The Distasteful Truth

In my post, “Appropriate Technology and The Art Of Being Poor,” I pointed out the role of “appropriate” technologies in addressing the energy, economic and environmental problems the world is now facing. These problems have been caused by large-scale expansion of Western industrialization and Western, hyper-capitalist economies. My point was that the technological solutions being devised for use in the Third World tend to be simple and cheap, and do not require lots of resources. But simple, low-tech solutions are frequently overlooked when policy-makers and technologists in the First World try to devise “appropriate technologies” for First World problems.

This is because we in the First World, and especially in America, can't get used to the idea that we need to live more simply. “Simple living is for poor people!” – or so say many. Too many of us still believe that we are entitled to a high-tech lifestyle, replete with all the things anyone might want, and that if that lifestyle is threatened by environmental or energy crises, at least we deserve the best, most high-tech solution to such a problem. Too many of us can't swallow the distasteful truth that we have become a poorer nation and a poorer world, and that we're going to have to start learning to live decently as poor people.

I saw a couple of examples of this over the last several days. First, the State of California recently decided to undertake construction of a high-speed rail line running from San Diego through Sacramento and San Francisco. This initiative began as a proposition written by the state government and approved by California voters during the last election. The post-election statement from the California High-Speed Rail Authority reads as follows:

“History will remember this night, when Californians demanded a new transportation system for California's 21^st century travel needs. Thanks to tonight’s vote, a state-of-the-art, new transportation choice will link every major city in the state and move people and products like never before. The citizens of California have put the 21st century golden spike in the ground with a clear affirmation of high-speed trains.”

Notice the words, “state-of-the-art.” The statement goes on to say more about technological advance, job growth and economic stimulation due to the high-speed rail project. (You can read the whole thing here: http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/news/MediaStatementfromQuentinKoppProp1A.pdf.)

The only problem is that the California High Speed Rail Authority may be running out of money. Their budget for the current fiscal year was to be financed partly by the sale of state bonds. But because of the present economic crisis and the state's existing debt, nobody's buying the bonds. (Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/09/BA6J1565UM.DTL&type=newsbayarea.) In fact, if you look at the High Speed Rail website, you'll learn that the entire $9.95 billion project is to be funded by the sale of bonds.

An economy faced with declining resource availability can't easily expand its debt load, yet this is what California is trying to do in order to obtain the finest rail line that money can buy. Now I have nothing against high-speed rail – but I don't think they can afford it. I have a better suggestion.

I used to work at a company that sent me from Southern California to San Jose on a few occasions. I hate flying, so I took Amtrak. (This was right around the time I started bicycle commuting.) From the Fullerton station to the San Jose Diridon station, the trip took 12 hours. In order to make it to my afternoon meeting in San Jose on time, I had to be at the Fullerton station at midnight, catch an Amtrak bus, ride to some place out in farm country (don't ask me where, I usually was quite foggy-headed by then), and catch a train to San Luis Obispo. Then I caught another bus which arrived in San Jose around noon. Now that I have moved, if I want to go from Portland to Los Angeles via Amtrak, it takes 29 hours.

Yet these trains can and do travel at over 80 miles an hour already. If we simply fixed the train system we've already got, a person could go from Los Angeles to San Jose or Sacramento in five or six hours, or could go from Los Angeles to Portland in thirteen hours. Fixing what we have would save money and is easily achievable, whereas the shiny and new, though sexy, is unattainable. But our leaders refuse to get this.

There is another psychological problem with simple, cheap, low-resource appropriate technology. High-tech, complex solutions requiring lots of capital are usually the province of First World scientists and corporations. But simple, resource-light, cheap low-tech technologies can be devised by anyone who is observant and can think logically. This means that low-tech appropriate technologies can be devised by citizens of Third World countries. This another thing that many in the First World find very hard to swallow.

