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John Upton mentioned this here yesterday, but I wanted to pause for a closer look, as I have been following this story for a while.

Last year, I wrote about the Reid Gardner coal-fired power plant in Nevada; the Paiute Native American tribe being poisoned by the plant; and the tragicomic efforts of the plant’s hapless owner, power utility NV Energy, to bamboozle the local media about it.

Then, last month, I wrote about the revelation that NV Energy falsified pollution reports from the Reid Gardner plant for a half-dozen years, crudely copying and pasting the same emissions data year after year. The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection wrote it off as “human error,” and, yeah, I suppose “being too stupid to get away with your scam” is an error of sorts.

Meanwhile, Harry Reid wants to close the plant and get Nevada off coal. The coal fleet is aging and new EPA regulations threaten to make upgrades even more expensive. And Nevadans overwhelmingly want cleaner energy.

So NV Energy has finally said: fuck it, coal is more trouble than it’s worth. On Wednesday, it rolled out a proposal to completely divest itself of coal assets, replacing the lost load with 60 percent natural gas, 40 percent renewables.

As part of the move NV Energy would shut three of the four boiler units in the Reid Gardner plant by 2014, and the fourth by 2017. That’s awesome, though the Paiute rightly remind us that coal leaves behind a toxic mess:

“Closing Reid Gardner is the just thing to do,” tribal chairman William Anderson said Wednesday. “This dirty coal plant has harmed our people’s health for decades.”

But he said the closure is “only half of what’s needed.”

“The facility’s coal ash ponds and landfill leach toxics into the groundwater, and dust from coal, coal ash and poisonous residue pollutes our reservation day in, day out,” Anderson said.

Who’s going to pay for all that remediation? I bet it won’t be NV Energy stockholders and executives.

The utility would also divest from the Navajo and Valmy coal plants in 2017 and 2025 respectively. Here’s where things stand now:

The utility expects to submit its plans to the Public Utility Commission of Nevada within a year. The PUC would have 210 days to review and approve the retirement of power plants, the construction of new ones and other aspects of the transition away from coal.

The commission also will consider rate increases — 3.84 percent a year for 20 years, on average — NV Energy expects to need to help pay for the conversion, which could generate as many as 4,700 construction jobs and 200 operation and maintenance jobs.

Many of the media accounts fail to note this, but NV Energy says the rate increases are less than what would be necessary to maintain the current fleet and bring it up to code. (People always forget this — the status quo has costs too.)

One other interesting aspect of the proposal is that Nevada’s PUC would not have the power to reject NV’s plan to get off coal, only to modify it. NV insists that’s no big deal, since modification could be substantial, but the PUC is not a fan and some ratepayer groups are also making noise. I strongly suspect the shift off coal will not cost as much as NV now projects, but nonetheless, it’ll be interesting to watch the early politics play out.

NV Energy’s shift is a sign of the times: In the U.S., coal is no longer economic. It’s a vulnerability, a PR nightmare, and a money sink. Smart utilities will diversify away from it, now rather than later.

Filed under: Article, Business & Technology, Climate & Energy

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Something refreshing is about to blow into Dallas, Houston, and other oil-soaked Texan cities: wind energy. Lots of wind energy.

A wind-farm boom has been brewing in the blustery Texas panhandle, where wind turbines now provide 9.2 percent of the state’s electricity. That figure is growing quickly, with more than $3 billion expected to be spent on new wind generation during the next two years alone. Meanwhile, Sustainable Business reports that the world’s most powerful battery system is helping to store wind energy produced during off-peak times so that it can be sold when demand for electricity is highest.

But the state’s biggest cities are in the east, far away from the graceful wind turbines and snazzy batteries of the west, making it difficult to deliver the renewable energy into most of the state’s homes and offices.

That bottleneck will ease by the end of the year, when the state completes a scheduled $6.8 billion effort to double the capacity of power lines from western wind farms to its eastern municipalities. That will provide an even bigger market and new incentives for potential wind power developers eying opportunities in the Panhandle.

Again from Sustainable Business:

Texas leads the nation in installed wind capacity and grew 18% last year, adding over 1800 MW for a total of 12.2 gigawatts across more than 40 projects. Wind supplies 9.2% of all electricity generated in the state.

Texas is #3 in the country for the green jobs, with 227,532 in 2012.

