Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 139
May 29, 2015
‘We’re Not Going To Fake It': America’s Top Two Oil Companies Reject Climate Change Measures
Smoke billows from the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California
CREDIT: AP Photo/Noah Berger, File
Shareholders of ExxonMobil and Chevron — the United States’ top two oil companies — voted down proposals aimed at getting the companies to focus a little more on climate change this week.
One of the proposals would have added an independent director with experience in climate change to the boards of both companies. In corporations like Exxon and Chevron, an independent director sits on the board but is brought in from outside of the company. According to Reuters, that proposal got about 20 percent of the shareholders’ votes at both companies.
Chevron shareholders, however, did pass a measure that would allow shareholders with stakes of at least 3 percent to nominate independent directors. That measure was submitted by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, with the idea that shareholder concerns about climate change weren’t being addressed at big oil companies. Chevron will still need to approve the resolution for it to go into effect, but if it does, it means that shareholders could elect a director who’s concerned about climate change, and that director would be able to lend his or her opinion and expertise on board decisions.
A few other climate-related proposals were also voted down by shareholders, as InsideClimate News reports. One that would have prompted the companies to develop a report on the effects of fracking operations got a 27 percent vote at Chevron and a 25 percent vote at Exxon. Another would have prompted Exxon to set goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That proposal, which was sponsored by the Roman Catholic Sisters of St. Dominic of Caldwell, New Jersey, got less than 10 percent of the shareholders’ votes.
The American oil companies’ shareholder decisions on the climate change measures put them at odds with some European oil companies, which adopted measures on climate change earlier this year. Chevron Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Watson spoke about his unwillingness to join the European companies, including BP and Royal Dutch Shell, at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting Wednesday.
“We don’t intend to participate in that coalition,” Watson said. “We think we can make our statements, and our statements speak for themselves.”
Exxon Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson also voiced his disapproval of Exxon engaging in climate-friendly efforts similar to BP and Shell’s, as the Seattle Times reports.
“No, thank you, that would not be us,” Tillerson said Wednesday. “We’re not going to be disingenuous about it. We’re not going to fake it. We’re going to express a view that we have been very thoughtful about. We’re going to express solutions and policy ideas that we think have merit…speaking out to be speaking out about it doesn’t seem particularly helpful to me.”
Earlier this year, BP shareholders passed a resolution calling for the company to provide information on its “preparation for the low carbon transition.”
“At BP we have consistently advocated for stronger government action and have been open and transparent about our environmental impact,” group chief officer Bob Dudley told shareholders in April. “The challenge ahead is to make the case for the necessary role of fossil fuels, and further transparency supports that case.”
It was a major step for the oil company, but that’s not to say that oil companies — and the fossil fuel industry in general — are suddenly changing their minds on the dangers their product poses to the environment. Chevron, Exxon, and BP are among the 90 companies that have contributed two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions that have caused the climate change of the 21st century.
The post ‘We’re Not Going To Fake It': America’s Top Two Oil Companies Reject Climate Change Measures appeared first on ThinkProgress.
Ben And Jerry’s Wants To Fight Climate Change With A New Flavor
Ben & Jerry’s new flavor aims to inspire action towards climate justice.
CREDIT: Ben & Jerry’s
With its new flavor, Save Our Swirled, Ben & Jerry’s is urging fans to dig their spoons into climate change activism.
The flavor is a mix of raspberry ice cream, marshmallow and raspberry swirls, and dark and white fudge ice cream cones. But Save Our Swirled is also a flavor with a message: when you dig out a spoonful, the website says, “you can’t help but notice” that those cones appear to be melting. Abbreviated on pint lids as SOS, Save Our Swirled’s message is simple: If it’s melted, it’s ruined, whether it’s our ice cream or our world. The flavor launched earlier this week in the U.S., and will debut in European markets in the summer and move into Asian and Australian markets later in the year.
“The place where we interact with our consumers most is in the freezercase,” Chris Miller, Ben & Jerry’s Social Mission Activism Manager, told ThinkProgress. While the flavor is a central element, it is part of a “larger, global campaign” against climate change, Miller said.
If we’re going to solve this we need a big, diverse, grassroots movement around the world
That campaign is centered around the 2015 United Nations climate summit, to be held at the end of this year in Paris, France. Some of the countries where Ben & Jerry’s is most popular — such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, Canada, and others — are countries that are going to be crucial in the talks. Miller said that wide fan base gives the company access to a powerful grassroots voice leading up to the 2015 talks.
“2015 is a really important point in the race to combat climate change,” Miller said. “We have a rapidly closing window…this is our last chance of keeping global warming below 2°.”
