Princeton's Carbon Footprint: An upcoming report, its history and meaning

Note: Sustainable Princeton will present the findings of an inventory of the town's greenhouse gas emissions on Tuesday, March 27, at the Andlinger Center. Details at this link. Below is a history of Princeton's long quest to comprehend its impact on the world's climate, and my thoughts on the powerful ethical and emotional implications of a town's "carbon footprint."

Through a generous grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Sustainable Princeton has been able to fund a study of Princeton's carbon footprint, that is, how much carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases we are collectively sending skyward. That number represents the extent to which we as a town are trapped in a carbon economy, and thereby contribute daily to a collective, chemical undermining of nature. The main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, plays important positive roles in the earth's atmosphere, oceans, and in delivering to plants the carbon they use to grow, but as in our bodies, a significant change in its concentration can have disastrous consequences.

Few of us pay any notice to the exhaust pipes and chimneys in our lives, even though their emissions are quietly day to day determining our planetary fate. We abuse nature because we see little choice, because everyone else does it, because each individual's contribution seems insignificant, and because we can. Abuse can be inadvertent or, as in the photo of an outsized exhaust pipe in the back of a Dodge Ram pickup truck, a brazen show of power.

I may have been the first to attempt a carbon assessment of Princeton's energy use, in 2011, when I sought data from our energy provider, PSEG, on Princeton's consumption of gas and electricity. At the time, Princeton University was beginning to assess its own energy use, as was Sustainable Lawrence just down the road.

The premise, at least for me, was that awareness of our collective energy use as a town could help spur a move to use less, knowing the catastrophic global consequences of using carbon-based energy. We could compare our energy use year to year, and with other towns in the area, and thereby gain a sense of progress towards a shared goal.

My own experience with a home energy monitor, which displays how much electricity my house is using at any moment, suggested that knowledge is power. If I turned on the electric clothes dryer, our home energy use jumped by 3500 watts. Who knew? That's when we got clothes racks to hang-dry the clothes. A noisy, inefficient fan in the attic was replaced by passive ventilation. Turning off a few unneeded lights made the number drop even further. It was empowering and satisfying. We saved 35% on energy costs in the years that followed, with no loss in comfort or livability.

Immediate feedback seemed key in changing behavior. I dreamed of being able to go to a website where Princeton's energy use would be displayed in real time. Even more fine-grained data would allow neighborhoods to compete to see "how low we could go." But I quickly came up against the technical hurdles. PSEG was only set up to provide data every three months. Determining energy use by town government, or by the school system, required sending PSEG the meter numbers on every building. And then there's all the consumption of gasoline by cars and trucks driving through town. How to assess that?

I was stunned to learn that our town's biggest energy hog may be the incinerator that burns sewage sludge down on River Road. When natural gas prices were high, the town was spending more than one million dollars each year to fuel an incinerator most people don't even know exists. (I bet "Princeton's Finest" could outcompete Milorganite any day, and dramatically reduce our carbon footprint at the same time.)

In 2014 Heidi Fichtenbaum of Sustainable Princeton contacted me, wanting to pick up on my initial work with PSEG to quantify Princeton's energy use. I passed the data to SP's Christine Symington, who attended Hack Nights hosted by Code for Princeton, and sent the following update to me in 2015:

"Your past efforts to get this data were instrumental in getting a conversation started with PSEG that has led to us getting a commitment to getting updated data each quarter. 

We now have the start of a webpage that gives anyone in Princeton the ability to visualize our collective energy consumption. The team working on this included a 7th grader that designed the logo & created the styling for the site. Keep in mind that this is a work in progress. Ideas out there to expand on this include:

• providing an import tool for residents and businesses who opt in to upload their personal utility bill information so it can be collected and used to create a "Princeton" energy consumption profile. This could be used to gather before and after energy costs from homeowners that participated in the EnergySmart Homes campaign 

• an import tool for Sustainable Princeton to upload the data from PSEG easily and dynamically update the site with current usage data

• a map of Princeton that would display energy efficiency or renewable energy implementations 

• scenario builders that would show what Princeton could do to get to a 20% reduction in fossil fuels by 2020, i.e. increase solar installations by x%"

Then, in the fall of 2015, Christine published a report on Princeton's energy use on the SP website, the aim being to identify a baseline of energy use from which to measure Princeton's progress towards reducing energy use 20% by 2020.

Now, a grant-funded professional study may yield some meaningful number for Princeton's carbon footprint.

The big question going forward will be what Princeton does with that number. If we've learned anything in this long struggle to get action on climate change, it's that numbers don't make people change their behavior. The number on my home energy monitor moved me to action only because of a feeling in my gut that it is ethically wrong to be using energy that risks the future of our children, our nation, and a livable planet. How, we must ask, if Princeton is to be an example to the rest of the world, do we plant that feeling of ethical revulsion deep within more than a conscientious few of its residents?

One heartening development over the past year or two has been the growing gut-level rejection of discrimination, sexual harassment, and most recently gun violence. These issues have gone from the level of intellectual and political objection to a cathartic, visceral imperative that such behavior must be purged from society.

The Academy Awards this week was emblematic in its conscious shift towards inclusion and respect. And yet, predictably interspersed throughout that program and many others are car commercials that not only tolerate but glorify our collective chemical abuse of nature.

Our senses, of course, will not help us to reject the daily practice of pouring more and more CO2 into the atmosphere from the underground fuels we burn. Invisible, odorless, it all seems harmless enough. But if we were doing to our closely regulated bodies what we are doing indiscriminately to the earth--raising its temperature, acidifying the waters that sustain its life--we would literally feel in our guts the revulsion necessary to drive change in behavior.

It will be interesting on Wednesday to see the numbers that Sustainable Princeton has come up with, how business, commercial, residential, school and municipal sectors compare, and to see if the numbers are fine-grained enough to help drive decisions that will lead to substantive, measurable change.

