Stop Taking Your Breakfast for Granted!

3.75
That's how many pounds of Carbon Dioxide are released into Earth's atmosphere for every carton of Tropicana Orange Juice. To give you an idea of what it means in terms of pollution: Cars make about 1 pound of Carbon Dioxide for every mile driven. Each carton of Tropicana OJ that you buy is like driving a car for almost 4 miles. The name that scientists give to the amount of Carbon Dioxide (and other harmful Green House Gases) connected to a particular product is its "Carbon Footprint."

[Note: Check out my last post on calculating your own Footprint -- the approximate Green House Gases from all the goods and services you buy each year.]

What goes into each carton's Footprint?
As I mentioned above, the Carbon Footprint refers to some amount of Carbon Dioxide, which contributes to Global Warming. The largest sources of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere are Fossil Fuels. (Some examples of theses Fuels include Oil and Coal, and products made from them like Gasoline.) Two major characteristics of Fossil Fuels that scientists have known and taken advantage of for years are that 1) they release a great amount of heat energy when set on fire and 2) they have lots of Carbon in their chemical make-up.

When Fossil Fuels are burned, the Carbon that is contained in them transforms into Carbon Dioxide and floats off in a cloud of smoke. Just so you know: Most of the electricity in the U.S. is produced by Fossil Fuel-burning power plants -- that is, about 72% of all U.S. electricity. (Only 8.5% is created by Renewable Resources, like Solar and Hydro Power.) And don't forget how much Gasoline (made from Oil) we burn every day driving our cars around! (I would also like to point out that most Plastic is made from Oil and has a large Carbon Footprint as well.)

A Carbon Footprint calculates things like how much Carbon Dioxide is made while producing the electricity used in Tropicana's factory. It also includes the Carbon Dioxide from burning Gasoline while shipping the cartons of juice across the country (usually from the main plant in Bradenton, Florida). You can probably tell already how hard it is to calculate a Carbon Footprint: you have to figure out every step of the process and then calculate the Carbon Dioxide associated with it. The hardest part can be figuring out just what all the steps in the process are.

A Surprise in the Calculation
To calculate their Carbon Footprint, Tropicana hired an outside company, called Carbon Trust:

Early on, [Tropicana's own] company officials roughed out the carbon footprint of Tropicana juice. But when the Carbon Trust came back with its own calculations, that initial estimate was off by more than 20 percent.

Growing the oranges accounted for a larger share — about a third — than [Tropicana] had expected, almost entirely because of the production and application of fertilizer.

So Tropicana's own people made a guess at their Footprint, but like I said, it's hard to figure out all the steps in the process. The professionals they hired from Carbon Trust found a step the Tropicana people left out: growing the oranges.

Tropicana discovered something that Environmentalists have known for a while now: Farming makes a lot of pollution. The majority of Carbon Dioxide produced in farming comes from its fertilizers. Most of the nutrients in the fertilizers are made from Fossil Fuels. In 2005, 99.5% of farms in America use fertilizers made in a lab. Just the process of making the fertilizer releases a huge amount of Carbon Dioxide. (These chemical fertilizers -- and other elements of modern farming -- have further negative effects on the environment, but for this blog post, let's just stick to the Carbon Footprint.)

Breaking Down the Footprint
Here's Carbon Trust's breakdown of the Carbon Footprint:

As it turned out, the production phase of the juice alone accounts for 60% of the Carbon Footprint. Of that, 58% comes from the fertilizer.
58% of 60% = .58 x .60 = .348 = ~35%So, about 35% of the orange juice's Footprint comes from the chemical fertilizer used to grow the oranges. That's more than the Electricity and Natural Gas (another Fossil Fuel) used to power the factory in processing the oranges! That's more than the fuel used by trucks and trains to drive it across the country!

The way Carbon Trust came to the number 3.75 pounds was by adding up all of the Carbon Dioxide emitted by all of these processes over the course of 6 months or a year and then divided by the number of cartons produced in that time. Consider this scenario: A single batch of orange juice made from the same harvest of oranges is split into two trucks. One truck full of orange juice drives from the main Tropicana plant to somewhere else within Florida. The other truck drives all the way out to California. Since the second truck drove farther, does that mean that its orange juice has a larger Carbon Footprint?