Two degrees Celsius is the oft-cited goal for the limit on global warming, though some scientists argue that even that is dangerously high. Ben & Jerry’s hopes that increasing awareness and action in the ramp up to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference will help leaders set legally binding goals that will keep warming below dangerous levels.
To compound the 2°C message, Ben & Jerry’s released a video alongside of the new flavor. Against an oozing backdrop of ice cream that’s 2° too warm, a narrator points out that “A 2° warming of our planet’s climate would have an equally dramatic — though much more significant — impact.”
In addition, on every pint of Save Our Swirled is the URL for www.benjerry.com/climate, where ice cream fans can learn about climate change and sign a petition hosted by Ben & Jerry’s partner, the global civic engagement website Avaaz.org, which calls for international leaders at the climate summit to work towards 100 percent clean energy by 2050.
Avaaz has a goal of delivering 3 million signatures by the summit, and so far has garnered about 2.36 million. However, that petition is only the first step, Miller said.
“It’s not just about signing that one petition. We hope that the petition is a gateway to the larger movement,” he said, adding that once fans sign the petition, they become part of Avaaz’s network for updates regarding this and other campaigns around climate change. Stopping climate change, said Miller, is going to require “everybody doing everything,” so the petition is merely “the first step on a ladder of increasing activism on this issue.”
To help accomplish that increase in activism, a portion of the proceeds of Save Our Swirled will be donated to an organization helping mobilize activism around the Paris talks.
In April, Ben & Jerry’s also launched the Save Our Swirled tour, which involves the company traversing the country in a retrofitted Tesla Model 6 to get people speaking up against climate change. The Tesla has been modified to fit three freezers and hold more than 1,000 scoops of ice cream, which Ben & Jerry’s is scooping for free for anyone involved in climate change activism. The car also includes a “Climate Action Station” where fans can sign the Avaaz petition.
While Ben & Jerry’s has launched social justice campaigns and social justice flavors before — notably, ONE cheesecake brownie, launched in 2008 in a partnership with the ONE campaign against poverty, and the renaming of popular flavors to “Hubby Hubby” and “Apple-y Ever After” to raise awareness for same-sex marriage — this is the company’s first truly global campaign, Miller said.
“What we believe is if we’re going to solve this we need a big, diverse, grassroots movement around the world.”
Climate change is an issue Ben & Jerry’s has recently ramped up its action on. In addition to Save Our Swirled’s externally focused advocacy campaign, Ben & Jerry’s took a look at its own supply chain. As a dairy company, Ben & Jerry’s has a relatively large carbon footprint, something the company says it’s committed to changing. A recent report found that each pint of Ben and Jerry’s contributes about two pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere — the equivalent of a medium car driving two miles. Forty-one percent of the company’s total greenhouse gas footprint can be traced back to the most common ingredient in their pints: dairy.
We see this as an issue of human rights…it is the poorest, least developed countries that will pay the price
“When it comes to climate change, the methane from the front and back ends of cows is approximately 21 times more potent than CO2” says the Ben & Jerry’s report on the subject. Miller said that Ben & Jerry’s has implemented a company-wide price on carbon, somewhat like an in-company tax which generates funds for programs to reduce on-farm emissions. In its 2014 Social and Environmental Assessment report, the company pledged to use 100 percent renewables by 2020, in conjunction with its parent company Unilever.
Climate justice is also a central issue of the Save Our Swirled campaign. “We see this as an issue of human rights” Miller said. “It is the most developed countries that caused this. It is the poorest, least developed countries that will pay the price.”
That’s an assessment with which experts agree: climate change is expected to hit poorer countries harder, resulting in changing and extreme weather patterns that endanger both livelihoods and lives. For an ice cream company, it is also an issue that’s close to home: Ben & Jerry’s sources its ingredients from some of these developing countries — vanilla from Madagascar, for instance, and cocoa from Uganda.
“We really strive to build long-term relationships with our sources” said Miller. When it comes to climate change, “we really do see it as an issue of justice…it is about people and it is about equity.” Moving towards Paris, Ben & Jerry’s website references the United Nation’s Green Climate Fund, saying that wealthy nations like the United states have “the responsibility” to help the developing world transition to a clean energy future and to protect it from the worst ravages of the warming climate.
Melted ice cream, put back in the freezer, is never quite the same. A melted world would be even worse — and as Ben & Jerry’s recognizes, it is not necessarily those who left it out who will pay the price.
The post Ben And Jerry’s Wants To Fight Climate Change With A New Flavor appeared first on ThinkProgress.
Fracking Ban In Maryland Will Go Into Law After Republican Governor Refuses To Veto
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan.
