Unlike some previous high markets, this doesn’t look like a spike.  Prices have been rising steadily for many months, and there’s no sign of panic or a bubble mentality. 

What has happened?  Two things:  Globalization and Single Stream.

Globalization.  Market demand for fiber in the US is now very closely linked to global demand.  Inventories in the US have been low and growing demand particularly from Asia has depleted much of the US inventory. 

Single Stream.  Single Stream recycling is another major factor in the supply/demand situation.  As single stream has increased, quality Mixed Paper is harder to find.  The low quality fibers that come out of a Single Stream plant are not considered usable in many mills in the US, thanks to glass shards, soiling, other contamination.  As a result, much of the Single Stream Mixed Paper is an export only grade, and this drives up prices in US markets.  The impact is felt locally.  Small paper mills that depend on procuring quality fiber at reasonable prices cannot find or afford these feedstocks.  As the global economy forces mills to sell finished goods at more competitive prices (with the competition coming from international mills), high feedstock prices are squeezing these small US mills out of many sales opportunities.

There is no good way to project where markets will go.  On one hand, with prices this high and still rising it is nice to be in the business of selling paper right now.  On the other hand there is legitimate concern for the survival of local markets in the US if these prices stay unusually high.  If local markets continue to shrink, then our dependence on Asian markets will increase, and our options when markets are low will be limited.  It was just a couple of years ago in 2008-2009 when we struggled to push low-grade fiber into the market, and those times could easily return.

At IRN, where I work and manage, we don’t have an “official” position about Single Stream.  There’s no denying it increases participation in residential recycling.  But we don’t think it’s the right option for most business and institutions.  In a professional situation it’s straightforward to keep recyclables separated.  That gives the organization the maximum financial benefit from recycling, and it supports American markets and manufacturers.  That’s a win-win situation, environmentally and financially, and we don’t see any reason to trade that in.

We get asked all the time why we charge money to recycle computers and monitors and TVs, cell phones, Blackberries and other used electronics.  The reason we get asked this question is that there are a lot of “recyclers” out there who will take this stuff away for free, or even pay to take it off your hands.  Why, we are asked, does IRN charge to recycle electronics when other companies will do it for free.

There’s a simple answer:  If someone is “recycling” used electronics for free, they’re exporting containers filled with “e-waste” to China or the Third World.  Here’s a very small selection of recent media documenting how much e-waste is dumped from the U.S. to sweatshops and open burn pits in Africa and Asia, and naming some names who would rather not be named. 

There are hundreds more.  If you want to see things that are really sad and frightening, just Google images or web content for  “e-waste China” or “e-waste Africa”. 

You’ll see what it really means to “recycle” electronics for free.  It means whole cities and regions turned into wastelands of toxic smoke and ash and mountains of debris.  It means enormous costs in damage to human health and the environment.  It’s just that the costs are transferred to some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on Earth.

If that’s what “free” means, shame on all of us.

60 Minutes:  The Wasteland

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5274959n&tag=related;photovideo

Boston Globe:  Old TVs spark environmental dispute

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/03/02/old_televisions_spark_environmental_dispute/

Business Management:  The global e-waste problem

http://www.busmanagementme.com/news/global-e-waste/

Business Week:  E-waste:  The dirty secret of recycling electronics

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_43/b4105000160974.htm

CBC News:  E-waste mounting in developing countries

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/02/22/tech-e-waste-report.html

CNET:  E-waste piles up in Nigeria

http://news.cnet.com/2300-1041_3-5911167.html?tag=mncol

CrunchGear:  Guiyu:  E-waste capital of China

http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/04/04/guiyu-e-waste-capital-of-china/

Earth911:  Trading company illegally ships e-waste overseas

http://earth911.com/news/2009/09/11/trading-company-illegally-ships-e-waste-overseas/

Earth 911:  Ghana a literal ‘digital dumping ground’

http://earth911.com/news/2009/07/14/video-ghana-a-literal-digital-dumping-ground/

Foreign Policy:  Inside the digital dump

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/09/23/inside_the_digital_dump

Inhabitat:  Electronics Recycling 101:  The problem with e-waste

http://inhabitat.com/electronics-recycling-101-the-problem-with-e-waste/

Popular Science:  The UN tries to address the international e-waste problem

http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/03/material_world.html

Sacramento Bee:  California recyclers find market for toxic trash

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/11/28/3216070/california-recyclers-find-market.html#ixzz17AERNcAU

