The good news about fighting the global climate crisis is that there are ancillary benefits from the methods, techniques and technologies which we must adopt in order to reduce our carbon footprint. At the top of the list of those benefits is air pollution. Exacerbating a whole host of maladies including asthma and emphysema, air pollution is as dirty as its name sounds.

Proposals to dispense with fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and petroleum in our electrical power plants receive a great deal of attention and rightly so. However, urban haze and smog are a growing problem, too, and point to air pollution statistics which may shock you. My favorite dates back to the summer of 1996.

As you will recall, Atlanta, capital city of the State of Georgia, often called the New York of the South, hosted the Olympic Games. Living in the South, I can tell you that it was a big deal for Florida, even though we were hundreds of miles away from most of the action.

Emissions of carbon monoxide, sulfur and volatile organic compounds from lawn care equipment such as mowers and trimmers are a big problem. In some ways, they are a greater problem than automobiles. It’s true!

Until I sat down and thought about it some 15 years ago, I had not realized that this makes sense. Tailpipe emissions from cars have been regulated in one form or another for decades. Not so with lawn care equipment. In fact, until just a few years ago, the patchwork of small engine pollution regulations which has sprung up around the United States did not exist.

Is it really that bad, you might ask? The answer is yes. We need new air pollution solutions.

The Environmental Protection Agency tells us that 5% of our nation’s pollution comes from lawn care equipment and this dirty air comprises a larger portion of smog in urban areas than the national average. For example, in Los Angeles, California, air pollution from edgers, mowers and trimmers exceeds the total emissions from all planes in the city’s airspace.

With such air pollution facts in mind, then, dear reader, you may come to share my urgency for finding meaningful and practical air pollution solutions. They exist and a friend of mine by the name of JP Patten of HUGR Systems in Orlando, FL has invented one of them.

It turns out that operating lawn mowers on larger platforms with diesel engines can quintuple fuel economy and reduce airborne contaminants by large percentages. The news gets better. Modern diesel engines require no modifications whatsoever in order to operate on BioDiesel. What’s more, because fuel for lawn care involves a mere fraction of what we in the United States burn for transportation, we can obtain the liquid gold in small quantities from organic sources.

In the third post in this series, I will explain how BioDiesel is a wonderful fit for the lawn care industry, including individual homeowners who cut their own lawns.

Sustainable Justice For All!

Corbett Kroehler
 

JP Patten is a BioDiesel expert and a friend of mine. If you would like to be put in touch with him, just send me an email through the Contact Corbett link in the left navigation bar of this blog and I will relay your message gladly.

Well, when I first learned of JP and his amazing technology, I immediately wondered about the economic viability of fueling a community’s landscaping activities with BioDiesel. JP had the answer and it is quite compelling. Broad BioDiesel expansion can be quick and profitable.

Average population centers (Orlando, FL fits the mold) have more than enough restaurants in clusters for practical collection and processing of kitchen waste, such as fryer grease, to sell it at around the same price per gallon as petroleum diesel. Better yet, it is recycled fuel, which is very important, is domestically produced, even more important, and enhances engine operating temperature plus fuel economy! In fact, JP’s model uses roughly one-fifth the fuel per cutting as a conventional gasoline mower and has more torque. Wow!

When was the last time you refilled the fuel tank on your lawn mower? Did you spill?

I used to have a terrible problem spilling gasoline when refilling my mower. That’s one of the reasons I switched to an electric unit years ago.

Electric landscaping equipment truly is the best choice because exhaust from small gasoline engines is very dirty. In fact, small engine smoke is a major cause of lung cancer. However, for many Americans, mowing while tethered to a wall socket is impractical.

Enter BioDiesel.

If I said “ozone layer,” it would be perfectly normal if your reply were, “I thought that we fixed that in the 1980’s.” The fact is, repair work on the ozone layer high in the atmosphere is progressing at a tolerable pace because of the (mostly) global ban on nasty substances known as CFCs.

No, when I refer to the ozone layer now, I regard urban haze and its effects both on natural vistas, such as at Grand Canyon National Park, and the way in which plants (especially prairie grasses and trees) consume the byproducts of the carbon we exhale 72 times per minute and convert it to the oxygen which all animals need in order to survive.

I call this exchange process the carbon dioxide oxygen cycle. It is one of the building blocks of mammalian life on Earth, meaning human life. In short, without it, we become the dinosaurs of the Holocene Age.

Huh?

Forests are vital to the planet’s ability to process carbon, sequestering it, but, more commonly and importantly, converting it to oxygen for us to breathe. Healthy, old-growth forests clean more carbon from the atmosphere than arithmetic (and a count of the area covered) would lead one to conclude because of symbiosis.

Central Florida suffers from urban sprawl to an extent which rivals the nation’s oldest cities. At our current pace, soon we we’ll have not just suburbs next to suburbs but exurbs, where residential areas ringing cities become so large and traffic so bad that new city centers are born. Indeed, the Interstate 4 corridor between Orlando and Tampa is growing so fast that it is known by some as “Orlampa.”

“There he goes again!”

I’m sure you are tempted to react to the title of this thread that way. I don’t blame you. After all, would average web surfers think twice about the potential connection between the numbers of trees in urban areas and pediatrics?

Please bear with me, though, because this linkage is crucially important.

As the world becomes more and more industrialized and we westerners ever more acclimated to city living, the importance of urban forest value rises in proportion.

What do I really mean?

As we close out one of the hottest and deadliest summer seasons ever in the northern hemisphere, we find new questions arising about the role which green tags, also called carbon offsets or carbon credits, can play in reversing the global climate crisis.

At the same time, we find that local cineplexes are showing not one but two films about life in our planet’s polar regions and the impact which global warming has on wildlife, “A Polar Tale” and “11th Hour”.

Since I have advocated that offsets can play a crucial role in a blended approach to conservation, this seems an ideal juncture to offer my carbon credit definition. Specifically, do I define such credits are good, good over the short term or bad?

The climate, of course, is the main reason I love living in Orlando, Florida. One of the benefits of the climate is tourism. Central Florida is the tourism capital of the world, in fact. One main gateway for tourists is Orlando International Airport, just a 20-minute drive from my home. More than 40 million passengers travel through OIA every year. In fact, it is the busiest airport in Florida.

The enactment of the Open Skies treaty has resulted in a marked expansion of non-stop international flights to and from OIA. This is great news for our community and economy. My wife is German by birth. Her immediate family still resides in Germany to this day. Up until the treaty, there was only one airline which offered non-stop flights home for my wife. Now that we have more, she is developing butterflies to hop a plane and see the family.

