Archive for the ‘Global Warming’ Category

16 Jun

The EPA, Greenhouse Gases, the D.C. Circuit, and Political Warfare

Posted by Peter Lohnes in Air Pollution, Clean Air Act, Climate Change, CO2, Environmental Activism, EPA, Global Warming, Power Plants.

Photo via D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals

Photo via D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals

The Obama administration, increasingly frustrated by Congressional hostility to any efforts to contain greenhouse gases, has turned to the EPA as a tool for reining in carbon emissions. The agency is developing regulatory standards under the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon pollution on a number of fronts. It is coordinating with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to promote new technologies with the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles by 3,100 million metric tons by the year 2025.  It is implementing rules requiring minimum amount of renewables in transportation fuel, setting national limits on carbon emissions by power plants, and implementing rules which are expected to bring about a 95% reduction of  volatile organic compound emissions from fracking gas wells. Where Congress has refused to act, the Agency has embarked on an aggressive and far-reaching effort to fill the void.

But the agency’s efforts to curb America’s copious carbon discharge may encounter a fatal snag in an unexpected place: the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. It is this court, arguably the second most important in the country, which reviews decisions and rule-making by many federal agencies,including the EPA, and has jurisdiction over regulations enacted under the Clean Air Act, the very act upon which the EPA is basing its regulations. The D.C. Circuit Court has a conservative reputation and environmentalists have been growing increasing concerned about the likelihood of it de-clawing the EPA’s efforts. As Steven Pearlstein has written in the Washington Post, the D.C. Circuit represents a “ new breed of activist judges …waging a determined and largely successful war on federal regulatory agencies.”

Without question, the court is well positioned to block the administration’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions via agency action. The administration, however, is determined to counter-balance the political composition of the court. The court currently has three empty spots on the bench.  The administration has put forth candidates to fill the vacant seats, a move which has some Republican politicians reaching for Orwellian political analogies. Senators Mitch McConnell and Charles E. Grassley accused Obama of “court-packing”, as though simply filling long-vacant seats on the court were the equivalent of President Roosevelt’s efforts to expand the size of the Supreme Court, a plan that would have resulted in a total of six new justices at the time. The senators know perfectly well that the D.C. court, like many others across the nation, is under staffed – it’s just in their interests to keep it that way. A dysfunctional, chronically short-staffed, and conservative court is exactly what is called for to keep the EPA’s hands off the climate control switch. The New York Times has called Republican intransigence on filling the court’s vacancies “something not far from a crisis in our constitutional system.”

Readers of this blog are well aware of the necessity of tackling global climate change. Faced with a stone wall of willful denialism and industry resistance, the administration had little choice but to turn to the EPA. The political battle over greenhouse gas emissions has now shifted inexorably to the courts: The Republican’s bone-deep hostility to regulation has assured it. Filling the D.C. court’s empty seats is likely to provoke more than a skirmish. It could turn into a major battle in the country’s – and the globe’s – efforts to keep from cooking itself to death.

29 May

This American Life Tackles Climate Change

Posted by Kyle Hargus in Climate Change, Global Warming.

Photo by Hot Meteor. Some rights reserved.

Photo by Hot Meteor. Some rights reserved.

This American Life has long set a high journalistic standard for bringing unique perspective and individual voices to the capital-b Big issues of our time, and their most recent episode is no different. Entitled “Hot in My Backyard,” this installment focuses on unique voices in the realm of climate change, from Colorado State Climatologist Nolan Doesken to former South Carolina Republican Rep. Bob Inglis.

As is often the case, this episode covers a lot of ground and gives its listeners a lot to chew over:  reflections on climate change issues surrounding Hurricane Sandy last fall, a rancher/farmer perspective on climate change fears, documentation of Colorado’s extremely wild weather in 2012, climate denial and shifting conservative attitudes towards global warming, and even an in-depth profile on the efforts of writer-activist and all-around-badass Bill McKibben, whose current project involves vilifying  oil, gas, and coal companies (“a rogue industry,” McKibben says, “determined to do things that are unwise, unsafe, crazy”) in order to unite Americans on the issue of climate change around a common enemy. Listen here!

