‘Free’ Parking is Bundled Bag of Goods

By JAMES KENNEDY

As I look for a campus to get my graduate degree, a surprising factor weighs into my decision: How much am I going to pay for parking? As a non-driver, Rhode Island College may end up charging me the most of all.

The Rhode Island College website boasts that parking is a free service offered to all students. Economists have a more accurate name for “free” services that are included with the cost of something else: bundled goods. The price of parking on campus is not actually free, it’s just bundled to the cost of tuition. Students pay for a parking spot whether they want one or not, even if they don’t own a car.

In fact, 99 percent of parking spots in the United States are bundled, from groceries to restaurant service, and at almost all of our jobs — so few of us think about parking’s cost. It’s not chump change. The median price of just one parking space is $15,000 (pdf). With four parking spaces per car in the United States, the real-estate value of all those asphalt rectangles adds up to far more than the total value of all the country’s vehicles.

Workers pay that cost in lower wages; customers pay it in higher prices for goods; renters pay it in higher housing costs. At Rhode Island College, a “free” parking policy results in higher tuition for students, whether or not that cost is actually itemized on one’s bill.

A movement is afoot to challenge free parking. In California, where businesses are now required (pdf) to match any free parking by paying non-drivers the equivalent of the cost of a non-used spot in cash, cyclists, bus riders and carpoolers all earn hundreds of dollars per month just by choosing not to drive alone to work. If RIC itemized the cost of the parking space students were buying in their tuition bill each semester, they might start to fight for that portion of their tuition to be returned to them. Why pay for something you don’t use?

Of course, if one has chosen to take the bus to school, free parking has made that more difficult as well. Parking expert Donald Shoup’s 2005 study (pdf) shows how zoning requirements for free parking challenge even well-funded transit systems. San Francisco, which supported its train system with the highest per-square-foot charge to real-estate developers in the country, nonetheless subsidized cars 4.7 times more for each additional parking space it required a building to provide.

In Rhode Island, which has one of the worst-funded public transit systems in the country (pdf), the destructive effect of free parking on public transportation can only be more pronounced.

Bundling one good to another isn’t always a bad idea. Students rarely choose a university for its janitorial services, but the cost of janitors is included in tuition because having a clean campus is universally needed. Letting students go a la carte and forego the cost of a janitor would be a disaster, leaving the campus a mess. But parking is not such a universal need. Students who can’t afford a car shouldn’t rack up more student-loan debt in order to hide the cost of driving.

Parking isn’t free. We’re all paying for it. That’s the part that has to change.

James Kennedy is a Providence resident.

We're Losing Power to Centralized Systems

By KYLE HENCE

When Aquidneck Island lost power last weekend, Islanders experienced once again their precarious, even dangerous, dependence on a fragile centralized electrical grid.

There was an eerie silence as I ventured out to shovel in my Middletown neighborhood. Even the snowplows were missing. In that pregnant silence across the Island was a poignant message for those who could hear it. “We’re dangerously dependent on a shaky system.”

Moving to a home in Newport with a gas fireplace last Sunday the silence was interrupted and replaced by police sirens, and house and car alarms. While the silence was a welcome respite from frenetic daily life, the alarms and sirens sounded a warning, one that should lead to a call to action, and for change.

What we need is freedom from debilitating, potentially catastrophic dependence on undependable, unsustainable energy sources, and fragile energy delivery systems. We are losing power. We have lost our individual and neighborhood power because our communities have lost their independence and good, old-fashioned, New England-bred self-reliance. Resilience has eroded.

Instead, we’ve grown accustomed to creature comforts we take for granted until they are knocked out. More frequent and intense storms have forced many of us to begin to re-examine and redefine our economic, food and energy security. In doing so, we can go from losing power to regaining it.

Economic security
With every purchase at a big-box store too much of our hard-earned money exits our community. We are losing power. We lose the community-building power of our economic vote by not shopping locally. Instead of that dollar circulating through the community by a multiple of three to five times, it’s siphoned off to out-of-state or overseas profiteers.

We are losing power when our economic vote isn’t vested close to home. Our economic security is compromised and prospects for change are tenuous as long as dollars are unnecessarily drained from our community.

Food security
Of all the food we consume in Rhode Island, only 1 percent is grown, harvested or foraged in the state. On average, the food on the shelves at most major supermarkets travels 1,500 miles, burning fossil fuel and fouling the air along the way.

If this long-distance food supply was interrupted, the food on shelves or warehoused would last just days. Our current food system is fragile and unsustainable. The more centralized and monopolized it becomes, the more we lose power. Real food security is freedom from debilitating, potentially catastrophic dependence on unsustainable food sources. We gain power as we strengthen our local food system.

Energy security
With every corporate or government decision to excessively limit the expansion of renewable, decentralized energy — think wind, solar and geothermal — we are losing power. Our community loses power whenever the growth of small-scale distributed energy systems is stifled.

When this happens, we are missing the opportunity to create more thriving, independent and resilient communities, to create genuine energy security, security derived from our own hands, from the power from our own installed energy infrastructure.

