Let us be clear, the idea that the Senate (and Congress) might actually fast-track something to deal with America’s addiction to oil is — on the face of it, a good thing. Even if we didn’t face the looming prospects of future economic shocks and security risks due to Peak Oil colliding with increasing demand, the fact that a significant portion of America’s trade deficit is going to put oil in our McSUVs (that we drive to Wal-Mart to buy Chinese-made products) is something that should be on the top of Congress’ agenda for addressing with serious and meaningful legislation.
While perhaps developed with lofty intentions, moving past bumper stickers shows that this legislation would not provide any serious movement forward to end America’s fossil-fuelish (e.g, foolish) energy system and likely would end up being counter-productive to movement forward toward a sustainable energy future.
Stating that “the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund financing rate is 21 cents a barrel.’”
Perhaps due to Harry Reid’s blossomed friendship with T.Boone Pickens, section 1 is a full-blown endorsement of Pickens’ call for using natural gas in the transportation system. This section would, immediately, appropriate $3.8 billion for rebates to NGV buyers (with rebate levels higher than that provided for electric vehicles), $500 million in subsidies to manufacture NGV vehicles. In total, about $4.5 billion in new appropropriations to support significant investment in moving American transportation from one fossil-foolish addiction (oil) to another fossil-foolish path (natural gas).
To reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil, there are far more cost-effective and more rapid paths to reducing oil dependency (such as putting real-time mpg feedback devices on car dashboards). Per barrel/day reduction of US oil demand, subsidizing NGVs in this way looks to be many times more expensive than other, existing, options.
While this reduces most dangerous tail-pipe emissions, the overall environmental improvement achieved by switching from oil to natural gas is unclear. The CO2 (greenhouse gas) emissions reductions are marginal (and potentially non-existent) while the environmental damage from shale natural gas exploitation is serious. (E.g., this $4.5 billion would do little to address climate change.)
This simply moves US transportation dependency from one non-renewable polluting fossil fuel to another, potentially, slightly less polluting fossil fuel. Yes, it would reduce US imports — at least for awhile — but do so at a high fiscal and environmental cost.
This path increases demand on a valuable fossil fuel, natural gas, which will increase prices for other uses (home heating, industrial use, electricity generation (especially partnered with intermittent renewable energy sources, etc). And, even with shale natural gas exploitation, it is a non-renewable resource that will thus get used up faster and won’t be available for these other uses.
All-in-all, putting $4.5 billion (borrowed from the Chinese) is perhaps best described, in terms of fostering a clean-energy future, as a step to the side rather than a step forward. If there were, as is likely appropriate, $1-2 trillion of new funding into the energy arena, this $4.5 billion might be beneath notice. But an adequate program isn’t on any legislative radar scope, at the moment, and this $4.5B comes at the expense of far better measures that would actually represent steps forward to a more prosperous and climate-friendly society.
Now, section 2 is actually longer, with more subsections, which makes it seem more impressive perhaps on the initial read. And, there is $1.515 billion targeted for DOE efforts on Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) research and development. That impressive figure, however, merits a review. That is $1.5 billion over ten years, just $150 million per year. It is, as well, an “authorization” rather than an “appropriatinon”. In other words, unlike the $4.5 billion for NGVs in Title 1, this gives permission for Committees to appropriate funds for PHEVs but doesn’t mandate that funding. Looked at in isolation from Title 1, Title 2 doesn’t look so bad except that it is far smaller than make sense in terms of fostering a shift toward electrification of American transportation (and, of course, has nothing re electrification of rail).
Putting section three aside, how should we summarize this piece of legislation that the Senate Majority leader plans to fast-track through the Senate after the election?
Natural gas gets $4.5 billion in real money to foster a different fossil foolish addiction with an inefficient path toward cutting our oil demand.
Electricity gets nice words — lots and lots of nice words — and a bit of fictitious money with nothing serious in the real world.
Other alternatives to cutting oil demand (better traffic management, feedback systems on car dashboards, advanced biofuels and other alternative fuels, electrification of railroads, etc …) don’t even get platitudes or, more importantly, the regulatory steps (such as requiring all vehicles to be flex-fuel or else have a penalty applied on their sales price) that could help them move forward.
