1. Bloomberg BNA, “EPA Defends Three Fracking Investigations, Will Work With States to Prevent Pollution”

January 24, 2014

By Alan Kovski

Bloomberg BNA — The Environmental Protection Agency is working with states and will continue to do so to prevent or investigate groundwater contamination from shale gas drilling, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told a prominent environmental advocate.

McCarthy in a letter Jan. 10 was responding to a September letter from Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, who accused the EPA of “a troubling trend of abandoning investigations of hydraulic fracturing before they are completed.”

Beinecke’s letter to the EPA cited three high-profile investigations of well water contamination, all near natural gas wells where hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, had been used to stimulate underground gas flow. The investigations were in Parker County, Texas, near a Range Resources Inc. gas well; at Pavillion, Wyo., near Encana Corp. gas wells; and at Dimock, Pa., near Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. gas wells.

McCarthy responded that the EPA in its investigations worked closely with individual states, “which have key capacity and regulatory authority relevant to unconventional oil and natural gas extraction.”

That didn’t sit well with NRDC. Kate Sinding, a senior attorney with the group, posted a blog commentary Jan. 15 saying the letter from McCarthy “reiterates the, frankly, lame non-explanations that EPA has previously proffered.”

State Regulation Addressed

Beinecke’s letter said state oil and gas regulators “ignored citizen complaints.” When the EPA withdrew from the cases, “the public lost confidence that EPA was truly dedicated to investigating the risks of hydraulic fracturing and ensuring full enforcement of federal environmental statutes,” Beinecke said.

McCarthy’s responding letter didn’t fault state regulators or suggest they had ignored problems, nor did she attempt to address the question of what confidence the public may or may not have in the EPA.

The Parker County and Pavillion cases remain in the hands of state oil and gas regulators, and McCarthy said the EPA is ready to contribute as needed to those cases. The EPA ended its work in Dimock after concluding that there was no threat to public health and no further EPA action was needed.

McCarthy’s reference to state capacity and authority reflected something state agencies have been saying not only in those cases but in questioning the need of enhanced federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing.

State oil and gas agencies have been regulating and investigating oil and gas drilling and production for many decades, and that work routinely includes investigations of contamination complaints.

McCarthy’s letter pointed out that the EPA has several regulatory initiatives involving unconventional oil and gas, including a pending guidance on fracking with diesel fuels, working with the Bureau of Land

Management on a BLM update of oil and gas regulations involving fracking on federal lands, a rulemaking on reporting of toxic chemicals in fracking fluids and a study of the risks posed to drinking water from fracking.

2. PBS Newshour, “Compost Sites Clamor for Table Scraps”

January 26, 2014

By Barbara Hartman

Watch the clip here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-june14/foodwaste_01-26.html

Transcript

BARBARA HARTMAN: These are food scraps. Rather than putting them in the trash, I’d rather put them in my compost area.

MONA ISKANDER: Barbara Hartman is a registered dietician who lives in rural West Virginia. She grew up appreciating the value of food.

BARBARA HARTMAN: I don’t like to waste food. It’s been ingrained in me since I was a little child. My grandfather lived through the Depression. And he would always bug us about cleaning our plates. And then my parents would echo that.

MONA ISKANDER: Hartman is part of a growing number of people trying different methods to reduce food waste at home.

BARBARA HARTMAN: A lot of people will throw the greens on the beets away, but they are actually delicious, so I save them, put them in the pan. There’s less waste that way.

I like to freeze things instead of throwing them out. This is a piece of turkey pot pie from the holiday meal that I just stuck into the freezer, otherwise it would have gone into the compost.

MONA ISKANDER: But Hartman’s not only trying to reduce waste at home… she’s taken her philosophy to work. She is the chief of nutrition and food service at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Martinsburg, West Virginia, where she’s in charge of serving 15 hundred meals a day.

MONA ISKANDER: What was this food situation like here when you first came to work here?

BARBARA HARTMAN: When I first became the chief of the service, we were throwing all of the food waste into the trash. Which was then going to the landfill.

MONA ISKANDER: According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 36 million tons of food waste goes to landfills every year. And the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the nation’s most powerful environmental groups, says that’s harmful to the environment.

MONA ISKANDER: According to the NRDC, food now represents the biggest component of solid municipal waste that makes its way to landfills. Food waste converts to methane, a greenhouse gas that’s at least 25 times more powerful in global warming than carbon dioxide.

MONA ISKANDER: It’s environmental concerns like this that encouraged Barbara Hartman and her team to take action. Six years ago they started to implement what they call, “a green kitchen” initiative.

BARBARA HARTMAN: Our goal these days is to be as environmentally responsible as we can be. And to also have great food.

MONA ISKANDER: So Hartman turned to technology, investing $22,000 of the VA medical center’s money in a food waste tracking system called LeanPath. It paid for itself in just 6 months.

MONA ISKANDER: Here’s how it works: every day, Hartman’s staff weighs and records the amount of food that’s wasted when preparing meals… they also measure the waste from untouched leftover meals

RUSSELL: So I’m actually weighing our waste trim that’s coming from the vegetable prep department.

MONA ISKANDER: LeanPath generates data on what specific food is being wasted.

BARBARA HARTMAN: This shows the top 10 food items that we’ve wasted by category and I can see that cooked vegetables were up quite a bit in our waste. So… It does help me to determine that OK next week we do need to order less of certain items.
ANDREW SHAKMAN: Food is money. So it’s really critical that we record data about it and we know what we’re wasting.

MONA ISKANDER: Andrew Shakman is the president and co-founder of LeanPath. A graduate of Stanford University, he has a background in technology.

ANDREW SHAKMAN: I’m passionate about the food waste problem because I came to it initially as a very rational business thinker, approaching this as– an economic problem. There’s a financial opportunity where it made no sense to be inefficient.

MONA ISKANDER: Shakman is one of a growing number of social entrepreneurs who are trying to make money and do the right thing to reduce food waste.

ANDREW SHAKMAN: And I found that I got out of bed every day with a purpose and a mission that was driven by impacting those things. Yes, we want to build a great business, but what’s exciting to us is about making a change.

MONA ISKANDER: So far he’s sold his system to more than 150 large institutions, like colleges, hospitals and hotels around the country.