A case in point is the pot-in-pot refrigerator (or Zeer, in Arabic). It was invented by Mohammed Bah Abba, a Nigerian teacher, in 1995, and is a very simple device consisting simply of a clay pot placed within a larger clay pot with wet sand between the pots and a wet cloth on top. Mr, Bah Abba was awarded a Rolex Laureate prize in 2000 for his invention, which is able to preserve fresh vegetables for up to three weeks at a temperature of around 15 degrees C. (Sources: http://www.time.com/time/2001/inventions/basics/inpot.html, http://www.varaprasad.htmlplanet.com/custom3.html, http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2004/september/refrigeration.htm.)

Fast forward to 2009 and you may find a recent surprising news article about “an amazing solar-powered fridge invented by (a) British student in a potting shed (that) helps poverty-stricken Africans.” (Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1108343/Amazing-solar-powered-fridge-invented-British-student-potting-shed-helps-poverty-stricken-Africans.html.) Upon reading the article, one quickly discovers that this “amazing invention” is nothing more than a variation on Mr. Bah Abba's “pot-in-pot” refrigerator, with practically the same performance! According to the Daily Mail article cited above, this girl's invention is “now improving the lives of thousands of poverty-stricken Africans” who evidently were not clever enough to come up with such a device on their own, and who just happened to be rescued by benevolent European masters with their incredible scientific insights. It must just be a coincidence that the girl came up with the idea for her invention while working on a school project in her grandfather's potting shed. By the way, no mention is made of Mr. Bah Abba in the article. Also note that this girl's invention requires a specially machined metal cylinder, while the original pot-in-pot is...just two clay pots!

This failure to accept our coming poverty and to properly acknowledge the inventiveness and ideas of the global South and of the Third World is going to cost many people in the First World dearly as resource constraints increasingly deprive the First World of its technological edge, and the hubris of the First World causes many people to labor at reinventing wheels that were available all along to anyone with an ounce of humility.

Appropriate Home Technologies

It is time now to consider appropriate technologies to help households adjust to declining availability of energy and rising energy cost. We will begin by examining the forms and purposes of energy use in modern households.

Houses need energy in order to accomplish a few basic tasks: lighting, heating (or cooling, as the case may be), cooking, doing chores and occupying the minds of those who live in them. Throughout most of history, lighting, heating and cooking were accomplished by burning things or by using sunlight (at least for lighting and heating). The need for cooking was sometimes reduced by innovative low-tech food processing and fermentation techniques (things like sun-drying meats and fruit and preservation techniques such as pickling). Doing chores required only time, skill and elbow grease. And people kept their minds occupied by building friendships, having conversations and practicing folk culture.

The Industrial Revolution changed this arrangement. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, heating and cooking continued to be done by burning things, although the instruments of burning became ever-more refined. There was a switch in the things being burned also, from wood to coal to oil to natural gas. Many of the inventions of the Industrial Revolution were “labor-saving devices” which harnessed newly-discovered energy sources to automatically and mechanically do many of the chores that used to require human time, skill and elbow grease. The widespread harnessing of electricity caused a change in the way humans lighted their dwellings, as well as the way they kept their minds occupied. The uses of new forms of energy continually grew, because humankind kept finding ever-greater stores of these new energy sources. Eventually, the most advanced societies became almost wholly dependent on these new sources of energy and the machines that harnessed them.

A particularly noteworthy form of energy is electric energy. The creation of electric energy requires the conversion of other forms of energy (solar energy, wind, nuclear energy, chemical energy in fossil fuels, kinetic energy of falling water) into electricity. Yet once the conversion has been made, electric energy is the most flexible form of energy available to modern man. It can be converted to any other form of energy, i.e., light, heat, cooling, motive power or even nuclear energy (assuming that one has a very powerful source of electric energy and a very powerful particle accelerator). Because electricity is so flexibly used, it has assumed a key role in the running of modern advanced nations, and one measure of the advanced state of the First World is the measure of how much electricity is generated and used in the First World.

But in this time of economic trouble and declining energy resources, the availability of electric energy is in danger. As has already been stated, the transmission of electricity depends on the conversion of other forms of energy into electric energy. This process is never 100 percent efficient, and most electric power plants use some fossil fuel energy source in order to supply the energy for electric power generation. We know that oil is becoming scarcer, as well as natural gas, and even coal reserves are declining in size and quality of fuel. The same can be said for the uranium and thorium used in nuclear power plants.

