What would it take you to change your shower to a low-flow shower head?

Do you love a long, hot and powerful shower? What would it take you to change your shower to a low-flow shower head? Be honest.

• A. I understood the environmental impact that it would have
• B. I have knowledge of and compassion for the watershed
• C. Someone came to my house and put in a free low-flow shower head for me
• D. I would be publicly recognized
• E. I verbally committed to doing it
• F. Everyone else on my block is doing it
• G. President Obama and Jane Goodall are doing it (not together!)
• H. All of the above.

Canadian environmental psychologist Doug McKenzie-Mohr believes that the last five reasons inspire more behavior change than the first two. I recently took a workshop with McKenzie, who coined the phrase “Community Based Social Marketing”, and was amazed to learn that studies indicate that “information intensive” campaigns are not very effective. Uh-oh – time to recycle the brochures. This is the method that we have been using to influence behavior change for years.

An earlier blog of mine explored what makes a person care about nature. Now I’m compelled to explore what makes a person change a behavior for the good of nature – the outcome I ultimately desire. Perhaps Community Based Social Marketing (CBSM) is the answer.

CBSM believes that people do not change behavior or do an activity because:

• They do not know about it
• They have many perceived barriers to the activity
• They believe it is easier to continue to do their current behavior than to change

Once the targeted audience knows about the issue, and the barriers are identified with research, it is time to convince them that the benefits outweigh those barriers.

There are many tools for inspiring the change of behavior: making a commitment, copying a well-respected community leader, being reminded with prompts, realizing that the behavior is the current social norm, clear and vivid messages, incentives, ease or a combination of these concepts. CBSM also believes that requests to change behavior are the most effective when they are at the community level and involve direct contact with humans. At the end of the program, outcomes are measured, not outputs. This makes sense!

So, with this in mind, what if President Obama and Dr. Jane Goodall arrived at your door with a lovely, low-flow shower head and installed it while they told you all about the watershed and how you are helping. They then planned to install an identical shower-head in all your friend’s bathrooms followed by thanking you all in the local newspaper. Would you change your showering behavior then? I think I would – a victim to the new concept of Community Based Social Marketing.

I can’t wait to try to get influence our zoo public to compost, our staff to recycle, and my supervisor to send me to more of Doug McKenzie’s workshops. And I will await that knock on my door.

The National Parks are a living record of America's past.

Living here in the San Francisco Bay Area I marvel at the diverse culture that sprouts from our surrounding parks and open spaces. In Golden Gate Park alone you can practice fly-fishing, sail a model boat, ride a horse, play golf, kick a soccer ball, tackle rugby, or pitch a horseshoe, bocce or baseball. You can see where the buffalo roam or spin round and round on an antique carousel. Skate, bike, row a boat, play music, dance to the beat of your own drum and stop to smell the roses. Nearby, down at Ocean Beach surfers ride the waves and kids make sand castles. Stroll the promenade at Crissy Field and you’ll see people soaking up the sun on the beach, flying kites, fishing off the pier or windsurfing under the Golden Gate. Go to Fort Funston where you can run your dogs down to the beach or launch your hang glider off the cliff and soar into the sky. I can go on and on but you get the picture. And that’s just here in San Francisco! Add the Peninsula, North, South and East Bay then combine all the city, county, state and federal parks with all the regional open spaces and count your blessings. It’s been said that if you go to any neighborhood in Bay Area, there is a park or a trailhead less than a mile away. These places are calling us outside to play. And in the process they are building our communities, and in many ways defining who we are and who we want to be.

Of all the activities happening in the parks, probably the most important and rewarding is volunteering to help preserve and protect these amazing places. I urge you all to pitch in. Contact your local regional parks and open space district and see what you can do to help. It’s up to all of us to make sure these wonderful places are saved and maintained for everyone in the future.

If you've watched the show, or are reading this blog about the National Parks, the chances are you also know that filmmaker Ken Burns is about to release his next series "The National Parks: America's Best Idea." Through our role in the development and distribution of the series, KQED is collecting viewer stories about their own experiences with these hallowed places. Let us know what these marvelous open spaces mean to you by sharing your story. We’d love to hear about your favorite park, Bay Area or beyond.

