Electric Cars, Electric Companies

General Motors announced today that in a few months its much talked about electric car, the Volt will be in dealer lots. The car is set to cost about $41,000 to start, but according to a clip from National Public Radio , a fully loaded Volt will set a person back about $45,000. While it's not clear how many of the Chevy dealers in Virginia will carry the Volt, but the Washington, DC-area which includes Northern Virginia is expected to have inventory.

The Volt is the American electric car, but the Japanese manufacturer, Nissan, also has

an electric car, the Leaf.

I don't know which name is sillier, the Volt or the Leaf. Both are attempts by marketing types to describe their cars, but neither has me singing their praises.

That said, both cars and the ones that hopefully will follow are a big step toward the greenhouse gas emissions from cars. Or is it. Demonstration cars are being delivered to area power companies, Dominion and Pepco, according to a GM press release.

Remember, the Leaf and the Volt run on electricity and most of the electricity from Dominion or Pepco is created from the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal.

While the experts are saying that owners of electric cars are likely to recharge during the night when power costs are cheapest, electric utilities in the long run will do pretty well if the electric car catches on.

In fact, electric utilities are doing pretty well right now, according to an article in Forbes. The overall stock market has been either in the tank or down for most of 2010, yet utilities have done remarkably well.

Here are some of the earnings numbers for our local power companies.

Dominion Power won't release earnings for a couple of days if their schedule holds, but in the first quarter ended March 31, the company earned $174 million, or 96 cents per share, higher than what the smart Wall Street analysts had anticipated.

American Electric Power also won't release earning for a few days. It's first quarter results were $365 million or 76 cents per share. American had some MBA-type issues in the period, and thus had lower earnings, although its revenue was higher.

Cooling off In and Near the James

The heat that's been baking much of the mid-Atlantic and northeast since the late spring has sent a lot of us to the beaches, lakes and rivers nearby to cool off. A few days ago I was in Richmond, VA and hiked along Belle's Island's trails and took a refreshing dip in the James River that encircles the island.

I wasn't alone. While there were probably more than fifty people hanging out on the rocks along the river's shore, a few folks stood out.

The first one is this guy who decided that it wouldn't be a good idea to bring

his iPad to the river, instead brought a book and just plopped down on a rock in the middle of the river flow and read. With the water level no higher than five feet, he had a great spot to stay cool and catch up on his summer reading list.

A little further downstream, where the river frothed across a smattering of rocks, a group of rafters tried to navigate the open spaces into the wider and flatter parts of the river. One group of rafters didn't quite make it through without a hitch, catching themselves on the rock. Above the roar of river I heard the expedition leader string a few choice curse words to the group. Eventually he had to get out of the raft and push them from the rocks, but not before another raft in the group slid past, waving at the stranded team.

But the real highlight of the afternoon was the group of kayakers. They paddled skillfully down the river and through the rapids, although one of them decided that the best way down was to just let the river do all of the work.

And while the river was the coolest place to be that hot July afternoon, the most fun was probably had by a group of girl scouts from Williamsburg, VA who made their first attempt at rock climbing.

Water Wisdom

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality issued a state-wide drought watch as the Old Dominion suffers under one of the driest summers in years. The announcement comes as a shock to most of us here in Northern Virginia who remember how much snow fell only six months ago, shutting down the region. But while the snowfall made for some spectacularly green lawns and farms in the spring, the relentless heat that's covered much of the state has made the ground and the crops in it begin to shrivel, and sent the rest of us to cranking our A.C.

The plight of Virginia's farmers as they face what they have to consider to be a drought, no matter that the state hasn't made the official designation, brings to mind our own everyday efforts to conserve fresh water. When it comes to water there really is no substitute. OK, all of you joking beer or wine fans face reality: without water there's no beer and no grapes. So whether you drink the clear and pure stuff or the crisp and golden, or take it as coffee practically intravenously like me, we all need to keep water and its wise use top of mind.

But how to do that when in 99.99 percent of the time, water is just there -- right at the tap, on the supermarket shelves or in the five-gallon water cooler. What's common is taken for granted, even if it is the most precious thing on.

