Ecological Economics

Gas Prices Not 'Outrageous'

On mainstream news this morning I heard our Utah Governor declare US gas prices "outrageous". Memorial Day national news coverage labeled them "sky high." Wrong! Gas prices only seem outrageous to we Americans who George W. Bush correctly noted are "addicted to oil".

Europeans, by contrast, have lived with high gas prices for years, using proceeds to fund social programs, re-build infrastructure, etc. In addition, as noted in a May 21 Senate-side Congressional hearing Exploring the Skyrocketing Price of Oil (3 hrs), Europeans used gas tax differentials to correctly steer transportation systems toward diesel and away from gasoline, which proves ever-more important now that clean diesel is available. And to steer transportation system toward mass transit and away from single-vehicle transportation. Meanwhile we Americans sat around watching TV and partying until world market forces pushed prices upward, allowing most of the recent 'surplus' to be captured as record profits, record CEO compensation, etc. by what I'll call the Petrochemical Industrial Complex. Finally, Europeans are now beginning to look toward a future free of dependence on petrochemicals and their commingled carbon-loading propensities.

Even though we Americans are just now beginning to face the reality of high gas prices, the prices themselves are not the problem. In fact "sky high" prices are finally getting us to pay attention, however feebly, to alternative sources of energy that are compatible with global climate systems and human survival. As noted in the Congressional hearing, planet Earth is not in jeopardy, rather it is we humans (along with myriad other species) who are at risk. The Earth has worked its way through five Great Extinctions in the past and arguable done remarkably well. But it is in no way clear that we humans will survive the Sixth Great Extinction. Tragically, we humans may be contributing to our collective demise by clamoring for lower gas prices.

This is not to say that all is well in petrochemical industrial complex, medical industrial complex, financial industrial complex, military industrial complex America. But that is a story for another post (or several hundred posts). In the meantime 3 hours are well-spent viewing the hearing. If you want a sneak peak, go to 2:15 in the videocast and watch Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) in action, followed by others as the hearing winds up.

The Air Car?

Until a few days ago I had no idea that people were playing with the idea of using compressed air to power vehicles. Now it looks like we may see some within the next few years. Add in a hybrid gas engine to compress more air and compressed air vehicles might go further than just city driving.

But even if just for the city, and particularly if power sources come increasingly from solar and wind, the idea just might be a life saver not only for those living in very polluted cityscapes, but also for the rest of us as air pollution is a global problem.

And the idea isn't limited to cars. The video below highlights both a rather conventional but all-aluminum piston engine from France, and a much smaller rotary engine design from Australia. The latter shows much promise for small vehicles, but also for recreation vehicles, lawnmowers, golf carts and much more. Take a look:

Compressed Air Vehicles

Hat tip: Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture

See also: Compressed-Air Car at Wikipedia

OK.. Now that I've got some all hyped up, let's let the naysayers have a say. I just did a bit of after-the-postup Googling and found that Celsius blog ran this thing about a year ago. In Nov, Celsius reader Mark offered this up:

November 9th, 2007
This car is for the naive. The energy density of compressed air at 300 Bar, the pressure at which it is advertised for the MDI car, is 4 MJ/Kg. The energy density of gasoline is 47 MJ/Kg, almost 12 times greater than compressed air.

On the only published test they did, the car got only 4.5 miles on a full tank of air. In order to get the range of a normal car, the air tanks in such a car would have to be the size of a moving truck. Even then, the filling up process will take hours, which, like electric cars, means that they will not be practical solutions for transportation. As for heating the car, well I’m not sure how you heat a car with compressed air, but if you can, you will need to drain the energy from the tanks to do it. With fossil fuel cars, heat is a waste product so no energy penalty is required to heat the vehicle. This is a significant, perhaps fundamental, stumbling block to all-electric or all-air cars in cold climates, range and power aside.

This is no breakthrough.

And earlier:

Eric says:
April 4th, 2007
I first read about this car in about 1995. It was then due to go into production “within a year”. It still is. I don’t see any sign of progress whatsover. You may even note that the FAQ on the website of www.theaircar.com hasn’t even been udpated since 2005! (Where as usual it indicates that the car is just around the corner!). I remember when this car was called the ZEV, when it was called Air Car, when it became the CAT.. I’m sorry. But I just don’t believe in it any more.
ps. I’m an engineer and I know that technically it works.

But other Celsius readers are more hopeful

John Gauthier says:
May 30th, 2007
I’m an engineer, and a skeptic. I pulled out my thermodynamics textbook and checked the math. I confirmed that they can produce the energy that they advertised (about 41 MJoules per 300 liter tank).

While it sounds too good to be true, you have to consider what they have working for them. Yes, the energy density is a lot lower than that of gasoline, but their tank is about four times as large as the average gasoline tank and the energy efficiency of the engine is a lot higher than a combustion engine, which discards an incredible amount of energy as heat.

As far as the naysayers that continue to discredit the idea of using power from the electric grid to charge the car with a compressor, it’s a lot better alternative than personally pumping hundreds of pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. Besides, you can take advantage of power sources that don’t produce CO2 that are only practical on a large scale, like nuclear power.

Hope springs eternal! Where does reality lie?

China's CO2 Emissions Staged to Get Even Worse

Via Brad DeLong who says, "This is, I think, very good work--and the worst news about the human future I have learned in months." :

Forecasting the Path of China's CO2 Emissions Using Province Level Information, Maximilian Auffhammer and Richard T. Carson (2008)

ABSTRACT: Our results suggest that the anticipated path of China's Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions has dramatically increased over the last five years. The magnitude of the projected increase in Chinese emissions out to 2015 is several times larger than reductions embodied in the Kyoto Protocol. Our estimates are based on a unique provincial level panel data set from the Chinese Environmental Protection Agency. This dataset contains considerably more information relevant to the path of likely Chinese greenhouse gas emissions than national level time series models currently in use. Model selection criteria clearly reject the popular static environmental Kuznets curve specification in favor of a class of dynamic models with spatial dependence.

'The Story of Stuff'

Tired of being told to "go shopping" whenever a national or international crisis occurs?

Tired of hearing that "recycling" will save us?
  Note: Recycling is a very good idea, just "not enough."

Want to know how our so-called Consumer Society was manufactured?

Want to know why the linear "produce, manufacture, CONSUME" model is so deeply flawed?

Ever wonder how stuff can be so damned cheap? And wonder who is really paying "the freight"?

Want to know more about the pathway to sustainability?

Then you'll be glad to see/hear how Annie Leonard exposes the dark underbelly of our Consumer Society in a little 20 minute educational video titled The Story of Stuff.

Here is a trailer:

More at storyofstuff.com.

PS.. If I'm the last person on the block (the Planet?) to hear about The Story of Stuff—having heard about it over coffee just yesterday—chalk it up to the fact that I'm an old, retired economist living in Utah, just a small step on the far side of nowhere. But damned good scenery!

Exclusively Renewable Energy by 2050: Germany Says Yes!

Can you envision a country that plans to rid itself of both Coal and Nuclear Energy source-dependence? Germany is on track to do so:

Germany's Plan on video (8 minutes)

Germany is looking to integrate wind, solar, and biofuel natural gas to supply 100% of its power generation needs by 2050 (40% by 2020). Germany plans to phase out both Nuclear and Coal-fired power generation.

Hat Tip: Brad Ewing, Environmental Economics & Sustainable Development

Global Forest & 'Env. Justice' Groups Condemn Bali Carbon Trading Schemes

Today, the Global Forest Coalition and the Global Justice Ecology Project strongly condemn—on both human rights and environmental accounts—recent carbon trade announcements/resolutions at the UN Bali Glogal Climate Change Conference. "They are going to use the failed model of carbon trading to supposedly protect forests, but just like agrofuels, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility [3] is going to exacerbate deforestation at a faster rate, worsen human rights abuses and do nothing for the climate but make it less inhabitable", Dr. Miguel Lovera, Chairperson for the Global Forest Coalition.

14 December 2007
What's missing from the climate talks? Justice!

Bali Forest Outcomes Trample Indigenous Peoples' & Local Communities' Rights
False "Solutions" to Climate Change Condemned at the UNFCCC

Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia-As the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change ends, Global Forest Coalition expresses great concern that market-based mechanisms promoted here do not give enough guarantees to indigenous peoples and forest dependent peoples to ensure their rights.

