GREEN GRAFFITI: As seen on a drawbridge in Amsterdam (repost)
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Category Archives: Environmentalism
POLITICS: Republicans attack policies and regulations that promote energy conservation, address environmental degradation, and protect the public’s health
Republicans are using the state of the economy and the debate over the national debt to attack the EPA, to rollback environmental regulations, and to rollback policies that address overconsumption, pollution, and our addiction to oil. Republicans aren’t considering the best interests of the American people or the welfare of the public when they imprudently decide to attack policies that attempt to address issues threatening U.S. national security. Climate change, pollution, and our reliance on dwindling, dirty fossil fuels are all issues that the federal government must address to secure our future. Instead, the majority of Republicans don’t consider climate change, energy security, or environmental degradation as issues that must be addressed in order to preserve national security and to protect the public welfare. For example, House Representative Mike Simpson, a Republican from Idaho, “added language to the Continuing Resolution that would block any attempt by the Obama Administration to enforce rules under the Clean Water Act, undermining the EPA’s ability to administer these programs.” Another House Republican, Michele Bachmann, recently “introduced legislation that would eliminate federal light bulb standards passed in 2007 that are expected to have the effect of phasing out some incandescent bulbs in the next few years.” Republicans also want to defund the EPA, and Tea Party Republican Rand Paul recently blamed the Department of Energy for his toilet problems. Another Republican Tea Partier, Marco Rubio, a junior Senator from Florida, “hopes to use the budget debate happening now in the Senate to block new pollution controls for Florida waterways.” Since Republicans [are] reversing a series of in-house green initiatives undertaken by Democrats” at the U.S. Capitol, their regressive efforts aren’t limited to rolling back major U.S. environmental regulations. Given the GOP’s shenanigans, I’m baffled that they can even get elected into a majority.
On the Net & Resources:
- House Panel Approves Bill Stripping EPA’s Power to Regulate Greenhouse Gases
- House Subcommittee Moves To Block EPA Funding On Emissions
- Light bulbs in spotlight as senators lambaste US efficiency standards
- Rand Paul Blames Energy Department for Faulty Toilets, Among Other Things
- House Republicans Open a Major Budget Battle, Proposing Deep Cuts Into Energy, Environment and Climate Spending
ENERGY & THE ENVIRONMENT: Oscar-nominated documentary highlights the drawbacks to natural-gas drilling
Gasland, a documentary that tackles the environmental side effects associated with drilling for natural gas, is up for an Oscar for the best documentary feature at the Academy Awards ceremony tomorrow. Not surprisingly, the fossil-fuel industry attacked the claims that are made in the documentary. However, given the history of environmental litigation that’s associated with fossil-fuel companies and their wrongdoings, the efforts of fossil-fuel companies to circumvent and stifle environmental regulations, and the known environmental crimes that have been committed against the human environment by the fossil-fuel industry, I believe that claims made by the fossil-fuel industry should be taken with a grain of salt. Here is a review of Gasland via Scientific American (a comprehensive review of claims made in Gasland can be found at Greenwire):
Scientific American got its hands on a pre-release copy of the film months before it aired on HBO, and the movie convinced me to write a feature article investigating the claims of fracking critics and promoters. After doing my own research and interviews, it became apparent that, like most documentaries, Gasland revealed surprising facts, amplified a few, and chose to gloss over a couple others. What writer and producer Josh Fox did achieve, regardless, was to blow the lid off the secrecy that kept most local residents, not to mention scientists and regulators, in the dark about the chemicals used in fracking and their possible effects. And he certainly put me on the reporting trail.
You can see a trailer here. And do your own handicapping of Gasland‘s competitors for the Oscar.
And from New Scientist:
[Josh Fox] spends a lot of time on three Colorado households who can all set their water on fire. All three cases were investigated by Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, and while one was indeed traced to fracking, the other two apparently have nothing to do with it. One homeowner had inadvertently drilled his well through four coal beds, which contained natural gas.
