Climate Change

“No good times, no bad times,
There’s no times at all,
Just The New York Times” 

Here’s some good, recent stuff from the venerable “New York Times.”

The “Business of Green” is a special section from a few weeks ago. (I wrote at some length over a year ago on their special of the same name.) This latest one’s got some great articles, including one on jobs: Millions of Jobs of a Different Collar. Here’s an audio slide show too on a “net zero energy” home. I mentioned an article in this vein, For Carbon Emissions, a Goal of Less Than Zero, by Matt Wald in my review of Earth: The Sequel from last week. 

Wald, in addition to being on the energy and environmental technology beat, has been the aviation industry reporter for years. Here’s A Cleaner, Leaner Jet Age Has Arrived from Wednesday. It’s about new materials, engines, and systems for safer, more fuel-efficient planes. Who could be against that? (I’ve also written about aviation a couple of times, here and here, and I had a great time this past summer writing about sustainability at airports for “Planning,” the magazine of the American Planning Association.) 

As further evidence of the strain that biofuels, among some other causes, are putting on the land, as I’ve reported on recently at Krugman on Food Prices and Biofuels and Are Biofuels A Bummer?, there was a front-page article the other day, As Prices Rise, Farmers Spurn Conservation Program. The long and short of it is that farmers are taking millions of acres out of the hugely successful federal Conservation Reserve Program in order to cash in on profits that haven’t been available to them for years. Who can blame them? However, what’s driving so much of this is a biofuels policy that is, according to more and more food, energy and environmental experts, misguided. See more from the “NY Times” on “The Food Chain,” examining growing demands on, and changes in, the world’s production of food. This is an important series for any number of reasons and the paper is to be commended for being on it. 

Finally, I wrote about the failure of the NY State Assembly to bring New York City’s congestion pricing plan to a vote, let alone pass it. See “This is the way the world ends …” just below. Well, the paper, given the importance of the issue and the worldwide implications, has a special section, including this video from Andy Revkin on New York City and congestion pricing. Where do we go now that the Mayor’s plan has failed? Read the op-eds from Owen Gutfreund and Gene Russianoff.

I’ve written about the growing evidence that biofuels are becoming increasingly recognized as a menace to the environment, not the boon they were once thought to be.  In Are Biofuels A Bummer? in February, I reported on a couple of recent studies showing how pressure on land use from biofuel production was creating the deleterious effect of increasing GHG emissions. 

Yesterday, in Grains Gone Wild, the extraordinary economist and “NY Times” columnist Paul Krugman wrote that “…it turns out that even seemingly ‘good’ biofuel policies, like Brazil’s use of ethanol from sugar cane, accelerate the pace of climate change by promoting deforestation.”  Krugman’s analysis tracks that of the researchers I cited in February.  “We also need a pushback against biofuels, which turn out to have been a terrible mistake,” says Krugman, echoing what I heard Jeffrey Sachs say recently: EU and US biofuels policies are “misguided.”  There’s an eloquent letter from ten top scientists to policymakers in Washington that is a cry to change course. 

I revisited congestion pricing in New York City recently.  (See Congestion Pricing Redux from April 1 below.) 

Well, after having been recommended by the NY City Council, with the support of scores of municipal good government, environmental, labor and business groups, it sailed up the Hudson River to Albany - where it died.  (Albany is not the Valhalla of the Norse myths, I can assure you.)  This is the lead story in today’s “NY Times” - $8 Traffic Fee for Manhattan Gets Nowhere.  Whose fault is it?  Many of the state legislators are pointing their fingers at Mayor Bloomberg for some sort of “arrogant elitism,” while others think that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Bloomberg adversary in almost all things, killed it because he could.  (“I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.”)  The “NY Times” editorial board certainly is in the latter camp.  See Mr. Silver Does It Again in which they say of him:  “He failed to put New Yorkers’ needs before his personal agenda. That makes him unworthy of his office.”  Nuff said.

*(“The Hollow Men”- T. S. Eliot)

I’m killing two birds with one stone here (even though I’m a vegetarian).  I’m going to highlight some of the more important recent stories I’ve not gotten to while pointing out some of the blogs I consider to be in the top tier.

