Lignite

Crazy but true. Here's how it went down. Back in 1995, Minnesota passed a law assigning a cost to carbon for purposes of utility planning (go Minnesota!). North Dakota, which sells a lot of coal-fired power to Minnesota, got worried that this law would hurt its in-state lignite coal industry. The western half of North Dakota sits on a giant bed of lignite, a very low-grade coal also referred to as North Dakota mud because when they strip mine it the product looks a lot more like dirt than coal. You have to burn a lot of it to get the same energy value as richer coal, which in turn releases a lot of carbon dioxide.

The lignite industry - which receives major subsidies from the State of North Dakota - argued to the legislature that attaching a cost to carbon would put lignite at an economic disadvantage to wind power. They produced charts comparing lignite to wind, with and without carbon regulation. Now you might think that the Minnesota law presented a fabulous opportunity to North Dakota to build up its wind industry, because North Dakota has some of the best wind in the country and could produce mass quantities of cheap, carbon-free electricity for the power-hungry Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

But no. Instead, the visionary North Dakota legislature passed a law (NDCC 49-02-23 if you're interested) banning the state Public Service Commission from considering any environmental externalities, including the anticipated cost of any future environmental laws or regulations, in making planning decisions about new electrical generation. Our humble challenge now is to drag North Dakota kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.

Bismarck Ho!

I don't mean that in the Don Imus way.

I'm needed in Bismarck, ND, to argue a motion before an Administrative Law Judge on whether my client, Dakota Resource Council, can bring evidence about the future economic cost of carbon regulation in a proceeding for siting a new coal-fired power plant. It might seem like an obvious thing to consider, but the North Dakota legislature has taken care of that. They passed a law barring regulators from considering the anticipated cost of future environmental laws or regulations. We have to try to convince an elected judge in lignite coal country that the law doesn't apply to our particular proceeding. Which saint do I pray to?

Powerless

We had a doozy of a storm over the weekend. First freezing rain, then horizontal snow, followed by more freezing rain and snow until the tree branches hung down to the ground with the weight of ice, and so did the transmission lines. Around 2:30 on Saturday afternoon we lost power. Often losing power is a delight: the candles, the quiet, the neighbors talking to each other because there's nothing else to do. It was that way all afternoon and through the evening, when we had cheese, crackers, fruit and wine for dinner because our stove is electric. It was that way through the night as the temperature dropped and we slept cozily under down comforters.

Come Sunday morning, the whole adventure began to lose its charm. We have a gas furnace, but the blower is electric, so the temp had dropped to below 55 degrees. We ate breakfast with a neighbor who has a gas range and spent a large part of the day shoveling to keep warm. The major crisis of the morning was averted when we discovered that we could use our hand-cranked nut grinder to grind coffee beans. The fire station and city hall were running off the same generator, but the rest of us fell back on fireplaces, flashlights, candles, and one guy's crank-powered TV. The estimates were anywhere from 24 hours to a week without power, with temperatures in the 20s and 30s (that's hovering around zero to you celsius types).

The grocery store in town was closed, but we heard that the one on the near side of Cedar Rapids was running on generators, so we piled in the AWD Subaru and headed out. The store was full of farmer types who look like they don't come to town much, filling carts with huge water bottles and propane. We hatched a scheme to haul the Weber grill up onto the back porch, boil water on the Coleman stove, and rely on down sleeping bags and the gas water heater for warmth until our connection to the nuke plant could be restored. Luckily the juice came back a little after 5 on Sunday evening. I reckon we saved at least $10 on power, but we spent over $200 at the grocery store, so no net gain. It's good to be warm again!

To those who are hungry,

give bread.
To those who have bread,
give the hunger for justice.

Because you can't get to the hunger for justice, until your stomach is full.

Flat snow

I grew up on vertical snow, slanty at least, the kind you could slide down on skinny sticks, jumping off the bumps, flying through the trees, screaming as you went waaaaay too fast until the thrill of speed overcame the fear of death. A few days ago we got the first snow of the year here in Iowa. Of course the first thing I did was head over to the sledding hill to help the kiddies get started constructing a terrain park for their sleds and snowboards. Not half an hour later a guy in an orange truck from the city pulled up to tell us to knock down our most excellent little jump, because someone would fly off it and crack their head open.

Will they take away my Mom Card if I admit that what ran through my head was, "Oooo yeah, cool...."? You're not really having fun until somebody has a concussion.

My friend met David Lynch

Maybe you're like me and wouldn't recognize David Lynch if he danced down a dark alley at you in an eerie pink glow surrounded by a troupe of dancing dwarves. If so, you are not like my friend Joan, who thinks he's one of the all-time geniuses, uses a photo of him for her computer wallpaper, and wishes her husband would grow old to look like him. Now that Joan has forced me to look at photos of David Lynch, I think he looks sort of like Eraserhead and don't really get the obsession. But then I have my own thing about Hendrik Hertzberg (the images come up side by side in my browser - you'll have to guess which is which), so I won't throw stones.

So Joan was going into the local natural foods hippie co-op and whom should she run into but Eraserhead himself. I shit you not. Joan, being Joan, screamed "YOU'RE DAVID LYNCH!!" and jumped up and down. I would have at least tried to play it cool. He could have had scary California bodyguards or an attack dog or something. But David Lynch was not at all intimidated. He gave her an autograph and posed for camera phone photos while other shoppers looked on, wondering who the hell he was. This preternatural calm is probably the result of Transcendental Meditation, which is what brings Lynch to Iowa. He goes to see the gurus at Maharishi International in Fairfield. If only Hendrik were into TM.

For Porter

In honor of my most loyal reader, a new post.

2007 brings with it a new nonprofit organization, Plains Justice, conceived in hope and consternation, and dedicated to the proposition that the people and places of the Northern Plains deserve better environmental justice than they have been getting. We've got funding, a great board, and a lot of work to do. Back at it.