The loss of power across Aquidneck Island last weekend was a poignant reminder of our vulnerability to major disruptions, of the fragility of our region’s electrical grid and energy production system. The fear and anger of many calling into talk-radio stations was palpable and understandable.

But no matter where we source oil or gas to run electrical generating plants, or how many lines are run underground protected from damaging winds, the reality is that we have lost power. Our Yankee can-do spirit and prideful independence has ebbed, as we have become ever more dependent on corporate cartel-driven infrastructure. While these vast systems bring economy of scale, convenience and welcome comforts, they have bred blindness to increasing dependence.

This is particularly true when it comes to energy production. Look at National Grid, an enormous conglomerate that manages the New England electrical grid and natural gas pipelines, from Maine to New York. Our “National Grid” is 100 percent owned and operated by a U.K. corporation. It’s the 22^nd-largest company on the London Stock Exchange, and its Chairman, Sir Peter Gershon, was knighted by her Majesty.

In effect a Knight of the British Crown oversees our power here in New England. In a way, England has inadvertently reclaimed its once rebellious and lost colony.

Not too big to fail
When renewable-energy options are advanced it is no surprise the proposals supported by the state install huge, utility-scale turbines tied into the electrical grid and funded by hedge funds and big banks. When a storm hits, knocks out power and the grid goes down, the massive turbines continue to spin and generate power. Problem is, that power can’t be delivered to heat homes and pump water.

Our individual and community energy security is compromised here. The system, though “too big to fail,” does anyway. And we’re left literally in the cold, vulnerable, waiting and hoping the guys in the National Grid trucks ride to the rescue.

Regaining power
Lost power and community resilience can be restored, however. Though it’s a long row to hoe, our independence, our true power, can be regained by investing in a decentralized or distributed energy system that puts energy-generating capacity in your backyards, deep underground below our homes and on our roofs.

Twenty years from now, were Aquidneck Island to be dotted with modest, residential-scale turbines, photovoltaic arrays, geothermal systems, or tied to community-scale tidal, wind, solar or geothermal systems, one thing is for certain: when the storms strike, likely more devastating than last fall’s Sandy or last weekend’s blizzard, there will be more Islanders able to offer a warm refuge and hot showers to neighbors accustomed to losing power that is tied to faraway nuclear, coal or natural gas plants.

Smart options
Here is the kicker: those who invest in energy independence and energy security from renewable sources will save money, money perhaps spent within the community rather than going to U.K.-based National Grid, whose fragile network can so easily be brought down, leaving those dependent on it, vulnerable and wishing they and their community had invested in energy alternatives that foster local economic security and greater energy security.

Similarly every dollar we spend on local food not only supports our local farmers and fishermen, and thus our local economy, but also our personal health. Non-renewable energy also is saved because the broccoli from Simmons Farm or chicken from Aquidneck Farms isn’t traveling hundreds of miles to get to our tables.

The more our communities are directly responsible for, and able to produce the essentials of food, water, energy and shelter, the more power we have to take care of our families, our loved ones and our environment.

Kyle Hence is a Middletown-based contributor to ecoRI News.

Tale of 2 Obamas and 1 Pipeline

By KEVIN PROFT

Just two men are responsible for making the decision about whether to build the Keystone XL pipeline — President Obama and his secretary of state.

Pipeline supporters tout the construction jobs the project would create and the advantages of shifting U.S. energy dependence from the tumulus Middle East to our friendly neighbor to the north. Opponents, in addition to disputing the validity of those claims, fear pipe breakages, contaminated watersheds and a devastating increase in global warming.

James Hansen, a NASA climatologist who pipeline opponents cite regularly, calls Canada’s tar-sands oil the “dirtiest of fuels.” He notes that its development would raise carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere by 120 parts per million and result in “a climate system out of control.” Developing the tar sands, Hansen says, is “game over for the climate.”

The pipeline would transport tar-sands oil from Alberta, Canada, across the U.S. heartland to refineries 2,000 miles away on the Gulf of Mexico. Everyone agrees building the pipeline would open the floodgates to the tar sands, doubling current American oil imports. Alternatively, economists and oil industry representatives admit that without the pipeline bottlenecks would prevent millions of gallons of tar-sands oil from reaching the global market annually.

Environmentalists are tentatively optimistic that the pipeline will be rejected. After all, a re-elected Barack Obama spent more time during his 2013 inauguration speech discussing the need to address climate change than any other specific topic. He also nominated John Kerry as secretary of state; Kerry has been a champion of environmental causes since the 1980s.

In addition to these recent pro-environment signals from the president, Obama has historically supported combating climate change. In 2006, then-Senator Obama attacked President George W. Bush’s energy policy, insisting that climate science be accepted and America be weaned from fossil fuels.

“For decades, we’ve been warned by legions of scientists … that we couldn’t just keep burning fossil fuels without consequence. And yet, for decades, far too many have ignored the warnings,” Obama said seven years ago.

