Atlanta School Daze

Yesterday I met with administrators at the Atlanta Public Schools Office of High Schools located in the Kirkwood district of Atlanta. My 10th-grade Son had recently received a form letter from the APS district offices explaining that he was being removed from an Accelerated Mathematics class.

The letter opened with "Dear Perspective (sic) Student..." and further repeated the misuse of perspective.

My meeting was a failure, as I unsuccessfully appealed the Administration's decision to pull Sam out of the class. I argued that my Son demonstrated exceptional aptitudes for the subject and should receive instruction commensurate with his abilities. The administrator countered that they have no way of doing so that would not jeopardize his qualifications for High School graduation.

I felt let down by the APS, a feeling which has persisted for many years based on school officials' sloppy handling of their work, disinclination to challenge my son, and comfort with "good enough" performance on their part and the part of my son.

The APS' Office of High Schools is a shared facility with the Crim "Open Campus" High School. On my way to the meeting I pedaled by three young men playing dice on the front steps of an abandoned house a block away from the School. At the corner of Clifton and Memorial, a group of students shared a joint in plain view of the School. As I left the meeting, the same group of students had doubled in size, and the sidewalk was littered with what appeared to be a stack of loose leaf papers.

Such is the story of the Atlanta Public Schools: with a student population beleaguered by drugs and poverty, APS officials are preoccupied with efforts to graduate as many students as possible. Based on my Son's experience this preoccupation comes at the expense of academic excellence, and we would be more likely to find a greater emphasis on academic performance in suburban school districts.

I have two pieces of advice for students and parents of middle and high school students in the APS system:

1. Advocate for yourself and DO NOT expect your counselors to give you useful advice on what classes to take and what programs to join
2. Take EVERY honors and AP class you can. Classes in core subjects such as language arts, science, math and social studies that do not have an honors or AP designation are likely to contain troubled students who will distract the teacher and detract from the academic progress of the class.

Unfortunately in the APS, there are two worlds, and if you care about your education you will want place yourself in the right one.

Georgia's Solar Eclipse

The Georgia Clean Energy Property Tax Credit encourages homeowners and businesses to install a variety of equipment such as solar electricity systems, solar water heaters, wind turbines, geothermal heat pumps, and high-efficiency lighting. This incentive returns to the property owner up to 35% of the total system cost and are especially important for stimulating Georgia's market for renewable energy, since current State energy policies aim to keep the cost of nonrenewable electricity from coal and nuclear plants artificially low. (more on that in a future blog.)

In April, the Clean Energy Property Tax Credit program reached its limit for this year. That means that no more projects will receive these credits until January, 2011.

Relative to other states' clean energy programs, the Georgia Legislature capped this program at a ridiculously-low amount of $2.5M annually. Property owners must file for the credit after they install their systems, and the State then assigns the credits on a first-come, first served basis.

Theoretically if all of the credits were assigned to solar PV projects, that would amount to approximately 1.2MW of new electrical capacity. In some states, that much new solar PV is installed every week.

This, plus the new rate increases recently approved by the Georgia Public Service Commission, benefit the utility companies but not the ratepayers, be they homeowners or business owners. We should demand fairer and more competitive energy policies from our elected officials.

For more info and action, check out the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

What's Blooming in that Box?

This week, the Silicon Valley inventors at Bloom Box unveiled their namesake product, touting it as the answer to America's long-term electricity needs. Report on 60 Minutes here. The Bloom Box is a fuel cell which, unlike those currently on the market, doesn't require hydrogen as as a fuel and instead can directly utilize hydrocarbon gases such as natural gas (NG) to produce electricity.

I certainly anticipate its commercial success, despite the many technical and business challenges it still faces.

We need answers to many questions. For instance, how much electricity can the Bloom Box generate per therm of natural gas, compared the performance of NG-fired turbines that most large utility companies currently operate? Also, how do they propose to dramatically increase the scale of their product manufacturing, distribution and support? For most startup companies, this stage in their business development is fraught with risks.

I wish that Bloom Box's boosters would not state the benefits of their product in comparison with solar energy. Solar is not their main nemesis, although they continue to compete with solar businesses for what little public and private development funding that is available.

Of much greater consequence are the multinational energy firms, which stand to either buy them out or undermine them with competing technologies. Petroleum, nuclear and coal companies love to see renewable energy startups bickering amongst themselves. This also poses a threat to most power utilities, which resist those technologies (like solar PV and fuel cells) that enable the distributed generation of electricity.

As for Bloom Box's claims of revolutionizing the world's electricity supply, they still have to provide a convincing answer about how their boxes would be fueled. Our long-term supply of cheap natural gas is a risk. Fact is, no one has a good idea how much is left in the ground.

Relatively speaking, the sun ain't gonna run out on us. I think that solar energy combined with advanced battery technology has at least as good a likelihood of supplying us safe and secure electricity enmasse as this does.

