Tag Archives: review

NRDC OnEarth

Book Review — High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug In the Auto Industry | OnEarth

Jim Motavalli | Rodale Books, 272 pp., $24.99

When the Toyota Prius debuted in the United States a decade ago, reactions were polarized. Fans loved its tantalizing mileage; skeptics scoffed at its relatively high cost and smug eco-imaging. Today, with more than two million sold, the groundbreaking gas-electric hybrid is as uncontroversial as it is unsexy, its success a profitable reward for an early, risky bet on green technology.

In High Voltage, the longtime automotive journalist Jim Motavalli argues that we’re at the start of a similar arc with electric vehicles, or EVs. As these finally hit the streets, we’re still early in the fascination-versus-skepticism phase. Pundits fret over “range anxiety” — how far an EV can go on a charge — while consumers are drawn to the remarkable mileage, the equivalent of as much as 100 miles per gallon of gasoline.

High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug in the auto industry Riding shotgun with Motavalli, readers get a sense of how this technology may not only electrify most new cars (either partially or completely) but also remake the auto industry, rewire our electrical grid, and redefine how and where we refuel — all while lowering oil consumption and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

For the lay reader, Motavalli breaks down the basics of the technology, untangling the often confusing taxonomy of subspecies. There are the now-familiar gas-electric hybrids, such as the Prius, which are never plugged in. There are plug-in hybrids, such as the Volt, which recharge from an outlet but also have a gas engine for extended range. And there are the truest EVs, such as Nissan’s Leaf, which use no gasoline, drawing all their energy from a supersize battery pack.

If you think the $40,000-plus Volt is too costly, Motavalli writes, blame the battery. Higher-capacity batteries may spell the difference between success and failure, which explains, he says, why “battery companies have become the rock stars of the EV business.”

How and where EVs recharge is shaping up to be a monumental technology shift in its own right. From developing a safe, standard design for EV plugs to transforming the grid to handle the EV era, the effort has pulled in some big newcomers to the auto biz. There’s Southern California Edison, which is working out the kinks to install at-home and public charging points. Then there’s GE, which is fortifying the grid for EVs and rolling out “smart grid” technologies, including curbside gizmos that will allow even garageless city dwellers to recharge.

China, already the world’s largest auto market, looms as the EV industry’s game changer. China’s top battery maker, BYD (which is one-tenth owned by Warren Buffett), is targeting the U.S. market with both battery and plug-in hybrid models, the latter priced just south of $30,000, about $10,000 less than the Volt. They’re still crude, and safety is a question, Motavalli reports, but the same was said of the first Japanese imports in the 1960s, and those turned out to be harbingers of a sea change in design and efficiency.

Motavalli concedes that “because of high cost, range issues, relatively low fuel prices, and a scarcity of federal incentives,” EVs may yet hit one of the potholes that has crashed past runs. The odds are with them, though. High long-term oil prices are driving the shift, as are moves toward higher fuel-efficiency standards. Without some measure of electrification, Motavalli contends, few manufacturers will be able to sell in tomorrow’s car markets.

A decade from now, EVs may be just one more kind of vehicle stuck in traffic. That would be exactly the sort of humdrum success EV players hope for. And it would be great for the environment, too.

View and comment on the original story at http://www.onearth.org/article/high-voltage-the-fast-track-to-plug-in-the-auto-industry.

NRDC OnEarth

Review: Revenge of the Electric Car | OnEarth

Chris Paine’s 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? arrived with perfect timing, capturing the country’s collective frustration with sky-high energy prices as well as our growing disenchantment with the automotive alternatives on offer. Let’s hope his sequel, Revenge of the Electric Car, previewed last week in New York and set for wide release this October, proves equally as prescient. The film, which captures what may turn out to be the first stages of the auto industry’s evolution away from oil, cruises smoothly over the finish line where its predecessor ultimately stalled short.

For Revenge, Paine scored fly-on-the-wall access to three of the most charismatic leaders in the auto industry. And he did so at a key moment — just as each was in the midst of executing a high-risk, multi-billion-dollar bet on battery-powered cars. Add in the fact that Paine’s crew was filming during the 2008 economic crisis and implosion of GM, and the result is more than just a snapshot of the gamesmanship behind the creation of mass-market vehicles. Revenge offers a look inside the minds of business leaders struggling through one of the most troubled periods of recent economic history.

