Environment Forum

The Green Gauge: Shale developers hit speed bumps

Development of shale gas has attracted myriad fans and enemies in recent months: those who cheer a source of natural gas on the home turf of the U.S. and environmentalists who warn the process to release the gas underground risks contaminating drinking water.

This month, Chesapeake Energy, Denbury Resources and Southwest Energy Co. each made headlines for environmental mishaps, and share the top spot in this issue of The Green Gauge, a breakdown of companies that made headlines Sept. 6 to Sept 19 for winning or losing credibility based on environment-related activity.

Selections of companies were made by Christopher Greenwald, director of data content at ASSET4, a Thomson Reuters business that provides investment research on the environmental, social and governance performance of major global corporations. These ratings are not recommendations to buy or sell.

Chesapeake Energy, Denbury Resources, Southwest Energy Co.

In the wake of the Gulf Oil disaster, environmentalists have become increasingly critical of the process of hydraulic fracturing, which involves blasting water, sand and chemicals into shale rock underground in order to retrieve natural gas.  A recent public hearing by the EPA on hydraulic fracturing in Binghamton, New York drew about 200 protesters, and the NGO Riverkeeper published a study in conjunction with the hearings outlining the risks of the technique for water contamination.

Several companies active in hydraulic fracturing for shale gas have faced notable controversies surrounding the impacts of the practice in recent weeks. Chesapeake Energy, a company that hopes to expand its hydraulic fracturing into New York State, was ordered to ensure the safety of its shale wells in Pennsylvania, after the Department of Environmental Protection found methane concentrations in water that could be traced back to several of the company’s sites.

Greens party soars to new heights in Germany

Germany’s Greens party are already the world’s most successful environmental party – having spent seven years in government of one of the world’s largest economies as junior coalition partners to the centre-left Social Democrats. The Greens wrote Germany’s renewable energy law that helped the country become a major player in wind and solar energy technology between 1998 and 2005 — and the party is chiefly responsible for raising the share of renewable energy to 16 percent of the country’s total electricity consumption.

Although in opposition since 2005, the Greens’ popularity has nevertheless soared to record levels over 20 percent in recent months and the party – which only recently celebrated its 30th anniversary – is doing so well in opinion polls that they could possibly end up heading coalitions in two state elections next year ahead of the SPD in Baden-Wuerttemberg and the city-state of Berlin. 

Pollsters say the Greens are benefitting from an increasing awareness in environmental issues, such as climate change and the public’s opposition to government plans to extend nuclear power in Germany beyond 2021. The Greens are also profiting from voter frustration over broken promises by the ruling parties.

So what’s their secret? Why is the unabashedly pro-environment party so successful in an industrial nation like Germany? We got the chance to chat with the co-chairman of the Greens, Cem Oezdemir, who explained why the Greens are doing so well –but also warned that good opinion polls do not always translate into good election results.

“We’re thrilled about the good run in opinion polls but there’s no danger of us getting arrogant about it like the other parties might,” Greens party co-chairman Cem Oezdemir said in an interview with Reuters at the Greens’ party headquarters in Berlin – under a roof with a photovoltaic system on top. “We’re not going to suddenly start changing our positions according to how the political winds are blowing. We’re sticking to our guns and concentrating on our core issues. We’re not going to squander our political capital and we’re not going to make promises before elections that we forget about after the elections.”

That, in essence, is why the Greens have climbed to around 20 percent in national opinion polls this year from the 10.7 percent they won in the last federal election. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition has, by contrast, lost credibility and plunged in the polls because many of the pre-election promises the ruling parties made were quickly scuppered after the vote. Pollster and analysts agree the Greens have taken advantage of the weaknesses of the other parties.

The Greens have also been helped by such things as their consistent opposition to a new rail station in the southwestern city of Stuttgart that will cost billions of euros. They are the only party that has argued against the mammoth project from the start and, because most voters in the state are also opposed, have gained from that stance.

