Our oldest trees remember the Cayuga Indians. The first Europeans walked easily through forests of broad oaks and chestnut. One massive sentinel at the south end of Cornell's libe slope has seen the swamp below it made into a city, and the hill around it collegiated.

Early settlers scalped most forest, to farm instead. By 1938 air photos show the county's woods reduced to hedgerows. The lapse of local agriculture has allowed 56 percent of Tompkins County to return to commercial forest. One quarter is maple.

The Living Fuel

The city's trees were once so large and dense that Ithaca was called the Forest City, until disease took the oaks, elms and chestnut. Still today approximately one third the city's area is shaded by leaves, according to city planner Jonathan Meigs. They are perhaps our most dignified and productive citizens. Without them, winter winds would penetrate our houses to chill our fuel bills and freeze our bank accounts. Summer heat would beat some 10 degrees hotter and, nationwide, the electric grid would faint away.

The city's 5,500 street trees and 1,000 front yard trees also freshen the air which is fuel for our lungs. Thanks to abundant green, Central New York is one of the few inhabited regions storing more carbon dioxide than it releases. But suburbanization is destroying both forest and agriculture potentials as fertile topsoil is drowned in asphalt or squashed under lawn. This careless distribution of humans increases the energy load.

Apple trees in Tompkins County drop 1.3 million pounds of fruit. Nuts and syrup are gathered. Field crop yields increase up to 35 percent with windbreak borders.

As the Bough Breaks

The Tompkins County woodpile stacks about 215 feet tall by 215 feet wide and long. The 1980 census counted 1,866 homes here heating with logs, burning an estimated 7,697 cords. Woodburning peaked in the early eighties after the 1979 oil crisis and has trimmed lately. More wood is used by many homes as backup fuel.

Mike Leach of Ithaca Stove Works says that probably 15 to 20 percent of stove users here take wood from their own land. Most is delivered by five sawmills in Tompkins County (2,500 tons), by Cotton-Hanlon of Odessa (450-500 truckloads), by professionals like Shadow Arborists of Candor, Finger Lakes Firewood and Pierce of Groton, with the help of perhaps several dozen pickup truck woodcutters.

Some get tired of loading wood, others thrive on it. Margaret Miller of Trumansburg, author of Tending the Fire says, "Its hard work, but I like feeling more independence and freedom. There's no monopoly on wood." Her chimney was cleaned last summer by a family of raccoons.

On Elm Street, Sharon and Kirk Sapa spend $350 per year for heating. Their semi-underground barn-beamed sun-facing house, home also to blooming bougainvillas, fifty plants and flitting canaries, is designed for high energy efficiency. Their Sierra woodstove is shut off by February, to keep the space from getting "too hot." A greenhouse addition will further decrease need for fuel.

Several sources suggest Tompkins County could heat entirely with its own wood. Richard Pancoe, South Central New York State DEC Forester, says that Cornell could, like Colgate University, depend on local wood. Although roughly 2-3 percent of this county's wood is harvested each year, it is believed total growth exceeds removal, despite the great loss of beech, ash and maple to disease. 55 percent of northern New England is wood heated. Hagerstown, Maryland (pop. 34,000) powers its central plant from a 500-acre municipal woodlot.

Woodstoves produce only one thirteenth the sulphur and nitrous oxides coal burning does. The gritty bits released though, have caused bad air pollution in stovepipe communities. New EPA standards now limit catalytic woodstoves sold after July, 1988 to 7 cigarette-packs- per-day of particulates. Many stoves retailed locally already greatly improve on this requirement. Gas burn efficiencies are beyond 80 percent for some.

Still, whether a third or all of us use wood we'd need to foresee the effect of this pyre on wildlife, erosion, noise, traffic, climate, greenspace and water. Gentler foresters will get 5 to 10 times more wood by coppicing: cutting trees back rather than down, speeding regrowth.

