Pylon Sounds

By Meredith Niles

This week, as I sorted through my inbox and overflowing number of "google alerts," one particular story from Fox News caught my attention. In a decidedly personal yet informative piece, Andy Kroll of Fox News outlined the reasons why he was going to reduce his meat consumption by 75 percent in the upcoming months. The tipping point for him? The significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions associated with animal production globally.

What is so inviting and simultaneously exciting about Andy's article is the realistic and informative approach he takes to a very complicated issue. He notes the United Nations figure regarding animal production -- 18 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions are associated from animal production [PDF]. This includes all of the myriad emissions linked to animal production: pesticides and fertilizers required to grow feed crops, methane emissions from cows burping, and all of the stuff that comes out their back end, plus the energy required to transport, slaughter, package, and distribute animal products.

To put that 18 percent figure in context -- 14 percent of emissions come from transportation. And, as Andy thoughtfully notes -- many of us find it difficult to cut back on driving, but we do have significant control over our diets every day. Research published in the journal Earth Interactions in 2006 found that a meat-eater consuming the average American caloric diet produced 700 kg of CO2 more than a plant-eater in a year. In context, this is the difference between driving a Prius and a midsize sedan like a Toyota Camry. So if you think you have to spend a bunch of money to upgrade your car to be climate-friendly, try looking to your plate first.

What the article does so well is take an issue that, to date, has actually drawn considerable sensationalist criticism, and put it on a level that people can actually understand and use. When the U.N. released the report Livestock's Long Shadow back in 2006, from which the 18 percent figure came, vegetarian organizations rejoiced, but sadly few others really thought about the implications of the U.N. report.

Attempts to suggest that meat consumption be reduced in the United States as a means to fight climate change and greenhouse gas emissions were dismissed as left-wing propaganda and vegetarian agendas. But the reality of the U.N.'s report, along with dozens of subsequent peer-reviewed scientific articles, is that reducing meat consumption is one of the greatest things individuals can do to reduce their carbon footprint.

Andy presents a realistic option for making a difference -- calculating your own meat consumption currently (for him about 20 meals a week containing meat) and reducing that figure by 75 percent. He is ambitious with such reductions, but even reducing your meat consumption by 25 percent can and will make a difference. While the article focuses on climate change environmental impacts in particular, there are also numerous other reasons to cut back on meat consumption.

In the United States, the EPA estimates that animals produce three times as much waste as humans, and that waste goes untreated before it is sprayed on our fields and washed into our streams. Downstream the added nutrients of animal wastes choke out oxygen from waterways and create eutrophic conditions, much like the ones that create the seasonal "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.

Meat production, especially at large scale factory farms throughout the country, has had a notable impact on rural communities. Significant odors, groundwater contamination, and farmworker health problems have plagued pockets of our country including eastern North Carolina, central California, and the upper Midwest for untold years, as factory farms have gotten bigger. And, since the average American eats more than 200 pounds of meat a year -- far more than any other country in the world -- there are certainly potential health benefits to cutting back on the meat. Clearly, meat consumption isn't just an environmental issue.

Climate change legislation is coming down the pipeline quickly throughout the country, and to date most of the discussion has focused on cap-and-trade initiatives to regulate transportation, electricity, and manufacturing sectors. The Fox News article highlights the need to also consider the role of animal production and food-system emissions overall in our climate change policies. But for the moment, it makes clear that we don't need to wait around for policymakers to tell us how to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in this country. We make decisions everyday about our own carbon footprint which can actually have a real impact. I hope we can all join Andy in looking no farther than our plates to start making real changes today.

By David Roberts

Today the Department of Energy announced its first energy loan guarantee. It's going to ... Solyndra, a manufacturer of solar panels. What's the phrase? Oh, right: elections have consequences.

By Adam Browning

I have a foolproof plan to fight spam: if the government gave out Viagra for free, then most spammers would quickly go out of business as their market would be undercut. Foolproof.

Our friends at ForestEthics are trying to do the same for junk mail, except they have an even better plan: a Do Not Mail Registry, modeled on the effective Do Not Call Registry. And on Monday, March 23, the city of San Francisco will hold a hearing on whether to be the first municipality in California to pass a resolution (PDF) in support. If you are in town, come on down to City Hall at 1 pm.

By Jeff Biggers

As a new round of explosives shattered the ridges across mountaintop removal mines in Boone and Raleigh counties in West Virginia yesterday, unleashed by a recent U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, White House Council on Environmental Quality chair Nancy Sutley gave the first indications that the Obama administration plans to act promptly on dealing with the ravages of mountaintop removal in Appalachia.

Sutley's testimony at a hearing at the House Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies -- whose electricity was powered by a coal-fired plant using mountaintop removal coal -- raised a few eyebrows of those who recalled a similar pivotal moment in the anti-strip mining movement 30 years ago, when a well-meaning liberal Democratic administration came into power in 1976 and ultimately caved-in to coal lobby pressure and relegated Appalachia to three decades of destruction.

In responding to a question on mountaintop removal policies, Sutley presented some of the questions her office is reviewing:

Whether all of the permits are created equal, do they all represent activities that will have significant environmental impact. So that we can focus on the ones that have the most significant environmental impacts and see what the options are for making sure that if they do go ahead that we are dealing with the environmental impacts.

Significant environmental impact is an understatement: Over the past 30 years, more than 500 mountaintop have been blown to bits, 1,200 miles of streams have been jammed with mining waste, and untold numbers of historic communities have been impoverished and depopulated.