The answer is: No, since Tropicana is a national company and it uses profits in one area of the country to balance out costs in another. That helps them to deliver a uniform brand product with the same quality and price nationwide. But it also means that the cost of fuel and therefore the fuel's Carbon Dioxide is distributed over all the cartons of juice that Tropicana sells.

Does this mean that Tropicana is bad for the environment?
Let me put it this way: "Bad for the environment" is relative. As I said before, the biggest part of the juice's Carbon Footprint comes from the chemical fertilizer that is used, and remember that 99.5% of farms in America use these fertilizers. That means 99.5% of oranges, corn, wheat, rice, grapes, and all other types of produce have this large Carbon Footprint due to chemical fertilizers. You may be wondering now what that other .5% of American farms is: Organic Farms.

If you go to a supermarket and head to the produce section, you'll find that there are many types of fruits and vegetables available. And next to each variety, you may (though maybe not) find the same kind but with the label "Organic." Organic blueberries. Organic corn. It's the same type of food, but grown without chemical fertilizers (and without pesticides). This means that these organic foods have much smaller Footprints.

Something else that can reduce a product's Carbon Footprint is not driving it halfway across the country, burning up gasoline. Locally grown foods don't have to travel nearly as far. There are big Farmers' Markets that happen in Richmond and Oakland every weekend.

In Richmond, the Farmers Market is every Friday, 11am-5pm:

Richmond Public Library (parking lot)
325 Civic Center Plaza
Richmond, CA

[Note: I just went there and bought a blood orange (oranges that are red inside) and strawberries.]

The other big way to reduce the Carbon Footprint of your foods is buying less processed stuff. The more that food has to go through machines and factories, the more electricity has to be used. You can minimize the Carbon Footprint of your orange juice by buying California-grown, organic oranges and squeezing them yourself, then just keep a pitcher of it in your fridge.

But getting back to the original question: Tropicana's orange juice is probably no worse than any other company's: they all use chemical fertilizers and ship around the country. Tropicana, however, has taken the first step to reduce their Carbon Footprint, and which no other company has done: figuring out just what their Footprint is.

Carbon Footprint Calculator

The University of California - Berkeley has developed a handy "calculator" that helps you to determine how much Carbon in the Earth's atmosphere that you (and your family) are responsible for. The questions it asks especially deal with how much you and the people you live with spend on food, travel, heating, etc. (For example, the calculator asks you how much you spend on fruit because it often has to be driven across the country, and that burns gasoline.)

Check out the calculator: here. These are my results:


My household (2 people) creates 16 tons of Carbon Dioxide per year, which is the equivalent of cutting down 3 acres of forest. I do my best to conserve energy -- and I only use about 60% less than the average 2 person household -- but what makes my footprint really big is the Transportation. I don't have a car (I ride my bike and take BART often), but my family lives all the way in New Jersey, so I've flown out to see them twice per year. That means that I fly way more miles than the average American.

On the other hand, my carbon footprint is twice the average of people around the world. Maybe in the interest of my carbon footprint, I'll start using Skype with my family, instead of traveling.

Alternative Energy in the Economic Downturn

From the New York Times's Green Inc. blog:

OptiSolar, based in California, is laying off close to half of its workers at what it had hoped would become a huge solar-panel plant near Sacramento.

HelioVolt, a [...] solar manufacturer headquartered in Austin, is also cutting jobs, as reportedly is SunEdison.

Evergreen Solar, a solar manufacturer, announced that it would close down a pilot plant in Massachusetts as a cash-saving measure; it will incur a $25 million charge for writing off equipment.

All of those (hyperlinked) company names are different companies that manufacture solar panels and things like that. And, as you probably noted, they are all suffering right now, during the Financial Crisis.

According to USA Today, there are several reasons why:

Since 2004, solar prices have been propped up by a shortage of capacity to make both silicon — the raw material for solar-power systems — and finished panels. Meantime, the Spanish and German governments have paid system owners hefty subsidies to generate solar power, turbocharging sales in those countries.

Manufacturers responded by building a wave of factories. Then Spain and Germany slashed this year's incentives [ie the subsidies]. In the U.S., the biggest solar investors were banks such as Morgan Stanley that can no longer benefit from tax credits because of insufficient profits.

