Guilted Environment

Warning--this post has no stats, no links, no proof. Just thoughts, experience, belief. Unfortunately, belief is something easily poo-pooed in a culture that more and more is cynical toward groups--whether that be a religion, a bunch of garden writers, or a corporation. We have good reasons for cynicism; look at our federal government / special interest figure heads. Look at your last girlfriend who left you for a Packers fan.

As the conversation over the National Wildlife Federation and Scotts joining to save wild spaces and get kids outside simmers down into more rational emotion, I feel full of guilt. My own, and others. Am I a nut for believing that we have happier, healthier, smarter people if our home landscapes had more wild habitat and less lawn? That depression and anxiety and ADHD would ease? That our kids, following a butterfly or making mud pies might be more creative, abstract, and fearless thinkers in whatever profession they choose? That they'd be more effective leaders? Shouldn't I just shut up?

Do you remember playing in the mud? With sticks? Do you ever sit and play with sticks now? Grab a piece of mulch and pretend it's a bulldozer? Am I the only one? Maybe I played with my Lego sets too long past high school.

Homeowners are guilted into thinking they need a pristine lawn or landscape. Anything wild is wrong, you won't fit in, people walking their dogs will give you the evil eye. Whole neighborhood associations have policies towards stringent landscape appearances of green earth and bulbous boxwood. Where did this come from? A religious-based fear of the wilderness? The Puritanical idea that nature tests our morality? And if it does, we've failed. In our attempt to exorcise personal demons over class, race, wealth, sex, and intense emotions, we do everything we can to recreate the environment to what we need or want, to what our ideal is, pillaging as we go. We've cut down the forest to make it a savanna so we can see the predators coming at us, but now we are even more wary and uncertain. We are even more afraid of each other (who's the predator now?).

I was just thinking this morning about my Mennonite family, burned and torutred during the Spanish inquisition, forced to leave the Netherlands for Prussia, forced to leave again for Russia, then again centuries later in 1874 for America. Each time they relocated they rebuilt their villages and homes in the same way. They kept their culture close to them, and remade the land into familiar ideals that helped preserve their identity. This is why the prairie vanished so swiftly from Kansas and Oklahoma--a sense of home, not of adaptation or patience. And perhaps a sense of guilt, a built in wanderlust that seems innately human. We are nomadic and it hurts us, keeps us from the world and from our deeper selves. (If you want readings on these environmentally philosophical thoughts, look at The Machine in the Garden by Leo Marx, This Sacred Earth by Roger Gottlieb, anything by Lawrence Buell.)

Lawn care companies make us feel guilty for weeds in the lawn, for brown lawn, for not fertilizing and mowing and watering religiously. At the hardware stores it's 50% tools and 50% lawn care products, especially from April to July.

I don't use a drop of chemical anything, and I've only been gardening for four years--I just dove in and went trial by fire. I've created a habitat of mostly native plants, of various sizes and textures and blooming times, and the diversity brings in good bugs who eat bad bugs, insects who feed baby birds, and seeds that feed migrating and winter birds. Everything supports each other. Each year more life rushes in like a broken dam. I know I spend less time in my landscape than my neighbors because I can hear it from inside my house--the guy next door mows 2-3 times per week and waters every morning. The folks across the street mow at least as often, edging and blowing for hours on a once-tranquil Saturday morning, wasting away their weekends. (Do they really enjoy it I wonder? Even when it's 90?)

Maybe you see this as a judgement, but I see it as an opportunity--I spend about 2 days in March cutting down the garden, and that's it for the year. Maybe 1 day I'll top dress with compost. My mulch is cut down perennials. My joy is sitting back on Saturdays, watching the three-dimensional life swoop in and out, crawl around, I sitting in the deck chair sipping lemonade, letting my thoughts take me wherever and grounding me, all the while trying my best to tune out the whirl of fertilizer spreaders, the chug of sprinklers, and the vibrations of mowers spewing exhaust my way. Actually, I don't even go outside on weekends anymore. There's no point--everyone is outside working. I mean relaxing.