In an effort to attract smaller businesses, like restaurants, LeanPath now charges about $150 to $1,000 a month, depending on the level of service provided.

ANDREW SHAKMAN: So what LeanPath does is we help people understand what they’re putting in the garbage, so that they can then make changes to production, to purchasing and to menus so that in the future, they don’t have that waste again.

MONA ISKANDER: Shakman’s company is making a profit. And its clients are saving money.

BARBARA HARTMAN: I conservatively estimate that we save $40,000 to $50,000 a year in food waste.

MONA ISKANDER: In the last few years, other companies have sprung up to tackle the food waste problem while also trying to make a profit. Start-ups like Food Cowboy and Crop Mobster connect food suppliers who have excess fresh produce to organizations that feed people in need… cutting waste and charging a small commission on the transaction. Another company, Daily Table, wants to make money on the fact that most grocery stores can only sell perfect looking fruits and vegetables. The company wants to sell bruised and oversized produce at discounted prices.

Back in West Virginia, just 15 miles from the VA medical center, a local farmer, Cam Tabb, has also found a way to make money and reduce the amount of food going into landfills. On his 1800-acre farm, he grows a variety of crops and raises livestock. But Tabb has also built a thriving composting business. The VA medical center pays Tabb to pick up their leftover food scraps every two weeks. He trucks this to his compost heap where it supplements other organic waste that will decompose over time.

CAM TABB: We’re converting a waste into a usable product that grows another crop. In other words, what you saw put in there was some sort of crop and now, once it’s processed into finished compost then we’ll grow other crops.

MONA ISKANDER: Tabb uses the nutrient rich compost in place of commercial fertilizer, saving him $50,000 a year.

CAM TABB: It’s part of the diversification that we’ve done which makes us more profitable.

MONA ISKANDER: Thanks to this unique partnership and other efforts the VA medical center has made to reduce food waste, Hartman and her team received an award from the White House in 2010.

BARBARA HARTMAN: Before we started our Waste Watchers program, our green kitchen, all of our food waste was going into the landfill. And now we’ve reduced it to where there’s about 5 percent to 10 percent.

MONA ISKANDER: But advocates say there is much work that needs to be done around the country to address what is an enormous problem.

PETER LEHNER: In the United States, there’s food wasted at every step of the chain.

MONA ISKANDER: Peter Lehner is the executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He says the government is starting to pay attention.

PETER LEHNER: EPA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture have all started programs to try to address food waste, to try to begin to educate people about that.

MONA ISKANDER: One area his organization would like the government to focus on is regulating food date labeling. Those dates stamped on products you buy often provide information for when food is at its best quality. Not the date that a product has gone bad and is supposed to be tossed out.

PETER LEHNER: When people are encouraged to use their nose rather than just look at the date, actually taste– take a taste and see whether it is still good, that can make a big difference.

MONA ISKANDER: And Lehner says curtailing food waste may be easier than it seems. He says that’s because almost half of the food in this country goes through six major retailers, Walmart, Safeway, Kroger, Costco, Target and Supervalu.

PETER LEHNER: And so it’s a half a dozen companies who have a tremendous opportunity if they change some of their policies, including pressure they put about expiration dates, how they display food, what they do with food they’re throwing out, putting it into composting or feeding it to animals instead of putting it in a landfill. It’s a relatively small number of actors who could make a big, big difference. And so NRDC and others are working with them because they can also save money at it.

MONA ISKANDER: As for Barbara Hartman, she has plans to expand her initiatives and hopes to tell others in the community about how they can put these types of programs into place.

BARBARA HARTMAN: When it’s all said and done, when I’m in my senior golden years, I’ll be able to feel like I did the best I could. And that my contributions add up.

3. NBC Nightly News, “Store to Sell Only Expired Food”

January 26, 2014

By Nightly News

[Watch video here: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/54186865#54186865]

NRDC and Dana Gunders @ 1:30.

4. NBC Politics, “Frustrated Obama’s Message: I’ll Go it Alone.”

January 26, 2014

By Tom Curry

When he stands before lawmakers Tuesday night for his State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama will have a message for the divided Congress that has largely stymied his agenda for the past three years: Fine, I’ll go it alone.

“I’ve got a pen,” Obama has said in the weeks leading up to the speech, “and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.”

Many of Obama’s big policy goals have ended up stranded in limbo between the Democratic-controlled Senate trying to advance his agenda and the Republican-led House bent on stopping him.

And, heading into a midterm election year, he faces lame-duck status unless his party can regain control of the House this November.

Frustrated with the Capitol Hill quagmire, the president is increasingly turning toward the power of the presidency to try to solidify his legacy. Obama has pledged to act, saying, “We are not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help that they need.”

“The president sees this as a year of action, to work with Congress where he can and to bypass Congress where necessary,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told ABC News Sunday.

This rhetoric is not new for Obama. He said last June that climate change is “a challenge that does not pause for partisan gridlock. It demands our attention now.”

The president has also warned that he “has a phone,” to rally the county around his ideas and entice businesses and non-profit organizations to help shift the political winds.

Here are three areas where President Obama can act on his own or at least can operate with a great degree of leeway

Appointments

Now that Senate Democrats have eliminated filibusters for nominations other than to the Supreme Court, the way is clear for Obama to fill vacancies in executive branch agencies and especially to life-tenured posts on the federal appeals courts.

Nominees can now be confirmed by a simple majority vote. Democrats have 55 votes in the Senate, which allows Democrats in conservative states or who face tough re-election races in 2014 to not vote with Obama on his contentious nominees.

Last month, three red-state Democrats, including Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas who’s up for re-election this fall, voted against Obama appeals court nominee Nina Pillard, who’d made controversial comments critical of anti-abortion protesters.

There are now 16 vacancies on the federal appeals courts around the country. So far Obama has sent nine

nominees to the Senate for these open posts.

Thanks to the abolition of the filibuster in the case of most nominees, Democratic-appointed judges now dominate the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit which handles many EPA and other regulatory cases. Obama and Bill Clinton have appointed seven of that court’s 11 active judges.

Executive orders and directives

Based on what Obama and his aides have said in the run-up to the State of the Union, it’s likely that he will seek to test the limits of what he can do through executive orders and directives to federal agencies.