Bottom line: The Obama administration needs to end all mountaintop removal, one of the most egregious human right and environmental violations, in Appalachia, now.

Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward covered the hearing in detail at his blog, Coal Tattoo.

Sutley's timing could not be urgent: A sense of desperation for federal intervention has gripped the coalfields in Appalachia.

"Our members feel a sense of urgency like never before," said Jim Foster in a statement this week. Foster is a retired underground miner and member of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, whose home in Van, West Virginia, is below another expanding mountaintop removal operation. "Unless the Obama Administration steps in to protect coalfield communities and retrain coal workers, the coal industry is going to take all it can, leaving us poisoned water, abandoned towns and a toxic future."

Thirty years ago, the movement to abolish strip mining was effectively derailed by the Goliath resources of the coal companies, whose sway on Capitol Hill was no less powerful in the state and township corridors. In the end, federal legislators opted to "regulate" strip mining, instead of banning its undeniable wrath of destruction in the coal areas.

In 1977, in the afterglow of the OPEC energy crisis and a new scramble toward coal production, President Jimmy Carter signed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, an admittedly "watered down bill" that would enhance "the legitimate and much-needed production of coal." The president declared that it would also "assuage the fears that the beautiful areas where coal is produced were being destroyed."

Few residents in the coalfields agreed. In his classic To Save the Land and People: A History of Opposition to Surface Coal Mining in Appalachia, Chad Montrie described the sense of betrayal of the Appalachian coalition working with the Midwestern heartland advocates, and those living in the ruins of the strip mines: "... the present bill was so weakened by compromise that is no longer promised effective control of the coal industry or adequate protection of citizens' rights. A press release listed the provisions (or absent provisions) the Coalition found particularly troublesome: an eighteen-month exemption of small operators; recognition of mountaintop removal as an approved mining technique (rather than a variance requiring special approval); language allowing for variance from restoration to approximate original contour; failure to impose slope limitations (or a partial ban on contour mining); and failure to fully protect surface owner rights with a comprehensive consent clause."

According to long-time anti-stripmining activist Jane Johnson in Illinois, the Act further also allowed a flood of "grandfathering" of old mining contracts to circumvent the new requirements. Johnson wrote in the Illinois South newsletter in 1987, on the tenth anniversary of the surface mining act:

The State allowed thousands of acres of prime land to be mined without having to meet the requirements of PL 95-87. Also, farmland could be mined, but there was no criteria written for judging the success of land reclamation. Industry continued to defend its reclamation practices but citizens couldn't find the bountiful harvest of corn and soybeans alluded to in permit applications. People in the cornbelt felt betrayed.

Nancy Sutley: Appalachia must not be betrayed this time around.

To fully understand the horrific impact of the mountaintop removal blasting and destruction, here is a video of an explosion earlier this week in Peachtree, W. Va.:

By Brad Johnson

This post originally appeared at the Wonk Room.

Glenn Beck, the conservative ideologue whose show is mocked by fellow Fox News anchors, recently attacked plans to modernize our electric grid. After Carol Browner, President Obama's climate and energy adviser, said that a smart grid means "we can get to a system where an electric company will be able to hold back some of the power so that maybe your air conditioner won't operate at its peak, you'll still be able to cool your house, but that'll be a savings to the consumer," Beck argued that would lead to "one-world government" with "Czar Browner" in charge of everyone's air conditioners:

I can't wait for the 97 degree day in August when Czar Browner in Washington decides it's in my country's best interest to make sure I'm not cooling my house. . . . There's no way the government would turn down the air conditioning at the wrong place and kill someone.

On Fox News, Beck snorted, "Gosh, that would be great if I could just keep turning the air conditioner up and the government won't let me do it. That's fantastic." Watch it:

In reality, Browner was describing demand-side management technology, the kind of grid modernization that corporate executives from Wal-Mart's Lee Scott to American Electric Power's Mike Morris have called an essential advance. Our antiquated power grid, a national embarassment which threatens our energy future, needs to be upgraded to a digital network just as the analog phone system gave way to the Internet.

Beck's rant assumes that an "electric company" and "the government" are one and the same. In fact, eight-four percent of the United States retail electric power market is provided by private companies. Over 120 million customers are served by the private market, versus 21 million served by public utilities, most of which are small municipal entities. The concept that Carol Browner would have control over a national thermostat is frankly bizarre:

During his diatribes on his Fox News show and his radio program, Beck also called cap-and-trade — which would establish a multi-billion-dollar private market in pollution allowances — "one of my favorite socialist ideas." Although global warming is increasing the deadly heat waves that worry him so, Beck further claimed "the only thing that has become incredibly clear on the science of climate change is that they can't decide whether to call it global warming or call it climate change."

It's not surprising that someone who can't tell the difference between capitalism and socialism doesn't understand much about science either.

By Joseph Romm

Yale and George Mason Universities surveyed 2,164 Americans last fall about their "climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy preferences, and actions." Details will be posted at midnight Tuesday here. Here is a first look:

• 92 percent supported more funding for research on renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power;
• 85 percent supported tax rebates for people buying energy efficient vehicles or solar panels;
• 80 percent said the government should regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant;
• 69 percent of Americans said the United States should sign an international treaty that requires the U.S. to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide 90% by the year 2050.

