A little more than a month ago, I started a job at the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) – an environmental advocacy organization with a long history of protecting New England’s environment. I’m pleased to be working with them, and look forward to the months ahead.
However, it has kept me busy — so busy I haven’t had time to post here. I hope to post more of my work for CLF here as I publish with them.
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I’m honored to be doing some work for Rick Ridgeway to help with the growth of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition.
Rick is someone I’ve long admired — for his writing, his work at Patagonia, and his adventures. For those who don’t know, he was on the first American team to summit K2, has written a few great books, and has produced many tv shows and documentaries. For this, Rolling Stone described him as “the real Indiana Jones.”
I’ve enjoyed working with Rick, and wish the SAC the best of luck.
Read MoreOne year ago this past Friday the US Supreme Court ruled, in its historicCitizens United decision, that constraining corporate spending on political broadcasts was unconstitutional. In what some believe to be a not entirely unrelated event, House Republicans dissolved The Select Committee on Global Warming at beginning of the new Congress.
Sen. Boehner (R-OH), Speaker of the House, has characterized climate change as “comical”; Sen. Markey (D-MA), Chairman of the Committee, has described the American support for action on climate change as a “deafening” chorus. On climate change, today’s Congress stands divided – divided in all but one way: there is little action. Indeed, there may be no action for some time to come.
Why is that? According to some, the lack of progress on campaign finance reform has restricted the possibility of US climate policy. Political donations, they argue, outspend environmental interest and target incumbents in ways that impede progress.
The 2010 election was notable not only for its historic shift in the balance of power, but also for being historically expensive – at $4 billion total, or $87 per voter, campaign spending broke all American records, quadrupling what was spent in the 2006 midterms. Some claim that this money bought the election; others point to examples of well-financed failed campaigns. Either way, spending is up and climate down, so to speak, in ways that not only coincide but correlate. It appears that while politicians reap large donations, climate and clean energy are among the national priorities that will pay the steepest price.
Dr. Carl Safina, President of the Blue Ocean Institute and author of several books on marine ecology, has commented on the shaping effects of money on the national dialogue. “As long as we have the distortion caused by the influence of large corporate money in politics we will not be able to have an honest debate on the facts or the issues,” Dr. Safina said in a phone interview. “And we will not be able to consider what’s best for the country.”
According to Americans for Campaign Reform, over the period of 1990-2008 the energy industry outspent the environmental movement by a factor of 20:1 on campaigns. The disparity in contributions to Congressional war chests rose to 30:1 in the lead-up to the Energy Policy Act of 2005 energy legislation – legislation that included heavy incentives for clean coal technology. This trend is only likely to expand. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United that corporations were permitted to make unfettered, undisclosed campaign contributions will no doubt see spending increase as it becomes more partisan as well.
Money does not buy elections (witness Meg Whitman or Linda McMahon), but it does buy influence. Each House member who voted yes on an amendment to gut the 2009 cap-and-trade bill “received an average of $37,700 from the Oil & Gas, Coal Mining and Nuclear Energy industries between 2003 and 2008, more than three times as much as the $11,304 received by each legislator voting No” according to a study by Maplight, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that tracks money in politics. Influence, in this instance, opposes clean energy innovation and efficiency.
Witness the dissolution of the The Select Committee on Global Warming, created in 2007 by Congresswoman now Minority Leader of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Republicans claimed the committee was redundant, and that cutting it would save money. This latter point is true – a meager $2 million in savings, compared to the projected costs of climate change. “Unfortunately, many of the new members elected to the House have expressed opinions ranging from skepticism to outright denial about the facts regarding climate change,” Dan Lashof, director of the climate center at theNatural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in an interview last week with CBS News.
To advance energy and climate legislation, environmental advocates needs to look for new partnerships. They would do well to support campaign finance reform, as well. Thankfully, some of this is happening already.
