Llewellyn King: Rooftop solar energy burns the poor

  Leon Trotsky said, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”  The same thing might be said about disruptive technologies.

The U.S. electric system, for example, may not be interested in disruptive technology, but disruptive technology is interested in it. What Uber and Lyft have done to the taxi industry worldwide is just beginning to happen to the electricity industry; and it could shock consumers – particularly the less affluent – as surely as though they had stuck their finger in an electrical outlet.

The disruptive revolution is not only happening here, but also in Europe, as Marc Boillot, senior vice president at Electricite de France (EDF), the giant French utility, writes in a new book.

Ironically in the United States, disruption of the otherwise peaceful world of electric generation and sale last year was a bumper one for electric stocks because of their tradition of paying dividends at a time when bond yields were low.

The first wave of disruption to electric generation has been a technology as benign as solar power units on rooftops, much favored by governments and environmentalists as a green source of electricity. For the utilities, these rooftop generators are a threat to the integrity of the electrical grid. To counter this, utilities would like to see the self-generators pay more for the upkeep of the grid and the convenience it affords them.

Think of the grid as a series of spider webs built around utility companies serving particular population centers, and joined to each other so they can share electricity, depending on need and price.

Enter the self-generating homeowner who by law is entitled to sell excess production back to the grid, or to buy on the grid when it is very cold or the sun isn't shining, as at night. The system of selling back to the electric company is known as net metering.

Good deal? Yes, for the homeowner who can afford to install a unit or lease one from one of a growing number of companies that provide that service. Lousy deal for the full-time electricity customer who rents or lives in an apartment building.

There’s the rub: Who pays the cost of maintaining the grid while the rooftop entrepreneur uses it at will? Short answer: everyone else.

In reality, the poor get socked. Take Avenue A with big houses at one end and apartments and tenements at the other. The big houses -- with their solar panels and owners' morally superior smiles -- are being subsidized by the apartments and tenements. They have to pay to keep the grid viable, while the free-standing house – it doesn’t have to be a mansion -- gets a subsidy.

It's a thorny issue, akin to the person who can't use Uber or Lyft because he or she doesn’t have a credit card or a smartphone, and has to hope that traditional taxi service will survive.

The electric utilities, from the behemoths to the smallest municipal distributor, see the solution in an equity fee for the self-generating customer's right to come on and off the grid, and for an appreciable difference between his selling and buying price. Solar proponents say, not fair: Solve your own problems. We are generating clean electricity and our presence is a national asset.

EDF's Boillot sees the solution in the utilities’ own technological leap forward: the so-called smart grid. This is the computerization of the grid so that it is more finely managed, waste is eliminated, and pricing structures for homes reflect the exact cost at the time of service. His advice was eagerly sought when he was in Washington recently, promoting his book.

While today’s solar may be a problem for the utilities, tomorrow’s may be more so. Homeowners who can afford it may be able to get off the grid altogether by using the battery in an all-electric car to tide them over during the sunless hours.

The industry is not taking this lying down: It is talking to the big solar firms, the regulators and, yes, to Elon Musk, founder of electric-car maker Tesla Motors. He may be the threat and he may be the savior; those all-electric cars will need a lot of charging, and stations for that are cropping up. There’s a ray of sunshine for the utilities, but it's quite a way off. Meanwhile, the rooftop disruption is here and now.

Llewellyn King (lking@kingpublishing.com), a longtime publisher, journalist and international business consultant, is executive producer of "White House Chronicle,'' on PBS.

A psychiatrist to speak about war-traumatized populations

  Americans understandably are very concerned about the mental-health effects on our military of serving in such war zones as Iraq and Afghanistan, especially regarding post-traumatic stress disorder. But there's remarkably little in the U.S. media about the effects of these seemingly endless wars on the populations in those tortured places.

Thus we at the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations have invited Dr. Amir Afkhami, M.D., a psychiatrist, who will talk about  mental health in such crisis spots at our Feb. 4 meeting.  He is also an expert in the global history of public health.

Dr. Afkhami holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavior Sciences and the Department of Global Health at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.  Before joining GWU in 2007, he was a lecturer in the global history of public health at Yale University. He is an adviser to the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. military on issues pertaining to public health and mental health.