Americans say they are prepared to incur significant costs, as the figure above shows. In fact, they "support policies that would personally cost them more," specifically (emphasis in original):

• 79 percent supported a 45 mpg fuel efficiency standard for cars, trucks, and SUVs, even if that meant a new vehicle cost up to $1,000 more to buy;
• 72 percent supported a Renewable Portfolio Standard that required electric utilities to produce at least 20 percent of their electricity from wind, solar, or other renewable energy sources, even if it cost the average household an extra $100 a year;
• 72 percent supported a government subsidy to replace old water heaters, air conditioners, light bulbs, and insulation, even if it cost the average household $5 a month in higher taxes;
• 63 percent supported establishment of a special fund to make buildings more energy efficient and teach Americans how to reduce their energy use, even if this cost the average household $2.50 a month in higher electric bills.

Interestingly, the study also finds that most Americans support unilateral action:

These results may appear at odds with recent polls -- see "Gallup poll shows failure of media, conservatives still easily duped by deniers" (here) and "Deniers are still mostly duping only GOP voters" (here) and "The Deniers are winning, but only with the GOP" (here).

But I think the results are not so inconsistent. Americans want to reduce pollution and strongly believe in clean energy -- even most of the (large) minority that tells pollsters "News about about global warming is exaggerated" today. Indeed, most Americans are smart enough to figure out that the threat from global warming is not its (relatively) small impact on climate today, but the huge danger it poses in future decades if we continue on the business as usual path of unrestricted emissions.

I will expand on this point with another look at this poll later. I am also hoping to get somebody who was involved in the research to comment on it.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

By Robert Stavins

Whether they are called "revenue enhancements" or "user charges," fear of the political consequences of taxes restricts debate on energy and environmental policy options in Washington. In a March 7 post on "green jobs," in which I argued that it is not always best to try to address two challenges with a single policy instrument, I also noted that in some cases such dual-purpose policy instruments can be a good idea, and I gave gasoline taxes as an example.

Although a serious recession is clearly not the time to expect political receptivity to such a proposal, the time will come -- we all hope very soon -- when the economy turns around, employment rises, and a sustained period of economic growth ensues. When that happens, serious consideration should be given to increases in the federal tax on gasoline.

A gas tax increase -- coupled with an offsetting reduction in other taxes, such as the Social Security tax on wages -- could make most American households better off, while reducing oil imports, local pollution, urban congestion, road accidents, and global climate change. This revenue-neutral tax reform would exemplify the market-based approaches to environmental protection and resource management I examined in previous posts.

Such a change need not constitute a new tax, but a reform of existing ones. It is well known ­-- both from economic theory and numerous empirical studies ­-- that taxes tend to reduce the extent to which people undertake the taxed activity. In the United States, most tax revenues are raised by levies on labor and investment; the resulting reduction in these fundamentally desirable activities is viewed as an unfortunate but unavoidable side-effect of the need to raise revenue for government operations. Would it not make more sense to raise the revenue we need by taxing undesirable activities, instead of desirable ones?

Combustion of gasoline in motor vehicles produces local air pollution as well as carbon dioxide that contributes to global climate change, increases imports of oil, and exacerbates urban highway congestion. Can anyone really claim that -- given a choice between discouraging work and discouraging gasoline consumption -- it is better to discourage work?

According to the Department of Energy, a 50-cent gas tax increase could eventually reduce gasoline consumption by 10 to 15 percent, reduce oil imports by perhaps 500 thousand barrels per day, and generate about $40 billion per year in revenue.

Furthermore, this approach would be far more effective than ongoing proposals to increase the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which affect only new vehicles and lead to serious safety problems by encouraging auto makers to produce lighter vehicles. Also, remember that a major effect of CAFE standards has been to accelerate the shift from cars to SUVs and light trucks (so that overall fuel efficiency of new vehicles sold is no better than it was a decade ago, despite the great strides that have taken place in fuel efficiency technologies). As my Harvard colleague Martin Feldstein pointed out in The Wall Street Journal in 2006, the conventional approach "does nothing to encourage individuals to drive less, to use their cars more efficiently, or to shift sooner to new and more fuel efficient [and cleaner] vehicles." A more enlightened approach ­-- a market-based approach -- would reward consumers who economize on gasoline use. And that is what a revenue-neutral gas tax is all about.

The revenue from the gas tax could be transferred to the Social Security Trust Fund and credited to current workers. If $40 billion per year from new gas tax revenues were transferred to Social Security, the payroll tax -- the employee contribution to Social Security -- could be cut by perhaps a third: a worker with annual wages of $30,000 would take home an additional $750 per year! The extra income would more than offset the cost of the gas tax, unless the worker drove over 35,000 miles per year in a car getting 25 miles or less per gallon. Rebating the gas tax in this way addresses the greatest concern about higher gas taxes -- that they can hit hardest those workers who drive to their jobs. Further, a tax of this magnitude could be phased in gradually, perhaps no more than 10 cents per year over 5 years, allowing individuals and firms to adjust their consuming and producing behavior.

Proposals for gasoline tax increases in recent sessions of Congress would have dedicated the revenue to public spending (for transportation and other programs). A key difference is that the proposal I have outlined here is for a revenue-neutral change in which the gas tax revenue would be returned to Americans through reduced payroll taxes. To adopt some of the language I developed in my previous posts, such a change can be both efficient and equitable, and -- for those reasons -- perhaps even politically feasible.

Of course, such a scheme is not a panacea for U.S. energy and environmental problems. But it would make a significant contribution if enacted. On the other hand, political fear of the T-word in Washington may mean that it is never discussed seriously in public, let alone adopted. Most fear of taxes is due to politicians' anxieties about asking their constituents to pay more. But an increase in the Federal gas tax, rebated through reduced payroll taxes would not cost most Americans any more and would have significant long-term benefits for the country. Still, fear of the T-word looms large; maybe it should be called an "All-American Ecologically Sound, Fully Recyclable, Anti-Terror, Energy-Independence Assessment."