Indeed, the film is at the centre of a row over its supposed inaccuracies. An organisation called Energy in Depth (EiD) has produced a lengthy list of criticisms. But it is worth noting that EiD is funded by a host of major oil and gas companies, and that Fox has produced an equally lengthy rebuttal of their comments.
Regardless of the arguments, will Gasland take home the Oscar? It seems unlikely that arguments about its accuracy will sway the Academy much. But for the record, my money’s on Banksy.
More via the Connecticut Post:
“Gasland” is up for best documentary at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony. Director Josh Fox’s dark portrayal of greedy energy companies, sickened homeowners and oblivious regulators has stirred heated debate among the various stakeholders in a natural gas boom that is sweeping parts of the U.S. The film has galvanized anti-drilling activists while drawing complaints about its accuracy and objectivity.
In a letter to the academy, Lee Fuller, the executive director of an industry-sponsored group named Energy In Depth, called “Gasland” an “expression of stylized fiction” with “errors, inconsistencies and outright falsehoods.”
He asked the academy to consider “remedial actions” against the film.
Davis, the executive director, wrote to Fuller that if the academy were to act on every complaint made about a nominated film, “it would not be possible even to have a documentary category.” He said the academy must “trust the intelligence of our members” to sort out fact from fiction.
. . .
Fox said the industry’s campaign against “Gasland” has backfired.
“What they’re doing is calling more attention to the film, so I think it works against them,” the director said from Los Angeles. “But I think it shows how aggressive they are, how bullying they are, and how willing they are to lie to promote the falsehood that it’s OK to live in a gas drilling area.”
The documentary category is no stranger to controversy. Michael Moore films like “Bowling for Columbine” and “Sicko,” as well as Al Gore’s 2006 global-warming tale, “An Inconvenient Truth,” have likewise been attacked as biased and inaccurate.
Interestingly, it appears that a quote from a fossil-fuel industry spokesman in a Wall Street Journal article by Ben Casselman was removed, because the quote was critical of the energy sector’s practices of removing minerals from the earth (see the screenshot at right for a copy of the original article that contains the missing quote). The quote that was removed stated, “We have to stop blaming documentaries and take a look in the mirror.” More via Alison Rose Levy for The Huffington Post:
When the article was published on Friday night, it was the first time an industry spokesperson deployed a shift in strategy from the industry’s standard denials and repeated assertions that fracking is safe, despite the numerous reports of problems, such as flammable water, contamination of drinking water, trucks leaking toxic and radioactive waste-water on public highways, the pollution of streams, as well as fires, and explosions in which people have been injured.
“We have to stop blaming documentaries and take a look in the mirror,” Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for gas producer Range Resources Corp., was quoted as saying in WSJ.
However, if you go to the article, you won’t find Pitzarella’s statement because within the hour the quote disappeared, say citizen journalists, who screen captured it and posted it on Twitter. Gasland director Fox, in Los Angeles, awaiting Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony, has the screen shot of the original version. He also has questions:
“Why did this key quote disappear from the article? Why did the WSJ censor its own piece ? Does the Gas industry get to edit the Wall Street Journal?” Fox wondered. “Who pulled the quote?”
It’s more innocuous replacement from Tom Price, a Chesapeake Vice-President reads, “We need to be able to respond objectively and accurately.”
. . .
Although it’s unknown who ordered the yanking of the quote published in the Wall Street Journal, the appearance of censorship, whatever its source, does little to restore public confidence in either the industry reported on, or the media outlet doing the reporting.
Meanwhile citizens are rooting for Gasland to win the Oscar Sunday night at nationwide Gasland parties, and by writing letters to President Obama, asking for a nation-wide moratorium on fracking and safety studies. To learn more and participate, go here.