All in all, a lame excuse for lame-duck legislation.
The 10:10 campaign is targeting getting nations, organizations, businesses, individuals, etc to commit to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions 10 percent per year as a path to achieve reductions, globally, in line with what looks necessary to have any serious chance of avoiding catastrophic climate chaos. As part of this, sparked in efforts with groups like 350.org and 1Sky and others, there is a Global Work Party scheduled for 10 October 2010.
As you will see, if you choose to watch it, this promotional video (film?), entitled No Pressure, takes a rather bloody tack to getting attention.
Here, by the way, is what I find to be a far more appropriate message re 10/10/10:
UPDATE: The 10:10 video had a strong — and sometimes legitimate — angry response. As per above, 10:10 pulled it from the web. If you wish, you can find it. Note that this effort was not endorsed or seen by almost of those pushing the Global Work Day. Here, for example, is the response from Bill McKibben (350.org)
Days that suck by Bill McKibben
I just climbed off an airplane at Boston’s Logan Airport. The day began in Monterrey, Mexico–and though I was tired, I was also feeling pretty good. Our big day of action on October 10th has been building to a crescendo: we yesterday broke our record from last year, registering more than 5500 actions for the big Global Work Party.
But I’d barely turned on my computer when that good feeling turned to a kind of quiet nausea. There were emails from people all saying the same thing: Have you seen this? This was a gross video making its way around Youtube, purporting to show people being blown up for not believing in climate change. It’s been “pulled” from Youtube by its creators, the British climate group 10:10, but of course nothing is ever really “pulled” from Youtube. If you want to watch it bad enough, I’m pretty sure you can find it. Or you can look at the story at climate denier Marc Morano’s Climate Depot website assailing it as the latest example of eco-fascism.
Morano, and other climate skeptics, are right to crow. It’s the kind of stupidity that really hurts our side, reinforcing in people’s minds a series of preconceived notions, not the least of which is that we’re out-of-control elitists. Not to mention crazy, and also with completely misplaced sense of humor.
We put out a statement at 350.org saying we had nothing to do with it– we didn’t see it till it had made its way around the web, and as soon as we did we let people know we thought it was disgusting. We’ve known the creators for years–they put out a statement apologizing for their lapse. But it’s the kind of mistake that will haunt and hurt efforts. What makes it so depressing is that it’s the precise opposite of what the people organizing around the world for October 10 are all
about. In the first place, they’re as responsible as it’s possible to be: they’ll spend the day putting up windmills and solar panels, laying out bike paths and digging community gardens. And in the second place, they’re doing it because they realize kids are already dying from climate change, and that many many more are at risk as the century winds on. Killing people is, literally, the last thing we want.
There’s no question that crap like this will cast a long shadow over our efforts, and everyone else who’s working on global warming. We’re hard at work, as always, but we’re doing it today with a sunk and sad feeling.
Across the nation, 255 records legitimately associated with warming and 4 associated with cooling. Again, to be clear, one day in one country proves nothing. But we are seeing many days like this. To be clear, neither does a month or a specific year in one town, country, or region. Nor does the fact that, globally, 2010 is on track to be the hottest (or tied for hottest) year in recorded weather history with nation-after-nation breaking their all-time high temperature records.
At this time, the U.S. Senate is the roadblock between U.S. action (even if inadequate) and inaction when it comes to climate change mitigation and the development of a comprehensive approach to global warming. The 2010 election looks likely to change this dynamic for the worse, moving even more Senate seats into the hands of anti-science syndrome sufferers.
The Democratic Party nominee, Scott McAdams, is a potential Climate Hero. While he supports exploitation of Alaska’s resources, those resources are not defined simply in carbon terms for him. He supports serious investment in clean energy, defending one of the most cost-effective legislative actions in US history (the Clean Air Act), and developing a path toward a sustainable future.
The write-in candidate, fallen Republican angel Lisa Murkowski, is a Climate Peacock who acknowledges climate change and that humanity contributes to it, but undermines any serious effort to address climate change or mitigation. (Murkowski might, in fact, be defined as a ‘fallen Climate Peacock’, tending toward Climate Zombie, because Murkowski’s efforts to undermine the Clean Air Act into the Dirty Air Act go directly against using science to support decisions about public policy.)
