Reflecting on the Wall

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2009/11/12/wall-environmental-change-climate/

True Value

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=529800

Concentrating on Carbon

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=529519

Column #2

The Supreme Court began it's new term on Monday. Here's my take.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=529266

Transition

Because I was recently given a column in The Crimson the role of this blog will be modified slightly for the time being. Most of my longer pieces are going to be written in the context of the column and the links will be posted here as entries. The column will appear on alternate Thursdays so check back every other Thursday afternoon and there will be a new post - I think that's a better model than the current I post when I feel like it model. It will at least ensure that there are more posts.

However, this blog is not going to serve only as a link aggregator. I'll be moving to NC for the fall and, assuming I have time, I'll use this to post my thoughts as I'm living there. These will be shorter entries that I post whenever inspiration strikes me.

In the meantime, here is the link to the first column:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=528984

Clean Coal: No Solution for Black Lung

A lot has been written about the problems with Clean Coal and the fact that the purported environmental benefits are, in reality, essentially non-existent. I will not re-hash those discussions here except to outline them briefly. The fundamental problem with the claims of Clean Coal is that the power plants still emit carbon. The must capture this and then store it underground. In theory this works. However, it is technology that has never been used on a large scale and no one is quite sure how permanent the storage is. Furthermore, no one is sure what such large levels of carbon in the bedrock will do to the chemical makeup of the soil. Based on these reasons alone Clean Coal should be approached with skepticism, but there are far more condemning reasons why it is not the future of energy in this country.

The fundamental problems with using coal to power America lie much further upstream than power plants. The real problems with coal can only be seen by looking at coal from a lifecycle perspective. While burning coal has plenty of problems, the truly problematic aspects of coal lie in its removal from the earth. Clean coal does not address these problems. Clean coal only addresses the downstream emissions problems and ignores the upstream production.

The upstream impacts include both environmental problems and damages to human health. It is up to you to decide which is a bigger problem but either one, taken individually, is a reason to put an end to coal mining in this country. Together they are and overwhelming indictment of the industry.

The first, human health impacts have been recognized by anecdotal knowledge and personal stores of miners forced out of the business by black lung and other diseases for years. All of this anecdotal evidence was finally quantified by a recent study from West Virginia University that measured the human impacts of mining and compared it to the economic revenue that mining brings in (the study can be found here). What it found was shocking. From 1997-2005 West Virginia counties dependent upon coal mining have had an average of 10,000 excess deaths annually. The study links these excess deaths to both the poverty levels in the region as well as the increased exposure to pollution and environmental damage created by mining activities. Those are 10,000 deaths each year so the country can have cheap electricity.

Valuating these deaths, as well as the additional health care costs caused by the pollution and environmental degradation, the study estimated the total health costs of coal mining at around 42 billion dollars. This was the most conservative estimate produced by the study. Some estimates ranged as high as 80 billion dollars. When compared to the 8 billion dollars a year that the coal mining industry brought to the region and it is easy to see why Appalachia is America’s very own third world country.

Based on standard economic indicators these regions are worse off than nearly anywhere in the country. They have the highest poverty levels, highest unemployment levels and lowest income levels. This new study now indicates that they have some of the highest health costs as well. The people who work in these mines are not dumb – they realize the health risks, but they have nothing else. The primacy of coal and the $60,000 salaries mining offers effectively stifle the development of any other economic opportunities. Yet, it is clear based on the anecdotal evidence and this new research, it simply is not worth it. The people in these communities are literally dying so that America can have cheap energy.

It is not just the health impacts that condemn coal however. The environmentally impacts of mining are just as devastating. The most popular, and least expensive, means of mining is not the traditional underground shaft operations. Instead, it is industrial strength excavation. Commonly called mountaintop removal. Companies use large quantities of dynamite to blow the tops off mountains so that they can go in with heavy machinery and scoop the coal out.

This has been shown to be the most destructive type of land use change in the country. It is immense in scale and essentially irreversible. The mountains are blown apart and the remains are dumped in the surrounding streambeds. From 1992-2002 over 1200 miles of streams were buried in West Virginia. This may not seem like a huge deal but it means that 1200 miles of ecosystems were destroyed. It means that downstream areas were poisoned with elevated levels of heavy metals (which have human as well as environmental impacts). It means that the mountains are being irreversibly changed to produce dirty power.

