Energy Bad Habits

Here are a few of my ideas and comments regarding climate change. You may think these are radical and abrupt, but I feel that our U.S. leadership and most Americans are still "asleep" when it comes to our climate. I feel we had a good taste of climate change this past summer – the second major hurricane to hit Central America is still ongoing as I write this.

Americans have developed many "bad habits" dealing with energy that are hard to break. Our economy is like a giant monster that lives and breathes on gasoline, diesel fuel and electricity, and belches out toxic pollutants that affect the entire world. We are one of the biggest, if not the biggest, polluters on earth!

One of our biggest “bad habits” is the AUTOMOBILE.

For the past 100+ years now, Americans have thrived on auto racing. The INDY 500 now draws several hundred thousand spectators. If you do the math for gasoline consumption for the participants and spectators combined, it is well over several million gallons of gasoline consumed. Since each gallon consumed equates to around 19 pounds of CO2 emissions on average, this equals several thousand tons of CO2 produced for just this one event. During the summer there are many major auto races across the country. So, the total CO2 produced is well into the million-ton range. All that for the "excitement" and "thrill" of speed, and maybe seeing a big burning wreck! You may say "it's a money maker for our economy." Well, if that is true, we are indeed in trouble.  

Joliet has three racing venues: Chicagoland Speedway, Route 66 Raceway, and the Autobahn (named after the famous speed-limitless highway in Germany). In my opinion, if our country is serious about climate change, then all three of these venues must be shut down immediately. Auto racing is a cancer for our climate and one of our major bad habits. But it's not just track racing. It's tractor pull contests, mud racing, dirt track racing, off-road rock climbing, etc. There are dozens of different racing classifications in this country alone. Don't forget the Bonneville Salt Flats in western Utah! We Americans set a bad example for the rest of the world on how to waste energy. But that's not all. There are big boat racing events and even airplane racing. They all need to go if we are serious about climate change. Americans glorify the winner of NASCAR races. We make heroes out of the winners. Instead, we need to see them as villains and not heroes.

Electric cars are the cure, you may say. Well, let's take a look at history. We damaged the environment to mine coal. We damaged the environment to extract oil. We are producing tons of nuclear waste from nuke plants every year, and several plants have had major disasters. We are now damaging the environment with fracking. We have damaged the environment mining minerals (the Animas River in Colorado turned orange, remember that event). And now we intend to damage the environment to mine and purify lithium for electric car batteries.

We need to step in and make several important changes to the automobile and how it is driven. Limit the speedometer range to 90 MPH. Why do we need the speedometer to go from 0 to 140, or 160, or even to 200 MPH on some cars? WHY? Every week I read about someone caught driving well over 100 MPH in the Chicago area. I have a collection of newspaper articles detailing some individuals driving 150 MPH and a few even faster. In October, an attempt was made in the Nevada desert to drive 300 MPH in a “hypercar” (an extreme high performance vehicle) just for the record!

Why do manufacturers make cars with 1000 HP engines and some even bigger? These engines are gas wasters. Limit the horsepower to no more than 250 HP, and even that may be excessive.

Put a governor on the engines of ALL cars sold in the U.S., so the speed can never go above 85 MPH. We should also drop the speed limit on the interstate highways back down to 65 MPH, or perhaps even lower to save energy. Ten years ago, several individuals in the Chicago area complained that the speed limit was too low due to the fact that almost everyone was going well over the speed limit. These individuals had no clue what effect raising the speed limit does to gas mileage. The faster you go in a car, the lower your miles per gallon is. You are pushing more air out of the way in the same period of time. For example, if you can get 35 mpg at 50 MPH, you may only get 25 mpg at 70 MPH.

How many of you have heard about the Cannonball Run?

“The Cannonball Run is an unsanctioned speed record, typically accepted to run from New York City's Red Ball Garage to the Portofino Hotel in Los Angeles, a distance of about 2,800 mi (4,500 km). As of August 2020, the record is 25 hours 29 minutes, with a top speed of 175 mph and an average speed of 110 mph, driven by Arne Toman and Doug Tabbutt."

The Cannonball Run is done on our interstate highways no less, just for the thrill of it. How many hundreds of gallons of gas and tons of CO2 are produced for this one gas-wasting event? This goes on every year. And there are probably tens of thousands of Americans who are drooling to break that record.

I will finish up with comments about ADVERTISING.

Every day on TV, on the radio, and on the internet, I see and hear ads for automobile sales that show speeding, roaring, spinning wheels, burning rubber, doing burnouts, and in some cases splashing through a stream. All this to sell gas-wasting cars. Splashing through a stream is an environmental sin!

To see this for real, all you have to do is drive out to Pilcher Park on Joliet's east side. Come in through the west entrance from Rt 30. As you approach the park about a mile in from Rt 30, there is a large parking lot on the right, between the road and Hickory Creek. You will notice "burn out" spirals on the pavement. Someone with a high horsepower car with nothing else to do but spin the wheels and burn rubber on the parking lot pavement, damaging public property set aside for the enjoyment of all. And if you can't make it to the park, all you have to do is go to Google earth maps (just search for Pilcher Park) to see a satellite view of the park. The burn out trails are actually visible from space!

