A Doormat for a Carbon Footprint

Silja Tanner

ENG 090

Van Dyken

15 July 2012

A Doormat for a Carbon Footprint

Reduce your carbon footprint by donating to your local CO₂ reduction program and Go Green by buying compact fluorescent light bulbs and driving an electric car!  Do your part to lower greenhouse gas emissions by installing solar panels or the world’s carbon dioxide levels will increase so much that it will cause the global temperature to dramatically increase, causing ecological chaos!  Man-made global warming is a doctrine that has been vigorously pushed in the United States especially, but also worldwide.  It is a theory that man’s voracious energy use has resulted in vast amounts of wastes CO₂ gases that supposedly cause the entire globe’s temperature to rise.  By offsetting one’s “carbon footprint” or personal contribution to these emissions, and therefore, to the supposed global warming phenomenon, one can mitigate any shame or responsibility put upon them.  This can be done by buying into any product or activity labeled “Green” or “Clean Energy.”  But these labels prey upon the average concerned citizen’s guilt and can be quite misleading.   People should not feel the urgent need to buy such “Green” products as compact fluorescent light bulbs, electric vehicles, and solar panels because they do not reduce carbon footprints effectively.

Promoted by President Bush’s Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, the Light Bulb Law requires a phasing out of traditional incandescent light bulbs in favor of new compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFL’s (energystar.gov).  These light bulbs use the heavy, toxic element mercury to light up.  They are able to radiate the entire spectrum – including Ultra Violet - which makes for a whiter light.  The UV radiation is minute, but adds up over time.  Breaking a CFL bulb releases mercury powder which is toxic to humans, especially children (chicagotribune.com).  The EPA’s cleanup procedure for a broken CFL goes beyond making sure all the glass slivers are picked up.  Among the numerous steps involved is evacuating all life forms and turning off central heating/AC systems for several hours (epa.gov).  Turning the children and pets out into the rain, heat, or cold or risk deadly exposure is a mighty inconvenience for only saving about $30 over the life of the light bulb in energy costs (chicagotribune.com).  Potentially harming one’s family and releasing mercury into the environment is a risk worth taking according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which reasons that a CFL requires less electricity and thus, less coal burned (which also emits mercury,) according to their 2005 National Emissions Survey.  But your local power plant may not even use coal.  Also, factory workers in China, who handle the mercury in order to manufacture the bulb, have become seriously ill (chicagotribune.com).  For all the promotion for compact fluorescent light bulbs, the benefits seem insignificant compared to the risks.

The Electric Vehicle, (EV) which uses a rechargeable battery, is a “clean energy” improvement upon the standard fossil fuel car.  But it is the battery itself is that makes these electric vehicles so cost-prohibitive to the average American and what is also so potentially damaging to the environment.  The battery packs must be replaced at least once over the lifetime of the car and costs up to $15,000 (usnews.com) on top of the car’s initial median price tag of $65,000 (scientificamerican.com).  The money saved from not fueling with gas would take 10 or more years to make up that cost (usnews.com).  Even President Obama’s tax credit of $7,500 (scientificamercian.com) for such a purchase many not lower the cost enough for mass consumers.  Made of lead, the batteries pose a health and environmental hazard if not handled or disposed of properly.  Also, there are setbacks to America’s unique motoring culture in which long drives along our open highways is a symbol of freedom.  For example, a fully-charged EV only has a range of about 25-100 miles (as opposed to 300 miles for a gas-powered car) and so requires a charging station’s frequent use (usnews.com).  But there is no infrastructure for the mere 12,000 charging stations nation-wide, even in invested, forward-thinking cities (usnews.com).  Besides, charging a battery takes much longer than it does to gas up: 30 minutes to 8 hours (fueleconomy.gov).  One must be completely dedicated to reducing their carbon footprint to use an EV – or else just use the EV for local commuting and a gas-powered car for extended travel.  But how practical is that?  In fact, to help extend range, most electric vehicles are actually hybrids, meaning they utilize internal combustion and fossil fuels as well as electricity (scientificamerican.com).  These hybrids emit tailpipe pollutants along with the power plants needed to make electricity for charging the lead battery (fueleconomy.gov).  Finally, due to President Obama’s fuel efficiency mandate requiring all vehicles to achieve 35.5 miles per gallon by 2025, gas-powered cars are edging out EV’s on fuel efficiency (usnews.com).  It seems the only reason to buy and tolerate an electric vehicle is the pure principle of hoping to reduce one’s carbon footprint.

Once a novelty – and an eyesore – solar panels have improved so much that they are widely available to any American who can afford them, with prices starting at $15,000 to panel a suburban home’s roof (livestrong.com).  Solar energy is a renewable, and therefore, a “Green” power source in which a computer chip-like device called a photovoltaic (pv) cell captures the energy in light’s wavelength.  Theoretically, if enough solar panels, full of these pv battery cells, were placed around the world, then there would be few greenhouse gases emitted and unlimited, free electricity would be available.  But making these pv cells and the rest of the panel may be more harmful than it is worth.  Manufacturing them is a dirty and energy-intensive undertaking (low-techmagazine.com) mostly because the battery is made of lead and the components are made is under-regulated factories in China and India (ncpa.org).  These factories emit heavy metal pollutants into the air while consuming vast amounts of energy – all to make those “clean” solar energy panels.   Consequently, lead emissions and poisoning have increased in those countries since the advent of solar panel manufacturing (ncpa.org).  Moreover, sunlight is required to make solar panels work, but not everywhere in the world gets much sunlight.  People in Phoenix, Arizona may benefit from a solar panel infrastructure, but people in Forks, Washington (low-techmagazine.com) would not.  Construction of “solar farms” – vast tracts of land affixed with rows and rows of shiny solar panels – have become popular.  But these farms do more ecological harm than good (israelnationalnews.com,) even in a desert setting, because natural habitats of animals are destroyed when setting up the necessary processing equipment and electric lines, besides land stolen for the panels themselves.  Birds and bats often get blinded and killed by the panels’ reflections.  The Israel Parks and Nature Authority states that whole species could go extinct due to solar farm implementation (israelnationalnews.com).  Altogether, making and purchasing solar panels is an enormous expenditure for a product whose contribution to reducing air pollutants may be nonexistent.