As the documentary opens, U.S. automakers face an environment that’s radically different from the cheap-oil days that ruled when GM developed its first electric vehicle, EV1. Now oil prices are running at historic highs, and governments around the world have begun to put some real muscle behind the idea of the electric car.

Here’s Bob Lutz, GM’s American-born vice chairman and a veteran of the Big Three (Chrysler, Ford, and GM), becoming the unlikely champion of the Chevy Volt, and opening a door to GM’s salvation after the company’s downfall. Known in Detroit as “Mr. Horsepower,” Lutz personifies the about-face that the industry as a whole went through in the time that passed between the making of the two films. Once a deep skeptic of EVs, he now artfully tilts GM’s monolithic culture toward his goal of developing the Volt.

Facing off against GM is the enigmatic Carlos Gohn, the Brazilian-Lebanese CEO of Nissan/Renault, which is building the all-electric Leaf. Gohn’s orderly execution of the Leaf offers a welcome perspective on EVs from beyond American borders. After all, battery-powered cars are likely to flourish on the roads of Paris, Shanghai, and Tokyo before they do here, for the same reasons that small cars did.

Playing counterpoint to the corporate titans is Paypal-founder Elon Musk, a charismatic South African-Canadian struggling to steer the scrappy Tesla from startup mode to full-scale manufacturing. With confidence bordering on hubris, the then 38-year-old is at once inspiring and pain-inducing, as he underestimates the complexity of manufacturing and struggles to produce a stream of fault-free $100,000-plus electric sportsters. (This while also navigating his way through a painful divorce and playing doting dad to his five sons.) There’s real drama in watching Musk’s brave face flicker as he inspects an armada of faulty cars and in watching him awkwardly deliver the news to early depositors that the price of their vehicles will have to rise yet again.

One of the film’s delightful subplots involves the struggles of Greg “Gadget” Abbott, a goateed indie tinkerer who made a brief appearance in Who Killed and who excels at retrofitting classic cars with batteries and electric motors. With an infectious, mischievous air, Gadget offers a reminder of the gear-head roots of EVs’ most devoted fans.

Unlike with his first film, where Paine came to the topic too late to build a “how-it-happened” tale and leaned instead on activists and half-baked acolytes, Revenge captures rich natural tension as it unfolds. Who Killed, for example, featured a parade of Hollywood A-listers (Tom Hanks) and B-listers (Phyillis Diller), many of them sore about having lost their exotic cars and whining about GM’s decision to kill the EV1. Revenge gives us mercilessly few Hollywood prima dons — though Danny Devito does get downright giddy test-driving the Volt.

It won’t be giving anything away to tell you that the end of Revenge is a happy one. Of course, it’s far from the end of the story. Should Paine opt to complete what seems like a natural triptych, the final installment will no doubt prove more global in scope. Beijing has set national EV goals that dwarf those of Washington, for example, and the Chinese have much deeper capital resources. They also have a strong knack for building things like smart grids, which will be necessary for the wide-scale adaptation of EVs. And the race to build a better battery is heating up elsewhere overseas, with labs in dozens of countries working to build batteries capable of matching the range of your average gas tank.

With the gee-whiz stage of EV creation now complete, GM, Nissan, and Tesla also face the tougher slog of turning these enormous bets into reliable, mass-market machines that can actually make some money. Sales of EVs and hybrids are so far running far below the ambitious targets set by national governments, including our own.

Lurking farther out is the persistent threat of volatile oil prices. Many, myself among them, would argue that the real killer of the electric car was cheap oil. In the late 1990s, prices hit a post-’60s low, in inflation-adjusted terms, at the very moment that GM’s EV1 was being rolled out. That wouldn’t make it easy for any $1.25-million prototype to get off the ground, I don’t care how many starlets tell you it’s a great idea. Sub-$2-a-gallon gasoline may seem unimaginable to us today, but a double-dip recession — a real possibility given the anemic economic growth and sovereign debt woes on both sides of the Atlantic — could send energy demand crashing, rendering the EV once again an intolerably uneconomic prospect.

Revenge closes with a scene featuring the Los Angeles Times reporter Dan Neil. The sole automotive writer ever to win a Pulitzer, Neil is cynical about the industry’s abysmal record on eco-cars. At the same time, reflecting on a lifelong affair with gas-guzzlers, he admits that in recent years even he has begun to “let go” of the idea of the traditional car, and to acknowledge that it may finally be rolling toward the sunset.

