The bike ride from the old Emo’s location on Red River and Sixth Street downtown and the new Emo’s on East Riverside Drive is about 2.3 miles. The fastest route is to ride down Red River just past Caesar Chavez then scoot over to Rainey Street and keep going until you get to the walking trail along Lady Bird Lake. There’s a public restroom shaped like a modernist sculpture here if you need it. Next follow the gravel trail towards the I-35, weave through the parking lot beneath the 12-lane bridge, and turn up the pedestrian switchback that shoots you out along the highway feeder lane. As you ride across the bridge there’s a nice view of Lady Bird Lake to your left where you can make out the Longhorn Dam in the distance.
Read the rest of the essay at Full Stop: http://www.full-stop.net/2013/03/20/blog/ari-phillips/while-everyone-was-at-south-by-southwest-i-was-at-emos-east/
March 21, 2013
Short URL austin, bike, Broken Spoke, Emo's, gentrification, Lady Bird Lake, Music, redevelopment, Riverside, SXSW Ari's Blog
By the time I complete my ten-week internship Asia will have nearly one million new urban residents. Many of these urbanites will move into freshly constructed, high-energy consuming buildings that help make up a building sector accountable for one-third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Over the next 20 years, China alone will add 350 million urban residents to its population – more people than live in the United States – and will build the equivalent of ten New York Cities worth of skyscrapers. And greenhouse gas emissions, which are the main cause of climate change, will continue to gather at greater frequency up above the skyline.
This atmosphere of concern weighs heavily on the researchers in the Climate Change Group at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), where I’m living and working this summer. Located in the small town of Hamaya about an hour south of Tokyo, we spend our days in this glass-paned, spaceship-like building trying to reconcile the facts of rapid development in Asia with those of gradual climate change around the globe. We sit in our cubicles drinking milk tea and noshing on whatever treats have been most recently provided by a colleague returned from a business trip, and we ponder how the world can brave these 21st century challenges.
Read the rest of the essay at the Kyoto Journal: http://kyotojournal.org/the-journal/nature/an-atmosphere-of-concern/
March 21, 2013
Short URL aftermath, Asia, atmosphere, carbon dioxide, co-benefits, earthquake, energy, environment, greenhouse gasses, Japan, Tokyo, tsunami Ari's Blog, Climate change, Energy, Environment, Water
To explore Waller Creek and environs is to live intensively in the modern world and at the same time to be aware of how brief an instant modernity has been with us; how brief an instant, indeed, the human presence has been here in any guise to contemplate a very old set of surroundings.
– Joseph Jones, Life on Waller Creek
In 1982, Joseph Jones published Life on Waller Creek, a meditative book about the University of Texas English professor’s decades-long love affair with one of Austin’s main urban creeks. For years Jones strolled the creek, taking “inventories” in which he described his thoughts and feelings while picking up trash (some of which he made into art objects) and observing the landscape – a practice that led to his appearance in Richard Linklater’s 1991 film, Slacker. In the film, Jones, who had been one of Linklater’s professors, talks about the tragedy of life while meandering down a street that crosses Waller Creek. Twenty years later, much of Austin is hardly recognizable – but the area around Waller Creek remains largely unchanged. Jones died in 1999, after 40 years at UT, teaching Commonwealth English literature. He was heavily influenced by American Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who believed human beings thrived as self-reliant individuals and should be skeptical of society and its institutions.
Read the rest of the story at The Austin Chronicle: http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2013-01-11/going-with-the-flow/
January 10, 2013
Short URL austin, ecology, gentrification, homelessness, joseph jones, Lady Bird Lake, tunnel, urbanization, waller creek Ari's Blog, Environment, Texas, Water, Wildfire
Currently the city of Los Angeles gets about one-fifth of its electricity from renewable resources. By the end of the decade this will increase to one-third. As the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the largest municipal utility in the United States with over 4 million customers, slowly phases out coal and some natural gas, solar parks in the deserts to the east are filling the void.
Utility-scale solar offers the cheapest and most practical form of clean energy for Los Angeles. But the forecast is not all sunny. As these solar parks come into view, so does the range of associated concerns. On the Mojave National Preserve, Oakland-based BrightSource Energy Inc.’s Ivanhoe Solar Complex has made ongoing and exceedingly costly efforts to accommodate the fragile desert tortoise population. Earlier this year, the Genesis Solar Energy Project in Riverside County, Calif., was held up when Native American burial remains were found on multiple occasions during construction, indicating the presence of sacred burial grounds.