An example of one Obama directive done by presidential memorandum: last June he directed the Interior

Department to approve enough renewable energy capacity on federal lands to power more than 6 million homes by 2020.

But congressional Republicans are on a high state of alert for what they see as Obama intrusions on congressional law-making power.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., warned Sunday that “when the executive branch tries to assume the legislative

powers, that that’s a form of tyranny.”

And in testimony to the House Judiciary Committee last month, Georgetown University law professor Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, who served in the Justice Department during the Bush administration, criticized “the president’s decision to enforce the immigration laws as though the DREAM Act had been enacted when in fact, it has not.”

He said that even though Obama favors the DREAM Act, “Congress repeatedly declined to pass it. So the president simply announced that he would enforce the Immigration Nationality Act as though the DREAM Act had been enacted.”

Regulations

The coming year will be crucial for the climate change agenda which Obama announced last June.

Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental advocacy group, told reporters last month the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been developing new rules for fracking — hydraulic fracturing to increase natural gas and oil output — under federal leases for areas that “serve as major sources of drinking water for metropolitan areas like Washington, D.C. and the Denver metro area.”

The NRDC, she said, thinks BLM’s fracking policy “is much too weak,” so environmentalists will be closely watching Obama’s nominee to head the BLM, Neil Kornze, who is a former advisor to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The BLM may not be well known to most Americans, even though it administers 245 million acres, an area larger than New York, Florida, Minnesota and California combined. And Kornze, who is awaiting Senate confirmation, isn’t a household name. But the decisions that he and other regulators make will have enormous real-world consequences, even though the debate over these policies won’t usually be taking place on the Senate floor and certainly won’t be broadcast in primetime as will Obama’s speech Tuesday night.

5. LA Times, “Most Latinos Want Government Action on Climate Change, Poll Finds”

January 24, 2014

By Tony Barboza

Latinos overwhelmingly favor government action to fight climate change, voicing a level of support exceeded only in their views on immigration reform, according to a new poll commissioned by an environmental group.

Nine in 10 Latino voters surveyed said it was important for the U.S. government to address global warming and climate change; 80% favored presidential action to fight carbon pollution that causes it, according to the nationwide survey funded by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Other polling has shown that Latinos by wide margins back action to curb pollution, climate change and other environmental problems. The latest poll found even more intense support for policies to counter global warming.

“Almost any way you sliced it, Latinos were saying yes, we think there’s a role for government to regulate and limit carbon pollution,” said Matt Barreto, a professor of political science at the University of Washington and co-founder of Latino Decisions, the political opinion research firm that conducted the poll.

Those views cut across age, income and party affiliation, according to the survey. The poll, however, found somewhat lower support for government action on climate change among Latino Republicans and higher support for environmental protections among Democrats and young Latinos.

The results echo other surveys conducted in recent years for groups like the Sierra Club and National Council of La Raza that have found that a higher percentage of Latinos believe climate change is happening than do Americans as a whole.

The latest poll, conducted in November and December 2013 by Latino Decisions, interviewed 805 registered Latino voters across the country in English or Spanish. The Natural Resources Defense Council said it worked with the polling firm to design the questions.

A comparison to similar polls showed support for climate change action among the Latino electorate was higher and more consistent than on many other issues, including healthcare, education and the economy, and surpassed only by their attitudes on immigration policy, Barreto said.

He said the findings also showed that climate change and environmental protection resonate strongly with Latinos on a cultural level. Many respondents indicated they see global warming and air pollution as global rather than local issues. They also told interviewers they were motivated by beliefs that addressing environmental problems could build a better life for their families and for future generations.

Those findings indicate to Barreto that going forward, “we should be thinking of climate and the environment as a core Latino issue.”

The results also suggest that ignoring Latinos’ views could be a wasted opportunity when it comes to building support for policies to reduce carbon emissions, said Adrianna Quintero, an attorney and director of Latino engagement for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“We need to really get out there and engage with Latinos to speak up and help us solve the climate crisis,” she said.

6. Inside Climate News, “FEMA: Caught Between Climate Change and Congress”

January 27, 2014

By Katherine Bagley

Thanks to climate change, extreme weather disasters have hammered the United States with increasing frequency in recent years—from drought and wildfires to coastal storms and flooding.

It is perhaps surprising, then, that the U.S. agency in charge of preparing for and responding to these disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), doesn’t account for climate change in most of its budget planning and resource allocation or in the National Flood Insurance Program it administers.

“Climate change is affecting everything the agency does, and yet it isn’t given much consideration,” said Michael Crimmins, an environmental scientist at the University of Arizona who is leading a project to try to improve FEMA’s use of climate science data. “FEMA has to be climate literate in a way that many other agencies don’t have to be.”

A main problem, he and other experts say, is that FEMA doesn’t use short- or long-term climate science projections to determine how worsening global warming may affect its current operations and the communities it serves. Instead, FEMA continues to base its yearly budget and activities almost entirely on historical natural disaster records. That practice is exacerbated by the fact that the agency is at the mercy of economic and political pressures. In addition to having to deal with years of recession that ate into its budget, FEMA has repeatedly been caught in the crosshairs of partisan politics that forced funding cuts and blocked proposed increases.

And so while the number of billion-dollar-plus weather disasters in the United States has increased five percent a year since 1980, FEMA’s annual budget has stayed roughly the same, straining its ability to function.

“Recent events have been so big that they’ve swept through the agency, affecting every corner of funding,” Crimmins said. “It is hugely problematic. FEMA is reeling and saying, ‘Wait, we have to become more efficient at every timescale because this isn’t sustainable from a budget stand point.'”

In 2011, 14 natural disasters with price tags of $1 billion or more struck the United States. As a result, FEMA was forced to divert funds from long-term rebuilding projects to cover the immediate response needs—things like food, water and shelter—for victims of Hurricane Irene. It faced a similar budget crunch following Superstorm Sandy in 2012, a year that saw 11 billion-dollar-plus disasters. In fact, FEMA has needed Congress to approve additional disaster relief funds nearly every year over roughly the past decade to handle the mounting climate-related damage.

FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, which provides coverage for more than 5.5 million Americans, faces particular risks from warming. It’s already $18 billion in debt from Hurricanes Katrina and Irene, Superstorm Sandy and other disasters. And that deficit will only increase. According to a FEMA-commissioned study, released last year, flood zones could grow 55 percent in size by 2100 from mainly climate change, but also population growth along coastlines—doubling enrollment in the program and straining the entire insurance system. The report, recommended by the Government Accountability Office back in 2007, could eventually influence recommendations about how to reform the flood insurance program.

The 35-year-old emergency response agency has about 7,500 employees scattered across the country and operates on an approximately $10 billion annual budget.

FEMA spokesman Dan Watson denied claims that the agency is dragging its feet on including climate threats in its current budgets and plans.

“FEMA is working within its existing statutes and authorities to incorporate climate change adaptation into ongoing plans, policies and procedures,” he wrote in an email. Watson pointed to the agency’s recent announcement that it developed a way for states and regions to incorporate sea level rise projections into grant applications for disaster mitigation projects. The move was made in response to President Obama’s mandate last November that federal agencies help states adapt to climate change.

With the trend of extreme weather intensifying, critics say that reports and suggestions are not enough, and they are urging FEMA to take a more proactive and aggressive approach. Two leading environmental groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Wildlife Federation, have petitioned FEMA for more than a year to overhaul its disaster mitigation program, asking to require—not just suggest—that communities include climate impacts in their grant requests and strategic plans.

According to the groups, FEMA officials agreed earlier this month in a private meeting to meet that request and update the process by the end of the year.

“It is encouraging news … a great example of the direction FEMA needs to be heading in more,” said Rob Moore, head of the water and climate team at the NRDC.

“We can’t afford to simply respond as disasters happen and muddle through,” he said. “The time has come to look forward 20, 30 years.”

Even if FEMA made global warming a top priority, however, experts agree that the agency needs a major increase in funds to deal with the coming threats.

That means approval from Congress—a difficult prospect. Republicans have threatened several times in recent years to reject additional relief funds following disasters, such as Sandy, without first slashing money from other government programs. Democrats have refused to deplete other programs for the sake of FEMA.

“It is very clear that FEMA isn’t being given the resources to tackle the scope of the problem in front of us,” Moore said.

Between fiscal year 2012 and 2013, the agency’s overall budget lost $364.2 million. Between fiscal year 2013 and 2014, FEMA will lose another $500 million overall.

“Should FEMA’s budget be increased? Absolutely,” said Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards and

Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina, who believes that Congress has chronically underfunded FEMA and that the agency needs a funding boost that is consistent and across the board, not necessarily a deeper focus on climate science.

“But where does the money come from? Which other agency loses out? No one wants to makes that political move.”

In Arizona, an Experiment

As FEMA faces growing challenges from global warming, a team of climate and social scientists at the University of Arizona is trying to inspire change at the regional level by helping local FEMA staffers better use climate information to try to anticipate where disaster may strike months in advance.

The aim of the two-year project is to improve communication between scientists at the National Weather Service and “watch teams” in FEMA’s region nine, an area that includes Arizona, Nevada, California and the Pacific Islands. It started in late 2012 and is funded by a $166,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

If all goes smoothly, the researchers hope it could be a model for other regions.

The National Weather Service (NWS), a division of NOAA, runs a climate prediction center that puts out seasonal forecasts projecting precipitation and temperature trends, which can provide clues on coming droughts, wildfires, floods and other natural disaster risks. To date, FEMA hasn’t done a good job using the data to track where the next disaster might be brewing, according to Crimmins, the University of Arizona scientist who is leading the project.

“The weather service was throwing information at FEMA, but no one was sure whether FEMA actually understood what they were getting,” he said. “It meant missed opportunities to take early action. With climate change, this disconnect was becoming an even bigger problem.”

Crimmins and his colleagues are currently building an online dashboard for FEMA staffers that has the latest information from NWS in a more approachable format. It will include the weather service’s most recent seasonal forecasts, as well as historical trends so that FEMA can easily understand the scope and scale of any looming threats.

“The hope is that in six months, an analyst in a particular region can very quickly look and say, ‘Oh, it is going to be mellow for the next month,’ or ‘oh, there’s a drought in this area, so there’s going to be an increased fire risk,’ or ‘there’s an El Nino developing, so this winter we’re going to need to focus on the southwestern states and not northern California,'” Crimmins said.

The information could help FEMA foresee its short-term staffing and resource needs—two things that could help the agency better address weather extremes under its existing budget, he said.

Although FEMA has said it is interested in the online dashboard, it’s still uncertain the extent to which the agency will actually use it, Crimmins said.

Cutter, the disaster expert from the University of South Carolina, who was a co-author of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report about managing the risks of climate change, is skeptical about whether using climate projections could help the agency better budget for climate threats.

Seasonal projections don’t provide exact dates for when a disaster will strike and can sometimes be wrong. And while climate models are good at showing long-term trends—decades to centuries—the projections aren’t specific enough to be really useful on a year-to-year basis, the timescale on which the agency sets its budget, she said.

“There’s a lot of variability from year to year,” Cutter said. “This last year was a quiet year. I don’t think FEMA was strained that much at all.” With seven billion-dollar-plus disasters in 2013, FEMA was able to make its budget last the year. This doesn’t diminish the need to boost FEMA’s funding, she said, acknowledging that its budget has been strained because of more frequent climate-related disasters.

But it makes the matter trickier.

“FEMA is very different than NOAA or the Environmental Protection Agency, which have a primary focus on understanding climate change and science. FEMA thinks about these things, but it doesn’t have any immediate responsibility to respond,” Cutter said.
7. The Outdoor Wire, “EPA to Review Pollution Regs for Mississippi River Basin, Gulf of Mexico”

January 27, 2014

The U.S. District Court in Eastern Louisiana in September ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to determine within six months whether to set new limits on the pollution that is fueling the dangerous algae growth choking the waters throughout the Mississippi River basin, the Gulf of Mexico and waters across the country. That deadline is approaching this spring.

“For too long, the EPA has stood on the sidelines while our nation’s waters slowly choke on algae,” said Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Senior Attorney Ann Alexander. “They have acknowledged the problem for years, but could not muster the gumption to address it. The court is telling the Agency that it is time to stop hiding from the issue and make a decision already.”

