Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 116

France Passes Law To Halve Its Energy Use, Slash Fossil Fuels And Nuclear

On Wednesday, France, host to the major United Nations conference on climate change at the end of the year, passed a law that both re-envisions the country’s energy system and sets an impressive precedent for the leadership potential France could offer come December.

The long-anticipated law will halve the country’s energy consumption by 2050, cut nuclear power production by a third by 2025 (from 75 percent of electricity mix to 50 percent), and increase renewable energy to 32 percent of total energy consumption by 2030. It also requires France to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels, in part by reducing fossil fuel consumption by 30 percent in 2030 compared with 2012. The emissions reduction requirement is in line with the E.U.’s 28-country commitment to cut emissions at least 40 percent by 2030.

That’s a lot to keep track of. As part of the effort, the French parliament will have to produce “carbon budgets” every five years, which will help set emissions targets for different parts of the economy. Large emitters will face a more stringent carbon tax that could nearly quadruple by 2020 from its current rate of 14.50 euros ($15.93) per metric ton.

France introduced its domestic carbon tax in 2014 to cover companies not regulated by the E.U. Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), including those consuming natural gas, heating oil, and coal. The tax later expanded to fuels including gasoline and diesel. Originally, it started at 7 ($7.69) euros/metric ton.

As the Carbon Pulse reports, “only around five percent of France’s power comes from fossil fuels, so the tax increase will have little bearing on electricity prices. However, the country relies on natural gas and fuel oil for much of its domestic heating, meaning the higher tax will raise some household bills while adding an estimated 7 cents to a litre of gasoline and 9 cents to a litre of diesel by 2022.”

While the fossil fuel, greenhouse gas emissions, and renewable energy targets likely stand out to the international community, the rapid curtailment of nuclear power is probably the most substantial, and controversial, domestic element of the law. France is the second biggest nuclear energy producer in the world, and the country that relies most on it for electricity, with 58 reactors at 19 different power stations. In his 2012 campaign, French President Francois Hollande promised to cut back the country’s reliance on nuclear power. The new law effectively means that some of the older nuclear plants will close in the next couple years to meet the 63.2 gigawatts production limit to be put in place.

The exact manner in which these cuts will be implemented is yet to be fully agreed upon, which had led to some pushback from environmental groups like Greenpeace.

“This law sets goals, which is interesting, but it doesn’t explain how to reach them,” Greenpeace energy campaigner Yannick Rousselet told Reuters.

While the reduction in nuclear power will also cost some jobs — the industry employs an estimated 220,000 people — French Environment Minister Segolene Royal said the reforms will create 100,000 new jobs in the green sector in the next three years.

“It’s the most advanced law of its kind among industrial countries,” Royal said in an interview with French media.

President Hollande has even bigger achievements on his mind when it comes to climate change. On Tuesday at the “Summit of Conscience for the Climate” in Paris, Hollande said “an agreement must be found” at the Paris U.N. climate summit in order to avert climate crisis.

“Today, with the agreement we see taking shape, we are still above two degrees Celsius, and probably three,” said Hollande. A viable deal needs to forsake “the use of 80 percent of fossil-based energy resources to which we still have easy access,” according to Hollande.

Across the channel on Wednesday, the British government made a controversial move in seemingly the opposite direction of France by announcing plans to curb subsidies for renewable forms of energy like small solar projects and biomass generators. The plan comes weeks after the newly re-elected Liberal Prime Minister David Cameron’s government said it would also discontinue onshore wind farm subsidies next year.

“We can’t have a situation where industry has a blank cheque and that cheque is paid for by people’s bills,” said energy secretary Amber Rudd.

In responding to the cuts, the U.K.-based Guardian newspaper stated in an editorial that “it is true that some of the incentives have been too successful,” but that “just like fracking and nuclear, greening the energy supply needs intervention. It will not be cheap. But for future generations, not doing it will cost far more.”

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Climate ChangeFossil FuelsFranceNuclear PowerRenewable EnergyUnited Nations

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The Link Between Climate Change And ISIS Is Real

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley linked climate change to the rise of ISIS earlier this week. Conservatives pounced. Score this round for O’Malley.

For three years now, leading security and climate experts — and Syrians themselves — have made the connection between climate change and the Syrian civil war. Indeed, when a major peer-reviewed study came out on in March making this very case, Retired Navy Rear Admiral David Titley said it identifies “a pretty convincing climate fingerprint” for the Syrian drought.

Titley, a meteorologist who led the U.S. Navy’s Task Force on Climate Change when he was at the Pentagon, also said, “you can draw a very credible climate connection to this disaster we call ISIS right now.”

Compare the words of Admiral Titley — former Deputy Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Information Dominance (!) and currently Director of Penn State’s Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risks. — with O’Malley’s (video here):

“One of the things that preceded the failure of the nation-state of Syria and the rise of ISIS was the effect of climate change and the mega-drought that affected that region, wiped out farmers, drove people to cities, created a humanitarian crisis that created the symptoms — or rather, the conditions — of extreme poverty that has led now to the rise of ISIL and this extreme violence.”

