Some days I feel like I stagger under the amount of mail I drag into the house. Perhaps once a month I get a personal letter. A few times a week I get a bill. I subscribe to a few magazines. But the largest portion of my mail is what we call “junk” (and for good reason).

I’m quite good at recycling it before the junk ends up in a pile to be dealt with a second or third time. But there are techniques for keeping the stuff from being sent in the first place.  

Reducing incoming mail doesn’t affect my financial bottom line, at least directly. But if many people work at getting less mail sent to their household, the demand will be less, requiring less paper to be ordered, less ink to be used up, and less gas expended to transport it all. This all sounds like a Good Thing to me.

This site — http://www.obviously.com/junkmail/ – has some great tips for reducing the amount of unwanted mail that you get. Unfortunately, each step mentioned sounds like it reduces only a portion of the incoming mail. (Getting rid of unwanted phone calls seems far easier by comparison.)

One step that I already take is to ask that my name and address not be given to other organizations. I do this when I make a donation, when I order from a company, when I’m on the phone and am asked for this information. From reading the “obviously” page, it looks like my next most effective step is to write to the Direct Mail Association.

Short of never donating money, never buying items online, and never owning a credit card,  what are your thoughts for disinviting junk mail from gracing your household?

Just a note, I will be gone for the next week or so.  I am not sure how much blogging I will be able to do, but I’ll leave it up to my co-bloggers to keep things alive while I am gone.

Have a good week.

-Eric

Ah, the age old question — paper or plastic?

Today’s newspaper contains an article with the following lead: “The Boston City Council wants to ban the use of plastic shopping bags at supermarkets, pharmacies, and convenience stores in the city, saying the ubiquitous bags are a hazard to the environment and a maddening blight of the landscape.”

The article continues with pros and cons for both types of bags. I’ve long suspected that plastic is cheaper and easier for stores to handle and that stores just erroneously claim that paper and plastic have an equivalent impact on the environment.

I find that although I usually ask for paper (which I suspect has less environmental impact than plastic), we end up with a fair pile of plastic bags. We actually reuse the plastic bags for our daily cat litter scooping; they are a precious commodity in this house. We use the paper bags to hold other paper that we end up recycling. This summer, we’ll also be delivering a pile of paper bags to a farm so that they can bundle their vegetables.

Even better than these two solutions would be to bring my own canvas and string bags, but I’m terrible at remembering to carry them around. The permanent bags sit in my car trunk until they rot and then I throw them out — not a very effective solution.

So how have you approached this every-day dilemna? How do you make the solution easy for yourself?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the recent Supreme Court decision that said that the EPA does have the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

As several readers pointed out at the time, since the decision didn’t say that the EPA had to regulate these emissions, they didn’t have much hope that there would be any immediate change.

Well, their foresight was correct.

Earlier this week, the head of the EPA testified before a Senate committee and would not give any response to questions about when the EPA would move to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

As much as I would like to see the EPA “hop to it” and solve this issue, I think the article’s author was not very fair in describing Mr. Johnson’s actions as “repeatedly [refusing] to say … how soon he will comply with a Supreme Court ruling and decide whether to regulate carbon dioxide.”

The Supreme Court ruling did not say that the EPA must “decide whether to regulate carbon dioxide” or not. Quite to the contrary, the Supreme Court basically said that this is not a choice that the EPA can even make.

Instead, what the Supreme Court ruling said was that “EPA can avoid taking further action only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do.”

So, the EPA’s job is to determine if greenhouse gases contribute to climate change. If the answer is “yes”, the EPA has no discretion — the Clean Air Act mandates that they act.

On the flip side, if they determine that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if they come up with some creative reason for saying that they are not going to decide one way or the other, then they don’t have to do anything.

I just think it is a bit unfair to describe this as “refusing to comply” with a court order since those are pretty serious words.

Much like Eric Richard (EDC Blogger Extraordinaire) , I have become obsessed with reducing my energy consumption, or as my teen-aged kids call me “A Global Warming Nazi”. I have been on a never ending quest, often to the dismay of my wife and kids, to reduce our carbon footprint, and to maybe save some money along the way.

