DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

PG&E launched its carbon-offsetting program last week. It’s called “ClimateSmart.” Ratepayers can sign up with a couple mouse clicks.

What would it cost you per month? Probably about $5. Here’s a cost estimator. You’ll need to have a recent PG&E bill handy, or ideally one from last winter and another from last summer so you can measure average consumption during peak energy-use months.

Thanks to the PV array on my roof, my monthly ClimateSmart fee should be about $0.66.

What do you get for your $5 (or $0.66) per month? According to the website,

100% of your ClimateSmart payment will go to directly funding new greenhouse gas emission reduction projects in California. PG&E will invest these funds in a range of innovative projects, such as conserving and restoring California ecosystems and capturing methane gas from dairy farms. Examples of the types of projects PG&E may invest in include the van Eck forest in Humboldt County and Garcia River forest in Mendocino County, if they are chosen through the competitive selection process.

It seems like a great deal.

Before you sign up, though, read Katherine Ellison’s analysis in Salon: Shopping for carbon credits. She investigates the “new greenhouse gas emission reduction projects in California” and learns that the project first in line for certification may well end up using ClimateSmart money to fund the construction of a new forestry building at Purdue University in Indiana.

To which any right-minded ratepayer can respond only, WTF??

Buying offsets is, at best, the lazy way out of environmental responsibility — as Ellison points out, the only true solution is to reduce emissions at their source — but this particular example is so far removed from actually reducing the carbon level in the atmosphere that instead of eco-mindfulness it inspires only jokes, e.g.: Why would anybody tack $5 onto their monthly utility bill to finance a new schoolroom at an institution whose most memorable contribution to culture is the biggest bass drum in the world?

Ellison decides not to join ClimateSmart, opting instead to save up for double-paned windows and to contribute ~$5/month to support federal election reform — which I agree ought to be at the top of the list of any realistic carbon-offsetting program. (Ellison’s article makes the case that volunteer efforts to reduce emissions are insufficient, that federal regulations are required, and further that “petro-dollar-powered Republican legislators” are never going to make the necessary regulations.)

I find no fault with her reasoning or conclusions, but I signed up for ClimateSmart anyway. I have more faith that the California Climate Action Registry will find some legitimate, non-joke-worthy ways to spend ClimateSmart donations. For example, the manure management idea. OK, maybe that’s going to inspire some jokes too, but at least the benefits are real. For example, read about the Straus Dairy’s methane digester, which not only directly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, but also generates electricity, preventing the need for other fuels to be burned, thereby indirectly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

And if they don’t — if after six months PG&E and the Climate Action Registry are still struggling to find legitimate and productive ways to spend Climate Smart money, I’ll take back my $0.66/month and save up for another acre of rainforest.

These trees are kicking my ass. We just suffered the worst June ever, following the worst May ever. Our solar electricity production is about a day above last year’s at this time (1644 kWh vs 1634 kWh through June 21) but significantly under the two prior years: 1986 kWh by late June, 2004, is our record.

I noticed during my last trip up to the roof that the tall sycamore across the driveway from the house is now putting 1/3 of our array into shadow at 4:30PM. Needless to say, this nukes our generation for the rest of the afternoon, including 90 critical minutes of the utility’s “peak period.”

The tree in question has also enveloped all the cables coming into the house — data, telephone, and electric — so it has needed attention anyway. (High winds plus tree limbs equal extended power outages.) I’ve scheduled our tree surgeon for a visit next week.

The other problem we’re having is dirty air. I have washed the panels more often this year than any other, every 3 weeks on average, and they seem dirtier than ever before. I scrubbed them clean 11 days ago, and yet when I stand with my eyes just above the plane of the surface of the panels, they look completely opaque with dust. I wonder if more people are burning trash now than in previous years?

There is some good news: our electricity charges for 2007, despite production woes, will be lower than the prior two years. Last year’s fee was ~$160.

I mention the financial aspect to make clear that despite maintenance issues, the PV system on my roof will save me about $1000 in electricity costs this year.