Despite what you believe about Gasland, here are some facts and observations about hydrofracking that are a cause for concern: (1) the evidence for groundwater contamination from hydrofracking is compelling; (2) the industry maintains that the complete list of chemicals used in hydrofracking are proprietary property, so the industry maintains that they shouldn’t be required to disclose their fracking recipes to government regulators or to the public; (3) in addition to a plethora of toxic chemicals, ”drilling service companies have injected at least 32 million gallons of diesel fuel underground“; (4) like the production of corn ethanol, the energy input associated with hydrofracking might be excessively high and perhaps disproportionate to the actual energy returns that might be derived from the natural gas that’s actually extracted from the ground; (5) animals and people have become sick in areas where hydrofracking is conducted; and (6) hydrofracking is exempt from some major environmental regulations.
Given the large amount of water that must be used and transported during the hydrofracking process (“fracing a typical Chesapeake horizontal deep shale gas well requires an average of 4.5 million gallons per well“), the large amounts of chemicals that must be produced and used in hydrofracking, and the large amount of diesel fuel that is used in hydrofracking, I’m interested in seeing data that compares the energy input that’s required to extract natural gas during the hydrofracking process against the actual energy that’s extracted from the ground in the form of natural gas. Considering the likely high costs to the human environment and to human health, it seems to me, that if the energy return is slight or even in the negative, then why do politicians allow natural-gas drilling in such an extreme and gross negligent manner without reasonable precautions to protect the environment. Of course, the answer is money in the form of profits and subsidies. However, the price paid to land owners and the price paid for natural gas by consumers vastly undervalues and ignores the human and environmental impacts that occur during and after the drilling process.
Another problem with hydrofracking is wastewater treatment. Wastewater contains carcinogens and radioactive elements, and since “radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways,” it appears that wastewater from hydrofracking is a threat to drinking water supplies and to public health. Via the New York Times (emphasis added):
With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.
While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.
The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.
Other documents and interviews show that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based partly on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an E.P.A. consultant who concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law.
The Times also found never-reported studies by the E.P.A. and a confidential study by the drilling industry that all concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways.
But the E.P.A. has not intervened. In fact, federal and state regulators are allowing most sewage treatment plants that accept drilling waste not to test for radioactivity. And most drinking-water intake plants downstream from those sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania, with the blessing of regulators, have not tested for radioactivity since before 2006, even though the drilling boom began in 2008.
In other words, there is no way of guaranteeing that the drinking water taken in by all these plants is safe.
That has experts worried.
“We’re burning the furniture to heat the house,” said John H. Quigley, who left last month as secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “In shifting away from coal and toward natural gas, we’re trying for cleaner air, but we’re producing massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it’s not clear we have a plan for properly handling this waste.”
On the Net & Resources:
- A bill to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to repeal a certain exemption for hydraulic fracturing
- Controversy behind an Oscar-nominated documentary
- Did the Gas Industry Censor the Wall Street Journal?
- Documentaries could give green tinge to the Oscars
- The Drillers Are Coming: Debate over Hydraulic Fracturing Heats Up
- Fort Worth Democrat’s bill would require ‘tracer’ in drilling water
- Gas Drilling Technique Is Labeled Violation
- Groundtruthing Academy Award Nominee ‘Gasland’
- Industry tried to get doc disqualified from Oscars
- List of 78 Chemicals Used in Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid in Pennsylvania
- Natural Gas Industry Rhetoric Versus Reality
- Sparks Fly Over ‘Gasland’ Drilling Documentary
- Wall Street Journal Caves to Industry Pressure on Gasland
CLIMATE CHANGE policy & politics
Image via Neubie on Flickr
Even with a Democratic majority, climate change legislation didn’t pass, but at least it was there. However, due to widespread climate change denialism within the Republican Party, a GOP win could mean the end of climate change policy altogether. Via NPR:
The more carbon that gets released into the atmosphere, the higher the average temperature rises.
That’s a scientific fact.
