Doonesbury Whiffs on White Roofs

Today's edition of Doonesbury uses white roofs as part of the joke, and while I'm excited for the concept to reach a new audience ... the comic gets their economic benefits wrong, severely underestimating their impact.

If white roofs didn't deliver year-round energy savings, why would anyone do it? Yet that's exactly what Garry Trudeau's character Mike Doonesbury mistakenly claims.

As Mother Jones' Kiera Butler detailed last year, white roofs are a net energy win no matter where you live:

The latest white-roofs study used computer simulations to figure out what might happen if every roof in every city of the world were white. The finding: An average temperature reduction of .7 degrees Fahrenheit. Good news in general, but here’s the problem for homeowners: Since white roofs cool buildings all year round, some people have pointed out that folks with white roofs in northern climates might end up cranking the thermostat higher than their neighbors with dark-colored roofs during winter months.

Roofs of the future might solve this problem: Last year, a team of MIT researchers came up with a prototype of high-tech tiles that change color based on the air temperature. A cool idea for sure, but unfortunately the smart tiles aren't on the market yet. So till they are, should you spring for a white roof even if you live in the chilly north? Hashem Akbari, a senior scientist and leader of the Heat Island Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, says yes, since AC typically uses a lot more energy than heat. "The wintertime penalties are only a fraction of summer time savings."

White roofs can save up to 20% of a building's energy costs on a hot day, as Bill Clinton recently wrote in Newsweek. The further south you go, the more in energy savings you'll see from having one - but even in Maine, you'll see a net benefit. Makes sense - not only does AC cost more than heat, but deflecting strong summer sun is a bigger benefit than absorbing much weaker winter sun.

And above & beyond the net energy benefit, white roofs would cut the urban heat island effect and take some of the edge off global warming. So why aren't we putting people to work painting every roof white?

Harris Teeters Toward Local Foods

The Harris Teeter in Ballston has recently started highlighting "Fresh off the Farm" fruits & vegetables. Each item is identified with its local farm and the prices are no higher than usual:

So far, so good. But I noticed the blueberries also got a "from your regional neighbor" tag, which is supposed to be for produce shipped six hours or less. They're from "California Giant Berry Farms," which, call me cynical, but sounds suspiciously non-local. On top of that, the blueberries are marked "Product of Canada," so who knows how many passport stamps they've earned:

So while on the whole this is progress, as always, shop smart ... shop S-Mart.

Don't Be a Menace While Drinking Your Juice

Regular readers of The Green Miles know I'm not big on pushing lifestyle changes - I mostly stick to things that make it greener, more fun, lower energy-consumptive & less stuff-intensive to do the things you already do. Switch to wind power, eat local organic meat, drive a Prius, give Christmas cookies instead of sweaters, etc. But given that my experiment with green deodorant remains one of my all-time most popular posts, I know there's a great thirst out there for tales of trying out more radical change.

My friend Lauren Dunn, a producer with NBC4 here in Washington, recently tried a juice cleanse diet. Health was her motivation, but given her past vegetarianism, how many questions I get about diets like this & how entertaining her posts are, I thought I'd link them up for The Green Miles readers:

• Part I: "My juice arrives Tuesday, July 26, and I'll will report back in three days. For now, wish me luck -- and if you happen to see me passed out on the floor, don't steal my wallet."
• Part II: "Feeling pretty energetic, I went to my boxing class that night. But when the instructor commented on my technique, I full on bit his head off. (Note to self, do not snip at professional boxers.) I wanted to scream: 'I've only been drinking juice for three days!! Leave me the hell alone!'"
• Part III: "The whole process was truly a lesson in discipline. No, I didn’t always feel so fabulous. Yes, my sanity was put into question multiple times. But as I come out on the other side of this, I truly have reaped the benefits."

Lauren's early posts reminded me of a quote from baseball Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, who struggled with his weight as he transitioned from everyday player to bench-warming manager. One year he tried the grapefruit diet and said, "It's OK for the first few days. Then you get a little tired of grapefruit. And after about a week, you want to go find a grapefruit farmer and blow his head off." 