One way to begin to value water is to actually begin valuing it, or placing a real market price on the use of water. Most of us do that every day when we're in the convenience store and slap down about a buck for a one liter bottle of water. But when it comes to the water that flows into our homes, the water is a lot cheaper, but actually no less clean. In fact, the Washington Post reported last month that water that comes into our homes costs pennies. No wonder we waste so much of it.

I'm not saying that the water that comes into our homes should cost four bucks a gallon; that would give real meaning to the phrase "flushing your money down the toilet," but what I am saying is that if we're a country that believes in the power of the free market and the market prices that come with it, then we should begin applying those principles to water.

Doing so won't reverse Virginia's drought watch or flood the parched farms across the state, but thinking of ways to more wisely use the water we do have just might be the best thing that we can do on our own behalf in the long run. I for one don't want to live the song lyrics ... 'you never miss the water until the well runs dry.'

Independence

Nature is the true independent. If I were to choose a personality adjective for the environment, I think that I'd choose "independent." Nature doesn't need us, but we sure need it. We need its water, its air... a whole bunch of stuff from it, but this weekend we need its energy.

This July 4th holiday weekend, a lot of us still are watching and reading the news about the gusher of oil spewing off the Louisiana coast and flowing toward the shores of some of America's best beaches. The beaches where we go to take a break, exercise our right to "kick-back" and relax and do just about whatever we want because, "Hey, we're on vacation!"

But while we stroll along the beach, head to the park... whatever it is that we do, we ought to keep in mind that as independent we think we are, actually we're very dependent. When it comes to the environment, our top of the food chain, 'do it my way' kind of thinking really is a mirage. It's a mirage because we're living in Safetyland, a term coined as far as I can tell by the writer Laurence Gonzales in his book, "Why Smart People Do Stupid Things."

In a nutshell, Safetyland is where we live when we think that we've conquered our environment, molded it to our liking and bent it to our will, Safetyland. But really we've done something kind of stupid. How else to explain the ignorant comfort we have with the idea of drilling for oil one mile beneath the surface of the ocean? What if something goes wrong all the way down there? The answer: we really haven't a clue.

The environment doesn't want to be tamed by us. It wants to remain independent. Nature may lull us into a sense of calm and help us create our Safetyland, but eventually it reminds us that no matter how much we think we have it under our control, nature reminds us that it is really in control, that it is independent.

Realizing this can really shatter a person's view of what's safe. But running scared isn't the point. The point is not to do anything stupid in the meantime, anything stupid that could make things worse when nature decides to exercise its right to do what it wants to do, when it wants to do it, how it wants to... in short, when nature decides to declare its independence.

So, back to the BP oil disaster (does anyone call it a spill anymore?). Because of our dependence on oil, we allowed a company to drill about one mile under the water. If something goes wrong there's really not much that can be done about it before the disaster spreads. Stupid, but we were living in Safetyland.

Becoming less dependent on foreign oil is often cited as the reason for drilling off our shores, and recently because of the BP accident there have been increased calls for oil independence. Foreign oil dependence and oil dependence are both pretty bad in the long run and we need to declare independence from them one day.

Coming Together

The Virginia transportation secretary said a few days ago that the Old Dominion would commit $500 million over the next ten years to Metro, the Washington region’s subway system. The decision cleared the way for the Metro system to place an order for new equipment that is essential to the safe and efficient running of the Metro, the second largest subway network in the U.S. based on ridership. Metro also will increase fares this week, a signal that not all is well with the system, and a move that might push more riders into their cars.

At about the same time that the VA legislature -- the same legislature that has been starving Northern Virginia road and mass transit projects for years -- came to its Metro decision I was having a conversation with a person who I think is pretty knowledgeable about mass transit as it relates to housing.

We were talking about the meaning behind comments made by Housing and Urban Development Secretary (HUD), Shaun Donovan. Secretary Donovan noted that his agency, the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Energy Department (Energy) planned to work together in the months ahead in order to jump start the the development of more livable and greener communities.

