Environment

Global warming, healthy food, clean water, population control, and nature protection. Comprehensive coverage on Environment here.

Biofuel is Still a Stupid Idea
Posted by Manila Ryce, The Largest Minority on May 13, 2008 at 5:52 AM.

It’s fairly common knowledge by now that ethanol increases global warming, is worse to your health than gasoline, and inflates food prices, but what about second generation ethanol that uses cellulose rather than the edible portion of food crops?

On the surface, it may seem resourceful to convert that corn cob into energy, but our hunger for fuel goes far beyond what inedible food scraps can provide. In fact, second generation ethanol is perhaps even more dangerous than first generation ethanol under the simple understanding that if all plant matter is a potential fuel then all forests are potential gold mines for the fuel industry.

US incentives for ethanol production have already contributed to massive deforestation in places like Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Amazon, where rainforests are being cleared to grow biofuel crops. Cellulose ethanol would further promote this destruction by using the forest itself for fuel.

Americans love the idea that they won’t need to sacrifice. There is no incentive to curb your consumption if science will save you by replacing that fuel in your inefficient internal combustion engine with another. Turning CO2-absorbing trees into gasoline is not progress. It’s just as insane as burning food to run a car. The only clean energies have always been wind, solar, and water. Eyes back on the prize folks. The goal should be to get off of all fuels entirely.

McCain's Not-So-Straight Talk on the Environment
Posted by Howie Klein, Down With Tyranny! on May 12, 2008 at 8:34 AM.

I was just reading some more of Lincoln Chafee's fascinating book, Against The Tide, the chapter about how the Senate dealt with environmental issues in light of Cheney's success in persuading Bush-- if it took much, or even any persuasion-- to do a 180 on his campaign promises to be an environmentally friendly president. When Cheney announced to a gathering of Republican senators that the Regime had decided to throw away all their environmental pledges, the crowd burst out into a chorus of cowboy whoops and cheers. But Chafee-- at least in the part of the chapter I finished over dinner last night-- named McCain as one of the small cadre of Republicans who helped save ANWAR from the oil companies (a passion of Chafee's).

Today's Washington Post gets further into the weeds. Basically McCain is significantly better than Global Warming deniers like Inhofe... but not as good as the worst, most reactionary Democrats, anti-environmental hacks Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Max Baucus. There are also 9 Republicans with consistently better environmental voting records than McCain (Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Judd Gregg, Gordon Smith, Arlen Specter, John Thune, John Sununu, Bob Corker, and Norm Coleman-- all of whom have barely mediocre environmental voting records).

The Post makes a point that McCain is "the most unpredictable, erratic" Republican who sometimes support pro-environmental policies.

McCain has made the environment one of the key elements of his presidential bid. He speaks passionately about the issue of climate change on the campaign trail, and he plans to outline his vision for combating global warming in a major speech today in Portland, Ore.

"I'm proud of my record on the environment," he said at a news conference Friday at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City. "As president, I will dedicate myself to addressing the issue of climate change globally."

But an examination of McCain's voting record shows an inconsistent approach to the environment: He champions some "green" causes while casting sometimes contradictory votes on others.

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Conservatives Doctor Gore Audio Clip
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on May 11, 2008 at 4:00 PM.

It sure would make political attacks easier if we could take interviews from people we don't like, rearrange their words to make them say what we want to hear, and then attack them for it. Sure, it would be deceptive and unethical, but just think how much more efficient smear campaigns could be. Why wait for a rival to say something controversial when we can make them say something controversial?

This week, for example, Al Gore appeared on NPR, and talked a bit about global warming and natural disasters. Business & Media Institute (BMI), a far-right outfit backed by activist Brent Bozell, thought it best to splice the interview together, to make Gore say something he didn't say.

Wonk Room's Brad Johnson has the story.