A few months back I got it into my head that replacing our early seventies windows would make our home a more efficient, warmer place, and I was right, sort of… Our windows are double-hung single-pane windows with separate storms, and I though were obvious candidates for replacement with new state-of-the-art triple-pane vinyl windows. We had had an NSTAR energy audit three years ago, that lead us to adding about 6 more inches of blown-in insulation to our attic. They had told us at that time that our windows weren’t bad, but I went ahead and started getting quotes for windows anyway. The quotes came in between $10,000 and $15,000 to have them all done. A big price, but I figured our planet was worth it. Then in my window confusion, I contacted some people at one EDC’s affiliate groups “Green Decade” in Newton, to ask if anyone knew anything about replacement windows, and the response was “well, what’s your energy consumption? Maybe you don’t even need window replacements?” So after some email dialog it was clear that my consumption was high for the size of my home, and it was recommended that I have Blower-Door and Infrared tests done on my home. So that is what I did.

A blower-door test is exactly as it’s named. The whole house is closed up and a large fan apparatus is put in your doorway to suck air out of your house. This makes it easy to walk around the house finding air leaks. It also allows the measurement of the total volume of air flow so it can be compared to other similar sized houses. Mine had an above average air flow. That’s not a good thing have, but a good thing to discover. As we walked through the house, Bruce Torrey, of http://buildingdiagnosticshelp.com , used his infrared (heat sensing) scope to see what was going on in the walls and windows. What he found was that my windows are not so bad, and replacing them would help, but not a necessity, and that there were other things that needed to be done first. He found that my home was poorly insulated and sealed and should probably have been addressed by the original energy audit. He said that what they had done in the attic was a good first step, but that the job was incomplete. There are areas in a bedroom that has a vaulted ceiling where there is no attic over the ceiling and the insulation is so poor that it’s like a giant window. There were insulated crawl-space closets in the same room that had unsealed insulation that was leaking huge amounts of air, like having a window open all winter. There was very poor air sealing around the chimney in the attic that allowed air to flow down the full height of the house, again similar to having another window open all winter. He found that insulation in the walls was poor (only half filling the cavity) and possibly non-existent in some places, and recommended having more blown in. He said that if I had these things fixed, it would be much less than the windows, and also most likely be eligible for an NSTAR rebate.

At this point I have not had the work done, but I plan to, and will let you know how it affects our heating bill, and comfort level after it’s done.

In case you missed the comments on my first message, I’d like to point out that Carl made some helpful suggestions. And Josh passed along an idea that, well, left a smile on my face but hmm, perhaps I’ll leave to others to try out and report back on (or not).

Carl points out that sometimes just being aware of your use of electricity helps you economize in easy ways. He recommends a couple of devices to help — a Kill-o-watt meter and a Smart Meter.  (At first blush, the Smart Meter sounds expensive, but it sounds like it could pay for itself within the first year of use.)

He also suggests using sun and air, rather than a dryer, to finish off the laundry cycle (how about considering that technique for just one load a week to get started?) and an easy way to fully turn off appliances that draw some energy even when turned to “off”.

Finally, he mentions a new web site, GoLoco, which helps people arrange carpools and sensibly split the costs.

Thank you, Carl — these are a lot of great suggestions! Has anyone tried these ideas? And if so, how do they work? Are they easy? hard? worthwhile? not?

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

– Confucius

The SEDC Editor recently posted an article inviting ideas for reducing the environmental footprint. I wrote several comments to that entry and have since become a guest contributor.

I hope to write about small, single, steps that you might consider taking. Some of the ideas might appeal to you and might be worth trying. You might have tried (and either adopted or discarded) other ideas years ago. We’d love to hear your feedback. What works? What doesn’t? How can you improve on each idea?

And if you have ideas for additional articles, please leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do.

Why single steps when the problems are so big?
The problem of saving the earth is bigger than any one of us. In a sense, it takes all of us working together to make a difference. Yet, at every turn, contemplating all that needs to be done feels overwhelming. (BTW, I commend our Editor for starting this blog, which represents quite a large commitment.)

I keep thinking that if we each make tiny changes in our lives, the sum total of our efforts will begin to add up to something significant. In addition, I’ve always found that it’s a lot easier to change in an evolutionary way, rather than a revolutionary one.

