A View from the Maine Coast: Heartbreaking Beauty, Uncertain Future

The Maine coast, where we spent a month this summer, is a place of heartbreaking beauty—quiet coves, massive rock formations, silent woods, osprey nests, and hills with views of Nova Scotia and Massachusetts. Even in fog, it resembles a painting of an ideal world.

A closer look, however, reveals a more troubling picture.

To be fair, Maine is one of the most environmentally conscious of states. Organic milk and produce are easily available and inexpensive. Producers donate part of their profits to environmental causes. State and federal wildlife preserves are filled with waterfowl, small and large mammals, frogs, and freshwater fish. The lobster fishery, though still imperfect, is better managed than it was even ten years ago. Farmed Maine mussels are the envy of the world for taste, cleanliness, and protection of the environment.

All this is true, but twenty-five miles inland, the standard America of highways, parking lots, big box stores, sprawling development, and automobile dependence is taking over. From Winter Harbor, where we stayed, it is a twenty-five mile drive to Ellsworth, the biggest town in the region. There is a bus, but it runs too infrequently to be a practical alternative to driving. Even to get to this part of the Maine coast is difficult without a car. The railroad that used to serve the area is derelict and scheduled to be converted to a hiking trail.

Ellsworth itself is an interesting place. Just outside of town there is a shopping area consisting of two large groups of stores with acres of surface parking and traffic that baffles even experienced local drivers. At one end of the shopping complex is a Home Depot, with attendant parking lot, which is still controversial because of its effect on local hardware dealers. Nearby is a new Wal-Mart (with attendant parking lot) whose effect on local supermarkets is still being debated.

There is no debate about how all this affects traffic and water runoff. Both are worse because of the shopping district and the two new big box stores. The line to enter the Wal-Mart parking lot sometimes extends for a mile. Heavy rains routinely flood the main road from the north into the town.

Downtown Ellsworth remains compact, walkable, and, with larger shops moving to the outskirts of town, full of ideas. It has become a place of restaurants and innovative specialty shops. This is good for local residents and tourists alike, but it comes at a very high cost in traffic and pollution less than a mile from the center of town.

These developments are not the fault of the people of Maine. They know that the state will not retain its magic without measures to protect its environment. But until recently our society also presented them with a single development model: to prosper, a town needed parking, national chain stores, and ample provision for traffic.

This kind of prosperity made Bar Harbor (and Mt. Desert Island where it is located) one of the most polluted towns on the East Coast. A free, low-emissions bus service funded by L.L. Bean has helped to reduce pollution on Mt. Desert and in the main part of Acadia National Park, which is located on the island. But there is no free bus service to Ellsworth—there is not even a regular bus from Boston. And the trains are long gone.

The beauty and calm of coastal Maine is still there, to be sure. But it is an open question how long it will remain if we do not begin to implement more sustainable ways to prosper. There are development models—walkable shopping districts near public transit hubs are one example—that avoid the big box store and the massive parking lot. We must begin to use them.

Simple Changes and Common Sense Ideas

It's surprising how simple changes and common sense ideas can move us—more than we might have imagined—toward sustainability. The best-known example is the compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), which could prevent millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions if it came into widespread use. CFLs have other virtues: they last far longer than conventional incandescent bulbs, and they use far less electricity, thereby saving a lot of money for those who use them.

CFLs are one simple idea, but there are many others. Here are three:

White Roofs: The traditional Philadelphia row house, which usually has party walls with its neighbors on the left and right, is an extremely efficient design for cold weather. With windows and doors only on the front and back and a black asphalt roof, it absorbs and retains heat well, thus saving fuel. In summer, however, the row house's advantage becomes a liability. The roof absorbs heat, as it is designed to do, and the house retains it, as it is designed to do. The house becomes a heat sink.