On Silence and Solitude

I can never get enough of either. I feel healed when I have large quantities of both--I feel cleansed and centered and alive again.

Here are quotes from Terry Tempest Williams I posted almost exactly three years ago. Someone linked to it, and I rediscovered them. These are ideas I hope to address in my next memoir.

from Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place:

“It [silence / solitude] is what sustains me and protects me from my mind. It renders me fully present. I am desert. I am mountains. I am Great Salt Lake. There are other languages being spoken by wind, water, and wings. There are other lives to consider: avocets, stilts, and stones. Peace is the perspective found in patterns…. We are no more and no less than the life that surrounds us. My fears surface in my isolation. My serenity surfaces in my solitude.”

Quoted from the Indian teachings of Samkhya: “If you consciously hold within yourself three quarters of your power and use only one quarter to respond to any communication coming from others, you can stop the automatic, immediate and thoughtless movement outwards, which leaves you with a feeling of emptiness, of having been consumed by life. This stopping of the movement outwards is not self defense, but rather an effort to have the response come from within, from the deepest part of one’s being.”

“We usually recognize a beginning. Endings are more difficult to detect. Most often, they are realized only after reflection. Silence. We are seldom conscious when silence begins—it is only afterward that we realize what we have been a part of. In the night journeys of Canada geese, it is the silence that propels them."

Thomas Merton writes, “Silence is the strength of our interior life….If we fill our lives with silence, then we will live in hope.”

Garden Evolution -- 2007-2009

My garden is just over 2 years old. And yet in that time I've amazed myself (easy to do) at how lush the plants have become. So, here's a post with twenty some pics tracing the garden from July 2007--when my wife helped me spread 20 yards of mulch in 90 degree heat--to just this past August and September.

FALL 2007

I didn't know how best to organize these photos, so we'll go from year to year. Many of the pics were taken from near the same position to highlight the evolution. As always, click to expand (especially with those of mostly just mulch).

I've never had a garden before, but I grew up with a gardener--one who gardened by a "do it and see what happens" creed. So I just threw myself into it. In 2007 and 2008 it wasn't uncommon for me to be outside for 8 hours, even in the middle of the afternoon, sweating like a Robin Williams.

My idea for the main garden, above, was a combination of whatever native plant I happened to come across and like, as well as prairie / meadow flowers and grasses. So I just started plopping stuff in, creating scattered repetition, mixing heights and textures, hoping form would follow function. Or function would follow form? I felt blind out there the first year.

A view back toward the side garden and main gate. Though I didn't have a real plan, it was always my intention to make that side garden along the house as low maintenance as possible. To me, this meant varied shrubs, as well as ideas of what a Japanese garden might look like or work like (though mine doesn't look like one). Since this area is on the east side of the house, plants get half sun, and the soil stays damp.

Side garden

Those Amsonia hubrichtii by the deck were dug up from my old place. I had a very small porch garden were these plants never took off. Wait till you see them in 2009. (FYI the woman who bought my place tore up every last flower of my mini garden. For shame. She left the two arborvitae, though.)

FALL 2008

In the spring of 2008 we added the disappearing fountain--which took 7 hours to install. Ridiculous.

Side garden

I added a dry stream bed--which isn't dry when the rain chain is rainy.

See that obelisk way out in the middle with a morning glory on it? Well, it's out there. And it's copper. I built it. Viva Trellis Craft by Roger Beebe.

MAY 2009

I added a real bona fide bridge over the 6" deep stream bed. That stream was a real hazard during heavy rain (sarcasm).

Here's the main garden about the time I graduated with my Ph.D. Most of my plantings were at first just native perennials to the midwest and plains, with some native to other parts of the country. In 2008 I started adding shrubs so that 1) there'd theoretically be less maintenance and 2) there'd theoretically be winter interest. So far, the only winter interest comes from rabbits who eat the shrubs and make me buy new ones in the spring.

