———————– ** Fresh Green Beans ** ———————– Grown in Kansas. Eaten Worldwide.

Bowersock Power’s hydroelectric plant on the Kansas River provides an alternative for customers looking for carbon-free energy.
Photo by Lauren Keith

Tucked away in a non-imposing brick building near Sixth and New Hampshire, the quiet beast hums away, fed by the waters of the Kansas River. Inside the facility that passers-by may think is abandoned, lies Kansas’ only hydroelectric plant.

The hydroelectric plant, which is owned by the Bowersock Mills & Power Co., produces 2.5 megawatts of energy, or enough electricity to power about 2,000 homes and businesses, Nicholas Herndon, a worker at the plant, said.

The thought of a dam in the middle of the Great Plains is somewhat strange because many think a drastic change in elevation is needed to take the energy from the water.

“What we don’t have in height, we make up for in quantity,” explains co-owner Sarah Hill-Nelson.

Although this is one of the oldest hydroelectric plants west of the Mississippi River, the changing flux of Lawrence residents doesn’t know that the plant even exists or that they have the option to buy environmentally friendly energy.

To have green energy in your home, you can buy “green tags.”

Mark Maxwell, a worker at the dam, said Bowersock sells its power to Westar, and then Westar sends out the electricity on the grid that connects homes and businesses.

“You can’t really buy what we produce because you’re just buying energy off the grid,” Maxwell said. “Most of the energy is going to be produced by Westar, but for the tags you buy, Westar doesn’t produce that amount of energy, which lessens the amount of coal burned, the pollution and the environmental impact.”
The green tags cost about $20 per month. Tags can be purchased at greentagsusa.org.

Although some people think that buying green tags is a scam because green energy is supplied to the same electrical grid as non-renewable energy, it’s easy to see that green energy is being generated in Lawrence. We can see the hydroelectric plant in action.

“The more environmentally friendly energy we have, the better,” Maxwell said.

You’re dam right.

-Lauren Keith

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Coal-fired power plants used to be the symbol of growth and progress, but people have now woken up to the true cost of coal.
Photo by Bruno D Rodrigues, flikr.com

Damn, America has found itself in quite the energy crisis.

The price of oil is burning a hole in our pockets and in the atmosphere. We are wary of General Electric’s standing as one of the top wind turbine manufacturers because of the company’s lax air and water pollution policies. The environmental crappiness of coal power has finally been exposed. What now?

Look no further than one of our favorite swear words: dam.

Dams are no stranger to the American landscape, but for the most part, we just leave it to the beaver.
Hydroelectric plants account for about 20 percent of the world’s electricity supply, giving more than 1 billion people power. All of the world’s hydroelectric dams put out a combined 715,000 megawatts, which is the same as saving 3.6 billion barrels of oil, according to the Renewable Energy Policy Network (PDF).

More than 2,000 hydropower plants are currently operating in the United States, making hydroelectricity our country’s most used renewable energy resource.

To learn how electricity is produced from running water, take a step back to elementary school. It’s that dam simple.

Flowing water has potential energy, which is stored until it can be converted into kinetic energy, or the energy of motion. Water coming into the plant drives a circular turbine and a generator, which change the water’s potential energy into a useable form. The amount of energy taken from the water varies. It depends on how much water is coming through the turbines and the height difference between the incoming water and the height that it leaves the plant. For a more in-depth look, see How Stuff Works.

Not all dams are environmentally friendly, but some meet certain standards that minimize their effects on wildlife. These dams are certified low-impact by a voluntary program. Some states require hydroelectric projects to be low-impact certified to qualify as renewable energy. More than 20 hydropower dams have this certification, including the only facility in Kansas.

With low-impact hydropower, one city in Kansas has made some dam changes.

-Lauren Keith

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by Mohamed Sami, energytribune.com

“This isn’t a political issue. This is a moral issue,” the former politician claimed triumphantly.

“Woo!” I called out from my theater chair, pumping my fist in the air like I was Captain Planet, ready to combine the five element rings. “You’re damn right!”

I looked around for some support from the rest of the audience, 90 percent of which was made up of half-empty cups of flat Coke and overturned popcorn buckets from the last movie that played. My fellow planeteers were nowhere in sight, even though I could have sworn that I saw Heart ducking down in the front row, apparently a little embarrassed by my outburst.

I thought my Heart was in the right place.

So I decided that if the audience wouldn’t come to the movie theater, I would have the movie theater come to the audience. I set up screenings of the documentary and invited everyone that I had even remotely come in contact with to come watch it.

