Yesterday, I took the recyclables that had been accumulating in my kitchen for the past month and dumped them in the brand spankin' new recycling bin that was provided by the city of Savannah. Who thought this day would ever come? I have to admit, though, I found it somewhat ironic that the informational materials that were left for me by the city were contained in a non-recyclable plastic bag.

The battle over how Obama's stimulus package will be spent has already begun. On one side, you have the unions pressing for road construction projects, primarily in the suburbs. On the other side, you have the advocates for green energy, mass transit, urban redevelopment, and the like. The latter group basically thinks the suburbs are a failed experiment and that we cannot afford to spend money on projects that cater to a lifestyle of long commutes and other unsustainabilities. I tend to agree, myself. This going to be a battle royale.

We are all enjoying cheap oil prices for christmas, but not only might the respite not last very long, the implications for how much effort we will be able to put into developing a green economy as a result are dire, as well. An article in Financial Sense WrapUp lays out a short term issue that hasn't gotten much press yet:

According to Matt Simmons, by the end of 2009, Mexico will no longer be an oil exporter. If Simmons is correct, it will be very difficult to replace the oil revenue that has supported 40% of the Mexican budget. The Mexican government has recently taken the unprecedented step of voting to allow foreign oil companies to explore for oil in Mexico. In a country that celebrates the 1938 nationalization of its oil industry as a federal holiday, it was clearly an act of desperation. Promising offshore discoveries in Mexico will likely take decades to bring to production, according to Simmons, due to the extreme depths and massive technical challenges.

Unfortunately, it may be too little too late to replace the rapidly disappearing Cantarell production. In as little as 12-24 months, the effects may be felt both in Mexico and the US. Replacing the 1.3 million barrels per day the US now imports from Mexico won’t be easy (the US imports 1.4 million barrels per day from Saudi Arabia by means of comparison). For Mexico, the problems run much deeper, as they must quickly diversify their economy or face wrenching economic and social dislocations. The adjustment period will likely bring great change and tumult, perhaps across the border as well.

The author of this article contends "An investor with a longer term time horizon should own well-managed oil production, exploration and service companies, especially at these much lower valuations. The resource these companies bring to market is growing ever scarcer, and will be desperately needed for decades to come." He offers this assessment of how the new administration will handle the coming crisis. It's good news for investors, but not as good for the planet:

The new Obama administration wants rapid change into renewable energy sources. Those changes are expensive and will be difficult to sell at low oil prices. Government policies will likely encourage higher oil prices. Of course official acknowledgement of global oil depletion carries many political risks and would raise havoc with many of his supporters. As dire as the longer term situation appears, would any politician take severe political measures before shortages strike? Not likely.

Obama is going to have a lot of pressure from vested interests and will be taking advice from those he has gathered around him. While he has made it clear that he is in charge and that those around him are pragmatists who will implement his policies, the conventional wisdom is that a president's choice of advisers tells us more about how he will govern than anything else he has ever said or done before. Obama has chosen financial advisers who were largely responsible for starting the trainwreck we are now on when they worked for Bill Clinton. He has chosen a Secretary of Agriculture who is totally in the pocket of big agribusiness corporations and the corn ethanol industry. His foreign policy team is a hawkish crowd, all of whom supported the war in Iraq at the outset. He has chosen a Secretary of Education who is on record as basically wanting a kindler, gentler version of No Child Left Behind. The one shining light so far is his environmental team. They are the only ones I would call true progressives. Let's hope they are the ones who hold sway.

Perhaps, the others are all there to make amends and clean up their collective messes. The problem is that these are people who have already demonstrated they lack basic common sense and critical thinking skills. They pander to the moneyed class. Their fatal flaw is that they all still believe at their cores that the market is king; it's just needs a little tweaking. This pretty much means that as soon as things starts to seem on the mend, they will do something dumb again. The reality is that we live in a culture where 70% of GDP is based on debt-driven spending. There is just something fundamentally wrong with that, and until the powers that be realize that, there is going to be a world of hurt coming at us.

Right now, there is a big battle in the left to center blogosphere and progressive magazines like The Nation. While longtime progressives are up in arms about many of the things I have noted above, many of the folks who, after years or decades of political apathy, finally got out and decided to vote—and voted for Obama in huge numbers, are telling the progressives to shut up. There is this naive certainty that Obama will not let us down in any way and that we should just trust him to do the right thing—that attacking him before he has even done anything of substance just strengthens his real enemies and weakens the left. Well, while there may be some grains of truth to that sensibility, it ignores one key thing: If the left remains silent now, the only voices Obama will hear are those of industry (who do not have our best interests at hear), those of his advisers (i.e., more of the same), and what appears to be universal approval from his base. That is not a way to make good policy.

Those who have particular interests need to make their voices heard. Of course, it serves no purpose to trash Vilsack or Summers at this point, but it does serve a purpose to make a lot of noise about what needs to get done to fix the economy and the planet. For example, do we just let 100s of billions of dollars be spent on new roads, when they should perhaps be spent on mass transit instead? If we stay quiet about these things, we may only get a short-term fix, at best and lose the one opportunity we have to get on the right track. Now is not the time to sit back and savor our victory. The hard work has just begun.

For some good reading on what we really need to do, I suggest Plan B 3.0. (Note: This is a free download of the entire book, at least for now.)

Fascinating article on passive houses in today's New York Times. They have no heating system at all, are always the perfect temperature, floors and wall as warm as the air, and use 1/20 the energy of a regular house. This is how it works:

Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants’ bodies.

Best of all, they don't cost much more to build than regular hose, at least in Europe, where the builders are close to the supply chain. There are some caveats, though:

Because a successful passive house requires the interplay of the building, the sun and the climate, architects need to be careful about site selection. Passive-house heating might not work in a shady valley in Switzerland, or on an urban street with no south-facing wall. Researchers are looking into whether the concept will work in warmer climates — where a heat exchanger could be used in reverse, to keep cool air in and warm air out.

Those of you out there who are into green building might want to see if you can be the ones who pioneer the warm-weather systems.