I’ve written about the truly heinous practice of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia a number of times, most recently here and here.  An amazing activist, Maria Gunnoe, is featured in both the superb documentary, Burning the Future, and in the magisterial book Big Coal.  Now Gunnoe has garnered international recognition for her work by winning the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize.  Read this interview with her and this profile of her in the indispensable Gristmill.

Photo: Tom Dusenbery

It is fitting that another champion of the forest who has had to fight against mining interests, Marc Ona Essangui of Gabon, has been similarly honored.

There’s a scene near the end of Burning the Future when Gunnoe and some of her colleagues are in New York for the Sustainable Development Commission meetings at the UN, and they visit Times Square at night.  She starts howling that all these gaudy signs and flashing lights are killing her community.  You can make the connection quite well by this point in the film and it’s a pretty bone-chilling moment.  I can’t go by Times Square anymore without thinking of her and the 500+ mountains they’ve destroyed.  We can do better - a lot - and because of folks like Gunnoe and Essangui, we will.  You can take that to the bank.

Here are some reviews of some books on two environmental visionaries, an article about a world-famous campaigner against the looming specter of climate change, and a lucid, comprehensive and deep report on managing solid and hazardous wastes.

In The Ecstasy of John Muir, Robert Pogue Harrison reviews an apparently magisterial biography, A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir by Donald Worster.  (You have to have the print edition [imagine!], or an electronic subscription, or pay $3 to read this.)  Harrison praises the book and eulogizes the man.  I’m an old Sierra Club activist and so share a very high regard for Muir from way back.  Harrison centers much of his review on Muir’s anti-materialist ethic, his affinity for nature.  Looking at our world today, Harrison asks:  “What human civilization must do to survive materially is a question that is bound to engage us in the decades to come, yet alongside it there are other questions, easily brushed aside, that are no less paramount in import.  Will a greener technology transform our relation to nature?  Will a more sustainable economy merely provide a more sustainable basis for our consumerist sloth?  Does nature make any spiritual demands on us, or is it purely the supplier in a supply-demand relationship?”  (Is nature a mere provider of “ecosystem services?”)  For some more on this theme, see Galloping Consumption from the blog about a year back.

The FT’s Fiona Harvey, who I cite and laud often, as I did in the last post below, has reviews here of a book by James Lovelock and one about him.  I consider Lovelock a hugely less important visionary than Muir, but important nevertheless in his contemporaneity with the global environmental crisis.  He has been talking about what’s happening now.  His Gaia hypothesis, as Harvey points out, presaged the study of “… earth systems sciences, a new discipline that seeks to understand how the natural processes of the earth interact with one another.”  He is also a prophet of climate change doom, and wholeheartedly embraces nuclear power, and these are both points with which I, among a good many others, take vigorous exception.

Another environmental warrior, Tim Flannery, is profiled here at the “FT” this weekend.  His book, The Weather Makers, came out just before “An Inconvenient Truth.”  Flannery, universally recognized as an important contributor to the message of concern regarding warming, says “People like myself, with a perhaps more in-depth view, may have influenced specific people but for the mass movement, I think it was really Gore.”

Finally, I touched on waste management in the last post below.  Here is an excellent look at the subject from “The Economist.”  Great reading, well worth your time.

Coal Ash - I wrote last week about the horrific spill of coal ash sludge in Tennessee.  (See Jan. 1 below.)   Hundreds of Coal Ash Dumps Lack Regulation is the story today from the “NY Times.”  There are more than 1,300 of them, “most of them unregulated and unmonitored.”  What do they contain?  “heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium, which are considered by the Environmental Protection Agency to be a threat to water supplies and human health.”  The article link has an excellent video too, well worth viewing.

One of the themes of the superb documentary Burning the Future: Coal in America is the poisoning of drinking water.  (I wrote about this film and what it depicts at The Crime of Mountaintop Removal Mining last May.)  The “NY Times” article included this compelling graphic on the extent of water pollution from these sites.