Let’s run through the science underpinning what O’Malley, Admiral Titley, and others have said.

We know that the Syrian civil war that helped drive the rise of the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) was itself spawned in large part by what one expert called perhaps “the worst long-term drought and most severe set of crop failures since agricultural civilizations began in the Fertile Crescent,” from 2006 to 2010.

That drought destroyed the livelihood of 800,000 people according to the U.N. and sent vastly more into poverty. The poor and displaced fled to cities, “where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created unrest that exploded in spring 2011,” as the study’s news release explains.

The March 2015 study, “Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought,” found that global warming made Syria’s 2006 to 2010 drought two to three times more likely. “While we’re not saying the drought caused the war,” lead author Dr. Colin Kelley explained. “We are saying that it certainly contributed to other factors — agricultural collapse and mass migration among them — that caused the uprising.”

Events leading up to 2011 Syrian uprising, with chart of net migration of displaced Syrians and Iraqi refugees into urban areas (in millions) since 2005. Source: Kelley et al. (2015)

The study identifies “a pretty convincing climate fingerprint” for the Syrian drought, Admiral Titley told Slate at the time. Titley is the former COO of NOAA.

In particular, the study finds that climate change is already drying the region out in two ways: “First, weakening wind patterns that bring rain-laden air from the Mediterranean reduced precipitation during the usual November-to-April wet season. In addition, higher temperatures increased moisture evaporation from soils during the usually hot summers.”

This study and others make clear that for large parts of the not-terribly-stable region around Syria — including Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and parts of Turkey and Iraq — brutal multi-year droughts are poised to become the norm in the coming decades if we don’t reverse carbon pollution trends ASAP.

Climate models had long predicted that the countries surrounding the Mediterranean would start drying out. In general, climate science says dry areas will get dryer and wet areas wetter.

In 2011, a major NOAA study concluded that “human-caused climate change [is now] a major factor in more frequent Mediterranean droughts.”

Reds and oranges highlight lands around the Mediterranean that experienced significantly drier winters during 1971-2010 than the comparison period of 1902-2010. Via NOAA [Click to enlarge].

“The magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone,” explained Dr. Martin Hoerling of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, the lead author of the 2011 study.

The connection between the conflict in Syria and climate change is not new. In March 2012, Climate Progress published a piece by Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell, co-founders and directors of the Center for Climate and Security, which made the case for the link between climate change and events in Syria.

In 2013, Tom Friedman went to Syria to learn firsthand about the connection between the drought and the civil war. His New York Times column, “Without Water, Revolution,” explains what he discovered.

Friedman also filmed his visit, where he talked to actual Syrians about the causes of the civil war. It was for the premiere episode in April 2014 of the Emmy-winning Showtime series, “Years of Living Dangerously,” which can be viewed on Netflix right here.

Many other recent studies have been done on this subject, such as “Water, Drought, Climate Change, and Conflict in Syria” by climate and water expert Peter Gleick.

Perhaps the central takeaway from this area of research is that the greatest danger to humanity this century from human-caused climate change is Dust-Bowlification and the threat to our food supplies and hence global security.

That’s because large parts of the most inhabited and arable parts of the planet — including the U.S. breadbasket — face the exact same heating and drying that have already affected the Mediterranean. The 2014 study, “Global warming and 21st century drying,” projected this bleak future:

Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) for 2080-2099 with business-as-usual warming. By comparison, during the 1930s Dust Bowl, the PDSI in the Great Plains rarely exceeded -3 (see here). Source: Cook et al. and Climate Progress.

The bottom line: Homo sapiens is currently on track to make drought and extreme drying the normal condition for the Southwest, Central Plains, the Amazon, southern Europe, the entire region around the Mediterranean, and many other key areas post-2050.

As Femia bluntly told an interviewer in 2013, the time to act is now: “if you let this problem get out of hand you’re going to have a number of situations in the future, whether they’re major disasters or conflicts, that our security forces may have to respond to. It will cost us a lot more in the long term if we do nothing now.”

Returning to O’Malley’s comments, it’s pretty clear that they are quite reasonable and defensible. Personally, because the causes of war and terrorism are so complicated and interconnected, I prefer to say things like “climate change HELPED create conditions for rise of ISIS.” Not that nuanced phrasing will not spare anyone the attacks from the anti-science crowd.

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Climate ChangeClimate Change DeniersIsisMartin O'Malley

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Shell Can Now Begin Drilling In The Arctic

Royal Dutch Shell has received final approval to move forward on its controversial plan to explore for oil in the frigid, remote Arctic waters off Alaska’s coast.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement granted conditional approval to two permits that will allow the company to begin exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea, about 140 miles from Alaska’s northwest shoreline. However, the approval came with conditions that will slightly alter Shell’s plans. Certain oil-rich areas will be temporarily off limits to drilling because of issues with Shell’s safety equipment, and Shell will be prevented from drilling two wells at once. The administration had previously told Shell that it could only drill in one area at a time because the proposed sites are too close to each other.

