Pay-As-You-Go Solar

Here’s a FIRST in the Nation: The Berkeley City Council has approved a proposal by Mayor Tom Bates to make Berkeley the the first city in the nation to allow property owners to pay for energy efficiency improvements and solar system installation as a voluntary long-term assessment on their individual property tax bill.  The program is now in development, with a June 2008 target date for the launch of the pilot phase of the project.  

California has also approved a Feed In Tarriff system that pays individual homeowners a fee for providing rooftop electricity to the local utility. A similar law in Germany offers homeowners 10 times the wholesale price for electricity for a fixed number of years. This provides homeowners with enough money over time to finance their solar system and make a profit once it is paid for.

In Colorado, House Bill 1166 is seeking similar approval for Feed In Tarriff law where homeowners will be paid to feed excess electricity into the local utility, Xcel. 

Voting in the Classroom

Here’s a new way to bring students into the world of voting. At the University of Colorado a Business School document design class invited local businesses to get a free “make over.”

As a class project, the students would develop business materials for them including brochures and a web sales page. The professor was overwhelmed by the response, so she put each of the organizations up for a vote and invited the students to select their favorite.

You can see the results here Which organizations should our Document Design class partner with?

Cheyenne River E-Politics

In any political campaign, one of the biggest expense items is the cost of travel. It takes a lot of money for presidential candidates to travel around the U.S. trying to shake the hand of every potential voter.

In a dirt-poor part of the Lakota Nation - on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in South Dakota -  travel to distant parts of the reservation is equally expensive for those running for Tribal Office.

So, in what may be the first Votelink Town Hall of its kind, Phyllis Bald Eagle, a Lakota-Sioux from Cheyenne River, plans to include an on-going E-town Hall as part of her out-reach campaign. Along with traditional Pow Wows, telephone contact, and door-to-door campaigning, she’ll invite Natives throughout her district to reach out to her via the Internet.

Like most third-world countries, America’s Indian Reservations lack amenities that most U.S. citizens take for granted. Few homes have access to computers and the Internet. So community centers, like tribal schools and colleges, where there is access to the Internet, may also become centers of communications for the tribe.

A Native who lacks access to the Internet and wants to voice a concern, or suggest a solution, may be able  to have a student or staff member post their comments online. 

In building a bridge between traditional and modern ways, this experiment in electronic democracy, forged by a Native woman running for political office, may do more than provide a voice to those whose concerns often go unheard, it may also provide on-going insights and solutions to long-standing problems. 

The wisdom of the community it seems, is an untapped gold mine. 

Energy Future of a Small Town

Planning for a “world without oil,” the mayor of the mountain town of Nederland, CO, population 3,000, recently gathered the community online to take part in an Energy Futures planning process.

Residents were asked to act “as if” they had only one year to make a rapid change to renewable energy and energy conservation. When the 30-day community discussion was complete, Mayor Laura Farris affirmed that the proposed ideas were “completely do-able.”

Ideas included using Barker Dam as both a regional water supply system, but also as an aquafarm for fish. Beetle ravaged forests surrounding the town would be managed by town residents and sustainably cut timber would be converted into wood pellets for sale throughout the region. One participant even alerted the town to a wood pellet plant now up for sale in a neighboring state.

What this process shows is that when you tap into the wisdom of the community, those with expertise or experience become the town’s most valued resource … and best of all … it’s offered for free.

Benson, Oil and Big Bucks

Why Benson? It’s easy to read between the lines of the University of Colorado’s selection committee desire to have oilman Bruce Benson be their next president.

Benson is a Republican, ex-chair of the Colorado Republican Party, and a billion dollar fund-raiser. The CU Regents are betting that Benson-as-Fundraiser will bring in Big Bucks to the statewide system for research into nuclear power, carbon sequestration and biofuels. It’s a big gamble on the part of the regents that could fail. Here’s why.

Over the past few months, the Bush Administration has earmarked billions of dollars to fund “clean fuels” research for the oil, gas and nuclear industry. It’s their version of a Climate Solution program. However, a change in the White House in 2009, and a decision to follow the German Energy Model instead of fossil fuel futures could turn the CU Regents decision on its head.