Supporters of Fair Elections Now Act (S. 752 and H.R. 1826), a bipartisan bill introduced to both the House (March 2009) and Senate (April 2009), include NRDC, the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters and 1Sky. Though the bill fell short of a vote in the House, and was not taken up by the Senate, it did signal growing support from the environmental community. According to Dan Weeks, President of Americans for Campaign Reform, “Campaign money from wealthy interests like big oil and gas too often determines who runs for office, who gets elected, and what they do in office. What’s changing now is the willingness of grassroots groups across the issue and ideological spectrum to step up and make campaign finance reform a priority alongside the other crucial battles they fight.” (I spoke to Dan recently on another program. Click here for the podcast.)
In 1858, Lincoln said that he did not expect “this house” – the Union of American states – to fall, but to cease to be divided. Until we fix campaign finance, I fear our house will remain divided. And division is no fix for the fix we’re in.
Source: Originally published in On Earth, January 26, 2011.
(Photo provided courtesy of tetsumo @ flickr. Used under the Creative Commons license.)
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The time is 8:15 am. You have a meeting at 8:45am. This leaves you with 15 minutes to get to work and make sure your hair doesn’t look like a character from Avatar. What do you do?
Two new studies out this month make the case that at rush hour, bikes can leave cars and public transportation in the dust, while other studies show the number of daily bikers is taking off.
First, compare cars to bikes. A recent article in the MIT Technology Reviewdraws on data from 11.6 million bicycle trips in the French city of Lyon between May 2005 and December 2007. The data shows that, on average, bicyclists travel nearly as fast as cars and that, at rush hour, the average speed of cyclists actually outstrips that of the average car — and this doesn’t include time for parking.
Some claim that this data doesn’t apply to American cities, many of which, unlike Lyon, are built on a grid. I’m in the camp that uses this science to make an unscientific claim: bikes can, in the right conditions, travel faster than cars when commuting. For the 9 out of 10 Americans who drive to work in a private car, this may well come as a surprise.
Another tool makes the comparison of public transportation to biking quite vividly. Mapnificient.net will show you how long it will take you to get to any part of a city of your choice at any time of day and within any time limits. It also lets you specify whether you have a bike with you. Say you select New York City, 8 a.m., starting point of the Washington Square area and a travel time of at most 15 minutes. The highlighted area (where you can travel) bubbles out to encompass southern Manhattan. Indicate that you’ll be carrying a bike, however, and your reach extends out impressively. This isn’t specific to New York City, either; I replicated this comparison in cities such as Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Dallas, and even London. All returned the same result.
I grant that this model doesn’t work in all locations for all people. Cities like San Francisco, that boast hilly terrain, are likely not suitable for this model. Nor are bikes a suitable replacement for all other forms of transportation; in a modern city, each has its place. However, these studies do suggest a general rule of commuting: bikes are faster than cars, in the right situation. That by itself is significant.
The good news for cycling supporters is that more Americans are realizing this. According to the American Community Survey, in cities like Boston and Washington, D.C., ridership is up 165 percent and 108 percent respectively over 2005 levels. In New York, where Mayor Bloomberg has constructed over 200 miles of new bike lanes in the last four years, ridership has doubled since 2005, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The rest of the country may be less enthusiastic about cycling, but they’re more enthusiastic than they were. According to the American Community Survey, between 2005 and 2009, bike commuting grew by 0.3 percent. Nothing, you say? It’s something, surely.
Source: Originally published in On Earth, December 13, 2008.
(Photo provided courtesy of megawheel360 @ flickr. Used under the Creative Commons license.)
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The leading question about climate change is a question of costs. No one disputes that climate change will be expensive.
Where advocates argue we need to pay now, climate delayers argue we should wait and pay later. As a consequence, where sides diverge on timing, they share a common concern to bring these costs down to levels that are both manageable and predictable.
Smart grid technology is part of an effort to bring down costs for the consumer. By knowing how much energy the customer is using, the argument goes, the consumer will use less energy. It is about driving change through information.
