Like the proposed Columbia plant, this anaerobic-digestion facility - funded through the UK's Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and operated at a family-owned dairy in Devonshire, England - uses local organic waste to produce both electricity and soil additives that are used on the farm. Photo: WRAP, wrap.org.uk
Waste 2 Energy (W2E) LLC, a local start-up co-founded by city councilmember at-large Dan Rickenmann, announced this week that it has received the funds to build a $25 million anaerobic-digestion facility in the region.
The 48,000-ton facility will accept all forms of organic waste from the Columbia area and convert it into electricity by utilizing anaerobic bacteria.
Unlike the aerobic bacteria that typically break down waste in landfills, anaerobic bacteria can digest organic waste in the absence of oxygen – meaning plant operators can produce and extract methane in a completely sealed environment without fear of fugitive emissions.
Converting methane produced from the decomposition of organic waste is steadily growing in popularity – thanks in part to the EPA’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP), which provides assistance to landfills that are good candidates for methane extraction.
But some environmentalists express concern that extracting methane from landfills for energy – called landfill gas-to-energy or LFGTE – may lead to excess methane seeping out into the atmosphere.
READ: Is Landfill Gas-To-Energy a Good Idea?
Proponents of anaerobic-digestion facilities, which have already been operated successfully in Europe, claim the technology solves the fugitive emissions problem by capturing 100 percent of all methane generated during decomposition.
While anaerobic-digestion facilities usually carry a much heavier price-tag than converting landfill methane to energy, the process is said to be much more efficient.
Even the most efficient landfill gas-to-energy systems only claim to capture about 90 percent of the methane produced in a given landfill.
The Columbia facility will use Eisenmann Corporation’s Biogas-GW technology to extract the most methane possible from decomposing waste, while separating unwanted contaminants and keeping the plant safe for the surrounding environment and human health.
Representatives from W2E LLC said construction will begin by the end of the year and expect the plant to be fully operational in 2012. In addition to providing electricity to the local grid, the digestion process will produce soil additives that will be used by local farmers.
Funding for the plant was acquired through the partnership with Eisenmann and additional funding provided by Chicago-based Ciycor LLC.
The plant will be the first of four W2E-operated anaerobic digestors in the Southeast, according to the firm.
Click graphic for larger version
It was five years ago this month an ocean inlet debuted at the Bolsa Chica wetlands, and there are many ways to tell the area is flourishing. There is the diversity of wildlife. The picturesque landscape. And of course, the potent scent of bird droppings.
That last attribute might not be pleasant, but it’s a sure sign of a healthy ecosystem, one that’s rebounding at the eleventh hour amid a constant march of urban development.
“I just see this place as like a life raft,” said Kelly O’Reilly, biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game. “All these wild things are clinging to this life raft. So many of these species don’t have any other place to go where they can get away from people.”
That doesn’t mean the wetlands are pristine. The low hum of oil pumpjacks is nearly ubiquitous, as is the distant rumble of motorcycles on Pacific Coast Highway. Pipelines crisscross the terrain, and visitors might notice an occasional example of graffiti.
Nonetheless, the land has been rejuvenated. Dozens of nodding-donkey oil wells were removed so hundreds of acres of marsh could be inundated by the ocean. Islands of green pickleweed, banks of brown mud and patches of rust-colored earth commingle everywhere, looking like someone dropped a camouflage blanket over the place. At the center of it all is a vast basin where millions of gallons of silver-blue seawater enter and exit each day.
“That is probably the most striking aspect of it, is visually,” said Flossie Horgan, executive director of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust. “What used to be oil roads and derricks is an inland bay. It’s gorgeous.”
A far different vision once was proposed – 5,000 homes and a marina – but environmentalists helped prevent it from becoming reality.
In doing so, they created the crown jewel in Huntington Beach’s wetland crown. Farther down the coast, smaller patches of marsh are being restored all along PCH, from Newland Street to the Santa Ana River.
“The community has done an excellent job of rallying around our wetland areas,” said Connie Boardman, a Huntington Beach councilwoman and president of the Land Trust.
More broadly, there has been something of a renaissance in a state where 90 percent of wetlands have been eradicated.
In Newport Beach, the Back Bay recently completed a $50 million restoration. In Carlsbad, the 600-acre Batiquitos Lagoon thrives roughly 15 years after an ocean inlet was created. And in Marina del Rey, the 600-acre Ballona Wetlands are more vibrant seven years after work to increase tidal influence.
Bolsa Chica’s inlet project, which also involved cleaning contaminated soil and building nesting mounds for birds, cost $151 million. Money came from the Ports of Long Beach-Los Angeles, which paid to offset habitat destruction caused by their expansion, as well as state bonds and interest.
A natural inlet existed nearby at PCH and Warner Avenue before being plugged by duck hunters in 1899, but the new opening would shut itself if not for human intervention. Every two years, it must be dredged to remove accumulated sediment, and engineers are studying whether they can modify the design to reduce clogging.