There is an additional difficulty, especially true in the United States. Our electric power grid is getting quite old and unreliable, and parts of it are very heavily loaded. System events like an arcing fault or ice accumulation on a medium or high-voltage line can have serious cascading effects that take large parts of the power grid out of service. Arcing faults can easily be caused by severe weather or wildlife (squirrels and birds can wind up costing a lot of people a lot of money!).

So what does this have to do with the modern house? The modern home depends on electricity for the majority of its functions. Without electricity, many of the functions performed in a modern house simply cease. Therefore, appropriate technologies for a post-Peak household consist of those devices and techniques that don't require electricity.

Let's consider my house, for instance. It is small mass-produced tract house built a couple of years after the Korean War. As is typical of many houses in the Pacific Northwest, it is mostly electric. I have an electric stove/oven and a microwave, an electric water heater, an electric garbage disposer, and of course all the lights are electric. One of the previous owners installed a new gas furnace within the last ten years, and that is the only gas appliance in the house – yet it has an electric fan motor and is electronically controlled. (It's also in the attic, so it blows warm air down from the ceiling diffusers. The only problem is that we all know that warm air tends to rise. So unless I'm standing under a diffuser, I feel cold.) My washer, dryer and refrigerator are electric. If I had lost power a few weeks ago when the whole city was snowed in, I would have had to leave my house and stay elsewhere until power was restored.

The post-Peak challenge for this house is to find a way to replace all the functions that are now handled by electricity. This is not only a good goal for coping with a post-Peak world, but for coping with an extended power outage caused by any other event. Here are some questions I need to answer:

• How can I wake up in the mornings without an electric alarm clock?

• How do I cook food and keep food from spoiling?

• How can I wash and dry clothes? I have a clothesline, but what do I do during the rainy, wet, cold Pacific Northwest winters?

• How can I stay in touch with others who are far away?

• What do I do for lighting after dark?

• How do I keep my mind occupied without an iPod, stereo or TV? (I think I've got that one solved ;) )

• How do I stay warm in the winter without relying on a furnace that uses electricity?

• How do I keep the house from getting moldy during the winter?

Such questions as these will become increasingly important as our electric power infrastructure wears out and we are faced with the possibility that as a nation, we may not be able to afford its continued upkeep. I will be tackling these questions from time to time in future posts, and I will let you all know what I come up with.

In the meantime, I want to mention a blog post along these lines, titled, “Inexpensive Ways To Stay Warm This Winter,” from David's My Two Dollars blog (http://www.mytwodollars.com/2008/12/15/inexpensive-ways-to-stay-warm-this-winter/). Also, this weekend I will be attending a series of classes on sustainable living hosted by the City of Portland. Among the topics they will discuss are “Home Weatherization,” “Cutting Your Energy Bill,” and “Principles of a Healthy Home.” I may snap a few pictures and give a summary of the event in my next post.

Digital Television and Frugal Entertainment

Those who watch television regularly probably know that the United States recently passed a law requiring all television broadcast networks to stop broadcasting analog television signals as of 17 February 2009, and to broadcast only digital television (DTV) signals. The U.S. has also mandated that as of 1 March 2009, manufacturers of television sets can only manufacture sets containing DTV tuners. Older analog TV sets will not be able to receive or display shows broadcast by DTV networks, meaning that those who own analog sets and refuse to buy newer DTV's will no longer be able to watch television.

According to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, the switch to DTV is a good thing, because it will give us all an enhanced viewing experience, as stated on their DTV website:

"Digital Television (DTV) is an advanced broadcasting technology that will transform your television viewing experience. DTV enables broadcasters to offer television with better picture and sound quality. It can also offer multiple programming choices, called multicasting, and interactive capabilities.

