environment Politics: automobiles corporate irresponsibility economics sustainability
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 13: See The U.S.A. In Your Chevrolet
Well, that’s a relief. The Detroit Free Press:
General Motors officially acknowledged today that implementing policies to prevent climate change is “good business.”
GM became the first automaker to sign the “Climate Declaration” pledge, which is promoted by nonprofit Ceres’ Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP) coalition.
The decision to sign the pledge comes as GM has been pressuring the U.S. government to establish a national energy policy focused on promoting energy security with a diverse range of sources, including natural gas and renewables. The automaker sends no waste to landfills from 105 of plants, and is trying to boost that figure.
GM CEO Dan Akerson told the Fortune Green conference on Tuesday that “sustainability is woven into our global strategies.”
“It’s not a regional strategy; it’s a global strategy for us,” Akerson said, adding that it’s “pretty hard not to be convinced that something is going on in the world” with the climate.
I remain unconvinced. May 1:
While it’s good news that General Motors acknowledges the existence of climate change and the importance of a robust strategy for combating the greenhouse effect, this turnaround in corporate thinking won’t make much of an impact unless we address some of the root causes of the problem. Our national addiction to fossil fuels goes hand in hand with our consumer society; as long as we continue to believe that we can buy our way out of trouble, we will never be able to make the broader societal transformations necessary to provide happiness and prosperity for our descendants.
There are deeper questions that need asking. Can profit-fixated corporate systems function sustainably over the long term? Is an economy focused on consumption good for our species or our planet? Yes, preventing climate change is “good for business,” and allowing it to continue is “bad for business.” But is business good for us?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: extreme weather infrastructure sewage shit
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 12: Central Park In The Dark
Well, damn. USA Today:
Superstorm Sandy released 11 billion gallons of sewage from East Coast treatment plants into bodies of water from Washington, D.C., to Connecticut, according to a report released Tuesday by a science journalism group.
Princeton, N.J.-based Climate Central said that future sewage leaks are a major risk because rising sea levels can make coastal flooding more severe.
The group, which compiled data from state agencies and treatment plant operators, did not look at the specific environmental or public health impact of the sewage overflows after Sandy, which struck in late October. But it said that bacteria in sewage can spread water-borne illnesses and have a particularly bad effect on shellfish.
In New Jersey, officials spent months monitoring shellfish beds for contamination and reopened the last of them in mid-April, said Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.
The collective overflows — almost all in New York and New Jersey and due to storm surges — would be enough to cover New York City’s Central Park with a pile of sewage 41 feet high, Climate Central said.
Just read that last paragraph again, willya? April 30:
The news that Superstorm Sandy distributed eleven billion gallons of sewage all over East coast water systems is a compelling argument for massive infrastructural investment in preparation for planetary climate change. At the mandated rate of 1.6 gallons, that’s just under one flush for every man, woman, and child now alive on Earth.
For the past century, we’ve been pumping our waste CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, resulting in a runaway greenhouse effect that threatens our agriculture, our environment, our oceans, and our civilization. It’s a powerful irony that the intensifying storms which are fueled by global heating now seem poised to deliver a far less intangible waste product back to our doorsteps and water supplies.
Atmospheric CO2 is now 400 parts per million, a level not seen for millions of years. As my 8-year-old might put it, unless we implement robust climate and energy policies immediately, we’ll be in deep doo-doo.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: economics extreme weather fossil fuels Republican obstructionism sustainability
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 11: Headless Body In Topless Bar
The Denver Post runs an AP story on the Human Interest angle:
MANTOLOKING, n.j. — The 9-year-old girl who got New Jersey’s tough-guy governor to shed a tear as he comforted her after her home was destroyed is bummed because she now lives far from her best friend and has nowhere to hang her One Direction posters.
A New Jersey woman whose home was overtaken by mold still cries when she drives through the area. A New York City man whose home burned can’t wait to build a new one.
Six months after Hurricane Sandy devastated the Jersey shore and New York City and pounded coastal areas of New England, the region is dealing with a slow and frustrating recovery.
