September 05, 2008
Coal New World
The Guardian reports a bold step forward in the race to find clean and abundant energy for our swiftly tilting planet: A demonstration of carbon capture technology--the first of its kind--is upon us. Starting next week, a power plant in Germany will serve as guinea pig for a $100 million project that will take thousands of tons of CO2 and drive it almost two miles underground, beneath a spent natural gas field just off-site.
The pilot plant will use an oxyfuel boiler, one of three types of CCS technology. This involves burning coal in an atmosphere of pure oxygen – the resulting waste gas is almost pure CO2 and this can be buried, preventing it from entering the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. The other CCS methods are pre-combustion, involving the removal of CO2 before burning by pre-treating the coal, and post-combustion, which scrubs the exhaust gases from a power station.
...
CCS is seen as a potential solution to the projected increased use of coal in power stations around the world. At its best, it would trap up to 90% of a plant's carbon emissions and, though each element of the capture, transportation and storage process is already proven and in use, until now no one had demonstrated a full-cycle system, even at the small scale of a pilot. A full-scale system remains years away, largely because developing such a system is likely to be very expensive. As a result, many leading power companies have been reluctant to fund CCS individually, arguing that governments should also shoulder some of the financial risks.
One CCS expert noted that the pilot "shows what can be done if the state and company are aligned and have confidence in each other". This is a key consideration. The US Department of Energy has its own plans for clean coal storage, but the kind of investment to which the article alludes is not even close to being on the table. President Bush has pledged only $2 billion over ten years. And the "all of the above" mix that the two candidates for President espouse (with key differences) puts less of a premium on this kind of initiative--probably because the cost-benefit ratio remains high, and the prospect of shoving CO2 underground can't fail to elicit fears of slow leakage or a major burp that could render the whole gambit moot. (A fine primer here.) And I think there are other, more assured bets when it comes to investing in a green economy.
But I think a harmonic committment from the public and private sector is critical for even this more high-risk technology. I've written before that major capital investments are a critical component of any forward-looking American energy strategy. Happy then, that priorities are shifting toward the right place. Private/public partnerships may be easier in Germany, but the US should strive to share best practices on CCS with Germany and other nations that have fast-tracked this (I won't say promising) technology. Or in other words, no pain, no gain.
--Dayo Olopade
September 03, 2008
Dumpster Diving for Profit
Why drill offshore when the real energy bonanza might be… in our landfills? Kate Kelland of Reuters has an intriguing dispatch on how high oil prices are convincing waste companies to scavenge through their rubbish dumps to find old plastic. In Britain alone, there's potentially $100 billion worth of tossed-out plastic that could be recycled, reused, or "potentially turned into liquid fuel." (I thought that list possibility was a joke, but, no, this is an idea very much on the make—the Pentagon is funding research into "fuel-latent plastic" that could be used first as packaging, and then turned into a substitute diesel fuel.) Plus, it's not like dumpster diving for profit is such a radical notion:
Images of poor, often homeless people scavenging waste to sell from landfill sites in Asia and South America have already provided evidence there is money to be made from other people's rubbish.
William Hogland, a professor in Environmental Engineering and Recovery from the University of Kalmar in Sweden, also points to previous instances of dumpsite mining in Israel in the early 1950s where the soil—enriched with rotting waste—was recovered and recycled to improve soil quality in orchards.
And certain U.S. states have since the 1980s mined waste from landfills to be used as fuel for incineration to produce energy.
As a parallel development, countries are increasingly likely to promote recycling of metal, glass, and paper insofar as it can help save energy, or, in the case of smaller countries like Japan, as they simply run out of landfill space. Many countries are also looking at incinerating trash as a way to generate heat or electricity—waste incineration already generates 5 percent of Denmark's electricity and 13.7 percent of domestic heat consumption. I'd still like to get a better sense for the economics of recycling—NRDC recently issued a report, for instance, suggesting that recycling paper, plastic, metal, and glass in New York was on track to become cheaper than just chucking it out within five years, but it'd also be good to know how $100/barrel oil factors in here.