Then, after winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, he again brought climate change to the forefront, promising that “generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children … this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

During his first term as president, Obama doubled fuel-economy standards on cars and light trucks, to 54.5 miles per gallon. He invested heavily in the electric-vehicle battery and clean-energy industry; since 2008, the United States has nearly doubled its renewable energy generated from wind, solar and geothermal sources. The president also placed aggressive regulations on coal-fired power plants that make new plants nearly impossible to build.

Based on his rhetoric and actions, one would think the Keystone XL pipeline application would be a non-starter for this administration.

The problem is that the Obama described above is not the only Obama making promises to Americans. There is a different Obama who delivers speeches when environmentalists aren’t listening. The Other Obama campaigned for a second presidential term promising an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy for America. The Other Obama patriotically proclaims on the White House website that he created aggressive reforms to offshore oil regulation, “to ensure that our nation can … responsibly expand development of offshore energy.” The Other Obama continues to permit Shell to drill exploratory wells in the Arctic Sea despite a growing blooper reel of errors committed by the oil company.

Obama could have denied construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in 2011, but, instead, the Other Obama kicked the can down the road by delaying the decision rather than standing with the environment. The Other Obama’s decision was based on a deadline technicality, not the environmental dangers associated with building the pipeline.

“This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people,” the Other Obama announced.

Then, a few months later, in what many took as a signal that he would approve the pipeline, the Other Obama told Rolling Stone, “I have the utmost respect for scientists, but it’s important to understand that Canada is going to be moving forward with tar sands, regardless of what we do.”

This is the stance from which the Other Obama wants to make the pipeline decision. In this scenario, America gets the jobs, oil and energy security from tar-sands production or China does.

Unfortunately for the Other Obama, this claim doesn’t represent reality, according to oil industry experts and economists. In June 2011, Ralph Glass, economist and VP of AJM Petroleum Consultants, said, “Unless we get increased access (to markets), like with Keystone XL, we’re going to be stuck. … We’re going to hit a wall (and our) production is going to be backed out of the system. … I think it will have a dramatic impact.”

Brian Ferguson, CEO of tar-sands producer Cenovus Energy Inc., said, “Keystone itself is very important to the industry.”

Alberta’s energy minister, Ron Liepert, said he is “kept up at night” by fears that “we’re going to be landlocked in (tar sands). We’re not going to be an energy superpower if we can’t get the oil out of Alberta.”

The problem for tar-sands producers is that many of their proposed pipelines are under attack, not just the Keystone XL. This is something the Other Obama isn’t accounting for.

Last October, 4,500 protestors convened on the British Columbia legislature to protest the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline slated to run from the tar sands, through British Columbia, to tankers near the coast. Once on the tankers, the oil would navigate narrow and environmentally fragile waterways before reaching the open Pacific. The pipeline is currently undergoing additional environmental review in part because of strong opposition from many First Nation tribes in Canada, who have taken legal action against the pipeline and fought to keep the pipeline off their lands.

Enbridge Inc., the company behind the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, made headlines in 2010 when one of its existing pipelines broke and spilled about a million gallons of tar sands into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. The oil promptly sank, highlighting the fun fact that tar-sands oil, unlike conventional oil, is actually heavier than water. Confounded clean-up crews spent the next two years inventing methods to clean up submerged oil. In July 2012, the river reopened to recreational activities after the longest and costliest pipeline cleanup in American history.

In January, New Englanders made their position on the tar sands clear, when more than 1,000 protestors rallied in Portland, Maine. Rumors are circulating that tar-sands oil could be piped from Montreal, across Vermont and New Hampshire, into Portland. At the rally, Portland Mayor Michael Brennan spoke out against that idea and in favor of developing renewable energy. “We need to expand the market for renewable energies and eliminate the demand for tar sands and other fuels that are not only a root cause for climate change but also carry real risks of pollution and spills in our backyard.”

The actual stance from which Obama needs to make his decision about the Keystone XL pipeline is one where he recognizes that if it is rejected, tar-sands producers will have to scale back oil production expectations drastically until they can figure out another way to get their oil out of Alberta. Based on widespread opposition to tar-sands pipelines in both Canada and the United States it’s likely that production would be limited for years to come, providing more time for additional responsible energy options to be developed.

Obama has talked a lot about false choices during the course of his public career. He insists that we need not choose between the environment and jobs. He is right. The green economy has enormous job potential. He reminds us that we need not choose between our liberty and our ideals. He is right. American security and freedom have stood side by side for more than 200 years. By acknowledging these false choices Obama shows he is a man who prefers compromise to winners and losers.

Unfortunately, the president’s upcoming choice about the Keystone XL pipeline is not a false one; the physics of climate change refuse to compromise. The Other Obama wants badly to turn Keystone XL into a false choice. He claims, “Keystone got so much attention not because that particular pipeline is a make-or-break issue for climate change, but because those who have looked at the science of climate change are scared about a lack of sufficient movement to deal with the problem.”

In other words, the Other Obama believes we need not choose between Keystone XL and a livable climate. The Other Obama is wrong.