Climate change is deceptive on so many levels. It is human nature to cling to the status quo, and yet it is the status quo that now drives radical change that increasingly threatens the lifestyle we wish to preserve. The more we cling, the less control we will ultimately have, as rising oceans claim our cities and super storms devastate communities. Each of us is left to grapple with the personal predicament arising from a collective failure, as in some lines I read at a recent poetry event at the library:

I don't mean to
I don't mean to
I don't mean to be so mean
To the earth.

How I love so much about it
As I travel all about it,
Spewing all that carbon as I go.
Where will I go,
When all that I love so,
When all that I go to,
Is gone?

Pessimists will say that it's already too late, that too much change is already baked into the system. But that is just one more in a long line of convenient excuses for inaction. Ending abusive behavior helps everyone. It not only makes life better for the abused, but also makes the former abuser a better person. Reducing the incredible disrespect for nature embedded in our economy and our culture will free us from an existential predicament we face as individuals every day, and make us better people.

A version of this piece was first published by PlanetPrinceton.com.

Roadside Snow Reveals the Two Worlds We Navigate

There is an important distinction that is often not made, between the impact of people and the impact of the machines people use. Machines are useful, even lovable, and yet the ones with exhaust pipes are, for all their fine attributes, contributing to a chemical assault on nature. That assault may be unintentional, undramatic, and mostly invisible, yet it is relentless and permanent in effect. Some of us participate reluctantly, others obliviously.

This photo is one of the ways to visualize the difference between People World and the Machine World we participate in. Pedestrians and bicyclists (it's legal to bicycle, respectfully, on most sidewalks in Princeton) leave no trace, while the snow is symbolic of the mess cars and trucks make of the world. That dirt that can be seen will seep into the ground or be washed away as a plug of pollution in local streams during the next rain, but is also symbolic of the larger, permanent damage: the CO2 rising from the exhaust pipes up into the air.

Once that distinction is clearly drawn in the mind as well as the snow, then one can begin to gain freedom from the sorts of machines creating slow havoc, and use one's own resourcefulness and partner with nature rather than the flawed machines. The aim is not self-denial but the pleasure of freeing oneself in more and more ways from the ethically challenged machines we feel dependent upon.

Recycling Receptacle in a Princeton Park--Simple But Effective

One of life's persistent questions, in Princeton or anywhere else, has been how to improve recycling in public spaces. I used to write critiques of recycling arrangements wherever encountered, whether here, in airports, or in travels around the world. One of the posts, Ten Tips for Improving Recycling in Your Workplace, speaks to the importance of pairing trash and recycling containers, and making sure they contrast visually.

This very simple retrofit, initiated by the Princeton Borough parks department probably ten years ago, is a good example of how easy and inexpensive it can be to add a recycling container to an existing trash can. The bucket used to have a recycling sign on it, contrasts visually, and is simply hung on the trash receptacle to provide park users with a clear choice. Though it may not be the most attractive setup, this combo has survived years of use, and works much better than sleek, high-priced combo containers that often put appearance ahead of functionality, confusing users by giving very little visual contrast between the recycling and trash receptacles.

Of course, the high degree of separation of trash and recyclables that this simple retrofit achieves is only one step in getting the bottles, cans, etc. actually recycled. The next step is for the park custodial crew to actually keep the recyclables separate from the trash when they empty the containers. As the Ten Tips post explains, anyone wishing to determine whether recycling is actually happening at their workplace, school, parks or elsewhere, needs to track each step along the way to the recycling facility.

An empty bottle, then, is a bit like a salmon swimming upstream, having to negotiate many obstacles along the way, any one of which could prevent it from reaching that place where new bottles can be born. Thanks to this simple retrofit in one of Princeton's parks, a lot of bottles and other recyclables have made it past one of the major obstacles along that path to recycling.

SOLAR JAM 2018 - A Solar Car Race

This from Liz Cutler, Sustainability Coordinator for Princeton Day School. Please pass along to those who might be interested.

OASIS (Organizing Action on Sustainability In Schools) invites students grades 3-8 to participate in SOLARJAM 2018, a solar car race, May 19.

Students can come as a school group or register on their own.

The Top Three Finishing cars in Upper Division (grades 6-8)
are invited to race in the TransOptions Junior Solar
Sprints’ Inter-County Regional Race in Florham Park on Monday, May 21st.'

For information, registration contact: theandrewlloyd@gmail.com

Your Changing Climate, As Described by Your NJ Climatologist

Thanks to the Mercer County Master Gardeners and the Princeton Public Library for bringing NJ's climatologist, David Robinson, to Princeton this past week.

Here are some notes from the presentation. Unlike events on climate change years ago, this one was packed, with the audience spreading out into the hall. Robinson is an excellent ambassador for the subject of climate change. As I was taught by a theater director, even the darkest subjects or emotions must be presented with some element of joy, and Robinson does that.