Read the rest of the story at Grist.org: http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-powering-los-angeles-why-the-city-needs-utility-scale-solar-in-the-desert-and-who-suffers/
August 13, 2012
Short URL Desert Center, distributed solar, Donna Charpied, Jonathan Parfrey, LADWP, Los Angeles, renewable energy, storage, transmission Ari's Blog, California, Climate change, Energy, Environment, Solar, Water
I approach Biosphere 2, couched in the cacti-ornamented hills of the Sonoran Desert and surrounded by mountain peaks. I’m enamored with the unusual tale of this larger-than-life science project, but have come to terms with the fact that for the generation that came of age in the 1990s, the memory of Biosphere 2 will likely forever be held captive by the Pauly Shore vehicle, Biodome, which was filmed on this location and which “put the mental in environmental.”
Pierre Meystre, physics professor at the University of Arizona and director of the Biosphere 2 Institute, acknowledges the difficulty of overcoming the public associations with the 1996 teen comedy. “It’s been a challenge to reinvent because of the history,” he says from a room that was originally the command center but which will soon be an exhibition space for the Model City program—a testing lab for projects ranging from solar power to cyber security. “When you mention the word ‘biosphere’ a lot of people think of that silly movie. You have to get past that first reaction.”
Read the rest of the story, fourth in four-part series at GOOD: http://www.good.is/post/reinventing-the-biosphere-the-future-of-the-research-jewel-of-the-arizona-desert/
August 3, 2012
Short URL bio-dome, Biosphere, John Allen Ari's Blog, Arizona, Energy, Environment
Imagine riding a tramway from the rim of the Grand Canyon all the way down to the canyon floor at the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers along the East Rim. Once your gondola docked, a 1,400-foot “riverwalk” would guide you to the Confluence Restaurant or to an amphitheater in the other direction. After dining and perhaps taking in a show from the amphitheater’s terraced grass, you could ride the trolley back to lodging, shopping and cultural attractions nestled around a 1,200-space parking lot.
Well, at least that’s the dream of the
Navajo nation‘s top leader and executives at the Phoenix-based development group Confluence Partners, who signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this year on the so-called “
Grand Canyon Escalade.”
Read the rest at the NYT Green blog: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/a-development-dispute-in-the-grand-canyon/
July 31, 2012
Short URL Colorado River, development, economic, Grand Canyon, Little Colorado River, Navajo, tramway Ari's Blog, Arizona, Environment, Water
It’s early afternoon and Brett Isaac, a barrel-chested 27-year-old whose soft-spokenness gives the impression of a gentle giant, is explaining the purpose of the solar trailer hitched to the back of his truck.
“One thing we never think about is that each of us produces energy,” Isaac, renewable energy Project Manager for the Shonto Community Development Corporation in Navajo Nation, tells a group of adolescent summer campers gathered against a middle school wall. “We produce heat and we produce activity. There’s no reason why we couldn’t produce energy in our own homes.”
Read the rest of the story, third in a four-part series originally published by GOOD: Link to PDF
July 26, 2012
Short URL drought, global warming, mineral, mining, Native American, Navajo, solar power, trailer, Zuni Ari's Blog, Arizona, Climate change, Energy, Environment, Solar, Water, Wind
I meet Tom Swetnam, Director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson, on a Sunday morning because he’s leaving for Siberia in a few days and is otherwise totally booked. As part of the paleofire team that will be traveling to the “Alaska of Siberia, if you will” to study fire and climate, Swetnam will spend a few weeks immersed in the burn history—and possible future—of some of the largest forests on earth.
“We’re trying to understand fire, climate change and carbon emissions out of Siberia because of the huge carbon pool contained there in the soil, permafrost, bogs and forests,” says Swetnam, a sturdy middle-aged man with an outdoorsy white beard. “This giant pool of carbon is beginning to burn in a massive way—the amount of area burning in Siberia is startling.”
Read the rest of the story at Grist: http://grist.org/article/the-secret-life-of-tree-rings-what-they-can-teach-us-about-drought-climate-and-fire/
July 25, 2012
Short URL climate change, dendrochronology, ecology, fire, forest, history, Siberia, Tom Swetnam, tree rings, university of arizona Ari's Blog, Arizona, Climate change, Environment, New Mexico, Water, Wildfire, Wind
It’s easy to see why Eastern New Mexico is referred to as “Little Texas.” The same proliferation of pump jacks dot the landscape here as it does in its neighboring state and gas is cheaper than anywhere in the country outside the greater Texas region. After five days in Odessa, West Texas I’m anxious to cover some new ground, and I can’t seem to stop tinkering with the AC or scrolling through music until I settle into the flat, shrubby southeastern expanse of the “Land of Enchantment.”