Scienceblogs:  What we waste:  A view of e-trash

http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/2007/06/what_we_waste_a_view_of_etrash.php

ShanghaiIST:  Bonfire of the e-salvageries

http://shanghaiist.com/2009/08/31/bonfire_of_the_e-salvageries.php

TechNews Daily:  Global e-waste problem more dire than realized

http://www.technewsdaily.com/global-e-waste-problem-more-dire-than-realized-0265/

U.S. General Accounting Office:  Electronic waste:  Harmful U.S. exports flow virtually unrestricted…

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d081166t.pdf 

Asset tags pulled from a Chinese e-waste dump (Photo: Basel Action Network)

The thing I like best is when there’s a hurricane and a hurricane expert comes on TV and says “It’s releasing as much power as fifty Hiroshima atom bombs going off every minute.”  Or else this:  “It’s producing 200 times, as much energy as all of the electric generating plants in the world.”

Nothing points out better the absurdities in discussion of America’s energy future. Because last time I looked, a hurricane is solar energy.  Solar energy on the scale of fifty Hiroshima bombs a minute.  Solar energy, on a scale to generate enough electricity for 200 planet Earths.

The last time I looked, a tornado is solar energy.  For a 200 mph tornado, solar energy is equivalent to the output of two big nuclear power plants.

The last time I looked, every drop of drinking water on earth is the product of solar energy.  The sun picks up water from the oceans, it condenses, falls back down, and we drink it.  Every single drop of drinking water and the sun does this for free.

The last time I looked, everything we eat is produced by solar energy.  We eat plants, and we eat animals that eat plants, and plants grow by converting solar energy into forms they and we can use. The sun does this for free, too.

The last time I looked, every human being on earth – along with every other plant and animal – is a product of solar energy.  It’s the sun, and only the sun, that provides the energy to create and sustain humans, plants, and animals in all their incredible complexity.

And by the way, the last time I looked, gasoline and coal and oil are solar energy.  Plants died and fell to the bottom of swamps and got trapped and cooked and came out as coal and oil.  The only thing is, as an economist would put it, they’re solar capital, not solar income.  They’re an inheritance from millions of years ago, and like a stupid kid who gets an inheritance from his grandmother and spends it all instead of investing, we’re burning our solar capital as if it will never run out.

There is plenty of solar energy, more than enough for ourselves and our kids and our grand-kids and theirs and theirs and theirs.  I don’t know why we don’t harvest this energy.  I don’t know why every new house in the U.S. isn’t built with solar panels on the roof.  I don’t know why we’re not covering with solar panels the roofs of millions of houses already built.  I don’t know why the parking lots of big-box malls don’t have a canopy of solar panels ten feet off the ground, or why the big boxes themselves aren’t roofed with solar panels.  I don’t know why the windbreaks between fields in Illinois and Iowa, or California or Vermont, aren’t planted with windmills.  I don’t know why we’re not growing oil crops or algae for biofuel, or producing electricity from biomass.

I don’t know why politicians, policy wonks and pundits argue and obstruct.  Don’t they have kids?  Don’t they have eyes?  Don’t they have brains?

We are, every single one of us, every living thing on earth, the products of solar energy.  We are utterly reliant on solar energy.  There is no other energy that will be here hundreds or thousands of years from now.  There is no other energy that is free and without waste.  There is no other energy that makes life possible.

Fifty Hiroshimas a minute.  We can use that energy.

Newton is a suburban city, population about 85,000, less than ten miles from downtown Boston.  When the City opened a new high school in August 2010, it reused and donated locally as much furniture as possible from the old school, but was still left with more than 4,000 items of surplus furniture and equipment that needed to go away.  Most of the furniture was packed into the gymnasium and pool area; the rest was scattered throughout the old campus.

The City faced tough challenges.  The school is located in a residential neighborhood, hampering access for large vehicles.  Loading facilities consisted of a single two-foot high dock accessed by one double door.  The surplus was less packed than stacked and jumbled into the gym and pool area, a big 3-D jigsaw puzzle, and there were long carries for the surplus that wasn’t in these locations.  The surplus was a mix of a lot of usable stuff with a large fraction too decrepit to be used again.