• Climate is your personality; weather is your mood.
• A drawing of the biosphere, cryosphere, and atmosphere. Cryosphere is his favorite. Editor's comment: The cryosphere is all the frozen water on the earth, in ice sheets, glaciers, snow, ice caps, etc. The cryosphere has been doing a lot of "crying" as we warm the planet with our machines' emissions, and if all of it melted, your house would likely be under water (unless you're higher than Nassau Hall), which is one reason to be grateful for cold in our world.
• Princeton was home to the foremost expert on the history of weather, David Ludlum.
• You can see the urban heat island effect in the temperature patterns of NJ. Seemed like a five degree difference on the map. Air conditioners belching out heat, and the solar energy absorbed by asphalt, concrete, etc. extend hot spells.
• While NJ was experiencing extreme cold recently, the rest of the world was warmer than usual.
• There's 7 inches of evaporation happening in July/August, which means that even if we get 5 inches of rain, the ground is getting dryer.
• He doesn't use the word "believe" with climate change. It's not a matter of belief. It's a matter of understanding what's going on.
• It's hard for a lot of people to understand the difference in time frame between climate past and now. Human activity (the combustion used to power our machines) is changing climate much faster than it would happen naturally.
• El Nino and La Nina may not be completely natural anymore, given how much we've heated the oceans.
• The gases in the atmosphere--CO2, methane, etc.--bring the temperature of the earth's surface from zero degrees up to 55 degrees F.
• The oceans are absorbing  huge amount of the excess heat caused by global warming. Because there is so much extra heat already in the system, "the train has left the station" with climate change. Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases will slow climate change rather than stop it.
• NJ precipitation showing increased variability. "We're primed for more storms."
• Hurricane Sandy rode ocean waters that had been above normal for 22 months leading up to the storm, plus a seasonal dip in the jet stream that caused the storm to come in towards land.
• Climate change looks like it will be particularly extreme for the southwest U.S., where drier,
  hotter summers are predicted. The snowpack out there this winter is only 6% of normal.
• Dr. Robinson mentioned Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist, evangelical, and an excellent speaker, based at Texas Tech. Editor's note: She is also a longtime member of the advisory board for Citizen's Climate Lobby, which has a local chapter.
• There's a weather station at Stonybrook/Millstone Watershed.
• Nice photo of the Great Falls at Patterson during the recent deep freeze.
• In the Q and A, I asked him about how people are to learn about climate change when journalistic convention doesn't include basic facts in day to day reporting, like the graph showing the dramatic departure from historical patterns of temperature and CO2, or how we've raised CO2 levels in the air by 40%. He said that he only gave 160 interviews this past year, half of previous years, which for him is telling about the diminishment in science reporting as news services struggle to survive.  
• Clouds are hard to "parameterize" in climate models. They'll have different impacts depending on whether they are over dark water, land, or snow that would reflect the light back up into space regardless of whether the clouds were there.
• Research shows that the main determinate of view of climate change is ideological.
• He had expected climate change to get more attention when Clinton/Gore were elected, but Clinton administration had lots of other things on its agenda.
• Someone asked about the 3% of climate scientists who supposedly disagree about the amount and cause of climate change. Robinson questioned whether that 3% really exists.
• If you want to see some of his slides, an internet search revealed that ANJEC (an umbrella organization for town environmental commissions) has one of his powerpoints at this link.

After the talk, an acquaintance confided that she still didn't understand the basics of how the extra CO2 got into the atmosphere, and why it is a problem. A NY Times primer on climate change explains to some extent, but still doesn't make clear that the extra carbon, now active in the atmosphere warming the earth, was previously safely stored in underground deposits of coal, oil and natural gas. Both the origins and dangers of human caused climate change have a great deal to do with storage. Coastal cities exist only because vast amounts of water are being stored in ice sheets perched on Greenland and the Antarctic. There are 220 feet of sea level rise stored in those ice sheets, and by creating warmer conditions on earth, we will steadily lose that wonderful storage service.

In this short video, the CO2 molecule comes to life to explain the situation.

Climate Talk and Jazz Play this Week

Two people I've had the pleasure of interacting with in the past will be in Princeton this week. Your state climatologist (did you know you had one?) will be speaking at 7pm at the Princeton Public Library this evening, Jan. 17. And Jonathan Elbaz, a wonderful, highly talented, super knowledgeable young jazz pianist I jammed with at a dinner party a couple months ago will be performing this Friday, Jan. 19, at Salon 33, a unique performance venue worth checking out. Potluck at 7, performance at 8pm. Highly recommended. For more info and to rsvp, scroll down at this link.

David Robinson "New Jersey's Changing Climate"

The New Jersey state climatologist gives a presentation on the weather and climate of the Garden State that explores events and issues on short to long time scales.  Intended to promote an understanding of global climate variability and change, the talk will address where we have been and where New Jersey's climate may be headed. Newsroom

 

This special event of the Princeton Environmental Film Festival is co-sponsored by the library and Rutgers Master Gardeners of Mercer County.

Jonathan Elbaz, a recent graduate of the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, is an aspiring yet impressive twenty-two year old jazz pianist. His talent is quickly becoming recognized, and has already landed him gigs at Dizzy's and other key venues in NYC that feature young topflight jazz musicians. Elbaz is a name to keep watching on your jazz radar. Salon 33 is pleased to host him in his home town of Princeton.

Jon will present a pianistic survey of jazz from the Swing era – that is, from the late 1920s until bebop of the 1940s. While this is very much a performance concert, Jon will also engage the audience with brief introductions to the composers who made these tunes so popular in their day, notes from their lives and life context, and some funny bits here and there about the lyrics. Featured jazz musicians include Willie the Lion, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson, vocalist Billie Holiday and composer/pianist Duke Ellington, among others

Working With Rather Than Fighting Against Nature

Cold nights and sunny days bring memories of the wonderful passive solar homes I've been in, warmed passively in winter by the sunlight streaming in through a bank of south-facing windows. From its low angle in the winter sky, the sun's power pours in to fill a welcoming house with its radiance and warmth.

Most homes, including ours, turn a cold shoulder to the sun's winter radiance. To get a sense of how much energy is traveling all the way from the sun only to bounce futilely off the siding, stand in front of a window and feel the sun's heat on your skin.

Even with most of the solar energy bouncing off the house unused, there's still canned solar energy in the form of wood foraged locally for the stove. Along with the solar energy streaming through the windows, and one of those really comfortable, lightweight Patagonia coats, it's possible to give the gas furnace a break, and thereby contribute a little less to the radicalization of weather.

A wood stove and a sunny south-facing window are like the Victory Gardens of the Second World War. Back then, people became producers, e.g. of food, and minimized their consumption of energy in order to make more available for the war effort. Now, the aim is simply to use less of the unethical energy that permeates our economy--unethical in the sense that present comfort contributes to future discomfort. It sometimes feels like another war needs to be fought, this time against climate change, a self-produced enemy, perhaps the most dangerous of them all. As wars go, it has the advantage that no one need die to win it. But wars aren't as galvanizing as they used to be. Maybe it's time not to make war but to end it, to end the largely inadvertent war on nature. The Third World War, it turns out, is a war not on other nations but on the world itself, waged everyday as collateral damage from our seemingly peaceful lifestyles. We end it by working with nature rather than against it.

Our dog is responding to the frigid weather not with worldly thoughts but by opting out of walks, and going out each morning to bark at the cold, as if it were intruding on his territory.