What have we talked about so far?
In the aforementioned posting, we’ve already mentioned the following:

• Landscaping with minimal impact

• Using freecycle to recycle household goods  (http://www.freecycle.org/)

• An earth day celebration in Concord MA on April 28 with ongoing activities during the year (http://www.emersonumbrella.org/content_current/musketaquid/earthday.html)

• Recycling your cell phone (http://www.collectivegood.com/)

Future postings
Some ideas for future postings include:

• Recycling electronics

• Recycling household goods

• What we eat

• Reducing junk mail

• Eco travel

• Installing setback thermostats

• Supporting organizations that work toward protecting the environment

• Taking public transportation

Again, I am interested in your thoughts, too. Thanks for reading and welcome!

Ok, probably not.

But I thought it was nice timing that I just wrote that article on CFLs and then I saw this article about how the Governor is flipping out all of the bulbs in the State House and requiring lights to be turned off on nights and weekends.

After all of Deval’s stumbles in the beginning of his term, it is nice to see him land on a completely pragmatic and environmentally conscious program.

I am going to see if I can find more details about the Executive Order talked about here — currently it isn’t up on the State of MA’s website.

How can’t I start with this one? There’s discussion of this everywhere.

Over the past months, I have tried to replace virtually every light in the house with compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

This has resulted in mixed successes.

In general, I think this has been pretty successful — I have been able to swap out the majority of the bulbs with little to no problems.

But there have been a few gotchas.

The first gotcha has been dimmable switches. We have a number of dimmers in the house and you cannot use normal CFLs with dimmer switches. I have heard various things from “it will damage the switches” to “it will damage the bulbs”, but either way, it isn’t good. I have heard many other folks run up against the same barrier as they have been trying to move to all CFLs.

The only dimmable CFLs I found were at Home Depot. They have these tiny 4W dimmable CFLs that are intended to be used in chandeliers. (I’m not sure what the technical description is, but these bulbs have a much smaller base than normal lightbulbs and are used with a specific type of socket.)

The first place I installed these was in our dining room. We have a chandelier there and it uses 6 or 7 of these lights and it worked like a charm.

With that success in my pocket, I installed these same lights in a couple other light fixtures in the house that have the same socket.

Here’s where I hit my first failure. These light fixtures only take two lights. And it turns out that these 4W bulbs don’t put out a lot of light and also take a little while to warm up. So, now I have a mad wife. =( And unfortunately, in all of my brilliance, I threw out the non-CFL bulbs and so now I can’t fix the problem which makes my wife even madder.

As much as saving energy is good, mad wives are not good.

What I really need to do is check out a product like this and see if it solves my problem.

In our library, we have a ceiling fan that takes four “normal-size” light bulbs, but the light switch has a dimmer. Initially, what I did was replace all four bulbs with these same 4W candelabra CFLs. (The bulbs came with a converter that allowed you to screw them into a normal-sized base.) Unfortunately, this was too dark and I had a mad wife again.

So, what did was replaced 1 of the 4 CFL bulbs with the normal incandescent light leaving the other three CFLs in place. It now emits enough light (so my wife is happy), but is saving energy on 3 of the 4 bulbs.

Finally, in our basement, we have a number of indoor floodlights that are on dimmers. I haven’t been able to do anything with these yet, so they are still normal incandescents.

It looks like this whole “dimmer problem” is quite solvable though. Again, I haven’t tried any of these, but it looks like there are plenty of dimmable CFLs available.

I know of other people who have complained about the “color” that the fluorescents produce. Again, it looks like there are plenty of choices out there and, if you look closely, you can find the information about the color that the bulb will produce.

My general sense here is that buying CFLs is just a little bit harder than buying normal incadescent bulbs and, because of this, it is easy to buy the wrong bulb and have a bad experience. I am guessing that once upon a time, buying incandescents had similar problems, but over time, they have worked through all of the issues so buying incandescents is now a commodity and you don’t really pay attention to anything other than the wattage.

For now, I think that buying CFLs will take a little more elbow grease to “get it right”, but I think that an educated consumer probably could navigate through all of these choices and figure out the right solution for these problems. For example, I think that if I was really comparing lumens to lumens, I wouldn’t get into all of these problems of things not putting out enough light.