Some showed up. A few of my Republican friends gave me the stink-eye when I told them what it was. “More like Al Snore,” they said.

People came and went. I gave complimentary recycle cans to people for hanging out with me, but they still didn’t seem too interested in anything Gore or I had to say.

Unfortunately, 22 showings later, I still couldn’t pinpoint why no one cared.

And then Media and the Environment dawned on me.

Environmental storytellers have a hard time connecting the dots that the audience needs to have connected for them. We tell people to recycle, to save the Amazon, to quit breathing so often, but we hardly tell them the most relevant part: why it’s important.

I don’t shop at The Merc to save the polar bears. I don’t make my roommates unplug the microwave (and soon the refrigerator, they joke) because the glaciers are melting. I do it so we can save ourselves.

We are so used to people being able to string the concepts together themselves that we don’t realize that this time we need to be the ones providing the glue of the conversation.

We are the eco-friendly adhesives.

It saddens me that a more expensive case of Bud Select has my friends more worried about the state of the environment than a carbon dioxide graph did, but I’m ready to meet them where they are: at the grocery store.

Al Gore and “An Inconvenient Truth” didn’t doom the environmental movement.

Leonardo DiCaprio and “The 11th Hour” didn’t doom the environmental movement.

Our (PowerPoint) presentation doomed the environmental movement.

Until environmentalists can reframe their argument and make the environment relevant to the general public, it will be our movement’s 11th hour.

-Lauren Keith

Photo by Tayseer, flikr.com

It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your readers are?

They’re right here, you post procrastinator. They are breathing down your avatar’s neck, expectantly drooling on their keyboards, just waiting for you to hit the almighty “save” button.

You’ve been slaving away over a hot CPU all damn day, but in the world of the ever-impending deadline, readers don’t give a ctrl-alt-del.

The New York Times reported Sunday that two well-known technology bloggers suffered from heart attacks and have gone to meet their maker (presumably Al Gore).

It seems the stress of approaching deadlines is taking its toll everywhere.

Mother Nature knows for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for the (environment).

I fear the sixth great mass extinction will begin soon, this time arising from the deaths of environmentalists suffering from green fatigue.

We rush around: turning off the lights, unplugging unused toasters and TVs, digging through the garbage to find one man’s trash that’s another man’s trip to the recycling center and being a vegetarian even when your friends force you to join them for a Buffalo Wild Wings dinner.

But what satisfaction do we get, especially when we come home to find that our roommate has single-handedly chopped down the entire Amazon rainforest and transported its chipboard brothers and sisters to our living room?

The non-organic, petroleum-derived Doritos bag was my addition to this trip down the Amazon Trail.

With global warming putting an impending deadline on the survival of the human race, we need to take a step back before we hit “save” on our daily actions.

People demand news, now, never-ending. As bloggers, we need to make the climate crisis relevant but not redundant, to remember our deadline and to remind readers of theirs.

Don’t forget that you can stop and breathe for a second, but please divert your CO2 elsewhere.

-Lauren Keith

Editor’s note: This an extended version of a letter to the editor that I plan to submit to Time magazine about an article posted to its site called “Earth Hour ‘08: Did It Matter?“. To make some sense of this post, I would recommend reading that article first. I would promise you that it wouldn’t be a waste of time, but that would be a lie, which is why I’m writing this. My column this week in Jayplay also discusses Earth Hour.

In Sydney, Australia, where Earth Hour began.
Photo by Jamie Williams, flickr.com

Although not everyone claims to be a treehugger, I am hard-pressed to find people who say they hate the planet.Then by the transitive property of the basic human need for a home multiplied by the square root of Al Gore, I can’t see why the individual is left out of the equation in trying to solve global warming.

In Bryan Walsh’s article about Earth Hour, he completely dismisses the importance of the individual making a difference. But Earth Hour highlighted just that. This event showed how easy it is to reduce your personal carbon emissions in one of the simplest ways possible: turning a light switch the other direction.

In a country that can hardly do the basics when it comes to saving the environment (Americans still recycle only 32 percent of their trash), flicking the lights off for an hour should be a no-brainer.

Walsh writes that we must “live like monks” in an attempt to erase our individual 20-ton carbon footprints and later says that that will “barely scratch the surface.”

But he forgets the point of Earth Hour and has fallen into the carbon-dioxide-induced dumps. The main point of the event was not necessarily to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, organizers wanted to make a statement about the importance of fighting climate change.

The biggest producers of carbon in Americans’ daily lives come from transportation and the energy used to heat and cool our homes. How can these not be changed at an individual level?