I will not stand in Catrin’s way but the other day I learned a fact about air travel which gave me pause. I was so taken aback that I now proclaim that aviation pollution statistics can astound.

I could write an entire month of posts about the topic of bottled water. In the United States, there should be very little need for such a product. If you live in an area with municipal water which is less than tasty, as I do, I understand the quandary. After all, if you calculate it by the gallon, many of us pay more for bottled water than we do gasoline!

Over the last two decades or so, Americans have allowed the consumption of bottled water to pervade. The environmental impact of doing so is huge and, sadly, offsets many of the strides made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by individuals, companies and governments. How big of an offset are we talking? What causes air pollution to worsen even as cars and trucks run cleaner than ever?

The term megacity is defined as a metropolitan center with at least 10,000,000 people. In the year 1950, the world had a single megacity, New York. Today, we have 15 and are headed for a great many more. This is significant to the question of global warming because the average city dweller uses 3 units of energy for every 1 unit produced whereas your average farmer who does not use an excess of mechanized equipment lives at roughly a 1:1 average.

In the United States, the average city dweller consumes 5 units of energy for every unit produced! In other words, we Americans do not live efficiently and the world is following our lead – not a good trend! It is for this reason that environmentalists point to reforming city lifestyles as one of the best ways to begin reversing the climate crisis. I concur fully but we must do more than teach the people to live greener and retrofit buildings to use less energy. We must control urban heat islands, too.

One of the lessons of the E-IQ quiz which I assigned last week is that America’s forests are larger than in recent years. In all candor, that fact is in dispute. What is not in dispute, however, is that the commercial forestry industry does a far better job today of replanting than in any recent decades. Why? Part of the reason is that the general public has demanded the industry’s support in reversing air pollution and causes of global warming.

In the undated photo above, we see that the air between the forest and the snowy mountaintops is fairly clean. Sadly, such is not the case everywhere and while I concur that the forest products industry has cleaned up its act in the United States to a measurable extent, other places around the world continue to suffer from clear cutting and widespread deforestation at historic rates. Humanity must look past territorial boundaries and engage in wide reforestation efforts.

Last year, I wrote about how Florida’s Showcase Green Envirohome was born of family tragedy and natural disaster to become the world’s greenest and most hurricane-resistant home. Parts of that series were syndicated throughout the blogosphere because of the human tale it tells. In no way do I wish to grandstand on profound loss but human history is chock full of examples of how people turned lemons into lemonade and charted a new course for the future.

Right now, as you read this, residents of California are doing just that. So, even as the toll from recent forest fires there is tallied, it is time to spend at least part of the time pondering the ecological response. We need to rebuild businesses and homes which were destroyed, as well as many lives, but also restore the area’s natural beauty. So, I advocate that California forest fire updates henceforth take into account reforestation efforts whenever possible.

One organization with a proven track record of replanting fire-damaged areas is American Forests. The folks there are the real deal. That’s why Jim Griffin, the man with whom I created the Green Earth Expo, selected American Forests as the organization to plant trees from Expo proceeds to help offset the week-long event’s carbon footprint.

The concept of a Clean Air Act impact on oriented strand board industry practices and profits may seem far-fetched but I ask that you bear with me. There is a crucial point here.

In the video series which I shot with Nonnie Chrystal regarding Florida’s Showcase Green Envirohome, Nonnie gives several explanations about wood-frame construction and why she avoided it for her amazing project. One of the reasons stems from drawbacks of oriented strand board, such as particle board, which can be highly flammable and/or emit toxic gases which become a grave health concern during periods of long confinement.

Nonnie’s solution comprises multiple technologies which are explained in the video series and my favorite is Armoroc. Not only does it contribute tremendously to the home’s superb resistance to hurricanes but the ingredients used in the manufacturing of Armoroc can be assembled cleaner than with conventional materials. It’s a win-win!

Yesterday, I made my usual weekly pilgrimage to Publix, Catrin’s and my local supermarket. During our 16+ years of wedded bliss, we have alternated between competing grocery chains. Because of its distance from us, we seldom shop at Whole Foods Market. However, a recent policy change on the part of this national grocer may well compel us to modify our buying pattern.

As I have written in recent months, shopping bags used in supermarkets count for a very large chunk of the air pollution which the United States generates each year. Whether you choose paper or plastic, many natural resources are consumed to create the bag and pollution spewed into the air in the process. That’s why I advocate so strongly for using canvas bags or, even better, no bags at all whenever possible, just as I do.

The alarming tale of the need for polar bear refrigerators in Churchill, Manitoba which I shared with you last time disturbed me greatly when I first heard it. However, in the same speech, Premier Gary Doer also shared some very good news. His province is on track to decommission all of its coal-fired electrical power plants by the year 2010. Impressive!

Cynics might decry Manitoba’s move as relatively insignificant given the province’s small population compared with other places. That is not the point. The key here is that a province which derives so much of its economic growth from fossil fuels is recognizing in a very formal way that burning coal for electricity is bad. Mr. Doer and his colleagues in the Manitoba legislature have raised the political carbon flash point. It’s just that simple.

As natural gas and petroleum prices continue to fluctuate and as global warming deepens the devastating droughts which are causing hydroelectric and nuclear fission power plants to reduce their capacity, coal advocates point to the merits of their preferred fuel source. Under that narrow definition, they are correct to an extent. Where they go wrong, however, is in the broad side effects of mining and burning the black rocks.

The map which begins this thread is a decade old and the red shaded areas show what will happen to my home if sea levels rise 3 feet. Sadly, it has become a best case scenario because most of the predictions from the scientific community about sea levels have come to fruition since the map was created.

How dire are our straits, then? I could overwhelm you with facts and figures. Fortunately, our allies at National Geographic have done the heavy lifting for us in the form of an excellent series entitled “Six Degrees.” I commend it to your immediate attention but be warned, it may give you nightmares.

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/sixdegrees

Air pollution has no long-term benefits. There are short-term economic benefits to some because they have learned to turn a profit from directly or indirectly spewing air pollution into the atmosphere. It is a well-documented fact which no credible person would dispute that air pollution is bad for people and wildlife. What, though, is the effect air pollution has on the Earth’s ecosystem and what can we do about it?