In the same period, over 380,467 acres of forestland were cleared by these mines; 380,467 acres of forest that had been sequestering carbon. Remember, land use changes account for 10% of global emissions. Not only is coal emitting carbon when it is burned but it also accounts for huge land use change emissions.

In the face of all of this evidence the question remains: why are we still promoting coal? The common answer is because it is cheap and the country needs cheap electricity. But by any measure of cost – economic (clean coal will cost four to five cents more per kilowatt hour than traditional coal, nuclear or wind power), social or environmental - coal is far from cheap. It has created a “land of sacrifice” in Appalachia where people are destroying their heritage and, quite literally, killing themselves to provide the rest of the country with dirty energy.

The obsessive focus on coal and clean coal as a future source of energy makes no sense. The Senate needs to recognize this and pass Waxman-Markey without concessions to the coal industry and without emphasizing clean coal as a long-term solution. Meanwhile, investment into renewable and non-coal sources of electricity needs to be increased. Then, maybe, Appalachia can move beyond a coal economy and begin to reach the quality of life enjoyed by the rest of the country.

Corn Foolery

U.S. environmental policy is to be dictated by the concerns of energy generation yet again. This time it is not the oil and gas companies or the coal companies that are to blame but the farmers of the Midwest. Not content to simply destroy the biological diversity of the Great Plains or ruin the soil quality through mono cropping they have now gotten into the global warming game as well.

Rep. Peterson (D-MN) is the man most directly responsible for this but it is really the corn farmers of the Midwest who do not want the cash cow of biofuels to disappear. What I am referring to are the changes made late last night in the Waxman-Markey Bill climate bill that will now restrict the EPA’s ability to regulate the Ethanol industry.

Last month the EPA proposed a rule that would have required “lifecycle emissions” to be calculated into the Carbon footprint of the fuel. This means that the land use changes undertaken when production of the corn needed to produce the type of ethanol that comes out of the Midwest would have to be counted as part of the production cycle’s carbon footprint. This does two things: first, it significantly reduces the environmental appeal of corn based ethanol fuels (more on that below) and, second, under any type of permitting scheme in which ethanol produces are required to hold permits or credits for the emissions they produce it increases costs of production and makes ethanol less competitive with traditional oil based fuels.

But if this change makes ethanol more competitive isn’t that a good thing? Economically, for the farmers? Yes. Environmentally? No, not at all. The principle of a carbon cap-and-trade system (what Waxman-Markey is essentially creating) is that polluters have to pay for their pollution. Either this cost is internalized, or better, passed on to the consumer as a way of making them pay for the environmental damage that their lifestyle causes. This price signal, in theory, then induces people to change the way they live to a more sustainable lifestyle. As Yvo de Beor noted, “you can eat strawberries in the dead of winter, providing that you pay the environmental cost associated with getting those strawberries to you at that unsustainable moment in time.” You either pay for the correction of the emissions that your strawberry passion causes – through sequestration projects – or you just learn not to eat strawberries in January if you live in Boston.

Yet, this internalization of costs is precisely what the changes to the Bill are designed to avoid. Using a fuel that has fewer tailpipe emissions is fine. However, the full environmental impacts of the production of the fuel must be considered. The use of corn ethanol, when viewed from the perspective of its entire lifecycle is at best only slightly more appealing, and at worst, it is just as bad, as oil based fuels. The annual carbon emissions caused by global land use change – peat mining, deforestation, turning grassland into farm land, etc – are greater than the emissions caused by every car, truck, train, ship or plane in the world. The change in Waxman-Markey explicitly ignores this reality and allows midwestern farmers to produce corn-based ethanol at a fraction of the proper, sustainable, cost.

