Tag: carbon

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U.S. Energy Department: Peak Travel Season Could Cost Drivers 6% More

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Gasoline prices have edged off the pedal in recent days, but the Energy Information Administration this week released new data showing motorists will pay about a quarter more per gallon during peak travel season—April through September. Prices will top out at $4.01, on average, in May. The last time gasoline spiked to such levels was 2008, causing a much different reaction from motorists in part because prices had shot up 35 percent in just six months.

While escalating gasoline prices are driving some folks to hybrid dealerships, only a few models offer a speedy return on investment. With the exception of the Prius and Lincoln MKZ, and the clean-diesel Volkswagen Jetta TDI, most clean-car technologies take more than a decade to pay owners back.

Rising oil prices are feeding a population boom in North Dakota, with the town of Williston holding the distinction of fastest-growing town after its population rose 8.8 percent in about a year. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney say the economy can handle the current high oil prices of around $100 a barrel, but that a further spike in oil prices triggered by a confrontation with Iran could be one of the biggest threats to the economy.

Smoggy City Makes Strides in Clean Air

Mexico City only a few years ago rivaled Los Angeles and Houston as a smog capital, but thanks to air-scrubbing innovations such as vertical gardens and a popular bicycle sharing program, the city is becoming a leader in green efforts. Although California is slipping in the smog and air toxics categories, the state topped a list ranking states’ preparedness to address such challenges as rising sea levels that a warming world portends. Alaska, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin also ranked high.

Realclimate.org reports that scientists’ predictions about human-caused climate change pushing the mercury up were on target. What’s more, a warming planet may be bad for bunnies threatened by the loss of sagebrush habitat and snow, where they hide from predators. Tennessee, meanwhile, enacted a law that would let teachers challenge climate change and evolution in the classroom.

Energy vs. Environment

A new slate of clean- and renewable-energy initiatives—part of the long-term “Operational Energy Strategy” aimed at reducing the military’s dependence on fossil fuels—was announced this week. The Obama administration aims to build three gigawatts of solar, wind and geothermal power capacity on U.S. military installations by 2025. The Army, meanwhile, is building fuel cell and hybrid vehicles.

Actor Matt Damon has signed on to “The Promised Land” a film critical of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Meanwhile, promoters of the pro-fracking film “FrackNation” are raising funds on Kickstarter. Outside of Hollywood, the Department of the Interior is poised to propose guidelines governing fracking on public lands. For those opposed to fracking for fear that natural gas will diminish demand for renewables, the Center for American Progress says that in the long term, the two are not necessarily in opposition, with renewables becoming increasingly competitive as natural gas production nears a peak sooner than some might predict.

A new energy poll says 61 percent of Americans said they’d be more likely to vote for a presidential candidate backing more natural gas. The same study concludes many Americans—six out of 10—are unfamiliar with hydraulic fracturing.

Payouts related to the BP oil spill, the largest in history, have recently increased four-fold. Texas, a recipient of some of the funds, announced plans to spend its money on long-term coastal conservation. Oil drilling in the Gulf is expected to see its biggest year since the 2010 spill, with predictions for eight more oil rigs, even though signs of the disaster’s effect on the environment still remain.

India has forbidden its airlines from complying with a European Union law that went into effect Jan. 1 that charges airlines using European airports for their carbon emissions. Indian Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan called the requirement a “deal-breaker” for global climate change talks.

Scientists have finally extracted sunlight from cucumbers. No, not really, but in a 2011 essay Vaclav Smil used the fictional cukes from Jonathan Swift’s 1726 novel Gulliver’s Travels to make a point about today’s serial infatuations with “it” technologies—simple solutions to complex energy problems. Bloomberg’s Eric Roston suggests that President Obama’s “all of the above” strategy—which consists of various “it” technologies—would do well to “focus not on our infatuations with particular energy sources but on the market in which they operate.”

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

 

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Obama Moves Ahead with Oil Sanctions as Gas Prices Climb

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Before Congress headed home for spring recess, the Senate, with a rate vote of 100, approved President Obama’s new round of sanctions designed to deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The president’s decision was based on an analysis of current oil supply and the likely effect of further sanctions on prices. The Senate also shot down the president’s bid to reduce subsidies to oil producers.

