Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
As if 2007 never happened?
If four years is a lifetime in politics, it’s an eternity in climate change politics. Events in Washington this week might make climate policy watchers wonder if 2007 really happened.
At issue is the decision by American Electric Power to put its plans for carbon capture and storage on hold, due to the weak economy and the lack of a U.S. plan to limit emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide. Read the Reuters story about it here.
Carbon capture and storage, or CCS for short, has been promoted as a way to make electricity from domestic coal without unduly raising the level of carbon in the atmosphere. Instead of sending the carbon dioxide that results from burning coal up a smokestack and into the air, the plan was to bury it underground. But that costs money and requires regulatory guarantees, and neither are imminent in the United States. Legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions bogged down on Capitol Hill a year ago and has not been re-introduced.
Sarah Forbes of World Resources Institute called AEP’s decision “a surprise, but not a shock.”
“Given that U.S. climate legislation stalled last summer, companies have less incentive to move forward with CCS, which has proven difficult to advance at scale,” Forbes said in a statement.
Compare that to what happened in 2007. Senators Barbara Boxer, John Warner and Joe Lieberman joined forces that year to focus attention on climate change and were able to shepherd a carbon-limiting bill to the Senate floor the next year, the farthest any such measure has gotten in the United States. Al Gore, the former vice president and perennial climate campaigner, shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the United Nations’ Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change for bringing climate change to public attention.
On Groundhog Day of that year (why did they pick February 2?) the IPCC released its Fourth Assessment report on what was likely to happen in a warming world. The report forecast more severe weather, worse heat waves, dramatic droughts, wildfires and floods, rising seas and melting glaciers. It also famously said, with 90 percent certainty, that climate change was under way and that human activities contribute to it.
A winter’s tale of climate skepticism
Another winter storm is brewing in Middle America. So what else is new?
It’s been one spate of severe weather after another even before 2011 began. And you would expect those skeptical of climate change to capitalize on the cold snap by questioning whether human-spurred global warming is a real deal.
Strangely enough, climate skeptics appear to be less vocal than they were last year, when Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma built an igloo as a blizzard blew through Washington DC, and dubbed it “Al Gore’s new home.” If it’s so cold, the argument went, how can there be global warming?
Gore himself offered an answer last week, in a blog post meant to respond to just such a question from Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly.
“In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe,” Gore wrote. “Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.”
All the numbers indicate the planet as a whole is warming, which means climate change is already under way. But climate skeptics remain unpersuaded.
That was evident on Capitol Hill today, where measures that could help combat the causes of climate change — environmental protection, scientific research, weatherization programs — got short shrift in a new Republican spending plan.
I keep reading the statement that global warming has increased atmospheric moisture, and therefore heavy snowfalls are to be expected. It is true that warmer air holds more water vapor, but it can’t snow unless it is below freezing. So heavy snowfalls would be evidence for global warming if they occur in regions where it is usually too cold to snow much. But the heavy snowfalls of the last two winters have largely been in the South, where it usually does not snow at all. The heavy snowfalls have been accompanied by colder than normal weather. This has nothing to do with global warming. The unusual snowfalls have been caused by a persistent negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) which drives cold air south into the southeast US and southwest from Siberia into Western Europe. The negative NAO may be related to abnormally low sunspot activity, but this is still in dispute.
from Mario Di Simine:
WWF, businesses deal on emissions
The debate over lowering greenhouse gas emissions is sometimes depicted as a fight between environmental groups concerned over the health of the planet and businesses concerned about economic growth and bottom-line erosion.
Occasionally, though, there is a meeting of like minds between the two.
The WWF has a program in which it partners with companies to target emissions reductions. The Climate Savers program is an agreement between the WWF and its partner companies to lay out targets and set out projects to meet those goals.
"We want to show that doing business and reducing emissions go hand in hand," said Matthew Banks, a senior program officer at the WWF and an economist.
The program, started in 1999, is aimed at getting companies to reduce their carbon footprint. Twenty-three companies have signed on, including Coca-Cola, Hewlett-Packard, Nike and JohnsonDiversey. The companies negotiate targets and projects to reach those targets with the WWF and independent experts. Each contract is tailored to the company's specific circumstances and progress is verified by an outside experts like ecofys.
Hewlett-Packard, for instance, has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 6 million tonnes below 2005 levels by 2010. Japanese transportation company Sagawa aims to reduce its gross CO2 emissions by 6 percent by 2012 compared with 2002.
The WWF is trying to get companies to stretch those targets.
from Mario Di Simine:
JohnsonDiversey exec sees CO2 reductions good for businesses
Some businesses in the United States will have to reinvent themselves as the Obama administration moves to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but they'll be better off in the long run, Pedro Chidichimo, president of JohnsonDiversey EMA, told Reuters.com on Thursday.