Starving the IRS: Boon for the rich

The GOP Congress seems to be determined to starve the IRS, which as it is doesn't have nearly enough staff or even tax forms. The effect already is to encourage  even more tax cheating, particularly by the rich. They can afford the fancy tax lawyers and accountants to game the system even more than they have been doing. Someone must help offset the loss in revenue, and that will be poorer people who aren't tax-cheats, though most of their tax is to help pay for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, not income taxes.

But say it with flowers

"Depression, Anxiety, Despair, Poverty, Death '' (latex, glitter, oil, acrylic on wood), by RANDY STEVENS, at the New Art Center, in Newtonville, Mass.

River makes up in beauty what it lacks in miles

 

"September on the Lieutenant River'' {in Connecticut} (watercolor mounted on linen), by NANCY FRIESE, in her show "Encircling Trees and Radiant Skies,''  through May 3 at the Newport Art Museum, represented by Cade Tompkins Projects.

Gorgeous, but at this time of the year we'd prefer to visualize May on the Lieutenant River. That's even though September is perhaps consistently the prettiest month in these parts.

The Lieutenant River, best known as a venue for painters and photographers, is a 3.7-mile-long  tidal river in Old Lyme, Conn. It joins the Connecticut River in the estuary, just above the point where that river flows into Long Island Sound. This is a gorgeous part of the Nutmeg State. I'm surprised  that the hedge funders haven't bought much of it yet.

-- Robert Whitcomb

Chris Powell: Don't park here but drive state off cliff

Any Connecticut state legislator who affixes to his car the official legislative license plate to which he is entitled may be either impossibly vain or naive. For a legislative license plate is an invitation to the whole world to scrutinize and resent every move by the car's driver, as state Rep. Brandon L. McGee Jr., (D-Hartford), discovered Monday.

Hurrying Friday between a tour of the state Capitol with some of his young constituents and a meeting at his job outside the legislature and having not eaten all day, McGee drove to a doughnut shop near the Capitol and parked in a handicapped spot near the door. While he insists that he was in the shop for no more than three minutes, that was plenty of time for someone to take a photo of the car with the big-shot legislative plate parked in the handicapped spot without a handicapped parking tag.

The photo was posted on a local Internet site and then on Monday on a site devoted to state politics, a site followed closely by the state's political class -- Tom Dudchik's CTCapitolReport.com -- whereupon a torrent of outrage and ridicule began falling on McGee via the Internet, even, he said, death threats.

McGee quickly confessed and apologized in interview after interview, including an interview with a television station that led its 6 p.m. newscast with the supposed scandal before cutting to its usual "weather every 10 seconds" or thereabouts.

The caliber of Connecticut state legislators is not high enough to disprove what H.L. Mencken wrote of the typical legislator decades ago. "If the right pressure could be applied to him," Mencken noted, "he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology, or cannibalism." Mainly Connecticut legislators are good at suffering fools lightly.

But that can be hard enough, and most legislators put in a lot of hours, if to no particular effect, and they aren't paid much. Only the richest or most pensioned among them can afford not to have a full-time job outside the legislature, though for at least five months per year the legislature is a full-time job in itself, and even when the legislature is out of session there is often much work to do. That's why even McGee and other inexperienced legislators have been appointed assistant majority leaders, a silly fiction by which they get an additional stipend of a few thousand dollars.

Those license plates are about the only perk ordinary legislators get. As McGee has discovered, handicapped parking tags would be more useful.

McGee has just started his second term, but maybe after a few more terms of running himself ragged in two jobs he will discover the gumption to talk back to hyperbole and trivia.

For who hasn't driven to the store to find occupied all the regular parking spaces within a hundred yards while six handicapped spaces up front are vacant? And how much harm can be done by delaying by a few seconds a handicapped person's descent on a doughnut shop? Does anyone need doughnuts that badly? It's not the entrance to a hospital emergency room.

Of course there's the hypocrisy of it -- legislators making rules for others to follow while exempting themselves. But parking in a handicapped spot without a permit for a few minutes is the least of the hypocrisy of legislating in Connecticut.

If McGee had never parked improperly at the doughnut shop and thus had done nothing to distract from his record of following his party's line, which is to tax the private sector into oblivion to reward special interests in the name of helping the poor, who nevertheless somehow always grow more numerous, he wouldn't have been compelled to apologize for anything, everyone would still consider him a right honorable member, and the TV newscasts would have gone straight to the weather, reporting urgently that January remains cold and dark.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Sam Pizzigati: The cost of American inequality

 

Have you ever wondered what inequality costs the average American family?