But the short duration seemed to keep any homicidal tendencies from growing within Lauren. And the juice seemed to convince her it would be easy to keep doing the things she liked while making them even healthier (say, replacing cheese with anything plant-based). So, #winning.

What Lauren doesn't mention: It was The Green Miles' influence that got her to try meat again after 10 years of vegetarianism! That's right! FEEL THE BURN, VEGAN TREEHUGGERS. Don't you feel betrayed for having read my posts all these years? I feel like Vince McMahon revealing himself to be "The Higher Power" who'd been screwing over Stone Cold Steve Austin. 

(OK, so I don't care if my friends are vegetarians & it was actually the delicious smell of my Dinosaur BBQ Sauce that got Lauren to want to try meat. But let me enjoy acting like a villain for once.)

Balconies & SUVs: People Love Things They Never Use

My last two apartments have been in buildings in which every unit a balcony or patio. I can see about 60 balconies from my current parking lot, and if I look up on three different nice summer evenings, I might see one balcony in use one time. I've always been amazed at how all these people paid whatever little bit extra to move into a building with a balcony, almost always populating it with some sort of outdoor furniture, then absolutely never use it.

A friend mentioned this weekend she'd soon be in the market for a new car and asked if I had any recommendations. (Everyone always assumes I'll say a Toyota Prius. Does this happen to Emeril? If people ask what they should make for dinner, do they assume he'll say andouille sausage?)

I asked what she expected to use the car for. She said she mostly makes a very short drive to work here in the DC area, short trips around town, and that she needed something to get to the mountains for snowboarding.

I said, "How many times a year do you drive to the mountains to snowboard?"

"Once. Maybe," she replied.

"Well, maybe rather than paying twice as much up-front and twice as much in gas for an SUV, you could get something more affordable, more fun to drive, and easier to park," I said. "Then when you DO go to the mountains, you can take a tiny fraction of the thousands you'll be saving and rent the biggest, baddest, most tricked out SUV you can find."

I suggested checking out the Ford Focus (including the hybrid), Volkswagen's diesel models (great mileage but not necessarily better emissions), and yes, the Prius, still a great car at a low price compared to other hybrids.

Merchants of Doubt Now Attacking Polar Bears

I usually try to keep my day job with the National Wildlife Federation & my personal blog separate, but I have a new post at the NWF blog I wanted to share.

The same polluter front groups that defended cigarette companies & attacked climate scientists are now targeting polar bears. Journalists, rather than trying to determine the truth, are instead reporting to the controversy & leaving it there.

Mark Warner Thinks Disabled Seniors, Not Big Oil, Should Sacrifice to Balance Budget

Sen. Mark Warner's "Gang of Six" budget plan would've repealed the CLASS Act, part of the 2010 health reform law designed to help seniors who need help with daily tasks such as bathing and dressing. Who does Sen. Warner think should not be asked to sacrifice? Wildly-profitable oil companies:

On Thursday, a handful of Senators wrote a letter (PDF) to President Obama that stated, “as you continue your negotiations, we urge you to remember the oil and gas industry is part of the solution.” Or, in other words, don’t single out big oil companies and their taxpayer subsidies as a way to reduce the deficit.

These nine Senators—six Republicans and three Democrats—have received $7.1 million in oil and gas industry cash during their career in Congress, according to our analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics. [...]

Ending oil subsidies didn’t make it into the tentative default deal reached over the weekend, but as Congress looks to create a commission to enact further deficit reduction measures, it’ll be important to watch what influence Big Oil and other industries will exert on the process.

Sen. Warner himself has received a smaller amount of oil & gas money relative to his oil state co-signers. But it's interesting to note the letter he signed onto tries to pass off as fact the oil & gas industry's claim to be "supporting over 9 million jobs." Just 2 years ago, the oil & gas industry was only claiming to employ less than 1.8 million people & support 4 million more. So either the oil & gas industry's share of jobs has shot up by more than a third in the midst of nationwide stagnant employment, or they now feel the need to fudge their numbers because clean energy employs more than 2.7 million Americans, 50% more than the oil & gas industry had claimed 2 years ago.