All these products may live up to their hype after all in the near future.  Though there is a huge initial energy and/or monetary cost and health risk to manufacturing compact fluorescent light bulbs, electric vehicles and solar panels, in the long run, they make up for it in both cost and emissions.  As electrical consumers or producers, they all have the potential to significantly reduce America’s dependency on foreign oil, increasing security and financial stability (fueleconomy.gov).  If your power plant uses coal, then you can feel better about reducing pollutants when using CFLs or charging your EV.  Any combination of these three products will save household money spent on electricity, once the initial cost is overcome.  If America’s infrastructure would change to accommodate them, then greenhouse emissions could drastically reduce.  Technology is rapidly improving upon any defects such products may have, such as reducing mercury content in CFL’s (epa.gov), increasing EV battery power and range (scientificamerican.com,) and using current solar panels to make new ones (low-techmagazine.com).

Assuaging guilt seems to be the driving factor for the frantic creation and use of these technologies.  Although there is modest momentum for “Green” products, individual carbon footprint reductions are miniscule.  Most Green products are cost-prohibitive to those below the upper-middle class American.  So, unless these costs plummet, the average good-intentioned citizen cannot participate in the movement.  There also needs to be a change in infrastructure with the best example being charging stations for electric vehicles (usnews.com).  There is no major electrical grid exclusively for solar panels – a mix of coal, nuclear, etc, is still required (ncpa.org).  And CFLs are not yet made in every variety of light bulb used, though most will fit into current fixtures (chicagotribune.com).  Most outstanding is how these products are created in the first place: in energy-guzzling, pollutant-emitting factories.  Weighing these costs with the questionable good done for the environment does not add up to saving the world from so-called manmade global warming.

The “Green” and “clean energy” labels prey upon the average concerned citizen’s guilt and can be quite misleading.   People should not feel the need to buy such “Green” products as compact fluorescent light bulbs, electric vehicles, and solar panels because they do not reduce carbon footprints effectively.  The man-made global warming fabrication has an undeniable, persistent hype underlined by the “Green” and “clean energy” movements which aim to reduce man’s output of carbon dioxide emissions into Earth’s atmosphere.  While reducing one’s personal carbon footprint is not an unworthy endeavor, the general populace of America should be aware that most products or services that carry the “Green” label, may not always be so clean and green.

Works Cited

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Burnett, Sterling.  Solar Power: Bad News on the Jobs and Environment Fronts.  1 September      2011  National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA).              http://environmentblog.ncpa.org/solar-power-bad-news-on-the-jobs-and-environment-        fronts/   16 July 2012

Cleaning Up a Broken CFL.  Environmental Protection Agency.     http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html  16 July 2012

De Decker, Kris.  The Ugly Side of Solar Panels.  3 March 2008  Low-tech Magazine.com              http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/03/the-ugly-side-o.html  16 July 2012

The Editors.  Jump-Start Electric Car Market Via Buyers, not Automakers.  15 July 2012      Bloomberg.com  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-15/jump-start-electric-    car-market-via-buyers-not-automakers.html  16 July 2012

Energy Star.    http://www.energystar.gov/ia/products/lighting/cfls/downloads/EISA_Backgrounder_FIN            AL_4-11_EPA.pdf?6bd2-3775  16 July 2012

fueleconomy.gov.  U.S. Department of Energy.  http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml/ 
            16 July 2012

Hausfather, Zeke.  Superfreakonomics’ Climate Contrarianism: Do Trees and Solar Panels            Warm the Earth?  23 November 2009  The Yale Forum.            http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2009/11/superfreakonomics-climate-           contrarianism/

Hoffman, Leslie J.  The Future of Electric Cars.  14 March 2012  The Connecticut Post.             http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/The-future-of-electric-cars-3406614.php  16 July        2012

Lev, David.  Study Slams Plans for Negev Solar Farms.  21 July 2011
            Israeli National News.   http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/145963 
            16 July 2012

McClatchy, Terri Bennett.  The Good, Bad, and Ugly About CFL’s. 26 April 2010
            Chicago Tribune.  http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sc-home-0426-clfs-         20100426,0,2225600.story  16 July 2012

2005 National Emissions Inventory.  Environmental Protection Agency.     http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cfl-hg.html  16 July 2012

Newman, Rick.  5 Reasons Electric Cars Will Disappoint.  28 October 2010  US News.              http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2010/10/28/5-reasons-electric-cars-         will-disappoint  16 July 2012

Sherwood, Chris.  Bad Things About Solar Panels.  26 April 2011  livestrong.com              http://www.livestrong.com/article/129740-bad-things-solar-panels/  16 July 2012