Several days later, the barking seems to have worked all too well. Strange cold is replaced by strange heat, much as the drought-enhanced wildfires in Californian have segued to downpour and mudslides. Weather is stretched to extremes, and calls to work with nature seem to arise from a strangely peripheral AsIf world--a dreamed of realm where people think and act as if the future mattered.

Seeing the Big Picture in Our Big Freeze

A map of global temperatures is very helpful in better understanding how our record-breaking cold fits into overall global warming. Red indicates parts of the world that are currently warmer than normal, with that blob of blue over North America showing that our comparative cold is an isolated event. To compensate for parochial perceptions of climate, news media need to be displaying these maps frequently.

There's another way in which our frigid temperatures, predicted to continue for the next week at least, could be an effect of overall warming. A climate scientist at Rutgers, Jennifer Francis, has been studying how the radically warming North Pole could be weakening the jet stream. As these high altitude winds slow, the jet stream begins to sag and stagnate. This in turn leads to the sorts of stalled weather patterns that contributed to the record breaking flooding in Houston this past summer. Presumably, this same "increase in persistent weather extremes" in the summer, a consequence of climate change, would hold true for the winter as well.

From what reading I've done, the jet stream functions like a belt, or an abdominal wall that rings the planet, flexible but strong enough to keep the arctic weather mostly contained to the north. The big freeze we are experiencing can be thought of as a giant hernia, in which that wall weakens, allowing arctic temperatures to spill southward over the U.S.

An Unusual Silence

Making my usual morning coffee and toast, 7am on Christmas morning, I became aware of an unusual silence. It came from outside, where so much was not happening, so many cars not going by, so many trucks parked for the day, so many planes not flying overhead. It made me think of Santa, and how he might long ago have had the whole night to himself while the world slept. By the time I stepped outside, though, a car was coming by, and another, and the poignancy was gone.

Maybe there was a moment, sometime in the night or early morning, when all people were happy right where they were, and felt no need to be somewhere else, and the great white noise of machines stopped for that glimmer of time, opening up for all to hear, a clear, crystalline silence.

Making Sustainable Practices Visible

Behavior that makes a community more sustainable in the longterm tends to be invisible and inaudible. No one sees you not driving, or using less energy in the home. No one hears you raking leaves. Neighbors don't see a backyard compost pile. Solar panels don't make demands on our awareness the way traffic and airplane noise does. How then to model sustainable practices, given that people tend to copy what they see and hear their neighbors doing?

Have a pollinator garden, solar panels or compost pile hidden somewhere? Don't keep it secret. Tell the world. During a recent visit to Bloomington, IN, I saw a lot of these signs, indicating that the homeowner has some solar panels somewhere on the roof. Given all the reasons people can conjure for not adopting more sustainable practices, signs like these provide some reassurance that others have overcome their inner resistance and perceived impediments and taken action.

Lacking a sign, I decided to use a frontyard demonstration instead. Home composting of yardwaste and kitchen scraps is typically done in the backyard, while the more energy-intensive practice of piling leaves in the street for pickup by heavy machinery is highly visible. This "Wishing the Earth Well" leaf corral serves as a sign of sorts. Since the decorative hubcap was stolen (I guess it's a compliment), a pumpkin has been sitting in as a cap for the inner column where food scraps are tossed.

Gravity works in one's favor with a leaf corral. The leaves continue to settle, leaving room for more when the oaks drop their last leaves.

People often think compost piles need a lot of turning to aid decomposition, but if the leaves are moist and the leaf corral is set on bare ground, the decomposers work up through the pile on their own. This fall, the corral yielded a bucket and a half of high quality compost for the raised beds.

Demonstrations like this are made to show how easy and rewarding sustainable practices can be, if humanity ever chooses to adopt them.

To Fix a Problem, First Make It Worse

I'm sure this isn't always true, but it sure was yesterday afternoon, when I was organizing the frig in preparation for a party, and accidentally spilled an open can of soup. Tuscan-style white bean soup, which I mistook for minestroni as it began dripping down from one shelf to the next. Sponging up the mess caused me to notice that the whole frig needed a cleaning. Stirred by that special party-prep energy, I launched into a full cleaning. I doubt anyone will notice. People will see a clean frig and assume it always was--such is our capacity to overlook a slow accumulation of dirt. No matter. A clean frig has its own satisfactions.

The experience got me thinking, though. What other cleaning and organizing could I incite by making things worse, in order to make them better, of course.

Shout Out to Princeton Womens' Soccer

A shout out to the Princeton University women's soccer team for some exciting play this fall and a deep run in the NCAA soccer tournament, reaching the quarter finals. They combined a tenacious defense with a potent, free-wheeling offense that won the Ivy League title and took some much larger schools in other leagues by surprise.

Though I seldom follow sports, the soccer team and its season pushed some buttons for me, having come from a small town in Wisconsin whose high school teams, orange and black bulldogs rather than tigers, played against larger schools and often won. What drew me to sports as a kid was the skill, teamwork, improvisation, and the exhilaration of running pell mell down a field. Women's soccer brings those qualities to the fore, leaving brute strength and body blows to other sports and other fans.

At some level, the women's soccer games serve as a salve in this political era. The games are honest--no phony writhing in pain like one finds in men's professional soccer. There's all that positive energy of players giving everything they've got to a shared goal. No room for laggards or selfish agendas. At the same time, the players are free to express their personalities on the field--each with a distinct style. With no time outs, the coach often out of earshot, the team must depend on its own wits and chemistry. The fluency of precise passing doesn't play out as static ball control, but always leads somewhere interesting, with near goals often as exciting as the goals themselves.

Soccer games at Princeton U. are free and open to all. Knowing no one in the stands, I'd engage in the action but also feel a solitude, a sense of having stepped out of my accustomed orbit. My youth in sports was eclipsed by an adulthood of music and environmental work, but even a native plant advocate can get drawn back to the action on that broad sward of green. Go Tigers!

Related post about soccer and climate change: Cheering For the World

Giving Thanks for Improved Sidewalks

One thing I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving weekend is the new or improved sidewalks going in around town. My understanding is that Princeton no longer charges individual homeowners for repaired or newly installed sidewalks, eliminating the friction and delay caused by the old policy.

