Una exposición que viaja sobre los sonidos y las canciones de la vida
by Ted Nace.
Too often, environmental policy turns into a game of whack-a-mole: solving one problem just makes another one pop up.
Such a perverse game is currently playing out in the push to retrofit old coal plants with scrubbers for “criteria pollutants” such as sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, and mercury. Although it is estimated that tightened regulation of these emissions will push about a sixth of the aging coal fleet into retirement, those plants that survive the gauntlet will be harder than ever to close after receiving expensive retrofits. Although the shiny new scrubbers will make the air cleaner, these plants will now spew entirely new waste streams such as scrubber sludge, and the additional power to run the scrubbers will require additional mining. Worst of all, equipping a plant with an expensive new scrubber will give that plant a new lease on life, enabling it to keep spewing out carbon dioxide and spelling disaster for the 2030 deadline that climate scientists have named as the key to preventing dangerous climate change.
Scrubber retrofits are a devil’s bargain, as we can see at power plants like the Merrimack Station in New Hampshire and the Boardman Plant in Oregon. In both instances, the Sierra Club and others came out against $500 million scrubber retrofits, arguing that the plants should instead be retired. Naturally, the owners of the plants have resisted closing the highly profitable facilities. They’ll make more money scrubbing them up and running them until 2040 or later.
Maybe it’s time to consider a new way to deal with all this, based on the adage, “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” What about creating a positive financial incentive to induce power companies to shut down old coal plants? This Cash for Coal Clunkers idea has been floated by such people as Ted Turner, T. Boone Pickens, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Kirsch, and science writer Bill Sweet.
“Nifty notion!” you say (having overcome the gag reflex induced by the thought of the federal government writing huge checks to gentlepowerpeople like Jim Rogers). “But won’t the scheme cost billions of dollars? What about fiscal austerity? Haven’t you heard about the global financial crisis? Where in hell will the money come from?”
The answer to the financing riddle can be found in the work of tobacco policy analysts, who have developed the crucial insight that smoking (like coal plant emissions) not only inflames arteries and darkens lungs, but also plays pickpocket with Uncle Sam. That’s because smoking kills income earners, and income earners pay taxes. In addition, people who are disabled by smoking (or coal plant emissions) create fiscal burdens on federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration.
Notice that we’re not talking here about the full range of coal’s infamous “externalities,” i.e. the numerous sorts of damages that mining and burning coal inflict on human health and the natural environment. We’re only interested, for purposes of this analysis, in estimating those impacts that are specifically fiscal. The idea is to show that a Cash for Clunkers program would be revenue neutral or even revenue positive, paying for itself through increased federal taxes and reduced federal expenditures.
Even a quick survey shows that there are at least 20 major types of externalities caused by coal mining and combustion, including climate change, heavy metals, flooding, fine particulates, acid deposition, thermal pollution, smog, ozone, radioactive releases, methane, land subsidence, stream destruction, acid runoff, and the zombie stares of coal barons, among others. Unfortunately, for most of these the specific information we need on fiscal impact is hard to nail down. Global warming, for example, is surely the worst of the coal-related externalities, and the general magnitude of the problem is suggested by a 2008 NRDC study estimating that climate-related losses to the U.S. economy could be running at $271 billion annually by 2025. Still, it’s not easy to translate that looming disaster into current fiscal impact. Another serious externality is mercury, with one 2005 study estimating 316,588 to 637,233 babies born each year with umbilical cord blood mercury levels greater than 5.8 micrograms per liter, an amount associated with loss of IQ. Power plants are the leading cause of the problem, but again, how do you measure the fiscal impact of small amounts of brain damage spread across an entire generation of children?
Of all the externalities associated with coal, the most carefully studied and monetized is the elevated mortality and morbidity caused by ultra-fine particulates. According to a 2009 study of deaths due to coal emissions, led by Jonathan Levy of Harvard’s School of Public Health, the ultra-fine particulates from 414 of the highest-emitting coal plants cause about 30,000 deaths each year. While the Harvard study did not specify the reduced lifespan associated with each death, that number has been estimated elsewhere to be 14 years.
Remember, for purposes of justifying the expense of a Cash for Clunkers program, we’re not actually interested in the full value of those deaths (a 2009 National Research Council study suggested $58 billion), but rather in the more limited question of impact to the federal treasury. Such a figure can be derived using a methodology developed by groups such as the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids [PDF], the Centers for Disease Control, and the American Academy of Actuaries. To arrive at the lost federal tax revenue attributable to coal’s health effects, we multiply the following: deaths (30,000), reduced life per death (14 years), U.S. per capita GDP ($46,400), the average all-inclusive federal tax rate (30 percent), and the estimated remaining life of each coal plant (30 years). This yields $175 billion in lost federal revenues.
In addition to increased mortality, particulate emissions also result in increased morbidity. According to a 2009 National Research Council study, that increased morbidity produces $3.72 billion annually in health costs. Assuming (in keeping with tobacco studies) that two-thirds of those costs are ultimately borne by federal programs, the impact of this morbidity on the federal budget is $74 billion over the same 30-year period.
So even though the science and economics needed to estimate the price tag for all 20 or more coal-related externalities remains incomplete, the federal fiscal impacts of fine particulates alone ($175 billion plus $74 billion, or $249 billion) provide a sufficient basis for a substantial federal financial incentive aimed at accelerating the retirement of aging plants. Of course, as more sophisticated data on the fiscal impacts of other externalities arrive, the size of the credit that can be justified from a revenue-neutral standpoint can be increased, no doubt substantially.
How do we do it?
How might a Cash for Clunkers incentive be structured? In terms of dovetailing an incentive into the mix of policy vehicles, it is perhaps easier to use tax credits than outright payments. By using a tax credit, we can match coal plant retirement credits on a dollar-for-dollar basis to the production tax credits provided for renewable facilities under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. That will ensure that credits from retiring old coal plants aren’t simply used to finance new coal plants, but instead are used to finance a clean energy transition.