Though the restored area is largely off-limits to the public, elevated areas afford stellar views, and up-close sightings of feathers and fins are common.
Locals also are free to enjoy a pleasant side-effect, that being improved surfing near the inlet jetties. Sand deposited offshore altered the angle and size of waves to create “one of the best breaks” in Huntington Beach, said Sean Collins, founder of Surfline.com.
“Fishing has (become) really good as well,” Collins said, with halibut and bass thriving in the wetlands and making their way out to sea.
“We’re very, very happy because the marine fishes that are using the full tidal inlet just run the gamut of things that are vital to coastal fisheries,” said Jim Trout, himself not a sea creature but rather an official with the State Lands Commission.
It’s also been a “boom year” for various types of birds, such as snowy plovers, savannah sparrows and least terns, Trout said.
Indeed, visitors to gated-off areas find a world that, with homes and cars visible in the distance, seems remarkably wild.
Caspian terns, circling near a heavily scented nesting site, greet humans with kamikaze-style dive bombs and ceaseless squawking. Stingrays lap at algae-covered water-control gates, just above schools of minnows and just below resting brown pelicans. Crabs dart sideways amid beds of fist-sized oyster shells, and endangered plovers scurry around like turbocharged chicks.
“The more you look,” O’Reilly said, “the more you see.”
 Christopher John Myers Darling |
Keeping trash from landfills that are quickly filling up is a top priority for the L.A. Bureau of Sanitation. And these days its officials are working on changes to the way apartment dwellers and businesses dispose of their trash. The Home section's latest look at the complexities of apartment recycling delves into the possibilities and obstacles ahead before the L.A. City Council considers a new plan.
Home also has looked at why it's hard to know what can be recycled, and at whether all sorts of things can go in the recycling bin.
-- Mary MacVean
Photo: Los Angeles Recycling Center. Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times
ALSO:
Recycling: More questions than answers
Throw recycling in the trash? Some cities do
Can I recycle bubble wrap, wine corks, Ziploc bags and ...
Caltech's graduating class marched across the stage at Friday's commencement ceremony bedecked in more than 12,000 plastic bottles.
And it wasn't a prank.More than 500 graduates of a school known for elaborate ruses — such as changing the Hollywood sign to read "Caltech" — donned garments made entirely of fabric spun from molten plastic pellets instead of the traditional polyester caps and gowns.
Graduation planners around the country are greening their ceremonies, cutting back on printed materials and balloons filled with non-renewable helium and choosing compostable dinnerware, biodegradable water bottles and campus-grown floral displays.But to graduates such as Catherine Beni, who at 20 years old is the youngest ever to receive a doctorate from Caltech, the eco-friendly regalia was more an "interesting factoid" than something to brag about."It feels exactly the same as the polyester gowns," the Riverside native said. "Maybe on a hotter day, I would notice the difference. And because it's my PhD, I would have preferred a nicer gown that I would want to keep, but maybe for others, this'll be extremely useful because it would all otherwise go to waste."The environmental movement is growing at schools, which are adding sustainability courses to their schedules and commissioning eco-friendly lecture halls, but skeptics say greening graduation garb might be more a marketing gimmick.Jostens Inc., a maker of academic products, recently introduced a gown made from wood-based fiber that decomposes in soil. Critics said graduates were likely to rewrap them in the plastic cover before throwing them out, preventing the fiber from biodegrading. The company's outfits now come in packaging that it says breaks down in landfills.At Caltech, school officials set up special recycling bins around campus for the gowns. The outfits, which were produced by Salem, Va.-based Oak Hall Cap and Gown, are to be reworked into new fabric, perhaps for next year's graduation.Oak Hall, which has been making cap and gowns for more than a century, introduced the GreenWeaver line of eco-friendly garb in late 2009 and has seen orders nearly triple in the last year. With about 23 post-consumer bottles worked into each outfit, more than 7 million bottles otherwise destined for landfills have instead gone into GreenWeaver products, the company said.The gowns are more expensive to produce because the technology is still new and the manufactured volumes are small, said Joseph D'Angelo, Oak Hall's president. However, each cap-and-gown set cost $27 for Caltech undergraduates, $35 for master's students and $71 for doctoral graduates — about $2 less than the old polyester prices.Nearly 30 colleges and universities in California use GreenWeaver, said D'Angelo, who on Friday was at the University of Washington in Seattle, where graduating students are planning to wear his company's gowns this weekend.The regalia comes in recycled-plastic bags and is shipped in recycled-cardboard cartons. Oak Hall experimented with fabrics made from bamboo and wood pulp before deciding on the GreenWeaver material, which it said was softer and more breathable than traditional gowns — while looking no different."A cap and gown is the most recognizable symbol for achievement that we know," D'Angelo said. "All of us are becoming more sensitive to our environment, but this helps make people more aware that they should be recycling."http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-green-grad-20110611,0,6067090.story
I found the following story on the NPR iPad App:
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/20/136460594/midnight-in-paris-woody-allens-best-in-a-decade?sc=ipad&f=1008
NPR - May 20, 2011
Woody Allen isn't religious, but he has a rabbinical side, and over the past decade his films have become more and more like Talmudic parables for atheists. On the surface, these movies are streamlined, even breezy, and they often have voice-over narration to get the pesky exposition out of the way fast. Philosophically, Allen has settled on resignation, a cosmic shrug: There's no God, no justice, people are inconstant, life is meaningless — so where do you wanna eat?