I also have 5 butterfly bushes, but in 2009 the insects mostly left them alone, as opposed to 2008. In 2009 the native perennials came into full vigor and were devoured instead--by bees, butterflies, and a massive plague of grasshoppers. (Did you need another reason to go native? Insects REALLY DO FAVOR NATIVE PLANTS). The trick with a perennial garden is to be patient, I've come to learn. Many perennials--like eupatorium--will soon grow to the gerth of shrubs and be just as interesting in every season, even in winter with the grasses. Maybe shrubs are silly indulgences.

LATE SUMMER / EARLY FALL 2009

Just look at that native sweet autumn clematis, c. virginiana, in its 2nd full season. And the smell was luscious--like roses (better than roses)--permeating the entire garden.

Entrance to the garden / side garden. That one person chair against the fence is my favorite place to sit, until the neighbor's dog finds me, or one of his toys is lobbed over the fence.

Just beyond the arbor.

From the deck.

There are several eupatoriums and ironweeds along the fence that grow to 6' high or more and act like shrubs, as well as provide a second privacy screen. By the arbor you can see one of 5 trees in the garden, a clump river birch. There is also a regular and weeping bald cypress, and two crabapples elsewhere.

Look at those Amsonia hubrichtii now.

In the forground bordering the yard are three shrubs that I hope will become a mixed hedge from this viewpoint, and from within the garden provide a nice strong background. There's also a 'Coralburst' crabapple on a stick to the right that I got at Home Depot for $60. Sometimes you can go to hell and redeam a lost soul, particularly when it's on sale for half off.

Above: 2009 -- Below: 2008

 
 
 
 
 
 



JULY 2010 (UPDATE)

Link here to see the garden 300% more lush in mid summer of 2010--all on its 3rd birthday, and my X birthday.

I don't use chemicals. This spring I spread 4 yards of city compost about 1-2" deep most everywhere. This fall I put down 2 yards of mulch in sunny areas. I do sprinkle a little bit of slow release all purpose fertilizer in the spring, but I maybe don't really need it. I am pretty anal about researching plants before I buy them so I know if it will work, and where it should go. Parts of my garden stay very wet, and others get very dry. I'm doing ok I suppose.

That's my garden. About 1,500-2,000 square feet in the back. There are another X feet of foundation beds along the back of the house, and 500 feet out front I never show because it's boring and I can't figure it out (and if that piques your interest, stop it).
 
If you want to know what anything is in the pics, let me know. A link to my end of 2008 season plant list is on the right somewhere toward the top.
 
And some of my favorite nurseries, online or in person:

Ambergate Gardens
Prairie Moon Nursery
Prairie Nursery

I'm afraid I might get bored this year and just start digging random holes in the yard. Lawn circles. Aliens. Insane assylum. Plant catalogs. Straight jacket. Join the A-Team. Follow? The garden doesn't need to be bigger, and we won't be here but a few more years anyway, I figure. This is my trial garden for a future acreage. Still--leave it better than you found it, and hope the next owners will also pay it forward.
 
Have a Merry Christmas from all of us one people here at The Deep Middle, a certified 501c nonprofit on this 1/4 acre lot looking for plant donations.

PBS and National Parks

Ar you watching it this week? The National Parks: America's Best Idea (Ken Burns). The first episode tonight was very moving for me, and had personal favorites talking and being talked about: John Muir, William Cronan, and Terry Tempest Williams. So good. Every night this week on PBS. Go go go.

(And as an aside, I used to think it strange talking to trees, sitting on the ground for hours watching that small world of a few square feet. But it's not. And I realize I've got more Muir in me than I previously thought--though I don't see myself spending the night in a tree during a storm to understand what the tree goes through in a storm).