10,000 walruses, ready for their close-up

Zoom! Pan! Swish!  Take a look at a new movie of walruses crowding an Alaska beach — as you’ve never seen them before! Shot from 4,000 feet up in the air, the vast herd of walruses looks like a pile of brown gravel from a distance. (A far different view than the extreme close-up in the still photo at left, which was taken at a zoo in Belarus.)

As the camera in Alaska zooms in, you can see there are thousands of walruses scrambling ashore as the ice floes they normally use as hunting platforms melt away. The video was shot this month at Point Lay, Alaska, and distributed this week by the U.S. Geological Survey. It’s impossible to say how many are on this beach in this movie, but an Arctic scientist at World Wildlife Fund estimates between 10,000 and 20,000 of the tusked marine mammals have hauled themselves onto land in Alaska this year as summer Arctic sea ice shrank to its third-smallest recorded size.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Stringer Vladimir Nikolsky (Zoo employee plays with a walrus during celebrations marking the zoo’s 23th birthday in Minsk, Belarus, August 11, 2007)

Video credit: U.S. Geological Survey

Jay Leno’s garage: a lot of EVs

The fact that comedian Jay Leno has a serious collection of cars in his 17,000 square-foot-garage in southern California may not surprise fans, but his soft spot for electric and hybrid vehicles most likely will turn a few heads.

In this exclusive interview with GigaOM‘s Green Overdrive crew, the host of “The Tonight Show” opens the door to his solar-powered home for dozens and dozens of cars for an animated tour of his collection, including three cherished vintage electric models from the 1900s.

Ice thaw exposes trove from pre-Viking hunters

A thaw of ice in the mountains of Norway is helping Lars Piloe and his team of archaeologists uncover a 1,500-year-old trove of equipment used by ancestors of the Vikings to hunt reindeer.

Their work as “ice patch archaeologists” points to one of a few positive side-effects of man-made climate change, widely blamed for shrinking glaciers worldwide.

On other missions to dwindling ice fields they have found arrows, even some with feathers attached. And another expert found a 3,400-year-old leather shoe. (…they speculate that the shoe’s first owner threw it away because it has a hole in the sole).

I was up by the ice a few days ago with my TV colleague Kurt – luckily about 40 cms of snow that fell shortly before had melted away, or the trip would have been in vain for everyone — on days with snow, ”ice patch archaeologists” can’t find anything.

And at almost 2,000 metres, the season is already extremely short — it starts in mid-August and ends as soon as the autumn snows fall, usually around now. Their finds are a stark sign that the ice has not been this small for centuries: feathers or leather turn to dust within days of exposure unless they are properly preserved.

Most of the finds at the ice, known as Juvfonna, are “scare sticks” — perhaps a metre long with another small piece of wood tied to the top to flap in the wind (see picture below left for the carved end of a scare stick where string was tied). Placed in rows on the ice, they would worry the unwitting reindeer just enough to guide them towards hunters lying in wait behind rocks, without causing a stampede. The archaeologists found dozens of the sticks — even I managed to find a couple among the rocks.

Archaeologists speculate that teams of hunters came up from the valley below — probably a 10-hour slog — and left gear at altitude between hunts to avoid carrying the extra weight. Maybe one year at the start of the Dark Ages there was an especially bad early snowstorm that covered up rows of scare sticks — until now. 

Attack survivors at UN: Save the sharks!

Jaws needs help.

Nine shark-attack survivors from five countries headed for the United Nations in New York City to plead the case for shark preservation. U.N. member countries could take this issue up this week as part of an annual resolution on sustainable fisheries. They’ll also be reviewing the Millennium Development Goals — a long-range set of global targets that includes stemming the loss of biodiversity, including sharks.

“I’m very thankful to be alive,” said Krishna Thompson, a Wall Street banker who lost his left leg in a shark attack while visiting the Bahamas in 2001.  “I have learned to appreciate all of God’s living creatures. Sharks are an apex predator in the ocean. Whether they continue to live  affects how we as people live on this Earth. I feel that one of the reasons why I am alive today is to help the environment and help support shark conservation.”

Another survivor, Yann Perras of LeMans, France, had his leg severed while windsurfing off the coast of Venezuela in 2003. “Even if the movie ‘Jaws’ has scared entire generations, we have to remember that it is only fiction,” Perras said in a statement.