 

26 May

China, a Big Country With Big Environmental Problems, is Starting to Make Big Plans for Big CO2 Reduction.

Posted by Peter Lohnes in Cap and Trade, Carbon Offsets, Global Warming, Uncategorized. Tagged: , .

Pollution Over East China via Wikimedia Commons

Pollution Over East China
via Wikimedia Commons

We recently wrote about how the concentration of CO2  in the environment has reached a point higher than it has been in millions of years.  A lot of the newer CO2 no doubt came from the Middle Kingdom. China, which is currently responsible for a quarter of all carbon emissions worldwide, has been under intense pressure in recent years to curb its output of global warming gases. It has consistently resisted doing so, citing the imperatives of economic development and the central, seemingly irreplaceable, role that coal plays in driving the country’s growth. Indeed, China consumes nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined. China’s refusal to rein in its emissions has served as a useful excuse for other nations to drag their heels. Why tighten your own belt when the big guy over there is loosening his?

But rampant pollution and the looming threats posed by global climate change are affecting a notable turn-around in China. Pollution in its capital city has become the stuff of international legend. Gas masks are becoming must-have accessories for business travelers in Beijing. China is now a major, market-disrupting producer of  solar panels and wind turbines much to the dismay of German and U.S. manufacturers.  And now, in a dramatic about-face, the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gas pollution has agreed to follow some 200 other countries and agreed to impose a cap on its CO2  emissions and cut the amount of  CO2  per dollar of economic output – something the U.S. has so far been unwilling to do.

Britain’s Climate and Energy Change Secretary Ed Davey believes China’s changing attitude towards climate change demonstrated by its willingness to impose a ceiling as soon as 2016 may provide a significant push toward reaching an ambitious global accord on emissions reduction.  “At the end of last year the Chinese leadership changed and started talking about creating an ‘ecological civilization’. This doesn’t mean they have signed up to every bit of the climate change talks, but it means they recognize that their economic model has to take account of pollution and the environment and that damage that it’s doing to people’s health.” Perhaps China and the U.S. will finally stop passing the climate buck back and forth and jointly pave the way for a global deal.

China’s vow to dramatically reduce emissions doesn’t appear to be merely theoretical. In another first, the country has unveiled its first carbon–trading program which will cover 638 companies in the southern city of Shenzhen.

And the country isn’t just getting aggressive about reducing coal and industrial emissions. It’s pressing ahead with far more unconventional methods of reducing its carbon footprint. And what is its latest eccentric proposal?  How about building an entire self-contained city in one of the tallest buildings in the world in just seven months?  The Broad Sustainable Construction Company has announced it will build a pre-fab 220-story, 2,750 high building containing some 4,450 apartments and 100,000 square feet of indoor vertical farms on a greenfield site in just over half a year. The goal, aside from dramatically increasing the speed with which skyscrapers can be built, is to simultaneously increase the energy efficiency and lower the carbon footprint of what will amount to a brand new city of 30 thousand people.  A resident of BSC’s mega tower is expected to use only 1/100th of the land used by a typical Chinese citizen.

China, a big country with big environmental problems, is starting to make big plans for big CO2  reduction.

10 May

Keeling Over: Carbon Dioxide Levels Higher Than At Any Time In Human Evolution

Posted by Peter Lohnes in CO2, Global Warming, Oceans. Tagged: , , , .

Keeling CurveEvery day, millions of tons of carbon dioxide are spewed into our planet’s atmosphere as a result of extracting and consuming fossil fuels. According to the GAO, global CO2 emissions have increased over 2.5 percent a year over the last century. Decades ago, Charles Keeling noted that CO2 levels were increasing steadily over time, along with emissions and global temperatures. Thus was born the “Keeling Curve”, a widely used measure of atmospheric CO2. Now, Keeling’s curve is about to breech a new record. For the first time in human history, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will reach 400 parts per million. Keeling’s son Ralph, a researcher at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, says “There’s no stopping CO2 from reaching 400 ppm. That’s now a done deal.”

Two hundred, four hundred, a thousand parts per million. What does that number mean, exactly? According to NOAA , before the Industrial Revolution, global average CO2 was about 280 ppm. During the last 800,000 years, CO2  fluctuated between 180 ppm during ice ages and 280 ppm during warmer periods. Today’s rate of increase is more than 100 times faster than the increase that occurred when the last ice age ended.