Oil prices have climbed this year amid lingering tensions with Iran, with the price of gas now averaging around $3.92 a gallon—and experts are warning more increases are on the way. The U.S., France and other nations are considering the release of some emergency oil supplies to stop further rises in prices. Experts are skeptical about the impact tapping the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve would have on prices. Reuters reports that with this decision, timing is everything.

Back home in their districts, legislators are using oil prices to fuel campaign rhetoric. Rep. Bobby Schilling, R-Colona, is finding photo ops at the pump, pumping $100 into his Chevy Suburban. Meanwhile, La Tarndra Strong, who manages a trucking company in North Carolina, said high fuel prices are slicing her razor-thin margin.

Officials Eye Cap-and-Trade Revenues for Transit

In California, some officials are eyeing revenues from the state’s cap-and-trade system to get drivers out of their cars. The cap is envisioned as a financial backstop to the state’s high-speed rail plan. Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget indicates that cap-and-trade could provide up to $1 billion in revenue. Building high-speed rail up and down the Golden State could be just one plan for cap-and-trade monies. Former Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez advocates using revenues to boost clean tech, while State Sen. Kevin de León wants to see at least 10 percent of the revenues be put toward greenhouse gas reduction projects in disadvantaged communities. Some farm groups, meanwhile, are vying for funds to go to supporting agricultural practices that cut greenhouse gases.

Further north, Washington State Gov. Christine Gregoire signed legislation helping to shield drivers from liability who lend their cars as part of the nation’s burgeoning car share movement. Whereas some companies such as Zipcar and Car2go provide fleets for sharing, person-to-person programs use software to link individuals who want to rent out their cars to people who need a short-term lift. But most automobile insurance companies currently cancel the policies of drivers who are part of this growing “collaborative consumption” movement.

Nuclear Worries Continue as Wind Farms Appear on Horizon

Federal investigators have kept a troubled Southern California nuclear reactor closed as they investigate why tubes carrying radioactive water are decaying rapidly. Concern is mounting in nearby coastal cities—fueled by Fukushima fears—prompting some to call for the plant’s permanent closure. Germany accelerated its timetable for moving off nuclear in response to last year’s tragedy in Japan. Two plants to be built in Britain are the latest to fizzle. But phasing out nuclear may not boost renewables.

The U.K.’s Shetland Island could be home to the world’s most productive wind farm after receiving approval to move ahead with construction Wednesday. In the U.S., an offshore wind turbine in Virginia may be the first in the country. Five states have reached an agreement to speed the approval process for offshore wind farms in the Great Lakes.

Apple unveiled plans for the nation’s largest private fuel cell energy project. The project will power a data center using hydrogen extracted from natural gas.

Scientists Dissect Causes of “Weather Weirding”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that March’s “meteorological madness” with record-setting highs was due mostly to freakishly random factors, with only a small assist from human-induced climate change. IPS calls this “extreme weather” the new normal, and there may be more crazy weather in our future. The changes are causing some scientists to look to the ice.

A paper now out in Nature shows how increased CO2 in the atmosphere led to a series of sudden and extreme global warming events that occurred between about 55.5 and 52 million years ago.

Stopping climate change would cost consumers pennies per day, a new U.K. study concludes.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

 

 

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As Eurozone Crisis Deepens, Fight to Save Emissions Trading Scheme Begins

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Editor’s Note: The Climate Post will not be circulated next Thursday in observance of the holiday. Look for it again on January 5.

Prices in Europe’s carbon emissions trading scheme have collapsed this year, in part because there were too many allowances in the system starting off, threatening the future of the whole market.

“Without intervention … Europe’s climate policy is over,” one analyst said. Some of Europe’s biggest energy and manufacturing firms also wrote a letter to the European Commission that called for Europe to take “decisive action now” to raise the price of carbon and fix the scheme.

The European Parliament’s environment committee voted in favor of temporarily cutting the number of emissions permits to be issued.

This year, the price of permits has fallen about 50 percent. Emissions allowances are now about 6 euros per ton—a four-year low, and about half what they were when the market began. Denmark, which will take over the presidency of the European Union in 2012, said the current carbon prices are “not sustainable” and vowed to help fix the problem.

Part of the problem is that Europe’s economic crisis is escalating, risking a slump like in the 1930s to which no country will be immune, said Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, in a speech at the U.S. State Department. Also, a new energy efficiency effort could also cut the number of permits needed, another reason to issue less in the future.