Developing the Keystone XL pipeline means adding 240 gigatons of carbon pollution to the atmosphere, according to projections. That is 42 percent of the carbon pollution we can add without exceeding the 2 degree Celsius temperature increase that nearly all scientists and nations agree upon as the workable limit. This means the president has the real choice between building the pipeline and moving the world’s population of 7 billion and growing vastly closer to a devastating temperature limit, or he can reject the pipeline and take a giant step toward committing America to a transition to renewable energy.

I wonder which Obama will make the decision.

Kevin Proft is an ecoRI News staff member.

Aquidneck Island Blows Off Wind

By FRANK CARINI

Aquidneck Island has plenty of wind to make renewable energy, but, unfortunately, it also produces a lot of hot air.

Newport officials recently became the latest wind bags to add to the island’s growing cover of hot air. City Council and Planning Board members didn’t want the Bruce Long-led Middletown Town Council to be the only ones sounding the alarm about the dangers of wind turbines. These three-armed beasts, they fear, will put the health of neighbors at risk, deafen the island’s inhabitants, and ruin the fossil fuel-inspired views of telephone poles, power lines, blinking neon signs and traffic congestion.

And don’t mention gearboxes. They’re scared to death all wind turbines come with one of these faulty contraptions that will throw them all off a fiscal cliff.

To avoid the many pitfalls of renewable energy, the Newport City Council earlier this month quickly and quietly voted to ban wind turbines from most of the city. The Planning Board had recommended banning all shapes and sizes of these spinning devices that don’t belch pollution from 80 percent of the city. The fearful City Council, however, thought 91 percent was a far safer number.

They were particularly concerned about property owners erecting small wind turbines to produce electricity anywhere in the city’s historic sections. Council members must consider power lines that connect the old homes in these neighborhoods to utility poles historic. Is the SUV parked in the driveway considered historic?

The council also made sure the entire southern portion of Newport defined by Ocean Drive couldn’t be infiltrated by wind turbines. After all, earlier this year a privately funded initiative removed 36 overhead utility poles along Ocean Drive by burying nearly a mile of power line. Out of sight, out of mind. My electricity comes from magic produced far beneath the surface.

As for the private individual who would like to mount a small wind turbine to his or her home, Newport officials don’t believe you have the right to produce your own electricity. But a roof-mounted DISH Network satellite is OK.

The Middletown Town Council passed an ordinance in mid-September that restricts wind turbines to farms, limits their height to 120 feet, tolerates zero shadow flicker and caps the noise they are allowed to make at 30 decibels. On the scale of environmental loudness, 30 dB comes immediately after 0 dB. A normal conversation is between 60 and 65 dB.

But in the words of council member Long, wind turbines need to be overly restricted to protect “public health and risk.” He explained that, “The decision we make must be ones that protect the people from their neighbors, not to protect people from themselves. The only way to do that is to put in strict guidelines.”

A few months later, Newport Mayor Henry Winthrop closed the council’s meeting that severely restricted wind turbines — a meeting that featured little discussion about the need for such an over-the-top ordinance — by blustering, “I don’t expect to see many people lining up outside to secure permits to build wind turbines.”

Just what Aquidneck Island needed from its alleged leadership — more hot air. Perhaps one day we will replace boastful talk with meaningful discussion.

Frank Carini is the executive director of ecoRI News.

Make 2013 the Year of Smart Growth

By TIM FAULKNER

2013 is shaping up to be a year of activism. Planning is underway for a massive Presidents Day rally in Washington, D.C. Union supporters are striking and taking to capitals. College students are calling for divestment. Even those unhappy with the outcome of the presidential election aren’t taking the year off.

Perhaps a new consumerism will also be part of this burgeoning activist movement. Environmental degradation aside, the economy is improving; shoppers are spending; new stores are opening.

This wave of modest growth presents an opportunity to transform the physical look of retailing, the livability of our communities and the health of local economies.

The nationwide Black Friday rallies at Walmart Supercenters show that the low-price-only doctrine undermines the economy. In terms of jobs, wages — about $9 an hour at Walmart — and standard of living, big-box stores and discount retailers only make people poorer and contribute to the nation’s wealth gap. The “Walmart Effect” reinforces the oldest of adages: "You get what you pay for."

Simply put, you can’t buy stuff for cheap and also expect to earn a respectable income and live in a nice place. In our consumer-dominated economy, shopping sets the standard of living. If you patronize big-box stores and strip malls, then your community begets retail sprawl, and low-paying retail jobs dominate the workforce. Shopping centers and malls create fields of pavement, threaten wetlands, increase flooding and make driving stressful and dangerous. You are where you shop.

Contrast this ever-growing image with the goals of Grow Smart Rhode Island, the nonprofit group advocating for revitalized and walkable city and town centers. Grow Smart RI promotes the development and preservation of unique communities through the advancement of small businesses, public transportation, rehabbed buildings and access to local agriculture. It seeks a quality of life based on sustainability, not low prices.