(Photo credit: Reuters)
--Bradford Plumer
September 02, 2008
How To Improve Car Insurance
Yet another gasoline-saving idea is percolating through California: pay-as-you-drive insurance policies, in which rates would be based on how many miles a person drives in a year. (Variations of this policy are already available in 34 other states.) Drive less, pay less. Simple enough.
Dean Baker of CEPR has been flogging this idea for quite some time, estimating that pay-as-you-drive would essentially provide the same disincentive to drive as a $1.60-per-gallon gas tax—except that it wouldn't raise average driving costs at all. (Of course averages can obscure a lot: Rural drivers would likely see their rates go up quite a bit.) Now, I'm not sure the idea of putting an electronic monitor inside cars to monitor travel will be a hit, but, as an alternative, it doesn't seem overly invasive to have your odometer checked by an insurance agent.
One thing to note is that pay-as-you-drive mainly targets the negative externalities of driving (e.g., congestion and accidents), and only indirectly the externalities that come with burning gasoline (e.g., pollution, global warming). It certainly doesn't, by itself, create incentives for fuel efficiency or, I dunno, plug-in hybrids. Still, that's hardly a counterargument—it looks like a wholly sensible idea, though I'd be curious to know what the critics have to say.
Update: Jason Bordoff, who has done a lot of
in-depth work on pay-as-you drive for Brookings (you can read the nickel version
here), writes in to correct me on the point about rural drivers:
You write that inevitably rural drivers will end up paying much more. In fact, our research shows that roughly two-thirds of households will save money under PAYD, with an average saving for those households of $270 per car—and we find that percentage is roughly the same for urban drivers and for rural drivers. So roughly two-thirds of urban drivers are winners and roughly two-thirds of rural drivers are also winners. The reason is that per-mile premiums are still risk-adjusted, and geography is a key risk factor, so those in rural areas where people drive greater distances will not be disÂproportionately impacted because their premiums will be determined relative to how many miles the average driver in their area drives. And it turns out that in both urban and rural areas, a minority of drivers are responsible for the majority of miles driven.
To be sure, some people will pay more for auto insurance under PAYD. But that higher premium just reflects the higher risk that they pose. Under the current system, the premiums of high-mileage drivers are being subsidized by low-mileage drivers—which is particularly inequitable since low-income people drive fewer miles on average.
--Bradford Plumer
September 02, 2008
GOP Platform on the "Risk" of Climate Change
Global warming, it seems, may no longer be just a convenient liberal fiction. For the first time ever, the Republican Party platform has included a plank explicitly recognizing that man-made carbon emissions might be contributing to climate change and negative environmental impacts. Here's their introduction to the plank, "Addressing Climate Change Responsibly":
The same human economic activity that has brought freedom and opportunity to billions has also increased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. While the scope and longterm consequences of this are the subject of ongoing scientific research, common sense dictates that the United States should take measured and reasonable steps today to reduce any impact on the environment.
That being said, the platform still rails against the "doomsday climate change scenarios peddled by the aficionados of centralized command-and-control government." Texas delegate Cathie Adams, who helped draft the plank, says the GOP believes that climate change is a "risk" that they should make accomodations for, not a reality. "This is a theory. This is not a scientific fact," Adams said in an interview today. "We are very interested in following what the science has to say and definitely being prepared according to the directives therein."
That being said, it's still a notable revision to Republicans' 2004 platform, which only passingly mentions "global climate change" in the same breath that it dismisses Kyoto. Maybe someone should give global-warming denier Sarah Palin the update.
--Suzy Khimm
September 02, 2008
Can We Tell Much From Palin's Environmental Record?
Over at the Plank, Cass Sunstein has already noted that Sarah Palin doesn't seem to understand that the current rise in global temperature is being caused by human activity. (After joining the GOP ticket, her spokesperson said that Palin "stands with John McCain in his belief that global warming is a critical issue that must be addressed"—but stayed mum on the whole what's-causing-it-question). Now Grist's Kate Sheppard has a thorough review of Palin's record on energy and environmental issues, with this incident the most troubling:
Another major concern for enviros is Palin's stance on endangered species in the state. After the Bush administration's Department of Interior listed the polar bear as a threatened species in May, the governor sued the department. "We believe that the ... decision to list the polar bear was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available," said Palin, who also penned an op-ed in The New York Times on the subject.