Drilling could begin in just a few days, as Shell has said that it will aim to begin some time this month, the Hill reported.

The approval represented a significant loss for the environmental community, which has long argued against Arctic drilling in part due to concerns over the sensitive environment, which is home to vulnerable animal species like the polar bear and walrus. Climate change has also been a concern, as scientists have warned oil extraction there will further exacerbate the human-caused phenomenon.

“Shell shouldn’t be drilling in the Arctic, and neither should anybody else,” said Franz Matzner, the director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Beyond Oil program, in an emailed statement. “President Obama’s misguided decision to let Shell drill has lit the fuse on a disaster for our last pristine ocean and for our climate.”

Shell’s shaky track record of drilling attempts in the Arctic has also been raised. Shell already had an accident in the Arctic the first time it tried to drill there in 2012, when a harsh winter storm hit and the company lost control of a rig. The rig, along with 150,000 gallons of fuel and drilling fluid, washed up on an island along one of Alaska’s pristine coastlines.

“Allowing Shell, with its horrible track record of accidents and disregard for the rules, to drill even on a limited basis without the equipment on site to contain a spill is truly reckless,” said Rachel Richardson, the director of Environment America’s anti-drilling program, in a press release. “Today’s action is a huge setback for climate action and the health of the Arctic.”

Those groups are pledging to continue fighting against the plans, and lawsuits challenging permit approvals from other U.S. agencies are already underway. A lawsuit filed earlier this month against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management accuses the agency of performing a “rush and cursory” review of Shell’s plans, and seeks to nullify the permit. Protesters have also delayed the company’s plans in a number of ways, first boarding its rig and refusing to leave, then surrounding it in a barricade of kayaks.

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ArcticArctic DrillingOilShellShell Oil

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Have You Heard Of Solar Desalination? If Not, You Will Soon.

Solar power turns the sun’s energy into electricity. Desalination removes unwanted minerals from saltwater so it can be used for drinking or agriculture.

These two technologies have typically been employed separately in the effort to live more sustainably and limit dependence on finite resources. Now in California, a company has found a way to merge the two with the aim of providing long-term relief to farmers suffering the impacts of the state’s devastating four-year drought. The implications are far-reaching, as agriculture accounts for 80 percent of water use in California and roughly 70 percent of water use globally. In California alone, there is an estimated one million acre-feet of irrigation drainage that could be treated and reused if solar desalination catches on.

“Conserving or recycling even a small share of this water can make a big difference,” Sandra Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project and a Freshwater Fellow of the National Geographic Society, told ThinkProgress.

WaterFX, a San Francisco-based water producer for agricultural and commercial users, recently announced that its California subsidiary, HydroRevolution, plans to build the state’s first commercial solar desalination plant. To be located in the agriculture-intensive Central Valley, the plant will ultimately generate up to 5,000 acre-feet, or 1.6 billion gallons, of clean water per year — enough water for 10,000 homes or 2,000 acres of cropland. It will be built on 35 acres of land currently used to grow salt-tolerant crops, and will recycle unusable irrigation water from a 7,000-acre drainage area into a new and much-needed source of freshwater for nearby water districts by removing unwanted mineral and salts.

It could be a win-win for farmers and the environment.

Using something called Aqua4 technology, the desalination process creates zero excess discharge and produces only freshwater and solid salt as co-products. This differs from traditional desalination where up to half the discharge ends up as brine back in the ocean.

This is not the only way solar desalination differs from traditional reverse osmosis desalination projects, where sea water is the main input. There are currently several of these large-scale projects in use or under construction along the California coastline. Conventional desalination plants force salt and other minerals through a membrane; they are energy-intensive and can also harm marine life and disturb coastal ecosystems. The solar desalination plants developed by WaterFX use solar thermal energy to avoid the use of fossil fuel-powered electricity.

“The energy intensity of conventional reverse osmosis plants has dropped considerably over the last two decades, but they still have a relatively high energy price tag compared to other water supply and demand management strategies,” said Postel. “I see no elegance in a technology aimed at ensuring there’s enough drinking water during droughts if it employs a process that will hasten climate change, which in turn will worsen droughts.”

Postel said WaterFX’s technology has several advantages, including “not contributing to climate change,” cleaning up local salty, toxic irrigation drainage, and being more cost-effective. She said while she hasn’t done an independent cost comparison, she’s read that solar desalination produces clean water at rough one-fourth the cost of conventional desalination.

“Lastly, it’s super exciting to me because it opens up the possibility of farmers and irrigation districts leasing some water back to the environment,” said Postel. “It could be a win-win for farmers and the environment” if they could lease some water “to safeguard habitats for fish and wildlife.”

[image error]

The Aqua4 technology at WaterFX’s demonstration solar desalination plant in California’s Panoche Water and Drainage District.

CREDIT: Courtesy of WaterFX

The solar desalination technology is also “modular and movable,” Ivy Wisner with the WaterFX communications team told ThinkProgress.

“The equipment is delivered in modules and mounted on skids so installation is easy and equipment can be moved depending on water treatment needs,” she said.