What experiences have others had here?

Has anybody starting playing around with LEDs yet? My understanding is that LEDs put CFLs to shame in terms of both energy efficiency and lifespan, but just have a much higher up front cost.

It seems like there is a nice conversation developing here around things people can do to help reduce their environmental footprint. So, I thought I’d see if I could help foster this even more by creating what will hopefully turn into an ongoing conversation where we can all share our experiences with one another.

A few months ago, my wife was reading a blog whose author had a goal of finding one new way, each month, to reduce their environmental footprint. My wife and I thought that was a neat idea, so we have been trying to adopt a similar goal.

I thought I’d share out some of our successes and failures and see if others have other thoughts.

Just to make this clear, I am not trying to be “preachy” here and say that you should do these same things. This is just a forum for sharing some ideas that you can choose to pay attention to vs. not.

Anyway, as we try things here, I’ll share our experiences out.

If you are interested in submitting your own ideas, let me know and I can set you up with an account so you can post your own articles.  You can try to use the “comments” feature, but I’ve found that isn’t necessarily as good as a full posting since the postings get e-mailed out to people.  So, if you want to post your own ideas, just let me know.

I just got an interesting e-mail from Amazon.com advertising some environmentally friendly products.

I am certainly not vouching for all of these, but there are definitely some good ideas in here that are worth checking out.

If you do buy anything from this list (or in general from online stores), please keep in mind that the shipping itself is going to cause pollution. Because of that, try to group your packages into as few shipments as possible and always prefer ground transportation over air. The good news is that both of these will wind up saving you money too.

I’d love to hear if folks have tried any of the products here and have any comments on things that work or didn’t work.

A couple of months ago, I made a trip down to Home Depot’s corporate headquarters in Atlanta, GA for business.

When I was there, I noticed that they had all sorts of signs for “Eco Options“.

When I got back from the trip, I looked on their site and found some more information about this and had intended to write a blog entry about this.

That kinda fell by the wayside until today.

Turns out, I probably had got an sneak preview of what was coming.

Today, Home Depot issued a press release announcing their Eco Options and the New York Times published an article about them.

I haven’t yet been to an actual Home Depot store to see how this will work, but I applaud Home Depot for the effort. In principal, I support anything that stores can do to help their customers make educated and informed decisions about the environmental impact of their decisions.

Another interesting example of a company providing good information to their customers is the British supermarket Tesco who will be labeling the carbon footprint of every product it sells.

Hopefully getting this information out in front of consumers will help them make the right choice.

It’s been a busy couple of days, but I wanted to let folks know how the Step It Up event went.

I think we had about 40 people attend. For a Saturday afternoon event on a nice Spring day during school vacation, I was pleased by the participation that we got.

More importantly, Tom Conroy our State representative was able to attend part and field some questions. I think it was really good to get him engaged with the crowd on this issue. More importantly, he has also suggested holding a town meeting later in the year to focus on legislative issues related to the environment. So, definitely good stuff.

On a broader topic, I think it is really neat to go to the Step It Up website and look at the various pictures from different events. There were definitely some big events out there with some really nifty ideas on how to send a message.

I haven’t heard any tallies yet on the number of events nationwide or the approximate number of participants at those events; I think they are still waiting for organizers — like me — who haven’t yet submitted information about their events.

Anyway, it was a nifty event and I hope it helped raise some awareness.

If anyone else had the opportunity to participate in one of the events, would love to hear your thoughts or feedback.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking around for some energy-saving products. I bought a few different toys that I could check out.

I’ve tried a couple of them so far and found one that is really neat — the Isolé® IDP-3050 Plug Load Control.

I set this up at work where I have my monitor, my cell phone charger, and a couple of other devices. I set the device to power off pretty aggressively (about 5 minutes).

What’s really neat is that I walk out of my office to go to a meeting and 5 min. later, it turns off power to all these devices. I walk back into my office and sit down and *voom* everything powers back up.

Very nifty.

I have to say that at $90, it is a bit pricey — you’d think someone could create something like this much more cheaply. But, now that I’ve paid that much for it, it is definitely very nice. I’m thinking about buying a few more for home.