Oil Sands - Today’s “NYT” also has an article about Canadian tar sands, their abundance - and their devastating environmental impact - The Costly Compromises of Oil From Sand.  In a post from March last year, I wrote about oil sands, and flagged a potential big fly in the ointment for the “flow” of oil to the US:  our energy law passed in December of 2007 limits government procurement of alternative fuels that have lifecycle GHG emissions greater than conventional ones.  The article here reports:  “In a recent study, the RAND Corporation estimated that oil from the oil sands generates about 10 to 30 percent more greenhouse gases than conventional crude.”  Does this make any sense when we’re trying to get to a low-carbon world?  Not to me.  To you?  (See also this characteristically terrific story from Betsy Kolbert at the “New Yorker” - Unconventional Crude.)

Aviation Fuel - The venerable Matt Wald has a good story in the “NYT” today about some trials for alternative aviation fuel - A Move Toward Veggie Power Aloft.  Algae is in the mix, as is jatropha.  I admit I love Algae.  I also love jatropha , see the last paragraph from this post of mine from a while back.  Jatropha has a great upside but not perhaps in mass production for aviation fuel.  It would likely squeeze out cropland, as the NYT article reports.  And, as we’ve seen a good number of times from more-than-a-few studies, biofuels are already having a negative impact on food supply and prices.  See this post, for instance, and this.

Energy Security? - If you’re in Europe and you’ve been relying on Russian natural gas, you might be feeling just a tad insecure at the moment.  Here’s an article from today’s “NYT” on the squeeze they’re getting.  I remember hearing a high EU panjandrum at the FPA’s annual World Leadership Forum in September.  I wrote here that “Unfortunately, for my money, she dwelled a little overmuch on the question of pipelines carrying oil and natural gas coming into Europe and not enough on the potential for regional and international cooperation on renewables.”

The EU has certainly embraced renewables, much to their credit, but if they want to get out from under the Russian sword of Damocles, they better pick up the pace.

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Overall, the “NY Times” has consistently superb coverage.  See their Global Warming topics page for “all the news that’s fit to print.”

First of all, I have to apologize for being off the air for so long. There’s a seven-year-old kid in the picture and Christmas, plus getting away for the last five days for some R & R for us, has all been a little consuming. I should’ve put some posts in the can prior to getting so busy, but I was swept up in the maelstrom of the holidays.

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Now to some serious business, I’m afraid. We here at the blog and the entire large (and growing) community fighting global warming are well aware of the role of fossil fuel combustion in the production of greenhouse gases. Coal is, of course, the greatest culprit in the production of carbon dioxide. The magisterial Big Coal by Jeff Goodell has three parts that describe the depredations of coal: The Dig, The Burn, The Heat. What we so often forget, in our focus on the threat of catastrophic climate change, are the dire effects of coal mining , the Dig , for the communities where the mines are situated.

On December 22, as you no doubt are well aware by now, a dam broke at a Tennessee Valley Authority coal-fired power plant and released “more than 1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge” according to “The Tennessean” here. That article and this, from the “NY Times,” have a lot to report on the toxicity of the sludge. For a little more of the bigger picture on coal ash, see (and hear) Tennessee Spill: The Exxon Valdez Of Coal Ash? from NPR. “Coal ash is the stuff that’s left over after coal-fired power plants generate electricity and strip out pollutants. Plants produce about 130 million tons of it every year.”

What pollutants don’t get stripped out? Mercury is one critical one. See this report from the consortium of Northeast US states fighting air pollution. Do you eat fish? You probably know then about the dangers of mercury. If not, see this report from NRDC.

Do we really need to expose ourselves, day in and day out, year after year, to the extraordinary environmental and health problems associated with burning coal? The short answer is: Of course not! As I’ve pointed out many times here, renewables are here now, they’re growing in their ability to provide all of our energy needs, and we will be fools, frankly, to pursue any other path for energy generation.

There are other compelling reasons to get away from coal. I’ve written here on a number of occasions about the crime of mountain-top removal mining, and the devastation it causes to communities and to the extraordinary ecology of Appalachia. Here is a blockbuster article, Mining the Mountains, from “Smithsonian Magazine.” Let me leave you with a quote from the article. If this isn’t insane, criminal behavior, then I, for one, don’t know what is.