Tire marks on pavement and adjoining grass at Pilcher Park Nature Center in Joliet, Illinois.
(Image courtesy of Google Earth)

How does this happen? It is a failure of our society. It is a failure of parenting. It is a failure of our community standards. It is a failure of our schools. It is a failure of our leadership. It is a failure of our business culture.

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Our Faith Compels Us to Vote to Care for Our Earth

The year 2020 is a year when it is dawning on some of us that we are living in climate change. Climate change is no longer subtle; it is hitting us literally with Hurricane Laura, the mid-west derecho on August 10th, and a million-acre “gigafire” in the West. The fires in California are so massive that they can be seen from outer space. Texas is being hit with stronger, bigger, and slower hurricanes. The derecho in the mid-west in June struck my neighborhood near Chicago with ferocity; there were tree limbs down all over the place, and thousands of people were without electricity for days. Farmers in Iowa fared even worse, because 40% of Iowa’s corn and soybeans were flattened by the derecho.

Governor Newsome in California was asked about the cost of cleaning up after the wildfires in recent years. He said that just the debris removal after the fires was a multibillion-dollar expense. Quoting Governor Newsome, “Folks think, well we can’t afford to address climate change. My gosh. The naiveté of that. Because the most expensive option is doing nothing.”

These catastrophes have been predicted by the vast majority of scientists for years, who said that storms and wildfires would become more frequent and severe if we do nothing to slow down the release of greenhouse gases. Also, scientists predicted the rising temperatures. In 1990, the U.S. military called climate change, “a threat multiplier.” I could go on and mention environmental catastrophes happening all over the world, for example the huge wildfires in Australia. Moreover, our changing climate is causing increasing numbers of people around the world to become refugees. In our own country, many people were displaced after Hurricane Katrina, and have had their homes destroyed in other hurricanes. Now we also have refugees from the wildfires in California.

I look at this natural world and see God’s amazing gifts to us in the flowers, trees, creatures, rivers, oceans, and an excellent climate. Pope Francis states in Laudato Si’, “The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us.” When we are given a lovely gift by a friend, we naturally express our appreciation. A way that we show appreciation for God’s gifts to us in this natural world is by taking care of those gifts He has given us, and not trashing them. When we disrespect the gifts, we disrespect the Giver of the gifts.

Many times in the Old and New Testament scriptures we are told to care for the poor, immigrants, the homeless, and the powerless. Katharine Hayhoe is a woman of faith and the Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. Regarding climate change, Katharine says, “The poor, the disenfranchised, those already living on the edge, and those who contributed least to this problem are also those at greatest risk to be harmed by it. That’s not a scientific issue; that’s a moral issue. When I look around, the biggest way in which we are failing to care for those in need is through ignoring climate change and acting like it doesn’t exist. As a Christian, I believe that is something the church needs to know.” When we care for our Earth, we are caring for each other, and working for the common good of all humankind.

One of the most important things we can do to stop climate change, in addition to personal actions to help our environment, is to put taking care of the Earth near the top of our list of priorities when we go into the voting booth. Of course, it is not our only priority, but it is important enough to rise to one of our top five priorities. All of us care about our children and grandchildren and leaving them with an Earth that is beautiful and able to sustain life, and a decent quality of life. We need to think about that when we vote.

Vote for lawmakers who pledge to make cleaning up our air, water, and soil a top priority. Vote for politicians who will do all that they can to stop climate change. Specifically, vote for politicians who support the Green New Deal, the Paris Agreement, and organic and carbon-sequestration agriculture. If you live in Illinois, vote for state congresspeople who will vote to pass CEJA, the Clean Energy Jobs Act. Find out what pro-environmental laws are proposed in your state, and vote for people who will make them a reality. Also consider what environmentally friendly ordinances are proposed in your town or city, and vote for mayors and city council people who support them.

In closing I share part of a prayer from Michelle Balek, OSF: “All creation, each star and every flower, each drop of water and every person, each and every atom, down to its very electrons, explodes with the revelation of your Sacred Mystery. Our minds alone cannot fathom such splendor. Our hearts can only respond in awe, praise and gratitude.”

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How the U.S. Power Grid Can Become 90% Carbon Free by 2035

A June 10 article from the non-profit online news magazine Grist lays out a relatively simple plan for a 90% carbon free power grid by 2035. The article states that 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide are spewed into our atmosphere from our electric grid, which includes power plants and transmission lines. This is over 25% of our nation’s carbon emissions. Due to rapidly falling prices for wind and solar energy, U.S. power can be almost carbon-free in 15 years. Over the past 10 years the price tag for solar has dropped 89%.

In order to make this a reality, Congress needs to set a “universal clean energy standard,” which is a law requiring utilities to generate a portion of their energy from energy sources that do not release carbon dioxide. A reasonable and attainable nationwide clean energy standard would be 55% clean energy by 2025, which would increase to 75% in 2030, and then increase again to 90% in 2035. This would put all states on the same path to clean energy. (At this time states are uneven in their use of carbon-free energy sources).

Loans and tax credits to create new energy infrastructures would boost the manufacturing that would be required to meet a national clean energy standard. Congress needs to pass strong legislation to make this more than a pipe dream. This is doable! We just need the political will to do it.

Read the complete article here.

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