Paving the Way for De-carbonized Energy

The European Commission presented its long-awaited “Energy Roadmap 2050,” aiming to point the way to meet the European Union (EU) goal of cutting emissions at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

The report considered various ways of reaching these targets, and concluded that relying heavily on renewables would be no more expensive than boosting nuclear, or fossil fuels along with carbon capture and storage.

A de-carbonized energy system could be cheaper than “business-as-usual,” although de-carbonization would require large up-front spending. The report also said natural gas will be a “critical” fuel during the transition.

The EU soon needs to set renewable energy targets for 2030, said EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger.

Pollution Crackdowns

The European Union moved earlier this year to expand its emissions trading scheme to include flights in and out of Europe, and now the European Court of Justice has backed that law despite protests from the U.S. and others. The new decision, which goes into effect Jan. 1, may trigger a trade war.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Environmental Protection agency unveiled its first limits on emissions of mercury and several other toxic pollutants from power plants. The limits were 20 years in the making, and cover a variety of toxic compounds including arsenic, nickel, selenium, and cyanide.

The new standard gives companies three options: install systems to scrub their emissions, switch to natural gas, or shut down their plants. Some of the nation’s oldest—and generally dirtiest—coal-fired power plants may be forced to shut down, which could also benefit the climate.

Climategate Investigation Widened

The U.S. Department of Justice is apparently working with law enforcement officials in Britain to investigate who leaked climate researchers’ e-mails.

In the U.K., police raided the home of one climate skeptic blogger and confiscated two of his computers.

Flipping the Switch on Incandescents

A ban on the sale of incandescent light bulbs of 100 watts or more in the U.S. is supposed to go into effect Jan. 1, but an emergency spending agreement in Congress removed funds from enforcement of the ban, at least until October 2012. Experts say the lack of enforcement will likely have little effect, since light bulb manufacturers have already retooled and moved on.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Tar Sands Pipeline Gets Green Light in Environmental Review

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Hundreds of protesters—including famed climate researcher James Hansen—have been arrested in protests in front of the White House over the past two weeks, in an attempt to stop the construction of a pipeline from Canada to Texas to carry diluted tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries, mainly over concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and risks of tainting a nearby water aquifer.

The U.S. State Department has been weighing whether to approve the pipeline, and under what conditions. In a major step last week, the State Department published its final environmental review, which said the pipeline would have “no significant impact to most resources” along its path, assuming “normal operation.”

U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said energy security concerns could help the pipeline win approval on the grounds that importing oil from Canada is preferable to imports from the Middle East—an argument echoed in a Washington Post editorial by veteran business reporter Robert Samuelson.

Shale Gas Shakedown

The Marcellus shale deposits—so far, the biggest site for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking— may contain far less gas than recently projected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), according to a new assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Although the new estimate is higher than the U.S. Geological Survey’s own 2002 estimate, it is much lower than an estimate EIA published earlier this year. In response, the EIA said it will downgrade their next estimate—perhaps by as much as 80 percent. But the Washington Post reports there may be more to these numbers.

In light of allegations that petroleum companies have overstated how much gas they could get out of shale deposits, the New York State Attorney’s Office is investigating whether companies “overbooked” reserves. Earlier this summer, federal lawmakers called on the Securities and Exchange Commission, the EIA and the Government Accountability Office to investigate industry estimates.

Rise and Fall of Solar, Wind

China achieved a meteoric rise in wind power over the past five years, and last year pulled ahead of the U.S. to become the country with the largest installed capacity of wind turbines.

At the same time, the growth of China’s wind industry is slowing down due to over capacity and withdrawal of subsidies, among other causes. And some of China’s largest wind turbine manufacturers reported falling profits due to fierce competition, as has been seen in the solar panel industry.

Solar manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe have been struggling to compete with panels from Asia, China especially. Two weeks ago, Evergreen declared bankruptcy, followed by Solyndra this week. Both companies had been touted by the Obama administration and local officials as models for the green economy. New York-based SpectraWatt, a solar spin-out from computer chip manufacturer Intel, also filed for bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, China is pushing ahead with plans to greatly expand their installations of solar power, doubling their targeted installations over the next decade. By 2015, they aim to have 3 gigawatts installed—10 times as much as they had last year—and by 2020, 50 gigawatts.

Despite such difficulties in the market, the United States’ net exports of solar power products more than doubled in 2010 compared with the year before, reaching $1.8 billion. Total U.S. exports of solar products rose 83 percent, to $5.6 billion, in part because Asia is importing equipment for manufacturing solar panels.