Gore kick starts sweeping program to slash U.S. carbon emissions is a headline from Tuesday from the comprehensive, always informative and eminently readable DeSmogBlog.  He’s getting $300 million together to convince those that yet need convincing that climate change is upon us, and needs to be mitigated sooner rather than later.  I’d be happy to have President Obama enlist the Nobel Laureate in a major effort to effect the changes we need.  (If President Clinton or President McCain wanted that, that’d be good too.)

More reasons to love Lieberman-Warner is one of the many useful things that are usually being represented at The Gristmill.  This cites an analysis by the Center for American Progress’s Dan Weiss and his colleague, Alexandra Kougentakis, that S. 2191, the current vehicle for an American cap-and-trade program, would mean thousands of new jobs.  (I worked with Dan way back when he was a staffer on clean air for the Sierra Club and I was an activist.)  The Gristmill is an always stimulating blog.

Antarctic ice breakup caught on tape reads the story from the impeccable Climate Feedback, a blog from the folks at “Nature,” one of the world’s preeminent science publications.  Here’s the poignant video clip they’ve got posted.

Bangkok Climate Change Talks 2008 is the lead from the Climate Science blog at the National Wildlife Federation.  This reports on the talks that are a follow on to the big meeting in Bali last December.

Soot in the Greenhouse, and Kitchen is from Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth at the “NY Times.”  This highlights a story that caught my eye in which a new study identifies soot from industrial and transportation sources, and from developing world cooking practices, as having a significantly more potent impact on climate change than previously thought.  I wrote about solar box cookers, solar flashlights and innovative design for the developing world here last year.  Man, why aren’t we on that?  (That’s not a rhetorical question.  I’d like to know.  I’m going to be following up with some sustainable development folks before too long.) 

A truly classic quote, as reported in the Year in Review, came from Fred Krupp, influential president of the Environmental Defense Fund, in referring to the White House talks on climate change in September:  “It was a lost opportunity.  America needs to lead, and we can lead, but now the spotlight shifts to the Congress because the president has refused to accept the only path that’s ever solved an air pollution problem — and that’s mandatory legal limits.” 

Krupp and EDF have been a powerful force in getting the mainstream environmental movement more in tune with the realities of the private sector.  Instead of always confronting big business on issues of energy and the environment, they have very often worked with business to effect positive change.  That does not mean, in any sense, that organizations as powerful as EDF, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which bears many of the same attributes as EDF, don’t take their shots at irresponsible and dangerous actions by industry in the courts and in the offices and lobbies of government when industry’s actions merit it.  It does mean that EDF recognizes the value of getting business to act responsibly in whatever ways are effective.  Hell, even Greenpeace works with Coca-Cola and Unilever these days.  (See that story toward the end of this from July.)

Krupp and EDF made an enormous breakthrough in February of 2007 when they negotiated the shelving of eight coal-fired power plants in Texas.  Former EPA administrator William Reilly and Krupp were the architects of a deal that permanently altered the map of power production in this country.  You can see this segment from Frontline’s “Hot Politics” to get a bigger picture.

Now Krupp and the journalist Miriam Horn have come out with a book, Earth: The Sequel – The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming.  It looks at some amazing initiatives that are being aggressively pursued:   the use of “concentrators” to intensify the sunlight directed at solar thermal arrays or photovoltaics, colocating solar and wind farms to get the maximum generating potential of those two, bottling heat in giant thermos-type containers as a storage mechanism, using biotechnology to produce biofuels and nanotechnology to radically improve the properties of silicon for use in PV cells, power-generating buoys, geothermal units that can be deployed all over the world to take advantage of the crust of the earth’s tremendous heat and also the hot water that comes up with oil at wellheads, and underground coal gasification, among many others.

My favorite is the pilot in Arizona that is using carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plant stacks to feed algae which, in turn, can then be converted to a potent biofuel.  The process is water-intensive but it can tolerate wastewater so that is another waste stream that is incorporated.  This scheme would also use nitrogen from the emissions as fertilizer.  Eventually, the coal in the plant could be replaced by the algae, leading to a carbon-negative situation.  (See also this recent piece from Matt Wald at the “NY Times.”)  I’ve been writing about Renewable Energy since the beginning of this blog and I continue to find these ideas and initiatives, as Mr. Spock would say, “Fascinating.”

