It's Not Climate Change - It's Everything Change 

by Margret Atwood

Oil! Our secret god, our secret sharer, our magic wand, fulfiller of our every desire, our co-conspirator, the sine qua non in all we do! Can’t live with it, can’t — right at this moment — live without it. But it’s on everyone’s mind.

Back in 2009, as fracking and the mining of the oil/tar sands in Alberta ramped up — when people were talking about Peak Oil and the dangers of the supply giving out — I wrote a piece for the German newspaper Die Zeit. In English it was called “The Future Without Oil.” It went like this:

The future without oil! For optimists, a pleasant picture: let’s call it Picture One. Shall we imagine it?

There we are, driving around in our cars fueled by hydrogen, or methane, or solar, or something else we have yet to dream up. Goods from afar come to us by solar-and-sail-driven ship — the sails computerized to catch every whiff of air — or else by new versions of the airship, which can lift and carry a huge amount of freight with minimal pollution and no ear-slitting noise. Trains have made a comeback. So have bicycles, when it isn’t snowing; but maybe there won’t be any more winter.

(Frank Carroll/NBCU Photo Bank; Visions of America/UIG via Getty Images; J. A. Hampton/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

We’ve gone back to small-scale hydropower, using fish-friendly dams. We’re eating locally, and even growing organic vegetables on our erstwhile front lawns, watering them with greywater and rainwater, and with the water saved from using low-flush toilets, showers instead of baths, water-saving washing machines, and other appliances already on the market. We’re using low-draw lightbulbs — incandescents have been banned — and energy-efficient heating systems, including pellet stoves, radiant panels, and long underwear. Heat yourself, not the room is no longer a slogan for nutty eccentrics: it’s the way we all live now.

To finish this wonderful piece and view the photography, please continue on this link.

Get Ready for Ugly as Markets Begin to Deal With Climate Crisis

Carl Pope  ::  EcoWatch  ::  28 July 2015 

Advocates of “market-based” climate solutions paint pastel pictures reflecting smoothly adjusting macro-economic models. Competitive markets gradually nudged by carbon pricing glide into a low carbon future in a modestly disruptive fashion, much as sulfur pollution from power plants was scaled back in the 1990’s.

But commodity markets for oil and gas don’t work that way. These real markets are poised to savagely strand assets, upset expectations, overturn long established livelihoods and leave a trail of wreckage behind them—unless climate advocates start owning the fruits of their own success and preparing for the transition. Schumpeter’s destructive engine of capitalism is about to show its ugly side.

Markets are abandoning carbon companies—even if society continues to burn far too much of it. Photo credit: Shutterstock

Two powerful forces are currently driving energy markets and climate outcomes.

Fossil fuel prices are indeed opening the door to climate solutions, but not through the gradual carbon pricing mechanisms so favored by economists (and recently, reluctantly beginning to be explored by conservative thinkers). Instead, the divergence between clean energy price curves, which fall rapidly with market share and fossil fuel prices, which rise with consumption, are about to collide explosively.

Second, Investors are indeed, moving away from fossil fuel stocks and bonds, but not out of ethical concern over climate risk, or even an expectation of global regulation of carbon combustion. They are racing to the exit as bloated coal and oil stock values collapse on the other side of the “Commodity Super-Cycle” which until early 2014 was the dominant paradigm.

Two weeks ago I wrote two pieces in Bloomberg Views suggesting that the fossil divestment movement was arguably behind market trends in arguing that coal and oil were bad investments. The following week witnessed a cascade of commentary making my pieces look milquetoast and timid. Markets are abandoning carbon companies—even if society continues to burn far too much of it.

Look at the numbers:

U.S. coal consumption has fallen, in the face of competition from performance (efficiency), alternatives (natural gas) and disrupters (solar and wind.) Five years ago we burned a billion tons of coal; now we burn 850 million tons. Solid progress. But still 850 million tons.