Tens of thousands of people remain homeless. Housing, business, tourism and coastal protection remain major issues with the summer vacation — and hurricane — seasons almost here.
“Some families and some lives have come back together quickly and well, and some people are up and running almost as if nothing ever happened, and for them it’s been fine,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a news conference Thursday. “Some people are still very much in the midst of recovery. You still have people in hotel rooms, you still have people doubled up, you still have people fighting with insurance companies, and for them it’s been terrible and horrendous.”
Getting your life destroyed has gotta suck big time. April 29:
People will still be reeling from the devastation of Superstorm Sandy for years to come. Losing a home, a business, or a cherished community to the impersonal forces of extreme weather can’t be healed with an insurance payment or a renovation plan. As we rebuild, let us recognize that as climate change intensifies, so too will the number of dislocated and traumatized individuals and families. The future will bring even more sad and disturbing stories as the consequences of our planetary greenhouse emergency make themselves felt, not just on our storm-battered coastlines, but in forests turned to tinder by invasive insect pests, in shrinking and algae-choked lakes, and in the drought-cracked farmlands whose yields once fed millions.
State and federal governments must develop and implement reality-based climate and energy policies, including initiatives to end our dependence on the fossil fuels that started the problem in the first place, infrastructure projects to mitigate the climate change that’s already inevitable, and, finally, humanitarian programs to ensure that those whose lives are shattered can again be part of a vibrant and generous civil society.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture denialists economics skiing sports sustainability
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 10: You Need A Hug
The Berkshire Eagle assesses climatic impact on the economy of Western Massachusetts:
By the end of the century, the Berkshire County economy — much like the global economy — may be forever altered by the effects of climate change. Some local economic changes have already begun in response to impacts expected from climate change in the coming decades.
Land-use planners and policy specialists in the insurance industry are preparing for changes likely to be brought on by warmer temperatures and more severe weather events. Local farmers and business owners are already looking to their future, many doubtful about the climate change concept, but still determined to build revenue streams that will withstand climate changes or compensate for weather-generated losses.
In one example of a specific local economic effect likely to result from climate change, Cameron Wake, associate professor with the Institute of Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire and a lead author of the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists, had a dire assessment of the local ski industry: “By the end of the century, the only ski areas that remain viable [in the Northeast] will be in the western mountains of Maine.”
It’s one of my favorite parts of the world. April 27:
The Berkshires aren’t alone in experiencing the accelerating impact of climate change, a real-world crisis that even the most vehement denialists cannot ignore much longer. Between dwindling snowpacks, multi-year droughts, unseasonal monsoons, and the arrival of invasive insect pests, this planetary phenomenon manifests itself at local and regional levels in ways that will bring significant economic, social and environmental effects. There may be temporary benefits for a few species here and there, a few communities poised to take advantage of short-term circumstances — but the future offered by our radically transforming climate is almost entirely bleak.
Are there positive aspects to this slo-mo disaster? Only that we humans may, at long last, fully grasp that our individual and collective behaviors have effects far distant in space and time. The lives of our descendants hinge on our recognition that the greenhouse effect renders political and cultural distinctions utterly and finally irrelevant.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: false equivalence fishing scientific method
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 9: Great Green Gobs…
The Lewiston Sun-Journal (ME) runs a good article from a trio of scientists, explaining all about fish kills:
Last summer, hundreds of economically valuable, fun-to-catch trout died at Lake Auburn. Some people blamed this event on “global warming,” but were they right to do so? It’s hard to say for sure, but the early ice-out and warm summer temperatures in 2012 did probably play a role, in combination with other, locally controlled factors.
To understand what happened to the fish, we need to know a bit about how lakes work.
During the summer, deep lakes stratify — divide horizontally — into a warm, well-lit upper layer and a cold, dark lower layer. Sunfish, like bass and bluegills, grow fastest at water temperatures around 80 degrees F, so they tend to live near the surface of the lake. However, lake trout and other salmonids live in the deeper layer, since they grow best at temperatures around 48 degrees F and cannot tolerate temperatures above 75-80 degrees F.