Global Forest Coalition's Managing Coordinator, Simone Lovera stated, "The outcomes of the forest negotiations here in Bali do not include any guarantee that the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities regarding their forests, which have been enshrined in the UN Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, will be respected. Instead, this entire process is dominated by the corporate interests of logging, soy and palmoil companies that have started to demand compensation for every tree they don't cut down. Carbon offset projects financing such compensation schemes do not contribute anything to mitigating climate change, they are no more than a convenient lie to subsidize some of the most destructive industries on earth. Considering the crisis we are in, carbon offsets are unacceptable: We desperately need both forest conservation AND policies that cut emissions at source."

"Indigenous peoples and women are the traditional caretakers of the forest," said Anne Petermann, Co-director of Global Justice Ecology Project. "The fact that they are being ignored and excluded in this process is typifying for the way in which we are moving in the wrong direction."

The International Forum of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change, expressed their profound concern in a statement [1] read inside the UNFCCC about Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries (REDD):

REDD will not benefit Indigenous Peoples, but in fact, will result in more violations of Indigenous Peoples' Rights. It will increase the violation of our Human Rights, our rights to our lands, territories and resources, steal our land, cause forced evictions, prevent access and threaten indigenous agriculture practices, destroy biodiversity and culture diversity and cause social conflicts. Under REDD, States and Carbon Traders will take more control over our forests.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues added, "It is countries in the North that have caused the climate problem and now they are promoting projects like agrofuels [2] to supposedly address this problem, the impacts of which will be shouldered by the countries and indigenous peoples of the South."

To worsen matters, World Bank President Robert Zoellick announced their latest scheme called the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, stated Dr. Miguel Lovera, Chairperson for the Global Forest Coalition. They are going to use the failed model of carbon trading to supposedly protect forests, but just like agrofuels, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility [3] is going to exacerbate deforestation at a faster rate, worsen human rights abuses and do nothing for the climate but make it less inhabitable," he said. [Iverson: Notes edited lightly]

---

notes:

[1] Statement from the International Forum of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change (IFIPCC) at the 13th Session of Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC--SBSTA 27, concerning agenda item 5/REDD. See www.globalforestcoalition.org [Iverson: Specifically see this news release.]

[2] The term 'agrofuels' is a more accurate label for the production of fuel from industrially produced agricultural crops (and is also used by the FAO). The term 'biofuels' gives a false impression that these fuels are environmentally friendly, when they are in fact environmentally and socially destructive.

[3] The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility is the World Bank folding the carbon
storage potential of forests into their carbon trading scheme as another way to
avoid emissions reductions from polluter countries. ["notes" lightly edited]

See also:

1. Biofuels: Another False Solution to Global Warming, from Global Justice Ecology Project

2. Advance copy of a major new report from Global Forest Coalition and Global Justice Ecology Project that reveals the social and ecological impacts of large-scale production of agrofuels. The True Cost of Agrofuels: Food, Forests and the Climate [specifically details the threats on forests and forest-dependent people that are resulting or are predicted to result from the production of agrofuels from food, oil and cellulose crops.] The report is available online (English version [PDF: 74 pp.])
http://www.globalforestcoalition.org/img/userpics/File/publications/Therealcostofagrofuels.pdf
and (Spanish [PDF: 80 pp.])
http://www.globalforestcoalition.org/img/userpics/File/Spanish/Elverdadocostodelosagrocombustibles.pdf

Bloomberg Blasts Carbon Trading at UN Bali Conference

Bloomberg: Carbon tax should replace carbon trading, CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent, Newsday.com, Dec. 13: … "[Cap and trade is] a very inefficient way to accomplish the same thing that a carbon tax accomplishes," [NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg] said. "It leaves itself open to special interests, corruption, inefficiencies." …

Japan Set to Buy Carbon Credits on the Cheap

Folks at Globalization and the Environment provide evidence as to why I've been so skeptical about the Carbon Trading game. Japan is staging up to buy its way out of Koyoto commitments with no pain — buying from willing Eastern European sellers who find themselves with a surplus of credits. To their blog:

Nov 23: Today's FT reports that Japan is looking to hoover up shed loads of carbon credits on the cheap to meet its Kyoto agreements.

Such a move, whilst entirely legal is not entirely politically desirable. This article explains why.

This issue of course is that Japan promised to reduce its emissions 6% below its 1990 figure and it is now 8% above. The problem with buying carbon credits is that it does not necessarily reduce emissions by a single tonne of CO2. What then is the point exactly?

The collapse in eastern European heavy industry means they have an excess of credits to sell (and is one reason why Russia signed up in the first place despite dragging its heals for many years). …

US Congressional Budget Office Favors Carbon Tax

At a Nov. 16 Congressional Budget Office "Director's Conference on Climate Change", CBO Director Peter Orszag argued in favor of a carbon tax relative to an at-least-for-now inferior alternative of a cap-and-trade policy [Issues in Climate Change, Statement of CBO Director - PDF]. Here is a snip:

… Any effort to limit CO2 emissions would have two principal effects: It would produce long-term economic benefits by avoiding some future climate-related damage, and it would impose immediate economic costs by reducing the use of fossil fuels. Employing incentive-based policies to reduce emissions would help minimize the cost of reducing emissions by any given amount because they would use the power of markets to identify the least expensive sources of emission reductions. Thus, they can better accommodate technological advances, differences between industries or companies in their ability to make low-cost emission reductions, and changes in market conditions.

Two alternative incentive-based approaches for reducing CO2 emissions are to tax them or to establish a cap-and-trade system for them. Either a tax or a cap would be most efficient (that is, would best balance expected benefits and costs) if it was designed to gradually become more stringent over time—meaning the tax would gradually rise or the cap would become tighter. Such an approach would best reflect the present value of avoided future damage (the benefit of reducing a ton of emissions), which would take on greater weight as larger potential damage became closer in time. Further, such an approach would allow a smooth transition to a less carbon-intensive economy, allowing firms and households time to gradually replace capital equipment with alternatives that are more efficient, use less carbon intensive fossil fuels (such as natural gas rather than coal) or use renewable energy sources (such as wind or solar).

Efficiency Advantages of a Tax on CO2 Emissions
Although both types of incentive-based approaches are significantly more efficient than command-and-control policies, studies typically find that over the next several decades, a well-designed and appropriately set tax would yield higher net benefits than a corresponding cap-and-trade approach. A tax creates relative certainty about the cost of emission reductions each year, because firms will undertake such reductions until the cost of decreasing emissions by another ton just equals the tax on an additional ton of emissions. A cap-and-trade program, by contrast, creates relative certainty about the total quantity of emission reductions each year, because the cap limits total annual emissions. In terms of the impact on the climate, however, it does not matter greatly whether a given cut in emissions occurs in one year or the next.

From that perspective, a tax has an important advantage: It allows more emission reductions to take place in years when they are relatively cheap. Various factors can affect the cost of emission reductions from year to year, including the weather, the level of economic activity, and the availability of new low-carbon technologies (such as improvements in wind-power technology). By shifting emission reduction efforts into years when they are relatively less expensive, a tax can yield a given quantity of emission reductions at a lower cost than can a cap-and-trade program with specified annual emission levels. In addition, by avoiding the potential volatility of allowance prices that might result from a rigid annual cap, a tax could be less disruptive for affected companies. Provided that the tax was set at a level that reflected the expected benefit of reducing an additional ton of CO2 emissions, the tax would provide a motivation for firms and households to reduce emissions up to the point at which the cost of doing so was equal to the resulting expected benefits.

The relative advantages of a tax and a cap-and-trade program could change over time as new information became available. For example, because a cap creates relative certainty about the level of emissions, it could become more efficient than a tax if scientists determined that additional emissions were likely to trigger a sharp increase in damage, or if new technologies offered the opportunity to make extremely large cuts in emissions at a low and fairly constant cost. Analysts who have tried to define more precisely the conditions under which a cap would be more efficient than a tax have found those conditions to be quite narrow and not likely to be relevant in the near term. Specifically, scientists would need to have fairly precise knowledge about the level of an emissions threshold—beyond which additional emissions would trigger a sharp increase in total global damage—and such a threshold would have to be sufficiently close that policymakers would want to make very large cuts in emissions each year to avoid crossing it. In the absence of those conditions, a tax offers a more efficient approach for reaching a multiyear emission-reduction target.