I have a problem, though, buying into the worldview of someone whose world is a closed ecosystem. There's no evidence that Allen lets any contemporary culture penetrate his hard, defensive shell. Music stopped in the '40s, if not earlier, ditto literature, ditto film — with a pass for select European directors. He seems locked in a daydream of the past.
The good news is that Allen has made the lure of nostalgia the theme of his supernatural comedy Midnight in Paris, which might be why this is his best, most emotionally pure film in over a decade. It's a romantic fantasy that's also a sly act of self-criticism.
The time-traveling hero, Gil, played by Owen Wilson, is a successful Hollywood screenwriter on holiday in Paris with his brisk, upwardly mobile fiancee, Inez, played by Rachel McAdams. Gil considers himself a hack and, to Inez's horror, wants to write novels instead of movies. How he wishes he could be a writer in Paris — better yet, Paris in the '20s, alongside Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and all those other giants living high yet creating enduring works of art.
You can almost hear the familiar Woody Allen cadences in the film, yet Owen Wilson isn't the usual East Coast intellectual Allen hero, and he makes the lines his own. Apart from Mia Farrow in The Purple Rose of Cairo, this is the finest lead performance in an Allen film that wasn't by Allen — and finer than many of Allen's, too. You sense the vein of wistfulness under his stoner cool, the longing for definition behind his spaciness. It's a thrilling moment when he sits forlornly on some steps in the rain at midnight, a vintage automobile rumbles by, the champagne-swilling occupants invite him in, and he's suddenly back in the '20s.
How? No explanation. Allen just breezes past all that, the way he did in Purple Rose and, before that, in his great 1970s short story, "The Kugelmass Episode," happily eliminating the sci-fi wheels and pulleys that tend to suck up so much screen time. Gil is just there — counseling Scott about Zelda, drinking with Hemingway, showing parts of his novel to Gertrude Stein, and falling in love with a woman named Adriana, played by a stunningly beautiful Marion Cotillard. Adriana bonds with Gil over his love of the past — except the past she loves is the 1890s and not her vulgar present. His '20s ideal woman hates the '20s — a bitter irony.
Allen doesn't do anything interesting with Scott and Zelda — my guess is he's too in awe of them. But his Hemingway, played with forthright manly-manliness by Corey Stoll, is a riot; and as Gertrude Stein, Kathy Bates proves that in an absurd context, playing it straight can make you funnier than a thousand clowns.
Midnight in Paris is a doodle, but it's easy and graceful, and its ambivalent view of nostalgia has all kinds of resonance. As I watched, I felt a different sort of nostalgia: not for the Parisian '20s but for the days in which Allen regularly turned out freewheeling, pitch-perfect tall tales in print and onscreen. The movie is so good it takes you back to those days, which were the days, my friend. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]
To learn more about the NPR iPad app, go to http://ipad.npr.org/recommendnprforipad
ScienceDaily (May 11, 2011) — Marine species facing threats from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico far exceed those under legal protection in the United States, a new paper in the journal BioScience finds. University of New Hampshire professor Fred Short and others found 39 additional marine species beyond the 14 protected by federal law that are at an elevated risk of extinction. These species, which range from whale sharks to seagrass, should receive priority for protection and restoration efforts, the authors advocate.....http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110511134221.htm
Overturned truck may have hazardous material
http://www.ocregister.com/news/closed-298463-street- eWaste Disposal IncInspired by successful high-speed train systems worldwide, California's electrically-powered high-speed trains will help the state meet ever-growing demands on its transportation infrastructure. Initially running from San Francisco to Los Angeles/Anaheim via the Central Valley, and later to Sacramento and San Diego, high-speed trains will travel between LA and San Francisco in under 2 hours and 40 minutes, at speeds of up to 220 mph, and will interconnect with other transportation alternatives, providing an environmentally friendly option to traveling by plane or car.
800 miles of track… up to 24 stations… the most thorough environmental review process in the nation. Due to the large scope of the project, the planning process proceeded in phases: first, program-level review assessing the need and .......http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/project_vision.aspx
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-morrison-chouinard-031111,0,6628594.column
(CNN) -- The Hawaiian islands may get a new and unwelcome addition in coming months -- a giant new island of debris floating in from Japan.
Researchers in Hawaii have created a simulation showing exactly how the houses, tires, chemicals and trees washed to sea by the March 11 tsunami will float across the Pacific and eventually hit the U.S. coast.
The team, led by Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the International Pacific Research Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa have spent years preparing computer models by following real world observations of floating buoys, according to a statement.
The first wave should begin washing up on beaches in Hawaii within a year, the simulation shows.