Just outside of Roswell, a deep, lush valley cuts west and into the picturesque mountain town of Ruidoso before tumbling back over the peaks into a distilled vision of the Southwest. I finally opt for the new Walkmen album and relinquish the AC in favor of the cool breeze coming through the windows.
Read the rest of the story, second in a four-part series originally published by GOOD: Link to PDF
July 18, 2012
Short URL birds, Bosque Del Apache, climate change, Fish and Wildlife Service, riparian, Santa Fe, William deBuys Ari's Blog, Environment, New Mexico, Water, Wildfire
William deBuys is the author of seven books, including most recently “A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest,” for which I wrote a Dot Earth book review last month.
As part of my summer reporting project on energy and climate change in the Southwest, I had the pleasure of driving deep into the heart of the Santa Fe National Forest and interviewing deBuys at his home about an hour and a half from Santa Fe.
We discussed how he ended up in a far-removed mountain hamlet in New Mexico, what drove him to write his most recent book, and what the biggest takeaways from the project were, among other things.
Read the full interview at Think Progress
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July 16, 2012
Short URL A Great Aridness, deBuys, drought, global warming, Santa Fe National Forest Ari's Blog, Climate change, Energy, Environment, New Mexico, Water, Wildfire
As I approach Midland, Texas from the southeast the rolling hills give way to large, engine-revving trucks, their menacing grills reflecting the setting sun into my rearview mirror. The asphalt beneath my white Toyota Corolla seems to be melting into the petroleum-laden ground from which it had emerged: Not even the road was prepared for the heavy vehicles that showed up with the recent oil and gas boom.
Read the rest of story, first in a four part series originally published by GOOD: Link to PDF
July 12, 2012
Short URL benzene, drilling, fracking, Gardendale, GOOD, industry Ari's Blog, Energy, Environment, Gas, Oil, Texas, Water
Story originally appeared on Climate Central: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/preventing-catastrophic-fires-what-goes-on-when-everythings-not-aflame/
By Ari Phillips
Wildfires have been national news this summer. Massive, destructive burns in Colorado and New Mexico have emblazoned websites and TV screens across the country. But just as the monsoon rains roll into the Southwest bringing much needed moisture, the nation’s gaze over the fires will move on, too.
The wildfires are just the eye-catching flashpoint of a complex and ongoing process of forest management and restoration in the Southwest. Since the U.S. Forest Service began monitoring national forests in the region more than 100 years ago, protocols and best practices have been evolving alongside changing science and technology.
July 12, 2012
Short URL Causes, Climate, drought, Extreme Weather, Extremes, Flora & Fauna, Greenhouse Gases, Heat, Impacts, Landscapes, Responses, southwest, United States, Weather, West, Wildfires Ari's Blog, Climate change, Environment, New Mexico, Water, Wildfire
Today I had the privilege of sneaking into, i.e. walking into with permission, a panel on current transmission projects in the Southwest held as part of the two-day “Energy in the Southwest” conference currently underway at the Santa Fe Hilton (price tag in the quadruple digits).
Jeremy Turner, Executive Director of the New Mexico Renewable Energy Transmission Authority (RETA) spoke for the bulk to the 90-minute session. He covered a lot of ground (transmission joke) so I’ll just touch on a few main points:
- There’s a growing backlog of projects in the Southwest, with transmission projects becoming harder to complete due to environmental and financial hurdles.
- Need to start using existing infrastructure and minimizing new build-out in order to accomplish more with less resource investment. This requires long-term planning, not band-aiding issues, and cooperation rather than the competition currently inherent in the development of transmission projects.
- RETA has recently stepped into the role of transmission project developer for the first time and created a public-private partnership with a subsidiary of Goldman Sacks. This is an opportunity to get past the development bottleneck and actually start building.
- The SunZia Transmission Project that will bring renewable wind and solar power from Central New Mexico to the energy craving metropolitan areas of Arizona is making great progress and will hopefully be completed in a few years.
Turner also spoke about the Tres Amigas Power Station planned for Eastern New Mexico. The station is being designed to cost effectively transfer energy between the three main U.S. electricity grids (the Eastern grid, the Western grid and the Texas grid) to enable faster adoption of renewable energy and increased grid reliability.
“It’s exactly like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was for cattle and commodities industries back in late 1800s,” said Turner. “All it did was draw everybody to the same place and create an opportunity to bring products to the market.”
Tres Amigas will have the ability to allow spot market trading and to stabilize the grid if there are blackouts by sending power where there needs to be.