At the end of the day on Friday, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan will become the first-ever Republican governor to allow a statewide moratorium on fracking.
A two-year ban on the natural gas extraction technique passed overwhelmingly in both houses of the state General Assembly earlier this year, and last weekend, Hogan announced that that he would not veto the bill. However, Hogan also said he wouldn’t sign the bill, instead simply allowing it to automatically become law under time restrictions for signing or vetoing. That time restriction expires at the end of the day on Friday.
Fracking entails injecting a high-pressure mixture of water, sand, and chemicals underground to crack shale rock and release oil and gas. Environmentalists have long been concerned about the risks fracking poses to drinking water via the vast amount of waste that it produces, and the potential for methane and other chemical migration into aquifers. Air pollution risks have also been a concern, as well as methane leaks that contribute to climate change.
The bill that will become law is in response to concerns about fracking’s potential impact on the environment and public health. The two-year period allots time for what environmentalists hope will be a comprehensive public health and scientific study of the industry, similar to the study undertaken by New York before it decided to ban fracking last year. In addition, the bill will require Maryland’s Department of the Environment to finalize regulations on the process by October 2016. After those regulations are formed, no company will be allowed to frack in the state until October 2017.
Hogan’s indirect approval of the bill, however, does not seem like a representation that the newly-minted governor is environmentally-minded. The bill passed both houses of the General Assembly with veto-proof majorities, meaning if Hogan had vetoed it, it’s very likely that veto would have been overridden and the bill would have become law either way.
Hogan has also not applauded the Assembly’s efforts to be cautious about the environment — in fact, he hasn’t said much about fracking at all since taking office this year. Last year, while campaigning, Hogan said fracking was a “gold mine,” but also said he would “want to make sure that [fracking] is done in an environmentally sensitive way, and that we take every precaution possible.”
Still, some are applauding Hogan for allowing the bill to sail through into law, including the bill’s Senate sponsor Karen Montgomery.
“I am relieved and delighted that Governor Hogan will allow mine and Delegate Fraser-Hidalgo’s bill for a 2 year moratorium on fracking to become law without his signature,” she said in a statement. “Now we have two years to continue to compile indisputable scientific data.”
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Mysterious Globs Of Oil Close Beaches In Southern California
A cleanup crew collects balls of tar that washed ashore in Manhattan Beach, Calif. on Thursday, May 28, 2015.
CREDIT: AP
Nearly seven miles of popular Los Angeles coastline remain closed Friday after mysterious balls of oil — some as large as footballs — began washing ashore Wednesday.
The substance was first spotted around 10 a.m. on Wednesday by lifeguards at Manhattan Beach, though officials are unsure exactly when the balls began washing ashore. Cleanup crews were dispatched, and worked into Thursday night to clean the beaches. They hope that the cleaning will be complete in time to reopen the beaches for the weekend. As of Friday, officials reported no new balls had been seen on the shore.
The origin of the substance — thought to be oil or tar balls — remains unknown. Officials aren’t ruling anything out — the balls could be coming from a nearby refinery, offshore oil tanker or the Santa Barbara oil spill last week, a disaster that sent up to 101,000 gallons of oil into the ocean and surrounding environment. Coast Guard and state officials collected samples of the tar and water, hoping to run tests in order to figure out where it came from, but they note that the results of those tests could take days.
The Coast Guard did not find evidence of a potential spill from the nearby oil tanker. Tar balls can happen naturally, and some locals told NBC News that they had seen a substance like this on the beaches before, though never in this amount. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), tar balls can also happen after oil spills, when wind causes the oil slick to break up and mix with water, forming a sticky, pudding-like substance. For years after the BP oil spill, locals reported finding tar balls along Gulf Coast beaches.
Officials judged the amount of oil to be around one or two barrels — a tiny amount compared to the Santa Barbara spill that created a 10-square-mile slick of oil. In Los Angeles County, the affected area is about 30 cubic yards, according to the Associated Press.
Still, officials warned the public of health risks associated with the oil balls, cautioning that contact with petroleum products can irritate the skin and cause long-term health issues. Beach-goers were barred from entering the water Thursday, though a few intrepid surfers attempted to dodge the ban before being asked to leave.
The the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has said that no wildlife has been harmed from the oil balls. The Santa Barbara oil spill, however, is still affecting sea lions, seals, birds, and other California wildlife.
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The Government Just Released A Plan To Protect The Greater Sage Grouse. Here’s Why You Should Care.
CREDIT: Jeannie Stafford/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP
The Department of the Interior Thursday released a long-awaited plan to protect the greater sage grouse, a ground-dwelling bird that was once ubiquitous across the American West but that has seen its numbers plummet as the region’s open sagebrush lands have been lost to energy development, grazing, and catastrophic wildfires.