What happened to coal company share values? In the last five years, a coal company has gone bankrupt on the average every month. The second largest U.S. coal company, Alpha, after one bankruptcy and reorganization, was just dumped from the NY Stock Exchange because its price fell below $1.00. Even a coal producer (Walter) whose output, metallurgical coal, still enjoys a strong market had to file for bankruptcy. The biggest U.S. coal company, Peabody, which traded in 2011 at $73, is now selling at $1.29. The bond markets have abandoned coal. All coal company debt is now graded “junk.” In the last quarter the three worst performing major U.S. bonds were all coal:

Alpha Natural Resources: -70 percent
Peabody: -40 percent
Arch: -30 percent

Coal, as an investment class, is effectively finished—coal companies will go through a series of reorganizations. After each one only those with the best balance sheets and cheapest mines will remain. The reclamation bonds which the U.S. government and the State of Wyoming allowed these companies to self-insure against their balance sheets are about to go south, creating sequential calls on capital that will push even more companies first into Chapter 11 and then into Chapter 7. Outside the U.S., 1/6th of Australia’s coal mines now operate at a loss. Companies in the sector are in liquidation, even though the world will use a lot of coal for quite a while to come. Eventually slumping demand will be overtaken by declining production and more mines will become cash flow positive, but existing stakeholders will be liquidated first. That’s the dynamic of shrinking commodity markets—investors, communities and workers lose fast even as markets shrink slowly.

Many investors thought they could be the last to make a profit on conventional telephone land-lines. Someone was that last lucky bottom-feeder. But most of those who entertained that illusion were wiped out. Coal investors can join the line.

But what about oil and gas? The public—and politicians—still view oil as the necessary evil and oil companies as the essential usurers of our dependence. But the markets are not so sure. Since 2011 a “five-point gap has emerged between market valuations for energy companies and the S&P 500, as returns on capital have fallen in the sector.” Federal banking regulators have begun warning lenders that many of the loans made to drillers at the height of the shale rush must be treated as “substandard.”

BP recently earned the dubious distinction of being the first of IOC’s integrated majors to have its bonds de-rated because of potential environmental liabilities from the Deepwater Horizon Spill. Shell was able to finance one of its recent pipeline projects at 23 times its earnings, but its own shares fetch only 9X. From 2006 to 2013 the percentage of Exxon Mobil’s proven reserves made up of tar sands and heavy oil increased from 15 percent to 32 percent. Relying on a larger share of more expensive oil reduced Exxon Mobil’s margins and returns. Its stock value trailed the S&P 500 by 40 percent during those seven years—even as the company used the vast majority of its profits to buy back shares to sustain their value.

Chatham House in a recent analysis commented, “Even before the 2014 oil price collapse, equity investors were concerned that, with few exceptions, many companies in the oil sector were heavily committed to high-cost projects for which they had a poor record of execution.”

Now, with oil less than half its price a year ago, companies are desperately canceling projects; a few months ago $118 billion in oil exploration and development projects had been shelved; this month Wood Mackenzie said the total had risen to $200 billion, a cut of almost 50 percent in investments to replace reserves. The biggest victims: not just U.S. shale producers, but Canadian tar sands, declining North Sea fields and Brazilian deep ocean drilling. Big investors have been hit hard: Carl Icahn and John Paulson have lost hundreds of millions of dollars on their oil bets.

Investor owned oil companies are particularly vulnerable in an oil commodity-cycle price crunch because while their existing reserves include large volumes of relatively cheap to pump legacy reserves, their ability to replace those reserves is highly constrained to the world’s most expensive ultra-deep, super-heavy and wildly remote reserves. “Even before the 2014 oil price collapse, equity investors were concerned that, with few exceptions, many companies in the oil sector were heavily committed to high-cost projects for which they had a poor record of execution.” The remaining untapped cheap or moderately costly oil fields are mostly off-limits to IOC’s, reserved by Russia, Venezuela and Persian Gulf monarchies for their nationally owned oil companies, whose long term business plan is to squeeze the Western IOC’s out of business.

In 1915, as the American economy boomed, the huge supply chain that supported horse-drawn transport—harnesses and horseshoes, wagons and buggies makers (13,000 of them), farriers and blacksmiths, hay balers and feedmills—looked like a robust and vital segment for deploying capital. 1920 was the year of “Peak Horse” in the U.S.. By 1940 it was gone. This was not “low-cost”, incremental progress. It was an economic disruption so fierce that the phrase “buggy-whip maker” became a business simile for loser.

From both the standpoint of barometric pressure and stock market volatility we have sown the winds of fossil fuel capitalism for a decade too long—but bemoaning that fact changes nothing. As Christina Figueres says “Better late than later.” We still have time to prepare for the whirlwind. It will come whether we prepare or not.