The effect is broad but can be summarized concisely: air pollution, as a component of global warming, disrupts the ability of the atmosphere to regulate itself, leading to erratic weather patterns. In turn, these patterns impinge upon natural systems and we wind up with a big mess, including insect species where they don’t belong, melting glaciers, widespread famines and the list goes on.

In the middle of the 19th Century, an Irish scientist by the name of John Tyndall established the correlation between carbon particles in the atmosphere of our planet and increases in global average temperatures. So, if you dispute the phenomenon global warming or hear others doing so, the argument goes against more than a century of hard science, science which was not controversial until multinational conglomerates decided to invest some of their billions of dollars in quarterly profits into disinformation in favor of maintaining the status quo. This fact does not escape the watchful eyes of OSAC, NASA, NOAA and agencies of governments large and small the world over.

Here’s a brief quote from Tyndall:

Last time, I told you about the commendable gains made in the promotion of the SIGG aluminum water bottle by StopGlobalWarming.org It’s a wonderful product but perhaps impractical for your situation. What are your alternatives?

You may have heard about Brazilian Springs water, which claims to be the first and only eco-friendly bottled water in the world. Is that possible? It’s a question of degree. First the good news...

Brazilian Springs Water as a firm created a foundation and then partnered with Fundaçâo de Preservaçâo da Floresta Amazônica, FundAmazon for short, to protect sensitive lands which have been cleared (or are under threat of clearing) plus engage in broad reforestation along Brazil’s Atlantic coast. A portion of the revenue from the sale of the bottled water, which comes from Arkansas, is directed into the foundation to go toward saving the Amazon rainforest.

The goal is sound. The urgency is great and the need for international involvement cannot be overstated. Two thumbs up for creativity and mission!

Now, the bad news – the water is bottled in only one place yet available in many. In other words, the product must be shipped, a carbon-intensive practice. Of equal damage is the fact that the water is packaged in PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, which, while recyclable, is a carbon-intense material which usually winds up in landfills.

There is no such thing as clean coal! Period!

In my first year as a Keyboard Culture Expert, I have mentioned my position on clean coal but never as affirmatively as right now. Why the change? Well, it’s not really a change so much as a tweak in my narrative style. It is precipitated by two events of historical significance.

Firstly, we have the nomination for President of the United States of Senator Barack Obama. No matter whether you follow politics passionately with an inclination toward one political party or away from another, or are lukewarm about all of it, you are or will become aware of the fact that Senator Obama’s nomination by the Democratic Party has caused a marked uptick in budget allocations for television advertising by fossil fuel companies, including mining interests.

In a word, fossilized conglomerates which have been embraced by many national politicians in recent years have become frightened. Whereas earlier in this decade they have spoken occasionally about clean coal technologies, now they can’t seem to refer to them often enough.

Since this is not a political blog, I will leave the matter there with a simple statement of fact. These companies are frightened.

Secondly, though, is the preceding event to Senator Obama’s nomination, the partnership between Environmental Defense, a standard bearer in the quest for a clean environment and a reversal of global warming, and one of the world’s largest investment firms, Kohlbert Kravis Roberts.

“We don’t want to spend taxpayer dollars on fuels that make global warming worse.”

– Hon. Kitty Piercy, Mayor

Eugene, Oregon

June 23, 2008

Last time, I gave you my position on clean coal technologies. They are a myth. However, since no reasonable environmentalist can expect the world to abandon coal overnight, the most important thing for us to do is disseminate the truth about clean coal technologies and drive consumers of coal toward clean, renewable resources.

One area where the environmental community can obtain the fastest results is in educating government bodies. NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense Council, is a very influential organization doing just that. The quote above came in part as a response to their work.

“Our world, our old world that we have inhabited for the last 12,000 years, has ended, even if no newspaper in North America or Europe has yet printed its scientific obituary.”

- Professor Mike Davis

University of California at Irvine

Although science is at the heart of this blog, I am neither a scientist nor a science writer. I am an environmental journalist. However, science is at the heart of everything I write and advocate because without scientific laws, there is no existence.

Science has told us that we have poisoned our atmosphere and oceans but also that human landscape transformation now exceeds natural sediment production by an order of magnitude. In other words, the Earth really isn’t the Earth which humanity inherited.

The American system of mandating and measuring the fuel efficiency in automobiles is called the CAFE Standard, Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency. The United States Department of Transportation defines it as, “the sales weighted average fuel economy, expressed in miles per gallon (MPG), of a manufacturer’s fleet of passenger cars or light trucks with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 8,500 lbs. or less, manufactured for sale in the United States, for any given model year.”

The program has existed since 1975, when it was instituted in response to the first gasoline crisis in the United States and has been tweaked very seldom since then. In fact, average fuel efficiency ratings of automobiles on American roads are lower now than when the mass-production automobile was invented a century ago!

How can this be?

Clear to Mostly Cloudy in Moments

The atmospheric patterns which give Florida its pleasant weather also used to provide it with adequate rainfall to keep skiable lakes and the aquifer topped off nicely during every month of the year.

Overdevelopment (which I refer to as urban sprawl), global warming and the El Niño effect have changed that in recent years. In fact, when I moved to Florida two decades ago, we enjoyed regular afternoon downpours during 9 months of the year or more. Residents, including this author, almost could set our clocks to the weather. If the time was 3PM, cloud fronts were due to begin building over the Atlantic Coast and move westward. If it was 5PM and the cable television or electrical service had not flickered, we were due for at least a brownout at any moment.

Soda Pop and Slushies

The dialog surrounding dead trees and bodies of fresh water in the Northeastern United States and Maritime Canadian Provinces (which I mentioned last time) ultimately yielded an hemispheric alert. Soon thereafter, the Clean Air Act of the United States was amended and updated to address acid rain, as it was known at the time, and thousands of lakes and surrounding forests were given a fair shot at recovery. As important as the landmark legislation was, though, it only postponed the inevitable, acidification of the world’s oceans.

If acid rain was caused by nitrogen and sulfur in smokestack and tailpipe emissions, why does an acidification problem remain if nitrogen and sulfur now are under control?

Bicycle Sharing Beauty

Vélib’, short for vélo libre, free bike, is an unparalleled success in the industrialized world. According to the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy, more than 1,000,000 people joined the Parisian bicycle sharing program in its first three weeks of existence.

What does this tell us? Three key points emerge:

From Intolerable to Idyllic

Dr. Enrique Peñalosa was Mayor of Bogotá, Columbia from 1998 through 2001. He inherited a city in crisis. Entire sections of his 8-million-strong metropolis were considered off-limits by families because of smog and sky-high crime rates. Quality of life in Bogotá essentially had ground to a halt.