I Know I'm a Whiney Jerk But....

If you've had sod for 1 month, should you be fertilizing it already? In August? I can feel the synthetic, polluted runoff making its way to my tap then collecting in my organs. All this just from watching my new neighbor.

A quick google search seems to suggest that sod was fertilized quite heavily at the farm (duh), and a summer (early or late) installation won't need anything until spring--maybe a winterizer at most. That lawn just can't be too green, so why not use plutonium on it? Oh, because the dog--the only one who uses the lawn BARK BARK BARK PLOP PLOP PLOP--might get sick.

In non grouchy news, I have 20 essay submissions ready to be sent out this week. I'd like to double that number so maybe 1 place will accept me this year (my odds always seem much longer than other writers I know), but it's just so darned exhausting... and that's not what this fall is about.

I need to go move some ironweed now.

Have Greener Sex

22 percent of people worldwide have had sex in the garden.

Now, I simply report what I find, ecologically mindful, of course. But this all seems a bit over the top to me. Or is it? Enjoy (XXX).

1) Sex Toys
Many store-bought sex toys contain, among other things, chemicals called phthalates, a substance used to soften hard plastics like PVC and provide that jelly feeling. There is quite a bit of concern about the toxicity and health risks of phthalates (in 2004, the EU banned a range of phthalates from children’s toys), especially in sex toys that are used in warm, moist places.

2) Lube
As you would with any other personal care product, go as natural as possible and try to avoid petroleum products, artificial scents, flavors, and colors.

3) Condoms
Let’s face it, reduce, reuse, recycle just doesn’t apply when it comes to the rubbers. (duh)

4) Green Fun
Sexy play can be green and efficient as well. Showering together can save water (if things get steamier, we suggest taking it to the bedroom and not leaving the shower running). A nice bike ride for two is a fossil-fuel-free way to get the blood flowing and can also be quite stimulating, especially for the ladies. (OMG!!!)

5) Taste Sweeter
There are some very strong rumors going around that vegetarians have the best tasting love juices (though some items from the vegetable kingdom you may want to avoid, like asparagus and garlic). (Please don't test this theory out and post about it in the comment section--thanks.)

Drugged Up Fish Found Near Water Treatment Plants

Fish caught near wastewater treatment plants serving five major U.S. cities had residues of pharmaceuticals in them, including medicines used to treat high cholesterol, allergies, high blood pressure, bipolar disorder and depression, researchers reported Wednesday....

A person would have to eat hundreds of thousands of fish dinners to get even a single therapeutic dose, Brooks said. But researchers including Brooks have found that even extremely diluted concentrations of pharmaceutical residues can harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species because of their constant exposure to contaminated water....

...tested fish caught in rivers where wastewater treatment plants release treated sewage in Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, Philadelphia and Orlando, Fla....

Much of the contamination comes from the unmetabolized residues of pharmaceuticals that people have taken and excreted; unused medications dumped down the drain also contribute to the problem.

They found trace concentrations of seven drugs and two soap scent chemicals in fish at all five of the urban river sites. The amounts varied, but some of the fish had combinations of many of the compounds in their livers.

In an ongoing investigation, The Associated Press has reported trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals have been detected in drinking water provided to at least 46 million Americans.

The EPA has called for additional studies about the impact on humans of long-term consumption of minute amounts of medicines in their drinking water, especially in unknown combinations. Limited laboratory studies have shown that human cells failed to grow or took unusual shapes when exposed to combinations of some pharmaceuticals found in drinking water.

Attention! Rain Barrels with 2.9% APR

Seriously. I'd like one, but who has $150? Go green--get a second mortgage on your house. $150 appears to be a lower end average for 50 gallons, particularly if you don't want a diverter on the down spout (which is extra for $30, and which you do want). I found a barrel for $85, but shipping was $70. And 99% of them are darn ugly--why must "barrel" be synonymous with "ye olde lemon juice container to prevent ye olde scurvy on the high seas, arrr?" I--mean--they--are--ugly. Perhaps 'tis time to make my own out of taped-together nursery pots and squirrel tails.