However, the barriers for smart grid technology remain high. It is entering a crowded, mature market place, and is deeply integrated into a rapidly changing if not uncertain scientific, technical and political landscape. The costs are high and the rewards remain uncertain.
There is one potential method to reducing these costs that is both unconventional and still largely unexplored: tailored knowledge networks. I’m not talking about Tweeting our way out of a climate and energy conundrum. I’m talking about the power of information to enable technical solutions at scale when shared freely — or to impede growth when unduly constrained.
Consider first the process of innovation. It is, by nature, either incremental or radical; either you improve something slightly or invent something entirely new. (Plastics, Benjamin. Plastics.) What an investment will yield — and whether it will yield anything — is always uncertain because failure is always an option. In the absence of a clairvoyant, R&D can be unattractive because it can be nothing but costly and uncertain.
In areas requiring innovation, knowledge is then not academic. As the stabilizing and enabling element, knowledge is both cost and cause. It is the product, and a costly product at that. Thankfully, some businesses are beginning to prove that networks reduce those costs.
Consider the example of 2degrees, an online network based in Oxford, UK, for professionals working in sustainable business. Their mission is to harness the collective knowledge of their network to expedite the process of innovation through webinars, subject-specific working groups and other information sharing services. Membership is free (though a business membership comes at a cost) and the pace of activity is impressive. Their early success, which I have witnessed as a member for two years now, is impressive and founded on well-established principles of business and group behavior.
First, its members. Drawn from business, government and academia, each member shares a common concern: to understand and help resolve the issue of climate change. The price one pays for general content is nothing other than the knowledge one cares to share, while the benefit is collective; no one has to pay anything, and everyone can learn from anyone.
Whereas traditional forms of information sharing, like peer review articles, conferences or think tanks, are of unquestionable value, they are also slow, burdensome, and monologue-driven. Networks can facilitate the kind of knowledge exchange people often seek: those answered by open-ended questions posed to a well-informed community.
There is an additional benefit to businesses. Whereas businesses often think about the marketplace in terms of capturing market share, networks can be an effective way of increasing the size of the original market. There is a growing body of literature, having grown out of the intersection of behavioral economics and energy, that demonstrates that information provision is a driving force in the adoption of new behavior. In other words, the best way to get people to do something is for them to know other people are doing it. Networks like 2 Degrees are, in this sense, reinforcing; they both strengthen commitments and engender new commitments, creating an expanding space of sustaining behavior.
In the age of growing technical and entrepreneurial challenges in confronting environmental challenges, innovation is essential. In the age of austerity, it is essential that the cost of this innovation is kept low. It’s my conviction that knowledge specific networks are can help enable both — innovation at a lower cost. It’s not the answer, but part of the answer.
Source: Originally posted on The Huffington Post, November 8, 2010.
(Photo courtesy of Ian Muttoo @ flickr, via Creative Commons license.)
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For some, it was with a sense of relief that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar passed Cape Wind, the beleaguered offshore wind project on Cape Cod. For others, it was the latest in a drama that has lasted nearly a decade.
While the environment remains a low priority issue to most American voters, clean energy solutions have proven to be polarizing. Against the backdrop of rising expectations of a climate bill, the debate over Cape Wind is both enduring and exemplary.
With Salazar’s approval today, it was given the green light to become the first offshore wind project in the United States. But for the last nine years, it has been an example of how even clean energy can provoke everyone from environmental nonprofits to conservative business groups to fight dirty, and to fight amongst themselves.
How is it that something so simple and so useful as a windmill make foes of allies, and allies of foes? Once you sort through all the dialogue, the barriers boil down to backyards, money and delays. Let’s take each one in turn.
Backyards
Wind turbines are built where the wind is most consistently strong. All you need to do is glance at a wind map of the US to see that these areas are often either rural — North Dakota, Colorado, Texas, Vermont and Maine — or coastal. As an energy resource, this is a good thing: the Great Plains has been called the Saudi Arabi of wind, while coastal wind can provide power to population pockets along the shore.
The Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe of Martha’s Vineyard oppose the project on the ground that it would interfere with sacred rituals and desecrate tribal burial sites. The late Senator Kennedy also vehemently opposed the Cape Wind project, in part because the Kennedys, known as avid sailors, own a family compound that looks onto the project sight.
There is a very real and unavoidable problem: no matter where you put a windmill, it’s always going to be either in someone’s backyard, off their ocean dock, or along their hiking trail. This argument is not about windmills, but about fear of progress. Just ask the old man in New Mexico with whom a friend of mine recently held a conversation.
He said he remembered how up in arms everyone was when the town wanted to put telephone lines. Everyone, he said, though it was going to ruin the main street. Once they were there, they became commonplace. Now, in most places, you hardly see them. The same, he said, would be true for wind turbines.
There are other examples of this fear of progress. But the simple truth is that our growing demand for energy will demand we build new sources of power. Ask yourself whether the drive up California’s coastal Route 1 would be the icon it is with coal plants clustering the cliffs? And would Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard or Maine’s rocky coast would be the summer tourist destinations they are if they were dotted with nuclear plants, both functioning and decommissioned? Off shore wind famers — barely visible and glimmering in the sun — are hardly disruptive in comparison to conventional sources of power.
Money
Money is another leading concern. The initial investment required for an offshore wind farm is high — nearly double that of onshore wind projects per kilowatt-hour.
This has proven to be a problem for Rhode Island’s proposed off-shore wind farm. The developer, Deepwater, would have charged National Grid 24.4 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2013, when the contract was due to begin, with prices increasing in subsequent years. The retail price of electricity for a home in Rhode Island currently is about 13 cents per kilowatt-hour. At the time, the governor’s office said the agreement would increase the average residential customer’s annual electric bill by about $16.
Meanwhile, upfront investment costs are significant. The Cape Wind project, for instance, will likely cost more than $1 billion. The Rhode Island project is even larger, and will likely cost $1.5 billion, not including the $8 million already spent on an impact assessment report.
These costs have been made more significant by weak federal subsidies for renewable energy relative to European subsidies, and by the lack of a federal climate policy. The lack of a clear federal policy introduces degrees of uncertainty into US-based investments in offshore wind that inhibit growth, and lead other countries like China, Norway and Denmark to surpass the United States.
Of course, there are paybacks. Both of these — the direct payback to investors and savings to local taxpayers — will come in years to come. A study released earlier this year by a consulting firm hired by Cape Wind’s developers Charles River Associates claimed that the project might save New England ratepayers $4.6 billion in energy costs over 25 years. However, these figures likely have little impact on political support. There is a large body of evidence that shows people account for potential but uncertain future savings poorly.
Delays
Finally, there is the issue of delays. Related to the issue of uncertain future savings is the issue of uncertain future impacts from climate change.
In scientific terms, the fundamental science of climate change is largely settled. But scientific terms don’t always translate into cognitive certainty; where the evidentiary standards of science rightly err on the side of conservatism, our minds demand the bold and the immediate. Scientists cannot tell us more than they know, and climate change will not deliver its full drama in one shot, but unfold slowly over decades.
What does this mean? It means the climate delay exploits a human problem. If we had more immediate evidence of the need for clean energy solutions, we might be more willing to build more wind turbines. But lacking the kind of evidence humans learn most effectively from, we predictably delay and debate. In a snowy winter, such as the one DC and Europe experienced this year, we even confuse the weather for climate.
Not all is bad
Despite this, there is good news. Offshore wind will likely play a forceful role in clean energy development in the US in years to come.
Six governors of East Coast states — Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island — called on Salazar to approve the project, in hopes that similar projects in their states would benefit. These projects are part of a nascent but adamant wind industry. Twelve offshore wind projects from the Great Lakes area to the East Coast and Texas have been proposed. Cape Wind will no doubt lend certainty to these projects.