After it passes Hawaii it should begin hitting beaches stretching from Vancouver down through Oregon, Washington and to the tip of Baja California in 2014, before bouncing back toward Hawaii for a second impact.
That second impact five years from now could be even more concentrated and harmful to Hawaii's beaches and reefs, the researchers found.
The flotsam and trash eventually makes its way into what's called the North Pacific Garbage Patch, a sort of circulating whirlpool of garbage hundreds of miles in diameter.
There it eventually decomposes and breaks up in collisions over many years.
 The manufacture of incandescent lightbulbs is being phased out in the United States. (Willis Glassgow, AP / April 7, 2011)
|
The nation's accelerating shift from incandescent lighting to a new generation of energy-efficient bulbs is raising an environmental concern: the release of tons of mercury every year.
The most popular new bulb — the compact fluorescent light bulb, or CFL — accounts for a quarter of new bulb sales. Each contains up to 5 milligrams of mercury, a potent neurotoxin that's on the worst-offending list of environmental contaminants.
Demand for CFL bulbs is growing as government mandates for energy-efficient lighting take effect, yet only about 2% of residential consumers and one-third of businesses recycle the new bulbs, according to the Assn. of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers.
As a result, U.S. landfills are releasing more than 4 tons of mercury annually into the atmosphere and storm water runoff, according to a study in the Journal of the Air and Waste Management Assn.
A San Francisco hardware store owner is all too familiar with the bulb issue.
"They're promoting them and giving them away, but there's nowhere to drop them off," said Tom Tognetti, co-owner of Fredricksen's Hardware.
The federal Clean Energy Act of 2007 established energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs that dimmed the future for old-fashioned incandescents, which don't meet those standards. Incandescents are to be phased out by 2014 in the U.S., and California passed even stricter rules, calling for store shelves to be cleared of them by 2013.
The old-style bulbs are just too wasteful, converting to light only 10% of the energy they consume. The rest is squandered as heat.
Sales of energy-efficient alternatives like CFLs, halogen bulbs and LEDs have been growing steadily, with the low-cost CFLs the biggest sellers.
If every California household replaced five incandescent bulbs with CFLs, the move would save 6.18 billion kilowatt-hours and prevent the annual release of 2.26 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, according to the California Energy Commission. That's equivalent to taking 414,000 cars off the road.
But no federal law mandates recycling of household fluorescent lights. Federal rules exempt some businesses, based in part on the number of bulbs used, said Paul Abernathy, executive director of the Napa, Calif.-based recycling association.
Several states, including California, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont and Minnesota, do require that all households and businesses recycle fluorescents. Abernathy's group thinks compliance is low because of a lack of convenient drop-off options.
Tognetti's store is part of a pilot project run by San Francisco to increase recycling of fluorescent bulbs and other hazardous waste. Since 2009, a city-financed truck has regularly stopped by his store and about a dozen other independently owned hardware stores to pick up consumers' toxic discards.
The National Electrical Manufacturers Assn. in Rosslyn, Va., offers information on fluorescent light bulb recycling at http://www.lamprecycle.org. Home Depot, Ikea, Lowe's and many Ace Hardware stores, among other outlets, offer free recycling, even for noncustomers.
The website Earth911.com provides a list of recyclers by ZIP Code; or consumers can call 800-CLEAN-UP (253-2687).
CFL bulbs actually have fewer mercury concerns than incandescent lights, according to the California Energy Commission. Although the older bulbs contain no mercury, they're often powered by coal-fired electricity plants, which release mercury as a pollutant. The result is about 40% less mercury emissions per bulb with CFLs, according to Environmental Protection Agency figures.
But CFLs aren't the only energy-efficient alternatives to incandescents, said Brad Paulsen, national lighting merchant with Home Depot Inc.
"You really have three options," he said. "Halogens, LEDs [light-emitting diodes] and CFLs."
Halogen bulbs are essentially energy-efficient incandescents. "They're very similar to a person's experience with incandescents," Paulsen said, and are 30% more efficient.
Paulsen, along with many others, sees LEDs taking center stage in coming years. The lights contain no mercury, are 85% more energy-efficient than incandescent bulbs, and burn for 25 years.
The main drawback now with LEDs is cost — sometimes $30 or more per bulb — but Paulsen says prices are sure to plunge as demand and production grow.
"LEDs, in my mind, are the way of the future," he said.
Bohan writes for the Contra Costa Times.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
The mercury release shows just how problematic the ban on simple bulbs is..
It is of course a ban:
Yes, energy efficient halogen incandescent replacements are
temporarily allowed, but
have whiter light type etc differences with regular bulbs, apart from
costing much more for the small savings, which is why neither
consumers or governments really like them, since they have been around
for a while now without being sold much
LEDs are not yet suitable for all-round use,
and regarding the pushed CFLs,
the so-called power factor alone means that common CFLs use twice the
energy compared with what your meter says ( http://ceolas.net/#15eux
with Sylvania, DOE and other references, and with more on why supposed
savings from banning simple incandescents don't hold up ).