Last summer, a large bloom of phytoplankton — algae and cyanobacteria (sometimes called blue-green algae) — developed in Lake Auburn. Phytoplankton growth got an early start when the ice went out in late March 2012, which was the second-earliest ice-out ever recorded for the lake.
More science in the popular press! April 28:
Fish kills are one of many ways that climate change, usually thought of as a planet-wide problem, manifests itself locally. The consequences of our civilization’s century-long carbon fuel binge will differ radically, depending on the particular regional environment — and this variety of impact creates another problem. Our news media’s fixation on simplistic explanations of complex phenomena means that even though its epiphenomena (freak storms, torrential rainfalls, droughts, forest fires, fish kills) may lead the nightly newscasts, the climate crisis will not be televised.
Of course, it’s not just that our collective national ADD makes it impossible for us to understand the greenhouse effect, and for our pundits to explain it. Our broadcast and print outlets are also prone to the fallacy of false equivalence, in which a scientist’s measured statement about global warming is “balanced” by the dismissive rhetoric of a petroleum-industry shill. Climate change’s effects can no longer be ignored or trivialized; Drs. Cottingham, Ewing and Weathers deserve our appreciation for their careful explanation of how a global phenomenon can manifest itself in a single lake.
Warren Senders
environment India: animals biodiversity climate refugees endangered species timescale
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 8: The Song Is You
The Deccan Chronicle (India) notices climatogenic changes in bird migration patterns:
Kochi: It was a tradition in Kerala to wait for the vitthum kaikottum (seed and spade) call of the Indian cuckoo, which was the indication for farmers to begin sowing operations as the rains would not be long in coming. But that was then. Today, new species of birds have descended on the state, some never sighted here before. And climate change is said to be the reason. “The Aquila type of eagle, not historically reported in Kerala, is now commonly found.
These are commonly found in the very dry areas of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Punjab and have migrated to Kerala. The sparrow type wheatear or buntings noticed in the dry areas of central and north-western parts of the country have also been spotted across Kerala in the last few years,” says professor at the College of Forestry of Kerala Agriculture University, P.O. Nameer.
This is a new phenomenon and the presence of these birds is an indication that they are equally comfortable in the southern tip of the country as in northern parts which were their original homeland.
Ornithologist R. Sugathan says these are indications of global warming. “Birds do not migrate or come for fun. When a moist deciduous forest changes into deciduous, shedding its moist tag, a new set of birds and animals takes the place of the old. This is obvious in the changing pattern of migration of birds to Kerala. Some of them are now found going to places in neighbouring Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in search of food and breeding grounds.”
Anthropocentric thinking takes a hit. Sent April 26:
News coverage understandably tends to focus on the human face of climate change. Whether it’s an island nation anticipating its own disappearance beneath rising sea levels, or a farming culture grappling with increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather, there is no shortage of people confronting the grim realities of global warming.
But our own species isn’t the only one affected. At all levels of scale, from microscopic plankton to giant sequoias, the great web of Earthly life is being torn and disrupted by the consequences of industrial civilization’s two-century carbon binge. When hitherto unfamiliar bird species come visiting, it’s as much an indicator of climate change as melting glaciers or drought-cracked farmlands. While the arrival of the Aquila eagle or the Stonechat may be a brief boon for birdwatchers, it is an ominous sign of things to come. It’s not only humans who’re becoming climate refugees as the greenhouse effect intensifies.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: coal Solar sustainability timescale
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 7: There Went The Sun
The Portland Tribune talks about coal. It’s bad stuff:
My greenhouse is covered with a thin plastic film. A few molecules of plastic are all it takes to make it 30 degrees Fahrenheit warmer inside than out.
When coal, gasoline and natural gas are burned, they produce carbon dioxide that traps heat just like the plastic film of my greenhouse.