In addition to this momentum, it is unlikely that offshore wind would not play an important role in future clean energy development. It is only very conservative assumptions that yield a future in which one technology dominates. Instead, numerous technologies will likely play in a diverse portfolio.
Combine these considerations — state momentum and likely projections — with physical realities and you have a compelling combination. Lake and ocean winds are typically both more reliable and stronger. Offshore wind projects designed to capture such breezes are located close enough to population centers to limit the need for transmission lines while being far enough away to reduce the impact upon ocean views.
The green light Salazar gave to Cape Wind will likely fill the sails of these twelve offshore wind projects. It’s simply a question of which way the winds will blow.
(Photo courtesy of Martin Pettitt @ flickr. Used under the Creative Commons lisence.)
Source: Originally published on The Huffington Post, April 29, 2010.
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Now that Sarah Palin has announced her resignation as Governor of Alaska, you may wonder: What has she been doing? How will she fill her time? In an Op-Ed piece for The Washington Post, Palin kindly provided an answer. She’s committed herself to a single task: confusing the American public on energy and environment.
On Tuesday, Palin’s Op-Ed criticized Obama’s cap and trade bill — known as the American Clean Energy & Security Act, or ACES — and refused to acknowledge the existence of climate change. The article so fully muddles the issues that the best thing one can hope for is that someone else wrote the article, and the Governor simply signed her name.
Behind all the bluster — and the exclamations! that neatly turn fact into fiction — are familiar phrases. She appeals to national independence, rising unemployment, taxes, supply side economics and God’s creation. In so doing, she positions Democrats as enervating technocrats opposed to prosperity, and herself as rooted in a history of economic growth, rugged independence and faith.
To use talking points is one thing, to rely on them another. This isn’t a partisan issue; candidates from both parties have lines they work through. But Palin’s argument is so dependent on established Republican strategy that is reads like a grab bag of worn-out phrases.
This is where Palin’s argument veers from the path of denial. In making her argument, she ignores mounting, if not overwhelming evidence on energy and environment. She also strays from mainstream public opinion.
The Nobel Prize awarded to the IPCC was an acknowledgement that the fundamental science of climate change is firmly established. Furthermore, a recent survey of American opinion on climate change revealed that 72% find climate change to be personally important, while 90% believe the US should act to reduce climate change.
In her Op-Ed, Palin ignores both science and public opinion. If David Brooks was right in describing the Republican party as intellectually bankrupt, Palin’s Op-Ed positions herself as both a lender and borrower Republican subprime arguments. After articles like this, I would hope she’s flush out of capital.
Let’s take a few moments, then, to review Palin’s major points in the article, and trace where she goes astray.
Palin: “There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources.”
Palin’s argument is afflicted as much by what is not there as what is not. Note here how she discusses the need to reform energy policy without mentioning why – that we live in a world of increasing resources scarcity facing and that we face uncertain risks from a climate that promises to change in the short and long-term, with potentially sever damages.
Palin engages in a critique of ACES without discussing why it’s being implemented in the first place. It’s like arguing against throwing water on a house fire, by avoiding all mention of the fire.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Palin has argued that man is not responsible for climate change. Or, rather, she said:
“I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.”
Again, she seems confused, and is trying to confuse the American public.
Palin: “I believe [the cap-and-trade energy plan] is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.”
Contrary to this argument, ACES will help to grow the economy. Palin distorts the picture by overstating the costs and ignoring the benefits.
For instance, any costs to the economy as a result of cap-and-trade largely nominal. Aluminum and chemical businesses will see an increase in costs of about 2% by 2030, while the steel industry would see a rise in costs of between 4% and 11%. Similarly, the cost to each American family would be about $174. These costs are real, but not huge.
Far from the crippling burden Paling describes, the cap-and-trade program would create market for carbon, spur investment and expand an already rapidly growing sector of the economy.