Much more relevant savings of actual “energy waste” comes from power
plant and grid changes, and from preventing the unnecessary usage of
products eg night lighting in buildings,
rather than from preventing the personal choices of what products
people can use.
The law of unintended consequences. Personally I plan to stock pile a lifetime supply of incandescent light bulbs.
 |
Photographs courtesy Daniel Russo January 20 and 21 saw the biggest waves of the winter to pound Hawaii so far. Those surfers who were skilled enough and brave enough waxed up their big boards and headed to spots like Jaws in Maui, Outer Log Cabins, Oahu, and, of course, the spiritual home of big wave surfing, Waimea Bay. While big-wave surfing has traditionally been a masculine activity, a few women join the lineup those days, including Adventure favorite Maya Gabeira and 23-year-old Anastasia Ashley. Ashley was born on the North Shore and now divides her time between the islands and California. Adventure got a hold of her for a first person account of what it’s like to paddle out and catch a few monsters at such a legendary spot.—Tetsuhiko Endo
ADVENTURE: When did you know you wanted to start riding Waimea?
Anastasia Ashley: I actually didn't start surfing out there 'till last year, when I found an old board under my house that was left by someone—an old 7'10’’ big-wave board. Out of curiosity I wanted to try riding it because I’d never ridden a board that big. I took it out on a small day at Waimea and felt super under gunned, so I then decided I needed a bigger board. I ordered one from Rusty and have been stoked to surf the bay ever since.
What was it like paddling out for the first time?
It was definitely surreal seeing the waves from the water—they’re so big!
How do you mentally prepare yourself for any big swell?
Definitely by just being physically prepared. I always get a good night’s sleep and make sure to eat some healthy food to keep me powered.
Walk me through surfing a wave at Waimea Bay.
Being out at Waimea is pretty crazy. The paddle out is actually pretty minor, besides the initial shore break. but if you mistime that you can be very much screwed. The most intense part, on the other hand, is the drop. It feels like you’re dropping in forever! The wave behaves one way around 15 feet, but it definitely changes once the swells hit the 18-foot plus mark. It jacks up out of the deep water and turns really, really intense.
Maya Gabeira once told me that there is a certain loneliness to being a woman who rides big waves because you are constantly surrounded by men. What is your take on that?
I agree. I feel like that is true in any aspect of surfing, big waves and small waves. It's definitely a man's lineup. But I also think it's definitely changing!
Are you considering doing any more big-wave surfing this year?
Yeah, of course! It's all swell dependent, so I’ll hopefully surf a few more days out at Waimea, and some outer reefs.
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A Yorba Linda man was arrested on suspicion of stealing copper wiring from an electrical box Tuesday morning, authorities said.
Terry Alan Lee, a 50-year-old resident of Yorba Linda, is alleged to have taken $2,000 worth of copper from Homestead Neighborhood Park, according to a statement released by the Irvine Police Department.
An Irvine police officer noticed a suspicious vehicle parked in the park's lot at about 5 a.m., according to the statement.
The officer stepped out of his patrol car and began to search the park, which is near Jamboree Road and Robinson Drive. The officer found a man removing the wire, but the man took off.
Lee was taken into custody a short time after the chase. According to the statement, he was still holding the wire.
Authorities believe the wiring was taken from an access panel for the park lights.
Lee is in custody in lieu of $20,000 bail
 Outside Magazine (@outsidemagazine)1/24/11 7:46 AM Our ode to the godfather of #fitness, #Jack LaLanne. A classic profile by Donald Katz. http://bit.ly/eqlcBE #longreads |
truedogblog <truedog@truedogblog.com
I’m always looking for metaphors and finding them in odd places, often despite myself.
I stumbled over this one while talking with Bowser, my Dharma buddy turned Buddhist monk. The two of us grew up in opposite ends of the San Joaquin Valley and played football against each other in high school. This metaphor arose when we were sharing our childhood memories of backwater black and white television and the cheesy, low budget B movies that stations back then used to fill their air time late at night or on weekend afternoons. There were cowboy movies, road racing movies, war movies of every stripe, truck driving movies, aliens from outer space, pirate movies, former serials—both science fiction and cowboy—horror films, and lots of the Three Stooges and the Little Rascals. And more.
You remember the lifeboat movies?” Bowser chuckled.
“Lifeboat” stopped me in my tracks.
Bowser noticed right away. “You got that look again,” he said.
By then I was already deep in metaphor gear.
The lifeboat movies Bowser referred to featured a cast of seven or eight, whose boat had been sunk, adrift together on dangerous seas, and the drama that ensued between them as their characters came to the fore. Lifeboat movies were, of course, cheap to make. They used bit actors on a set rigged to look like a lifeboat and intercut their scenes with stock footage of waves at sea. The scripts were generic collisions of stereotypes trapped situations where they couldn’t avoid each other, short on food and water and stripped to their emotional core by the desperation of their plight. Someone was always battling despair; someone else always wrestled with what passed for madness in that American era, shouting and throwing himself about as he “lost his head,” only to be “brought to his senses” by a hard blow to the jaw. Otherwise, most of the dialogue was relatively vapid soliloquies on their lives. At their inevitable rescue finale, almost all of them experienced some epiphany about themselves and how different they needed to be from then on.