Andrew Freeman, writing at Climate Central, puts the new CO2 figure in terrifying context: These carbon dioxide levels haven’t been seen on planet earth during the whole of human evolution. In case that 800,000 year figure cited by NOAA doesn’t grab your attention, Freeman points to research indicating such levels haven’t been seen in 15 million years.

‘The last time there was this much carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, modern humans didn’t exist,” writes Freeman. “Megatoothed sharks prowled the oceans, the world’s seas were up to 100 feet higher than they are today, and the global average surface temperature was up to 11°F warmer than it is now.”

The notion that human evolution has brought our species to the point where we can alter the basic planetary conditions which allowed us to thrive in the first place is sobering, to say the least. Given that the Keeling curve’s trajectory is likely take us beyond 450 ppm or higher, bending that curve down should be a global priority. There’s no guarantee we could survive a precipitous plunge back into a climate like that which prevailed fifteen million years ago.

29 Apr

Calamity, Catastrophe, or Cataclysm?

Posted by Peter Lohnes in Global Warming, Resource Conflict, Water.

Photo Credit: FoodAndYou. Some rights may be reserved.

Dire warnings and dismal predictions often seem to be the stock in trade of environmental activists. Hyperbole helps fundraising and hyperventilating about imminent threats get page views. Two of the leading subjects for pumped-up concern are global climate change and vanishing resources. But rarely are both topics so alarmingly conjoined as they have been by Michael Klare, author of The Race for What’s Left and Resource Wars.

Writing for TomDispatch.com, Klare argues that we are on the cusp of a new world order dominated by struggles over access to affordable resources. He says that humanity is faced with two converging and utterly unprecedented disasters: severe resource depletion and extreme climate change. His prognosis is not a happy one. The civil, political, and military institutions we have developed over centuries would be strained to deal with either threat alone. Together, they present a monumental global challenge.

It’s not just peak oil. The world is also heading for peak water. Klare cites the disastrous drought in Russia that decimated that country’s wheat crop in 2010 as just one in a litany of destabilizing events global warming will visit on us. The roiling discontent of the Arab spring flowed at least in part from the enormous spike in wheat prices caused by the murderous heat in the Russian steppes. Klare tells us such resource shocks will become increasingly common as the globe warms and resources diminish.

He is hardly alone in seeing the threat. The Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper (no Pollyanna, he) cites competition and scarcity involving natural resources as a national security threat on a par with global terrorism, cyberwar, and nuclear proliferation. “Extreme weather events (floods, droughts, heat waves) will increasingly disrupt food and energy markets, exacerbating state weakness, forcing human migrations, and triggering riots, civil disobedience, and vandalism.”

So while we may become inured to the environmental movement’s escalating warnings, those alarms are not groundless carping. A prudent and conservative individual or organization would be well advised to take them into account. The world may be warming but there are still icebergs in our path. It would be best not to collide with one.

22 Apr

One Casualty of the Economic Crisis: The European Cap-and-Trade System

Posted by Peter Lohnes in Cap and Trade, Carbon Markets, Coal, Global Warming, Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

Photo by Takver. Some Rights Reserved

Photo by Takver. Some Rights Reserved

The price of European carbon emission certificates has plummeted in the aftermath of the global economic crisis. This week the European Parliament narrowly voted down a bill designed to prop up the price per ton of carbon emissions in an attempt to keep the once-lauded program financially viable.

Cap-and-Trade has always seemed a jury rigged method of dealing with the principal driver of global climate change. A straightforward carbon tax would be a more transparent external cost but the political challenges of instituting such a tax have largely kept it off the table. The political difficulties have been compounded by the challenge of implementing carbon taxes globally – which country wants to walk into the propeller first? Cap-and-Trade at least had the virtue of being fungible; emissions banked in one country could be spewed out in another corner of the world.