For instance, ACES would help spur $150 billion in clean energy investments, help to create 1.7 million jobs throughout the United States. ACES would help to unleash billions of dollars of investment in energy efficiency, renewable energy and clean-car technology. According to Andy Stevenson’s excellent piece over on NRDC’s Switchboard blog, the result of these improvements in fuel efficiency would be “1.4mln barrels a day by the year 2020…providing a cumulative savings to American households around $1,900 through the year 2020.” Those are real savings for American families.
Moreover, Palin seems to ignore that in the clean energy economy, jobs have grown by nearly two and a half times faster than over overall job growth since 1998. It is a field that is already growing. This will help accelerate growth in an already growing field.
For an economy in decline, job creation and the accelerated expansion of markets with demonstrated potential is exactly what this country needs.
Palin: “But the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive!”
Scarcity isn’t the answer. But putting a price on carbon is.
One of the challenges in creating substantive reductions in carbon emissions is generating the capital needed to develop and deploy clean energy technology at scale.
Cap-and-trade helps to provide this capital not by making energy scarce, but to create a market of perceived scarcity that drives up market prices for carbon. That market then provides a revenue stream to be invested in R&D measures for clean energy technology. It’s one of the best, and only, ways to generate the kind of revenue needed.
But this move is cute. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of Palin winking her way through the presidential debate. Too bad an exclamation point doesn’t magically convert fiction into fact.
Palin: “Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America’s economy.”
To judge from all of the above, we know Palin is describing someone else. She clearly doesn’t understand the issues.
Palin: “We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil.”
This is not only offensive, but reflects a shockingly limited theological vision.
In the first place, it is offensive to claim a responsible use of God’s creation is to limit our economy activity to only those fuels which are dirtiest and which therefore degrade the world we’re meant to protect. In fact, if you look at the position of many religious environmental groups, you’ll find Palin to be dramatically out of sync.
Furthermore, did God create only the resources beneath the surface of the earth? Did he not also create the sun? Did he not also create the wind and rain?
Palin: “Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation?”
Yes, we can. The Waxman-Markey Bill is a first step. It’s not perfect, but it’s not a stake to the heart, as Palin describes it. Much to the contrary, it’s a much-needed shot in the arm.
(Photo provided courtesy of Oyvind Solstad @ flickr. Used under the Creative Commons license.)
Source: Originally published on On Earth, July 16, 2009.
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The state of Maine is in a state of gubernatorial uncertainty: a recent poll shows Paul LePage (R) faltering, with Eliot Cutler (I) rising. Candidates are calling, and people are wondering who to vote for. The answer to that question doesn’t begin in the booth, but in Maine’s mountains and islands, in its forests and its fish.
There is no question that Maine is a unique state. It boasts deep, healthy woods, a rocky coast without peer and high energy bills through long, cold winters. For Maine to remain Maine, it needs to preserve the first two and solve the third. Of all the candidates asking for your vote to be Maine’s next governor, Eliot Cutler has, without question, the most experience. He has my vote, and I hope he will have yours.
The final weeks of any campaign is a time for questions regarding candidate’s conduct — and, in the case of Paul LePage, questionable conduct. But one question was settled before the race began: Eliot Cutler has, by far, the best environmental credentials of any candidate. In fact, it’s hard to find another candidate in all the gubernatorial races across the country that has such an exemplary track record of promoting energy solutions and environmental protection.
Consider where Cutler has been, and what he’s done:
• Cutler helped write the first tough Federal oil spill cleanup law – important to remember in light of the recent BP oil spill.
• Cutler worked for Senator Ed Muskie, where he helped write the 1970 Clean Air Act and the 1972 Clean Water Act .
• And he has worked with national environmental bureaus, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Park Service and the Forest Service, to whom he restored funding.
Even before he ran for Governor, Cutler has done more to help maintain he quality of Maine’s natural resources than any of the other candidates will likely do in their tenure.
The Republican candidate Paul LePage, for instance, wants to weaken environmental regulations and open the coast to offshore oil exploration. In one debate, he argued that the state’s regulatory burden was excessive for businesses by citing a non-existent study about buffalos. Libby Mitchell, the Democratic nominee, is better than LePage, but not nearly as good as Cutler.