People are fertilizer factories. Flammable gas is made within us, like in the bowels of the earth. Taken by sewers to the Ithaca Area Waste Water Treatment Plant on Third Street, three million cubic feet of gas from 40,000 Ithacans bubbles from turd into tanks. It is set afire to warm and electrify the facility. The Chinese do this home-style: five million dwellings have biogas digesters for heating and lighting.

In Groton, 350 dairy cattle contribute 2,100,000 pounds of manure per year to a concrete basement. The gas held under plastic fires an internal combustion engine which generates heat for Ron Space's farmhouse and electricity for the rest of us, via NYSEG.

Since any plant or animal yields biogas when decomposing, power can be gotten from food crop leftovers like cornstalks and straw. Professor William Jewell, of Cornell's Agricultural Engineering Department calculates this residue, gathered within ten miles of Ithaca, could create all the natural gas the city's homes need. "We could reduce our consumption of foreign oil by three-quarters, decrease unemployment, improve the economic well-being of our farmers and promote a closer sense of community," he says.

Jewell's process for taking biogas from garbage before landfilling would salvage about $1.6 million per year of electricity for Tompkins County. This money would stay here to stimulate the local economy. His greenhouse water purifier cleans Ithaca sewer water with plants that consume pollutants. The system saves lots of money compared to typical sludge processing, and biogas can be taken from the plants for more electricity. He has also invented a method to remove toxic metals from sludge so it can be safely used by farms as fertilizer. This saves yet more money.

Jewell concludes that "the Ithaca area could be energy independent with a modest capital investment and without detriment to our environment."

Ethanol

Cars drunk on corn liquor ride smoother. Grain ground and soaked, fermented and distilled creates high-octane gasohol when added 1:9 to gasoline. The 1986 Tompkins County corn crop could have produced 4,390,000 gallons of ethanol (at 2.5 gallons per bushel) plus 280,500 pounds of feed mash.

Great plans for ethanol from corn must wait, to see whether the Midwest Breadbasket is being killed off by the Greenhouse Effect. This theory expects that the U.S. will become drier while the Sahara desert blooms again. In fact, Ethiopia reports its heaviest rains in 26 years and Sudan has its worst floods of the century (NYT 8/5 &14/88).

Fortunately, 20 pounds of dead grass will yield a gallon of ethanol, too.

Hydrogen

Liquid hydrogen, made by electrocuting water, has been used to propel automobiles and trucks. Its most famous jobs have been the last Challenger spacecraft and the Hindenburg dirigible.

Benefits include clean exhaust and efficient thrust. However, its manufacture depends on other fuels. That's why Canada and Sweden produce it, from cheap hydropower. U.S. factories make it with natural gas, to be used for fabrication of fertilizer and petrochemicals.

Some have suggested sending sunny Southland solar-generated hydrogen northward in natural gas pipelines.

The First Fuel

Before fire or even clothes came food. Before crops came edible weeds and roots as nature offered them. Wild food expert Becca Harber says that about 25 percent of her own meals are foraged from nearby fields during April and May. "Most common plants are edible and/or medicinal. Few plants are poisonous."

Suburbanites treat dandelions like communists, but they're highly nutritious. Lamb's quarters are fine in salad, day lilies are best stir-fried, nettles are tasty cooked, and so on nearly endlessly. Harber counts over 200 plants harvested for tea in Tompkins County.

About 333,000 fish are taken from Cayuga Lake yearly. Almost half of them are smelt. Hundreds of deer are shot here during hunting season, and 300 run over yearly. Some are eaten.

Cultivated Tastes

The Tompkins County harvest of 1888 could feed us well today: 24 percent of the land popped up corn, wheat, oats, barley, rye and buckwheat; 31 percent went to pasture, orchard and vegetables; 23 percent made hay for 16,049 dairy cattle and 33,614 sheep. There were 9,175 pigs, 3,109 acres of potatoes and 108,403 chickens.

Present-day machines and fertilizers would further increase the crop. However, large-scale mechanized agriculture is an energy loser. Vegetables need five calories of fossil fuel for every food caloric raised. Fruits need twice the fuel for each calorie of food, and meat needs ten to ninety times more.