Mayor Peñalosa realized that a new approach was the only way to go. He knew that automobiles were facilitating suffocating rates of smog, drive-by shootings and kidnappings. Cars, while important, of course, had become the enemy of his once pedestrian-friendly city.

His solution? Dr. Enrique Peñalosa pondered the early success of Bogotá and other Latin American cities before the mass-production automobile. Then, he closed his eyes and envisioned Bogotá as a pedestrian paradise.

Today, this ancient city has reduced its crime rate significantly and added to its streets hundreds of thousands of cyclists and pedestrians who used to feel forced to choose between driving and self-imposed confinement. How was this accomplished? Mayor Peñalosa realized that he needed a grand vision, one of a car-free city. Even though such a position would be impractical and rejected by many citizens and members of the business community, Bogotá came close, banning all automobile traffic on Thursdays.

Initial Resistance becomes Enthusiastic Acceptance

The nose-bleed prices which motorists around the world saw during the first half of 2008 owe their heights to causes geological, psychological and political. However, no matter where we place the blame, the simple fact is this: with Iraq still producing a mere trickle of oil and the Saudi royal family struggling to perpetuate the myth that it can remain one of the largest oil producers in the world, demand will continue to outstrip supply for many years.

As you well know, dear reader, high fuel prices have broad impacts on the modern world and can drive us, pardon the pun, to desperate acts. One of them is a modern form of alchemy, the migration to water injection for gas engines.

In the United States, Mischief Night comes every October 30, a night when otherwise upstanding citizens do foolish things in the name of foolishness, such as adding sand, sugar or water to the fuel tank of a neighbor’s automobile. Such naughtiness generally causes more inconvenience than damage but the parallels to water injection for gas engines are most apt.

After all, if adding water to a fuel tank can lead to engine failure, water injection can’t be much better, can it? Could the solution to record fuel prices be that simple? If we approach the problem backwards, we may find the answer. After all, automobile tailpipes often drip water. So, there must be water in gasoline, right?

In order to help you understand all of the ramifications of water injection for gas engines, I will engage in a full explanation of the role of gasoline in the modern internal combustion engine in my next post.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Stepping Lightly

Back in December, I told you about the splendid online video, The Story of Stuff. It explains in brilliant terms the reality of pollution created in order to provide the amenities of modern life, including air pollution and the waste stream (especially landfills and electronic waste (ewaste)).

The main message of The Story of Stuff is to consume less. Naturally, I am in full agreement. It is a lifestyle I have adopted. However, since I wrote about the aforementioned exemplary video, the green revolution has made several key strides in the consumer marketplace. We have Clorox selling a line of green cleaners. We have Delta Air Lines embracing a green operating model in a very public way. So, with all this positivity occurring, how can you hop on the bandwagon and not just consume less but take the next step and become as green as possible?

Knowing, monitoring and reducing your carbon footprint are the key steps. So, how does that differ from consuming less? The two points most definitely are interrelated. However, leveraging the knowledge of your carbon footprint helps you achieve another vital aspect, insulating yourself from green washing.

A quick definition: Green washing is the willful process through marketing and/or propaganda of defining a practice, product or service as being sensitive to the environment or greener than that of a competitor when the opposite is true.

While measuring the carbon footprint of a practice, product or service is not the only way of determining the precise hue of its green credentials, it is the most meaningful and effective way of assessing its role in combating or exacerbating global warming.

The good folks at the Earth Day Network have created a brand new online calculator of everyone’s carbon (or eco) footprint. Arguably the most wonderful aspect of this nifty tool is the fact that it includes nationality in the calculation. I exhort you to surf over to www.earthday.net/ecofootprint today and assess yourself. If everyone did likewise, we’d be a whole lot wiser about where we stand on an individual and collective mark and have a serviceable grasp on the length of the journey which lies before us as we fight global warming and reduce atmospheric carbon footprint by 2% per year.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

New Approaches to Old Problems

Nearly a decade has passed since the Environmental Defense Fund, one of my favorite American charities, began its broad effort to reform the courier and freight industry. Contributing significantly to air pollution, smog and global warming, the hundreds of thousands of vehicles in use every day around the world to deliver goods on demand constitute a superb opportunity to engage the problem head on and collaborate with the courier and shipping services to help them improve their bottom lines and embrace sustainability at the same time.

While United Parcel Service, UPS, has engaged in its own laudable innovations with respect to hybrid-electric delivery vans, hydrogen fuel and enhanced route planning to reduce engine idling, Federal Express, FedEx, has been the true leader.

Roughly 5 years ago, FedEx agreed to a revolutionary partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund with a very simple goal: prove that hybrid-electric engines can work in the heavy-duty, stop-and-go daily operations of a typical FedEx delivery van just as well as dirty old diesel systems which FedEx uses every day. To call the initiative a success is an understatement!

Having surpassed the impressive milestone of 2 million miles traveled, the FedEx hybrid-electric operating model has proved itself day after day and the shipping leader is on track to have 170 of the rugged yet low-emission vehicles on the road by the end of this calendar year, operating in more than a dozen North American cities with a parallel program in western Europe ramping up.

I commend the leadership of FedEx for having an open mind about low-emission delivery vehicles at a time when petroleum diesel fuel cost less than $2 per gallon but this success story hardly ends with the impressive achievements of 2008. You see, the personnel structure of FedEx is tightly integrated. It is one of the reasons that the company consistently wins awards as one of the most admired employers in the world.

When delivery drivers who participated in the proving process for the hybrid-electric vans learned that they wouldn’t have to change their daily practices one iota yet would consume roughly half the volume of fuel per day that they had on the standard vehicle, they rejoiced and sent a clear message up through the management chain that they wanted to see FedEx embrace low-emission business practices wherever possible.

People Power Impresses Corporate Power Structure

The clamoring from the labor base of the company for a greater corporate posture toward environmental sustainability has led not only to the expansion of the hybrid-electric delivery van fleet but two other key innovations as well.

That’s right. FedEx is on track not only to have well over 100 diesel-electric delivery vans on the road but the shipping leader also has begun an important initiative to utilize hybrid-electric gasoline vehicles in North America. Long considered standard in Europe, the inclusion of a specially-designed hybrid gas model for the North American marketplace will give FedEx another distinction and competitive edge. For this reason, when I need to ship documents and parcels of high importance, FedEx is the only service I use.