Up to now, the three agencies worked separately and their work often didn't enable the development of greener communities. For example, few people would argue that America’s transportation policy has been automobile focused. Spending on highways in fiscal 2009 was about $40 billion while spending on transit (buses, trains) was about $10 billion.

Virginia’s decision and the federal government’s push to work together can mean a lot for us. For one thing, Metro might one day become the commuter service that it should be, that is a service that reaches more of us, offering us more choices for how to get back and forth not only to work, but to leisure events, too.

If the federal government’s small plans to date succeed, then maybe its efforts will grow and provide the spark that’s needed to transform our suburban neighborhoods into more connected communities. In the process, all of us might drive a little less, burn a little less fossil fuels, walk a little more and burn a little more calories -- together a win for the environment and our nationally expanding waistlines.

So, Now What?

The other night President Obama put the full force of his office into play and told all of us that he was royally ticked off with BP. The next day, BP found some spare change and pledged to put the $20 billion that it found into a fund that would pay the costs of the clean-up. Good thing, no doubt.

But with thousands of barrels of oil each day still spilling into the Gulf one mile beneath the surface, there is more at stake than the economic effect of this unprecedented disaster. So, now what?

Political observers are wondering if the disaster will energize the push to move more aggressively toward alternative energy sources that has been stalled on Capitol Hill. I think that if the one and only positive thing that comes from this debacle is that Congress begins to act like it wants to be a steward for the future of America and its citizens and not just a consumer of political chits and develop a real energy policy then that's great.

Because alternative energy needs some policy guidance. Business can't operate in a dark room, not knowing what whim it will bump into next. Already wind energy is struggling in this confusion, according to an article in Renewable Energy World.

But the wind sector may have gotten a shot in the arm. Virginia has reasonable potential to generate power through wind resources, according to analysis done by the Department of Energy. Of course there are problems with wind energy production. Some of the best locations in the state also are some of the most beautiful such as the Virginia Beach area and our mountain locations.

That said, Virginia did recently sign on to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) along with nine other east coast states to form the Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium. You go, Gov. McDonnell; now you're making sense.

But as anyone who has ever had the misfortune to be party to a MOU, you know that it makes for good PR, but not necessarily great working partnership that are truly effective. What has to happen now is residents of Virginia who want our state to lead or to at least walk real closely behind a leader must make their voices heard in Richmond and in their county governments. There's going to be stiff opposition to the placing of windmills in just about anywhere, let alone pristine places in the Commonwealth.

Maybe they don't have to be sited in our most beautiful places; maybe wind energy can be generated with less intrusion into our wild spaces. I don't know. But just blindly blocking construction through environmental NIMBYism is not going to help us get cleaner energy.

When a Fish is like a Canary

Most of us have heard the story of the canary in the coal mine. It goes something like this: before miners had the technology in place today to detect poisonous air as they dug deeper and deeper into the earth, miners carried a canary down with them. The thinking was that the canary would keel over before the men, an indication that the air was too poisonous to breathe. My guess is that the miners paid pretty close attention to the canary before it dropped dead.

Are we paying attention to the canaries in our environment?

Recently the Potomac River Conservancy released a report on the increasing rate of intersex among fish found in the Potomac and its various tributaries. The report prompted Virginia Representative Jim Moran to sponsor legislation aimed at reducing the presence of chemicals suspected of causing intersex in fish from entering our drinking water. As chairman of an important Congressional committee, Rep. Moran hopes to direct as much as $30 million to fixing this problem.

While fishers can certainly pull up a bunch of fish without this problem, the fact that the presence of intersex fish in what are supposed to be clean waters is increasing should worry all of us.

A lot of the blame can be placed right back at our own doorstep, or more accurately, our medicine cabinets. Improperly disposing of old medicine, vitamins and even in personal care products like shampoo.

More urgently, the supply of these chemicals also is coming from farm run-off resulting from pesticide use, or home lawn care pesticides. Importantly, the problem of household toxins entering our water is not confined to the Potomac and the Chesapeake watershed. An article posted to the National Geographic Society's blog notes that the problem is widespread throughout the U.S.

So the fish are our freshwater canaries. Paying attention to them will probably improve their health and lives and maybe our health and lives, too.