We can decide to turn the thermostat down a few notches in the winter and up a few in the summer. We can decide to walk or ride a bike to get groceries down the street. We can decide that we would rather have our electricity come from renewable resources instead choking down the pollution from America’s coal plants.

Individuals comprise the collective, so the efforts that we make at a grassroots level resonate higher up the chain.

Walsh may be right on one point, though: The statistics are monstrous, and it is hard for people to visualize what their 20 tons of carbon dioxide emissions is doing to the planet. But this oh-well-it’s-not-my-problem attitude has plagued efforts to electrify some sort of global environmental concern in the American people.

Historically, international failures like the Kyoto Protocol give even more clout to the importance of individual action.

Although then-vice president Al Gore symbolically signed the treaty, the Clinton administration never submitted it to the Senate for ratification. President George W. Bush said he has no intentions to submit the treaty for ratification, making the United States the only developed country in the world that hasn’t signed Kyoto.

Walsh’s pessimism is not shocking, considering the message this country sent by failing to sign Kyoto and its refusal to take action. It’s no wonder Americans think we can’t make a difference when this cynical attitude dominates the landscape.

By ignoring the significance of the individual, Walsh defeats any hope that Americans can make a difference. As a world leader, this country has an obligation to take on global challenges and be a role model to other nations. The United States has the highest carbon dioxide emissions per person, so it is up to us to change our ways.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of green fatigue that Walsh mentions by constantly being reminded of the tough changes we must make to the typical American lifestyle. But what we forget is the new American lifestyle that we can create — a smarter lifestyle that holds us accountable for our actions and our only home.

It’s time that we face the consequences of our choices, and it’s Time that is informing Americans about remaining the status quo.

-Lauren Keith

photo by Sean McNamar, flikr.com

Oh, baby. Too cute, right? The planet’s newest little bundle of greenhouse gas joy appears so innocent, but the weight of the world will soon fall on her shoulders.

In the midst of discovering everything we’ve been doing to keep Kansas on track for becoming beachfront property, we have forgotten the root of the problem: this graph.

graph from one-simple-idea.com

Researchers have long being trying to mathematically determine the carrying capacity of the planet, or how many members of a species an ecosystem can support before the system collapses, which is determined by available food and water and ecological footprint quizzes.

Just feeling guilty about “permanently borrowing” Mother Nature’s resources may not be an effective way to deal with the problem, but we need to start feeling something besides being in the mood to add to the population.

Researchers have found that Earth’s carrying capacity may be only 2-4 billion people. And whoops, we forgot to put our pants back on and got our numbers up to 6.7 billion.

Human population numbers are soaring off a cliff, driven by a pair of Wile E. Coyote’s ACME rocket-powered skates. Unfortunately, I think we are going to cause a little more damage when we land than he did with a puff of cartoon smoke.

Thomas Malthus, a British economist who lived in the 1700s, saw the future problems with the population growing at a geometric rate (1, 2, 4, 8, 16) when food production only increased at an arithmetic rate (1, 2, 3, 4). He argued that population would be kept in check by natural causes (death from old age), misery (war, plagues, famine) and vice (murder, contraception).

He also may have just been sad that no one wanted to increase the population with him. Yikes, check that mug.

image from Encarta.com

Neo-Malthusians think the population has passed the point where everyone can live with an iPod and a Hummer. Instead, people now and in future generations will be trapped in the misery caused by war and famine, as is now occurring in developing countries where people are dying from preventable diseases, malnutrition and political unrest.

However, humans keep outbidding Mother Nature. We build (or re-build) better levy systems. We progress through technological and medicinal advances. But can we keep growing and improving? How in the world can we even start to grow “sustainably”? And isn’t “sustainable growth” an oxymoron because we’ve exceeded carrying capacity?

Oh well, who needs Earth anyway if men are from Mars and women are from Venus? Let the countdown begin.

-Lauren Keith

Are you there, God? It’s me, global warming.

When I logged on to Facebook yesterday, I was disturbed to see that my two least favorite things (organized religion and Yahoo! Inc.) have friend requested my best buddy, the Green Movement.

And the Green Movement accepted their friend request.

In a story posted yesterday on Yahoo! Green (which I had no idea existed until 12 hours ago), the Catholics’ second-in-command declared pollution a sin.

According to the article, the Pope has made a decent fuss about environmental problems, enough so to scare some churches to invest in eco-palms for this year’s Palm Sunday.

As much as I disagree with everything else the Pope stands for, I like seeing a major religion acknowledge and combat the climate crisis. In fact, Vatican announced plans last summer to become the world’s first carbon-neutral state. Yahoo’s article said that photovoltaic cells have been installed and that the Church has discussed the consequences of global warming.