But smart growth doesn’t make consumers less wealthy. A recent report from Civic Economics showed that $45 of every $100 spent at a local retailer stays in the community, while only $13 from a national chain stays local. Clustered and transit-oriented development also increases property values and reduces transportation costs. It creates work in construction and transportation, careers that are more likely to weather a poor economy. These projects also create proportionally more medium-wage jobs and fewer low-wage jobs, according to Grow Smart RI.

The principles are slowly proving true in cities such as Cambridge, Mass., and countless smaller communities and neighborhoods across the country. Both North Kingstown and South Kingstown have already embraced the idea in order to preserve open space and manage growth. And Rhode Island has 21 towns and villages identified as candidates (pdf) for such development.

The good news is that the economy has the momentum to make smart-growth principals take hold. Local public policy also is advancing the cause, with the passage of the complete streets legislation (pdf) by the General Assembly. New smart growth initiatives are planned for 2013 involving seven state agencies nine cities and towns. Consumers, however, must support this development for it to succeed. Shop your values at places where employees earn respectable wages with benefits, in stores and restaurants that use local food and products and sustainable packaging. Avoid retailers engulfed in a sea of pavement.

It may not be a full-blown march or protest, but practicing sustainable consumerism during a resurgent economy drives the change required for a better Rhode Island.

Tim Faulkner is the ecoRI News executive editor.

Why Is It So Hard to Ban Grocery Bags?

By FRANK CARINI

Fifteen years ago Pakistan banned the use of plastic bags. Earlier this month, the Barrington Town Council, after much debate and plenty of consternation, passed a ban that expires in two years.

The sixth-most populous country in the world, consisting of four provinces and four federal territories, and whose recent history can be characterized by periods of military rule and political instability, has no need for plastic grocery bags. But a small town of about 17,000 is addicted to these pouches of petroleum. Concerned Town Council members believe they need to wean their bag-dependent constituents from their plastic habit.

Pakistan’s government determined — likely quite easily — that discarded plastic bags were choking storm drains, spoiling the countryside and causing environmental problems. Barrington officials are more concerned that a local shopper could be left holding a reusable cloth bag.

At an August council meeting, the American Progressive Plastic Bag Alliance, a plastics industry advocacy group, sent a representative from Washington, D.C., to speak against the ban. His pants-on-fire line that “Given a choice, plastic bags are an environmentally friendly choice” must have resonated with town officials.

By giving the bag ban a two-year sunset provision, the afraid-to-get-yelled-at-by-small-government-big-mouths Town Council provided opponents with a targeted deadline for reversing the limp measure. While most residents at the Oct. 1 meeting where the wimpy law was passed expressed support for a full ban, the Town Council was more interested in pacifying a few people who 40 years ago would have belly-ached about the government mandate to ban DDT.

Lobbyists from the American Chemistry Council will not doubt be appearing in Barrington in summer 2014.

In the midst of the council’s months-long dizzying bag ban debate, Shaw’s, the town’s largest retailer, announced it was voluntarily pulling plastic checkout bags from its store by the end of November.

While Westport, Conn., hasn’t had a compliant or violation in its four years with a bag ban, one or two complaints will likely allow the Barrington Town Council to simply do nothing to reinstate the bag ban, as loudmouth opponents portray such an extension as politically risky.

Unfortunately, Barrington isn’t the only U.S. town, city or state afraid to ban what is routinely used to carry a tube of toothpaste from the checkout line to a parked SUV. Five months ago, Hawaii became the first — and still only — state to ban plastic checkout bags.

Since 2009, though, eight states have passed laws that permit guns in bars.

Plastic grocery bags clog storm drains, which intensifies flooding, choke animals and litter beaches. It takes about 400 years for a plastic grocery bag to decompose.

Yet an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide annually, including 380 billion in the United States alone. We carelessly discard some 100 billion of those plastic bags every year, which is the equivalent of dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil.

Civilization thrived for centuries without plastic vessels to carry fruits and vegetables from market. And, please, banning plastic retail bags won’t ruin the economy or send unemployment soaring. Deregulating Wall Street already accomplished that.

Frank Carini is the executive director of ecoRI News.

Bag Ban is Good for Shops and Shoppers

By TIM FAULKNER

Anyone who has participated in a beach or neighborhood cleanup can tell you the environmental argument for banning plastic bags is obvious: plastic bags choke, entangle and generally suck the life out of any habitat. In Rhode Island, with its abundance of coastal areas, wetlands and rivers, discarded bags easily disappear into waterways, where the effects can be devastating to aquatic plants, turtles, fish and shellfish.

Three Rhode Island towns — Barrington, Middletown and Warren — are considering restrictions on retail plastic bags. The Barrington Town Council will discuss a proposal Monday night.

The argument against the ban, however, will likely be an economic one. Opponents will no doubt claim that a ban will burden businesses and consumers with the cost of buying bags that are more expensive than thin-film bags. Typically, paper bags cost about 10 cents apiece for retailers to buy. A thin-film plastic bag costs less than a penny.

