Author Archives: L J Furman, MBA

About L J Furman, MBA

Analyst here and Director of Information Technology with an MBA in Managing for Sustainability.

21C Education

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela

“We need a new environmental consious on a global basis. To do this we need to educate people.” – Mikhail Gorbachev

“True education and progress lie in challenging assumptions, not in accepting them.” – Ralph Meima, Vermont Commons, Marlboro MBA

Marlboro MBA – Managing for Regeneration – Tom Rossmassler

“Don’t Follow Trends, Start them” Wendell Berry

“Look deep into nature and you will understand everything.” Einstein

“We are living on this planet as if we had another one to go to.” Terri SwearingenTerri’s Goldman Prize

A small body … can alter the face of history – Mohatma Gandhi

The supreme reality of our time is the vulnerability of this planet. – John F. Kennedy

We hold in our hands the power to end povery and the power to end life on this planet. – John F. Kennedy

Shades of Green – Energy, Economics, and the Environment

Green, Your Place in the New Energy Revolution, at Amazon.

Green, Your Place in the New Energy Revolution, at Amazon.

A review of Green, Your Place In The New Energy Revolution, by Jane Hoffman and Michael Hoffman, Palgrave Macmillian, 2008, ISBN: 0230605443.

May you live in interesting times.” – Old Chinese curse.
“The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast” – Dylan

Jane Hoffman, a policy wonk, and Michael Hoffman, a professional capitalist, have written a terrific book on the challenges and opportunities we face in moving from a fossil fuel based economy to a sustainable energy economy. Their intended audience includes people who think about where the energy they use comes from, who work, or want to work in the field. If you’re in a position in which you make vote, or make policy, then you should read this book. If you’re life expectancy is greater than 4 years, or you have children or grandchildren, then you should read this book. Unless you’re living off the grid, then you should read this book.

The Challenges

  1. “Remaining reserves of oil in the world are just enough to last us for another thirty-six to forty-five years.”
  2. “The global demand for electricity is projected to grow by 75% in the next 12 years.”
  3. Americans threw over 95 billion barrels of oil in the garbage last year by not recycling plastic bottles.
  4. Burning fossil fuels pushes tons of greenhouse gases and other things – mercury, oxides of sulphur, and oxides of nitrogen into the air we breathe.


The Opportunities

  1. “It is possible to significantly cut the bottom line of your electricity bill by switching to a renewable power source.”
  2. Switching to renewable and sustainable energy systems will enhance or national security, our economy, the environment, and our international competitiveness.

A Secure Energy Future, they say, is a function of Renewable Energy, Conservation, and New Technology.

If “assets = liabilities + equity” is the canonical equation of accounting, then the next fundamental equation is:

A Secure Energy Future = Renewable Energy + Conservation + New Technology.

Continue reading →

CAFE Standards – Not Meaningless, But Trivial

Pres Obama has raised the CAFE standards from 27.5 mpg to 35.5 mpg, by 2016.  Raising the CAFE standards to 35.5 mpg in 7 (or 26) years is not the change we need. It is very little, and very late. The standard for cars has been 27.5 mpg since 1990 (DieselNet).  However, at least we are starting to move forward. Union of Concerned Scientists provides a good summary.

CAFE standards were effective in increasing new car and truck fuel economy by 70 percent between 1975 and 1988. In 2000 alone, CAFE standards saved American consumers $92 billion, reduced oil use by 60 billion gallons of gasoline, and kept 720 million tons of global warming pollution out of our atmosphere.

Dependence on Foreign Oil. American cars, trucks and SUVs account for approximately 40 percent of all U.S. oil consumption. Much of this oil is imported and our foreign oil reliance continues to grow. U.S. consumers currently spend $1 billion every day to import oil and other petroleum products. Achieving 35 mpg by 2020 as directed by the recently passed energy bill will save 1.1 million barrels of oil per day in 2020—over half the oil the U.S. currently imports from the Persian Gulf.

