Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 152
April 23, 2015
The World’s Oceans Are Worth Trillions Of Dollars, Report Finds
CREDIT: AP Photo/ Eranga Jayawardena
The oceans are worth at least $24 trillion in services such as fishing, tourism, shipping and carbon sequestration, but “urgent action” is needed if the world wants to maintain that ocean economy, according to a new report.
The report, published this week by the World Wildlife Fund, states that if the oceans were a country, they would be the world’s seventh-largest economy in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). And, according to the report, even those measurements of the oceans’ value are likely underestimates: the report didn’t take into account essential ocean services such as oxygen production, temperature stabilization, and cultural services in putting a value on the ocean.
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, lead author of the report and director of the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute, told Nature that the $24 trillion represents a minimum value for the world’s oceans — but despite that, “it’s quite large,” he said.
“[The report] comes up with a very large number despite the fact that we can’t value the many intangibles — production of sand along coastlines, the value of oceans in terms of their contribution to cultures, and so on,” he said.
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CREDIT: World Wildlife Fund
More than two-thirds of the goods and services that were included in the report rely heavily on healthy ocean, which means countries need to act quickly to protect the oceans if they want to ensure this economic value will be maintained.
“The evidence is clear: the ocean is a major contributor to the global economy, but its asset base is being rapidly eroded,” the report states. “To restore the ocean’s productive capacity before it is too late, the world must take urgent action.”
The report lays out eight steps countries should take to preserve the ocean economy, actions that include reducing emissions — an effort that the report says must include the adoption of a binding agreement at the United Nations’ climate talks in November — and committing to increase ocean and coastal conservation. It also calls for the creation of an international “Blue Alliance” made up of countries that would “cultivate international will” and “establish a global fund to support countries that have fewer resources and are more vulnerable to the impacts of ocean degradation.”
The report notes that the oceans — and thus the economic resources they provide — are already being heavily degraded. Pollution, overfishing, poorly-planned aquaculture, coastal development, tourism, climate change, and a range of other stressors have greatly affected the oceans over the last few decades. One of the most striking examples of this degradation is the loss of the ocean’s coral reefs, which, aside from serving as a home to a wide range of marine life, can help protect shoreline communities against storm surge.
“Recent studies indicate that at least 50 percent of reef-building corals on tropical reefs in Southeast Asia, Australia, the Western Pacific, Indian Ocean and Caribbean have disappeared from reefs over the past 30 years,” the report states. “While declining water quality and over-exploitation represent serious short-term threats to coral reefs, ocean warming from climate change and ocean acidification are widely appreciated as two of the greatest threats to reefs.”
Overfishing is a major concern too, for the ocean ecosystem and for the communities around the world that depend on fish for sustenance. Luckily, the state of ocean fish stocks could be looking up, at least in the U.S.: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced earlier this month that number of U.S. fish stocks listed as overfished has fallen to its lowest point since 1997. Still, according to the report, 90 percent of the world’s fish stocks are over-exploited or fully exploited, a term that means the fish stock shouldn’t be harvested at any higher rate if it is to remain healthy.
Other reports have outlined the threats the ocean faces, though this is among the first to put a value on the ocean’s services. Last year, a study found that the Pacific Ocean is taking up atmospheric carbon dioxide and acidifying much faster than previously expected, a change that’s dangerous for coral — especially baby coral — and fish, which scientists predict could become more hyperactive or confused as the ocean acidifies. And in 2013, the State of the Oceans report found that the level of acidification in the oceans is “unprecedented” and the earth is “entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change, and exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure.”
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Joss Whedon: Politicians Who Deny Climate Change ‘Deny Basic Scientific Truth’
‘Avengers’ writer and director Joss Whedon is quite familiar with dystopian futures.
CREDIT: Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
If there’s anything to be gleaned about Joss Whedon’s worldview from his hit show Firefly, it might be that he’s pessimistic about the future of politics.
“Nothing will change in the future,” Whedon, who also wrote and directed the enormously successful Avengers movie, once said about the dystopian universe depicted in Firefly. “Technology will advance, but we will still have the same political, moral, and ethical problems as today.”
On Wednesday — Earth Day — Whedon revealed that he thinks one of those political problems of today is climate change. In a series of tweets, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator chastised U.S. politicians who don’t accept climate science, saying they are denying “basic scientific truth.”