The other device that I played around with some, but haven’t yet been able to install is the Hubbell Motion-Sensing Wall Switch. Hopefully I’ll be able to get that installed sometime soon.

Part of the reason I have been so quiet lately is that I’m busily working on Sudbury’s event for Step It Up 2007.

For those who don’t know about Step It Up, this set out to be a “National Day of Climate Action” in which folks all around the country organize local “actions” to call attention to global warming.

The specific goal of the event is to pressure Congress into cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050, but every action may have its own focus and twist.

In Sudbury, we will have two separate actions. In the morning, there will be a nice hike and picnic. In the afternoon, my group will be hosting two lectures on global warming.

I know that Arlington is also putting on a really great event. They have bands and politicians and will have many different speakers.

Not surprisingly, the “big event” out here will be in Boston on the Common.

But there will be events all over the country; currently there are over 1,300 events registered covering every state in the U.S. (Now, I don’t really believe the 1,300 number. There are lots of events that are just one person saying, “We should do something.”) But I do believe there will be a good number of events all across the nation.

I definitely encourage you to go to the Step It Up website and find a local event to attend to help bring attention to this issue. The simple act of being able to draw large crowds will help motivate change.

Two years ago, the $10M Ansari X Price was given to Burt Rutan and Richard Branson for their creation and development of SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded vehicle capable of human spaceflight.

The idea behind this prize was to spur commercial development of the human spaceflight category. The prize offered money, but also the publicity associated with winning the prize. The competition was a vibrant competition between multiple teams of entrepreneurs all racing to claim the price.

An important element of the competition is that the rules were developed to encourage practical designs that could be readily moved into commercial production; the prize was not going to reward theoretical “concept” vehicles that had no possible commercialization path. For example, in order to win the prize, the same vehicle had to make two trips to 100 km within two weeks. Not even NASA’s Space Shuttle would meet that requirement.

The idea is that the design of the vehicle had to take into consideration the need for rapid reuse cycles.

The X Prize Foundation, has recently announced their next competition, the Automotive X Prize, and it is focused on developing commercially viable vehicles capable of getting a sustained mileage of at least 100 miles per gallon.

The group has not yet announced the financial prize amount (I think they are still gathering money from donors), but according to a New York Times article it is “expected to carry a prize of more than $10 million.”

In the same spirit as the Ansari X Prize, the competition is focused on developing practical cars that have a real potential of mass production, not just “concept cars”. For example, the cars “must be designed to meet safety regulations in the U.S. and other markets”. This precludes the use of extremely light materials that would be unsafe to build with.

In addition, the “vehicle cost at a production rate of 10,000 units per year must be within levels that the market is likely to bear.” This precludes the use of highly experimental designs that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce and, thus, would not be commercially viable.

On top of this, “the race courses will reflect typical consumer driving patterns during numerous stages, in varied terrain, communities, and weather conditions.” This will prevent theoretical gas mileage claims that don’t bear out in reality.

There will be two “classes” of prizes given:

• A “mainstream” class for “4+ passenger vehicles with 4+ wheels that meet conventional expectations for size and capability”
• And an “alternative” class which is “an outlet for innovative ideas that push forward today’s conventions about automotive transportation (2+ passengers, no requirement on number of wheels)”

I think this is a great thing. It will hopefully spur the same sort of innovation that went into the original Ansari X Prize.

However, the participants should make sure not to pay too much attention to the words of General Motor’s vice chairman Bob Lutz who commented (on an unrelated convertation) that:

“There is no technological bag of tricks that enables much better fuel economy than we have today. … Despite what alarmists may think, we don’t have any magic 100-mpg carburetor that we’re holding back because we’re in bed with the oil companies.”

Let’s see if they can prove him wrong.

More Reference:

On Point had an hour long show on the prize a couple of weeks ago.

The Boston Globe has commissioned a simulation showing what Boston will look like in 100 years if the sea levels rise 15 inches (the half way point between the low estimate of 7 inches and the high estimate of 23 inches).

The good news is that during most of the year, most of Boston is fine.

Even when Boston gets a Nor’easter (something that happens a couple of times a year), there would be mild flooding.

But the real problem comes when Boston gets a Category 2 Hurricane — something that doesn’t happen each year, but certainly happens on a regular basis. Under this case, massive areas of Boston and Cambridge are under water.