Although a tax is generally a more efficient policy, the efficiency of a cap-and-trade approach can be enhanced by various design features. In addition, some participants in the policy discussion believe that analytical comparisons of a tax and a cap-and-trade system ignore the idea that policymakers may be more inclined to set a tight cap than a correspondingly high tax. … [footnotes omitted]

HT: Greg Mankiw

Monboit: Biofuels as 'Crime Against Humanity'

Be sure not to miss George Monboit's latest, thought-provoking rant against biofuels. Here's bit of it as posted on his blog:

An Agricultural Crime Against Humanity, George Monbiot, from the Guardian Nov 6: Biofuels could kill more people than the Iraq war. … In principle, burning biofuels merely releases the carbon they accumulated when they were growing. Even when you take into account the energy costs of harvesting, refining and transporting the fuel, they produce less net carbon than petroleum products. The law the British government passed a fortnight ago - by 2010, 5% of our road transport fuel must come from crops - will, it claims, save between 700,000 and 800,000 tonnes of carbon a year. It derives this figure by framing the question carefully. If you count only the immediate carbon costs of planting and processing biofuels, they appear to reduce greenhouse gases. When you look at the total impacts, you find that they cause more warming than petroleum.

A recent study by the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen shows that the official estimates have ignored the contribution of nitrogen fertilisers. They generate a greenhouse gas - nitrous oxide - which is 296 times as powerful as CO2. These emissions alone ensure that ethanol from maize causes between 0.9 and 1.5 times as much warming as petrol, while rapeseed oil (the source of over 80% of the world's biodiesel) generates 1-1.7 times the impact of diesel. This is before you account for the changes in land use.

A paper published in Science three months ago suggests that protecting uncultivated land saves, over 30 years, between two and nine times the carbon emissions you might avoid by ploughing it and planting biofuels. Last year the research group LMC International estimated that if the British and European target of a 5% contribution from biofuels were to be adopted by the rest of the world, the global acreage of cultivated land would expand by 15%. That means the end of most tropical forests. It might also cause runaway climate change. … (footnotes omitted here)

Greg Mankiw: Several Billion plus One Favor Carbon Taxes

For more than a year, Greg Mankiw has formally/strongly advocated for Carbon Taxes. Mankiw also keeps tabs on who else supports such. Lately he adds, by reference, several billion new members to his Pigou Club:

Several Billion Join the Pigou Club, Greg Mankiw, Nov 5: The BBC World Service [PDF] reports that a majority of people in most countries favor higher energy taxes if the tax revenue is either rebated by lowering other taxes or used to finance energy-related government programs….

Another Member, Greg Mankiw, Nov 2: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg joins the Pigou Club.

Go Green! Without "Corporate Giveaways"

Pro Football's Philadelphia Eagles are not only green in color but "green" in commitment and action, voluntarily reducing their environmental footprint and providing a much-needed precedent in the sports arena. This is the right way to go: no big government inducements, no notions that somehow government and industry are "partners" in regulation. Instead we have an enterprise doing things because people involved think it right and necessary.

Big banks and big timber companies, on the other hand, seem to be fishing for big payoffs from cap-and-trade carbon legislation, to allow them to profit from both their extant ventures and from the very "market-based" regulatory schemes they are petitioning for — the type that are currently being debated as cap-and-trade on Capital Hill in Washington DC. This seems to me to be the wrong way to go.

Environmentally aware cap-and-trade advocates continually stress moving, through time, away from corporate giveaways, else starting without corporate giveaways from the beginning. Still, most legislative proposals allow for some carbon credits to be given to polluter firms as does this week's spotlight bill, the Liberman/Warner sponsored America's Climate Security Act. (S.2191)

Cap-and-trade v. carbon tax was debated in two important forums this week. On Oct 30, The Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project hosted a very lively and informative debate of carbon tax v. cap-and-trade. Policy papers included:

• An Equitable Tax Reform to Address Global Climate Change, Gilbert E. Metcalf
• A U.S. Cap-and-Trade System to Address Global Climate Change, Robert N. Stavins

It isn't clear where any of this is headed in the US: even if a legislative proposal emerges in either form, there is a big question of whether it gets past a G.W. Bush Presidential Veto. Still it is worth the effort to read the policy papers, and even the transcript (pp 1-62 or 103 [PDF]).

Since I advocate for carbon taxes over cap-and-trade, I'll post up this one comment from the transcript, from panel moderator Sebastian Mallaby (Council of Foreign Relations):

… [I]f people focus in on [the debate over "carbon tax" and "cap and trade"] more and they perceive the cap and trade mechanism as being partly a way to distribute free vouchers to industry, as consumers wake up to that, they may prefer the tax system with a rebate that Gib [Metcalf] is talking about. So the political dynamic could flip when consciousness goes up.

On Nov 1, Amy Goodman, Democracy Now hosted Carbon Trading: Practical Solution to Global Warming or Corporate Greenwash? A Debate. Goodman engaged Annie Petsonk (International counsel with Environmental Defense) and Daphne Wysham (Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies). The debate gives us some insight into why both sides strongly support their positions. Supporters, like Petsonk believe that carbon taxes and cap-and-trade leglislation without some "give" to corporate pollutors are non-starters.

Dissenters, like Wysham (and me) believe that cap-and-trade while well-intentioned will never get to desired results due to the overly-complex nature of the proposals and the inability to ratchet up the "caps" through time, and ratchet down the "corporate giveaways" through time. Here are Snips from the "debate":

… ANNIE PETSONK: We've had great experience with cap-and-trade for controlling air pollution in this country since 1990, when Congress passed the Clean Air Act amendments. We put a cap on acid rain pollution and adopted this kind of system to cut acid rain pollution from coal-fired power plants. So, in that program, we essentially put the training wheels on the bicycle and learned how to ride the bicycle. That program has cut acid rain pollution far faster than industry and many environmentalists predicted could be done. And it's done so at a fraction of the cost that people projected.

Setting up a carbon trading system for the world and for the United States is more complicated. There are more polluters. I agree with Daphne that companies should not be allowed to get credit in a developing country which has no caps on emissions for doing what they were supposed to do anyway. … [O]ne of the reasons why we're looking forward to the markup [of the Liberman/Warner "America's Climate Security Act"] in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee today is that the bill now being considered there doesn't create that system. It's better than that. …

DAPHNE WYSHAM: I tend to disagree with that perception, as do quite a few number of groups. Friends of the Earth has recently produced an analysis on the windfall profits in the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill [FOE Press Release], and according to their calculations, 38% of the giveaways, the free giveaways in this bill, would benefit the fossil fuel industry over the lifetime of the program. That's — and roughly $268 billion of that would go directly to the coal industry alone. …

[O]ne of the failures of the EU emissions trading system is that they essentially — the governments essentially gave the right to pollute to certain industries. They set the tap high, and as a result industry was able to emit as much as they had been emitting in the past and make a profit buying and selling these emissions rights. Similarly, in this — and there was no auctioning.

Now, in the current Lieberman-Warner bill, there is some auctioning, but about 50% of all of the permits are just being given away for free. Now, these permits are valuable. They are basically being turned into a commodity. So now what we have is essentially the most carbon-intensive of the fossil fuels, the coal industry, is one of the largest beneficiaries of the Lieberman-Warner bill. And an additional $522 billion will potentially go to what they call zero and low carbon energy technologies. Now, if we are optimistic, we would say, "Wonderful! That's going to go to renewables." However, the legislation is vague. It could go to either the fossil fuel industry for carbon capture and storage, which is a very expensive and unproven technology, or it could go to the nuclear energy. And that is not specifically ruled out in this legislation.

So we have problems with this also because it essentially is a tax on the working poor. It's not a tax on the very corporations that are causing the problem.

AMY GOODMAN: How is it a tax on the working poor?

DAPHNE WYSHAM: Well, because we will see the windfall gains. Instead of having those go to, say, subsidize an increase in the price of power or to public transportation or to other incredibly important solutions to the climate problem, we will see billions and billions of dollars worth of profits going back to the very industries that are causing the problem.

AMY GOODMAN: Annie Petsonk?

