Electric vehicles coming to a street near you

A state legislative committee is meeting in Long Beach tomorrow. I know, sounds like a bore. But the topic actually sounds interesting. They'll be talking about whether California's infrastructure is ready for plug-in electric cars. Will the state have enough charging stations for the Chevy Volts and Nissan Leafs soon to be hitting the pavement?

When I read about the meeting, it reminded me of a video I recently watched on latimes.com and now have a reason to share. Times reporter Susan Carpenter  experimented with driving an electric vehicle, using energy generated by solar panels installed on her roof, to be truly emissions free. It made me want an electric car even more, although first I'd need the house and roof on which to install the solar panels.

 

I'm curious about how driving an electric cars works. Would owners charge their cars at home, like Carpenter? Or at public charging stations like they do at gas pumps? And, more importantly, is it really better to be fueling your commute with electricity instead of gas? That's why Carpenter's experiment is so intriguing, she's using just the sun to power her car. Along with the video, she wrote this fascinating column about the intricacies of installing solar panels on her roof to charge an electric car, which answered some of my questions (you can charge them using a standard 120-volt outlet that you'd find in any home, although it's much faster when you use a 240-volt charger that charging stations would have).

I'm hoping I'll learn even more after tomorrow's meeting. Not that I'll be there because I've gotta work, but there should be news coverage of it. I know I'm not the only one who's clueless and curious.

Mileage count: Week 2

For week two of sharing my mileage in my blog I'm proud to say I have an improvement to report: 281 miles instead of 363. What made the difference was one day of taking the train, which I hadn't done in months. I also jumped on my bike a few times to cut out short trips.

Here's the daily breakdown:

• Monday: On my day off, I drove 15 miles to a doctor's appointment and to my softball game.
  

• Tuesday: Drove to work. 64 miles.
  

• Wednesday: Drove to work. 64 miles.
  

• Thursday: I took the train to work so I drove only nine miles. Hooray! And made good headway in the book that I had been neglecting.
  

• Friday: Back to driving to work. But I did bike to the gym at 5:45 am. 64 miles.
  

• Saturday: Drove to work, blah blah. 65 miles. Biked a mile to my friend's house (in boots, thank you very much) and then we walked down to 2nd Street for dinner.

• Sunday: Another no-driving Sunday. I'll call it a biking Sunday. I biked to the same friend's house so we could go running, then biked home, changed and biked to a park 1.5 miles away for softball practice. Coming home I was pretty exhausted and hungry. Yes driving would have been easier but biking isn't too bad, as long as I stay in a two-mile radius of my apartment.
  

Mileage count: Week 1

It's the end of the first week of my experiment to publicly share my mileage. All added up, I drove a grand total of 363 miles. Now that you're done gasping and can read again, here's how it breaks down:

• Monday (my day off): I rode my bike to the gym instead of driving. This is something I should do on a regular basis since it's a whoppin' 1.5 miles away. I drove 16 miles to drop some stuff off at Goodwill and go to the nearby Target. I ended the day getting a ride to my softball game.

• Tuesday: Drove to and from work for a total of 64 miles.

• Wednesday: Another 64-mile commute.
  

• Thursday: At the end of a 13-hour work day, the 110 ramp is closed so I take a detour, adding an extra two miles and a lot of internal cursing at L.A. (My co-worker's guess the next day was that it was closed for filming, which made me even more annoyed.) Total=66 miles.

• Friday: I add an extra 20 miles to my commute to drive to a school to work with a student. Total=82 miles.
  

• Saturday: 66 miles driving to work (I discover that my all-freeway route on Saturdays is slightly longer), then five miles round-trip to meet friends for dinner. I considered biking but I was already running late. Total=71 miles.
  

•  To end the week, I had a no-car Sunday. Since I've taken public transportation to work and liked it, I decided to take the bus to Home Depot. When I'm in my car doing errands I don't think twice about adding another destination or driving to the nice mall over the one that's closest (as I did on New Year's Day, Christmas gift cards in hand). But when you're leaving your car behind, running errands becomes simpler and more streamlined, but not faster so you have to have extra time on your hands. But it did help in my environmental goal of not over-consuming since I couldn't impulse buy and throw whatever I bought in the car.