Eleven percent of U.S. fuel goes to food processing, packaging, transport, storage and cooking. Ithaca's increased local production would shorten these steps.

Muscle Power

Food Power converts to Muscle power. Among the jets, nukes and lasers, human muscles do a minor but essential part of the nation's work. Tompkins County's farm horses (9,819 in 1890) contribute little horsepower today. They still help the Amish avoid high farm fuel costs.

Most prominent of muscle machines is the bicycle. Local bike racer Glen Swan has ripped down East Miller Road at 65 mph and towed 187 pounds of brick out Cliff Street past the hospital. He once hauled two bikes on a trailer to the top of Buffalo Street. And, like several others, he rides all winter.

Many of the rest of us ride bikes to conquer traffic jams, parking hassles, second car costs, pollution and flab. Ithaca College math instructor and concert pianist David Streater prefers his bike, owns no car. Potential U.S. bike utility is high, as 36 percent of commuters live within 3 miles of work, and half of all car trips are within the same short distance.

There's no fuel like less fuel. Any job done with less fuel liberates fuel for other jobs and other generations. More clean fuel can be extracted from fuel efficiency than any source. Modernization of the nation's industrial motors would replace energy produced by 70 large nukes, and switching to energy-efficient illumination would save the energy of 40 nukes, while new efficient household appliances will put 22 nukes to rest. Independent power producers are expected to displace 12 nukes in the next five years. New and retrofit superinsulated housing are estimated able to reduce residential heating needs over 75 percent. Every step in the direction of efficiency strengthens our future.

Efficiency is the next shift of national gears. The continent's once-limitless open spaces and cheap resources made growth a headlong race for wider highways and taller buildings. But this style of 'progress" has led us to decayed cities, hot Greenhouse summers, drug escape and crime, dying forests, carcinogenic water, toxic garbage, the invasion of foreign-controlled capital.

Consuming lots of oil and metal was long seen as essential to making big profits, but the opposite is now true. Greater Ithaca and a greater America will progress by consolidation: making what we've got already better.

Freeing Enterprise

Efficiency will make this community busier than ever: we'll need far more jobs to prepare less need for fuel and to clean up past damage, than to blunder forward "growing." Saving even ten percent of the annual countywide NYSEG bill (87 percent of which leaves the county) would keep $7 million in the Ithaca area to be spent with each other instead, potentially to stimulate thousands of trades jobs, craft businesses, agricultural enterprises, daycare opportunities, revolving loan funds, community land trusts, wildlife sanctuaries, and further fuel efficiency. Minneapolis calculates $2.20 is added to their local economy for every energy dollar saved. Tightfisted fuel policy is essential for local prosperity, national security and world health.

Worker-controlled fuel-efficient local enterprise could create goods and homes of better quality than Americans have ever had. If we do not retool and rebuild Ithaca's economy soon, while we still have cheap fuel, we will lose the luxury to change when the plug is pulled. The transition can be painless and profitable. Those who got rich from waste and suburbanization could be welcomed to use their talent (and wealth) instead to renew.

Beginning at Home

Every one of us uses more fuel than we need for heating homes and water, more than is needed for lighting, cooking, refrigeration, transportation, packaging, entertainment and recreation. Some of us live at full throttle, using up America as fast as possible. Our cardboard homes spill heat through holes called windows. Our appliances obey the silliest whims, we're stuck to electric fun, our faucets run loose. Too noble for bikes, we would drive from kitchen to bedroom if possible.

Others of us live modestly, pleased with friends and picnics, music, storytelling, a few books, fresh garden greens and a morning walk to work. But all of us have a lot more to learn.

The simplest thing we can do is to look at ourselves in the energy mirror and plug one leaky habit this month. This means using appliances less or buying appliances that work better with less electricity. New national (1987) and state (1988) minimum efficiency standards will upgrade the tools which use 25 percent of U.S. electricity. Refrigerators using 1900 kwh will be replaced by units of 750 kwh or less. Same for freezers, window air conditioners, furnaces, water heaters, dishwashers, kitchen ranges and clothes dryers. NYSEG offers cash rebates to customers who buy efficient models. They are rewarding you for "negawatts:" the power plants they don't have to build because of the fuel you don't use.

