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By David Morris, AlterNet. Posted June 6, 2009.
The new climate bill exeAn equally important political truth is that the cap-and-trade provisions are unnecessary. For while the Democrats have begun to embrace anti-regulation, market-based strategies, the evidence is clear that virtually all of the progress we’ve made in building a clean-energy society has been achieved a result of command-and-control policies. The new federal vehicle fuel-efficiency mandate is a case in point. It alone could achieve about a third of the Act’s greenhouse-gas reduction goals by 2020. And the impact could potentially be even greater because the federal government has given California the right to significantly raise those standards, something it may do as early as 2016, with the real prospect of 10 to 15 states following its lead. Another federal mandate will increase the efficiency of light bulbs, and that could have a significant impact on GHG emissions. Over 50 percent of greenhouse gases that are generated by commercial buildings, for example, come from lighting those buildings. The only sections of this bill worth saving are its few mandates, as hobbled as they are by Republican intervention. These include the nation’s first renewable-electricity mandate, although in return for allowing this command-and-control provision into the bill, Republicans and some Democrats who vote Republican when it comes to taking on big corporations, managed to so neuter the mandate that it could be satisfied if just 12 percent of the nation’s electricity is generated by renewable energy by 2020. That level will probably be achieved by the collective renewable electricity mandates already enacted by 28 states and the District of Columbia. Another mandate in the bill requires new coal plants to reduce their CO2 emissions to levels so low that they could only be achieved with carbon capture-and-sequestration systems. However, again in return for Republican support (and that of Democrats from coal states), the provision affects only those coal plants permitted after 2020, several political lifetimes into the future. Nevertheless, it does send an important signal to the coal industry. A largely overlooked but potentially very important provision of the bill will create our first national energy-related building code. The code will be far more energy-efficient than those in effect today, and all states and localities are mandated to make their own codes as energy efficient as the federal code. If this provision passes, more than 40 states will immediately have to dramatically upgrade their building codes and continuously improve them from 2014 onward. Most environmental leaders and Democratic Party officials argue that we should support this bill no matter how imperfect because it represents an important, small step forward. Strip it of its cap-and-trade provisions and I would agree. Retain the cap-and-trade provisions and I see it as a giant step backward that may well hobble further progress in federal efforts to combat climate change for years to come.mplifies a Republican approach: Don’t tell polluters what to do, bribe them and hope they do what you want.
“Command and control” is a military term the Republicans long ago appropriated to caricature and condemn Democratic programs. Republicans like to contrast the Democrats’ embrace of a command and control, regulation-based you-will-do-as-I-say-or-else strategy with their own, presumably, more effective market-based we-will-make-it-worthwhile-for-you-to-do-what-we-want approach.
Nowhere is the phrase “command and control” used more often and with more passion than when Republicans attack environmental regulation. The 2008 Republican Party platform, for example, declares, “Republicans caution against the doomsday climate change scenarios peddled by the aficionados of centralized command-and-control government.”
Well, when it comes to climate change policy making, the Republican Party can justly claim a major victory for its philosophy. We may have a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, but the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 recently passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is very much a Republican bill characterized by a paucity of sticks and a plethora of carrots.
In fact, President Barack Obama has publicly described the bill as his and the Democrats’ preferred alternative to regulation. Without the bill, he has threatened, the EPA will directly regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, a power it was given by the Supreme Court in 2007 and which it announced it would exercise in April 2009. Indeed, the bill specifically prohibits Obama’s EPA from regulating these emissions.
The bill’s carbon-cap-and-trade provisions are by all reports its heart and soul. They exemplify a Republican approach: Don’t tell polluters what to do, bribe them and hope they do what you want. Democrats have faked left and gone right.
The bill looks to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by about 1 billion tons by 2020 and then gives away over 1 billion tons of carbon allowance to polluters free of charge. And then, adding insult to injury, it allows polluters to purchase 2 billion tons of carbon offsets, three-quarters of which could come from overseas. In other words, companies could satisfy the Act’s provisions without reducing greenhouse-gas emissions within the United States at all, by buying offsets from other countries that will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to monitor!
