Could Taking Substantive Action on Climate Change Possibly Be Bush Legacy?

For Teddy Roosevelt, it was the creation of our system of national parks. For Richard Nixon it was the passage of landmark environmental reforms found in the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. For Bill Clinton it was an eleventh-hour preservation of millions of acres of public land. For George W. Bush, will leading the world in addressing climate change with strong, substantive policy be his legacy? I kind of doubt it.

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Photo courtesy of Madison Guy

Wyoming's New Legal Framework for Carbon Capture & Sequestration?

[Originally posted at Red, Green, and Blue on 3/18/08]

Last week, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal signed a bill that recognizes that surface owners control the underground pore spaces where carbon dioxide (presumably from coal-fired power plants) could be stored or sequestered. A companion bill, gives the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality the authority to regulate the long-term storage of carbon dioxide. More...

Photo: Kevin Winslow

Video: State of Resolve

This short pbs video highlights California's relatively progressive environmental policy and juxtaposes it with our (lack of) federal policy. The well-produced piece also does a good job of linking our drive for material wealth as a contributor to environmental pollution in China. About 4 minutes.

Just a Reminder of What We Are Up Against

BlogNod: Climate Science & Policy Resource Guide

The science has spoken. The debate is over. Climate change is real and human actions are contributing to the acceleration of the buildup of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. Well, that is at least what the American public is being spoonfed by the media, presidential candidates, pundits, and each other. Despite the doom-and-gloom forecasts and the daily stories about threatened polar bears habitats, bleached coral reefs, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and the ultimate demise of our planet, I think this new awareness is largely a good thing. But before we start high-fiving each other and dumping tubs of Gatorade on the scientists contributing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, we have a little unfinished business to take care of.

Although it would be nice to, we don't need to convince everybody on the planet that climate change is real and that humans are causing it. But we do need to make sure that the deniers and delayers don't gain any more traction in the public discourse about climate change than they already have - and below are a few bloggers who are doing just that.

• A Siegel at the Energy Smart blog wrote a piece today about General Motors' Vice Chairman Bob Lutz who said "global warming is a crock of $#!T," adding that, "I’m a skeptic, not a denier. Having said that, my opinion doesn’t matter." Well, actually Bob, your opinion does matter, it matters to your stockholders, your machinists, your sales people, your parts suppliers, and to the discourse in general.
  
• If you want some sound data and real science to back up your climate change arguments, I suggest heading over to the Climate and Energy Project blog (CEP), where Maril Hazlett has assembled a noteworthy collection of links and snippets from some of the most authoritative scientific organizations on the planet and their official positions on climate change.
  
• Relatedly, Maril Hazlett has also been doing a remarkable job at the CEP blog of tracking the debate in the Kansas legislature about the landmark Holcomb case. Kansas' legislators are attempting to overturn the Kansas Department of Health's denial of a permit for a coal-fired power plant expansion.
  
• Finally, Craig Rubens at earth2tech has put together a worthy summary of the seven different carbon bills currently being considered in Congress (I know that this is less science than it is policy, but what else would you expect from a wonk like me?!).

Illustration: Biology Science Fair Projects

Feed-in Tariffs: The Quick and Dirty

Quite a lot of people come to ecopolitology looking for information on renewable energy laws called feed-in tariffs (FIT's). Miguel Mendonca, of the World Future Council wrote an excellent post at Celsius, which gave an excellent introduction to FITs and an elaboration of how and why the policy mechanism works. I have excerpted a portion of that post below. For information and guidance on actually drafting a feed-in law, go the Policy Action on Climate Toolkit (PACT) website.

"FIT laws place a legal obligation on utilities to purchase electricity from renewable energy installations. The tariff rate is guaranteed, and in the best examples, for a long period — say 20 years. The tariff rate is scientifically determined for each technology, to ensure profitable operation of the installation.

There are different design options for the law, including tariff degression; this reduces the rates each year — meaning for example that PV gets a lower rate if you install next year than if you install this year. One, it encourages swift take-up; two, it encourages manufacturers indirectly to increase design efficiency. If you are going to receive a lower rate, you want to generate more electricity. This drives innovation, making renewable energy a more rapidly evolving field — which is precisely what we all need.

The costs of the scheme should be shared among all end-users, so that no-one is overly burdened. In Germany (perhaps the most effective system, developed and supported politically since 1990), their law has made them a world leader in renewable energy, generated billions of dollars a year in exports, created in the region of a quarter of a million jobs, saved towards 100m tons of CO2 annually in recent years, and set records for installed capacity across many technologies — all at the cost of around $1.80 per household, per month."

