Inner City Farmer

Get used to hearing the names Nocera and Kanan. They could become the next Watson and Crick. In the July 31 edition of Science magazine it was revealed that Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT, and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have created a process that makes it possible to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases, using only the sun’s energy. In the second step of this process the oxygen and hydrogen are recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity capable of powering houses and cars.

Exactly how this gets done is a little beyond me. I’m just a farmer after all. But for those interested in reading more about this amazing discovery you should check out this article from MIT’s website.

Unfortunately, this technology is still a few years away from actually getting implemented, which, I guess, explains why it’s not on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Meanwhile, the demand to open up our country’s coasts to offshore drilling continues by those too short-sighted to realize the folly of such a plan, further proof that we are the dumbest animal on the planet. The answer to the world’s energy problem was right there in the sky this whole time, but none of us had the brains or vision to simply look up.

In today’s world it’s easy for an environmentalist to get frustrated and say the whole world is going to hell—Bush lifting the ban on offshore drilling immediately comes to mind. But there are places that prove that it doesn’t have to be that way. If you look hard enough, you can find little pockets of hope.

One of them is the Danish island of Samso, which acclaimed environmental author Elizabeth Kolbert wrote about in a recent New Yorker article. Since 2005, the island has produced more energy than it’s used, and most of that energy has come from renewable sources like wind turbines and heating plants that run on biomass. In less than a decade the island’s residents went from heating their houses with oil brought in by tankers to earning an international reputation for living on “the renewable-energy island.”

Another example is Kamikatsu, a small town in the hills of southeastern Japan, which prides itself on producing “Zero Waste.” Residents have to compost all their food scraps and sort the rest of their garbage into 34 different categories for recycling. The one flaw in the plan, critics point out, is that residents have to drive their recyclables to Kamikatsu’s Zero Waste Centre.

For all its talk about being a Green City, Austin has a long way to go… but, seeing the change that’s starting to take place all around the world, I remain hopeful.

Observing our collective reaction to rising gas prices, it’s clear to me how we got into this mess in the first place. Are humans incapable of looking any further ahead than tomorrow? Do we only care about ourselves? Are we the dumbest, most short-sighted animals on the planet? I hate to say it, but, “Yes, YES, YES.”

First, there was that whole gas-tax holiday gambit championed by old man McCain and Hillary Clinton. Two days ago, McCain jumped on the idea of overturning the 26-year-old ban on offshore drilling in this country, a glaring reversal from his previous position on the matter. A day later, Bush chimed in that he thought it was a good idea, which is all the evidence you need to know that it isn’t. I’m not even going to mention all the environmental damage such a move would cause. Nor am I going to harp on our infantile desire to keep things just the way they are (“I’m going to be driving this Suburban when I’m 95!”) when nature constantly shows us that everything is in flux. No, this plan doesn’t even make sense economically. A 2004 study by the Energy Information Administration found that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would trim the price of gas by a mere 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027.

Another option I keep hearing about is using biofuels to run our cars. A bunch of companies (one is Sapphire Green in San Diego, another is Valcent Products in El Paso) are trying to convert certain strains of algae into fuel. This is fairly exciting in that algae doesn’t need fresh water to grow, and the carbon dioxide it needs to grow might possibly offset all the carbon dioxide it releases when used as fuel. But it still seems like a stop-gap measure when what we desperately need is a paradigm shift, an entirely new way of thinking as we enter a new era in our history.

As thrilling as using algae as fuel might be to some, I still don’t understand why we love our cars so much. What good have they done for our culture? They’re expensive, dangerous, and socially isolating. Sure, they’re an ideal spot to fool around with the opposite sex when you’re a teenager, but beyond that they’re just rapidly depreciating death traps. I still think we’d be better off in the long run just ditching them and fully embracing public transportation. To help people in Austin make that choice, Capital Metro is offering “Xtreme Transit Makeovers,” specific advice about which routes to take for commuting and other trips, as well as handing out free seven-day bus passes from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today at 100 Congress Ave.