Converting to DTV also will free up parts of the scarce and valuable broadcast spectrum. Those portions of the spectrum can then be used for other important services, such as public and safety services (police and fire departments, emergency rescue), and advanced wireless services."

Manufacturers of consumer electronics have devised digital-to-analog converter boxes that owners of analog TV sets can purchase in order to continue watching shows without buying a new DTV. However, these boxes cost between $45 and $70. The Federal government had been issuing $40 coupons to offset the cost of these converter boxes, but the Feds seem to have run out of coupons (imagine that!), so that those without coupons must pay the full price. Also, there is at least one report that these converters don't work so well (See “Technology – Not Picture-Perfect, Houston Chronicle, 5 January 2009, http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/news/6195818.html).

On the other hand, if you want to just buy a new DTV (also known as HDTV), you will have to spend between $999 and $3597 at Paul's TV (He's the king of big screen) in Orange County, California. Or if you go with Best Buy, you can get a TV for anywhere between $109 and $3999. But I have a better idea.

It should be obvious by now that the sole purpose of American television is to hoodwink and hypnotize people into buying worthless, unnecessary things at grossly inflated prices. Not only are we being sold a bill of consumer “goods,” but we are being sold a point of view and a mindset that renders us incapable of critical thinking, that turns us into prey and that makes us into easy targets for the large, rich powerful predators who feed on us. Since this is the case, losing the ability to watch television isn't a bad thing.

It should also be obvious that the sole purpose of the recently passed DTV law was to force working-class Americans to spend money they don't have.

So here's my frugal tip for the week: don't buy a DTV converter box. And don't buy a new DTV or HDTV set. When the 17^th of February rolls around, just take your analog set out to the dumpster. Get a hobby instead. Or learn a new skill. Or read books that force you to think. Or get some friends and do something meaningful and constructive. Or if you're a kid, go outside and play. Learn to play a musical instrument, to write, or to draw pictures - and make your own culture. After a few months of real life, you'll hardly miss television.

Appropriate Technology And The Art Of Being Poor

I'd like to take a few moments to discuss a concept I first encountered several months ago – the concept of “appropriate technology.” Understanding this concept is a key to navigating our way through the times now upon us – times of climate change, post-Peak Oil and economic difficulty.

Appropriate technology is the maturing offspring of a related concept, “intermediate technology,” first devised by British economist E.F. Schumacher. He formulated this concept as he watched the harmful effects of imposing Western-style economics and large-scale, capital-intensive industrialization on local economies and cultures in the developing world. These Western economic and technological schemes were imposed on the nations of the Third World by powerful Western governments and by well-meaning but misguided Western charities and non-governmental organizations (NGO's), with devastating results that included the loss of self-sufficiency for members of local cultures, the resulting spread of poverty, and the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the richest citizens of developing countries. In addition, the poor majority of these countries could not afford to use the capital-intensive technologies being introduced to these countries. (As an example, even now, in a country like China, there are 56.97 million cars, but over a billion people, meaning that only one out of every eighteen people owns a car.)

As an economist, Schumacher believed that his mission was to help create a higher standard of living for people in developing nations, yet he saw the limitations of Western high-tech economic practices. His “intermediate” solution was to provide or devise means and technologies which would be more advanced than indigenous methods currently in use, yet simpler and more affordable to implement by Third World citizens than those of the modern West, technologies which would benefit their users without doing violence to their way of life.

Schumacher's “intermediate technology” has given rise to the distinct, yet related concept of “appropriate technology.” Yet appropriate technology is seen in two rather different ways, depending on whether those who study and seek to implement appropriate technology are working in a Third World or a First World context. This is seen in how appropriate technology is defined in these two contexts, as noted in a Wikipedia article on the subject:

“Appropriate technology (AT) is technology that is designed with special consideration to the environmental, ethical, cultural, social and economical aspects of the community it is intended for. With these goals in mind, AT typically requires fewer resources, is easier to maintain, has a lower overall cost and less of an impact on the environment compared to industrialized practices.