By Tom Laskawy

Team Ethanol got together recently at the Department of Energy for Biomass 2009: Fueling Our Future -- a conference on all things biofuel. Needless to say, they're still singing the same old song. More subsidies, a higher blend wall (a cheer that USDA Chief Tom Vilsack knows well) and much crowing over the promise of cellulosic ethanol, which uses "non-food crops" such as switchgrass and wood waste rather than corn.

They all clearly got the memo about carbon neutrality, which explains why Richard Hamilton, CEO of Ceres, one of the ethanol bigwigs, was saying things like this:

[L]arge increases expected in crop productivity, as well as better utilization of fallow or marginal land, will absorb the demands being placed on U.S. farmers by bioenergy. "And if we look at improved ways to roll-out advances in plant science globally, and rely primarily on non-food, low-carbon crops like switchgrass, sorghum and Miscanthus, then the math behind biofuels looks even more promising," he said.

Hamilton noted that direct land-use policies hold the greatest promise for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by providing a predictable, transparent carbon playing field.

"By having landowners and governments be directly responsible, we can drive efficiencies in farm practices, such as conservation tillage, expand the use of high-yielding, low-input crops and varieties, and encourage other sequestration practices, such as the use of winter cover crops. From a policy and practicality standpoint, it makes greater sense to be tackling the problem head-on," he said.

It sounds positively sustainable, doesn't it! Ignored in his analysis, of course, are the indirect effects of using land to grow fuel -- whether the crop is a food or not. If that land is no longer being used for food, then food will be grown somewhere else -- likely in former rainforests, as a team from Woods Hole Research Center discovered. And Lester Brown points out that profitable crops grown on marginal land will provide too much temptation; farmers would invariably try to grow them on prime land, thus further displacing food crops.

And if there was any doubt about the current carbon footprint of ethanol production, Phil Brasher of the Desmoine Register erased it when he noted concern among participants that "new biofuels plants will face greenhouse gas emission targets they can't meet when EPA releases a long-awaited formula." But wait, I thought ethanol was a low-carbon "solution." Guess not.

All that said, we will likely need low-carbon liquid fuels well into this century -- it's not, however, the concept of biofuels that are the problem. Algal biofuel (which may turn out to play a crucial role in carbon sequestration) or ethanol fueled by wood waste (or waste products) may yet be in our future fuel mix. But forcing agriculture to provide crops exclusively for use as fuel makes no sense for a planet wracked by climate change and struggling to feed our growing population.

Sadly, with the politics of ethanol all about "reducing dependence on foreign oil" and providing a means to use all that corn our screwed up system of agriculture subsidies produces, we lack a means for our political institutions to connect the dots. Making matters worse, there's no powerful, well-funded interest groups pressuring for the decoupling of crops and fuel nor an institutional pressure point on which to act. What a biomess.

By Joseph Romm

The best and cheapest near-term strategy for reducing coal plant CO2 emissions without forcing utilities to simply walk away from their entire capital investment is to replace that coal with biomass (see here).

Today, Energy Daily ($ub. req'd) reports on the huge -- but little covered -- news from one of the nation's biggest carbon polluters:

The Georgia Public Service Commission gave the green light Tuesday to a Georgia Power request to convert the utility's 155 megawatt coal-fired Plant Mitchell near Albany, Ga., to burn woody biomass, a move that will result in the first biomass plant in the vast generation fleet of Georgia Power parent Southern Co.

This will become "the largest biomass facility in the United States," according to Southern Company COO Tom Fanning. And this is not the only biomass effort Southern Company is pursuing:

Alabama Power, another Southern affiliate, is studying co-firing woody biomass and switchgrass at its coal-fired Gadsden plant near Birmingham and co-firing woody biomass at its coal-fired Barry plant near Bucks, Ala. Southern affiliate Gulf Power is evaluating co-firing biomass at its coal-fired Plant Scholz near Marianna, Fla.

The huge advantage of biomass conversion or co-firing is that you don't have to build an entire planet from scratch, thus lowering the capital costs. Plus you already have the power plant sited and you have transmission sited and you have train lines and water supply. Plus this is new baseload renewable power -- arguably the most valuable commodity in the entire power sector these days.

And since biomass captures carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere during the process of growing, it is the only form of carbon capture that is likely to lead to deliver significant kilowatt-hours for the next one to two decades (see here).

So, again, this is, in the near term, the most practical and affordable strategy for utilities with coal plants that want to reduce CO2 emissions without simply writing off the entire value of their plant. Hence, this is a crucial strategy for coal-intensive utilities in the Southeast and Midwest that have long opposed renewable energy standards and climate action:

Southern for years has spearheaded utility industry opposition to a national renewable electricity standard (RES) that would require power companies to obtain a percentage of their electricity from wind, solar power or other green resources, saying the mandate would discriminate against utilities in the Southeast, which lacks the abundant wind and solar resources found in the Midwest and Southwest, respectively.

If this is to be a scalable medium-term solution, then the country will need to make an all out effort to develop cellulosic biomass for use in power plants. Even today, the resource is significant in the key regions:

However, the Southeast has enormous quantities of woody biomass, a renewable fuel that utilities can use to meet the RES. Southern's Web site states that 8 million acres of forest and timberlands lie within a 100-mile radius of Plant Mitchell, providing 12 million tons of surplus supply wood fuel annually. The converted Mitchell plant, which will have a capacity of 96 MW, is expected to consume about 1 million tons per year.