Human activities, such as driving, flying, building and even turning on the lights, are the biggest contributor to the release of carbon.
That too, is a fact.
And yet the majority of Republicans running for House and Senate seats this year disagree.
. . .
Bill McKibben, scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont and the founder of 350.org, says it is a tragedy that conservatives are turning their back on the science behind climate change.
“On this issue maybe more than most, we need that interplay of liberal and conservative,” he says. “Liberals are good at sort of pointing the way forward in kind of progressive new directions and conservatives are good at providing the anchor that says human nature won’t go along with that. That back and forth has been very useful.”
If Republicans take control of the House this November, McKibben says, he doesn’t see a future for climate change policy.
“Look, the Democrats — with a huge majority — couldn’t pass climate change legislation even of a very, very weak variety this year, so I doubt there’ll be any action over the next two years.”
That is, unless conservatives decide to team up with liberals.
“We desperately need conservatives at the forefront of the fight,” McKibben says. “The sooner that conservatives are willing to accept the science, the reality, the sooner we can get to work with their very important help in figuring out what set of prescriptions, what combination of market and regulation will be required in order to deal with the most serious problem we’ve ever stumbled into.”
Despite the lack of merit in their own explanations for the nonexistence of climate change, Republicans reject years of peer-reviewed climate research and observations. Apparently, former Vice President Dick Cheney was the catalyst for the widespread climate change denialism within the Republican Party. Via the New York Times:
According to Congressional inquiries, White House officials, encouraged by Mr. Cheney’s office, forced the Environmental Protection Agency to remove sections on climate change from separate reports in 2002 and 2003. (Christine Todd Whitman, then the E.P.A. administrator, has since described the process as “brutal.”)
The administration also sought to control or censor Congressional testimony by federal employees and tampered with other reports in order to inject uncertainty into the climate debate and minimize threats to the environment.
Nothing, it seemed, could crack the administration’s denial — not Tony Blair of Britain and other leaders who took climate change seriously; not Mrs. Whitman (who eventually quit after being undercut by Mr. Cheney, who worked for the energy company Halliburton before he became vice president and received annual checks while in office); and certainly not the scientists.
In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its most definitive statement on the human contribution to climate change, Mr. Cheney insisted that there was not enough evidence to just “sort of run out and try to slap together some policy that’s going to try to solve the problem.” To which Mrs. Whitman, by then in private life, said: “I don’t see how he can say that with a straight face anymore.”
Nowadays, it is almost impossible to recall that in 2000, George W. Bush promised to cap carbon dioxide, encouraging some to believe that he would break through the partisan divide on global warming. Until the end of the 1990s, Republicans could be counted on to join bipartisan solutions to environmental problems. Now they’ve disappeared in a fog of disinformation, an entire political party parroting the Cheney line.
Since the Tea Party movement is rife in climate-change denialism, big polluters, which are corporations that acquire their profits from polluting the environment, are backing the Tea Party. Via the Guardian:
BP and several other big European companies are funding the midterm election campaigns of Tea Party favourites who deny the existence of global warming or oppose Barack Obama’s energy agenda, the Guardian has learned.
An analysis of campaign finance by Climate Action Network Europe (Cane) found nearly 80% of campaign donations from a number of major European firms were directed towards senators who blocked action on climate change. These included incumbents who have been embraced by the Tea Party such as Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, and the notorious climate change denier James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma.
The report, released tomorrow, used information on the Open Secrets.org database to track what it called a co-ordinated attempt by some of Europe’s biggest polluters to influence the US midterms. It said: “The European companies are funding almost exclusively Senate candidates who have been outspoken in their opposition to comprehensive climate policy in the US and candidates who actively deny the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and is caused by people.”
Obama and Democrats have accused corporate interests and anonymous donors of trying to hijack the midterms by funnelling money to the Chamber of Commerce and to conservative Tea Party groups. The Chamber of Commerce reportedly has raised $75m (£47m) for pro-business, mainly Republican candidates.