After his Gang of Six failed, Sen. Warner now wants a seat on the debt commission. Our Democratic leaders shouldn't pick someone who'll be fighting to protect Big Oil subsidies while trying to slash our social safety net.

The Washington Post's Selective Transit Austerity

$140 million for the Columbia Pike streetcar that would give people a cheap, less-polluting way to get to work and draw people to a sorely under-utilized area? A waste of money! Spend it on something else instead! Anything! Like, uh, how about education? Clearly, if you support the Columbia Pike streetcar, you must hate kids!

$110 million to upgrade just one road interchange for drivers (Route 29 & Gallows Road in Merrifield), while leaving it insufficient for pedestrians and bike commuters? Still waiting to hear from the Washington Post editorial board on how that could be better spent on schools. Should be any day now.

My point is not that Columbia Pike streetcar is more worthy of funds than the Route 29 interchange. My point is that maybe at a time of crazy low interest rates when a lot of people need work, we should be doing every project we can. By the time we need to start paying it back, the economy will have recovered - and if it hasn't, we're screwed anyway.

And if you have to resort to "but what if we spent it on free health care for puppies instead?" to make your argument, maybe you should re-think your case.

Welcome to Your New Climate: July Shatters DC Heat Records

When I first moved to the DC area, one of the things I appreciated most was that the summer evenings were absolutely perfect. No need to grab a sweatshirt or a blanket before heading out to the backyard or Westover Beer Garden - DC summer evenings have been just right.

But the summer of 2011 has been different. No backyards, no beer gardens, just an endless search for the safety of air conditioning.

First, let's talk about the record-hot days. In today's Washington Post, Capital Weather Gang's Jason Samenow details the carnage:

Relentless and punishing, July’s heat was unrivaled in 140 years of Washington, D.C., weather record-keeping. The July temperature averaged 84.5 degrees at Reagan National Airport — Washington’s official weather station — more than a degree above July 2010 and July 1993, which previously held the mark for hottest month.

The high temperature was at least 90 on 25 occasions, the most on record.

And what about the nights? So much for just right - July nights were just plain hot:

There were seven days in July with low temperatures of 80 or higher. During the entire period from 1871 to 1930, only three such days occurred, all in 1876.

The Washington Post deserves credit for daring to speak the truth - that heat waves like this are exactly what climate scientists have predicted as a consequence of global warming fueled by man-made carbon pollution. While global temperature data for July will take time to compile, we know June was the 7th-hottest on record and 2011 has been the 11th-hottest year on record so far.

As for me, maybe I gave up on New England weather too soon. Thanks to global warming - still accelerating unabated thanks to Congress' refusal to lead at home or abroad - those perfect nights can now be found somewhere north of here.

Photo via Flickr's Tom Faulkner Photographs

Today at 5pm: Join the FDL Book Salon with Amanda Little

I'll be moderating FireDogLake's Book Salon today with Amanda Little, author of Power Trip. Hope you can join us!

Shocking News: I Agree With Richmond Times-Dispatch On BRAC

Huge traffic changes are coming to Alexandria thanks to the Defense Department's Base Realignment & Closure Commission (BRAC), but little has been done to figure out how 6,400 federal employees will get to & from Alexandria’s Mark Center.

The conservative Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial board rightly heaps a share of the BRAC blame on the slouched shoulders of Gov. Bob McDonnnell (R-VA) and his fellow Republicans who control a majority of Virginia's state government:

Virginia has known for years that base consolidation would bring more workers here. But it has failed to get ready, because state leaders — almost exclusively Republicans — have failed to take the necessary step: raising the gasoline tax, whose value has been greatly eroded by inflation.