Environment. For every gallon of gasoline that is consumed, approximately 24 pounds of global warming pollution are released into the air. Drilling, refining, and distributing gasoline account for about 5 pounds of global warming pollution per gallon of gasoline, and burning gasoline during vehicle operation produces another 19 pounds of global warming pollution per gallon. Increasing fuel economy standards to 35 mpg by 2020 can cut annual greenhouse gas emissions by 206 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2020.

Economy. A fleet of cars and light trucks that reaches 35 mpg will cost about $1,000 to $2,000 extra per vehicle. This additional cost will be more than offset by the fuel savings consumers will enjoy over the life of the vehicle. Consumer fuel savings along with automaker investment to produce a 35 mpg fleet by 2020 will help spur the creation of more than 170,800 new jobs in the year 2020.”

“It’s important to note that all companies will be required to make more efficient and cleaner cars,” said an unnamed EPA official quoted on the “Personal Money Store“. “We do that by proposing individual standards for each class size of vehicle and then a fleet average for each company. This has the effect of preserving consumer choice – you can continue to buy whatever size car you like, all cars get cleaner.”

The Hummer, the Escalade, seat 5 and get 8 miles to the gallon.  Even if you double the milage, or triple the mileage, you’re talking 16 to 24 mpg. That’s terrible. There are no logical and compelling reasons to buy, drive, or build these vehicles – which is part of the reason for GM’s decent into bankruptcy.

Aside from the environmental problems; we buy petroleum from Iran, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Veneuzeula, and soon, Iraq. There are profound national security problems associated with this, with petroleum, with a dependence on foreign powers for a resource on which our whole economy is based.
We have the technology. The Toyota Prius gets 50 mpg, and has been available since 2001. The new Honda Insight gets 40 mpg. Bright Automotive has announced a cargo van that will get 100 miles to the gallon, and which will be on the road in 2010.

100 mpg vehicles are the change we need.

The next step would be a Plug-In Hybrid that runs on Bio-Deisel.

One problem is that we all are stuck between the rock of the environmental and national security challenges associated with obtaining a resource from potentially or occasionally hostile foreign powers and the hard place of people like the Heritage Foundation, which has been fighting against the CAFE standards since 1991. Back then they said small cars are unsafe, American car manufacturers don’t know how to build small cars so CAFE would cost jobs, and big cars are our birthright. Today they say government standards don’t work, it will cost more to retool auto plants to build cars people need so we should just keep churning out vehicles that people don’t need and can’t afford, and we have the right to drive trucks (2009). A Heritage Foundation post from 2001 claimed that a) small cars are unsafe, and b) because oil imports have risen the CAFE standards have failed. Oil imports have risen because demand is inelastic and domestic wells have run dry. The Heritage Foundation doesn’t believe in “peak oil” it says the taxpayers should subsidize oil shale. As a taxpayer, I’d rather subsidize solar and wind than oil shale, especially since the subsidies will be lower.

But the fact of the matter is that there are no Jed Clampetts in Louisiana, Oklahoma, or Texas shooting at varmints and hitting gushers. The new “Texas Tea” will be brewed in a solar tea kettle. Or it will be air temperature – and pretty hot.

Thoreau: Voice of Environmentalists, Anti-War Radicals, Civil Rights Activists, and … Ronald Reagan?

Henry David Thoreau, an American Transcendentalist writer, philosopher, and activist, 1817 to 1862, lived his ideals of simplicity, self-reliance, and individualism. He lived for 2 years and 2 months on a cabin on the edge of Walden Pond in Massachusetts. He built the cabin himself on the estate of his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, using recycled materials. After leaving Walden Pond, he worked against slavery as an abolitionist and on the underground railroad. In the book, he describes his philosophy and his life, and asks two questions, which resonate today.

  1. How much is enough?
  2. How do I know what I want?

Continue reading →

Health Care Costs and Access, US, Canada

Back in 2006, 45 Million Americans, one out of every six people, had no health insurance. When those one of every six people got exposed to something contagious, they exposed a lot of other people. Given the level of unemployment today, the number of people without health insurance is probably higher. It includes everyone who lost their job and can’t afford or no longer qualifies for COBRA.  According to a report on CNN, produced by Jennifer Pifer-Bixler, published March 4, 2009, at some point during 2007 or 2008, 86.7 Million Americans –One out of Three were without health insurance.