Attorneys at the NRDC led the suit, filed on behalf of several conservation groups and based on longstanding efforts by the Mississippi River Collaborative to break decades of inaction from the federal government on the issue of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. These chemicals fuel the formation of the Gulf Dead Zone and toxic algae blooms and cause damage to drinking water supplies.

“The Army Corps of Engineers monitored Kentucky’s recreational lakes for Harmful Algae Blooms for the first time this past summer and recorded excessive numbers throughout much of the summer at several lakes,” said Judy Petersen, executive director at Kentucky Waterways Alliance. “Nutrient pollution is clearly just as much of a problem in Kentucky as it is in other Mississippi River Basin states and down in the Gulf, and the EPA must address it.”

Nitrogen and phosphorus from sewage plants, urban stormwater systems and agricultural operations fuels the growth of algae in waterways around the country. Algae, in turn, chokes out other aquatic life and can rob water of the oxygen that fish and shellfish need to survive. One of the most devastating consequences of this pollution has been the emergence of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico-an area the size of Connecticut where algal growth has driven levels of oxygen at the sea floor so low that virtually nothing can live there. Similar issues are driving the dramatic collapse of Lake Erie and threatening other portions of the Great Lakes.

“It should be apparent that pollution limits are essential to controlling pollution” said Kelly Foster, senior attorney for Waterkeeper Alliance, “With this decision, we are hopeful that the EPA will finally do what it has long known is necessary to address the Gulf Dead Zone and the staggering number of other fisheries, water supplies and recreational waters decimated by nitrogen and phosphorus pollution across the nation.”

The suit, filed a year and a half ago, challenged the EPA’s denial of the Mississippi River Collaborative’s 2008 petition to the EPA asking it to establish quantifiable standards and cleanup plans for nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. The suit charged that the EPA had unlawfully refused to respond to the question posed to it, which is whether such federal action is necessary to comply with the Clean Water Act. The court agreed with plaintiffs, holding that the EPA’s refusal to provide a direct answer was unlawful.

“This isn’t just about the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Bradley Klein, senior staff attorney for the Environmental Law and Policy Center. “Algae blooms threaten the Great Lakes-and smaller waterways across the nation are being impacted by this huge problem. Hopefully the EPA will move in the right direction on this because until we deal with the sources, which are sometimes thousands of miles away, we cannot get to the problem.”

The decision does not tell the EPA how to address the problem, only to make a decision on the issue. However, the EPA has repeatedly acknowledged the severity of the problem and stated that federal intervention is appropriate because states are not doing enough to solve it.

“We are gratified that the EPA cannot duck this important decision, and hope that the EPA takes quick and decisive action to control widespread nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in the Mississippi River,” said Kris Sigford, water quality director at Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. “In Minnesota, over one-quarter of our streams and rivers are polluted by nitrogen in excess of safe drinking water standards, and the trend is increasing rapidly.”

Plaintiffs in the suit included Gulf Restoration Network, Waterkeeper Alliance, Environmental Law and Policy Center, Iowa Environmental Council, Missouri Coalition for the Environment, Prairie Rivers Network, Kentucky Waterways Alliance, Tennessee Clean Water Network, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, Sierra Club and NRDC. Attorneys at the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, NRDC and the Environmental Law and Policy Center brought the case.

8. Voices of San Diego, “Fix the City’s Mucked-Up Storm Strategy”

January 24, 2014

By Noah Garrison

Complying with a federal law Scott Lewis mentioned in his recent post — a law designed to protect public health and water resources — shouldn’t be rocket science.

Stormwater pollution sickens thousands of San Diegans and visitors to the region every year when they go to the beach or are exposed to untreated runoff. Common sense solutions exist today that can dramatically reduce the potential for people to come into contact with polluted waters, and can provide multiple benefits to the community.

Building green infrastructure —water quality management techniques like green roofs, tree plantings, rain gardens and permeable pavement that mimic a site’s natural hydrology — into our urban areas is a cost-effective way to capture rainwater on-site (and to add a needed, sustainable local supply of water during periods of drought), instead of allowing it to funnel pollution to creeks and rivers or the ocean.

Not only does building with green infrastructure often cost less than using traditional systems of gutters, drains, and pipes to manage stormwater runoff, but there is ample evidence that private developments with well-designed green infrastructure can see substantial economic gains — higher property values, increased retail sales, energy and water savings, reduced infrastructure costs, and even increased mental health and worker productivity for office workers.

But the city’s questionable cost estimates largely ignore opportunities to engage commercial and other properties that green infrastructure practices would benefit. Instead, the estimates focus heavily, if not exclusively, on making use of public lands to install stormwater controls.

For example, to clean up Chollas Creek, rather than encouraging or assisting private developments to invest in green infrastructure, which could help beautify surrounding communities and stimulate economic revitalization, the city’s estimate relies on spending upwards of $900 million to buy private land for stormwater projects. The city fails to point out that a potential alternative scheme, which would use green streets to improve water quality instead of private land acquisition, could save it more than $880 million.

1. New York Times, “New Forces Join Lawsuit Fighting Palisades Tower”

January 22, 2014

By Robin Pogrebin

Two months after work began on LG Electronics USA’s new headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., new opponents have jumped in the battle to scale back the project, which they see as a blight on the Hudson River landscape.

The environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Natural Resources Defense Council and a New Jersey conservation group said they planned to join a legal challenge on Thursday, and the National Park Service has registered its objections to the project’s scope.

The Defense Council — for which Mr. Kennedy is senior lawyer — together with the New Jersey Conservation Foundation planned to file a motion on Thursday to join a lawsuit challenging the company’s plan to build a tower on the Palisades cliffs north of the George Washington Bridge.

“This is like if somebody tried to build a high-rise next to Yellowstone,” Mr. Kennedy said in an interview. “It’s a national issue.”

By rising above the tree line, the council argues, the proposed building would spoil parkland and views from both sides of the Hudson. The site is almost directly across the river from the Cloisters, the medieval outpost of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Fort Tryon Park, which was built in the 1930s using architectural elements from European cloisters from the Middle Ages.

LG, which is based in South Korea, plans to construct eight stories, 143 feet total, in an area previously zoned for a maximum of 35 feet. The height restriction was first lifted through a variance, which has been challenged in State Superior Court in one of two lawsuits filed to protect the view. Subsequently the land was rezoned to allow for a taller building. The council seeks to join the variance challenge. A separate case contesting an overall rezoning for the town is still in the lower court.