To be sure: Contrary to the impression given by certain Democrats, raising the gasoline tax is not the only step the state should take to address road woes. Land-use planning needs an overhaul (Gov. Tim Kaine started work on that). Zoning rules need relaxing, and telecommuting, flextime and similar measures need encouraging.

Metro is adding a bus line, but that project is being supported by the Defense Department & City of Alexandria, not the state. And considering Gov. McDonnell waffled as his Congressional Republican friends like Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) tried to slash Metro's budget, McDonnell may actually be doing less than nothing.

New Report Sheds Light on Arlington Skunk Scarcity

A few years back, the Washington Post asked why skunks flunk Arlington. The County's new natural heritage resource report (PDF) takes an in-depth look at a long list of species & their relationships with Arlington, concluding Arlington just isn't good skunk habitat:

Striped Skunk Mephitis mephitis nigra. The striped skunk is well known, but rarely encountered in Arlington. Historical records include a single early record from 1878 (Four Mile Run) and a later record in 1946 from N. Nelson St. The absence of skunks from the local environment is not unexpected. Based on dietary need, skunks primarily inhabit open fields, old field meadows, thick brush land, pastures and farmland. Past environmental changes in Arlington have eliminated natural meadows and farmland and replaced them largely with an urban landscape or mature forest. Over the course of the wildlife inventory, a number of citizen reports were received claiming to have smelled an odor of skunk. A number of these reports were later dismissed as unverifiable or mistaken as male red fox scent. However, two reported observations within the period of 2003-2006 were followed up by interviews. In both cases, the reports were deemed credible. No contemporary documentation exists in the form of photos, bones, fur or scat. In addition, no road kills have been reported within the last ten years by two different reporting agencies. Arlington National Cemetery may provide the best remaining habitat for skunks in Arlington. Striped skunks remain more common in the less developed portions of Fairfax and Prince William Counties. Current Status: Rare, does not occur every year.

One other interesting note from the report - get ready for more deer in South Arlington.

Arlington Passes Strip Mall Preservation Act

Rest easy, strip malls of Arlington. The Arlington County Board has acted to let developers know if they try to turn you into housing, they can expect ... well, probably just a sternly-worded letter, but still:

County Board members on July 9 unanimously adopted an initial “historic resources inventory list,” which ranks nearly 400 properties constructed between 1909 and 1962 based on how important staff and a consultant believe it is to shield them from demolition. It is an effort, County Board Chairman Chris Zimmerman said, to make up for lost time. 

“We didn’t have a great tradition of preservation in Arlington,” he said, particularly since the county has a limited number of properties more than a century old.

Never let a lack of actual historic properties stop you from declaring that whatever properties you have handy are historic.

The first phase of the effort focused on only a very narrow slice of property types in Arlington: garden apartments, shopping centers and commercial properties more than 50 years old. Leventhal said those types of properties are most vulnerable to redevelopment.

As the National Trust for Historic Preservation points out, in many cases the greenest building is the one that's already built. But saying properties more than 50 years old are most vulnerable to redevelopment is like saying cars more than 10 years old are most vulnerable to being traded in. Even if it's still functional, does it still meet your needs? Will it be a slight to the historic value of TheGreenMilesMobile if I need a roomier car when I have kids?

From Fort C.F. Smith to the Key Bridge, I understand the value of preserving truly historic places & sites. But in a place like Arlington that's nearly 100% built-out, historic preservation doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's a choice between maintaining existing structures and the best available use of that land in redevelopment - often the choice between a short, single-purpose building that can serve a smaller number of people and a tall, multi-purpose building that can serve a much larger number of people.

This comment to my original post is the essence of why the sustainable development advocates at the Urban Land Institute thought my original post was from The Onion. The comment discusses the Colonial Village Shopping Center strip mall as if it was the Pyramide du Louvre & bashes "misguided," "pious transit-related development. It also ignores the inherent choice - that every time we give a one-story strip mall & parking lot the cover of preservation, we're choosing to block something else potentially more beneficial.