The town recently replaced bumpy sidewalks along a main route taken by kids going to PHS and the middle school. The value of smooth sidewalks becomes most vividly apparent if you walk with someone who uses a walker.

It's nice to see workers improving infrastructure in town. A closer look reveals the craftsmanship involved. The less demand for custodial functions like picking up leaves piled in the street, the more resources can be channeled to these infrastructural improvements.

May this sidewalk's utility extend far towards the horizon.

Slavery in Princeton--Some Context

The Slavery in Princeton project led to some additional reading, which in turn led to writing the opinion piece, Unethical Energy: Then and Now. The Slavery in Princeton project does a great service by showing how slavery was a part of Princeton's past, and has sparked a lot of interest, both here and more broadly, with articles in the NY Times.

People who look honestly at the past and acknowledge deep injustice are more likely to look honestly at the present as well. In fact, past injustice can help us better understand current injustice, and vice versa. There is the ongoing legacy of slavery and discrimination, and the parallel tragedy of ongoing dependence on fossil fuels. Few people--when they drive up a hill with but a nudge on the pedal, or bask in comfort while the furnace quietly heats the home--think about the distant consequence of that easy energy--the land wounded by extraction, the distant lives disrupted by or lost to radicalized weather and rising seas. Awareness of the way injustice is woven into what seems like normal, civilized life is our ticket to a deeper understanding of what it was like to live in the early 1800s, when many people may have been troubled by slavery, but also found it served their interest too much to demand change. The fine-grained rendering of the past by the Slavery in Princeton project helps make more vivid our current predicament.

There is a cultural tendency to put malefactors front and center in the news, in political comedy, and in movies. Though distasteful, the malefactors also satisfy in a peculiar way, as long as they are the "Other", whether from a distant era or members of the other political party. They satisfy in that we the audience come out looking better by comparison. Whether our ancestors were slaves or free, or both, we rightly feel disgust at the news that slaves were once sold on Nassau Street. The Slavery in Princeton project will not fully realize its potential, however, unless we ask ourselves if the disgust we feel now will, decades or a century from now, be felt towards us. Only then can the urgency of our moment in history be made clear. It's time to forge an economy based on ethical energy, that respects people and planet, present and future.

Here are some of the sources that offered insight into then and now:

Slavery in the North gives a state by state history of slavery in the North. New Jersey's is here.

For those trying to reduce consumption of fossil fuels, the closest counterparts in antebellum America were the Quakers, described in this article, Boycotting Goods Produced by Slaves. John Woolman, whose house has been preserved, was one of the leaders who influenced Quakers to take a stronger stand against slavery in the mid 1800s.

12 Years a Slave is a powerful movie worth seeing. It's one of those movies where you emerge from the theater shaken, with perceptions of the world dramatically changed. I wrote about it here.

Why Non-Slaveholding Southerners Fought gives a fascinating description of attitudes in the South leading up to the Civil War.

The New Abolitionism compares slavery and fossil fuel use, with a particularly useful discussion of stranded assets.

Rationalization, whether of slavery back then or fossil fuel use now, is alive and well. Here's an example from the current U.S. energy secretary.

Support Bike and Ped Mobility Tonight, Nov. 2

This from Princeton Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee:

Great news! On November 2, Princeton's Planning Board is to consider formally incorporating bicycle and pedestrian mobility into Princeton's transportation plan. More details on this issue are in Nat Bottigheimer's clear and informative article in Planet Princeton.

This is a huge development for sustainable transportation in Princeton, and it would be great if we come to the meeting in large numbers to show our support. Bring your friends! Bring your kids! (Tell them that it's a chance to see democracy in action; also that our town hall has good WiFi).

The hearing is on Thursday, November 2, 7.30-9pm in the main meeting room of the Municipal Complex on 400 Witherspoon Street. 

You can download and preview the proposed circulation element here.

Electric Bike Gone in Minutes

Less than a half hour after putting an electric bike out on the curb, I heard a knock on the door. A man with a long beard wanted to make sure it was free for the taking. Years ago, I had acquired it under similar circumstances, motivated by a vision of tooling around town, powered by solar energy. The envisioned repair and reuse had languished, however, for lack of an understanding of all things electrical. The bike should be in good hands now, though. These guys are real electricians, and just happened to have room in their truck.

Follow the Water: Stormwater Workshop Wednesday

There's pleasure in exploring where the runoff goes from your roof and your driveway, and figuring out how to use that rainwater in the landscape rather than rushing it out to the street or into your neighbor's yard. Princeton Public Library is hosting a presentation about this on Wed, October 18, at 7pm. Information below:

Stormwater Management for Princeton HomeownersPrinceton residents are invited to join landscape architect Carolle Huber, architect Kirsten Thoft, and Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association storm water specialist Kory Kreiseder to learn how to best incorporate stormwater management on their property. Community Room 

Co-sponsored by the library, the Princeton Environmental Commission, Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed and the Princeton Environmental Film Festival.

Science and Social Issues Come Together in "Paradise"

Update: If you missed Paradise at Passage Theatre, you can catch it at the Luna Stage in East Orange in November. Might even be accessible by train.

Some of the most moving theater I've witnessed has been at Passage Theatre in Trenton. This coming weekend's the last for a play I'm being urged to see, partly because science is in the mix. The science of romantic love, the muslim experience in America--along with the good reviews from friends, it looks like a trip to Trenton somewhere between this coming Friday and Sunday, Oct. 20-22. Go to http://passagetheatre.org/paradise/ for more information. There's a writeup at this link.

Synopsis:

Two outsiders – a gifted Muslim-American teenager and her disgraced biology teacher – form an unlikely partnership to research first love. Science, religion, and exploitation are all fair game as both lives change forever.

The urgings from friends:

"If you go to the play at Passage this weekend, you won't be disappointed. It combines social issues with science issue, and is really well done. Passage is not allowed to have newspaper reviews--some contractual agreement--so word of mouth and blog reviews are key."

"It is first of all about the relationship between a teacher and a student and how science is done. It is also a sensitive presentation of Islam and the struggles believers face in America."