Leaving out the environmental and societal costs of plastic bags, there’s little proof that plastic bag bans pose an economic burden on shoppers or retailers. In fact, cities and town with bag bans have shown to save money for consumers and retailers in the short and long term.

Westport, Conn., banned plastic bags in 2008. During the first year of the ban, there was a 70 percent increase in the use of reusable bags, and some 600,000 fewer plastic bags were handed out at the register. Therefore, retailers spent less on “free” bags, and perhaps those that sold reusable bags even made money. In the long term, about 2 million fewer plastic bags have been used in Westport annually since the ban took effect. Overall, between 50 percent and 60 percent of shoppers use reusable bags.

Westport public schools also acted to support the ban and helped embrace the movement to keep the town plastic bag free, according to Jeffrey Wieser, a representative on the Westport Town Meeting board.

“It’s actually been quite remarkable,” Wieser said of the positive response in the community. Shoppers continued spending and retailers big and small continue to thrive. “The world has not ended. It’s a very vibrant downtown.”

Stop & Shop, Walgreens, CVS and Ann Taylor didn’t close their doors in Westport, and consumers are more conscious of their impact on the waste stream, Wesier said. “You feel better about shopping. You really do change behavior and people feel good about it. It’s not a detriment," he said.

A “reusable bag ordinance,” as Wieser prefers to call the bag ban, also spurs innovation. While there are no plastic bag manufacturers in New England, there are reusable bag makers such as Enviro-Tote in New Hampshire, ApRi in Providence and countless local craftmakers who can ramp up sales of their homemade shopping totes.

From an economic standpoint, the bag ban is an exercise in the notion of “free” as it relates to costs for shops and shoppers. As a columnist for the Christian Science Monitor described it, having to think about whether you need a plastic bag makes all the difference, as it did in cutting plastic bag use in Washington, D.C.

“Free is a risky price because it allows people to get something without really thinking about whether they want it," Donald Marron wrote. "That’s why health insurers insist you pay at least $5 to see your doc or get a prescription. And it’s why D.C.’s nickel bag tax has been so effective in cutting use of plastic bags.”

In Barrington, the decision of charging a fee for bags will be up to the store owners, as it is in Westport. But with a bag ban everyone has more control over the costs and how they want to pay them.

Tim Faulkner is the ecoRI News executive editor.

Portsmouth High Turbine: A Treasonous Monster

By FRANK CARINI

PORTSMOUTH — The continuing mechanical problems with the 1.5-megawatt wind turbine at the high school have angered and frustrated Town Council members and taxpayers. That’s understandable. The gearbox issue also has been a source of merriment and “I told you sos” from renewable energy antagonists. Their glee is mind-boggling.

Opponents of renewable energy fervently point out deaths and accidents connected to wind turbines. Unfortunately, there have been both. However, they disregard the fact that fossil-fuel energy and nuclear power also contribute their share of death and destruction.

It’s the steep price we pay to live in this society, but that doesn’t mean the dangers from any power source should be ignored. In fact, the only way to actually lower that rising cost is to move beyond coal, oil and gas for a bigger percentage of our energy needs. Renewable energy provides a cleaner and, ultimately, safer option.

The told-you-so energy crowd would have you believe otherwise. Besides ruining picturesque views, there are a host of dangers, they argue, associated with wind turbines. For example, turbines like to throw things, such as whole blades, or at least pieces of them, and ice. They also fall down, and start fires.

Shadow flicker is annoying, and their spinning blades kill birds.

During transport, wind turbine parts or the vehicles carrying them wreak havoc, with reports of a turbine section ramming through a house while being transported to the site where it will inevitably fall down, a hauler knocking a utility pole through a restaurant, and a section of turbine falling off in a tunnel.

Oil rigs, on the other hand, don’t like to throw things. They may occasionally belch out nearly 5 million barrels of fossil fuel into the Gulf of Mexico, but they don’t throw iceballs. They also don’t start fires; they explode.

Coal mines don’t fall down; they collapse. Fossil-fuel pollution causes cancer, and mountaintop removal kills everything.

When fossil fuels are being transported, they seldom get in an accident. The Exxon Valdez was a fender-bender, and it happened in Alaska. Nobody lives there. Closer to home, the North Cape oil spill occurred when the tank barge North Cape and the tug Scandia grounded on Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown, after the tug caught fire. Hey, I thought only wind turbines catch fire?

Anyway, this little mishap only spilled about 830,000 gallons of home heating oil. The Exxon Valdez spilled much more, but at least it didn’t fall down on the job like one of those treacherous turbines.

Tragically, there are dangers with all types of energy production. It’s the price we pay to live a more comfortable life. But for the “Not In My Backyard” crowd and the fossil-fuel apologists, renewable energy is mankind’s greatest threat to capitalism. It’s unpatriotic.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, was outraged when President Obama held BP accountable for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, saying “I think it’s part of this sort of blame game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.”

I wonder what Paul would have said if a wind turbine had thrown an iceball at him? We know the Big Oil-backed politician is against subsidies for wind and solar energy, because they would “distort the marketplace.”