Renewable Energy Is Not Always ‘Green’: Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Hydroelectric Reservoirs

Kale Roberts  ::  Mother Earth News  ::  2 July 2015

Photo by Robert Campbell, Wikimedia Commons

Hydropower is often considered a clean energy source, free of climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions. But although dams have been demonized for disrupting fish migrations and flooding valleys inhabited by families for generations, this so-called renewable form of energy has largely escaped scrutiny for its climate impacts. After all, how could the atmosphere be harmed by letting a river flow through a few energy-generating turbines encased within a 50-foot wall of concrete and steel?

Hydropower is the world’s leading form of renewable energy, accounting formore than 16 percent of global electricity generation. But dam enthusiasts who tout hydro’s climate credentials may not like the news about its emissions numbers.

Studies conducted over the past decade have shown that greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are produced by hydroelectric systems in potentially huge amounts.

In some cases, emissions from hydropower can even exceed those that would have been produced from burning conventional fossil fuels instead. For example,a 2014 study finds that the Curuá-Una Reservoir in Brazil emitted 3.6 times more greenhouse gases than would have been emitted had the electricity come from oil.

How Hydroelectric Dams Produce Greenhouse Gases

When a dam is built for energy generation, the land upstream of the impoundment is flooded. The more than 45,000 large dams built around the world cover a combined area the size of Montana (Barros et al., 2011). For many, within their depths lies former forest land.

As the submerged trees, grasses, shrubs and soil decompose, microbes convert the carbon stored in the vegetation into gas that can bubble up to the surface and escape to the atmosphere. Carbon trapped within the soil percolates out in the form of carbon dioxide.

Age matters. Studies show that younger reservoirs may be bigger emitters than older one, because most carbon is released from drowned vegetation within the first several years of flooding.

Location matters, too. Emissions seem to be highest from dams built in the tropics, presumably because higher temperatures give decomposer microbes themetabolic boost to do their work.

Methane Matters

Methane is of particular concern. The gas is made anywhere methanogenic (methane-producing) bacteria can thrive without oxygen—so, in the guts of pigs and people, peat bogs and permafrost. Unfortunately, methane is also 25 timesmore potent a planet warmer than carbon dioxide over 100 years. And warm, tropical places can produce more of it.

Methane has plenty of opportunities to escape during the hydropower process: It bubbles up from the oxygen-free muck that accumulates at the bottom of reservoirs. It is churned out in the spray coming off spinning turbines. For miles, it wafts off the newly agitated surface of the river downstream from a dam.

So much methane is produced that studies suggest more than 20 percent of what humans are responsible for may come from dams, which may be releasing up to104 teragrams of the gas annually. (This may be more than all the methane produced per year from burning fossil fuels, according to NASA.)

A Lack of Information or Regulatory Failure?

Of course, impacts from big hydro projects go beyond greenhouse gas emissions to include altered land use, the collapse of migratory fish populations and the displacement of people. Coastal erosion can occur downstream from reservoirs when sediment becomes trapped behind dam impoundments, preventing the silty particles from reaching the sea where they build and stabilize coastlines.

Despite large hydro’s detrimental impacts on life, land and atmosphere, many nations fail to include emissions associated with dams in their total greenhouse gas reporting. This gap in information makes hydro emissions difficult to track—and to regulate.

Most hydropower is concentrated in Asia, but more than 150 countries employ the technology for at least some of their energy. The Worldwatch Institute reportsthat “in 2008, four countries—Albania, Bhutan, Lesotho, and Paraguay—generated all their electricity from hydropower,” and “15 countries generated at least 90 percent of their electricity from hydro.”

Moreover, when nations have made steps to report hydro emissions, the international hydroelectricity industry has attempted to muddy the waters bydownplaying the amount of carbon degassing from their projects.

Take Down the Dams?

Before you think tearing down all dams is the answer, consider this: Taking down a large dam may actually release more greenhouse gases from the newly exposed, carbon-rich soil than were produced throughout the entire life of the dam.

For example, decommissioning Arizona’s Glen Canyon Dam in the United States, which provides power from Lake Powell, would theoretically produce nine timesmore methane following takedown than all the methane produced during Glen Canyon’s 100-year operation.

What is the Solution?

What many believe would be a good first step is for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s foremost scientific authority on the subject, to ask all participating nations to report greenhouse gas emissions from hydroelectric reservoirs. Can that happen with so many questions left unanswered?