That is, what price do we pay — in actual dollars and cents — for tolerating an economy fixated on pumping our treasure to the top?

That question has no simple answer.

How much, for instance, should we value an added year of life? We know — from hundreds of research studies over the years — that people live longer, healthier lives in more equal nations.

We also know that more equal societies have lower levels of mental illness, higher levels of trust, and fewer teenage pregnancies and homicides. Placing dollar signs on quality-of-life indicators like these can get complicated.

On the other hand, dollar signs do come easy when we’re talking about income and wealth.

The Economic Policy Institute has gone through one exercise along this line. How much income would middle-class Americans be making today, EPI researchers asked, if the United States had the same distribution of income now as our nation had back at the end of the 1970s?

The difference between now and then could hardly be starker. Since 1979, households in America’s top 1 percent have more than doubled their share of the nation’s income, from 8 to nearly 20 percent.

What if this increase in inequality had never happened? What if middle-class households were taking in the same share of the nation’s income they took in four decades ago?

EPI focused its calculations on 2007, the last year before the Great Recession. In that year, the average middle-class income in the United States — that is, the average for the middle 60 percent of American households — amounted to $76,443.

If America had been as equal in 2007 as it was in 1979, that average income would have been $94,310. In other words, inequality is costing the average American family about $18,000 a year.

But the global economy, some might argue, has changed fundamentally over the past four decades. Simple comparisons of then vs. now, they say, no longer tell us much.

For argument’s sake, let’s accept this rather dubious claim — and make a different comparison. Let’s contrast the wealth of ordinary Americans today with the wealth of ordinary people in a more equal country.

France makes for a good comparison. France and the United States, the Swiss bank Credit Suisse reported last fall, have about the same total wealth per adult.

If you divide the wealth of the United States by our adult population, that is, you end up with $347,845 per adult. If you do the same for France, you end up with $317,292 per adult.

Total equality, of course, reigns in neither France nor the United States. But if both nations divvied up their wealth on a totally equal basis, the average American would have slightly more wealth than the average person in France.

What do we actually see?

In France today, “median” adults — those with more wealth than the poorest half of France’s adult population but less wealth than the richest half — have $140,638 in net worth to their name. In the United States, by contrast, median adult wealth stands at a mere $53,352.

The bottom line? If the United States had as equal a distribution of wealth as France, typical American adults today would have almost triple their current net worth.

So how much does inequality cost America’s middle class? More than we realize. Much more.

Sam Pizzigati, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow and otherwords.org columnist, edits the inequality weekly Too Much. His latest book is The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970.

The joy of pessimism

"Debtris'' (video game), by ANTHONY MONTUORI, at New Art Center, Newtonville, Mass., in its current show "The Power of Negative Thinking,''  which celebrates the joys of pessimism.

The gallery says the seven featured artists "address some of the more unpleasant aspect of life, in seemingly delightful ways. They all create work that in some way challenges societal notions of happiness, through humor, avoidance or direct confrontation.''

Ariel Sullivan: Illegal procedure? Title IX and sexual assault

Via our friends at the New England Journal of Higher Education, part of the New England Board of Higher Education  (nebhe.org) BOSTON Florida State University quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston was recently cleared of sexual assault charges following the university’s two-day investigative hearing. The high-profile investigation was launched under Title IX, which requires schools to investigate such allegations even in the absence of criminal charges. Winston’s attorney immediately took to his Twitter account to share the news of the outcome—the finality of which is pending any appeal by the complainant—and provide the following emphasized excerpt from the hearing panel’s decision “In sum the preponderance of the evidence has not shown that you are responsible for  any of the charged violations of [FSU’s Misconduct] Code.”

While most institutions do not face such intense public interest and ongoing media coverage of their Title IX investigations—typically reserved for cases involving Division I athletes—many are scrutinized by their campus community and the media for the way that they respond, or fail to respond, to allegations of sexual assault. Tack on the fact that nearly 100 colleges and universities are currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for possible violations of Title IX, and the conclusion is clear: Colleges need to be better prepared to respond immediately and appropriately to complaints of student-on-student sexual violence in accordance with the law and their internal policies.