“The climate IS changing — if we can’t, that makes us dumber than weather #ClimateChangeIsReal,” he tweeted. “Policy makers who deny basic scientific truth should also be denied penicillin, horseless carriages, [and] air time on the magic box of shadows,” read a subsequent tweet.
While conservatives decried Whedon’s “no penicillin” rhetoric as “unhinged,” his logic is not new. Many high-profile scientists have suggested that politicians who deny climate science are arbitrarily picking and choosing which kind of science they want to believe is true. So, while they benefit from the scientific method in other areas — modern medicine, engineering, and so on — they choose to reject it in areas where it’s politically inconvenient.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has put it similarly. “Science is not there for you to cherry pick,” he has said. “You can decide whether or not to believe in it, but that doesn’t change the reality of an emergent scientific truth.”
As it stands now, 97 percent of climate scientists agree that climate change over the last 100 years is “very likely” due to human activities, according to NASA. In addition, the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — a panel made up of 1,250 international climate experts and approved by every major government in the world — states that it is 95 percent sure that humans are the main cause of current global warming.
That scientific consensus, however, does not reflect itself in U.S. politics. Right now, 53 percent — or 131 members — of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives deny that human-caused global warming is occurring, according to a Center for American Progress analysis. In addition, 70 percent of Republican Senators are on record expressing skepticism about the validity of climate science.
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Oklahoma Lawmakers Vote To Outlaw Fracking Bans As Earthquakes In The State Spike
CREDIT: shutterstock
Oklahoma’s government is of two minds when it comes to fossil fuel extraction.
In an especially fractious split, the day after the state’s energy and environment cabinet acknowledged that the “recent rise in earthquakes cannot be entirely attributed to natural causes,” state lawmakers passed two bills to limit the ability of localities to decide if they want to allow fracking and drilling nearby.
While at least eight bills were filed this session in Oklahoma to prevent cities and counties from banning drilling operations, the two that passed through the House this week are SB 809 and SB 468. SB 809 would allow “reasonable” ordinances related to “road use, traffic, noise and odor,” but would not allow any outright bans — the bill prohibits the direct regulation of oil and gas exploration, drilling, or fracking. SB 468 would make it so that any interference with oil and gas production would be considered a “taking” of property, meaning royalty owners could seek compensation.
The Oklahoma legislature is one of a number of state governing bodies focused on how local jurisdictions could impede the oil and gas industry’s ability to drill first and deal with the consequences later. Earlier this month, the Texas House approved a bill that drastically curtails local governments’ abilities to say no to fracking within their communities. Authorities and industry leaders in both states are worried that more municipalities might follow the lead of Denton, Texas in instituting a ban on fracking within city limits.
According to Oklahoma government, the current rate of earthquakes is approximately 600 times historical averages — a phenomenon that Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS) now considers very likely to be caused by wastewater wells associated with drilling for oil and gas.
“The observed seismicity of greatest concentration, namely in central and north-central Oklahoma, can be observed to follow the oil and gas plays characterized by large amounts of produced water,” a report from the agency released this week stated. While the oil and gas industry has pumped produced water associated with fossil fuel extraction back into the water disposal wells for more than half a century, recent studies show that particularly high-volume wells are likely attributing at least partly to the rise in quakes.
According to the report, earthquake “swarms” are occurring over about 15 percent of the state in the same areas that have seen an increase in wastewater disposal wells. According to a new report from the U.S. Geological Survey, prior to 2012, there were virtually no earthquakes in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma. However, in the last two years, the number of quakes in the region has increased dramatically, with several hundred recorded.
Oklahoma House Democratic Leader Scott Inman referenced the OGS report when voicing his opposition to the bills, saying the people pushing for bills that limit communities from imposing drilling ordinances “are the ones causing the earthquakes in our communities.”
Inman said that the best way residents of these areas can address their concerns is to go “down to your local city council member” and ask them to “pass an ordinance to say please protect my house.”
Other democratic lawmakers also were critical of the bills.
Rep. Cory Williams (D) said those communities considering drilling ordinances are “threatened” by industry and their powerful lobbyists, and that the use of the word “reasonable” in the legislation favors the operators.