A new administration could end up pouring billions of dollars into solar solutions. Government money for a so-called “clean” oil, gas, and nuclear technologies could be cut off leaving CU’s gamble for big bucks un-funded.

 
In the CU statewide system, however, the problem of Benson’s candidacy lies deeper than the search for money. It lies deeper than a division between candidates representing Democratic or Republican ideals.

More importantly, it’s is in making a choice between the future role of a state funded university in providing an academic environment for learning, or in its desire to become a perpetual fund-raising machine for attracting big research grants, like MIT.

Would the choice of Benson - who is rooted in oil and big business, not academia - mean that the search for money would drive the learning process? Shouldn’t the CU system - in fact, all state universities - be grounded in their founding ideals …offering students a world of ideas and passion-driven faculty in an active learning environment? Let’s bring on the other eight candidates and have a real choice for our common future.

Damanhur on ABC's Good Morning America

Back in 2002, I wrote a whole chapter about Damanhur, a sustainable city in northern Italy, in my book Rapid Evolution. The Damanhur Federation, numbering nearly 850 citizens, is comprised of 85 settlements in five different regions of Valchiusella, Italy, about 40 minutes northwest of Turin.

What makes Damanhur unique is its combination of free enterprise and self-sufficiency, the organization of its Federation into a model nation-state, and its highly evolved spiritual culture. 

The Damanhur Federation exists in a parallel world that interacts with modern Italian culture. Thirteen of their citizens sit on local village councils, and the mayor of one of their settlements is elected with the support of non-Damanhurian citizens of Vidracco, yet remains independent of Vidracco. Damanhur has its own Constitution and political system, and a three-tiered system of money that has recently become a subject of research by many European economists seeking to establish alternatives to traditional monetary systems.

Damanhurians use Eurodollars for external purchases outside of the community. Their CREDIT currency is exchanged internally. It continuously circulates, and is never accumulated, which means that when one provides a service they receive something in return.

I’ve described the Constitution of Damanhur and its 20 key principles in my book. You can also tune into Good Morning America to learn more. 

Subprime Crisis Has a Loan Solution

If you know someone who is facing foreclosure, then pass this column along. It holds hope and a loan solution for those in crisis. They can restructure their loan and get a 3%, 2%, or even 1% new loan …fixed for 30 years. The catch: they need to hold a steady job and be a single home owner.

Wall Street made billions off the backs of homeowners, says Bruce Marks, CEO of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA.com) who has come up with the low interest loan solution.

The Boston Globe, in honoring Marks as Bostonian of the Year in 2007 calls him a “pit bull” who has been able to stand up for the Average Joes and, incredibly, get some of the biggest banks to bend.

The banks are also bending, in part, because the cities are putting pressure on them to find a quick solution. A home that ends up in foreclosure may be at risk of theft: in Southfield, Michigan, for example, thieves target abandon homes and strip them of appliances and COPPER.

Homes that are abandoned, boarded up, lack maintenance of the yard, or sit empty depress the value of the neighborhood and drive down tax revenues for cities. Cities have a reason to act on behalf of homeowners.

Bruce Marks has also come to their rescue because he believes that homeowners facing foreclosure are the victims of mortgage brokers, lenders, rating agencies and investment bankers who have made off with hundreds of billions of dollars in the Subprime scheme.

What NACA does is reduce the loan amount to something that is affordable to the homeowner.  They determine your annual income, set up a budget for you that includes your basic expenses, plus $200 for unexpected expenses. The dollar amount that is left will be the monthly payment for the new loan. The interest rate is then fixed at 3, 2, or even 1% if needed, for 30 years, to match that amount. In setting up a restructured loan solution, NACA has gotten Countrywide, Wells Fargo and others to go along with them.

If you know someone in need, here are the people to contact. To learn more, go the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America or the Hope Now Alliance at 888-995-HOPE.

Prisons for Internet Pedophiles

Prisons are a growth industry. In states like California, they also account for about 20% of the state’s energy use. Like a compact city for 5,000, prisons are the carrot that a “get tough on crime” member of Congress can bring back to constituents. They suck up a lot of money and energy … and they create jobs.