Demolition of the old Prentice-Hall building at the site began in November. Construction on the LG headquarters is to begin this year and should be completed by 2017. Several local officials support the development, which LG has said will be environmentally sensitive and produce jobs.

“We understand the position of the handful of folks who are opposed to this, but the project enjoys significant support among those in New Jersey who understand the economic impact,” said John I. Taylor, a spokesman for LG. “We’re enthusiastic about moving ahead.”

Although the National Park Service does not have any formal review authority regarding the project, the agency nevertheless made its opposition known in two recent letters. “We hope that you will reconsider the plan,” Park Service officials wrote in letters sent Jan. 7 and Dec. 23 to Edwin Fehre, the chairman of Englewood Cliff’s planning board.

The current proposal “threatens the integrity of the scene in a startling and major way,” the letter added. “If built, this tower will introduce a massive incompatible feature that will be visible for miles along the river and from vantage points along the west side of Manhattan as well as from the bridge.”

In October, the World Monuments Fund featured the Cloisters and the Palisades on its annual list of endangered cultural sites, saying LG’s construction “would seriously affect one of the most unspoiled areas of the Hudson River, including treasured views from the Cloisters museum and gardens, and also have a negative environmental impact on the region.”

Mr. Kennedy said, “It is so important to maintain landscapes in cities, so people who can’t afford to go out to the national parks will be able to experience the majestic beauty of the American wilderness in their backyards.”

2. Agence France Presse, “New York seeks to double recycling by 2017”

January 23, 2014

By Mariano Andrade

More than 40,000 tonnes of waste a day, 7,000 employees and a fleet of more than 2,500 trucks: New York faces an uphill task in trashing its garbage and doubling recycling by 2017.

It is the US city that generates the most garbage: a dizzying 2.5 kilos (5.5 pounds) per person per day compared to two kilos in the rest of the country, according to the office of Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“Sanitation is the most important uniformed force on the street,” writes Robin Nagle, anthropologist at New York University in her book “Picking Up”.

“If sanitation workers aren’t there, the city becomes unlivable, fast.”

But New York, in so many other respects a municipal policy trailblazer for the United States, lags woefully behind its West Coast and European rivals on the issue of recycling.

Ron Gonen, New York recycling czar, says the amount of waste rises each year and that the city spends $330 million on trucking off its refuse to places like Ohio or North Carolina.

But in the last two years the city of 8.4 million, where businesses organize their own separate waste collection, has made serious if belated efforts to improve recycling.

Of the 11,200 tonnes of daily rubbish collected by the city, it is committed to increasing the rate of recycling from 15 to 30 percent by 2017, organic waste not included.

Private companies discard another 29,000 tonnes a day.

The city has partnered with private investors to build a brand-new, state-of-the-art recycling plant in Brooklyn.

The city has extended a pilot program to collect organic waste from 300 schools this year, up from 90 in the last.

From July 2015 restaurants, delis and grocers will also have to separate out organic waste and recycling.

“In the last two years there was phenomenal dedication. There is a lot of potential,” Gonen told AFP.

‘Catching up quickly”

Eric Goldstein, an expert from the Natural Resources Defense Council also working with the city, agrees.

“We are in an early stage of transformation,” he told AFP.

“We had a slow start, we are still not one of the leading cities, as Seattle or San Francisco. But we are catching up quickly by good steps forward.”

He blamed the delay on being too focused on the short-term and shying away from long-term investments.

“The biggest challenge is that the progress of the Bloomberg administration continues with the new mayor,” Goldstein told AFP, referring to the just-finished reign of billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg.

In December, an ultra-modern recycling plant for metals, glass and plastics opened in Brooklyn, operated by Sims Municipal Recycling, a world leader in the sector.

It took 10 years and $110 million from private and state investors to build the 44,515 square meter Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility along the East River.

“This is the largest sorting system of this type, to my knowledge, in the world, certainly in the United States,” said Tom Outerbridge, general manager of the Sims plant.

The machinery is mostly Dutch and German. There is an educational center for students but at the moment it functions only eight hours a day with the plan to go 24-seven by spring.

Of the approximately 800 tonnes of plastic, glass and metal that the city collects each day, the plant currently treats about 272.

The rest goes to another plant in neighboring New Jersey. The two plants combined can recycle 1,180 tonnes a day according to Outerbridge, who has 25 years experience in the sector.

Recycling is not just good for the environment. It also generates revenue: an aluminum cube produced by Sunset Park weighing around 680 kilos can be resold for $1,000.

3. FoxNews.com, “Trader Joe’s ex-president to open store selling expired food”

January 22, 2014

We’ve all heard about the massive food waste Americans incur every year.

‘Sell-by’, ‘best-by’ and ‘use-by’ dates are mostly unregulated and confusing for consumers when it comes to throwing items out –a factor that contributes to $165 billion of food wasted every year.

But the former president of Trader Joe’s Doug Rauch says he’s got a solution.

In May, he’s launching The Daily Table, a grocery store and restaurant in Dorchester, Mass., that will offer inexpensive food considered ‘unsellable’ by regular grocery stores.

Food available will include fruits and vegetables that are expired and repurposed food that will be incorporated into hot meals. Other items for sale will be products that are fine to eat but may have damaged packaging.

“Most families know that they’re not giving their kids the nutrition they need. But they just can’t afford it, they don’t have an option,” Rauch recently told Salon.

His big idea: Make healthy food available for the working poor at the same price as fast food by using expired food.

A recent report from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic says Americans are prematurely throwing out food, largely because of confusion over what expiration dates actually mean.

Dana Gunders with the Natural Resources Defense Council and co-author of the study, said that as much as 40 percent of food in the U.S. –or the equivalent of $165 billion– is wasted, thrown away to fill our landfills after spoiling in the refrigerator or pantry.

Although Daily Table will be setup as a non-profit, it is a retail store, not a food bank or a soup kitchen.

Rauch is hardly the first to sell expired food or slightly damaged items deemed unsellable for cosmetic reasons. Discount supermarkets already offer many of the same items, but don’t sell prepared food.

Yet, critics have accused Rauch of taking rich people’s food, repurposing it, and selling it to the poor, something he just shrugs off.