To be successful, a market-based strategy must raise the price of carbon sufficiently to change corporate and personal behavior. But the bill clearly demonstrates the lack of political will in Washington to impose such a dramatic price increase. Indeed, the bill explicitly notes that the purpose for rewarding free allowances in such enormous quantities is to mitigate price increases.
As a result, the EPA estimates the bill would raise the price of a gallon of gasoline by about 20 cents. No one can suggest with a straight face that such a trivial price increase will change driving habits.
The plain truth is that the cap-and-trade provisions of the bill are ineffectual. They may even be pernicious because they would lock us into a convoluted and largely unworkable Republican-inspired global cap-and-trade architecture and a massive pollution permit giveaway program from which it will become increasingly difficult for us to extricate ourselves in the coming years.
An equally important political truth is that the cap-and-trade provisions are unnecessary. For while the Democrats have begun to embrace anti-regulation, market-based strategies, the evidence is clear that virtually all of the progress we’ve made in building a clean-energy society has been achieved a result of command-and-control policies.
The new federal vehicle fuel-efficiency mandate is a case in point. It alone could achieve about a third of the Act’s greenhouse-gas reduction goals by 2020. And the impact could potentially be even greater because the federal government has given California the right to significantly raise those standards, something it may do as early as 2016, with the real prospect of 10 to 15 states following its lead.
Another federal mandate will increase the efficiency of light bulbs, and that could have a significant impact on GHG emissions. Over 50 percent of greenhouse gases that are generated by commercial buildings, for example, come from lighting those buildings.
The only sections of this bill worth saving are its few mandates, as hobbled as they are by Republican intervention. These include the nation’s first renewable-electricity mandate, although in return for allowing this command-and-control provision into the bill, Republicans and some Democrats who vote Republican when it comes to taking on big corporations, managed to so neuter the mandate that it could be satisfied if just 12 percent of the nation’s electricity is generated by renewable energy by 2020. That level will probably be achieved by the collective renewable electricity mandates already enacted by 28 states and the District of Columbia.
Another mandate in the bill requires new coal plants to reduce their CO2 emissions to levels so low that they could only be achieved with carbon capture-and-sequestration systems. However, again in return for Republican support (and that of Democrats from coal states), the provision affects only those coal plants permitted after 2020, several political lifetimes into the future. Nevertheless, it does send an important signal to the coal industry.
A largely overlooked but potentially very important provision of the bill will create our first national energy-related building code. The code will be far more energy-efficient than those in effect today, and all states and localities are mandated to make their own codes as energy efficient as the federal code. If this provision passes, more than 40 states will immediately have to dramatically upgrade their building codes and continuously improve them from 2014 onward.
Most environmental leaders and Democratic Party officials argue that we should support this bill no matter how imperfect because it represents an important, small step forward. Strip it of its cap-and-trade provisions and I would agree. Retain the cap-and-trade provisions and I see it as a giant step backward that may well hobble further progress in federal efforts to combat climate change for years to come.
Source: http://www.alternet.org/environment/140483/why_does_the_much-touted_climate_bill_look_like_it_was_stolen_from_the_republican_playbook/?obref=obinsite
By Daphne Wysham, Institute for Policy Studies. Posted July 28, 2009.
The new energy bill would strip EPA of its power and let polluters take the reins with a market-based system.
On February 17, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did something audacious that sent shockwaves throughout the coal industry: Lisa Jackson, the agency’s administrator, announced that it would take a fresh look at a Bush administration memo preventing the regulation of CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants and other sources.
Simply stating she was going to reconsider former EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson’s December 18, 2008, memorandum was enough to put at least 17 coal-fired power plants currently in the pipeline on hold. These power plants, had they been approved, would have produced roughly 12,000 megawatts of power — enough to provide the needs of 3.6 million homes — and released about 84 million tons of CO2 per year.
What does this mean? Let’s put it in context: 84 million tons of CO2 is roughly equivalent to 2 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and about 4 percent of all emissions from electricity the United States produced in 2007. In other words, the mere threat of regulation meant a previously expected 2 percent increase in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions was suddenly much less certain.
This promising signal was just one of several from the Obama administration’s earliest days. Sadly, the word now from the White House is that President Barack Obama wants Congress to send him a “market-based cap” on greenhouse gas emissions. Ironically, it’s that market-based approach — and all that goes with it — that may actually rob the administration of its most powerful tool in this battle for climate stability: EPA regulation.