And let's face it: Arlington was a quiet bedroom community before transit-related development revitalized it. Actually, I don't even know if "revitalized" is the even right word, which implies we were this vital at some point in the past - Arlington is more lively in 2011 than it's ever been, and the graph is trending straight up.

Here's the most annoying contradiction: Does anyone fighting new multi-family housing near Metro want to give up the added value of their homes, wildly inflated by their proximity to these vibrant neighborhoods? Of course not.

So what's next?

Still down the road is a similar effort for the roughly 10,000 residential properties the county government believes have historic value.

Arlington has 207,627 residents with about 90,000 households & around 60% of residents live in multi-family units. I emailed a friend who works in local real estate, "Arlington County thinks there are '10,000 residential properties' with 'historic value'? Come on. How many houses are there in Arlington total?"

He replied simply, "10,005."

Key Smokefree Advocate Making Political Comeback?

I hadn't heard smokefree advocate Brandon Bell's name since he was primaried out of office as part of a Republican purge of moderates in 2007. But today, Ben Tribbett reports he could be mounting a political comeback, considering a run for Virginia State Senate an independent.

Given the popularity of Virginia's smoking ban in bars & restaurants (59% of Americans now want smoking banned in all public places), the support for clean air & public health that made him so unpopular in today's extremist Republican Party could make him a rock-solid centrist choice.

Drivers Oppose The Best Policy To Speed Their Commutes

Studies have shown that while people like to complain about traffic, most long-haul commuters don't do anything to change their drives. Today's Washington Post article is misleadingly headlined
Traffic science struggles to keep cars flowing on highways in D.C. and elsewhere - we know exactly how to keep traffic flowing, but drivers would rather pay less to sit in gridlock:

First, we don’t hate spending time in our cars as much as we pretend to. How do I know? “Because building more roads doesn’t improve traffic flow,” says Chris Barrett, a Virginia Tech professor who constructs traffic modeling systems and was involved in the Los Alamos effort. “If you decrease the amount of time it takes to travel a certain distance to work, people just move farther away from their offices [for larger yards and cheaper housing, instead of staying put to reduce their commutes]. It changes behavior in a negative way.”

Moreover, people have strongly resisted the best congestion-fighting tool that can be immediately implemented. Every traffic expert I spoke with pointed out the runaway success of London’s congestion pricing system. Drivers who want to enter the heart of the city during busy times have to pay 10 pounds — about $16. The system has made a huge difference in reducing congestion, and the city is using the extra revenue to renovate the subway and add buses.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to adopt a similar strategy in 2007, but the state government killed it. A congestion tax has never gotten anywhere in the D.C. area, which one recent survey found was first in the nation as measured by hours wasted stuck in traffic.

That's not a failure of science. That's a failure of political will.

So instead of gridlock-busting congestion pricing that could be used to fix Metro, we get Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) trying to make it look like he's doing something by pushing terrible ideas like the Outer Beltway and Charlottesville Bypass that will cost taxpayers enormous sums of money without easing traffic.

What If Your Family Tightened Its Belt GOP-Style?

Claiming that cutting millions from public health & wildlife protections is about "belt-tightening" while ignoring the multi-trillion dollar Bush tax cuts is like telling your kids you're cutting their allowance but keeping the Porsche.

I'm glad the House Sustainable Energy & Environment Coalition is taking a stand.

The Green Miles, Now Available In Tie Form

Unfortunately, The (green/grey) Miles is currently listed as sold out at TheKnottery.com.

I For One Welcome Our New Bunny Overlords

If you follow me on Twitter or FourSquare, you know I've been amazed at how many rabbits have been hanging out in East Falls Church this year. It's rare that I can walk down Sycamore Street to EFC Metro without spotting at least one, if not 3 or 4.

ArlNow.com reports it's part of a regional bunny boom:

“It is indeed a boom year for rabbits in the county,” [Arlington County Parks spokesman Nathan] Spillman said, “Rabbit populations here are cyclical and about every seven or eight years you see a large spike in the population followed by a relatively steep (and quick) decrease as the boom attracts predators like foxes and hawks which bring the population down… It’s likely the decline will start to become noticeable as early as this November.” 