The conversion of the Mitchell plant to biomass may signal recognition by Southern Co. that-with stronger Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and President Obama a strong backer of a federal RES-developing its extensive biomass resource may be both politically and economically prudent. The converted Mitchell plant is expected to begin operation in June 2012.

Interestingly, the new biomass power plant will generate more electricity than the current coal-fired unit. Here are some interesting details from a 2008 story in Biomass magazine:

According to Lynn Wallace, a company spokeswoman for Georgia Power, the nameplate capacity for the converted wood biomass-powered unit would be 59 megawatts lower due to the different physical characteristics of wood in comparison to coal. Wood contains more moisture and produces only 4,000 British thermal units (Btu) to 5,000 Btu per pound compared to coal at 12,000 Btu per pound, she said.

As a wood biomass-powered unit, the facility would actually produce more electricity than it does as a coal-fired unit, Wallace said. The unit currently operates at low capacity and is not considered one of the company's base-load power units; however, the biomass-powered unit would operate continuously and be part of the company's base load.

Surplus wood fuel for Plant Mitchell would come from suppliers operating within an approximately 100-mile radius of the plant. Wallace said the wood primarily would be waste wood, such as tree limbs, tree tops, needles, and leaves, which is normally left behind by timber harvesting companies. "We wouldn't be competing with their wood supply," she said.

Wallace said consumers are asking to have more energy produced from feedstocks and from processes that produce lower emissions. She said the wood biomass-powered unit will produce less sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions and will engender a net reduction in carbon emissions.

Wood biomass is also less expensive than coal, Wallace added. The new feedstock requirement for the unit is expected to create between 50 and 75 new jobs related to waste wood recovery. She said waste wood that is left on the forest floor also emits methane gas and can easily fuel forest fires if it's not cleared away.

The key, of course, to make sure this is all done in the sustainable fashion. That will be the job of regulators and the Obama administration.

When I was at the Department of Energy, we were pursuing research into developing better fast-growing hybrid poplars, which are "the fastest growing hardwood trees available to homeowners and landowners in America and they are growing successfully from the Northern Gulf Coast to New England, throughout the Midwest and into the Northwest." They are a high-energy crop that "grow well on marginal land, so they don't take up valuable food-producing soil" (see here).

The fundamental reason biomass conversion and co-firing are a core climate solution is that anyone who can deliver considerable amounts of low carbon power for under $0.15 a kilowatt hour -- and especially if that is baseload power -- will be a major player in the transition to a low carbon economy. And if you can do that in regions of the country that don't have a vast solar resource suitable for concentrated solar thermal or wind -- and especially if it is closer to $0.10 a kilowatt hour -- then you will be doubly valuable.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

By Tom Philpott

It's official, because it's been etched in the pages of our most sacred national chronicle. No, not the Federal Register -- I'm talking about O Magazine.

Here's the scoop: the Obamas will plant a veggie garden in the White House lawn. The First Lady of the United States told the Queen of the Universe as much, in an interview published in the latest edition of O. The excerpt available online doesn't include the garden stuff, but Daily Green has the money quote:

We want to use [the garden] as a point of education, to talk about health and how delicious it is to eat fresh food, and how you can take that food and make it part of a healthy diet. You know, the tomato that's from your garden tastes very different from one that isn't. And peas -- what is it like to eat peas in season? So we want the White House to be a place of education and awareness. And hopefully kids will be interested because there are kids living here.

Yes. I've waxed cynical about overstating the importance of the personal choices of First Families; and it's critical to remember that a White House garden is a symbolic gesture, not to be confused with real change in a unjust, unsustainable food system.

But Michelle O's sheer fabulousness has won me over. I honestly think she's going to push her husband to break new ground in food policy.

Update [2009-3-19 15:5:48 by Tom Philpott]: According to a White House press release emailed to Grist, the First Lady isn't procrastinating on getting in her spring veggies. Reads the press release: "Friday, March 20: The First Lady will host the groundbreaking of the White House Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn of the White House. She will be joined by students from Bancroft Elementary [a D.C. public school], who will be participating in the project from groundbreaking on Friday, to planting in the coming weeks and harvesting later this year."

By Tom Philpott

Update [2009-3-19 12:37:25 by Tom Philpott]:Also on the theme of Big Oil loving biofuels: Valero Energy, the largest U.S. oil refiner, just snapped up seven ethanol plants from bankrupt ethanol maker Verasun for $1 billion. To get the plants, Valero beat out corn-processing giant Archer Daniels Midland, which had bid $700 million.

-----

From& Reuters:

Oil Major Royal Dutch Shell Plc doesn't plan to make any more large investments in wind and solar energy in the future and does not expect hydrogen to play an important role in energy supply for some time.

But ...

Shell's future involvement in renewables will be principally limited to biofuels, which the world's second-largest non- government-controlled oil company by market value believes is a better fit with its core oil and gas operations.

By David Roberts

Just because people keep asking me:

Yes, we are in fact in the homestretch and a brand new Grist.org will debut in the middle of next week (barring unforeseen disasters). We turned comments off because we've been dual-publishing on both sites for a week, just to make sure the new one works. Moving every post over by hand is one thing ... trying to move comments over by hand? No.

But have no fear! In a week or so you'll be able to comment to your heart's content.