Those televised low budget dramas sucked as cinema, but their artistry wasn’t what struck me when I was hanging with Bowser. It was metaphor—and the possibility of using “Lifeboat” to frame and evoke the situation in which our civilization now finds itself. After a day or so contemplating lifeboats, I came up with five significant similarities between the current us and my new metaphor:
We will soon be adrift in peril after our mother ship’s failure. The world we assumed for ourselves is disappearing as a consequence of our alteration of the atmosphere’s chemistry and the ensuing destabilization of climate patterns. We face deep deterioration in the world as we have known it and potentially massive attendant casualties. We must reinvent civilization in new, diminished circumstances with little but ourselves to count on. Lifeboats are used to survive dislocation and dislocation is about to become our daily experience, with civilization as we know it at stake.
We have nowhere else to go. Like lifeboat riders, we do not have the option of starting over or ignoring our situation. We are stuck in our lifeboat until we find some way to organize our rescue. That vessel is all that separates us from disaster. We need to accept confinement in it as part of the price of survival. The hostile sea in which we float dictates many of the terms we must live with and to which we must adjust.
We are in uncharted waters. Our circumstance is unprecedented in human history, making navigation problematic at best. No one before us has managed to disrupt the planet’s cycles to the point of threatening our species with what in the very worst case scenario looks like oblivion. Where that disruption will carry us is unknown. Like lifeboaters, we have to act without any sure means to verify our course or reassure ourselves of the outcome. Uncertainty prevails and the decisions we must make require us to calculate over the horizon.
We have only finite resources with which to sustain ourselves. Part of the disruption that brings us to our lifeboat is the shrinking of the communal capacity to maintain our traditional lifestyles and the endless growth they require. Shortages will multiply and the chemistry of our air will dictate how much we can use of what resources remain. Like lifeboaters dividing up their chocolate bars and rationing their water, we have to find new ways to get by in severely reduced circumstances and still stay strong enough to paddle.
All our fates are mutual. In a lifeboat, any single occupant can drown all the rest by shifting their weight to the wrong spot, and the physical demands of the lifeboat require the sum of everyone’s strength, applied in concert. Such interrelationship is a fundamental characteristic of the world that will soon be upon us. Any of us can tip the rest of us into the drink simply by not being mindful of all the others.
Metaphors, of course, bring with them an implied set of behaviors that must be adopted to actualize the metaphor. So too with “Lifeboat.” If we are in a Lifeboat, we have to behave like lifeboaters adrift on the sea, intent on optimizing our chances.
It took me another few days to identify a bunch of those behaviors. I call them the Lifeboat Rules:
Make more out of less;
Don’t panic;
Accept insecurity;
Share what there is;
Be patient;
Take everyone into account;
Conserve energy;
Learn as much as possible about what’s going on;
Accept responsibility;
Hold each other accountable;
Think collectively;
Steer into the wind; and
Don’t take anything for granted.
When I’d finished my ruminations, I was excited about my new metaphor and all that it implied, so I stopped by to blurt it all out to Bowser.
Bowser wasn’t particularly moved, though he did chuckle.
“So,” he wondered out loud, “what makes you think bad movies make good metaphors?”
![[ALMOND]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-AY811_ALMOND_G_20110111193848.jpg)
F. Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal Got almonds? Almond milk makes a mustache, too.
The new darling on the dairy shelf is almond milk.
Two brands—Silk Pure Almond, from Dean Foods Co., of Dallas, and Almond Breeze, from Blue Diamond Growers, of Sacramento, Calif.—are waging a Coke-and-Pepsi style market-share battle in the supermarket. Almond milk's appearance in the refrigerated dairy case in 2010 helped fuel 13% growth in milk alternatives, a category where sales were flat the year before, according to SymphonyIRI Group, a Chicago market research firm.
Almond Breeze, from Blue Diamond Growers, and Silk Pure Almond, from Dean Foods Co., are battling it out in the dairy case.
![[ALMONDjp5]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-AY825_ALMOND_DV_20110111214034.jpg)
F. Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal![[ALMONDjp6]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-AY829_ALMOND_DV_20110111214208.jpg)
Dean Foods (Silk)Milk alternatives—creamy liquids derived from non-dairy sources—are on the rise, especially in households where people are lactose-intolerant or dairy-allergic. The food industry is quickly ramping up the options, offering milks derived from soybeans, rice, coconut, hazelnuts and even hemp. The sales growth follows decades of slow, steady decline in consumption of cow's milk in the U.S.
Almond milk has shot up from nowhere, appealing to shoppers like Tammy Wade, of Calvin, Okla., who first tried it about a year ago as part of an effort to eliminate dairy products from her diet. When she and her husband go grocery shopping, they often have to visit three different supermarkets to find it.