The counter-argument to all of this is that a price system like the one proposed, where people pay for their unsustainable lifestyles has a disproportional impact on low-income families. Those who can afford to pay the extra cost of strawberries in January will do so while those who cannot will be forced to choose something else. There is some truth to this. However, the reality is that there is no other option. The U.S. emits approximately 20 tons of CO₂/captia annually. The IPCC calculated sustainable amount? 2 tons/capita annually. We cannot continue to live the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed. We must choose a more sustainable lifestyle because technology is not changing fast enough to permit us to live the way we have been while emitting less CO₂.

This is not to suggest that the policy should be entirely regressive. Under a properly managed cap-and-trade system, the permits are auctioned of to companies with the auction revenue going to the government. If there are concerns about the regressivity of the program the auction proceeds can be used to compensate low-income families for the increased cost of carbon intensive goods. This must be done carefully however because the price signals cannot be entirely muted. They should simply be equalized, as best as possible, across socio-economic levels.

Corn-based ethanol is not the answer to American energy needs or to a more sustainable future. The changes in Waxman-Markey are a step backwards for progress towards a world that emits less CO2 and here is to hoping that the final house bill does not include these mistakes. Failing that, one must hope that the Senate has a better grasp of what it means to create a climate bill that recognizes the realities of global climate change and is aggressive enough to properly address them.

Suscribing

So rather than checking back here all the time (since I know that all of you are waiting with baited breath to see my newest entries) you can scroll all the way to the bottom and click where it says "atom." This will let you add a bookmark to your bookmarks bar which should tell you when I add new posts. Then you'll know right away when I've added more provocative, on point and humorous content.

What would Martin Luther think?

Last month the Catholic Church announced the return of plenary indulgences. They need not have. Environmentalists have already claimed the privilege of putting a price on guilt for this century. The new Catholic indulgences will have to take a back seat to carbon credits when it comes to buying your way out of sin.

To be fair, the Catholics will no longer allow you to buy your way out of Hell. They no longer sell indulgences, rather the indulgences can only be granted for doing things that good Catholics should be doing anyway. It is too bad that some environmentalists are not following their example but, instead, insist upon following in the footsteps of the 15th century Catholics and are selling redemption for cash.

For environmentalists, redemption comes in the form of carbon offsets; forgiveness for their role in global warming. For anyone who does not know what a carbon offset is, the essential idea is that companies, or individuals, engage in activities that have a net negative impact on CO2 emissions – planting trees, installing carbon sequestration devices in factories, using renewable power sources rather than traditional power sources, etc – and then calculate the amount of CO2 they have taken out of the atmosphere and sell the right to release that much CO2 to someone who has not reduced their carbon output. The going rate in European markets in 2007 was between 21† and 24† for a pound of emitted CO2.

It has become increasingly popular for those celebrities who wish to appear environmentally friendly to publicly buy these credits to “offset” the carbon expended in their daily lives. Once they have purchased their credits they can blithely jet from their manses in Italy all over the world: confident that they are doing their part to protect the environment.

This confidence in their environmental credentials is the flaw in the carbon credit argument. While, unlike indulgences in past centuries, some carbon credits can actually repair past “sins” by removing carbon from the atmosphere the mechanism by which this occurs is not well understood. This means that the degree to which planting a tree actually offsets carbon is not entirely clear. Furthermore, the regulatory schemes which determine what constitutes a carbon credit, and who can and cannot sell them, are not well defined or sufficiently advanced to ensure that the markets are secure and non-fraudulent. Essentially, there is no way of knowing whether or not those carbon credits purchased to forgive air travel actually equal the amount of carbon that the flight released.

There is, however, an even more fundamental flaw with the practice of offsetting carbon emissions through carbon credits. Like indulgences carbon credits are a forgiveness of “sin” that absolves the sinner of guilt for having committed an action. Whether or not someone should feel guilty for these actions is irrelevant, the essential fact is that, if they are purchasing a carbon credit, they clearly feel guilty for taking that action. By purchasing the carbon credit they therefore, in their minds, absolve themselves of the guilt incurred by releasing carbon into the atmosphere. It is this absolution that creates the fundamental problem with credits.