OCR attempted to provide guidance to help colleges comply with their Title IX obligations through a 45-page guidance document entitled “Questions and Answers on Title IX and Sexual Violence,” published on April 29, 2014. Since then, colleges have been scrambling to ensure compliance with this latest guidance and avoid becoming the subject of an OCR investigation. This one-sided approach leaves colleges vulnerable to claims of negligence and mistreatment by the accused, whose rights are barely recognized by OCR. Moreover, OCR’s guidance does not provide answers to the seemingly endless conundrums that arise in sexual violence cases, nor is it entirely consistent with other recently promulgated federal regulations. It is therefore of paramount importance that those in charge be capable of handling the competing interests that arise in responding to sexual violence complaints.

Best practices for college officials include:

• Be sensitive to the complainant’s emotions, needs and rights, while ensuring that the rights of the respondent are also met. One of the biggest risks colleges face in responding to sexual violence complaints is a subsequent claim or lawsuit by the complainant or the respondent. With regard to the complainant, such claims often stem from her perception that campus officials were not sensitive in the way that they spoke to the complainant throughout the process. OCR states that those in charge of responding to sexual violence complaints have training or experience working with and interviewing persons subjected to sexual violence, including the effects of trauma and associated neurobiological change, appropriate methods to communicate with students subjected to sexual violence, and cultural awareness regarding how sexual violence may impact students differently depending on their cultural backgrounds. By providing such training to those with responsibility for carrying out their Title IX procedures, colleges will help to ensure that appropriate sensitivity is employed in working with complainants. At the same time, they must ensure that their sensitivity toward the complainant does not infringe on the respondent’s right to a fair and impartial investigation, which is often the crux of subsequent claims brought by respondents.

• Employ interim measures to assist the complainant throughout the process, but ensure that the measures taken are reasonable and appropriate under the circumstances. For example, a complainant may ask the college to immediately suspend the respondent or bar the respondent from campus while the investigation is pending. Notably, such interim measures are not suggested in the OCR’s guidance. The practical approach is to employ such severe interim measures only in in the presence of aggravating factors such as the use of a weapon, threats of future violence, a group assault, or multiple claims against the same respondent.

• Be communicative and transparent about the complaint and the process, while remaining confidential and adhering to privacy laws. Like the sensitivity issue addressed above, subsequent claims arise from a perceived lack of communication regarding the process. Therefore, colleges should communicate with the complainant and respondent on a regular basis, and respond to their questions in an equal and impartial manner. At the same time, colleges should develop procedures for addressing concerns and inquiries from parents, students and the media related to Title IX investigations, in accordance with federal privacy laws and consistent with public relations objectives.

• Review and update Title IX policies in accordance with the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (“VAWA"), despite OCR’s suggestion to the contrary. OCR’s guidance insists that VAWA has no effect on a school’s obligations under Title IX. However, the final VAWA regulations published on Oct. 20, 2014, and effective July 1, 2015, indicate otherwise. Indeed, with regard to the presence of an advisor, the new VAWA regulations require colleges to allow both parties to be accompanied to any proceedings “by the advisor of their choice,” while OCR’s guidance merely states that if the college allows one party to have an advisor at the proceedings, it must do so equally for both parties.

• Develop and implement a memorandum of understanding (“MOU”) with local law enforcement that will allow the college to meet its Title IX obligations to resolve complaints of sexual violence promptly and equitably. The MOU should delineate responsibilities for responding to and investigating incidents and reports of sexual violence on and off campus, as well procedures for sharing information about students and employees who are the victim of, a witness to, or an alleged perpetrator of an offense of sexual violence.

As colleges bear more responsibility and are subjected to greater scrutiny than ever before in carrying out their obligations under Title IX, it is more important than ever for those in charge to follow these and other best practices to guide them in responding immediately and appropriately to reports of student-on-student sexual violence.

Ariel Sullivan is a partner in the Massachusetts law firm Bowditch & Dewey. She concentrates her practice in all aspects of labor and employment law.

Islamic civilizations in Toronto

 Readers will enjoy this piece about the new Aga Khan Museum, in Toronto. It's the first institution in North America devoted to what the museum calls  the “artistic, intellectual, and scientific heritage of Islamic civilizations.” (Note the plural -- civilizations.)

The Wall Street Journal says the museum has "300 or so items on display date from the eighth through the 19th centuries and come from as far west as Morocco and Spain and as far east as India, Indonesia and China, with Egypt, Turkey, Iran and other lands in between.''