The Home Depot is three miles away but easy to get to by bus since it's just a straight shot up Cherry. So I walked 15 minutes from my apartment to Cherry, waited about eight minutes for the bus, then rode on the bus for 10 minutes. I got my paint samples and headed out. On the way back the bus came as soon as I arrived at the bus stop. And getting off at 4th Street, I browsed in some antique stores on Retro Row on my walk home with the sun shining (hint, I was enjoying myself). The extra time it took wasn't a big deal but I think that's partly because of the novelty of it all. I'm not sure how often I could do this, or if I could extend it to a whole weekend.

For the rest of the day, I went running with two friends, walked to the grocery store just around the corner from my house and resisted the urge to drive to Target to return some things I'd bought earlier in the week.

A mile here, a mile there starts to add up

After visiting my sister and her family in Dallas for Christmas, I've realized that I can be an impatient, slightly pushy and self-centered Angeleno. So my new year's resolution is to be more considerate. I'll try to thank store clerks and waiters, ask politely for directions and not interrupt a salesperson helping someone else to ask where the bathroom is (I did really have to go). After several years of big city living and always being in a hurry, I found that in a city full of Southern manners where the pace was slower, I liked that people took the time to be gracious to one another. And I started being nicer in return (maybe it helped that I was on vacation and more relaxed). That felt good so I want to extend that positive energy throughout the year.

Despite the theme of my blog, I didn't make a new year's resolution related to the environment. I already do what I can and the big change I could make -- reducing the miles I drive -- is a resolution destined to be broken faster than you can say "diet." But in the spirit of the new year and new beginnings, and inspired by a suggestion from my co-worker Mike, for the next month I'm going to share my mileage in my blog. The goal of my public shaming is to become more aware of how much I drive.

I worked today but didn't remember my plan until I was midway through my morning commute so I'll start on Monday, Jan. 4. Mike recorded his purchases in his blog every day. In a similar vein, I'll be recording my exact mileage. The big culprit will be my commute but I'll also keep track of my weekend driving. This isn't the best timing because lately I've had the urge to redecorate and want to go furniture shopping, which of course involves a lot of driving. But I'm hoping it will force me to cut back, from getting back in the habit of taking public transportation to work to biking more on the weekend. I'll record my mileage every day and update my blog once a week with the total. Mike said his experiment made him more aware of the obvious: small purchases add up. I'm curious to see what I learn. It may be that saying thank you is easier than leaving my car at home.

Green v. Consumerism at Christmastime

"In a world where people want to continue to aspire to middle-class consumption patterns, but they are also wanting to feel like they are responsible citizens who care about social and environment issues, how do they reconcile that? They go shopping for something that declares itself to be ecologically friendly."

Sadly, that quote from a UC Santa Cruz professor is true. It's from a Los Angeles Times article about retailers offering eco-friendly gifts for the holidays as a way to make money. The story says that according to a recent poll, nearly nine in 10 consumers identified themselves as "conscious consumers." Wow, that's a lot. More than I would have expected considering how few people I see using resusable bags at the grocery store (with the exception of Trader Joe's and Whole Foods shoppers, who have been on that bandwagon for a while now).

What's better for the environment? Buying gift wrap made from recycled materials or wrapping small presents in used sandwich bags you have lying around your house, cutting out the energy-using step of recycling the bags into other paper products? (I'm doing the latter.)

Buying presents I understand. It is Christmas after all and who doesn't want to do that? But I've been turned off by the Sunday circulars and TV ads that are pushing their great bargains on wrapping paper, gift bows and all that other crap. Sure, it made sense in the pre-global warming era to decorate our presents to the nines, but aren't we living in a more conscious time now (according to that poll, yes we are)?

Sure, use the wrapping paper you already have from years past, but let's not buy new bows and ribbon. And if you run out of wrapping paper, look around your house for something to use instead, like the Sunday comics, old paper bags and glossy pages from magazines. Have fun with it. If it's a clothing item, wrap it in the LA Times Image section. Heck, you could even use old pillow cases if it's a larger present (and then the recipient can cut up the linen into smaller cleaning rags for a gift that keeps on giving).