Original URL: http://www.onearth.org/article/revenge-of-the-electric-car

NRDC OnEarth

Plastic: A Toxic Love Story (in Pictures) | OnEarth

 Writer Susan Freinkel began wondering how much plastic passed through her life. So she conducted a one-day experiment, recording each plastic-containing item she came in contact with. The tally: 196.
 
They ranged from the obvious to the unnoticed, from the dashboard in her car to the dime-sized stickers she had to peel off her apples. The next day, she reversed the experiment, tracking everything she touched that wasn’t made of plastic. Total: 102.
 
Freinkel’s world, she realized, was more plastic than not. Yours probably is, too.The experiment started Freinkel on a plastic odyssey, learning all she could about its imprint on our economy, lives and health.
 
The resulting book, Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, appears at a time of rising anxiety over plastic’s impact. In mid-April, Congress renewed efforts to modernize a 35-year old law addressing chemical safety that’s widely regarded as toothless and ineffective.
 
Freinkel traces the reversal of plastic’s reputation from “better than nature” to a chronic health concern. She reminds us of plastic’s very real achievements while exploring our options to reduce the health and environmental toll of living in a plasticized world. These images help tell that story…
 
Originally published as a slideshow at onearth.org.
 
BusinessWeek

Profile – Edward Tufte combines a policy wonk’s love of data with an artist’s eye for beauty and a PR maestro’s knack for promotion | BusinessWeek

“My father once told me that I would never be successful because I have too much contempt for authority,” says Edward Tufte. “I think that’s been an enormously successful strategy.”

At 67, Tufte (pronounced TUFF-tee) defies easy categorization. He has been a university statistician and a public policy wonk. And these days, he’s more excited about turning bulldozers into sculpture than the abstractions of information analysis.

More here:  http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jun2009/id20090610_157761.htm

 

BusinessWeek

Book review – Hot, Flat, and Crowded By Thomas L. Friedman | BusinessWeek

Enlisting Father Profit to Save Mother Nature — Tom Friedman makes a gripping political, environmental, and economic case for green innovation

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution— and How It Can Renew America. By Thomas L. Friedman. Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 438 pp; $27.95

When the U.S. Marines, General Electric (GE), and even China—an energy-poor, environmentally challenged industrial giant—are betting on green innovation to gain a competitive edge, you’d think U.S. policymakers would pay attention. Not yet, though, says Thomas L. Friedman in Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew America. It is urgent, he says in this cri de coeur, that we unleash U.S. creativity—and capitalism—on the challenges of energy and climate change. “There is only one thing bigger than Mother Nature and that is Father Profit, and we have not even begun to enlist him in this struggle,” he writes.

Expanding his horizons beyond globalization, the subject of The World Is Flat (2005), the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner argues that a trio of powerful dynamics is shaping our future. The “hot” of the title refers to global warming, or “global weirding,” as he calls it, referring to the bizarre climate effects we are encountering. “Flat” refers to globalization, enhanced here with a look at how trade growth fuels energy use and hurts the environment. “Crowded” refers to humanity’s relentless expansion and its perilous effects on biodiversity and the planet’s finite resources. The only solution to these ills, he forcefully asserts: innovation in the form of a green revolution.

Of course, these topics have been addressed by others: If Fareed Zakaria and Al Gore met and co-authored a long-winded book, this would be it. Many sections were first explored in Friedman’s New York Times column, and with over 400 anecdote-chocked pages, Friedman asks a lot of the reader.

Stay with him, though. Surprising material is scattered throughout, and the final sections may be the book’s most rewarding. Its very sprawl emphasizes the scale of these problems and allows the author to make a strong case for the possibility and necessity of addressing them. With a tone of urgent hopefulness—or “sober optimism,” as he says—he beseeches voters, executives, and politicians to get on with it.

SUCCESS STORIES

Friedman hops across the globe to document the intimate interplay of the three trends. In the jungles of Sumatra, he visits a conservation activist who worked with an energy developer and with villagers to create an economy that fosters rather than destroys the rainforest. Then Friedman is on to Iraq, where a U.S. general on the front lines installs solar panels to reduce the need to transport diesel to fuel electric generators. Cut to Connecticut, where CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt (a recurring character) talks up how tougher environmental standards have made GE’s high-efficiency locomotives best-sellers and a leading export to China.

