Trees vs. Sun

by shamanic

As an intermittent gardener, I read this story with some interest. Basically, a California homeowner installed $70k worth of solar panels on his home in 2001, and his neighbor's trees grew to shade them. There is a never-before-used California law that protects a homeowner's right to the sun in just these instances, so the homeowner had prosecutors file charges against his neighbors, and years of legal fighting later, a few of the trees have to come down.

What's interesting is that if the homeowner had dropped a few thousand dollars to put a large patch of, say, organic garden on his property and was growing his own food and maybe donating surplus to area homeless shelters or something, he'd get no consideration from this law. I say that as someone with a large patch I'm going to till soon in a neighborhood of towering pines. I'll do the best I can, but I won't be growing any prize winning veggies out back.

I don't have any solutions or any judgment about, uh, the judgment. This is mostly thinking out loud. If we live close to each other, we're going to trample on each other's toes from time to time.

One really cool detail in the story though: The homeowner with the solar panels drives a plug-in electric car, meaning that he's not only generating energy for the operation of his home, but for the operation of his vehicle too. Those Californians really seem to mean it.

Friday (Wild)Cat Blogging

By Cernig

I've wandered over large chunks of Scottish wilderness in my time - and only ever seen two Wildcats, the indigenous Scottish cat. They're gorgeous creatures, a bit bigger than a large domestic cat and with all the pride and 'tude of a full-grown lion.

Now, there's a push on to try to get an accurate picture of how many of these beautiful cats are left.

Walkers in the Highlands are being asked to help discover the true numbers of one of Britain's most secretive creatures - the Scottish wildcat.
It became extinct in England and Wales 150 years ago but continues to be sighted in Scottish woods and moorland.

Some estimates suggest just 400 survive - although there could be up to 4,000.

Now Scottish Natural Heritage is asking everyone who uses the countryside to take part in a year-long survey and report sightings of the timid animal.

The conservation body hopes to assess numbers and distribution.

...

If it helps preserve their numbers and habitat, then great. Scotland would be poorer without them.

Government & The Environment

by shamanic

There's a piece in the Post about carbon offsets that the House purchased this year for $89,000 and the projects that were funded with the money, and there's just something incongruous about the whole idea.

Here's how I see it: last year I purchased a small carbon offset through Georgia Power and I pay an extra $5 or $10 per month on my monthly bill to, in theory, fund greener energy sources in my state like methane reclamation, solar, wind, hydro, or geothermal. They've got a page on the web that discusses the various options in the region. I can't say whether Georgia Power uses the money for those things and I can't tell you if a single other Georgian household purchased these offsets through the program, but it seemed to me that I could, as a consumer, represent a market force that wants cleaner energy sources. Hopefully others have joined the program too and are also demonstrating to the suits at Southern Company (which owns Georgia Power) that these things are a worthy and profitable investment.

But I'm just one person, or perhaps one "household" in corporate-speak. I don't have the power of the federal government backing my consumer decisions, and I can't pass laws or fund projects that would cause a semi-permanent improvement in the situation. I'm sure the House did more than just buy carbon offsets to go to questionable projects, but really, they could pass a bill mandating the planting of a million new trees on federal land each year, and fund it for probably about the same cost.

I understand the impulse to "go green" and do simple little things to save energy and conserve resources, but if you're the US House of Representatives, you really should dream bigger than that. You don't have to go through brokers to achieve your ends, you can pass laws that create small, intelligent, funded programs and make a real difference. There's something depressing about the idea that the federal government is using the same methods I am to impact the environment. It has so much more power than I do, and it appears to have squandered it.