The engineers and technologists who designed and built the giant Airbus A380 may well be proud of their accomplishments in attempting to reduce this huge aircraft’s environmental impact. As their web site says “[they took] a fresh approach to its environmental impact, too. With a new wing design and composite materials accounting for 25% of its structural weight, the A380 is a much more efficient aircraft all round. And by producing only about 75g of CO2 per passenger kilometre, the A380 is contributing to the aviation industry’s commitment to constraining greenhouse gas emissions.”

So, a full A380 carrying 525 passengers between London and Los Angeles, a distance of 8750km, will produce 344,531,250gms of CO2. Yes that’s 344 million - I’m just saying…hat’s off to the marketers for using grams instead of pounds. They’re European, so they can.

The site also mentions that “The A380 burns fuel per passenger at a rate comparable to that of an economical family car.” All I can picture here is 525 cars driving 8750km. And what is an “economical” family car?

They go on - “There’s the extra space per passenger afforded by its twin, full-length, wide-bodied cabins. The cabin air, recycled every three minutes to keep the atmosphere fresh. The natural light provided by 220 cabin windows. And while the A380 feels more natural inside, the environment outside benefits too. From the dramatically reduced external noise levels. From the lower fuel consumption and significantly improved CO2 emissions per passenger kilometre. From the increased capacity at airports and the reduced need for expansion.”

I love that phrase natural light provided by 220 cabin windows because every flight that I’ve been on the attendants can’t wait to tell the passengers to please lower your window shades as the “entertainment” i.e bad movie or TV, is about to begin. Whether you like it or not you are forced to sit in a dark stuffy tube while people with headphones on guffaw at lame jokes. Good use of “natural” though.

And this is a good one - “From the increased capacity at airports and the reduced need for expansion.” The boast here is that the ‘planes are so big they can deliver more folks to be packed into your airport’s long lines at immigration reducing the need for the airport authorities to expand their airports. Brilliant! What a relief for those in charge of our comfort while we struggle through their over-crowded airports, they don’t need to do anything but allow Airbus A380’s to land.

It gets better - “Some operators might, for example, choose to seat their First and Business class passengers on the upper deck –providing a corporate jet-like environment for these clients – while configuring the A380’s main deck for an all-Economy layout.”

Dear Airlines, when you configure the ‘planes for your fleet, why not put the great unwashed underneath with the freight and be done with it?

An oil rig off the coast of California

Here in Portland I am seeing signs that the price of gas is making a difference in how people get around the city. Bus ridership has spiked, there are less cars on the road during the commuting hours and bicyclists seem to be everywhere. Yesterday as I walked my dog along the banks of the Willamette River, I noticed far more sailboats than the motorized variety. Maybe the price of gas is making Americans think twice before getting into the car? Maybe.

I carpool to the Nemo warehouse and it’s still a drag to see that of those cars that are on the road I’d guess that 95% of them are occupied by only the driver. And don’t get me started on the hypocritical Prius owners who fly past at speeds that exceed the legal limits. And on Sunday’s the Hillsdale Farmer’s Market is filled with people buying fresh, locally-produced organic food while the parking lot and the surrounding streets are crammed with their cars. None of this makes sense. If you’re concerned perhaps you can leave a comment on their blog.

It seemed that once gas went through $4 a gallon and the $100 fill up entered the public’s economic equation we’d see a marked change in the way we would use our energy. Unfortunately that’s really not the case.

Portland is one of the more environmentally-friendly and green cities in North America. If we can’t break the automobiles stranglehold on our city then what hope for other cities that are less friendly toward buses and bicyclists? Portland has also shown strong support for ending the war in Iraq. If we disagree with the Iraq war, and the inevitable future Middle East wars that will be fought over oil and water resources, what will we Portlanders do at home to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?

I argue that if we are unwilling to drastically reduce our gasoline use then it is hypocritical of us to oppose off-shore drilling in California and drilling and exploration in Alaska. We simply can’t have our cake and eat it.

Today, President George W. Bush plans to lift a presidential ban on offshore drilling to combat soaring energy prices, a largely symbolic move unlikely to have any short-term impact on the high cost of gasoline.

Who will stand in his way this time?

Related Post: I’m Sick of the Co-Opting of Green

I love coincidence. Coincidence I mention because as I reach the end of John Gray’s book, Straw Dogs, for the third time in as many years, I read chapter 20, ‘The Soul In The Machine,’ an hour before leaving the cabin this weekend. On arriving home last night I caught up with Friday’s edition of the NYT and read a review of the new Pixar movie, Wall-E, by A.O. Scott. In the first paragraph of his review he tells us - “This is a world without people, you might say without animation, though it teems with evidence of past life.” He also mentions that in the first 40 minutes of the movie - “barely any dialogue is spoken.”

Another coincidence here is that it is as if the movie’s director, Andrew Stanton and his co-writer Jim Reardon, had also read the last few chapters of John Gray’s book. According to A.O. Scott the movie’s underlying theme is far from a happy one - “…… but ‘Wall-E’ surely breaks new ground. It gives us a G-rated, computer-generated cartoon vision of our own potential extinction. It’s not the only film lately to engage this somber theme. As the earth heats up, the vanishing of humanity has become something of a hot topic…”

The Earth devoid of humans, or at least where the remaining humans are reduced to living in cities “emulating the noble idleness of hunter-gatherers, their needs met by new technologies” as Gray writes, is an Earth left to conscious machines. The writers and director of Wall-E suggest that this has already occurred and conscious machines are all that remain on the planet. As he says - “Wall-E’s tender regard for the material artifacts of a lost civilization is understandable. After all, he too is a product of human ingenuity.”

“In his recent documentary Encounters at the End of the World the film director, Werner Herzog muses that “the human presence on this planet is not really sustainable,” a sentiment that is voiced, almost verbatim, in the second half of Wall-E.”