Reducing fuel consumption, while vital, is only one side of the savings which FedEx has embraced. It also is a leader in covering the rooftop of no fewer than two of its freight sorting facilities with photovoltaic arrays. Oh yes, FedEx now has the largest corporate installation of solar generating capacity in the state of California with no plans to stop there.

Naturally, if we really wish to stave off the worst impacts of global warming, everyone must pitch in and do more. FedEx and its rivals have a long way to go. Nevertheless, the year 2008 has shown that it not only is possible but profitable for leading service providers from around the world to go green and as a consumer of such services, you can help commend companies such as FedEx for acting responsibly by voting with your wallet. I do and exhort you to follow my lead.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Newer does not always mean better. As a movie buff, I know this to be true. Still, there are other areas in which humanity’s progress truly improves upon the ways in which we used to do things. As regards personal transportation, especially in large cities, the first decade of the new millennium has produced mixed results. On the one hand, we have the Prius and Segway, both evolutionary leaps in the right direction. On the other hand, we’ve had the pervasion of sport utility vehicles (SUVs) on every continent.

As we seek to move ever more people and merchandise, we must find ways which consistently are better. No doubt you know by now that the Interstate Traveler is a great solution and I am pleased to inform you that it draws closer to breaking ground with each passing day. However, it cannot be everything to everyone. So, in order to solve all of the world’s ills in the realm of transportation, we need multiple solutions. Some, as above, will be modern; others will be retro.

Given the depth of the problem of air pollution and its march toward suffocating levels in most of our largest cities, urgency informs us that we should embrace whatever works so long as we keep our eye on the ultimate prize of 100% clean transportation. Luckily, by embracing assorted solutions in order to keep progress moving, we can solve problems of congestion at the same time.

Vehicles which are powered through the burning of fossil fuels operate at their dirtiest when idling and when first started. Congested roads cause thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dirty engines to run at their dirtiest for many hours a day every day. Naturally, this situation leads to smog and respiratory ailments for the people unfortunate enough to live in congested cities.

Traffic gridlock also places a large strain on municipal infrastructure due to fender benders and road surfaces which exceed their designed load factors. A vicious circle begins because cities with clogged streets spend too much money filling potholes and deploying traffic police and hence have inadequate funds to invest in mass transit systems.

The auto rickshaw may be an old solution to a very modern problem, however. In the second part of this thread, I will elaborate.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

The depth of the world’s air pollution and transportation problems is such that we need to embrace reasonable solutions wherever we find them, even if they are short-term remedies. It’s just that simple. The auto rickshaw, long a staple of urban transportation in many of our largest cities, has the potential to contribute greatly to our quest for permanent solutions.

Consider, it already is a popular means of metropolitan transport. Because its construction can be a combination of components both new and used from a variety of sources, there are fewer entrenched manufacturers to convince to build the machinery. Arguably best of all, since most of the vehicles have owner-operators who are interested in steady profits and cleaner air, engaging them to become part of the solution is relatively easy.

That’s why Tata Motors, one of the largest auto manufacturers in the world, is engaging the auto rickshaw marketplace with full force. Now with a voice just as loud as that of Ford and Chrysler, Tata Motors has realized that the future of its profit margins comes in affordable transportation. This also is the reason that local governments in India and elsewhere are awakening to the need to formalize an auto rickshaw-based transportation system, especially in those places where there is little or no funding for large infrastructure improvements such as bus rapid transit and light rail.

Where the auto rickshaw becomes really interesting is in the move away from fossil fuels. The first and arguably easiest step is toward clean-burning natural gas. Still a fossil fuel and thus a contributor to global warming, natural gas makes sense as a very short-term modification because it tends to be more plentiful than petroleum fuels and the engine modifications needed to use it in an auto rickshaw are relatively minor. Ethanol, hydrogen and/or ultra capacitors for running on electricity would be far better choices but also much more complex and expensive.

Naturally, this global warming expert knows that fossil fuels must become a thing of the past if we are to save the planet from ourselves but victory will not occur in one giant leap. It will be gradual. Our daily goal must be to accelerate the changes but perfect cannot be the enemy of good. The auto rickshaw is good because it is better than many alternatives but not perfect. For now, that suits me just fine.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Despite what many political candidates and incumbents espouse during election years, there is no such thing as clean coal. That being said, the immense contribution to global warming of the mining and burning of coal has the potential to be offset to a certain extent. To be clear, what I am about to share with you in no way addresses mercury hotspots or other mercury-related issues which arise from our reliance on coal.

Coal mines often contain byproducts which in some cases we capture and in other cases we vent into the atmosphere. Methane gas in a common example and, tragically, its ubiquity in mines is a leading cause of sudden disasters in mining communities. The geological history of our planet is one of the main reasons that the methane is present. The gas was created and compressed over eons of planetary evolution and then trapped beneath the surface. Slicing into the Earth’s crust to extract the coal can allow the methane to escape.

If we think of mines as rudimentary tombs, the potential for repurposing becomes an intriguing concept. After all, if the Earth’s crust was solid enough and strong enough to create and retain billions of BTUs of methane, might it not be possible to use this tomb concept to store other substances? Indeed it can and sequestration is the operative word!

Environmentally speaking, we should desist all coal mining today, right now as you read this. For a variety of reasons, that won’t happen so let’s make the best of a dirty situation. The same politicians who love to blather on about clean coal also are enamored with the concept of carbon sequestration as a means of fighting global warming. The hard science behind such positions indicates that it can help but is very, very far from being a panacea.

Nevertheless, the sequestration of carbon in mines can be an important stop gap measure which I support, mostly for sentimental reasons since it was the bitumen and coke previously located in the mines which brought us the climate crisis of the new millennium. What more logical place to store some of the byproducts is there?

In my next installment, I will share with you an encouraging yet distinct repurposing of abandoned mines. It does not sequester carbon directly but can result in significant decreases in the use of fossil fuels, having a similar net effect.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Last time, I told you about repurposing abandoned mines for carbon sequestration. While better than leaving them as useless crevasses, this approach has a new rival, aquaculture. You may be wondering how this could work. As it turns out, in some places it is highly effective.

One of the greatest impacts on the planet caused by global warming is shifting weather patterns, especially precipitation. This is the main reasons that Mount Kilimanjaro will be free of its permanent snow pack very soon. Fortunately, some places continue to have adequate rainfall throughout the year. One such location is the mountainous terrain of West Virginia, a spot, not coincidentally, with many abandoned mines.