Speaking of social distortion, read the comments left by some readers under our recent coverage of the Portsmouth High School wind turbine. There’s one: “The wind industry is hiding a dirty little secret about gearbox failures.”

For the renewable energy deniers, the same accusations don’t apply if there’s a problem with dirty energy. BP was just protecting trade secrets about its blowout preventer that was supposed to slam the Deepwater Horizon oil well shut. Hey, accidents happen.

Here is part of a comment from another reader who must be delighted that the arms of Satan aren’t spinning at Portsmouth High School. “… it has proven to be all too common since 1982 as wind turbine electric generation has expanded due primarily to many $billions of government subsidies, profiting wealthy investors, for uneconomic projects.”

I would like to ask Stewart Farber if it’s OK for Big Oil to receive government subsidies, profiting wealthy investors, for projects that are environmentally damaging? Since ExxonMobil earned a profit of $41 billion in 2011 and BP made a $25.7 billion profit that same year, accidents and deaths associated with their operations are worth it. Economic profit and financial growth supercede public health and environmental protections.

When renewable energy projects fail — and the Portsmouth High wind turbine is not a failure, perhaps poorly managed — Farber and others who view clean energy as an attack on their portfolios and bank accounts, immediately note the burden placed on taxpayers.

The bankruptcy of solar-cells manufacturer Solyndra is a scandal that cost taxpayers. The BP oil spill was an accident that hurt BP's shareholders.

You seldom hear renewable energy foes complain about the huge burden fossil fuels place on the less fortunate. Cheaper fuel is better than cleaner fuel, as long as no one is fracking in my backyard, blasting off mountaintops in my county or shipping LNG through the waters where I go sailing.

Place that burden on struggling farmers in western Pennsylvania, the poor living in Appalachia and the places where I don’t go cruising.

Frank Carini is the executive director of ecoRI News.

Crazy Idea: Apple that Tastes Like Bubble Gum

By JOANNA DETZ

The food industry is crazy.

Crazy about the idea of taking what is essentially candy and marketing it as health food. Think about those cereal bars that come packaged in boxes that are peppered with grand promises of fiber to cover up the heaps of sugar and empty calories.

Now, it would seem, there is a new trend, in which at least one Washington-based company has begun marketing fruit as candy.

Introducing Crazy Apples.

Recently spotted by an ecoRI News reporter in the produce section of a Providence Stop & Shop, Crazy Apples are packaged individually — or in packs of four — in crinkly candy-colored plastic bags. The apples, which are touted as “100% natural, whole apples flavored on the inside” come in three flavors designed to appeal to the discerning palettes of children: Bubble Gum, Tropical Blast and Pomegranate Grape.

You may ask yourself, why take a food that already has its own naturally delicious flavor and make it taste like bubblegum? Or why not just serve your children pomegranates or grapes, or both?

According to the FAQ page on the company’s website, Crazy Apples “were created to be a HEALTHY way to keep an apple habit FRESH and FUN.”

OK. Yes, we should encourage children to eat fruit, but, do we really need to condescend to kids to get them to eat apples? If we assume they can’t tolerate eating a regular apple, then kale is a distant pipe dream.

Though ecoRI News’ e-mail inquiries to Crazy Apples went unanswered, it’s probably safe to assume that the folks there view their product as training wheels for healthy eating. But this is a product that is superfluous and which may even undermine healthy eating habits down the road, by teaching kids that healthy food needs to be gussied up like candy somehow. Will these children, accustomed to eating candy-fied healthy food, simply graduate to the processed-food aisle where they will buy the candy being marketed as health food?

And what of that packaging? Why take a food that has its own perfect natural packaging and put it in a plastic bag? We can only assume this is to preserve the precious bubblegum flavor, and because you can’t successfully “brand” an apple without some sort of packaging. But shouldn’t an apple sell itself?

In the interest of conducting a full investigation of this product, two staffers taste tested a bubblegum-flavored Crazy Apple, purchased for $2 at the aforementioned Providence Stop & Shop. The apple didn’t taste overwhelmingly of bubblegum; in fact, we could detect no bubblegum flavor at all, but it did taste a little more sugary and was slightly sweeter than a way-nature-intended-it-to-be apple.

Crazy Apple’s mission to get kids to eat more apples may be on point and it may even be heartfelt, but its method is off-kilter. There is a simple way to get kids to eat more fruit, and it doesn’t depend on an over-engineered over-packaged apple. The way to get kids to eat more fruit: feed them more fruit. There’s nothing crazy about that.

Joanna Detz is the ecoRI News director of development. She likes her apples to taste, well, natural.

Greenness Fades While You’re On Vacation

By KEVIN PROFT

It’s not easy being green, especially when you’re on vacation. First, there is what you can control, but don’t. Vacation takes you off your daily schedule, which has all of your environmentally friendly habits built in. Forgot to pack your reusable mug? No worries, the continental breakfast at your hotel will supply you with a Styrofoam substitute.

