This is a classic case of an envirohuman impact: humans use fossil fuels, such as petroleum, which upsets the delicate balances in nature that allow the weather patterns we are used to having and the earth then, “upset” by the changes, has more drastic weather patterns, and a general trend toward a warmer climate, worldwide.

Beside more frequent major storms, like Hurricane Ike, we can expect, the scientific communty’s consensus says, rising sea levels (leading to floods of densely populated areas worldwide), droughts and drinking water shortages in other areas, and mass extinctions of thousands of species.

So the pathway is:

We often write, “EHI Quick Tips,” which outline simple, easy steps you can take to green your daily life.  The writers of EnviroHumanImpact believe that this is a great approach to those just begining to look at a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle.  Once you have introduced a few greener buying options or changes to daily life, it can become difficult to stop yourself from adopting even more practices that will improve your envirohuman impact!

Here, we have compiled a short list of some of the easy, yet effective changes you can begin using in your daily life, right away!

1. EHI Quick Tip: Unclog that Shower Drain
2. EHI Quick Tip: Get a Watering Can
3. EHI Quick Tip: Ditch those Paper Statements
4. EHI Quick Tip: Buy a Tea Kettle
5. EHI Quick Tip: Ride the Elevators Less at Work

You might notice a common pattern here: most of our quick tips are easy and focus on reducing our energy, water, or other resource usage.  What ideas do you have for improving one’s envirohuman impact?

I picked up this article from The Daily Green that outlines the situation regarding tax credits for renewable energy.  Now, I should say, I agree with much of what is said in the article, including the four main reasons to pass the credits: High oil prices, high U.S. unemployment, the melting Arctic, and Russia’s overwhelming of Georgia.  I have a bone to pick with The Daily Green regarding this article.

I disagree with that last point on a technicality because it zeros in on a territorial dispute in the headline and ties it into the crisis too much (IMHO — yes, I know, it’s humble for a reason), when the larger point, the one that is somewhat made in the paragraph in the article, is that petrodictatorships flourish in the current environment.  That should have been the main point with perhaps Russia’s influence and ability to ignore the international community as one example of many such countries awash in oil money.  They basically did that, but their bolding of that statement (and ignoring the other facts surrounding that debacle) is reason enough for me to point this out.

But that is not my main beef with this article; rather, the way in which this information is framed is problematic.  On this first point, I’m rather quibbling over what is a main point and what is a detail, mentioning it only because it is significant to me.  Let me explain my main problem with this article.

The main paragraph that troubles me reads thus:

Congress reconvenes today to discuss, among other things, energy policy. All they’ll really be doing is posturing for their respective candidates, however, and that means that the renewable energy tax credits — which both parties and their candidates support (emphasis mine) — may well be held hostage to this battle: Republicans entrenched in support of offshore drilling, and Democrats entrenched in support of taxing oil company profits to fund more renewable energy projects.

Sounds fair, but if you know what I know, meaning, if you have followed this issue, you know that John McCain, the Republican candidate for President, and his Republican colleagues, have passed by the opportunity to extend these valuable tax credits that help to make the renewable energy industry compete on a more equal playing field.  After all, we allow huge tax breaks on the oil industry (not to mention dirty nuclear energy — yes, dirty!).

From a Thomas Friedman column,

Senator McCain did not show up for the crucial vote on July 30, and the renewable energy bill was defeated for the eighth time. In fact, John McCain has a perfect record on this renewable energy legislation. He has missed all eight votes over the last year — which effectively counts as a no vote each time. Once, he was even in the Senate and wouldn’t leave his office to vote.

Yet, in this article, the author says that both parties and their candidates suppor the tax incentives for renewable energy.  Friedman notes that Democratic Presidential Nominee, Barack Obama, also missed some votes on this issue, but they were times when he was out campaigning, and he knows that they don’t have the votes on this issue — because of Republicans and John McCain stonewalling.  

We cannot act as if both parties are in favor of this when their actions have not shown that to be the case.  If McCain were truly in favor, he would have left his Senate office to go vote.  And if he were out campaigning, he would fly his wife’s private jet, of which he has rather unfettered use, back to Washington to cast an important vote in favor of these tax credits.  I am angered that such gross misrepresentations persist.  The Republicans are behind the oil industry all the way and that includes John McCain — Mr. Drill Here, Drill Now.