“When the tsunami hit Japan what most people didn’t realize is because there’s two separate grids one grid operated just fine and the other didn’t,” said Turner. “They had no ability to send power between grids. A project of this nature [Tres Amigas] has the ability to change that – not only for us, but for the world.”
July 9, 2012
Short URL electricity grids, Jeremy Turner, renewable energy, SunZia, transmission, transmission authority, transmission lines, Tres Amigas Ari's Blog, Arizona, Energy, Environment, New Mexico, Solar, Wind
I seem to have brought the summer monsoon rains with me to New Mexico. Monsoon season, the Southwest’s fifth season, arrives in early July and lasts into the first week of September. It is a highly anticipated time of year that brings up to half the region’s annual rainfall. It also brings extreme weather events, such as intense rain, hail, high winds, flash floods, copious lightning, and dust devils.
With all the wildfires in the region this year the rain is both a blessing and added challenge: It is a blessing because it can douse fire danger and a challenge because burned areas are more prone to flash floods, and debris from fires can pollute local water supplies.
In the Santa Fe/Albuquerque region the third driest spring on record lead to an unusually hot and dry June. Twice the amount of average monsoon rainfall will be needed to bring the area out of present drought conditions.
For a thorough explanation of the causes and effects of the summer monsoon in the Southwest check out the Southwest Climate Change Network’s Understanding the Southwestern Monsoon article.
For now I’m just happy to enjoy a refreshing afternoon shower and a high of around 80 degrees in Santa Fe.
July 5, 2012
Short URL drought, monsoon, summer Ari's Blog, Arizona, Energy, Environment, New Mexico, Water, Wildfire, Wind
Gallery
This gallery contains 25 photos.
As I was leaving Ruidoso heading NW I passed through the remains of the Little Bear Fire. One of the most destructive wildfires ever in New Mexico, it burned 44,000 acres and destroyed 254 structures, the most of any one fire in NM history. Originally sparked by lighting, the fire took a turn for the worse on […]
July 3, 2012
Short URL Little Bear Fire, Ruidoso, summer, tourism Ari's Blog, Climate change, Environment, New Mexico, Photos, Wildfire, Wind
So I made the drive from Odessa, Texas to Ruidoso, NM. On the way I passed several landmarks of note regarding energy/environment in the Southwest.
The first was the site of the new Waste Control Specialists’ plant that disposes of low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) - the only commercial facility in the United States licensed to dispose of Class A, B and C LLRW. Obviously storing radioactive waste is a controversial issue, and this facility fits the bill. Read more about the plant, environmental concerns, and political/financial intrigue here:
WCS Commences Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Reuters
The ABCs of Radioactive Waste in West Texas Reporting Texas
Months Later, TCEQ Getting Burned by Latest Radioactive Favor for Harold Simmons Texas Observer
I took some photos of the site, which mostly consisted of giant dirt mounds. Although I did find it amusing that the Waste Control Specialists sign flanked the Welcome to Texas sign. Just so you know what you’re headed into.
I also drove by the future site of America’s Most Innovative Neighborhood, otherwise known as The Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation (CITE).
Located outside of Hobbs, NM, CITE will essentially be a highly capable ghost town. This empty mid-sized American city will be a testing ground for new technologies, including smart meters and other things with energy implications. Economically this is a big “get” for New Mexico as it will bring 350 permanent jobs and a lot more temporary ones, helping Hobbs become the city its welcome sign always thought it could be.
July 1, 2012
Short URL Andrews, CITE, Hobbs, NM, radioactive waste, TX, Waste Control Specialists Ari's Blog, Energy, Environment, New Mexico, Photos, Texas
Image
Yesterday I had the opportunity to go for a plane ride around the Odessa area with a member of GARDAP (Gardendale Accountability Project). The 45-minute flight opened my eyes to many new things – not least of which being the queasiness induced by rapidly circling small oil spills.
Yes, the most exciting moment came when we unexpectedly flew over an oil spill just south of Odessa. You can see in the picture how close it is to a landowner’s residence. For more images see GARDAP’s post.
On the flight I saw the proximity with which oil rigs can be put to homes in unincorporated townships in Texas, such as Gardendale. There are literally derricks in people’s backyards as close as 100 feet from their homes.
One of the most unsettling things I saw was a pit full of water to be used for fracking. West Texas is already suffering serious water shortages and these immense reservoirs of clean water go not to people or agriculture, but to freeing fossil fluids thousands of feet underground.
I leave you with an image of a well being drilled. The brown inner pit is the mud discharge that comes up from the earth. The outer moat that looks almost black is the drilling mix, which includes untold chemicals. Often this mixture is left on the owner’s property when the drilling is done. Only a liner separates it from mixing with the earth and groundwater that many residents use for drinking.