"A lot of times we find it's totally gone off the shelf," she says. "We try to buy it two at a time." They like to add almond milk to breakfast cereal and coffee, and they use it to make everything from mashed potatoes to chocolate cake.
Barry Lovelace, a fitness trainer and owner of a gym in Allentown, Pa., sometimes has difficulty finding almond milk in stores, and so he loads up when he can. He and his wife go through as many as six half-gallon containers a week. "It is such a hot item now," Mr. Lovelace says. "We will buy three vanilla and three chocolate at a time, as long as they have it."
Almond milk is made when roasted almonds are crushed to make almond butter, then mixed with water plus vitamins, stabilizers and, in some cases, a sweetener, such as evaporated cane juice. Compared with other alternatives, almond milk is especially low in calories: A cup of original-formula Silk Pure Almond contains 60 calories, compared with 90 calories for a cup of original-formula Silk soymilk and 130 calories for a cup of 2% milk. "It tastes incredible," says Mr. Lovelace, who used to drink rice milk and soymilk.
Consumers are paying premium prices for almond milk, in contrast to regular milk where grocers often cut prices, sometimes below their own cost, to lure shoppers. And dairy beverage consumption has been in a slow and steady decline in recent decades, with the average consumer drinking 20.8 gallons of cow's milk in 2008, down from 24.3 in 1994, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.
Milk substitutes are tiny compared with the estimated $13 billion in retail sales of regular milk. Lower calorie and fat profiles are helping sales of some substitutes, as is the increasing attention to dairy allergies and vegan lifestyles.
Almond milk may also be able to draw consumers who drink the most established milk alternative, soymilk. Soy contains estrogen-like chemicals, called phytoestrogens, and heightened exposure to estrogen has been linked with increased risk of breast cancer. Researchers haven't established a direct correlation between phytoestrogens and breast cancer, and some studies even point to the possibility that soy-based phytoestrogens may decrease breast cancer formation, says Barbour S. Warren, breast cancer research associate at Cornell University. Still, given the uncertainty, Dr. Warren says women should consume soy-based foods in moderation.
Almond milk in shelf-stable packages has been around since at least the late 1990s, when low-fat foods were in vogue and nuts were perceived as high in fat. Then, almond milk had a low consumer profile, but sales picked up in 2003 as low-carb eating became fashionable and snacking on nuts was encouraged.
Still, until almond milk was sold alongside traditional milk in the refrigerator case, "we knew our opportunity was limited," says John O'Shaughnessy, general manager of the consumer products division at Blue Diamond.
That's what happened by the end of 2009. The resulting consumer demand has surprised many supermarket chains, which normally track every nuance of consumer purchasing. Wegmans Food Markets Inc., headquartered in Rochester, N.Y., began stocking refrigerated almond milk last March. "It is outpacing the growth of every other non-dairy milk alternative we sell," says spokeswoman Jo Natale.
Whole Foods Market, of Austin, Texas, rolled out its own private-label organic refrigerated almond milk to stores in August. Errol Schweizer, senior global grocery coordinator says almond milk and coconut milk are both strong sellers. "The growth on both has been really surprising," he says.
Among the top 20 brands in the milk substitutes category, Almond Breeze and Silk Pure Almond currently rank fourth and fifth respectively, according to SymphonyIRI, which tracks food sales at major retail chains, except Wal-Mart. "The beauty of the almond milk category is that almonds are so familiar to consumers, and there's an expectation of great taste there," says Brooke Hansen, Silk brand manager. Silk Pure Almond's success is all the more striking during a period of subdued consumer spending. "It's a more challenging time for consumers to take risks" and try new products, she says.
Blue Diamond Growers began testing Almond Breeze in late 2008 in Florida markets with large Hispanic populations, a group with higher-than-average incidence of lactose intolerance. "It went gangbusters," Mr. O'Shaughnessy says. Encouraged, Blue Diamond rolled out Almond Breeze nationally in 2009 and today it is in more than 90% of U.S. grocery stores, Blue Diamond says.
By January 2010 there was a new refrigerated almond milk entrant—from Silk, a brand already known for soymilk. In March, it kicked off an advertising and promotion campaign, including TV and print ads and coupons offering 55 cents off a half-gallon of Silk Pure Almond. Sales were soon nipping at the heels of Almond Breeze, hitting $47.1 million in 2010, compared with $57.8 million for Almond Breeze, SymphonyIRI says.
Ever since, couponing and discounting has been fast and furious in a race to win new customers and build brand loyalty. "It's a dog fight," Mr. O'Shaughnessy says. If a customer buys some Silk Pure Almond, she may receive a coupon for Almond Breeze at checkout, he says.
Silk is already looking at the next potential milk alternative: This month, it has launched coconut milk in the refrigerated section of supermarkets and grocery stores nationwide. "We have high hopes," says Brooke Hansen, Silk brand manager.