Palin and other state officials expressed concern that listing polar bears as threatened would impair oil and gas development in the state. Palin argued that the listing decision was based on "the unproven long-term impact of any future climate change on the species" and that a "comprehensive review" of the federal science by state wildlife officials found no reason to support listing the bears as endangered.
But emails released via a public-records request later showed that Alaskan state scientists agreed with federal researchers that polar bears are threatened by shrinking ice. "Overall, we believe that the methods and analytical approaches used to examine the currently available information supports the primary conclusions and inferences stated" in federal reports, wrote Robert Small, head of the marine mammals program for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
It's not easy to extrapolate from Palin's track record working with oil companies—Alaska is such a weird state in that regard, and I'm not sure we can glean much about what she'd do in the White House from the fact that she favored TransCanada over BP and ConocoPhillips for a new, state-subsidized natural-gas pipeline, or enacted a windfall tax on oil companies in a state where the proceeds go directly to the citizens. She'd love to drill in ANWR, sure, but beyond that...? On the other hand, it says a fair bit about how she would govern if she's willing to go to great lengths to lie about and distort what her own scientific staff is saying. Eight years of that have been quite enough, thanks.
--Bradford Plumer
September 02, 2008
TNR TV: Environmentalism: What's Next?
On August 26th in Denver, TNR hosted Environmentalism: What's Next?, a forum on green strategies of the future. The program featured SmartPower president Brian Keane, Breakthrough Institute chairman Ted Nordhaus, Sen. Ben Nelson, and Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope, and was moderated by TNR editor Franklin Foer.
Nordhaus says the key to energy independence is NOT cap and trade, while Nelson explains his solution for China's bad environmental behavior:
Nelson and Keane weigh in on a vital prerequisite for going green, and Pope discusses the power of harnessing the public opinion on environmental initiatives:
Pope explains how the market has increased your energy bill and carbon footprint, as Keane argues for energy efficient products being marketed like Coca-Cola:
--The Editors
August 29, 2008
The Cheapest Option For Thirsty Cities
The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza pointed to Colorado's Front Range as a window into the political future of the American West, but Las Vegas might be a better place to look for a glimpse at the region's environmental future—no city, after all, is closer to running out of easily available water. Las Vegas has already maxed out on its quota of 300,000 feet of water per year from the Colorado River, despite an innovative program under which it gets credit for the treated wastewater it puts back in the river. Unless Nevada calls for renegotiating the Colorado Compact—which, as John McCain discovered, is the nuclear option in Southwestern water politics—Las Vegas will have to meet further growth in water demand by pumping groundwater from desert valleys hundreds of miles north of the city. This could be an environmentally disastrous move—drying up springs, killing deep-rooted plants that live on the groundwater, and possibly causing horrific dust storms as a result. It could also be disastrously expensive: Cost estimates vary based on interest rates and other things, but all agree that the water would end up costing more than $1,000 per acre-foot.
There's a much cheaper option, though: not using as much water in the first place. According to an analysis by the Pacific Institute, installing ultra-low-flow toilets instead of the regular kind saves water at a cost of just $50 per acre-foot. Improving the efficiency of lawn sprinkler systems, by adding soil-moisture sensors that keep the sprinklers from turning on when the ground is already wet, conserves water for about $200 an acre-foot. Low-flow showerheads, meanwhile, actually have a negative cost, simply because the energy savings alone (you don't have to heat as much water) more than covers the cost of the retrofit.
The problem is that it's hard to get people to conserve water unless they have financial incentives to do so. That's why cities that are serious about water conservation have adopted steeply tiered water pricing. They keep the cost for the first few thousand gallons per month relatively low, because nobody wants to price people out of the small amount of water that's actually necessary to sustain life. But use more than that, and the price per thousand gallons rises significantly. Seattle has aggressively tiered water rates that top out at $10.50 per thousand gallons. The city uses about 100 gallons per person per day. Las Vegas, meanwhile, has rates that top out at $4 per thousand gallons, and it uses 227 gallons of water per person per day. The lesson for Las Vegas—and John McCain, for that matter—should be that it's a whole lot easier to change water prices than to start water wars.
