How does your electricity compare? You can get the answer from EPA’s Power Profiler website. It says it takes 5 minutes, but it only took me about 5 seconds. All you do is enter your website, and choose your power company.

The electric power I buy is less polluting than average:

That’s because more of my power comes from renewables (like wind and solar), hydro, and natural gas (which emits fewer conventional pollutants like nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide than coal, but still releases a lot of CO₂, which causes global warming).

The website is part of a recent update to the agency’s eGRID program, which I’ve used a bit in projects examining the emissions related to water use. Most people don’t think about it, but water use accounts for a great deal of energy use. More about that later.

The Sierra Nevada Mountain range serves as an important source of drinking water for the State of California. However, summer cattle grazing on federal lands affects the overall water quality yield from this essential watershed as cattle manure is washed into the lakes and streams or directly deposited into these bodies of water.

This organic pollution introduces harmful microorganisms and also provides nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus which increase algae growth causing eutrophication of otherwise naturally oligotrophic mountain lakes and streams. Disinfection and filtration of this water by municipal water districts after it flows downstream will become increasingly costly. This will be compounded by increasing surface water temperatures and the potential for toxins release by cyanobacteria blooms.

With increasing demands for clean water for a state population approaching 40 million, steps need to be implemented to mitigate the impact of cattle on the Sierra Nevada watershed. Compared to lower elevations, high elevation grazing has the greatest impact on the watershed because of fragile unforgiving ecosystems. The societal costs from non-point pollution exceed the benefit achieved through grazing of relatively few cattle at the higher elevations.

We propose limiting summer cattle grazing on public lands to lower elevations, with a final goal of allowing summer grazing on public lands only below 1,500 m elevation in the Central and Northern Sierra and 2,000 m elevation in the Southern Sierra.

This is the kind of public policy we need, based on peer-reviewed science and sound economics. The first author Dr. Derlet is a practicing medical doctor who became concerned about the impacts that grazing cattle have on the fragile land and water of the high Sierras. The Sacramento Bee ran a good article on the paper’s findings in April, Livestock waste found to foul Sierra waters:

As director of the emergency room at the UC Davis Medical Center, Robert Derlet always wondered what made people sick.

 Each summer, on hiking trips into the high Sierra, he brought that curiosity along, asking himself: Where do you get infections in the wilderness? The most obvious possibility, he believed, was the water.

 Now, after 10 years of fieldwork and 4,500 miles of backpacking, Derlet knows for sure. What he has learned – after analyzing hundreds of samples dipped from backcountry lakes and streams – is that parts of the high Sierra are not nearly as pristine as they look.

Nowhere is the water dirtier, he discovered, than on U.S. Forest Service land, including wilderness areas, where beef cattle and commercial pack stock – horses and mules – graze during the summer months. There, bacterial contamination was easily high enough to sicken hikers with Giardia, E. coli and other diseases. In places, slimy, pea-green algae also blossomed in the bacteria-laden water.

At issue is the tradition of cheap grazing permits from the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Many think that the costs to the environment and the public exceed the benefits of cheap summer grazing for a handful of large cattlemen.

When I corresponded with Dr. Derlet, he told me, “I have a 1 hr + lecture on “Water Quality in California: A case for adding new National Parks in the Sierra Nevada” I am willing to drive to the Bay Area to give this talk if you can get a minimum of 20 people to listen.” Anyone have any ideas for an organization with a lecture series that would be interested?

The “BP Ten” are wanted for taking more campaign contributions from BP than any of their peers in the last two campaign cycles.

FOE is circulating a petition encouraging each of them to donate all the dirty oil dollars they received in the past two election cycles to the Gulf Coast Fund. I think it’s more symbolic than anything else. The largest sum is about $37,000 to John McCain. Is that all it costs to buy a vote these days?

I think the more important goal is stated by their director Eric Pica in an article on Huffington Post, ending unlimited campaign contributions by corporations

Restore a democracy of, by and for people. The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens’ United vs. Federal Election Commission gives corporate behemoths like BP, ExxonMobil, Monsanto and Goldman Sachs the right to pour unlimited cash into influencing elections. All under the guise that corporations have the same First Amendment rights as people. Congress can and should pass legislation to reverse this disaster for democracy, even if it requires a constitutional amendment.

Related: The Dirty Dozen: Who to Blame for the Oil Spill, at Time Magazine. Unsurprisingly, Bush and Cheney are partly to blame for the disaster in the Gulf, with their years of giveaways to oil companies and lax regulation.

Today, 89 percent of Americans have water delivered to our homes by a public water utility, essentially a branch of local or regional government. The other 11 percent of us buy water from a private company. With gas and electric, it’s the other way around: only 15 percent of us buy energy from public utilities, while the other 85 percent pay private, for-profit companies.

In the water world, there is strident opposition to privatization, from activists like Maude Barlow and organizations like Food & Water Watch. The argument goes like this: private companies value profit over all else, and can’t be trusted with something so essential to our life and well-being.

But water and power are both essential to life in America. You realize this very quickly if you live in a cold climate and forget to pay your heating bill. Yet we seem comfortable with private ownership and operation of our power grid and gas pipelines? Why the disparity in the way we think about water and energy?

I am agnostic on the issue of public vs. private utilities. Like most people, I want clean water, reliable energy, and reasonable rates. The management and administration of the pipes, power lines, and billing systems can be handled by government or companies. If government screws up, we vote the bums out of office. Likewise, private utilities are accountable to regulators at state Public Utilities Commissions.