Innovation, whether the result of policy or entrepreneurialism, is the key to these success stories. Unfortunately, America remains caught up in what Friedman calls a “dumb as we wanna be” mindset, where “drill, baby, drill” is an easier sell than long-term, comprehensive energy policy.

This has security implications. There’s a simple, negative correlation, says the author, between oil and democracy: As oil prices rise, petrodictators grow rich and democracies weaken. Conversely, as oil prices fall, petro-dictators grow weaker and democracies flourish. Think of the reforms of Russia and Iran in the 1990s, when oil prices were low, compared with the countries’ troublemaking in the era of $100-per-barrel oil.

What’s more, he notes, petro-states tend to undereducate their youth, fueling unemployment and creating a breeding ground for terrorism. How to reverse this pattern? Radically cut energy demand and invent fantastic substitutes.

Which brings us to China’s green ambitions—and the U.S.’s failure. If you read only part of this book, let it be the final chapters, in which Friedman explores how China could emerge as a green prodigy. Sure, Chinese leaders unleashed two decades of environmental turmoil by replacing communism with “GDPism.” But increasingly, Friedman says, those leaders are recognizing that environmental harm threatens not only the land, water, and air but also their political future.

So they’re acting. China’s voluntary goal of decreasing carbon emissions, for example, would result in five times more greenhouse-gas savings than the targets set by Europe under the Kyoto Protocol. China also has higher national targets for renewable energy than the U.S. (where there are none) and tougher mileage rules for its burgeoning fleet of vehicles.

If China’s leaders see the necessity of this approach, Friedman wonders, why can’t ours? Despite the scale of the challenge, he is optimistic that the political, technical, and economic means are at hand to spark a U.S. economic revolution. From windmills to advanced batteries, the results could mean new exports and jobs.

When Friedman completed this book in July, he may have been encouraged by the green leanings of the men who eventually became Presidential contenders. If so, he has good reason to worry now. John McCain, the author of some of the Senate’s most progressive climate proposals, is now promoting offshore drilling as a fix. And Barack Obama, having argued the potential of green innovation to jump-start economic growth, has become less vocal.

Yet, Friedman is certain the public can tackle the challenge. He criticizes articles that offer “205 easy ways to save the earth.” Such pandering implies that the revolution will be painless. It will not be: It will demand ugly political battles, the fall of dirty industries, and the rise of new, clean ones. “I am convinced,” he writes, “that the public is ready; they’re ahead of the politicians.” For now, though, the petro-dictators are surely the only ones smiling.

URL for original story: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_38/b4100099481532.htm

 

BusinessWeek

Book review – “The World Without Us” By Alan Weisman | BusinessWeek

Save The Planet: Disappear — Weisman presents a curiously refreshing vision of the apocalypse

THE WORLD WITHOUT US By Alan Weisman. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press — 324pp — $24.95

The extinction of humankind is a grim topic. Yet in The World Without Us, journalist Alan Weisman invokes this ancient specter as the jumping-off point for a refreshing, and oddly hopeful, look at the fate of the environment. His central question: What would earth be like if humanity just vanished? Weisman’s answer is as fascinating as it is surprising. It turns out, from towering bridges to sprawling cities–not to mention delicate books or masterly artworks–precious few of man’s creations would last long. The author richly documents the damage done by industrial civilization, providing further momentum for business to go green. But his explanation of just how all of our methodically built cities, factories, and temples would implode under the slow assault of rot, rain, plants, and critters is the most compelling aspect of the book. The winners in Weisman’s tour de décomposition are the very flora and fauna that today are under pitiless assault from humanity…

More here: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_31/b4044089.htm

 

 

BusinessWeek

Book review – Water Everywhere…And Not a Drop to Drink? | BusinessWeek

Business Week Online

AUGUST 12, 2002

BOOKS
By Adam Aston

BLUE GOLD
The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water
By Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke
New Press — 278pp — $25.95

WATER WARS
Drought, Flood, Folly, and the Politics of Thirst
By Diane Raines Ward
Riverhead Books — 280pp — $24.95

Summer, for most of us, means water-soaked fun at a pool, lakeside, or beach. But as we nonchalantly paddle about, the world’s water supply is imperiled. Consider some of this year’s headlines: Unprecedented wildfires in Arizona fueled by moisture-starved brush. Hydropower shortages in the Pacific Northwest. Creeping desertification of farmland in the Midwest, Central Africa, and East Asia. The situation is grim and getting worse.