While Alaska might be nicknamed The Last Frontier, it is on the front lines of climate chaos, seeing the most dramatic temperature shifts in the United States and, quite literally, already having lost villages to climate change. As USA Today put it years ago, “Alaska the ‘poster state’ for climate concerns“.
September 27th, 2010 · Comments Off on Stupid Goes Viral: Climate Zombies of KS, NV, RI, SD, TN
R L Millercomes to the table with thoughtful, informed, insightful, and passionate writing. This guest post is part of a series highlighting the anti-science syndrome suffering hatred of a livable economic system that is prevalent in the new wave of Republican candidates for Congress. An utter disdain for science, openly using truthiness-laden talking points that are simply false. To paraphrase a famous question, “Have you no shame, political candidate, no shame at all?”
They prowl the halls of Congress, moaning for caaasshh.
Their stupid has gone viral.
And if they win, humanity loses.
I’m tracking Climate Zombies: every Republican candidate for House, Senate, and Governor who doubts, denies, or derides the science of climate change. Today, a look at two states whose GOP candidates haven’t said much about climate science…or have they?
Mountain-top removal (MTR) is a travesty, a crime on current and future generations in the interest of near-term profits. Even within the context of mining coal, MTR isn’t just a way to get the miner out of the mine but miners out of the coal industry as blowing up the mountains and devastating the environment requires fewer workers per ton of coal than actual mining.
The Bush-Cheney Administration declared war on Appalachia, with just a few word changes to definitions as to “fill”, allowing much more aggressive MTR operations with far less oversight. Valley after valley, stream after stream has been devastated over the last decade.
Another guest post from the extremely thoughtful and insightful BruceMcF. Bruce’s thoughts, writ large, about transport policy and, more specifically, electrified rail merit attention and action.
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
Living in Ohio, that is doubly true: first, adding the impact of the recession on top of the impact of sixteen years of Kasich/Portman style policies is, ironically, the best opportunity for those who helped cause the mess to gain political power from it.
Offering a path to sequester significant amounts of carbon for centuries.
A serious biochar program could create jobs, improve agricultural productivity with reduced use of fossil fuel based inputs (fertilizer), and take a bit out of global emissions.
Thus, the first glance response was virtually a cheer as this commonsense, cost-effective, effective on multiple fronts approach made it to The Post’s oped section. Here is that opening:
In New Haven, W.Va., the Mountaineer Power Plant is using a complicated chemical process to capture about 1.5 percent of the carbon dioxide it produces. The gas is cooled to a liquid at a pressure of about 95 atmospheres and pumped 2,375 meters down to a sandstone formation, where it is meant to remain indefinitely. The objective is to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere from the coal burning at the plant.
This certainly seems to be doing it the hard way. Extracting just this 1.5 percent of the CO2 from the plant’s flue requires a $100 million investment, and whether the gas will remain underground or bubble to the surface is in question.
Fortunately, there is a way to capture and store excess carbon from the atmosphere that is cheap, efficient and environmentally friendly.
Great. An attack at the fallacial carbon capture and sequestration silver bullet with offering up that old technology provides a potential answer.
From there, the enthusiasm quickly drained away.
What was his heaping of garbage idea? That we collect agricultural waste and put them in “garbage heaps” as a path to sequester carbon.
Let’s lay out just a few of the problems with the concept that Price lays out:
The “waste” materials that he talks about are, in a lot of cases, now part of no-till agriculture and end up aiding soil fertility. Taking this material away to dump into piles means that we’ve have to add more fertilizer to make up for the missing organic material.
The system would take a significant amount of resources (read energy) to gather the materials and dig them in.
And, this process risks creating massive anaerobic fermentation chambers creating large amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane (which, after all, is what happens in garbage dumps).
The basic errors in the concept layout should embarrass The Post. Look at this paragraph:
Any gardener knows that compost heaps must be turned regularly. Without access to oxygen, bacteria cannot break down plant material. The principle can be harnessed for carbon capture: All that is necessary is to pile the plants high enough, and the carbon at the bottom will stay put indefinitely. After all, this is how all that coal and oil formed in the first place.