The rainfall in West Virginia often accumulates in the mines. Luckily, the state of some of the mines is such that the water is suitable for raising fish with the only technical need being of circulating and purifying the water on a regular basis.

HOW ABOUT THAT!

The situation gets better, too. Because the large bodies of water are located deep underground, the temperature is fairly constant throughout the year and there is very little sunlight, which means that they are suitable for raising species of fish which grow naturally in the Arctic Ocean!

This wonderful practice is very real and occurring today. Ponder the possibilities! Appalachian aquaculture allows many of the most popular species of fish to be harvested much closer to most of North America’s urban population centers without endangering scarce natural stocks. What’s more, by growing millions of pounds of fish every year in close proximity to cities, carbon emissions are reduced greatly since much less fuel is consumed in the process.

TALK ABOUT A WIN-WIN!

Needless to say, I am very excited about aquaculture in abandoned mines and can’t think of a better way of repurposing these scars on the face of the Earth. It represents real progress and a delightful departure from the old ways of doing things!

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

A Picture Could Be Worth A Thousand Tons Of Carbon

Here at Keyboard Culture, I utilize repetition sparingly and only for dramatic effect. Indeed, I almost never exceed 3 parts in a series or posts on a particular topic. The greatest exception was my Global Warming Loser series back in May. During the second half of this year, though, I have engaged in an accidental series on environmental contests, as in who can write the most clever poem or story about the environment.

This was never planned but I am deeply gratified to leverage the broad readership of this blog to disseminate vital information. The Environmental Defense Fund already has been featured here for another contest and the deadline for that one has not yet past You can read more here but this latest offering from Environmental Defense has the potential to change another whole demographic group and I just had to share the details with you.

First a quick explanation of the topic...

In previous threads, I have told you about carbon credits. In essence, they allow us to pay money to use clean practices elsewhere as a replacement for the carbon which we produce through daily living. They are not the cure for the disease which is global warming. However, much like fighting malaria, they are an important tool in bringing down the suffering until we don’t need medicine anymore.

Carbon caps are the next logical step. They are a self-imposed limit on carbon emissions which can be utilized by companies, government bodies, entire industries or people. Whereas carbon credits merely place us on the path to recovery, carbon caps are the cure. Both approaches cause us to be aware of our carbon emissions but carbon caps limit our production of carbon, a key difference.

Well, carbon particles in the air are invisible except in the smoggiest cities. They are, to most people, an abstraction. So, how do we communicate such an ethereal concept to people in a persuasive manner which compels them to care about their carbon emissions and take steps to reduce them permanently? That’s where the Environmental Defense Fund enters the picture once again!

A leader among environmental non-profit organizations the world over, the Environmental Defense Fund is running yet another contest, this time for video or graphic submissions which convey a simple point about a solution to the greatest cause of global warming, the use of petroleum products for energy. Way to go, EDF!

The content does not have to be produced in a fancy software environment like Illustrator or shot on a professional soundstage in order to be considered a valid entry. The message is the key so if you have a creative bent, enter today. The URL with all of the details is

http://edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=27811

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

The Intercontinental Smog Express

I told you recently about the awful reality of the North Pacific Gyre, an informal oceanic garbage dump which is caused by casual dumping of solid waste at sea and along the world’s shorelines and formed by planetary wind patterns and water currents. Larger in area than the continental United States, the North Pacific Gyre is as large a stain on the face of the Earth as the unspeakable loss of tropical rain forests on most every continent.

Sadly, it turns out that there is something of an atmospheric cousin to the North Pacific Gyre, known affectionately among climatologists and meteorologists as the Chemical Equator. Confined to a range of latitudinal boundaries, the Chemical Equator is a vast pocket of dirty air which shifts throughout the year with monsoon winds but remains confined to the Intertropical Convergence Zone – a belt of low-pressure air which circles the Earth near the equator.

Driven by Hadley cells, the same results of solar radiation on the atmosphere as give us jet streams, trade winds and subtropical deserts, these cells occupy the intersection of the oceanic and atmospheric patterns of each hemisphere. Strangely enough, this chemical equator generally is dirtier in the north because the land mass north of the Equator contains millions more people than the south and thus millions of additional sources of air pollution.

What strikes me the most is that smoggy metropolitan and industrial areas have an effect so vast that it can be measured on a global scale. Now, thanks to the fine work of the Natural Environment Research Council in the United Kingdom and Clean Up The World in Australia, it is possible for each of us to see with amazing accuracy just where the results of the air pollution which we create will be trapped in the sky and rotated as the planet spins on its axis.

That’s right, through the power of Google Earth, we can see where the dirty air which we caused is located. Give it a try. You may find the results quite compelling. I know I did. Just visit the interactive map at

activities.cleanuptheworld.org

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Photocredit: sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov

Despite important gains in energy efficiency through the Energy Star program, Americans cause more air pollution per capita than their counterparts in most every other nation. As consumption patterns shift, the lead position in this ignominious category may change but what is unlikely to alter anytime soon is the love of the personal automobile on the highways and byways of the United States.

Even after suffering through more than a year of record petroleum prices, much of American popular culture is steeped in the driving experience since Yankees invented the mass production automobile and because of our pioneering spirit. However, since Americans produce 25% of the world’s pollution and 40% of that comes from transportation, we will not tackle global warming in a meaningful way until we learn to harness sustainable locomotion.

Fortunately, government bodies, business groups and blocks of citizens are taking steps to help everyone drive in a manner which is economically and environmentally sound – or at least better than the old ways. A leader in the campaign to help Americans be more green is the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers with its EcoDriving USA campaign.

Comprised of 9 of the world’s largest automakers, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has gained significant traction, pun intended, in helping drivers understand that embracing sensible driving and maintenance practices is easier than they may think.

The EcoDriving USA website has several handy features which make it easy for drivers to go green, or at least clean up their act, including a flyer with more than a dozen tips in the categories of driving practices and maintenance practices.

My favorite part, though, is the endorsement of the campaign by high-profile individuals, including several governors. Greening the American roadway will be no easy task but the EcoDriving USA campaign from The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers represents a commendable first step which I am happy to recommend to you. Even if you do not live in the United States, you can benefit from much of the information contained at

EcoDrivingUSA.com

Point your web browser there today!

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

In a few weeks, I will venture to the frozen north of my home state, Maine, to attend my sister’s wedding. It is sure to be a joyous time for all. jetBlue will be my airline of choice because of its competitive fares, extended legroom coach seats and non-stop service between Orlando and the largest city in Maine, Portland.