Maybe McCain should follow his own advice, “Tell them to come back and get to work!”  Senator, your “Drill here!  Drill now!” mantra is old hat.  Get back to work and go vote on this measure.  It’s time to get past all of that partisanship you say you are past and work toward a green energy future.  And Mr. Obama should get back to Washington every time and cast a symbolic vote every time, even if they know they don’t have enough votes to pass the measure.  No excuses — our country needs real leadership.

Offshore drilling cannot and will not address America’s energy or climate crises now, in three years, five years, or ten.  We have about 3% of the world’s reserves of oil and use about 25%.  Go ahead and argue with that reality.  Feel the wind and sun on your face and realize the solution is smacking you in the face every time you go outside.  Wind and solar are the energy of now.  Today.  Blow here!  Shine now!  

The Daily Green, thanks for highlighting this important issue.  But we have to call out those who are dragging their feet forward — or, in the Republicans’ case on this issue, pulling the country down into an almost dry oil well — and tell it like it is.  Don’t be afraid to call Regressives by name.  John McCain is a Regressive.  The Republicans are not even close to being on equal footing with Democrats on what is best for the country regarding this issue.  We gain nothing by throwing them a bone — and that’s the bone I’ve picked with you!

This week, I see two stories you should be apprised of if you are following the environment.  These are important for the longterm implications they may have on our environment.

The first story I would like to outline for you in this week’s news section is an effort to change rules in the Endangered Species Act that would effectively strip it of most of its effectiveness by allowing more projects to go forth that do not completely annihalate a species.  Currently, projects deemed to put into danger habitat or any species on the endangered species list is not allowed to move forth.  That’s the move in a nutshell, but for a spectacular article with description of the change and plenty of insight, check out George Lakoff’s article on this matter.

That’s a major language change!  And it’s the same kind of sneaky changes we’ve seen over the last eight years, with signing statements at the time of signing laws, essentially explaining the intention to go ahead and not enforce a law.  

The other change is by the Environmental Protection Agency regarding its rules governing the engines of lawnmowing and trimming machines and engines for personal boats.  In order to have these engines fall within range of the new regulations, set to be enforced begining in 2011 and 2010 respectively, manufacturers will likely begin adding catalytic converters, which would reduce the amount of particulate matter, nitrogen oxide, hydrocarbons, and carbon monoxide are released (they’re standard on car engines).  Read the whole article here.

So you have taken the plunge and taken the advice of many extolling the environmental virtues of composting, such as replenishing needed nutrients to the soil in your own community (rather than filling up landfills with otherwise useful organic matter.

That’s great!  But how often do you have a very small item for the compost and feel it is too much to stop making your meal to take that one peel out to the compost heap?  My guess is that it is too much to take every scrap piecemeal (no pun intended) to your compost pile, but maybe you have adapted to that situation by collecting compostables in a container until day’s end.  But who wants to have to remember to take it outside everyday or face the smell sitting right there on your counter?

So maybe those coffee grounds end up in the garbage from time to time?  Not a big deal, right?  Not a big deal?  Well, sure, there will be times when composting doesn’t happen for whatever reason.  But composting is a big deal considering that synthetic fertlizers are used to replinish our lands of necessary nutrients when it becomes depleted (among other reasons) and I have a simple method so that you don’t have to take every bit of compostable matter outside separately.  

All that organic matter paid to have that organic matter shipped our way and now we’re going to have a gas guzzling (er, diessel drinking) garbage truck haul it away and mix it with inorganic, toxic materials?  Make sense to you?  It’s needed in your own backyard!

So, for that Quick Tip: Simply, put an old butter container (preferably a larger one) or a coffee can into the refrigerator or freezer and put your banana peel, coffee grounds, tea bags, crushed egg shells, and other matter into the container as it is produced.  When it is full, take it out and leave it on the counter for thirty minutes as it thaws loose from the sides of the container.  Then, take it outside and bury the block of ice under some leaves, sticks, and green matter to avoid pests from picking at any food remnants.

If you need the room in your freezer, then keep it in the refrigerator until more room is available.  It’s that easy!  And it helps you to save energy by keeping your refrigerator or freezer stocked.