Enroute home from the Conference of Mayors in Washington DC, while waiting for my luggage to arrive at the Denver airport – it took almost an hour – I talked with the fellow standing next to me. He is an architect and his job is designing federal prisons. From a global perspective, America might look like one big prison farm. We now have more people incarcerated than any other country in the world.

The Children’s Defense Fund says that race and poverty are the major factors in what they call the Cradle to Prison Pipeline. In response, they have launched a campaign to stop the funneling of tens of thousands of youth, down life paths that lead to arrest, conviction, incarceration, and in some cases, death.

They point to grim statistics: a black boy born in 2001 has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime; a Latino boy has a 1 in 6 chance, and a White boy, a 1 in 17 chance. Poverty is the largest driving force behind the Pipeline crisis, with almost 13 million, or 1 in 6 children, in America living in poverty, almost half of whom (5.5 million) live in extreme poverty.

But is poverty REALLY the issue, or is it driven by private industry, the prison guard workforce, and federal and state policies which demand mandatory prison sentences for many crimes which could be best solved by other means, such as counseling and treatment?

While waiting for our luggage, I learned that the U.S. plans to build seven new prisons. Tough on Crime advocates have discovered a new population for their ever expanding prison industry: Internet Pedophiles.

This new “client” offers a perfect business profile. They are generally between the ages of 32 to 38 years of age. When they are incarcerated, they receive “treatment” for eight years, and then are released to society. To the business minded, it’s a perfect business. It’s a prison with a revolving door, and a steady stream of clients.

It may be also more of a White boy crime. Thus the isolation is necessary so they won’t get brutalized or killed by the standard prison population.

In America, only 40,000 Black males earn a bachelor’s degree each year, but 1 in 3 Black men ages 20-29 is under correctional supervision or control. The high incarceration rate of young black men is having an unexpected consequence in the black community. As the prison population rises, it has become increasingly difficult for young black women to find a marriage partner. Like Europe in the Dark Ages, these women may have children with men to whom they are distantly related, thus compromising the genetic makeup of future generations. This is an emerging problem; one that won’t be talked about for years.

In the meantime, only an hour’s flight south of Miami, Cuba, which has lived under a U.S. embargo for more than 45 years and suffered the effects of extreme poverty, has a nearly 98% literacy rate for all citizens. Cuba offers free education, from cradle through college. Able to leap the high barriers of the embargo, Cuba trades its medical doctors and intellectual capital worldwide.

As the Cuban model shows, it’s not poverty that’s driving young black men into prison, it’s about misplaced policies and making a profit.

Disaster Economics in Congress

Senate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) may have lost some women’s votes for Hillary Clinton when she acceded to Republican demands to toss out unemployment benefits and food stamps to those most in need.

Women, we’re told, are naturally inclined to help those most vulnerable in society. While grandmother Pelosi told reporters that while she is not totally pleased with the $150 Billion Economic Stimulus Bill, she “knows” that it will help stimulate the economy … “And if it does not,” she added, “then there will be more to come.”

What Pelosi could have done is suggested that the now $150 billion tax cut … ($5 billion was probably added from the now defunct rail project from Washington DC to Dulles Airport) … should fund a Civillian Conservation Corps similar to the CCC of the 1930s. Green collar workers could be hired across the U.S. to weatherize homes and trade out old, inefficient furnaces.

Someone, in Congress, should have seen this meltdown coming a long time ago, and set up a blueprint for rapid mobilization for energy security through a 21st Century CCC.

Santa Barbara Sues California

In an ironic twist of fate, the State of California - which recently sued the federal government to force a decision about whether it can impose tougher emission standards for cars and light trucks – is now being sued by the City of Santa Barbara for a related issue.

According to Marty Blum, the Mayor of Santa Barbara, community leaders listened to a speaker talk about the need to become more energy efficient. They were so energized by the talk that they went right out and changed city building codes to require a higher standard than that required by the State. Here’s the problem: the State of California has a law on the books that locks in the building code as the defacto standard.

To go above it, the City must sue. What’s wrong with this picture?

Here’s another warped picture. Some of the best athletes in the world are making plans to attend the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer; however, a win could also mean a loss. An early drop out may be Haile Gebreselassie, the star of Ethiopia’s track team who won two gold medals in the 10,000 meters and holds the world record in the marathon. Says Haile’s manager Jos Hermens, it’s great if he wins, but it could also mean the end of his career.