The sage grouse’s U.S. population totaled about 16 million 100 years ago — now, the numbers ring in as low as 150,000. With the greater sage grouse’s already dwindling populations falling an additional 55 percent between 2007 and 2013, western states and federal land management agencies have been scrambling to develop land management plans that reduce development pressures on the bird’s habitat and reverse the decline of the species.
The decade-long efforts of western governors, private landowners, and the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Agriculture are in part aimed at avoiding the need to formally protect the bird under the Endangered Species Act, a decision that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will make in September based on sage grouse population levels and the adequacy of existing protections.
The land management plan released Thursday by the Obama administration will guide conservation and development on approximately 70 million acres of national public lands, which contain the majority of the greater sage grouse’s remaining habitat. This effort has been described as “the largest landscape-level conservation effort ever undertaken by the Bureau of Land Management, the nation’s largest land manager.”
Here are the three things you should know about the administration’s plan to protect the greater sage grouse:
The sage grouse isn’t the only species that will benefit from the plan
[image error]
Pronghorn antelope stand with a sage grouse.
CREDIT: wikimedia commons
The plan increases protections on more than 40 million acres of public lands, and in particular on 16.5 million acres which are set aside as sagebrush “focal areas” that are off-limits to all future oil and gas development.
Unveiling the plan, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said that the steps her agency is taking to protect the sage grouse are “grounded in the best science” and “we are confident that these plans address the main threats to the bird and its habitat.”
The plan aims to protect the habitat of more than 350 other species in addition to the sage grouse, such as the iconic pronghorn, golden eagles, elk, and mule deer. Environmental groups, ranchers, sportsmen, members of Congress, and others praised the release of the plan and the coordination efforts.
“It has been impressive and downright inspiring to see the [Bureau of Land Management] engaging in true landscape level planning focused on the need for conservation as part of managing public lands,” said Nada Culver, senior director for agency policy at the Wilderness Society, in a press release.
In addition to protecting habitat from future oil and gas drilling, the plan identifies buffer zones around sage grouse breeding areas and minimizes surface disturbance on more than 43 million acres of public lands by encouraging the use of new technologies.
The plan is a product of years of work with western states
[image error]
A male sage grouse during a lek, an event in which a group of males come together and put on mating displays for females.
CREDIT: shutterstock
Almost 70 million acres of sage grouse habitat cover public lands across 11 western states managed primarily by the Bureau of Land Management or the U.S. Forest Service. For more than a decade, federal agencies have worked with state governments, and key stakeholders such as ranchers, sportsmen, local businesses and the oil and gas industry to ensure a balance between competing interests.
Jewell was joined by Wyoming Governor Matt Mead (R) announcing the plan Thursday. Mead emphasized that the federal agencies had done an “extraordinary job” and said that “this is not just about the sage grouse, it’s about the habitat; it’s about the West.”
The oil and gas industry will likely ramp up its attacks on sage grouse protections
[image error]
Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Despite significant bipartisan support for the administration’s next steps, the oil and gas industry and its allies are escalating attacks on western communities’ efforts to conserve the greater sage grouse and the open lands it inhabits. As reported by the New York Times last week, the industry, “led by such groups as the Western Energy Alliance, the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance,” has “mobilized to try to prevent the Department of the Interior from barring large stretches of land as potential drilling sites over concern that drilling and fracking operations could harm the sage grouse.”
Kathleen Sgamma, Vice President of the Western Energy Alliance, continued to push back on the plan to protect the sage grouse after Thursday’s announcement, telling Fuel Fix that “we believe the science doesn’t justify these restrictions.”
Additionally, a number of the oil and gas industry’s allies in Congress, including Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), have led legislative efforts to undermine the Endangered Species Act by exempting the greater sage grouse from protection for up to ten years. A letter from 26 conservation groups earlier this month said that Bishop’s proposal to delay listing and give management authority of sage grouse habitat to states would be “interrupting the ongoing conservation efforts” and “could further jeopardize the existence of the species.”
Now that Interior’s plan has been released, the agency will undergo a 60-day review to be finalized while the western states are also working to finalize their own conservation plans. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has until September 30, 2015 to make a final decision whether the federal and state plans to protect the greater sage grouse are sufficient to reverse the decline of the species, or whether the bird also needs the protection of the Endangered Species Act to survive.
Claire Moser is the Research and Advocacy Associate with the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress. You can follow her on Twitter at @Claire_Moser.
The post The Government Just Released A Plan To Protect The Greater Sage Grouse. Here’s Why You Should Care. appeared first on ThinkProgress.