One of the leitmotifs of the book is the entrepreneurial, even frontier spirit of the innovators bringing some of these solutions into being.  Venture capitalists get their due here.  But what drives capital?  The promise of a return on its investment.  What then is the single-most important driver in the quest to realize a good “return on capital”?  Krupp and Horn iterate (and reiterate) it’s setting a price on carbon.  Why?  To “level the playing field” with the fossil fuel and nuclear suppliers of energy.  What’s the best mechanism for doing this?  A cap-and-trade system.  This brings us back to Krupp’s quote above regarding the necessity to institute “mandatory legal limits.”  That’s the cap.  The trade part is what you do when you’ve gone below your capped emission limit and can then sell the difference between what you’ve achieved and what you’ve been mandated to achieve.  (I’ve written about this mechanism a number of times at Carbon Markets.)

EDF, led by economist Dan Dudek, was one of the pioneers of cap-and-trade back in the 1980’s in order to effect dramatic reductions in acid rain precursors.  (I had the privilege of working with one of their senior scientists, Michael Oppenheimer, back then on the acid rain problem when I was an activist with the Sierra Club.  Michael has been a critical figure in bringing the science of global warming to the fore.  He was right there with James Hansen at that epic hearing in Washington in the summer of 1988 that brought global warming fully into view for the American public.  See from about 2:45 in this segment from “Hot Politics.”)

Energy:  The Sequel also discusses other critical approaches to confronting global warming such as halting tropical rainforest destruction.  A post-Kyoto international regime that set a reasonable price on carbon ($30 a ton) would allow Brazil alone to realize $168 billion profit from protecting its rainforests while preventing emissions of six billion tons of carbon dioxide, according to the Woods Hole Research Center.  (Pop quiz:  After the US and China, which two countries are the biggest contributors to global warming?  Brazil and Indonesia - because of rainforest destruction.)

The book also notes the critical importance of energy efficiency.  (See my post Energy Efficiency for Fun and Profit.)

The book is engaging, informative, and hopeful.  It gives us the perspective of those scientists, policy innovators, entrepreneurs and, in some cases, visionaries, who are going to make the earth a safer, more prosperous, smarter, and more equitable place for us all to live.  It’s a stimulating read, to say the least.

For more, go to the book’s website and also see the trailer.

I wrote about congestion pricing in the Big Apple here and here back in August and July.  London, Stockholm and Singapore each have made it a big hit in their towns, and now they’re trying to bring it to Broadway.  Well, it took another positive step yesterday when the NYC City Council approved a plan that had been negotiated over several months time.  It was a close vote, for this particular legislative body, 30-20, and only the powers of persuasion of the City Council’s Speaker, the formidable Christine Quinn, turned the tide in its favor.  See this from “Newsday” and this release from Hizzoner Mike Bloomberg’s office.

On to the state legislature where the new Governor, David Paterson, and the Senate leader, Joe Bruno, are in favor of the plan, but the Assembly Speaker, Shelly Silver, is keeping us all in suspense.  They’re ironing out the final details of the state budget agreement now, and hopefully, the Big Three of Paterson, Bruno, and Silver will be able to get to the congestion pricing plan before a deadline from the federal Dept. of Transportation expires next Monday.   If we miss the deadline, that’ll be about $350 million down the chute that could be spent to implement the plan, and for other related transportation costs.  We (New Yorkers) would, in a word, be nuts to miss this opportunity to increase business by billions by reducing traffic congestion, reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and get federal support for this all in the bargain. 

UPDATE - April 4 - “Crain’s NY Business” is reporting here that the proposal, although on life support in the NY State Assembly by some reports, may live if it’s created as a pilot program. 

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Noteworthy event for New Yorkers:  See “Carbon Trading Update:  Business Opportunities for Asian Sustainable Infrastructure,” a high-level panel discussion from the Asia Society on April 7.