Climate policy expert Felix Matthes, of the Institute for Applied Ecology, sat down to talk with Spiegel Magazine about the stark implications of Parliament’s decision, which he sees as the death knell for EU-wide emissions reduction. The ironic result, he says, will be a return to a national, rather than regional, approach to carbon reduction with serious consequences for global efforts to reign in emissions. Noting that while right wing politicians hope to undermine climate change policy entirely, and those on the left seek more regulatory protection, he still believes carbon trading is the most fruitful means of dealing with the global reach of carbon emissions. Unfortunately, the dramatically reduced energy consumption and industrial output following the economic crisis, combined with a glut of credits from China, have resulted in a flood of certificates on the market and a corresponding precipitous decline in their price.

16 Jan

What We Can Reasonably Expect From Our Cities

Posted by Kyle Hargus in Climate Change, EPA, Flooding, Global Warming.

Photo by mediafury. Some rights reserved.

Photo by mediafury. Some rights reserved.

A new report released last Friday in draft form by the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee (or more succinctly, the NCADAC) has been raising heads and eyebrows this week across the energy/environmental sector, as would any official suggestion from the government that things may be worse than we think on the global warming front.

The report specifically suggests such harbingers of doom such as an 11 degree rise in temperatures by the end of this century, an eight inch rise in sea levels (the consequences we were reminded of late this year), and more obscure-yet-troubling byproducts of climate change such as more pollen in the air (making allergies worse) and more ticks in general (making everything worse). And of course, every big picture idea in the report has its own local implications depending on where you live. For low altitude coastal cities like (oh, say) Seattle, flooding is a very real possibility. In Georgia, the reports threaten “hundred year storms” that could start occurring annually, and in California, future flooding has implications for power plants that are closer to sea level.

So, the point? We have to start thinking locally. The federal government can only make climate change so much of a priority, with everything else going on (though for whoever’s interested, the EPA just released their FY 2013 Annual Plan). Grist has a nice piece up today that suggests that urban centers are expected (and often do) “take the lead” on adopting climate change policies, and even inventing and enforcing their own when they see fit.

In a liberal city like Seattle, it’s easy to see local efforts to combat global warming in effect, even in smaller municipal gestures like compost bins and bike lanes. However, the report cited in the Grist article (by UCLA urban planner Rui Wang) claims that cities by and large adopt more basic, less work-intensive climate change policies first, and that they do it piecemeal. Cities willing to take on the more rigid measures were most often those which had already exhausted implementing the easier policies.

The report argues that often the easier measures are those that benefit both the city/business and the environment (we in the 9 – 5 world are probably familiar with simple corporate efforts to “go green” such as reducing printed paper around the office or setting goals for lower building energy – these measures help contribute to a green effort and ultimately save the company money), where the more difficult actions are those that most often will harm or interfere with budgets and do not have as many “tangible benefits” for its implementers. It’s an interesting-if-not-exactly-new concept, and worth giving some consideration no matter where you live.

30 Nov

National Flood Insurance and Jersey Shore Demographics

Posted by John Renehan in Climate Change, Coastlines, Construction, Development, Environmental Justice, FEMA, Flooding, Global Warming, Market-Based Rates, Natural Disasters, Real Estate, Subsidies.

Photo by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, some rights reserved.

Back in 1968, Congress stepped into the flood insurance market to provide coverage where private insurers would not. Today, taxpayers back $527 billion of assets in coastal flood plains insured by the National Flood Insurance Program. Run by the Federal Emergency Agency, the program paid out $16 billion of claims for Katrina; Sandy-related claims could reach $12 billion. The program is already $18 billion in debt, as sum the government acknowledges will probably never be covered by higher premiums.

Besides the program’s cost, what is the issue? In New York alone, 200,000 people live less than four feet above the high tide level. Nationwide, the number of people living in flood-prone areas has been increasing, so each natural disaster damages more property and displaces more people than the last. An op-ed in Thursday’s New York Times opines that the time for the federal government to subsidize the insuring of homes and businesses in high-risk flood zones is long past. If property owners cannot find flood insurance on the private market, which in many cases they cannot, they should bear that risk instead of transferring it to the federal government.