“In developing nations, the term is usually used to describe simple technologies suitable for use in developing nations or less developed rural areas of industrialized nations. This form of appropriate technology usually prefers labor-intensive solutions over capital-intensive ones, although labor-saving devices are also used where this does not mean high capital or maintenance cost. In practice, appropriate technology is often something described as using the simplest level of technology that can effectively achieve the intended purpose in a particular location. In industrialized nations, the term appropriate technology takes a different meaning, often referring to engineering that takes special consideration of its social and environmental ramifications.”

Note the difference between these two definitions. In plain English, those who speak of appropriate technologies as applied to developing nations are talking about techniques and tools that achieve a desired goal while being simple and cheap, and that don't require a lot of resources. In the rich industrialized world, “appropriate technology” means engineering that produces tools and products that have a positive social and environmental impact. Now it is quite true that tools developed for use in the Third World, under the “appropriate technology” paradigm used in a Third World context, will also have a positive social and environmental impact when used by citizens of the First World – precisely because they are simple and cheap and they don't use a lot of resources. Yet simple, low-tech solutions are frequently overlooked when policy-makers and technologists in the First World discuss the application of “appropriate technology” in a First World context.

Why is this so? I believe it is because we in the First World have gotten used to the idea of “progress” as ever-advancing technological development. And even though our technology has generated our current problems, we still believe that the solution to those problems lies in ever-advancing technology. But ever-increasing technological advancement requires an ever-expanding resource base and a society that is becoming ever-richer because of continual discoveries of new resources. Our trouble is that the resource base of the world is now contracting, having been very efficiently depleted by our global history of industrial “progress.” In short, we can no longer afford a society that depends on ever-expanding technological advancement of the sort to which we have become accustomed.

This fact seems very difficult for citizens of developed nations – especially those of the United States – to swallow. I think this is because the middle and upper classes of the U.S. have enjoyed lives of affluence for so long, and because of our long history as the “richest nation on earth” and our long track record of impressive technological achievements. The road we have taken has led to resource peaks, climate change and economic breakdown, yet we as a nation still think that the solution to these things lies in the further advancement of our technologically-driven way of life. We are as spoiled as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind, and we can't seem to grasp the reality that we are not rich anymore and that we will have to seek simpler solutions to our problems.

This is seen in a multitude of ways in the present discussions about potential solutions to climate change and Peak Energy. One example that I want to discuss particularly is the American approach to sustainable building as exemplified in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Rating Systems for Building Construction devised by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC).

The USGBC is a non-profit trade organization founded in 1993 for the purpose of promoting sustainable building design and construction. It has used many tools for achieving this purpose, including education, publications and research; yet its primary method has been its LEED Green Building Rating System, developed in 2000. According to the USGBC, “The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria.”

The LEED rating systems have been developed for a variety of projects, such as new construction, core-and-shell, tenant improvement, existing building retrofits, schools, health care facilities, and neighborhood development. Those architects, engineers and constructors who want to certify a project under the LEED rating systems must include certain design and construction features in order to earn points for the rating system under consideration. Certification levels range from “Certified” to “Silver” to “Gold,” and lastly, to “Platinum” as the highest rating. Participation in the rating system is entirely voluntary. A LEED certified building or construction project is supposed to save energy and resources, and to have a substantially reduced environmental impact compared to a similar non-certified project.

This is an admirable goal. Yet there is disturbing evidence that in many cases, pursuing LEED certification inflates the cost of building projects, discouraging project owners from pursuing LEED as they struggle to keep their projects within budget. A 2003 study by Northbridge Environmental Management Consultants stated that pursuing LEED certification could add up to eleven percent to a project's total construction cost. A General Services Administration (GSA) study calculated that LEED certification could add up to eight percent to a construction project's cost. Also, LEED-certified buildings are supposed to use up to 42 percent less energy than similar non-LEED buildings, yet there have been recent criticisms that LEED-certified buildings do not actually save significant amounts of energy and water.