Some appliances can be improved instead of replaced. Up to 17 percent of Ithaca's residential heating bill can be saved simply by installing automatic thermostats that reduce heating while we're in bed. Water heaters can be insulated and temperature reduced. Automated furnace vents keep heat from pouring outside. Refrigerators located away from stoves and sun keep cool easier.

NYSEG will also visit anyone's house free to analyse energy use and suggest money-saving improvements. Last year they did 3,644 residential energy audits. Most households took their advice.

Superinsulation

By the year 2000 insulation is expected to be ten times cheaper than electricity. We have a lot of work to do: 97 percent of the City of Ithaca's homes were built before the 1973 energy crisis, with very little insulation. The 60 percent constructed before 1940 were not insulated. Five local companies have insulated a few thousand of these homes. Several homeowners, builders and INHS have superinsulated several old units, reducing heating costs by over 80 percent in some cases. They are heated mainly by body warmth, stoves and appliances, after the installation of triple-pane windows, and extra-thick insulation behind an airtight liner. They are ventilated deliberately rather than randomly. New York state's Energy Conservation Bank provides zero-interest loans for weatherization. NYSEG offers low- interest loans. EOC does it free for lowest income residents. A 1977 study (Masin and Klein) proposed an Ithaca insulation industry that would mix blown-in cellulose insulation from recycled newspapers with Milliken's fly ash as a fire retardant.

Because most of the city's rental housing isn't insulated, the City Energy Commission drafted an ordinance (1986) requiring landlords to either insulate, double-glaze, or upgrade gas and oil heaters. The Building Commission estimates potential annual savings at $425,000.

Big Jobs

Industry and business use about 50 percent of Tompkins County electricity. Much of it is wasted. Phil LaPadula of the state's Small Business Energy Efficiency Program (SBEEP) is one of 60 energy technicians showing merchants, farmers and non-profit organizations how to slim fuel bills. He saved one local retailer $850 per year, by replacing 30 night lights with four PL tubes costing $65. A restaurant saved $2,500 yearly in hot water by installing a $75 low-flow nozzle. Overall they have saved dozens of businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars. This suits NYSEG, which "would rather keep a customer than run them out of business or chase them away to a warmer climate," LaPadula says.

Larger businesses can call on the Energy Advisory Service to Industry (EASI), for technical conservation studies. The state will pay up to $5,000 each for these. The Alternatives Federal Credit Union is the only local bank offering loans for this rehab, to the 46 eligible companies in Tompkins County. Tompkins-Cortland Community College has cut its energy consumption by half since 1980, by installing thermal glazing, and heating the rooms being used. NYSEG is required by law to spend 1.5 percent of its gross receipts on energy conservation ($2 million of $1.3 billion in 1987). Although they want to sell as much electricity as possible, they want to spread sales throughout the day, rather than overload the lines at noon. That's why they give a cheaper rate, like the telephone company, to businesses and homes which use service in late hours.

Every Home a Power Company

Fuel costs and consumption can also be cut to a fraction, by cogenerators. Every major industry once had boilers which convert coal, oil, natural gas or propane into electricity plus useful heat and hot water. It's like the automobile drive shaft turning wheels while also running an electric radio and warming passengers. These machines come in all sizes. Cornell's new cogenerator takes useful power from 80 percent of the fuel it eats, compared to Milliken's 36 percent. Smaller businesses, like laundromats and donut shops can save thousands of dollars per year by buying refrigerator-sized generators. The investment is repaid in two to four years. Micro household units are sold. Some utilities are getting wise: New Jersey gas companies sell natural gas to cogenerators half price. The federal PURPA law of 1979 requires utilities to buy power from Ma and Pa Steamkettle-- anybody who wires their cogenerator, windmill, solar cells, waterfall, dump or cows to a NYSEG transformer.

