Power brokers, pt. 6: Brooke Coleman, executive director, New Fuels Alliance

From Discover, if you haven't figured that out by now.

Brooke Coleman's "bright idea": let biofuels compete freely with petroleum on the open market.

Verbatim (again):

"Sometime people compare using advanced biofuels to the Internet boom. But no one had control of the Internet market before the Internet existed. The oil companies do have control of the liquid fuels market, however - so at the end of the day, what the biofuel folds are looking to do is to take market shate away from probably the most powerful industry in American, and arguably in the world. It's not an easy thing to do, and it's policy driven.

"So what do you need to do to solve the problem? You have to cut the knot by allowing these fuels to compete in the marketplace on a level playing field. Get flex-fuel vehicles on the roads that can run on any combination of biofuels. In the United States, people pretend it's really difficult. It's not. It's less expensive than putting a seat belt in a car, certainly less expensive than air bags, definitely less expensive than stereos and a leather interior. Comapnies have to attract investment, build plants, and produce gallons ahead of the market, in time for these mandates to kick in.

"Anybody who has lived in this country for the last 18 months knows that when petroleum prices go up and down, you have a variety of indirect carbon effects in the market. If we place controls on carbon in the future, we will have to score each fuel based on specific variables and assumptions that might make or break entire industries. We need to let renewable fuels out of the box so they can compete on a level carbon playing field. If you're going to carbon-score them and compare them on a relative basis, threat petroleum and biofuels alike."

That would show 'em.

Power brokers, pt. 1: Lowell Ungar, senior policy analyst, Alliance to Save Energy

The December issue of Discover Magazine contains an article called "Power Brokers." In it, "Eight leading thinkers offer visions of how to make our energy supply cleaner, more efficient and more abundant.

Lowell Ungar of the Alliance to Save Energy suggests treating efficiency like a fuel and make it the cornerstone of US energy policy.

He states there are dozens of simple things everyone can do, from merely knowing which lightbulb is the best to use or if a ground source heat pump would work where you live. Is your home adequately insulated, saving energy that could be lost through leakage?

Write your congressman. Let them know you support energy-efficiency policies such as carbon cap legislation. Encourage local builders to use natural lighting and cooling.

Try to buy a more energy efficient home. Some of the foreclosure problems in the country sprang from utility bills - there is good evidence that such bills are the second-leading cause of foreclosures.

Protect your pocketbook while you protect the planet and go Green.

Valero, whoa-oh-oh-oh! (an open letter)

The Valero oil company is actively campaigning against the cap-and-trade bill, threatening customers with rising prices using signs at their gas stations.

Dearest sweetiekins Valero,

Yes, it is true that gas prices are most likely going to rise slightly due to the bill, but come on Valero, the scare tactics are simply your way of avoiding responsibility.

I love you, but why not encourage your customers to drive more fuel efficient, less carbon emitting vehicles?

I don't want to ruffle your feathers, but why not make your own plants less polluting and more efficient so your own emissions won't cost you the projected $6 billion a year your current output indicates?

The money you'll spend on overhauling your own plants will cut back on the money you spend for carbon allowances and pay for itself in less than a decade, dear.

Ok, now I'm angry and please excuse me, but NOOOOOOO, you'd rather plaster signs (which are probably not made of recyclable cardboard and will probably end up in a landfill) all over your gas stations, filling consumers with misinformed hate.

Do you think they've read the bill? Have you?

When you break something as badly as you've broken the atmosphere, it ain't cheap to fix, honey.

Do your part, Valero instead of just complaining.

With all love and respect,

Mother Nature

The Catastrophist

The June 29th issue of The New Yorker contains a feature on James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in NYC. He is also one of the leading experts on climate change on the planet.

He earned the job through the Ph.D. in physics he received from the University of Iowa where he wrote his dissertation on the atmosphere of Venus, a planet that illustrates the Greenhouse Effect to the nth degree.

Beginning in 1981 he became the director of GISS and later that year forecast that the decade would be peculiarly warm. That prediction came true. He went further to say that the 90s would be even warmer. Right again.

Narrowing the issue, he bet a roomful of scientist that 1990 or one of the two following years would be the warmest on record. According to the article, "Withing nine months, he had won the bet."

During the Bush administration, the White House "insisted that all communications between GISS and the outside world be routed through political appointees at the agency." This is one of the policies that led Howard Dean to accuse the administration of bullying scientists when it came to discussing gloabal warming or the milder term, climate change. He was also forbidden from giving a "routine interview" on NPR.

Not that the Obama administration is doing much better. He gave a letter to John Holdren, a friendly acquaintance of Hansen's and Obama's chief science advisor.

The letter read, in part:

"'A stark scientific conclusion, the we must reduce greenhouse gases below present amounts to preserve nature and humanity has become clear. It is still feasible to avert climate disasters, but only if policies are consisitent with what science indicates to be required.'"

In a later email, Holdren stated he could not discuss "'what I have or haven't given or said to the President.'"

Hansen said he hopes that Obama grasped "the reality of the issue and would seize the opportunity to marry the energy and climate and national-security issues and make a very strong program."