The institution sh0ws the diversity within Islam -- something that's particularly important to do in these difficult days.

The Aga Khan, a descendent of the Prophet Mohammed, is the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims.

Connect the dots

  Left: ''Examined Repetition,'' by Wendy Wolf. Right:''Fuji,'' by Lyell Castonguay, at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, through January. Bromfield presents exhibitions by its two SOLO 2015 winners: "Feathery Devils" by Lyell Castonguay and "Examined Repetition" by Wendy Wolf. The gallery says:  ''Castonguay's monumental woodcuts turn birds into fierce predators. Wolf's ink drawings on Yupo transform automatic writing into meditation''.

Invisible menace

 

Fractures

This morning presented itself with those patches of black ice that that remind us the fragility of our bodies, especially as we age, and the thin line between the dignity of strolling along and the  humiliation of a fall, all too often in front of people. It may be the most dangerous condition in New England, excepting  perhaps a hurricane, because the menace is so hard to see, on the road and on sidewalks.

A real ice storm, which turns the trees into crystal, at least has great beauty and tells you not to venture out.

The black ice we had this morning is insidious.

It may be most perilous for people walking scamp dogs and for people of northern European ethnicity, who are most vulnerable to bone breaks.

-- Robert Whitcomb

Frank Carini: Rising waters threaten region's cultural treasures

Welcome to Boston

(FRANK CARINI is editor of ecoRI News )

Sea-level rise, more frequent and intense storms, and the subsequent flooding being caused by these climate-change impacts are putting U.S. historic sites at risk. The Cambridge-based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) lists Boston’s historic districts among the country’s most endangered.

History-rich and waterlogged southern New England needs to develop a plan on how to adequately protect the region’s many cultural resources and historic buildings from a rising tide of sea and flood waters.

The May 2014 UCS report that lists Boston among the 30 most at-risk historic areas across the country notes that the city is one of several along the East Coast experiencing more frequent and severe coastal flooding and more intense storm surges.

“You can almost trace the history of the United States through these sites,” said Adam Markham, director of climate impacts at UCS and the report’s co-author. “The imminent risks to these sites and the artifacts they contain threaten to pull apart the quilt that tells the story of the nation’s heritage and history.”

The 84-page report claims rising waters are a threat to Boston’s historic Long Wharf and to Blackstone Block — a compact district of narrow, winding streets and alleys dating to the 17th century.

Ten of the 20 highest tides in Boston during the past hundred years have occurred in the past decade, according to the report. Since 1921, when such record keeping began, the city has experienced waves 3.5 feet taller than normal 20 times, and half of those instances have occurred in the past 10 years.

In fact, high tides along the East Coast are getting, well, higher, largely because sea levels are increasing. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists have said these increases are the result of shifts in climate — the seas, on average, are 8 inches higher than a century ago. The result is the growing occurrence of flooding in coastal communities.

Had Sandy, the October 2012 superstorm that wreaked havoc on New York and New Jersey and damaged historic buildings and landscapes up and down the Mid-Atlantic coast, hit Boston about five hours earlier, at high tide, the damage to some of the city’s historic sites would have been severe.

The Blackstone Block of Colonial streets, for one, would have flooded, according to the Boston Harbor Association. An association report claims that nearly 7 percent of the city would have been flooded, with floodwaters reaching City Hall, had Sandy arrived earlier.

The additional destruction under this scenario would have significantly damaged Boston’s economy. Some 12 million tourists visit the city annually, generating about $8 billion for the local economy. Many visit to walk the Freedom Trail, browse Faneuil Hall, a U.S. National Historic Landmark, and dine in some of the country’s oldest restaurants.

In fact, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ranks Boston the eighth-highest metropolitan area worldwide in expected economic losses, estimated at $237 million annually, on average, between now and 2050, because of coastal flooding.

Boston, however, is hardly the only seaside southern New England community with a fine collection of historic attractions. Rising tides also threaten historical properties in Fall River, New Bedford, Providence, Wickford Village in North Kingstown, R.I., and Groton, Conn., among other places.

Cultural resources — i.e., libraries, archives, historical societies, museums, city/town halls and historic farms— are an important part of southern New England’s unique heritage. Their significance also includes the literary works, rare collections, manuscripts, historical archives, municipal records and artifacts they hold.