Over the last year or so, we've been:

1. completely replacing our server architecture,
2. migrating our 10 years of content from two crappy old content management systems that didn't work very well together to one shiny new one, and
3. completely redesigning the look and functionality of the site.

Shockingly, it took a bit longer than we thought it would!

But the wait will soon be over. And obviously, you'll be hearing a lot more about it. But for now, as my mom used to say: keep your pants on.

(Now that I think about it ... what did that mean?)

By Ken Ward

After ducking the matter for a decade, U.S. environmental organizations finally pulled together a climate policy, but the National Call to Action on Global Warming issued by 53 organizations on March 5 is a mistake and should be reconsidered.

The National Call contains key elements that have been startlingly absent from our efforts to date -- an assessment of climate risk, bright-line definition of solution, and a platform -- but in attempting to thread a path between fundamentally irreconcilable political worldviews, the groups have fashioned a pushmepullyou compromise that will not gain us the traction we now require and squanders moral capital won at cost.

The National Call was hurried into place when it became clear that the irredeemably flawed cap-and-trade agenda of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership would otherwise be adopted by default. Yet, instead of coming down emphatically, if belatedly, behind Jim Hansen's precautionary analysis and focusing on the central questions facing humanity -- "how bad is it?" how much time do we have left?" and "what do we have to do to avert cataclysm?" -- our major organizations choose to fudge the science and aim for something much smaller then the reordering of civics, economy, and society required to avert cataclysm.

What could and should be an illuminating, spirited civic debate between two sharply defined and fundamentally contradictory worldviews is now muddied by the introduction of a confused and confusing middle road position advanced by respected climate leaders. Split into three camps, we are further than ever from sharpening our story and worse off then before the National Call was issued.

No attempt was made to hide the illogic of the National Call, which claims to stand on "climate science" yet recommends inadequate, lower-end IPCC targets based on essentially antique science which does not fully encompass the risk of abrupt climate change. A bland statement acknowledging this fact ("more recent findings since the publication of the latest IPCC assessment suggest that even more urgent action may be needed") is included in the Call without clarification or conclusion.

This throwaway statement, however, is the nub of the matter, because all recent evidence on factors affecting the pace and scale of ice shelf break-up in Antarctica and Greenland -- the climate change "world killer" -- is very, very grim, and all projections of fossil fuel use and GHG emissions continue to rise steeply. It could not be clearer that we are running the last lap and there will be no opportunity for "do-overs."

What's going on here? None of our organizations and leaders truly disagree with the precautionary position as a matter of science, so why did 53 sign on to an statement calling for less than we know is now necessary to avert catastrophe?

Six organizations -- 350.org, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Friends of the Earth (FOE), International Rivers Network (IRN), GlobalWarmingSolution.org and, contrary to original reports, Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection -- did not endorse the National Call and there are indications that the decision does not sit comfortably with every group which did. People should be worried, because the National Call puts the majority of our organizations on the same slippery track that compromised the integrity of EDF and NRDC.

I have a half-formed idea that the critical factor for leadership and organizations is no longer whether one accepts the reality of abrupt climate change, as it was for the last 10 years, but whether one believes in the possibility of abrupt political change and is willing to work for it. If so, then there is no reason at this stage to support inadequate compromises that cannot avert cataclysm and will merely run out the clock. We're playing winner take all now.

If one cannot imagine a new American revolution, or shudders at the thought, then I suppose there is appeal in cutting the best deal going and hoping that Hansen et al. are wrong, but as a matter of strategy, it's still the bad move. Whether or not "non-linear" social change is thought likely or desirable, driving toward it improves the outcome either way.

Environmentalist power is proportional to our moral authority, not our facility at brokering, and our moral authority is diminished when we speak less then the truth. The National Call to Action on Global Warming, relying on out of date IPCC science, is knowingly built on a foundation of sand. It reduces our moral authority (and we ought to start thinking about our members, donors, and staff in this regard) and should be reconsidered.

Having won consensus for joint action -- a tremendous step forward -- we must assert the new power that can and should have flowed from the achievement, and the best way to do so is by endorsing Jim Hansen's call for a 300-350 ppm bright line. If we do this, then we act as a responsible movement, coalescing behind two opposed visions of political change and measures of appropriate precautionary behavior. If we do not do this, we churn already muddy waters and are worse off then if we had done nothing.

By Adam Stein

David Roberts asks:

Who, in this scenario [carbon revenue rebated to consumers], has any new incentive to shift to low-carbon electricity or efficiency?

Short answer: everyone.

Let's say I'm your utility, and I raise your energy prices so that, at present rate of consumption, your bill will rise to $50,000 per year. Pretend that energy here means everything: heating oil, electricity, natural gas, everything encompassed in a carbon cap. Then I hand you an annual rebate check for $50,000. You can do two things.

1. Give the money right back to me to pay for energy. Money is shuffled. Nothing changes.
2. Use part of the $50,000 to install a solar hot water heater, put in triple-glazed windows, and replace your light bulbs. Then you set your programmable thermostat two degrees lower, throw away your second fridge, and hang a clothesline. All of this will cost you a few thousand dollars, and you'll slash your energy use in half. Now, year after year, you pocket $25,000 from the rebate check.

This is, obviously, a toy example, but it helps to show where the "money shuffling" criticism of cap-and-rebate goes wrong. When you change the relative prices of things, people shift their consumption patterns, even if they have more money to spend.