Even after planting cogenerators everywhere, welcoming renewable fuels, loading insulation and streamlining electrification with superconduction and magnetohydrodynarnics, America might still depend on dangerous fuels for metalworking and transportation. We would want to install the largest safety margin, to protect ourselves.

For the long haul, Ithaca will be prudent to begin gradual changes in the structure of housing, transportation and food systems. Here, briefly, are a few examples. Each will need study and public planning. All entail great cultural change, but calm transition will meet the crisis ahead.

Replacing the Automobile...

Widely believed needed for freedom and adulthood, the automobile drives into a ratrace trap. Replacing the 200 million U.S. gas hogs with 98-miles-per-gallon Toyotas only slow oil drain while crawling toward gridlock. American petroleum reserves will soon be, needed for more important things, like food production. There are ways to make the Ithaca area mobile without cars.

...with Trolleys

Between 1887 and 1935 the Ithaca Street Railway carried passengers from Cornell and Cayuga Heights to Stewart Park and the West End. It connected with interurban rails to Cortland, Syracuse, Elmira, Buffalo, New York City and the trolleys of 44 other New York state cities.

Today over 40 U.S. cities are resurrecting their trolleys. Fifteen states, including New York, are planning high- speed commuter trains. The whole continent is crossed by Conrail lines. Technical and financial analysis would show how we could join them.

Trolleys would bring tourists with money, without cars, to see a better Ithaca, without polluting it. Student trolley routes would relieve East Hill traffic, boosting both downtown and collegetown shopping. The Ithaca- Cortland rail route reborn would save lives on Rte. 13, decrease commuter congestion and cost less than a new highway. Faster, safer, cheaper, more fun, necessary.

...with Safe Streets

Shortcut traffic can be kept from residential neighborhoods with planter barriers. Side streets can be converted to pocket parks, playgrounds, pathways and neighborhood orchards, retaining enough permeable stone for emergency and neighborhood access. These will inspire more people to walk to work.

As Ithaca unpaves the way to a greener future, more rainwater will enter the ground, less will enter stormdrains, helping the lake cleanse.

...and with Bikeways

Well-kept crosstown bikeways separated from cars would allow Ithacans to shop, commute and visit without traffic hazard. The Ithaca Bikeway Study of 1975, defining exclusive bike routes, needs pumping again. There are more bikes than cars in flat Davis, California. Ithaca would offer ready-racks on buses and trolleys.

Growing Food

The Drought of '88 may signal the end of reliable Midwest grain, due to Greenhouse climate change. One third our Breadbasket crop is lost. This coupled with world population increase means Ithaca will be responsible for growing more of its own food.

To protect local farm potential we need stronger agricultural incentives, major tax abatements, land trusts and resolute zoning. Destruction of topsoil, by suburbanization and industrialization, should be prohibited. Property holding is the privilege to use land, not kill it. Tompkins County can't wait for the droughts of '89 or '90 to prove the need for local soil. The highest use of land will be to weave nature into the city: converting vacant lots to woodlots, orchards and community gardens. Ithakids could restore our urban ecology, planting edible street trees, learning planning.

Cornell's intention to 'Siliconize' Ithaca, by contrast, threatens local agriculture and water quality. Cornell has hired David Costine of Silicon Valley to do here as he did to Princeton's Route One. Such industries have brought massive traffic tangles and poisoned groundwater, with high rates of cancer, birth defects and spontaneous abortions among workers. Cornell will insist their plan is safe, but Ithaca will be either aggressively safe or very sorry.

Building Permanent Homes

Earth-sheltered housing needs no fuel for air conditioning and a trifle for heating. Five feet underground Ithaca's temperature stays near 54 degrees even mid-winter. Beautiful well-lit dwellings tucked into hillsides ought gradually to replace present structures, where possible. Thousands of U.S. homes are below ground, millions are earth-bermed. Ten million Chinese near Beijing stroll or garden their rooftops; courtyards give them lots of natural light. New Swedish subterranean office buildings are heated by human warmth and lightbulbs. Shopping malls in Montreal and industrial parks in Kansas sit underground. The largest such local building is Cornell's campus store. Building manager Kurt Howe says they have fine heat savings despite constant door opening and closing, and few problems with seepage in I I years of use.