In terms of the amount of money that would make a difference, a 2010 study [PDF] of the economics of retiring the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona provides some hints. According to the study, the gap between the cost of providing power from a mixture of conservation and renewable sources was 2.3 cents per kWh more than the cost of continuing to operate the plant. Of course, that differential will narrow considerably when a plant like Navajo faces a $500 million scrubber mandate. This makes a Credits for Clunkers program a good complement to a scrubber-oriented program like the proposed Clean Air Transport Rule. Together, the two can deal a one-two punch to a plant like Navajo, and the resulting revenues from the clunker credit will help solve the workforce transition issues involved in closing any large coal plant.
If we apply the economics of the Navajo Generating Station to the coal fleet as a whole, the basic conclusion is that a fiscally affordable Credits for Coal Clunkers program will dramatically increase the current estimate that about a sixth of the coal fleet will be retired within the next five to 10 years. That makes the program a win-win that will aid the climate while addressing the full spectrum of coal-related externalities. Since the program would be designed to be revenue neutral, there would be no need either to raise taxes or to increase federal indebtedness. From a political perspective, eliminating the need for tax increases defuses the ideological resistance that has bedeviled both cap-and-trade and carbon tax proposals. And since a Credits for Clunkers program would specifically aid the regions, power companies, and industries most heavily attached to coal, both regional and sectoral objections would be nullified.
If this all sounds too easy, maybe we should wonder whether we’ve been looking at the problem of coal through the wrong lens. Rather than focusing on how difficult it is to retire hundreds of entrenched coal plants, perhaps we should be looking at the transition away from coal from a historical perspective—as nothing more than the sort of infrastructure modernization that industrial countries experience on a regular basis. In that sense, retiring old coal plants over a 20-year period is not much different in nature than the decisions to build a transcontinental railway system, an interstate highway system, a space program, a network of federally subsidized hydroelectric projects, or an archipelago of jet-capable airports. In all those cases, the public as a whole stood to benefit from better infrastructure, and the broad gain in public welfare provided the basis for the fiscal involvement of the federal government. Looking at the problem in this way, we can see that a federal subsidy in the form of tax credits to retire old coal plants is well justified economically and is an appropriate federal role.
Perhaps most importantly, a Credits for Clunkers approach cuts the Gordian knots that have stymied the clean energy transition: first, the differential impacts of the transition on regions, power companies, and industrial sectors; second, the anti-tax ideologies that have made the politics of both cap-and-trade and carbon fees seemingly intractable at the federal level.
For all these reasons, a Credits for Coal Clunkers program is well worth exploring.
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Attention Congress: China is shutting down its old coal plants
Utilities can meet EPA standards without threatening reliability
The other new EPA rules that could threaten coal plants
by Randy Rieland.
The federal government doesn’t do simple—which make its latest idea for rating auto fuel efficiency a thing of rare beauty. Simple beauty.
Hummer bummer: Here’s how it would work: Cars get graded based on gas mileage. That’s it. Electric cars get an A+. Hybrids, like the Prius, get an A-. A Ford F-150 pickup earns a C. And a gas pig like the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, a D. (The feds don’t do Fs). Grades would be displayed in a big, honkin’ circle at the top of the gas mileage sticker that prospective buyers would see on all showroom vehicles. This is one of two auto sticker updates being considered by the EPA and the Transportation Department. The other is a less dramatic sticker redesign. Naturally, groups like the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers don’t like idea of big letter grades slapped on car windows. They say that would place a “value judgment” on the vehicle. Ah, yeah, that’s kinda the point.
Ding dong, the witch hunt is dead: Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia’s attorney general, climate change skeptic, and right-wing poster boy, took it on the chops yesterday. For months now, he’s been after climate scientist Michael Mann, claiming that Mann committed fraud while he was a University of Virginia professor by manipulating climate data. Several investigations already have cleared Mann of wrongdoing and on Monday, Virginia Circuit Court Judge Paul Peatross, Jr. joined the crowd. He ruled that Cuccinelli never made a case that fraud had been committed. Said the happy Mann:
I’m very pleased that the judge has ruled in our favor. It is a victory not just for me and the university, but for all scientists who live in fear that they may be subject to a politically-motivated witch hunt when their research findings prove inconvenient to powerful vested interests.
Update: Cuccinelli says he won’t drop his campaign against Mann and plans to redraft his request for emails and other documents from the University of Virginia.
Better stimulate than never: Last week, the Obama administration gave itself a big pat on the back, claiming that its stimulus package will help double the U.S.‘s renewable energy capacity by 2012. Michael Grunwald, writing in Time, chimed in with an amen, describing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as the “most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world’s largest venture-capital fund.” No question the stimulus package throws a lot of money at renewable energy. But AP reporter Frederic Frommer takes a glass-half-empty view. Frommer suggests that the White House over-hyped how much the stimulus money will be able to sustain renewable energy growth, how much it will cut solar energy costs and make electric cars affordable, and how much it will spark a high-speed rail boom.
Hope and mirrors: Unless Congress renews them, stimulus grants for renewable energy projects will run out at the end of the year. So a lot clean energy developers are scrambling to get their projects in under the wire, especially in California, where utilities also are required to get 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources by the end of 2010. The state isn’t likely to make that goal, but the dual deadlines have brought a solar land rush to the California desert. Last week, the California Energy Commission approved the state’s first solar thermal power planet in 20 years, one that will create 250 megawatts of energy using mirrors to capture the sun’s heat. An even bigger project promises to become the largest solar plant in the world, with the capacity to produce 1,000 megawatts of energy, enough to power 800,000 homes. Some call the construction of this huge solar plant a watershed moment. As Rhone Resch, CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, told Greenwire’s Scott Streater:
This project will be the signature project for the industry. It gives the industry a level of credibility that we haven’t had to date simply because solar has been small scale. But if projects like this can move forward, it will show the country we do not need to be dependent on toxic energy sources any more, and we can rely on solar to provide a large portion of the country’s energy.
Life’s an itch: In the realm of climate change consequences, virulent poison ivy might not seem so dire. But for me, well, I get a rash when poison ivy is in the same zip code. So it doesn’t make me happy to learn that all the extra carbon dioxide in the air is basically a steroid for the vile weed. Laura Hambleton, writing in the Washington Post, quotes researcher Jacqueline Mohan about her computer model for plant life in 2050. Mohan’s model is based on CO2 projections.