Until now, utility Excel Energy has bought most of Texas’ wind energy, but the new transmission lines will finally be able to carry power from wind plants in the western part of the state to all metropolitan areas, including Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio.

So forget black gold, Texans! Your future is paved with … invisible gold. Or something.

Filed under: Article, Climate & Energy, Politics

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Last year, I shared the sad and pathetic story of NV Energy, owners of a Nevada coal plant that’s polluting and sickening the nearby Paiute Native Americans, and the company’s crude attempts to manipulate local media into thinking that the pollution is no big deal.

Well, it seems that in the interim, the story has gotten sadder and even more pathetic.

NV Energy is required by law to monitor and report the particulate pollution that comes from its Reid Gardner coal plant, to ensure that it doesn’t exceed legal limits. The Paiutes who live nearby have been getting sick and dying at suspicious rates for years, so naturally they were curious about those reports. They filed an open records request.

Guess what they found?

Turns out, NV Energy has been falsifying those reports since at least 2006. And not in some clever, Bond-villain way, but more in a ham-handed, Austin Powers-villain way. Which is to say: Particulate data was just cut and pasted from previous reports, year after year. Here’s an example from an analysis the Paiutes had done:

Click to embiggen.

See the numbers highlighted in dark pink? What a coincidence!

Also, from the Paiutes’ press release:

The Moapa Paiutes have also uncovered evidence that NV Energy has routinely and significantly exceeded its “heat input” permit limits at Reid Gardner, producing more air pollution as a result (pollution emissions from coal boilers are proportionate to heat input rates). For example, in 2010, the utility ran unit three at Reid Gardner in violation of the heat input limits for more than 2,100 hours, approximately a quarter of the year.

Anyway, it gets worse. It turns out that the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (NDEP) learned about this last year. And what did they do?

They let NV Energy off with a warning. No penalty, no fine. They wrote it off as “human error.”

Now, I think we can agree that it was a human who copied previous years’ data and pasted it in as new data. But is that an “error”? Kinda hard to see how it would be. Seems almost like, oh, lying and law-breaking to me.

And the coup de grace: NDEP did not see fit to tell the nearby Paiutes that the particulate data had been falsified and that, as it happens, no one has any idea how much pollution was dumped on them from 2006 to 2011.

Inspiring all around, huh?

So now the Paiutes are filing a lawsuit against NV Energy. You can read their 60-day notice of intent to sue here [PDF]; all the gory details are in the Appendices.

I don’t know what the court will decide. But economic analysis shows that shutting down the Reid Gardner coal plant would benefit Nevada ratepayers. I’m just saying.

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Suddenly everyone knows about Germany’s solar power dominance because Fox Newsheads made an ass of themselves, suggesting that the country is a sunny, tropical paradise. Most media folks have figured out that there are some monster differences in policy (e.g. a feed-in tariff), but then latch on to the “Germans pay a lot extra” meme.  Germans do, and are perfectly happy with it, but that’s still not the story.

The real reason Germany dominates in solar (and wind) is their commitment to democratizing energy.

Half of their renewable power is owned by ordinary Germans, because that wonky sounding feed-in tariff (often known as a CLEAN Contract Program in America) makes it ridiculously simple and safe for someone to park their money in generating solar electricity on their roof instead of making pennies in interest at the bank.

It also makes their “energy change” movement politically bulletproof. Germans aren’t tree-hugging wackos giving up double mochas for wind turbines, they are investing by the tens of thousand in a clean energy future that is putting money back in their pockets and creating well over 300,000 new jobs (at last count).  Their policy makes solar cost half as much to install as it does in America, where the free market’s red tape can’t compete with their “socialist” efficiency.

Fox News’ gaffe about sunshine helps others paper over the real tragedy of American energy policy. In a country founded on the concept of self-reliance (goodbye, tea imports!), we finance clean energy with tax credits that make wind and solar reliant on Wall Street instead of Main Street. We largely preclude participation by the ordinary citizen unless they give up ownership of their renewable energy system to a leasing company. We make clean energy a complicated alternative to business as usual, while the cloudy, windless Germans make the energy system of the future by making it stupid easy and financially rewarding.

I’m all for pounding the faithless fools of Fox, but let’s learn the real secret to German energy engineering and start making democratic energy in America.

