Reminiscent a bit of Caroling Coal, my in-box this morning was deluged with Peabody Energy press releases (see full material after the fold) and other announcements of a new public relations campaign: Coal Cares.
Evidently stung by the medical community’s highlighting of the linkages between the burning of coal (mainly for electricity) and health problems in America’s youth, especially a heavy asthma toll, a decision was made to take steps to address the reality that energy usage creates choices and that all energy options come with costs. To address the externalities of asthma costs, evidently there will be a move to make inhalers more available and affordable for youth living downwind from coal-fired electricity generation facilities.
From the press release (again, after the fold),
“Our actions are guided by a singular mission: to be a leading worldwide producer and supplier of balanced energy solutions, which power economic prosperity and well-being,” said Boyce. “Coal Cares™ brings this mission to life, empowering children everywhere to take control of their destinies, beginning with their own lungs.”
Recognizing that all energy choices have costs, we have a variety of paths to address these costs. The government as solution path would create regulatory controls that would impose costs on those creating damage — moving “externalities” like health-care impacts “internal” to the business process and creating fiscal costs associated with them. Another political philosophy path would be to emphasize individuals and individual responsibility as per the decision to “empower children … to take control of their destinies.” Coal Cares™ takes this second philosophical path.
A question to ponder: Which path is the one that makes the most sense to you?
May 6th, 2011 · Comments Off on Florida fights to increase nutrient pollution, algae blooms, and midge population
This guest post from DWG provides a window on depressing developments in Florida highlighing the likely impacts of pending (soon to be signed) legislation.
Nothing attracts tourists, increases property values, and improves quality of life like water choked with algae and clouds of aquatic midges hovering nearby. Fortunately, Governor Rick Scott and his Republican allies have a bold plan to increase algae blooms in the waters of Florida. The crown jewel of the Republican plan is HB 239, which has cleared the Florida House and expected to pass in the Senate. It has already earned the good ‘teabagging’ seal of approval (see here and here) and will be signed into law as soon as it hits Scott’s desk.
HB 239 is masterful legislation, written by Rep. Trudi Williams (R, Ft. Myers), an engineer who worked for the state’s largest real estate developers. HR239 will cripple Florida’s nutrient pollution regulation through five-interconnected measures. HR239
Establishes the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) as having the sole regulatory authority over nutrient pollution.
Prohibits the DEP and other agencies from adopting EPA nutrient emission guidelines.
Weakens existing DEP standards for nutrient pollution.
Short-circuits more rigid standards by local water management districts.
Makes any all DEP rule actions contingent on Florida Legislature approval.
Let’s take a closer look at algae blooms and nutrient pollution in Florida and why Republicans have taken an interest in weakening already ineffective regulation.
Former CIA Director and advisor to John McCain during the 2008 campaign James Woolsey bubbles with enthusiasm when speaking of his car: a modified Prius which is a Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) able to run on electricity from his roof-top solar and on gasoline for an equivalent of about 100 miles per gallon.
“We’re paying for both sides in this war, and that’s not a good long-term strategy,” Woolsey says. “I have a bumper sticker on the back of my Prius that reads, ‘Bin Laden hates this car.'”
Now that ‘wanted’ has changed to ‘deceased’ when it comes to bin Laden, perhaps the bumper sticker will change to “hated”.
The core purpose, however, hasn’t changed. From a 2007 interview, prior to the 2008 and (now) 2011 run up of oil prices:
“The heart of the issue is that, although we have other vulnerabilities in our infrastructure-the electricity grid needs changes, for example-those things are at least under the national control of each country. The oil infrastructure is the only one that is worldwide, and much of it is located in the extremely volatile Persian Gulf. A terrorist attack could send prices well over $100 a barrel. There’s no other commodity like that. Transportation is 97-percent dependent on oil, which means our oil-importing society has an Achilles’ heel sitting out there in the most volatile part of the world. We could wake up and find that overnight the cost of transportation has doubled-a shock for the economy, but it would be a disaster for people who have to drive places for a living and don’t have much money.”
“A disaster for people who have to drives places for a living and don’t have much money” along with a disaster for all as spiking oil prices lead to increased commodity prices and displace other (more valuable) uses for the money than perpetuating fossil-foolish energy systems and spiking oil company profits.
Driving a PHEV enables Woolsey to radically reduce his transportation fuel requirements. [Photo to right is President George W. Bush looking at Woolsey’s Prius the day he accepted delivery at the 2008 Washington International Renewable Energy Conference in Washington, DC.] If spread across the nation’s personal vehicle, cutting oil demand by several million barrels of oil per day by the end of the decade would translate directly into $100s of billions of fewer dollars sent overseas and indirectly to lower oil prices to all. And, it would help reduce the funding available for Bin Laden-wannabes and otherwise dangerous regimes.
Woolsey, however, doesn’t want to stop with that PHEV. He is part of a coalition seeking to ‘turn oil into salt’ (e.g., just another commodity amid plenty of choices):
“And if my Prius had an ethanol, other alcohol, or bio-based diesel engine using 85 percent biofuels,” said Woolsey, “I would get close to 500 mpg on the petroleum fuel in the engine.”