I've had fun wrapping my office Secret Santa present. I blogged earlier about how I planned to use paper bags to wrap my gifts this year, but would have to think of ways to make the presents look good despite my lack of artistic skills. So what I did was cut up a brown paper bag I already had, wrapped it in ribbon left over from a past Christmas and attached an old Christmas ball I bought this year at a thrift store. Then I wrote "Joy" in pen and, in a flash of brilliance, found a way to make use of those pesky circulars that inundate our mailboxes at this time of year. I cut out a cute bear from the Trader Joe's flier and glued it to the brown paper to make it look more festive. I knew any attempt at drawing something would look as bad as those terrible ornaments we made for our parents in elementary school (because my art skills haven't improved since then) so this was a way around that.

Let's think outside the proverbial Macys sweater box this holiday season to not just say we want to live green, but actually do it.

My Secret Santa gift, wrapped in a paper bag.

Do my actions really make a difference?

That's a common question in the debate over protecting the environment and stopping global warming. The refrain we hear is yes, everyone's actions make a difference. Drive less. Take shorter showers. Use reusable bags. Recycle. These are the actions I've discussed in my blog as I've chronicled my attempts to "do my part." They're the changes that while small and fairly easy, make me feel good that I'm making things better. Today after taking a quick shower, I took the train to work. I ate lunch, pulling a cooked chicken sausage out of a reused Ziploc bag. I bought a can of Sprite and meant to recycle it (oops, I left it behind but I have faith that someone else recycled it instead of throwing it away), and then I took the train home at the end of the day.

Then tonight I read an interesting article on alternet.org, a website featuring stories with alternative and progressive viewpoints that don't get covered in the mainstream press. The article, "Taking Shorter Showers Doesn't Cut It: Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change," written by Derrick Jensen, an environmental activist, and originally published in Orion Magazine, had some sobering statistics about how our individual actions make little difference in the grand scheme of things. As the headline suggests, taking shorter showers won't save our water supply because 90 percent of water use is by agriculture. I thought a valid criticism was that An Inconvenient Truth focuses only on the solutions individuals can take to stop global warming. This statistic summed up Jensen's argument well: "Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide."

The writer didn't intend to leave us feeling hopeless, he wants to wake us to the reality that we need to change our society and not just our individual habits. So tonight will I leave my computer turned on because it doesn't make a difference? No. But at the same time I can feel less guilty about the bath I want to take.

I'm not sure what to take away from this. I feel good about the changes I've made to my lifestyle because it's better than doing nothing but I'm not working toward larger, community-wide changes. I think cities (or even better, the state and country) should require businesses to charge customers for plastic bags, which would get more people using reusable bags, but I'm not writing letters or attending city council meetings or joining activist groups to fight for it. It's easier to be responsible for just myself and blog once a week about my latest small victory or stumble. In the short term, it's refreshing to know I don't have to carry the burden of the world on my shoulders. But in the long term, am I going to make a bigger commitment? It's something for all of us to think about.

McDonald's McCafes: a gamble with the environment

On my two-mile drive down Long Beach Boulevard from the train station today, I passed four reminders from McDonald's that I should be drinking its coffee. That would be three McDonald's restaurants telling me "Now serving McCafe" and enticing me with giant posters of mocha lattes topped with whipped cream, plus a billboard in case I missed the ads plastered across the stores. I think McDonald's really wants us to buy its "specialty" espresso drinks.

Even I am not immune to the powers of good marketing (the commercials are funny). Last week I decided to try a McCafe because if it tasted good but was cheaper than Starbucks or another coffee chain, then it would be a good option. I went through the drive-thru and ordered a small iced latte. I shouldn't have been surprised that in McDonald's super-sized world, a small would be 16 ounces of seriously strong coffee. It was so potent I saved half for the next day, which did make the $3 price a good deal, although it wasn't as cheap as I expected (iced drinks are more expensive; their hot lattes are cheaper).