In preparing for the flight, I examined my options for a carbon credit so that the net contribution to global warming of flying more than 1,000 miles each way will be a net zero. Since jetBlue has partnered with CarbonFund.org, I knew that I would like what I saw when I visited the special page on CarbonFund.org to offset my trip. I was very pleasantly surprised and that’s no easy feat for someone who has lived carbon-neutral since 2005.

If you have read my blog for any time, you know that I just love CarbonFund.org. This very fine organization achieves much. In fact, one of its claims to fame is that it now offsets more carbon than some nations produce each year. Good for them! However, even though superb offerings from TerraPass.com and others in the transportation sector make it easy for travelers to offset their driving and flying, a key aspect of such products was missing until now, radiative forcing.

“Radiative what?” you may ask. The concept is quite simple, even if we seldom ponder it. Aircraft spend the bulk of their time aloft at cruising altitude, roughly 7 miles above the surface. Up there, the effect of carbon emissions is more pronounced because the carbon particles have less chance to dissipate before floating to the top of the atmosphere. Worse still, because one product of the combustion of jet fuel is water, clouds are formed artificially, clouds laced with carbon particles and greenhouse gases, a noxious brew.

The ultimate result is that their contribution to global warming is roughly double that of driving even when comparing carbon emissions pound for pound because the dumping occurs so close to the sensitive layers of the atmosphere which are damaged by the carbon. Hence, those of us who travel by air need to break ourselves of a habit. When we purchase carbon credits, we must use a website which gives us the option of factoring in radiative forcing. CarbonFund.org does.

Worried that it’s too complicated versus using a convenient service such as TerraPass.com? It’s not. You merely need to adjust for the fact that you can purchase credits which include the extra damage of radiative forcing through the jetBlue offset page of CarbonFund.org irrespective of the airline you fly. Just check the box labeled radiative forcing and you’re all set.

And the cost? If I had used TerraPass.com for my trip to Maine, I would have paid roughly $10 to offset the roundtrip flight. By including radiative forcing, the price more than doubled but I will sleep easy on the flight knowing that both the carbon and its altitude have been offset.

To learn more and to employ an accurate offset of your next flight, visit

carbonfund.org/jetblue

I promise you’ll be glad you did.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Being a vanguard is a melancholy experience from time to time, particularly when political allies of the environmental community campaign on the notion of saving American jobs and fighting the climate crisis simultaneously by embracing clean coal technology. Since I have affirmed very clearly that there is no such thing as clean coal, I went through about 6 months of relying essentially on my own convictions while candidates in the American political system spouted their guff.

Now, the election is a distant memory for most and we are left with reality. Clean coal is a myth. Could it become reality some day? Environmentalists can argue the point. My take on it is simple: in order for coal to be clean, we don’t merely have to scrub our smokestacks. We must mine, process and transport coal with no environmental impact. Can that be done? Yes, I suppose that it can but under those restrictions, coal loses its economic edge over renewable resources.

So, when Al Gore’s fine organization, the Alliance for Climate Protection, unveiled its new initiative last month, ThisIsReality.org, I grinned like the Cheshire Cat. The first commercial on ThisIsReality.org does a very effective job of explaining how clean coal technology looks and I encourage you to visit the website today. After you have watched the commercial, be sure to join the mailing list. ThisIsReality.org is a most welcome ally to my mission to convince the world of the absence of clean coal technology.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

In addition to abundance and global standardization, the main reason that kerosene is the only aviation fuel which the major airlines use is that it performs well in very harsh conditions. Think about it: during long, high-altitude flights, the temperature in and around the wing of an aircraft can drop nearly to 100 degrees below zero! However, even in such circumstances, the fuel must ignite and combust in much the same way and at the same high temperature as when the plane is on the ground.

That is no easy feat and certainly is out of the question for petroleum diesel fuel.

Needless to say then, as the aviation industry has received greater and greater demands to lower its carbon footprint and escape the monopolistic tyranny of OPEC as its fuel supplier, the pace at which it experiments with biofuels has grown. It now appears that jatropha oil may be the answer.

As applied to biofuels, the triple bottom line of sustainability demands that the source materials not just be organic but that their use not damage the environment or the prosperity of agricultural workers. Corn-based and sugar-based ethanol often fail that test because they are nearly impossible to grow under those restrictions. Moreover, corn-based and sugar-based ethanol assist with weaning us off fossil fuels but really don’t reduce carbon loading over gasoline on a gallon-by-gallon basis.

Jatropha is quite different. Here are the key distinctions:

1) In most places, it is considered a weed, meaning that it can be grown alongside existing crops rather than in place of them.

2) Its seed is inedible. Hence, growers never face that quandary of growing it as a feed stock rather than for fuel.

3) It grows very effectively on land which is unsuitable for feed crops, opening up billions of acres of land to agriculture which currently do not fit the definition of arable.

4) In many places, jatropha can be harvested at any time, leaving peak times free for farmers to continue bringing in their feed crops.

5) The carbon loading of jatropha is roughly half that of corn or sugar, making it a true improvement over gasoline.

6) The oxygen density of processed jatropha oil can be minimized, making the fuel suitable for high-altitude jet engines, which neither ethanol nor petroleum-based gasoline ever will achieve.

7) Hence, it can be used in jet aircraft with no mechanical modifications.

I trust, then, that you grasp why I am so enthusiastic about jatropha oil, especially its potential role in commercial aviation as a replacement for kerosene. In the third installment of this series, I will tell you about Air New Zealand’s impressive and historic first flight with sustainable jatropha which took place last month.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Air New Zealand is an intriguing airline. It spans the wall of niche markets and broad commercialization like few others. Fortunately, this intriguing combination made it possible for the ownership and senior management of the company to take a leadership role in reducing its environmental impact, not just through recycling, fleet optimization and route optimization but now, a commitment to researching and implementing biofuels in its fleet.

Replacing kerosene as the global standard for jet fuel is a difficult nut to crack, it you’ll pardon the pun, because kerosene does the job very well. It is reliable. It performs well. Everyone understands it. All the aircraft and jet engine manufacturers specify it in their operating guidelines. The list goes on. First generation biofuels have none of these merits. Thanks to the work of Air New Zealand and its project partners, Boeing, Rolls-Royce and UOP, jatropha oil does.