EPA's Most Wanted

I'd host the TV show!

Here's the fugitive list: http://www.epa.gov/fugitives/

"The launch of the most-wanted list comes as EPA's criminal enforcement has ebbed. In fiscal 2008, the EPA opened 319 criminal enforcement cases, down from 425 in fiscal 2004. And criminal prosecutors charged only 176 defendants with environmental crimes, the fewest in five years.

But Walter D. James III, an environmental attorney based in Grapevine, Texas, says the EPA is critically understaffed to investigate environmental crimes. While the budget for the division has increased by $11 million since 2000, there are still only 185 criminal investigators. Congress authorized the EPA to hire 200 investigators in 1990."

Here's the article: http://www.startribune.com/nation/35864634.html?page=2&c=y

Low Monarch Populations This Summer

Apparently, they aren't the only butterflies suffering (and we must include moths). One guess from the Monarch Watch blog is the incredibly wet and stormy May / June much of the central part of the country experienced. In any case, the blog states that their best guess is that there will be less egg laying and butterflies in late July / early August; this last batch of monarchs is the one that makes it to Mexico and overwinters before heading north again in spring.

Of course, being a conspiracy theorist and fan of any canary in the coal mine hypothesis, I think other issues could be involved. But then again, what the heck do I know--I ain't nobody nohow. I might go check out Robert Michael Pyle's logs on Orion to see if he's noticed anything on the general ebb and flow of North American butterflies. (Pyle is traveling NA for a year in an attempt to i.d. as many butterflies as possible.)

11 "Easy" Steps to Dispose of Broken CFLs

You've got to read the below from the EPA, who say we should use these bulbs--INSANE. Plus, 1 CFL bulb makes 6,000 gallons of water toxic (due to the mercury inside it if disposed of improperly--which is very likely to happen).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23694819/from/ET/

Before cleanup: Vent the room
1. Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more.
2. Shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system, if you have one.
Cleanup steps for hard surfaces
3. Carefully scoop up glass fragments and powder using stiff paper or cardboard and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.
4. Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder.
5. Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes and place them in the glass jar or plastic bag.
6. Do not use a vacuum or broom to clean up the broken bulb on hard surfaces.
Cleanup steps for carpeting or rug
3. Carefully pick up glass fragments and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.
4. Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder.
5. If vacuuming is needed after all visible materials are removed, vacuum the area where the bulb was broken.
6. Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister), and put the bag or vacuum debris in a sealed plastic bag.
Disposal of cleanup materials
7. Immediately place all cleanup materials outside the building in a trash container or outdoor protected area for the next normal trash.
8. Wash your hands after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing cleanup materials.
9. Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in your specific area. Some states prohibit such trash disposal and require that broken and unbroken lamps be taken to a recycling center.
Future cleaning of carpeting or rug
10. For at least the next few times you vacuum, shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system and open a window prior to vacuuming.
11. Keep the central heating/air conditioning system shut off and the window open for at least 15 minutes after vacuuming is completed.

Leave No Child (Adult) Inside

Richard Louv, author of Last Child in The Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, was in town last night. Instead of enjoying the -20 wind chills, I watched him on cable access (lord bless cable access, and the holiday season fireside streaming video that warms me so).

I wouldn't have wasted an hour watching him had I known I could go to Orion Magazine's website and read his presentation--it followed his short essay Leave No Child Inside. You could tell he'd done this a billion times before, commenting on how after 2 years the book hasn't gone away; and after reading up on the internet, he seems eager to move on to other projects yet thankful for what he started.

What I like about Louv is he is HOPEFUL, positive, we can do things better and make more money at it, says that part of our problem is we are paralyzed with doomsday talk, that to create change there must be hope. I read this in another essay on Orion that was concerned with capitalism's ability to squash hope and our spiritual connection to each other and landscapes.