One obvious remedy for this problem is a white roof, which would reflect heat in summer without making the row house significantly less efficient in winter. Until recently no one seems to have thought of making row house roofs white. Now two cities, Chicago and Philadelphia, are experimenting with the concept. In Philadelphia, a local non-profit group, the Energy Coordinating Agency, has created Smart Energy Solutions, which provides a number of services, including installation of white roofs. The new roof lowers the temperature in the house an average of five degrees—which, for some people in row houses, can mean the difference between life and death. White roofs save on cooling costs, which saves fuel, and make the upper floors of traditional row houses more habitable than the traditional black roof. And by reflecting heat instead of absorbing it, they should help to cut down on the "urban heat island" effect and make cities less hot—if only very slightly—in the summer.

Car Sharing: The private car is the least efficient way to move people. Its manufacture uses huge amounts of raw materials, energy, and fossil fuels, and it would be hard to imagine a more efficient way to generate greenhouse gases than a traffic jam with thousands of car engines idling for half an hour or more.

That said, there are some trips, such as a visit to a garden shop and a return with plants for a home garden, where a small vehicle is most efficient. The problem is that car ownership is highly inefficient and expensive: it is actually cheaper to have no car (thus avoiding depreciation and maintenance costs), take a taxi where only a car will do the job, and use public transit the rest of the time. This is also a more sustainable and efficient way to get around than driving everywhere in a car whose manufacture uses resources and whose upkeep can be prohibitively expensive.

Groups like PhillyCarShare have begun to provide the obvious alternative: shared vehicles that group members rent only for the time they need them. Joining is free, and for those who use cars only occasionally there is no monthly fee. Rental rates are lower for more fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles. And many pickup points are at local train stops to help members get to their temporary car by public transit. It is a well-thought-out program.

Shared Tools: On our block, there is only one lawn mower. One neighbor owns it, but others on the block are free to use it, provided they return it with its cord. It is a highly efficient electric model which generates no exhaust pollution and, because most block residents use green electricity sources, a relatively small amount of indirect pollution. In all, a simple but good arrangement. By having only one lawn mower on the block, we also keep down the cost in materials and greenhouse gases of manufacturing separate mowers for each household.

This kind of informal arrangement is easy in a densely-populated city where neighbors talk across garden fences. It is more difficult in the spread-out suburbs, but it can be done. Everybody's lawns are well-mowed in our block, and nobody is seriously inconvenienced because if the mower is in use one day, it will be available the next.

Americans, on the whole, don't like sharing. They want their private space, their private tools, and their private cars. But sharing with neighbors, or with other members of groups like PhillyCarShare, makes life easier and more neighborly, not more difficult. Like white roofs, sharing tools and vehicles is a common sense idea that can help to build a sustainable and quite possibly more civilized future.

The Ultimate in Something

The City of Santa Monica, CA, has outdone itself. Behold its newest civic treasure—a "fully sustainable," solar powered parking garage. Or so the city's brochure argues:

The six-story, 882-space structure at the Civic Center features photovoltaic roof panels, a storm drain water treatment system, recycled construction materials and energy efficient mechanical systems.

The $29 million structure—which sits near the entrance and exit ramps at the end of the 10 Freeway—also features ground-floor retail, art works on every floor and sweeping city and ocean views.

City officials hope the 290,000-square-foot-garage will become the nation’s first parking structure certified by the U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

The structure’s photovoltaic panels—which cost $1.5 million—will pay for themselves in 17 years by generating $90,000 a year in electricity,” said Craig Perkins, director of Environmental and Public Works Management for the City.

It's hard to decide whether the city is serious. A parking garage can, apparently, aspire to a green building certificate. But its function is to hold hundreds of parked cars, which encourages driving, which increases the concentration of greenhouse gases. And on and on.

Hard to believe, and even harder to believe that a parking garage could ever meet LEED standards. It probably won't. That would be rather like certifying an AK-47 automatic rifle as safe for children and other living things.

(Thanks to James Howard Kunstler's Eyesore of the Month for picture, inspiration, and text of the city's handout.)

Notes on the G8 Failure

The recently-concluded summit of the Group of 8, which was once, but no longer is, a gathering of the world's major economic powers, was strange from nearly any perspective. Only six countries were present at the opening dinner. The Presidents of the United States and Russia got into a dispute about proposed U.S. deployment of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. The President of the U.S. missed some sessions because of illness, but his government was always there, making agreement on some key matters very difficult.