Update: Note, also, that your behavior doesn't really depend on getting that rebate check. If I raise your annual energy bill to $50,000, you'd be a fool not to install the solar water heater and clothesline regardless. The rebate just changes the distributional consequences of the carbon cap. Under a rebate scenario, you actually wind up richer. Under a permit giveaway scenario, the utlity winds up richer.

Another problem with the money-shuffling theory: it ignores the action of the cap. If for some reason people don't change their energy consumption patterns when they get their rebate checks, then the cap is going to bite. Carbon permits will become more expensive. Prices will rise until people do change their consumption patterns.

A third problem: David says, "Business costs rise, but they get that money back by raising prices for consumers." This is the persistent fallacy that businesses can pick whatever price they want, so they don't care about costs. In the real world, businesses care about costs an awful lot. Fortunes are made and empires built on the ability to squeeze costs out of the supply chain. When carbon carries a price, businesses that can find efficiencies or switch to non-carbon sources of energy will be able to pass those savings on to their customers. Then their competitors will go out of business. Then environmental bloggers will do little happy dances, writing about the smart green companies that are growing rapidly, hiring new employees, and wringing a profit from the new green economy. Hoo-ray!

(Note that the logic above also applies to David's Netflix example. Most people would quit Netflix, pocket the $5, and either join a competing service or watch something on cable. The key thing here is that, under cap-and-rebate, you get to keep the rebate even if you're no longer a Netflix subscriber.)

Update 2: Other bloggers are piling on. We're all saying the same thing, but for the record, I was first.

By Joseph Romm

After growing 19 percent in 2006 and 62 percent in 2007, world solar photovoltaic (PV) market installations exploded by 110 percent last year to a staggering 5.95 GW, according to Solarbuzz's Annual Report, Marketbuzz 2009:

Europe accounted for 82% of world demand in 2008. Spain's 285% growth pushed Germany into second place in the market ranking, while the US advanced to [a very distant] number three. Rapid growth in Korea allowed it to become the fourth largest market, closely followed by Italy and Japan.

And who is the leading producer of PV cells?

China and Taiwan continued to increase their share of global solar cell production, rising to 44% in 2008 from 35% in 2007.

Yes, the United States created the solar cell industry and literally launched it into space 50 years ago. And, yes, solar PV is going to be one of the largest job-creating industries of the century, projected to grow "from a $20 billion industry in 2007 to $74 billion by 2017."

And, yes, today America has precisely zero of the top 10 PV plants (down from one last year), with our market share having plummeted in the past decade, as the figure below makes all too painfully clear:

But don't get all friggin' sentimental on me. Think of the few billion dollars U.S. taxpayers saved because:

• President Reagan gutted Jimmy Carter's renewable energy program (see "Who got us in this energy mess? Start with Ronald Reagan").
• Newt Gingrich blocked President Clinton's effort to boost funding for solar PV research and deployment programs.
• Conservatives in general like John McCain and George Bush Judd Gregg opposed the kind of funding and incentives that countries like Japan and Germany embraced (see "The greenwasher from Arizona has a record as dirty as the denier from Oklahoma" and "Is a possible 60th Senate seat worth a not-very-green GOP Commerce Secretary?").

The fundamental tenets of conservative ideology say that if countries like China and Taiwan and Spain make most of the PV cells, it must be because they have an inherent "comparative" advantage over us. You gotta start reading your Ricardo, people.

Any card-carrying conservative knows that if other countries manage to get millions of their workers' hands dirty actually making stuff, it's only because they are better at it. We're still the brainiacs who invent the technologies first and then wisely save a few pennies of the taxpayer dollars not promoting American technologies into billion-dollar American industries. We've still got all those Internet-related jobs, and it's not like the government had anything to do with that.

So please, all you progressives and enviros out there, stop your whining. The plan is unfolding as it should, indeed as it must. Do not argue with the invisible hand. People will think you're crazy.

Sure those thin films look cool. They seem like something that could generate a lot of jobs for a high-tech, high wage economy.

More seriously, it will be interesting to see whether significant incentives and real requirements for renewable energy at a national level can restore some semblance of U.S. leadership.

Although growth is sure to slow this year, it does seem like PV is make it a real race with the other solar energy, Concentrated solar thermal power Solar Baseload.

Hat tip SET Energy.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

UK consumers may be taking their time jumping on the Blu-ray bandwagon so maybe Sony's latest Blu-ray players, sporting Wi-Fi and sensible price tags will help them make the leap. The company has just announced its new BDP-S360 and the BDP-S560 [above], the latter coming with integrated 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity to make updating firmware and accessing Web content a snip. They both offer full 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema Output and support for the latest HD audio formats like 7.1-channel Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD High Resolution Audio and DTS-HD Master Audio. They are Profile 2.0 players with support for Internet-based BD Live content, like trailers, extra content and games.The BDP-S560 uses Wi-Fi Protected setup, which promises simple connection to your wireless router and it also supports DLNA, for easy communication and file swapping with other DLNA-certified products. However, despite the inclusion of Wi-Fi the player does not support content streaming from your PC, for instance, which new players from Samsung and others do. Still, there's always the price to look forward to as the BDP-S360 and the BDP-S560 are priced at $300 and $350 [US first], respectively, so will be in the £215-250 ballpark when they arrive this summer. Oh, what a difference a year makes.-Martin Lynch blu-ray movies sony