Now, Obama is getting what he asked for: In June, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, otherwise known as the Waxman-Markey bill. This legislation pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 2 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 — if all goes well. But there’s a lot that could go wrong.
As a tradeoff to gain support from industry for this bill, lawmakers have agreed to strip the EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from all power plants, including coal burners, under the Clean Air Act. In place of regulatory oversight, the bill allows for a free market in pollution allowances between industries. Put simply, coal-fired power plants and other large burners of energy would have a “right to pollute,” which they could buy and sell with other large consumers of energy. And because these pollution rights have a cash value and would be given away for free over the next several decades, polluters will make a handsome profit from their pollution.
EPA’s weakened authority is just the first of several bonuses for polluters. Under the Waxman-Markey bill, polluters could purchase carbon “offsets” — 2 billion tons of them each year — should they not be able to meet their cap in greenhouse gas emissions via reductions or carbon trades.
Regulated carbon reductions at power plants are the optimal-value approach: straightforward, uncomplicated, easy to quantify. Next down the value chain would be carbon trades, where Polluter A, who has exceeded his pollution target, trades with Polluter B, who has reduced his pollution by more than is required by law. Polluter A might find it too expensive to reduce his pollution according to strict regulations, so pays Polluter B for the right to claim Polluter B’s share of pollution reductions.
Further down the value chain would come carbon offsets, a sort of “subprime” carbon trade. If Polluter A finds trading with Polluter B to be too challenging, Polluter A can instead claim carbon credits by buying carbon offsets.. A carbon offset is “subprime” because, unlike an emissions reduction, it is hard to prove it would not have taken place anyway. For example, some carbon offsets are claimed from methane that is captured and burned at a waste dump, transforming it into carbon dioxide, a less potent global warming agent. Other carbon offset sellers claim they are sequestering CO2 in fast-growing eucalyptus plantations — and claim that this CO2, which would otherwise be emitted in the air, is now being stored in trees. But local regulations often require waste dumps to burn their methane. And trees grow (and die) without intervention from humans.
If the climate bill passes in its current form, this “subprime carbon” market would explode, while the optimal regulatory approach would wither. The Waxman-Markey bill would allow polluters to “offset” their emissions via these questionable commodities, and even to bank their pollution allowances — meaning, if they “underpollute” one year, they are free to “overpollute” the next, so long as the difference between the two approximates their annual target. This banking of emissions credits, coupled with so many carbon offsets, invites market speculators (those who bet on the future price of a commodity) and derivatives traders to turn our planet’s carbon cycling capacity into a lucrative investment opportunity.
To make matters worse, in a bid to win passage of the bill, on June 23 the House Agriculture Committee succeeded in ensuring that the Department of Agriculture would wield oversight over carbon offsets generated by the agricultural industry, rather than the EPA. In the offsets world, agricultural offsets are akin to “junk carbon.” Why?
First, because CO2 in this industry doesn’t come out of a smokestack or a tailpipe. It comes from soil, application of certain fertilizers, and animals’ front and back ends. Handing oversight of this amorphous market in flatulence and other gases to the USDA, which is notoriously cozy with corporate farming interests, all but assures we’ll be minting yet more money for agribusiness, which already reaps billions of dollars every year in farm subsidies. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Energy Information Administration estimated that the market for agricultural offsets could total up to $24 billion annually. That sum would dwarf all other U.S. farm subsidies combined.
Second, because about 1,000 additional workers would need to be hired just to oversee these offsets, it would create an untenable bureaucracy.
Recent studies suggest these 2 billion tons of offsets — rather than having “integrity,” as Waxman and Markey had pledged — will instead become the “counterfeit” carbon so many climate activists feared would overload the system.
As the bill proceeds through the Senate for markup, EPA authority should be restored. Remember, the mere threat of regulation from the EPA didn’t require offsets, markets in carbon futures, or SEC bureaucracy to deliver a staggering result: A 2 percent increase in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions stalled.
