Energizing voters

Fuel use and global warming heat up as campaign issues

As the 2008 presidential primaries get closer, The Post and Courier is taking a close look at some of the biggest issues as seen through the eyes of Lowcountry residents. This installment looks at energy and the environment.

As presidential candidates talk about reducing our dependence on foreign oil, Dean Schmelter of Mount Pleasant has been turning chicken fat into diesel fuel for three months.

The idea took shape a few years ago, after Hurricane Katrina wrecked the Gulf Coast's oil refineries and caused everyone to pay more at the pump.

"I complained about gas prices after Katrina, and my mechanic said, 'Why don't you do something about it? You're a chemist,'" Schmelter said.

He is now a partner in Southeast BioDiesel, an industrial startup at the northern tip of the old Charleston Naval Base that was made possible largely by federal tax credits.

"The actual cost of the chicken oil and the processing is more expensive than diesel, but after taxes, it's a little cheaper," he said. Currently, it's about 10 cents a gallon cheaper.

Schmelter uses the brew to power his diesel Mercedes, as do about half of the plant's eight employees. The brew produces 78 percent less carbon dioxide — a gas emission many link to global warming.

While some Lowcountry shrimp boats use his fuel, the company exports much of it beyond the immediate region, which makes it less economical. He is looking for local customers.

He's also looking for assurance that the government won't change the playing field in a way that ruins his business plan. He's planning to add a second shift at the North Charleston plant that would double its capacity and soon might build a new plant next door or in Florida. There's a large stock of beef tallow, chicken oil and pork fat that could be turned into fuel — much of it now is used for dog food — and algae or other plants hold promise too.

He said he wants the next president to not only help ensure the tax structure makes this alternative fuel economical but also to consider converting the federal fleet to biodiesel. He doesn't see it as a partisan issue, adding, "I think everyone agrees we need to do something."

"The various politicians, to one degree or another, all say they're for alternative fuels," he added. "The truth always comes out after they're elected."

An oilman's view

A small office above a King Street shoe repair shop is not where one would typically find an oilman, but Rusty Bennett yearned to return to the Southeast after learning the business in Dallas.

A large county-by-county map of Texas hangs behind the desk where Bennett uses e-mails, faxes and phone calls to make deals for those looking to sell their oil and natural gas rights.

But the 26-year-old CEO of Black Mountain Royalty would be happy to see oil get some new competitors. In his ideal world, the price of oil would remain flat, making it easier for him to calculate deals.

"All alternative sources are now 1 or 2 percent," he said. "If that grows a few percentage points, I think that's good for the country. Maybe it's because I'm a younger guy, but I'm wholesale behind all those forms of supply."

He said he is leaning Republican in this election, partly because he is concerned about new windfall taxes on the oil industry — taxes he fears could put a damper on domestic production and hurt small businesses and property owners. "Democrats tend to view big oil as guys getting fat smoking cigars and making money off people going to work every day. I can't get as behind on that as other people do," he said.

Other oil competitors, such as coal or nuclear power, also carry their own environmental drawbacks, he said.

While he knows that oil and natural gas remain king because they're the cheapest, he also realizes that the world's long love affair with fossil fuels could be presenting a significant downside that goes beyond business. Bennett noted the one- or two-foot snows that he played in while growing up in Kentucky have become increasingly rare there.

"I'd be the first to volunteer that everyone is in agreement, based on scientific evidence and natural evidence, that the earth has been warming," he said. "It's in the realm of possibility that humans are the primary reason behind global warming."

"I cut off the lights around the house a lot more than I used to," he said.

Sustainable thinking

Beth Huntley is working to cut off not just the lights, but all other unnecessary energy use around the Lowcountry.

While her background is in interior design, Huntley recently became chairwoman of the Sustainability Institute, a nonprofit that began eight years ago in North Charleston and now works across the region to make homes more energy efficient and sustainable.

It provides workshops and energy audits. Once it found a family whose electric bill had topped $600 a month and helped it make changes to bring that down under $100.

While the institute is interested in wider issues such as air quality, the fate of the Brazilian rain forest and the toxicity of paint and other household materials, its bread and butter is helping people save on their power bills.

"If you want to call the energy issue the 'low-hanging fruit,' it is in a way," she said. "We're very focused on that because we know that's a way to go in and educate people."