Despite the inevitable short-term pain, Chidichimo said that carbon footprint reductions simply have good bottom-line implications for businesses.
"Of course there are a lot of investments that need to be done, not only financial investments but resources and capabilities investments that need to be done to do that but this will generate significant bottom-line improvement for the business landscape," he said.
The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) ruled on Monday that greenhouse gases endanger human health, a move that will allow it to regulate planet-warming gases even without legislation in Congress.
Reinvention will be key for some companies as they move to comply with new standards and regulations, said Chidichimo, who spoke to Reuters.com at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Climate Business Action Day event on the sidelines of the COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen.
"In history you’ve seen many reinventions of industries," he said. "I think we are at one of those breakthrough times in humanity where some industries need to be redefined totally and need to take other technologies as a base to drive a different business model."
Wisconsin-based JohnsonDiversey specializes in cleaning and hygiene solutions for commercial customers. The unlisted company has committed to reducing emissions from its global operations to 8 percent below 2003 levels by December 31, 2013. It said this will result in an estimated cumulative CO2 reduction of 89,000 tonnes by 2013.
Must the natural gas industry clean up its act?
Natural gas is regarded as a relatively clean source of energy but there is mounting evidence that it has a dirty side.
My colleague Jon Hurdle has reported on Wyoming water woes that have been linked to the booming gas industry. You can see his stories here and here.
In August U.S. government scientists reported that they had for the first time found chemical contaminants in drinking water wells near natural gas drilling operations, fueling concern that a gas-extraction technique is endangering the health of people who live close to drilling rigs.
The Environmental Protection Agency found chemicals that researchers say may cause illnesses including cancer, kidney failure, anemia and fertility problems in water from 11 of 39 wells tested around the Wyoming town of Pavillion in March and May this year.
On Monday, I reported that high concentrations of harmful compounds have been found in the air in a north Texas town that is in the heart of the region’s gas industry, according to a report released by an environmental consultancy.
The study by Wolf Eagle Environmental Engineers and Consultants found high concentrations of carcinogenic and neurotoxin compounds in the atmosphere at seven locations around the rural town of DISH, which is about 50 miles northwest of Dallas.
as a weekend flyfisherman who fishes every time i get a chance in PA. and am hearing almost daily about the pollution dangers from this process of drilling and the amount of water it uses i am getting sick to my stomach
U.S. chamber wants Scopes trial on climate change
The biggest business lobby in the United States wants to hold a public hearing “to put the science of global warming on trial,” The Los Angeles Times reports.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to drive back major emission limits, wants the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to hold the hearing on evidence that climate change is man-made.
“Chamber officials say it would be ‘the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century’ — complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect,” the newspaper reported.
“It would be evolution versus creationism,” William Kovacs, the chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs, told the LA Times. “It would be the science of climate change on trial.”
The EPA told the Times that a hearing would be “a waste of time” and called a lawsuit by the chamber “frivolous.”
“The chamber proposal ‘brings to mind for me the Salem witch trials, based on myth,’ said Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist for the environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists. ‘In this case, it would be ignoring decades of publicly accessible evidence.’”
But if the EPA refuses to hold the hearing, the chamber is threatening to take the fight to federal court.
Businesses rely on you, the consumer to buy their products and services to survive, prosper,develop and expand. Therefore you are the key to reversing climate change. If you care enough to question who sells you your products or services and vote with your feet, big business will be forced to move with you. In the old days, you did not expect the milk man to deliver your milk and then trample over your tulips on the way out, so today we don’t expect companies to make profits at the cost of the environment that we and our children live in. Big business needs to change in its own sector, as we all do, and every little reverses climate change.
from Tales from the Trail:
Team Obama’s Environmental Irony Tour
Okay, so it's August in Washington. It's hot. Congress has gone home. Even the summer interns are packing up and getting out of town. So it's not surprising that top members of the Obama administration might be ready for a road trip.
That's basically what the White House announced in a statement headlined: "Obama Administration Officials Travel America, Talk Clean Energy Economy." President Obama went to Indiana to announce $2.4 billion in funding for advanced battery and electric drive projects; Energy Secretary Steven Chu headed for Minnesota to look at renewable energy projects and North Carolina to announce a big grant to a lithium battery firm, finishing up the week in Massachusetts to talk about clean energy jobs at Harvard; Interior Secretary Ken Salazar went to a solar panel company in Colorado; EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was in Florida and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke traveled to Missouri.
Probably only a crank would wonder just how much greenhouse gas all this official travel spewed into the atmosphere. There's no hybrid Air Force One, after all. But it does seem like an exquisite irony that, with the best of environmental intentions, the Obama team may have stomped all over the United States with a heavy-duty carbon footprint.