According to WaterFX, the HydroRevolution system is the most efficient of its type available. It uses heat generated from parabolic solar panels to evaporate clean water out of the original source water. The condensate is then recovered as pure water at over 90 percent efficiency. When the sun isn’t shining, thermal heat storage used to hold excess heat allows the process to continue.

“WaterFX hopes this project is merely the first step in revolutionizing the way California uses water,” said Wisner.

WaterFX Co-founder and Chairman Aaron Mandell, who studied groundwater engineering, told ThinkProgress that in order to confront climate change, any solution to the water crisis must be long-term.

Droughts come and go, but the water problem in California is driven by climate change.

“Droughts come and go, but the water problem in California is driven by climate change,” he said. “While lack of rain is temporary, elevated temperatures due to a warming climate is permanent and as a result will have a long-lasting impact on the amount of available water.”

WaterFX’s mission is to expand the availability and reliability of freshwater generation — very few places need this more than right now than California’s dried-out Central Valley. In some places in the Central Valley, groundwater tables have dropped 50 feet or more in just a few years, and many shallower wells have run dry.

While the HydroRevolution plant is currently in pre-production and seeking investors, WaterFX installed a demonstration plant in the Panoche Water and Drainage District in the Central Valley, where the federal Bureau of Reclamation has cut back water deliveries from dams and canals by up to 80 percent. Central Valley water districts are also under pressure to limit polluted irrigation runoff from their fields into the San Joaquin River. The solar desalination plants could also provide a fix to this issue.

“The technology is being piloted in the perfect place for it,” said Postel. “The drainage water from irrigation in this western side of the San Joaquin River in the Central Valley has an unusually high load of salts, selenium, and other contaminants.”

As the Central Valley publication Ag Alert recently reported, the plant “will help the district clean up salts, selenium, boron and other minerals in tile-drain water coming from irrigated fields and reach its goal of zero agricultural water being discharged into the San Joaquin River by 2019, which is required by an agreement with federal agencies.”

Part of HydroRevolution’s innovative approach to the solar desalination project is to pursue a crowdsourcing effort, or capital-raising campaign, that will be available to California residents only. It is still in the preparatory stages.

Postel considers WaterFX’s approach one way of confronting the bigger challenge of repairing the overall water cycle.

“Our approach to water management has been very disruptive of the natural water cycle and all the benefits that cycle provides,” she said.

Other avenues that can aid in this process include better storm water management, green infrastructure that helps rainwater infiltrate back into the earth, and wastewater recycling and reuse.

“We still have a long way to go with water conservation and efficiency improvements,” she said. “Both indoors and outdoors.”

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AgricultureCaliforniaDesalinationRenewable EnergySolar Power

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Why Carbon Emissions Are Good For The Planet And Humankind, According To Conservatives

On Wednesday, the House Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing meant to analyze how the Obama administration calculates the total cost to society generated by carbon emissions. Instead, the hearing devolved somewhat into a discussion of the benefits that carbon emissions can provide for the planet.

The Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) is a metric created by a government working group — overseen by the Office of Management and Budget along with the Council of Economic Advisors — meant to calculate the future damage a ton of carbon dioxide presents to society. The SCC takes into account things like health impacts, impacts to agriculture, property damage, and ecosystem impacts. The SCC produces a range of estimates, which are then used by government agencies whenever they are creating new regulations (or updating old ones). Most recent estimates, put out in 2015, set the average SCC around $37 per ton — though some studies have suggested that even that number probably underestimates the costs to society associated with carbon pollution.

But many of the representatives — and witnesses — at the hearing took the opposite stance. Carbon, they claimed, doesn’t necessarily harm the planet, causing rampant global warming that threatens to drive up sea levels, increase the frequency and strength of storms, and completely upend global food security. Instead, they argued, carbon emissions can be — and have proven to be in the past — extremely beneficial to society.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the craziest arguments representatives and witnesses made during the hearing.

The Government Should Subsidize Carbon Emissions, Not Tax Them

Many environmentalists agree that putting a price on carbon emissions might be one of society’s best chances at reducing carbon emissions and mitigating global warming. Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems have proven effective in both reducing carbon emissions and stimulating the economy in the Northeastern United States and Canada.

But instead of taxing carbon emissions, Kevin Dayaratna, senior statistician and research programmer for the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, told the committee Wednesday that the government should be doing exactly the opposite.

“Under some assumptions, the SCC is negative two-thirds of the time. This would suggest that there are literally no costs, but benefits, to burning carbon dioxide,” Dayaratna said. In that case, he continued, the government should “subsidize, not tax, carbon dioxide emissions.”

Dayaratna arrived that that two-thirds figure by increasing the social discount rate used in calculating the SCC. The discount rate is pretty dense and fairly boring, but it basically boils down to how much we’re willing to invest today in order to avoid damages in the future — how much $100 is worth to us today, for example, compared to a year from now. High discount rates prioritize the present over the future — meaning high discount rates tend to understate how much climate action now is worth. For his analysis, Dayaratna used a discount rate of 7 percent — the normal discount rate in economics is around 3 percent.