Then the very next day, after I'd enjoyed my day-old latte, I read an article in the Los Angeles Times about McDonald's coffee investment and I felt bad about supporting what will likely lead to an increase in milk consumption, if McDonald's gamble pays off. The article quoted a dairy expert saying, "When per capita milk consumption rose in 2006 for the first time in 20 years, McDonald's was a prime reason." Why? McDonald's had started offering milk in plastic containers, which became so popular that other fast-food chains followed its lead. "The dairy industry is counting on the same sort of effect from McDonald's espresso coffee drinks," the article said, and then had this shocking statistic, "which can contain up to 80 percent milk." If (let's be real ... when) McCafes become popular, that's a lot of milk -- 1 1/2 cups for a 16-ounce drink. That means a lot of milk production, which is not good for the environment (cows are a source of methane pollution, plus concerns over the amount of water used on dairy farms).

But when I made this argument to my coworker, she played devil's advocate and said "So are poor people not allowed to buy coffee but rich people who can afford Starbucks can?" No, of course not. I know that Starbucks and other coffee chains have led to more people drinking coffee and thus consuming more milk, but my concern with McDonald's is that it's even more pervasive in our culture and its coffee is cheaper, which could lead to people buying coffee more often, no matter their income.

I think the solution is that everyone should buy less coffee and try to make it at home more often. I'm not saying I'm a saint. I buy coffee about once a week, the last time being on Sunday after a run. I felt like I deserved to indulge and since I'd gotten up too early to make coffee, I decided to splurge on an iced latte at Seattle's Best. But was my impulse buy worth $2.80 for a measly 12-ounce drink that also wasted a plastic cup? In the time it took me to wait in line, I could have gone home and made my own coffee. And I would have been happier with it. They were out of vanilla so I flavored my latte with cinnamon, which doesn't taste so great. And when I make coffee at home, I use a half cup of milk, probably less than what was in my McCafe or Seattle's Best drink.

And let's face it, making your own coffee saves money too. McDonald's may be promoting their drinks as a cheaper alternative to Starbucks but MyCafe beats out McCafe any day.

This carbon counting is complicated

This story in the Boston Globe, "For a route to green living, you'll need a map," is really fascinating on many levels. First, it introduced me to fun new environmental terms:

-- carbon conscious. As in people are taking into consideration how much energy was used to make the products they're buying. (For example, buying bottled water from France, which uses nuclear energy, may have less of a carbon footprint than buying water from the US, where we use plants powered by fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.)
-- carbon calories. One experts imagines the day when people will be counting the carbon footprint of their food like they count calories.

Then it brought on the guilt. This is what it said about the most energy-efficient way of cooking:

"The microwave uses the least energy, followed by frying and boiling and, finally, the conventional oven. (Think how wasteful it is to heat up an entire oven just to cook a baked potato or two.)"

You talkin' to me? I just made one lonely sweet potato in the oven yesterday. But I grew up when microwaves were the hip new thing and remember the concerns over standing too close and getting cancer, so microwaving is ingrained in my mind as a less healthy way of cooking, even if that's not true anymore. Grrr, this is complicated.

But I felt vindicated when it pointed out that hanging onto an older computer is better than ditching it for a new energy-efficient model because of the energy used in manufacturing. Buying green has becoming a marketing ploy so it's helpful to remember that sometimes the most green thing you can do is not buy anything at all (I'm still using my old-school 19-inch TV that my dad bought me when I graduated from college, although I won't deny sometimes pining for those flat-screen high-def thingys).

The point of the article is that as consumers try to make better decisions, the reality is that we don't really fully know the carbon impact of the stuff we're buying. Great. Now I'm really overwhelmed. Well, then again, the flip side is that as I sit here nibbling on mini squares of Lindt truffles, I don't feel so bad eating chocolate imported from Europe. I'm just gonna have to hope Lindt's carbon footprint is smaller than that of an American candy bar, because Swiss chocolate is far superior and sorry Earth, I'm just not going to give it up for a Snickers bar.