“I might say, without naming the names, one of the leading, best regarded brands in the large, national, food industry — they basically recover the food within their stores, cook it up and put it out on their hot trays the next day,” Rauch said in an 2013 interview with NPR. “That’s the stuff that we’re going to be talking about. We’re talking about taking and recovering food. Most of what we offer will be fruits and vegetables that have a use-by date on it that’ll be several days out.”

So would you go shopping at The Daily Table or think it’s a good idea? Let us know what you think.

4. Bloomberg News, “Enbridge beats TransCanada on Keystone XL delay”

January 22, 2014

By Rebecca Penty and Jeremy van Loon

Canadian pipeline rivals Enbridge Inc. and TransCanada Corp. are earmarking billions for new pipelines to capture a larger slice of North America’s crude oil market. Some investors say Enbridge is the better bet.

Headquartered on the same downtown Calgary street, the two companies plan to spend a combined $74-billion through 2018 on projects including pipelines and power generation. Enbridge, already Canada’s largest transporter of crude, stands to profit more from increased demand as TransCanada struggles to win U.S. approval for the Keystone XL project.

An energy renaissance from Alberta’s oil sands to the shale fields of Texas has heightened the urgency of building new pipelines to carry surging supplies of crude. Enbridge, whose $2.45-billion in revenue from oil pipelines last year was more than twice that of TransCanada for the segment, faces fewer hurdles for its expansion plans while Keystone has become a target for environmentalists’ protests.

“Our favorite between the two right now would be Enbridge,” said Michael Formuziewich, a portfolio manager at Leon Frazer & Associates Inc. in Toronto who owns shares in both. “We think TransCanada will grow slower.”

Enbridge has a number of oil pipeline projects scheduled to come online between now and 2017 that face fewer threats, according to Formuziewich. This year, it’s targeting startup of a 600,000 barrel-a-day line that crosses the U.S. Midwest, called Flanagan South. The company also plans to double capacity to 850,000 barrels a day on the Seaway conduit that connects a Midwest oil hub with the Gulf Coast, which it owns with Enterprise Products Partners LP, according to Enbridge’s website.

Higher Returns

Among analysts that follow Enbridge, 80% have buy recommendations, compared with 71% for TransCanada. Enbridge stock has returned 133% in the past five years, compared with a 45% gain for TransCanada. The S&P/TSX Energy Index is up 42% in the same period.

Enbridge is winning favour partly because the U.S. may further delay or reject TransCanada’s US$5.4 billion Keystone XL pipeline, designed to link oil-sands output to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, according to FirstEnergy Capital Corp. The U.S. State Department is completing a final environmental review.

While TransCanada says President Barack Obama may make a decision by the end of March, FirstEnergy doesn’t expect a ruling until early next year.

Political Risk

“It’s largely about the political risk of XL weighing on TransCanada,” said Steven Paget, an analyst at FirstEnergy in Calgary who advises investors to buy Enbridge shares and hold TransCanada.

Both companies are seeking oil conduits as crude output surges and because they offer higher returns than natural gas lines. Shale oil discoveries are forecast to propel the U.S. to the top spot among the world’s biggest crude producers in 2015, the International Energy Agency predicts. Canada’s oil sands will more than double output by 2022 from a decade earlier, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

Enbridge is best positioned to take advantage as the rise in U.S. shale gas output reduces demand for the heating fuel from Western Canada, hurting TransCanada more, according to Moody’s Investors Service. TransCanada faces risks with Keystone XL and its C$12 billion Energy East proposal to pipe oil to the Atlantic Coast, which would together more than quadruple the company’s crude-transport capacity, the credit rating company forecasts.

Pipeline Risks

“The long wait to get a presidential permit brings into question whether Keystone XL will get built and highlights the pitfalls of undertaking a pipeline project,” Mihoko Manabe and Gavin Macfarlane, analysts at Moody’s, wrote in a November research note.

Keystone XL, proposed by TransCanada in 2008, is supported by U.S. trade organizations touting job creation and Canadian producers seeking new markets for heavy oil on the Gulf Coast, where imports from Mexico and Venezuela have fallen. Environmental opponents say the project would boost carbon output. The Natural Resources Defense Council has called it a “carbon bomb.”

TransCanada says the pipeline doesn’t create emissions because it runs on electricity. An interim environmental report from the State Department said it wouldn’t boost greenhouse gas emissions because the oil sands would be developed regardless.

Bigger Margins

TransCanada is seeking to build more oil pipelines to lift its stock and boost earnings and dividends as it shrinks the share of contributions from gas pipelines and power plants, Russ Girling, chief executive officer, said last month in an interview at his Calgary office.

“Investors historically have paid more for liquid- infrastructure investments that they have for gas,” Girling said. TransCanada can make returns of 8 to 9 percent on oil pipelines, compared with 6 to 7 percent for gas conduits. “You get another couple hundred basis points for fundamentally the same kinds of risks.”

TransCanada, which reported a 14 percent decline in net income for 2012, the most recent year available, has boosted revenue from oil pipelines from zero in 2010 to 13 percent of the total two years later. Enbridge had more than double the oil pipeline revenue of TransCanada in 2012, a year in which it, too, reported a 14 percent drop in earnings.

Regulatory Obstacles

TransCanada has diversified away from Keystone XL as it focuses on other new oil pipelines including within Alberta, Girling said. The biggest challenges facing construction of new lines are financing and labor and TransCanada has both those pieces solved, Girling said. The company hired 700 people in both 2012 and 2013 and has 40 engineers in training.

The company is in a “strong position” to develop new oil pipeline infrastructure partly because its projects are backed by long-term commitments from customers, Shawn Howard, a TransCanada spokesman, said in an e-mail.

Lifting oil pipeline revenue for both Enbridge and TransCanada is becoming harder. Projects are being delayed and risk rejection as regulatory processes become protracted against a backdrop of environmental and political opposition.

Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway conduit that would connect the oil sands with Pacific Rim markets faces the threat of lawsuits from aboriginal opponents. Canadian regulators recommended approving the C$6.5 billion project last month, starting a 180-day period in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet must make a ruling.