Tree seedlings grew 8 to 12 percent more, with more C02. Poison ivy grew 149 percent more. Poison ivy is getting bigger, faster, and nastier.
I itch, therefore I am.
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Hearings begin on federal coal ash rules as evidence of damages mounts
by Sue Sturgis.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is holding the first in a series of seven official public hearings today to collect comments on a proposal to federally regulate coal ash. Today’s hearing will take place at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Va. from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and is expected to draw attendees from across the country.
The event comes amid growing evidence of utilities’ failure under the current state-led regulatory system to protect communities from the serious health hazards of coal ash.
A report released last week by environmental advocacy groups documented 39 additional sites in 21 states where coal ash has contaminated water supplies with arsenic and other toxic metals. That brings the total number of coal ash damage cases that have been documented to date to by regulators and independent watchdogs to 137 sites in 34 states.
A recent EPA risk assessment [PDF] found that people who live near coal ash impoundments and drink from wells have as much as a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer due to contamination with arsenic, one of the most common and dangerous pollutants in coal ash. The same assessment found that living near coal ash dumps also increases the risk of damage to the liver, kidneys, lungs, and other organs.
“There is no greater reason for coal ash regulation than preventing the poisoning of our water,” says Lisa Evans, an attorney with the nonprofit law firm Earthjustice, which released the report along with the Environmental Integrity Project and the Sierra Club. “We now have 39 more good reasons for a national coal ash rule. The mounting number of contaminated sites demonstrates that the states are unable or unwilling to solve this problem.”
The states where the new sites were identified are Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. At least 18 of the 39 newly documented sites are located within five miles of a public groundwater well that could potentially be affected by pollutants from the coal ash.
A February 2010 report by EIP and Earthjustice documented 31 cases of coal ash contamination in 14 states. And a 2007 EPA report [PDF] identified 67 proven and suspected damages cases across the country. These 137 sites represent about 29 percent of the approximately 467 power plants plants that dispose of coal ash. For a chart listing all 137 sites by state along with the companies responsible and locations, click here [PDF].
The state with the most coal ash damage cases identified to date is Wisconsin with 13, followed by Illinois with 12, North Carolina with 10, Indiana and Pennsylvania with nine each, and Florida with eight.
The latest count of contaminated sites was compiled using state groundwater monitoring data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. It’s possible there are other contamination cases that still have not been discovered, since many states don’t require groundwater monitoring at coal ash dump sites.
Large coal ash-generating states that don’t require such monitoring include Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, and Tennessee, where the 2008 collapse of a coal ash impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston plant brought the issue of coal ash regulation to national attention. Mississippi is the only state in the South where a coal ash damage case has not been documented to date.
In May, the EPA released two proposed options for regulating coal ash—a stricter version that would regulate it under Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which governs hazardous waste, and a less strict option that would handle coal ash like ordinary solid waste under RCRA Subtitle D, offering guidelines but leaving oversight largely up to the states.
Public health and environmental advocates favor the stricter option, pointing out that state oversight has failed to adequately protect the public from the dangers of coal ash. But the politically powerful utility industry does not want coal ash to be treated like hazardous waste, arguing that such an approach would be too costly and discourage efforts to recycle coal ash.
The agency will be accepting public comments on the proposed regulations through Nov. 19. Besides today’s public hearing in Virginia, other official hearings are planned for Denver on Sept. 2, Dallas on Sept. 8, Charlotte, N.C. on Sept. 14, Chicago on Sept. 16, Pittsburgh on Sept. 21, and Louisville, Ky. on Sept. 28. For more details on the proposed rules and the official hearings, click here.
There is also a people’s hearing planned for Sept. 2 in Harriman, Tenn., where a coal ash impoundment at TVA’s Kingston plant collapsed in 2008, sending a billion gallons of toxic coal ash waste onto a residential community and into the Emory River.
Among those planning to attend today’s hearing in Virginia is John Wathen, the Hurricane Creekkeeper from Alabama. After documenting extensive problems with the landfill in the impoverished rural Alabama community where TVA and EPA chose to dump most of the coal ash spilled in the Kingston disaster, he turned his attention to documenting the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He sees a connection between the two catastrophes.
“Coal or oil, it is the same thing,” Wathen says. “Disemboweling the Earth for temporary energy and destruction of natural resources, people, and the quality of life we are all guaranteed under the Constitution.”
(A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.)
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With drilling stalled in the Gulf, Big Oil sets its sights on the Arctic
Attention Congress: China is shutting down its old coal plants
by Randy Rieland.
Sure, deepwater drilling is on hold in the Gulf of Mexico, but it’s about to go into high gear in the Arctic.
You know the drill: Last week, the Scottish company Cairn Energy announced that it had found natural gas deposits off the coast of Greenland, and right away there was talk of a new oil rush. As much as 20 percent of Earth’s untapped oil is thought to be in the Arctic, which is now more accessible than it’s ever because—Irony Alert!—so much of the polar ice has melted due to global warming caused by fossil fuels.
Within a week or so, Greenland’s government will grant licenses to explore along its coast—Shell, ExxonMobil, and Norway’s StatOil are reportedly chomping at the bit. Green groups are girding for an Arctic oil boom. Writing in NewEurope, Kostis Geropoulos quotes Jack Hunter, of Greenpeace’s European Union unit:
By drilling for oil in ever more dangerous, difficult to reach places the oil companies are taking us in the wrong direction. If a spill happened there, that pristine area would face an environmental catastrophe.
Gimme the Arctic ... straight up!: Thanks to the polar meltdown, it’s now possible to circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean in ice-free waters, and that will probably be the case for at least another month. No, this is not normal. But as Jeff Masters points out in his WunderBlog, it is now. This is the third consecutive year that both the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage in the Arctic are passable, and the trend spells trouble to come:
When the summertime Arctic sea ice starts melting completely a few years or decades hence, the Arctic will warm rapidly, potentially leading to large releases of methane gas stored in permafrost and in undersea “methane ice” deposits. Methane is 20 to 25 times more potent than CO2 at warming the climate, meaning that the fire in Earth’s attic will inexorably spread to the rest of the globe.