Green plants recycle carbon dioxide, but they can’t keep up with the amount that we put out. Two hundred years ago, atmospheric CO2 levels were 280 parts-per-million; now they’re more than 395 ppm. Every year globally, we burn 9 billion tons of fossil fuels. None of this is disputed.
The debate is about whether there are any consequences. Six years ago, the consensus among climate scientists was that man was accelerating climate change by burning fossil fuels.
The Earth’s climate has always changed, but never as fast as now. The change we are experiencing is a response to the coal and oil we burned 50 to 100 years ago. Our average temperature has risen 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the pre-Industrial Age. Sea levels are rising due to thermal expansion.
The scientific consensus is that a rise of 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit would be bad, but survivable. Even if we stopped burning carbon today, scientists forecast that we would blow past this mark just from what we’ve done during the past 50 years.
Each year that we continue our reliance on fossil fuels will add $500 billion to the cost of mitigation. Warmer oceans produce stronger storms, so New York is planning to build a seawall. The Clark County (Wash.) Health Department is planning for refugees coming from the hot southern states by 2030. The forecast is for the oceans and the Willamette River to rise 2 feet by 2050.
It’s all solar. The only difference is how long it’s been sitting around. April 25:
If humans are to make the transition from fossil fuels to renewables, we need to transform the way we think about oil and coal. For too long we’ve considered them an easily-extracted source of cheap energy (just dig a hole!), while ignoring all their costly externalities (health effects, oil wars, environmental pollution, climate change). This faulty accounting has to change, of course.
But something else needs to find its way into our thinking. Fossil fuels are the remnants of the ancient sunlight which shone on the dinosaurs; when we carelessly idle our cars we are burning solar energy that is hundreds of millions of years old. Just as we are outraged when ancient cave paintings are despoiled, so should we be repelled by the profligate destruction of one of our oldest planetary inheritances in the name of convenience. We’ll do far better if we harvest sunlight when it’s fresh.
Warren Senders
Year 4, Month 5, Day 6: The Earth is Sharp. What?
A young man named Jonathan Kamel writes in the Daily Northwestern, advocating a carbon tax:
Recently, I have been thinking about the state of our country and how to make it more secure. We are not on a path for sustainable growth in our economic, fiscal or environmental sectors. As The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman argued in his most recent column, we need to invest in the future of the United States through infrastructure improvement, education and national security measures. Yet the federal government remains handcuffed to achieve these efforts due to the state of the economy and the national deficit.
In honor of Earth Week, I am suggesting a “green” solution to our nation’s current financial problems. Ladies and gentleman, it’s time for a carbon tax. This flat rate would tax all carbon emissions from industries ranging from oil to manufacturing. I am not the first person to proclaim a carbon tax as a solution to current environmental and fiscal problems, but it’s an idea worth talking about.
I will not get into the specifics of how high or low a carbon tax should be set — that is for the economists to figure out. According to Friedman, a carbon tax has the potential to generate $1 trillion over 10 years based on current consumption of gasoline and electricity. Besides the economic incentives of a tax on carbon, this initiative would lower U.S. reliance on foreign oil by making gas more expensive, encourage industries to cut greenhouse gas emissions and fuel an emerging alternative energy industry that has struggled to compete with coal and natural gas.
It’s a start. April 24:
Self-styled fiscal conservatives are fond of arguing that policies to address the burgeoning climate crisis are too costly at a time when America is struggling under a burden of debt. This contention fails for multiple reasons. First is the simple fact that climate change is happening right now, and it’s impacting individuals, families, businesses, and whole sectors of our economy in powerful and unpredictable ways. It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing, and the longer we wait, the worse the problem is going to get.
Furthermore, while all those unfunded wars and tax cuts indeed increased our deficit, a far graver debt is owed to the natural environmental systems upon which all life depends. We have treated our planetary natural resources as if they were infinite, squandering them like college freshmen with a new credit card. Now the bill is coming due in the form of accelerating global warming, and it’s time to stop the runaway spending of our environmental capital.