It’s a crisis that goes largely unacknowledged. The reason, argue two recent books, is that the developed world’s technical mastery over water has led to a false sense of security. In Blue Gold, activists Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke offer an angry and persuasive account of how this has damaged the environment and how the privatization of once-public water resources threatens to exacerbate the problem. In Water Wars, conservationist Diane Raines Ward provides a less polemical, more engaging story of “drought, flood, and folly” across the planet.

Both books marshal abundant data to support their conclusions. Global consumption of water is doubling every 20 years, twice the rate of population growth, observe Barlow and Clarke. Worse, toxins from cities, factories, and farms are spoiling freshwater supplies: More than half the world’s rivers are polluted. Meanwhile, as Ward details, lowlands around the world are engaged in a losing fight against rising sea levels.

Sometimes, the books’ flow of statistics can be numbing. For example, Blue Gold notes that the earth has 330 million cubic miles of water, but just 8,000 cubic miles available as circulating freshwater. Is that a lot or a little?

Yet the authors more than compensate for such lapses, while tackling the crisis from different angles. Blue Gold describes the moneyed interests plunging into the water business. It tells how Perrier, Evian, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo–and particularly the French giants Vivendi and Suez–are buying up rights to mine free public aquifers, then bottling and selling their products around the world. Blue Gold‘s central question: Is access to water a fundamental right, or is water a salable good? If it’s a right, then countries have a duty to distribute water to their citizens. But if considered a good, water gets caught up in the calculus of profit maximization.

Clearly, the authors are in the rights camp, holding that local communities should set water policy. But they make a strong case that the water-as-commodity view is winning. A spate of rulings by the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank treat water as an economic good. And many poor countries, unable to afford the capital costs, have invited private companies to run their water systems, sometimes ceding control to foreign interests. “Maximizing profit is the prime goal, not ensuring sustainability or equal access to water,” write Barlow and Clarke.

Their stance is well-served by a description of U.S. engineering giant Bechtel Group Inc.’s disastrous 1998 investment in the water system of Cochabamba, Bolivia. To recoup its spending on infrastructure, Bechtel raised water fees so high that the poor could not afford them. The resulting riots led to the ejection of Bechtel and the return of the assets to public management. “Cochabamba” has since become a rallying cry for activists opposing similar privatizations elsewhere.

Water Wars, despite its action-movie title, doesn’t draw such sharp lines between good and bad. Ward’s intent is to describe mankind’s complex relationship with water. She is fascinated by such megaprojects as Holland’s $8 billion system of storm-surge gates that can seal off Rotterdam harbor from North Sea storms. Visiting the ruins of a 5,000-year-old dam in the Egyptian desert, she reflects that the urge to find, dam, and channel water is one of the earliest spurs to technological advancement.

Yet Ward is saddened by our destructive treatment of water. Evaluating megascale projects, she finds that many costs come with the benefits. Dams, for example, are built to irrigate land for farming. But poorly designed dams let sediment accumulate behind them, starving downstream farms of nutrients.

Indeed, many of the 20th century’s greatest victories are double-edged when it comes to water. Ward talks to countless people caught up in the contradictions. One is Jacobus Van Dixhoorn, director of the Netherlands’ water-control bureau, who lives on a farm below sea level. He explains how the centuries-old Dutch obsession with holding back the sea has resulted in some of the world’s most uneconomic farmland, maintained only by a massive network of dikes and pumps. Like much of Ward’s book, the tale is at once compelling and sad.

Both books suffer from lack of illustrations. They’re packed with explanations of water-control structures and the physical features of the hydrosphere–but rely on words alone to tell how over-irrigated land can turn snow-white with deadly salt, or where the shrinking Ogllala Aquifer in the Western U.S. lies.

Still, the words alone are plenty to inspire and alarm. Blue Gold will make you want to waste less water, while Water Wars may induce you to visit the Hoover Dam. Together, they make the point that the lifeblood of planet earth can’t be taken for granted.

Aston is Industries editor