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I’ve done some writing about uncertainty and the role it plays in climate change analysis. (See: here, here.) I continue to think that it’s one of the most widely misunderstood aspects of the mess we’re in. Insofar as uncertainty enters climate discussions, it’s usually in dopey arguments over whether “the science is settled.” In fact, it’s true both that the basic science is settled and that we face enormous uncertainties about climate impacts and their cost. We need to start dealing with those uncertainties in a more sophisticated way.

One place uncertainty is not well-represented is in the economic models used to determine what’s called the “social cost of carbon” — that is, how much it’s worth to reduce carbon emissions.

Efforts to remedy that are underway. One came across my radar recently (via the ever-vigilant RL Miller). It’s called “The Social Cost of Stochastic and Irreversible Climate Change.”

Wait! It’s not boring! Okay, maybe a little boring. But important!

The problem is that the typical study in this area — like a recent one [PDF] conducted by the U.S. Government Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Carbon — uses what’s called an Integrated Assessment Model (IAM), which “assumes that the economy and climate systems evolve deterministically.” But those systems do not, in fact, evolve that way. Rather, they are what’s called “stochastic” systems — there’s an element of randomness that makes them intrinsically unpredictable, especially at policy-relevant time scales. More accurate models must incorporate stochastic change.

Previous models have done some of this stochastic stuff. What these researchers (out of Stanford and the University of Zurich) add is a more realistic estimation of “social risk preferences,” a measure of how risk averse we are with regard to future generations. There’s some technical stuff in there about measuring risk aversion, but I will spare you the details.

So anyway, these researchers “analyzed the optimal level and dynamic properties of the carbon tax in the face of stochastic and irreversible climate change and its interaction with economic factors, including business cycle fluctuations and preferences about risk.” Sexy, huh? (The work involved mixing elements of a DSGE model with an IAM model, but really, you don’t need to know that.)

The part I find most interesting is the attempt to incorporate stochastic climate change effects. Most previous studies have assumed that “damages are a function of contemporaneous temperature” — i.e., that climate damages rise in a steady, linear fashion along with temperature.

But this leaves out the much-ballyhooed “tipping points,” positive feedback loops (like melting of the Siberian permafrost) that become self-sustaining. “While the likelihood of tipping points may be a function of contemporaneous temperature,” the researchers note, “their effects are long lasting and might be independent of future temperatures.” In other words, once a tipping point is crossed, the trajectory of climate damages may change, sharply, and stay changed for some indeterminate amount of time. Realistic models must incorporate the possibility of irreversible changes of indeterminate duration. (“Irreversible Changes of Indeterminate Duration” is also, coincidentally, the name of my new math rock band.)

The researchers boast:

In contrast to other approaches in the literature … we are endowed with an annual-frequency, full-dimensional, stochastic IAM with intrinsic uncertainty about annual economic productivity and stochastic climate components.

Suck it, other nerds!

Anyway, what’s the take-home message here?

When you incorporate the threat of tipping points into a model, the social cost of carbon goes up. (In nerdspeak, inclusion of stochastic change “induces significant and immediate increases in the social cost of carbon, even for low-probability and low-impact tipping events.”)

When you incorporate more realistic levels of social risk aversion, the social cost of carbon goes up.

When you incorporate uncertainty about the duration and severity of post-tipping point damages, the social cost of carbon goes up.

Long story short: Grappling with the uncertainties involved in the economy and the climate system, with some consideration of the welfare of future generations, leads us to a much higher social cost of carbon, and thus a much higher price on carbon.

Uncertainty about climate change is not an excuse for inaction. It’s a reason for more aggressive action.

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The Department of Defense has bases in the U.S. and forward operating bases in theaters of war like Afghanistan. In both cases, providing reliable electricity, a strategic and tactical necessity for an increasingly wired military, is a challenge. One way the military is meeting that challenge is developing microgrids, which are way cooler than they sound.

The two types of DOD bases face the same challenge, but for different reasons. In Afghanistan, the diesel generators that provide electricity at bases are the top consumer of fuel on the battlefield. And it’s not just any fuel, it’s high-grade jet fuel, trucked into the country in caravans that cross treacherous, hostile territory and are frequently attacked. The “fully burdened cost” of that fuel — the cost of the fuel plus the costs of transporting and protecting it — can reach into the hundreds of dollars per gallon, especially at the smaller forward bases.