Many have done it — you’re out, far away from a modern toilet, and yeah, you decide that you’re going to have to go, “ancient school” and urinate right there on a bush.  In a modern society, this is not the best option (obviously) but if one uses discretion, it is unlikely to cause much of a stir before or after the, “evacuation complete” voice is heard (yeah, the one from Austin Powers).

Of course, you don’t want to go in the middle of a parking garage as Jerry Seinfeld did in an episode (as did George, both of whom were caught and used the same, “uromisitisis” excuse if my memory serves).

But I digress.  What if the bush you were peeing on were a blueberry bush or a few stalks of corn?  It might seem rather disgusting to us to think that people would be eating the harvest and that they had been “irrigated” in such a manner.  People actually do this and many have no other, or very little, choice.

In fact, a report shows that that is happening on a large scale in many developing countries/regions, with about 200 million farmers in China, India, Vietnam, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America partaking in the “pee party” (yet another reference to a Seinfeld episode; George decides to use Jerry’s bathroom, but doesn’t close the door — Jerry protests, “It’s a pee party!”).

According to the article in National Geographic:

Facing water shortages and escalating fertilizer costs, farmers in developing countries are using raw sewage to irrigate and fertilize nearly 49 million acres (20 million hectares) of cropland, according to a new report—and it may not be a bad thing.

Wow!  Really?  Yeah, really!  But like they said, it may not be a bad thing, because the alternative is hungry (or starving) people, or using what would be drinking water to irrigate crops.

The article continues:

When this water is used for agricultural irrigation, farmers risk absorbing disease-causing bacteria, as do consumers who eat the produce raw and unwashed. Nearly 2.2 million people die each year because of diarrhea-related diseases, including cholera, according to WHO statistics. More than 80 percent of those cases can be attributed to contact with contaminated water and a lack of proper sanitation. But Pay Drechsel, an IWMI environmental scientist, argues that the social and economic benefits of using untreated human waste to grow food outweigh the health risks.

And what’s more:

Agriculture is a water-intensive business, accounting for nearly 70 percent of global fresh water consumption.

So this of course is not without risk, but often the farmers see little or no other option, in fact breaking into sewage pipes to divert the needed waste product for use as fertilizer and irrigation.

With fertilizer prices jumping nearly 50 percent per metric ton over the last year in some places, human waste is an attractive, and often necessary, alternative, Redwood said.

In cases where sewage sludge is used, expensive chemical fertilizer use can be avoided, he said. The sludge contains the same critical nutrients—nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium.

While it may sound disgusting to those not in that position, using untreated human waste in this manner is a way of life for many.  Still, there may be examples of methods these people could be educated about to reduce the chances of illness spreading because of food-borne bacteria.

There are also low-tech solutions for “treating” human waste. IWMI suggests employing appropriate and time-tested indigenous practices.

The report cites examples in Indonesia, Nepal, and Vietnam. There, farmers store wastewater in ponds to allow solid feces and worm eggs to settle, possibly reducing bacterial content in the residual water.

Composting, in which heat kills much of the bacteria, is another option, according to the report.

What can you do?

For one, stop wasting your food!  A recent report (pdf) From the Stockholm International Water Institute states that about one-third of the food that is produced in the United States is thrown away each year.  The cost?  About $48 billion, wasting about ten trillion gallons of water, used in the production of said food.  Let us not forget the wasted efforts and carbon emissions due to farming and transportation, either.  Furthermore, half of all food worldwide is wasted, according to the report.

So, you can help put a stop to that waste.  Stop buying food that you don’t end up eating.  Plan your meals out around what you have on the shelf, to reduce the chances of spoilage, and also include leftovers in your family’s meals.  This saves money and helps to reduce the problem here at home, so that potentially, more food could be exported to countries where it is needed (of course, in a manner that does not to undermine the efforts of the farmers in those countries).

Part of the solution also is to help those countries’ people to learn ways to cheaply and effectively treat human waste.  Also, methods such as this free refrigeration method, highlighted by Matthew Phillip, could help reduce the amount of food wasted in developing countries.  Also, look to continue reading sites such as this blog, or read a Big News Page on The Huffington Post, such as: Green Living.

