OK, you got me. If pretty much the only TV I watch is an occasional movie on HBO, then once again "more" translates into "any". Don't send the language police after me, send the Green Police, instead.

In fact, I wouldn't even have known about Audi's "Green Police" SuperBowl ad, were it not for this post on Grist, an environmental newsletter. The post includes both an embedded YouTube link and an analytic deconstruction of the ad's message and presumptions. In a nutshell, it suggests that Audi is intending to sell cars that get their drivers environmental "get out of jail free" cards. And for that to work, the target audience must already have internalized the legitimacy -- on some level -- of environmental regulation.

Far be it from me to try to outwit Madison Avenue (or wherever it is the creative types hang out these days), but I wonder whether the marketing geniuses are right on this one. Or, if they're right, are they only right about a narrow target demographic (30-50 year old upper-middle and lower-upper class white males with a tendency toward European cars (read "Euro-culture") but without the money to buy Porsches)?

Other thoughts? Reactions? Questions?

OK, I admit it. For me, watching pretty much any TV is watching "more".

But from time to time, there comes along a show -- in this case, a made-for-TV movie -- that truly justifies the existence of the idiot box. "Temple Grandin" is a tour de force. In the movie, which premiered on HBO this past Saturday but will doubtless be re-aired, Claire Danes turns in an Oscar-worthy performance if ever I've seen one. And director Mick Jackson both recreates the America of the 1960's (which has been done before) and creates an impression of how it must be to see the world entirely differently (which, to my knowledge, really hasn't).

Grandin, a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State, is autistic. Her renown comes both from overcoming this challenge and from becoming the world's leading designer of livestock containment and handling systems. The film traces her life from her high school years (with flashbacks to early childhood) through her early breakthroughs and acceptance into the doctoral program at Illinois. More importantly, it shows (not just tells) the viewer how her different way of perceiving the world led to her ability to solve problems other trained professionals didn't even notice existed.

And this is the lesson for all of us. The fact that things have been done a certain way for hundreds of years -- the fact that all the professionals just know that the traditional way is the best way, indeed the only way -- the fact that no one involved perceives any significant downside in the way things are done -- none of these means that significant improvements aren't possible, aren't economically efficient, aren't at some level easy and obvious. People have been handling animals for thousands of years, and one autistic woman showed us how to do it an order of magnitude better. Perhaps, just perhaps, some things we've been doing for far less time can also be improved markedly, if we just ask the right questions.

The last time I did algebra in these pages, I crashed and burned. But the compulsion, triggered by President Obama's latest proposal that your dollars and mine be invested in making "clean coal" a reality, is just too strong. Plus, I'm a slow learner.

So let's start with some basic facts:

In the USA, coal is burned almost exclusively for the purpose of generating electricity; it puts about 1950 million metric tons of CO2 (or 520 mmt of carbon) into the atmosphere every year.

A metric ton of CO2, at sea level and at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, takes up about 18000 cubic feet. Do the multiplication, and the CO2 that would need to be sequestered (captured and stored) every year to make burning coal a clean process would fill about 35 trillion cubic feet. That's a layer of CO2 which would cover the entire surface of the country (including Alaska, remember) to a depth of about 4 inches. In 9 years, that adds up to three feet. In a century, it's the height of a 3-story building. Across the entire USA. Where and how are we going to store that much stuff? How are we going to be sure that it won't ever escape into the atmosphere? What are we smoking, to be even thinking about this?

Of course, most of the weight and volume of the CO2 comes not from carbon (the coal), but from oxygen (the air). If we could somehow separate the two (strip out the carbon), the oxygen could go back into the atmosphere without creating a problem. Plants do that (transform CO2 into O2 plus hydrocarbons) all the time. An acre of forest converts (depending on a number of variables) enough CO2 to create between one and two metric tons of carbon per year. So, what we'd need to create would be a processing capacity equivalent to about 350 million acres of forest. That's about twice the size of Texas, and it would require an amount of energy equivalent to all the sunlight those trees would absorb. And we'd still have to find a way to store the carbon extracted, which would be about equal in volume to all the coal burned to create it.

None of which is to say that the infrastructure and the logistical processes to burn coal and not contribute to global warming can't happen. But it does demonstrate that to make it happen, we'd have to more than trade away the advantage -- low cost -- that's causing our electrical companies to want to burn coal in the first place. "Clean coal" may be technologically feasible (I'm not saying it is, I'm just saying I can't prove a negative), but it's clearly not economically feasible. And it's even more clearly not economically attractive when compared to renewable technologies which are considered "too expensive" today.