When you hike, or fish or hunt, you don’t thank a political party. But when you’re thankful for our state’s clean air and water, you can be thankful for the work Cutler has already done. Just think of the work he can do as Maine’s next governor.
In a speech to the Maine Forest Products Council, Cutler expressed what so many Mainers feel: “The North woods, like the Maine coast, is the heart and soul of the state. Period.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Source: Originally published on The Huffington Post, October 19, 2010.
Read MoreA few yards from his brewhouse at Blue Mountain Brewery in Afton, Virginia, Taylor Smack, owner and brewmaster, shows me his little field of dreams. One year ago, on a quarter-acre plot, Smack planted 200 hop vines, climbing plants that produce the flowers that are used to make beer. Today he admits that his yield wasn’t quite what he’d hoped for. He didn’t water the plants enough, he says, and he used the wrong fertilizer. Standing between thin rows of his plants, Smack reaches up and picks off a bud. “These are kind of pathetic looking compared with a German hops yard, where they grow thick and bushy and 30 feet high. But we’re trying,” he says. “We don’t claim to be farmers.”
Eco-conscious foodies already know the “buy local” mantra, and for good reason: reduce the miles a product travels from farm to table and you typically reduce its carbon footprint. But for many, including Smack, buying local is about something more. It’s about establishing a sense of place, knowing where your food comes from, and supporting your own community. Smack is trying to apply these principles to his beer. And so despite his obvious shortcomings as a farmer, Smack continues to tend his fields, because he can’t get locally grown hops unless he goes out and grows them himself. I’m rooting for him, because I love a good beer — and I love the environment. What I’m searching for, in other words, is a cold, frothy brew that’s carbon lite.
A beer made with local ingredients is hard to find. Just three companies — Anheuser-Busch, Coors, and Miller — account for 80 percent of the entire U.S. beer market. Pick up a bottle of your favorite brand and you’re not likely to find the list of ingredients; beer makers consider their recipes trade secrets.
“What’s in a Bud? What’s in a Coors? There’s, like, 47 different things in there. That’s not cool,” Smack says.
Chemical substances commonly used by commercial brewhouses can be found on the Web site of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. There’s propylene glycol alginate, a chemically modified derivative of algae that keeps a beer’s foamy head standing tall (it’s also used to thicken acidic foods like salad dressing). Keep reading down the list and you realize that stabilizing beer foam must be pretty important, since companies also use several other chemicals to do the job, including gum arabic (which is used in some types of candy to prevent the formation of large sugar crystals) and sodium carboxymethyl-cellulose (another thickening agent used in ice cream, pie filling, and icing). This stuff won’t kill you, but you don’t need any of it to make beer. “There are only four ingredients in all of my beers,” Smack boasts. “Water, malted barley, hops, and yeast. Occasionally a little bit of malted wheat.”
As a craft brewer, Smack is one of a growing number of small-scale producers — better-known craft breweries include Brooklyn, New Belgium, Sam Adams, and Sierra Nevada — who aim to return traditional methods and flavors to the industry. These brands now make up just 5.9 percent of the U.S. beer retail market, although their sales increased by 16 percent in 2007. They all keep their list of ingredients to a bare minimum and avoid chemical additives.
Still, even if you’re drinking one of these brews near where it was produced, chances are it’s not really as local as you think. A closer look at the ingredients explains why. Malted barley provides the sugars that are fermented into alcohol; it’s a beer’s backbone. Yeast gives beer its carbonation, and hops balance the sweetness of barley by imparting a slightly bitter taste. Depending on the variety used, hops impart different flavors and aromas too. After water, barley is the largest ingredient by volume. Yeast and hops are used in far smaller quantities.
According to Smack, yeast is the easy part. “I buy it from a laboratory in a vial, and then I propagate it myself,” he says. “It costs 50 bucks, they FedEx it to me, and then I use it over and over.” He even shares his yeast with three or four other craft brewers in his area and picks up different strains from them when he wants to try something new. “We all share,” he says.