And because of delays in construction schedule and bid preparation, the City had less than two weeks to complete the project before school started – for RFP, bids, award, mobilization, and implementation.  After bids and award, the actual project had to be completed in just three days.

There were three options for the surplus:  (1) Throw all the stuff out; (2) Recycle some and throw the rest out; (3) Attempt to reuse as much as

more and more and more and more

possible.  The City went through a competitive bid, and selected IRN’s surplus reuse program over the alternatives.  Reuse offered environmental and social benefits, but the determining factor was cost.  More about that below.

On two days notice, IRN scheduled a 15-man moving crew on each of three days.  Seven trailers were loaded on Day 1, nine trailers on Day 2, and seven trailers on Day 3.  With such short lead time, IRN divided the surplus between eighteen shipping containers that were loaded directly for overseas destinations, plus five storage trailers that were removed to a local yard.  Later these were unloaded and repacked into containers for overseas shipment.  In addition, eleven metal recycling containers were loaded with 37 tons of materials that were too worn or damaged to be reused.

At any given time there were between one and three trailers on the loading dock, with an IRN project manager directing surplus into the correct trailer as movers took it from the building.  In intervals when there were only one or two trailers at the dock, IRN kept the crew moving and staging furniture as close to the dock as possible, so the next trailer could be loaded efficiently when it arrived.  There were also two big dumpsters for pieces too damaged to be reused:  one for items that could be recycled as metal, one for mixed debris.  IRN’s onsite manager made sure that every item went into the right container.

In all, IRN packed more than 4,200 pieces into 23 trailers and shipping containers.  About 2,000 items were shipped to Food for the Poor’s central Caribbean warehouse in Jamaica.  Although FFTP ships from Jamaica throughout the Caribbean, most of the Newton North surplus will ultimately be shipped to Haiti for reconstruction after the January 2010 earthquake, and now from floods after Tropical Storm Tomas.  Four loads or approximately 700 pieces were shipped to the Fundacion Nuevos Horizontes in El Salvador for community building programs, and four loads were provided to the American Nicaraguan Foundation, whose long-term mission is to construct the 400,000-500,000 homes needed to alleviate the effects of natural disasters and long-term poverty. 

What was it they received?  AV equipment – 87 items; 170 lab benches; 285 bookcases; 144 storage cabinets; 48 study carrels; 18 wheeled carts; 1,226 chairs; 695 desk-armchairs; 37 couches; 359 full desks; 147 file cabinets; 20 pieces of gym equipment; 33 pieces of kitchen equipment; 40 locker units; 56 shelf units; 87 stools; 518 work and conference tables; plus about 300 other items.  Another 37 tons of damaged or unusable items were recycled locally for metal and/or wood content. 

And what did it cost?  Besides making an incredible difference in the lives of thousands of kids and grownups, besides saving hundreds of cubic yards of landfill space and gaining all the environmental benefits of reuse, what was the bottom line, the dollars and cents bottom line?

Because this was a competitively bid public project, we can answer that question exactly.  IRN’s cost to reuse 80% of Newton’s surplus and recycle the remainder was 38% LESS than the next lowest competing bid for recycling and/or disposal.

So the next time some schmo tells you that reuse and recycling aren’t worth it, show them a picture of kids in Jamaica or Haiti sitting in a classroom using the stuff they say we should just toss in a landfill.  And show them the price tag.  Show them what you already know: that what’s good for the environment and good for society is much more often than not good for the economy as well.  Hearts, minds, and wallets, almost always in alignment.

Most of all, he never forgot the opportunity that Columbia gave him.  In 1939 there weren’t a whole lot of schools opening doors to a world-class education for poor Irish kids.  Columbia changed his life.

Sometimes wheels turn slowly.  I was 50 before I as much as saw the Columbia campus.  A country boy by nature, I went to school in New Hampshire and stayed there.  Went to a wedding in NYC in 1980, but beyond that New York and Columbia were a different planet.

Along the way my Dad helped me start my own business in recycling, IRN – the Recycling Network.  And that, eventually, closed the circle back to Columbia.  Two of IRN’s specialties are finding ways to reuse surplus property, and recycling from construction projects.  Columbia asked us to take a look at a project that combined the best – or worst – of both.