Louv also hates the word "sustainable," and now so do I (I had an inkling I did)--for him, it means "stasis and stagnation." Yup. Why try to hold on to what's left when you can actually create more of it instead? Fun things I learned:

--Only 6% of kids 9-13 play outside on their own during a typical week
--Ansel Adams was kicked out of school as a kid for hyperactivity, which was fixed by his desperate parents taking him on repeated nature trips. Didn't he do something with nature in his photagraphy? (sarcasm)
--Playing outside is statistically proven to increase self esteem, confidence, social skills, creativity, lowers teenage suicide risk and symptoms of ADD, et cetera. DUH.
--Eco phobia is taught at a young age. Basically, we fear nature like we fear strangers.
--Which is why kids don't play outside--parents don't let them. In truth, child abductions and such are holding steady or dropping nationally. Virtual house arrest he calls it. News media is largely to blame, consistently covering the same story over and over to improve ratings and play on fears that something IS up, when it isn't.
--Lincoln, NE is pretty progressive when it comes to getting families outside repeatedly with their Lincoln Safari program (5,000 families projected this year).
--National Park attendance is down 25%.
--There's a 40% reduction in fieldtrips and recess nationally. Some schools post "no running" signs on the playground. That'll help curb childhood obesity.
--Nature Deficit Disorder (NDD) is about reclaiming our humanity, too, not just environment. I.e. we suffer emotional and spiritual lack for not playing outside.

And by the way, this isn't all about or for kids. It applies to adults. So go outside and build a fort.

Where did you play as a child? My dad built us a "tree house" once in Oklahoma (we were always at war with the neighbor's kids). But I think my spiritual, romantic, deep space must have been from my first impressions of Minnesota when we moved from Oklahoma--a dark, musty stand of pines and spruce near where we first lived. The ground was soft and squishy, the sunlight hazy, that darkness and stillness the same quiet inward solitude of fear and hope I felt after moving north--the same solitude I carry with me today as a definition of who I am and how I recharge, or find my way again.

Solar Array--Hurray?

When I first read this headline I thought it was neat and I was proud of the motherland--then I saw it only powers 80 homes and a miniscule amount of hybrid cars. So what? Must we take not just baby steps, but mitochondria steps? Where's the leap? This is simply another case of an electric company attempting to placate environmental critics. Guess how many wind turbines Lincoln has? How many eyes do you have?

Minneapolis Gets Grant to Create Solar Energy

A $2 million grant will be given to the city of Minneapolis to build the largest urban solar array in the Midwest, the city announced today. The Xcel Energy grant will fund a 600-kilowatt array to be built on top of the city's Currie maintenance facility.

The array is made up of 3,000 panels and will generate enough electricity to power nearly 80 homes. The city said the electricity could allow it to expand its fleet of plug-in hybrid vehicles. Minneapolis currently has 28 hybrids, which could be converted to plug-ins. "We now have the opportunity to build what we expect to be the largest urban solar array in the city, state or Upper Midwest," Mayor R.T. Rybak said in a news release.

The grant needs approval from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission in the spring. Minneapolis currently has three solar arrays operating at city facilities.

Renegade Gardener Ruminates on Nature and God

I tell my students to quote when some idea is said well, or to your liking, or that makes you think deeper / new about a subject, or that you just enjoy. Practice what you preach.

http://www.renegadegardener.com/

"One cannot experience this wilderness and not ponder whom or what created it, wonder why it so quickly infiltrates and alters every element of one’s being. Why are we drawn to wilderness? What power does it hold? The answer that has slowly formed for me is that we are drawn to wilderness because in areas where the influence of human, mortal man is nowhere in effect, the spiritual principles that lie beneath all material reality rise nearer to our perception.