Furthermore, if “junk” agricultural offsets are allowed, the EPA — not the USDA — should oversee these trades to avoid the inevitable pressure from agribusiness to turn offsets into yet another subsidy for business as usual.
But Obama should go one step further than simply restoring EPA authority to its rightful place. He should make the case for an even stronger EPA, one that could cut U.S. coal-fired power plant emissions by over 50 percent by simply requiring that all coal burners be retrofitted to burn natural gas. A stronger EPA could weigh in with a louder voice and ensure that no more of our taxpayer dollars subsidize climate change via our development banks and export credit agencies. A stronger EPA could be empowered to better implement the many international treaties we are already signatory to — such as the UN Convention on Biological Diversity or the UN Convention to Combat Desertification — treaties that could help us take bold action on climate change internationally, even in the absence of a strong outcome at the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December.
If we took a regulatory approach, instead of a “market-based” one, or, at the very least, if we didn’t scrap our strongest regulatory tools and removed the “subprime” and “junk” carbon from the mix, we might actually get this problem solved. Now there’s something truly audacious.
Daphne Wysham is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C., where she is the director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network.
Source: http://www.alternet.org/environment/141612/why_epa%2C_not_coal_burners%2C_should_be_in_charge_on_climate_change?obref=obinsite
By Peter N. Spotts, Christian Science Monitor. Posted June 2, 2009.
This week, negotiators from 182 countries meet in Bonn, Germany to lay the groundwork for a post-Kyoto climate regime.
A two-year march toward a new treaty to combat global warming is pausing briefly in Bonn to give negotiators from 182 countries their first crack at tackling a rough draft of an agreement.
Despite differences over some difficult issues, there is cautious optimism that negotiators could make progress especially now that the US is playing what many see as a more constructive role than it did under the Bush administration.
Over the next two weeks, country representatives will debate and overhaul as much of a 53-page “negotiating text” as they can to get a draft pact ready for government ministers to consider in December at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) annual “conference of the parties” in Copenhagen.
The ultimate goal is to produce a new agreement that will cover developing as well as developed countries and will pick up where 1997 Kyoto Protocol leaves off. The protocol’s first — and so far, only – enforcement period ends in 2012. The protocol, which formally took force last year, calls on industrial countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by a combined average of 5.5 percent below 1990 levels.
The timetable and topics the new treaty must cover were set out at global climate talks in Bali in 2007. The Bali Roadmap envisioned a draft treaty that would be ready for consideration in Copenhagen, but now, UN officials speak in terms of an “agreed outcome” or talks leading to “a result” in the Danish capital.
Still, negotiations that began today in Bonn “represents a significant new step in the talks,” said Yvo de Boer, the UNFCCC’s executive secretary, at a briefing Monday. “Governments have on the table for the first time real negotiating text, which can serves as the basis for drafting an agreed outcome in Copenhagen.”
How would he define success at December’s meeting? First, an agreement must be clear about how much industrial countries aim to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020, Mr. de Boer said.
Then, it must be clear on what major developing countries — China, India, Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa — will do to limit the growth of their emissions. It must be clear about providing stable and predictable sources of money for adaptation measures in the developing world and for aid in buying the green technologies that will help those countries meet their emissions goals. And it must be clear on how the financial institutions that provide that money will be governed.
Developing countries argue that they have no representatives on the governing boards of any of the climate-related funding agencies currently set up to serve them.
US back in the game
Not surprisingly, the top item on Mr. de Boer’s list — emissions reductions from developed countries — remains one of the most contentious.
In Bali, industrial countries minus the US “agreed in principle to reduce emission by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020,” notes Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. As with Kyoto targets, that’s an average across all industrial countries.
Now the US is back in the game, but the Obama administration speaks of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The energy legislation that cleared the US House Energy and Commerce Committee last month would reduce emissions anywhere from1 percent below 1990 levels to 23 percent below, depending on how aggressively some of its provisions are used, according to calculations by the World Resources Institute in Washington.
By contrast, Europe aims to reduce emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and would sweeten the pot by dropping emissions to 30 percent of 1990 levels if other industrial nations took on aggressive 2020 targets.
Japan is currently weighing its 2020 targets, with proposals ranging from 4 percent above 1990 levels to 25 percent below 1990, Mr. Meyer says. And Australia is reportedly shooting for 25 percent if several conditions are met.