Actually, we need both, and many more good ideas to secure our energy future. For now, we should step up our investments in renewable energies (and power storage) and gradually reduce the subsidies we give to dirty energy technologies.

The future is one of renewable and distributed power generation!

China Is Leading the Race to Make Renewable Energy - NYTimes.com

China Is Leading the Race to Make Renewable Energy - NYTimes.com

As someone who designs and installs solar energy systems, the emergence of China as the leading provider of high-quality, low-cost equipment comes as a mixed blessing. My firm began receiving solicitations from Chinese manufacturers early last year, and the tempo has dramatically increased over the past four months of advertised prices that are one-half the going rates of a year ago, now as low as $1.70 per Watt.

This allows my commercial clients to enjoy an economic payback on their systems in less than five years, which previously stood in the 7-9 year range. Unfortunately, we are also allowing the Chinese to grow their manufacturing jobs and amass the know-how vital to manufacturing these advanced technologies on a global scale.

I cannot understand why our government does not provide more stimulus to these industries of the future, instead of bailing out those industries heading for a dead-end (automotive) or failing to produce products of real value (financial institutions that make reckless investments.)

A New Year of Food

In 2010, many people will try to improve their their health and diet. The best advice is, keep it simple. For instance, author and food expert Michael Pollan has a list of ten food rules.

I reduced them as follows:

1. Don't buy anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. That includes products with ingredients that cannot be found in an ordinary pantry.
2. Avoid products that are pretending to be something they are not. Good food does not need health claims printed on its packaging. If it says heart healthy, lite, low-fat, or non-fat, put it down.
3. It's best to shop at local farmers markets. If you have to shop at a supermarket, shop its outside aisles and not its middle.

I would also add that, if you eat meat, reduce your consumption of it to a level as Thomas Jefferson once did, as a condiment on your table.

To good heath and a better planet. Bon Appétit!

Image courtesy of the Antiadvertising Agency.

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

- Will Durant

This quote at first sounds trite but then takes root in my mind, because I enjoy those moments in my life when I can tell someone I didn't know that!

REVIEW: Pedaling Revolution

Last June, I reviewed the New York Times book review of Pedaling Revolution, by Jeff Mapes.

The reviewer, David Byrne, posited that bicycling's macho extreme sport image impairs its ability to gain popularity as a legitimate form of transportation.

And now for my book review: Pedaling Revolution is the hardest book I have ever tried to review. It is a fine book, an important book that addresses a subject I care deeply about, and because of that I cannot describe it without reflecting upon my own opinions, experiences and paradoxes.

Like a dead, stinking fish my book review has in its various forms of lengthy draft occupied my computer's hard drive for months. I repeatedly tried to organize and unify my thoughts to no avail, so I have now filleted from from the dead fish a concise review of the book and a more expansive series of riffs on the books's core themes: public perceptions, safety, advocacy and the Euro view.

In Pedaling Revolution, Mapes describes how people and their bicycles are part of a global movement, changing cities and whole countries around the world in places like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland (OR,) Amsterdam, Germany and Denmark. Each of these locations has a unique bicycle history that he explores with the help of local experts, advocates, and innovators.

Mapes excels at explaining the role of leadership, politics and social norms in shaping how each location accommodates bicycle usage. I like how he cites the exemplary advocacy of seventy-two year old Representative Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and his tireless work to garner funding for bicycle accommodations in Federal transportation legislation. Oberstar has a great tag line:

Are you ready to convert from the hydrocarbon economy to the carbohydrate economy?

Mapes omitted any mention of bicycling's impact in East Asia, especially China. Given the sheer scale at which the Chinese ride bicycles, the political dynamics, cultural attitudes and current trends there would provide interesting and insightful reading. Perhaps that would merit an entire book in itself?

Any discussion of the bicycle as a form of transportation naturally must address how bicycle policy comes in conflict with the automobile. Mapes adds a degree of objectivity to this book by frequently acknowledging that automobiles are not implicitly bad, but their near-exclusive use in most American transportation settings is.

Many of the people that Mapes features in the book stoke reader interest when addressing controversial subjects such as John Forrester's vehicular cycling movement and the legitimacy of Critical Mass rides. Nevertheless, Mapes sometimes goes too long on explaining government transportation policy-setting.

Much of the book prompts a central question: why can't more Americans use transportation modes other than the automobile, especially for trips of 2 miles or less? The potential benefits to our health, environment, pocketbooks and communities are mindboggling.

While Mapes' bicycle stories from places around the world may hint at it, he does not state a fundamental problem with bicycling in the United States: that bicycling remains outside of the societal and political mainstream, that the average American views bicyclists as either sports enthusiasts or eco-freaks. This perception excludes what most Europeans (and Chinese) know as truth: that the bicycle can simply be another way of getting there.

This book should equally satisfy the bicycle advocate and the enthusiast. I hope it also wins over some converts. Soon, I will post more about the book's core themes: public perceptions, safety, advocacy and the Euro view.

Thanks for reading!