“If oil and gas tells you that 350 feet is (a) reasonable (setback), you had better think long and hard about suing,” he said.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission is the government body charged with overseeing oil and gas drilling operations in the state. The Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, Jeff Hickman (R), said that the Corporation Commission is “addressing” the earthquake problem, and that some of wells have already been closed due to the issue.
“The system is working exactly as it is supposed to work with sound science and the expertise of the Corporation Commission, the Geological Survey and others determining the cause and now determining the course of action,” he said.
This effort in Oklahoma is the latest take on a style of preemption legislation that has been used across the country to bar cities from regulating everything from landlords to the minimum wage. As the New York Times recently reported, these preemption laws invoke “a paradox for conservatives who have long extolled the virtues of local control in some areas, like education, but now say uniform standards are necessary in others.”
The Oklahoma bills will now head back to the Senate where they are expected to move forward.
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The USDA Is Taking On Agriculture’s Huge Contribution To Climate Change
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
CREDIT: AP
The United States Department of Agriculture plans to announce a set of voluntary initiatives aimed at helping farmers, ranchers, and forest land owners respond to climate change by increasing carbon storage, reducing carbon emissions, and supporting resilience in the face of extreme weather.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is expected to make the announcement Thursday during a visit to Michigan State University, where President Obama signed the 2014 Farm Bill. The initiative is based off of ten “building blocks” that cut across the agricultural sector and seek voluntary action from farmers, ranchers, and forest land owners to reduce their carbon emissions. Through these voluntary programs, the USDA hopes to reduce net emissions related to agriculture by 120 metric tons per year by 2025 — the equivalent of taking more than 25 million passenger vehicles off the road.
In 2013, the agricultural sector accounted for 7.7 percent of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions, with methane and nitrous oxide being the primary greenhouse gases released. Methane is largely released through livestock production, via fermentation in the stomach of ruminants like cattle, sheep, or goats, or through manure management. Nitrous oxide is released when excess fertilizer isn’t absorb by soil.
To achieve these reductions, the USDA plans to encourage farmers, ranchers, and foresters to adopt a slew of sustainable practices, from improved nutrient management to enhanced forest conservation. To reduce fertilizer pollution, the USDA hopes to increase the U.S.’s amount of no-till cropland from the current 67 million acres to over 100 million acres by 2025. To tackle methane from livestock production, the USDA intends to support the installation of 500 new digester plants — meant to turn animal waste into renewable energy — over the next 10 years. The department will also maximize efforts to improve energy efficiency and increase the use of renewable energy, especially the use of biomass as a fuel source.
The initiatives also focus on increasing and managing existing forests on both private and federal lands. Under the Forest Stewardship Program, the department hopes to protect an additional of 2.1 million acres of nonindustrial forest on average each year. The USDA also wants to increase the number of urban forests in the country — to reduce storm water runoff and urban heat island effects while increasing carbon sequestration and urban property values — by planting an additional average of 9,000 trees each year.
The initiatives are voluntary, though the USDA plans to incentivize participation by offering grants, low-interest loans, and technical assistance, according to the Associated Press.
In conjunction with the USDA’s initiatives, several environmental and agricultural groups have announced new commitments to reducing emissions through new conservation and mitigation efforts. Among the organizations pledging new initiatives are Field to Market, a sustainability-focused agricultural group that hopes to curb emissions throughout commodity crop supply chains; the Fertilizer Institute, which has pledged more than $6 million to nutrient research; and the American Forest Foundation, which announced it would work with the U.S. Forest Service to increase wildlife education outreach in Western states.
“Partnerships are an important part of addressing climate change,” Rita Hite, AFF’s executive vice president of the American Tree Farm System, Woodlands, and Policy, told ThinkProgress. “USDA is committed to partnering and this [initiative] is the perfect example.”
Last year, as part of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the USDA created seven regional “climate hubs” to help farmers better understand how climate change will affect them.
In the past, however, the USDA has been cautious in linking extreme weather to climate change, with the department referring to climate change as “weather variation” when it promotes programs to farmers. Defending this move at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual conference in January, Vilsack said that talking about climate change can move the conversation into politically charged territory, something that can turn off farmers and dampen progress.
In 2012, Vilsack drew criticism from environmentalists for refusing to link drought to climate change, telling reporters that “I’m not a scientist, so I’m not going to opine as to the cause of this.”