ANNIE PETSONK: We believe that the Americas Climate Security Act that's going to be voted on this morning in the Environment and Public Works Committee is a very good first step. Is it perfect? No. Are senators moving to improve it? Yes. Senator Lautenberg announced yesterday he wants to broaden the coverage of the bill so that more parts of the economy come under that cap on fossil fuel emissions. …

DAPHNE WYSHAM: … I think it's important to take some specific examples. I think it’s instructive to look at, for example, the World Bank, which I have been monitoring for over ten years now. Now, they have invested over fifteen times as much in fossil fuels as renewable since 1992. Originally, it was a hundred to one. Now, they are getting into the carbon trading market. The US Treasury back in 1997 said this is a clear conflict of interest for a financial institution to both profit from financing fossil fuels and profit from carbon trading. They're actually charging somewhere on the order of 13% commission on all carbon trading transactions. Now, what the World Bank could have done and should have done instead of getting into the carbon trading market is they should have set a higher energy efficiency standard, they should have stopped subsidizing fossil fuels, they should at the very least be calculating their climate footprint, which they are not doing. So they're calculating the carbon credits, but they're not calculating the carbon debits.

Now, if you globalize that particular model and look at how that would play out with bank after bank, whether it's Citibank or the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development or other public or private banks, you see how these banks are going to be gaming the system. They will be profiting from selling — from giving loans to the likes of Chevron, and then they'll be profiting again from charging a commission on the CO2 that is captured from those operations in developing countries or potentially in the US.

So, you know, what I think people need to understand is, yes, the time is urgent. We need to take action very soon on this issue. However, we need to learn the lessons from the failures of the EU emissions trading system. And the bill that's on the Senate floor this morning is not the best way to move forward. It's a corporate giveaway, and we need to do better. Boxer needs to hear from people on this

AMY GOODMAN: Last word, Annie Petsonk, on this. Is this just a corporate gift, a subsidy, a giveaway?

ANNIE PETSONK: If America doesn't take the lead, beginning to tackle our global warming pollution — excuse me — other nations won't either. I strongly support getting rid of fossil fuel subsidies for big coal-fired power plants in China and India and in the US. We've got to start. We cannot afford to delay. This bill is not a corporate subsidy or giveaway. It's a first step in getting America on a track to a cleaner energy future and a safer climate.

AMY GOODMAN: Fifteen seconds, Daphne Wysham, then what's your alternative, since you are so critical of this?

DAPHNE WYSHAM: Well, I think, you know, what we have is a political opportunity here. We know that the President is going to veto any kind of legislation that comes from the Senate. He has made clear his opposition to any kind of legislation —

AMY GOODMAN: Even Lieberman and Warner?

DAPHNE WYSHAM: Even Lieberman and Warner. So why aren't the Democrats — why are they just — why are they kowtowing to Bush? Why aren't they pushing forward the most aggressive piece of legislation that they can get as a benchmark and say this is what we're going to be pushing for in the next administration? And, you know, we can do better. We should be debating these issues. We should be setting much more stringent targets, at least 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. This bill gets us nowhere near that. And so, that's my concerns with it.

Dingell Drafts Carbon Tax Legislation

The Carbon Tax Center endorses Congressman John Dingell's Carbon Tax Legislation, set to be introduced later this year. Dingell is chairman of the US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce. The Carbon Tax Center says of the proposal, "we think the bill is terrific." Here's more from CTC:

… The current version would phase in, each year for five years, a charge of $10 per ton of carbon content of coal, oil and natural gas; plus an additional 10 cents/gallon for gasoline and jet fuel (kerosene). By the end of the five-year period the charges would reach $50/ton of carbon plus 50 cents/gallon of gasoline and jet fuel. These equate to 63 cents a gallon of gas and 90 cents for one hundred kilowatt-hours assuming the nationwide average fuel mix. …

We examined a 20-year ramp-up — starting Dingell's "10/10" tax in 2008 and continuing through 2027 to a level of $200 per ton of carbon plus $2/gallon on gasoline and jet fuel. Here's where the U.S. would be in the representative year 2025:

• Carbon dioxide emissions would be down by 1.55 billion metric tons from projected levels, a 20% drop — a decrease equivalent to current emissions from England, France and Italy combined.
• Petroleum consumption would be 4.5 million barrels a day less than otherwise, an 18% decrease from projected usage, and more than 10% greater than Iran's current production.

Moreover, these reductions could be supplemented by savings from other targeted policies and programs to reduce use of petroleum, natural gas and coal-fired electricity. (Indeed, a companion section of Dingell's bill will call for phasing out the federal tax deduction on mortgage interest on very large homes, thus ending a subsidy through which middle and working class families subsidize gargantuan sprawl homes for the wealthy.) No other single policy measure — not broader CAFÉ standards, not a national Renewable Energy Standard, not a massive biofuels push, and certainly not a new generation of subsidized nuclear power plants — can produce nearly the carbon and petroleum savings promised by the Dingell hybrid carbon tax, provided it extends beyond the initial five-year period.

The brilliant touch in the Dingell bill is the supplemental tax on gasoline and aviation fuel. …

Maybe this will take some heat off Dingell, who some environmentalists have criticized as not "on board" on environmental issues. Or maybe not.

I'll echo The Carbon Tax Center's concluding comment: Let Dingell and others know how you feel on this issue.

… We urge you to read Dingell's Web statement and post a comment on his site and at other sites that cover climate, energy, oil, national security, and politics. Having a legislator of Dingell's stature even float a carbon-tax trial balloon is a very important and positive development — possibly a breakthrough. There's a lot riding on it. Be heard.

See Also:

Newsweek, Web-Exclusive Interview, 'This is Going to Hurt', Sept. 27: A defender of the auto industry proposes a carbon tax that will cause everyone pain. Is the country ready for shared sacrifice to combat global warming? …

Daily Kos, Dingell: A dingbat proposal re Global Warming?, A. Siegel, Sept. 26

Econospeak, Economists v. Politicians, Michael Perelman, Sept. 26: … [T]he Wall Street Journal has chimed in reporting that economists as a whole agree that carbon taxes are the way to limit global warming, yet politicians are just as adamant in supporting the cap and trade. Nobody wants to get blamed for raising taxes. Rep. John Dingell (Dem, GM; i.e. General Motors) is still supposed to introduce a carbon just to prove how unpopular such a tax might be. …

NY Times, What is John Dingell Really Up to?, David Leonhardt, Sept. 5

Say No to Liquid Coal?

"Liquid coal will NOT move America toward a clean energy future." So says Julie Waterman of SaveOurEnvironment.org in an email today:

According to the Department of Energy (www.fueleconomy.gov), a Honda Civic produces 5.5 tons of CO2 per year and a Hummer H3 produces 10.6 tons of CO2 per year. According to Williams et. al., Princeton University, coal-to-liquids produces 50 lbs CO2/gal gasoline equivalent and conventional gasoline produced 25 lbs. CO2/gal.

Where is the countervailing evidence? I can find none. But that doesn't mean there is none. Help!

Here's more on the case against Liquid Coal:

NRDC Feb. 2007: Why Liquid Coal Is Not a Viable Option to Move America [PDF]
Earthjustice, April 2007: Liquid Coal: Undermining the Fight Against Global Warming!

UN-Energy on Biofuels and Sustainability

UN Report Urges Caution on Biofuels, Naked Capitalism, May 10: In an underreported story (no mention in the Financial Times or the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal reference was in its energy blog, far from prime time), the United Nations said in essence that biofuels could create as many problems, via environmental damage and higher food prices, as they solve. …

U.N. raises doubts on biofuels, Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, May 8: … In an agency-wide assessment, the U.N. raised alarms about the potential negative impact of biofuels, just days after a climate conference in Bangkok said the world had both the money and technology to prevent global warming blamed in part on greenhouse gas emissions.

Biofuels, which are made from corn, palm oil, sugar cane and other agricultural products, have been seen by many as a cleaner and cheaper way to meet the world's soaring energy needs than with greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuels. …

The report said bioenergy represents an "extraordinary opportunity" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But it warned that "rapid growth in liquid biofuel production will make substantial demands on the world's land and water resources at a time when demand for both food and forest products is also rising rapidly."

Changes in the carbon content of soils and carbon stocks in forests and peat lands might offset some or all of the benefits of the greenhouse gas reductions, it said.

"Use of large-scale monocropping could lead to significant biodiversity loss, soil erosion and nutrient leaching," it said, adding that investments in bioenergy must be managed carefully, at national, regional and local levels to avoid new environmental and social problems "some of which could have irreversible consequences."

It noted that soaring palm oil demand has already led to the clearing of tropical forests in southeast Asia.

In addition, the diversion of food crops for fuel will increase food prices, putting a strain on the poor, as evidenced by the recent steep rise in maize and sugar prices, the report said.

"Liquid biofuel production could threaten the availability of adequate food supplies by diverting land and other productive resources away from food crops," it said, adding that many biofuel crops require the best land, lots of water and environment-damaging chemical fertilizers.