The SCC Doesn’t Take Into Account How Carbon Helps Plants Grow

It’s a proven scientific fact that plants use carbon dioxide for survival, to convert CO2 and water to oxygen and sugar through a process called photosynthesis. Climate deniers have often seized upon this fact to prove that even if carbon emissions are causing global warming, it can’t be all that bad because carbon dioxide helps plants grow — it has a fertilization effect on the planet, they reason, bumping up agricultural production and stimulating the global economy.

During the hearing, Patrick Michaels, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for the Study of Science, repeated this idea early and often, citing “thousands of scientific studies that point to the direct fertilization effect shown by an increase in carbon to agriculture.”

Scientific studies have shown that the fertilization effect isn’t completely outlandish — some crops really do perform better in high-carbon scenarios, at least for a time. But what Michaels failed to mention is that numerous studies have shown that while high-carbon scenarios might have some benefits, they also come with serious trade-offs. Some studies have shown that the fertilization effect stimulates the growth of weeds, raising concern about farmers’ ability to manage weed growth in the future.

Severe weather events made more intense by climate change can destroy crops, causing food insecurity for small farmers that rely on subsistence farming. Climate change is also expected to make droughts more common and severe, creating issues with water access and irrigation for farmland. And even if farmers can still grow food — with increased weed production, more intense storms, shifting regional climates (and growing seasons), and a lack of water — that food is still likely to be less nutritious when grown in high-carbon scenarios.

In Cold Weather, We Have The Plague. In Warm Weather, We Build Cathedrals.

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) argued that fossil fuels have made life better for mankind — and that the social costs associated with global warming have been shown to benefit humans rather than harm them.

“Fossil fuels have dramatically improved the lives of human beings,” Duncan said. “Man does better when it’s warmer. It got colder, we had the Bubonic plague. [Fossil fuels] ought to be the standard.”

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences directly contradicts this claim. It found that 15 years after temperatures in the northern mountains of Pakistan turned warmer and wetter, fleas carrying the plague were found in European harbors. Mountain-adapted wild rats — the primary host for fleas carrying the plague — had a hard time surviving in the new, warmer climate. That suggests, the researchers said, that as rats in the mountains died out, fleas went looking for new hosts — most likely, humans traveling on trade routes from Asia to Europe.

Still, Duncan couldn’t get away from the idea that mankind simply does better when temperatures are a little warmer.

“Between 900-1300, the earth was a lot warmer than it is today. Man did so well we saw this Renaissance, where cathedrals were built and there was art and man did not have to struggle to survive as much as they do when it’s colder,” Duncan said. “The earth was warm, they had abundant food, they were able to do a lot of things.”

This seems a little at odds with Duncan’s claims about the plague, since the Black Death — the worst of the outbreaks of Bubonic plague throughout Europe — spread across the continent from 1346 to 1353, nearly half a century before warm temperatures supposedly inspired the Renaissance. Also, the warm period that Duncan is referring to is largely thought to have spanned from around 950 to 1220 A.D., while the Renaissance reached its height at the end of the 1400s.

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carbonClimate ChangeHouse of Representatives

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After A Year Without One, The U.S. Is Finally Getting A Pipeline Safety Chief

The important but little-known agency responsible for ensuring the safety of oil pipelines hasn’t had anyone officially sitting in the top spot since October of 2014. But that will soon change, at least if a recent Senate hearing was any indication.

On Wednesday, the Senate’s Commerce Committee held a confirmation hearing for Marie Therese Dominguez, slated to be the next administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). And though confirmation hearings for Obama administration appointees have often been tense, senators from both sides of the aisle appeared ready, if not eager, to confirm Dominguez for the position.

“I didn’t get any sense that anybody didn’t want to confirm her,” Carl Weimer, executive director of the nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust, told ThinkProgress. “I think everybody recognizes that there’s a void there, and they want to fill that void.”

The House also seems to have bipartisan support to improve pipeline safety by tackling problems at the agency. At a subcommittee hearing last week, members of the House Energy and Commerce committee pressed acting PHMSA head Stacy Cummings on what they saw as a greater need for pipeline inspection and enforcement of rules.

Along with ensuring the safety of America’s 2.5 million-mile oil and gas pipeline system, PHMSA (pronounced “fim-sa”) is supposed to protect humans and the environment from oil trains and other transportation methods for hazardous materials. But the agency has faced serious challenges in implementing safety measures. POLITICO, which has covered the agency’s failures extensively, noted in May that the agency often allows industry to self-police, which has “helped stymie safety initiatives for years.”

Meanwhile, a boom in fossil fuel production in the United States is increasingly stressing pipeline infrastructure to the point of catastrophic failure. As POLITICO reported in May, pipeline accidents have caused more than 170 deaths, 670 injuries and $5 billion in property damage in the last 10 years. Without an official chief of U.S. pipeline safety, those accidents have been all the more marked.

Dominguez has been acting as deputy administrator of PHMSA since just a few weeks ago, and Wednesday marked her confirmation hearing to be the official administrator. Her nomination by President Obama back in May came as a surprise to some, as Dominguez — who last served as principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army — had no experience dealing with pipelines or hazardous materials.