As Gray writes in his passage ‘The Soul of the Machine,’ - “Those who fear conscious machines do so because they think that consciousness is the most valuable feature of humans - and because they fear anything they cannot subject to their will. They fear the evolution of conscious machines for the same reason they seek to become masters of the Earth.”

Gray predicts - “As machines slip from human control they will do more than become conscious. They will become spiritual beings, whose inner life is no more limited by conscious thought than ours. Not only will they think and have emotions. They will develop the errors and illusions that go with self-awareness.”

That sounds like a movie called ‘Wall-E’ to me.

One other coincidence regarding the movie was that today I read a post by Seth Godin on his blog entitled “Bravery and Wall-E.” At first I thought from the title that by bravery he meant that we humans are brave to be advancing our technological know-how ever forward as we invent “living software” and biological chips, machines that Gray predicts will move us humans toward extinction. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case - Seth discussed the marketing [or lack of] and how the movie will make “plenty of money.”

The parable of ‘Wall-E’ transcends marketing and money.

The view from the cabin

It’s been a while since I’ve been completely cut off from all means of electronic communication. Two and half hours from Portland and you hit the western edge of Central Oregon, the mobile phone drops off the grid, the AT&T wireless card hunts aimlessly for a signal - nothing but digital silence.

Five adults, two teenagers and two younger ones walked and biked the river trails and cooked, conversed and read books and magazines. We socialized. My iPod wired to an old boombox and my Canon G9 were the only reminders of my digital life.

The Metolius River

I read an article in Newsweek about Facebook being responsible for the drop off in college reunions [an aside: being English I never quite grasped the concept of reconnecting every 10 years with ex-college mates, I must admit.] The premise, as recounted by one youthful member of the digerati, is that Facebook now fulfills this need; everything one needs to know about your former college friends is laid out for all to see online. I’d argue that this is not true. The premise requires that everyone’s Facebook profile be a true and honest reflection of their true “selves.” Unfortunately that defies reason; people’s Facebook personas are not true reflections of their “selves,” in fact they are another “self” altogether. Photos are cropped and edited to provide satisfaction to the poster not the viewer, and details of marriages, relationships and whether the person has children or not are often left vague.

There’s a reason for this. Originally Facebook was a solution for college kids to remain firmly in touch, but as that audience has broadened far and wide demographically, it has become a safe haven for people to explore their “second lives.” The only way to discover if your ex-sweetheart, dorm mate or college team buddy has actually remained a perfect, toned 150 lbs of lean muscle with no obvious receding hairline is to go to that 10 year college reunion. This is also why marketers will have a hard time reaching social network users.

Trailerwrap

The idea of portable and semi-permanent spaces have been taking hold recently. In the 60’s, nomadic types in the USA embraced the Airstream trailer as a way of escaping the humdrum existence of everyday life and hit the road with the “silver bullet” in tow behind the station wagon. The modern version of these trailers are now being envisioned as the answer to urban over-crowding as offices/work spaces and guest houses, even escape pods for solitude.

Take Trailerwrap for instance. The idea behind Trailer Wrap is to provide simple and affordable solutions to improve the condition of the mobile home. Basically taking an abandoned trailer and updating it from the chassis up. Trailer Wrap comes in the form of a simple, affordable kit that can be assembled easily by just a few people. It is both functional and aesthetically pleasing. Visit the Trailerwrap site for all the details including photos of one being built from scratch.

For urban living, the folks behind Loftcube have come up with the idea of a living space that can be built in place on the roof of buildings. It can also be placed at ground level. The body of the Loftcube can be customized. The four outer walls consist of individual segments, which are available in transparent, translucent or closed versions. Louvre windows with horizontal wooden slats provide ventilation.

The designers pondered what a temporary, aesthetically pleasing domicile could look like. They envisioned a ’space’ where people could live for short periods of time in large cities and urban centres. They also understood that in postwar Berlin, the structures that had been built offered hundreds of flat rooftops - what they called an undiscovered treasure of sunlit property.

The debate over global warming may well continue for many years. Whatever the consequences of our spewing pollutants into the atmosphere day by day one thing seems certain - sources of fresh, potable water are becoming scarce. In the western states of the USA rivers are running dry, reservoir levels are shrinking and wildfires, sparked by heat-burdened, tinder-dry woodlands are burning by the dozen and it’s only June.

The states of the USA will have to learn to share; asking people to use less water will not work - look at the oil situation and American’s unwillingness to cut back on driving. Beyond our borders, countries that do not have a plentiful and easily accessible source of water will soon look to their neighbors or nearby countries that have a plentiful supply of what is becoming known as ‘blue gold.’ There will be envy.

T. Boone Pickens

When an oil man becomes a water baron we should all take note. In an article in Business Week Susan Berfield tells us - “If water is the new oil, T. Boone Pickens is a modern-day John D. Rockefeller. Pickens owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property.” He makes no bones about his ambition to sell water - “There are people who will buy the water when they need it. And the people who have the water want to sell it. That’s the blood, guts, and feathers of the thing,” Pickens says.

Meanwhile Americans spent nearly $11 billion on bottled water in 2006, when we could have guzzled tap water at up to about one ten-thousandth the cost. That fact comes from a book by Elizabeth Royte called Bottlemania - How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It. She also tells the tale of how the residents of Fryeburg, Me, are trying to stop Nestlé’s Poland Spring from sucking 168 million gallons of water a year from its pristine aquifer. All of which goes into plastic bottles.

Something has to change as, just like oil, there soon will not be enough to water to go around. And those eight glasses a day that some “experts” say we should drink? Not true. As more clearheaded experts point out, drink when you’re thirsty. Soon you may not have that choice.

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