--Rob Inglis, High Country News
August 29, 2008
TNR TV: Olopade Talks Green with Sen. Cantwell
TNR Reporter Dayo Olopade chats with Sen. Maria Cantwell about her greatest environmental triumphs in Washington, the encouragement of other states to adopt green policies, the role of the private and public sectors in environmental preservation, and future legislation in the next congress.
--The Editors
August 28, 2008
The Future of Dirt
The current issue of National Geographic has dirt all over its cover, and rightly so: The fate of the earth's soil is a major story, and an unjustly neglected one at that. After all, just look at Haiti, which has been razing its forests for centuries to make way for coffee and indigo plantations. Most of the country's topsoil has now been eroded away—in many places right down to the bedrock—and local agriculture has collapsed, a major reason why the country was hit especially hard by the recent spike in global food prices.
It's a common story the world over—since 1991, some 7.5 million square miles of arable land, an area the size of the United States and Canada, has suffered some degree of soil degradation due to misuse, and it's not an exaggeration to say the world's running out of good dirt. Charles Mann does a fantastic job of telling that tale in this piece, visiting various parts of the world, from China to the Sahel, that are trying to reverse longstanding erosion trends and nurture the local soil back to health, with varying degrees of success. Especially useful was his treatment of terra preta, a technique recently discovered in the Amazon that could, potentially, be used to rejuvenate degraded soil:
Terra preta is found only where people lived, which means that it is an artificial, human-made soil, dating from before the arrival of Europeans. Neves and his colleagues have been trying to find out how the Amazon's peoples made it, and why. The soil is rich in vital minerals such as phosphorus, calcium, zinc, and manganese, which are scarce in most tropical soils. But its most striking ingredient is charcoal—vast quantities of it, the source of terra preta's color. Neves isn't sure whether Indians had stirred the charcoal into the soil deliberately, if they had done it accidentally while disposing of household trash, or even if the terra preta created by charcoal initially had been used for farming. Ultimately, though, it became a resource that could sustain entire settlements; indeed, Neves said, a thousand years ago two Indian groups may have gone to war over control of this terra preta….
Sombroek had wondered if modern farmers might create their own terra preta—terra preta nova, as he dubbed it. Much as the green revolution dramatically improved the developing world's crops, terra preta could unleash what the scientific journal Nature has called a "black revolution" across the broad arc of impoverished soil from Southeast Asia to Africa.
Key to terra preta is charcoal, made by burning plants and refuse at low temperatures. In March a research team led by Christoph Steiner, then of the University of Bayreuth, reported that simply adding crumbled charcoal and condensed smoke to typically bad tropical soils caused an "exponential increase" in the microbial population—kick-starting the underground ecosystem that is critical to fertility. Tropical soils quickly lose microbial richness when converted to agriculture. Charcoal seems to provide habitat for microbes—making a kind of artificial soil within the soil—partly because nutrients bind to the charcoal rather than being washed away. Tests by a U.S.-Brazilian team in 2006 found that terra preta had a far greater number and variety of microorganisms than typical tropical soils—it was literally more alive.
Better yet, terra preta might offer an easy way to sequester lots and lots of carbon. Agriculture, after all, accounts for about one-eighth of manmade greenhouse gases—especially as the soil gets plowed and carbon from inorganic material churns up into the air—but using charcoal to create terra preta could end up putting more carbon back into the ground than is released. (Some scientists have gone so far as to argue, probably optimistically, that nearly all of our fossil-fuel use could be offset by storing carbon in terra preta.) Still, that's getting a bit ahead of ourselves: As Mann notes, we still don't know have a great handle on creating terra preta, and no one knows for sure how much carbon can actually be stored in the soil.
--Bradford Plumer
August 28, 2008
How Important Are The Next Eight Years?
Even the usually staid Brookings Institution is getting shrill about climate change, as Carlos Pascual and Strobe Talbott argue in the Post today that the United States has only a small window—the next eight years, really—to start curtailing greenhouse-gas emissions (and convince developing countries to do the same) if we want to avoid large and exceedingly unpleasant temperature increases down the road. Why the urgency? Partly because, as the IPCC's R.K. Pachauri notes, "The cities, power plants and factories we build in the next seven years will shape our climate in mid-century." But also because even smaller increases in temperature can trigger changes that, in turn, lead to even more warming. Here's an an AP story today about the possibility that the Arctic sea ice is reaching just such a tipping point:
Five climate scientists, four of them specialists on the Arctic, told The Associated Press that it was fair to call what was happening in the Arctic a "tipping point." ...[T]he melt in sea ice has kicked in another effect, long predicted, called “Arctic amplification,†Dr. Serreze said.
