Fair warning: there's going to be a lot of math in this post, so if you just want to get the gist, skip to the bold bits in the middle and at the bottom.

We'd all like to think that if you walk into a store and see a washing machine that uses 20% less electricity than the one you have at home--yippee!--you get to buy yourself some new home gadgets and at the same time do the environment a favor.

The problem is that the appliance you're thinking about requires a lot of energy to manufacture--"embodied energy." Plus, you have to factor in the habitat damage caused by mining the metals, the water pollution caused by smelting them, the energy of transportation of the appliance and on and on.

Of course, if you've already decided to buy a new appliance, it's best to buy the most energy-efficient model. The question is--and it's a complicated one--is there ever a time when it's actually better to buy a new appliance than to keep an old one that works perfectly well?

That's the question the New York Times tried to answer on Sunday with its story "If Your Appliances Are Avocado, They Probably Aren't Green," by Alina Tugend. According to the story:

“It takes energy to make a product,” said Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “You don’t want to replace perfectly good products.”

He gave me his rule of thumb for refrigerators.

“If it’s avocado or brown-colored, it’s time to retire it,” he said. Refrigerators from the 1970s, the last time I believe those particular appliance colors were in vogue, use three to four times the power of today’s models.

A spokeswoman from the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the Energy Star program along with the Department of Energy, told me that, generally, any appliance over 15 years old probably should be put out to pasture.

Tugend then goes on to write:

"It turns out that clothes washers and dishwashers have pretty much the same criteria as refrigerators — they have become much more energy-efficient. So if yours is inching toward 15 years, consider replacing it."

And while she's right about the 15-year-old fridge--replace it--it turns out she's wrong about about the 15-year-old dishwasher and laundry machine--use them till their dying breath.

Because, as you'll see below, only in the case of the refrigerator do the energy savings outweigh the embodied energy and other environmental impacts of manufacture (not to mention the impact of disposing of the old appliance).

To figure this out, I noodled around the internet but was unable to find studies giving the embodied energies of even a single appliance (if you know of a source for embodied energies of appliances, please email me or leave behind in comments).

What I did find, though, is a Australian government study on solid waste management that gives the weights of different materials in a variety of average appliances (154 pounds of steel, for example, for a refrigerator, 55 pounds of steel for a dishwasher, and 33 pounds of steel for a laundry machine). I also found this Tufts University web page which gives a range of values for embodied energy of the production of steel, the major material in most appliances (I'm taking a figure of 40MJ/kg or about 25 kilowatt-hours per pound of steel).

In other words, according to these figures, the embodied energy of the steel alone in an average refrigerator is:

154 lbs x 25 kWh/lb = 3,850 kWh.

The embodied energy of the steel in a dishwasher is:

55 lbs x 25 kWh/lb = 1,365 kWh.

And the embodied energy of the steel in a laundry machine is:

33 lbs x 25 kWh/lb = 825 kWh.

If my figures and math are anything near correct, to make it worth replacing your old appliances with new ones, those are the amounts of energy you would have to save, just to recoup the energy used to produce the steel. This, of course, doesn't include the energy of the other materials in the appliances or of the energy of the manufacture or distribution of the appliance itself. The actual embodied energy of each appliance is likely much higher than the figures above.

Now, considering refrigerators, today's models use about half the energy of a 15-year-old model, according to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (the ACEEE). Since, according to the Consumer's Guide to Effect Environmental Choices (a book), today's average refrigerator uses 1,100 kWh per year (suggesting that a 15-year-old model uses 2,200 and that the annual energy savings would be 1,100 kWh per year).

In other words, recouping the embodied energy of the steel alone in a new refrigerator when replacing a 15-year-old refrigerator would take:

3,850 kWh / 1,100 kWh per year = 3.5 years (this means, to be explicit, that the energy savings of your new fridge would have to pile up for 3.5 years before it equals the energy costs of the steel in the fridge you bought).

On the other hand, according to the ACEEE, a modern dishwasher only uses 30% less energy than a 15-year-old one. Since a dishwasher according to the Consumer's Guide, only uses 299 kWh a year, that means a new dishwasher would save only only 90 kWh a year.

In other words, to recoup the embodied energy of the steel alone in a new dishwasher by replacing a 15-year-old dishwasher would take:

1,365 kWh / 90 kWh per year = 15.2 years.

Considering, finally, the laundry machine, the ACEEE doesn't seem to offer a energy efficiency comparison to older models, but I'll assume a 30% improvement over 15 years, the same as for dishwashers. The average laundry machine, according to the Consumer's Guide, uses only 99 kWh a year, which means a new laundry machine would save only about 30 kWh a year.