Even though pollution is now one of the seven deadly sins, recent studies show that fewer Catholics are attending confession. It’s okay, sinners, the rest of the human race doesn’t want to own up to global warming yet either.

While Catholics only have a few new sins to steer clear of, I’ve compiled the Green Movement’s 10 “Greenmandments” to make sure the rest of us can also avoid eternal damnation.

And Mother Earth did spake:
I: Thou shalt have no other planets before Me.

II: Thou shalt not exploit resources in vain.

III: Thou shalt take a break from electronic devices and unplug them while not in use.

IV: Thou shalt recycle, even if thou must driveth to Wal-Mart in thy carbon dioxide emitting, 10-miles-per-gallon-getting Hummer.

V: Thou shalt not kill animals grown in factory farm conditions.

VI: Thou shalt not sleep with polluters to convert them to thine side.

VII: Thou shalt not steal, because then thou art consuming earthly goods.

VIII: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor’s greenhouse gas emissions.

IX: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s solar panels, greywater irrigation system or organic garden because thou shalt soon have one of thine own.

X: Thou shalt not key thy neighbor’s Prius, even if thou would like to own one or thou knoweth the truth about its origins.

Hallelujah! Praise be with the planet.

–Lauren Keith

Roderick Bremby, the secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, is speaking tonight at 7 p.m. at the Dole Institute on West Campus.

This past October, Bremby denied the Holcomb coal project the permits it needed because of concerns about carbon dioxide emissions. He truly put Kansas on the map as a leader in changing our mindsets about global warming. Since then, both the Kansas House and the Senate have tried to push bills through to severely limit the secretary’s power in being able to regulate the environment.

This man is a big deal in the modern environmental movement, especially since that’s still somewhat of an oxymoron in Kansas. And it’s a little off-putting when I hear other people referring to him simply as “some guy who doesn’t like the coal plants.”

See the story from the Kansan here.

The story says “Bremby may not be able to comment on the issue that has brought him the most attention.” Not sure what that means, but I’m sure some loud greens may be able to change that.

Hope to see some familiar faces there!

-Lauren Keith

I’ve always been a little picky, but lately my food choices have left a bad taste in my mouth.

I get so bored of eating, cooking and going to the grocery store that I’m on the verge of heading over to the lab to help the scientists invent meal-time in pill form. But I usually get distracted and end up at Chipotle instead.

Over the past 24 hours, this is what I’ve eaten for:

Breakfast: Highly processed corporate yogurt with organic granola and raisins

Lunch: Pizza Hut cheese sticks. Definitely the greasiest decision I’ve made in a while. My stomach lining is still not happy about it.

Dinner: Omelette-turned-scrambled-eggs with organic cheese, eggs and onion and locally grown mushrooms.

I love learning about what ingredients go into food because of this strange obsession with learning about what chemical compounds can do. I’ve been reading a book called “Twinkie, Deconstructed” that exposes the Twinkie’s usually undiscussed innards. Luckily, I’ve worked in a bakery far too long to even have the desire to look at a cake ever again.

But this book, along with numerous articles like the Happy Meal story and a monthly piece in WIRED, unnecessarily magnifies the so-called negatives about ingredients in food.

“Did you know that the iron compound in enriched flour in Twinkies is also used as a common weed killer?” the back of the book asks.

Food ingredient exposés are misleading. You can’t go out and spray Twinkies on your yard this spring to kill pests (but maybe the fish could at least enjoy some better tasting runoff).

Chemical compounds can change ever so slightly and yield a different product. Simply by the addition of a few electrons or even the rearrangement of the atoms can create something new.

The “iron compound” from the quote has a completely different chemical formula depending on which place it’s going. With this logic, could you say that the “hydrogen compound” found in water is also commonly used in nuclear fusion?

We have a finite set of chemicals to work with in this universe, but we can make an infinite set of products from them. There’s going to be some overlap. Everything is made of chemicals, and they aren’t scary things. We consume them all the time.

I’m not praising the shortcuts that industry has taken (read: corn syrup and almost anything ending in –ose), but seemingly “investigative” journalism is trying to spill the beans to the American consumer, but they should just eat their words.

On a completely unrelated note: somehow octopus from Wal-Mart has come to reside in my apartment’s refrigerator. Octopus. From Wal-Mart. In Kansas. From Wal-Mart. Digest that for a bit.

-Lauren Keith

I’m trying to wrap my mind around this story, but I just can’t seem to do it.

Can someone help me decipher? What is this world coming to? Besides global warming, of course.

-Lauren Keith