That is when the warming up north is increased in a feedback mechanism and the effects spill southward starting in autumn, Dr. Serreze said. Over the last few years, the bigger melt has meant more warm water that releases more heat into the air during fall cooling, making the atmosphere warmer than normal.
On top of that, researchers are investigating “alarming†reports in the last few days of the release of methane from long-frozen Arctic waters, possibly from the warming of the sea, said Bill Hare, a Greenpeace climate scientist, who was attending a climate conference in Ghana. Giant burps of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas, is a long-feared effect of warming in the Arctic that would accelerate warming even more, according to scientists.
Still unclear what's happening there, exactly, but a place to watch. On a semi-related note, Andrew Leonard had a sharp post yesterday about how high oil prices may, paradoxically, be hurting investments in clean energy—at least that seems to have been the case in the second quarter of 2008. As Leonard notes, we can't make too much of this fact, since skyrocketing fossil-fuel prices still make alternatives more attractive, and global investments in clean energy have, after all, quintupled since 2004. But rapid spikes in fuel prices can cause governments to worry more about affordability and less about the environment, not to mention more reluctant to play with carbon taxes or climate regulation.
--Bradford Plumer
August 27, 2008
California's New Pitch For Density
Via Ryan Avent, the California legislature is looking to promote so-called "smart growth" in the state by steering transportation dollars toward projects that reduce, rather than increase, vehicle-miles traveled:
The legislation, SB 375, would offer incentives to steer public funds away from sprawled development. The state spends about $20 billion a year on transportation, and under the new law, projects that meet climate goals would get priority.
An earlier version of the bill was blocked last year by the building industry and by organizations representing cities and counties. Developers feared their suburban projects would be delayed or halted. Local officials were wary of ceding zoning powers and transportation planning to the state.
The bill's expected to pass this week, but no word on whether Schwarzenegger will sign it (as Josh Patashnik once wrote, these lifestyle-altering measures don't really mesh with his brand of environmentalism). Under the new law, cities and countries would be able approve any sort of development they want, but only certain types of development—clustered housing, say, or projects located near transit—would qualify for state transportation funds. Plus new incentives for infill development and construction along transportation corridors. The idea, ultimately, is to chip away at the need for driving, since, if nothing changes, the growth in vehicle-miles traveled—as California adds 9 million more people by 2030—is expected to negate everything else the state does to curtail its carbon-dioxide emissions.
A number of states have tried to promote smart growth here and there over the years (it's now forgotten, but Mitt Romney was once one of the more proactive governors on this front), but it hasn't always panned out. Many of these attempts fall afoul of local property-rights' movements: Portland's urban growth boundaries, for instance, eventually fostered a backlash that led to Measure 37, putting a damper on land-use regulations. But a "softer" approach like California's might prove more feasible. At least in the abstract, it's fair enough to have the government shift money toward slightly denser development—states have, after all, used transportation funds to subsidize suburbia for the past half-century. But these sorts of efforts are always more explosive than most environmental measures, so this will be one to watch closely.
P.S. I should clarify: This bill definitely won't move everyone back to cities and denser inner-suburban rings, and it won't create development patterns that allow everyone to ditch his or her car. As teplukhin points out in comments, even if people wanted to do that, you would need a lot of different elements in place—$4 gas isn't going to convince families to relocate to the city if the public schools are still abysmal, for starters.
Odds are you'll mostly see an impact at the margins, like, for instance, more transit-oriented development near rail stations, similar to Oakland City Centre, with the sort of condos that are typically bought by retirees or childless couples. That's obviously not for everyone, but it does move people off the roads and eases up the pressure to keep building outward into the exurbs. That's just one example: You might also start to see somewhat denser, more walkable suburban family-oriented neighborhoods, similar to what Denver's starting to build—where people would still have to commute to work by car, but could more easily get around their own neighborhood without driving. Even modest reductions in auto travel can still add up.
