Got What He Wanted

I was in Alaska for a week in May, had a rental car, and thought it was crazy to be paying over $4.00 for gas. I don’t own a car, or have friends that drive very often, so the price creep of gas really hits me and my friends. In mid June I witnessed my first $40.00 fill up and today a coworker had to drive to a work meeting and I witnessed my first $50.00 fill up. I asked, “Is it worth it?” Both responded, “Yes.”

Going on tour is a bit out of reach for me these days, but I am certainly curious what the impact of higher gas prices has been on the music industry’s summer tour. I’ve made it to a couple of shows that required driving, but they were within 25 miles of home. Based on Rothbury and the recent rumor mill, I am trying to imagine a Phish tour with gas prices this high. Would we see $2 grilled cheese instead of $1 grilled cheese? Would there be a bigger “shakedown street” with more vendors trying to get gas money, or less due to the expense of driving between shows?

Whatever the impact may be, this has certainly highlighted a few key points for me.
•Live somewhere that doesn’t require you to have a car to meet your basic needs.
•Work somewhere that doesn’t require you to have a car.
•If you have to live and work somewhere that requires a car, drive less, encourage your political leaders to improve public transportation, ride your bike more, combine as many errands as possible into one trip, keep up with your car maintenance which can improve gas mileage, and try to work from home a couple days a week.

If you are going on tour, or just to a single show in your area, try walking, biking, riding the bus or train, or if you have to drive, carpool. The music community is full of like minded people, get to know some in your community and make an effort to ride share if you have to drive.

I haven’t noticed any obvious impacts to touring schedules, but we may see them soon. Residencies may become more common as bands look to cut down on their own travel. This could be an interesting trade off if a lot of fans converge on a single city, so there may be some advantages to a band traveling versus hundreds or thousands of fans traveling to get to the show.

So what does the future hold? Probably higher and higher gas prices, but there is room to change the way we get our energy. I was lucky enough to hear Al Gore speak on Thursday, July 17th, at Washington DC’s, DAR Constitution Hall. Better known to most people as a small/medium sized venue to see a show, Al Gore certainly rocked this audience receiving multiple standing ovations. Gore’s message was a challenge for the United States to produce 100% of our energy from renewable sources such as solar, wind and geothermal within the next ten years. This radical shift would also include more plug in hybrid cars, which Gore claimed could be bring the equivalent price of travel to around a dollar a gallon. Investing in these greener technologies is a potential boost to the economy and vital to the future of the planet. See Gore’s speech and learn more here.

So who is to blame for the situation we are in? Thomas Friedman certainly has his viewpoint, which became one of the most recommended articles on the New York Times website this week. Friedman basically says that rather than trying to break our addiction to fossil fuels, the current administration is trying to make it easier for us to consume them. He makes an interesting analogy stating that we would not try to lower the price of crack to break someone’s addiction, we would try to get them from using the drug in the first place. Perhaps a bit extreme, but as the current administration claims that opening up more off-shore drilling will lower gas prices, and that the current problem is nothing more than a psychological one, we certainly need someone to set us straight. The bottom line is that the oil companies aren’t using the current area allotted them for offshore drilling, there is still and Congressional moratorium on new offshore drilling and we won’t see any of this new oil for 10 years. Is that going to lower gas prices? I don’t think so.

See music. Not too much. Mostly close to home.

Every Day Is Earth Day

For those spending Earth Day in Washington, DC, at the Green Apple Festival, your Earth Day was wet, very wet. It was a bit ironic that Mother Earth would be responsible for cutting the festivities short. Fortunately, those of us in attendance had a chance to visit the booths and hear a rockin set by Umphrey’s McGee. HeadCount was definitely one of my favorite booths to visit, not only because of their cause of registering fans to vote, but the enthusiasm of the people working at the tent. I actually caught some of those same folks featured in a CBS news segment on the evening news this week which was very cool.

Although I was disappointed that most of the festival got rained out, I think the annual event of Earth Day reminds people how important the environment is. I hope that some people take the information they learned seriously and become more aware of their decisions and how they affect the environment. Although Earth Day is officially celebrated once a year, we need to acknowledge the impacts we have on the environment every day. The awareness established on Earth Day is only a small part of improving our environment, but the choices we make as individuals can collectively make a huge impact.

One of the choices that we are fortunate to have in this country is choosing our political leaders. Another booth I visited was the League of Conservative Voters, which is an organization that provides information on how members of Congress and the president vote on pieces of environmental legislation, campaigns for environmental issues and tries to empower citizens with information on environmental issues. Although the primaries are almost over, I would still recommend checking out their page on how the 2008 presidential candidates compare on their environmental positions - http://lcv.org/voterguide/. I am advocating for one candidate over the other, but I think it is clear from the information provided which candidate has the best environmental record and plans for improving the environment in the future.