One way to reduce that fuel use is to generate more power on site, through distributed generation technologies like solar or waste-to-power plants. Another is to use that power more efficiently. And another is to network the base’s power sources and loads together into a microgrid that can be managed intelligently. For the bigger bases, it means they can be self-sustaining and not rely on primitive grids. For the smaller units up on the front lines, there are “mobile tactical microgrids,” which are small, modular systems that are easy to set up and disassemble, allowing a balance of connectivity and mobility.

Anyway, that’s the battlefield microgrid stuff, and it’s really cool. But I want to focus on the state-side “stationary” bases. As it happens, they are also plugged into a primitive grid — namely, the aging, shaky U.S. power grid. The military doesn’t trust it. It’s one thing if you’re at home and the lights flicker. It’s another if you’re piloting a drone strike by remote control and the lights flicker. So DOD is looking into microgrids for domestic bases too.

The idea is that the power grid serving a base could “island” itself from the larger grid, providing and controlling all its own power if necessary. It would do that through a combination of distributed generation, energy storage, energy efficiency, and smart power controls. If successful, even a total blackout of the larger grid would not affect power on the base. And though the primary purpose is security-related, it would also help DOD meet its clean-energy goals.

Here’s a representation of a military microgrid, from Sandia National Laboratory:

As it happens, Pike Research has a new report out on domestic military microgrids. Pike, the research arm of Navigant Consulting, releases a steady supply of fascinating reports that I can’t afford. (This one is $3,900.) Being subscribed to its newsletter is like water torture. The good news is, if you sign up you can at least see the executive summary for free.

Pike was able to identify around two dozen military facilities in the U.S. that are currently in the process of implementing microgrids. Most of them are using what Pike calls RDEG, or renewable distributed energy generation. Here’s what Pike projects for the next five years:

These are not huge numbers on an absolute basis, but they are interesting beyond just the megawatts involved.

There are other (non-military) microgrid projects — in a separate report, Pike identified more than 160 around the world (they expect up to 2,000 by 2015), used for everything from commercial applications to community deployments to off-grid projects serving small, remote villages. Most, almost 70 percent, are in North America and subject to democratic and economic pressures, which mean they’re on a short leash and subject to backlash if they fail or go over budget.

The U.S. military is one of the few institutions in the country with the capacity and the mandate to plan for the long term. That means it can bring a sustained focus to finding what works, tolerating some failures and high costs in the short term for strategic advantage down the road.

Consequently, we’re going to learn a ton from the military’s efforts. Right now, when we think about a microgrid that can island itself, we think either inclement circumstances (remote villages) or mission-critical activities (military bases). But as I wrote the other day, a truly resilient power grid would effectively be a patchwork of networked, overlapping microgrids. It makes sense for every region or even neighborhood to have some capacity to take care of itself should surrounding areas experience blackout or attack. It makes the whole system more fault-tolerant.

So we need to figure out microgrids. They are the key to power-grid resilience. What the military learns will find important application in the civilian world. Should be fun to watch.

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Future generations of Americans can expect to spend 25 days a year sweltering in temperatures above 100 degrees F (38 degrees C), with climate change on course to turn the country into a hotter, drier, and more disaster-prone place.

The National Climate Assessment, released in draft form on Friday, provided the fullest picture to date of the real-time effects of climate change on U.S. life, and the most likely consequences for the future.

The 1,000-page report, the work of the more than 300 government scientists and outside experts, was unequivocal on the human causes of climate change, and on the links between climate change and extreme weather.

“Climate change is already affecting the American people,” the draft report said. “Certain types of weather events have become more frequent and/or intense including heat waves, heavy downpours and in some regions floods and drought. Sea level is rising, oceans are becoming more acidic, and glaciers and Arctic sea ice are melting.”

The report, which is not due for adoption until 2014, was produced to guide federal, state, and city governments in America in making long-term plans.

By the end of the 21st century, climate change is expected to result in increased risk of asthma and other public health emergencies, widespread power blackouts, mass transit shutdowns, and possibly shortages of food.

“Proactively preparing for climate change can reduce impacts, while also facilitating a more rapid and efficient response to changes as they happen,” said Katharine Jacobs, the director of the National Climate Assessment.

The report will be open for public comment on Monday.

Environmental groups said they hoped the report would provide Barack Obama with the scientific evidence to push for measures that would slow or halt the rate of climate change — sparing the country some of the worst effects.

The report states clearly that the steps taken by Obama so far to reduce emissions are “not close to sufficient” to prevent the most severe consequences of climate change.