Money can’t buy you love…not even Brad Pitt’s: One company that won’t be joining the Arctic drilling party is BP, which, for obvious reasons, Greenland sees as a political pariah. Speculation abounds as to whether BP will ever regain its reputation as a company that “lives on the frontiers of the energy industry.” BP, meanwhile, is busy trying to prop up any kind of reputation. To make sure we all get the message that it will “make things right” in the Gulf, BP has spent an average of $1 million a week on TV and radio ads since the Deepwater Horizon explosion in April, according to a report by James Quinn in The Telegraph. Oh, and speaking of “make it right,” Brad Pitt was the first to coin the phrase—for his push to rebuild home in New Orleans ravaged Ninth Ward post-Katrina. The actor called BP’s appropriation of his slogan “dastardly.”
The end (of the end) is near!: It’s looking more and more like the current freeze on deepwater drilling in the Gulf won’t last its full six months. Last week, a bipartisan think tank concluded that enough safety measures are in place for the moratorium to end before November 30. Now Bill Reilly, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and co-chair of the White House commission investigating the Gulf gusher, agrees that the drilling ban should be lifted sooner rather than later.
They got it bad, and that ain’t good: That would be yet another setback for green groups desperately trying to stop the downward spiral of the past year. From the debacle in the Gulf to the disaster in the Senate, where climate change legislation shriveled like fruit left out in the sun. In a front page story in today’s Washington Post, David Fahrenthold writes about how enviros are struggling to salvage any kind of victory after overestimating the public’s passion for climate change legislation and underestimating Big Oil’s clout on Capitol Hill. David DiMartino, a spokesman for Clean Energy Works, told Fahrenthold:
The oil industry has tremendous reach and control in the United States Senate. Our mistake was miscalculating ... how far into the Senate it went.
Better fed than dead: Here’s a little ray of sunshine. According to Joel Benenson, pollster for the Obama campaign, a recent survey still shows strong public support (60 percent) for having the federal government control greenhouse gas emissions. A slightly lower percentage of respondents (54 percent) feel confident the EPA can handle the job, and 53 percent oppose the proposal from Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) to suspend the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases for two years.
And get this: Brazilian scientist Fernando Galembeck recently told a meeting of the American Chemical Society that he and his team of researchers have made progress in harvesting the electricity in thunderstorms. Galembeck said he was hopeful that one day this “hygroelectricity” could be captured by small rooftop devices.
Hey, it worked for Frankenstein.
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‘Skeptical environmentalist’ Bjørn Lomborg reverses his climate skepticism
Hearings begin on federal coal ash rules as evidence of damages mounts
by David Roberts.
Certain members of the U.S. Congress believe that America shouldn’t do anything about climate change until China does. Putting aside the moral illogic of that position, let’s focus on something China is doing: shutting down old, dirty coal plants. Surely once senators find out about this they’ll be eager to follow suit!
The Chinese government recently finished its latest five-year plan, part of which is a series of measures meant to address air pollution [PDF]. The measures are described in ... are you ready for this? ... “Notice of the General Office of the State Council about Forwarding Guiding Opinions on Pushing Forward the Joint Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution to Improve the Regional Air Quality Developed by the Ministry of Environment Protection and Relevant Departments,” or NGOSCFGOPFJPCAPIRAQDMEPRD for short. It was approved by the State Council, China’s highest level of government, on May 11.
The Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection is working on implementing the measures. This is from a draft (not yet final) guidance they’ve worked up:
Eliminate conventional thermal power generating units which have been operated for 20 years and whose capacity of each unit is less than 100 MW, various generating units whose service is up and whose capacity of each unit is less than 200 MW, and various coal burning units whose power supply standard coal consumption is 10 percent higher than average level of the province (autonomous region and municipality) in 2010 or 15 percent higher than national average level.
This is actually a continuation of policy established in the previous five-year plan, which mandated the shutdown of old coal plants under 50 MW. (By the by, “shut down” means really shut down, as in blow the stack up with a party official there to witness it.) In the past five years, China’s shut down over 50 GW of older and smaller coal plants. As it happens, around 50 GW of coal is what experts say is at risk in the U.S. from new EPA regulations.
Of course, 50 GW of coal isn’t much in the grand scheme of things in China. It’s the world’s biggest producer and consumer of coal. It gets around 70 percent of its total energy from coal (as of 2006). It added over 65 GW of coal-fired power in 2008 alone, according to a recent report from the China Electricity Council (CEC). Nevertheless:
Xue Jing, director of statistics and information at the CEC, said at an earlier conference that China will invest more in the power grid and clean energy, and gradually decrease the proportion of power plants that are coal-fired.
Statistics from the CEC report show that in 2008, China’s investment in nuclear power and wind power increased 72 percent and 88 percent year on year, respectively. At the same time, investment in coal-fired plants declined 22 percent.
Since no post is complete without a graph, here’s what the experts expect China’s power sector future to look like:
(For an interesting perspective on how China sees its energy dilemma, see this post from Brad Plumer.)
Though the recession has slowed growth somewhat, China’s total coal consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions are going to rise for the foreseeable future; such is the inexorable mathematics of growth. Nonetheless, authorities recognize that shutting down old, inefficient power plants advances both environmental and economic goals. It removes the largest sources of toxic air and water pollution while swapping in new, cleaner, more efficient power plants. It also serves as economic stimulus, driving investment in and construction of new generation capacity. It’s what a free market system would already be doing, if such a system existed anywhere on the planet.
Chinese officials get it on old coal plants. We’ll see if Congress really does follow its lead.
———
Here’s another revealing graph on China’s power sector, via Tim Hurst:
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We should pay to shut down dirty old coal plants
Hearings begin on federal coal ash rules as evidence of damages mounts
by Kerry Trueman.
If some sort of natural disaster or terrorist attack were to shut down New York City’s food supply chain, our supermarket shelves would reportedly be picked clean within three days. Other U.S. cities aren’t any better prepared for such emergencies, thanks to our fuelish dependence on a globalized food system.
So my husband Matt keeps a bin filled with tins of sardines under the bed in our sardine tin-sized Manhattan apartment. Plus two cans of organic vegetarian chili, and a Kelp Krunch sesame energy bar. He’s on a self-sufficiency kick, too; makes his own vanilla extract, sauerkraut, duck rillette, and cat food. I guess we’ll be in pretty good shape if calamity comes a-callin’.