Onstage Seniors Community Theater Performs A-HA MOMENTS Sunday at the Library

OnStage Seniors, a community project that I joined five years ago and is now based at McCarter Theater, will be performing at the Princeton Library this Sunday, October 15 at 3 p.m. See our troupe of fifteen, all over 55, do monologues and skits on this year’s theme: A-HA MOMENTS. The stories are all true, gathered from people in the greater Princeton/Trenton community about those moments of insight, big and small, funny and serious, that changed a life.

A video about the group's work of gathering stories from the communities and performing them as monologues or dialogues can be found at this link. Join us!

De facto Banning of Children's Books on Climate Change?

There was a wonderful energy under the big tent on Hinds Plaza. Crowds of people, long lines at the checkout counter, beloved authors signing books and having their picture taken with avid youthful readers. In a time when the internet dominates and downsizers leave bookshelves on the curb for trash day, this scene happily did not compute.

This feast of reading, celebratory and uplifting in so many ways, left one unexpected aftertaste. There were books on myriad subjects, but none on the one reality that will most determine the fate of children: climate change. One author told me that publishers think the subject is too "controversial", so that it can only be talked about indirectly.

If true, it merely adds one more layer of bondage to our lives. We are, after all, essentially forced by cultural norms and economic necessity to consume fossil fuels every day, directly or indirectly, as if some sinister force had harnessed us up to collective drag civilization towards the cliff. What to tell a child, as we read by a light powered by coal, in a house kept warm by natural gas, with an internal combustion engine ready to carry the child to school the next morning? The leaders whose responsibility it is to free us of this dependency are instead running from the problem, and creating false controversy by proclaiming that the problem doesn't exist. That false controversy, along with whatever guilt we feel for being collectively complicit, then suppresses discussion of the topic, which plays into the hands of the deniers who are getting elected by letting themselves and the voters off the hook.

A google search of "childrens books on climate change" shows that not all publishers are staying away from the subject. There are, for instance, overviews of recommended books at Parent and the Guardian. Another link recommends Jason Chin's books, such as Coral Reefs, which can be read online.

The Princeton Children's Book Festival was a joyful affair. How much more joyful it would be if we could uncouple our leadership and our lives from the collective unraveling of the future.

The Quandary and Legacy of Overamplification

Every now and then, I have a bone to pick with Princeton University. These aren't the usual bones, e.g. University expansionism, it's impact on property taxes, or moving the Dinky station. These are smaller bones, like the stadium lights that used to be left on for long hours while the stadium was empty (which also turned out to be one of former university president Tilghman's pet peeves), or the ineffective recycling at Jadwin Gym (they improved it for awhile after my input, then reverted). All of these bones play against a background of overall gratitude. My wife is a professor there, my older daughter had a good experience as an undergrad, and I've attended many lectures open to the public. The bones are often not specific to the University, but are symptomatic of a culturally pervasive problem. The bone du post has to do with toxic sound levels.

In a world of speed limits, seat belts and emission standards, where toys, play equipment and nearly everything else we buy and consume are carefully regulated for safety, the exceptions to this safety-first mentality stand out. The most grievous is carbon emissions, upon which no constraint has been placed. The future remains unprotected and has already suffered what is now playing out as tremendous damage.

Another is decibels, whose impact on the ears, as with climate change, is unintended and often long delayed. That impact became apparent at an event this past spring (this post lingered in the draft folder): the big Princeton University graduation party known as the Senior Prom at Jadwin Gym. My daughter was part of the 2017 graduation--a meticulously planned 3 day affair that involves mass transport and accommodation of far-flung families, and a tightly scheduled series of events, all of which seems to have come off without a hitch.

Why, then, would a University that watches closely over its students not pay attention to the sound levels at the big party to which we were all invited? The cavernous gym was packed with people young and old, dancing and seated. The food was a healthy mix of humus, vegetables and fruit, but the air was toxic with thunderous sound. About one hour in, my daughter's ears "popped". Traumatized, she fled to the building's entryway, texting me with worries that her hearing had been damaged.

As someone who has played in wedding bands, I know that people who complain about loud music can be pegged as fuddy duddies trying to ruin the party. That's probably why I wore earplugs but didn't try to convince others in the family to do the same.

Regulation is often viewed negatively, but it can often lead to better products. Regulation of the producer can protect and simplify life for countless consumers. The deafening volumes in Jadwin Gym not only stymied any conversation at the tables, but by overwhelming the ears, paradoxically, the music was harder to hear with any clarity. The philosophy seems to be that people are so inhibited, so awkward at parties, that they must be pummeled by loud music in order to break down inhibitions, while providing an excuse to avoid conversation. In nightclubs, loud music is intentionally used to encourage people to drink more and talk less. But the University has no profit motive at a graduation party.

It's true that tolerance for loud sounds varies, and spectacles like a big party or a sports event are expected to be loud. But it's possible to achieve the desired intensity, sense of spectacle and celebration without destructive sound levels. In the 1980s and 90s, I struggled with this while playing in loud bands, and concluded that human nature conspires with technology, leading to volume creep. Soundmen, subjected repeatedly to loud music as part of their job, are not the best arbiters of volume. A band's volume can creep upward out of youthful exuberance. It's easier for a musician to turn up than to risk resentment and bruised egos by asking others to turn down.

These factors pushing volume upwards have no countervailing force. Audience members are very reluctant to give feedback. I remember a deafening Maynard Ferguson concert--my first but one of his last before he died--where people sat like trapped animals in their seats. A few walked out, but I was the only one to appeal to the soundman, clearly a veteran and victim of nightly decibelian overdose. He shrugged, perhaps unable to hear what I was saying. We searched for a quieter place in the auditorium, but finally had to leave.

At the least, at events where sound levels could be extreme, big bowls of foam earplugs should be displayed in the lobby. Soundmen should be required to conform to decibel limits. And any noisy establishment should be protecting its workers and customers from hearing damage. Workers in particular, such as the waiters at the Senior Prom, with longer exposure and no option to leave, are particularly at risk. Once requirements and procedures are in place, good habits are reinforced and our lives become simplified and safer. Otherwise, everyone pays. Hearing aids ain't cheap.