At Blue Mountain, Smack brewed 27,900 gallons of beer using 50,000 pounds of barley last year. The amount of hops he uses in his beer varies, but one of his “hoppier” beers, the Full Nelson Pale Ale, uses less than an ounce of hops per gallon. Some of his other brews require merely one-fifth of that.
Unfortunately, both hops and barley are global commodities, sold to brewers around the world through brokers. Germany, France, Belgium, Australia, and New Zealand are major hops producers, and in the United States, the Pacific Northwest is home to the vast majority of domestic hops farms. Though there is a smattering of small hops farms on the East Coast, they can meet only a fraction of the demand from eastern brewers. For Smack, who wants to brew a truly local beer, a New York-based hops farm is far too distant from Virginia, which explains why he’s started growing his own. After all, he doesn’t need all that much. He projects that he’ll soon meet 30 percent of his hops needs on the small quarter-acre plot he’s currently cultivating.
Of course, he can’t meet his barley needs on his four-acre property. Most of the barley that is used to make beer in the United States is grown in Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota, or in Canada, which leaves most everyone who doesn’t live in northern tier states without a local supply. “Nearest malted barley’s in Wisconsin,” Smack says, and so he buys it from there.
It’s disappointing to think that when I drink a pint of Brooklyn Lager in Brooklyn, New York, or a glass of Sam Adams in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I’m inevitably quaffing hops and barley grown, processed, and shipped to the breweries from hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away. It wasn’t that way for the real Samuel Adams, who actually was a brewer as well as a patriot. In the 1800s, before production moved west, hops were primarily grown in New York, Vermont, and Virginia, as well as in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and other eastern states. The East Coast may yet return to its former hops-growing glory, but it has a long way to go. The Northeast Hops Alliance lists just two hops farms in the region, both of which are in New York State. In 2004, Ithaca Beer became the first New York-based company in more than 50 years to brew a beer using only hops grown in-state, at Pedersen Farms in Seneca Castle. Victory Brewing of Downington, Pennsylvania, also brews its Harvest Ale using Pedersen Farms hops.
But if you want a pint of Blue Mountain, you have to come to Smack’s brewhouse or live nearby. Blue Mountain lagers and ales are distributed regionally, and that’s the point when it comes to drinking sustainably.
“We’re not going outside our local area,” Smack says. “We get calls from distributors outside Virginia, but that’s not our thing. This is what you should drink when you’re here. We’re lessening our impact on the planet by not having our beer trucked all over the place.”
Even so, Smack can’t produce a truly local beer until he finds a reliable local source of hops and barley, and that’s not happening anytime soon. He mentions some scientists at Virginia Tech who have developed a new strain of barley; right now, they’re growing some on a 24-acre test farm outside Richmond, but it’s not yet commercially available. And one of Smack’s regular patrons recently planted his own field of hops nearby. If it works out, Smack says he’ll buy from him. “But it’s going to take some serious farmers to get into the industry,” he says. “I’m not one. Most of the people who talk to me aren’t ones either.”
Toward the end of my visit, Smack walks me out the back door of the brewery to show me the irrigation system he’s set up: he’s recycling the wastewater from his brewery and using it to water his hop vines. We’re standing about 50 yards from the clapboard house where he lives with his wife and 5-month-old son, the Blue Ridge Mountains looming on the horizon. Life here is pretty good. Business is pretty good. Smack has a lot of loyal patrons, and he’s even opened a restaurant in his brewhouse that will soon feature beef and lamb raised on a nearby farm and fed with Blue Mountain Brewery’s leftover barley. But what about my quest for the perfect carbon-lite brew?
“I guess if you were in the grain belt, you could maybe make a truly local beer,” he says. The problem is, he adds, “just being a brewer is a full time job.”
Source: Originally published in On Earth, December 1, 2008.
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