Jet engines burn kerosene with no tailpipe. In other words, there’s no easy way to attach an emissions system to the engine in order to reduce the pollution as we do with buses, cars and trucks. So, the only practical way of cutting the contribution to global warming of aviation is to change the fuel. Up until the year 2008, no one thought that it was possible. Visionary aviation leaders such as Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic and Rob Fyfe of Air New Zealand have taken it upon themselves to make jatropha oil a reality.

So, on December 30, one engine of an Air New Zealand 747 jumbo jet underwent a comprehensive test flight fueled by 50% jatropha oil and 50% conventional kerosene. The results were very encouraging. The plane underwent multiple maneuvers during the flight, including climb, cruise, acceleration/deceleration, approach/missed approach, descent and, of course, landing. The history of the flight has less to do with the existence of the flight than of the source of the jatropha fuel. It is sustainable!

Air New Zealand’s commitment to the jatropha project is based on the triple bottom line of sustainability, so that the airline doesn’t merely replace one fuel with another but it converts to one which it knows can be grown and harvested in harmony with nature for decades to come and without impacting the world’s food supply. That, more than any other reason, is why I love jatropha and I commend Air New Zealand for this important leap into a new era of cleaner aviation.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Because the topic of environmental racism has an even greater emotional and political charge than global warming, I have not touched on it until now. However, in many cases, it is far easier to prove than global warming and, of course, the existence of environmental racism is a stain on humanity.

This scourge refers to the fact that many of the byproducts of industrialization are ugly, malodorous or otherwise undesirable. In the case of petroleum refining, the byproducts are carcinogenic and malodorous. Hence, many of the refineries in the United States are deliberately located in low-income neighborhoods which have disproportionately high populations of ethnic minorities such as African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans.

The good news is that fighting the problem can bring ancillary benefits since scrubbing smoke stacks is the best and cleanest practice. Fortunately, the city of Louisville, KY has proved that such an approach can win with its STAR Program. An acronym for Strategic Toxic Air Reduction, the STAR Program began in 2005 and has been an unqualified success, cleaning the air of Louisville quite significantly of, for example, the human carcinogen 1,3-butadiene, which has fallen more than 75%.

I commend Louisville and all of the members of the coalition which was formed to push the STAR Program into fruition. Naturally, the resulting drop in pollution-caused premature deaths downwind of the chemical plants and dry cleaners which have cleaned up their act are a very real and most welcome bonus. This important success proves that no dream for a cleaner, greener future is beyond our reach.

photo credit: Arza Barnett, The Courier-Journal

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

My heart goes out to the victims and families affected by the rash of recent coal mine disasters around the world. Our top focus must be on the workers who risk life and limb every day, deep beneath the Earth’s surface to bring ancient, fossilized fuel topside. However, even as we grieve, let us remember that coal is an anachronistic source of energy. It belongs in the ground, where the planet placed it millennia ago.

Coal is a known killer. Coal kills many who work to harvest it. Coal kills people who live downwind of the electrical power plants which burn it. Coal kills people and wildlife which drink from streams which mountaintop removal mining has contaminated. How serious is such contamination? Here’s a quote from Dr. Dennis Lemly of the United States Forest Service, speaking with respect to the area which parenthetically has seen some of the most recent coal mining fatalities:

“Before mountaintop removal, cases of severe selenium contamination were mainly limited to coal-fired power plant discharges. Now they’re appearing across Appalachia near mountaintop mines.”

Nothing good but cheap electricity and heat comes from coal. Arguments that coal mining creates economic prosperity are disingenuous at best and perfidious at worst. When the true cost of medical care from people suffering from pulmonary conditions caused or exacerbated by coal dust or smog are included, coal is far costlier than renewable energy. Then, when other side effects of coal are included, such as neurological damage from mercury poisoning, can we truly claim that this black killer has any advantage over renewable energy?

Mountaintop removal mining, mentioned in the quote above from Dr. Lemly, is doubly bad because it inflicts enormous damage aboveground, too.

I could go on and on about how coal kills. However, I trust that I have convinced you. If so, I encourage you to support the work of fine organizations such as Appalachian Voices which strive to raise awareness of the truth about coal, especially mountaintop removal mining. I exhort you to visit their website for additional details:

ILoveMountains.org

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Air travel is so much faster than surface transportation that it’s easy to embrace it with the thought, “If I arrive in a fraction of the time of driving or riding the train, it can’t be that bad.” Tragically, it is the very nature of air travel which makes it so damaging to the atmosphere, especially the over the Arctic.

The power of jet fuel lies in its ability to provide tremendous thrust at a wide range of altitudes and an even wider range of temperatures. However, conventional jet engines would be compromised by scrubber technology, such as catalytic converters, to nullify some of the harmful effects of their fumes. Hence, they are allowed to burn jet fuel with no emission controls. That’s bad enough. However, of equal concern is the fact that burning jet fuel not only releases tons of carbon right into the planet’s most vulnerable layers but water in the form of contrails.

Why are contrails such a problem? According to an engineering team at Stanford University, led by Mark Jacobson, jet emissions increase the fraction of cirrus clouds where vapor trails are most prevalent but decrease the fraction in some areas by increasing the temperature and consequently decreasing the relative humidity in the lower atmosphere.

The damage doesn’t stop there, though. The manner in which the atmosphere attempts to respond to the damage from these vapor emissions, contrails, is altered by the heavy carbon content of jet fuel. All told, Jacobson estimates that 15% – 20% of the catastrophic warming seen in the Arctic is caused by the effects of air travel.

Do I advocate terminating the use of jets? Certainly not but we can take steps to slow the damage, such as embracing the use of biofuels and hydrogen in aviation. However, what also can help is a sober accounting of the difference between burning fossil fuels at or near sea level and doing so several miles above the face of the Earth. A handy tool for doing so (and for spending a few dollars to offset the damage from flying) is available through the partnership between Carbonfund.org and jetBlue.

Their carbon offset webpage not only makes it very easy to calculate and purchase offsets from airline flights but includes an option for radiative forcing, the physical phenomenon which causes jet emissions at altitude to be more harmful to the Arctic than emissions at or near sea level. In fact, the radiative forcing option is driven by a simple check box.

Even if you are not yet ready to invest a nominal fee to offset your latest flight, or if you would like to know how much damage will be caused by a future flight, surf over to the flight calculator in the jetBlue section of Carbonfund.org and input your travel cities. The whole process will take about 5 minutes. The results may surprise you.

http://carbonfund.org/jetblue

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler