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A third of our military budget could cure our carbon addiction

Scientific American's grand plan to provide a bit over a third of U.S. energy from solar sources provides insight into what it would cost to phase out all or most U.S. greenhouse emissions. Bottom line: a lot less than current military spending.

The total cost of the SciAm plan: $420 billion over the course of that 40 years, or slightly over ten billion dollars per year -- less than current fossil fuel subsidies, less than the new subsidies "clean coal" would require.

The authors suggest phasing out fossil-fuel powered electricity over the course of forty years, using a solar dominated electricity grid. They suggest Compressed Air Electricity Storage (CAES) and thermal storage to compensate for the intermittent nature of solar electricity, and High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission lines to move solar electricity from where it is generated to where it is needed.

However, we can't wait 40 years, and we especially can't wait 40 years for a 35% reduction in emissions. So suppose we tripled the investment, and spent over the course of 20 years. That would be about $1.26 trillion, or $63 billion a year over twenty years -- a rounding error in the Pentagon budget.

Unfortunately, it is not that simple. The "Grand Plan" saves a lot of money via slow implementation, giving the technology time to develop. Implementing it more quickly, with less mature technology, would cost more, probably requiring more solar thermal and less photovoltaic power (unless PV prices drop a lot faster than SciAm projects). So we can double to ~$2.5 trillion, or $126 billion per year. This is still a fraction of our military budget.

Why burning a vinyl album is a bad idea

Thursday night, a group of us Grist gals headed out to The Stranger‘s Valentine’s Day Bash — a yearly purge for Seattle’s lovelorn wherein the wronged bring in mementos of their failed relationship and host Dan Savage destroys them on stage in some sick and twisted but totally satisfying way. (Fret not, old boyfriends, I […]

A breathless appraisal of Lance’s new bicycle mecca and mission

Lance Armstrong will soon unveil his 18,000-square-foot Austin-based bike shop, Mellow Johnny's (named after the Tour de France's yellow jersey -- or "maillot jaune"). The goal of the shop is to promote bike culture and bike commuting:

"This city is exploding downtown. Are all these people in high rises going to drive everywhere? We have to promote (bike) commuting..."

Showers and a locker room will allow commuters who don't have facilities at their offices to ride downtown, store their bikes at the shop, bathe and catch a ride on a pedicab or walk the rest of the way to work.

Armstrong's advocacy could move mountains. Cycling has always been a trend-driven sport. As far back as the 1800s, manufacturers promoted their technological innovations by sponsoring racers. In the U.S., bike sales boomed in the early '70s (reaching a high they've never quite touched again) due to a sudden craze for road bikes.

Aerial spraying of pesticide on Bay Area given OK

The California agriculture department has authorized nighttime aerial pesticide spraying on the San Francisco Bay Area this summer in an attempt to eradicate a potentially crop-destroying moth. Similar spraying was done in two other counties this fall, after which more than 600 residents complained of respiratory problems. Application of the pesticide, called Checkmate, was only […]

Post-Valentine’s Day quickies

Photo: Mongabay.com

Always a day late and a dollar short, I present to you, ah, two more love stories from nature. The first from Mongabay, which includes a hot photo of two mountain gorillas in the dorso-ventral (missionary) position. A true feminist of the gorilla world, this female has also pioneered the use of tools to measure the depth of puddles before walking into them. Given enough evolutionary time and no competition from upright walking primates, her progeny would probably discover fire and eventually use it to burn their bras.

You might want to take a cold shower before reading this next one from The New York Times, which is quite explicit.

What weighs less than two pounds and has a gnarly 11-inch-long Johnson?

Depressing ocean news buoyed by Pam Anderson’s striptease

Walking into the office this morning, I saw this headline in bold letters on the front of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “Scientists fear ‘tipping point’ in Pacific Ocean.” Then, a news search told me this: “As vast as the oceans are, almost no waters remain untouched by human activities.” It’s enough to make me wanna strangle […]

Nearly all of world’s oceans tainted by human activity, says study

Human activity has tainted all but 3.7 percent of the world’s oceans, and 41 percent of the world’s waters have been heavily impacted, says a new study in Science. A graphic map illustrates in all-too-clear terms that the briny deep has taken a terrible toll from 17 human threats, including climate change, overfishing, fertilizer runoff, […]

Aussie musician Xavier Rudd chats about coming to America and greening his tour

Xavier Rudd. Photo: James Looker When Australian musician Xavier Rudd was 10 years old, he realized that he could reuse an old vacuum-cleaner hose as a didgeridoo. Talk about a career rooted in green values. Since then, Rudd has moved on from vacuum-cleaner hoses to guitars, harmonicas, banjos, lapsteels, and even real didgeridoos — but […]

A solar grand plan

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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A recent issue of Scientific American featured a "Solar Grand Plan." Its authors described a way for the United States to obtain nearly 100 percent of its electricity and 90 percent of its total energy, including transportation, from solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal resources by end-of-century. Electricity would cost a comfortable 5 cents per kilowatt hour.

U.S. carbon emissions would be reduced 62 percent from their 2005 levels. Some 600 coal and gas-fired power plants would be displaced. The federal investment would be $400 billion over the next 40 years ($10 billion a year) to deploy renewable technologies and suitable transmission infrastructure.

If that future seems too good to be true, then look at two other studies during the past 13 months that have reached similar conclusions: one sponsored by the American Solar Energy Society (PDF), the other by the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. All three concur that energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies can satisfy the nation's demand for power without additional nuclear or fossil-fueled power plants.

If $400 billion seems unaffordable, consider: It's less money than the federal government already has spent on the Iraq war, only a third of the $1.2 trillion that some experts now predict the war will cost, and only a sixth of the federal government's current annual subsidies for fossil and nuclear energy.

And if a Solar Grand Plan seems politically implausible, read the newspaper. Last November, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said we have until 2020 to make major changes in greenhouse-gas emissions. Two weeks ago, the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell told his staff that world oil demand will outpace supply within seven years. That means rapidly rising oil prices, more recession (the last five recessions in the U.S. were preceded by high oil prices), more power for oil-producing nations like Iran and Russia, and more likelihood of international conflicts.

The more practical -- and certainly the more survivable -- of these two futures is the Solar Grand Plan, an aggressive national effort to rebuild the economy on a foundation of efficiency and sustainable energy supplies. To get to that future, national energy and climate policy must have a few key ingredients.

From Flesh to Flurry

Vegan exposure The perfect eco-nightspot: Casa Diablo. “[It’s] vixens not veal; sizzle, not steak,” says the owner. “We put the meat on the pole, not on the plate.” Photo: iStockphoto You want a piece of her? A letter to the Parents Spears: “We have heard that Britney asked for ice cream while she was in […]