But how will our fellow New Yorkers feed themselves? Will they pluck purslane from the sidewalk cracks? Raid Annie Novak’s rooftop farm? Where will the freegans forage when the dumpsters are as empty as a Palin stump speech?
Matt and I aren’t the only ones stewing about our far-flung food chain. Evan Fraser, co-author of the new book Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, declared on NPR’s All Things Considered recently that our entire future is imperiled by a global food system “built on some very, very rickety pillars.”
Fraser warns that the U.S. is making the same agricultural missteps that brought down the Roman and Mayan Empires: degrading our topsoil; banking blindly on ever-higher yields at a time when unstable weather patterns and depleted resources will more likely bring reduced harvests; cultivating a monoculture that’s economically efficient but ecologically ruinous. And talk about a vicious cycle—our fossil fuel-intensive, forest-and-ocean-destroying farming methods worsen climate change, which makes it ever harder to grow food all over the world.
A relocalized food system, or “foodshed” (i.e., the path that our food travels to get from farm to plate) offers city dwellers a sustainable alternative to Agribizness-as-usual. Shorten your supply chain and you stand to reap a long list of benefits: increased food security; green space provided by urban farms and gardens; more fresh, wholesome foods and job opportunities where they’re needed most; less pollution and waste; and reinvigorated local economies.
A seismic shift toward greater self-sufficiency is rippling through every region. We’ve seen a dramatic rise in farmers markets and CSAs (community supported agriculture programs), and tremendous enthusiasm for community and school gardens and urban farms. Food policy councils are cropping up all over the country. From Sonoma to Chicago to Sheboygan, these coalitions have brought together policy makers, for-profit and non-profit enterprises, farmers, gardeners, and advocates to figure out how to go about relocalizing our food systems.
The first link in this brave new food chain? Land tenure, zoning issues, and other regulatory hurdles that city folks have to contend with in order to grow food to feed themselves or sell to others. They’re also working on how to collect and compost food waste instead of shipping it to the landfill; how to increase the percentage of locally sourced ingredients in schools, hospitals, prisons, and other publicly run institutions; how to facilitate local food production and ease distribution bottlenecks; and how to support all kinds of urban agriculture, from school and community gardens to rooftop farms, aquaculture, chicken keeping, and bee keeping.
Zoning in on vegging out
There’s no shortage of places to grow food in even the most densely built communities. What’s in short supply, in some cities, is better access to these spaces, and more secure tenure. With all the sweat equity that it takes to turn a barren lot or a rooftop into an edible oasis, our community gardeners and city farmers deserve to have their cherished plots protected from being plowed under to make way for more condos. Here in New York, hundreds of community gardeners and urban ag advocates turned out at a recent hearing to voice their concerns about proposed regulations that would sow uncertainty like a pernicious perennial weed in their carefully cultivated beds. Even now, despite a development-dampening recession and the resurgence of urban farming, community gardeners can’t afford to let down their guard.
Detroit has become an international poster child for urban agriculture, with an estimated 40 square miles or so of open land and a mayor, Dave Bing, who’s eager to convert those vacant lots into productive farms. But Detroit’s current zoning laws “neither define nor set standards for community gardening or commercial agriculture,” according to the city planning commission’s urban agriculture draft policy. So, Detroit’s thriving farms are off the radar, officially speaking. Mayor Bing is being encouraged to move “quickly to change the city and state legal structure to accommodate them,” as the Detroit News reports; Grist’s Tom Philpott has more on the history and future of Detroit’s urban-ag scene.
Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn has declared 2010 the “year of urban agriculture”, as Tyler Falk reported for Grist, and he means it: the city government this month approved new legislation that allows any would-be urban farmer to grow and sell food, increases the number of backyard poultry allowed from three to eight, and other urban-ag-friendly moves.
In Los Angeles, Jason Kim, the young chef behind a hot new Silver Lake eatery named Forage, had the novel idea of letting home gardeners trade their surplus produce for meals at his restaurant. As the word spread, Kim’s “Home Growers Circle” grew to include more than a dozen backyard farmers.
But four months after he launched the program, Kim was obliged to suspend it after the health department informed him that produce from unlicensed growers would be a liability risk should a customer become ill.
After doing a little homework, the folks at Forage and the backyard farmers discovered that the Home Growers Circle could receive the same certification that lets professional farmers sell their produce at farmers markets, just by paying a $63 fee and undergoing an inspection. So, as of July, the Home Growers Circle is back in action, equipped with Certified Producer’s Certificates from the county agricultural commission that permit them to sell their backyard surplus to restaurants and markets.
Front-yard farmers in Sacramento, meanwhile, are just grateful they’re allowed to grow any food at all. It took food activists three years to overturn a ban on front yard food gardens that dated back to 1941. Now, they just have to get to work on Sacramento’s mayor, who left food out of the equation when he recently announced a “Green Initiative” to make his city more sustainable.
It’s an all-too-common oversight. Mayor Bloomberg—famous for championing a soda tax, salt reduction, and calorie counts—mysteriously ignored food when he announced New York City’s sustainability blueprint, PlaNYC. So, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer stepped up to the plate and collaborated with local good-food folks (disclosure: myself among them) to create FoodNYC, a comprehensive plan to relocalize New York City’s foodshed through such initiatives as an Urban Agriculture Program and an Office of Food and Markets. The FoodNYC team has met with the mayor to discuss incorporating their proposals into PlaNYC, but Bloomberg has yet to sign on.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom needs no such prodding to put food policy front and center. In July, Newsom issued an executive directive which has the potential to “dramatically accelerate urban food production,” according to New School professor Nevin Cohen, an urban food policy expert who lauds Newsom’s specific mandates as a meaningful step up from the non-binding agreements and resolutions that typify so many food policy initiatives.