Because Olympic level athletes breathe in so much oxygen, a victory gained in Beijing’s polluted air could be like walking away with Miner’s Lung. According to Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, a Boulder bicyclist, who competed in a 30-mile race in Beijing, only eight of the 47 contestants in the men’s race finished. Like him, they suffered from breathing problems and dropped out.

The Tax Cut GAP

The $145 Billion economic stimulus tax cut proposed by President Bush has become temporarily stuck in Congress. While everyone agrees something must be done, here is where the GAP between the two parties lies.

Bush wants to pass an across the board tax cut so that everyone benefits. The Democrats want the tax cut to be narrowly applied to the nearly 50 million low income people in America who do not pay income tax, but do pay into the social security fund. It’s a safety net that will also stimulate the economy.The Dems want them to get the full rebate, with the expectation that they will spend it on necessary food and housing.

The economy is in urgent need of recovery, former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin warned the 250 mayors attending the Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington DC.

The economy is slowing down, the jobless rate is going up, the foreclosure meltdown is spreading across all sectors of society, affecting everyone, from the middle class and wealthy to low income families. People are tightening their belts and preparing for the worst.

Rubin, a hero to many mayors, is remembered as a member of the Clinton Administration team who managed to bring the Federal budget into balance in the 1990s and even create a surplus.

Next week, the deficit-driven Bush Administration may try to point to the successful bi-partisan passage of the Energy Bill in December. However, the bill contains a staggering “welfare” stimulus of $280 billion for big coal. The goal of $280 billion in corporate welfare is meant to stimulate Wall Street investment in techology. The goal is to drive investment capital into development of new, unproven technology for carbon sequestration for coal-fired power plants.

By contrast, the bill contains a pittance for cities: $10 billion (still unfunded) to provide for block grants to promote energy conservation and weatherization strategies for America’s cities.

All in all, there seems to be a deficit of creative ideas in the upper reaches of government about how to solve and fund solutions at the local level.

While Bush makes deals to fund BIG oil, coal and nuclear solutions, the global economy is rapidly shifting under the feet of the average American citizen. Currently, $270 billion a year is going out of the U.S. to pay for foreign oil. Money that moves out of the country is also money that is not invested in local jobs, education, healthcare or infrastructure.

Until money and policy combine to make a green transition happen, we’d better get ready for the next Oil Shock.

Dependence on foreign oil, the mayors are told over lunch, is expected to rise from 59% today, to 65% by 2030.

Talk about an oil addiction…. Unless new leadership takes us in a new direction in 2009, we might as well bring out the lifeboats. However, if we wait until 2030, there might not be any birds left to guide us back to land.

U.S. Mayors Take the Lead

What a difference a year makes. Last year at this time, only a few hundred mayors had signed the Climate Protection Agreement. Today, more than 780 have signed on, committing their communities to take direct action to reduce their carbon emissions.

Mayors are idea people. They also know how to delegate. When they find an idea they like, they know how to activate a local network to make things happen. And unlike big business, they share BEST practices. If something works for them, they talk about it.

This week, the U.S. Conference of Mayors hosts its annual winter conference in Washington DC. Among the hundreds in attendance, there are 31 mayors showing up from California including San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom, 15 from Florida, and 2 from Colorado including Colorado Springs’ Mayor Lionel Rivera, and Mayor John Hickenlooper representing the City of Denver.

The City of Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie is also here. I’ll join the mayor in co-presenting the results of the Energy Futures program we ran last November on Votelink.

New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg will also show up, not to announce his candidacy for U.S. president, but to accept the Conference President’s Award for Leadership on Global Climate Protection.

Bloomberg is a strong advocate of the carbon tax. It’s an advocacy that requires both political and personal courage. It calls for a change in the tax system so that coal can be taxed at a rate that shows its environmental impact, thus forcing the cost of electricity generated by coal-fired power plants to sharply rise. The money collected from the tax can then be redirected toward renewable energy and energy conservation solutions.