Ecolonies

Multiple-family structures are more energy-efficient because they share heat through walls. They are neighborhoods as well as housing, when shared areas are built-in. The ecolony, or ecological colony, is a semi-underground south- facing solar co-op community house. It provides well-soundproofed private spaces for those living alone or as couples, in nuclear families and neofamily groups. There are common areas for child care, health care, parties, meetings, dances, lounges, food production and processing, arts and exhibits, libraries and learning, theatre, worship and meditation, and cottage industry. They are designed by prospective residents. Limited-equity deeds keep rental and ownership costs low.

PAYING FOR THE FUTURE In addition to enriching Ithaca with fuel efficiencies, local wealth is created whenever we buy regionally-made food, furniture, clothing, etc. from locally-owned businesses. Similarly, money invested in democratic banks like Alternatives FCU (every investor has one vote) promotes capitalization of locally-controlled projects. Neighborhoods elsewhere (in Chicago, NYC, Philadelphia) have started their own banks. There are funds, like the Industrial Cooperative Association and Affirmative Investments, which help workers buy and convert businesses, with lawyers to show them how. There is federal and state seed money for new small enterprises. Ithaca should quit courting and subsidizing non- union and non-local industries. As well, Ithaca needs an Alumni Association, to obtain tax-deductible donations from the Cornell and Ithaca College alumni who enjoyed Ithaca, who liked their university more as alma mater than as factory. Many would find more satisfaction donating to trolleys and solarization than to monoliths. We would celebrate benefactors with speeches and plaques.

Those afraid of Russia's military rarely notice the Soviets have an even stronger peace machine. They are more durable: they have twice our oil supply, twice our coal reserves and three times our natural gas. Most of their strategic metals are domestic, most of ours imported. They also use these more careful. Most of their transportation is by rail, which is 14 times more efficient than trucking and car travel. They manufacture fewer consumer baubles that waste energy and fill dumps. America's tough militarists guard our porch with guns ready while the house bums: our rate of oil use is making us a weak nation. And U.S. patriots who would condemn burning the flag eagerly burn the country itself, in cars. We Americans are the enemy inside, throwing America away, into wastebaskets. National security begins by marketing quality recyclable goods and developing our rail network. It rises with the nation's communities creatively changing together. Full national security arrives with global accord.

Public Planners of Ithaca collects money to research prospects like these. Our city can teach the world by setting examples for the thousands of leaders who graduate from Ithaca's schools. Tompkins County needs to demand Federal spending priorities which defend the nation by rebuilding it. Contractor Peter Penniman estimates 6,700 Ithaca homes could be insulated for the price of one nuclear bomb, about $10,000,000. The state, likewise, should be more willing to spend $35,000,000 on an Ithaca area rail system than on another Route 96.

Prepare for the Best

These are some of many fuel choices and opportunities before us. There are endless good possibilities to be planned, financed and started. The best planning draws creative ideas from workers and residents. The worst sells neighborhoods. Typical progress rolls toward gridlocked cities, wall-to-wall walls, dead trees and air, rents too high for laborers, dangerous lonely streets. And energy poverty.

Beyond bleeding-heart liberalism and heart-breaking conservatism, beyond plundering capitalism and bureaucratic socialism there is greener progress that strides toward full mutual employment, success and stability, natural beauty, national security and global sanity. And a powerful Ithaca with more fuel than it needs, produced in our back yard.

Comments to: hours@lightlink.com Paul Glover is also author of the "Amazing Ithaca History Calendar" (1976), "Los Angeles: A History of the Future" (1982), "Where Does Ithaca's Food Come From?" (1987), publisher of HOUR Town local currency news http://www.lightlink.com/ithacahours (1991-present), and dozens of other articles and monographs. He holds a degree in City Management, rides his bicycle everywhere, and in 1978 walked across the U.S. entirely on foot.

Donations for further local sustainability research are welcome: Paul Glover, Box 6578, Ithaca, NY 14851