Newsom’s directive contains 16 mandatory actions that various agencies must take in the near future in order to implement its goals. Cohen cites several of the most significant:
Within six months, every department with jurisdiction over property is required to audit the land under their control to identify sites suitable for food production All city agencies that purchase food for events or meetings must buy healthy, locally produced or sustainably certified foods to the maximum extent possible. Within two months, the Department of the Environment will draft a local and sustainable food procurement ordinance for City government food purchases. The Parks Department is directed to facilitate access to gardening materials and tools to support increased production of food within the City.Food waste: kickin’ it to the curb
We throw away an awful lot of perfectly edible food in this country, not to mention all those past-their-prime, slimy veggies and moldy bread. In fact, the food we discard each year wastes more energy than we extract annually from the oil and gas reserves off the nation’s coastlines, according to New Scientist.
Worse still, less than 3 percent of that food waste gets composted. The rest goes off to the landfill where it generates methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.
Wouldn’t you rather convert your kitchen scraps into ‘black gold’? As Darcy Minow Smith noted in Grist’s Composting 101 for Citydwellers, cities all over America are seeking to divert food waste from the landfill and feed it back to the earth instead.
San Francisco set the black gold standard last year when it passed a mandatory recycling and composting ordinance that requires every resident and business to sort their refuse into recyclables, compostables, and trash. The city composts more than 400 tons of food scraps and other organic matter each day.
Single-family households in Seattle are required to pay a monthly fee to have their food and yard waste picked up weekly, unless they opt to compost in their backyards. The city is currently contemplating extending this program to apartment and condo dwellers.
Portland, Ore. began weekly curbside recycling of kitchen waste last May in 2,000 households as part of a food-compost pilot program. If all goes well, the city plans to extend the program to all households, and switch to a biweekly schedule for regular garbage pickup, giving residents a greater incentive to recycle or compost as much of their waste as possible.
Clearly, the West Coast is on the carbon-cutting edge. But other cities have followed suit; Denver, Boulder, Austin, and Minneapolis all have curbside composting programs, some still in the pilot phase. The East Coast’s first municipal organic-waste pickup program began earlier this year in the Massachusetts towns of Hamilton and Wenham. And as of July 1st, residents of Richmond, Va. are now permitted to add to their designated yard waste bins “anything that is from a plant, tree or animal that can decompose.”
Will San Francisco achieve its goal of becoming a zero waste city by 2020? Will other restaurants follow in Forage’s carbon foodprint and start sourcing their ingredients from neighborhood backyards? Our cities have only just begun to innovate, cultivate, and legislate their way to a more sustainable, locally-based food chain. No one’s seriously claiming that we’ll ever be able to produce all the food we need within our own boundaries.
In fact, skeptics dismiss the current urban mania for all things aggy—be it front-yard farming, backyard gleaning, rooftop gardening, keeping bees, chickens, worms, or canning your own kimchee—as some kind of homesteader-hipster hype. Agribiz apologists ascribe these trends to a plague they call “agrarian nostalgia,” which afflicts predominantly affluent, urban communities and seems to coincide with a high Pollan count.
Seeking self-reliance through sauerkraut may sound silly, but the drive to relocalize our food systems is an imperative, not a passing fad. We can’t even imagine what sorts of unforeseen disasters may be lurking—that’s why they’re called “unforeseen”—but do you really want to get caught with your pantry down?
I’m pretty resourceful when it comes to making a meal out of what’s on hand, but I’m not looking forward to Matt’s sardine/sauerkraut/cat-food patties seasoned with vanilla and topped with room-temperature chili. Better stock up on the kelp bars, just in case.
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My Intentional Life: Hot Flies in the Summertime, Part 2
Transhumanists! Singularitarians! Listen up! You who harbor a fervent faith in science’s imminent transformation of our frail, fleshy selves. The conquest of all our physical and mental ailments, cancer, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, depression, senescence--death itself. You who exult over every “breakthrough” in nanotech, biotech, neuro-prostheses, artificial intelligence bearing you closer to eternal life.
[More]by Ed Bruske.
Can a state that’s not a state have a state fair?
Until now, deep-fried Twinkies (or worse; see Grist’s slide show), Ferris wheels, and pie-eating contests have been denied the nearly 600,000 residents of the District of Columbia, who also hold the distinction of being the only jurisdiction in the Lower 48 that pays federal income taxes while having no voting representation in Congress.
Congress still treats us as its private plantation. But as of this year, we do have an agricultural fair, thanks to a community gardener and food blogger who wondered why she had to take her favorite cherry tomatoes across the Potomac to Virginia to be judged. She decided it was high time D.C. had a fair of its own.
And I’m glad she did. On Saturday, my zucchini bread-and-butter pickles won first place for the best D.C.-grown food product in the entire federal enclave. How appropriate, I thought, that these zucchini should grow in an urban kitchen garden just five blocks from the fair grounds, and barely a mile from Michelle Obama’s garden at the White House.
But the kudos all go to Amelia Showalter, author of the Gradually Greener blog, who not only imagined a state fair where none had existed before, but organized a host of volunteers to pull it off flawlessly.
Showalter’s idea captivated the Internet news mavens here in the nation’s capital in recent weeks and created enough buzz to lure a throng of canners, picklers, and pie bakers. There were 20 entries in the jelly and jams contest, 25 for pickles, another 35 for pies, and 40 cupcake submissions. A contest for best home-brewed beer drew individuals as well as teams from all over town for judging that took place at a local pub the night before. (The winner was a German black beer said to go down like liquid pumpernickel.)
It was all folded into Columbia Heights Day, a festival celebrating the local neighborhood, where kids had moon bounces and a tent filled with face painting, cookie decorating, and storytelling fun. There was a community dog show (won by a handsome Airedale terrier), political candidates, rock music, barbecued chicken, and locally-made fresh fruit popsicles.
No funnel cake, pigs or chickens. But we did have some alpacas on display.
In fact, I did not win first prize in any of the categories I entered. My green tomato jam with cinnamon and the green tomato mincemeat we love so much didn’t even place. Ditto for our beloved lacto-fermented, spicy Cajun pickles. The best I could do in that category was third for the aforementioned bread-and-butter zucchini.
It was all zucchini, all day for me. An heirloom Italian zucchini I grew this year tied for second-biggest vegetable, behind a city-grown butternut squash that tipped a digital scale at nearly five pounds. The same zucchini—at 12 and one-eighth inches in length, not including the stem—also took second in the longest vegetable category.
Yet when all the votes were tallied, those bread-and-butter zucchini somehow emerged as the best entry of all the foods grown right here in the District of Columbia.