As part of its Manhattanville development, Columbia acquired Reality House, a former methadone clinic on West 125^th Street.  Columbia rehabbed two floors into its Manhattanville project offices.  The remaining two floors were left as Reality House left them:  a mess.  There were over 10,000 square feet of partially built-out space: a forest of studs and wiring and door frames.  This and the rest of the two floors were packed with the detritus of nearly three decades:  old computers and monitors and IBM Selectric typewriters, hundreds of boxes of documents, a thousand or more pieces of furniture, fluorescent lights and fixtures, piles of scrap metal, unused building materials, cardboard boxes filled with clothes and toys and office supplies and Christmas decorations.  Three decades of junk, strewn and thrown and jumbled.

Normally a mess like this is a demolition project; recycle what you can, throw the rest away.  But that wasn’t possible at Reality House.  Among the documents were patient and financial records.  The computers also presumably contained confidential patient data.  The monitors, fluorescent bulbs and fixtures all contained hazardous materials.  All of these materials are regulated and have to be handled properly.  There were tens of thousands of pounds of usable building materials, doors and windows, wiring, all of that surplus furniture, all in good condition and 100% reusable.  And there was Columbia’s very serious commitment to the environment and sustainability.  Disposal simply wasn’t an option.

Where most folks would see nothing but problems, IRN and Columbia saw opportunity.  Working with Columbia’s Manhattanville management team and Community Affairs office, we developed a project that brought community-based groups together to take advantage of bright nuggets in the Reality House mess:  Build It Green! NYC (BIG), a Queens-based nonprofit retail that gathers and resells salvaged and surplus building materials at deep discounts to New York residents and small businesses; Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW), a nonprofit that works with New York’s unions to bring women into skilled, higher-paying jobs in the construction trades through pre-apprenticeship training programs; and The School of Cooperative Technical Education (SCTE), an alternative school within the NYC Department of Education that provides students with the opportunity to learn traditional trades-based skills along with a variety of state-of-the-art technologies.

Over the course of a month in July and August 2009, NEW and SCTE crews removed nearly 70 tons of reusable and recyclable materials from Reality House.  More than 3,000 pieces, over 10 tons, of furniture and building materials will be injected straight back into New York communities through Build It Green.  Three shipping containers were loaded with surplus furniture and supplies for disaster relief in Nicaragua and Jamaica.  More than 21 tons of scrap metal were recycled, along with 11 tons of paper and cardboard (the paper was shredded to assure destruction of confidential information).  The computers, monitors, fluorescents, and other hazmat-containing wastes were recycled to the highest regulatory and environmental standards.  Overall, more than 90% of accumulated Reality House “junk” was reused or recycled; less than 10% was thrown away.

But most important, more than 30 disadvantaged young men and women from NEW and SCTE got serious job training.  Training in tool use, construction and dismantling techniques, electrician skills, safety, teamwork, communications.  Deconstruction is the most actively growing (right now the only growing) field in the construction trades.  There’s pressing need for workers trained in deconstruction, and before Reality House New York had essentially no work crews with these capabilities.  NEW has pressed ahead with Columbia’s Harlem Small Business Development Center, turning its Reality House experience into a permanent enterprise.  IRN has proposed NEW workers on more NYC-area jobs, and several of the NEW women have been offered interviews or positions in union apprenticeship programs.

Closing my Dad’s circle.  Columbia offered my Dad a shot when no one else had the concern or sympathy to do so.  Nearly 70 years later, Columbia is still at it, still offering opportunities to poor kids from the community.  My Dad passed away in 2001, but he wouldn’t be surprised.  He’d be proud, and he’d be happy that my own firm, the firm he helped start, was able to be part of it.  But mostly he’d be happy for the kids, getting the same kind of chance from Columbia that he did back in 1939.

Backed by standard sources for persons with Mr. Jacoby’s point of view: The Heartland Institute (Wikipedia: “The Heartland Institute questions the scientific consensus on climate change, arguing that global warming is not occurring and, further, that warming would be beneficial if it did occur.”); the Policy and Environment Research Center (“PERC claims that government policy is the root cause of much environmental degradation.”).  Neutral sources, like the Pope is neutral on contraception.

The central problem with Mr. Jacoby’s argument, and almost all of the invective thrown at recycling, is that it regards trash as waste.  And yes, probably the cheapest way to get rid of something that’s a waste is to compact the heck out of it and toss it into a hole in the ground. Mr. Jacoby’s solution. 