One week ago, Tropical Cyclone Nargis struck Burma, tracing an unprecedented path of devastation across this poor nation of 55 million, called Myanmar by its military dictatorship. On May 6, Jeff Poor wrote for the Business & Media Institute (BMI) a story entitled, "Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a "Consequence" of Global Warming," which was subsequently linked on the Drudge Report.

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The Sound of One Hand Clapping: Coal Subsidy Act To Fail?
Posted by A Siegel, Energy Smart on May 9, 2008 at 2:06 PM.

The latest news suggests that the Lieberman-Warner Coal Subsidy Act (the Climate InSecurity Act, CISA) has moved from critical condition to the morgue. As it will require 60 votes to get past any threatened filibuster (not that the Senate Democratic Party leadership could force a filibuster on anyone other than their own Senators fighting for Americans' privacy rights), corraling enough Senators to vote for even the CISA's inadequate measures looks to be an impossible task. As Joe Romm phrased it at Climate Progress:

Serious climate legislation had been in critical condition for some months. Doctors and family members finally pulled the plug this week, and the patient appeared to lose all vital signs. The coroner listed the cause of death as “apathy.”

While disagreeing with Joe about whether to call Lieberman-Warner serious or seriously dangerous, apathy in face of ever mounting evidence of the existing damage from Global Warming and looming threats of more damage to come is moving toward reckless endangerment of America's and humanity's future prospects.

What is truly sad, truly, is that so much of what is necessary can fall into a no regret strategy, with "win-win&" categories. We can "geo-engineer" to a better planetary environment with biochar and white roofing, gaining other benefits at the same time, win-win-win paths. We can pursue greater energy efficiency, leading toward more comfortable lives while creating good jobs, reducing pollution, and spending less money on energy. With each day that passes, renewable energy is becoming more cost competitive with fossil fuel energy, even before we discuss making "external" costs internal to the calculation of energy prices. We can do so much good - even without considering the climate benefits.

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It's Bare Knuckles Time at the Bush EPA
Posted by Howie Klein, Down With Tyranny! on May 8, 2008 at 9:03 AM.

As regular DWT readers know, we're big fans of Al Kamen's "In the Loop" column in the Washington Post. (Confusingly, other people also write under the "In the Loop" heading--but if it's Wednesday or Friday, it's really in the loop.) Al and his no doubt gleeful network of spies and informants haunt the back alleys and especially the back channels of D.C. for an often-hilarious view of the way our gummint actually works.

But often what he turns up isn't so hilarious. Often, in the way that a person may be better informed watching The Daily Show than anybody's Evening News, Al's column serves as the primary source for news that should be on every front page. Like this item from today's column, which by the way comes with the urgent recommendation of our go-to webguy on energy and environmental matters, A Siegel (whom we still have to thank for honoring us with a visit and a comment the other day):

Don't Do Any Environment Stuff

Loop Fans know to be highly skeptical of those political announcements that a top administration official is resigning "to spend more time with the family," or maybe to "return to his first love," coin collecting or weight lifting. These phrases are almost always euphemisms for getting the boot or being squeezed out.

But there was even greater skepticism Thursday at the Environmental Protection Agency when deputy administrator Marcus Peacock circulated this e-mail to senior officials at 5:06 p.m. about the resignation of EPA's administrator in the Chicago region.

Subject: Region 5 Personnel Announcement

As of this afternoon, Thursday, May 1, 2008, Mary Gade has resigned her position as Regional Administrator for EPA Region 5. I want to thank Mary for her many years of service to the people and the mission of EPA.

She has worked hard to help protect human health and our environment.

Mary plans to return to private life and spend time with her family.

Bharat Mathur, the Deputy Regional Administrator, will assume the responsibilities of Acting Regional Administrator. I thank Bharat for his continued service and leadership.

Problem was, the e-mail came 1 1/2 hours after the Chicago Tribune posted a story online quoting Gade, who said she had been forced out of her job because of her aggressive stand on dioxin flowing from Dow Chemical's Midland, Mich., plant into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron.