“She’s kind of an unknown quantity,” Weimer said. “It was kind of a surprise when she got the nomination, because we thought we knew all the names who would be in the hat, and hers was a name new to us and industry groups.”

Dominguez’s strength, however, may come from somewhere else — not experience with pipelines, but experience with stress. Weimer said that, from what he has heard, Dominguez had a lot of experience “going through organizations with significant change.”

“While she doesn’t have a lot of experience on pipelines and railroad safety, maybe they’re looking for someone who is going to lead PHMSA through an expansion,” he said.

An attempted expansion is certainly underway. Congress recently approved a $250 million budget bill for the agency, an increase by $120 million over last year. Dominguez said at Wednesday’s hearing that, as deputy administrator, she has been using that money to expand the agency’s staff by more than 100 people. She said a large majority of those new employees would be pipeline safety inspectors, though she also noted the agency faces stiff hiring competition with actual oil pipeline companies who are looking for people with similar expertise. About 40 of those 100 positions have already been filled, Dominguez said.

While Dominguez did face questioning from Democrat and Republican senators at Wednesday’s confirmation hearing, most of them were decidedly softball. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) arguably pressed her the hardest, at one point asking Dominguez whether she agreed or disagreed with President Obama’s decision to veto a bill approving the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Dominguez responded with a pause and an awkward laugh, and Sullivan walked back the question.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Sullivan said. “I won’t hold that against you.”

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Oil SpillOil SpillsPHMSAPipelinePipelinesSenate

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Disclosure Reveals Donald Trump Has Been Promoting Company He Has $250,000 Invested With

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s mandatory personal financial disclosure statement was made public on Wednesday, revealing his massive financial holdings. Among his many investments: At least $250,000 worth of stock in TransCanada Pipelines Ltd., the Canadian company hoping to build the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

[image error]

CREDIT: Federal Election Commission filing

Trump has frequently criticized the Obama administration for not yet granting a permit for the project. In 2011, he told a Canadian paper, through a spokesman, that it is “an outrage our president isn’t approving the Keystone pipeline,” and “Canada is lucky to have superior leadership” to America’s. He tweeted:

The Keystone pipeline will create 20,000 jobs and lower gas prices. But Obama says No. Dumb.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 27, 2011

On Fox News in 2012 Trump deemed the Obama administration’s delay in approving the pipeline “absolutely disgraceful.” Later that year he tweeted that thanks to the lack of a Keystone XL permit, “China has become Canada’s biggest oil consumer. China is laughing at us!” And in 2013, he continued to press the case, asking no one in particular on Twitter, “Will the Keystone XL pipeline finally be approved? Will create over 100,000 jobs and make us more energy independent.”

While estimates — including those by Trump — about the number of temporary jobs required for the project vary, the Department of State has determined the pipeline would create only about 35 permanent jobs.

Trump’s disclosure filing does not indicate when the purchase was made. His holdings also include stock in numerous other fossil fuel companies that could benefit from the pipeline’s construction.

Last month, the Huffington Post noted that Democrat Hillary Clinton gave paid speeches to two Canandian banks “tightly connected to promoting” the Keystone XL pipeline.

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Donald TrumpElection 2016Fossil FuelsKeystone XLTransCanada

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Why The Pope Just Met With Dozens Of Mayors About Climate Change (And Human Trafficking)

As mayors from more than 60 of the world’s major cities convened on Tuesday, their reason for gathering — addressing “modern slavery and climate change” — was already somewhat unusual. Environmental and human trafficking activists have hosted high-level talks in the past, but this conference managed to pull together leaders from some of the world’s largest population centers to discuss human rights and how to implement effective green policies at the local level — an impressive political feat.

But there was something else peculiar about the meeting: Attendees weren’t cloistered inside the well-worn atriums of the United Nations or pacing the glossy halls of the EU Parliament. Instead, they were huddled behind the ancient walls of Vatican City, where they gathered as part of a climate change-themed conference sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

“We want sustainable development, without excluding the extremely poor,” said Monica Fein, the mayor of Rosario, a city in Pope Francis’ home country of Argentina. “We fundamentally want to leave our children and future generations with a planet that isn't contaminated.”

To be fair, the location of the conference, while atypical, isn’t totally unexpected. The gathering comes a little over a month after the release of Laudato Si’, a nearly 200-page papal encyclical from Pope Francis focused primarily on climate change issues. Aimed at fellow believers, the document debunked conservative theological claims against protecting the environment and outlined a moral argument for why the world’s Catholics have an obligation to help protect the planet. It was also well-received among climate scientists, who lauded its surprisingly robust engagement with peer-reviewed research.

But outside of its purported theological impact, the document’s real power came from its often unapologetically political language, which hinted at a broader agenda: Namely, a call for real-world policies that can address our changing environment.

“Many signs indicate that [the effects of climate change] could worsen if we continue with current models of production and consumption,” the document read, according to an initial translation conducted by ThinkProgress. “Therefore it is urgent to develop policy so that in the coming years, we drastically reduce carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gas emissions, by, for example, replacing fossil fuels and developing renewable energy sources.”