Watch the National Parks Special: Bringing the Parks to the People television story online.

Every fall, 30,000 raptors and hawks migrate across the Bay Area in a fantastic display.

In celebration of the 25^th anniversary, there are a number of interactive events and talks scheduled over the next month.

Hawk Talk and Banding Demo

Where: Hawk Hill

When: Sat 9/12, Sun 9/13, Sat 9/19, Sun 9/20, Sat 9/26 12 Noon – 2 PM

Cost: Free

Details: At these Hawk Talks, a GGRO volunteer gives an hour-long talk about hawk monitoring, migration, and identification using photos and other props. Then at 1 PM a newly banded wild hawk is shown to the crowd, a volunteer talks about GGRO's banding program, and the hawk is released.

GGRO Open House and Raptor Fest!

Where: Ft Cronkhite at Rodeo Beach

When: October 24^th and 25^th, 10 AM-4 PM

Cost: Free

Details: Scientific Displays, Radiotelemetry Demonstrations, Live Non-releasable Raptors, Kid Crafts, GGRO 25th Anniversary Product Sales, Visits to Hawk Hill, Banding Demonstrations, and Raptor Art. On Sunday only – Speakers from UC Davis, SF State University, UC Berkeley presenting results of their research with GGRO.

Celebrate Raptors—A Series of Raptor Biology Talks

Satellite-Tracking Peregrines throughout the Americas

Where: San Francisco Zoo

When: Thursday, September 10^th 7-9 PM

Cost: $3-$5 suggested donation

Falconiformes Discovery: Field, Lab, and Conservation

Where: California Academy of Science’s Nightlife

When: Thursday, October 15^th 7-9 PM

Cost: $12

Eagle Quest:  To See All the World’s Eagles

Where: Mission Blue Chapel, Cavallo Point

When: Wednesday, November 18^h 7-9 PM

Cost: $3-$5 suggested donation

get tac redits and rebates for doing the right thing? What could be better? Image source: Mark_W

Top Five Federal Tax Credits (for improvements made from January 1, 2009 through December 31^st, 2010)

1.      Adding qualifying insulation to an existing home-30% of cost, up to $1,500 for all upgrades other than renewable energy systems.

2.      Energy Star-qualified metal roofs or asphalt roof replacements-30% of cost, up to $1,500 for all upgrades other than renewable energy systems.

3.      Efficient gas, oil, propane, and electric heat pump water heater replacements-30% of cost, up to $1,500 for all upgrades other than renewable energy systems.

4.      Solar water heating systems in new or existing homes-30% of cost.

5.      Photovoltaic (PV) systems in new and existing homes-30% of cost.

The feds are also giving money to the states for appliance rebates and is offering tax credits for certain window and door upgrades for new and existing homes, small wind energy systems, biomass stoves, geothermal heat pumps, fuel cells, efficient cars, and other equipment. For more detailed information about the federal tax credits, go to the California Building Performance Contactors Association.

*Top Five State Rebates (not time limited but rebates usually last until the money for rebates in each category runs out)

1. Adding qualifying insulation to an existing home-PG&E offers $0.15 per square foot in rebates.

2. Qualifying "Cool Roofs" replacement roofs-PG&E offers $0.10 or $0.20 per square foot depending on roof type.

3. Efficient gas and electric storage water heater replacements: PG&E offers $30 rebates.

4. Energy- and water-efficient clothes washers-PG&E offers $35 or $75 rebates depending on efficiency level and East Bay Municipal Utility District offers $125 rebates.

5. Irrigation systems and high-efficiency toilets-East Bay Municipal Utility District offers up to $1,000 rebate for qualifying water saving irrigation hardware and landscape material costs; up to $500 for WaterSmart replacement irrigation timers; and up to $150 for high-efficiency toilets (HET).

*This only lists rebates offered through PG&E and the East Bay Municipal Utility District, since these are the utilities that I know best. But most utilities offer similar rebates. For more detailed information about these and other California rebates for efficiency upgrades and water and energy efficient appliances, see Flex Your Power.