Gade said two political appointees at headquarters told her to quit or be fired by June 1. The EPA confirmed she was leaving but declined to discuss a personnel matter.

Gade, appointed by President Bush 18 months ago, told the Tribune: "There is no question this is about Dow. I stand behind what I did and what my staff did. I'm proud of what we did."

Gade had been trying to force Dow to clean up several inland hot spots contaminated by the cancer-causing chemical. She told the Tribune that top aides to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson repeatedly questioned her actions against the chemical giant.

Next thing you know, she "plans to return to private life and spend time with her family."

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Environmental Destruction Adds to Devastation in Myanmar
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on May 7, 2008 at 2:46 PM.

While the blogosphere is beating up Al Gore over alleged comments on NPR linking cyclones (and the increasing frequency and severity of storms) to global warming, one thing is certain: environmental factors did play a role in the devastation in Myanmar.

As the BBC reported:

Destruction of mangrove forests in Burma left coastal areas exposed to the devastating force of the weekend's cyclone, a top politician suggests. ASEAN secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan said coastal developments had resulted in mangroves, which act as a natural defence against storms, being lost. A study of the 2004 Asian tsunami found that areas near healthy mangroves suffered less damage and fewer deaths. Mr Surin, speaking at a high-level meeting of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Singapore, said the combination of more people living in coastal areas and the loss of mangroves had exacerbated the tragedy.

The story further explains that mangroves are "bio-guards" and were responsible for helping to protect Sri Lankan villagers during the December 2005 tsunami. "While two people died in the settlement with dense mangrove and scrub forest, up to 6,000 people lost their lives in a nearby village without similar vegetation," the article says.

It turns out, we are pretty good at getting rid of mangrove forests -- about 3.6 million hectares are gone since 1980. The cause? Apparently it is new development pressures from tourism and rising population as well as the shrimp and fish farming industry.

So what do we do now? Here's a way to help long-term community-led reconstruction.

Bubbling Our Way to Catastrophe
Posted by A Siegel, Energy Smart on May 7, 2008 at 4:35 AM.

Oscillating between pessimistic optimism (or optimistic pessimism), there are so many reasons to be hopeful for change. Amazing technologies. Increasing awareness. McSUV sales plummeting. Political leaders taking forthright stands. Optimism.

Reality can strike hard, ambusing surging optimism with reasons for dire concern. Today’s Chicago Tribune had a story of bubbling catastrophe …

Sergei Zimov waded through knee-deep snow to reach a frozen lake where so much methane belches out of the melting permafrost that it spews from the ice like small geysers.

Remember, methane is 23 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas (GHG). And, billions of tons of Siberian peat/such melting and we’ve crossed any sort of tipping point of humanity having a say about the direction of global warming in the next few years.

the Russian scientist struck a match to make a jet of the greenhouse gas visible. The sudden plume of fire threw him backward. … “Sometimes a big explosion happens, because the gas comes out like a bomb…. There are a million lakes like this in northern Siberia.”

A million bubbling, exploding lakes.

Out of sight of almost all of us (the US). Out of mind for most as well.

In Siberia, the permafrost entombs billions of tons of organic matter from the Ice Age, … Dormant for millennia, the permafrost is being thawed by global warming, triggering the microbial consumption that results in the release of greenhouse gases.

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What's Right with Kansas
Posted by Carl Pope, Huffington Post on May 5, 2008 at 3:43 PM.

Topeka, KS -- Well, King Coal did its best. The insiders in the Kansas political world huffed and puffed. The Speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives kept a vote open for two hours while the coal industry's allies tried desperately to bludgeon four more members into voting to override Governor Kathleen Sebelius's veto of a bill denying the state's chief health officer the right to block coal-fired power plants. And when the votes couldn't be found to override the veto, some legislators threatened to hire a private lawyer with public money to sue the health office for exceeding his authority. (The coal companies, of course, have ample resources to sue on their own -- and it's unlikely that funding for the mammoth Sunflower proposal would still be alive by the time any lawsuit ended.)