P.P.S. Bill Fulton has some doubts that the new law will be as far-reaching (or novel) as some of its supporters seem to think.
--Bradford Plumer
August 27, 2008
The Dragons Are Not Pleased
Not sure how I missed Yaroslov Trofimov's Wall Street Journal piece about bloodthirsty Komodo dragons on the warpath in Indonesia, but it's pretty wild. Seems the island inhabitants of Kampung Komodo are none-too-pleased with do-gooder environmentalists who, as part of a $10 million conservation project, recently banned a bunch of local customs—including deer-hunting and offering up sacrificial goats—that were thought to appease the ten-foot Komodo dragons. In truth, the ban on deer hunting was intended to help preserve the dragons' food supply. Either way, the dragons are now turning on their two-legged neighbors:
A year ago, a 9-year-old named Mansur was one such victim. The boy went to answer the call of nature behind a bush near his home in Kampung Komodo. In broad daylight, as terrified relatives looked on, a dragon lunged from his hideout, took a bite of the boy's stomach and chest, and started crushing his skull.
"We threw branches and stones to drive him away, but the dragon was crazed with blood, and just wouldn't let go," says the boy's father, Jamain, who, like many Indonesians, goes by only one name.
Unlike in the U.S. and many other Western countries, park rangers here don't routinely put down animals that develop a taste for human flesh.
A few months later, Jamain's neighbor Mustaming Kiswanto, a 38-year-old who makes a living selling dragon woodcarvings to tourists, and whose son had been bitten by a dragon, was attacked by another giant lizard after falling asleep. In June, five European divers, stranded in an isolated part of the park, said they successfully fended off an aggressive dragon by throwing their weight belts at it.
Not good. Though it does seem doubtful that the lizards are attacking because they're annoyed by the lack of goat sacrifices. More likely, the population of the island has swelled over the last few decades, space is getting limited, and more confrontations are inevitable. (Unlike other parts of Indonesia, where dragons are hurtling toward extinction, Komodo has strong taboos against harming the beasts.) In any case, here's grisly footage of a Komodo dragon fixing itself a mid-afternoon snack:
--Bradford Plumer
August 27, 2008
The Worst Sort of Gridlock
The national grid doesn't get nearly enough attention when people talk about energy policy. Maybe a sentence or two about how it needs to be improved, but that's usually it. So it's nice to see The New York Times' Matthew Wald get into the gritty specifics of how America's aging grid is hampering our ability to bring alternative-energy sources to the market—it's a fat roadblock in the way of generating a greater percentage of the nation's electricity from wind power:
Achieving that would require moving large amounts of power over long distances, from the windy, lightly populated plains in the middle of the country to the coasts where many people live. Builders are also contemplating immense solar-power stations in the nation’s deserts that would pose the same transmission problems.
The grid’s limitations are putting a damper on such projects already. Gabriel Alonso, chief development officer of Horizon Wind Energy, the company that operates Maple Ridge, said that in parts of Wyoming, a turbine could make 50 percent more electricity than the identical model built in New York or Texas.
“The windiest sites have not been built, because there is no way to move that electricity from there to the load centers,†he said.
The basic problem is that many transmission lines, and the connections between them, are simply too small for the amount of power companies would like to squeeze through them. The difficulty is most acute for long-distance transmission, but shows up at times even over distances of a few hundred miles.
The real problems here are political, not technical—or even economic. (The Energy Department says it would cost $60 billion for a "high-voltage backbone" that would allow wind to generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity—and that would be spread out over many years and millions of customers.) Congress is reluctant to handle improvements directly because the states have jealously guarded their authority over their local grids, and many states, for their part, have no incentive to make upgrades to their grids that would mainly benefit wind farms elsewhere—the best wind, for instance, is all up in North Dakota and South Dakota.
Wald notes that the 2005 energy bill gave the Energy Department greater authority to step in, but federal officials are already getting pushback for being "too aggressive." And even that's just the start: Upgrading the grid requires coordination among multiple states, dozens of power-line companies, hundreds of landowners, all those environmentalists who don't want to see transmission lines snaking through desert preserves… It's not impossible to do, but far from simple. Alternatively, if there was a better way of storing the electricity generated by wind, it would take a lot of pressure off the existing grid—power could be transmitted when lines are less congested and stored near to where it's needed. But we're still a technological leap or two behind that point.