Do you see the absurdities in this paragraph? Let’s highlight just a few:
Again, anaerobic fermentation occurs in the absence of oxygen and, unlike well-turned compost, creates methane. Now, that methane could be a clean fuel support but, clearly, would be returning carbon into the atmosphere.
“All that is necessary” is some form of truly enormous pile. Just how big a pile are we talking about? How much energy to dig a serious enough pile to avoid anaerobic fermentation?
Hugh Price, “the director of production planning at The Post,” had a cute idea, perhaps amusing for a brainstorming session, that simply doesn’t stand up to even the most basic scrutiny.
And, well, due to his day job, Mr. Price had a unique path toward publication without, evidently, any form of substantive review of the work.
As online commentators B202 put it,
Again, I wish the Post would discover the unique idea of inviting actual scientists onto its pages to discuss scientific issues. Hard as it is to believe, there are better experts – right here in the DC area – to talk about environmental issues than George Will and your printing press manager. No personal offense meant to Mr. Price.
September 20th, 2010 · Comments Off on Energy Smart Micro-Lending
Today is time to take a moment to make a plug for a specific charity as I am about to write a check and you might want to as well. A bit of background first.
To another subject, the potential for helping people ill-served by existing fossil-foolish energy systems leap frog to energy efficiency systems powered with clean (renewable) energy is a developing empowering path around much of the world. For example, an LED-light/solar power with battery combination can be had for the cost of a few months of kerosene for a home lamp. The direct financial ROI for that capital investment could, easily, be many times over due to eliminating those kerosene costs. Once paid off, there are years of now ‘free’ and clean energy services. There are also the ‘indirect’ benefits, such as reduced air pollution within the home, not having to spend the time (a resource) on buying/managing the kerosene, and the potential that the LED/solar system could enable extended business. The real challenge, not surprisingly, is that a solar system requires an upfront capital investment that is beyond the resources of the vast majority of the world’s citizens.
The value of marrying micro-lending with energy smart leapfrogging options seems quite clear.
There has been very little research on the specific impact of microfinance on environmental sustainability. However, around two billion people around the world use kerosene (paraffin) for household lighting, consuming the equivalent of 1.7 million barrels of petroleum a day, greater than the petroleum production of Libya. Many of these poor people are, or could be, microfinance clients. Recently, new technologies, in particular inexpensive, reliable solar/light-emitting diode (LED) systems, have opened up the possibility of consumer lighting products that are cost-competitive with kerosene lighting, even for very poor people. The market for clean energy products is enormous; there are 200 million households in Africa alone that could switch from kerosene to solar/LED lighting.
Grameen Shakti (e.g, same family as Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the poster child of a successful micro-financing program) has been doing solar lighting, biogas, and improved (more efficient) cook stove deployment using microfinancing principles. (In essence, the new system will save / earn you money, use that money to pay on installment for the provided system.)
To be honest, I hadn’t really picked up on the growing marriage of micro-financing with sustainable energy systems.
Opening my mail the other day changed that equation. For better or worse, most of our mail is fundraising material and most goes unopened — especially from organizations that we ‘know’ and are happy to donate to on a regular basis. (Sigh, try to signal that the mailings are a waste of resources but not all charities get the message. That, by the way, is becoming a guideline as to who should receive funds. Send me a letter every week and, well, you don’t really merit funding in my book.) Thus, the FINCA mailing almost went right into the recycling but, with opening, the letter’s first paragraph grabbed my full attention:
Dear Mr Siegel,
You and I take many things for granted that familes in developing countries simply don’t have. Take electricity, for example, I am writing to you on a computer in an air-conditioned office powered by a reliable source of electricity. Yet, as I do, I am acutely aware that millions of families cannot afford to light their homes.
According to the United Nations, 1.5 billion people worldwide have no access to electricity. This puts them at a huge disadvantage. It affects their health — since most cook with wood or charcoal or kerosene in poorly ventilated homes. It hampers their ability to work — since whatever they do or produce must be done by hand and during daylight hours only. And, it affects their children’s education — how do you read or write or do homework without light?
One estimate that I’ve see is that an hour of nighttime lighting can translate to two years additional educational achievement, on average, for girls in the developing world.