Photo Credit: ChiKurt via flickr

Pine Beetles Cross the Divide

[This post was originally published at sustainablog on January 22, 2008. It is the first of two parts addressing the pine beetle epidemic in Colorado and what the mountain communities are doing about it. Part two can be found by clicking on this link]

Colorado has 1.7 million acres of lodgepole pine forests. Though, if you have any desire to see any of those trees alive, I’d suggest you move rather quickly. State and federal officials recently announced that the mountain pine beetle epidemic grew by a half a million acres in 2007, bringing the total infestation in the state to about 1.5 million acres. Foresters indicated that the epidemic would virtually eliminate every acre of lodgepole pines in the next three to five years.

Up until quite recently, the pine beetle epidemic in Colorado was limited to a five county area along the Continental Divide. However, recent forest surveys indicate that the beetle has crossed the Divide and is moving eastward. The Forest Service’s annual surveys that are produced by ’stitching’ together aerial photographs have enabled the forest service to illuminate the rapid acceleration of the beetles’ northeasterly march. Once restricted to high country hamlets like Breckenridge, Fraser and Steamboat Springs, the hungry beetles are quickly moving into the foothills and front range near Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins. According to Kyle Patterson at Rocky Mountain National Park, the pine beetles have reached “epic proportions.”

Although the beetle is a full-time resident of the temperate coniferous forests of the Rocky Mountains, their numbers have grown exponentially in the last ten years, fed by a ‘perfect storm’ of contributing factors, including a steady pattern of rising temperatures.

Extreme cold temperatures can reduce beetle populations. But, ever since the most recent outbreak began in the mid-1990s, the extremes have not been extreme enough. For freezing temperatures to affect a large number of larvae during the middle of winter, temperatures of at least 30 degrees below zero must be sustained for at least five days.

Locals have come to accept that, for the most part, the beetle cannot be stopped, only adapted to. The good news is that folks in the mountain towns of Colorado are not willing to simply let the beetles win. Facing daily changes to their familiar green landscapes, and dealing with the potential of catastrophic wildfire, large-scale erosion leading to watershed quality problems, and loss of tourism dollars, communities in Colorado are forming innovative, multilevel collaborative partnerships to come up with new ideas and plans of action for an epidemic that knows no political boundaries.

The biggest obstacle for community organizations is not political will, it is the significant resources required for the large-scale thinning of at-risk areas. Currently, the average price of thinning one acre of forests in Summit County, CO is about $2000. Limited funding obviously means that not every acre can be treated. The reason for the high cost of forest thinning is that there is no market for the beetle-kill wood. According to Gary Severson of the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments:

“There’s simply not enough public money to thin the forests. The only way to do this is to find some way to add value to this material. With small-diameter lodgepole pine, there aren’t a lot of options.”

But, at least there are some options, and some pretty good ones at that. I will address some of the very innovative solutions to this sticky problem in part two.

Colorado State Univ. Cooperative Extension

The Denver Post

The Fort Collins Coloradoan

Photo Credits: Canadian Forest Service.

Obama and Clinton Get Wonky w/o Any Ecopolicy

Last night's Democratic debate was certainly for the wonkish at heart. I found both of the candidates were rather sharp with the enunciation of their platforms, citing numbers, facts, figures, etc. They were not sharp, however, with the enunciation of their environmental policies. Their wasn't a single question asked of the two candidates about energy and/or environmental policy in throughout the whole thing. How could this be, especially in the all-things-eco Los Angeles, California? This is another in a series of debates sponsored by the coalition, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices. And of all the questions asked in the four debates, not a single one has addressed the politics of climate change. Last night, Mrs. Clinton briefly uttered the words "climate change", but only while paying tribute to John Edwards and thanking him for the issues he had fought for during his campaign.
Noteworthy quips from the debate:

“It did take a Clinton to clean up after the first Bush, and I think it will take a Clinton to clean up after the second.” -Clinton

“I was friends with Hillary Clinton before, I will be friends after” -Obama

“We HAVE a president who basically ran as the ‘CEO-MBA President’ and I am not too happy with the results.” -Clinton

“You can tell just by looking at us - you can tell we are not more of the same.” - [I'll let you imagine who said this one]

Pine Beetle Epidemic Grows 1500% in Larimer Co., CO in 2007

If you have traveled to Colorado any time recently, (and certainly if you live here), you may have noticed something a little peculiar about some of the pine trees. If you haven't had such a privilege, let me just tell you: there are acres upon acres of red pine trees. Why? The state's lodgepole pine forests have been hit by an unprecedented pine beetle outbreak.