Before You Invest in Photovoltaics, make sure your house isn't haunted by phantom loads.

When writing about energy efficiency in California, I know that emphasizing heating systems doesn’t carry much punch. I might as well try to get Californians interested in who makes the best deep- dish pizza. (That’s Chicago, of course. Zachary’s isn’t bad though.) Cooling systems are accounting for more and more of a share of residential energy use as we continue to build out from the cities near the Bay in hot dry climates. But overall, when it comes to climate, the inside and the outside of Bay Area homes are pretty much the same for most of the year. But let’s not get soft on energy efficiency! There are other energy users in California homes that threaten to lift us in the future to the level of, say, what a Wisconsin home uses in the winter today.

Miscellaneous electric loads are electric loads other than heating and cooling, water heating, refrigerators, and lighting, and include consumer electronics, outdoor lights, and portable inside lighting fixtures. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency estimates that these “other” electric loads, along with televisions and office equipment, made up close to 30% of U.S. residential electricity consumption in 2006; this will rise to about 35% by 2020. Part of the reason for the growth in energy use of these devices as a percentage of total home energy use is that homes are heating and cooling more efficiently, with better HVAC equipment, tighter building envelopes, and more insulation.

Rich Brown and Greg Homan of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, measured electricity use in 13 new California homes in 2007 and came up with some interesting results. They metered plug-in devices in standby, off, or low-power mode. Since the homes were not yet occupied, they estimated the annual energy use by using typical use patterns and the energy use of the plug-in devices in active mode, or “on,” measured in other studies. Some of the homes were model homes and packed with appliances and electronics like TVs, and others had only the plug-in devices installed by the builders. Builder installed devices include things like garage door openers, structured wiring, and gas fireplaces. The homes were in four different subdivisions and span the range of typical new construction to super efficient homes with PhotoVoltaic (PV) systems installed.

The builder-installed devices use on average 800 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year, or about $80 worth with electricity at a low $0.10 per kWh. That does not include lighting energy. That’s interesting. About half of the energy used by the builder-installed devices is used by devices that are supposed to be turned off, or are in standby mode! That’s very interesting. This is like having a 50-Watt light bulb on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, lighting nothing.

One of the model homes, the biggest energy user of the 13, used close to 2,500 kWh per year ($250) for two large televisions, a structured wiring panel that uses 20 Watts continuously to power three security cameras and an Internet router, smoke alarms, garage door openers, a washer/dryer, a very big refrigerator, and a few more devices. Add in lighting and that house is a major energy hog, even with super efficient heating and cooling systems and PV panels on the roof.

So what to do? Don’t even think of getting that PV system until you spend some time reducing your electricity load. The PV system you need to meet that load then won’t be so expensive. When it’s time to buy a new appliance, always look for the Energy Star label. Energy Star appliances use about 20% less energy than typical new appliances. Anything that uses a remote control, such as televisions and set-top boxes, or that displays the time of day all day, such as some stoves and microwave ovens, uses energy when officially off. Look for electronic devices that are really off when they say off, or that use 2 Watts or less in standby mode. For your other sleep slurping electronics, plug them into a power strip, and turn the power strip off when you aren’t using the devices. Then look into that sexy new PV system for your roof. More on that in my next blog.

This attic hatch insulation kit install is making the author use some choice language.

I promised Michele that I will practice the Yoga of home improvement projects and keep the cursing down to a minimum. My home improvement projects usually involve some cursing. I worked part time as a janitor when I was in high school and that's when I learned some pretty spicy language. I didn't intend to write about cursing here, but since I am in this so deep now, then damn it, I may as well connect the topic to some cutting edge scientific research. You got a problem with that?

British scientists found that cursing takes away pain. When people put their hands in a tub of cold water and cursed, they could hold their hands in longer than if they said things like, "butterscotch." If you don't want to take my word for it, you no-good so-and-sos, the research results were published in the online journal NeuroReport.