“As climate change and its impacts are becoming more prevalent, Americans face choices,” the report said. “Beyond the next few decades, the amount of climate change will still largely be determined by the choices society makes about emissions. Lower emissions mean less future warming and less severe impacts. Higher emissions would mean more warming and more severe impacts.”

As the report made clear: No place in America had gone untouched by climate change. Nowhere would be entirely immune from the effects of future climate change.

Some of those changes are already evident: 2012 was by far the hottest year on record, fully a degree hotter than the last such record — an off-the-charts rate of increase.

Those high temperatures were on course to continue for the rest of the century, the draft report said. It noted that average U.S. temperatures had increased by about 1.5 degrees F since 1895, with more than 80 percent of this increase since 1980.

The rise will be even steeper in future, with the next few decades projected for temperatures 2 to 4 degrees warmer in most areas. By 2100, if climate change continues on its present course, the country can expect to see 25 days a year with temperatures above 100 degrees F.

Nighttime temperatures will also stay high, providing little respite from the heat.

Certain regions are projected to heat up even sooner. West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware can expect a doubling of days hotter than 95 degrees by the 2050s. In Texas and Oklahoma, the draft report doubled the probability of extreme heat events.

Those extreme temperatures would also exact a toll on public health, with worsening air pollution, and on infrastructure, increasing the load for aging power plants.

But nowhere will see changes as extreme as Alaska, the report said.

“The most dramatic evidence is in Alaska, where average temperatures have increased more than twice as fast as the rest of the country,” the draft report said. “Of all the climate-related changes in the U.S., the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice cover in the last decade may be the most striking of all.”

Other regions will face different extreme weather scenarios. The Northeast, in particular, is at risk of coastal flooding because of sea-level rise and storm surges, as well as river flooding, because of an increase in heavy downpours.

“The north-east has experienced a greater increase in extreme precipitation over the past few decades than any other region in the U.S.,” the report said. Between 1958 and 2010, the Northeast saw a 74 percent increase in heavy downpours.

The Midwest was projected to enjoy a longer growing season — but also an increased risk of extreme events like last year’s drought. By mid-century, the combination of temperature increases and heavy rainfall or drought were expected to pull down yields of major U.S. food crops, the report warned, threatening both American and global food security.

The report is the most ambitious scientific exercise ever undertaken to catalogue the real-time effects of climate change, and predict possible outcomes in the future.

It involved more than 300 government scientists and outside experts, compared to around 30 during the last such effort when George W. Bush was president. Its findings were also much broader in scope, Jacobs said.

There were still unknowns though, the report conceded, especially about how the loss of sea ice in Greenland and Antarctica will affect future sea-level rise.

Campaign groups said they hoped the report would spur Obama to act on climate change in his second term. “The draft assessment offers a perfect opportunity for President Obama at the outset of his second term,” said Lou Leonard, director of the climate change program for the World Wildlife Fund. “When a similar report was released in 2009, the administration largely swept it under the rug. This time, the president should use it to kick-start a national conversation on climate change.”

However, the White House was exceedingly cautious on the draft release, noting in a blog post: “The draft NCA is a scientific document — not a policy document — and does not make recommendations regarding actions that might be taken in response to climate change.”

This story first appeared on the Guardian website as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

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Each year, the New Year’s holiday brings us more than just a gingerbread hangover and a metric ton of empty champagne bottles — it serves up a natural opportunity to pause and take stock of our lives. It’s that special time of year when we look back at where we’ve been and make plans for a brighter future. And it’s no different for the Greenie Pig.

You see, I’ve learned a thing or two from this year’s worth of green living challenges — lessons that I’ve boiled down into five simple guidelines for a cleaner, more sustainable 2013. I think they’ll help me as I embark on another year of eco-experimentation — and I hope they’ll help you on your own green lifestyle quests. (What? You’re not on such a quest? What are you doing here? Perhaps you’d like something like this instead.

1. Keep an open mind.

Some sustainability steps are easy — CFL bulbs? Why not? But others sound tough, gross, or just plain crazy. Some, you fear, will exile you to the island of misfit, hemp-clad fruitarians. I beg you, don’t be so quick to judge.

First off, you can pull of the hard ones. After I clocked a dismal 10-minute time on my shower, a few simple tweaks got me down to a three-minute suds session.