As Peter Barnes put it, in Capitalism 3.0, (ISBN-10: 1-57675-361-1)

Here’s the bottom line.  All Canadians get health care and peace of mind at a per capita cost that’s about 45% lower than ours. Canada lays out less than ten cents of every health care dollar on administration, while we spend nearly thirty cents (and that doesn’t include time and energy patients themselves spend on paperwork.) What’s more, our health care system doesn’t even keep us healthy. Our infant mortality is higher than Canada’s, our life expectancy is lower, and we have proportionally more obesity, cancer, diabetes, and depression. To top it off, forty-five million of us have no health insurance at all.

Health Care By The Numbers, 2005 United States

 Canada
Estimated per capita expenditures (2004; US $) $6,040 $3,326
Percent spent on administration (1999) 26% 10%
Monthly premium for family of four $1045 $88
Male life expectancy (years) 75 77
Female life expectancy (years) 81 84
Infant mortality (per 1,000 births)

6.4 4.7

This is not why Paul Revere rode thru Boston on the 18th of April in ’75. This is not why John Hancock, Sam Adams, John Adams, Richard Stockton, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the rest of the 56 delegates signed the Declaration of Independence (U S History . org , wikipedia).

This is not the America I know and love.

Here’s the article on CNN :

Study: 86.7 million Americans uninsured over last two years

By Jennifer Pifer-Bixler, CNN Senior Medial Producer
March 5, 2009: 1:44 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNN) — One out of three Americans under 65 went without health insurance at some point during 2007 and 2008, according to a report released Wednesday.

The study, commissioned by the consumer health advocacy group Families USA, found 86.7 million Americans were uninsured for at least a portion of those two years.

Among the report’s key findings:

  • Nearly three out of four of those uninsured Americans were without health insurance for at least six months.
  • Almost two-thirds of them were uninsured for nine months or more.
  • Four out of five of the uninsured were in working families.
  • People without health insurance are less likely to have a usual doctor and often go without screenings or preventative care.

“The huge number of people without health coverage is worse than an epidemic,” Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said in a news release. “Inaction on health care reform in 2009 cannot be an option for the tens of millions of people who lack or lose health coverage each year. … The cost of doing nothing is too high.”

Coal Is Really Dirty

Burn Coal – release arsenic, mercury, radioactive particles, and carbon – lots of carbon.  Here’s how the National Resources Defense Council, NRDC, describes it:  Coal is Dirty and Dangerous

Coal is America’s dirtiest energy source — and the country’s leading source of global warming pollution.

Coal mining destroys land, pollutes thousands of miles of streams and brings massive environmental damage to mountain communities.

… produces dirty air, acid rain and contaminated land and water … childhood asthma, birth defects and respiratory diseases that take nearly 25,000 lives each year.

“Coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet.” – James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientistThere are far cleaner and cheaper ways to meet America’s energy needs. Yet industry apologists are spending millions of dollars to block clean energy solutions and persuade Americans that they can keep using coal without the consequences.

…

Green technologies and renewable fuels will create millions of good-paying jobs, … reduce dangerous pollution and help fight global warming.

NATURAL CHICKEN – WITH SALT WATER

Chicken labeled “Natural” can contain salt, and lots of it: 200 to 400 mg sodium per four-ounce serving – almost as much as in French Fries. One third of all fresh chicken sold in the US is “plumped” with salt-water. Real natural chicken contains 45 to 60 mg sodium per serving. According to Melinda Beck at the Wall St. Journal,

(click here) and the Truthful Labeling Coalition, chicken producers can inject up to 15% of saltwater and seaweed into the birds and call them “natural” because saltwater and seaweed are natural, even tho they don’t naturally appear in chickens.  $2 Billion worth of Salt Water in $40 Billion worth of Chicken.

The industry says “People like salty chicken.” Well, we like cigarettes, French Fries, and soda, but that doesn’t make them healthy or natural.