While bioenergy crops can create jobs in impoverished rural areas where the bulk of the world's poor and hungry live, creating biofuels favors large-scale production, meaning small-scale farmers could be pushed off their land by industrial agriculture.

It suggested that farm co-ops, as well as government subsidies, could help small-scale farmers compete.

Such concerns have been raised by Greenpeace International and other environmental groups worried that the biofuel fad is being driven by big agricultural interests looking for new markets.

"More and more, people are realizing that there are serious environmental and serious food security issues involved in biofuels," Greenpeace biofuels expert Jan van Aken said. "There is more to the environment than climate change. Climate change is the most pressing issue, but you cannot fight climate change by large deforestation in Indonesia." …

UN-Energy: Sustainable Bioenergy: A Framework for Decision Makers [PDF], April 2007

Global Climate Change Fixes Prove Politically Vexing

(via Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith, 4/18/07)

Gideon Rachman, in "Climate change is not a global crisis — that is the problem," works through the implications of the fact that global warming will create winners and losers. He discusses first order effects – the benefits of warmer weather in Russia, and higher sea levels for Asia — and some second order effects, such as mass migration and increased instability.

It is disheartening as it is to consider that the asymmetrical impact of global warming will lower the sense of urgency and shared sacrifice, particularly since I suspect the impact of climate change could well be worse than is now envisaged. The second IPCC report was negotiated, and China called for some of the findings to be watered down. Moreover, while the report did contemplate the effects of changed weather upon agriculture, it did not consider the effect on other creatures. We are already in the midst of one of the greatest loss of species in planetary history, and at a certain point, the entire ecosystem become precarious. And on a mundane level, I am also not certain enough allowance has been made for the impact of unstable weather patterns on the grain belts, and the resulting lower yield and increased cost of staples.

From Rachman:

Here is another inconvenient truth. Global warming is good news for parts of the world. This is truly awkward. A "planetary emergency" that affected everyone equally would be much easier to tackle. However, climate change that hurts some places but helps others opens the way for dangerous political conflicts.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued this month, confirms that global warming puts large parts of the world at risk from the biblical woes of famine, flood and disease. The places most at risk are those that are already poor — sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia.

But in northern Europe, agriculture will become more productive and the climate will improve. From a parochial British point of view, the latest IPCC report sounds like good news. It has taken off the table the single most threatening scenario — the paradoxical threat that "global warming" was going to make Britain much colder by shutting down the Gulf Stream, the ocean current that gives the UK a much warmer climate than its latitude implies. The latest thinking from IPCC scientists is that this is very unlikely to happen during the next century.

Global warming offers a positive bonanza for Russia. The legendary Russian winter gets more tolerable. As the permafrost retreats in Siberia new mineral resources are revealed — and huge new areas become available for settlement and cultivation.

In an irony that will infuriate environmentalists, oil companies are also likely to benefit from global warming. The US Geological Survey estimates that 25 per cent of the world’s known oil and gas reserves are in the Arctic Circle. As the ice melts, they become easier to exploit.

As a new paper in Environment and Urbanization, an academic journal, makes clear, three-quarters of the 634m people deemed to be most at risk from rising sea levels connected to global warming live in Asia.

Coastal cities in the developed world, such as New York and Los Angeles, may be at risk. But wealthy countries are best placed to adapt to the problem. Certainly the Dutch, who have long experience of keeping the sea at bay, are not panicking. They are simply planning to spend billions more on flood defences.

Of course, even countries that may benefit directly from global warming could suffer indirectly — as other parts of the world descend into chaos. Britain is not an island (well, technically, Britain is an island — but you know what I mean). Dealing with refugees and desperate immigrants will only get harder as life becomes tougher in Africa and the Asian subcontinent.

In fact, it is now dawning on the world's politicians that global warming could transform international relations — introducing a range of new issues and conflicts.

The most obvious problems are struggles over refugees and resources. Some argue that the Darfur conflict is partially caused by global warming, as settled farmers and nomadic herders fight over failing land. This sort of conflict could proliferate in the future.

Last month, a conference arranged by the US Army War College heard that: "Within a century, extreme drought will affect 30 per cent of the world, up from 3 per cent today."

Water shortages are a particular threat. They have long been an underlying source of conflict in the Middle East. But as India and China run short of water, their neighbours are worried that struggles may arise over the diversion of rivers and the building of dams.

The idea that the Chinese are oblivious to the threat of global warming is untrue, as I discovered on a recent trip to Beijing. Officials were openly concerned that the Yangtze and Yellow rivers were at their lowest levels for years. Much of the problem is to do with irrigation and industrial use. But the Chinese believe that global warming is also contributing to water shortages because of its effect on rainfall and the glaciers that feed into Chinese rivers.

The government in Beijing faces a dilemma. Terrified of social unrest, it is reluctant to do anything that might slow economic growth — such as stopping the building of coal-fired power stations. Yet, water shortages are already causing social unrest in the countryside and the water table is falling fast in Beijing. One western analyst based in China speculates that the next political upheaval there could come "when people in Beijing turn on their taps in 2009 and find there is no water coming out".

Global warming will not just provoke conflicts over scarcity. It may also cause struggles over the emergence of new resources — in particular, the oil and gas that lies underneath the Arctic. Outstanding territorial disputes between Canada and the US, between Russia and Norway, and between Denmark and Russia have taken on a new urgency in recent years, as these countries develop a new interest in hitherto unpromising stretches of ice.

Struggles over territory and borders are, at least, familiar ground for politicians and diplomats. But the new diplomatic world will increasingly be dominated by debates over the environment and international regimes for combating climate change.

The argument over global warming could quickly turn into the latest and bitterest struggle between the traditional industrialised countries and the developing world.

Any successor to the Bush administration is likely to be much more concerned about global action on climate change. And in 2009, just as a new administration settles down in Washington, China is likely to surpass the US as the world’s leading source of carbon dioxide emissions.

Although rich northern countries are best placed to cope with global warming, domestic public opinion means they are also likely to be the countries pushing hardest for new international regulations to tackle carbon dioxide emissions. In the US and Europe, climate change is becoming a new issue to berate China about — merging with protectionist concerns about exports from Chinese companies that practise "environmental dumping".

But the Chinese will not lack allies in any struggle over who bears the costs of global warming. The Russians — with an economy based on fossil fuels, and a society that benefits from a warmer climate — may well stand with them. So could India and much of the developing world. Global warming presents a formidable environmental and scientific challenge. The political consequences may prove just as vexing.

The Case for Carbon Taxes and Against Cap-and-Trade

(via Greg Mankiw)

In a comment on a previous post, reader James offers a good reason why, if the government is to do something about climate change, a carbon tax is better than a cap-and-trade system:

This just occurred to me, so maybe I'm missing something but there seems to be another big advantage for taxes: they probably are much more likely to be both tax-burden and progressivity neutral.

Here's why: Both carbon taxes and cap-and-trade would affect consumers by raising energy costs. (Approximately equally, although to the extent that cap-and-trade imposes more administrative costs, you might need to add more to the price of energy to achieve equivalent carbon emissions.) Taxes raise the after-tax prices directly; cap-and-trade raises the price indirectly by forcing producers to purchase credits, which raises the cost of producing, and thus purchasing, energy. Raising energy costs harms the poor most, because they spend more of their budget on energy.

The regressive effects of a carbon tax are obvious because they are direct, so it should be relatively easy to convince Congress to make the tax revenue and progressivity neutral by instituting income tax cuts (and hikes in the earned income tax credit) weighted toward the poor. (And there's a great bargain to be struck here between conservatives and liberals. Liberals can say, "We'll keep it revenue neutral as long as you keep it progressivity neutral.")

But this will be much more difficult to do for cap-and-trade programs. The main reason that Congress might choose such a program over a carbon tax is the fiction that, unlike a tax, it does not impose costs on consumers. This fiction ignores the indirect cost imposed on consumers when the program increases the price of producing energy. Given that animating fiction, it seems like Congress would be less likely to make progressive changes in the tax code to offset the regressive effects of cap-and-trade. (Congress couldn't argue that they were just offsetting the costs of cap-and-trade because their choice of cap-and-trade was based on denying that those costs exist.)

Al Gore at the US House of Representatives

Global Warming, March 20, 2007:

Al Gore: … "The Day will come when our children and grandchildren will … ask one of two questions. Either they will ask, "What in God's name were they doing? Didn't they see the evidence? … What were they thinking?  Or, … How did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy — [to] do what's right?"