The Massachusetts seaside towns of Duxbury, Marshfield and Scituate are rich in New England history, and they’re also prone to flooding because of rising tides and heavier storm surges. In fact, the three South Shore communities in the past 35 years are collectively responsible for nearly $80 million in FEMA Flood Insurance claims — nearly a quarter of the state’s total, according to a recent study.

From 1978 to 2013, the three towns received a total of $78.3 million in flood-related claims, as compared to the total of $337.8 million for all of Massachusetts.

These communities are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise because of their extensive floodplains and estuaries that reach into inland areas. In addition, their densely populated shorelines are fronted by narrow and fragile coastal and barrier beaches that are exposed to high-energy surf from Massachusetts and Cape Cod bays.

They have all experienced extensive damage over the years from storm-related flooding, which is predicted to worsen in the years ahead.

The Brown Street Bridge and much of historic Wickford Village in North Kingstown, R.I., was inundated during Superstorm Sandy’s visit in 2012. (Photo from Coastal Resources Center at University of Rhode Island.)

The threat of rising seas, worsening storm surges and more frequent downpours arguably concerns Wickford more than any other historic district in southern New England.This small village on the west side of Narragansett Bay features one of the largest collections of 18th-century dwellings in the Northeast. Most of the village's historic homes and buildings — the majority privately owned — remain largely intact upon their original foundations.But rising waters are beginning to routinely lap against many of these old structures. A mid-August tidal surge, for instance, flooded a parking lot across the way from Gardner’s Wharf Seafood, turning the popular local business into a harbor island.

Grover Fugate, executive director of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), has warned that some projections show sea levels rising as much as 6 feet in the next 100 years. If that happens, he says much of Wickford Village would be lost.

A 6-foot rise would flood about 150 parcels of land in Wickford, as much as 5 percent of the town, according to a Rhode Island Sea Grant analysis. The value of the land that would be lost is some $80 million.

Wickford’s municipal parking lot already floods regularly at moon tides. During Sandy, the iconic village lost power, basements were flooded and septic systems overwhelmed. Street flooding turned some properties nearest Wickford Harbor into small islands.

With this historic village — regarded by many as the town’s heart and soul — so vulnerable to flooding, Rhode Island selected North Kingstown for a pilot project in a statewide effort to develop climate-change adaptation measures. One of the project’s first tasks was to map areas of North Kingstown vulnerable to sea-level rise and flooding and then identify priority at-risk infrastructure, buildings and assets in those areas.

It likely would take a massive engineering project to properly protect this harborside village. This prospect begs the same question municipal officials, historical societies and homeowners across southern New England are grappling with: “How do we protect our properties and these districts from climate change without sacrificing their cultural integrity?”

“How do we balance preserving the historical integrity of these homes and also get them out of the way?” Teresa Crean, a community planner and coastal management extension specialist with the Coastal Resources Center and Rhode Island Sea Grant, said during a “resiliency walk” she led along Wickford Harbor in October. “There’s little guidance currently that addresses how to deal with historic districts when it comes to climate change.”

Complex problem The complexities of coastal adaptation combined with little guidance from the federal government makes the problem of protecting historic districts from climate change all the more difficult.

To slow the rate of change and give archaeologists, historic preservationists and land managers more time to protect historic sites, carbon emissions must be reduced, according to last year’s UCS report. But even if we manage to reduce our carbon emissions, much of the change is already locked in, according to accepted science.

In Boston, where many properties are close to sea level and many areas were originally wetlands filled for development, the Harbor Association has suggested, among other things, that the city consider making room for the encroaching waters with canals and/or lagoons.

A 117-page study released in July 2013 entitled “Building Resilience in Boston: Best Practices for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience for Existing Buildings” offers experts’ recommendations for property owners in preparing for emergencies related to climate change.

Many of the techniques that are available to protect properties and/or districts are costly and/or don’t mesh with historic-district rules. Elevating a home, for example, can cost upwards of $150,000, according to Crean. She noted that in The Point neighborhood of Newport, R.I., which has one of the highest concentrations of Colonial homes in the United States, some homeowners have elevated their property to get out of the flood zone.

“But then there’s the ongoing discussion on consistency and what historic district commissions will allow,” Crean said.

Across southern New England such discussions have already become heated. Like most issues related to climate change, it’s difficult for some to even admit there’s a problem. Add historic district to the equation, and the issue becomes even more complicated.