What the simulation doesn’t show is how much water is in all of these places to get a sense for how much damage would be done. I’m certainly not implying anything on the scale of New Orleans being under feet of water and massive human casualties, but I would presume that this level of flooding would have a pretty large financial impact.

As if Monday’s ruling about the EPA and carbon dioxide wasn’t enough, the courts took two more swipes at the Bush administration’s woeful disregard for the environment and issued a couple more smackdowns.

In one case, a federal judge in California threw out recent Bush administration policies that allowed the Forest Service to “cut back on requirements for environmental reviews and safeguards for wildlife.”

The second case came from the Supreme Court on the same day as the EPA case. While the EPA case got most of the attention, this case is potentially more important in the immediate future. In United States vs. Duke Energy, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court to reconsider its decision. This case dealt with the issue of retrofitting existing coal fired power plants with more efficient pollution control systems during any upgrade to the plant.

Companies, like Duke, had been using an inconsistency in the laws to allow them to upgrade the plants so they can run more hours each day without having to install the pollution control systems.

The Supreme Court sent this back to the lower court, rejecting the lower court’s explanation for Duke’s behavior.

If the lower court reverses its opinion, this would force many coal fired power plants to install new pollution prevention systems.

I remember when I first heard that the Supreme Court was going to hear the case of Massachusetts vs. the EPA. I remember thinking to myself, “Dang it. There is no way that this court is going to give the EPA a fair hearing.”

You see, in my mind, the EPA is a force for good that sees one of its primary functions as …. well… protecting the environment. In my mind, the EPA would proactively look for things that are harming the environment an look to right those wrongs.

Hence, as soon as I heard that the EPA was involved in this case, I immediately thought that they must be who I should be cheering for.

But then as I heard more about the case, I realized that we had entered Bizarro World — a world in which everything is the opposite of normal.

So, in Bizarro World, states have to sue the EPA to ummm … well.. protect the environment.

In order to understand where this case came from, you need to go back to the Clean Air Act, which says that:

“The [EPA] Administrator shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) in accordance with the provisions of this section, standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”

Now, let’s hypothetically say that there was some emission from motor vehicles, like carbon dioxide, that was anticipated to endanger public welfare, might one reasonably conclude that this fell under the purview of the EPA to regulate?

In normal world, you would say yes.

But, in Bizarro World, the EPA said that they don’t have the statutory authority from Congress to regulate such an emission.

First, the EPA claimed that carbon dioxide isn’t an “air pollutant” and, thus, isn’t covered under the Clean Air Act. In Bizarro World, they might be right. But, in “normal world,” one simply needs to look at the following definition of an “air pollutant”:

“any air pollution agent . . . , including any physical,chemical, . . . substance . . . emitted into . . . the ambient air . . . ”

You might think that carbon dioxide fits this definition to a “T”. But, in Bizarro World, the EPA claimed that carbon dioxide doesn’t meet this definition because… well, I have no idea how they justified such a crazy argument.

Then, the EPA contended that even if carbon dioxide is an air pollutant and even if it is going to linked to global warming, that you could not reasonably claim that lil’ ol’ global warming meets the criteria of endangering “public health or welfare.”

In Bizzaro World, they might have had us on the ropes. But, in “normal world”, you simply need to notice that wily authors of the Clean Air Act included a definition of “welfare” that includes “effects on . . . weather . . . and climate.”

Those jerks! Being all specific like that. Ruins any attempts to play games with what they meant.

Confronted with these pesky facts showing that the Clean Air Act clearly applies to carbon dioxide, the EPA did a little rope-a-dope and claimed that “climate change was so important that unless Congress spoke with exacting specificity, it could not have meant the agency to address it.”

In a move meant to keep their opponents off balance, they went from claiming that global warming was not likely to endanger the public welfare to now claiming that the issue is so serious, that it could not possibly fall under the Clean Air Act.

The irony in this claim is that EPA was basically saying that its mission is to only tackle those issues that are unimportant; important issues cannot possibly be their purview because they would be dealt with directly by Congress.