Tuesday’s convening is one of the first tangible expressions of this sentiment, with the Vatican actively positioning itself as a central organizing force in the fight for climate justice. By gathering climate-conscience mayors from Europe, South America, the United States, and even Iran, the Holy See is slowly crafting a global coalition of partner cities united in their support for helping stem the effects of climate change.

In fact, the 60-plus mayors attending the conference — many of whom are not themselves Catholic — appeared ready to give the pope’s message political teeth. According to the Associated Press, attendees are set to sign a declaration that “human-induced climate change is a scientific reality and its effective control is a moral imperative for humanity.”

“The [pope’s] encyclical is not a call to arms,” New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said in an address to the conference. “It is a call to sanity.”

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), who also attended the conference and who once enrolled in a Jesuit seminary, agreed.

"This intervention by the pope is appropriate and absolutely essential to wake people up to the dangers of climate change and to the value of seeing human beings as part of nature and dependent on nature as opposed to be adversaries of each other,” Brown said, according to the National Catholic Reporter.

But the gathering — and, by extension, the Pope’s greater agenda — isn’t limited to technical discussions of carbon emissions. The framing of the conference, which is titled “Modern Slavery and Climate Change: The Commitment of the Cities,” makes the case that climate change causes, or is inextricably connected to, a litany of other global issues such as human trafficking.

“Today we are facing two tragic emergencies that are related in different ways: the climate change crisis and the new forms of slavery,” the conference website reads. “As a matter of fact, global warming is one of the causes of poverty and forced migration, which are breeding grounds for human trafficking, forced labour, prostitution and organ trafficking.”

Indeed, human trafficking is a common risk for immigrants traveling to places like the United States. Female migrants are routinely captured and sold into sex slavery by gangs while journeying northward through remote sections of Mexico and elsewhere. Most currently make the dangerous trek to escape violence in their home countries, but studies conducted by NASA and others show that impending droughts in Central America — where denizens already endure some of the harshest effects of climate change — could create a “new dustbowl,” forcing thousand to flee and likely expanding the scope of the sex-trafficking industry.

At the conference, Toni Chammany, the mayor of Kochi, India, warned that a similar situation is primed to impact his home country. He pointed to India’s ongoing drought, which is forcing farmers to relocate to cities and “pushing them into the dark dungeons of slavery.”

By discussing these two issues at the same conference, the Vatican seems to be signaling that climate change will be the moral fiber that connects its larger global agenda for years to come, which includes addressing issues of economics, immigration, and prisoner’s rights. This will likely prove important come September, when Francis is scheduled to address both the United Nations and a joint session of Congress.

“Laudato Si’ is about much more than caring for nature; we cannot separate care for human beings from everything else,” Francis reportedly said in an address to the conference Tuesday afternoon.

The pontiff also told the assembly that he has “a lot of hope" major climate talks later this year in Paris, France will result in a bold deal to reduce global warming.

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Utah Officials Give Canadian Company The Go-Ahead To Expand America’s First Tar Sands Mine

Utah officials have given a tar sands company the green light to continue constructing the nation’s first tar sands mine in the eastern part of the state.

The Utah tar sands operation had already been approved for construction, but the company, U.S. Oil Sands, recently submitted another plan to expand the operation. The Utah Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining approved this new plan, but did so on the condition that the company come up with a plan to monitor air and water quality — an order environmentalists opposed to the mine are hailing as a victory.

“This is a big deal and it’s a step in the right direction,” Rob Dubuc, an attorney for Living Rivers, an organization that has protested the mine, told the AP. “To expect [the Division of Oil, Gas and Mining] to deny the permit is not realistic in this political environment. But at least they are doing the right thing by requiring the monitoring.”

Environmentalists in Utah have long opposed the mine, saying they are worried about the effects a tar sands operation will have on local air and water. In July of last year, 21 activists were arrested after they chained themselves to fences and equipment at the mine site. The group Tar Sands Resistance has been fighting the mine since 2012, organizing multiple protests and vigils near the mine site.

U.S. Oil Sands — which is based out of Calgary, Alberta — and the state of Utah have argued that there would be little risk to water contamination from the mine, since the operation doesn’t have any connection to a groundwater source. The Utah Department of Environmental Quality has conducted studies that back up these claims.

But University of Utah Geology Professor Bill Johnson maintains that the mine would pose a pollution risk. Johnson said last month that a study he conducted on the vulnerability of water sources near the mine does point to a threat from the operation.

“Unfortunately, every decision that has been made to date is the (same) as looking out at the sky today and saying it is impossible that water can fall from the sky, and I find that infuriating,” he said at a hearing about the project last month. “The conclusions are based on data that was never intended to find a hydrological resource.”

This potential risk to water sources is why environmentalists in the state have praised officials’ decision to mandate that U.S. Oil Sands monitor air and water quality near the mine site. Dubuc told the AP that this monitoring will help prove whether or not worries about contamination were warranted. U.S. Oil Sands says it plans to comply with the monitoring mandate.