June 29, 2012
Short URL drilling, fracking, GARDAP, Gardendale, Odessa, oil, property rights, water Ari's Blog, Energy, Environment, Gas, Oil, Texas, Water
Driving through Texas Hill Country in the center of the state I am always reminded of how pretty it is, especially when viewed from the enhanced comfort of an air-conditioned vehicle. The rolling hills outside of Austin tumble lower and lower giving way to a semi-arid steppe and widening sky.
On either ends of Hill Country are the wind turbines of the west and the population centers of the south and east. For the last several years transmission lines have been constructed to bring this much needed renewable energy source to those in need of it most – Especially during the summer months, when Texas is prone to electricity shortages and rolling blackouts.
These lines are part of the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) project, itself a response to a directive by the Texas Legislature passed in 2005. To reach the renewable energy goals set by the Legislature and support the growing wind industry in Texas, the Texas Public Utility Commission (PUC) created a plan to identify areas with potential wind capacity, the CREZ, and build a transmission infrastructure to move wind energy to populated areas. The Texas Tribune has been covering the issue, and you can read all about it on their topic page: CREZ Transmission Lines.
Texas has more installed wind energy than any other state and has already hit a new record for wind power generation at least once this year as capacity continues to grow.
Yesterday as I was driving through Hill Country near the town of Eldorado I caught sight of some recently installed transmission lines with the towers in place but no power lines running yet. There is a contingent of people who are opposed to the transmission lines because of the local impact they have on the ecosystem. This includes Hill Country landowners who moved to the area for the scenery and recreation.
I took a couple of pictures of the gentle steel giants before they transition from skeletal sculptures to functional transmitters.
Once these transmission lines are finished more turbines can be built, which will in turn spur more transmission lines. All the while the wind will continue to blow and wind power will continue to grow throughout Texas.
June 28, 2012
Short URL Hill Country, landowners, Texas Tribune, transmission lines, wind power Ari's Blog, Energy, Environment, Photos, Texas, Wind
Last year was the hottest and driest on record in Texas. There were 90 days of 100-degree heat in Austin. The Texas drought of 2011 was the driest 12-month period on record, by a large margin. The state is just beginning to emerge from under the deep red blotch that consumed it on precipitation maps.
2011 was my first full year in Texas. But meanwhile across the rest of the American Southwest, where I’ve spent most of my life, other inauspicious records were being set. The Wallow Fire became the biggest in Arizona’s history, burning 538,049 acres. New Mexico, with my hometown of Santa Fe, experienced its biggest forest fire ever just a few weeks ago.
The Southwest, with its fragile ecosystems and drought vulnerability, stands to face some of the worst impacts of climate change. In the introduction to William deBuys’ recent book “A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest,” Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist who co-directs the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona, says: “Climate change will produce winners and losers, and those in the Southwest will be losers. There’s no doubt.”
I feel myself losing with every record-breaking heat wave, unending rainless spell and expansive western sky choking on seas of rising ash.
There’s another perspective to take, thankfully – one that offers potential.
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June 21, 2012
Short URL climate change, clovis, deBuys, forest fire, kickstarter, Overpeck, southwest Ari's Blog, Energy, Environment, Gas, Oil, Texas, Wildfire
Midland, Texas - hometown of George W. Bush and the hub of the current Permian Basin oil and gas boom.
Since the mid-1980s, when a surge in energy prices fueled Midland’s growth, the area has struggled. But now with the increased use of fracking and other means of reaching unconventional oil and gas resources, the region is exploding again, and it can be hard to staff local fast food restaurants because of the job opportunities in oil and gas.
June 18, 2012
Short URL gas, midland, oil Ari's Blog, Gas, Oil, Photos, Texas
Image
Summer in Austin is a hot, humid, sweaty affair that revolves around staying cool. Hence the legendary spot Barton Springs Pool holds in the hearts of many Austinites. The fourth larger spring in Texas, this man-made pool is fed by natural springs and stays relatively cool year round.
As I head towards West Texas and the greater Southwest, I’m sure there will be many an opportunity to reflect fondly on the prospect of a cool dip in the springs.
Side note: In the wake of the recent Fish and Wildlife Service decision not to place the dunes sagebrush lizard, found only in New Mexico and West Texas, on the endangered species list, salamanders in Central Texas are facing a rejuvenated push to keep them off the list as well.
Earlier this week U.S. Rep. John Carter, a Texas republican, said that
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June 18, 2012
Short URL austin, barton springs, barton springs pool, dunes sagebrush lizard, endangered species, salamander, water Ari's Blog, Environment, Photos, Texas, Water