In accepting the prize, I had to admit that our zucchini usually grow just fine with little interference from me. All I have to do is leave on vacation for a couple of weeks. When I return, the zucchini are as big as your leg. The monster I entered this year—hardly the biggest we’ve seen by a long shot—was found hiding in a tomato cage.
It was such a grand beginning for our new state fair, I couldn’t help wondering what it might be like next year.
“I don’t even want to think about it,” said Showalter, as she tried to focus on the pie judging. “I have to go home and crash first.”
Prize-winning bread-and-butter zucchini
If using really large, heirloom Italian zucchini for this like we do, slice the zucchini down the middle. Remove the center part with the seeds and cut the meat into quarter-rounds about 3/8-inch thick. If you’re using traditional garden-variety zucchini, simply cut the zucchini into 1/4-inch rounds.
4 pounds zucchini, cleaned and cut as described above
3/4 pound onion, peeled and sliced into thin quarter-rounds
1/4 cup pickling salt (or non-iodized sea salt, or kosher salt)
2 cups cider vinegar
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons mustard seed
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
Cover the vegetables with ice in a large bowl and let stand two hours. Drain the vegetables. Meanwhile, in a nonreactive pot, bring to a boil the salt, vinegar, sugar, mustard seed and turmeric. Add the vegetables, return to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes.
Ladle vegetables and liquid into 4 pint-size canning jars, leaving 1/2-inch head space. Secure two-piece lids according to manufacturer’s instructions and process 10 minutes in a boiling water bath to seal.
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by Darby Minow Smith.
Oh, Jersey Shore. After a long day dealing with the scary realities of the world, I crave this divorced-from-reality show. Curling up with some DIY Junk Food and DUI junk television helps me take my mind off downers like global warming and Sarah Palin as president. It’s mindless television, but that doesn’t stop my mind from wandering and starting to apply green values to the show. (Pesky noggin, I wanted to relax!)
Short in stature, but never in spirit (or spirits), Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi is my favorite cast member. That’s why I need to offer Snooks a little unsolicited green advice. But I’m no Angelina. I freely admit I’m about to talk some shit:
1. Voting on orange issues, not green: This little snookit caused my skin to burn:
I don’t go tanning anymore because Obama put a 10 percent tax on tanning. McCain would never put a 10 percent tax on tanning. Because he’s pale and would probably want to be tan.
Now I’m not claiming Obama has been perfect on environmental issues. Far from it. Or that Snooki likely votes. But Jesus Christo, can you think of a more shallow swing issue? And besides, judging by her income and burnt sienna shade, Snooks still hits the tanning salon all-too-frequently.
Tanning has obvious health implications, none of them good. Tanning beds are on par with cigarettes for cancer risk. And then there’s the environmental concerns. Most tanning lotions ranked by the Environmental Working Group received a 7 or higher (on a scale of 10) for high levels of toxins. Bulbs contain heavy metals such as mercury, and consume 100-160 watts every hour. The sunlight that hits the earth in just one hour is enough to power the world for a year. There’s no reason to believe it couldn’t power guido and guidette‘s mega-tans too.
Snooki’s, your greenest (and healthiest) option is to forgo tanning altogether and embrace your natural hue. Since I somehow doubt that will happen, I advise opting for a green sunless tanner instead.
2. Taking hair to new un-green heights: Thumbs up for ditching the giant hair bump, Snooki. You look better and are obviously using much, much less hair product. But I’ve noticed your hair has a new red hue, which means it’s time to check out Umbra’s advice on hair dye. And please, let Pauly D know that his beloved Spiker Gel contains vinyl. As Umbra says, “No on vinyl and that’s final.” There are many, many green hair products out there—some truly eco-friendly, many green-washed—so check the ingredients at the aforementioned Environmental Working Group site.
3. Making no one want to vacation in Florida: OK, so this is a stretch. But hear me out: the gang’s absurd antics even had New Jersey politicians clamoring to distance themselves and the Garden State from the show. While their, um, rowdy style might be good for MTV ratings, no state wants to be associated with them.
In season two, they relocate from Seaside Heights to the Sunshine State. Florida’s tourism industry is worth $4 billion annually and employs one million people, making tourism a vital part of Florida’s economy. The state has been mighty worried about all those haunting images of oily, dead sea life prompting families to cancel their beach vacations. Thanks to Jersey Shore, they now have oily, dead-drunk Seaside Heights life to deal with.
My girl Snooki even got arrested at a Jersey beach for annoying her fellow sunbathers. I can’t say Snooki directly caused any Florida vacation cancellations. But she can’t have helped.
That said, Snooki is stumbling in the right direction. She recently auctioned some of her personal items on eBay to benefit the Gulf cleanup. So keep up the good work, Snooki, and Florida might proudly adopt you. OK, so THAT is a stretch. But if you tone down the guidette stereotypes and use your fame for good, heck, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist might even give you tanning tips.
4. Falling drunk off bikes instead of riding them: While I appreciate Snooki’s attempt to get up on something besides a guido, she should do it more often—and sober. Plus, with the recent disappearance of the giant hair bump, there’s no reason a helmet wouldn’t fit.
5. Birth control: This really is none of my business, but, oh well ... Grist doesn’t have an official stance on casual sex. It’s a fairly alien concept to us environmental journalists. But we do have a strong opinion on birth control.
When the gang was interviewed on The View, Joy Behar asked them about condom use. Snooki, Mike (who calls himself “The Situation”), and Pauly D all said they use them (hooray!). But the following exchange casts some doubts on their birth control know-how:
Behar followed up by asking if safe sex extends to the hot tub and Sherri Shepherd suggested it was unnecessary because “hot water kills all the sperm.”
“It’s really hot water,” The Situation agreed. “It takes care of business.”
Bad Situation. Especially since the crew tends to hook up with one another. So, memo to Snooki: when you’re splashing in the hot tub with Mike, USE PROTECTION. When you’re smooshin tipsy Vinnie, USE PROTECTION. If you spin with Pauly D, USE PROTECTION. And if Ron ever stumbles into your bed, run, Snooki, run!
