Carbon-neutral water from Iceland!! (and how to reduce energy use in a principled way)

[mattbell]

On my second-to-last trip down to LA, I found two examples of green-gone-wrong.

1.  I saw a van on Sunset Blvd advertising Icelandic bottled water that was Certified Carbon-neutral.

OK... fresh water is fresh water.  We've got some great water coming into LA via those giant channels they used to steal all the water from the Owens Valley (see Chinatown).  Why oh why do people think shipping water all the way across the Atlantic ocean and the United States from Iceland is possibly good for the environment?  If there's anything special about the impurities in the Icelandic water, they could be filtered out and sent to the US to be added to the local water. 

Really, this is all silly. Chances are the European upper classes are drinking ultra-pure water bottled at the source in the SIerras.  How much energy could we save by just all drinking our own damn water? 

2.  There was an airplane pulling a big banner saying "THINK GREEN" by the beach in La Jolla. 

Airplanes use a lot of energy.  Airplanes pulling giant streamers in the wind use even more energy.  The hypocrisy hurts.  Wouldn't a billboard on a highway be a hell of a lot more energy efficient while allowing the same number of ad impressions?

This is the big trouble with thinking green vs acting green.  Being green is somewhat hip right now, so companies are trying to figure out how to staple a green image onto whatever it was they were already doing.

So what *actually* helps?

Well, the Economist has a nice graph showing the net savings or costs of reducing carbon emissions in various ways.



It looks like the most useful things we as private consumers can do to save energy while maintaining our current lifestyles involve:
- Getting energy-efficient lighting and appliances
- Insulating our homes properly. 
- Recycling (though it doesn't break it down by what is recycled... I believe aluminum has the greatest impact)

And since it's a net cost *savings*, people should be excited to do them.  All we need is to disseminate information and have easy-to-get loans for certain kinds of home improvement.  Apparently, the Obama administration is planning something like this, but it's in the form of rewards and subsidies instead of loans.  It does seem a bit silly to offer a subsidy for something that's already a cost savings but requires an initial investment when a loan would bridge the hurdle just as well and would cost the government less. 

On a vaguely related note, this is the clearest I've EVER seen the skies in LA:

Comments

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

Some numbers on recycling:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/how_your_house_works/4291576.html

Of course those plastics numbers are somewhat misleading since plastics aren't really recycled, they're downcycled (the article does mention it's now possible to actually recycle PET into new bottles but I'm pretty sure this is rarely done). Still, it's a good order of magnitude kinda thing.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the kind of info I was looking for. Thanks!

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

Anyway, more along the lines of the first half of your post...

I am on a quest to convince the world that bottled water is tacky low-quality low-class dreck. I mean, really, most of it tastes like plastic and the stuff out of my tap tastes better. Too bad nobody thinks I'm a cool trendsetter :)

[ferrouswheel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't find the plastic bottle water is anything special. I much rather use a water filter jug - although I have to admit I haven't investigated how green this alternative is or isn't.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

I think they have to make the water filters look sexy and expensive. There should be some semi-pointless thing it does, like "aeration".

[ferrouswheel.livejournal.com]

I totally one a water filter that will do some "aeration"!

Although on a related idea, having water filters that seep nutrients into the water might be kind of cool and less wasteful than eating mega-dose pills that mostly get flushed out by the body.

[(Anonymous)]

The stupid "green" stuff sounds like it's very common in Santa Monica. But maybe it's just my republican department chair's wife who says that - maybe Santa Monicans are perfectly non-hypocritical. The only example I remember her mentioning was that they don't clean up after their dog, which she thinks is very environmentally unfriendly because it's messy.

I don't quite understand the graphic there - does 0 mean that the net costs of the switch are exactly offset by the savings in reduced electricity or whatever? Also, did they explain any of the terms discussed? I was wondering why plug-in hybrid is so much more expensive per unit abatement than "full hybrid", whatever that means.

Oh, and the sky was much clearer than that on Saturday afternoon right after the rain. But yes, that is a relatively clear day - still got a bit of a yellow streak though, which it sometimes doesn't have. I remember one day when I could see the snow covered mountains from on campus, which surprised me.

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

Oh, that was me.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Yeah, 0 is cost of switch being exactly offset by lowered energy use over the lifetime of the new system.

I imagine it's obnoxiously hard to calculate these amounts precisely as there are a huge number of externalities to account for. (eg some switch reduces CO2 emissions by X but also increases SO2 emissions by Y; however it also requires a precious metal for which there is a limited supply but the supply would likely go up if new mines were opened, which would require Z in additional carbon emissions... unfortunately the potential mine is in a politically unstable country that could declare war against its neighbor once it's flush with cash from profits from a new mine, and war is very, very bad for the environment...)

[happyinmotion.livejournal.com]

All true, and those are actions that everyone should be taking, for the good of their pocket at least.

However, the big and immediate wins come from changing lifestyles. The obvious two are eating less meat and flying less. Three hours on a plane emit roughly one ton of CO2. So avoiding that flight saves more than buying a more efficient fridge ever will. (For context, US average emissions per person are 17 tonnes or so.)

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Yeah, lifestyle change would have the biggest impact, but it's hard to get the majority of the population to do it unless there's a financial incentive to do so.

It's a big tragedy-of-the-commons issue -- the cost to the environment is so diffuse that people do not see or do not care about the result of their actions.

If the externalities were internalized, plane tickets, meat, etc would cost twice as much, and people might change their patterns.

Another option would be to make the alternatives cheaper and better -- invest in really good videoconferencing and telepresence tech!

[happyinmotion.livejournal.com]

All of those actions could be done, if there was the political will. There isn't, because people don't want those actions.

The UK tried more realistic fuel pricing, resulting in the biggest public backlash of the decade.

More on this from me