More research on the climate impacts of hydropower is needed, in more places and at all stages of big dams’ lifecycles. Until then, policymakers may be overlooking a potentially significant contributor to climate change, perhaps difficult to calculate but ever present, hidden at the bottom of a placid reservoir.

Kale Roberts is the Blogging Coordinator for MOTHER EARTH NEWS and a Rachel Carson Scholar at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy. His interests include renewable energy, real food and sustainable rural development.

References

Barros et al. (2011). Carbon emission from hydroelectric reservoirs linked to reservoir age and latitude. Nature Geoscience, 4, 593-596.

Demarty, M. & Bastien, J. (2011). GHG emissions from hydroelectric reservoirs in tropical and equatorial regions: Review of 20 years of CH4 emission measurements. Energy Policy, 39, 4197-4206.

International Energy Agency [IEA]. (2010). Renewable Eenergy essentials: Hydropower. Free publication. Accessed May 11, 2015, from http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/hydropower_essentials.pdf.

IPCC. (2006). Appendix 3: CH4 emissions from flooded land: Basis for future methodological development. 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.

Magill, B. & Climate Central. (29 October 2014). Methane emissions may swell from behind dams. Scientific American. In Energy & Sustainability. Accessed May 09, 2015, from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/methane-emissions-may-swell-from-behind-dams/.

NASA. (2010). Education: Global methane inventory. GISS Institute on Climate and Planets. Accessed May 11, 2015, from http://icp.giss.nasa.gov/education/methane/intro/cycle.html.

Pacca, S. (2007). Impacts from decommissioning of hydroelectric dams: a life cycle perspective. Climate Change, 84, 281-294.

Worldwatch Institute. (2013). Use and capacity of gobal hydropower increases. In Vital Signs. Accessed May 09, 2015, from http://www.worldwatch.org/use-and-capacity-global-hydropower-increases-0.

Yang, L., Lu, F., Zhou, X., Wang, X., Duan, X., & Sun, B. (2014). Progress in the studies on the greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs. Acta Ecologica Sinica,34, 204-212.

Is the climate crisis creating a global consciousness shift?

(Image credit: Nattu via Flickr)

When an assassin killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in 1914, no one called it the start of the First World War. That happened years later, after the implications, consequences and scale of the response could be assessed. It’s often the way. That’s why historians are important; they put events in context. 

Similarly, I doubt anyone knew how our world would change after Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built their first computer in Jobs’ parents’ garage in 1975.

In 1988, when climate scientist James Hansen testified in Washington that human-caused global warming was kicking in, people might have been excused for failing to grasp the significance of his early warning. But there’s no excuse for humanity’s subsequent dismissal and denial of the reality of his statements and the deliberate, aggressive opposition to any action to reduce the threat.

For years, environmentalists have called for an urgent response to runaway climate change. Evidence has poured in from around the world to corroborate Hansen’s conclusions, from melting glaciers, sea level rise and ocean acidification to increasing extreme weather events and changes in animal and plant behaviour and ranges.

Despite the evidence, few governments have taken the necessary steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of listening to scientists and citizens, many leaders have chosen to heed the fossil fuel industry’s massive PR machine and right-wing ideologues who see the call for global action as a socialist threat to capitalism.

There has been progress, at national and subnational levels, and among forward-thinking corporations and organizations. Some, like the commitment by countries including Denmark and Germany to reduce dependence on fossil fuels after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, were in response to markets rather than the climate crisis, but it positioned them well as evidence for climate change mounted.
More recently, people on the frontlines of climate change such as Pacific Islanders and Inuit have warned of the changes they’re experiencing. The insurance industry and a number of corporations have called for action, with some, like Tesla, designing solutions. But many in the media and government continue to downplay the problem.

I’ve been astounded by the lack of response over the years, but I’ll go out on a limb and suggest a shift is now taking place. Although we may not recognize its significance without the benefit of hindsight, we appear to be in the early stages of something huge.

Even some news outlets are shifting. The U.K.’s Guardian decided earlier this year to increase its coverage of climate change, going so far as to encourage divestment from the fossil fuel industry. The New York Times decided to use the more accurate term “denier” rather than “skeptic” to refer to those who reject the overwhelming evidence for human-caused climate change.