Transform America’s light passenger car fleet to 500 miles per gallon and that would do the lion’s share of the work to eliminate oil imports.
Amid these were activists who chose to take a ‘next step’ and risk arrest to bring attention to the urgency of serious attention to and action to address climate disruption:
The same day that President Obama met with Powershift leaders, in the House of Representatives, “nine activists were arrested for disrupting the
final session by singing an alternative Star Spangled Banner that decried
the lack of progress on climate change and corporate pollution of the
political system.”
The same that 1000s rallied before the White House and Chamber of Commerce, “after an unpermitted march of over 800 left Lafayette Square singing “We Shall Overcome,” 21 climate justice activists were arrested occupying the [Department of Interior’s] lobby in protest of the DOI’s rubber stamp for extractive industry from offshore drilling to mountaintop removal to the strip-mining of western lands for coal and tar sands.”
Like the 10,000s arrested for climate disruption and environmental destatition through burning coal and spilling oil [again, note any sarcasm?], these 30 Rising
Tide North America and Peaceful Uprising climate activists face fines and legal bills. From a Peaceful Uprising email appeal:
While the defendants are fundraising to cover their costs as well, Rising
Tide North America and Peaceful Uprising are joining up to raise $10,000 in a week for the Power Shift 30.
We’re on Day Two and need your support. Whether it’s $5 or $500, please
support these folks.
In the aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush had a moment to change history and turn America(ns) toward a more prosperous and secure future. Rather than seizing the day to announce a plan to end America’s oil addiction and ‘turn oil into salt’, President Bush called on Americans to go out and shop while promising that he would dedicate himself to tracking down bin Laden ‘dead or alive’.
Now that President Barack Obama has given substance to President Bush’s words, President Obama also has the opportunity to seize the day.
President Bush spoke of the need to end America’s ‘addiction to oil’. Mr President: Carpe Diem! Seize the day. Make a reality out of those words as well.
when it comes to stopping al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah, or defunding repressive petro-state governments, Obama’s next big national security question is of a very different sort than the one he made to send forces into Abbottabad, but at least as consequential: It’s a decision whether to raise fuel-efficiency requirements for cars and trucks to 47 or 62 miles per gallon, as outlined in a recent EPA proposal.
Ending America’s oil addiction is fundamental to American national security.
The economy would be strengthened by paring down and reversing the $100s of billions per year sent overseas to pay for imported oil. (Over $1 billion per day … the largest single component of America’s trade deficit.) Money sent overseas for oil could be spent more productively on American infrastructure (such as electrified rail) that would create jobs, here in America, while enabling competitiveness for tomorrow. A stronger economy means lower vulnerability to foreign actors (military or otherwise) while enabling support for U.S. national security requirements (military, police, economic aid, health care, food monitoring, etc …)
Reduced oil revenues would decrease the resources for supporting violent fundamentalists and would reduce the resources available for destabilizing regimes (such as Venezuela).
Reduced (ended) oil dependency would reduce the requirement to deploy U.S. military forces into the Middle East. After all, one can question whether Saddam Hussein would have invaded Kuwait and whether President George H.W. Bush would have sent 100,000s of Americans into harm’s way if Kuwait were a leading global producer of broccoli.
Reduced oil dependency would start to liberate the U.S. economy from the fossil-foolish buying of the American political system.
Reducing America’s oil addiction would improve core national security and improve the general welfare in numerous ways from health (reduced cancer, asthma, etc …) to environmental (such as reduced carbon dioxide emissions) to reduced vulnerability to societal disruption (due to natural or man-made disruption of our oil supplies).
As Glenn put it,
you might say that terrorists and dictators should be even more afraid of Priuses and bikeshares than drone attacks.
Former CIA Director Jim Woolsey has a plug-in Prius with a bumper sticker: “Osama bin Laden hates this car”. Guess he will have to change it to “hated this car”.
And, let us be clear: even with today’s distorted economic structure, there are a significant range of cost-effective paths to drive down U.S. (and global) oil demand at a rapid pace: increase the targeted mileage standards, electrify the nation’s rail system, require real-time dashboard feedback systems on all vehicles, require flex-fuel capacity on all vehicles, improve the nation’s bicycle infrastructure, etc … There is a five-percent solution …
Mr. President. Carpe Diem to set American Free and kill off our oil addiction … turning oil into salt is the most important national security imperative.
Questioned about theoil industry’s “obscene” profits by ABC’s Jonathan Karl, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) asserted that the oil industry doesn’t require the significant (>$1 billion/year) tax subidies of the oil depletion allowance. He said that they will “pay their fair share of taxes.” As Boehner put it, ““I don’t think the big oil companies need to have the oil depletion allowances.” Speaker Boehner appeared, for a moment, to have gone 25 percent of the way to meeting President Barack Obama’s call to reduce the subsidies to the oil industry by $4 billion per year.