But  in fact, trash is resources. Paper is a highly engineered product, as is aluminum, as is steel, as is plastic, glass, wood.  Ignored by the Jeff Jacobys of the world is the fact that these resources are extracted and produced at a huge economic and environmental cost, and that this finite globe of ours is quickly running out of many of them.

Here are some of the things the Jeff Jacobys conveniently forget:

To make (non-recycled) paper, you have to cut down lots of trees, and you don’t cut them down from real forests that support real populations of birds and animals. You cut them from plantations that are all the same species and all the same age; think cornfields.  More and more, you cut them down in places like Brazil or Indonesia where labor is cheap and environmental laws are slim.  Making (non-recycled paper) uses nasty chemicals and lots of energy. Most of the jobs that come with making (non-recycled) paper come in places that are far away. 

To make recycled paper, you don’t cut down trees, you don’t turn forests into plantations, you use a lot less energy, you use (and throw away) a lot less chemicals. And most of the jobs that come with recycled paper are close to home.

To make (non-recycled) steel, aluminum and other metals, you dig huge holes in the ground (from which you waste about 98% of what you dig up).  You use huge machines and factories, with huge environmental impacts and energy consumption. Almost all of these holes in the ground, machines, and factories are in places overseas where labor is cheap and environmental laws are slim, and that’s where the jobs are, too.

To make recycled steel and other metals, you don’t dig holes in the ground, you don’t need giant machines and intensely polluting factories, you use a small fraction of the energy, and most of the jobs are local.

To make (non-recycled) plastic, you start with oil. If I’m not mistaken, the story that dominated Mr. Jacoby’s own newspaper for several months this year had to do with an oil spill – the risks we take every day filling up our cars and using plastics we don’t recycle, and the incredible cost when something goes wrong. To make recycled plastic, you don’t need an oil well.

When you finish with a newspaper or a cereal box or a soda bottle or tin can, you are holding a valuable raw material.  The real question is, what’s the best way to get that raw material into the economy.  Is it to dig holes or cut down trees or build big factories far away, or drill another oil well?  Or is it to move the resource a few miles to a place it can be reprocessed and put back into the economy locally, creating local jobs and supporting local economic activity on the way?

We have invested a huge amount of money over hundreds of years into the systems that turn virgin raw materials into products.  Comparatively, we have invested very little money and very little time into systems to turn used products back into new products.  The reason recycling can be made to appear so inefficient is that we give it such scant attention; we treat it as a way to handle waste, not as a way to produce raw materials.

Mr. Jacoby opened his column with a good point:  Recycling can be a pain in the neck.  Having lived recently with a real pain in the neck (camping trip, crappy pillow), I’m pretty sure the sensible response is not “Kill the whole body.”  The sensible response is, “Fix the pain in the neck.”  Recycling is a sensible and cost-effective way to get valuable resources into the economy.  It takes thought and effort, more thought and effort than writing a column of criticism, but the return is worth it.

It still amazes us, after all these years, that some folks, some of our buddies, some really good recyclers, still think there’s some sort of magic bullet in electronics recycling. A “free” magic bullet. It’s been two years since GAO’s report KO’ed a whole bunch of lousy electronics recyclers. But here in 2010, right here in Massachusetts, there’s another round of operators pushing “free” electronics recycling, and there are folks who are taking the bait. This inspired ML to write the following:

Of Locusts and Electronics

It’s like locusts. They go underground. They seem to disappear. Then they come back. “They” is crappy electronics recyclers. They show up and they tell you things like this: “We recycle to the highest environmental standards.” Or this: “We are an EPA-approved recycler.” Or this: “Our recycling process protects the environment.” Then they tell you something like this: “At no cost.” Or: “For free.” Or: “We will pay for your used electronics.” Then they get your business and they recycle – or “recycle” – for a few months or a couple of years. Then they go away. They always go away.

They go away for a really simple reason: There is no such thing as “to the highest environmental standards” and “for free.” There’s no such thing as “Our recycling protects the environment” and “we’ll pay you.” Eventually people figure that out, and the recyclers, the “recyclers”, go away.

Like locusts. They show up. They blight the landscape for a while. They wear out their welcome. They go away.
One thing about these locusts, though. You have to invite them in your door. If you don’t invite them in, they can’t come in. You can keep them out. What’s weird is that so many people invite them in. Weird but understandable. “Free” is a pretty tempting number. It’s especially tempting if you’ve got a budget to meet and it’s a budget that’s getting sliced every year.