People power is another sign of the growing shift: 400,000 at the largest climate march in history in New York in September, with 2,646 simultaneous marches in 162 countries; an unprecedented gathering of 25,000 in Quebec City in advance of a premiers’ climate change summit in April; and more than 10,000 in Toronto (including me) on July 5 for theMarch for Jobs, Justice and the Climate in advance of the Climate Summit of the Americas.

When Pope Francis reached beyond the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to call for action on climate change, his message was endorsed by other religious leaders and organizations, including the Dalai Lama, the Islamic Society of North America, an influential group of Jewish rabbis and the Church of England.

Beyond visible evidence of the increasing willingness to meet the challenge of global warming, one of the biggest signs of a shift has been the almost unnoticed but spectacular increase in renewable energy investment in countries like the U.S., Brazil and China.
I
t’s easy for governments and industry to prioritize corporate profits and short-term gain over the best interests of complacent citizens. But when enough people demand action, take to the streets, write to business, political and religious leaders and talk to friends and family, change starts happening. We never know how big it will be until it’s occurred — but this time, it looks like it could be monumental! Let’s hope so.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Urban Farming Hits Major League Baseball Stadiums

Steve Holt, TakePart   ::  EcoWatch  ::  16 July 2015 

As fans sitting on the third baseline streamed into Boston’s Fenway Park for the Red Sox home opener, they were greeted with the sight of 1,800 square feet of raised beds on a formerly unused 5,000-square-foot rooftop. “Fenway Farms” initially will grow fresh vegetables not typically found in baseball stadiums—arugula, Swiss chard and broccoli rabe, for instance—for use by the chefs at the EMC Club kitchen, just 25 feet away.

Boston’s Fenway Park has 1,800 square feet of raised beds on a formerly unused 5,000-square-foot rooftop. Photo credit: Maureen White

The ballpark may not conjure images of health and sustainability—and certainly not innovation in urban agriculture—but a handful of Major League clubs just may change that, and in the process give new meaning to “farm teams.” This season, the Red Sox join the Colorado Rockies, the San Diego Padres and the San Francisco Giants in starting to grow a portion of their stadium concessions in on-site farms and gardens.

The farm’s location is highly visible to many of the roughly 37,000 fans who fill the ballpark for the team’s 81 home games and the handful of concerts and other events to which Fenway plays host—a potential influence that is not lost on Chris Knight, the team’s manager of facility planning and services.

“We have such a platform here at this level of sports and at Fenway Park—this is one way we can make an impact for the environment and nutrition,” he said.

When the first vegetables and herbs were harvested in early May, Fenway Farms contributed its part to a long-term push at the ballpark to operate more sustainably—and a more recent emphasis on integrating healthy food into concessions. Knight said the idea for the farm came from Linda Pizzuti Henry, wife of Sox co-owner John Henry. Last summer, the founders ofGreen City Growers—a company converting unused space into farms and gardens—met with Henry to pitch ideas for turning that dream into a reality.

The process “picked up quickly” from there, said Green City Growers founder, Jessie Banhazl, with the team picking out a site on the front-office roof and growers meeting with chefs at the seasonally inspired EMC Club to come up with a lineup of veggies to grow. Recover Green Roofs began construction and farm installation in mid-March, and plants went into the newly poured soil last week—just in time for the first home game of the season.

Photo credit: Maureen White

“It’s wild. We’re really, really, really excited about this,” said Banhazl, whose company will maintain the farm. “This particular project is the coolest and most widespread reach that we’ve ever seen with an urban agriculture project.”

The foray by the Red Sox into urban agriculture is unusual among modern professional baseball teams—but the team is not the first to catch the grow-your-own bug. In 2012, at the stadium chef’s request, San Diego Padres head groundskeeper Luke Yoder planted more than a dozen hot pepper and tomato plants in the Petco Park bullpen. In 2013, the Colorado Rockies, working with their catering contractor, Aramark, installed a 600-square-foot kitchen garden near Gate A at Coors Field, which sprouts an assortment of flowers, herbs, and other vegetables. Much of the food harvested from “The GaRden” is found in dishes at the stadium’s premier Mountain Ranch Club.