Following the release of the 2014 National Climate Assessment, however, Vilsack warned that climate change would have a profound impact on the country’s agricultural sector.
“The National Climate Assessment confirms that climate change is affecting every region of the country and critical sectors of the economy like agriculture,” Vilsack said in a statement. “This assessment provides an unprecedented look at how the changing climate and extreme weather impact rural America.”
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Exxon Will Pay $5 Million To End Lawsuit Over 134,000-Gallon Mayflower Oil Spill
Oil accumulates in a creek in Mayflower, Arkansas, after an ExxonMobil pipeline rupture.
CREDIT: Greenpeace USA Flickr
ExxonMobil has agreed to pay approximately $5 million to end a lawsuit over a 2013 pipeline rupture that coated an Arkansas town with 133,980 gallons of oil, the Environmental Protection agency announced Wednesday.
The lawsuit, brought by both the federal government and the state of Arkansas, accused ExxonMobil of violating clean water laws when its Pegasus Pipeline ruptured in March 2013, spilling approximately 210,000 gallons of Canadian tar sands crude oil into the small community of Mayflower. The lawsuit sought to prove that ExxonMobil engaged in gross negligence and willful misconduct in the events leading up to the spill.
If those claims were proven in trial, it could have been bad for Exxon. Under the maximum fines proposed by the lawsuit, ExxonMobil could have paid up to $4,300 per barrel of oil released — a maximum of $21.5 million — and up to $45,000 per day in civil penalties for violations since the spill.
But instead of continuing a trial which could have lasted years, Exxon entered into a consent decree, agreeing to pay just $3.19 million in federal civil penalties and $1 million in state civil penalties. The company also agreed to pay $600,000 for a project to improve water quality at the oil-affected Lake Conway, and $280,000 to the Arkansas Attorney General’s office for litigation costs.
“This settlement holds ExxonMobil accountable for this very serious oil spill and its disastrous impact on the Mayflower community and environment,” John C. Cruden, the assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Natural Resources Division, said in a statement, adding the settlement would “prevent future disasters by requiring better pipeline safety and response measures.”
In an e-mailed statement to ThinkProgress, Exxon spokesperson Christian Flathman apologized for the spill and said the company was working hard to reduce negative impacts.
“We regret that this incident occurred and apologize for the disruption and inconvenience that it caused,” he said. “ExxonMobil launched a rapid and effective response and worked closely with the U.S. EPA and the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to ensure cleanup and restoration took place as quickly as possible.”
Since the now-infamous disaster in 2013, residents of Mayflower have struggled to cope with the impacts. Many residents reported suffering from dizziness, headaches, nausea and vomiting — classic symptoms of short-term exposure to the chemicals found in crude oil — up to five months after it occurred.
The lingering stench was apparently so bad that Exxon offered to buy out 62 homes in the area. The company even had to tear down a few houses and bought 20 more from affected residents.
The federal judge presiding over the case had already rejected some of Exxon’s arguments against the lawsuit. In one instance, Exxon had argued that Canadian tar sands oil should not be legally considered “hazardous waste.” U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker rejected that argument, as well as the company’s argument that the small bodies of water affected by the spill were too small to be covered under the Clean Water Act.
Wednesday’s consent decree isn’t the first time Exxon has had to pay fines for the 2013 spill. Federal pipeline safety regulators fined the company $2.6 million for violating pipeline safety rules and failing to notify regulators that that the pipe — built before 1970 — was susceptible to rupture. According to Flathman, Exxon has so far spent more than $91 million on cleanup activities in Mayflower.
Exxon is also not totally off the hook from lawsuits. As the Arkansas Times reported on Wednesday, the company still faces various lawsuits from private citizens seeking compensation for damages from the spill, plus lawsuits from state and federal agencies over damage to natural resources.
Update
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A previous version of this article incorrectly included the original estimate of oil spilled — 210,000 gallons — instead of the final calculated estimate of 134,000 gallons. ThinkProgress regrets the error.
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Fears Of Contamination Confirmed, North Carolina Residents Warned Not To Drink Their Water
In this April 25, 2014 photo, Bryant Gobble, left, hugs his wife, Sherry Gobble, right, as they look from their yard across an ash pond full of dead trees toward Duke Energy’s Buck Steam Station in Dukeville, N.C.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Chuck Burton
Sherry Gobble has been wary of drinking the tap water in her neighborhood for more than a year.