Along with a carbon tax, these mayors could also take the bold step of asking Congress to remove subsidies from the oil and gas industry. Rising gas prices could solve congestion problems in most cities by driving transportation policies toward mass transit options, bikeways and pedestrian friendly walkways.

Once implemented, a carbon tax and removal of subsidies from the oil and gas industry – in incremental steps – would take us more than 50% of the way toward a Zero Emissions world. If we’re talking Save the World politics here, then it will take uncommon courage to lead the world back from the tipping point … the point of no return.

Spend $145 Billion to Save the Earth?

If every action has consequences, then consider the consequences of this decision-point: Should the US invest $145 Billion in a tax cut to stall recession? OR spend the money to restore Social Goals Worldwide and Restore the Earth?  The additional annual expenditure needed for this urgent global goal is $190 billion says Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 3.0, Mobilizing to Save Civilization.

Put differently, should we use the money buy a “happy meal” to stave off the need to tighten our belt, or reach out a hand to help the rest of the world?

This morning, I’m in Washington DC. Lester Brown is joining me for breakfast and we’ll talk about this and other mobilization strategies. While no one in the Bush White House or Congress – really knows how Americans would spend the $145 billion, here is how Les would spend it. If you agree, let your rep in Congress know.

Basic Social Goals (in billions of dollars)

$10  Universal primary education

$ 4   Eradication of adult illiteracy (a population reduction solution)

$ 6   School lunch programs for 44 poorest countries

$ 4   Assistance to preschool children & pregnant women in these 44 countries

$33  Universal basic health care

$ 3   Closing the condom gap

Earth Restoration Goals

$ 6   Planting trees to reduce flooding & conserve soil

$20  Planting trees to sequester carbon

$24  Protecting topsoil on cropland

$ 9   Restoring rangelands

$13  Restoring fisheries

$31  Protecting biological diversity

$10  Stabilizing water tables

Grand Total:  $190 Billion

If choice has consequences, imagine how you might feel if you just contributed $190 billion to save the Earth? You might just go out and celebrate.

 VOTE and comment on it here.

Cheap Green vs Local Green

News that WalMart now has 60,000 vendors supplying “green” products - makes me wonder whether this volume purchase of low-cost consumer goods will shift the marketplace toward green goods, or simply drive small business that can’t compete in the high volume, low price world of WalMart … out of business.

A better option, I’m told, is to have the focus shift from green to local. When making a cooperative purchase on a single item - say compact fluorescent lightbulbs - it’s better to purchase locally - where possible - to stablize the local economy, than shop globally to find the best savings.

Buying from “green” vendors at the lowest price simply means that both jobs and pollution end up in China. Local business can’t compete.  

Quilt Wars in China

Could a simple bed quilt be accused of stopping progress in today’s China? In Shanghai, apartment dwellers whose windows face south have a daily habit of hanging their bed quilts outdoors in the sunshine. They bring them in at night.

For those city dwellers whose windows face north, the only option is to take the bed quilts downstairs to the sunny side of the building, tie a rope between two trees and let their quilts take a “sun bath.” This has been a long standing tradition.

Tradition dies hard in China. People have their favorite trees and when a quilt is hung out in the sun, it doesn’t matter that a new driver is trying to drive their car through the space between the trees where the quilt now hangs. 

It’s a daily battle, explains a Chinese friend from Shanghai, as we drive down from a day of skiing in the Colorado high country. As a new driver herself, she tells me that when she drives, she never talks. “There is so much I have to notice.”

Quilt wars aside, I have also learned that so many young people have moved from the countryside into urban areas that there are many ghost towns in rural China. 

The only occupants of the ghost towns are the elderly. When one of them dies, there is no one able to bury them. Someone must dig the grave, but all the young men have moved to the city. It is against custom for women to dig a grave. So the old men must do what they can to bury the dead. 

In addition to shifting cultural patterns as China modernizes, another American icon is shifting the eating patterns of city dwellers. There are now more than 100 McDonalds fast food restaurants in China. My Chinese friends tell me that the country has now become the world leader in flipping and serving burgers and fries.

Like the “quilt” trees of Shanghai, tropical forests are rapidly being convered into paper and pasture land for a seemingly unstoppable, super-sized world economy.