As with climate change, it's the delayed damage done unintentionally that slips through society's otherwise elaborate safety net.

Free Leaf Bags Now Available at Ace Hardware

This scene outside Ace Hardware at the Princeton Shopping Center will bring joy to anyone who values efficiency in government. Yesterday, Sept. 26, marked the beginning of a private/public partnership, in which Ace Hardware will take over the distribution of free leaf bags to Princeton residents. The town stands to save or redirect $21,000/year--my estimate of savings from 720 hours of public works staff time that can now be devoted to other tasks. In return for storing the bags and keeping track of how many leaf bags are given to whom, Ace Hardware gains additional foot traffic. Residents gain convenience as well, since the hardware store is open longer hours and on weekends.

Even better, the idea came not from a paid consultant, but from a resident (me), hatched in that fertile bed of creativity and insight known as Princeton. My research two years ago, working off of figures provided by town staff, showed that what seemed like a nice perk for residents--40 free leaf bags per year--was actually costing the town $2/bag, four times their cost at a local hardware store.

Now, the town's cost is more like 50 cents a bag, and that cost may be getting covered through grant funding. The town, by the way, decided to buy the bags itself, rather than give away bags with the Ace Hardware logo. The transition was a bit bumpy, as the town began directing residents to the hardware store before giving the store any leaf bags. But any new approach is likely to have a few glitches at first.

Another cost-saving idea in the works is to make rollcarts available to residents, particularly those who live along busy roads where they can't pile loose yardwaste at the curb. Though leaf bags would still be available, rollcarts of the 64 or 96 gallon size have the advantage of being weatherproof and reusable, with greater capacity and mobility. The aim is to begin a steady shift towards containerization of yardwaste, which is more efficient to collect and reduces nutrient pollution in local streams. More on this approach further down in the post from two years ago.

Many people limit their view of local government to how they individually are being served. Though understandable, that narrow view cheats people of the satisfaction of larger victories, in which we all gain. This small but significant shift in the free leaf bag program is an instance of the latter.

More info on Princeton's leaf collection at this link.

700 Pounds of Steel Recycled on the Curb

After years of living on busy Harrison Street, I finally realized I could take advantage of the traffic flow to recycle metal that might otherwise end up in the landfill.

Most of these items had previously been put out on the curb on less-traveled side streets. If no one takes it before garbage day, I gather it and set it aside until the garbage trucks have come and gone, then put it out for someone to take to the scrap yards.

Scrap steel isn't worth much these days, compared to copper or aluminum, but most of this stuff disappeared within an hour or two, and the rest was gone within two days.

Some items left on the curb are useful, like this filing cabinet that puts me one step closer to finally getting organized. And I find it hard to drive idly by while older, solid wood furniture is consigned to the landfill, like the mid-century chest of drawers that appears to need only a couple knobs and a cleaning.

This plastic sandbox looks like it would be useful for someone, but has yet to be whisked away.

And these---oops. Didn't mean to include this photo, but I do know a couple male alpacas out towards Hopewell that may need a new home soon. That would be a sight--someone walking their pet alpaca down Harrison Street.

Community Theater Opportunity

Short notice, but Onstage Seniors, a 55+ community theater group I've been in for five years, has a couple openings. I joined five years ago, with no experience, and have found it a transformative experience. More information below. Contact the director, Liz Green, by tomorrow, Tuesday, even if you can't make the info session.

SEEKING MEN FOR ONSTAGE SENIORS ENSEMBLE

Our ensemble is made up of volunteer performers, and is looking for a few new people to join our ensemble this Fall. Participation costs a small fee (for weekly classes and workshops), though scholarships are available. Each of us participates both as a performer (learning, rehearsing, and helping to develop the new scripts) and as a company member (talking with new venues, scheduling, etc). No acting experience is required! If you love telling stories, being part of a team, and serving the community, then Onstage Seniors is right for you.

If you are interested in learning more, come to a small info session on Tuesday, September 19th between 10:30am - 1:00pm. Email lizdgreen@gmail.com to sign up for that info session.

If you are invited to join the Onstage Seniors Ensemble, you will be expected to:

• attend rehearsals on Tuesday afternoons from 1:30 - 3:30 from September until June

• memorize and act in two monologues or scenes

• perform in 2-3 performances per month, within 45 minutes of Princeton, starting in January

• support the ensemble by helping to coordinate performances at libraries, senior living centers, schools, and other non-traditional performances spaces

For more information, watch the video below, or go to www.onstageseniors.org

Repair Cafe Open for Business

Looking forward to checking out the new Repair Cafe, at 10 Hulfish Street in Princeton, next to Jazams. A flyer put out by Sustainable Princeton says it's open "most evenings and weekends through July and August", with a special gathering this Wednesday, July 26, 5:30-7:30, for people to learn about bike and furniture repair.

Almost exactly five years ago, I hosted a repair cafe in "Steve's Garage".  With the help of all the support videos and chatrooms the internet provides, and a hardware store close at hand, I had had good luck fixing a garage door, my pickup truck, a Bosch washing machine, and many other things. There can be a tendency to leave these unfinished "projects" sitting around for extended periods of time, but it feels good to repair things rather than throw them away, and it's good exercise for the creative, problem solving functions of the brain. As I wrote back then, the repair cafe concept was meant to extend those solo efforts "with the power of collective thinking to solve problems, and the pleasures of good company. I think of us as kindred spirits to WALL-E, fixing stuff with our wits, spare parts and the tools at hand, wishing we could fix the planet, too."

So, throw a broken chair over your back, jump on your bike, and head to the Repair Cafe. There's also a website devoted to repair cafes.

A Farrier for Patio Furniture

File this one in the "Who knew?" category. Renovated patio, with expanses of bluestone and brickwork. Lovely, but wait,

what are these marks on the new bluestone? Can't have that.

Turns out the furniture is supposed to have plastic feet, all of which wore down over time, leaving the rusting steel in direct contact with the patio stone. Fixing up the patio now means fixing up the furniture as well.