Snooki, your un-green antics make me quite sure you’re not a GINK (Green Inclinations, No Kids). But as an avid partier who can’t keep a job, I pray you remain a DINK (Drink Inclinations, No Kids). There are no official estimations on how much your carbon footprint would climb with the addition of a Snooki cookie. My best guess is more MTV shows and the end of the natural world as we know it.
Despite being made of rubber, using a condom is still a greener choice than not using one. But if you want to keep the planet clean while getting down and dirty, there are a growing number of eco-friendly sex toys and forms of protection out there. Like vegan condoms and lube, or condoms that benefit endangered animals. Poke around, Snooki. You’ll find an eco-fit.
Word to the wise (who don’t watch Jersey Shore): If this memo to Snooki seems out of character for Grist, or perhaps a little too much like a shameless ploy to boost page views, let me be perfectly clear: these musings and the need to share them are entirely my own. I’m sure you have your guilty TV habits too. Speaking of, what are they? Do you ever cringe at the habits of your favorite characters? Or are you surprised to find hidden green values?
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by Ashley Braun.
As a general—and generally very reliable—rule, songs about environmental issues are cringeworthy. Plenty of bands and artists may walk the green talk, but they generally don’t sing it.
How refreshing, then, to hear the group They Might Be Giants geek out about clean tech vehicles in its catchy pop song for kids (and—who are we kidding?—the rest of us) by the name of “Electric Car.”
Not diesel, steam, or gasoline
Let’s take a ride in an electric car
Happiness resides in an electric car
You can even drive an electric car
Won’t you take a ride with me?
Via The City Fix
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Are you listening to me through headphones? Because here’s a sample of what might be harming the ears of teenagers.
[low-volume beating bass]
[More]by Jonathan Hiskes.
If you read everything that bloggers declared a “must read,” you’d have time for little else. I’ll just say that if you want a lucid tour of the Obama administration’s work to remake the country’s energy and transportation landscape, it’s tough to beat Michael Grunwald’s new TIME piece “How the Stimulus is Changing America.”
Most coverage of the stimulus—the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—looks at the “recovery” portion—the goal of saving and creating jobs. Grunwald looks into the 16 percent of funds marked for “reinvestment”—the long-term projects of confronting climate change, cutting oil addiction, building a 21st century economy (and also modernizing health care and education):
Yes, the stimulus has cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, bailed out every state, hustled record amounts of unemployment benefits and other aid to struggling families and funded more than 100,000 projects to upgrade roads, subways, schools, airports, military bases and much more. But in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, Obama’s effusive Recovery Act point man, “Now the fun stuff starts!” The “fun stuff,” about one-sixth of the total cost, is an all-out effort to exploit the crisis to make green energy, green building and green transportation real; launch green manufacturing industries; computerize a pen-and-paper health system; promote data-driven school reforms; and ramp up the research of the future. “This is a chance to do something big, man!” Biden said during a 90-minute interview with TIME.
For starters, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world’s largest venture-capital fund. It’s pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet.
There’s very little in the story about who likes the $787 billion stimulus, who doesn’t, and how political consultants are using it in the midterm elections. Instead Grunwald reports on what the stimulus is actually doing (what a novel concept).
The $8 billion for high-speed passenger rail is the the boldest federal transportation initiative since the interstate highways, Grunwald notes. Investment in advanced batteries for electric cars will bring the number of U.S. factories from two to 30.
“Any one of those programs would have been a revolution in its own right,” he writes.
But should the government be picking winners and losers? I’ve harped enough lately about how that’s a bogus question unless you consider how the government already subsidizes winners in energy (oil and coal) and transporation (automobiles).
Grunwald takes a look the administration’s plan for keeping waste out of the stimulus:
Every contract and lobbying contact is posted at Recovery.gov, with quarterly data detailing where the money went. A Recovery Board was created to scrutinize every dollar, with help from every major agency’s independent watchdog. And Biden has promised state and local officials answers to all stimulus questions within 24 hours. It’s a test-drive for a new approach to government: more transparent, more focused on results than compliance, not just bigger but better. Biden himself always saw the Recovery Act as a test—not only of the new Administration but of federal spending itself. He knew high-profile screwups could be fatal, stoking antigovernment anger about bureaucrats and two-car funerals. So he spends hours checking in, buttering up and banging heads to keep the stimulus on track, harassing Cabinet secretaries, governors and mayors about unspent broadband funds, weatherization delays and fishy projects. He has blocked some 260 skate parks, picnic tables and highway beautifications that flunked his what-would-your-mom-think test. ...
So far, despite furor over cash it supposedly funneled to contraception (deleted from the bill) and phantom congressional districts (simply typos), the earmark-free Recovery Act has produced surprisingly few scandals. Prosecutors are investigating a few fraud allegations, and critics have found some goofy expenditures, like $51,500 for water-safety-mascot costumes or a $50,000 arts grant to a kinky-film house. But those are minor warts, given that unprecedented scrutiny. Biden knows it’s early - “I ain’t saying mission accomplished!” - but he calls waste and fraud “the dogs that haven’t barked.”
The Recovery Act’s deeper reform has been its focus on intense competition for grants instead of everybody-wins formulas, forcing public officials to consider not only whether applicants have submitted the required traffic studies and small-business hiring plans but also whether their projects make sense. Already staffed by top technologists from MIT, Duke and Intel, ARPA-E [the administration’s in-house venture capital arm] recruited 4,500 outside experts to winnow 3,700 applications down to 37 first-round grants. “We’ve taken the best and brightest from the tech world and created a venture fund—except we’re looking for returns for the country,” Majumdar says. These change agents didn’t uproot their lives to fill out forms in triplicate and shovel money by formula. They want to reinvent the economy, not just stimulate it. Sadoway, the MIT battery scientist, is tired of reporting how many jobs he’s created in his lab: “If this works, I’ll create a million jobs!”
Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic adds a comment:
Skeptics may roll their eyes at this, but they shouldn’t. Mike, whom I know well, is a famously skeptical journalist who has won a slew of awards for his tough coverage of government agencies. (Just ask the Army Corps of Engineers.) If he is enthusiastic about the Recovery Act, then you should be, too.
For a skeptical but fair take, see Derek Thompson at The Atlantic, who asks “Why Wasn’t the Stimulus All About Job Creation?”
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