And the gross ones? Not really that bad. I cringed at the thought of dumpster diving at first: Surely, all that awaited me at the bottom of the big green bin was rotting, castaway chard and mold-speckled dinner rolls. But then I took a deep breath and dove, and came up with some fresh, sweet-smelling, perfectly good food (for free).

And the super-hippie stuff, like homemade cleaning products? Hey, turns out the stuff works like a nontoxic, cheap, utterly effective charm. I won’t ever buy another bottle of all-purpose cleaner or laundry detergent. All this stuff works. I only know that ‘cause I tried it.

2. Take it one step at a time.

When you’re trying new stuff, though, don’t get too carried away. If you wanted to get in shape, you wouldn’t get up off the couch and run a marathon, right? It should be the same deal with lifestyle changes. If you average 85 miles of driving a day, don’t try to quit your car cold turkey; better to start with a smaller goal, like taking the bus three times a week, and scale up. (This goes double for any steps that include pee rags.)

Bite off more than you can chew, though, and you’re bound to get discouraged, mutter “f*#*@ this,” and give up. From there, it’s a slippery slope to buying a Hummer, tossing your empty Fritos bags on the ground, and actively voting against the interests of baby seals. So take it slow, k?

3. Add — don’t subtract.

Here’s the thing about green practices: They won’t stick unless they add something to your life. Your new product/habit/philosophy has to make something better, or it’ll fade like so many discarded New Year’s resolutions. Taking the train to work is totally awesome if it lets you bypass rush-hour traffic, save gas money, and eschew the circus that is urban parking. But if the only public transit in your area involves two buses and a shuttle and takes three times as long, well, who’s really going to embrace that one?

Living a more sustainable life is about making improvements — for you and for the planet — not adding needless inconveniences to your days. So let’s say public transit sucks in your town. Maybe taking the bus is out, but can you organize a carpool? Jump on a bike? Agitate politically for transit options that don’t suck?

Sustainable practices have to make sense for widespread adoption. That exhausting, time-sucking bathtub laundry gadget that didn’t really even clean my clothes? Yeah, not going to keep up with that one. But easily homemade laundry detergent, upcycled trash, lovingly handmade Christmas gifts, and plenty more brightened my life this year. Those are the improvements with staying power.

4. Don’t ban anything but bans themselves.

Surprise! Strict taboos — be they on processed food, fossil fuels, Faberge eggs, what have you — have the curious effect of making your desire for said object approximately 12 times more intense. You will obsess over this verboten treasure, and, unless you have superhuman willpower, ultimately give in, sending yourself into a shame spiral.

But, as I discovered on my two-mile challenge, a shift in attitude can make all the difference. You’re not banning car travel, you’re embracing every opportunity to walk instead. Don’t banish processed foods entirely; take up the challenge to eat fresh, healthy options whenever possible. Don’t say, “I’m not going to buy anything new, ever”; say, “Before I buy something new, can I fix, reuse, or borrow instead?”

Notice how this attitude can be interpreted as adding, not subtracting? Eh? What lovely synergy.

5. Don’t be a jerk (or, how to set a good example).

When you set off on a greening frenzy, your friends and family are bound to notice. They will probably have one of two reactions to this: “Wow, what a cool idea! I’m going to try it!” or “What an insufferable gasbag.” Which one it is depends entirely on you.

Sure, it’s natural to get excited when you adopt a great new habit. But lecturing your neighbors about their lack of a compost pile, or judging your sister-in-law harshly because she doesn’t stock her bathroom with recycled toilet paper, or rolling your eyes when your friend confesses he sometimes drives three blocks to the grocery store — these will not do much for your popularity. What’s worse, this judgmental attitude will probably turn people off of trying these changes themselves.

Lead by example, not by volume. Be encouraging, not a know-it-all.

There you have it. Five simple principles. What about you — got any green mantras to live by? What works for you? Tell us below. And here’s to a cleaner, better 2013, all.

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There’s something in the air this season – and I’m not talking about the smell of hot credit cards. People are pushing for simpler holiday celebrations – and some of them a re pushing pretty hard.

The New York Times ran a profile Saturday of Kalle Lasn, the 70-year-old mastermind of Ad Busters. The magazine surprised many of us a year ago by sparking the Occupy Wall Street protests. Now, Lasn is on a quest to convince the developed world to stop with the shopping, already.