A carbon tax alone won’t reverse the damage we’ve caused — but it’s an essential part of the ecologically responsible economy we need if our civilization is to survive and prosper in the coming centuries.
Warren Senders
Year 4, Month 5, Day 5: Just Enough
The LaCrosse Tribune (WI) notes the city’s realistic approach to climate change:
Most of the climate debate occurs at national and global levels. But local officials aren’t ignoring the phenomenon.
La Crosse is working with climate scientists to develop ways to better prepare for more extreme weather and other effects attributed to climate change.
The city also hosted last year a climate change workshop for city and county officials sponsored by the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts.
The primary focus was to build consensus about pragmatic adaptations authorities can make to changing weather.
“That sends up, I think, a message for municipalities: You need to be prepared for this kind of thing,” said Dick Swantz, La Crosse’s new Common Council president and a member of the city’s sustainability committee who attended the conference.
To that end, the city plans to add more green spaces on the South Side to help handle runoff from major rain storms.
The city is receiving more frequent major rainfalls, assistant city engineer Bernie Lenz said, taxing an infrastructure of pipes meant to divert the water out of the city.
Good. April 23:
Realistic approaches to the deepening problem of climate change have to work on more than one level. Whether it’s changing our lightbulbs or shifting our entire economy towards sustainability, no single act or program will defuse the crisis. Individual actions are easy to initiate and continue, but can only have negligible effects in a world with seven billion people. Global actions, on the other hand, demand overcoming extraordinary levels of political inertia, not to mention the dedicated opposition of the fossil-fuel industry, which fights tooth and nail against any moves to renewable energy.
This is why urban initiatives like La Crosse’s are absolutely crucial. Cities offer the possibility of meaningful and immediate collective responses to the runaway greenhouse effect’s devastating consequences — and as humanity overcomes its reflexive denial of the hard facts about our CO2 emissions and their effect on the planet, we are going to need to work together if our species is to survive and prosper in the coming centuries.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists Republican obstructionism sociopaths sustainability
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 4: Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries
The San Angelo Standard-Times runs a column by one Bonnie Erbe, purporting to offer good news:
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Finally, there’s some good news on reducing climate change, which is great news as far as I’m concerned.
I’m a climate skeptic. It’s not that I’m skeptical about the existence of climate change, but I’m extremely skeptical about mankind’s collective willingness to do anything about it in a timely manner.
Late last year, the Global Carbon Project issued a report showing global emissions of carbon dioxide rose to record levels in 2011 and were on track to rise even higher in 2012. Carbon dioxide is produced most often by the burning of coal, the largest global source of energy used to generate electricity.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes glaciers and ice sheets to melt and warming oceans to expand. But a new study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Scripps Institution for Oceanography, and Climate Central shows that by limiting four other pollutants that might be easier to control, scientists can make significant progress toward stemming rising sea levels.
For a host of reasons, international policy makers have been unable to agree on how to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide or CO2, the main greenhouse gas created by human activity. The new study shows that by limiting emissions of four substances — methane, soot, refrigerants and gases that lead to the formation of ground-level ozone — progress could still be made, possibly even more quickly.
Ignoring the elephant in the room, as always. April 22:
As the planetary greenhouse effect accelerates, making catastrophic climate change all but inevitable, any good news is welcome. Certainly, regulating and reducing our emissions of four other pollutants can help slow our headlong rush to disaster, although this cannot be a substitute for the real work of eliminating fossil fuels from our energy economy — ultimately the only approach to a meaningful and lasting solution to the climate crisis.
But it’s disingenuous to assert that there is a “host of reasons” for the world community’s failure to make this happen. Ultimately, there is only one reason: money. Big oil and coal corporations reap huge profits from processing and selling the fossilized solar energy of the Carboniferous Era, but they can’t make similar margins from sunlight when it’s fresh. The sums involved are staggeringly huge; buying a few politicians or a few governments is cost-effective for these corporate malefactors, if it can delay a global shift to renewables for even a few more years.
Warren Senders