In other words, to recoup the embodied energy of the steel alone in a new laundry machine by replacing a 15-year-old laundry machine would take:

825 kWh / 30 kWh per year = 27.5 years.

What does all this mean? Well, first of all, let's be clear that the sources of my figures aren't the best and that I'm not a manufacturing analyst and that this analysis should be regarded more as a thought experiment than anything else. On the other hand, since all we're considering is the embodied energy of the steel content of the appliances, it would likely actually take more than the estimates I've made to recoup the energy of the new machines.

Regardless, what I conclude is that, if environmental impact is your chief concern, than your best bet is to keep using all but your most energy intensive appliances until they wear out.

In other words, when it comes to residential dishwashers, laundry machines, vacuum cleaners, and microwaves (the analysis would be different in business or industry where machines are used more consistently) , keep them till they keel over.

For more energy intensive appliances, like refrigerators, stand alone freezers, clothes dryers, hot water heaters  and air conditioners, assuming you make regular use of them and that they're not turned off six months a year such as in a summer home, it may be worthwhile to follow the EPA spokesperson's advice and consider replacing those that are over 15 years old.

Energy scientists, especially, please weigh in on this post. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Meanwhile, tomorrow's post will be not about the science of appliances, but about the approach we're taking in the formerly No Impact household.

Photo courtesy of the New York Times.

The problem is that the revolutionaries are otherwise engaged. They're delivering Fedex packages, waiting tables, driving taxis, entering data and countless other tasks--including, yes, writing books and blogs--for 12 hours a day.

They're working their butts off to afford the gas and the car payments and the Christmas presents. They're worried about whether their kids are safe, whether they'll be able to afford the mortgage, how they'll pay if they break a leg.

So when the news comes on and some newscaster starts droning on about the climate, they care, yes. And they think we ought to take care of it. Just as soon as we take care of the health care system and the economy and national security.

It's not that we don't care. It's that we're more scared of today than we are of tomorrow.

The way modern life is set up in these United States, so many of us feel like we could fall off the tightrope at any moment and there's no safety net. What happens to an American who loses a job and gets sick? Without some sense of security, how can we risk taking our eyes off our daily tightrope long enough to worry about the problems of the future?

It's not selfishness. It's not apathy. It's not mindlessness.

It's busyness.

We're too busy to think.

**********

But however we define the problem, the question stays the same:

How can we help?

Climate Counts gives scores from 0 to 100, based on 22 criteria used to determine if companies have measured the carbon footprint, reduced their impact on global warming, supported progressive climate change legislation, and publicly disclosed their climate action.

According to the Climate Counts web page, "our goal is to motivate deeper awareness among consumers-not only that the issue of climate change demands their attention, but also that they have the power to support companies that take climate change seriously - and avoid those that don't."

The worst of the companies (scoring 5 or less): Amazon, 5; Burger King, 0; Darden (owner of Red Lobster, Olive Garden and other chains), 0; eBay, 5; Jones Apparel Group (Anna Klein, Nine West and many other brands), 0; VF Corporation (Lee and Wrangler jeans and others), 4; Viacom (4), Wendy's (0), Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and many more), 1.

The best of the companies (scoring 65 or more): Canon, 74; General Electric, 71; Hewlett-Packard, 68; IBM, 77; Motorola, 66; Nike, 82; Proctor & Gamble, 69; Sony, 68; Stonyfield Farm, 78; Toshiba, 70.

The good news is that the Climate Counts scoring approach attracts a lot of press attention, effectively rewarding those companies that make worthy efforts and chastising those who don't. Last year, for example, Climate Counts was among the organizations that helped bring attention to Apple's slow start when it comes to environmental commitment (the company scored a lowly 2 last year and only 11 this year).

According to Wood Turner, Director of Climate Counts, this kind of scrutiny, through Climate Counts or by other means, can encourage corporations to make real efforts. In an email to me, he told the story of how Levi's made the effort to climb from a score of 1 in 2007 to 22 in 2008:

We got their attention with a score of 1 pt (out of 100) on June 19 [2007] and got a call from them late that afternoon.  They were bewildered but motivated.  They acknowledged that they were behind on climate change and that the score had very much gotten their attention.  They said simply, "You got our attention. What can we do?"  And we were more than happy to take them through our 22-criteria scorecard and our key benchmarks. 