The environment is in the news everyday, whether it is high gas prices, debates over biofuels, endangered fisheries, threatened species, clean air, potable water or renewable energy. The value of a quality environment can be difficult to quantify, especially when we currently don’t incorporate the costs of environmental damage into our products. For any political candidate, the environment cannot be ignored. As citizens we must put the pressure on our politicians to take environmental issues seriously. A wealth of information is out there, make yourself aware, and make your politicians aware of your position on those issues. As citizens we must be involved to make our democracy work for us.

Dude, Where’s My Water?

It seems like everyday is a holiday, but I’m not complaining. Established by the United Nations General Assembly after the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, March 22^nd is World Water Day - http://www.worldwaterday.org/. In the United States, we often take for granted the quality of our drinking water and sanitation services. It’s certainly not perfect, but we have one of the better systems in the world. For developing countries, especially in rural areas, drinking water and sanitation services are less than ideal and present many challenges included sickness death. Water and sanitation are critical factors to alleviate poverty and hunger, for sustainable development, for environmental integrity, and for human health.

Despite our readily accessible and safe tap water, Americans are fascinated with bottled water. Fortunately this trend is facing mounting criticism as highlighted by the title of a recent New York Times Freakonomics blog post that declared, “Bottled Water is the Enemy” - http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/bottled-water-is-the-enemy/. For some startling facts about bottled water, check out the Food and Water Watch website, - http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/bottled. Bottled water uses over a million gallons of oil for the plastic bottles, those bottles are recycled less than 15% of the time and it will cost you, about $10 a gallon vs. $0.02 for tap water. Still not convinced? Well, tap water is regulated by the EPA and is tested frequently to meet regulations, while bottled water may only be tested once a week, much less frequently.

I know I am a step behind on this one as festival season has already begun, but as you venture out for your spring, summer, or fall run of shows, think about where you are going to get your next drink of water. One choice you have is to take along a reusable bottle, such as a Nalgene, or the ever so trendy KleanKanteen or Sigg (no endorsements should be inferred, my mind is not made up yet, which is best). These bottles will cost you about $20, hold about 32oz (about 4 glasses) and can be filled up easily. For extended trips, consider purchasing a reusable 5 gallon jug. My buddy and I used one last fall and it worked very well. The cost of the reusable container pays for itself very quickly when you consider paying $2-3 in the lot and $4-5 inside the show for a bottle of water. Many venues are now allowing fans to bring in empty bottles that can be refilled at water fountains inside. If the venue does not allow you to do this, arm yourself with the facts (see above) and talk to the venue manager or write them a letter when you get home.

So why do Americans still purchase over 28 billion bottles of it last year? This illustration from Steve Greenberg begs the same question - http://www.greenberg-art.com/.Toons/.Toons,%20Environ/BottledWater.html.

Green Gadgets

It seems that the buzz in this year’s campaign has revolved around the word change. No matter which party you belong to this should be a good thing. As the primary campaign continues, especially in full force for the Democrats, campaign dollars keep on flowing on ads, events, and other questionable expenses. Maybe one of the changes we need is to change the massive amounts of money spent on the campaign, but I digress.

I found an awesome blog while looking for materials for this months post. The blog is called Greenbase. I thought I would highlight some of the super cool posts that this blog has posted about recently. The blog has posted about some awesome gadgets related to music that seem to environmentally friendly.

If you are going on tour, you might need to rent a van for those long hauls. It looks like Enterprise, Alamo and National will being offering carbon offsets with your rental. At $1.25 a rental this seems like a pretty good deal, especially since the company will match the offsets up to the first million dollars spent on offsets by customers. I have previously written about the effectiveness of offsets, so the company is going a step further to also underwrite the planting on 50 million trees.

While in your rental van, you made need some extra entertainment. One option is a solar powered Mp4 player that allows you to play music or video games. The device stays charged via the sun and you have the option to plug other devices into it to get charged as well.

For those planning to hit the festival circuit this summer, but not willing to give up access to your power craving electronics, you may want to check out this solar table. I can just picture Shakedown with a bunch of people selling grilled cheese of this thing, or walking through the campgrounds to see someone blogging from the table about the festival.

Having problems getting a signal for your wireless device? Check out this solar powered Wi-Fi repeater. Looking for a signal takes a lot of power, so before your device runs out of juice, let this gadget do the work.

There is a lot more cool stuff where this came from, so be sure to check out Greenbase the next time your looking for some information about music and climate change.