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Cutting carbon from your diet.

June 18, 2008 11:51 PM

How much does your diet contribute to global warming? It's an interesting question that finds a nexus with vegetarianism and transportation costs:

Shifting just one day per week of red meat consumption to chicken, fish, or eggs achieves a reduction equivalent to 760 miles of driving. Shifting one day of red meat per week to fruits and veggies is the equivalent of 1,160 miles of driving. Swapping red meat entirely for other meats reduces the equivalent of 5,340 miles of driving. And going fully vegetarian is practically like giving up a car: 8,100 miles of driving. And when you think about it, this is good news for most of us. Cutting down food miles can actually be rather difficult. Cutting back on meat is fairly simple.

It's very clear that cutting down in red meat consumption cuts your carbon footprint considerably. Not only are you cutting down your demand for "Killer Cow Emissions," but you'll be cutting down on your artery-clogging fat intake. And in case you need some ideas on how to make the shift to a more veggie-friendly diet, you can read this recent article from cookbook author and food writer, Mark Bittman in the NY Times:

Let's suppose you've decided to eat less meat, or are considering it. And let's ignore your reasons for doing so. They may be economic, ethical, altruistic, nutritional or even irrational. The arguments for eating less meat are myriad and well-publicized, but at the moment they're irrelevant, because what I want to address here is (almost) purely pragmatic: How do you do it?

I'm not talking about eating no meat; I'm talking about cutting back, which in some ways is harder than quitting. Vegetarian recipes and traditions are everywhere. But in the American style of eating -- with meat usually at the center of the plate -- it can be difficult to eat two ounces of beef and call it dinner.

Cutting back on meat is not an isolated process. Unlike, say, taking up meditation or exercise, it usually has consequences for others.

The keys are to keep at least some of your decisions personal so they affect no one but yourself and, when they do affect others, minimize the pain and don't preach. (No one likes a proselytizer.)

The article goes on from there, and TerraPass has written about him, as well:

The tips aren't all that surprising. Just solid good sense. Buy less meat. Stop making protein the center of the plate. Learn some new recipes.

You can even watch the following 20 minute video of Bittman giving a talk at a recent TED presentation:

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Tags: carbon footprint, global warming, Mark Bittman, meat consumption

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Carbon sequestering.

June 10, 2008 10:34 PM

As the country inches towards a renewable energy model which will hopefully wean us from our addiction to oil, the most pressing need will be for more electricity for our plug-in hybrids. But where is that electricity going to come from? Coal - which unfortunately leads to more carbon spewed into the atmosphere unless we find a way to capture it:

Capturing carbon from these plants may become a lot more important soon. Emissions from coal-fired power plants already account for about 27 percent of American greenhouse emissions, but as prices for other fuels rise, along with power demand, utilities will burn more coal. And if cars someday run on batteries, a trend that $4-a-gallon gasoline will accelerate, then the utilities will burn even more fuel to generate the electricity to recharge those batteries.

It's much easier to control the carbon emitted by a few hundred power plants than from the millions of cars and chimneys cranking out the stuff now. The only problem is that we haven't built a carbon-sequestering power plant yet, and as it turns out, it's very hard to get that first one built:

Supplying electricity is not like most other businesses. Unlike the companies that make microchips, clothing for teenagers or snack foods, the companies that make electricity can see no advantage in going first. This is true for the traditionally regulated utilities that can charge everything to a captive class of customers (if regulators approve), and it is also true for the "merchant generators," who build power plants and sell their output on the open market.

Basically, no one wants to go first, which is why the government must be involved in jump-starting this industry.

The point was illustrated by a recent decision by the Virginia State Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities, to turn down an application by the Appalachian Power Company to build a plant that would have captured 90 percent of its carbon and deposited it nearly two miles underground, at a well that it dug in 2003. The applicant’s parent was American Electric Power, one of the nation's largest coal users, and perhaps the most technically able. But the company is a regulated utility and spends money only when it can be reimbursed.
The Virginia commission said that it was "neither reasonable nor prudent" for the company to build the plant, and the risks for ratepayers were too great, because costs were uncertain, perhaps double that of a standard coal plant. And in a Catch-22 that plagues the whole effort, the commission said A.E.P. should not build a commercial-scale plant because no one had demonstrated the technology on a commercial scale.

It's exactly because of this Catch-22 situation that the Federal government needs to take charge of this nascent industry, and it's just egregious that we've wasted the past eight years without building one carbon-sequestering power plant.

Let's not wasted anymore time...