Eye-Fi has extended its range of wireless SD Cards by announcing some 4GB cards that will also let you automatically uploading videos to YouTube and Flickr. The two new cards double the capacity of existing cards and the addition of video uploading support will no doubt interest you avid video sharers. The cards, Eye-Fi Share Video and Eye-Fi Explore Video, work like Eye-Fi's regular Wi-Fi SD storage cards by sending photos to your online site of choice and now video to sites like YouTube and Flickr. "The magic of Eye-Fi's new cards is that they work with the camera you already own to capture photos - and now videos - and send them directly to the Web for sharing," said Jef Holove, CEO for Eye-Fi. "Whether you're spending time with your kids or chatting with a friend, your memories will upload in the background for instant sharing - all by simply turning on your camera." The cards can upload photos and videos directly to one of more than 20 online photo sharing and social networking sites. The Eye-Fi Explore Video card also throws in some geotagging for your snaps and vids. "According to our research, nearly half of consumers reach for their digital camera to take video, instead of their other video capture devices, like phones or camcorders," said Alan Bullock, research analyst with InfoTrends. "Solutions like Eye-Fi make it easy for consumers to use the digital camera they already own to shoot and share videos." Available for pre-order here, the 4GB Eye-Fi Share Video costs $79 and the 4GB Eye-Fi Explore Video, $99. The company is also launching a new iPhone application that allows Eye-Fi users to store and share all their photos, from both an iPhone and a digital camera, into the same organised computer folder and to one of 25 online photo sharing Web sites.-Martin Lynch gadgets digital camera youtube video

Amazon is hoping to spread its Kindle software beyond its own Kindle ebook reader by announcing a version for the iPhone and iPod touch. The free application from the Apple App Store lets you "enjoy over 240,000 books, including 104 of 112 New York Times Bestsellers, on the iPhone and iPod touch using Apple's Multi-Touch user interface". Of course, it's just the application that's free as you will have to buy all those bestsellers and hope that reading them on a small screen won't make you go blind. Most books are priced at around $10.For Kindle owners, including the new Kindle 2, who also happen to own an iPhone or touch there's the added benefit of the WhisperSync technology, which saves and synchronises your bookmark across all the devices so you'll always pick up where you left off. Slushy marketing quote coming up. "We are excited to bring the new Kindle application to Apple's App Store and think customers are going to love how easy and fun it is to read their Kindle books on the iPhone and iPod touch," said Ian Freed, vice president, Amazon Kindle. "Kindle for iPhone and iPod touch is a great way for customers to catch up on their current book wherever they are, like in line at the grocery store or between meetings." We're not convinced about the relaxing value of being able to read in supermarket queues but having access to such a large collection of e-books via Amazon online on your iPhone/touch could be a winner for consumers and Amazon. Still we haven't been able to find it on the App Store this morning which leads us to think that Amazon might be making this a US-only app, just like its reader. And there's no date on when Kindle will ever be released in Europe.-Martin Lynch gadgets books ebooks amazon

Apple has refreshed its desktop offerings with a new, bigger 24in iMac all-in-one computer and a smaller and greener Mac mini. The 24in iMac joins the original 20in model but comes with twice the memory and storage at 4GB and 640GB, respectively. Under the hood are Intel chips ranging from 2.66GHz to 3.06GHz and a variety of integrated or dedicated nVidia graphics solutions. The 20in iMac has a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of memory, a 320GB Serial ATA hard drive and nVidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics. The beefed-up 20in costs £949 and there are 3 24in models to choose from, costing £1,199, £1,499 and £1,799.Each iMac sports the iSight video camera, mic and speakers, alongside a Mini DisplayPort connector with adapters for DisplayPort, VGA, DVI and Dual-Link DVI displays. The new Mac mini measures in at 6.5 x 6.5 x 2in and is powered by a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, with up to 4GB of DDR3 memory and a HDD up to 320GB. Apple's claiming a 5-fold boost in performance with the GeForce 9400M integrated graphics and says it's the greenest Mac mini to date, using less than 13W of power when idle. Apple claims that's 10 times less than a 'typical desktop', which can also be translated as 'will be crap for games' but, you will be saving the planet 1W at a time. There are two versions priced at £499 and £649. [Apple] apple pc

It's 'Stats-Time' people so get some salt ready, just in case. According to the latest sales figures collated by online site reevoo.com, UK shoppers largely ignored Blu-ray machines over the Christmas period in favour of DVD players and HD downloads. Despite falling Blu-ray player prices [some as low as £100], demand for DVD players outstripped Blu-ray demand by more than 10:1. The company added that consumers were also more keen on traditional hard disk drive recorders/PVRs and downloading HD content off the Net, from the likes of Apple iTunes. That said, HD download services are hardly that common in the UK yet. "We think this could be partly a convenience choice," said Samuel Bostock, Home Entertainment Manager at Reevoo.com. "The death of the VCR and the cassette saw the end of the chore of rewinding tapes. The convenience of downloads and wider availability of flexible digital content, suggests impatience with the eject button which may be partly why Blu-Ray isn't capturing the imagination." "When DVD came in, you could almost see the video shelving shrink before your eyes in Blockbuster and HMV. The same hasn't happened with Blu-Ray."According to Reevoo, its figure indicated three barriers to Blu-ray uptake, starting with cheaper DVD players that can upscale DVDs to near-HD quality. This is followed by higher Blu-ray player and movie pricing. The average cost of a Blu-ray player was found to be £239 versus £53 for DVD players while Blu-ray discs came in at £16-18 versus £10-12 for a DVD. Lastly, Reevoo thinks HD downloads are stopping consumers opting for Blu-ray, saying that over Christmas twice as many HDD recorders/PVRs sold than Blu-ray players. What's your take?-Martin Lynch [Reevoo] blu-ray movies