May 28, 2015
Obama Explains Why He Approved Arctic Drilling In The Face Of Climate Concerns
If President Obama cares about climate change so much, why did he approve drilling in the Arctic?
CREDIT: Shutterstock
On Thursday afternoon, President Obama took to his newly-minted personal Twitter account to answer questions about climate change. After fielding a question about climate denial, the president took on the controversial question of drilling in the Arctic — something that has been seen as contradictory to his interest in fighting climate change.
@POTUS Why are you allowing oil drilling in the arctic if you are concerned about climate change? #AskPOTUS
— Ben Alexander (@BigBennyFL) May 28, 2015
President Obama began by pointing out that he has already shut off the most sensitive Arctic areas to drilling, including the Bristol Bay, home to a number of endangered species and 40 percent of America’s wild-caught seafood. In April, his administration also finalized a proposal to set aside a majority of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness, which prevent drilling across some 12 million acres across northeastern Alaska.
But according to the president, it’s impossible to stop oil exploration in the Arctic completely.
.@BigBennyFL 2/ But since we can't prevent oil exploration completely in region we're setting the highest possible standards
— President Obama (@POTUS) May 28, 2015
.@BigBennyFL 3/ already rejected Shell's original proposal as inadequate which shows we're serious.
— President Obama (@POTUS) May 28, 2015
Despite low global crude prices (helped along by a natural gas boom in the United States), the Arctic remains an appealing long-term development project for oil companies — it’s one of the last untapped areas on the planet, and by some estimates could hold as much as 20 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and natural gas resources. Oil companies like Shell, which recently received the green light from the Obama administration to begin drilling in the Chukchi Sea as soon as this summer, have been trying to gain access to the Arctic for years; Shell alone has spent over $6 billion and spent more than 6 years fighting legal battles to gain access to the Arctic.
Theoretically, Obama could have tried to keep Shell and other oil companies out of the Arctic in a few different ways. The most stringent level of protection, according to Greenpeace’s Cassady Sharp, would be to declare the Chukchi Sea as a marine sanctuary — the marine equivalent to defining an area as wilderness. Oil and gas drilling is generally prohibited in marine areas designated as National Marine Sanctuaries by NOAA regulations. But designating an area as a marine sanctuary takes a long time — and has to undergo a great deal of environmental review — making it unlikely that Obama could successfully oversee that designation before leaving office.
According to Niel Lawrence, project director for National Resources Defense Council’s Alaska Project, Obama could also use the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) to withdraw the entire U.S. Arctic outer continental shelf from leasing eligibility — something that might be a permanent solution, since the OCSLA doesn’t specifically address whether or not a future president can undo past actions. Obama previously used the OCSLA to protect Bristol Bay and certain boundary areas within the Chukchi and Beaufort seas from future oil and gas development.
Attempting to take the Arctic off the table completely by issuing a moratorium could also be tricky — any moratorium would likely be challenged in court immediately, and the legal burden would be on the Obama administration to prove that the area should not be drilled. The precedent for such a thing would not be in the administration’s favor: in 2011, a New Orleans judge found the Obama administration acted in contempt by continuing its deepwater drilling moratorium following the BP oil spill, the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
In the short-term, Obama could cancel the lease that gives Shell — and other oil companies — the right to drill in the area, something that 18 senators, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) asked him to do in a letter earlier this week. The current lease runs through 2017, meaning that canceling the lease would prevent Shell and other companies from drilling in the area at least through 2017. At that time, however, whatever administration follows Obama could reopen the area to drilling, and wouldn’t necessarily be as inclined to include the limitations and regulations Obama claims his administration is requiring.
But even those regulations might not be as stringent as Obama claims. Lawrence called the regulations a “red herring” in an email to ThinkProgress, explaining that for 2015, there are no new safety requirements with which Shell must comply.
“Shell still has not submitted a new or updated Oil Spill Response Plan for 2015,” Lawrence said. “We also know that there still are no spill response methods proven effective in situ in an Arctic Ocean environment.”
To some, however, even a short-term stall on Arctic drilling could be seen as a win. “It is true that the next president could potentially undo whatever he does, but that’s true for any executive action,” Sharp told ThinkProgress. “All of this is completely within the power of the Obama administration and the executive branch. It’s really never too late.”
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A Group Of CEOs Managing $12 Trillion Want A Strong Global Climate Deal
Protesters at the 2013 international climate negotiations in Warsaw. More than 100 CEOs and institutional investors are asking for a strong climate agreement at the 2015 Paris talks.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski
Turns out environmental activists aren’t the only people who want to eliminate the risk of catastrophic global warming.