If one of these outfits calls you and you like the idea of “free” but care about “environmental standards”, here’s what you can do. Here’s what you really must do, because if it turns out they’re a locust and you let them into your electronics, that can be really bad for things like liability and publicity and job security.

Get in your car and go visit their place. Heck, if they’re “free” they’re saving you a bunch of money, right, so you can afford a little time to go check them out. Go check out their “high environmental standards”. If they really have high environmental standards, and not “high environmental standards” you should take the “free” and you should tell every single one of your friends to do the same thing. And you should buy the company, because that company is worth billions of dollars.

A lot of really smart people have tried to put “free” together with “high environmental standards” in electronics recycling for a lot of years. It just doesn’t work. There just isn’t enough value in the materials. If you an electronics recycler and you have high environmental standards you’re not free. If you’re free you don’t have high environmental standards. It’s as simple as that.

Which is why the locusts always disappear.

So if one of these folks knocks on your door, GO CHECK THEM OUT! It’s a really simple way to save yourself a whole lot of hurt.

WARRENSBURG, MO (June 16, 2010) – University of Central Missouri Housing recently donated surplus furniture from Nattinger and Bradshaw residence halls to relief efforts in Spanish Town, Jamaica and San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The 1,932 pieces and included bed frames, ladders, desks, and chairs slated for Honduran and Jamaican orphanages or residential schools.

This July, the Ellis Complex, which includes North Ellis, East Ellis, and South Ellis residence halls, and the Hawkins Hall apartment building also will donate surplus furniture. Hawkins will contribute over 160 pieces of furniture, including couches, box chairs, love seats, mattresses. The shipment also will contain as many camp beds as space will allow. The Ellis Complex will contribute 2,778 pieces of furniture, including beds, chairs, and desks. Warrensburg Salvation Army received the furniture from Foster Hall, while mattresses are being recycled through the company University Sleep.

“We had a lot of property to replace, and were trying to figure out what to do with all of the furniture” said Brenda Moeder, associate director of University Housing. “This fits with the ‘reuse, recycle, and reduce’ attitude we foster at UCM. Not only were we able to do a good thing for others by donating furniture to them, but this is also an environmentally friendly decision,”

UCM Housing employed the Institution Recycling Network Surplus Reuse Program to undertake the project. IRN networks with dozens of charitable and relief organizations that use millions of pounds of surplus every year.

“The needs are endless, and everything we toss aside in the United States could be used by someplace in Jamaica,” said Mark Berry of IRN.

For more information about this or University Housing, contact the Kelly Waldram Cramer, marketing manager for housing and Greek life, at 660-543-8121.  http://www.ucmo.edu/news/furniture.haiti.cfm

Because statistics tell you that is was just a matter of time until we had a catastrophic spill in the Gulf.  There are thousands and thousands of oil and gas wells in the Gulf, each one with a very small probability of failing.  BP and Deepwater Horizon drew the short straw.

It’s particularly disheartening to hear the blame being piled on BP.  As if, yeah, BP would cut corners so it could drive its share price down by half.  And secretly plot months if not years of public relations nightmare.  And cunningly position itself to pile up tens of billions of dollars in liabilities that will stretch on for decades.  Check for the insider trading; I’m sure the top dogs at BP have been shorting their own stock.

Statistics said that if you keep drilling in the Gulf, eventually you’d have a catastrophic spill.  The problem is the drilling in the Gulf.

The problem is the succession of “leaders” in Washington and Concord and 49 other state capitals who have failed to devise sensible energy policy in nearly four decades since the first oil crisis.

The problem is nationwide fuel economy that hasn’t improved in 20 years.

The problem is policies that encourage and manufacturers who push and consumers who buy SUVs and pickup trucks that they don’t need.

The problem is policies that promote cars and trucks and airplanes over other ways to move people and products.  (For example, policies that say gas taxes can be used for roads and nothing else, or policies that say our most urgent transportation priority is to build 20 miles of eight-lane highway so more cars and trucks can travel easier.  Those would be New Hampshire policies.)

The problem is every state that decides not to use local resources to produce electricity, but to rely instead on oil and coal and gas that are produced far away, in places like the Gulf.

The problem is every family that buys, heats, and air conditions a 5,000 square-foot home.

The problem is every new house that’s built without solar panels on the roof.