Lasn is one of the forces behind turning Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving, a major shopping frenzy – into “Buy Nothing Day,” and he’s now pushing “Buy Nothing Christmas,” asking people to march on Times Square from tomorrow through New Years Day brandishing signs that read “#BuyNothingXmas.” From the Times:

“As our planet gets warmer, as animals go extinct, as the humans get sicker, as our economies bail and our politicians grow ever more twisted,” Americans just go shopping, Adbusters says on its Web site. Overconsumption is destroying us, yet shopping is “our solace, our sedative: consumerism is the opiate of the masses.”

“We’ve got to break the habit,” Mr. Lasn said in a telephone interview. “It will be a shock, but we’ve got to shift to a new paradigm. Otherwise, I’m afraid will be facing a new Dark Age.”

Well if that doesn’t get you into a festive mood, maybe this will: Dante Chinni, writing in the Washington Post opinion section, suggests that we stop telling our kids there’s a Santa Claus. His 9- and 7-year-old kids have figured out that the notion of a fat dude flying around behind a bunch of airborne reindeer is pretty unlikely. Looking back, he writes, “if I had it to do over again, I would leave Kris Kringle out of our holidays altogether — at least when it comes to depicting him to our kids as a real person.”

Think for a moment about other lessons you teach your children. Planes fly because of aerodynamics and thrust. Kids shouldn’t put their heads in the railing because they could get stuck. And yet, here we are talking about a guy who pilots a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer around the world in one night, going up and down people’s chimneys. How? Well, he’s magic. He’s reality’s exception. America doesn’t need any more people who deny reality — at any age.

This may surprise you, but I take issue with both Lasn and Chinni. (For those of you just joining us, I’ve asked friends and family to get my kids nothing for Christmas this year.)

I’m guilty of getting a little doomy and gloomy about Americans’ consumption habits. But unlike Lasn, my main motivation is not to save the planet — although, yes, that too. My missions are to clear my home of a lot of unwanted clutter and to breathe some meaning back into a holiday that’s been turned into a nasty stress-fest.

If I had my way, Christmas would look more like it did in 17th century England, before the Puritans got a hold of it. Here’s a description from a Times op-ed by Rachel Schnepper, a history fellow at Washington and Lee:

It was a period of carousing and merriment. The weeks around Christmas were celebrated with feasting, drinking, singing and games. Mummers would … dress up in costumes, often in the clothes of the opposite sex, to perform plays in the streets or in homes. Carolers, too, would sing door to door as well as in the home. Wealthy lords threw open their manors, inviting local peasants and villagers inside to gorge on food and drink. Groups of young men called wassailers would march in and demand to be feasted or given gifts of money in exchange for their good wishes and songs.

And unlike Chinni, I think there is some magic to childhood that’s worth nurturing. I’m personally not a huge fan of the dude in the red suit, but my girls and I have a great time poking around the woods for fairies and the characters in the A.A. Milne books. I think they know full well that we’re playing imaginary games, but they can get lost in them. And they should — that’s what kids do.

So on Christmas Eve, I say this: If your kids want to believe in Santa, don’t spoil it for them. But this year, maybe Santa can bring something more meaningful than the usual pile of store-bought junk. Your home — and yes, the planet — will be better for it.

Happy holidays!

Need a few last-minute ideas for holiday fun that’s easy on the wallet and the planet both? We’ve got a million  and one of them (at least!) right here.

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Farm owners and farmworkers may not always see eye to eye, but there’s one thing on which they do — strongly — agree: We need change to our approach to immigration.

After years of ignoring the issue, Washington, D.C., has started to pay attention and may just be ready to act. President Obama has named immigration reform a top priority for his second term, House Speaker John Boehner feels “confident” that Republicans will agree to a comprehensive immigration bill, and if Obama’s expectations are met, we may see a proposal come out of Capitol Hill soon after his Jan. 20 inauguration.

Farmworkers, exempt from some of the nation’s most basic labor laws, like minimum wage and overtime pay, work in one of the most hazardous occupations in the country. They face risks from strenuous physical labor, often for long hours in extremely hot climates; pesticide exposure; and their work often involves dangerous equipment, often without proper training or safety measures.

Those are standard complaints, but because most farmworkers are undocumented — estimates range from about 50 percent to more than 80 percent in the U.S. — or in some cases employed through a guest worker program that doesn’t get much government oversight [PDF], they are doubly vulnerable. Without immigration status, they have little or no leverage to speak out or fight against inhumane working conditions, and often lack any avenue for doing so.