But none of it worked. Kansas citizens have spoken out.The Sierra Club chapter in the state organized day and night for weeks and, instead of getting closer to a veto override, the coal forces got further away.

The initial assault by the coal industry was an ad featuring pictures of Hugo Chavez, Iran's President Ahmadinejad, and Vladimir Putin, claiming that if Kansas couldn't build the Sunflower coal plant, it would be forced to import natural gas from these three despots. Since Kansas produces no coal, but a lot of natural gas (and actually exports gas to other states), these ads didn't go down very well. And the campaign got even more frenetic as it became clear that Sebelius was going to make her decision stick. Here's a sample quote from One newspaper story on why Kansas said no to coal:

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We Can Save The Environment And Get Rich
Posted by Dymaxion WorldJohn, Cogitamus on April 17, 2008 at 8:21 AM.

Matthew Yglesias and John Quiggin agree: we can keep getting richer and save the environment if, as the soon-to-be-bestseller writes, “we implement the right policies in a timely manner.” Seeing as I've made this argument in other forums before, I don't really disagree with the argument, but the likelihood of it being followed through. I'm pessimistic because, well, there's a track record here: the American government has been advised, in one form or another, on the necessity of investing in renewable energy since the 1950s, and we've seen precious little positive change.

Worse yet, in some ways we've seen a real retrogression here. In the 1950s, after America faced the wrenching oil crisis of 1948 – humorously, the “crisis” was over becoming a net oil importer for the first time ever – the Paley Commission recommended solar and wind energy as a way of reducing America's reliance on oil imports. This was presented as relatively uncontroversial, technocratic, blue-ribbon panel stuff but was abandoned by the Eisenhower administration in favor of the nuclear military-industrial-complex that was then just beginning.

Fast-forward to the 1980s, and instead of sustainable energy being more dry technocracy, it's become fully enmeshed in the culture wars. Reagan famously (and totally symbolically) removed Carter's solar panels from the White House, the green movement was blamed for the decline of the logging industry, and George H.W. Bush said, en route to the 1990 Rio Summit, “the American way of life is not negotiable.” Note the words: Bush wasn't defending a standard of living, or a per-capita GDP figure, but the American way of life.

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Dream Reborn
Posted by Brave New Films, AlterNet on April 12, 2008 at 10:19 AM.

More than a thousand people gathered in Memphis last week for The Dream Reborn, a green conference that celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.'s incredible life and legacy.

Van Jones reported from the event:

It was beautiful. The "Dream Reborn" conference was the first "green" summit to honor MLK and explicitly link his vision of justice to the emerging green economy. For everyone who attended, it seemed to be a transformative, life-changing experience.

For years and years, conventional wisdom has held that no "green conference" could attract people of color or low-income people. It was always assumed that attendance at such summits would always be 90 percent white and overwhelmingly affluent.

Not this time. More than 70 percent of the 1,200 attendees were people of color. And more than half of all attendees were of modest means; as a result, they qualified for some level of "scholarship" support to attend the three-day event. (Thanks to the generosity of Green For All's supporters, we were able to raise enough money to financially support hundreds of people who would have been unable to come otherwise.)

As a result, the conference didn't just LOOK totally different. It FELT totally different. From the main stage, we heard drums, prayers, choirs, poetry, and speeches that sounded more like passionate "civil rights" sermons. From the audience, we heard cheers, chants, shouts and - sometimes - sobs.

And during workshop times, the conference center looked like a ghost town. That is because few attendees lingered in the hallways, chatting and socializing and trading business cards. Instead, they crammed themselves into every chair, covered every bit of floor space, stood along the walls - hungry to learn how they could make their own neighborhoods and cities bloom as green oases of prosperity.

During the day, the plenaries, panels, workshops and sessions were packed and over-flowing with people of color, labor leaders and white people from struggling communities. And at night, slam poets grabbed the microphones, dance music took over the sound system and laughter filled the sidewalks and streets around the conference center. Outside of a church revival, I have never seen so many people of color laughing, crying and hugging.