None of this has escaped the notice of the dairy industry. Last spring, the Arlington, Va.-based National Milk Producers Federation, which lobbies for dairy farmers, wrote a letter to the Food and Drug Administration asking for a crackdown on use of the word "milk" on dairy alternatives.
In the letter, the federation president, Jerry Kozak, called almond milk and other alternatives "plant-derived imitation products." The letter says the products aren't as nutritious as cow's milk because they don't typically contain as much calcium naturally, but instead are calcium-fortified, and the body may not absorb as much of it.
"Soymilk is not an imitation," says Nancy Chapman, executive director of the Soyfoods Association of North America. "It has been used intentionally for hundreds of years" in cultures where dairy products aren't typically consumed.
Andrea Giancoli, spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, says while the body may absorb less calcium from a fortified product, it still absorbs "a substantial amount." "The difference is usually not enough to change your dietary choice," she says. She advises consumers shake the carton of a milk alternative well before drinking, because calcium can settle at the bottom.
Based on a one-cup serving.
![[ALMONDs1]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-AY812_ALMOND_DV_20110111220025.jpg)
Almond milk, F. Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal (5)
Calories: 60
Fat: 2.5 grams
Sugar: 7 grams
Vitamin D and Calcium: 25% and 30%**
Taste: Pleasantly sweet and nutty; nice almond notes
In Coffee: Smells great. Turns ordinary coffee into almond coffee.
On Cereal: Oh yes. Enhances but doesn't overpower a bowl of raisin bran.
Dunking Cookies: A sweet-on-sweet experience. Improved the cookie by adding the flavor of a nut.
Price***: $1.80 for 32 ounces
![[ALMONDs2]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-AY813_ALMOND_DV_20110111220103.jpg)
Soy milk
Calories: 90
Fat: 3.5 grams
Sugar: 6 grams
Vitamin D and Calcium: 30% and 30%**
Taste: Slightly sweet with a slightly bitter, some say 'beany,' aftertaste
In Coffee: Very close to cow's milk, with similar taste and heft.
On Cereal: Dark-beige color makes it a tough sell for kids.
Dunking Cookies: An above-average cookie foil, close to cow's milk. Not too sweet.
Price***: $1.90 for 32 ounces
![[ALMONDs3]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-AY814_ALMOND_DV_20110111220145.jpg)
Rice milk
Calories: 120
Fat: 2.5 grams
Sugar: 10 grams
Vitamin D and Calcium: 25% and 30%**
Taste: Pleasantly fragrant if a bit watery and sweet, with clear rice notes
In Coffee: Didn't quite hold its own against the coffee. Not very creamy.
On Cereal: Had a look and taste similar to skim cow's milk, added a not-unpleasant starchy note.
Dunking Cookies: Absorbed quickly, making for a soggy cookie.
Price***: $2.99 for 32 ounces
![[ALMONDs4]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-AY815_ALMOND_DV_20110111220225.jpg)
Coconut milk
Calories: 80
Fat: 5 grams
Sugar: 6 grams
Vitamin D and Calcium: 30% and 10%**
Taste: Strong coconut notes with a dairy-like tang. 'Tastes like coconut yogurt,' one taster said.
With Coffee: Seemed to separate, leaving a bit of a sheen on top. Not recommended.
On Cereal: Adhered well to flakes, but the thicker texture and tart flavor didn't marry well with raisin bran.
Dunking Cookies: Interesting flavor combination.
Price***: $2.55 for 32 ounces
![[ALMONDs5]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-AY816_ALMOND_DV_20110111220303.jpg)
2% cow's milk
Calories: 130
Fat: 5 grams
Sugar: 12 grams
Vitamin D and Calcium: 25% and 30%**
Taste: Rolls beautifully across the tongue. And the buttery shade adds to its appeal.
With Coffee: Transforms black coffee into something creamy without overpowering it.
On Cereal: A little plain-Jane next to cereal with almond milk.
Dunking Cookies: Still the gold standard
Price***: $1.25 for 32 ounces
NOTES:
* Brands compared: Blue Diamond Almond Breeze, original; Silk Soymilk, original; Rice Dream Enriched; So Delicious, original; Giant Food brand 2%. Results may vary by brand.
** Percent daily values are based on a 2,000-calorie diet.
***Retail prices in effect on Jan. 11, 2011, at Giant Food in Silver Spring, Md.
As autumn sweeps across the land, so does the grating whine of leaf blowers—and in some cities, peace-seeking citizens are campaigning to restrict use of the devices. New Yorker writer Tad Friend 
Besides,
All the major light bulb manufacturers support a ban!
Why would they do that?
Why do these manufacturers welcome being told what they can make?
Profits of course:
The removal of the unprofitable cheap simple safe and popular bulbs so
that major manufacturers can make bigger profits from expensive
inferior products
that people otherwise would not to buy in sufficient quantities.
Instead:
Increased - not decreased - marketplace competition gives good energy
saving bulbs that people want to buy – since manufacturers then have
to try to satisfy them.
New businesses with local American jobs, whatever the type of bulbs made.
Worried governments can give research grants towards energy saving alternatives.