A group of more than 120 CEOs and other institutional investors who manage more than $12 trillion in assets sent an open letter to seven of the world’s wealthiest countries on Tuesday, asking them to make bold commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during the U.N. climate talks later this year. The reason, the letter said, was because of the uncertainty surrounding how bad climate change would be and how it would affect their businesses.
“As institutional investors responsible for managing the retirement savings and investments of millions of people or managing endowments, we believe climate change is one of the biggest systemic risks we face,” the letter read, urging the countries’ financial ministers to support a long-term global emissions reduction goal that limits warming to a 2° Celsius.
The letter was sent to the Group of Seven (G-7), which is made up of the finance ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. Among the letter’s signatories were managers of some of the world’s biggest investment and pension funds, including the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the New York State Common Retirement Fund, and the AFL-CIO.
Aside from how climate change might impact business, the letter also stated that reducing carbon emissions would come with numerous financial incentives. Along with giving investors clarity about the future, the letter said a strong goal to reduce emissions would “serve to reduce policy risk, incentivize [research and development], facilitate the deployment of new technologies, and ultimately create new jobs.”
The letter also said that reducing carbon emissions to meet the 2°C target would be cheap, citing an that showed energy and transportation systems across the world could meet the goal with existing technology without harming economic growth. It noted that carbon emission reductions are already taking place in some sectors without harming the economy — indeed, last year energy-related carbon dioxide emissions flatlined globally while the world economy grew, something that had never before happened.
“The benefits of addressing climate change outweigh the costs,” the letter read.
The group of CEOs was organized by five responsible investment groups from around the world, but it is far from the first group representing monetary interests to come out and ask for action on climate change. Last month, a group of big insurance companies and consumer organizations asked the United States to strengthen its disaster policies in the face of increasingly extreme weather due to human-caused climate change. And last week, one of the world’s largest insurance companies pledged to drop its remaining investment in coal assets, saying climate change was already driving an increase in weather-related risks, which threaten business.
And, though they haven’t come out and called for climate action, big oil companies also seem to be worried about the risks climate change poses. At an annual meeting in April, BP shareholders agreed to a resolution stating the company should provide more information about its “preparation for the low carbon transition.” ExxonMobil has also admitted it faces risks from climate change, and has pledged to “ensure our facilities, operations and investments are managed with this risk in mind.”
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New Report Suggests U.S. Can Meet Its Climate Goals Without Congressional Action
The Clean Power Plan is really important if the U.S. wants to meet its climate goals, the World Resources Institute says.
CREDIT: Shutterstock
Congressional inaction? That shouldn’t stop the United States from achieving its climate goals, a new report from the World Resources Institute says.
Through existing federal laws and state action, the United States could cut its greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, the WRI said in a report released Wednesday. Ahead of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, to be held in Paris this December, the United States has pledged to cut its emissions by roughly 28 percent by 2025.
“The U.S. target is ambitious but achievable. The administration has already taken significant actions, but it will need to do more, assisted by American ingenuity and innovation that has helped find solutions to other great challenges,” Karl Hausker, senior fellow with the WRI’s US Climate Initiative, said in a press release.
The crux of the WRI analysis rests on the implementation of the Clean Power Plan, which is arguably President Obama’s most significant action on climate change. According to WRI’s analysis, implementing the plan as it currently stands, as well as strengthening greenhouse gas and fuel efficiency standards for vehicles and creating new standards for industry, would cut power sector emissions 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
The analysis offers three different scenarios. The first, described above, is considered the most achievable, but also offers the smallest reduction in emissions. By strengthening the Clean Power Plan — instead of just implementing it as it stands — and pushing for greater use of renewable energy throughout the power sector, the United States could see an even larger reduction: a 52 percent drop in power sector emissions by 2030.
In the most lofty scenario, WRI imagines a net reduction in the United State’s greenhouse gas emissions of 38 percent by 2030. To achieve this, the report says, the country would need to not only strengthen the Clean Power Plan, but greatly accelerate deployment of next-generation vehicle technology, like fuel cell electric vehicles, and implement policies that help slow the rate of personal travel. It would also need to accelerate the adoption of state efficiency savings targets meant to encourage the use of natural gas in residential homes and commercial buildings.
The power sector, the report finds, holds the largest opportunity to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Under the most achievable plan, 10 percent of the 26 percent reduction would come from the power sector, from a combination of the Clean Power Plan, stronger industrial emissions standards, and expanded residential and commercial efficiency programs. In that scenario, 70 to 75 percent of the potential reduction in greenhouse gas emissions comes from sectors in which the Obama administration has already taken some action.