Is it fair to ask that when they talk the talk, they walk the walk -- or offset emissions by funding windmills or other projects that supply renewable energy? Let us know what you think.
For more Reuters political news, click here.
Photo credits: REUTERS/Jason Reed (President Obama speaks in Wakarusa, Indiana, August 5, 2009); REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (Windmill turbines on Backbone Mountain in West Virginia, August 28, 2006)
How much would you pay?
What’s the real cost of global warming? More to the point, how much would you — the person reading this blog — be comfortable paying to stave off the worse ravages of climate change? A hundred bucks to keep the rising seas out of your back yard? A thousand to replenish mountain snowpack? Maybe a few dollars to put more trees back in the rainforest?
Luckily, there’s no shortage of estimates of how much each individual in the United States might have to pay to curb the greenhouse emissions that spur climate change. One particularly pertinent estimate was delivered on Capitol Hill by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at a Senate hearing geared to send the message that, yes, the United States Congress is getting serious about tackling the problem.
As Reuters’ Jasmin Melvin wrote in this story, Jackson said it would cost the average U.S. household about 50 cents a day to fight global warming, though wealthier households would probably pay more. Even if this cost doubled, Jackson told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, that would only be a dollar a day. Who wouldn’t pay that?
Apparently a fair number of people, according to Sen. James Inhofe, who cited a July 1 poll showing the 56 percent of Americans are unwilling to pay anything.
So what would you be willing to pay? Is a dollar a day too much? And if you shouldn’t pay, should anyone?
Photo credit: REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco (Worker inspects U.S. dollar bills in Manila, December 15, 2008)
As you suggest it is priceless and sadly time is running out.
Obama says greenhouse gases are hurting us — now what?
The Obama administration’s move to declare climate-warming carbon pollution a danger to human health was quickly hailed by environmental groups and leading liberals as a long-overdue shift from the Bush era and a historic first step toward regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
In making the announcement, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson said that solving the problem would not only clean up the air but also “create millions of green jobs and end our country’s dependence on foreign oil.”
She says the way to do it is for Congress to pass comprehensive climate change legislation while at the same time averting a “regulatory thicket” that unduly burdens governments and businesses.
But announcing that greenhouse gases are bad and getting the likes of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to agree with you is the easy part.
Manufacturers and industry groups, concerned that they will end up shouldering the cost of cleaning up the atmosphere, were wary.
And, speaking of thickets, it will be no easy task getting such monumental policy change as a renewable portfolio standard for utilities, a cap-and-trade program or a carbon tax through Congress during an economic recession.
So, what do you think? Do you agree with the EPA? Can Obama get it done during a recession? Should he? What do you expect him to do first? And if you had his ear, what would be tops on your wish list?
The greens where I live are opposed to this wind farm, take a look at
http://www.palmerston-north.info
Carbon ahoy! Who should pay to clean up ships, and what they carry?
The U.S. is out to create a clean-air zone around its coastlines, targeting diesel ships that look pretty dirty from shore. The cost will be only a penny per pair of sneakers, the EPA advises. Of course the cost of shoes can sneak up on you — the total is $3.2 billion per year by 2020. Health savings will more than compensate for costs, they say.
The idea of who should pay for carbon in the course of trade is getting a bit hazier, it seems. China only a couple of weeks ago said importers should pay for the carbon costs of goods they buy which are produced in China. The thinking largely has been you-make-it-you-pay-for-the-carbon, but maybe it will become you-bought-it-you-bought-the-carbon. It’s all up for grabs as nations talk about what to do once the Kyoto protocol runs out in 2012. At least the U.S. and China are making nice noises at each other as discussions in Germany get under way.
BTW — to be fair that Reuters pic is of a cruise ship’s laundry room on fire. Perhaps another issue to debate is how many changes of clothes should be allowed in international waters.
Why does no one talk about the fly ash slurry (water and coal ash waste)containment field that failed and flooded the town of Kingston, Tn.? The facts have been made public through the Freedom of Information Act.
Forty-some other coal fired power plants through out the U.S. are at risk for similar failure. Power plant and coal mine operators are concerned about their investments and would like to continue to mine and burn coal. However, to address the problems of excess CO2 and ignore the dangers of waste that is created is myopic at best and more likely a willful omission by government officials who stand to benefit financially from the preservation of these industries.
The nuclear power industry presents the same problem, what to do with the waste. Solutions that only address half of the problem are not solutions at all. They are an attempt to dupe the public into spending a lot of money for infrastructure that would in the short run allow the coal and nuclear industries to proliferate. In the end we will have ecological disasters like Chernobyl and Kingston all around the globe.