Most disappointing—former Vice President Al Gore called it a "disgrace"—was the agreement on climate change. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's original proposal, which sought a cut of 50% in carbon emissions from G8 members, disappeared early on because of the Bush Administration's aversion to specific numbers, government regulations, and agreements that might inconvenience U.S. industry. In the end, the group's members agreed to pursue "substantial" reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, a wording that is far too vague to be effective but was the best available, given U.S. intransigence.

The Bush White House sought to portray the G8 climate agreement as a major step forward, but it is not. Even the original proposal would have been less than needed, but it would at least have placed real requirements on the G8 members. "Substantial reduction" is not 50 percent reduction; it is whatever each government wants it to be. A U.S. Administration which up until recently denied that climate change was an issue at all is unlikely to seek major reductions in carbon emissions.

Reality, however, may catch up with the Bush Administration and the Group of Eight very quickly. On the economic front, the Group of Eight omits the world's fourth largest economy, China, and even a strong G8 declaration might not influence Chinese policy. On the climate front, the evidence is mounting that major change has to happen soon, regardless of the current U.S. government's preferences. States like California, whose economy is among the largest in the world, have already recognized this and begun to take action without waiting for the Federal Government.

The politics of the G8 will, in any case, change with a change in U.S. Administrations. Whether the change will be enough to make a difference is still an open question.

Slipping on Oil

Every now and then we should pause to remember that our heavy dependence on fossil fuels isn't just choking us to death, warming the planet, and threatening the polar bear. It has caused us to make policy decisions and strategic blunders that have made the world less safe and much of the world's population less free. In the search for oil supplies, the West (not just the United States, though as the largest consumer we bear much of the responsibility) has overthrown elected governments, supported totalitarian regimes, and brought chaos to Iraq (and possibly the whole of the Middle East) in the name of building democracy. The cost to us in blood and treasure has been enormous, and for our efforts we have gained a poisoned chalice—a planet at risk and an economy subject to the whims of the oil markets.

The height of our folly was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In 2007, nearly everyone but a few hard-core supporters recognizes that the war has become a fiasco. What few remember was that the forcible overthrow of Saddam Hussein was an essential component of the neo-conservative program long before the attacks of September 11, 2001 which made an invasion possible as (allegedly) part of the "War on Terror."

In neo-con theory, the overthrow of Saddam would accomplish a lot of good things:

• It would rid the world of a repugnant dictator;
• It would establish stable democracy in a major Middle Eastern country;
• It would neutralize Iraq's military power;
  
• It would lead to a wave of democratization throughout the Middle East;
• It would make Israel more secure; and
• It would make oil supplies more secure by giving the West another oil-rich ally—thereby also keeping oil prices under control.

Readers who are unsophisticated in neo-conservative thinking may not quite see the connection between invading Iraq and many of these benefits to the world. But whether there was a connection or not—whether the war could, even in theory, have the promised benefits—became irrelevant almost as soon as the first Coalition troops crossed the Iraq border. The actual war, as opposed to the theoretical one, overthrew Saddam Hussein—and that was all. There is no stable democracy in Iraq; the power of Saddam's military turned out to be a myth; democracy has not triumphed throughout the Middle East; Israel is not more secure; and the price of oil has gone up as demand outpaced supply and Iraqi oil failed to come into the marketplace.

Neo-con theory had fallen into a trap common to armchair strategy. It had ignored Napoleon's maxim that strategists must not "form a picture." Putting this in modern terms, it had based its theory on the best-case scenario—welcoming throngs with flowers; a government in exile returning triumphantly; democracy established quickly and peacefully—and not tried to assess what was really likely. A realistic assessment, which the government could have heard from its own State Department, its intelligence professionals, and the many non-government organizations that had worked in Iraq, would have (and did) warn against the whole enterprise.

Central to the Iraq blunder was the quest for oil. Oil was supposed to finance Iraqi reconstruction. Oil from a democratic and pro-Western Iraq was supposed to increase tight supplies and make the West less threatened by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the unpredictability of oil-rich governments like that of Venezuela. A stable and democratic Middle East was, perhaps, desirable in itself; but it was even more important because interruptions in the oil supply would be less likely.