Giving carbon offsets a try

On the checkout page at gaiam.com, where I was buying insulated curtains for my bedroom (they're supposed to reduce energy costs by keeping your room cool in the summer and warm in the winter), I had the choice to contribute $2 to plant trees that will offset the carbon impact from shipping the curtains. Now I have to say that I'm skeptical of carbon offsets. I wonder if trees would be planted anyway, so is it really a ruse to alleviate consumer guilt? And could we possibly plant enough trees to make a difference? The program is run through The Conservation Fund, which the website said keeps its administrative costs low so more of your donation goes toward actually planting trees.

So I went ahead and added a $2 Go Zero donation, swayed by a short video showing the Fund planting trees in an area of Louisiana damaged by Hurricane Katrina. It was just $2 and since I was buying the curtains to make my apartment more "eco-friendly," it felt hypocritical to not donate. Regardless of whether it really reduces my carbon impact, it's never a bad idea to plant trees.

Good LA Times editorial on the candidates and energy

First, a disclaimer: I had hoped to take the train to work today but when my alarm went off at 6:30 a.m. I didn't have the will to get up. So I accept my own hypocrisy when I point out today's Los Angeles Times editorial, which calls on the next president to have the will to enact an energy policy that is good for the environment. I like the facts in this editorial about things I knew loosely but not concretely (like that it will take 20 years for offshore drilling to lower the cost of gas significantly).

The editorial points out that "clean coal" is just a disguise for more of the same in coal-producing states, and that McCain's zealousness to build 45 new nuclear plants is ludicrous (being from Las Vegas, which for as long as I can remember has been fighting the government's proposal to store nuclear waste at nearby Yucca Mountain, I'm obviously 100% against nuclear power).

But the editorial ends with some hope. Perhaps, it says, once elected Candidate X will stop pandering and become President X, demanding real change and even sacrifice. I read between the lines on that one and assume they think there's only one candidate who can and will do that. It's the only one who mentioned sacrifice in the last presidential debate, as I pointed out in my previous post.

Here's the text of the editorial:

Editorial
A president with an energy plan: Neither nuclear nor 'clean coal' will solve the crisis.
October 15, 2008

Before most people had ever heard of commercial paper, they knew that high oil prices were squeezing both their wallets and the nation's economy, and the presidential candidates spent more time talking about gas tanks than banks. The financial meltdown of recent weeks hasn't just overshadowed the energy crisis, it has eased it in the short term -- gasoline prices have fallen because oil traders fear that demand will shrink in a global recession. Yet meeting our energy challenges will remain among the most important concerns of the next president.

That's why it's doubly disappointing that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain has a responsible energy plan. In pandering to voters in swing states, both have backed dangerous, dirty energy sources in contradiction of their own principles.

The United States gets nearly half of its electricity from coal-fired plants. These plants account for about a third of the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide, the prime contributor to global warming. They are also a top source of other air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide, and worldwide they are the No. 1 source of deadly mercury pollution. You can't pretend to be a crusader against climate change and pollution, as both candidates do, while favoring expanded coal use -- yet Obama and McCain waste few opportunities to declare their support for “clean coal.” If by this they mean they want more research into pumping coal emissions underground, good for them. But the voters in coal-producing states such as West Virginia interpret the candidates' rhetoric as an endorsement of increased mining and burning of coal using existing processes that are anything but clean, and Obama and McCain have done nothing to disabuse them of that notion.

"Drill, baby, drill" has become one of the McCain campaign's catchphrases, yet the pursuit of increased offshore drilling is a purely political maneuver that government energy officials say won't lower prices significantly within 20 years. To his credit, Obama frequently points out that the United States sits on 3% of the world's oil supplies but uses 25% of the world's oil, so ending our reliance on foreign sources can be achieved only by cutting consumption and developing environmentally responsible biofuels -- yet he too agreed to end a federal ban on new offshore drilling projects.