I used to do consulting work to a manufacturing company which was known for its engineering culture. In that organization, it was common practice for engineers to low-ball initial cost estimates by an order of magnitude or more, on the basis that "if we told management what it's really going to cost, they'd never let us go forward with the project."

Compared to the proponents of "clean coal", those engineers were entirely scrupulous in their honesty.

Today, I got lucky.

It's usually better to be lucky than good (a poker player told me that one). It's always better to be lucky than smart (pure intelligence, if there is such a thing, doesn't correlate particularly well with good outcomes -- luck, if there is such a thing, does). So today must be one of my better days.

I've been pondering the implications of "Global Warming's Six Americas 2009", a report from the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. As I mentioned last week, this is an audience segmentation analysis which breaks the American public down into six segments based on their attitudes about climate change -- segments ranging from the Alarmed to the Dismissive.

One of the most obvious conclusions in the report is that the largest category -- those who are Concerned -- contains one in three Americans all by itself. Combine it with those who are Alarmed, and you account for 51 percent of the American public. In a pure democracy, 51% of the population would be enough to decide the issue but, as recent US Senate experience has proven, this isn't a pure democracy and a majority requires more than 60% to be effective. Thus, my focus since my first reading of the report has been on the two categories of individuals who are less than Concerned but still more than Doubtful or Dismissive. The Cautious constitute 19% of the populace, and the Disengaged another 12%. Add that 31% (or even a good portion of it) to the 51% already on board, and you might have enough of a consensus to actually act upon.

The question that's been occupying my mind for the last week, then, has been how to construct a message which would appeal to the Cautious ("Yeah, the climate is probably changing, but let's not rush into this") and the Disengaged ("Climate change? Well yeah, probably. Haven't thought much about it") without alienating the Alarmed or the Concerned. My thoughts had been focusing mainly on the cautionary principle and everyone's hopes and wishes for their grandkids (born or otherwise). I was trying to be good, or at least smart. Then, I got lucky.

This morning, on public radio segment The Environment Report (out of the U of Michigan), I heard the second half of an interview with James Hansen. The mist cleared. Precaution and grandkids aren't bad, but those arguments lack force. The reason the Cautious and the Disengaged are so -- well -- cautious and/or disengaged is that they don't see what's in it for them.

The challenge to those of us concerned with ecological sustainability and minimizing climate change (no one I know is talking about avoiding it any more) is to communicate clearly and simply the reason Americans want their government to take action. The reason can be simple. Gordon Gekko was right. Greed is good.

Hansen was making the point that cap-and-trade is a market-based solution to a societal problem, but it clearly isn't appealling to the very people who preach that market-based solutions cure all ills. There's a disconnect here. And we can't address the disconnect on an intellectual level, because that's not where it exists.

The disconnect exists on an economic level. Established interests are making lots of money the way things are. Those same interests are less likely to make lots of money in a sustainable energy economy. Thus, those interests (with clearly subsidized assistance from Citizens United and presumably unsubsidized assistance from SCOTUS) will continue to spend lots of money to make sure people remain cautious and/or disengaged, so that nothing much changes.

Money is what's keeping this country from addressing climate change. Money is what can cause us to deal with the problem.

One of the issues I've had with most cap-and-trade GHG reduction schemes is that they, in effect, reward the very people and organizations who created the problem in the first place. I can see the political pragmatism that presents, but also the economic pragmatism which says that if you're going to bribe profitable malefactors to change their behavior, you better bring a lot of money.

What Hansen pointed out this morning is that a fossil carbon fee -- imposed at the mine, at the wellhead, and at the port of entry -- could easily generate a whole lot of money. He presumed that it would be implemented gradually, to allow people to modify their behavior and mitigate the impacts. But he estimated that by the time the carbon fee effectively raised the price of a gallon of gasoline by a dollar, it would generate enough money to pay every adult in the US $3000 per year, and every child (up to two children per family) another $1500.

A family of four, then, might spend an additional $1000 a year on gasoline and proportionally more for electricity, heating oil, natural gas, whatever. But they'd be pulling down an additional $9000 per year, some of which should be left over after all the additional costs are paid. And that's without any sort of behavioral change at all.

In fact, a lot of families -- given the opportunity -- will find ways to modify their behaviors, reduce their usage (directly or otherwise) of fossil fuels, and hold on to more of the $9000 annual payout. Corporations would, similarly, adapt. Those which adapted efficiently would make lots of money. Those which didn't, well . . .