Lloyd Alter discussed in a recent article that as oil prices have increased (yes, of course, they have dipped down slightly recently) China has exported less steel to the U.S.  Check out his article or keep reading:

Lloyd talks about some of the political and economic implications of such a shift, but let’s look at the environmental effects.

Here, again, because of rising costs of fossil fuels, we see decreased consumption.  Suddenly, the difference in the cost of labor between the U.S. and Chinese markets, is eaten up by high oil costs.  From the article:

Rubin continues: “Shipping a standard 40-foot container from Shanghai to the US Eastern seaboard now costs $8,000. In 2000, when oil prices were $20 per barrel, it only cost $3,000 to ship the container. But at $200 per barrel, it will soon cost $15,000 in transport costs to ship from China to the US Eastern seaboard.”

Wow!  What a difference!  I had no idea it was that high of a cost to move something across the ocean (though I suppose I never had given the financial costs much thought).  This just goes to show that increased fossil fuel consumption and costs can force people to rethink the way that they act — and this is probably truer for companies moving many tons of heavy stuff (such as steel).

Let’s just hope that not only does this spark a large green energy industry, but also perhaps some manufacturing jobs of yesteryear return to the U.S. as well.

One other note: with the cost of iron ore also increasing, perhaps recycling rates and more importantly, required recycling programs, will increase as a manner of combating that high cost.  The environmental effects of mining for more ore and processing it versus recycling are high and extensive.

How are increased fuel costs affecting the way that you behave?

Last week, Wesley wrote an article about using the upcoming cold weather of winter for some of your refrigeration needs.  But what about during the dog days of summer when the weather is anything but winter?

Well, thanks to Mohammed Bah Abba of Nigera, you have free refrigeration that uses zero energy!  Bah Abba is the adward-winning inventor of the Pot-in-Pot system for refrigeration.  The invention was born out of the need for increasing the life of fresh produce that spoils quickly in the intense African heat.

How does it work? Basically, his design involves a small clay pot within a larger one.  The smaller pot is separated from the large one with wet sand and covered with a wet towel or cover.  Now, as the water evaporates from the sand between the posts, the temperature within the small pot decreases due to the law of thermodynamics (evaporation is a cooling process).  

Bah Abba was awarded the Rolex Award for Enterprise and is featured on their site:  Rolex Awards for Enterprise.  They have a great site which explains everything much better than I could here.  Anyways, I guess my point for posting this is to ask, “How can we take this concept and apply it to our modern lives?”

EHI There!  Tell us how you’d use Bah Abba’s ideas to reduce your carbon footprint!

Use the outside air to refrigerate our foods?

We hear it all the time about how much energy our refrigerators use, especially if using an older model.  But little attention seems to be given to the fact that we put refrigerators into buildings that, in the winter time, are heated, even though there is free cold air outside.  Some climates even have cold temperatures year round and could really take advantage of the cold air.

No, I’m not saying that we should store our cold items outside during cold months: much of it would freeze that is supposed to stay at refrigerator temperatures (aside from myriad other complications that need not be listed here).  But I am suggesting that we can and should take advantage of cold temperatures nationwide.

How do we do that?

Well, somewhere, whether built into a wall, a cabinet, or in a basement or utility closet area, an insulated chamber would be allowed to monitor and draw cold air from outside as needed.  The air could be pumped into the unit with a fan, filtered as it enters the home, mixed with indoor air or slowly released into the refrigerator or freezer in small quantities (the air would be piped into the unit) with the use of a thermostat controlling temperature so as to make sure correct optimal temperatures are maintained.

A thermostat would also be set to stop accepting air from the outside when it would be detrimental (meaning, too high of a temperature) to the operation of the refrigerator or freezer.  The refrigerator or freezer unit’s compressor could then seamlessly kick back into gear to keep the temperature optimal.  In this way, users would not have to watch for unexpectedly warm days or for change-of-season days with large temperature swings.

“But no one is going to go to that much trouble to save a few bucks on refrigerator operating expenses…”

Oh no?  What about icemakers in our freezers?  Those have grown to the point that the plumbing now comes almost standard in most homes, because it saves people so much time from filling and emptying ice cube trays and the frustrations of running out of ice.  The convenience is great!  But how much of a niche product and plumbing offering was that when it first launched?  Yeah, and now it’s pretty much standard.