Burying the Problem

The first industrial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant in the U.S. broke ground in Illinois, with the aim of capturing emissions from a large corn ethanol plant. Work on the plant began just after a U.S. utility canceled its plan for CCS on a West Virginia coal plant.

In Canada, a CCS plant for capturing emissions from tar sands processing may move ahead after Canada’s government recently agreed to underwrite two-thirds of the $1.35-billion project’s cost.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Australia’s Ambitious Scheme Sets World’s Highest Price on Emissions

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Australia, with the highest per capita greenhouse emissions of any large developed country, will soon take on one of the most ambitious schemes to tackle climate change, with a new carbon-trading system.

The planned carbon tax will start in 2012 and apply first to the 500 worst polluting companies responsible for about 60 percent of the country’s emissions, making it the largest carbon market outside of Europe. Rates will start at 23 Australian dollars per tonne of carbon (US$24.20 per ton), higher than prices have been on the European emissions market for the past couple of years.

The carbon prices would gradually rise, and then the government would transition in 2015 into a cap-and-trade system, aiming for emission cuts by 2050 of 80 percent compared with 2000 levels.

Taxes Redefined

Australia’s plan was generally hailed by environmentalists and those working on renewable energy, and economists generally support it. But it was panned by many in big industry, and Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s administration, already suffering low approval ratings, saw ratings drop further after announcement of the new plan.

To avoid the carbon tax penalizing the poor, about half of the new revenues will be returned to citizens in the form of tax breaks for the lowest earners, part of an effort toward “reducing taxes on desirable things (work and income) … and replacing them with a charge on something undesirable (carbon pollution).”

The carbon tax is part of a package of new policies on climate and energy, which also include the creation of a new Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which will oversee more than $3 billion in funding, primarily for solar, wind, and geothermal energy. The funding boost will put “solar on steroids,” said John Grimes, chief executive of the Australian Solar Energy Society, aiding large-scale solar installations.

Nuclear Power Continues to Polarize

Meanwhile, the U.K. is embarking on a huge restructuring of its electricity market, which is outlined in a new white paper. The Guardian’s Damian Carrington argues the “sprawling and complex maze of measures … has the central aim of getting new nuclear power stations built.”

Since Japan’s Fukushima disaster, the U.K.’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne, and others in the U.K. government have supported expanding the country’s nuclear power. Within days of Japan’s disaster, the U.K. government began drawing up a public relations strategy to downplay the disaster, according to a recent report on a leak of government e-mails.

The restructuring proposed in the new white paper would require spending £200 billion ($320 billion) on new infrastructure, but this won’t necessarily lead to higher electricity prices than customers would face otherwise, argues Huhne, since customers now are vulnerable to rising oil and gas prices.

Elsewhere, there are a growing number of countries planning or weighing a nuclear retrenchment. Most recently, Kuwait’s Deputy Prime Minister said the country is no longer interested in developing nuclear energy, and Japan’s Prime Minister urged his country to phase out nuclear.

France, the most nuclear-reliant country, is embarking on a new study of the country’s future energy mix that will consider the possibility of phasing out nuclear by 2040 or 2050.

Saudi Oil Peak?

After the announcement by the International Energy Agency that the world’s richer countries would tap into their emergency oil reserves, oil prices initially fell. For the U.S. portion of the release, many bidders vied for the oil, offering about $105 to $110 a barrel—which would raise more than $3 billion for the government.

The high number of bidders “shows there are concerns in the marketplace over just how much oil is going to be out there,” said David Pumphrey, deputy director of energy and national security for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

After an acrimonious meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in which members disagreed about whether to boost production, some countries decided to go it alone. The most significant is Saudi Arabia, which raised its output to about 9.5 million barrels a day—the same rate as before the global recession.

Meanwhile, major Wall Street firms warned of rising oil prices over the rest of this year and into 2012. Goldman Sachs, for one, raised its forecast prices, and said “it is only a matter of time before inventories and OPEC spare capacity become effectively exhausted” and prices soar. A major reason for the gloomier outlook, Goldman Sachs said, is Saudi Arabia won’t be able to pump as much oil as many had expected.