According to a just-released inventory of wildlife in Arlington (PDF), the rabbit population in Arlington (made up mostly of Eastern Cottontails, pictured) typically moves in cycles with the population of its primary predator, the fox.

And they're quite accustomed to people. The photo above was the second one I took - the first one I accidentally had the flash on. The bunny in the foreground didn't run away at the flash, just perked up its ears for a minute, then went back to munching clover.

I Think I May Be A Corn Farmer

These started growing on the edge of my patio a couple of weeks ago and are now waist high. Are they corn?

Why Don't Feds Have Telework Option on Extremely Hot Days?

Federal government workers in the DC area are allowed to telework when it snows. Why aren't they encouraged to do so on extreme heat days?

I asked Federal News Radio's Amy Morris about the federal government's heat wave telework policy. She looked into it and tweeted that there's no broad policy, only that, "The office manager has discretion depending on office conditions, etc."

If federal government workers were allowed to telework in the most extreme heat (say, on days when the heat index is forecast to be over 105), there would be several real benefits:

• Air quality. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments is forecasting unhealthy air for the next few days thanks to a combination of heat and ozone pollution. With about 103,000 federal workers telecommuting in 2008, that's potentially a large number of tailpipes off the road.
• Easing transportation strain. On extreme heat days, cars break down more often and Metro cars without air conditioning become unbearable hot cars. 
• More productive workers. If you have to start your day drenched in sweat, you're not going to be at your most productive - you're going to be watching the clock until you can go home and drink a gin & tonic the size of your head. Teleworkers, on the other hand, are scientifically proven to be more productive than their commuting counterparts.

Adapting to DC's oppressive summer heat isn't a new concept - it's why Congress takes an August recess. But at some point our attitude shifted from taking summer siestas to trying to show nature who's boss. Anyone who's gotten a whiff of fellow passengers on Metro lately can tell you how well that's working out.

Of course, our climate is now even hotter than it was in DC's early days, and it's getting worse fast. Globally, June was 1.60 degrees F hotter than the 20th century average. And considering Congress hasn't curbed America's carbon emissions and the world has copied our inaction, we're hurtling towards the most extreme changes.

Letting feds telework on the hottest of hot days won't protect DC from global warming, but it would be an easy step to making it a bit more tolerable.

UPDATE: Federal News Radio posts this memo on the heat from the Office of Personnel Management to agency heads, which advises managers to keep employees hydrated but says nothing about teleworking.

Dirty Distinction: Virginia 14th on Power Plant Pollution List

Virginia comes in 14th-worst on a new ranking of states with the most toxic air pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants, according to an analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council, released jointly with Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida have the highest levels of toxic power plant pollution.

The Environmental Protection Agency is planning new rules to limit the toxic pollutants such as mercury, but those limits are coming under attack from friends of coal & oil in Congress:

The EPA estimates that the reductions of toxic pollution required by the pending “Mercury and Air Toxics” standard would save as many as 17,000 lives every year by 2015 and prevent up to 120,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms. The safeguards also would avoid more than 12,000 emergency room and hospital visits and prevent 850,000 lost work days every year. These standards are expected to be finalized in November; the agency is taking public comments on its proposal until Aug. 4, 2011.

“Coal pollution is killing Americans,” said Lynn Ringenberg, MD, of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “It is America’s biggest source of toxic air pollution. Air toxics from coal-fired power plants cause cancer, birth defects, and respiratory illness. Just one of those air toxics, mercury, damages the developing brains of fetuses, infants, and small children. It robs our children of healthy neurological development and native intelligence.

“Poisonous power threatens the health of our kids and families. As a pediatrician for over thirty years, I urge us absolutely to support the EPA’s efforts to reduce the health threat from coal.”

Tell your members of Congress & the EPA to back strong mercury pollution standards.