“I feel like I’ve become very suspicious of all water,” she told ThinkProgress in November. “When I go to a friend’s house, and they offer coffee or tea, I don’t drink it because I don’t know where it came from.”
On Monday, her fears were confirmed. Nineteen households and a church in her community of Dukeville, North Carolina were sent letters by the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) warning them not to drink or cook with well water due to elevated levels of toxic heavy metals, the Associated Press reported. Like Gobble’s home, each is located within a quarter mile of a coal ash pond owned by Duke Energy.
I feel like I’ve become very suspicious of all water.
The letters sent to Dukeville residents were part of a statewide testing of private drinking water wells near Duke Energy-owned coal ash dumps. That undertaking was sparked by an 82,000-ton coal ash spill from one of Duke’s storage ponds last year, which contaminated water.
In all, those tests conducted by DENR showed contamination of 87 private drinking water wells for households located near eight Duke plants across the state, the AP reported. The DENR tests only looked for contaminants found in coal ash — things like mercury, manganese, arsenic, and vanadium — and found of elevated levels of various chemicals depending on the location.
Duke Energy, however, is denying that any of the contamination is a result of leaky coal ash ponds. In a statement to ThinkProgress, Duke spokesperson Erin Culbert said each well had an absence of boron and sulfates, which she said are “key indicators of groundwater potentially impacted by coal ash, because they migrate more quickly than other trace elements.”
“Based on the state’s test results we’ve reviewed thus far, we have no indication that Duke Energy plant operations have influenced neighbors’ well water,” she said.
Others have taken issue with Duke’s explanation. Pete Harrison, a staff attorney at the non-profit Waterkeeper Alliance, said there could be explanations as to why boron and sulfates weren’t present — for instance, he said, the coal they were burning at the plant might have been low in those elements, meaning it might not show up in the waste.
… we have no indication that Duke Energy plant operations have influenced neighbors’ well water.
“They’re ignoring what is there in the water and just pointing out what isn’t,” Harrison said. “I think it’s kind of a non-sequitur argument they’re trying to make.”
Dukeville had a particularly high number of letters sent by DENR notifying residents of water contamination, and according to the AP, several of the letters cited high levels of vanadium. Vanadium is a naturally occurring element, but high levels are often found in coal ash, and it’s classified as a probable carcinogen.
According to Harrison, six water wells in Dukeville contained vanadium at a level of more than .3 parts per billion (ppb), which is the state’s maximum groundwater standard for the element. Five of those wells had levels from 1.6 to 10.6 ppb, he said, but one had a level of 25 ppb — nearly 86 times the maximum standard.
The people who get their water from that well are James and Levene Mahaley, who have lived near the coal ash pond since 1954, the AP reported.
The Mahaleys were reportedly aware of their contamination before the letters were sent out, telling the AP that Duke Energy officials came to their home in November to offer them shipments of bottled water, and told them not to tell anyone about it. According to Yadkin Riverkeeper Will Scott — the lead advocate for protecting the watershed in Dukeville — Duke also gave the Mahaleys a book about the negative health impacts of vanadium.
“The story is that Duke has known that these people had high levels of vanadium. They knew that. They gave them water. They knew they had health effects,” he said. “But they’ve still been sending out letters to the community saying everything’s fine.”
Culbert took issue with that notion as well, saying the Mahaley residence was the only well in Dukeville that exceeded 18 ppb, a level the state had, at the time, said was safe for vanadium in groundwater. The state updated its groundwater standards to .3 ppb this year. There is no federal drinking water standard for vanadium.
We know these ponds are leaking …
As for the Mahaley’s recollection that Duke Energy told them to keep quiet about the contamination, Culbert said she was “not aware of any expectation that the Mahaleys keep that information private.”
Testing of the water wells in these areas is far from over. According to Harrison, many of the letters sent out to residents notifying them of contamination said re-sampling would be recommended in one month, due to the fact that the labs could not reliably show specific vanadium levels below 25 ppb. So, while the labs are confident vanadium is present in the wells where it’s shown up, they’re not totally confident how much is there.
Culbert said Duke Energy would pay for any additional sampling or re-sampling that needed to be done.
Absent immediate direct evidence that the widespread contamination of well water near Duke Energy coal ash ponds is in fact the result of coal ash, Harrison said the Waterkeeper Alliance would keep trying to prove the link.
“Our task now is to continue to investigate the connection through the groundwater between these ash ponds and these people’s wells,” he said. “We know these ponds are leaking, but its much more difficult to prove where these contaminants are coming from because it’s all deep in the ground.”
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April 22, 2015
On Earth Day, Congress Targets America’s Public Lands and Waters
President Barack Obama walks the Anhinga Trail at Everglades National Park, Fla., Wednesday, April 22, 2015.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Susan Walsh
President Obama traveled to Everglades National Park in Florida Wednesday to commemorate Earth Day and highlight the effects climate change is having on America’s public lands. But recent efforts from Senate Republicans are threatening the very program that helped protect the iconic national park and hundreds of others across the country.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing Wednesday morning to examine possible ways to limit the use and effectiveness of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), a 50-year-old program that will expire in September without congressional reauthorization. In addition to helping fund protection of Florida’s Everglades National Park, the LWCF has supported the creation of more than 40,000 local outdoor recreation projects and helped protect more than 7 million acres of land across the country.
At Wednesday’s hearing, ranking member Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) defended the LWCF, calling for permanent reauthorization and full funding.
“We should remember on Earth Day that the Earth is lasting much longer than us, and the question is what good stewardship we are providing in the meantime,” she said. “So this iconic program that has helped to protect many of our nation’s iconic and most popular national parks, forests and public lands is, I think, a treasure in itself.”
President Obama also called on Congress to fully fund the LWCF in his Earth Day speech Wednesday.
Funded through revenues from offshore oil and gas development fees, the budget-neutral LWCF has attracted broad bipartisan support in the past. However, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is among a group of members in Congress who are arguing for significant changes to its structure, including diverting and placing restrictions on funding for the program.
At a House hearing last week, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) pushed back on proposals to alter the LWCF, saying that “diverting money from this fund away from its original purpose would set a dangerous precedent, and I hope that’s not the direction that this Congress goes.”
Attacking conservation laws and critical environmental programs is not new for this Congress. According to an analysis released last week, in the first 100 days of 2015, the new Republican-led Congress voted more for fossil fuel and anti-environmental priorities than on any other legislative area. In the Senate, 44 percent of all roll call votes were cast on energy and environmental topics in this Congress’s first 100 days, including on approving the Keystone XL pipeline, blocking action to address climate change, and selling off America’s public lands.
The new Congress’s anti-environmental efforts are summarized in a new video released today by the Center for American Progress:
The Senate hearing to undermine what is known as America’s best parks program, the LWCF, is not only fossil fuel-focused priority that Republicans are pushing on Earth Day.
“It used to be that even when Republicans spent significant time trying to undermine our environmental statutes, they would at least use Earth Day as tool to trumpet some small, consensus environmental bills with small improvements,” said Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) in his opening remarks at a House subcommittee markup today on a bill to block the Administration’s Clean Power Plan. “Now, we don’t even get that. Now, we have a Republican Majority whose message seems to be, ‘Happy Earth Day: let’s pollute the planet.’”
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.
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EPA’s Proposed Carbon Rule Would Create Hundreds Of Thousands Of Jobs, Report Says
The solar industry is one sector where the Clean Power Plan could boost jobs.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Jeff Gentner
The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan will add more than a quarter of a million jobs to the U.S. economy by 2040, according to a new economic analysis.
Researchers at private consulting firm Industrial Economics and the University of Maryland-based Interindustry Economic Research Fund credit efficiency improvements and lower electricity bills with adding about 273,000 jobs over the next 26 years. The analysts project that the plan will add 74,000 jobs by 2020. The findings support the EPA’s contention that the Clean Power Plan will not hurt the economy.
“Improvements in energy efficiency associated with the Clean Power Plan will reduce demand for electricity and, by extension, reduce electricity costs for households and businesses,” the report states. The projected employment gains are equal to “roughly one month of healthy job gains.”
The report, released earlier this month, flies in the face of claims from pro-coal politicians, regulators, and businesses, who say the Clean Power Plan will raise electricity prices, destroy jobs, and otherwise ruin the American economy. The Clean Power Plan sets limits for allowable levels of carbon emissions from the electricity sector, with an overall goal of reducing electricity sector emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The rule allows states to come up with their own ways to meet those limits.
“Their rules will shutter coal-fueled power plants, putting Americans out of work, but, most importantly, putting the American dream out of reach,” Mike Duncan, president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, said at a press conference last week. Duncan spoke after a Circuit Court of Appeals hearing on a lawsuit brought against the EPA by a coal company and 16 states, including Louisiana.
Louisiana is 31st in the nation in coal power generation, with six operating coal-fired power plants. The Louisiana Public Service Commission has estimated the proposed plan will cost that state between $4 billion and $6 billion between 2020 and 2030, according to Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell.
“The amount of money we are costing our power people… is just horrible,” Caldwell said after the hearing last week.
Coal-fired power plants are responsible for 39 percent of the United States’ electricity generation and three-quarters of the sector’s carbon emissions. It is expected that under the Clean Power Plan, there would be loss of coal-industry jobs, but the researchers found that increased retail spending — including on efficiency projects — and growth in other forms of electricity generation, such as renewables, would more than compensate for the coal job losses.
Proponents of the Clean Power Plan say the benefits are myriad. One study found that by 2020 the Clean Power Plan could prevent 3,500 premature deaths, as well as with 1,000 hospital visits for heart and lung problems, and 220 fewer heart attacks every year.
The EPA is expected to issue the final rule this summer.
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McDonald’s Commits To Zero Deforestation Throughout Its Entire Supply Chain
McDonalds has pledged to end deforestation in its entire supply chain by 2030.
CREDIT: Shutterstock
On Tuesday, McDonald’s announced that it would end deforestation throughout its entire supply chain, a move that will affect the company’s beef, poultry, palm oil, coffee, and packaging. The company will start taking steps to implement more sustainable practices immediately, with the goal of ending deforestation in its supply chain completely by 2030.
“I think its a really huge step,” Lael Goodman, analyst for the Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told ThinkProgress, “especially coming from a fast food giant.”
McDonald’s is the largest fast food company in the world, with more than 36,000 restaurants in over 100 countries — a reach that gives the announcement global implications in an industry that has lagged behind other sectors of the food world in terms of deforestation commitments.
“Seeing this from the leader is signaling both to other fast food companies and other players working in this space that it is something that consumers are demanding,” Goodman said.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) began exerting pressure on McDonald’s last year with the release of a palm oil scorecard, which found that the fast food giant had “little commitment” to sourcing palm oil from sustainable sources. Along with other advocacy groups, like Forest Heroes, UCS launched campaigns on social media to demand McDonald’s begin sourcing its palm oil from places with no-deforestation commitments. Outside of the public eye, UCS also worked with McDonald’s to advise the company about deforestation policies.
“We have been sharing info with McDonald’s for more than a year to help them understand the risk,” Goodman said, noting that the company consulted with UCS before releasing their commitments yesterday.
The new zero-deforestation policy impacts 3,100 of McDonald’s direct suppliers, but also applies to a complex network of indirect suppliers; McDonald’s said that it would work with suppliers and expert advisers to ensure that the products are sourced in a sustainable fashion and will report progress “at least annually” in its sustainability report. As signatories of the United Nation’s New York Declaration on Forests, McDonald’s has committed to ending deforestation throughout its entire supply chain by no later than 2030. For priority products with a high connection to deforestation — beef, poultry, coffee, packaging, and palm oil — the company intends to end deforestation in the supply chain ahead of the 2030 limit.
In its eight-point commitment, McDonald’s promised to end deforestation of high carbon stock forests — forests that act as crucial carbon stores and also harbor high levels of biodiversity. Often, these forests are cleared to make way for plantations or open up land for grazing. McDonald’s also pledged to stop sourcing products from peatlands, which store large amounts of carbon that can be released into the atmosphere when the areas are developed.
A 2012 policy brief compiled by two scientific groups estimated that tropical deforestation — excluding emissions from peatland and soil degradation — releases 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, an amount that’s the same as the emissions of 572,958,758 passenger vehicles. Worldwide, agricultural development is the leading cause of deforestation, with developers clearing land to make room for pasture for cattle, palm oil plantations, or soy cropland (grown to feed livestock).
Within the past year, the palm oil industry has become increasingly interested in improving its sustainability, with global suppliers broadly committing to sourcing palm oil in a way that prevents deforestation. Currently, 96 percent of global palm oil production is protected by no-deforestation policies.
In late March, agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland committed to a no-deforestation policy for both palm and soy, making it the first company to extend no-deforestation commitments to cover soy production outside of the Brazilian Amazon, an area that is especially vulnerable to agricultural development. As of 2012, soy production had contributed to the clearing of some 80 million hectares of forests in the Amazon basin.
While Goodman praised McDonald’s announcement, she stressed that the company needs to release specific details about how it plans on achieving its goals, as well as consider moving its deforestation timeline up.
“We’re really hoping for a sooner timeline,” Goodman said. “Given the state of the industry, we know its possible to do it much sooner than that and we’re hoping that their deadline for at least palm oil will be sooner than that because forests are at risk now.”
The post McDonald’s Commits To Zero Deforestation Throughout Its Entire Supply Chain appeared first on ThinkProgress.
The Link Between Fracking Activity And Earthquakes Is Getting Stronger
This photo shows Texas resident Barbara Brown pointing to a one of several cracks on an exterior wall of her home, Saturday, June 21, 2014, in Reno.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez
We’re only mid-week, but it’s already been a big one for human-induced earthquakes.
On Tuesday, scientists from Southern Methodist University added to the growing body of research linking small earthquakes to oil and gas wastewater disposal. That body of research is particularly important to the popular but controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which produces significantly more wastewater than conventional drilling.
On the same day, Oklahoma’s government announced that it would officially embrace that large body of scientific research, and start figuring out how to deal with its growing earthquake problem. In the last decade, Oklahoma has experienced a dramatic increase in earthquakes — an increase that has happened in tandem with the spread of wastewater disposal from fracking operations across the state.
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CREDIT: OKLAHOMA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
The research published by SMU scientists on Tuesday is similar to what we’ve seen before. Published in the journal Nature Communications, it links a series of small earthquakes in Azle, Texas to oil and gas activity — specifically, the process of injecting drilling wastewater underground. According to the research, the faults that shifted below Dallas-Fort Worth “have not budged in hundreds of millions of years.”
Like other research, the SMU study doesn’t definitively say that wastewater injections caused the quakes. It just says that they’re the most likely explanation.
What makes the Texas study a bit different than other research linking human activity to seismic events is that it suspects wastewater injection alone is not causing the quakes. Instead, it asserts that there’s a specific thing workers do when extracting fuel and performing wastewater injection that may be triggering them.
According to the research, quakes may be made more likely when workers extract gas and groundwater from one side of a fault line, then inject water back into the ground on the other side of the fault. That is slightly different than what other research has suggested — that wastewater injected anywhere near fault lines can change the stress of those faults to the point of failure, causing earthquakes.
Still, the basic idea is the same: human activity, via oil and gas watewater injection, is the most likely explanation for these unusual strings of earthquakes happening across the country.
“It’s what we figured all along, it’s not really new news to us,” said Azle Mayor Alan Brundrett, according to NBC’s Dallas affiliate. “It’s just confirming our suspicious that we’ve had.”
The fact that scientists haven’t been able to make definitive statements about oil and gas activity’s connection to earthquakes has been the main argument of industry supporters when these issues arise in states, particularly Texas and Oklahoma. The Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas activity, has been resistant to concerns that fracking activity may be causing quakes in the state. In response to Tuesday’s study, the agency’s staff seismologist Craig Pearson said it “raises many questions with regard to its methodology,” but declined to say exactly what those questions were before meeting with the researchers.
In Oklahoma, which is now seeing anywhere from two to 20 small earthquakes every day, state officials have been extremely reluctant to say drilling is the cause. That is, until Tuesday.
In saying oil and gas was likely responsible for the state’s earthquake epidemic, the state launched a website detailing why earthquakes are happening and what the state is doing to stop them.
“Oklahoma state agencies are not waiting to take action,” the website reads. “The Oklahoma Corporation Commission has been implementing evolving directives for wastewater disposal operators, known as the ‘traffic light’ system, based on the general view that injection of disposal of wastewater into the basement rock presents a potential risk for triggering seismicity.”
The post The Link Between Fracking Activity And Earthquakes Is Getting Stronger appeared first on ThinkProgress.
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