The attic hatch insulation kit will save us some energy losses and utility bill pain in the long run. According to the DOE Weatherization Assistance program, a gosh darn uninsulated 10 square foot attic hatch in a 100 square foot insulated attic can decrease the overall R-value of the attic floor by more than 50%! For example, an attic with R-38 insulation everywhere but on top of a stinking quarter-inch plywood hatch-with an R-value of approximately 0.3-will have an overall R-value of only R-17. What a freaking waste! Bloody hell!
You can find out more about insulating attic hatches at the Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Web site. Do it now!

Who's more energy efficient with the dishes– you or your dishwasher? Image: Ronan_tlv

Now as a regular morning coffee drinker who uses a kettle and a gas stove to heat water for coffee (not instant– yuk! I use a coffee filter cone and PEET's coffee, of course) instead of the microwave, since our microwave is an old piece of inefficient junk that takes forever to heat water, I thought that buying a new microwave would make me a more energy efficient coffee drinker. But I was wrong!

Jennifer Mitchell-Jackson, while a graduate student at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, measured the energy use of an average microwave oven, an electric stovetop, and a gas stovetop to heat up a mug of water. Turns out that an electric stove uses 25% less electricity than an average microwave oven to heat a mug of water. A gas stove is less efficient and uses more energy than a microwave oven, but depending on the cost of gas, it might cost less to heat a mug of coffee with gas compared to the microwave.

It is more efficient to wash dishes by hand than it is to use a dishwasher. True or false?

How many arguments has that one caused! The research to dispel this myth came from Germany. Rainer Stamminger, a professor of household and appliance technology and his colleagues at the University of Bonn, gathered more than 100 volunteer dishwashers with varying skill levels and dishwashing styles in a laboratory, and measured the amount of water and energy each used to wash big stacks of dirty dishes. He then washed similar dirty dishes in dishwashers and measured the dishwashers’ water and energy use.

His conclusion: The machine is more efficient than the hand. In general, the dishwashers used much more water and somewhat more energy than the dishwashing machines. Some test subjects used 53 gallons of water to clean 12 place settings! But there is a wide variation in the styles and economics of hand dishwashing.

Clearly, a new, efficient dishwasher is best. But if you can’t afford one, or like to spend a lot of time with your hands in soapy water, Stamminger and company have some suggestions:

• Remove large dish scraps with a fork or spoon.
• Do the dishes soon after a meal before the food has dried on the plates (get your dinner guests involved).
• Do not pre-rinse your dishes under running tap water (same goes for dishwasher use).
• Use a hot-water sink for washing and a cold-water sink for rinsing.
• Use just the amount of detergent recommended by the manufacturer.

And put that coffee mug in the dishwasher when you're done.

Seahorses are sold as expensive ingredients used in
traditional Chinese medicine.

Not surprisingly, I jumped at the chance to produce the Quest "Seahorse Sleuth" story, but I will admit that the process of making this piece was demoralizing, to say the least. I spent days in San Francisco’s Chinatown trying to get shop owners who sell Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to talk to me about their trade, and specifically about seahorses. I must have visited 20 or so stores, multiple times, and I saw many hundreds of dried seahorses and thousands of shark fins, not to mention enormous piles of antlers, skins, penises, and whole dried animals. Though I tried many different approaches, no one would talk to me…I was clearly an outsider and not to be trusted. (Had I managed to garner the trust of one of the shop owners, I would have certainly included them in the piece). This experience made me even more impressed and appreciative of the hard work that the folks at Project Seahorse are doing, and exhausted at the thought of how far they still have to go to convince fisherman and governments around the world not to decimate their seahorse populations.

But whereas Project Seahorse must be measured and careful in their approach to these conversations about TCM in order to make headway, I feel that in this blog I can be more forthcoming about my feelings about the use of these animals, and all animals, in TCM.