They quickly moved to begin reporting much more openly about their concrete activities and future plans, expanding their environmental reporting on their website including information about their efforts to measure their climate impact and set goals to reduce it.  These are clearly just first steps, but on the pathway toward deeper corporate climate responsibility, they are absolutely important ones because they indicate a willingness to face even greater scrutiny from an increasingly engaged consumer -- to us, that's one of the hallmarks of climate leadership.

You can read what others think of the Climate Counts report at the Wired blog and the Environmental Leader. I'm thinking the Climate Counts approach is no replacement for legislation and a regulated cap and trade system, but until we get some politicians with backbones, by finding a way to focus and aggregate the power of consumers, Climate Counts is making a start.

What do you think?

Royte and I spoke on the phone, yesterday, about the most recent drinking water scare, the Associated Press report that traces of a variety of pharmaceuticals can be found in our tap water (you can find my response to that report here). Here are Royte's thoughts on what can be done about the drugs in the water:

• To put the problem into perspective, there are much higher levels of hormones and antibiotics in our meat and milk.
• None of us should put our unused drugs down the toilet and pharmaceutical companies should institute some sort of take back scheme so drugs are safely disposed.
• Municipalities, with help from the federal government, should invest in existing drinking water treatment technologies that can remove the drugs.
• To offset the costs of the use of these technologies, rain water collection and gray water reuse systems should be established so less water requires treatment.
• Drug makers should be encouraged to reformulate their products to break down quickly and harmlessly in the environment so they can't end up back in our drinking water in the first place.
• Since 90% of antibiotics are used on farm animals, new regulations must be put in place to ensure that antibiotics excreted by them don't end up in our drinking water.

Lastly, here is a paragraph from Bottlemania, which encapsulate Royte's good, balanced approach to the question of public tap water versus privatized bottled water:

"I come away from my investigations," she writes, "with at least one certainty: not all tap water is perfect. But it is the devil we know, the devil we have standing to negotiate with and improve. Bottled water companies don't answer to the public, they answer to shareholders. As Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman write in Thirst, 'If citizens no longer control their most basic resource, their water, do they really control anything at all?'"

A week or two ago, I wrote about how if environmental damage is hurting other species, it's hurting us. I wrote about how the massive number of extinctions that are occurring--some 20 to 50% of our species are expected to be gone within 100 years--cannot occur without fundamentally weakening the planetary systems we depend upon for our health, happiness and security.

Other bloggers left some excellent comments behind, explaining why human well-being is dependent on the well-being of other species.

Sharon Astyk wrote:

"Most species enable or carry over 100 other species - that is, there are at least 100 other species on which the survival of one depends. But we've never considered which species we truly depend on. Is it honey bees? Frogs? Bacteria? Are we killing them? We simply don't know our world well enough to know what we're costing ourselves."

Greenpa wrote:

"Each critter in the web is connected to others.  They eat each other, basically, or change the environment for each other. Reality is a lot more than the 4 connections that are usual in a spider web; but the concept still works, and it's a lot easier to visualize the spider web than the reality of critical ties to 40 other organisms...

So, get out your scissors, and snip out- not a connection, but a node. You now have 4 loose threads. (or 40, in the real world) The web is not greatly disturbed. Yet. Keep snipping.  The web gets weaker, and weaker, and eventually, just a slight breeze may rip the whole thing down."

But also, Jeremy Hance emailed me his  Mongabay story about a new study out of Brown University that showed a direct link between increasing extinctions and global warming. The study shows that protecting biodiversity in our eco-systems may prove to be another key in fighting climate change.

As Jeremy writes:

"The Brown scientists conducted their study for six years in Patagonia. They divided an area into ninety plots then began to systematically remove native species from each plot and chart the changes in the plot's productivity. Productivity dropped as species were removed."

"Productivity," as the researchers call it, refers to the amount of biomass growing in the plot. So fewer species means less biomass which means less carbon dioxide sequestered in the plant matter and soil and therefore more global warming.

"It's a double whammy," explained Osvaldo Sala who led the study. "We not only are disturbing our planet by putting more carbon into the atmosphere, but we're reducing the ability of ecosystems to capture and store it."

Photo of the Patgonian steppe, courtesy of Osvaldo Sala, Brown University.

To my wife, my love, my partner, my Michelle (and to the House of Representatives, the Senate, the current President, and the soon-to-be 2008 candidates for all of those offices),

A year and a half ago, I was desperately worried about the declining health of our planetary habitat and its consequences for human health, happiness and security. I worried about the kids caught up in Katrina and the kids in our hometown of New York City who have asthma because of the number of garbage trucks driving through their neighborhoods and the kids all over the world, born and unborn, who will suffer from the damage we have done and continue to do to our climate, air, water, and earth.