Solar Purchasing

The company Groupon offers big discounts as long as a bunch of people will sign up to a particular deal, and now San Francisco is emulating this model to boost solar power installations. By forming buyers’ groups, they hope to get around some of the barriers to small-scale solar, such as high transaction costs and availability of credit.

In another effort to finance small-scale solar, some firms are emulating Wall Street’s bundling of mortgages, by creating “asset-backed securities”—bundles of leases on residential solar panels.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Record-breaking Greenhouse Gas Emissions, but Carbon Market Failing

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Greenhouse gas emissions dropped in 2009 in the wake of the Great Recession. Research now shows emissions rebounded quickly in 2010, setting a new all-time record.

In a press release, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said the prospect of limiting the global increase in temperature to no more than 2 ºC is getting bleaker. Commenting on the new data, economist Nicholas Stern said emissions are “now close to being back on a ‘business as usual’ path.”

Nonetheless, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, called for an even stricter goal in a speech at an emissions trading conference. “Two degrees is not enough – we should be thinking of 1.5 ºC,” she said.

Canada’s emissions likewise fell in 2009, as described in the government’s emissions report to the United Nations. However, they deliberately omitted details on tar sands operations’ emissions, which showed a 20 percent rise in pollution in 2009.

Despite record emissions, international carbon trading shrank for the first time since the program began in 2005, from $143.7 billion to $141.9 billion. The portion for the Clean Development Mechanism, aimed at helping developing countries put low-emission options in place, fell by nearly half, in large part because of uncertainties about the successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Because of this drop, Andrew Steer, the World Bank’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, told the Guardian, “The [carbon] market is failing us.”

Germany, Others Flee Nuclear

Germany had planned to expand its nuclear program, until Japan’s Fukushima disaster led to fresh debates over nuclear power. Now the government has announced it will close all the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022. The country had already shut down seven of its oldest nuclear plants in March, and those will remain off.

Germany’s largest utility, E.ON, is upset about the policy reversal and plans to sue the government for damages. E.ON and other big operators are facing big losses, not just because of the policy change but also because “customers are fleeing in droves” to companies that offer nuclear- and coal-free electricity.

Grid operators had already warned that Germany may suffer blackouts this summer if these nuclear plants were to remain off, and other European countries may likewise face blackouts due to a spring drought that has left river and reservoir levels low.

To make up for lost electricity from nuclear plants, Germany may turn to higher-emission sources like coal in the short run, boosting its carbon dioxide emissions by about 40 million metric tons, or around 5 percent. The move is a “shot in Russia’s arm,” said Steve LeVine of Foreign Policy, since it will make Germany even more reliant on natural gas from Russia, holder of the world’s largest proven reserves. Already Germany has become more reliant on heavily-nuclear France, becoming a net importer of electricity from them.

In the longer term, the government is raising its targets for renewable energy, aiming to double its share, from 17 percent today to 35 percent by 2020. In 1997, Germany set a target of achieving 14 percent renewables by 2010, but met the target early, in 2007. Integrating a large share of renewables is easier than thought before, according to a new analysis by the IEA.

Switzerland also decided to phase out nuclear power, albeit on a slower schedule—by 2034. Nuclear power supplies 40 percent of the country’s electricity, making it one of the world’s most nuclear-reliant countries.

Plea for Oil

Meanwhile, oil prices have remained high, with Brent crude remaining above $110 a barrel, leading the International Energy Agency in mid-May to make a rare formal plea to the world’s oil producers to raise their production, because continued high prices could hurt economic growth.

Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal agreed oil prices are too high, saying he would like them to be around $70 to $80 a barrel. “We don’t want the West to go and find alternatives, because, clearly, the higher the price of oil goes, the more they have incentives to go and find alternatives,” Talal told CNN.

But more than a dozen experts surveyed by Reuters said members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are unlikely to raise production quotas at their upcoming meeting.

In part this is because there’s disarray over who will even attend the meeting. Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sacked the country’s oil minister and announced he would take on the job himself, and planned to represent Iran at the OPEC meeting. But a few days later this was reversed, after the country’s Guardian Council said Ahmadinejad wasn’t allowed to take on the oil minister job.

Who might represent Libya has also been up in the air, after Shokri Ghanem, head of the national oil company, was reported to have defected from Muammar Gaddafi’s government. He showed up recently in Italy, announcing at a press conference that he had in fact defected, but is undecided about working with the rebels.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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U.K.’s “Greenest Government Ever” Charges Ahead with Nuclear Power

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Britain’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, has repeatedly pledged to create the “greenest government ever,” and now the country has adopted a new, ambitious goal for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, aiming by 2025 to slash them by half, compared with 1990.