Waxman Markey ACES Is A Start

Popular Logistics is about Policy, not Politics. However, it takes success at politics in order to implement policy. In terms of Policy, Popular Logistics thinks that the United States could, and should, move to 100% clean energy in 10 years (click here , here , here , or here).  However, in a democracy, important policy is made by compromise, and while will, as Al Gore once said, is a renewable resource, the public doesn’t seem to have the will to embrace wind, solar, geothermal, marine current, and negawatts. Thus Waxman-Markey. While we agree with those who say that the bill doesn’t go far enough, fast enough we view Waxman Markey as a good start.

While it allows 2 Billion Tons of offsets each year and while the goal for 2020 is 17% below 2005, while it mandates a minimum of 12% clean energy by 2020, the law is comprehensive and as noted, it is a start.

To those who say it is expensive, the costs of doing nothing are the cost of destroying Appalachia, the costs of more coal ash disasters like the 12/22/08 flood in Tennessee, and the costs of adding more arsenic, mercury, and radioactive particles and carbon from coal. These costs are higher, much higher than the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of 18 cents per day (Cited Paul Krugman, NY Times – Click here for PDF).
The law says a) we must move forward, b) we may move forward at a glacial pace, and c) we may move faster. We hope that America will move faster than the law mandates.  After all, the only thing that should move at a glacial pace are glaciers.

For a detailed summary of Waxman Markey, click here. For a high level overview, click here.

EYES ON INVISIBLE HANDS

The hand is quicker than the eye – especially when the hand is invisible and the eye is closed or blind. The heavy hands of wisdom and authority must guide the invisible hand of desire without limits, just as a parent stops a child from grabbing too many cookies before dinner and a shop-keeper stops a thief from grabbing cookies it is neither entitled to nor willing to pay for.

Some call this Regulation. I call it Common Sense. (Click Here for “Why Economists Failed to Predict the Financial Crisis from “Knowledge @ Wharton.”)

The False Assumptions of Neo-Conservatives

To paraphrase John Kennedy, “Ich bin ein Keynesian.”

Jude Wanniski coined the term “Supply Side Economics” in 1976 as a reaction to  Keynesian and monetarist thought. In his book, The Way The World Works, Wanniski argues against taxes. “Working together three men can build three houses in three months. Working separately, they can build three houses in six months…. If the tax rate on home building is 49% they will work together … if the tax goes to 51% they will suffer a net loss because of their teamwork and so will work separately in the barter economy and pay no taxes. … the government loses all the revenue and the economy loses the production…”

Here are Wanniski’s assumptions:

  1. Working alone three men can build a total of six houses in one year. Working together they can build 12 houses in the same year.
  2. A 4% change in the tax rate, from 49% to 51%, is significant enough to cause someone to “drop out.”
  3. The government taxes people when they work together but not when they work separately.

These assumptions are flawed. Continue reading →

Coal Plant Disaster Leads to New Coal Mines

As noted on this website, (click here ) On Dec. 22, 2008, a billion gallons of sludge covered 300 acres, and spilled into the Clinch River and the Tennessee River when the retention pond burst at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Steam Plant. That’s 1,000,000,000 gallons of toxic soup containing Arsenic, Lead, Mercury, Selenium and other toxics and carcinogens. Knoxvillebiz.com.

View of James home, Kingston, TN

View of what had been the James Home, Copyright (c) 2008, Knoxville Biz . com

posted on Yale Environment 360 (Click Here)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved 42 mountaintop removal coal mining permits in the Appalachian Mountains, dashing hopes among many environmentalists that the Obama administration would move quickly to crack down on the destructive and controversial practice. U.S. Rep. Nick J. Rahall (D-W.V.), chairman of the

Mountaintop

Photo by Teri Blanton

House Natural Resources Committee, said the EPA has given the green light to 42 of 48 mountaintop removal projects currently under review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In mountaintop removal mining, coal companies blast and bulldoze the tops off mountains to get at coal seams below. In recent years, the practice has destroyed nearly 1 million acres of Appalachian forests and buried close to 1,000 miles of streams in mining debris. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said recently that the agency was reviewing the permits because the projects might violate the U.S. Clean Water Act, but she added that “the bulk” of the pending permits did not appear to raise environmental concerns. Environmental leaders criticized the EPA for not taking a stronger stand and called on the White House Council on Environmental Quality to take action to stop the 42 projects from proceeding.