Because I was worried about all these things...

Click here to go to 1Sky and read the rest. While you're there, click on "Act Now" to get involved.

The question remained, however, about what each of the candidates, if they won the presidency, would actually do about climate change. Good climate policy will mean standing up to special interests and leading us through some potentially unpopular policy changes.

And we all know, that when it comes to politicians, there are those who will spend their political capital to help them do what is right and, on the other hand, there are those who will do what is wrong thing to help them win political capital. The question, when it comes to the issue of climate change, was which candidate was which type of politician.

Well, this week, it became clear.

As the New York Times said today in an editorial (with my emphasis):

Senators John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton have hit on a new way to pander to American voters: a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The proposal may draw applause and votes from Americans feeling the pain of nearly $4-a-gallon gasoline. But it is an expensive and environmentally unsound policy that would do nothing to help American drivers... Fortunately, Mr. Obama has not caved to the rising calls for cheap energy and has refused to follow his rivals down this misguided path...

Joseph Romm, a progressive, who worked for the Clintons as acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy, writing critically of the gas tax on his blog, Climate Progress, says (again with my emphasis):

I write this post with some sadness. I would not have expected a major progressive politician who obviously cares about global warming to propose a gas tax holiday, which has no public benefits whatsoever, but at the same time undermines the entire rationale behind a national climate strategy that includes, as it must, a pricing mechanism for greenhouse gases. I try, however, to be as consistent as possible — and if such a proposal was cynical and hypocritical for Sen. McCain, it is equally cynical and hypocritical for Sen. Clinton. Kudos to Sen. Obama for opposing this absurd proposal — double kudos because it might cost him a few votes.

According to the Washington Post, meanwhile:

Harvard professor N. Gregory Mankiw, who has written a best-selling textbook on economics, said what he teaches is different from what Clinton and McCain are saying about gas taxes. "What you learn in Economics 101 is that if producers can't produce much more, when you cut the tax on that good the tax is kept . . . by the suppliers and is not passed on to consumers," he said.

Which makes the move by Clinton and McCain all the more cynical. While the measure will cost the federal government $9 billion and send entirely the wrong message on climate change, McCain and Clinton know as well as anyone else that oil companies won't pass the price break onto consumers but instead will pocket it.

They are paying $9 billion in our money, in other words, to make a false promise. They are trying to trick voters into voting for them.

Environmentalists said, according to the Post:

[that] stoking ire about the cost of gas undermines efforts to build a case for limiting carbon emissions, which could raise prices at the pump. "It sends a confusing message," said Kevin Knoblauch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "What's more helpful is if [politicians] help consumers understand that this isn't about near-term gas prices, it's about a comprehensive and smart approach to energy policies."

The sad news is that this whole mishigas is a first indication of how McCain or Clinton would treat the climate issue if they became president. The good news is that it is also and indication of how Obama would treat it.

PS You might also read Sam Stein's critique of the gas tax vacation at the Huffington Post.

To help preserver our water systems, one of the things we did during the No Impact project, and continue to do, is try to avoid allowing toxins and sewage from entering our waterways.

Sewage, you say? Yes, sewage. Because here in New York we have a system of nearly 700 "combined sewer overflows" (CSOs) that occasionally dump raw sewage into New York Harbor and the surrounding waterways. The good news is that there are only 70 such emissions a year. The bad news is that that amounts to 27 billion gallons of untreated wastewater in New York City waterways annually.

What happens is that both the household sewage from our homes and the storm water drainage from the streets and rooftops of the buildings come together in underground drainage pipes that take it all to wastewater treatment plants (click on the above diagram for a larger version). During a hard rain, however, those underground sewage pipes get overwhelmed and, to keep the sewage from backing up into our sinks and toilets, it gets dumped, untreated, through the CSOs into the rivers and waterways.

Want to go swimming?

Not in New York, right? Well, it turns out there are a lot of other places you may not be rushing to don your bathing suits either. According to the EPA:

"Combined sewer systems serve roughly 772 communities containing about 40 million people. Most communities with combined sewer systems (and therefore with CSOs) are located in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions, and the Pacific Northwest (see map)."

And the discharge isn’t just poo. It can contain industrial waste and just about anything people pour down their toilets or into the sewers: car oil, bleach, ammonia, antifreeze, bug repellent, rat poison and every other toxin you can imagine (picture of a CSO in Pennsylvania courtesy of the Larson Design Group).