In fact, I have never experienced the kind of energy I felt throughout the convening. Good reason, apparently. Civil right veterans in attendance were openly weeping; they said they had experienced nothing like it since the 1960s.

Something powerful shifted on April Fourth.

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Glenn Beck Rants Against Endangered Polar Bears: "They Eat People! They’re Big, Angry Bears!"
Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress on April 4, 2008 at 11:36 AM.

Last night on his CNN Headline News show, right-wing pundit Glenn Beck hosted global warming skeptic Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK). Beck allowed Inhofe to rant about how — with “all the liberals” running the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works — he was forced to sit through hearings on “that nice white fuzzy polar bear.”

Inhofe argued that the polar bear population isn’t endangered. “[I]f anything, it’s an overpopulation problem,” said Inhofe. Beck then jumped in and claimed that, in fact, the extinction of polar bears may be a good thing:

They eat people! For the love of Pete, they’re big, angry bears. They eat people. Not that I say we go out and kill all of them, but I mean, it doesn’t seem to be a problem here. Senator, I can’t take the — I can’t take the lies anymore.

There is currently an estimated 20,000-25,000 polar bears worldwide who are threatened with “losing their habitat and becoming extinct over the next 50 years” because of global warming and melting sea ice. The U.S. Geological Survey predicts that without action, “11 of the 19 subpopulations will be extinct by the middle of this century, with an additional three subpopulations vanishing shortly thereafter.”

On Wednesday, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne skipped a Senate hearing on listing the polar bear as a threatened species. His agency missed a Jan. 9 deadline to decide on classifying the polar bear, in violation of the Endangered Species Act, according to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA).

Perhaps if little furry bunnies — which do not eat people — were endangered, Beck would want to save them.

Transcript:

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Al Gore on '08 Democratic Race: "I'm Not Applying for the Job of Broker" [VIDEO]
Posted by Adam Howard, AlterNet on April 1, 2008 at 6:11 AM.

Whenever I see Al Gore these days, I always think back to when I was a freshman in college and my dear friends were passionately arguing that Gore would be no different that Bush if he were elected and so I should vote for Nader. I didn't listen to them and I'm proud of that now, even if at the time I wasn't all that enthusiastic about my vote.

On global warming:

"We all share the exact same interest in doing the right thing on this. Who are we as human beings? Are we destined to destroy this place that we call home, planet earth? I can't believe that that's our destiny. It is not our destiny. But we have to awaken to the moral duty that we have to do the right thing and get out of this silly political game-playing about it. This is about survival,"

And on the deniers:

"I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view. They’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the earth is flat. That demeans them a little bit, but it’s not that far off."

Nice. Check out the video to your right for more.

Al Gore Launches $300 Million Climate Change Initiative, Meanwhile Bush Keeps Torturing
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on March 31, 2008 at 8:13 AM.

Two contrasting stories on CBS' 60 Minutes illustrated for the hundredth time why selecting the right person for President matters. In 2000, the American people made the right choice in voting for Al Gore over George Bush, but five conservative justices of the Supreme Court overruled the people and instead installed perhaps the most lawless regime in American history. We have paid a huge price for the Court's lawless dishonesty.

The imprisonment and torture of innocent people. President Bush surrounded himself with men and women who have little respect for the rule of law but plenty of zeal for giving the executive branch expanded powers unchecked by the Constitution. The created a Justice Department without integrity that sanctioned massive warrantless spying on Americans, kidnapping, rendition, secret prisons, indefinite imprisonment, the suspension of habeas corpus, kangaroo trials and torture. And the Administration is still lying about it all.

From 60 Minutes' story of the innocent German man we kidnapped, tortured and held for years at Guantanamo long after authorities knew he was completely innocent:

(CBS) At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America's shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed. But once he was picked up, Kurnaz fou