In Uganda, just five percent of people have access to the public electricity grid. Millions of Ugandans rely on kerosene, candles, and batteries for power; millions more go without. Imagine trying to run a business — or a home — without power. If you owned a small store, how would you light your shop or power the refrigerator? If you owned a small store, how would you light your shop or power the refrigerator? If you were a parent, how cold your children do their homework at night? What if you ran out of kerosene, or wood, or charcoal for cooking? What if you couldn’t afford to buy more?
What if you couldn’t afford to maintain any level of energy services? That is not an answer any of us wish to face and it is not a good answer to dealing with the poor’s (legitimate) desires for improved living conditions and opportunities. The answer to these questions, just as to America’s fossil-foolish addictions, should not be to increase subsidies and ignore all of the secondary (and tertiary) problems that reliance on burning carbon (especially fossil) fuel sources creates. When it comes to telecommunications, the developing world isn’t installing copper cables to rip them out to install fiber optics to see them obsolete with wireless comms, they are growing (exponentially) their wireless networks (increasingly powered by renewable energy systems). The question: How can we leap frog past the broken and inadequate fossil-foolish energy system to something better?
Micro-lending for renewable systems certainly seems one of the tools to enable that sort of leap frogging.
FINCA Uganda client Rose Nassimbwa lives in a small two-room brick house near a market. She runs a small restaurant and a tailor shop in the market. The FINCA-financed SHS appealed to her because, though she lives within range of the electricity grid, she cannot afford the connection fee. Ms. Nassimbwa uses her SHS at home to charge her cell phone and to power a lamp for an hour in the mornings and two-three hours in the evenings, so that her children can do their homework in the electric light. She still uses kerosene for making tea, but not for lighting her house anymore. Ms. Nassimbwa is so pleased with her FINCA SHS that she is now considering acquiring a second system for her restaurant. She is also thinking about moving her sewing machine from her shop to her house for the pre-Christmas holiday period—when demand for her clothing designs rises—so that she can put in extra hours sewing during the evenings with lighting from the solar panel. Her goal is to use her additional revenue to expand her tailoring business by purchasing a larger inventory of fabrics and sewing materials to better meet her clients’ requests.
Reduced costs, reduced pollution, improved educational opportunities, and increased (very small) business activity. That is exactly the sort of the type of win-win-win-win solutions that we should (and I like to) invest in. With this letter and this program, FINCA sent me looking for a pen and a checkbook.
What is FINCA telling me will be done with the money they’ll receive?
you can ensure that low-income families throughout the developing world will reap the benefits of light and electricity, just as you and I do. Your gift will help them generate clean electricity from the power of the sun — power that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels, that doesn’t generate carbon emissions, that is reliable and there when they need it. … your gift will help families invest in their own energy independence.
Rather than tax dollars spent subsidizing new coal plants in South Africa via the World Bank, this is a path forward for electrifying the developing world that I can support … including with resources.
R L Millercomes to the table with thoughtful, informed, insightful, and passionate writing. This guest post is part of a series highlighting the anti-science syndrome suffering hatred of a livable economic system that is prevalent in the new wave of Republican candidates for Congress. An utter disdain for science, openly using truthiness-laden talking points that are simply false. To paraphrase a famous question, “Have you no shame, political candidate, no shame at all?”
They prowl the halls of Congress, moaning for caaasshh.
Their stupid has gone viral.
And if they win, humanity loses.
I’m tracking Climate Zombies: every Republican candidate for House, Senate, and Governor who doubts, denies, or derides the science of climate change. Today, a look at two states whose GOP candidates haven’t said much about climate science…or have they?
NCAR scientists analyzed record high temperature and record low temperature data for the United States for the past60 years (using solely weather stations that have been active for the entire period). If the United States climate wasn’t changing in one direction, over time, writ large we should expect two things:
comes to the table with thoughtful, informed, insightful, and passionate writing. This guest post is part of a series highlighting the anti-science syndrome suffering hatred of a livable economic system that is prevalent in the new wave of Republican candidates for Congress. An utter disdain for science, openly using truthiness-laden talking points that are simply false. To paraphrase a famous question, “Have you no shame, political candidate, no shame at all?”
This last week, I have been staring at The Transport Politic post,