War for oil has always been an illusion. In the early 1990s, the U.S. Defense Department used more oil annually than Sweden—and this with no major war in progress. The Iraq War almost certainly used oil faster than working Iraqi oil fields could replace it (and the Iraqi oil fields work sporadically at best). And to this day the oil has not begun flowing to the West or anywhere else.

The way to avoid oil shortages is and has always been to use less oil, which is both simpler and cheaper in blood and treasure than making war. War for oil has, like war for any reason, unintended and often ruinous consequences. Conservation by its nature is far less likely to be destructive than war. It has the added advantage that it does less harm to the environment than modern mechanized warfare. And it does not leave us in a strategic box that we fashioned by our own blunders and now cannot escape.

Small Steps, Large Ideals

In a 1940 essay, The Relevance of an Impossible Ideal, G.H.C. MacGregor argued that Christian pacifism was relevant to our lives, even if in practice we could never achieve its goals. It set a standard of conduct that allowed us to assess our own actions and decisions. Perfect peace, MacGregor suggested, might not come in this world. But we could do our best to move the world toward it and to live in harmony with it. The effort to realize the ideal in practice can in and of itself lead to positive change.

One doesn't have to agree with MacGregor's pacifism to see the importance of his argument, or to see that it applies not just to the ideal of peace, but to other ideals as well.

Consider the ideal of a sustainable world. Many of the measures that could bring about such a world are politically and culturally difficult to achieve in practice. But even small steps toward sustainability are helpful and make it easier to move forward to the larger steps we need. Ten million compact fluorescent light bulbs will not cut greenhouse emissions to safe levels—but they will make a start, and those who use them will discover that caring for the earth is not the impossible and frightening task that it might have appeared. It may even have benefits (in this case, lower electric bills). Steps that appear small may, in fact, be very large indeed if they lead to other steps in the direction of the goal.

Ideals, that is to say, do not become worthless because they are hard to achieve. They become worthless if we give up on them—or if we do not value the small changes that can lead to larger changes.

There are two ways of giving up on an ideal. One is to abandon it entirely by saying that we cannot achieve it. The other is to make the best the enemy of the good—to reject the small steps because they do not achieve the goal all at once.

In building for the future, we must avoid both of these hazards. We will not achieve a perfect world. But we can move the world closer to the ideal if we value small steps and have faith that they matter.

Gas Prices—Again

The news yesterday and today was full of rising gas prices. Local news had interviews with drivers who were trying to save a few pennies per gallon. National news had average prices (just over $3.00/gallon) and projections of a rise to around $4.00 by the summer. MoveOn.org, of all places, had a letter urging supporters to pressure their congress members to do something.

"Something," whether for Moveon or for congress members, appears to be investigating the oil companies for price gouging in the hope that with enough pressure prices will come down without the need for people to use less gas. In the last round of price rises, some in Congress proposed rebates to motorists. All this, as if the problem is the price of gas, not our dependence on cheap fuel supplies.

One sympathizes with the drivers who were interviewed on television. They depend on their cars because many of them live in places where a car is the only way to get anywhere. It's true that they chose their location, but the lack of alternatives to the private car isn't really their fault. To a great extent they are stuck because our society is designed for cheap and abundant fuel and can't adapt quickly to tight supplies and high prices.

This time around there is some good news, at least in the Philadelphia area. The rising price of fuel appears to have led to a rise in the use of public transit. The change is small as yet, but it is encouraging. Some of those suburbanites—whose dependence on the car has been nearly total—have begun to find their way to the train and bus stations. This is heartening. It would be more so if our local transit agency wasn't facing an enormous deficit and proposing big cuts after the summer. And it would be even more so if the government didn't view spending on public transit as an expensive subsidy, while spending on roads is seen as an investment in the future (which it is not).

Still, at least some more people are learning that there are alternatives to driving. That is all to the good, even if the government hasn't yet figured it out.