Of course TCM has a rich history dating back at least 2,000 years, and at least a quarter of the world's population uses this form of medicine. I myself find acupuncture and herbal remedies to be very helpful and do not wish to debunk the efficacy of at least those two parts of the tradition. But I personally draw the line at the use of animals, because I'm a huge animal lover, and I am absolutely appalled at the use of endangered or threatened species for any use. This planet may have seemed endlessly bountiful 2000 years ago, but today we can no longer afford to take the survival of non-human species for granted. To add salt to the wound, it is my understanding that China does not, as of yet, perform the kind of rigorous testing of these products that we must perform for drugs in the U.S. to determine their effectiveness. (This is why we get products from China with arsenic in them, for example). One of the main uses of dried seahorses (and many other dried animals) in TCM is for male virility, though I do not believe there have been any studies that actually prove it has any effect on virility. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s dumbfounding that a country with an official one-child policy, which has led to female infanticide levels that have caused a significant gender imbalance in China, thinks they need to ingest threatened and endangered species to improve the potency of their male population. Let's put the pieces together here folks.

Ok, I'm going to get off my soapbox now, since I'm getting into territory that I am certainly not an expert in. But I did want to present this topic for open discussion – since that's what blogs are for. But before you get too riled up, let me suggest a few websites for further research.

First of all, learn what you can do to help save seahorses by signing on to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seahorse Conservation Page. You can also brush up on the specific uses of Endangered Animals in Traditional Chinese Medicine with this informative paper on Encyclopedia's “Advocacy for Animals” site.

TRAFFIC (The Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network) has a new Chinese-language textbook aimed at raising awareness on how to best protect threatened species used in TCM. Lastly, check out The World Wildlife Fund’s FAQ page on Traditional Chinese Medicine.

And that’s just to get you started…the web has plenty of information on this topic…read it and tell your friends!

Watch the Seahorse Sleuths television story online.

Stanley Jevons first described the take back effect in 1865, so this is nothing new. Jevons observed that new efficient steam engines decreased coal consumption, which led to a drop in coal prices. But the lower prices meant that more people could afford to use coal, and so coal consumption increased.

The "Snackwell Effect" takes it's meaning from the habit of people on diets who eat lots of low-cal snacks that add up to many times the calories of a regular snack. The example given in both articles mentioned above is a West Virginia couple that bought an energy efficient washing machine to replace their old inefficient one. Their energy bills were no different after the conversion. Turns out they were doing more loads of laundry, even washing one piece of clothing in one load, because they were lulled into complacency by their energy efficient purchase.

I asked Jim McMahon, the head of the Energy Analysis Program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), about the Snackwell Effect and appliance energy use. I recently heard him speak about the great efficiency gains made between the first energy crisis brought on by the Arab oil embargo in 1973, and today. Those gains are significant; refrigerators today use about half the energy on average than they did in the 1970s. "This effect [Snackwell Effect] has been studied for a long time, [it was] formerly called the rebound or take back effect," he says. One 2001 study concluded that for every gain in energy efficiency, about 10% is taken back by an increase in energy use. Greater air conditioner efficiency, for example, may mean that people lower their thermostats, since they expect their energy bills to be lower, and this eats into the efficiency savings. "I think that there are a number of energy-using devices where consumers do not exhibit the Snackwell effect, such as refrigerators or televisions. In those cases, in my view, the usage behaviors are unrelated to the cost of energy, at least for most households in the United States," says McMahon. He does admit that more study is needed in this area. A 10% take back effect is significant, but certainly not a barrier to serious energy efficiency improvements.

Karen Ehrhardt-Martinez, a sociologist, studies human behavior and energy use for the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE). "The relationship between energy efficiency and energy consumption is not as straightforward as it may initially appear and as some people like to portray it."

The trends show that: 1) residential energy consumption increased by roughly 57% between 1970 and 2005; and 2) residential energy consumption per capita increased by only 7%".

According to Ehrhardt-Martinez, a bigger problem than the 10% of energy lost due to the take-back effect-or the Snackwell Effect-is the proliferation of energy using, albeit more efficient, devices in American homes; lifestyle choices, such as the dramatic increase in the size of homes while families got smaller; population increase; and the "invisible" energy, such as standby power or phantom loads, that is hidden from consumers. "However," says Erhardt-Martinez "if we were able to combine efficiency improvements with better lifestyle choices (i.e. smaller, more energy efficient houses), smart purchasing behaviors, and improved information mechanisms that allowed consumer to actively manage their energy consumption, then we could have a much more dramatic impact on both household level consumption as well as state and national level consumption."