Hat Tip: Brad Ewing, Environmental Economics and Sustainable Development
More from Grist, The Goracle by Amanda Griscom Little, 3/22/2007

'Absent-minded killers' : Why no big focus on biodiversity?

Jeffery Sachs laments world leaders' lack of attention to the 'Convention on Biological Diversity'. Sachs subtitles "Absent-Minded Killers" this way, "We kill other species not because we must but because we are too negligent to do otherwise."

Guardian Unlimited Comment is Free, Sachs 03/22/07: As a species, human beings have a major self-control problem. We humans are now so aggressively fishing, hunting, logging, and growing crops in all parts of the world that we are literally chasing other species off the planet. Our intense desire to take all that we can from nature leaves precious little for other forms of life.

In 1992, when the world's governments first promised to address man-made global warming, they also vowed to head off the human-induced extinction of other species. The Convention on Biological Diversity, agreed at the Rio Earth Summit, established that "biological diversity is a common concern of humanity." The signatories agreed to conserve biological diversity, by saving species and their habitats, and to use biological resources (eg forests) in a sustainable manner. In 2002, the treaty's signatories went further, committing to "a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss" by 2010.

Unfortunately, like so many other international agreements, the Convention on Biological Diversity remains essentially unknown, un-championed, and unfulfilled. That neglect is a human tragedy. …

Willem Buiter's Doubts on Continuing China/India's Meteoric Rise

After airing his positive Moring Coffee spin on China and India's remarkable growth, Brad DeLong highlights Willem Buiter's pessimism re: China and India's recent stellar rise. Buiter identifies financial "credit boom" risks, political risks, and most importantly environmental risks going forward. In follow-up commentary, DeLong adds a fourth, intertwined with Buiter's first: "The People's Bank of China is acting like the world's most enormous hedge fund in reverse."

Willem Buiter
[comment following Ft.Com Economists' forum post, 3/20/07]
Both India and China are in the terminal stages of a credit boom…. If the monetary and fiscal authorities act in time (they appear to be well behind the curve in both countries) and if they have the right instruments and the political will and freedom to use them (doubtful in both countries) the credit boom can end with a whimper. A hard landing seems more likely, however.

Second, a domestic political question mark… political risk to growth is seriously under-priced by the domestic and global communities of investors. In China economic liberalisation is proceeding side by side with continued political repression through the monopoly on political power of the Communist Party…. The sustainability of such a social-political-economic configuration has never been tested. India has had an open and representative form of government for sixty years. I believe this to be an important socio-political safety valve….

Third and probably most importantly, an environmental question mark. Environmental supply-side constraints on growth in Chindia… invalidates the growth accounting exercise by Bosworth and Collins, reported by Martin [Wolf]…. [O]utput is seriously mis-measured and a key input - the services yielded by the stock of environmental capital - is ignored completely. For Chindia, this omission matters even in the medium run…. It is the local (national) natural resources of clean fresh water and fertile land (some would add clean air as well) that are not only important domestic 'consumer durables' but also key inputs into the production of the goods and services that are captured by conventionally measured GDP indices…. The water constraint is likely to be the first one to become binding in both China and India, certainly within 10 years. It will impair even the production of those goods and services included in conventional GDP measures….

Chindia urgently needs to re-orients its growth policies towards environmental sustainability. Pricing all water and power use (including agricultural) at long-run marginal social cost would be a good start. Without such a radical re-orientation, the 21st century may well become the century of China and India for a very different reason from the one prophesied by the current uncritical Chindia cheerleaders…

Brad DeLong, again in follow-up comments to the FT.com Economists' Forum post, says:

Brad DeLong
I would add a fourth worry, in addition to the environmental, infrastructure, education, and political legitimacy worries that have already been aired. The People's Bank of China is acting like the world's most enormous hedge fund in reverse. Unless there is significant inflation in China or a rapid reversal of global imbalances, the PBoC is likely to have to write off the largest amount of capital of any institution anywhere, anytime, anyhow—with either China's savers or China's taxpayers holding the bag. The political consequences of that may be a further important source of risk.

Finally, a DeLong reader points to Bill McKibben's recent Mother Jones commentary, Reversal of Fortune, and highlights:

Bill McKibben
… If we do try to keep going, with the entire world aiming for an economy structured like America's, it won't be just oil that we'll run short of. Here are the numbers we have to contend with: Given current rates of growth in the Chinese economy, the 1.3 billion residents of that nation alone will, by 2031, be about as rich as we are. If they then eat meat, milk, and eggs at the rate that we do, calculates ecostatistician Lester Brown, they will consume 1,352 million tons of grain each year—equal to two-thirds of the world's entire 2004 grain harvest. They will use 99 million barrels of oil a day, 15 million more than the entire world consumes at present. They will use more steel than all the West combined, double the world's production of paper, and drive 1.1 billion cars—1.5 times as many as the current world total. And that's just China; by then, India will have a bigger population, and its economy is growing almost as fast. And then there's the rest of the world.

Trying to meet that kind of demand will stress the earth past its breaking point in an almost endless number of ways ….

So many environmental concerns, so little time!

[Posted from Economic Dreams-Nightmares]

Jared Diamond on 'Failures of Group Decision-Making'

The other day our servers got hit with a virus scare. While we were without our 'electronic tools', I borrowed Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed from a colleague. In the book Diamond deals with a question posed by Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies: "How did so many societies make such bad mistakes?"

After taking us on a tour of ancient societies as well as contemporary societal failures, Diamond works toward "Practical Lessons." So, "How did so many societies make such bad mistakes?" In grappling with the question Diamond's students, along with Tainter, identified what they call "a baffling phenomenon": Failures of group decision-making on the part of whole societies or other groups. Diamond sets up four categories of potential failure:

… First of all, a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives. Second when the problem does arrive, the group may fail to perceive it. Then, after they perceive it, they fail even to try to solve it. Finally, they may try to solve it, but may not succeed.

Focusing in on the third — failure to even attempt to solve a problem once it is perceived — Diamond identifies a variety of factors that keep groups from attempting solutions, including:

• Rational behavior problems, i.e clashes of interests
• good for me (as an individual, corporate body, or ruling elite), bad for you and everybody else
• good for me (or us) now, bad for everyone later; e.g. shortsightedness rationalized by discounting
• Irrational behavior problems, i.e. collision of needed new values with deeply held values
• collision with deeply held religious or sectarian values
• collision with deeply held secular values, e.g. individualism, communalism, technological optimism, technological pessimism, group cohesion and protection from outsides (e.g. dislike for groups like "environmental groups" who first perceive and complain about a problem)
• crowd psychology; individual interests cowed by group pressure (e.g. groupthink, Abilene Paradox)
• psychological denial (subconscious suppression due to, e.g. "painful emotion")

In attempting solutions we have to get beyond rationalizing. Rationalizations include, according to Diamond:

• It's not my problem, it's someone else's problem
• The future has always (near-term history) proven to be better (technologically) than the past, therefore the problem will take care of itself. This boils down to "Technology will solve our problems."

Will we make it out of our current messes that increasingly well-up on a global scale, as well as welling-up locally in more and more places? Diamond sums up his assessment of our prospect at the end of his book:

I'm a cautious optimist. … [O]n the one hand, I acknowledge the seriousness of the [environmental and other] problems facing us. If we don't make a determined effort to solve them, and if we don't succeed at that effort, the world as a whole within the next few decades will face a declining standard of living, or perhaps something worse. … On the other hand, we shall be able to solve our problems — if we choose to do so. … Because we are the cause of our environmental problems, we are the ones in control of them, and we can choose or not choose to stop causing them and start solving them. The future is up for grabs, lying in our own hands. We don't need new technologies to solve our problems; while new technologies can make some contribution, for the most pare we "just" need the political will to apply solutions already available. Of course that's a big "just." But many societies did find the necessary political will in the past. Our modern societies have already found the will to solve some of our problems, and to achieve partial solutions to others.

… [It depends] on the courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time then problems have become perceptible but before they have reached crisis proportions. This type of decision-making is the opposite of the short-term reactive decision-making that too often characterizes our elected politicians ….

Carbon Offsets: Modern Day 'Indulgences'?