Many of the actions suggested in the report, the WRI says, are measures that not only help cut greenhouse gas emissions, but offer an economic boost. A new natural-gas fired power plant, for example, is between 19 and 44 percent cheaper than a new coal-fired power plant. Revised fuel standards for cars could also offer vehicle owners savings over the long-run, thanks to direct savings on fuel, and externalities like reduced air pollution and reduced CO2 emissions.
Though the United States could reach its climate goals without the help of Republican-controlled Congress, which has shown itself unlikely to act on climate change, the report notes that more dramatic, long-term change would require legislation. Through climate legislation, the United States could potentially cut its emissions 40 to 42 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, and 50 to 53 percent by 2040, but those cuts would require strong action from a Congress still locked in partisan debates over mankind’s role in climate change.
“Reductions of this magnitude would require greater action from the power sector than is likely possible using existing laws — more than double the reductions under the Clean Power Plan as proposed by 2030,” the report states. With the Clean Power Plan facing staunch opposition from Republicans in Congress and challenges in federal court, a strengthening of the law’s existing language seems unlikely in the current political environment.
But even as Congress stalls action on climate change, the international community seems to be ramping up its discussion of the issue ahead of the Paris conference. On Monday, UN chief Ban-Ki Moon called for “global action” on climate change this year, and WRI’s study comes just days before the next round of international climate discussions begin in Bonn, Germany.
As the largest global economy and the second-largest producer of greenhouse gases, the United States is expected to take a leading role in December’s international climate talks — a role that President Obama has publicly embraced.
“There is one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other. That is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate,” Obama said in a speech at the U.N. in 2014. “Nobody gets a pass. We will do our part, and we’ll help developing nations do theirs.”
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Sorry, Jeb, The GOP Can’t ‘Embrace Science’ And Climate Denial At The Same Time
CREDIT: AP File/Paul Sancya
Last week in New Hampshire, Jeb Bush said conservatives should “embrace science,” and the GOP needs to be the “party of science.” That was minutes after he embraced climate science denial.
“Look, first of all, the climate is changing,” Bush said. “I don’t think the science is clear what percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural. It’s convoluted. And for the people to say the science is decided on, this is just really arrogant, to be honest with you.”
Actually, it’s pretty easy to understand scientists’ best estimate of what fraction of recent warming is man-made — all of it. Jeb Bush asserts this issue is “convoluted,” but in fact it is so widely accepted that every major government in the world — including China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia — signed off on that finding almost two years ago.
I’m speaking of the findings of the IPCC’s 2013 Summary for Policymakers Fifth Assessment of the scientific literature. A key IPCC conclusion was that scientists are 95 to 100 percent certain humans are responsible for most of the added warming since 1950. They further explain that “the best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.”
To repeat, the best estimate is that humans are responsible for all of the warming we have suffered since 1950. Again, every major government in the world signed off on this finding, just like every other line in the Summary.
As for degree of certainty, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society, explained last year, “The science linking human activities to climate change is analogous to the science linking smoking to lung and cardiovascular diseases.” I guess for Jeb the question of whether smoking is bad for your health is “convoluted” — and it’s “just really arrogant” for the Surgeon General and other medical professionals “to say the science is decided on.”
This IPCC finding wasn’t actually news even in 2013 — except to climate science deniers — since, of course, the IPCC is just a literature review. As we reported back in 2011, a study in Nature Geoscience concluded, “it is extremely likely that at least 74% of the observed warming since 1950 was caused by” humans.
So in fact scientists are 95 to 100 percent certain that at least some three quarters of the warming since 1950 is human-caused. Yes, that means the key IPCC conclusion is a watered-down version of the science, but that is how the IPCC rolls. When you have to satisfy pretty much every scientist (and then every major government) involved in the process with your choice of words, you end up with a “highly conservative organization,” as Stefan Rahmstorf, Head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told the New York Times in 2013. That means it “tends to produce a lowest common denominator on which a large number of scientists can agree.”
Gavin Schmidt, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, put together a graph to make the IPCC’s finding more visually understandable. Here is the relative likelihood that different percentages of global warming can be ascribed to human activity (“derived from Fig. 10.5 in IPCC AR5″):
[image error]
The probability density function for the fraction of warming attributable to human activity. The bulk of the probability is far to the right of the “50%” line, and the peak is around 110%. Via NASA’s Gavin Schmidt.
For reference, “1.00” on the x-axis would mean climate change is 100 percent attributable to human activity. This graph peaks at about 1.10, or 110 percent.
But wait. How could 110 percent of the warming since 1950 be due to human activity? As Schmidt explained way back in 2009, “Over the last 40 or so years, natural drivers would have caused cooling.”
These cooling natural drivers include:
In recent decades, volcanoes have released particles that partially block the sun and cool the planet slightly.