Update 2007-10-18: It wasn’t the trees after all.

So, I played a jazz gig a couple weeks ago. It was a stretch. Fortunately it wasn’t a pure swing set; that’s the sort of stretch that leaves permanent scarring.

My friend Oli, wizard of the Hammond organ, and local guitar pro Burjor Dastur had booked a show at the Ace. They’ve done a lot of gigs as a duet but were thinking the show would benefit from a third instrument, even one that tends to be loud and somewhat busy. Enter my great big acoustic kit. Well, I left the cowbell at home.

We rehearsed once, the day before. It was rough. The idea behind this particular trio is to take jazz standards and turn them into electric fusion songs. Hopefully without turning them into Jazz Odyssey. The challenge for me was that I’ve never heard, much less played, any of the jazz standards that served as the basis for our set list. In contrast, Oli and Burjor can play them forwards and backwards, in any key, in any time signature, and from the sound of it, frequently did so during our rehearsal.

During load-in, I noticed a big sign outside the pub announcing the line-up for the evening. For me this was a random pick-up gig, so when I saw a band called “CORE” listed to go on stage during our slot, my first reaction was “oh, cool; they found a real band to play tonight!” It hadn’t occurred to me that this random pick-up trio might have a name.

But the gig went really well. The other guys are smoking, and they’ve played together a couple hundred times, which is of course a big help. I played pretty well too.

Oli owes me a copy of his recording of the show. If I can find an excerpt that stands up to the cold harsh (not to mention sober) light of day, I’ll post a clip here.

I’ve been on a music binge lately, picking up over a dozen new releases over the past two months.

As an inveterate comparison shopper, I use the fact that I’m equidistant from any number of online music stores to my advantage, even if it sometimes means I spend 10 minutes saving $1. (It could be worse. In fact, it used to be.)

So I’ve noticed a surprising downward price pressure on CDs, even new releases. Not only does Amazon offer significant discounts on most new CDs, the same products show up on Half.com within days of release for even less money. Some examples:

What would cause CD prices to drop below half of MSRP within a couple weeks of release?

We know that CD sales have been in decline since 2000 (or maybe earlier) — down 25% by 2005, at least another 14% in 2006, and at least another 20% this year, according to The CD Is Dead! (Long live the CD!)

Meanwhile, digital music sales are way up — e.g. Apple is now the 3rd-largest music retailer in the US — and peer-to-peer filesharing is gaining popularity (despite being illegal).

Remember the CD price-fixing lawsuit of 2002? Here’s a great quote:

Former FTC chairman Robert Pitofsky said at the time that consumers had been overcharged by $480 million since 1997 and that CD prices would soon drop by as much as $5 a CD as a result.

Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble still charges $18.99 for Systematic Chaos.

David Lazarus of the SF Chronicle agrees with my assessment of the recent CAFE mileage-standards revision in the Senate:

“This is a good day for American consumers and the environment, since we finally have gotten on the right path to better fuel economy,” said California Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, saw things differently. “This is not a win, nor is it a step forward for fuel economy, consumers or the environment,” she said.

Claybrook was former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Read more of her comments on the new CAFE standards.

There’s more of the Lazarus piece that’s worth reading:

Dave McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry group, called the goals of HR6 [a more aggressive version of the bill that finally passed] “wildly extreme,” and said such ambitious fuel-efficiency standards “would eliminate some of the most popular vehicles on the road today and devastate both consumer choice and the auto industry.”

Probably not. What they’d do is compel Detroit to produce vehicles that reflect this nation’s increasingly precarious energy security and send a message to overseas oil producers that we no longer intend to dance to their tune.

Significantly higher fuel-efficiency requirements would also prompt engineers in Detroit and in universities nationwide to do what this country has always done better than all other countries — innovate.

In more positive news about reducing oil consumption, Google .org (the philanthropic arm of Google, Inc) has given $1 million in grants to promote use of plug-in hybrids. Here are the grant recipients.

Google.org has pledged another $10M to to fund development, adoption and commercialization of plug-ins, fully electric cars and related vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology.