Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 89

Caution, Trolling Ahead: Fossil Fuel Advocates Are Hoping You Fail Their Latest Challenge

The oil and gas advocacy group Western Energy Alliance (WEA) is waging a social media campaign that challenges people to not use fossil fuels for five days. To the group, the point of the Fossil Fuel Free Challenge is to show how impossible it would be to live without fossil fuels right now.

“Eliminate fossil fuels! We hear it all the time,” says the campaign’s website. “Sounds easy, right? Then pledge to live fossil fuel free for a week and see what it’s really like.” The site shows a yes button that agrees to the challenge and a no button that says “no, life’s pretty good with fossil fuels.” Clicking on the yes button brings up a new page.

“For five days don’t use any product made from, delivered using or operating on oil, natural gas or their associated products,” the website then instructs. “That means staying clear of anything that uses gasoline, oil or natural gas. Even electricity, plastics, rubber and synthetic fibers are to be avoided.”

At first glance, the argument may seem compelling. Many products most people rely on were made with petroleum-based materials, most food comes to the table transported by fossil fuel-powered machines, and the majority of most people’s electricity and heating still comes from fossil fuels. Because beating the challenge is extremely difficult, the campaign’s intent is to show how essential and positive fossil fuels are to society.

“We’re trying to get people to think about how fossil [fuels] are used in their daily lives,” Kathleen Sgamma, WEA’s vice president of government and public affairs, told ThinkProgress.

To social scientists and climate communications experts, however, reality is more complicated. They say this is a straw man argument that uses a false dichotomy to attempt to exploit the cognitive dissonance people experience when their attitudes don’t match with their actions.

Straw man

A straw man argument ignores the actual position held by the opposition, substituting an exaggerated version that would be impossible. The Fossil Fuel Free Challenge site tells the user to go fossil fuel free: “live the life environmentalists promote through protests and social media activism.”

The problem with this logic is that no one is saying it is possible to shift completely off fossil fuels at this very moment.

“The WEA campaign is based on a straw man argument,” Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, told ThinkProgress. “I don’t know anyone who argues we should stop using all fossil fuels this very instant. Most people understand this is about a transition from the 19th and 20th century fossil-fuel-based energy system to the clean energy system of the 21st century. That won’t happen overnight, but it also can’t wait a hundred years.”

[image error]

A sign from the People’s Climate March in 2014.

CREDIT: Flickr user Takver

The WEA did not provide examples of environmental messaging making the case that people could or should completely extricate themselves from the fossil fuel-based economic system immediately. They directed ThinkProgress to search the internet for fossil fuel protests, which would make clear that “numerous groups want to end fossil fuel use.” The discrepancy here is the timing — most rhetoric, no matter how heated, talks about a transition to a clean energy economy, or a carbon-free future.

“Whether that’s today or a few years from now,” Sgamma said, “the point is that ‘fossil fuel free’ means your cell phone, computer, workout clothes, and modern medicine all disappear.”

Industry uses petroleum products as raw materials to manufacture essential goods. It would be concerning and unrealistic to argue for a complete moratorium on that, or the use of fossil fuels to run factories, power plants, and most of the global economy. Yet innovation is allowing people to have the choice of sustainable alternative options in materials, heating, and fuel sources for electricity providers. And energy efficiency advances are often the cheapest option to eliminate waste.

“No one is saying that you can get off fossil fuels tomorrow, but that we need to make the transition as quickly as possible,” Jaime Henn, communications director of 350.org, told ThinkProgress. He compared the WEA effort to typewriter salesmen daring people not to use their machines while the age of computers was taking off.

Fortunately, the world only has to slow its fossil fuel use right now, and soon flatline the growth of greenhouse gas emissions before dropping fossil fuels by the end of the century, according to the world’s top climate scientists.

“WEA’s gimmicky and cynical campaign is premised on the logical fallacy of a false dilemma,” Jessica Goad, advocacy director at the Center for Western Priorities, told ThinkProgress. “No one is arguing that Americans should turn off their lights or stop driving their cars today. But our nation is now positioned to facilitate a transition to a clean energy economy, instead of continued reliance on the energy resources of yesteryear.”

For example, last week companies like Nike, Walmart, and Proctor & Gamble pledged to transition to 100 percent renewable energy. This month, Aspen, Colorado became the third 100 percent renewable energy city in America. A recent analysis rated the United States number one in the world in its attractiveness to renewable energy investment and deployment opportunities.

“Bottom line — large majorities want to decrease fossil fuel use and want to increase renewables,” Leiserowitz. “And they’d like to get started immediately, not wait.”

Cognitive dissonance, false dichotomies, and justifying the system

Sgamma compared renewable energy advocates to anti-vaxxers or homeopathic medicine practitioners who refuse modern medicine in a recent blog post.

There is a reason that WEA’s argument could be compelling to some — to flip the script, as Sgamma put it. It takes advantage of the cognitive dissonance between widespread support for renewable energy, and an economy and society that still needs petroleum products to function.

“Highlighting that ‘keep it in the ground’ may make a nice protest sign but [it] has significant negative consequences in daily life,” Sgamma said. “That catches people’s attention.”

“The Fossil Fuel Free Challenge points out the conflict between most Americans’ support of clean energy and their everyday behaviors, which remain highly dependent on fossil fuels,” said Karen Akerlof, research assistant professor at George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication. Akerlof continued:

Human beings need to believe that they are consistent in their attitudes and their actions. When they realize that those aren’t in alignment, it makes them uncomfortable, a phenomenon called “cognitive dissonance.” When people experience cognitive dissonance it can lead to them either changing either the way they think, or how they act, to again become consistent in their attitudes and actions. What Western Energy Alliance is betting on is that when Americans are faced with that conflict, they will be more likely to soften their attitudes about fossil fuels than stop using them.

It isn’t a bad bet, but it is also slightly dirty pool, as it relies on presenting a false dichotomy about Americans’ energy choices. Whether or not to use fossil fuels isn’t the real choice that Americans face; the decision is about the ways in which they can become more energy efficient and use more energy from clean sources in order to protect the health of their communities.

It’s hard to feel comfortable about disrupting the status quo. The WEA’s challenge relies on not just fear and anger but also confusion and the basic social science behind the psychological advantage of the status quo. The campaign’s argument suffers from negative effects of what social psychologists call system justification theory. The theory says that people evaluate, say, the current economic system based on “existential needs to feel safety and reassurance,” according to a 2010 study.

“These needs give rise to a motivation to perceive the system as fair, legitimate, beneficial, and stable, as well as the desire to maintain and protect the status quo,” the study said. Climate deniers’ arguments suffer from the same negative effects of system justification theory.

It is much easier to assume that the only economy and energy system most people on the planet have ever known is here to stay, and also that any benefits yielded by that system are caused by fossil fuels.

But just as electricity from a geothermal plant can power a streetlight just as well as electricity from a coal plant, those systemic benefits are not intrinsically tied to the energy sources of the last few centuries. It’s easy for the fossil fuel industry to rely on our brains to justify the current system, though.

“They are driving home the message of how dependent we are on the existing system, and are correct in assuming that this will lead people to support that existing system more vigorously and resist changes to it, insofar as those changes are seen as a threat to everything we care about,” Irina Feygina, a New York University social science researcher who studies system justification theory told ThinkProgress.

Feygina said that the logical response to this should be “yes, this is the amazing world we have created by using energy, and if we want to preserve it and ensure its success we have to be very smart about how we protect it.” Using fossil fuels threatens to undermine the system that society requires to sustain itself in the long run.

“We’re countering misinformation that would have people believe that fossil fuels are dangerous,” Sgamma said. They provide the comfortable lifestyle many people enjoy cheaply and reliably, she said, whereas renewables are unreliable, expensive, and not up to the task.

The problem is that in both the short and long term, fossil fuels are indeed dangerous. They spill, leak, explode, and contaminate air and water. They also release greenhouse gases that cause dangerous climate change.

“The fossil fuel industry wants to know if we can live a week without fossil fuels” Elijah Zarlin, CREDO climate campaigns director, told ThinkProgress. “I’m sure the irony is lost on them that if we keep burning fossil fuels, we can’t live at all.”

“This desperate and depraved campaign treats Americans like idiots, but it’s clear who is really deluding themselves here,” Zarlin said. “With better alternatives available, do these executives and ad-men seriously expect us to sing the praises of fossil fuels as our wells run dry, our farmers can’t feed us, and our homes are burned to the ground or washed away by floods and rising seas?”

The messenger

Apart from the problematic challenge itself, the WEA is not just an industry group advocating for their members’ products. Best known for its advocacy of oil and gas development and fights against fracking regulations, the Colorado-based group also famously hired a PR professional known as “Dr. Evil” to advise members how to use “fear and anger” to win fights with environmentalists.

Its CEO, Tim Wigley, has experience with corporate astroturf campaigns and called people opposed to oil and gas development in their communities “long-haired, maggot-infested hippie freaks.”

This has done little to shrink its influence. Republican presidential candidates have been meeting the group’s members at its Denver offices, answering questions about their commitment to fossil fuel development.

The WEA is using a different tactic to advocate for fossil fuels than past campaigns of this nature. Every March, people around the world participate in “Earth Hour” by turning off their lights and electronic devices for an hour to promote awareness of energy conservation. In response, the Competitive Enterprise Institute encourages people to celebrate “Human Achievement Hour” by wasting energy — to turn on all their lights in order to “enjoy the human achievement of light when we want it.” This avoids the step of pretending to have people wrestle with the decision of using fossil fuels or not — it straightforwardly celebrates the human achievement of wastefulness.

The Fossil Fuel Free Challenge is more of a thought experiment, but it does make clear that decarbonizing the economy will require more than just individual choices — system-wide incentives to switch to sustainable practices and renewable fuels are critical.

“Their challenge demonstrates that finding a solution to our problem is not a question of each individual changing their behavior,” said Feygina. “It’s a question of an integrated transition of the energy generation system that maintains and protects our system — not only in the short term but in the long term as well.”

The WEA’s Fossil Fuel Free Challenge runs through Friday, October 2nd.

Tags

Fossil FuelsFrackingOil and GasRenewable EnergyWestern Energy Alliance

The post Caution, Trolling Ahead: Fossil Fuel Advocates Are Hoping You Fail Their Latest Challenge appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Ohio Lawmakers Say Obama Is The Reason They Won’t Extend The Renewable Portfolio Standard

When Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) signed a bill freezing his state’s renewable portfolio standard, it was widely accepted that he was offering the legislature — dominated by his own party — an opportunity to rethink destroying the policy.

Now, a year later, the committee tasked with considering the RPS, which requires that a certain amount of Ohio’s energy come from renewable sources such as wind and solar, has come back: They still want a freeze.

This puts Kasich, who is running for his party’s presidential nomination, in an awkward position. The freeze hurt Ohio’s nascent wind industry and turned off attractive investors, supporters say. Moreover, most Republicans actually support policies that encourage clean energy, and the governor might not be able to afford positioning himself in opposition to those voters.

In fact, he responded quickly Wednesday to the committee’s proposal.

“A continued freeze of Ohio’s energy standards is unacceptable,” Joe Andrews, a spokesman for the governor, told ThinkProgress in an email.

A continued freeze of Ohio’s energy standards is unacceptable

The Energy Mandates Study Committee recommended freezing the renewable energy and energy efficiency standards — under which utilities were required to reduce consumption by 22 percent and get 12.5 percent of electricity from renewable sources — “indefinitely,” according to a draft of the report provided to ThinkProgress on Wednesday.

Now that the Energy Mandates Study Committee has submitted a recommendation, the legislature will be tasked with developing a bill to address the issue. “We stand willing to work with the Ohio General Assembly to craft a bill that supports a diverse mix of reliable, low-cost energy sources while preserving the gains we have made in the state’s economy,” Andrews said, but he would not speculate on whether the governor would veto a bill that continued the freeze.

The governor’s statement could effect the outcome of the policy.

If Kasich vetoes the resulting bill, Ohio’s legislature will have a chance to overturn it with a two-thirds vote, and both the House and the Senate have Republican super-majorities. But one Democratic state representative applauded Kasich’s statement, saying it might put the legislature off from adopting the committee’s recommendation.

“I fully expect that that could move the needle away from an indefinite freeze,” State Rep. Michael Stinziano told ThinkProgress. And he was doubtful a bill to continue the freeze could overcome a veto.

“I don’t think they would have the unanimous votes in either chamber,” he said.

The legislative committee recommended continuing the freeze because of the Clean Power Plan, an EPA rule released in August that requires states to lower carbon emissions from power plants.

“First, there are significant legal questions as to whether the federal government has the right to govern state electricity policy,” the group of legislators wrote. “Second, freezing the Mandates indefinitely should provide the [Ohio Environmental Protection Agency] maximum flexibility to recommend a State Implementation Program… as well as corresponding legislation targeted to meet that goal.”

But whether or not the Clean Power Plan withstands the legal challenges Ohio and other states are bringing, renewable energy is already becoming big business. According the American Wind Energy Association, an industry group, Ohio has the potential to see $57 million in annual property tax revenue and more than $26 million in annual lease payments to Ohio landowners by 2030. Rural landowners already receive $3 million a year, the group says, and the wind industry has spent $775 million in capital investment in the state.

But investments in renewable energy are not the only economic benefit the state sees from an RPS. As more and more companies commit to going green, an RPS signals that a state is on their side.

We are trying to attract jobs, especially those out of Silicon Valley

“We are trying to attract jobs, especially those out of Silicon Valley,” Stinziano told ThinkProgress. Amazon, for example, which has committed to using renewable energy (as have many of the tech sector’s biggest players), came to Ohio.

“Wind was a big factor in their decision,” Stinziano said, but now the company buys its energy from other states. Continuing the the RPS freeze “is counterproductive for creating jobs in the state of Ohio,” he added.

Some groups questioned whether the committee, which consisted of 13 legislators, seven of whom have ties to the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, was ever going to find in favor of clean energy policies.

“What played out over the years in the General Assembly while Kasich has been in office is a repeated effort by utility interests with help from ALEC legislators and front groups, such as Strata Policy, to prevent clean energy from succeeding in a state that relies so heavily on coal,” said Matthew Kasper, a fellow at the Energy and Policy Institute.

This pattern, he said, could bode poorly for the beleaguered candidate. “Most voters, Democrat or Republican, don’t want to elect officials that enact policy shaped by just a handful of people listening to special interests.”

Tags

ALECCoalKasichOhioRenewable EnergyRPSStinzianoWind

The post Ohio Lawmakers Say Obama Is The Reason They Won’t Extend The Renewable Portfolio Standard appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Climate Action Avoids Over $300 Trillion In Damages At Super Low Cost

The present value of the damage caused by human-caused climate change from a moderate warming scenario is an astonishing $400 trillion, according to analysis from Cambridge University’s Judge business school. The author, Chris Hope, an expert on the economics of climate change, told me that the “corresponding value for a low emissions scenario is about $80 trillion.”

We already knew the cost of climate action — the cost of achieving the lower emissions 2°C total warming scenario — was super-cheap without counting the benefit of the avoided climate damage. Now it’s clear that the cost of inaction is simply staggering, even more so when you start to factor in key carbon-cycle feedbacks that pretty much every climate model ignores, like the thawing permafrost.

Hope is the lead author of a new Nature Climate Change study, which found “Under the A1B scenario, CO2 and CH4 released from permafrost increases the mean net present value of the impacts of climate change by US$43 trillion.”

A net present value of $43 trillion is an immense extra cost from the carbon dioxide and methane (CH4) released from the permafrost. The A1B scenario is a good approximation of where the world will be headed after Paris — after you add up all of the commitments that the various nations of the world have made leading up to the big December climate talks.

Hope’s original analysis of the cost of inaction included, for example, estimates of the impacts of sea level rise, “agricultural losses and air-conditioning costs,” as well as costs associated with “human health and ecosystem impacts.” The new analysis adds in the extra warming from the thawing of the permafrost, which contains 1.7 trillion tons of frozen carbon, almost twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere.

In its 2013 review of the scientific literature on permafrost, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found:

It is virtually certain that near-surface permafrost extent at high northern latitudes will be reduced as global mean surface temperature increases. By the end of the 21st century, the area of permafrost near the surface (upper 3.5 m) is projected to decrease by between 37% (RCP2.6) to 81% (RCP8.5) for the model average.

The top 10 feet of permafrost are headed towards oblivion in the IPCC’s no-action case (RCP8.5) — but at least most of it appears to survive this century in the 2°C scenario (RCP2.6). Given the huge amount of carbon in the permafrost, you might think the IPCC would factor in some of that carbon in their prognosis. But they have always been super-cautious to a fault (see “IPCC’s Planned Obsolescence: Fifth Assessment Report Will Ignore Crucial Permafrost Carbon Feedback”).

Back in 2011, a major study found that the carbon feedback from thawing permafrost will likely add 0.4°F to 1.5°F to total global warming by 2100.

The new study led by Hope looks at the impact of additional warming this century at the low end of that range, about 0.3°F.

Although one can’t directly compare Hope’s original analysis to this new one, Hope told me that avoiding the extra warming from the permafrost “would probably add about $40 trillion to the mean savings.” That would mean aggressive climate action would avoid damages with a net present value of some $350 trillion.

So climate action remains a figurative “no brainer.” And climate inaction remains a literal no-brainer.

Tags

Climate ChangePermafrost

The post Climate Action Avoids Over $300 Trillion In Damages At Super Low Cost appeared first on ThinkProgress.

EPA Rule Aims To Curb Toxic Coal Plant Pollution In Waterways

The Environmental Protection Agency announced new rules Wednesday aimed at curbing the amount of pollution that power plants dump into streams.

The rule, known as the Steam Electric Power Generating Effluent Guidelines, targets steam electric power plants — plants that use steam to drive the electric generator — that dump large amounts of toxic pollutants into streams every year. The rule, according to the EPA, marks the first time the federal government has set limits on the amount of toxic metals that power plants can discharge into streams. The EPA estimates that the rule will keep 1.4 billion pounds of toxic metals and other pollutants out of waterways each year.

According to the EPA, electric plants dump 64,400 pounds of lead, 2,820 pounds of mercury, 79,200 pounds of arsenic, and 1,970,000 pounds of aluminum into the country’s waterways every year. As the agency points out, that’s bad news for environmental health and for the health of people who depend on these streams for drinking water. Some of these pollutants, including arsenic, are known carcinogens, while others, such as lead, have been linked to developmental and reproductive problems. This pollution has also been linked to fish die-offs, according to the EPA.

“Burning coal creates a lot of heavy metals — pollution that’s dangerous for communities and the environment,” Dalal Aboulhosn, the Sierra Club’s senior Washington representative for Clean Water Policy, told ThinkProgress. “These are things that not only bio-accumulate — or build up in the fish we eat — but are heavy metals that cause a lot of health problems in vulnerable populations like children and the elderly.”

[image error]

How power plants produce waste.

CREDIT: EPA

The rule — which marks the first time the EPA has updated its steam electric power plant guidelines since 1982 — affects about 23,600 miles of waterways that are currently being polluted by steam electric plants. These plants discharge pollution upstream or close to 100 public drinking water intakes, according to the agency. The EPA states that about 134 of the 1,080 electric power plants in the country will have to “make new investments” to comply with the new rule.

Aboulhosn, however, is confident that it won’t bee too difficult or expensive for power plant operators to meet the new rule’s standards. The EPA estimates that compliance costs for the rule will total around $480 million each year, while monetary benefits will total anywhere from $415 to $566 million.

“This is a completely fixable problem, and there’s proven, affordable technology that can be implemented to stop pollution from getting into waterways,” she said.

Options for stopping the pollution include “dry handling” the waste, which Aboulhosn said does “exactly what it sounds like it does.”

“Instead of putting heavy metals into water, which allows them to move more freely into the environment and leach into groundwater and fish, dry handling prevents that type of contamination,” she said.

Aboulhosn said that the EPA’s decision to act on this issue was long overdue and hugely important. So far, there hasn’t been much pushback on the rule, but she said she wouldn’t be surprised if industry advocates and lawmakers began including the rule in their “war on coal” rhetoric.

“A lot of people understand that burning coal produces smoke, and pollutants that we inhale can cause asthma and bad air quality days,” she said. “What we don’t realize is that as we clean up those smokestacks — which is improving health of communities around us and is being done affordably — that pollution is going into wastewater streams.”

The pollutants, she said are “not just disappearing — they’re moving into other avenues and moving into waterways, and wastewater is getting more and more toxic as we are cleaning up air.”

Earthjustice, a group that sued the EPA in 2010 in an attempt to force the agency to take action on the issue, also praised the agency’s decision.

“We don’t drive cars or fly airplanes based on 1982 safety standards, so why should we allow power plants to dump poisons into our waters under such outdated standards?” Earthjustice attorney Thomas Cmar said in a statement. “Today’s rule finally ends the decades-old industry practice of using massive amounts of water to move toxic waste out of power plants and into unlined impoundments, which ultimately goes into our rivers, lakes and streams.”

Tags

CoalEPAWater Pollution

The post EPA Rule Aims To Curb Toxic Coal Plant Pollution In Waterways appeared first on ThinkProgress.

New Leader Of Canada’s Largest Oil-Producing Province Is Ready To Steer It Away From Fossil Fuels

In May, Rachel Notley sent shock waves through Canadian politics — and the entire world — when she and her left-leaning New Democratic Party ousted Alberta’s long-reigning conservative government in the province’s elections. Environmentalists quietly cheered the results, hopeful — though not certain — that the new premier would help steer Canada’s most oil-rich province away from fossil fuels.

Now, it looks like environmentalists can cheer a little louder.

In an interview with the Guardian, Notely previewed her forthcoming energy policy, which seeks to shut down Alberta’s coal plants, clean up its oil industry, and make a robust switch over to wind and solar power.

“I don’t think we are defined by energy. Certainly in the short to medium term that is an asset that we have, so we have to look at how we develop it carefully and responsibly because of the obligation we have to the people employed in the industry,” Notley told the Guardian, adding, “Do I see that as our reason for being 100 years from now? Well, I hope we will have learned a lesson of diversification by then.”

Alberta is Canada’s largest oil-producing province, home to 78 percent of the country’s oil production. And it has the natural resources necessary to produce even greater sums of oil — the northern part of Alberta sits atop a vast reservoir of heavy crude oil, potentially as much as 2 trillion recoverable barrels, the third-largest source of crude in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

But the mining of those tar sands has led to local environmental consequences, including deforestation and forest degradation. And the rampant increase in tar sands production — 107 percent between 2005 and 2012 — has made Canada’s energy sector its primary source of greenhouse gas emissions, surpassing the transportation sector for the first time in the country’s history. Because of the greenhouse-gas intensive nature of tar sands production, many scientists and environmental activists argue that expanding the mining of tar sands crude is incompatible with halting global climate change.

Notley told the Guardian that fighting climate change while preserving the jobs created by tar sands production would be a delicate balancing act.

“I want to change the direction, bend the curve and do it as effectively as we can while maintaining jobs that are important to Alberta. People deserve to see government both at the federal and provincial levels that are committed to very significantly changing the rate of greenhouse gas emissions coming out of both Alberta and Canada,” she said.

As the Guardian points out, that comment places Notley directly at odds with Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper, who has been a strong supporter of the tar sands industry since taking office in 2006. Under Harper’s leadership, Canada has become one of the world’s most notorious opponents to climate action, pulling the country out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2011 when it failed to meet its promised emissions cuts. Since then, Canada’s emissions have only grown, and the country is expected to fail to meet its promised 2020 target — instead, it’s projected that the country’s emissions will increase 2 percent each year until 2020. This October marks Canada’s 42nd federal election, however, so the country’s environmental tide could turn if Harper isn’t re-elected.

Some scientists have argued that in order to avoid catastrophic climate change, the majority of Alberta’s tar sands will need to stay in the ground, though Notley seemed more interested in regulating the oil industry’s emissions rather than stopping them altogether.

“We need to do much better with greenhouse gas emissions,” she told the Guardian. “We need to take our environmental responsibilities seriously if we are going to have support for our products in other markets that have greater environmental concerns.”

Earlier this week, national New Democratic Party leader and Prime Minister candidate Tom Mulcair proposed a national cap-and-trade system to fight climate change. Notley expressed resistance to Mulcair’s proposal, however, arguing that a cap-and-trade system would take funds away from Alberta.

“Generally speaking cap and trade as one strategy is a bit problematic for us,” Notely told the Guardian. “It would turn into a fairly major cash transfer from Alberta to other places … We are going to be more focused on a strategy that allows us to take investment that goes into reducing emissions and keeping it in Alberta.”

Tags

AlbertaClimate ChangeTar Sands

The post New Leader Of Canada’s Largest Oil-Producing Province Is Ready To Steer It Away From Fossil Fuels appeared first on ThinkProgress.

TransCanada Fails To Bully Nebraska Landowners With Keystone Pipeline Eminent Domain Lawsuit

TransCanada, the Calgary-based company behind the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, has backed out of a lawsuit filed by more than 100 Nebraska landowners, the company announced Tuesday.

The energy company had been trying to gain access to private land along the proposed path of the tar sands pipeline, but had been held up legally by landowners who were opposed to letting the pipeline through their land. Now, instead of trying to gain access to that land through legal means, TransCanada will apply for a permit for Keystone XL with Nebraska’s Public Service Commission.

TransCanada says the decision will bring more certainty to Keystone XL’s route through Nebraska. But it also could cause further delays for the project, as a PSC approval can take a year or longer.

Previously, TransCanada sought to avoid the PSC approval process, choosing instead to give the state’s governor final approval over the project’s application in Nebraska. The law that gave the company the ability to choose was heavily challenged in court, but ultimately upheld.

Anti-pipeline activists in Nebraska applauded the news of TransCanada’s retreat from the lawsuit.

“This is a major victory for Nebraska landowners who refused to back down in the face of bullying by a foreign oil company,” said Jane Kleeb, director of Bold Nebraska, a group that’s been active in the anti-Keystone fight. “It has long been clear that TransCanada has no legal route through the state of Nebraska and no legal right to use eminent domain against landowners. Now they’ve recognized that they’ve lost in Nebraska and are desperately trying another tactic to see their risky pipeline built through our state.”

TransCanada has used eminent domain to gain access to private land to build Keystone XL in other states. But Nebraska’s hold-out landowners have made the state a battleground for land rights concerns surrounding Keystone XL. Nebraska was the only state in which landowners along Keystone XL’s route have successfully refused to let TransCanada on their land, turning down the company’s monetary offers.

Keystone XL has been embroiled in delays and debates for seven years. The 1,179-mile pipeline, which would ship tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast, has once again emerged as an election issue. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton came out against the project earlier this month, while Republican candidate Donald Trump has said the project would have “no impact” on the environment — despite its potential for spills and its contribution to climate change. Final approval for the project rests with President Obama.

“We are happy to continue this fight in the Nebraska PSC, but we are confident that it will never come to that,” Kleeb said in a statement. “We know President Obama understands that this pipeline is all risk and no reward for Americans. We call on him to do the right thing now and fully reject the permit once and for all.”

Tags

Keystone XLNebraskaTransCanada

The post TransCanada Fails To Bully Nebraska Landowners With Keystone Pipeline Eminent Domain Lawsuit appeared first on ThinkProgress.

‘Thirsty’ Concrete Soaks Up 1000 Gallons Of Water A Minute, Will Blow Your Mind

Imagine a huge, concrete mixing truck parked atop a black, asphalt-looking parking lot begins to unload a deluge of water, the stream hurtling towards the ground. But instead of pooling into puddles, the water vanishes. The truck keeps unloading water at a relentless pace, spilling over 1,000 gallons in a single minute, but the water never rests on the parking lot surface for longer than a few seconds before disappearing.

Sound like magic? Not when the parking lot is paved with a type of permeable concrete that can absorb 1,056 gallons of water every 60 seconds.

Permeable paving materials aren’t new — architects and urban designers have been using the material for more than a decade to pave pedestrian areas — but Topmix Permeable, a new paving material created by British building materials manufacturer Tarmac, is one of the first permeable pavements that has a practical application as concrete, meaning it could ostensibly hold more weight than early permeable pavements used for low-weight pedestrian environments. And since concrete is the second most-used product in the world, behind water, that opens up the potential for Topmix to reshape the way that cities pave their surfaces — and deal with stormwater.

As the world’s population continues to shift from rural to urban areas, natural drainage systems are being replaced with impermeable surfaces — mostly concrete — that hinder the environment’s ability to drain rainwater. In a forest, for instance, somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of rainwater is absorbed back into the ground — in urban areas, that absorption can fall to just 10 percent of rainwater. Humans have dealt with this by creating our own system of infrastructure — stormwater drainage systems and sewer systems — but much of this infrastructure is becoming increasingly outdated and unable to keep up with an increase in precipitation events linked to climate change.

“Permeable paving sources are extremely important. Otherwise, water gets concentrated into systems that were designed in ways that are becoming increasingly expensive,” Dana Buntrock, an architecture professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told ThinkProgress.

These days, storms are breaking records

When extreme precipitation events overwhelm a city’s available infrastructure, flash floods become an increasingly damaging threat. In 2007, intense floods throughout the United Kingdom caused some $4.8 billion in damage — but only 12 percent of flooding incidents were related to an overflow from rivers. The rest were caused by an overflow of surface water and inadequate drainage.

“These days, storms are breaking records,” Buntrock said. “With the volume of water that’s coming out of the sky, [dealing with stormwater] is going to be even more critical.”

In the United States, many of the nation’s oldest sewage systems were built to combine sewage with stormwater, sending the noxious mix out into whatever body of water was nearest for draining. Beginning in the 20th century, engineers figured out that this wasn’t the best way to deal with sewage, and began installing treatment plants at the end of their combined lines, treating stormwater and sewage together. But many of the country’s oldest cities — concentrated along the East Coast, where heavy precipitation events have been increasing most noticeably over the past 50 years — are still saddled with a legacy of antiquated water systems that dump a mix of stormwater and sewage into bodies of water during extreme rainfall events.

Beginning in the 1990s, Buntrock explained, the EPA began requiring cities to split new systems, and began promoting ways to address old problems with existing systems. Some cities, like Washington, D.C. and Minneapolis, have separated their old combined lines. Other cities, like Chicago, have invested billions in new infrastructure meant to guard against heavy precipitation events. But as the United States’ water infrastructure reaches a critical point in its life cycle, and as climate change threatens to overwhelm existing stormwater drainage systems with increasingly extreme precipitation events, architects see something like Tarmac’s Topmix Permeable as an intriguing solution.

Traditional impermeable concrete, usually sand-based, only needs to absorb 300 millimeters of water an hour — just enough to safely handle a major storm event every 100 years, according to Tech Insider. But Topmix employs something called no-fines concrete — a concrete that, instead of “fine” material like sand, is made of tiny pieces of crushed granite.

[image error]

A close-up of Topmix Permeable.

CREDIT: Tarmac

When rainwater falls on Topmix, it drains through the porous concrete and a base layer of gravel, filtering out pollutants like motor oil in the process. Eventually, the rainwater percolates down into the ground, recharging natural aquifers. In times of intense rainfall, the process helps keep stormwater infrastructure from becoming overwhelmed by effectively acting as a reservoir — pulling water out of the surface and into the ground, where it takes a while to seep back into the environment naturally.

Depending on the area that is being paved, Topmix offers three different design options, ranging from an option that allows all water to permeate back into the soil to an option that includes an impermeable membrane that allows water to be captured and used for things like irrigation or flushing toilets. If the ground isn’t capable of absorbing large amounts of rainwater, that water can simply be directed elsewhere — whether to a recycling system or into existing infrastructure.

“You wouldn’t have to build a $3 billion tank if you were actually just trickling it into the ground at the source,” Buntrock said of the technology’s potential appeal. “Cities don’t have a lot of money for their infrastructure, and they don’t want to spend it on things they don’t have to.”

Buntrock said that she envisioned a time when permeable surfaces are as common place as low-flow toilets or low-wattage lightbulbs — a sustainable material made commonplace through regulations.

At some point, governments that are really under pressure are going to say you can’t pave with non-permeable paving on this area

“Part of what I find fascinating is the way regulations are constantly moving us into innovating materials. Fire-resistant lumber comes about because we’re trying to reduce collective disasters,” she said. “At some point, governments that are really under pressure are going to say you can’t pave with non-permeable paving on this area, because the sewer systems are under stress.”

But don’t expect permeable concrete to become the default paving material just yet — so far, Topmix is only available in the United Kingdom, and the technology comes with its fair share of caveats. In the product literature, Tarmac warns against using Topmix to pave a heavily trafficked areas, suggesting it might be more appropriate for places like parking lots and driveways rather than highways. And although Tarmac claims the product has “excellent freeze-thaw” ability due to the amount of space between particles (allowing space for water to freeze), it’s unclear how the material would hold up in really cold climates.

It also wouldn’t offer much protection against sea level rise, which threatens to overrun coastal cities’ infrastructure with more frequent floods.

“That kind of technology is great for reducing rain-driven flooding and fluvial flooding (from rivers), which is a big issue. But it won’t make any difference to sea level rise,” Kristina Hill, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told ThinkProgress in an email. “Nearer to sea level, groundwater could actually come up as sea level rises, and there won’t be anywhere for the rainwater to go as it lands on that permeable pavement. The soil will already be saturated.”

Still, with climate change driving sea level rise and greater rain events, city planners, engineers, and architects are starting to think more about water as they plan for the future.

“In general, for a long time when we thought about environmental consequences in buildings, water wasn’t one of the big ones [that regulatory authorities] thought about — we thought about fire, we thought about human health and air quality,” Buntrock said. “Water is getting more attention now.”

Tags

Climate AdaptationClimate ChangeWater

The post ‘Thirsty’ Concrete Soaks Up 1000 Gallons Of Water A Minute, Will Blow Your Mind appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Jeb Bush’s Energy Plan Doesn’t Even Mention Renewables

Natural gas represents America’s “energy revolution,” and the way to economic growth is to deregulate, according to Republican presidential candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who unveiled his energy plan Tuesday during a speech in Pennsylvania.

Bush’s four-point plan would lift restrictions on exports of oil and natural gas; reduce “overregulation,” such as on fracking or coal power plants; allow states and tribes more say over their energy mix; and approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which he says has been “badly politicized.”

That is to say, three of the four tenets lift federal regulation in some way or another, while the fourth simply approves a fossil fuel infrastructure project.

Regulation “is repressing the ability for us to grow,” Bush said. And, truly, his plan is all in the name of economic growth.

We will never know how many other innovations have been lost due to overregulation

Increased fracking will result in more jobs and more growth, he said, citing a Harvard Business School paper on energy. But unlike that paper, Bush’s plan makes no mention of renewable energy of any kind, even though renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydro now account for half the new electricity generation in the United States. In more economic terms, solar accounted for one out of every 78 new jobs created nationwide last year.

But solar and wind are not the energy revolution; the energy revolution is fracking, according to Bush.

“We have, thus far, benefited from the energy revolution simply because Washington did not have time to quash it, but we will never know how many other innovations have been lost due to overregulation,” Bush’s campaign wrote in a Medium post.

In fact, the current laws making it difficult to export natural gas — which Bush wants to get rid of — may actually keep prices low for consumers and manufacturers. The U.S. Energy Information Administration found that a surge in the global natural gas supply would cause prices to rise “between 4 percent and 11 percent, on average, over [the EIA’s] current projections for the 2015 to 2040 period.”

It’s also worth considering how fracking has benefited in the United States from skirting environmental regulation. The so-called Halliburton Loophole, implemented during the George W. Bush presidency, exempts fracking companies from disclosing the chemicals they use, as long as they don’t use diesel. So fracking’s boom — while lowering the cost of natural gas — has also raised myriad environmental concerns, including groundwater contamination, earthquakes, and explosions. The practice has also proved difficult for localities to effectively regulate. After one town in Texas passed a ban on fracking, the state legislature passed a ban on banning fracking.

Bush announced his plan at Rice Energy, a shale gas company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “Your success makes environmentalists miserable,” he told Rice owners and employees gathered for the speech.

Meanwhile, renewable energy advocates say fossil fuels in general benefit from entrenched tax breaks, while wind and solar struggle for policies that will level the playing field.

Bush pointed at attempts to regulate methane — a greenhouse gas that can leak during natural gas extraction and processing — as one example of Washington’s overreach.

“Regulations need to be fixed,” he said. “You can always find the proper balance between the environmental good… and economic progress,” he said.

It’s true that there is a cost to transitioning to clean energy sources, but weighing the economic cost of the Clean Power Plan is not as simple as just tacking a little bit onto electricity bills. The cost of climate change, which congressional Republicans do not want to think about, is widely expected to be more than the cost of clean energy.

Bush rejects the mainstream science on climate change, and environmental groups were quick to shoot down his plan for its focus on fossil fuels.

“This dangerous energy plan isn’t ‘low energy’ or ‘high energy’ — it’s every type of ‘dirty energy,'” Sierra Club Political Director Khalid Pitts said. “This plan promises voters the world, but the truth is that the world is exactly what it would sacrifice to fatten the wallets of dirty energy conglomerates like Koch Industries–all while failing to tackle the moral imperative of the climate crisis and just days after Pope Francis made clear that this is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity.”

Ironically, Bush’s plan was announced on the same day new national poll results came out. The poll of likely voters found that 68 percent of conservative Republicans — support “taking action to accelerate the development and use of clean energy in the United States.” Overall, 84 percent of voters agreed with this approach.

More than three-quarters of GOP voters thought that accelerating the growth of clean energy would “create economic growth and jobs at home,” according to the poll, conducted on behalf of ClearPath, a conservative clean energy foundation.

Other GOP candidates have offered similar plans. Marco Rubio’s plan also calls for eliminating the oil export ban and for deregulation. Chris Christie, Lindsey Graham, and Bobby Jindal have all released full or partial plans describing a potential energy policy.

Tags

BushclimateEnergyEnvironmentEPAFrackingHalliburtonJebRegulation

The post Jeb Bush’s Energy Plan Doesn’t Even Mention Renewables appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Two Countries Join The Global Effort To Cut Carbon

As the unofficial Oct. 1 deadline approaches, more countries are submitting their intended nationally developed contributions (INDCs) to the United Nations, showing how they will contribute to carbon emission reductions. This week, Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia all added their plans to the list, offering two different pathways for developing nations.

Brazil’s pledge will keep carbon emissions 37 percent below 2005 levels through 2025, and 43 below 2005 levels by 2030.

This pledge does not actually represent a drop over Brazil’s current carbon emissions, because the country has dramatically lowered emissions in the past few years. In fact, a 2014 study showed that Brazil has kept 3.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere since 2004.

According to Brazil’s submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, “Brazil’s current actions in the global effort against climate change represent one of the largest undertakings by any single country to date, having reduced its emissions by 41 percent in 2012 in relation to 2005 levels.”

The zero illegal deforestation goal is actually a step back

However, it does represent a significant decrease in per capita emissions, which is especially significant in a growing economy. Brazil was the seventh-largest carbon emitter in 2013 overall, including land use, and it was the eighth-largest emitter per capita. But the country estimates by 2025 its current commitments will represent a 66 percent reduction of greenhouse gases as compared to GDP, and a 75 percent reduction by 2030, both in relation to 2005 levels. While GDP is not a predictor of population, or vice versa, its critical to contain emissions in the face of growth.

“Brazil’s climate plan marks the first time a major developing country has committed to an absolute reduction of emissions,” Rachel Biderman, director of World Resources Institute Brazil said in a statement. “This is an important shift because it offers greater certainty that emissions can be cut even as Brazil’s economy expands.”

The commitments outlined in the document mostly formalize goals outlined in Brazil’s agreement with the United States, which was announced in June. Brazil will increase renewable energy in its electricity sector to 20 percent — not including hydropower, which has had damaging environmental repercussions in the country. It will also reforest 12 million hectares — some 46,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of Pennsylvania.

Deforestation has been a significant part of Brazil’s emissions. The Amazon Basin, which covers 1.4 billion acres and makes up half of the world’s remaining tropical rainforest is one of the biggest carbon sinks in the world, making it a critical component of addressing climate change. But deforestation — often illegal, and largely for agricultural reasons — has plagued the developing nation.

For more on how Brazil is combating illegal deforestation, check out this story.

Some environmentalists were hoping Brazil’s INDC would include a pledge to stop deforestation altogether, but the submission falls short of that goal. Instead, the country is shooting to eliminate illegal deforestation by 2030.

Biderman said in a statement that the reforestation and deforestation pledges weren’t as ambitious as they could have been.

“The zero illegal deforestation goal is actually a step back from the country’s previous commitments,” she said. “Curbing emissions from agricultural lands will depend in part on greater investment in low-carbon practices.”

Indonesia, another country that submitted its INDC this week, also has giant forest reserves — and a shocking 63 percent of the country’s emissions are due to land use change and peat and forest fires. Indonesia is the sixth-largest emitter, due almost entirely to land use. Its INDC is not nearly as ambitious as Brazil’s. Indonesia has a moratorium in place on clearing “primary forests” (forests that have never been cleared or disrupted) and on converting peat bogs, an unusually effective type of carbon sink, which can release huge amounts of carbon when burned.

The moratorium went into effect in 2010 and expires in 2016.

Indonesia’s voluntary pledges are not even counted against 2005 emissions levels (used by countries such as Brazil and the United States) or the even more stringent 1990 levels (used by the European Union). The Southeast Asian nation pledges to reduce its overall carbon emissions by 26 percent against the business as usual projections for 2020.

We’ll need continued leadership to build on those gains and avert the worst dangers of climate catastrophe

Notably, though, that pledge increases to 41 percent when international support is considered. Developing nations have long argued that they are bearing the brunt of carbon emission reductions without having enjoyed the benefits of the industrialization that is largely responsible for climate change.

Now, they are tasked with reducing carbon emissions while trying to reduce poverty, increase access to electricity, and transition to a modern economy.

“Brazil is a developing country with several challenges regarding poverty eradication, education, public health, employment, housing, infrastructure, and energy access,” the country’s INDC says.

The United Nations will host climate talks in Paris in December that are considered critical to global efforts to keep global warming to less than 2°C. India is the only major emitter whose plan is outstanding, and it is expected to submit one on Thursday.

While the current commitments fall short of what will ultimately be necessary, they still represent significant — and meaningful — international progress towards combating climate change.

“Paris has already prompted pledges for the largest carbon cuts in history,” Natural Resources Defense Council president Rhea Suh said in a statement. “We’ll need continued leadership to build on those gains and avert the worst dangers of climate catastrophe,” she added.

Tags

BrazilINDCindependent nationally developed contribution

The post Two Countries Join The Global Effort To Cut Carbon appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Glenn Beck Accuses Carly Fiorina Of Believing In Climate Change, Fiorina Says ‘No’

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina has earned praise from conservatives for her stance on climate change. Unlike most Republicans, she has indicated that she accepts the science that says it is man-made — but she rejects the notion that the United States should do anything about it because it’s too expensive, and would take too much global coordination.

But in a recent sit-down interview with conservative radio personality Glenn Beck, a snippet of which was published on Beck’s website The Blaze on Monday, Fiorina indicated that she may not actually, personally believe what the majority of scientists say about the reality of climate change.

“You believe in global warming, that it’s man-made,” Beck asserted at Fiorina.

“No,” she gently countered. “I didn’t say that. What I said was, scientists tell us that global warming is real and man-made.”

“You are good,” Beck said, smiling and shaking his head.

Though it may seem insignificant, the distinction between “I believe the science” and “The scientists tell us” is important, especially when it comes to a politician’s view of global warming. Accepting mainstream climate science means personally accepting that future generations are in real danger — and that we, though our emissions of greenhouse gases, are largely to blame. Accepting mainstream climate science means knowing that millions will suffer if we don’t find some way to reduce those emissions.

Now, if Fiorina does not personally believe the science of climate change, her stance that we should not do anything about it makes more sense. But in her interview with Beck, she actually cites scientists to justify that position of inaction.

“Scientists also tell us this,” she said. “The only way with current technology to solve the problem of global warming is a global coordinated effort over 30 years costing trillions of dollars. Now what do we suppose the chances of that are? Zero.”

Fiorina is correct that a global coordinated effort is the only way to solve the problem of climate change, as is her assertion that the effort will likely cost, in total, trillions of dollars. But she is incorrect that the chances of that happening are “zero” — China, the current largest greenhouse gas emitter, and the United States, the largest historical emitter, are working together to reduce emissions. China, in fact, has just made its most wide-ranging emissions reductions pledge yet. And those efforts are actually expected to stimulate economic growth though investments in renewable technology, increased efficiency, and the improved health of a less polluted population.

But it seems that when it comes to climate science, Fiorina only really believes the part that says a huge effort will be required to solve the problem. If she did indeed believe the reality of the problem, she would either have to propose alternative policies to align with the carbon reductions scientists say are required, or make the case that the problem really isn’t that bad. If she does the latter, she will be directly denying the mainstream science of climate change. Indirectly, it seems like she already has.

Tags

Carly FiorinaClimate ChangeElection 2016Glenn BeckGlobal Warming

The post Glenn Beck Accuses Carly Fiorina Of Believing In Climate Change, Fiorina Says ‘No’ appeared first on ThinkProgress.