In a last gasp of desperation, the EPA decided to use the “ends don’t justify the means” strategy and claimed that “if carbon dioxide were an air pollutant, the only feasible method of reducing tailpipe emissions would be to improve fuel economy.”

Nooo… Not that! Not improved fuel economy. Anything but that! Aren’t improved fuel economy standards against the Geneva Conventions?

You see, even if the EPA wanted to regulate carbon dioxide from automobiles, it couldn’t since “Congress has already created detailed mandatory fuel economy standards subject to Department of Transportation (DOT) administration.” Because of this, the EPA concluded that “EPA regulation would either conflict with those standards or be superfluous.”

In Bizarro World, the EPA might be off the hook. But in normal world, the Supreme Court saw through that silly tactic saying, just because “DOT sets mileage standards in no way licenses EPA to shirk its environmental responsibilities. … There is no reason to think the two agencies cannot both administer their obligations and yet avoid inconsistency.”

In the end, the Supreme Court threw out the Bizarro World arguments used by the EPA and concluded, “In short, EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change.”

Unfortunately, for the EPA, this means that they might actually have to DO THEIR JOB, even if they don’t want to.

To be clear, this ruling does not mean that the EPA has to regulate carbon dioxide from vehicles.

Instead, what it means is that the EPA has to go back and do its homework and make an explicit determination as to whether greenhouse gases cause global warming or not. If they conclude that this is the case, then the EPA will be bound to action by the Clean Air Act.

Specifically, the Court said, “EPA can avoid taking further action only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do.”

Epilogue

I couldn’t complete this post without reminding people of one of the most outrageous exchanges that took place during the hearing in front of the Supreme Court. The following text comes from a Washington Post article:

Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General James R. Milkey told the court that 200 miles of the state’s coastline are threatened by rising seas, a result of global warming.

‘The harm does not suddenly spring up in the year 2100; it plays out continuously over time,’ Milkey said in answer to Scalia’s question. ‘Once these gases are emitted . . . they stay a long time — the laws of physics take over.’

Milkey faced skeptical questioning from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the court’s newest members, but the most sustained — and entertaining — interrogation came from Scalia.

At one point, he acknowledged the role of carbon dioxide as a pollutant in the air but wondered about it being a pollutant in the ’stratosphere.’

‘Respectfully, Your Honor, it is not the stratosphere. It’s the troposphere,’ Milkey said.

‘Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I’m not a scientist,’ Scalia said to laughter. ‘That’s why I don’t want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.’

Ha ha ha! You funny guy Scalia. If only Earl Warren could have had your sense of humor. Maybe he would have said, “That’s why I don’t want to have to deal with segregation, to tell you the truth.”

Jerk.

It might shock you to learn that Scalia dissented on this case.

It does crack me up a little bit to think about Alito, Scalia, Roberts, and Thomas as Bizarro saying, “Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness!”

The “paper or plastic” question is one of those terribly simple, yet vexing questions for an aspiring environmentalist.

Which choice is better for the environment (or less bad as the case may be)?

Is it better to use a paper bag that came from a tree? Or is it better to use a plastic bag that came from petroleum products?

Clearly you can recycle paper bags.

Can you recycle plastic bags? It isn’t really clear. I think they have the logo on them saying that they are recyclable. But, then again, lots of places that take plastics for recycling don’t accept them.

I know that I put my plastic bags in with my plastics recycling, but is that just making me feel better? Are they actually being recycled? Or are they just getting put into the garbage?

I also know that some supermarkets (maybe all required by law? maybe only on a state-by-state basis?) have containers specifically for the plastic bags. Is that the appropriate solution? Should I not be putting my bags in my normal recycling, but instead take them back to the store?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, and even the EPA’s own FAQ on this doesn’t have any clear answer other than “don’t use either”; they recommend avoiding both paper and plastic bags and instead bringing your own reusable bags like this.

It looks like the City of San Francisco is set to weigh in; the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco recently voted to ban non-recyclable plastic bags from large supermarkets and pharmacies. The stores will have the option of “using compostable bags made of corn starch or bags made of recyclable paper“.

This doesn’t answer the “paper or plastic” question, but does sound like a “third way” of helping to make the plastic option better environmentally.

I would love it if anyone had more information to help folks make this decision that impacts our daily lives.