One of the implications of changing federal flood insurance would be increased cost of living in coastal areas. Another Times article covers how Sandy and the coming National Flood Insurance Program rate hikes will make “seaside living, once and for all, a luxury only the wealthy can afford.” Building requirements for homes in newly mapped flood hazard zones could effect a demographic shift in the northeast, because much of the development encouraged by subsidized insurance would only be affordable to wealthy buyers.

The wisdom of subsidizing status quo demographics on the Jersey Shore to the tune of $18 billion aside, the point of reducing or eliminating federal flood insurance would be to end the cycle of natural disaster and expensive rebuilding without internalizing the risks of development in flood-prone coastal areas, which in light of recent events are certainly expanding. This is a step toward affordable environmental risk-management most people can back in good conscience.

16 Nov

Second Term Preview of Environmental Regulation

Posted by John Renehan in Clean Air Act, Climate Change, Environmental Activism, Environmental Enforcement, Fuel Efficiency, Global Warming, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Hydraulic Fracturing, Oil and Gas Sector, Pipelines, Renewable Energy.

Photo by Carl Chapman, some rights reserved

In the next four years, the Obama administration will make its mark on energy and environmental laws, working through pending legislation and proposed regulation as well as considering further reforms in response to environmental and industry lobbying.

A Marten Law memo has the rundown on anticipated changes to energy and environmental laws. Obama’s “all of the above” energy strategy, well chronicled at the Green Mien, is likely to continue. Federal renewable energy programs have seen opposition recently, and the outcome of the pending battle of the wind energy production tax credit will be an early test of the Obama Administration’s policy. Either way, renewable energy growth is likely to be lower in the coming years as production of natural gas continues to increase.

Fracking, too, has contributed to the domestic supply surge, while prompting calls for closer regulatory scrutiny. In response, the Obama Administration has proposed regulation of fracking on federal lands, and EPA is studying the potential impact of horizontal drilling on drinking water.

Energy infrastructure questions are on the agenda, too. Most importantly, the Administration will decide whether to authorize a re-routed Keystone XL pipeline bringing oil from Canadian tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico. Proposals for coal and natural gas export terminals are making their way through state and federal agencies as well.

In the news this week is Obama’s stance on climate change, a topic he avoided during his election campaign. A second term will ensure that EPA will proceed with its plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under existing provisions of the Clean Air Act, a plan upheld last summer by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In addition, EPA is expected to release standards for greenhouse gas emission from power plants and refineries. Several challenges to air quality rules are still pending, though, notably the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Boiler MACT rule affecting industrial facilities.

At a press conference Wednesday, President Obama responded to a reporter’s question about his specific plans to address climate change. You should read his entire response here, but he made himself clear that ignoring jobs and growth simply to address climate change is not on his agenda: “I won’t go for that.” An agenda for job growth that includes making a dent in climate change, however, is “something the American people would support.”

In addition to air and energy policy previews, Marten Law’s memo has summaries of expected policy developments in natural resources and hazardous waste regulation.

14 Nov

Competing Goals: Energy Independence or a Stable Climate?

Posted by Kyle Hargus in Climate Change, Energy Independence, Global Warming.

Photo by mistergoleta. Some rights reserved.

On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released the 2012 edition of its World Energy Outlook (WEO) report, which made the exciting claim that North America could achieve “energy savings equivalent to nearly a fifth of global demand in 2010″ by 2035, putting the U.S. on the fast track to energy self-sufficiency. The IEA calls this exponential growth in domestic oil and natural gas a potential “sea-change” in the game of global energy politics, and it energy independence ended up playing a major role for both presidential politics in this year’s election.

However, Treehugger points out that, as is so often the case, we Americans can’t have our cake and eat it too on this issue. Especially in a post-Sandy America where 77% of us believe that tackling climate change should be made a high priority, the impact on global warming has to be considered in the conversation about ramping up domestic oil production. The IEA’s report also makes it known that “no more that one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2°C goal” (based on a temperature threshold set by climate scientists that we need to stay below to maintain a stable global climate) that was set by world leaders at the 2010 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

If we start drilling with a vengeance to try to rise above in the global energy market, we will also need to consider the negative impacts that these decisions have on keeping us below a 2 degree Celsius temperature gain, and if we rise above that threshold, well… I imagine we’ll have quite a few more dire decisions to weigh.

 

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