But each American family (except, perhaps, the truly richest and most profligate) could come out ahead. Certainly, most of them would expect to. And, in even an impure democracy, financial expectations present powerful political arguments.

Say the prospect of an extra couple thousand a year is enough to sway the Cautious. And it's enough to split the Disengaged right down the middle. That's 25% of the American public, in addition to the 51% who are already on board. Three out of four Americans who would be in favor of doing something about climate change, and who would feel cheated by any government not willing to make that happen.

Now that's a political argument that's so easy to sell you don't have to be lucky. Or good. Or even smart.

One of the questions that Greenback students often pose about carbon dioxide emissions runs along the lines of, "well, if there's more CO2, isn't that good for plants? And aren't plants good for the environment?"

Sometimes the student is merely curious, sometimes (s)he is being intentionally challenging. But the response I like to give is the same, either way. Yes, more CO2 generally tends to stimulate more plant growth among other effects. But not all plant growth is good for the environment. Not all plants are good, not all plants are good in all places, and more growth isn't necessarily better growth.

That we're getting more growth is the subject of a report just issued by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Ecologist Geoffrey Parker led a team of scientists who measured the growth of 55 different plots of mixed hardwoods for 22 years, and their data corroborates increases in CO2 levels, increases in soil and air temperatures, and a longer annual growing season.

That faster growth isn't always a good thing is borne out by differences in maple trees over distance and time. I've always been fond of red maples and sugar maples -- as trees, as syrup sources, and as dimensional lumber. But when I was living in the southern USA, the maples that grew nearby were junk trees -- the wood grew too fast and was, as a result, insufficiently dense. OK to burn, perhaps, but no good as lumber.

Near Greenback, maple sugaring is a traditional pursuit as winter gives way to spring. It's not a major industry, but a lot of farmers supplement their incomes by boiling a lot of sap. It's been that way for generations. It breaks my heart to know that it's on its way out.

A couple of years ago, I saw some signs along the back roads: "Stop global warming. Save our syrup". I haven't seen them recently. Maybe the supply ran out. Or maybe the people who set them out have noticed -- as I have -- that their yields are trending down already. Look -- maple syrup yields vary according to the kind of spring it is; some years the sap seems to run for almost a month, sometimes it's pretty much done in a week. But regardless of season length, yields have been decreasing for probably a decade or more.

Saving our syrup is, in all likelihood, no longer possible. Some day in the future, oil imports may be down but maple syrup imports will be up. That may be a victory for corn syrup producers, perhaps (shudder!), but it might just be enough to get me to stop making pancakes on Sunday mornings. Or to start bringing back gallons of duty-free syrup from Canada on a regular basis. Maybe I'll just cut Sunday breakfasts short, take my coffee out to the shop, and work on that trestle table I'm building. At my age I may see the end of maple sugaring, but at least the lumber will still be dense and strong with a nice open grain.

No, I'm not concerned with what will be (by the time you read this) last night's State of the Union address. I've seen and heard too many of those over the years to have any doubt that the state of our union will be declared to be strong. Realities notwithstanding.

What I'm intrigued by, and sad I didn't know about earlier, is a report out of George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication -- an outfit with which I'll definitely have to become more familiar. Catchily titled "Global Warming's Six Americas 2009" (even though we all know there are only three Americas -- North, South and Central), it breaks US public opinion regarding climate change down according to a six point scale (alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful and dismissive) and provides an analysis of the thoughts and beliefs of each segment.

I'm still working my way through the report's 140 pages (this being the beginning of a semester, I obviously have nothing else to do with my time), but a couple of points have already caught my attention.

First, the two categories at the most convinced/most concerned/most motivated end of the scale account for 51% of the result set (18% alarmed, 33% concerned). This is a truth that too often gets lost in the "one from this side, one from that side" style of what passes for journalism.

Second, the fact that folks in the "dismissive" category both consider themselves very knowledgeable on the subject and admit that they haven't thought much about it. I suspect that this combination is more common than most of us expect, but the quality of the debate might improve if this syndrome were pointed out a bit more often.

Based on reading the introduction and the table of contents, and on reviewing the 55 pages of tables which present the data, I'm looking forward to reading the category analyses. They should prove informative, and knowledge of the patterns described should prove useful.

I just wish I'd discovered the report when it first came out. Demographic analyses don't change as rapidly as the weather, but they do change. And stories about the economy and health care finance have shown a tendency to drown out other concerns. And alarms.

No, not Frank Zappa. Well, maybe Zappa, too, but that's not what I meant.