Last season, the San Francisco Giants and Bon Appétit Management built The Garden at AT&T Park, a 4,320-square-foot dining pavilion serving produce grown in several nearby gardens and a high-yield vertical farm. (There was even a bit of controversy when the Padres took issue with Giants’ marketing claiming to have the majors’ first farm, claims that were later retracted). The Garden pavilion contains two food concepts: The Hearth Table uses only gluten-free ingredients, while The Garden Table serves vegetarian offerings. Bartenders even integrate fresh-grown herbs into the cocktails. Don’t worry, you can still get your all-beef hot dog at The Garden, but Laura Braley, spokesperson for Bon Appétit Management, said the ballpark simply wants to provide alternatives for fans seeking a more nutritious meal and sees the on-site farm as a way to inspire fans to think about the source of their food.

Photo credit: Maureen White

“It’s fun to get a salad or a flatbread and literally see the ingredients growing right there,” she said, adding that prices in The Garden have remained consistent with other offerings at AT&T Park.

While the Sox, Rockies, Padres and Giants lead the majors in progressive food and nutrition policies, other clubs appear to be competing for the most outrageous offerings on the other end of the health spectrum. At Rangers Stadium in Texas, for instance, fans this season will be able to dine on a deep-fried “S’mOreo” (exactly what it sounds like), chicken-fried corn on the cob, and bacon-flavored cotton candy. The Arizona Diamondbacks this season introduced theChurro Dog: a churro inside a chocolate-frosted long-john doughnut, topped with ice cream, whipped cream, and both chocolate and caramel syrups.

Photo credit: Green City Growers

Make no mistake: Sox and Giants fans still have their pick of less-than-nutritious stadium foods. Neither club would provide data on how well their healthier offerings have been selling, but a 2014 study of a healthy-food overhaul of a concession stand at a high-school athletics facility found that the changes had no negative effect on concessions sales and even improved overall satisfaction among parents. Varsity football is a world away from Major League Baseball, sure, but with dining trends tend toward healthier food nationally, there is both interest and demand that these programs could tap into.

Besides nutritional and environmental goals for their farms, the Giants and Red Sox have strong educational outreach programs. The Giants earlier this year unveiled plans to use The Garden at AT&T Park as an outdoor nutrition and agricultural classroom for children on non–game days, giving kids a chance to learn the importance of healthy eating. Boston has similar plans for youth enrichment—and even dreams of farming in other parts of the ballpark—as soon as farm operations are streamlined and crops are coming up.

While the first veggies won’t be ready to harvest for a few more weeks, Banhazl said she caught glimpses of the the farm’s potential influence on opening day. As she watched child after child run up to the railing and see the new beds for the first time, she saw something come alive in them.

“They’d say, ‘Oh my God, the Red Sox have a farm?’” she recalled. “We should do this, Mom!”

And the Cheapest Electricity in America Is … Solar

John Rogers, Union of Concerned Scientists  ::  EcoWatch  ::  15 July 2015

A Nevada utility and a solar developer have just struck a deal for solar electricity at a price that stands out compared not just to other solar deals, but also to just about any other option for new electricity. Here’s what it and other recent deals say about the future of solar.

Costs for large-scale solar projects dropped by 7 percent last year,
and are down by way more than half since 2009.
Photo credit: John Rogers

Bloomberg’s story on the Nevada deal opens with this (emphasis added):

Warren Buffet’s Nevada utility has lined up what may be the cheapest electricity in the           U.S., and it’s from a solar farm.

“Cheapest” and “solar” aren’t words some folks might expect to see together in something coming out of a financial outfit like Bloomberg. But folks who have been paying attention to solar’s incredible recent price drops in recent years know that the times they are a-changin’.

Best deal in town NV Energy, part of Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway company, is buying output from a project being developed by solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturer First Solar at a price of 3.87 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). That’s probably a lower price than you’d get from just about any other source out there, except for wind or energy efficiency.

Utility leaders need to keep signing the contracts that keep getting us to
ever-greater scales and ever-lower prices on solar.
Photo credit: Sarah Swenty/USFWS

No doubt about it: this power purchase agreement (PPA) is a deal. A utility analyst at Bloomberg says it’s “probably the cheapest PPA I’ve ever seen in the U.S.” Note the lack of qualifiers: no “solar,” no “renewable energy.” Just “cheapest.”

And it’s clear that this deal, for 100 megawatts (enough for more than 15,000 households’ worth of electricity), isn’t a one-off. It’s part of a suite of recent deals that testify to how far solar prices have dropped:

• Another 100-megawatt NV Energy agreement in the same utility proposal, involving a project developed by PV manufacturer SunPower, came in at 4.6 cents/kWh.