Fortunately, the local hardware store has replacements that can be hammered lightly into place, like a farrier replacing a horseshoe on a horse.

Free World Music in Princeton, July 14, 15 and 22

Blue Curtain and the Princeton Rec Department host two concerts this summer in the beautiful setting of Pettoranello Gardens. Park in the Community Park North parking lot off of Mountain Ave and walk down into Pettoranello Gardens. Or ride you bike. This year, Jamaican and latin jazz.

Meanwhile, this Thursday, July 13, African banjo player Cheick Hamala Diabate performs, 6-8 at the Princeton Shopping Center, sponsored by the Arts Council of Princeton.

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Alert: Two shifts from public to private--Attacks on Internet Neutrality, and Selling Off of Public Airwaves

Defending the Internet's Net Neutrality: A broad coalition is encouraging people to defend the internet's "net neutrality" against the current administration's revisionary zeal. Here's an easy way to express your opinion by the July 17 deadline:
https://www.battleforthenet.com/netroots/?utm_source=greenpeace


Wireless Microphones: The government is also selling off additional frequencies to wireless providers, creating problems for performers who use wireless microphones. Depending on which frequency the microphones use, they could start picking up cellphone conversations in the middle of a performance. As with selling off public lands, the government gets temporary income but the loss of "common wealth" is forever. http://www.geartechs.com/index.php/News/fcc-auction-more-news-on-wireless-microphones-of-the-future.html

Pomp and Political Circumstance

It was a misty and misty-eyed day on the green in front of Nassau Hall as the class of '17 was formally anointed with degrees. There is so much quality stuffed into the bounded space of Princeton University, in the architecture, the brain power. A week is devoted to celebrating it all, first with an infusion of alumni, then with three days devoted to the graduating class. This year, I was invited in, as a proud parent, to bathe in orange and black, which happen to have been my school colors growing up in a small Wisconsin town. Our mascot was a bulldog, from which I may have gained some degree of persistence in life, though as a beast it lacks the lithe charisma of a tiger. My day of birth mixed with the graduating class's year--a prime coincidence given some additional gravitas by F. Scott Fitzgerald's graduation a century prior.

Among those receiving honorary degrees was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, basketball star from my youth, jazz aficionado, and doer of good in the world, still head and shoulders above as he walked through the gates.

There was another familiar name from my youth being honored along with Kareem--Jeremiah Ostriker, an astrophysicist who had been a student at Yerkes Observatory in that small Wisconsin town when I was growing up. He went on to be one of the discoverers of dark matter in the universe.

Stirring music wafted across the crowded green, and stirring words bounced off the surrounding buildings as the rain held off. It was a good feeling to witness my daughter walking through the gates to a gallant melody from Gustav Holtz's The Planets. Later, when the band was viewed from closer up, the body language of the conductor and musicians suggested a less than inspired feeling behind the music, but they were professionals doing what they do very well.

The class victorian, in her speech, focused praise on the un-degreed--the people who day after day provide food for the students, clean the bathrooms, and offer a chance for any student who takes the time to discover magic and authenticity in plain-spoken lives. I, too, having grown up in an academic family, was attracted to that plain-speech that came not from books but from everyday experience.

In retrospect, it seemed a call for reclaiming a connection with the working class, much of which has drifted into a self-destructive allegiance with faux-populist, authoritarian-leaning politicians.

President Eisgruber's speech, too, was in part a response to the forces that are working from without and within to erode and eviscerate institutions that once seemed so secure.

"Overcoming the fractious politics and bitter disagreements of our day will require empathy; it will require friendship and love; it will require an ability to connect and collaborate together. It will also demand that we find a way to restore and rebuild faith in the institutions, of government and of society, that allow us to take on projects together. That is no easy task, for we live at a time when confidence in our shared institutions is ebbing. People are losing faith not only in government, but also in business, journalism, and non-profit organizations."

What he must know and cannot say is that words like "empathy" and "us" and "together" are anathema for those who gain power by pilloring the despised "Other" and who thrive on division. How, it must be asked, can there be so much intelligence in the world, so much analytical power, so many wise words finely crafted over centuries and easily accessed, and yet power accrues to the incurious, the callous, the arrogant and the petty?

Within the comforting embrace of campus walls and elegant gates, as good deeds were praised and the graduating class was called upon to serve the nation, I watched swallows patrolling for insects above the verdant canopy of beneficent trees. Other birds, in twos or threes, passed through, barely noting our presence as they hurried on to some distant destination. Then the birds and their vibrant energy and skill were gone, and a lost balloon rose higher and higher towards the clouds. I imbued it with meaning, at odds with the occasion, as it slipped further away. The balloon became our prospects, given political sabotage, for stopping runaway global warming. Powerless to retrieve it, I watched as it faded to a speck and then disappeared into the gray mist of low-hanging clouds.

But no, we are buoyant, each imbued with spiritual helium. Dark matter cannot draw us down. The clouds may threaten rain but cannot deter. The faces of the regally clad and newly anointed, passing through the gates at long last, were full of joy, relief and expectation. Kareem still stands tall, unbowed by age and the nation's political trajectory. Gustav Holtz still stirs the noble bedrock at our core.

President Eisgruber quoted one of his predecessors, Bill Bowan: “Institutions exist to allow us to band together in support of larger purposes; they permit a continuity otherwise impossible to achieve; and they allow a magnification of individual efforts. Learning to make the accommodations that institutional affiliation requires is not always easy,” especially for people like our students, who have been encouraged to cultivate “critical habits of thought and a fierce independence. But there is a need to cooperate and collaborate, as well as to strike out on one’s own, if important societal ends are to be served.”

Those words were spoken to Eisgruber and others in his graduating class of 1986, as Ronald Reagan's administration was spreading pessimism about government and collective effort in general, promoting instead the individual as the all and end all. That pessimism has grown, deepened, hardened into an ideology impervious to evidence or urgency, and now leaves us helpless and paralyzed, as we collectively create problems but are denied the chance to collectively solve them.

Still, hope awaits in the wings, of vibrant birds overhead, of graduates dispersing to pursue their dreams, and the spirit that flies in timeless melodies.