What I meant was perceived necessity. Not necessity proper, but the perception of it.

If a need is real but no one recognizes it, no invention is stimulated. If a need is imaginary but perceived, invention is likely to occur. It's not the necessity, it's the perception.

Why does that matter? Well, in a recent report from the National Science Board, it was noted that the dominance of US science and engineering is slipping. Not so much that we've gotten worse, but that the rest of the world is catching up.

Part of the reason, I'm sure, is just the maturation of post-secondary science and technology education in the rest of the world. The Indian Institute of Technology, to take a familiar example, is world-class -- it provides better technical education than was available anywhere outside of North America and western Europe only a decade ago. Several Chinese universities aren't far behind. As economic power shifts to Asia, higher education naturally follows. No surprise there, and nothing much to be done about it.

But part of the reason is also that governments and markets outside the USA perceive a number of necessities to which the US government and market accord only grudging acknowledgment. In a nutshell, they take climate change seriously. We don't. We're too wrapped up in life-and-death struggles about the nature of health care finance and other weighty matters. Climate change is, in practical terms, off our national radar screens.

So the other nations of the world perceive a necessity we don't. And they're addressing it, even as we speak. China, for instance, is outstripping the USA as a producer of renewable energy technology. They'll likely outstrip us as a market for renewable energy technology. And they'll make a lot of money (even more than currently) as a result. Worse, China is only one example.

I've long suspected that the US plan for addressing the climate change issue was to wait until it became an immediate crisis, because there's more profit in solving a crisis than in averting one. The flaw in that plan, of course, is that if someone else starts building the solution first, and in larger quantities, then the large profit margins you were hoping for either never eventuate or end up in someone else's bank account.

Or, to paraphrase my inventive mother, be careful what you wish against because someone else might get it.

As I drove to campus this morning, my local NPR station was talking about only three subjects -- Haiti, the senatorial election in Massachusetts, and state governments. Some of the coverage of state governments was local, some was from the opposite coast (California). But all of it was related to fiscal crises, and efforts to relieve fiscal crises, and political problems standing in the way of efforts to relieve fiscal crises.

Now the good news about working to achieve sustainability on an institutional, local or societal level means that pretty much everything you hear, everything you learn reminds you -- in some way -- of your job. (Actually, I could be wrong. Maybe that's the bad news.) What reminded me most of sustainability efforts in the state government coverage was the way the supposed leaders were doing everything they could to avoid addressing the real issues facing them. It reminded me of my job because of how hard some (not all) of Greenback's decision-makers do everything they can to avoid addressing the real issues of sustainability on campus and in society. (They're glad to have Backboro become more sustainable. Most of our students, most of our alumni, and most of our donors don't live in Backboro. So making the local community sustainable doesn't require anything from the constituencies most important in Greenback's decision-making.)

The most typical state government response to fiscal crisis these days is a flat percentage spending cut across the board. The advantage of this is that it doesn't require explanation and it doesn't require thought. You're 15% short on cash, you cut expenditures at all agencies by 15%, everything's back in balance, right?

Of course, the balance achieved is only financial, and only on paper. If you cut expenditures on programs which are saving you money in other areas (like arbitration which reduces court costs or prenatal services which reduces health costs), the savings are more illusory than real. And if you cut social welfare expenditures, crime rates may go up, policing costs may go up, incarceration costs may go up, up, up. The politically simple tends to be the pragmatically stupid.

The next most typical state approach seems to be to target education and healthcare. The "reasoning" here is based on the fact that these costs have escalated significantly in recent years. Since this is where the cost increase disproportionately is coming from, this is where the cuts must happen. Note the implicit assumption that expenditures which have remained relatively flat for a while are not the problem, regardless of the nature of those expenditures. If you've been pouring the same amount of state money into the statewide inter-county machine screw thread coordinating corporation (a public entity) for the past hundred years, that can't be where the financial problem is. And -- just to emphasize the importance of that expenditure -- it can readily be pointed out that (due, I'm sure, to the efforts of this glorious corporation) bolts purchased in County A and nuts purchased in County B fit together just perfectly! What could be better? Indeed, in a society increasingly aware of the need to create jobs, what could be more fundamentally important?

Look, this approach (which the media seem to swallow whole, by the way), makes as much sense as saying that food, clothing and shelter prices are rising fast but the cost of dollar lottery tickets has been stable for years, so in the current downturn it only makes sense to buy less food. Or clothing. Or shelter.