“Since the mid-1990s, coal companies have pulverized Appalachian mountaintops in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Peaks formed hundreds of millions of years ago are obliterated in months. Forests that survived the last ice age are chopped down and burned. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that by 2012, two decades of mountaintop removal will have destroyed or degraded 11.5 percent of the forests in those four states, an area larger than Delaware. Rubble and waste will have buried more than 1,000 miles of streams.”

I did the right thing today and brought some electronic waste downtown to a Department of Sanitation drop-off site.  I can't say that I'm impressed with New York City's program in this.  The advertising was poor - you really had to search for it even at their website.  Plus, there were far too few locations in each of the five boroughs and this all only happens periodically.  Recycling, I'm sorry to say, has never been a top priority of the city administration at any point.  There have been various times when the impulse has flowered compared to others when the City has dragged its feet.  I would not say, however, that the full potential here has ever been anywhere near embraced.  (I like to plug my grand scheme at this point , Urban Gold , which I shopped around a few years back and for which I got a pretty fair hearing in a number of places.)

I do want to flag a really compelling article from National Geographic magazine from last January - High-Tech Trash.  Aside from the article itself, and the always superb photographs, NGM's website has some in-depth features including this interactive look at all the toxic components of a computer and monitor.  There's also a section on how you can reduce e-waste.  See also EPA's "eCycling" webpage.

Followup:  See this excellent article on the life cycle of computers from GreenerComputing News - How Activists Are Forcing Change in Green IT. This is precisely what the doctor ordered: tremendous built-in reductions in electronic waste as a direct consequence of paying attention to the life cycle.

An item in the "FT" caught my eye recently:  Wal-Mart to seek greener supply chain.  Fun fact:  "In the US alone, Wal-Mart is estimated to sell about $30bn of goods annually that are made by about 30,000 factories in China, or about 10 per cent of all US imports."  (I touched on what some retailers such as Tesco in Britain are doing here a while back, and one of Wal-Mart's initiatives on trucking here.)

Wal-Mart is working with EDF on their Green Supply Chain Initiative.  In the "FT" article, the head of the Wilson Center's China Environment Forum indicated that " in China similar pressure from international companies could help counter the problems of enforcement that continue to dog central government efforts to enforce existing environmental laws."  In a follow-up article, Wal-Mart orders Chinese suppliers to lift standards, we learn ""Meeting social and environmental standards is not optional,' Lee Scott, Wal-Mart's chief executive, told a gathering of more than 1,000 suppliers in Beijing."  Wal-Mart's pretty serious about sustainability, as evidenced by their CEO's somewhat unequivocal statement, as well as by their website.  

A third recent "FT" article zeroes in on Wal-Mart's concerns regarding packaging.  Packaging is also the focus of some of Amazon.com's recent initiatives.  For one thing, "Amazon has developed a software program that determines the "right-sized' box for any given item to be shipped to a customer, based on that item's dimensions and weight."  They also have a vibrant "Amazon Green" site for shopping that features "frustration-free" packaging to avoid "wrap rage." 

Getting back to the supply chain, the excellent GreenBiz.com has a series of recent articles on this subject.  They have issued a new report:  "Greening the Supply Chain in Emerging Markets: Some Lessons From the Field."  The report was written by the CEO of the World Environment Center, an NGO doing work in, among other things, capacity building.

Back in my NYSDEC days, we always highlighted the primacy of "waste reduction" as the first in the order of things to do with solid or hazardous waste.

The IPCC says "Post-consumer waste is a small contributor to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (<5%) with total emissions of approximately 1,300 Mt carbon dioxide-eq in 2005. The largest source is landfill methane "  Still, that's a lot of GHG.  (See the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report Working Group III Report "Mitigation of Climate Change" - Chapter 10: Waste management.)

With solid waste management, as with any sector, there are ancillary benefits to reducing GHG:  increased energy efficiency, fewer hazardous wastes for disposal, etc., etc.  The AR4-WG3 Glossary defines Co-benefits as "The benefits of policies implemented for various reasons at the same time, acknowledging that most policies designed to address greenhouse gas mitigation have other, often at least equally important, rationales (e.g., related to objectives of development, sustainability, and equity)."