I am familiar with a few LEED projects and I can see why these criticisms would be valid. In two of these projects, an architect partnered with a mechanical/electrical/plumbing/structural (MEPS) design team to produce a LEED certified building. The architectural firm spent the majority of the design budget alloted to the entire team, and set out to design an eye-catching architectural “statement” full of expensive materials and finishes, a design which almost completely ignored the laws of physics. Then the design was given to the MEPS team who was told to “make it work.” Of course, much of the MEPS team's effort was devoted to rectifying energy use problems caused by the architectural design and this added further cost to the projects. When the project owners saw the construction cost estimates, they naturally had second thoughts about paying for a “green” building.

Many practitioners of LEED are guilty of even more ridiculous errors, such as siting large building projects on virgin wilderness land, then excusing themselves for their environmental sin by trying to make their project “LEED certified.” There are people who design such oxymorons as a $29 million LEED-certified parking garage recently built in Santa Monica. There are also those who build new housing developments on formerly undeveloped land, yet who seek to use LEED certification to market their homes as “green housing.” There are even people who design and build LEED-Platinum rated McMansions, and who bless themselves afterward for the good they have supposedly done.

LEED is just one example of the typical American mindset that believes that believes we can find a “sustainable,” environmentally friendly way to enjoy ever-increasing technological power and complexity and ever-increasing consumption. In our drive to achieve the goal of “sustainable growth,” we therefore invest in technologies and strategies which actually run counter to our stated objective of sustainability. Instead of installing clotheslines, our households are taught by advertising to want the latest Energy Star appliances. Instead of building super-insulated “passive houses,” we buy furnaces and wood stoves. Instead of riding bicycles, we demand plug-in hybrid cars. Instead of learning to do without much electricity, we want 3 kilowatt PV systems on every home. But like Scarlett O'Hara at the end of the Civil War, we can no longer afford the finer things we have gotten used to.

It is time for us to admit that we're not rich anymore, and to begin to seek more affordable, elegantly simple solutions to our problems. Those who propose tech-intensive, expensive solutions must realize that their solutions will most likely not be implemented by a society that is rapidly becoming poorer. Embracing the “appropriate” technologies now being developed for the Third World would be truly – ah, appropriate.

Sources:

• “Appropriate Technology Sourcebook,” Village Earth website, http://www.villageearth.org/pages/Appropriate_Technology/ATSourcebook/Introduction.php

• Appropedia Appropriate Technology Portal, http://www.appropedia.org/Appropriate_technology

• “Appropriate Technology and Intermediate Technology,” Lecture Notes, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Special-Programs/SP-721Fall-2004/A6BCD1E6-5AF2-4978-9243-885FEE87DE31/0/lec_notes_02.pdf

• “E.F. Schumacher,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._F._Schumacher

• E.F. Schumacher, His Life And Thought, Barbara Wood, Harper and Row Publishers, 1984. (Note especially Chapter 22, “Small Talk.”)

• “1^st LEED Parking Garage: Santa Monica Civic Center,” inhabitat, 24 April 2008, http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/04/14/first-leed-certified-parking-garage/

• “Playa: A LEED Platinum Home in a McMansion Neighborhood,” Green Building Elements, 5 October 2008, http://greenbuildingelements.com/2008/10/05/playa-a-leed-platinum-home-in-a-mcmansion-neighborhood/

• “Henry Gifford: Is the USGBC Peddling Greenwash?”, green-buildings.com, http://www.green-buildings.com/content/78357-henry-gifford

• “Insight – Prioritizing Green: It's The Energy, Stupid,” Joseph W. Lstiburek, Ph.D, Building Science Insight 007, November 2008, http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-007-prioritizing-green2014it-s-the-energy-stupid

• “Analyzing the Cost of Obtaining LEED Certification,” Northbridge Environmental Management Consultants, 16 April 2003, http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/for_communities/LEED_links/AnalyzingtheCostofLEED.pdf

• “GSA LEED Cost Study, Final Report,” October 2004, United States General Services Administration, http://www.wbdg.org/ccb/GSAMAN/gsaleed.pdf

• “Pilot Version – LEED For Neighborhood Development Rating System,” United States Green Building Council, 2007, http://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=2845