Two years ago, Newport banned wind turbines from most of the city. Local officials were particularly concerned about property owners erecting small turbines anywhere in the city’s historic neighborhoods.

That same City Council concern, however, didn’t transfer to the power lines that connect the old homes in these neighborhoods to utility poles, or to satellite-TV dishes.

Just like the debate, often heated, that surrounds what is allowed in these historic neighborhoods, the conversation about how to protect them from climate change will likely be even more contentious.

Among the issues that will likely be hotly debated will be septic systems. To see how divisive the issue of cesspool phaseout and connection to municipal sewer can be, look no further than Warwick, R.I.

Much of the public opposition there comes from homeowners who are concerned about cost. Others have said, incorrectly, that if a cesspool — which is nothing more than a perforated steel bucket buried in a shallow pit or a covered pit lined with unmortared brick or stone — is properly maintained it will last forever. Some opponents against having to connect to the city’s sewer system have called the idea a tax; others have called it extortion.

Similar opposition has been heard in other communities in the region, such as Portsmouth, R.I.

In North Kingstown, however, most of the town is scheduled to be sewered by 2017, but Wickford will not be, and property owners there will be required to upgrade failing septic systems, which are typically expensive projects.

“At what point do you allow properties to be occupied when you can’t flush a toilet?” Crean asked. “It’s another tough question we’re struggling with, to honor property rights and investments made and to protect public safety and health.”

There are homes in historic districts in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, such as Wickford, and Connecticut that can’t flush their toilets now after heavy rains, for fear of popping the caps off their inundated cesspools or septic tanks.

In fact, climate-change impacts will likely increase groundwater elevations in southern New England’s coastal areas, which could potentially impact underground infrastructure, such as septic tanks and cesspools, commonly found in historic districts.

Protecting the region’s historic properties from the rising waters of climate change will take planning, funding, compromise and sacrifice. It will be considerably more difficult than simply enacting a plastic shopping bag ban, and we’ve seen how punishing that endeavor has become.

Impacts to historical/cultural resources from climate change range from coastal erosion and storm damage to the effects of increased flooding, melting permafrost and more rapid deterioration because of changing rain and temperature patterns, according to the National Park Service.

To properly protect the country’s inventory of these resources, the federal agency has noted:

Cultural resources can’t be managed in isolation; natural resources and the surrounding landscape must be taken into account.

A national inventory and prioritization of vulnerable sites is needed to assess the uniqueness of these sites.

A time frame for adaptation strategies needs to established.

A resource in poor condition due to deferred maintenance or insufficient funding has a different kind of vulnerability.

There is no natural hierarchy or sequence for the criteria; they should be assessed as more of a matrix that will vary site to site.

To incorporate many of the possible solutions will likely require zoning changes and embracing best technologies. For instance, would municipal zoning and/or historic-district guidelines allow for the use of composting toilets? Would home owners be interested in installing them?

Also, utilities in most historic homes are in the basement and vulnerable to flooding. Where can they be moved to better withstand increased flooding that climate change is expected to cause?

Can solar panels and wind turbines be tastefully incorporated onto historic buildings? Will green roofs be allowed in historic districts?

“Zoning needs to catch up with new technologies and best practices,” Crean said. “But a lot of agencies aren’t even on the same page.”

As Crean noted during the October tour of Wickford Village, one thing is for sure, “The longer we wait to address this problem, the more expensive the solutions become.”

Both financially and culturally.

---

Yankee Kingdom

 

North of here today, painting by NANCY WHITCOMB

Je suis faux? Charlie Hebdo video

This allegedly censored video on the Charlie Hebdo  massacre raises conspiracy questions. Perhaps.  

The lure of the local

"Peaches,'' by OLLIE BALF,  in the show "Montserrat College of Art Founders Exhibition,'' at Rocky Neck Art Colony,  Gloucester, Mass. through Jan. 15.

Yes, there's plenty of produce available in New England that's shipped here year round by train,  truck and rail  (and kept fresh via freon and refrigeration) from far away. But it's never as delicious as the fruits and vegetables from New England from May to October.

I sometimes envy our younger daughter in Southern California (who works for a fresh-food company called Good Eggs) who has access to fresh, locavore produce year round.

