed. If you're going to give out money to the public to deal with energy costs, then do it in such a way that it reaches those who really need it, and encourage (or at least allow!) them to conserve energy and use renewable energy sources. This is just a way of giving cash back to the oil and coal companies, ultimately, and doesn't help solve the actual problem.

Susitna damnation

I just CANnot believe that the stupid Susitna dam project is being resurrected AGAIN! The News-Miner, of course, is supporting the study of its feasibility.

Why not study microhydro instead? I mean, hell, what on earth is WRONG with applying less money to a bunch of little bitty local, affordable hydropower projects that are manageable and far more quickly buildable? Why must we even consider flooding millions of acres of land, causing untold havoc on fisheries, creating giant engineering structures in an earthquake-prone state, and spend HUMONGOUS amounts of cash to a) study the possibility (again and again) and then even MORE money to build the damn dam when we could have electricity much sooner and create more local jobs (like, in the villages) if we built a hundred little dams?

We've been through this before. Why waste time and money doing it all over again just to discover that, gee whillikers, it's a big dam expensive project that creates big dam overruns in time and (inevitably) money and a big dam environmental mess and gee, maybe we should shelve the idea.

Sheesh.

Booed in Bali

And rightly so: the United States has been standing in the way of meaningful effort toward combatting global warming, protections for endangered species, habitat preservation, and pollution reduction for around, oh, seven years. Actually, we've been in the way for a while longer than that, but we used to be leading the environmental charge, back when Carter was in office. It's finally pissing off other countries to the point that they're not putting up with it, much, anymore:

In a hushed conference hall, as envoys from 186 nations looked on, the world's lone superpower took a tongue-lashing from its most powerless, nation after poor nation assailing the U.S. ''no'' on the document at hand. Then the delegate from Papua New Guinea leaned into his microphone.

''We seek your leadership,'' Kevin Conrad told the Americans. ''But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.''

The U.N. climate conference exploded with applause, the U.S. delegation backed down...

Still, we managed to finagle our way on benchmarks. No actual binding limits. Which makes this treaty toothless.

Congress has passed, and Bush signed, a lily-livered increase in the CAFE standards that doesn't take effect for twelve more years, and only to a paltry 35 mpg. Mark Morford says it best:

This "milestone" legislation, which raises the fuel efficiency standards of cars and light trucks to a record high in America, will still be comfortably well below that of China.
That's right, China. Yes, it was fully five years ago that those pesky commies mandated that every car on the road (as opposed to fleet averages, as U.S. automakers get away with) get at least 38 mpg, to be increased to 43 in 2008 - 22 percent higher than what our "landmark" achievement won't accomplish until after the next three presidential administrations, and still far short of what many 50-60 mpg European cars can already achieve and all well short of what modern technology could accomplish if we had the slightest bit of nerve and Big Auto wasn't so appallingly gluttonous and the GOP didn't have raw, reeking crude where their humanity used to be.

It seems to me that the American car industry is doing its damnedest to make itself irrelevant, outmoded, and obsolete, and Congress is helping them kill themselves. But probably the auto industry is counting on a government bailout when they start going bankrupt and have to lay off thousands and thousands of American workers because nobody in their right mind will buy a gas-guzzling crap American car. (But then, it's pretty clear that a lot of Americans aren't in their right minds, these days.)

And then there's the idiocy of NOT rescinding the oil company tax breaks. That money would have gone to fund alternative energy research and incentives for your average Joe to install extra insulation or solar panels. But no, let's encourage our dependency on oil, let's keep ourselves in a precarious financial position, let's keep on making ourselves beholden to any oil-rich monarch or dictator out there! Let's make sure there's no controls on carbon emissions for autos! $90 a barrel, record profits for years, and the oil companies get government subsidy and tax breaks? And poor little ExxonMobil can't afford the nasty tort for all the damage they did to Prince William Sound back in 1989?

Free market, my ass.

Pay attention, Don: We're melting!

We're in deep, deep trouble, and all those idiots who think that there is no such thing as global warming ought to be the first ones thrown into the rising meltwater. Seth Borenstein of the AP has an article on it, "Ominous Actic Melt Worries Experts:"

Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.

This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."

All these limp action plans by presidential candidates like Barack Obama, who talk about getting 80% carbon emissions down by 2050, are stupidly ineffective (even though Obama's is one of the more agressive!). We're going to be in a pressure cooker by 2050. We've got to do something NOW.

Even Australia's figured it out. Here's a quote from their new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, at the Bali Climate Change Conference:

In my first act as Prime Minister, I signed the formal instrument for Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. And just a few moments ago I handed, personally, that instrument of ratification to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

I did so, and my Government has done so, because we believe that climate change represents one of the greatest moral, economic and environmental challenges of our age.

Australia now stands ready to assume its responsibility in responding to this challenge – both at home and in the complex negotiations which lie ahead across the community of nations.

For Australians, climate change is no longer a distant threat. It is no longer a scientific theory. It is an emerging reality. In fact, what we see today is a portent of things to come.

But Alaska, and the United States, is represented by boobs who don't have a clue that yes, they too will be affected by this, and they'd better get off their keisters and work on all those environmental issues that us Greens have been yelling about for years. Mostly, what we need to do is USE LESS ENERGY.

Going to greener energy sources, traveling less and traveling lightly are other ways to help. There's a solar power initiative starting up here in the Fairbanks area, to produce electricity to feed into the GVEA grid. The aim is to create a large solar power plant, rather than the smaller setups so far producing electricity for the SNAP program. More on this later.

A sustainability plan for Ester

Since, obviously, not much in the way of realistic or timely change is going to come from the feds on sensible approaches to global warming or sustainability, individuals and cities are having to do it themselves. As New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, "If we don't act now, when?"