When questioned about the affordability of lavish tax subsidies to oil companies with record breaking profits amid serious budget challenges, Boehner stated:
It’s certainly something we should be looking at. We’re in a time when the federal government’s short on revenues. We need to control spending but we need to have revenues to keep the government going. They ought to be paying their fair share.
First, let me express my sympathy for all those caught in the devastating path of tornadoes. To be caught in such devastating power of nature, recourse totally beyond one’s ability for action, is beyond my emotional imagination. I can only begin to imagine the pain for the families of the dead and for those whose lives were otherwise struck by these storms.
Second, we should clearly understand, at this time, it is absolutely impossible to tie any single weather event, any specific ‘abnormal’ temperature, any storm to the effects of Global Warming.
Thus, it is impossible to state that “Global Warming caused the tornadoes” with any confidence … but that is not the end of the conversation.
In fact, we now face an opposite challenge. As per Bill McKibben’s Eaarth, we have changed our planet such that we now in a different world than that in which modern civilization evolved. While Climate Disruption doesn’t cause any weather event, no weather event occurs any longer outside the context of the changed climate. [Read more →]
April 24th, 2011 · Comments Off on Conventional Rail and the Steel Interstates ~ Best Friends Forever
Yet another guest post from the thoughtful BruceMcF.
I’ve written several times about the direct potential of the Steel Interstate project to cut our oil imports by 10% by getting long haul freight trucking off the road. It would at the same time relieve the crushing burden imposed by long haul trucking on our over-worked, under-maintained Interstate, National and State highways, help get renewable energy resources from places that they are to places people need electricity, and of course support long distance Rapid Passenger Rail offering dramatically improved reliability and transit speed, supporting operating surpluses with multiple services per day.
I don’t recollect that I have written very much about the benefit that the Steel Interstates offer to passenger rail elsewhere. So that’s what I aim to do. Today I will look at one rail transport ideas I have talked about previously ~ Northeast Ohio Regional Rail ~ and what help it would receive from the Steel Interstates. Then sometime in the next week or two, I will look at the Columbus / WV / Atlantic Coast “RidgeRunner”, and the benefit it would receive from the Steel Interstates.
In an effort to foster a more open, transparent and accessible scientific dialogue, we’ve started a new effort aimed at inspiring pioneering use of technology, new media and computational thinking in the communication of science to diverse audiences. Initially, we’ll focus on communicating the science on climate change.
Paul Higgins is one of the 21 Google Science Communication Fellows selected for the climate science communication effort. He describes the goal of the program as making climate science more understandable to the general public and policy makers.
“The vast majority of people don’t know and understand the details of climate science. The science of climate change spans 20 to 30 disciplines and sub-disciplines, at least. It is an enormous amount of information, and distilling it is a bit of a challenge.”
A well-functioning democracy requires a well-informed populace so it is hard to argue with the premise of the Google initiative. I have my doubts whether it will translate into policy changes, but Google has a track record of success that cannot be easily dismissed. However, an early effort by one of their communications experts does not bode well.
Now, I have always written letters and even had many published — just not one every day. WarrenS inspires me to do better.
Many newspapers state that they will reject letters that have been published elsewhere, thus I have not been blogging letters … perhaps that should change. Thus, on a delay from ‘rejection’ (or lack of publication), here is an installment of the “unpublished letters” series publishing those LTEs that don’t get picked up by the editors.
8 April 2011
To the editor,
Jim Davenport’s 29 March article “S.C. lawmakers take dim view of light bulb law” asserted that a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL) costs about $2 more than an incandescent “but supporters of the new technology say the lights last so much longer that they save money in the long run”.
A simple question:
“What is the long run?”
Most of us, hearing that, likely think in terms of years. Is that the case here?
Let us assume that we have a light on 40 hours per week at an electricity cost of 10 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh). That 100 watt incandescent bulb Davenport referenced in his article would use 4 kilowatt hours of electricity at a cost of 40 cents and the 25 watt compact flourescent lightbulb (CFL) would use 1 kilowatt hour at a cost of 10 cents. After seven weeks, the incandescent cost would reach $3.80 ($1 purchase plus $2.80 of electricity) while the “more expensive” CFL’s costs would total $3.70. Is seven weeks “long term”?
After a year, the CFL’s total cost would mount to $8.20 while that less expensive incandescent bulb’s bill would hit $22.80.
No reasonable adult would call a less than two month period “long run” on financial matters and all would consider a 60 percent per year savings significant.
and advisor to John McCain during the 2008 campaign James Woolsey bubbles with enthusiasm when speaking of his car: a 
caught in the devastating path of tornadoes. To be caught in such devastating power of nature, recourse totally beyond one’s ability for action, is beyond my emotional imagination. I can only begin to imagine the pain for the families of the dead and for those whose lives were otherwise struck by these storms.
perspective on “Climate Shift”, questioning Google’s intentions with the climate communicators’ program.