Prices on solar panels had been pushed artificially high, since 2004. However, the Financial Crisis, last fall, slammed the brakes on everything: no one is buying solar panels and Germany and Spain stopped their subsidies. Even in the U.S. investment capital is slim. This has had two major results:

1. The wave of factory closings mentioned earlier.
2. Prices are much lower on the solar panels that are still being produced.
   • There were so many factories producing as many panels as they could, for the past few years, that there are a ton of panels just lying around right now. Factory owners are more or less trying to get rid of them.
   • At the same time as that high level of supply, there is extremely low demand.

Barry Cinammon, CEO of Akeena Solar, one of the nation's largest installers, estimates that the total cost for consumers buying solar panels has fallen 8%. And representatives from SunPower, one of the largest solar manufacturers, predict that prices may fall by as much as 20%.

The news isn't so bad though, if you're a consumer in the Golden State. From the USA Today article:

In California, which accounts for nearly 70% of the U.S. solar market, a typical 4-kilowatt, $32,000 solar energy system cost a homeowner about $23,000 last year after state and federal incentives [ie more government tax credits]. This year, if prices sink as expected, that system is likely to cost $10,000 to $12,000.

The point here is that if you're thinking about buying solar panels for your roof, the time to do it is now.

But even though the math has been sounding pretty negative for solar companies, there is good news in the long term. According to an article from the Wall Street Journal:

Start-ups across a variety of areas -- solar power, biofuels and energy conservation among them -- are getting increased financing from venture capitalists and lenders at a time when other small companies are cutting back and being turned away by investors. And many are hiring more staff, boosting marketing efforts and expanding geographically.[...]

While the overall volume of venture-capital deals sank last year, investments in clean-technology companies totaled $8.4 billion, up nearly 40% from 2007, according to Cleantech Group. In the third quarter alone, venture capitalists poured $2.6 billion into clean technology, a quarterly record. In the fourth quarter, they invested $1.7 billion.

Even though venture-capital as a whole was declined last year -- no doubt as a result of the Financial Crisis -- it went up by 40% for the Alternative Energy sector. The article goes on to interview owners of alternative energy retailers, manufacturers, and installers who are expecting their business to grow in the next few years.

How does this reconcile with the problems that the solar companies are facing? Solar technology is just one source of alternative energy. The WSJ article deals with everything from Biofuels to Information Technology:

Verdiem Corp. sells software that provides centralized control over power consumption, such as remotely turning off computer monitors left on overnight.

Solar got popular very quickly, but as it turns out, we're going to need more than one solution to the Energy problems that the world faces. It will encompass everything from the cars we drive to how we turn off the lights at night. Just producing the electricity that we consume will take several forms of alternative energy. Remember the Supergrid that I wrote about a while back? It was a plan to power Europe that focused on energy from the Sun, but every part of Europe had to contribute: the windy countries had turbines, the coastal regions contributed Hydro-power. Fortunately, now, U.S. companies are beginning to invest in these many different technologies. We are just taking the first steps on the road to sustainability.

Poem Read at President Obama's Inauguration

Praise Song for the Day
by Elizabeth Alexander

A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other's
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what's on the other side.

I know there's something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Take That Math Haters

According to the Wall Street Journal, the best job in America is... Mathematician.

According to the study, mathematicians fared best in part because they typically work in favorable conditions -- indoors and in places free of toxic fumes or noise [...] They also aren't expected to do any heavy lifting, crawling or crouching [...]

The study also considers pay, which was determined by measuring each job's median income and growth potential. Mathematicians' annual income was pegged at $94,160, but Ms. Courter, 38, says her salary exceeds that amount.

Her job entails working as part of a virtual team that designs mathematically based computer programs, some of which have been used to make films such as "The Matrix" and "Speed Racer." She telecommutes from her home and rarely works overtime or feels stressed out.

Take that Math haters.

Parabolas, Childhood Wonder

"And this really gave me the creeps cause it was as if this inanimate thing, this pendulum knew algebra. How could this thing swinging back and forth know something about parabolas, or how could that be built in? And so, it was in that moment that I understood what people mean when they say 'There is a Law of Nature'."