The nine who survived shark attacks gathered at the U.N. Environment Programme offices in an event organized by the Pew Environment Group, which among other projects aims to conserve shark species.

As many as 73 million sharks are killed each year to support the trade in shark fins, driven by demand for shark fin soup; 30 percent of shark species are either threatened or near-threatened with extinction and there is insufficient data to assess the population status of another 47 percent, the Pew Environment Group said.

Photo credits: REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom (A child looks at sharks at Siam Ocean World in Bangkok August 16, 2010.)

The quest to put solar power back on the White House

Bill McKibben, founder of the green group 350.org, is on a quest to convince President Barack Obama to put solar panels back on the roof of the White House.

He’s at the end of a journey to Washington from Maine in a van fired by biodiesel carrying one of the 32 panels Jimmy Carter unveiled in 1979 during the first press conference on the White House roof.

Also in the van are students from Unity College, which got the the panels some time after President Ronald Reagan, no fan of alternative energy, had workers remove the panels during “roof repairs” in 1986.

McKibben had hoped to meet with somebody high up in the Obama administration such as Carol Browner, Obama’s top energy and climate aide. He’s been talking all week with the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) on the plan.

“They keep saying it’s complicated and difficult, but compared with the other tasks they face, we think this one is relatively simple and it would be a great statement,” McKibben said via cell phone from the van.

The White House tells him the administration is greening federal government buildings across the country, which he agrees is a good effort.

The Green Gauge: Shell and BASF guilty in Brazil

Royal Dutch Shell and German chemicals maker BASF were dealt a costly blow last month in a court ruling in Brazil that found both companies liable for contaminating groundwater with toxic waste northwest of Sao Paulo.

The ruling puts Shell and BASF in the lead position in this installment of The Green Gauge, a breakdown of companies that made headlines Aug. 22 to Sept. 6 for winning or losing credibility based on environment-related activity.

Selections of companies were made by Christopher Greenwald, director of data content at ASSET4, a Thomson Reuters business that provides investment research on the environmental, social and governance performance of major global corporations. These ratings are not recommendations to buy or sell.

Royal Dutch Shell and BASF

A court in Paulinia, Brazil has ruled that Shell and BASF are responsible for the “collective damage” caused by toxic emissions to the groundwater at a large pesticide plant 120 kilometres northwest of Sao Paulo, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported. Shell built the plant in the late 1970s and BASF controlled it between 2000 and 2002.  The total liabilities are estimated to be $626 million, which include payments of $360 million to over 1,000 individuals who have experienced illnesses believed to have been caused by toxic chemicals at the plant.  BASF claimed that Shell is solely responsible for the problem. Both BASF and Shell said they plan to appeal the ruling.

Bjorn Lomborg: skeptic or too much an optimist?

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‘Friendly’ push for Facebook to dump coal

With half a million signatures backing it up, Greenpeace fired off a letter to Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg today calling for the world’s largest social network to cut ties to coal-fired power at its new data center in Oregon.

“Other cloud-based companies face similar choices and challenges as you do in building data centers, yet many are making smarter and cleaner investments,” executive director of Greenpeace, Kumi Naidoo, writes. He points to Google and its a recent agreement to buy wind power from NextEra Energy for the next 20 years to power its data centers.

The letter adds to what’s turning into a miserable week for Zuckerberg, who is also fighting a civil lawsuit by a man who claims to own a huge chunk of the social network site and is seeking to uncover “unnecessary details” about Zuckerberg’s private life.

Greenpeace’s “Unfriend Coal” drive targeting Facebook falls under the environmental group’s larger Cool IT campaign, which aims to influence infrastructure choices behind the cloud-computing boom.

When Facebook broke ground on its center in Prineville, Oregon, last January, it blogged about energy-efficient technologies at the new facility, including cooling the air by bringing in cooler air from outside in an “airside economizer” and re-use of server heat during the colder months.

But Greenpeace says since then Facebook signed a deal to source its energy from PacificCorp, which it says uses 83 percent coal in its energy mix, the Associated Press reports.