If you tell people that for a few hundred dollars they can greatly increase the efficiency of their refrigerators and improve their envirohuman impacts, some certainly would do so.  It would become even cheaper as these units and the necessary infrastructure could be built into new and renovated homes.   Refrigerators could come standard with plugged openings that could be employed for such uses, much as they now do with ice maker capabilities.

It was not so long ago that refrigerators did not have ice maker potential built into the units and slowly it became the norm because homeowners had the ability built into their homes.  Many come with the ability to add an icemaker unit, and the same type of “add-it-if-you-want” option could be used initially for this technology.

Just imagine how cheap the feature could be if the refrigerators had a small chamber added onto the unit near the bottom or on the back of the unit for such operation.  All you would need is a pipe nearby that had access to the outside with a built-in fan and filter, and you would be in business.

Homeowners choose such options all the time: think about not only the ice makers most people now use, but also units to remove radon gas from basements.  They are increasingly choosing solar electric or water heating systems, as well as other greener options, that are often costly upfront but eventually payoff both financially and environmentally.  Wind turbines are becoming more common on peoples’ roofs and properties, and a box on the back of a refrigerator would seem like nothing to that type of consumer.

How about commercial refrigeration?

Yes, think about all of the meatpacking and cold products industries, not to mention restaurants and grocery stores, that use huge industrial refrigeration units for keeping large quantities of foods cold.  Wow, what a savings for both the country and those businesses, in terms of pollution, energy, and cost savings!  Yes, it depends upon the climate and the time of year, but for many businesses, this may be yet another way to cut costs by improving their envirohuman impacts.

Now, if we could just get a major appliance manufacturer to put the same genius marketing behind that which launched that time-saving icemaker found in so many homes.

“Baby, it don’t matter if you’re black or white” – The Prince of Pop

Debate has raged on (seemingly for years now) as to whether or not switching to websites utilizing black backgrounds makes a real and significant difference in power consumption of computer monitors.  Proponents such as Blackle claim that if everyone switched to a black version of Google, we could save upwards of 750 Megawatt-hours per year.

So what’s the truth? Do black background websites really make a difference in power consumption?  Well, according to an article and research on Techlogg, the difference is somewhat disappointing.  Basically, they ran a pretty extensive test of 27 different computer monitors of various sizes and brands (including 23 LCD monitors) and found that in most cases, the power consumption difference was pretty negligible (some monitors even consumed more power using the black background Blackle!).

Now in all fairness, when testing standard CRT (Cathode Ray Tube or big, bulky, old tube-television style monitor that takes up my entire desk) monitors, they found that consumption was lowered but by closer to half (7-8 watts) of the 15 watts claimed by Blackle and its sources.

How about a little perspective? Did you know that LCD computer monitors now dominate the world marketplace for computer monitors at over 75%?  If your math is a little shaky, that means that less than 25% of computers worldwide are still using CRT monitors, which means that the 7-8 saved watts of blackness is less significant everyday that someone upgrades to a new LCD monitor.  The results of the Techlogg study were not necessarily surprising to me or probably anyone familiar with how an LCD TV or computer monitor works.

According to Webopedia:

“Short for liquid crystal display, LCD is a type of display that uses two sheets of polarizing material with a liquid crystal solution between them. An electric current passed through the liquid causes the crystals to align so that light cannot pass through them. Each crystal, therefore, is like a shutter, either allowing light to pass through or blocking the light.”

So in other words, when you visit a site with a black background on an LCD monitor, the backlight is still turned on but the “shutters” are closed and screen now black.  I suppose if you still own a CRT monitor you could relish in your 8 watt savings OR you could go out an purchase an LCD monitor and save upwards of 50 watts at all times the monitor is turned on.  That’s right, LCD’s consume about half the energy in the first place compared to CRT monitors!

So the bottom line? If you’re using a CRT monitor, you are saving a pretty small amount of energy on black background sites; however, if you’d upgrade to an LCD monitor, you could be saving between 5-7 times the energy at all times when your monitor is turned on.

How do you make an LCD monitor even more eco-friendly? Try this free and simple method that will tell you just how much power and money you’ll save each year using it!