Farmers, meanwhile, want reform because the current system for agricultural employment is failing them. As the anti-immigration climate has intensified over the last few years —  with programs like E-Verify, an internet-based system that lets employers do a background check on their employees — farmers have felt threatened because undocumented workers are a population they depend on. The result is tangible; more and more farmers are complaining about a lack of workers.

“One thing that I’ve been told consistently by growers this year was that if you needed 30 people, you had 25. If you needed five crews, you had four,” said Bryan Little of the California Farm Bureau Federation. “The result of that is you wind up losing productivity.”

That affects farmers’ profits, but the long-term implications have some concerned about larger, national issues like food security. In a recent California Farm Bureau survey, “Sixty-one percent of the nearly 800 growers surveyed said they were shorthanded by a little or a lot this year.”

“I talk to growers who are saying, ‘We are triaging. We don’t have enough workers to harvest all five fields that are ripe this week. We picked out the two or three that are going to bring the most profit and we ditched the others,’” said Frank Gasperini, president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers (NCAE). He added that more and more farmers are choosing to grow crops based on what they can get the labor for, and U.S. food production is suffering as a result. “Food costs will continue to go up, but more importantly, it means that we will continue to see food production acres going to other countries.”

Little agreed, saying he’s seeing a “notable” percentage of agriculture move to Mexico, where “you’re starting to see significant investment in the kind of infrastructure that’s necessary to support things like growing peppers and lettuce and strawberries.”

So what kind of changes do farmers and farm workers want to see? And what changes are we likely to see in whatever immigration reform package comes out of D.C. in the coming year?

Just about everyone agrees that effective, comprehensive immigration reform can’t just change the system going forward; it has to address the immigration status of undocumented workers already in the country. So the real question is: What status will those workers be given?

Farmworkers and their advocates want to see workers given permanent legal status. This would give farmworkers more rights, as well as more dignity by recognizing their place in the U.S. and the role they play in our economy and our food system. Some industry groups, however, are pushing for solutions like the American Farm Bureau Federation’s proposed an “ag card” program, or a temporary work visa.

Such measures would provide a stopgap for farmers looking for more workers in the short term, but they are not much different than the  guest worker programs that already exist and are riddled with problems — from inefficiency to worker abuse.

“We vigorously oppose those kinds of guest worker programs,” said Bruce Goldstein, president of the advocacy group Farmworker Justice.

In the coming months, he predicts “a public policy battle over whether this country will go down the path of becoming a nation of guest workers or will retain its history into the future as a nation of immigrants.”

Plus, advocates say the ag card program wouldn’t solve the fundamental problems faced by migrant farmworkers.

“The biggest issue with employer-based programs is that [workers] don’t have guaranteed rights,” says Lalo Zavala, chief executive officer of MAFO, a partnership of farmworker organizations nationwide. Zavala points to the fact that many workers are bussed to remote locations, where they become completely reliant on their employers for basic needs like food, water, and housing, and an internal economy that uses tokens rather than dollars.

While that doesn’t have to mean a raw deal for the worker, reality has shown that’s often exactly what it means. Under an ag card-type program, it’s very possible that workers would be vulnerable to neglect, price gauging, and unsanitary conditions.

Beyond the immigration status of current workers, the discussion of how to reform immigration policies to improve agriculture gets pretty sticky. Farmworkers and advocacy groups want to see basic protections for workers, while many large farms and employers are less interested in providing those protections.

Opponents of tightening labor laws for agricultural workers argue, among other things, that raising wages and providing overtime or workers’ compensation to farmworkers will be costly.

But, Goldstein points out, “In most of the states where there’s a lot of farmworkers, like California and Washington state, there is workers’ compensation coverage and they are very successful agribusiness states. There’s no excuse for other states to deprive farmworkers of wages and medical care when they are injured on the job.”

Overall, what Farmworker Justice and other groups want to see is, as Goldstein put it, “modernization of labor relations in agriculture and an end to the discrimination of labor laws against farmworkers based on their occupation.”

How government officials will address these issues when they work on immigration reform is still a huge question mark. As the Farm Bureau’s Kristi Boswell says, “There’s a lot of rumors and people talking about reform … but at the end of the day, it’s what the whole package is going to look like and what can actually pass politically. And I think we’re a long way from figuring that out.”

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