July 8, 2008--Thinking Green

Up here in Maine it’s hard not to think green. Pretty much everything’s green from the pine-packed islands to the naturalized roadside borders. And when the sun’s just right, even the water in Penobscot Bay appears to be green.

Then in the house in which we are staying, there are green reminders in almost every room: Pretty much all light bulbs are of the fluorescent type; there are at least four trash can among which one is reminded by little stick-on labels to separate garbage for recycling; and there is a compost pile onto which we have tossed our kitchen scraps. We have already begun to learn to distinguish between which of these we should put there and which to put in the receptacle with the “Trash Only” sign. Lobster shells we still have questions about—they feel as if they should by moral imperative compost. I would be disappointed to learn that they weren’t. Until we figure it out we have stashed some in the refrigerator inside a plastic bag, which we will be sure to wash and use again.

And there are notes all around about toilet paper. If we run out, there are strict instructions about which brands to buy and which to avoid. In bold in her book of house notes, in bold red type, she writes, “Please use only Scott. Our septic tank is very sensitive. Very sensitive!”

There is also what appears to be the highest-tech of high-tech woodstoves standing majestically in the living room on a base of granite stones. It feels as though if we were ever able to figure out how to use it (I think it has three dampers with are operated by handles that have to be aligned in three very precise directions in order to make it work and avoid burning the place to the ground), if we were to take a change to fire it up it is so engineered that one log properly situated and ignited in the built-in cradle would keep the entire house toasty warm through all of December.

That’s how green this place is.

But then again so is Lafayette Street in downtown Manhattan.

The day before heading for Maine, after coffee at Balthazar, we were walking north on Lafayette back to our comparatively not-green apartment. At the corner of Bleecker Street there is a small hardware store and in the window there was one of those large circular outdoor thermometers. It was not a particularly hot morning—I’d estimate that it was about 75 degrees—but the arrow on the thermometer registered110 degrees. I thought it must be defective: how could it be at least 35 degrees hotter inside the window than on the street?

But then of course it came to me—the morning sun was striking the window and because of glass’s ability to produce a greenhouse effect the objects and air inside the window were a version of super-heated.

The sunlight passing through the glass heats the solid objects which in turn heat the air and since it is trapped in a confined space this effect continues to warm it to a point way beyond the air on the outside which is not confined.

This is the so-called “real greenhouse effect”—the one that heats gardener’s greenhouses--as opposed to the misnamed Greenhouse Effect the entire earth is experiencing due to the proliferation of man-generated gases in the atmosphere that block the amount of radiation back into space that is required to maintain earth’s healthy environment. Thus global warming.

I untutored thought that while waiting for all sorts of new, renewable sources of energy to come on line why not figure out how to use the heat generated as in that Bleecker Street hardware store. I do know that some homes in cooler climates are designed to benefit by being aligned to capture the heat generated by morning and afternoon sunlight and others in warmer places are situated so as not to have that many windows facing south so as to avoid overheating. But what, I thought, about wider applications? Like using heat produced this way to contribute to generating steam that in turn might be used to produce electricity in steam-driven turbines?

But since I know relatively little about this, yet still feeling good about myself for at least attempting to help solve our global problems, I quickly abandoned these ruminations and turned back to thinking about what to pack for our month in Maine. Since we were driving there (in a rented fuel-efficient car) it was quite a long list of hiking boots and fleeces and trousers and shorts and shirts and sweaters of all weights since we suspected it would be both hot and cold there. And of course I reminded myself to take a case of Chablis which Rona thought would go very well with lobster.

Back in the apartment, as is my morning custom, I read through the New York Times and was struck to read about some of the things Japan has been doing to run its energy-frugal economy. Struck because, among other things, they have grown their economy substantially since 1970 without increasing the amount of energy they consume. (Article linked below.)

One technique they have employed sounded to me a little like what I had been thinking about on Lafayette Street.

Japan is the world’s second largest producer of steel—China is first. That industry requires tremendous amounts of energy. To keep use to a minimum, as one example, the JFE Steel’s Keihin Mill on Tokyo Bay has constructed a maze of steel ducts to surround the blast furnaces in order to capture the heat and gases that had previously been released into the atmosphere. And with this heat and those previously waste gases JFE now recycles them to power generators which supply 90 percent of the plant’s electricity.

This seems both basic and hopeful.

Thus inspired, it’s time for me to get back to looking up what to do with those lobster shells.