Only recently have we come off “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,” which also cooled the planet slightly.
The underlying long-term trend — driven largely by orbital changes — had been cooling (see Human-caused Arctic warming overtakes 2,000 years of natural cooling, “seminal” study finds).
In short, “human factors are most likely responsible for all the warming we’ve seen and then some (110%),” as environmental scientist Dana Nuccitelli put it in the UK Guardian.
Here’s the full video of Jeb:
Former Governor Bush apparently was against science before he was for it — or is it the other way around?
The post Sorry, Jeb, The GOP Can’t ‘Embrace Science’ And Climate Denial At The Same Time appeared first on ThinkProgress.
North Carolina Wants To Frack In Small Town Already Struggling With Coal Ash
Jacqueline Patterson, director of the NAACP’s Environmental and Climate Justice Program, said clean air and water are “moral issues.”
A small town in North Carolina is fighting back after it was named one of the state’s first testing grounds for fracking.
The state is paying $236,500 for core sampling to asses potential natural gas reserves on publically owned land, including in the town of Walnut Cove, in the Dan River Basin. Actual fracking hasn’t yet started — and possibly won’t for several years — but residents are still worried by the test drilling.
Residents of Walnut Cove and surrounding areas gathered Wednesday to protest the drilling, which they say will further pollute their community. Walnut Cove is next to the state’s third-largest coal ash pond, and just 35 miles from the site of a massive coal ash spill in 2014.
“The community we love is in the middle of a David and Goliath battle with big industries that seem to care very little about the people in the area we call home,” Walnut Cove resident Tracy Brown Edwards said during Wednesday’s community meeting.
It’s a moral issue when people can’t drink their water
Edwards said she has suffered health problems her whole life from living near the coal ash pond. “It’s in our soil, and we know this,” she said. She thinks adding fracking to the mix will just make things worse — increasing the likelihood of earthquakes, since the town is located near a fault line, and putting the water supply at greater risk.
It isn’t clear yet whether or not fears of earthquakes from fracking in North Carolina are warranted — the state’s geologist has said that the practice is unlikely to cause quakes in the state — but fracking has induced earthquakes in other states. But water pollution is a major concern for the town, as fracking operations have been shown to put water supplies at risk.
Officials have tested for coal ash pollution in Walnut Cove’s water, but tests have come back inconclusive. Coal ash is a byproduct of coal-fired power plants, and contains contaminants such as mercury, cadmium, and arsenic. It is stored in ponds, which are often located near lakes and waterways, and leaks or improper disposal can cause environmental and economic damage.
Though Walnut Cove’s tests were inconclusive, according to the Associated Press, 152 out of 163 water wells tested within 1,000 feet of Duke Energy coal ash ponds failed to meet state standards for groundwater — a 93 percent rate of contamination. A large number of the tests reportedly showed high levels of lead, vanadium, and hexavalent chromium, the latter of which is carcinogenic to humans.
“It’s a moral issue when people can’t drink their water… it’s a moral issue when people can’t breathe the air,” said Jacqueline Patterson, director of the NAACP’s Environmental and Climate Justice Program, who attended the community meeting. The national NAACP is investigating the situation in Walnut Cove after calls from local groups, Patterson said.
Low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by pollution from coal-powered plants, she said. Studies have repeatedly shown that low-income and minority communities face increased health risks from environmental hazards.
The event brought together people off all races and political affiliations. Ira Tilley, a self-declared Republican, said pollution was a bi-partisan issue.
“There are many conservatives and many Republicans in North Carolina and across this country who do not believe that what is going on is right, regard the fracking industry, regarding coal ash,” he said.
Under the leadership of Gov. Pat McCrory (R), a former Duke executive, and a Republican-controlled general assembly, the state allocated funds in 2012 for oil and gas exploration under the newly expanded Mining and Energy Commission’s management program for oil and gas. The program was tasked with investigating “the use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.”
Core sample drilling began Wednesday in the Cumberland-Marlboro Basin, in the southern part of the state, but it could take several more years for anything to come of the core samples.
“We’re a ways from hydraulic fracturing in these areas,” Jamie Kritzer, a spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, told ThinkProgress.
“Money has been appropriated at this point just to extract the core samples. Money has not yet been appropriated to analyze those samples,” he pointed out. In addition, earlier this month a judge halted fracking permits, while the state Supreme Court weighs the legality of the formation of some relevant state panels.
Since North Carolina repealed a moratorium on fracking last summer, no one has applied for any fracking permits, Kritzer said.
The post North Carolina Wants To Frack In Small Town Already Struggling With Coal Ash appeared first on ThinkProgress.
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