The problem is every person who decides that the way to enjoy a lake or pond or ocean is to drive a motorboat, or the way to enjoy winter is to drive a snowmobile, or the way to enjoy the woods is to drive a four-wheeler.

The problem is every company that opens an office accessible only by car.

The problem is every local planning board that has allowed or continues to allow development of strip malls and big boxes and suburban corporate campuses, promoting sprawl over cluster.

The problem isn’t the driller.  It’s the well, because statistics said eventually a well was going to fail.  And there’s plenty of blame to spread around for the well.  Almost all of it is right in the mirror.

Oil soaked pelican. One of too many.

There are no people.  A space alien looking in on Silicon Valley would say to himself (or herself, or itself, whatever  a space alien is), “What are these strange metal creatures that live on this planet?”  There are, to all appearances, nothing but cars in Silicon Valley.  You can go entire days without seeing a human being, except, if you’re lucky, a rare sighting of a person rushing from car to office or car to store, or vice versa.  There are tens of thousands of office buildings; no people.  Hundreds of thousands of houses; no people.  I suppose if the space alien had a sensitive protoplasm-meter, he/she/it might pick up the bits of protoplasm in the strange metal creatures, or occasionally a flash of protoplasm scooting from the metal creature to the larger fixed enclosures we call buildings.  They’d probably think it was some kind of contaminant.  The absence of people is really bizarre.

No people, lots and lots of cars.  There are a LOT of cars driving around the Bay Area, all the time, on parallel interstates just a couple of miles apart, and on all the roads in between, going every which way.  There is a LOT of pavement, and a LOT of cars.

But not so many SUVs and pickup trucks.  Way different than New England.  Maybe because we have winters and people think they need four-wheel drive.  Maybe because people in our suburbs hang on to the rugged settler thing and buy pickup trucks.  I don’t know, but there re a lot less SUVs and pickups in the Bay Area.  There are more Priuses, but still not a whole lot of Priuses.  And outside of that, there’s not much evidence that people are paying much attention to mileage.

When you do see people, it’s a monoculture.  I stayed in a hotel next to a place called the Great Mall.  I went looking in the Great Mall for a book.  Outside the Great Mall it looked just like every other place in California:  lots of cars, no people.  Inside the Great Mall, there were lots of people, and I was the only Anglo.  Like, the only Anglo.  Thousands of faces:  85% Latino, 14% Asian, 1% other, including me, and I might have been all of the 1%.  A couple nights later I went to dinner fifteen miles away in Los Gatos, where it was 95% white, 4% Asian, 1% other.  (Except in the restaurants, where the Latinos worked.)  On a macro scale California may be culturally diverse; on a micro scale it’s as diverse as a cornfield.

Houses too.  My God, how do people live here?  Thousands and tens of thousands of acres of identical houses on plots of land barely as big as the house.  No front yard (just driveway); no back yard.  No side yards – hell, you have to keep your windows shuttered because your neighbor’s window is five feet away (unless you build a fence, which most people seem to do).  This is bizarre and incomprehensible.  If you’re not going to have any space anyway, why not just join the houses together like old-fashioned row houses.  Saves a lot of energy.  Saves a lot of building materials.  Doesn’t make a whit of difference for privacy, if anything gives you more privacy, and if you added up the smidges in between you’d have enough land for some open space and parks.  How do people live here?  I don’t have a clue.

But San Francisco has hope.  Unexpected, especially for a person who lives in the middle of New Hampshire, but San Francisco is the one place that, environmentally and socially, offers the least glimmer of hope for a future.  So much easier and more efficient to provide services.  So much easier to provide transportation.  Practical without automobiles.  High housing densities that leave room for open space.  Multiple-story structures joined side to side, saving lots of energy.  Micro-scale polyculture rather than the color-coded monocultures in the suburbs.  As a city, San Francisco conserves the countryside and its environmental services.  Unlike the rest of the Bay Area, it’s a place and a model that might just survive.  Who would have thought it?

And it will all go away.  Maybe you get used to this if you live there, but looking at pictures at the earthquake in 1906 it’s hard to imagine that 2016 or 2026, or whenever it comes, will be much different.  Hopefully, when it does come, it will be in a series of survivable quakes and not one cataclysmic El Destructo.  One way or another it will be really, really bad.  Mother Earth will remind us, loud and clear, that “Sustainable” is at her whim.  That, I think, is the lesson we should live with every day.