Forgot your reusable water bottle? Not a problem. Street vendors with coolers full of ice will sell you a petroleum-based disposable water bottle for a dollar. Normally walk around town and bike to work? Good thing, because on this trip alone, you’ll drive your car in a giant 963-mile circle, as I recently did on a trip from Providence to Niagara Falls.

Once on the road, you tell yourself, “I’m not going to be stressed about this, after all I’m on vacation and I’m normally really good about being green.”

The problem is, it’s not just you. When you spend the day at Niagara Falls, you spend the day with about 32,000 other tourists. Most of them are probably also being less environmentally friendly than usual on account of being on vacation. That means thousands of Styrofoam cups from many continental breakfasts, thousands of water bottles to keep everyone hydrated, and hundreds of thousands of miles driven or flown for all of those people to come together in the first place.

Worse, when you go home, Niagara Falls doesn’t shut off. The tourists don’t stop visiting. The day before you visited, the day after you visited and every other day that you weren’t at Niagara Falls, 32,000 other people were. About 12 million people visit the falls annually. That’s a lot of Styrofoam cups.

And don’t forget that Niagara Falls is only one tourist destination. A similar scene was taking shape at Disney World while you were at Niagara Falls, and of course Mount Rushmore saw its share of tourists that day. Yosemite and Yellowstone probably had a few visitors that day as well. And all of these tourists, just like yourself, probably relaxed their environmental guard for the day and fell into a few bad habits they normally would have avoided.

Now let’s imagine you are the perfect environmentalist and did a little extra planning before leaving home. You only live 10 miles away from Niagara Falls, which is why you chose it to begin with, so you were able to bike. You had a reusable mug in your bicycle basket and reusable water bottle attached to your bike frame. You packed a lunch to avoid unexpected plastic dishes at a restaurant, and even picked up some litter and placed it in a garbage can during your visit.

Even if you match this description, it’s still hard being green on vacation, because tourism is simply not a green industry.

Consider the Maid of the Mist. This popular tour dates back to 1848 and consists of four large boats that transport tourists from their docking point, past the American falls and into the horseshoe of the powerful Canadian falls, where 2.75 billion gallons of water pour over the 170-foot-high cliffs every hour. The falls are so immense. Maid of the Mist passengers need to shout to be heard over their crash, which sends up a cloud of mist that rises to twice the height of the falls. As the mist rises, it collects into water droplets, and then falls onto either the river or awaiting Maid of the Mist passengers. By the end of the tour passengers look like they’ve taken a shower.

The Maid of the Mist tour is the best way to experience Niagara Falls, and is attractively priced at $15.50; as a result, most everyone climbs onboard.

Now consider what this great experience means for the environment. First, four large boats spend 7 hours daily, from April to October, motoring to and from the falls, guzzling gas in their giant engines. Second, each Maid of the Mists passenger is provided with a blue poncho to keep them dry. These ponchos are basically giant plastic bags with holes for your arms and head. While you could take them home to be reminded of your vacation each time it rains, these ponchos are not a high-quality product and are destined to be thrown out.

While the tour operators could come up with a system that would allow ponchos to be reused immediately, handed over by exiting passengers to those waiting to board the boat, for example, they don’t. Instead, the ponchos have a huge recycling symbol printed on their backs and are supposed to be placed in a line of recycling bins awaiting passengers back on the dock. The bins quickly fill up and get emptied throughout the day. Ponchos that don’t make it into the bin often find their way onto the banks of the river.  Looking down at the whole operation from the viewing point on the cliff above, you see dozens of blue dots, each signifying a poncho caught in the brush. Occasionally, you see them floating down the river toward Lake Ontario.

At another attraction, tourists are invited to trek their way down to the base of the falls by foot. Here, yellow ponchos are provided, along with extra-grip sandals that look like part of Buzz Lightyear’s space suit. While these sandals are fun souvenirs to wear around for the day, it seems doubtful that many find their way into most people’s regular footwear rotation. Instead, their most likely destination is the trash.

The summer vacationing season is upon. Don’t spend it worrying about the environment. Enjoy yourself and relax.

That said, do make an effort before you leave to think about how you can reduce your footprint while traveling. Consider what environmentally friendly things you do each day, then ask yourself if you can continue doing those things while traveling. Bring reusable mugs, water bottles, plastic bowls, plates and cutlery, on-the-road PB&Js, and reusable shopping bags.

While you are on your trip, help start a green revolution. If everyone acts like wearing a blue piece of plastic for a 15-minute boat ride and then throwing it away in a recycling bin is normal, then those in charge at Maid of the Mist, and other operations like it, will continue to do business as usual, either because they are oblivious or because they can get away with it. Don’t let them get away with it.

I declined my blue poncho when I boarded the Maid of the Mist. Based on the poncho distributor’s reaction, I don’t think many people do this. At one point I thought he was going to force one over my head. I got wet, but isn’t that kind of the point? I was dry an hour later.

Kevin Proft is the manager of ecoRI Public Works.