Once restricted to five high country counties along the Continental Divide, the mountain pine beetle epidemic in Colorado has spread to the Eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains and is on a path to wipe out virtually all of the state's lodgepole pine forests in the next 3-5 years. Several years of moderate to severe drought has weakened the trees, and a lack of sustained cold temperatures has prevented any significant kill-off. Fortunately, the preferred food for the pine beetle, lodgepole pines, do not really grow below 6000 feet, so much of the ponderosa, pinon and juniper forests in the foothills will be safe. But that is no comfort for mountain-town residents where the pine beetles have reached epic proportions, because the dead and dying trees could be a significant source of fuel for catastrophic wildfire events. Read more...

Kansas Coal Proponents Try New Strategy for Power Plant

First, they became involved in the only American case, thus far, of a coal-fired power plant being denied a permit based upon the negative impact of its carbon dioxide emissions. Then they cried foul and filed a lawsuit. Right around the same time, they produced a series of ads with Peabody Coal suggesting that Kansas legislators were playing into the hands of people like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Now, according to a report in DeSmogBlog, Sunflower Electric has joined forces with the several other co-ops, the Kansas Farm Bureau, the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO among others, to form a group that seems poised to fight the state of Kansas' October decision to deny the permit of two coal-fired electricity generators. And apparently the group's flashy new website is registered directly to Sunflower Electric Power Corporation.

According to the website:

The Alliance for Sound Energy Policy is a statewide, non-partisan organization committed to balancing our growing energy needs with environmental stewardship while encouraging the development of a comprehensive energy strategy that provides an affordable, reliable, and diverse energy portfolio for Kansas' future."

But a quick run through of the website content and the organization's list of members reveals a severe shortage of those who might be called "environmental stewards." Members on that list are:

Central & Western Kansas Building & Construction Trades Council

Finney County Board of Commissioners

Kansas AFL-CIO

Kansas Chamber of Commerce

Kansas Electric Cooperatives, Inc.

Kansas Farm Bureau

Kansas IBEW Local 304

Lane-Scott Electric Cooperative, Inc.

Midwest Energy Inc.

Pioneer Electric Cooperative, Inc.

Prairie Land Electric Cooperative, Inc.

Sunflower Electric Power Corporation

Victory Electric Cooperative Association, Inc.

Western Cooperative Electric Association, Inc.

Wheatland Electric Cooperative, Inc.

If the above list doesn't do much to ease your concerns about the ecopolitics of the new organization, perhaps a snippet from their recent press release will:

"The diversity of our coalition makes the Alliance for Sound Energy Policy a credible voice in the debate over balancing our growing electricity demand with our need to protect the environment."

Oh, now I get it. Simply saying that you are diverse, means that you are diverse. I feel much better now [note sarcasm].

Photo: Courtesy of simplerich via flickr

Just when you thought the coast was clear - more Lomborg.

An E&E Publishing Service Climate: Skeptical enviro Bjorn Lomborg discusses post-Kyoto roadmap, calls Kyoto "feel good strategy" (Wednesday, December 12, 2007) As the international community convenes in Bali to create a roadmap for post-Kyoto climate discussions, how successful will a new climate treaty be at reducing emissions and decreasing the impacts of climate change? During today's OnPoint, Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg explains why he believes Kyoto is a "feel good strategy". He also explains why the international community should be focusing on funding R&D for alternative technologies and adaptation measures, rather than emphasizing an emissions-reduction treaty. Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and "Cool It--The Skeptical Environmentalists Guide to Global Warming," gives his views on the Stern review on the economic impacts of climate change and assesses the current climate discussions in Bali. watch video About E&ETV E&ETV is produced by the staff of E&E Publishing, LLC and broadcast from our state-of-the-art Capitol Hill studios. E&ETV brings viewers insightful interviews with the top policy makers and opinion leaders from the energy and environmental policy world. E&ETV broadcasts daily at 10 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. E&E Publishing, LLC 122 C St., Ste. 722, NW, Wash., D.C. 20001. Phone: 202-628-6500. Fax: 202-737-5299. www.eenews.net

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Global Weirding (part II)

The irony of this photograph will be lost unless you reference the one I took a couple of days ago for a previous post...


