Articles by Clark Williams-Derry

Energy prices will force a reevaluation of how much elbow room we really need

The Ashland Daily Tidings has an interesting (though brief) article exploring what exactly might happen in their corner of southern Oregon if oil prices keep going up. It's good to see people thinking more about this. Not just because it will help people prepare for the adjustments needed should oil become progressively dearer -- but also because it might help shift people's thinking about what kinds of transitions might be possible, even desirable, even if oil prices flatten out or decline.

But I do think a word of caution is in order -- if energy prices do continue to trend upwards, we're going to have to take a cold and steely-eyed look at our proposed solutions to help people cope. Some of them, however well-intentioned, just might not cut it.

New studies say Cali will save money by cutting emissions — and they’re probably right

A couple of new studies have found that California can meet its ambitious 2010 goals for reducing climate-warming emissions at no net cost to consumers. And, even better, meeting the even more stringent 2020 goals could actually save consumers money:

"It's basically a very good news story," said Ned Helme, president of the Center for Clean Air Policy, an environmental think tank based in Washington, D.C. "We found you could do this very cheaply."

Now, I haven't looked at the studies -- and I might not really be able to judge their quality even if I had. By their nature, studies like this tend to be speculative: They show what could happen, but not necessarily what will.

Still, this seems extremely plausible to me -- far, far more plausible, for example, than the notion that eliminating wasteful energy consumption will wreck the economy.

More on glass recycling and reuse

About this previous post on glass recycling -- some astute readers noticed that by focusing on recycling, I'd ignored more important priorities: reducing the use of packaging, and reusing glass bottles where practical.

That's a fair enough critique. But it did make me wonder: What happened, exactly, to the practice of reusing glass bottles? I can still remember drinking Coke from reusable bottles as a kid, but I rarely see that anymore. How come? And, more to the point, how would a system of reusable glass bottles stack up against recyclable glass and plastic containers?

Is recycling glass worth it?

A random call from a reporter piqued my interest: Does recycling glass really save energy? That is, after you take into consideration all the energy spent to collect glass from people's homes, truck the collected glass to a distribution center, route it to a glass manufacturer, and then melt it down for reuse, does glass recycling really save anything, compared with using virgin materials?

I was actually fearing the worst here. Obviously, given all the energy costs of recycling glass, it's conceivable that it isn't a very good deal for the environment. Plus the reporter was asking specifically because he'd heard some mention that the benefits of glass recycling were overblown.

As it turns out, though, I shouldn't have worried. From just about every serious analysis I dug up, it seems that glass recycling really does save energy, compared with using virgin material. Some handy citations: here, here, here, and this extensive lit. review (PDF).

But as with most things, there is a bit of a twist.