What resonated with me was the fact that "leaders" of so many state governments were spending so much time, so much effort, so much political capital and never once asking the question of how the existing structure and operation of their organizations was resulting in problematic expenditure levels. They never managed to get to the question of what existing expenditures were unnecessary, or of low priority. They never asked what sorts of efforts more than paid their own way on a net-net basis, or which ones were basically pouring money down a hole.

That's the same sort of assumptions which are implicit in many administrative decisions that get made at Greenback -- we're willing to become sustainable, so long as it means that we don't really have to change anything. We don't really want to be affected. We don't want to think too hard or too long about the predictable results of what we're doing and what we continue to do.

If universities, which ostensibly specialize in thinking, aren't willing to ask the hard questions and figure out how what we've been doing has gotten us to where we are, how can social and political leaders be expected to? (I was told by a national political figure, once, that he was running for President, not genius. On campus, I like to think that there are at least a few folks running for genius. But I could be overly optimistic.)

Greenback, like any other organization, won't become sustainable without a thorough-going analysis of what it wants to do, what it's currently doing, how it's currently structured, why it's structured that way, how it could operate and structure itself more sustainably. Incremental changes -- increasing energy efficiency a bit here, switching to a cleaner-burning fuel there -- will get the ball rolling, but they won't get us where we say we want to go.

I've heard the saying attributed both to Thomas Edison and to G.K. Chesterton. There is almost no length to which a [wo]man won't go, to avoid the real work of thinking. But not thinking -- or at least, not thinking enough about the right things -- is what got us into this mess. Continuing to not think seems highly unlikely to lead us out of it.

As the new semester gets underway, there are a million things on my plate. Working with profs on curriculum revisions, with students on new projects, with student reporters new to the sustainability beat, etc., etc., etc.

So it seems odd that the announcement that stuck in my mind was the one about Walmart installing a 1MW solar array on some warehouse rooftop. California, I think. Certainly, nowhere near Backboro.

The announcement rubbed me the wrong way. First, one megawatt is significant but hardly record-breaking. The announcement trumpeted it as Walmart's biggest array ever, which only means that it's bigger than Walmart's other arrays. A personal best, if you believe in corporate personhood. It's the kind of triumphant announcement which PR people can always arrange any time anybody does anything about anything. Hardly the stuff of legend.

And, of course, there's the fact that it's Walmart. The big box retailer to end big box retailing. (Or, more truthfully, to end local small-box retailing in another town every day or two.) Today's great facilitator of suburban sprawl and rampant consumerism. The answer to a question no one should ever have been allowed to ask. Sure, they're making their distribution chain more efficient. That's hardly news. That's the way they've been doing business since Sam Walton first got a twinkle in his eye. Last year, they sold that as a virtue based on lowering consumer prices. This year they're selling it as a virtue based on reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Next year they'll be selling as a virtue based on some premise I can't even imagine at present. Same business strategy, new PR campaign. The more things change . . .

But then I got to thinking about a guy I worked for over 20 years ago. A good manager, a decent leader, a nice person, and the father of a son with a learning disability. He had a good income (a very good income, in fact), and he did a lot of volunteer work for a charity helping financially strapped families with learning disabled kids because, he said, he was so grateful for their work. See, he was sophisticated enough to know that the market for the services his son needed was increased tremendously by the financial help this outfit gave to families, and that the facilities to provide those services in our area probably wouldn't even exist if they had to depend only on clientele who could pay their own way. He knew that he benefited from the work of the charity, even though he didn't receive any funding from them. He got something more important, so he helped out any way he could.

Maybe it's rationalization. Maybe I have to find a way to justify Walmart's continued existence. After all, they've taken over pretty much all retail where I live, too. If I can't get it at Walmart, I probably have to drive 25+ miles. But my rationalization de jour is that maybe, by supporting and expanding the market for solar arrays, Walmart is in some way supporting the costs of technological and facilities development, making solar power more available in the market for all of us.

I'm not sure I really believe it. But if I try hard enough . . . maybe . . .

Well, maybe not the single best website regardless of topic or function, but the best site for environmental information with an emphasis on climate change.

And maybe the best sit ever in the past or future of humanity, but the best one I've found so far.

And it's hosted by a university! Yale, in fact (home of one of the best forestry/environmental schools in the USA).

It's called Yale Environment 360, and it's here.

Whether you're a sustainability administrator, a faculty member tasked with addressing sustainability issues (either by your department or by your students), or just an interested onlooker (like you can be an onlooker to a train wreck while you're riding the train), it's an excellent resource, constantly being updated. I'm going to recommend it to a number of the professors at Greenback. And to their students.