So long as credits do not directly reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere – and to some extent even when they do – there is problem with absolving this guilt. The problem is that guilt provides an enormous incentive to change behavior (Irish Catholics have known this for a very long time and anyone with an Irish Catholic mother can attest to their reliance on this knowledge). By absolving this guilt through the purchase of carbon credits the incentive to change behavior is removed. Rather than make the difficult decision to fundamentally change their behavior people can simply purchase credits to make what they would have done anyway “environmentally friendly.”

Yet, drastic and fundamental change is absolutely necessary. Offsetting carbon emissions will not stop global Warming. It will require a wholesale re-organization of the way which society, especially American society, conducts itself (for a better explanation of this see here). Providing the option of carbon credits simply promotes the myth that business as usual can continue and the environment will be fine.

Even if carbon credits actually do reduce the CO2- levels in the atmosphere, they still provide no incentive to change behavior. It is not possible, or desirable, to simply remove all of the CO2 from the atmosphere and as a result some type of change is still necessary.

While there is a place for a well-ordered carbon credit market, especially as a means of reducing industrial pollution, the presence of a personal market for carbon offsets is not a long-term solution. Rather than encouraging the purchase of these credits, environmentalists would be better served by following the model of the Catholic church and handing out credits to those who car pool, who bike or who minimize flights. In short, those who do what good environmentalists should do anyway.

Money and Parks

America is unique in the way that it protects its natural heritage. The National Park System is the oldest and the largest in the world. The tradition of publicly protected land in the United States dates to the preservation of this city’s very own Boston Common in 1634. The first modern national park was created in 1872 when President Grant signed it into existence. This has grown into a system of parks that now preserves 79 million acres of American land and some of its most important heritage; from Valley Forge and Gettysburg to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Today this heritage is under threat from its own popularity coupled with the reductions in services that come from budgetary shortfalls. That is why Congress and the Obama administration should be commended for including $900 million in the stimulus package specifically for the National Park System.

The deterioration of the National Park System is a national tragedy. It is the most extensive in the world and in 2007 attracted more than 250 million visitors. That is nearly one visit per capita. There are few, if any, other voluntary national programs that can claim that level of popularity. To lose this asset would be to lose one of the greatest tourist attractions in the country and is far more tragic than the loss of a few Wall Street bonus checks. Yet, without increasing the funds available for the Park system, towards which the stimulus package is a first step, these assets will be lost.

The National Park system currently runs at an annual budgetary shortfall of 600 million dollars, or 35%. This doesn’t include funding shortfalls for desperately needed infrastructure projects in order to bring park facilities up to date and that total at least $9 billion.
The state of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the nation’s longest and most visited park, illustrates perfectly the state of the system as a whole. Over 200 of the parkway’s restrooms are outdated and utilize sewage systems which were not designed to handle the volume of visitors the Parkway now sees each year. The roadway itself badly needs to be repaved in sections and many of the views, some of the most impressive in the South, are overgrown or no longer exist.

In terms of day to day operation the Parkway is also in dire straits. This year the management will continue a hiring freeze even though the workforce has declined 10% since 2001 and 25% of the positions are unoccupied. This number jumps to 40% in the upper levels of the management which has resulted in the delay in the development of a master plan for the Parkway’s management in the next decade. Finally, 40% of the parkway’s current employee’s will retire in the next five years and at the current funding levels the Parkway may not be able to replace them.

This pattern is replicated across the country, from Yosemite to the Hawaiian Volcanoes. In the face of these shortfalls the number of visitors to the parks increased by 6 million from 2003-2007. Without increased funding the parks will not survive the onslaught of visitors from a growing population on an aging infrastructure.

The $900 million in the stimulus package represents a first step in what will should be a long march towards rebuilding the infrastructure of the national parks. It also has interesting echoes of the past. While the first national park was founded in 1872 a large part of the current system was developed by another stimulus program about 60 years later. It was the Civilian Conservation Corp, created by Franklin Roosevelt in the Great Depression to employ the masses of recently unemployed workers, that built the infrastructure in dozens of parks all over the country. The current national park system may have been born out of a desire to conserve the precious places in the country but it was the necessity of rescuing the country from the depths of a depression that gave it an accessible and usable infrastructure in those parks. Today Obama and the Congress have the opportunity to help the country out of a recession – studies have shown that $1 invested in the National Park System generates $4 in the larger economy – by investing in the treasure that is the National Park System.