Ester's a village on the outskirts of a town, and we're growing. Seems to me that we should be planning ahead for what we want our village to be five, ten, twenty years down the line. If not, we're likely to be plagued with box stores and strip malls like Wasilla. The Gold Hill area (a.k.a., the Ester Industrial Zone, formerly known as Berry) is already a potential spot for this sort of crappy development.

So what would a sustainable Ester look like?

Well, here's what I'd like to see:

-- walkable neighborhood centers (we've got the Village Square, the park, Gold Hill, and Calypso right now) where people congregate and where there are centers of activity. Our current centers are a little far from each other (except the park and the square for walking from one to the other, but they serve as centers for their immediate areas

-- more green building and alternative energy use in structures (the library will incorporate some of this, but businesses and residents could start putting up solar panels, insulating, etc.). This is something I still want to try with the Republic, although going solar is pricey up front.

-- more small, locally-oriented businesses: a local grocery store would be nice, or a hardware place, or a general store. The trip into town adds miles, pollution, wear and tear, and a time cost to our day.

-- more local services: a school out here or even in Cripple Creek would save the kids a whole bunch of time that's now spent sitting on a bus. A local medical or health clinic, a laundromat, or a veterinarian would be good, too. (Jean Battig's clinic on Chena Ridge is pretty close, but closer would be better.) What about a micro-credit union? local constructed wetlands to take care of sewage or runoff?

-- another small farm or two, or a dairy, or a mill, or other agricultural institutions

-- local currency?

A lot of businesses, to be viable, depend on a certain minimum number of customers. What I wonder is how villages and small towns used to be able to do this, when they can't now. What happened? A lot of these ideas above are just thrown out, without a lot of investigation into them, but I think they merit a little discussion.

Sustainable Living Conference

This is going to be quite the to-do, but it's not getting the publicity it needs. It takes place on campus, mostly, and features an incredible array of presentations, events, and tours. So, here's a quickie listing of what's going on:

Monday, April 16: Do It Yourself Energy
Coordinator: Tom Marsik fttm1@uaf.edu
Natural Sciences building room 201A

4:00 – 4:40 pm -- Presentation: “Knowledge is Power; Turn it On” - Todd Hoener (GVEA)
4:45 – 5:25 pm -- Presentation: Energy Savings at the Workplace - Pam Seiser (Interior Alaska Green Star)
5:30 – 6:30 pm -- Slideshow: Powering a Homestead with Renewable Sources - Phil Loudon
6:35 – 7:15 pm -- Workshop: How to make biodiesel, winterize windows, & more

Tuesday, April 17: Do It Yourself Food
Coordinator: Jacquie Goss fsjdg@uaf.edu

Wood Center lounge
2:00 – 5:00 pm -- Workshops: Bow hunting, Fly tying, Beer brewing
WC Conf. rms. E/F
5:00 – 5:30 pm -- AK Grown/Organic Potluck and Cooking Contest
5:30 – 8:00 pm -- Workshop: “Living off the land… Fairbanks style!” - Larry Landry

Wednesday, April 18: Do It Yourself Transportation
Coordinator: Nick Toye fsnjt4@uaf.edu

Wood Center lounge
10:00 am – 5:00 pm -- Workshop: Bike Repair - Free help fixing your bike. (out in front of Wood Center)
2:00 – 5:00 pm -- Workshop: Learn how to build an electric powered car & bike (prototypes displayed)
Schaible Auditorium
7:00 – 10:00 pm -- Presentations and Discussion: Urban Sprawl and the Fairbanks Downtown Plan

Thursday, April 19: Do It Yourself Clothing
Coordinator: Eli Sonafrank fsaes1@uaf.edu

Wood Center lounge
5:00 – 8:00 pm -- Workshops: Knitting, Cloths Making, and Bookmaking
5:00 – 8:30 pm -- Knanook Knitter’s Stash Swap: drop off craft swap items from 5-6pm, shop until 8:30
Schaible Auditorium
5:30 – 7:00 pm -- Presentation and Films: Electronics Waste: Exporting Harm; E-Recycling in Fbnks

Friday, April 20: Do It Yourself Building
Coordinator: matthew.klick@gmail.com

Library Media Classroom
Also: Tour of the Cold Climate Housing Research Center at 10:30am
1:00 – 2:00 pm -- Presentation: Recycling and Building – creativity and cleverness - Peter Adams
2:00 – 3:00 pm -- Presentation: Remodeling for Energy Conservation - Richard Seifert
3:00 – 4:00 pm -- Presentation: US Green Building Council and LEED standards - Thane Magelky
4:00 – 5:00 pm -- Presentation: CCHRC, “Introduction to Green Building” - Mike Musik
5:00 – 7:00 pm -- Panel Discussion: Green Building and Design

Saturday, April 21: Earth Day Fair
Coordinator: Aaron Simpson fsajs6@uaf.edu

Constitution Park
12:00 – 6:00 pm -- Outdoor booths and informal workshops, live music, free BBQ, beer tent, games, fire juggling, art contest displays, and more.
4:00 pm -- Recycled art show winner announced, prizes distributed
3:00 – 6:00 pm -- Free BBQ with locally procured meat, salmon, and organic veggies.
Taku Parking Lot
10:00am-4:00pm -- Electronics Recycling Collection Event

Sunday, April 22: Sustainable Living Tour of Fairbanks
Coordinator: Maegan Weltzin fsmmw4@uaf.edu

10:00am – 6:00 pm or 10:00am - 9:00pm -- Meet at Patty Center. Transportation provided to tour five homes with sustainable design, with additional trip to Chena Hot Springs for geothermal tour.