Here are some measures each of us of can take to stop the pollution that flows from CSOs:

• Reduce water use so less wastewater enters the sewer system and it is less likely to overflow.
• Manage storm water so that less of it enters the sewer systems.
• Develop “end of pipe” innovations that prevent the overflows.
• Don’t put anything but water, pee and poo and TP down the drain (recipes for low impact soaps and household cleansers here).

Finally, here is my New York City water activist friend Kate Zidar's really cool video project (made in partnership with the Center for Urban Pedagogy), The Water Underground, a 25-minute student-led exploration of where water comes from, where it goes and what happens along the way.

Let's start with the fairy tale that came true for the gasoline magnates:

• Once upon a time, a number of companies bought up drilling rights here and oil refineries there and eventually gained control over the USA's gasoline.
• For a while, gasoline hovered under $2 a gallon, and the companies and magnates had to console themselves with--ho hum--tidy profits.
• One day, some people began to worry that there wasn't always going to be enough gas for everyone. "Demand will grow," they said. "Supply will fall."
• But the gas companies and magnates, instead of panicking, began rubbing their hands together. Gigantic, ridiculously huge profits, they knew, come to those who wait.
• Next, developing countries started buying cars and, at the same time, world gas production pretty much peaked. In other words, demand grew. Supply fell.
• Prices skyrocket, people suffered, but the oil and gas companies and magnates made huge, unprecedented profits.
• Peak oil, it turned out, wasn't their worst nightmare at all. It was their happiest fantasy!
• So the oil companies and magnates lived happily ever after.
• Too bad about everyone else.

Now let's look at the future fairy tale that the companies who privatize our drinking water look forward to:

• Nestle, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Suez and a bunch of other companies buy up water rights around the United States and elsewhere.
• For a while, people buy bottled water for less than $2 a gallon (even though tap water is free).
• The water barons console themselves with--ho hum--tidy profits, selling their water for something like a thousand times what they pay for it.
• Then, the phrase "peak water" gets bandied about, but far from worrying that the water will run out, the water barons begin buying water rights up faster than ever.
• Next, in some future scenario, underfunding to the municipal water supplies or pollution in the aquifers means that clean tap water becomes scarcer and scarcer and drinking bottle water is not a choice but a necessity.
• In other words, demand grows, Supply falls.
• Prices skyrocket, people suffer, but the water barons make huge, unprecedented profits.
• Peak water, it turns out, wasn't their worst nightmare at all. It was their happiest fantasy!
• So the water barons lived happily ever after.
• Too bad about everyone else.

You see, it's not just about the plastic bottles. It's not just about the food miles. It's about the fundamental right of access to drinking water. Are we willing for our children to have happen to them for water what is happening to us for gas?

We can make a difference!

• Take action against privatization of water in California here.
• Support federal funding of clean drinking water here.
• Learn how to boycott bottled water here.
• Read about my ultra-cool reusable water bottle here.
• I don't know what else, do you? Please leave your ideas in the comments!

Click the image above for a larger version

This could be totally wrong, but I’m guessing that the decline of religious life in our culture has brought with it a decline in gratitude. Not that I am laying some sort of a religious trip on everyone—I am the first to cop to not maintaining an attitude of thankfulness.

But I do feel as though we (and I include me) have come to worship desire. Here in the United States, I sometimes despair that our state religion is consumption and our main prayer is for more.

I’m not even religious, but I sense from people I’ve known who take the spiritual aspects of their religions to heart an emphasis on being grateful for what God or the Universe or the Oneness has given them rather than on what they don’t have. I admire that. I’d like to have more of that in myself, because I, too, often find that my prayer, if I’m not careful, is for more.

Here is what I think: that being grateful for what I have makes me want less. Wanting less makes me consume less. Consuming less makes me treat the planet more kindly. The equation goes, therefore, gratitude equals kindness.

And also, it turns out, gratitude equals happiness. According to the relatively new field of positive psychology (read an article about it in Time here), one way to cultivate happiness is to keep a

“gratitude journal, a diary in which subjects write down things for which they are thankful. [Researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky] has found that taking the time to conscientiously count their blessings once a week significantly increased subjects' overall satisfaction with life over a period of six weeks, whereas a control group that did not keep journals had no such gain.”

Notice how the blurb at the top of this post (courtesy of Time Magazine via Authentic Happiness, by the way), doesn’t mention anything about getting more stuff to make us happy? Instead, among other things, it gratitude at the top of the list (and I’m not suggesting this for the underprivileged or the poverty stricken). So by my reckoning, cultivating gratitude is another case of happier people, happier planet.

PS If you're a regular reader, you may notice this is a repost. Sorry. Isabella has brought me home another doozy of a cold.