Articles by Clark Williams-Derry

The ranking of most eco-friendly cities gives too much weight to good intentions.

Via Planetizen News, here's an interesting sustainability ranking for 25 US cities. Now, I haven't had time to look through the methods thoroughly. But my first impression is that it gives undue weight to intentions, and not enough to actual performance.

For example, Portland does exceptionally well in climate and energy policy, while New York City's rank on energy policy is only middling. But this only measures what cities say about energy, not what they actually do. In the real world, however, the climate doesn't care about good intentions. And in point of fact--at least where transportation emissions are concerned--Portland eats The Big Apple's dust. Gotham has by far the most energy efficient and climate-friendly transportation system in the U.S., largely because higher residential densities and a good mix of residences, jobs, and services let many New Yorkers get around on public transit or on foot. So even though Portland is doing a good job of talking the talk on energy efficiency, in New York City they're (literally) walking the walk.

That's not to say that Portland's energy policy is irrelevant, or that rankings like these aren't a useful exercise. Far from it.  Still, actions speak louder than words -- and any attempt to measure sustainability should look far more closely at what cities actually do than at what their leaders say.

Is using trees for biomass a good idea?

I point this out not because I'm in favor of it, but because I think it's a trend worth watching: the Klamath Falls, Ore., newspaper, The Herald and News is reporting on a project to use biomass--namely, thinned trees--to generate electricity.

Here's what the article has to say about the greenhouse gas effects of the project:

A major wildfire would release large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. But the controlled use of that same wood for lumber or electrical production would be positive in terms of "greenhouse gas" emissions. Future fires would not release the same amount of carbon dioxide, the wood that goes into building products stores carbon, and the biomass that goes into power production offsets the need to produce that energy from fossil fuels.

To be clear, I remain skeptical -- but since I don't really know anything about the specifics I'll keep my mouth shut, and let wiser or more informed people speak.

But over the long term -- and if future prices for natural gas are as high as they're expected to be (link goes to natural gas futures contract prices) -- I can't help but think that the pressure for this sort of project will intensify. And that seems to be a cause for concern. Deforestation rates over the past 30 years have been high enough just to deal with demand for timber and wood pulp; adding electricity to the mix is, well, troubling.

Washington Monthly considers peak oil.

Blogger Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly has a well-written, informative, and balanced set of posts of the so-called "Peak Oil" theory -- the idea that, while the world may not be running out of oil, exactly, we may be fairly close to the practical limit of how much oil can be squeezed out of the ground in any given year.  After the peak, goes the theory, oil production gradually declines, no matter how high the price might go. 

(By the way, oil production in the United States peaked in 1970.  Even with new production in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, and billions of dollars invested in domestic oil production since then, the US still produces about a third less oil per year than it did at the peak.  The Peak Oil theory is basically the hypothesis that the entire world is about to do the same thing that the US did in 1970 -- reach a physical maximum of production, after which oil supplies gradually and continually decline.)

I've posted on the topic before, and have nothing new to add.  But I think it's definitely something worth familiarizing yourself with -- at a minimum, to put the recent rash of media stories on the subject in context.  The Washington Monthly series is a pretty good place to start.

Transportation choices are made as much with the heart as with the head.

This New York Times article from last Saturday echoed news that has been popping up all over recently. The headline sums it up: "America's Love Affair With S.U.V.'s Begins to Cool." Higher gas prices are apparently starting to shift people's car-buying patterns -- which seems to have caught most auto-industry execs by surprise, though it should hardly come as a shock to economists who (quite naturally) expect that price changes will eventually change people's behavior.

But what stuck out at me was this quote from a former SUV aficionado:

"I never wanted a car before -- never," said Tamika Cooks, a science teacher at Bellaire High School in Houston, in an interview Friday as she was signing the paperwork for her Chrysler 300C. "But this car has captured my attention. It speaks to me. It calls my name."