Much has been made of Carbon Offset schemes. I have remained skeptical. Today I find this, to reinforce my skepticism:

(via Carbon Trade Watch): NEW PUBLICATION: "The Carbon Neutral Myth - Offset Indulgences for your Climate Sins" [PDF]

Carbon offsets are the modern day indulgences, sold to an increasingly carbon conscious public to absolve their climate sins. Scratch the surface, however, and a disturbing picture emerges, where creative accountancy and elaborate shell games cover up the impossibility of verifying genuine climate change benefits, and where communities in the South often have little choice as offset projects are inflicted on them.

This report argues that offsets place disproportionate emphasis on individual lifestyles and carbon footprints, distracting attention from the wider, systemic changes and collective political action that needs to be taken to tackle climate change. Promoting more effective and empowering approaches involves moving away from the marketing gimmicks, celebrity endorsements, technological quick fixes, and the North/South exploitation that the carbon offsets industry embodies.

Time to Reconsider Nuclear Power?

Former Greenpeace chief Patrick Moore thinks so, and his views have sparked controversy:

[Fuel Fight, ERICA HERRERO-MARTINEZ, Wall Street Journal Online, 2/12//2007] …"During my nearly 40 years as an environmentalist and student of sustainability I have only changed my position on one major issue: nuclear energy," [Dr. Patrick Moore, past director of Greenpeace, International] says.

His change of heart, however, has infuriated many of his former colleagues — and is symbolic of the wider debate raging between supporters of nuclear power and its critics. The late Robert Hunter, another founding member of Greenpeace, once referred to Dr. Moore as an "eco-Judas." Another fellow Greenpeace founder, Paul Watson, was even less restrained, calling him an "eco-whore" for switching to work for the nuclear industry.

Dr. Moore, 59 years old, shrugs off the attacks. "I am often confronted by the assertion that I am not an environmentalist because I support nuclear power…or whatever they don't agree with," he says. "I respond by saying that they are not in charge of giving out credentials for who is an environmentalist."

Dr. Moore, who left Greenpeace in 1986, insists he still holds true to almost all the policies Greenpeace initially pursued: banning nuclear testing, whale killing and toxic discharge. "I left Greenpeace because my fellow directors were drifting into policies that I did not believe had any basis in logic or science," says Dr. Moore, now chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd., a Vancouver consulting firm. One such policy, he says, was a campaign for a global ban on the use of chlorine in drinking water, he says. (Greenpeace says it has no record of a campaign to ban chlorine in drinking water.)

Greenpeace, meanwhile, continues to fight against the construction of more nuclear reactors. "There is always that risk of a catastrophic disaster," says Mike Townsley, an antinuclear campaigner at Greenpeace in Amsterdam. "No one in the world has resolved the issue of nuclear waste." Another objection to nuclear power, Mr. Townsley adds, is that, if it spreads, so, too, will the technology for nuclear weapons. …

Dr. Moore was certainly a believer in the past. In 1976, for instance, he had written as part of a Greenpeace report that aside from nuclear warheads, nuclear power plants were "the most dangerous devices man has ever created" and that their proliferation wasn't just irresponsible but "criminal."

So what made him change his mind? Dr. Moore traces his metamorphosis to a day trip he took seven years ago to Devon in southwest England. There he met another controversial figure, British scientist James Lovelock.

"I had always been fascinated by [Lovelock's] Gaia hypothesis [which argues that the Earth functions as a kind of superorganism]...and when I found out he supported nuclear power I was even more intrigued," Dr. Moore says. "We spent an entire day walking, lunching, supping and into the evening discussing Gaia, climate, nuclear energy."

"Lovelock matter-of-factly said he would gladly take a bundle of used nuclear fuel, put it in his swimming pool and use it to heat his home," Dr. Moore recalls. "This shook my brain into realizing that nuclear waste is no more dangerous than many other chemicals. The trick is to keep it contained and limit our exposure to it."

Dr. Lovelock is considered by other scientists and environmentalists who favor nuclear energy as the pioneer who has helped pave the way for a movement, which sees nuclear power as a potential savior of the environment, as opposed to the dangerous poison it has traditionally been viewed as by mainstream environmentalists.

Drs. Lovelock and Moore aren't alone in embracing nuclear power as the answer to environmental ills. French scientist Bruno Comby in 1996 set up an independent and nonprofit organization, Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy. Members include Dr. Lovelock and former antinuclear activist Simone Weiss. In the U.S., Stewart Brand, an environmentalist and author of the Whole Earth Catalog, has also voiced his support for nuclear power, while in 2004 the late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore was forced to step down from the board of Friends of the Earth after promoting the use of nuclear power in the fight against climate change. …

Hat Tip: John Schrock, A Better Earth.
See also: Beyond Peak Oil: Teaming up Wind with Nuclear Power

---

Update, 2/17:

From Sourcewatch.org [hyperlinks/notes not carried forward here]: Patrick Moore, grew up on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada where his family was involved in the fishing and logging industry. His father, Bill Moore, was past president of the B.C. Truck Loggers Association and past president of the Pacific Logging Congress.

After completing a Bachelor of Science in forest biology at the University of British Columbia and a PH D in ecology on the administration of environmental law relating to the mining industry, Moore became involved first in the Western Canada branch of the Sierra Club and later Greenpeace. His involvement in Greenpeace between 1971 annd 1986 spanned roles as a campaigner in Greenpeace Canada against whaling, uranium mining, sealing, toxic waste and nuclear warships.

He was President of Greenpeace Canada between 1977 and 1986 and as Director of Greenpeace International.

From 1984 he became involved in a family business, Quatsino Seafarms Ltd, farming salmon on Vancouver Island. Until 1991 he was President of the company and between 1986 and 1989 was President of British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association.

Following claims by the United Fishermans and Allied Workers Union about pollution by the industry generally, the Vancouver Sun reported "Moore called the union's concerns 'phoney' saying that we are not causing pollution and there is no such thing as genetic pollution”.(1)

In 1990, PR consultant James Hoggan (who had worked for Western Forest Products) told a meeting of forest executives that the industry was wasting millions on ineffective PR. He said he and Patrick Moore had designed a “green audit” program to sell to industry.(2)

Subsequently, Moore and two others formed Greenspirit to help business and government "incorporate the environmental agenda".(3)

In 1991, the year Moore created Greenspirit, he became a member of the Board of Directors of the timber industry created Forest Alliance of B.C.

In 1991 Moore was appointed as Director of the British Columbia Forest Alliance which was described by O'Dwyer's PR Services Report, as "a Burson-Marsteller created group, bankrolled by large timber companies", which "is waging a PR war with environmentalists upset with the logging of rainforests in western Canada.”(4)

Burson Marstellar employee, Gary Ley, was the Executive Director of the BC Forest Alliance in 1991. Ley subsequently headed up the Vancouver office of National PR, which B-M had a stake in. National PR had the BC Forest Alliance account.

Tom Tevlin, who was part of the initial Forest Alliance team and later succeeded Ley as Executive Director and then President at the Alliance, is now President and CEO of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd.

Burson Marstellar had worked for the Argentinian junta to "improve [its] international image" and boost investment. [Joyce Nelson, interview with Harold Burson (founder of Burson Marstellar) fall 1981, New York]. B-M's work for the Argentinian government occurred at the time that 35,000 people were disappeared by death squads.

In July 1991 Moore was asked by a Canadian journalist about B-M’s work for the Argentinian junta. "Forest Alliance Director, Patrick Moore, argues that Burson Marsteller's contract was with Argentina's economic ministry and its non-political role was to encourage foreign investment", Stephen Hume wrote. "It [B-M] has a record of truth in public relations as its bottom line," Moore said, citing the company’s role in the Tylenol recall.

Moore went on to object to the juxtaposing the reality of state murder of political opponents with Burson Marsteller's strategy for marketing the perception of Argentina's stability. Besides, Moore argued, "people get killed everywhere".(5)

In August 1993 Moore was part of the delegation that lobbied a US foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust, against a decision to fund British Columbian environmental groups. Following the meeting, the Chair of the BC Forest Alliance, Jack Munro, told the Vancouver Sun “we are not opposed to them giving money to environmental groups. We are opposed to money filtering into protectionists like the people protesting the Clayquot”, he said.(6)

In January 1994, Moore claimed in an interview that while Greenpeace had acted within the law in all matters relating to the International Whaling Commission that they may have funded travel expenses for some delegates to the Commission. "This statement was in error", Moore wrote in a retraction several days later. (7) Download apology as a PDF document "

Two months later, Moore was criticised for claims that he made that Greenpeace "blackmail" had forced the rejection of The Times of London of an ad from the BC Forest Alliance. The Times rejected Moore claim: "The Times had not even received the art work for the ad from the alliance … we do not even know what this ad is supposed to look like so we can hardly be accused of censorship or bias". (8) See also these articles from Greenpeace's other founder Paul Watson of the Sea Shepard Society on Moore [3].