This debate over public vs. private energy has taken center stage with Pacific Gas &Electric’s ill-advised California ballot initiative Prop 16. So far, PG&E has funneled $46 million into the June 8 ballot “New Two-Thirds Requirement for Local Public Electricity Providers Act.” I think Prop 16 is a terrible idea, hope it fails, and wonder why allowing this on the ballot was actually legal.

Why on earth should local government need a 2/3 vote to engage in the business of providing services to its citizens? Imagine if local governments had to hold a special election for every decision. Want to build a new municipal pool? Sorry, have to put it to the voters first.

It shouldn’t require the same super-majority as amending the state constitution. We’ve seen what a 2/3 voter requirement did with 1978’s Prop 13: among the 50 states, California has the highest per-capita GDP, but the third-lowest spending per person.

I called the ballot initiative ill-advised above, because it stands to seriously tarnish PG&E’s otherwise good reputation. I would advise them to consider the backlash from this brazen attempt to perpetuate its monopoly.

I generally had a good impression of the company before this. As a customer, I’ve never had any troubles; the power stays on 24 hours a day, and my bills are really cheap compared to other places I’ve lived. The company has a good recent record on the environment, having invested in renewables like wind and solar, and supported California’s climate legislation.

But their spending on Prop 16 has caused me to completely change my view. Before, I may have been hesitant to support my local government getting into the power business. After all, it is a complicated, capital-intensive, and risky. But that’s all changed. When a corporation wastes ratepayer money and manipulates public opinion to further its own interests, you have to conclude that they have become a “bad actor” and are no longer serving your interests.

Apparently, that can backfire if your customers are Republicans. From E&E News Climatewire (subscription required):

Political ideology helps determine whether homeowners respond to voluntary energy conservation programs, two University of California, Los Angeles, economists have found.

In a study published last month on the National Bureau of Economic Research website, Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn concluded that providing feedback on energy use can actually backfire with some conservatives.

Costa and Kahn merged utility data from 80,000 homes with corresponding voter registration and donation records. The economists found that a Democratic household with green bona fides — paying for electricity from renewable sources, donating to environmental groups and living in a neighborhood of fellow liberals — will reduce its consumption by 3 percent in response to feedback.

Meanwhile, a Republican household that doesn’t adhere to environmental behaviors will actually increase its consumption by 1 percent. The households that received home energy reports reduced their consumption by about 2 percent overall, but the Republican subset of this group reduced their energy use by 0.4 percent.

About half of the homeowners in the study received home energy reports from OPOWER, a company that contracts with utilities to compare homeowners’ energy use with that of neighboring homes of comparable size. Homeowners earn smiley faces if they use less energy than their neighbors. The reports also suggest efficiency improvements, such as installing solar panels or cleaning air conditioner filters.

One question is: what’s “conservative” about over-consumption? Someone needs to spend time with a dictionary here. But I think that the bigger story is that we can’t just suppose things work—we have to formulate hypotheses and then test them. In other words, when it comes to trying to nudge people towards more desirable behaviors, our actions need to be based on evidence.

I wonder how many millions have been spent by public agencies to print advertisements telling people to turn off their lights or take shorter showers. Seriously, has anyone tested whether these messages work? You’d better believe that by the time Coca-Cola or Volvo launch an ad campaign it has been thoroughly tested with focus groups, and that it produces the desired emotional trigger.

Notes:

• Expect each stage to be stretched out as long as possible.
• Several stages may take place simultaneously.
• State 13 only arrives when industry leaders become concerned that continued claims of unbearable compliance costs and penalties are beginning to affect stock prices.

A recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters, based on measurements in 1991 and 2006, shows that the ocean is becoming more acidic due to rising CO₂ in the atmosphere. This is very bad news for, well, everyone that cares about life on earth. I met Ken Caldera, a scientist at Stanford, last year, and heard a presentation on ocean acidification which terrified me more than anything else I’ve heard or read about climate change.

Plankton fertilization may backfire

One of the solutions proposed to reduce atmospheric CO₂ levels is to capture some of it and store it deep in the ocean. In these so-called sequestration schemes, the seas swaths of the ocean surface are fertilized with iron, and vast quantities of carbon are absorbed by single-celled aquatic plants, which then sink to the bottom of the ocean where they will stay, theoretically, forever. The only problem: these schemes also produce poisons which spread through the food chain and kill wildlife.

Adapting To Climate Change:
Preparing Palo Alto for Inevitable Impacts

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 – 7 to 9 p.m.

Lucie Stern Community Center, Community Room
1305 Middlefield Road
Palo Alto, CA 94301-3349

Free admission—Doors open at 6:45 p.m.

Climate change is happening. We must do everything possible to minimize its severity by reducing our use of fossil fuels, but we also should begin preparing ourselves for the changes ahead. In Palo Alto we can expect an increased risk of flooding, water shortages and wildfires in our foothills.

How can we prepare for these impacts?

Former Palo Alto Mayor Peter Drekmeier will identify some of the challenges ahead and measures we can take to reduce the local impacts of climate change.

Following Peter’s talk, attendees will be invited to divide into small groups to discuss the issues presented.

Sponsored by the Community Environmental Action Partnership (CEAP); Questions? pa.ceap@hotmail.com or 650-424-9633.

Co-sponsors: City of Palo Alto, Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce,Loma Prieta Chapter of the Sierra Club, Canopy Trees for Palo Alto, Avenidas, Acterra, Committee for Green Foothills, Palo Alto Online, Palo Alto Weekly.