Another way of looking at this is in having "no regrets" in your climate mitigation policy.  The IPCC glossary describes it this way: "No-regret policy (options/potential) - Such policy would generate net social benefits whether or not there is climate change associated with anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. No-regret options for GHG emissions reduction refer to options whose benefits (such as reduced energy costs and reduced emissions of local/regional pollutants) equal or exceed their costs to society, excluding the benefits of avoided climate change."

I devised a plan a few years back for New York City's municipal solid waste.  I articulated my ideas, gleaned from the best concepts and practices in urban sustainable development, in a comprehensive proposal for New York City's modest 25,000 tons a day of municipal solid waste and called the plan, Urban Gold.  The heart of the strategy is to co-locate a materials recovery facility (MRF) and other waste disposal facilities, such as pyrolysis or gasification plants, with industries that would use the recycled materials as feedstock for their manufacturing.

Another way to feed a MRF is to use recovered materials from a landfill.  The idea of "landfill mining" has been kicking around for a number of years and has found some traction.  See this article from Reuters - Could US$100 Oil Turn Dumps Into Plastic Mines?  (See also this Reuters "factbox" on landfills.  The IPCC's Waste Management piece cited above is also full of useful information.)

There are thousands of opportunities all over the world to mine landfills for plastics and metals for recycling, and organic materials for use as soil additives or for conversion by pyrolysis or similar processes to char and useful gases such as hydrogen.  (See the previous post below on this.)  The first global conference on landfill mining will take place in October in London.  Obviously, this movement is building.

All sorts of "best practices" are coming into greater prominence as a result of our having to confront the climate change crisis.  One should have little or no regret at all about this.

On Wednesday, L.A.'s mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, announced his city's Green LA plan, which incorporates a commitment to 35% use of renewables by 2020.  The Green LA plan is not unlike "PLANYC" in emphasizing energy efficiency, renewables, mass transit and alternative fuels for surface transport, etc.

The afternoon session, "Cities Can Thrive in a Low-Carbon Economy," was led by Steve Howard from The Climate Group.  They launched a new publication, Public Private Partnership: Local Initiatives 2007, that day and it was highlighted in the session.  Two panelists, the mayors from Berlin and Mexico City, both had initiatives in the publication:  Berlin's partnership with Johnson Controls on energy efficiency in buildings, and Mexico City's partnership with the World Resources Institute on transportation.  (For other case studies, see Climate Group's publication above and the website of the Summit.  Some really, really innovative projects.) 

The big news of the day, of course, was the announcement of the Clinton Climate Initiative putting together a group of banks and industrial corporations to underwrite and perform a $5 billion program of retrofitting buildings to maximize energy efficiency.  Here's a clip of Bill Clinton talking about the program.  Ken Livingstone said later, that when this is further funded and all up and running, the energy efficiency program could reduce carbon emissions by 10% globally.   Meanwhile, also on Wednesday, the heads of thirteen national Academies of Science, issued a statement, in advance particularly of the forthcoming G-8 Summit (see my post on "Meetings"), calling for an intensified focus on energy efficiency.  Beyond that, the 13 national leaders of their academies of science called for further efforts on reducing deforestation and also increasing technology transfer to the developing world, particularly of "leapfrog" technologies. You heard this expression often at the conference, from Ken Livingstone and others.

In a similar vein, IBM last week announced their $1 billion plan to upgrade their data centers and radically reduce energy use.  "Project Big Green" will address IBM's needs at more than eight million square feet of data centers in six continents.  See this video for more. 

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On another note, I had the pleasure of talking with Mayor Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City about his city's approach to solid waste management.  Here's their webpage on "Salt Lake City Green."   I got a moment to discuss with him my thoughts about solid waste management and how productive a holistic approach can be.  I articulated my ideas, gleaned from the best concepts and practices in urban sustainable development, in a comprehensive proposal for New York City's modest 25,000 tons a day of municipal solid waste a few years ago and called the plan, Urban Gold.  The heart of the strategy is to co-locate a materials recovery facility (MRF) and other waste disposal facilities, such as pyrolysis or gasification plants (mentioned by London Deputy Mayor Nicky Gavron at several points this week, I might add), with industries that would use the recycled materials as feedstock for their manufacturing.  Mayor Anderson was good enough to say that he'd look at the strategy.