So far, the goal has been to put emissions on a path that would limit the average rise in global temperatures to about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by century’s end. Based on the 2007 reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that amount of warming implies stabilizing greenhouse-gas concentrations at 450 parts per million (ppm). But some atmospheric researchers have since argued that to avoid dangerous human effect on climate, emissions must be stabilized at or below 350 ppm. Currently, the concentration of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse-gas posing the biggest concern, stands at 387 ppm.
Will emission cuts be enough?
The different targets and the various options for reaching them will make for an interesting conversation, Mr. Meyer says wryly. And a crucial one: Industrial countries currently covered by the Kyoto Protocol are unlikely to clamp down further on emissions unless they are satisfied with the changes the US and developing countries are willing to undertake.
With six weeks’ worth of negotiating time left, it’s likely that some of the financial issues could get ironed out first, analysts say, with the tougher issues of emissions and developing-country involvement coming later.
The UNFCCC’s de Boer says improvements in the negotiating climate give him confidence of a Copenhagen agreement. Among other things, the US is moving ahead with domestic legislation, which embraces many of the elements the Kyoto Protocol contains.
But he also strikes a cautionary note. At the last full set of talks in Poznan, Poland, late last fall, he suggested that the Copenhagen talks would fail if an agreement didn’t include deep additional cuts in emissions. The last IPCC report set out various temperature scenarios with differing concentrations of greenhouse-gases in the atmosphere and what it would take to stabilize them at each level. The greenhouse-gas levels with the highest likelihood of dodging dangerous human effects on climate involved deep cuts by industrial countries by 2020 and 2050, and a substantial change from “business as usual” in the developing world.
Do the proposals currently on the table include cuts deep enough to make Copenhagen a success? “No, they don’t amount to enough,” de Boer replied. The key challenge for negotiators, he says, is “raising the level of ambition.”
Source: http://www.alternet.org/environment/140411/world%27s_next_big_climate_pact_begins_to_take_shape_/?obref=obnetwork
By John Laumer, TreeHugger. Posted September 28, 2009.
Four hundred competing labels is a near-perfect way to devalue the whole idea.
Certification seals, consumer familiarity or “recognition.” Image credit:BBMG
The market research group BBMG just reported on his year’s annual survey of green consumer attitudes. Questions were asked to determine recognition of 13 of the estimated 400+ green labels already out there. Two thousand adult consumers were polled. Recognition was strongest for government sponsored, single attribute labels and weaker for non-government marks, as pictured. BBMG conclude that too-numerous labels might confuse consumers. Ya think? Four hundred competing labels is a near-perfect way to devalue the whole idea. Green Globes and Green Leaves: every body’s got ‘em. Makes me wonder if industries in opposition are donating money to label originators.
Durable goods makers contribute to label proliferation, as more brands come up with their own.
The smaller the physical product, the more likely that “label clutter” will contribute to consumer discouragement. Look on the back of your cell phone, under the battery, for an example of label clutter.
It gets worse.
Some green labels are well known single attribute: like USDA Organic and Energy Star. These are among the most widely recognized and trusted. Others are multi-attribute composites no one ever heard of.
Some labels issue a certification based on a proprietary index. Some rely on subjective judgments offered by PhD’s, lurking behind the web address where manufacturers send their payment checks. Other certifiers are entirely transparent. But, transparency may not do enough to improve consumer understanding.
Some require expensive life cycle inventories all the time; others, only some of the time.
Most don’t deal with carbon footprints. But, there is a movement to label “green buildings” as if they were organic foods to be eaten.
Some print their standards in English. Some don’t. I don’t read Japanese.
The EU is supposed to consolidate all the older national green labels under a single banner; but, don’t hold your breath waiting. There’s an undercurrent of “eco-nationalism” that tends to keep the branding separated. This exists not just in the European countries, but: pretty much everywhere but the USA . The USA only has a couple of prominent ones and they are very simplistic and inexpensive.
For how many years have these green labels been a-blossoming and changing? At least two decades. In another decade, we might have at least 500 green labels if we are lucky. Surely that will halt climate change in its tracks.