And then there's "safe nuclear," a phrase as oxymoronic as "clean coal" that both candidates like to toss around. Nuclear waste remains toxic for millenniums, and no one has figured out a sufficiently permanent way of storing it. McCain's plan to build 45 nuclear plants by 2030 is either disingenuous or naive. Because the nation's existing plants are crumbling, they will have to be decommissioned as fast as new ones can be built, making it unlikely that there would be a net increase in nuclear power even if McCain's goal could be met. Moreover, private investors have no interest in building nuclear plants unless they receive generous subsidies and taxpayer-backed loans, yet the Congressional Budget Office considers such loans so risky that "well above 50%" of them would default. Nuclear power isn't just environmentally irresponsible, it's fiscally irresponsible.

Conservatives argue that it would be impossible to get all of our power from renewable sources such as the sun and wind, so we might as well get used to fossil fuels. This is a cynical excuse for continuing our reliance on dirty and climate-altering, but cheap, energy sources. Our power supply might never be completely clean, but we've barely scratched the surface of what could be done to improve energy efficiency and raise the share of renewable power. Clean power would create jobs for American workers and innovations that could be sold around the world, while greater efficiency would lower consumers' energy bills by cutting demand.

Early in the campaign, Obama and McCain were both unafraid to make such precepts the centerpiece of their energy plans. We can only hope that when one of these men finds himself in the White House, his brighter angels will win out, but the candidates' quick embrace of wrongheaded policies in reaction to an uptick in oil prices isn't encouraging.

Environmental policy is closely connected to energy policy, because energy generation is a source of many of the world's most pressing environmental woes. Obama and McCain both understand that global warming is a serious problem, and both have proposed capping carbon emissions to solve it, though Obama would impose stricter controls. On other environmental issues, there is a similar dynamic: McCain is greener than the GOP mainstream, but still not as green as Obama and the Democratic mainstream. A good example is the "roadless rule," a Clinton administration ban on road building in national forests that was overturned by President Bush. Obama co-sponsored a bill that would codify the ban in federal law; during his time in the Senate, McCain has voted for and against giving subsidies to timber companies for building forest roads. Advantage: Obama.

The roadless rule is only one of dozens of environmental protections that have been undermined or simply eliminated under Bush -- a big part of the next president's job will be trying to reseed the scorched earth left behind by the current one. Near the top of his list should be granting the Clean Air Act waiver allowing California to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles, which was denied in December by the Environmental Protection Agency. The ruling was so blatantly political that it would be surprising if either McCain or Obama allowed it to stand, though Obama is likely to make overturning it a higher priority.

Obama and McCain are both well informed about environmental matters, and either would be a vast improvement over Bush. But the next president needs to be more than knowledgeable. He needs to have the political courage to demand change -- and possibly even sacrifice. Obama has shown little of this kind of courage so far, but McCain has shown still less.

Finally, a call for sacrifice

"What sacrifices will you ask every American to make to help restore the American dream?"

That was my favorite question in Tuesday's presidential debate. How can a country that's at war, trillions of dollars in debt and partly responsible for problems like global warming NOT be asking more of its citizens? It also gets to the philosophy of the candidates and how they would inspire the country if they became president. That's what I want. With all the bad news in the newspaper every day, I want to be inspired to act. And I want to feel like America is helping to make the world better, not worse. We need to be focusing on global warming and renewable energy, not spewing rhetoric like "drill baby drill" and "reduce our dependence on foreign oil," which miss the big picture.

That's why not only was that my favorite question, but also my favorite answer. The question seemed to be about sacrifices Americans can make to get the economy back on track. And sure enough, McCain talked about economic stuff -- cutting government programs and earmarks. That was a slick answer because it doesn't require you and I, the "Americans" in the question, to take action. And it surely didn't inspire.

When Obama spoke, I sat up and listened (literally, because I had been flopped on the ground tiredly watching the reairing of the debate at 11 p.m.). He said Bush missed an opportunity after 9/11 when he called on Americans to go out and shop. "That wasn't the kind of call to service that I think the American people were looking for." I agreed and thought it was noteworthy because you rarely hear politicians talk about that anymore. Then he used energy as an example of how Americans can make sacrifices for the greater good. "There is going to be the need for each and every one of us to start thinking about how we use energy." YES, that's it!!! Going green has become part of our culture but is action really happening? How many people have replaced their traditional lights bults with compact fluorescent light bulbs, shop with reusable grocery bags and drive hybrids or take the bus? And even if everyone did that, would it still be enough? I think people would do more and demand more from the auto and energy industries if they had a leader on the issue. Someone who says, "Each and every one of us can start thinking about, how can we save energy in our homes and our buildings?"