Huntley said rather than fret about global warming, she would rather people feel empowered. She said she isn't looking for the next president to create new mandates, tax changes or treaties, but simply to highlight the issue of energy and environment so others are encouraged to make change.

"My feeling is if we are going to make significant change, then all of us have to have ownership in this issue," she said. "People can change a little at a time. We as a society can't deal with change all at a time, but if you feed it to us a little bit at a time, we're open to it."

Huntley said she thinks former Vice President Al Gore might be able to do more good by continuing his current work rather than entering the race. She plans to support Democratic contender Hillary Rodham Clinton but said she doesn't want the issue seen as a partisan one.

"Just because you recycle doesn't mean you're jumping on any Republican or Democratic bandwagon, and it just makes good common sense," she said. "It's offensive, as far as I'm concerned, if anybody drags the environment out as 'their' issue.

"It's everybody's issue."

Hopeful or hopeless?

Cornelia Carrier was one of the South's first journalists to focus on the environment when she worked in New Orleans years ago, and though she retired and settled in Charleston, she's still following the story.

And for her, it's not a happy one.

"I kind of fluctuate between feeling totally hopeless and hopeful that somebody will come along and lead this nation in addressing global warming," she said. "Already, methane is bubbling out of the permafrost, and methane is a lot worse gas than CO2."

Carrier, who participated in a Charleston rally this summer designed to draw attention to the global warming issue, said Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," has raised some awareness, but many people still don't seem to understand the threat.

She said she was at a recent planning meeting in which people were asked what they thought of when they thought about the Lowcountry. Many mentioned history, architecture and plantations.

"I raised my hand and I said, 'I think of the land that will be under water because of global warming. People laughed like I had made some kind of joke," she said. "I think if anybody should take it seriously, it's coastal residents, but they don't seem to want to at all."

Carrier, who is past president of the Audubon Society and has lobbied state lawmakers about environmental issues, said she considers global warming the biggest issue in the race — bigger even than the Iraq war —though she considers them two sides of the same coin.

"I do think we went to war in Iraq about oil. I have no question at all that's why we went," she said.

Carrier said she tries not to turn on the air conditioning in her home and only does so to remove the humidity when it's most oppressive, and her hope is the next president will inspire the nation to cut back on its energy consumption, reduce our dependence on cars and take other environmentally friendly steps.

"I can see why a candidate in a primary wouldn't paint a catastrophic scenario, but I hope whoever wins the primary gets people engaged in the issue," she said. "We need to scale back our lifestyle."

'Don Quixote and Sisyphus'

Reid Wiseman remembers when his lifestyle was very much scaled back — because of World War II.

"I remember when I was a kid during the Second World War collecting bacon fat and taking it to the butcher and getting 7 cents a pound," he said. "I've been frugal for a long time."

Wiseman spent most of the following decades in academia. For the past 30 years, he has taught the College of Charleston's course on "Man and the Environment," a blend of science, economics, politics — even sex.

"It's really an eclectic course," he said, adding that his props include weights, a 1,000-watt light bulb and even an image of the Seven Dwarfs.

While the biology professor believes in global warming, his environmental concerns extend well beyond that topic.

"We're adding to the global population every four years a population equal to the population of the United States," he said. "If we keep on going, we'll have 13 billion people on our planet in 62 to 63 years. How are we going to supply energy to 13 billion people?"

Wiseman said the overarching issue is a sort of tragedy of the commons, how mankind's growth is taxing the earth in many ways.

While he recycled bacon grease, and still commutes from the Isle of Palms in his 1990 sedan with 245,000 miles on it, and tries to conserve in other ways, he knows he's not the perfect example of the change the needs to be made. He calculates he alone causes about 25,000 pounds of carbon dioxide to be released into the air each year.

"We're all guilty," he said. "It's been an uphill fight even to convince members of my own family to be frugal."

"I'm a combination of Don Quixote and Sisyphus," he said. "For some strange reason, I keep jousting at those windmills and pushing the boulder up the hill."

He said he does it for his two daughters, five grandchildren and others in the coming generation.

"Have you ever heard one of these presidential candidates even questioning the future demographics of the United States and the world?" he asked. "You know why they don't do it? I don't know if they know about it."

Reach Robert Behre at 937-5771 or at rbehre@postandcourier.com.