Daily Score Blog

People often ask me, “Is your family still car-less?”

I myself am still car-less, but the family has changed. Amy and I have separated, undone our vows, and revised our coupledom into a parenting partnership. The divorce paperwork is underway.

Don’t worry: I’m not going to regale you with the emotional tale. This isn’t that kind of blog.

Instead, I’m going to do what the Daily Score does best: wonk out. In this case, about the carbon footprint of divorce. (No kidding.)

Converting the Pacific Northwest over the next few decades to a place of compact, walkable communities that run on superefficient, renewable energy system—a climate-safe economy—will be a lot of work: paid work. But for all the exciting announcements of solar jobs and green-tech investment that pepper the newspapers, the skill sets of today’s workers are not yet aligned with the needs of this future.

Of course, riding a real bike rather than driving a car saves much more energy than riding a stationary bike attached to a generator, said Clark Williams-Derry, research director for the Sightline Institute, an environmental research center in Seattle. Nonetheless, Mr. Williams-Derry said, the human power initiatives “show the kind of ingenuity that we’re capable of, and a comprehensive, smart climate policy would unleash lots of similar efforts.”

I have to admit that we were more than a little amused that Clark, of all people, found his way into the Fashion and Style section of the paper. Does this mean wonkiness is the new black?

Coming next week: Sightline on the cover of Vogue.

I just can't help wondering what else we could do with $700 billion.

According to the United Nations, the entire debt for the entire continent of Africa was about $320 billion in 2003. Adjusting for inflation and further accumulated debt, let's call it an even $350 billion.

You could install solar panels on 20 million American homes for $300 billion. (I'm ballparking a rather conservative $15k for full installation of enough solar infrastructure to fully power an average American house; the price would surely come down drastically at that scale.) By the way, 20 million houses is more than one-quarter of the entire stock of occupied detached houses in the U.S.

Of course, the solar panels would actually pay for themselves pretty quickly. Under this plan, lucky homeowners (or renters) would then pay nothing for their new solar electricity -- we just footed the entire bill. It might be nice to target low-income folks, who generally inhabit the least efficient buildings. Even better, because the sunniest parts of the US are also, generally speaking, some of the most coal-dependent we'd shut down coal plants across the Sun Belt. So it's a huge win for global warming to boot.

That still leaves $50 billion lying around under the couch cushions.

We could install ground source heat pumps for 5 million American homes for $50 billion. (I'm ballparking a mildly conservative $10k for enough GSP installation to fully heat an average house.) Again, this would also pay for itself pretty fast. Plus, lucky low-income folks in the colder climates would be looking at a lifetime of carbon-free (and money-free) heat for their homes. One good place to start would be in places like the northeast where expensive and inefficient oil heating is common.

Pretty sweet. I just retired every cent of Africa's crushing debt. Then using conservative estimates, I provided an eternal supply of free electricity or heat to 25 million households -- thereby drastically reducing US carbon emissions.

Alternatively, some credible analysts have suggested that paying the full cost of implementing the Kyoto Protocol for the entire world would run $716 billion. (I should mention that other credible estimates are much, much lower.) And this figure doesn't count the tremendous savings from avoiding the potential costs of climate change impacts -- estimated at trillions of dollars just for the U.S.

Seattle's perenially contentious Alaska Way Viaduct is making headlines again.

First, the annual city sustainability rankings by SustainLane includes a prominent piece on the viaduct. It also has some good perspective from gadfly Cary Moon:

“They told us, ‘You can’t fight the highway department,’” says Moon.

But Moon is doing just that—and says she’s got the power of facts on her side.

First off, she says, highway I-5 runs parallel to the viaduct. Does Seattle really need two highways running side-by-side?

And not only that: the viaduct isn’t really used like a highway—most car trips on the roadway are in-city trips where drivers use the viaduct as a shortcut around downtown. Well-designed city streets could serve that same purpose.

If the viaduct is eventually replaced with something more human-oriented, then perhaps Seattle (#3) can overtake Portland (#1, yet again).

Second, the Congress for a New Urbanism ranks the urban freeways that are most in need of a giant delete key. Seattle's viaduct is number one.

Interestingly, the viaduct is the only highway west of the Mississippi to make an appearance on the list.

And finally -- just when you thought the highway era was drawing to a conclusion -- there's another rebuild proposal...