---- Robert Whitcomb

'The January thaw'

Usually starting this week, there's the beloved (except by skiers)   phenomenon known as the "January thaw,'' in which springlike temperatures, in the 50's, give us a touch of, well, spring fever in New England. This is actually substantiated by meteorological data. The January thaw used to occur on a fairly reliable basis, though it seems that we have missed some in the past few years as it has stayed frigid through the month.

After the usual January thaw, the temperature falls again for a week or two before starting its erratic ascent toward real spring. The January thaw may be transient but it's a nice reminder that comfort lies ahead, though snowdrifts may block the view for a while and fractures await us on icy sidewalks.

Robert Whitcomb: Another trap in the energy cycles

A few years ago I co-wrote a book, with Wendy Williams, about a controversy centered on Nantucket Sound. The quasi-social comedy, called Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Energy, Class, Politics and the Battle for Our Energy Future, told of how, since 2001, a company led by entrepreneur James Gordon has struggled to put up a wind farm in the sound in the face of opposition from the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound — a long name for fossil-fuel billionaire Bill Koch, a member of the famous right-wing Republican family.  An amusing movie, Cape Spin,  directed by John Kirby and produced by Libby Handros, came out of this saga, too. Mr. Koch's houses include a summer mansion in Osterville, Mass., from which he doesn’t want to see wind turbines on his southern horizon on clear days.

Mr. Koch may now have won the battle, as very rich people usually do. Two big utilities, National Grid and Northeast Utilities, are trying to bail out of a politicized plan, which they never liked, forcing them to buy Cape Wind electricity. They cite the fact that the company missed the Dec. 31, 2014, deadline in contracts signed in 2012 to obtain financing and start construction. Cape Wind said it doesn’t “regard these terminations as valid” since, it asserts, the contracts let the utilities’ contracts be extended because of the alliance’s “unprecedented and relentless litigation.” Bill Koch has virtually unlimited funds to pay lawyers to litigate unto the Second Coming, aided by imaginative rhetoric supplied by his  very smart and well paid pit-bull  anti-Cape Wind spokeswoman, Audra Parker,  even though the project has won all regulatory approvals.

It's no secret that it has gotten harder and harder to do big projects in the United States because of endless litigation and ever more layers of regulation. Thus our physical infrastructure --- electrical grid, transportation and so on -- continues to fall behind our friendly competitors, say in the European Union and Japan, and our not-so-friendly competitors, especially in China. Read my friend Philip K. Howard's latest book, The Rule of Nobody, on this.

With the death of Cape Wind, New Englanders would lose what could have helped diversify the region’s energy mix — and smooth out price and supply swings — with home-grown, renewable electricity. Cape Wind is far from a panacea for the region’s dependence on natural gas, oil and nuclear, but it would add a tad more security.

Some of Cape Wind’s foes will say that the natural gas from fracking will take care of everything. But New England lacks adequate natural-gas pipeline capacity, to no small extent because affluent people along the routes hold up their construction. And NIMBYs (not in my backyard) have also blocked efforts to bring in more Canadian hydro-electric power. So our electricity rates are soaring, even as many of those who complain about the rates also fight any attempt to put new energy infrastructure near them. As for nuclear, it seems too politically incorrect for it to be expanded again in New England.

Meanwhile, the drawbacks to fracking, including water pollution and earthquakes in fracked countryside, are becoming more obvious. And the gas reserves may well be exaggerated. I support fracking anyway, since it means less use of oil and coal and because much of the gas is nearby, in Pennsylvania. (New York, however, recently banned fracking.)

Get ready for brownouts and higher electricity bills. As for oil prices, they are low now, but I have seen many, many energy price cycles over the last 45 years of watching the sector. And they often come with little warning. But meanwhile, many Americans, with ever-worsening amnesia, flock to buy SUV's again.

Robert Whitcomb oversees New England Diary.

The Poseidon adventure

 

Bronze horse figurine (solid cast, with stamped and incised decoration), made in 8th Century B.C. Greece. It's owned by the Tampa Museum of Art but now will be in the ''Poseidon and the Sea: Myth, Cult, and Daily Life'' show at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., through May.

Poseidon was the Greek god of the sea and known as Neptune to the Romans. Oddly, Poseidon was said to have dominion over horses as well as more marine things. These creature looks a  bit like a sea horse.

Beautiful sea-green verdigris on the bronze!

Surprised

 

The brightness of the sun today makes you forget for a few seconds how cold it is.  A sort of euphoria springs up unexpectedly.