And I still haven't found Saturday's newspaper in my driveway.

Global Weirding

Monday night was one of those nights that I thought my house was going to blow off of its foundation. The wind is hardly uncommon up here. My house is located at an elevation of about 6,000 ft. (kids stuff by CO standards), but it sits on an exposed hillside in the foothills of the Rockies which just gets pounded by the prevailing NW west sweeping down towards the Plains.
Usually after a night like that during the month of December I would expect to wake up and either start a fire in the woodstove or go outside and try to find the newspaper which is somewhere in my driveway under 8" of snow. However today was not your usual day, it was 70 freaking degrees...in the shade! Now the record for Fort Collins is 70 degrees, but I am located almost a 1000 feet above that. Just to be sure my cheap little thermometer wasn't wrong I crosschecked my data with a rather reliable weather source - a NOAA weather station located on top of Horsetooth Mountain only a half mile away and about 400ft higher. Well it turns out my thermometer may have been a little off after all, the NOAA site said the high was actually 72 degrees!

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, part 1

Perhaps you've recently seen or heard "environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg discussing his new book,Cool it: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, in which he argues that global warming is real but not worth fussing about. Why not? Because the prognosis for environmental health is pretty good, according to Lomborg, and more "social good" could be purchased if societies would spend their money on AIDS or malaria treatment instead of on trying to control carbon emissions. Even if the rosey environmental scenarios Lomborg concocts out of creative statistical analysis were plausible (and there's good reason to believe that they're not, GRIST notes plenty of examples of Lomborg's "cherrypicking") there would be plenty of room left to raise an eyebrow at Lomborg's underlying premise: that doing environmental good is the equivalent of perpetrating humanitarian harm.

Lomborg has presented us with a false premise: that the way to solve the world's problems is simply to throw money at them--after doing a cost-benefit analysis. There is an inherent absurdity that comes along with trying to reduce social and environmental issues to quantifiable--in Dollars or Euros--terms such as "social good" (let's see, how about if we say that the loss of an island nation to sea-level rise has the same value as a 10% change in cancer incidence). It is equally silly to try and draw a dividing line between social and environmental issues, and then depict the two "separate causes" as competitors.

For instance, coal mining intensifies as the demand for energy rises to meet the needs of an expanding population; and burning that coal increases mercury pollution, which increases the incidence of developmental disabilities; of course, coal also contributes to global warming, which harms many communities in the form of drought, more intense hurricanes, and loss of coastline. Not to mention that working in a coal mine is extremely dangerous--in 2006 a BBC story reported that as many as 6,000 thousand coal miners die every year in mine accidents in China alone.

Socio-environmental problems can not be fixed by separating out their various components. In fact, separating "environmental" and "social" issues from one another virtually guarantees that more egregious eco-social problems will arise.

The Upshot to Global Warming?

With all of the news about the potentially devastating effects of climate change aside, it is refreshing to see that there may be a few things that we can look forward to. First, there is the potential for longer growing seasons (albeit with less total rainfall). Some can look forward to smaller heating bills (but larger cooling ones). And of course there will be more opportunities to surf the double overhead tsunami-waves created by chunks of breaking ice as they plunge into the Arctic. Do yourself a favor and watch this unbelievable video of surfer Kealii Mamala and his jet-skiing accomplice Garrett McNamara, as they enjoy some icy crumblers up north(thanks to Kingsley for sending me this).

Canadian Parties Compete for Greens in Ontario

The major political parties in Canada have all accepted the science of climate change and are now rolling out their green plans in an effort to gain political support from environmentalists. This is unlike the situation in the U.S., where the two major parties seem to accept the science but continue to do little more than offer lip service and rhetoric. Is this another sign of the U.S. lagging behind in terms of environmental initiative?