• Just a week earlier, Austin Energy signed a deal for solar at under 4 cents/kWh.

On the solar resource issue, you can remind the naysayers that solar is actually much more widespread than they might think. Some might dismiss these deals by pointing to the sunniness of the states in question or the incentives (federal or state) that are buying down the cost. Don’t let ‘em.

On incentives, you can invite them to do the math on what it would cost even without the federal tax credit, for example (still under 6 cents for the lowest-cost ones). And have them look to see what solar is achieving elsewhere—5.85 cents/kWh in Dubai, for example. Or just get them to do the math on what fossil fuels like coal really cost.

Keep making it happen

And, while the sun might not be getting brighter, the future of solar certainly is. Costs for large-scale solar projects dropped by 7 percent last year, and are down by way more than half since 2009.

Even more importantly, maybe, is the fact that a big chunk of cost reductions depend not on dropping the costs of solar panels (which are way down already), but on building up local capacity to install (or approve) such systems. That build-up comes only with experience and installations. That price trajectory could lead some to think about waiting till prices come down even more, but that would be a mistake. Solar may keep getting better, but it’s a good deal now, and even more drops in costs aren’t guaranteed. (Neither is the future of the very successful federal tax credit.)

Photo credit: UCS, Solar Power on the Rise

We also need utility leaders to keep signing the contracts that keep getting us to ever-greater scales and ever-lower prices. These contracts are a driving force for the fierce competition in the solar industry.

So go forth—sign, build, thrive. And then repeat, repeat, repeat.

How Doctors Die

It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be

BY KEN MURRAY  ::  NOVEMBER 30, 2011

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds–from 5 percent to 15 percent–albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.

It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.

Of course, doctors don’t want to die; they want to live. But they know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. And they know enough about death to know what all people fear most: dying in pain, and dying alone. They’ve talked about this with their families. They want to be sure, when the time comes, that no heroic measures will happen–that they will never experience, during their last moments on earth, someone breaking their ribs in an attempt to resuscitate them with CPR (that’s what happens if CPR is done right).

Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people. That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, “Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.” They mean it. Some medical personnel wear medallions stamped “NO CODE” to tell physicians not to perform CPR on them. I have even seen it as a tattoo.

To administer medical care that makes people suffer is anguishing. Physicians are trained to gather information without revealing any of their own feelings, but in private, among fellow doctors, they’ll vent. “How can anyone do that to their family members?” they’ll ask. I suspect it’s one reason physicians have higher rates of alcohol abuse and depression than professionals in most other fields. I know it’s one reason I stopped participating in hospital care for the last 10 years of my practice.

How has it come to this–that doctors administer so much care that they wouldn’t want for themselves? The simple, or not-so-simple, answer is this: patients, doctors, and the system.

To see how patients play a role, imagine a scenario in which someone has lost consciousness and been admitted to an emergency room. As is so often the case, no one has made a plan for this situation, and shocked and scared family members find themselves caught up in a maze of choices. They’re overwhelmed. When doctors ask if they want “everything” done, they answer yes. Then the nightmare begins. Sometimes, a family really means “do everything,” but often they just mean “do everything that’s reasonable.” The problem is that they may not know what’s reasonable, nor, in their confusion and sorrow, will they ask about it or hear what a physician may be telling them. For their part, doctors told to do “everything” will do it, whether it is reasonable or not.

The above scenario is a common one. Feeding into the problem are unrealistic expectations of what doctors can accomplish. Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a “tension pneumothorax”), walked out of the hospital. If a patient suffers from severe illness, old age, or a terminal disease, the odds of a good outcome from CPR are infinitesimal, while the odds of suffering are overwhelming. Poor knowledge and misguided expectations lead to a lot of bad decisions.

But of course it’s not just patients making these things happen. Doctors play an enabling role, too. The trouble is that even doctors who hate to administer futile care must find a way to address the wishes of patients and families. Imagine, once again, the emergency room with those grieving, possibly hysterical, family members. They do not know the doctor. Establishing trust and confidence under such circumstances is a very delicate thing. People are prepared to think the doctor is acting out of base motives, trying to save time, or money, or effort, especially if the doctor is advising against further treatment.