“Oil companies and the other special interests are spending millions on a campaign to gut clean-air standards and clean-energy standards, jeopardising the health and prosperity of this state,” Obama told a rally in California on Friday night.
Every cloud has a silver lining, and the silver lining in a big Republican win is the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas tailoring rule. Via the Emerging Issues Law Blog:
The Tailoring Rule covers large industrial facilities like power plants and oil refineries that are responsible for 70 percent of the GHGs from stationary sources. The proposals announced are a critical component for implementing the Tailoring Rule and would ensure that GHG emissions from these large facilities are minimized in all 50 states and that local economies can continue to grow.
The Clean Air Act requires states to develop EPA-approved implementation plans that include requirements for issuing air permits. When federal permitting requirements change, as they did after EPA finalized the GHG Tailoring Rule, states may need to modify these plans.
In the first rule, EPA is proposing to require permitting programs in 13 states to make changes to their implementation plans to ensure that GHG emissions will be covered. All other states that implement an EPA-approved air permitting program must review their existing permitting authority and inform EPA if their programs do not address GHG emissions.
Because some states may not be able to develop and submit revisions to their plans before the Tailoring Rule becomes effective in 2011, in the second rule, EPA is proposing a federal implementation plan, which would allow EPA to issue permits for large GHG emitters located in these states. This would be a temporary measure that is in place until the state can revise its own plan and resume responsibility for GHG permitting.
States are best-suited to issue permits to sources of GHG emissions and have long-standing experience working together with industrial facilities. EPA will work closely and promptly with states to help them develop, submit, and approve necessary revisions to enable the affected states to issue air permits to GHG-emitting sources. Additionally, EPA will continue to provide guidance and act as a resource for the states as they make the various required permitting decisions for GHG emissions.
EPA will accept comment on the first proposal for updated state implementation plans for 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. A hearing on the second proposal for the federal implementation plan was held on August 25, 2010, and the EPA will accept comment for 30 days after that hearing. The agency is working to finalize these rules prior to January 2, 2011, the earliest GHG permitting requirements will be effective.
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ENVIRONMENTALISM: Own or desire to own a hybrid car or EV? Your preferences may be driven by genetics
Nissan Leaf images via NISSANEV on Flickr found here and here
In addition to environmental factors, genetics may play a role in consumer preferences. Via Autoblog Green:
A study on identical twins published in the Journal of Consumer Research concludes that consumer preferences are often driven by genetics. The authors of the study, Itamar Simonson of Stanford University and Aner Sela of the University of Florida, examined, “a wide range of consumer judgment and decision-making phenomena” and concluded that, “many – though not all of them – are in fact heritable or influenced by genetic factors.”
So, how does this relate to automobiles and, more specifically, to hybrids and electric vehicles? Well, believe it or not, the study actually questioned participants about specific products like chocolate, mustard, sci-fi flicks and eco-friendly cars. The study concludes that if one identical twin preferred eco-friendly autos, the other twin almost always followed suit. The authors wrapped up the study suggesting that, “some people may be born with a tendency to be in the mainstream whereas others tend to live on the edge.”
More via The Stanford Daily:
This is not to say that people are born with a “Prius gene” or a “jazz gene.” Instead, these tendencies reflect a combination of genetic expressions influenced by the interaction between nature and nurture, say the researchers.
The study proposes as a “tentative hypothesis” that the observed heritability patterns reflect a genetic disposition for “living on the edge or in the mainstream.”
“At the present time, we do not know how genes might affect…the tendency to choose a compromise versus an extreme option, a risky versus safe option or batteries versus Godiva chocolate,” Simonson said. “This is a preliminary investigation, and given the difficulties of understanding such heritable tendencies, it may take decades until we have a good understanding.
The research suggests that environmental effects alone do not guide consumer behavior, but that heritable preferences play a key role as well.
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