--Bradford Plumer
August 26, 2008
Will Obama's Climate Promises Come To Naught?
Suppose Barack Obama actually wins this interminable election and decides to start wrestling carbon-dioxide emissions to the ground. He gives a pretty State of the Union address and implores Congress to pass a cap-and-trade bill, but the darn thing dies in the Senate quicksand. Does that mean game over? Not necessarily, according to The Wall Street Journal:
The Obama camp also believes it has a regulatory stick to force congressional action. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency can regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. While the Bush administration has taken a go-slow approach, a President Obama would shift into high gear, says Elgie Holstein, a senior Obama energy adviser. If Congress didn't act on a cap-and-trade system, he says, Mr. Obama "wouldn't hesitate to use Clean Air Act authorization to regulate" CO2 emissions, a step that could involve a huge increase in EPA oversight of industry.
This scenario needs closer scrutiny, since it looks increasingly plausible. One obvious problem: The EPA is understaffed as is, and doesn't have much experience regulating carbon—plopping broad new authority on its lap would be unwieldy. (Of course, this is a hurdle for cap-and-trade legislation, too, but presumably Congress could hand the EPA what resources it needs.) Plus, in theory, command-and-control regulation is less efficient than a trading system for pollution credits. That said, an Obama administration could threaten to use its Clean Air Act authority to persuade emitters to rally behind cap-and-trade legislation, so maybe this is part of a broader political strategy.
Relatedly, New York and eleven other states are now suing the EPA again, this time over its failure to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from refineries. If Congress doesn't pass any sort of climate legislation in the next few years (and with energy prices still high, momentum isn't exactly chugging along), odds are decent that the agency will soon step in, no matter who's in the White House.
P.S. The whole Journal article's interesting. Evidently, the Obama campaign's discussing internally whether to do health care or climate change first, should he get elected. Some advisers think climate is easier, since serious cap-and-trade bills have already been written, and the framework's in place. I'm not sure about that: Among other things, there's a lot more political infrastructure devoted to a health care push—it was all Ted Kennedy talked about last night, and you have organizations like SEIU spending $75 million on health care, with no comparable ground-up push around global warming. High energy prices could also make it easier for the Chamber of Commerce and friends to whip up fears that curbing greenhouse gases will send us back to the age of candlelight and horsedrawn carriages. (See this ad for a sample.)
--Bradford Plumer
August 25, 2008
Food Wasted is Water Lost
According to a report issued by the Stockholm International Water Institute last week, as much as half of all the food produced globally is either wasted or lost as it makes its way through the food chain—a stunning figure given the 850 million people in the world who are malnourished. The causes vary: In developing nations, most of the waste occurs because of poor harvesting techniques or insufficient storage facilities that leave crops susceptible to infestations or rot. (In Kenya and Uganda alone, for instance, a combined $45 million worth of milk is lost to spoilage each year.)
In rich countries, by contrast, most food waste amassed is a result of the carelessness that comes with food being so cheap. Retailers, cafeterias and restaurants toss out an average of 122 lbs a month per family of four. In American households alone, an estimated $843 billion worth of food is thrown out each year—that's not counting banquet halls, hospitals, etc.
Then there's water—agriculture uses nearly 70 percent of all freshwater withdrawn for human use annually and a great deal of that is unavailable for reuse, straining resources in areas already struggling to survive with limited water supply. Meat production is especially water intensive, as illustrated by California's beef recall earlier this year: The 65 million kilograms of ruined meat required some 650 billion liters of water, mostly to grow crops for animal feed, which would've been enough to supply the entire city of Las Vegas for a year. As poorer countries like China get rich and start eating meat, meat demand is expected to rise anywhere from 70 to 160 percent by 2050, boding ill for the world's already-strained water supplies.
The SIWI report offers up a number of suggestions to cut down on agricultural waste—from improving rainfall capture to employing more efficient harvesting and storage techniques in developing countries. A lot of it will involve better federal coordination of land and water management agencies—something a number of countries, the U.S. included, are sorely lacking.
--Marin Cogan
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