Source: http://www.alternet.org/environment/142949/can_400_green_labels_do_anything_but_confuse_the_world%27s_consumers/
By Liz Langley, AlterNet. Posted September 26, 2009.
We use enough deodorizers to ensure that we don’t smell remotely organic, and yet we can’t even keep our own heinies clean? What’s a first-world country to do?
So, do you ever feel … not so fresh?
This question is traditionally asked by young women of their mom’s on boats in douche ads, but this one is directed at everybody and the answer is probably “Yes.”
Whether it’s from being hermetically sealed in pantyhose all day, from sweating inside wooly winter wear or dripping with summer heat, feeling no-so-fresh is easier than the acres of body care products in the store would suggest.
And the fact is that most Americans aren’t as clean as they imagine themselves to be. We pay catlike attention to grooming, and yet all that Purell-ing sort of fades at the thought that we’re walking around with our nether regions shmeared with — there’s no nice way to say it — poop.
So, how can this be if Americans use about 36.5 billion rolls of toilet paper a year?
Well, Newsweek’s Smart List reported in August that “… a classic survey showed that half of TP users spend their days with ‘fecal contamination’ — anything from ‘wasp-colored’ stains to ‘frank massive feces’ — in their underpants.”
AlI can say, with pride in my award-winning writing skills is “Eeeeeeeeeewwwwww!” We use enough deodorizers to ensure that we don’t smell remotely organic, and yet we can’t even keep our own heinies clean? What’s a first-world country to do?
Well, we could get off our questionably groomed butts and try setting them on a bidet, a simple plumbing fixture the sprays the anal and genital areas with water, providing what some consider a far more thorough clean than dry toilet paper on its own. Bidets are common in other parts of the world, but they’re far from de riguer in America.
“It’s unthinkable for me … that people go around with, basically, feces smeared all over their butts — that’s the best that toilet paper can do,” said William Bruneau, author of The Bidet Book, possibly the only volume on the subject. “Using a bidet, our body is completely washed back there.”
Bruneau wanted to put in a classic French bidet when building his house, but building codes wouldn’t allow it. “I was crushed,” he said. But then, when they were putting in a kitchen sink and a vegetable sprayer he got another idea. “I had them attach a thing to the toilet so I could put a sprayer in there — and I thought ‘This is a great idea!’ ” He thought of writing a book on the subject of the inexpensive bidet and “found out there are a zillion portable bidets” on the market.
He’s right. Google “bidet” and you’ll find a bewildering number of sales sites with bidets that come in many varieties, with all kinds of features. The classic French model (the French are credited with introducing them in the 1700s, according to ehow.com) is a stand-alone basin, like a low sink.
Today, there are models that attach easily to an existing toilet, some of which have temperature controls and blow dryers. The Infrastructurist says (in a story called “What Do Americans Have Against Awesome Toilets?”) that “a typical Japanese loo” will do all kinds of tasks: spraying front-to-back, performing medical urine tests, providing a nightlight and playing the sounds of “a soothing waterfall or birdsong soundtrack to drown out embarrassing noises.”
On a quick trip to Home Depot, I found two models, Blue Bidet and Go Bidet, prominently displayed on endcaps for $99 each and promising easy installation. Even cheaper portable and travel models can be found online for the germaphobe on-the-go or just anyone who wants to take the clean with them.
Bruneau’s DIY model, by the way, is still spraying, nine years after installation.
Speaking of clean, let’s talk about toilet paper. Of course it has its merits, but if dry paper always worked perfectly well, why would we need the adult wet wipes that are stocked right there in the toilet paper aisle? Because a little extra water can go a long way.
In researching bidets, one thing I found was a Suite 101 article on pruritius ani, a condition characterized by perennial anal itching, for which author Dr. Hanish Babu suggets avoidance of dry toilet paper and washing with a bidet, patting dry with soft TP.
Bruneau cites that for people with hemorrhoids, who are pregnant or have other conditions, bidets can be a great help. The elderly, he says, whot may not have the physical or mental ability to ensure their own cleanliness could be greatly helped by bidets, as could their caregivers. They’re also good for rinsing off after sex, an excellent hygienic practice.
So, they’re clean. But are they green?