Tar sands mining is prevalent in Canada, but this Utah operation is the first of its kind for the United States. According to U.S. Oil Sands, there are more than 50 tar sands deposits in Utah, which contain a total of 20 to 32 billion barrels of tar sands crude. And Utah might not be the last state to get into the tar sands mining business: in 2013, the governors of Mississippi and Alabama signed a Memorandum of Understanding that agreed to study tar sands resources in the states. The states haven’t done any actual tar sands development yet, but residents and environmentalists remain worried that they could one day start.

Tar sands, as a fuel, has long been criticized by environmentalists because mining it is particularly carbon-intensive. In Canada, creating tar sands mining operations means cutting down vast swaths of boreal forest. It’s been labeled as one of the dirtiest types of liquid fuel, with an extraction process that’s water-intensive and creates toxic holding ponds that kill birds that land on them. U.S. Oil Sands, however, maintains that its extraction process for tar sands in Utah is less environmentally damaging than the processes used in Canada. It involves a use of a citrus solvent — rather than a hydrocarbon solvent, as is used in most tar sands operations — to reduce the tar sands’ viscosity.

Still, extraction isn’t the only thing aspect of tar sands that poses a risk to the environment. Transporting tar sands around the U.S. and Canada is also risky — in 2010, for instance, a tar sands pipeline owned by Canadian oil company Enbridge spilled more than 800,000 gallons of tar sands crude into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, a disaster that stands as the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history. This risk of a major spill is one of the main reasons so many environmental activists are opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline, which would ship tar sands crude from Alberta to Texas.

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John Kasich Halted A Program That Saved Consumers $230 Million

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is the newest entrant to the crowded Republican field for 2016, and his supporters are trying to steer the conversation towards his economic bona fides.

But Kasich’s record on the economy has one major flaw: In 2014 he signed a bill freezing a successful clean energy program. Ohio’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) had created 25,000 jobs and spurred at least $1 billion in private sector investment.

Kasich disagreed that the RPS had economic benefits. “The well-intentioned strategy developed in 2008 to encourage alternative energy generation mandated levels which are now emerging as a challenge to job creation and Ohio’s economic recovery. They are simply unrealistic and will drive up energy costs for job creators and consumers,” Kasich said in a statement at the time.

In fact, in less than six years, Ohio’s RPS saved consumers roughly $230 million and dropped electricity rates by almost a percent and a half. The efficiency measures that were also frozen had saved ratepayers $1 billion, according to utility company filings. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the policies were supported by 70 percent of Ohioans.

The reasoning behind the freeze — ostensibly billed as a chance to evaluate the costs and benefits of supporting renewable energy and efficiency — is unclear. But the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been tied to anti-RPS efforts in Ohio as well as several other states.

And it’s unclear how balanced the evaluation process will be. On Monday, the state committee responsible for reviewing the policy heard testimony from the Buckeye Institute’s Greg Lawson and Ryan Yonk from Utah State University, both of whom have been tied to anti-renewable policies, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

“Utah State has already been called out for making misleading statements about wind energy, not mention both Yonk and the University’s deep ties with the fossil fuel industry and the Koch brothers. Buckeye Institute suffers from similar questionable motives,” wrote Samantha Williams of the NRDC. The panel is likely to at least lower the RPS’ goals.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, two-thirds of Ohio’s electricity came from coal in 2014. Natural gas accounted for 18 percent, and nuclear energy provided 12 percent. Coal is a leading contributor to carbon emissions, and curbing carbon from the power sector is seen as critical to avoiding some of the worst effects of climate change.

Under the Clean Power Plan, a proposed rule from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that seeks to limit emissions from the electricity sector, Ohio will likely have to reduce carbon dioxide air emissions by 29 percent from 2012 levels. Under Kasich, Ohio joined a failed lawsuit to challenge the EPA’s proposed rule. It’s expected that when the rule is finalized next month, many of the states that joined the lawsuit will sue again.

And according to attorneys familiar with the plan, the next president may have the option of directing the EPA to not enforce the rule. In any case, the next president will also play a key role in holding the United States to any commitments that come out of the upcoming United Nations climate conference in Paris.

Unlike many of the other Republican candidates, Kasich does, in fact, recognize that climate change is occurring, and he believes we are stewards of our environment. But how we go about protecting the environment — or, rather, protecting ourselves from the most catastrophic effects of anthropogenic climate change — is another matter.

“At the end of the day, if we can find these breakthroughs to help us have a cleaner environment, I’m all for it,” Kasich told the Columbus Dispatch in 2012, two years before he signed the RPS freeze.

Kasich, raised a Catholic, has also said he doesn’t agree with all of the Pope’s recent encyclical on the climate, which called for greater action.

“The environment was given to us by the lord and it needs to be taken care of. It shouldn’t be worshiped, that is called pantheism. The pope pointing out the fact that we need to take care of the environment, that is good, I don’t agree with his conclusion that all of it is bad because of free enterprise,” Kasich said at the time.

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