The goal, agreed to by Cabinet ministers in the ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, is in line with the legally binding targets the country adopted in 2008 when the Labor Party was in charge, for a 60 percent cut in emissions by 2030, and an 80 percent cut by 2050.

The new target goes beyond European Union targets, and some in industry are pushing for the targets to be conditional, depending on whether Europe as a whole sets similar goals. Much depends on how the figures are calculated; a study last year found that including emissions from Britain’s imports would make their emissions the highest in Europe.

However, there is “no clear agreement on how to achieve the target,” says The Independent. To help reach these goals, though, the U.K. plans to keep existing nuclear plants running, and will push ahead with plans to build more, after the country’s nuclear watchdog group reported there was no reason to revise safety standards in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster. Energy minister Chris Huhne said, “We want to see new nuclear as part of a low carbon energy mix going forward, provided there is no public subsidy.”

Concerns about Nuclear Safety Raised, Dismissed

In Japan, a new assessment by power company TEPCO confirmed suspicions that one of the reactors did suffer a partial meltdown soon after the earthquake and tsunami.

The country has a long history of officials concealing or ignoring dangers in the nuclear industry, according to a New York Times investigation. Lawsuits stretching back nearly a decade tried to raise concern about safety standards. One of the plaintiffs, Yuichi Kaido of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, said of Fukushima: “This accident could have been prevented.”

The technical failures in the nuclear power plant—especially emergency vents—raise concerns about the safety of U.S. nuclear plants, another New York Times investigation says, rebutting American officials’ statements that the U.S. plants aren’t vulnerable to the kinds of problems that occurred in Japan.

European countries other than the U.K., such as Germany and Italy, have paused plans for nuclear expansion, and shut down some plants. Some developing countries are pushing ahead with nuclear power, though. Iran has brushed off warnings of earthquake dangers and is continuing with plans for nuclear plants, the Associated Press reported, and Pakistan opened a new nuclear power plant, built with China’s help.

Driving in a Wedge

Nuclear power was one of several “wedges” that could help the world counter climate change, according to a popular way of thinking about emissions cuts developed in 2004 by two Princeton University professors. The approach was meant to break targets—such as the U.K.’s emissions targets—into a number of pieces, to see how quickly measures would have to be ramped up.

But the study was misunderstood and the basic message distorted, one of the authors, Robert Socolow, told National Geographic News. “With some help from wedges, the world decided that dealing with global warming wasn’t impossible, so it must be easy,” he said. “The intensity of belief that renewables and conservation would do the job approached religious.” Nonetheless, he stands by the general approach, Socolow wrote in a comment to Climate Progress.

Congressional Log Jam

Both Republicans and Democrats introduced major oil bills—but neither managed to pass. Democrats introduced a bill to end $2 billion in tax breaks for big oil companies, a measure President Obama has been pushing for. In Senate hearings, oil company executives were asked to defend the tax breaks—eliciting what a New York Times editorial called “a big whine from Big Oil.”

While Obama had urged that the money be put toward clean energy, the defeated bill would have put the extra revenue toward paying down federal debt. A narrow majority voted for it, but it needed 60 votes to advance.

Republicans, on the other hand, supported a bill to allow more offshore drilling and speed up the process for drilling permits. That bill was rejected with 42 to 57; it, too, needed 60 votes to advance.

Commencement, Counter-Commencement

Rex Tillerson—the CEO of Exxon, the world’s biggest independent oil company—was booked to speak at the commencement at Worcester Polytechnic Institute near Boston—but the choice was controversial with both faculty and staff.

Student protesters said Tillerson was not fit to speak at the commencement because of (among other things) Exxon’s contributions to “a disinformation campaign against global warming.”

Rather than trying to block Tillerson’s speech, however, students invited peak oil expert Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute to speak after Tillerson—and some students walked out of the quad when Tillerson spoke, returning to hear Heinberg afterward.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Dial “C” for Carbon

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Climate Post is away this week, trying to estimate sea-level rise from first-hand observation (or, at the beach…). Before life in Washington picks up again in the fall, why not take a step back and look at a way to organize the big picture? The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star recently asked us for an op-ed, reproduced below, which first ran two weeks ago and has since been picked up by the McClatchy wire service. See you next week, and have a good Labor Day.