While there have been some accusations that the aid for the National Park System in the House version of the bill – 2.2 billion – was the result of questionable lobbying, the fact that the final version of the bill chose the Senate’s $900 million amount should lay these concerns to rest. This money is needed support that will not be wasted as pork in any one district. Rather, the money will be spread across the nation and it will allow the country to start repairing the damage that too much love has done to one of the nation’s greatest treasures.

People before Technology

Stop. If one word summed up the mindset of the American environmental movement it could well be stop. Stop polluting, stop driving, stop eating meat, stop buying large cars, stop using fossil fuels. In short, stop doing everything that American culture demands that you do. What reason do environmentalists give for their demand to stop? Because they say doing all these things is bad for the planet.
This is not a new attitude in the environmental movement but it is an attitude that must be changed. Global warming is far to complex to solve with statutory regulations. If the environmental challenges that face the world now are to be successfully addressed it will require engaging a much wider audience and focus more on education than it has in the past.
Historically environmental protection has been the province, almost exclusively, of relatively rich white men and women. The lack of involvement from inner-city and minority communities is one of the greatest failings of the movement. While environmental justice issues involving these communities have garnered increasing concern in the last several years the problems with engaging a broader audience run deeper than environmental justice issues.
These communities need to be included in the movement not because of the environmental justice concerns which they are a part of, but because they represent a majority of the population. Without their support the environmental movement cannot but fail to successfully address the global warming problems and all of its implications. Statutory regulations can solve air pollution when the majority of pollution is caused by industries that can be regulated. But global warming is a problem that is far more pervasive than that. It can only be addressed if individuals make the decision to change their behavior. This is not possible if the majority of the population is ignorant of the challenges.
A recent Pew poll found that, among the public, global warming ranked last out of a poll of twenty policy problems. More importantly however, the poll found a serious disconnect between concern over the environment, ranked seventeenth, and global warming. While it is heartening that the environment was not listed last it is concerning that people see a difference between the environment and global warming. These two policy problems are inextricably linked and dealing with one means dealing with the other. That this poll separates them indicates a serious lack of understanding of the problem.
People cannot and will not protect what they do not know or understand. The general lack of understanding is what underlines the importance of changing the focus of the environmental movement. In order to successfully engage these communities environmentalists can no longer rely upon scientific innovation and legal road blocks. These will prevent people from actively destroy the environment but to actively protect the environment requires engagement. If students in Boston Public Schools have no knowledge of the needs of a polar bear than, from their perspective, what is so absurd about saving the polar bears by keeping them in air conditioned rooms?
Making the investments necessary to create engagement in inner city communities will require a titanic paradigm shift within the environmental movement. Currently, the five largest traditional environmental groups have a budget of $325 million. Compare this with the $49 million that goes to environmental groups which work with low income and minority communities. There can be no disconnect between these numbers if new communities are to be brought into the environmental movement.
Rather than demanding that people protect the environment, by introducing it through education programs environmentalists have the opportunity to motivate people to protect it for the same reason that the environmentalists do: because they have an understanding of, and legitimate concern for, it. While it may be easier to tell people not to do something, making them not want to do it is a more effective means of protection.
True protection calls for a reevaluation of how the value of the environment is assessed. The environment is not a luxury good, by some estimates it contributes $33 trillion to the global GDP, and can no longer be treated as such. But the reevaluation requires massive cultural shifts, which, yet again require education; not new laws.
This will not be easy. The environmental movement has, for a very long time, been a group on the margin of American public policy and one that has not tried to engage outsiders. Their methods, protection by fiat, have worked passably well thus far. But these methods will no longer be sufficient. Global warming will not be legislated away and concern for the environment cannot be demanded in the same way that a catalytic converter can be required.
Education and outreach must play a larger role in the environmental movement and this begins with increased investment in those organizations that work with low income and inner city communities. This population has been ignored for decades by the environmental movement and only recently received attention. Now, the challenges facing the world demand that this attention not only be continued but be increased.