"'Maybe he still will, but I'm getting bad feelings about it.'"

Yes, the Earth has undergone climate fluctuations, but what is happening now "is that climate history is being run in reverse and at high speed, like a cassette tape on rewind.'" (I won't go into the obscolence of that statement.) It continues: "Carbon dioxide is being pumped into the air some ten thousand times faster than natural weathering processes can remove it."

While ice sheets won't melt overnight, when they do, "sea levels will go up two hundred and fifty feet. So [it can't happen] without producing a different planet."

There is no specific term for the human footprint on the environment, but scientists and policy-makers have come up with "dangerous anthropogenic interference."

CO2 is already at a dangerous level - 385 parts per million, 35 ppm over the hazardous level. One way to fight this is to cut off coal. Clean coal plants could curb this but "for a combination of technological and economic reasons, it's not clear that [this will ever happen]."

The amount of summer ice on the Arctic ice cap is "only a little over half what it was just 40 years ago."

As a result, "highly populated areas, including the Southwest and the Mediterranean basin, are likely to suffer more and more frequent droughts." I live in Texas. I can testify to this firsthand.

And although John Holdren has been wishy-washy on his communication (or lack thereof) with the president, he does say:

"'Any reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date look at the evidence makes clear that civilization has already generated dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system."

And Steven Chu, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and current Energy Secretary, said in a speech, "'There's enough carbon in the ground to really cook us. Coal is my worst nightmare.'"

Hansen also states that "'Almost everyone in the scientific community is prepared to say that if we don't do something now to reverse the direction we're going in we either already are or will very, very soon be in the danger zone.'"

Rather than the current cap-and-trade system now facing a Senate vote, he suggests direct taxes on emissions and distributed back to Americans on a per-capita basis. This would mean that "households that use less energy would actually make money." Those that use more would soon find it prohibitively expensive. (This would be a good place to encourage solar panels or wind generators for the home and business.)

Hansen feels the best thing to happen to the cap-and-trade bill would be to fail so that Congress would have to "'come back and do it more sensibly.'"

He argues that politicians "willfully misunderstand climate change." By the same token, "it could be argued that Hansen just willfully misunderstands politics."

A conumdrum either way, a sympathetic lawmaker recently approached Hansen and said, "'I assume you're used to telling policy-makers the truth and then having them ignore you.'"

'"You're right,'" was Hansen's reply.

What does the climate bill mean?

The Associated Press' Dina Cappiello and Eric Carvin have given readers a brief overview of what cap-and-trade, offsets and pollution credits actually mean. Rather than re-word it here, I direct you to the Houston Chronicle's site:

Questions and answers about the US climate bill

Tomorrow, a rundown of a New Yorker article about James Hanson, NASA's climate expert and a scientist that predicted the current warming trends over 30 years ago, starting when he working on his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Iowa. His dissertation? The atmosphere of Venus. (Hint: it's primarily CO2 and HOT! - even hotter than its proximity to the sun would explain and a prime example of the greenhouse effect.)

Cap and trade

In a June 26th column in the Houston Chronicle, Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund and Andrew M. Liveris, CEO and Chairman of the Board of the Dow Chemical Company lay out the benefits of such a policy.

Cap-and-trade is a free market way of ensuring environmentally and economically sound ways of reducing our dependence on carbon-emitting fuels while allowing companies to continue their business almost as usual. Companies are given carbon credits.

The column explains it thus:

"Companies that are under their emission targets can sell their allowances on a new carbon market. Companies that cannot meet their targets can buy extra allowances from the same carbon market. Cap-and-trade uses the efficiency of the marketplace to drive innovation, creating new carbon-reducing technologies at the lowest possible cost."

When acid rain became a true menace in the '80s, the Clean Air Act was instituted and "the cap-and-trade approach reduced emissions faster, and more cheaply, than anyone predicted. Under cap and trade, government doesn’t pick winners and losers — private markets do that job."

The tag team columnists go on to say, "This is how it should be."

For those who argue that this could be crippling to the economy, especially in its current state, the pair clarify:

"Opponents claim that this bill will result in higher energy costs. They are confusing price with cost. Although this legislation will lead to modestly higher energy prices, this, in turn, will lead to greater energy efficiency and new, cleaner energy technologies. This will, in all likelihood, result in lower overall energy costs. A true win, win, win — lower energy costs, greater energy security and fewer carbon emissions!"

Not only that, but the policy has the potential of creating new jobs in the lagging manufacturing industry.

"A single wind turbine, for example, contains 250 tons of steel and 8,000 parts, from ball bearings and electronic controls to gearboxes. Jobs manufacturing those parts can be created right here in America, especially in our manufacturing heartland, the Midwest. Ohio has lost more than 213,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000. For Michigan, the figure is almost 497,000 jobs lost. One way to jump-start our economy is with a cap-and-trade bill."

Another win, making it a win, win, win, WIN situation.

And keep in mind, one of the co-authors is the head of Dow Chemical, a company not exactly renowned for its environmental and social responsibility.

Wake up, America!