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Alfred Hitchcock filled his movies with suspense by picking some object of life-or-death consequence–microfilm, documents, uranium-filled wine bottles–and setting his characters in pursuit. The great director had a nickname for this plot-driver: the MacGuffin. The funny thing is, as long as his characters found the MacGuffin something to kill for, Hitchcock never particularly cared what the consequences were.

Too often the media treat topics of great national import as MacGuffins, the things that politicians are fighting over this week–though it never seems to matter what thing or what week. Our national storytellers never particularly care what the consequences of “it” are.

Case in point: Senators will return in two weeks from their summer recess and are expected to consider a climate-change bill similar to the one the House narrowly passed in June. The policy would gradually reduce U.S. carbon emissions by adding a price to polluting that commodifies its potential social cost. Judged by the steady ticker of news headlines this year–Wall Street bonuses! Health care! Climate change!–it would be reasonable to conclude that “carbon” is just another in a series of media MacGuffins. This is to our universal impoverishment.

Never mind the serious risks posed by climate change, and the difficulties we have in addressing them. Instead, think about this: What are the consequences of narrowly depicting “carbon” as “troublemaker,” as the MacGuffin we chase to move the climate-change story forward?

There are two main consequences here. The first is that we have become blind to something much bigger, the greatest detective story of all time. It’s not a tale of murder–not yet–but whatever the reverse of that is. Carbon is the story of life (itself!): what science over the past couple of centuries has revealed about it.

About 20 percent of you is carbon. About 80 percent of your DNA is carbon. Life on Earth is a great story, even though we’re uncertain how it begins and ends. The carbon atom, the most “sociable” of the elements, is the fastest way to learn the most about everything larger than a nucleus and smaller than a planet.

Think about this the next time you skip past an article about “carbon emissions,” “carbon footprints,” or “carbon regulations.” Have you ever wondered why leaves are green, why cars go and airplanes fly, how pharmaceuticals work or don’t, and what makes diamonds sparkle? If you’ve ever wondered about how most anything works, carbon is a valuable entry into the conversation, a lowest common denominator for organizing much scientific knowledge.

In the last 150 years or so, but mostly in the last few decades, scientists have identified nearly 50 million different kinds of stuff (molecules). This stuff is made up of combinations of atoms. And there are just 92 kinds of naturally occurring atoms: the chemical elements. A reasonable guess would be that these atoms mix and match pretty evenly to produce those 50 million kinds of stuff. But they don’t: Of those 50 million molecules, all but 100,000 or so contain carbon.

The story of carbon has fallen through the yawning cracks between scientists, who see it as so mundane and obvious that, well, they don’t even see it, and everyone else, who are made uneasy by thoughts of high school chemistry or who write it off as the “Star Trek” cliche of human beings as “carbon units.” Or who tragically think it’s just the ephemeral reason we need an ephemeral climate bill.

Instead of being a policy-world boogeyman, carbon is the most important word that people understand the least, a portal into how life persists and empires rise. If we conduct the climate conversation ripping “carbon” from the context of life on Earth, then we are both leaving ourselves ignorant and missing a terrific yarn. Primo Levi wrote, “The number of [carbon] atoms is so great that one could always be found whose story coincides with any capriciously invented story.”

Consequence No. 2 demands attention because the gee-whiz, science-is-neat, nature-is-beautiful argument doesn’t work for everyone. So we turn to economics, the heart of the neoclassical paradigm, Adam Smith himself.

By treating carbon as a policy-debate MacGuffin, rather than as a central character itself, we are coming close to tripping Smith’s admonishment that an economy of atomized people may lose sight of the big picture. Division of labor, he wrote, drives economic growth by encouraging skills development and efficiency. But too much specialization erodes the system’s overall health.

He wrote: “The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment.”

As proprietors and employees we thrive by honing high-demand skills for our own benefit. As citizens, we thrive together by substantively confronting present and future threats to the Republic. But because we’re overspecialized–and busy, to boot–we have too little context for framing these complicated civic risks.

To adapt a line from a non-Hitchcock thriller: “Follow the carbon.” As the Master of Suspense might agree, it makes a heck of a story.

Eric Roston is Senior Associate at the Nicholas Institute and author of The Carbon Age: How Life’s Core Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue available at Grist.