In 2000 Moore went to the Brazilian Amazon rainforests for the filming of a documentary by Marc Morano for American Investigator, According to an interview in the New York Post, Moore dismissed concerns about the impacts of logging, mining and clearning for agriculture on the Amazonian rainforests. "All these save-the-forests arguments are based on bad science ... They are quite simply wrong. We found that the Amazon rainforest is more than 90 percent intact. We flew over it and met all the environmental authorities. We studied satellite pictures of the entire area," he said.

"They are just about the healthiest forests in the world. This stuff about them vanishing at an alarming rate is a con based on bad science ... Anyone who has been in the jungle knows that if you want to live there, you'd better take a few machetes. Otherwise, it'll take it all back," he said. [4]

In October 2002, Moore was a keynote lunch speaker at the Best Practices in Communications: Wood Products and Forests, organised by the Wood Promotion Network conference in Vancouver. Moore's speech was titled "Declaration in Support of Protecting the Environment by Growing More Trees and Using More Wood". [5]

In October 2003 Moore endorsed the launch by The Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues (CGFI) of "Earth Friendly/Farm Friendly" Seal of Approval for the food and dairy industry. Monsanto, Dupont, Kraft/Phillip Morris, and the nuclear industry have funded the Hudson Institute.

In late January 2004 Moore was the key speaker at a 'teach-in' organised by Paul Driessen and hosted under the name of the Congress of Racial Equality on 'eco-imperialism' at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers. The environmental movement I helped found has lost its objectivity, morality and humanity ... The pain and suffering it inflicts on families in developing countries can no longer be tolerated," he said.

Are Biofuels Moving Us in the Wrong Direction?

As the political fuel behind biofuels propels us forward, is it time to take a step back for reflection? Craig Mackintosh says yes. Here is a glimpse of his very good work:

Biofuels from the Frying Pan to the Fire? Craig Mackintosh, 12/29/06:…When we take into account the scale of our past, present, and future transport requirements - are biofuels going to cut it? Do they hold the promise of securing our futures — nationally, economically, and ecologically? … Grist has an excellent collection of articles on the Biofuel subject …. Given the rate and scale of biofuel developments, I think it’s appropriate for me to bring their 'Not so fast: Issues and Implications' section to your notice. …

Throughout tropical countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, and Colombia, rainforests and grasslands are being cleared for soybean and oil-palm plantations to make biodiesel, a product that is then marketed halfway across the world as a "green" fuel.

In Southeast Asia, and increasingly in the Amazon, plantations of the African oil palm have become wildly lucrative. After monocropping the palms on recently cleared rainforest land, growers press the palm fruit and kernel for oil that can be used in both food and industrial applications, including — and increasingly — as biodiesel.

The palm oil industry is booming: global exports increased more than 50 percent from 1999 to 2004. To meet the growing demand, producers in Malaysia and Indonesia have ramped up production by clearing thousands of square miles of rainforest for new plantations.

In Indonesia, rainforest loss for oil palms has contributed to the endangerment of 140 species of land animals, while in Malaysia animals like the Sumatran tiger and Bornean orangutan have been pushed to the brink of extinction. Fish kills have become common in waterways surrounding plantations and palm-oil mills, as soil erosion from the cleared land and mill effluents have left waterways clogged with sediment and unviable.

The boom hasn't been limited to Southeast Asia. In one of the most disturbing examples of the biofuel hype’s hidden effects, right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia — a country mired in a four-decade-old civil war — have in recent years begun planting oil palm plantations over wide swaths of the territory they control. …

Farther south, another biodiversity hotspot is being rapidly cleared to plant a biodiesel crop. Nearly 80 percent of Brazil’s Cerrado region — a woodland savanna mix — has been cleared for agricultural production, mostly for soybeans, according to a Conservation International report.

Despite being home to thousands of endemic plant and animal species, the Cerrado has been promoted as "the last agricultural frontier" by green-revolution hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug. Low land and labor costs and high yield potential have sent investors from as far away as Iowa scrambling to buy up these Brazilian grasslands, frequently in collaboration with U.S. agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland, whose first Brazilian biodiesel production facility is currently in the works.

Tad Patzek, a professor in UC-Berkeley’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering who's known primarily as a critic of corn ethanol, says what's happening in tropical ecosystems is much more serious than the biofuel situation in the U.S. "We've already destroyed the prairie, and the topsoil in the Midwest is going, going, gone," Patzek says. "But the expensive noise we’re making here is being translated there into the total obliteration of the most precious ecosystems on earth." — 'What about the Land?'

I'd like to stimulate some discussion on this topic, as its importance cannot be underestimated. If we are considering using every available piece of land on the planet (and taking down our most valuable forests in addition) to fuel a ballooning population of vehicles, then discussion is the least we can do. …

I’m fairly sure the world still has serious issues with food and water shortages . As it stands, our dietary habits have us using more land per capita than the rest of the world (and not just our own land…). Combine this with the insatiable appetite our vehicles have, and will we not be taking this already out-of-proportion ratio into the realms of the obscene, and absurd? …

In the meantime, biofuel plants are going up everywhere and politicians are setting biofuel quotas into law. I guess I'd like to ask, where are we going with this? Are we not jumping straight from the frying pan into the fire? …

For a bit of hope (maybe?) re: Biodiesel from algae, see our earlier post on the subject, as well as another very good Mackintosh post titled As Corn Ethanol Threatens, Algae Makes Promises, 1/7/2007.

{Update Feb. 1}: Here's the latest on the Palm Oil mess, from The Oil Drum, Jan 30

Biodiesel from Pond Scum

I should never trust things I see on local TV. Or maybe, sometimes, I should. Last night I saw my old alma mater, Utah State University, unveil an ambitious plan to build a large scale production facility to convert pond scum into biodiesel. I wondered, Is this the next big Utah embarressment in the wake of the cold fusion debacle in 1989? Or is this really a possibility? Being a biodeisel skeptic. I thought I'd at least air this, and maybe do a Google search and a Google blog search to see what I might find. Here is the TV feed:

Pond Scum Offers Promise for Biodiesel, Ed Yeates, KSL.com: …Utah State University researchers are looking at biodiesel fuel made from pond scum. That's right, the green, slimy stuff that grows virtually anywhere appears to produce as good, if not a better, quality biodiesel fuel than soybeans.

Lance Seefeldt , USU Biofuels Program: "For soybeans, you get about 48 gallons per acre. And right now, the idea is for algae, we could get about 10-thousand gallons of oil per acre. So you can see it's about 200 times more oil per acre compared to soybeans."

Instead of prime agricultural land needed for soybeans or corn, pond scum can be grown rapidly on meshes or grids inside huge structures, fed by rooftop solar dishes. It's not a refinery, but a bioreactor.

Bright light comes through fiber optics from one single solar dish on the roof of the lab. Now, imagine what thousands of dishes could do in a massive bioreactor. Bioreactors built not on productive farmland, but on remote desert soils with thousands of grids inside growing the pond scum from solar energy.

"For every square meter of parabolic dish, we can illuminate 10 square meters of algae surface."

Byard Wood, USU Biofuels Program: "We're talking about thousands of acres with these kinds of bioreactors to produce in quantity the amount of liquid fuel that we need to make an impact."

From prototypes, to a fuel, to the pump, the technology appears so promising it's got the backing of the Utah Science and Technology Research Initiative to the tune of six million dollars in seed money.

The first large experimental facility would be built in Utah. USU expects pond scum biodiesel fuels could become cost competitive by 2009.

In his "How the World Works" column, Salon's Andrew Leonard had this to say on biodiesel in late 2005:

Pond Scum to the Rescue, Andrew Leonard, 12/16/2005…Ethanol from corn, and biodiesel from soybean or French fry grease are two fairly well-known [biodiesel] examples. I started looking into federal funding of this kind of research this morning, because I'd gotten curious about a comment a reader made about algae in a response to my earlier post about biodiesel and tropical forests. (Incidentally, Grist Magazine has an excellent article up today about how Brazil is kicking ass on the biodiesel production front.)

I've had a soft spot for algae ever since one of my first stories for Salon, an investigation into the mysterious "super-food" blue green algae harvested from Klamath Lake in southern Oregon. My read