Energy Smart

Berkeley, California, is providing a new path toward financing renewable energy programs, providing financing for individual home owner’s solar power systems.  Well, not far from Berkeley, Marin County is providing a different path toward making solar systems more accessible to its citizens. In this case, however, the County government is (at most) a follower rather than leader in the process.

As described by the San Francisco Chronicle,

A Bay Area grandmother’s grassroots campaign to lower the cost of solar power through a community bulk-purchase plan has reaped a bigger bonanza than she dreamed: an offer by a Marin solar company to provide discounted installations for every resident and business in the county.

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Humanity faces serious challenges today and in the coming years.  Clearly, core to emerging from this century whole will be adequate and appropriate addressing of Peak Oil and Global Warming.  The reality is, however, that these mega-crises are intertwined with numerous other very serious challenges, such as ‘peak’ water and fires like those hitting California as I write.

Over at Calitics, Robert in Monterey has written an excellent piece: Fire, Water, and Global Warming: It’s All One Crisis. 

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When discussing any particular disaster and its relationship to Global Warming, one needs to be cautious, to avoid saying “Global Warming caused X” as it is quite difficult to show a direct cause and effect relationship with a global trend to any particular activity. Thus, stronger storms are correlated with rising temperature which correlated with a storm like Katrina.  Did Global Warming cause Katrina?  Who knows?  Was Katrina’s strength, differentiation from past storms, within what Global Warming analysis/modeling suggests could happen? Yes.

Well, be careful if anyone says that Global Waming “caused” the California fires.  On the other hand, it seems clear that Global Warming is a contributing factor to the conditions in which the storms have occurred. As per Daniel James Brown’s OPED, Smarter ways to handle fire,

increased fuel loads in our wild lands are only one element of a converging series of fire-related threats that now challenge us in unprecedented ways. Our penchant for building homes in fire-prone areas is another obvious and much-discussed factor. And a third, now undeniable, one is the role that global warming plays in raising ambient temperatures, promoting drought in already drought-prone regions and lengthening our fire seasons.

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To start with, let me express my sympathy to all those who have been hurt, lost property, or are threatened by the California fires.  My — our — thoughts are with you. 

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The threat from the fires is quite direct. Images of a burning home, fleeing families, roaring flames engulfing a mountain side, smoke clouds billowing through the sky, firefighters pouring water onto flames. The images are compelling, the threat striking to the core. 

There are many threats that come from disasters, this is a short discussion of one threatening San Diego as I type.

Reuters is reporting that the wildfires threaten the power transmission links into San Diego, risking making San Diego an electricity island, cut off from the larger power infrastructure.  If cut off from external supply lines, Sand Diego would have a real risk of major blackouts. San Diego’s mayor has called for reduced power use. 

You’ve got to conserve today. You have no choice.

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