Some doctors are stronger communicators than others, and some doctors are more adamant, but the pressures they all face are similar. When I faced circumstances involving end-of-life choices, I adopted the approach of laying out only the options that I thought were reasonable (as I would in any situation) as early in the process as possible. When patients or families brought up unreasonable choices, I would discuss the issue in layman’s terms that portrayed the downsides clearly. If patients or families still insisted on treatments I considered pointless or harmful, I would offer to transfer their care to another doctor or hospital.

Should I have been more forceful at times? I know that some of those transfers still haunt me. One of the patients of whom I was most fond was an attorney from a famous political family. She had severe diabetes and terrible circulation, and, at one point, she developed a painful sore on her foot. Knowing the hazards of hospitals, I did everything I could to keep her from resorting to surgery. Still, she sought out outside experts with whom I had no relationship. Not knowing as much about her as I did, they decided to perform bypass surgery on her chronically clogged blood vessels in both legs. This didn’t restore her circulation, and the surgical wounds wouldn’t heal. Her feet became gangrenous, and she endured bilateral leg amputations. Two weeks later, in the famous medical center in which all this had occurred, she died.

It’s easy to find fault with both doctors and patients in such stories, but in many ways all the parties are simply victims of a larger system that encourages excessive treatment. In some unfortunate cases, doctors use the fee-for-service model to do everything they can, no matter how pointless, to make money. More commonly, though, doctors are fearful of litigation and do whatever they’re asked, with little feedback, to avoid getting in trouble.

Even when the right preparations have been made, the system can still swallow people up. One of my patients was a man named Jack, a 78-year-old who had been ill for years and undergone about 15 major surgical procedures. He explained to me that he never, under any circumstances, wanted to be placed on life support machines again. One Saturday, however, Jack suffered a massive stroke and got admitted to the emergency room unconscious, without his wife. Doctors did everything possible to resuscitate him and put him on life support in the ICU. This was Jack’s worst nightmare. When I arrived at the hospital and took over Jack’s care, I spoke to his wife and to hospital staff, bringing in my office notes with his care preferences. Then I turned off the life support machines and sat with him. He died two hours later.

Even with all his wishes documented, Jack hadn’t died as he’d hoped. The system had intervened. One of the nurses, I later found out, even reported my unplugging of Jack to the authorities as a possible homicide. Nothing came of it, of course; Jack’s wishes had been spelled out explicitly, and he’d left the paperwork to prove it. But the prospect of a police investigation is terrifying for any physician. I could far more easily have left Jack on life support against his stated wishes, prolonging his life, and his suffering, a few more weeks. I would even have made a little more money, and Medicare would have ended up with an additional $500,000 bill. It’s no wonder many doctors err on the side of over-treatment.

But doctors still don’t over-treat themselves. They see the consequences of this constantly. Almost anyone can find a way to die in peace at home, and pain can be managed better than ever. Hospice care, which focuses on providing terminally ill patients with comfort and dignity rather than on futile cures, provides most people with much better final days. Amazingly, studies have found that people placed in hospice care often live longer than people with the same disease who are seeking active cures. I was struck to hear on the radio recently that the famous reporter Tom Wicker had “died peacefully at home, surrounded by his family.” Such stories are, thankfully, increasingly common.

Several years ago, my older cousin Torch (born at home by the light of a flashlight–or torch) had a seizure that turned out to be the result of lung cancer that had gone to his brain. I arranged for him to see various specialists, and we learned that with aggressive treatment of his condition, including three to five hospital visits a week for chemotherapy, he would live perhaps four months. Ultimately, Torch decided against any treatment and simply took pills for brain swelling. He moved in with me.

We spent the next eight months doing a bunch of things that he enjoyed, having fun together like we hadn’t had in decades. We went to Disneyland, his first time. We’d hang out at home. Torch was a sports nut, and he was very happy to watch sports and eat my cooking. He even gained a bit of weight, eating his favorite foods rather than hospital foods. He had no serious pain, and he remained high-spirited. One day, he didn’t wake up. He spent the next three days in a coma-like sleep and then died. The cost of his medical care for those eight months, for the one drug he was taking, was about $20.

Torch was no doctor, but he knew he wanted a life of quality, not just quantity. Don’t most of us? If there is a state of the art of end-of-life care, it is this: death with dignity. As for me, my physician has my choices. They were easy to make, as they are for most physicians. There will be no heroics, and I will go gentle into that good night. Like my mentor Charlie. Like my cousin Torch. Like my fellow doctors.

Ken Murray, MD, is Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at USC.