 

Stretching the Conventional Wisdom

I was invited to join a panel on Jumpstarting the Green Economy hosted by the Sustainable Business Incubator at Fairleigh Dickenson University on May 21, 2009.  Copies of the conference presentations are available from the organizers for about $50. Copies of my presentation in audio and powerpoint format are available for $15, including shipping and taxes. Call or E-Mail me here or at Furman Consulting Group.

It boils down to this: Wind, Solar, Geothermal, other sustainable energy and Negawatts vs. Coal, Oil, and Nuclear; to Sustainable Business or Bernie Madoff and the Mafia. Continue reading →

There’s Something About Mary – And Keynes

 

There's Something About Mary

Back in 1931, John Maynard Keynes wrote:

“Assuming no important wars, and no important increase in population, the economic problem may be solved, or at least within sight of a solution, within a hundred years. This means that the economic problem is not – if we look into the future – the permanent problem of the human race.”  – John Maynard Keynes,  “Economic possibilities for our grand-children.’ In Essays in Persuasion, 1931.

Keynes wrote that wealth would grow because of compounded interest, and we would live off of the interest. This would fuel technical inventions and dramatically increase the standard of living for a stable, peace-loving world. He thought boredom would become the permanent problem of the human race.

We would become a world populated by dilettantes flitting from party to party; a world of people like Prince Charles and Paris Hilton, although most, presumably, would not be famous and very few could become king. While some would work a few hours per week, most would have a life of leisure. People would live like the physician played by Cameron Diaz in the 1998 film “There’s Something About Mary.” They would work more on “lifestyle” issues like their golf swing than their profession.

Four factors, Keynes wrote, would effect this transition:

  1. Power to control population,
  2. Determination to avoid wars and civil dissentions,
  3. Entrust to science that which is the domain of science,
  4. Compound interest.

Continue reading →

Coal Plant With Carbon Sequestration

Follow LJF97 on Twitter Tweet  SCS Energy, of Concord, Mass., wants to build a new coal plant in Linden, NJ.

18cleanmap According to Kate Galbraith, reporting in the NY Times, “A Plan for U. S. Emissions to Be Buried Under Sea“, 90% of the carbon dioxide will be captured, compressed, pumped thru a 24 inch diameter pipe, approximately 70 miles south-east, past Staten Island, New York, and Middlesex, Monmouth, and Ocean Counties in New Jersey, to a point 25 or 30 miles east of Atlantic City, New Jersey,and injected by a well drilled a mile beneath the sandstone floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic is about a half mile deep at that point.

Gailbraith reports that the plant could cost $5 billion if completed on time and on budget. And it will need $100 million a year in Federal Government subsidies, which amounts to another $4 billion over the plant’s 40 year operating life span.

The carbon sequestration is projected to use 25%  to 40% of the energy released from burning coal, so the 750 megawatt plant will be a 450 to 562.5 mw plant.  That’s $16 Billion to $20 Billion per gigawatt or $16 to $20 per watt, depending on the overhead costs, of sequestering the carbon.

Solar is roughly $6.50 per watt with no subsidies, no fuel costs, very low maintenance, and no loss in transmission. Offshore Wind is $3.00 per watt, with no fuel costs.

Continue reading →

100 MPG Plug In Hybrid

100 MPG Plug In Electric Van

100 MPG Plug In Electric Van. Designed by Bright Automotive and Rocky Mountain Institute. Image Copyright (C) Rocky Mountain Institute.

Bright Automotive of Indiana is set to turn Rocky Mountain Institute’s lightweight, hyper-efficient vehicle concept into reality.

The start-up, which launched out of RMI in 2008, is unveiling the IDEA–a 100 mpg equivalent plug-in hybrid concept vehicle–in Washington DC. Bright expects to produce 50,000 IDEAs a year, by 2012 and to create over 5,000 jobs by 2013.  For more details go to Rocky Mountain Institute and Bright Automotive.

The best news since the Prius.