Study the photos—you don’t have to believe in a Creator or Supreme Spiritual Being to realize that there is masterful design behind this wilderness. Why can’t those of the “sheer chance” persuasion, who insist that the design of our planet and the universe had no designer, shift half a degree and call whatever sheer chance caused it all, God? I think the hesitancy has everything to do with the established, prevalent definitions of this word, “God,” and the human, erroneous idiocy that has been performed on His/Her/Its behalf.

Wipe the slate clean, and it’s not difficult to believe in God. One’s definition of God need not be remotely similar to anyone else’s, after all. God can be principle. God can be whatever unseen, intangible principle created this wilderness.

Truth is intangible, yet real, as is life. Did humans invent life? I can pick up an acorn from my yard, put it in my pocket, fly to England, go hike in the countryside, plant it, and 200 years from now there will be an eighty-foot oak tree growing in the English countryside. Aside from my courier service, did man have anything to do with that? Then what did?

These key principles that humans did not invent—truth, life, love—they aren’t material, yet are real, and came from somewhere. A common word for this unseen, alternative reality is spirituality. That word doesn’t offend or scare me. It intrigues me. It makes me ponder that perhaps the spiritual reality is the true version of our existence, and the material reality the false. It makes me ponder that as I gaze at this material wilderness, I’m actually glimpsing evidences of spiritual principles, and that as the version you choose to believe in grows in your consciousness, it becomes your reality—for better, or for worse. At the very least, I’ve arrived at the belief that when it comes to the material world, there’s more going on than meets the eye. "

Corn Won't Cut It (And No, I'm Not a Husker)

For some time I've believed ethanol is not the best way to go. It just isn't. I wish I had money to buy solar panels, even with the government kickback it's still too much. The U.S., being the U.S., can and should be a leader in the switch to renewable energy. It's just, for lack of a better word, butt-ass stupid that we aren't, and we're gonna go down with everyone else when we don't have to. And as an aside, watching my recorded episodes of the Ken Burns documentary "The War," it is amazing to see what our country CAN do when mobilized, focused, from grass roots to the prez. And if it was for something more peaceful / benign / responsible / balanced, vs. a war (though that was a necessary war), how much more wonderful would that be? Look at what our industrial machine did in the 1940s: we created 50% of the GLOBAL industrial output by war's end, and our recession ended overnight. Not a fool proof argument, but it's what you get in the morning.

This article, though not in depth, sums up the issues of ethanol as dumb well enough (with some quotes below):

"The U.S. agriculture lobby is incredibly powerful, and it has somehow managed to convince Congress that our next 100 years of energy should also come from the sun. Not in its most efficient route, directly transformed by the magic of electronics from solar rays into electricity via large and small grids of photovoltaic cells. But in the most inefficient way possible: From the growing of corn and then its refinement into fuel.

How inefficient is the ethanol solution? When you break the "agrofuels" system down scientifically, you can see that 99.9% of the energy in sunlight is lost in the process, with the greatest waste coming in the creation of ammonia-based fertilizer from natural gas, and in the refinery. That is, for every unit of energy that is put into creating agriculture-based fuel, almost three-quarters of it is dissipated before it actually does any work. The greatest amount of energy lost is not in the creation of ammonia-based fertilizer, as many believe, but in the refinery.

Of course, an even bigger problem is that the 6.6 billion people on Earth need all the food they can get, so every acre taken out of wheat, rice and soybean production to feed our 1 billion cars is an acre that won't feed starving kids. As Patzek notes pungently in his paper, after a lot of math to prove the point, "Our planet has zero excess biomass at her disposal."

One better solution is solar energy created at the municipal level by massive photovoltaic cell facilities, at the street level by home-based grids and at the transportation level at lots where electric vehicles' batteries can be charged. Photovoltaic cells lose only about 80% of the sun's energy to dissipation, making them at least 100 times more efficient than ethanol after the fuel cost of growing and refining the biomass feedstack is accounted for."