In 2008, Chris Baskind wrote in Eco Tech Daily that the bidet is a greener way to go, but for smaller, more complex reasons than you might guess.
Interestingly, he says it’s not about eliminating TP use, but saving water, which you would think a bidet would use more of.
“Yes,” Baskind wrote, “a bidet uses treated water, an increasingly precious commodity. But it uses less than that utilized in the production of even recycled toilet paper — and a fraction of the amount consumed by virgin pulp.” (The whole story is worth a read).
“In 2001,” Bruneau said, “we were producing 100 million rolls of toilet paper a day — we spend $4 billion a year on purchasing toilet paper, and to produce that toilet paper we use 473 billion gallons of water, so using a bidet, you waste a little water, but if you didn’t purchase this toilet paper,” you would end up using less water.
Newsweek said, “Tossing all the TP in America would save 15 million trees, 17.3 terawatts of electricity and more than 473 billion gallons of water annually; the environmental impact of bidets is minimal in comparison.”
But can you really eliminate the use of toilet paper, even with a state-of-the-art bidet? I’m about to literally put my ass on the line and find out.
You have to admit it takes stones the size of Granny Smith’s to ask a total stranger if you can come wash your butt at their house, no matter how charming that butt may be.
Well, you have to do what you can for a story, and this story was my idea. I live in Florida, where relentless, drenching humidity means “fresh” is not an option, yeast infections are always lurking, and I thought how great a bidet would be for getting clean without having to jump into the shower/bathtub to do it, using a ton of water when a little would help.
But I haven’t actually used a bidet since my first trip to Europe in 1992. My friends explained the foreign fixutre to me, and I tried it gingerly, suspecting them of lying just to see if I’d actually rinse my junk off in what might, for all I know, be a dog bowl (I have trust issues).
Lucky for me, an unbelievably good sport named Mark Hill who lives in Orlando, has a bidet, swears by it and was nice enough to allow me to try it. Hill assures me that it’s a major attraction among friends and neighbors. “Any time during a party everybody ends up there,” he said, meaning the upstairs bathroom where dancing waters await.
Hill hands me a instructional card for the state-of-the-art Nais bidet, which has more buttons than my printer, but every one of them is a joy to consider. In addition to the heated toilet seat and charcoal filter (so the bathroom always smells good), it has temperature and pressure controls for the water, buttons for washing front or back, with or without pulsing action and for a blow dry, which also has an adjustable speed. It does everything except mime “Call me!” when you leave.
“Enjoy!” Mark said, leaving me alone with the bidet. After just a few minutes it was all I could do to avoid getting emotionally attached.
There’s a definite “Oooh!” as (in “Surprise!” but in a nice way) when the first gentle jet hits you in that special place, after which you just relax and enjoy the refreshing rinse (I actually lost track of time for a minute, it was so comfy). I had to wiggle around a bit to get the “front” spray to go as far up front as I’d have liked (I was thinking specifically of how clean it could help you get during menstruation), but a little maneuvering helped a lot. The water was totally refreshing and gave me that clean feeling I was (literally) jockeying for.
The blow dryer, on the other hand, was less effective. It compares to those hand dryers in public bathroom where you eventually end up drying your hands on your shirt — not enough power to do the trick. If it had the same power as a hair blow-dryer (on a cool setting) it would have worked wonderfully, but TP was a must in this case.
If you are determined to go paperless, though, you could keep a supply of hand towels by your bidet.
OK, so that was just one test of one model, but the bottom line (oh, pun so intended) is that while I think it’s more effective on the clean side than the green side, the clean side is lovely and fresh-feeling, and the green side could get there easily.
Americans haven’t adapted to the bidet yet, something Bruneau equates to our reluctance to use brown, unbleached toilet paper when an attempt to market that was made in the ’70s. In some areas we’re just slow adpaters.
After my experiment, I know I could adapt to a bidet. Like most of the people surveyed on Apartment Therapy, if money were no object, I’d have one installed.
In fact, I’d probably rename my bathroom “The home office,” and my new bidet would be my new BFF.
Source: http://www.alternet.org/environment/142908/the_green%2C_clean_art_of_keeping_our_%22rear_ends%22_hygienic%3A_what_are_we_afraid_of/
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