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Ditch Your Dryer, Save the World: Civic Greenwashing

Media coverage of issues related to global climate change and resource conservation has been steadily increasing over the last few years. Articles and advertisements ranging from how to green your back-to-school purchases to where to buy the best free-range, organic, pesticide-free, sustainably-produced, and "natural" products have become commonplace as consumers are bombarded with suggestions that buying some sort of product or another will somehow have the cumulative effect of saving the planet. In a world where eco-friendliness is increasingly obscured by corporate greenwashing, it can be refreshing to see media coverage of issues that don't necessarily equate buying things with environmental beneficence. On that note, and in terms of a different type of greenwashing altogether, the Fort Collins Coloradoan ran a story about how some people in the Choice City choose to hang dry their clothes, and how one man's efforts to save some money might just save the world [Alright, now that I've got your attention, I apologize for hamming it up a bit much; and I won't exactly be saving the world, but you should really read on]. The following was excerpted from a piece written by reporter Kelli Lackett from the Fort Collins Coloradoan on 8/11/2007:

Tim Hurst, a 35-year-old graduate student at Colorado State University, has been using a clothesline exclusively for the past five years. He said he started hanging his clothes on the line because the dryer was broken. "Primarily I was too lazy to get it fixed. But now it's more about the environmental impact. Third, it's about saving money on the electric bill," Hurst said. "On the really nice hot sunny days, the lightweight clothes dry in under half an hour." Hurst lives west of Horsetooth Reservoir where no one objects to hanging clothes on the line “You can look around and several houses around here have clothes hanging out,” he said...

(I like how they included my comment about being too lazy to get the drier fixed. I had a feeling when those words slipped out of my mouth they would end up in the paper.)

The Beetles Return to Colorado

The last time beatles invaded Colorado was 1964 and they only made it to the foothills of the Rockies. As the story goes, they were here for less than a day. And although they appeared at the storied Red Rocks amphitheater in Morrison for only about 35 minutes, they were able to inflict a considerable amount of their brand of "destruction" in that short time.

In terms of the most recent beetle invasion, however, it appears the visitors will be around for much longer -- and inflict a brand of destruction on the Rocky Mountain landscape that will, in retrospect, make John, Paul, George, and Ringo look merely like four harmless, long-haired kids from Liverpool who smoke cigarettes and play some newfangled kind of music that all the kids seem to love. And yes, even these beetles will not be loved by Boulderites.

I am speaking of course about the ubiquitous mountain pine beetle which is happily chewing its way through the vast coniferous forests of the North American continent. These beetles have yet to make their way to Red Rocks, but by the time they do, the damage will have been done.

Pine beetles, bark beetles and spruce beetles have always been part of the ecosystemic processes in the forests of Colorado. However, within the last 10 years, beetle populations have proliferated. Why? The answers range from the possibility that small increases in the temperature of the earth have created a more hospitable climate for the bugs; to a culture of fire suppression within the US Forest Service, that for over one hundred years took every effort possible to prevent and extinguish forest fires. But fire is a healthy and necessary part of some ecological systems, and perhaps we are beginning to see one of the consequences of its prevention.

About 44 percent of the state’s 1.5 million acres of lodgepole pine are now infested by beetles, or about 660,000 acres. The dry, dead trees, which have a rusty red color, pose the biggest fire risk in the year or two before their needles fall off. The debate rages on concerning this epidemic which cannot be stopped. Some groups argue that the dead trees should be left standing, and that they will eventually fall to create the space and nutrients necessary for the flourishing of new ones. But others are fearful that this approach is far too risky. People who live in the resort towns like Steamboat, Vail, and Breckenridge (not to mention the resorts themselves), fear the potential devastation that could be wreaked by catastrophic, region-wide fires. Direct injury to property is hard to prevent because it is hard to anticipate; indirect injury and the concomitant economic losses are also likely but difficult to predict. Many high country residents would much rather see aggressive thinning programs aimed at reducing the fuel-wood in and around the urban-wildland interface. This might help, but thinning would seem to be only a drop in the bucket. With all but 100,000 acres of the dead trees in Colorado on federal land, the bulk of the thinning falls to the U.S. Forest Service, which plans to treat 18,000 acres of dead trees this year.

So if you have never had the opportunity to be awed what appears to be a never-ending expanse of lodgepole pine, or if you just haven't made it out west in a while, I would recommend you do so pretty soon -- before what people think of as the Rocky Mountain landscape, is only a distant memory.

Two-strokes to Get Worked Over by Envirofit

One of the more influential green technologies coming out of Colorado State University was given some props by Treehugger today:

Envirofit, an independent, non-profit company established at Colorado State University in 2003, is now working to develop and distribute affordable retrofit kits that will improve the fuel efficiency of two-stroke engines, commonly used in many of the two-wheeler taxis and three-wheeler auto-rickshaws in the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and other parts of South Asia.

Fox News: Fair and Balanced

This from the good folks over at Grist...

And Rupert Murdock is buying Dow Jones? This should get pretty interesting.