In all, I felt Obama's response was muddled. He threw out the same old call for increased oil production, clean coal and nuclear energy. OK, fine, he had to say that to win votes in key states and not seem too quote -- liberal. And he got specific only when it came to government action, like incentives for buying fuel-efficient cars. But I'm not completely cynical. I feel hopeful that if he's elected, he will bring attention to the real energy issue: global warming and what America, the world's biggest polluter, is going to do about it. I hope he will get more specific about the sacrifices Americans need to make and frame global warming as the most important issue of our generation. We need a call to action like Kennedy's resolve to get us to the moon.

After eight years of Bush, it's rare that I hear a politician echoing my thoughts and view of the world. Maybe that's what excited me the most. I feel like Obama gets it and isn't afraid to say so.

You can watch that part of the debate on the CNN website, by typing in "sacrifice" in the search field at http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/07/video.transcript/index.html

I wish I were this cool

So as noted in my previous posts, I spend a lot of time in my car. And my favorite in-car activity is listening to NPR talk shows. Coming home from the gym last week I caught Talk of the Nation and the topic was about two things I care about: the green movement and the youth voice. Halfway through the show, which had as a guest Robert Redford, a teenager performed a slam poem she wrote about global warming. It was amazing! I couldn't believe she wrote that as a teen, and this coming from someone who has a lot of faith in teenagers' abilities since I work with teens in my job. She didn't rattle off boring statistics but told a story about this little girl she babysits (and being scared by the "global warming" game the girl played). I don't want to give any more away, I just highly recommend you listen. It's an example of great storytelling and of how the younger generation is growing up with the fear of global warming as part of their everyday life. But unlike the hole in the ozone layer that was the crisis of my teenage years, this problem doesn't have a simple and manageable fix. Scary stuff indeed.

To listen, go to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92584973 and click on Listen Now. It starts at 12:30 into the broadcast.

But global warming doesn't take vacation

I'm writing this while on vacation. For two weeks I can sleep in, be carefree, see family and friends and make a long list of things I will only partially accomplish. As I've been deciding how to spend my time, I've also been wondering how far I should go to have a "green" vacation. I'd only give myself a C.

The thing is, some changes are easy and don't require much sacrifice, like toting around reusable bags and recycling. Even taking public transportation to work is only a slight inconvenience. I'm still going to work -- that part hasn't changed -- I'm just leaving earlier (while arriving more relaxed and spending less money, so maybe it's actually slightly convenient). But what about changes that require a sacrifice? Should I be using public transportation while on vacation, instead of driving places? Should I even be going on a road trip to Palm Springs and Las Vegas (but of course I will)? Should I be using my bike more, since I have more time to get places?

On Monday a friend and I drove 40 miles to the Getty Villa, but how the heck would we have gotten there without driving? The bus would have taken ages. That's the frustration with ditching your car in sprawling LA -- it really limits you to what you can do. And even if getting there using public transportation is doable, I'm not yet comfortable with taking the train back to Long Beach at night.

Today during my leisurely breakfast, I read an article in the Times that said the effects of global warming from developed nations, including the U.S. (the largest producer of greenhouse gases), will be felt in Africa, which doesn't produce nearly as much pollution. I knew that already, but it was a reminder that global warming will hurt others before it hurts us. And yet here I am, resisting change because it might cause a little pain to my lifestyle. (I'd also recommend the Times' series on congestion. Yesterday's article featured a woman whose commute is five hours a day!)

I'll report back after my vacation with how I feel I did overall. As for today, I'm still average. I've driven a little bit around Long Beach, but later I'm going to bike to the gym, which I don't have time to do when I'm working. After a spinning class, biking back I'm sure I will be feeling a little pain ... literally.