Future Diversification

“It’s a lot more difficult to go through the regulatory process,” Al Monaco, Enbridge’s chief executive officer, said last month in an interview at his Calgary office. He committed to remain focused on oil pipelines for at least the next five years. “Further diversification down the road may make some sense,” he said.

After more than five years of regulatory scrutiny of Keystone XL, TransCanada is better equipped “than anybody in the marketplace” at getting pipelines approved, Girling said. “I’m comfortable we can get there.”

5. Grist, “Oil (Drilling) and Climate Action Don’t Mix”

January 21, 2014

By Ben Adler

The environmental community and the White House have beef, and it just escalated.

On Thursday, a coalition of 18 environmental advocacy organizations — including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the League of Conservative Voters — sent President Obama a letter expressing their opposition to his “all of the above” energy policy, which embraces oil and gas in addition to cleaner energy sources. Although they were careful to note that they “applaud the actions you have taken to reduce economy-wide carbon pollution,” they conclude that “continued reliance on an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy would be fundamentally at odds with your goal of cutting carbon pollution.”

It’s not clear why the green groups have chosen now to go public with their frustration over Obama’s enthusiasm for domestic dirty energy production. Obama finally put forth a comprehensive climate action plan in June. Just last month, he brought former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta, a strong proponent of climate action, into the White House as an adviser. Podesta reportedly accepted the job on the condition that he would oversee Obama’s plans to reduce carbon emissions. (Disclosure: From 2005 to 2007, I worked at the Center for American Progress, which Podesta founded in 2003 and ran until 2011.)

One day after the green groups sent their letter, Podesta responded with a letter of his own. In his response, Podesta reiterates Obama’s commitment to addressing climate change and lists some of the steps the president has already taken to reduce emissions, and others his administration is currently working on. From fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks to the first-ever regulation of CO2 emissions from power plants, there is no doubt that Obama has done a lot for a president facing an obstinately unhelpful Congress.

But Podesta’s letter does not actually address the specific complaint the environmentalists put forth: that Obama has opened up federal lands and waters to oil, gas, and coal exploration, and that this is at odds with efforts to fight climate change. Here’s Obama himself on the subject during the 2012 campaign: “Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth, and then some.”

As Bill McKibben detailed in a recent Rolling Stone feature, Obama has eagerly pursued natural resource extraction. He has opened the way for oil drilling offshore in areas such as Alaska’s Beaufort Sea. Last year, the Bureau of Land Management put up for auction the mining rights to 316 million tons of coal in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, drawing consternation from none other than the Center for American Progress. CAP calculated — using the BLM’s own metrics — that this would produce more than 523 million tons of CO2, which is equivalent to the annual emissions from roughly 109 million cars.

And so here is what Podesta wrote on Friday: “The President has been leading the transition to low-carbon energy sources, and understands the need to consider a balanced approach to all forms of energy development, including oil and gas production.” And then, in the very next sentence: “With respect to meeting the threats posed by a rapidly changing climate, implementation of the Climate Action Plan must and will remain the focus of our efforts.” As if these two sentiments were not at odds with one another.

One could theoretically argue that reducing CO2 emissions and opening areas for drilling and mining are not mutually exclusive. What matters is total emissions, not whether they come from coal-fired power plants or cow burps, or the U.S. or China. But such an argument would only be persuasive if there were firm economy-wide carbon caps both domestically and internationally. If we had a cap-and-trade regime in domestic and international markets, the price of burning coal and oil would increase dramatically, to such a point that most American fossil fuels would not be worth extracting. If it were still economical, because U.S. sources of dirty energy were cheaper than foreign sources, then you might be able to make a case that opening new areas to exploration would not actually affect climate change.

Of course, there would still be plenty of other reasons not to pursue increased domestic fossil fuel production. As demonstrated by the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the frequent explosions of trains hauling crude oil from North Dakota, and pervasive air pollution in coal-burning regions, there are deadly, devastating consequences to dirty energy production well beyond climate change. Even with carbon caps or pricing, the environmental groups would surely still oppose Obama’s energy policy and advocate clean renewable sources instead.

But the more important point is that we don’t have a price on carbon. The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill died in the Senate, thanks in part to Obama’s undermining of Senate negotiations. Until we do, saying that we are reducing CO2 emissions in other ways cannot justify giving public land to private producers of dirty energy.

6. Vermont Public Radio, “Group Warns Of Surge in Polluting Tar Sands Gas”

January 23, 2014

By Taylor Dobbs

An environmental group forecasts a massive spike in the amount of tar sands fuel coming to Vermont gas pumps in coming years.

According to a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, gasoline derived from oil extracted from tar sands made up less than 1 percent of the fuel supply in 11 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states in 2012. By 2020, the report said, that will be up to 11.5 percent if states don’t increase regulation.

The problem with that, NRDC said, is that gasoline derived from tar sands oil “emits 17 percent more carbon pollution than conventional gasoline when measured on a life-cycle basis.”

The Vermont Natural Resources Council, in a press release about the study, warned that use of the gasoline could severely undermine the state’s efforts to reduce carbon pollution to 50 percent of 1990 levels by 2028.

The state fell short of one of the benchmarks of that goal in 2012, by which time the state was supposed to have achieved a 25 percent reduction from 1990 levels. Instead, Vermont’s 2012 greenhouse gas emissions were almost equal to 1990 levels.

7. Everyday Health, “Tap vs. Bottled Water: Which Is Less Contaminated?”

January 17, 2014

By Susan Matthews

On January 9, hundreds of thousands of West Virginia residents were told their drinking water had been contaminated by 7,000 gallons of the chemical MCHM. The tap water was only safe for flushing toilets with, so the affected residents adopted a new norm of relying on bottled water as a safer, chemical-free substitute.

Not so fast. While bottled water may have been necessary in this scenario, don’t let sterile appearances fool you into thinking it’s always preferable to tap. In fact, researchers were able to pinpoint 24,520 chemicals in various samples of bottled water, according to a recent study published in PLoS One. Not all of them may be harmful to the body, but some disrupted the body’s hormones.

“An equivalent of 3.75 mL bottled water inhibited estrogen and androgen receptor by up to 60 and 90%, respectively,” the researchers wrote in the study. The researchers attempted to pinpoint exactly which chemical was having this precise effect on the body’s hormones, but though they could find the receptor of the chemical, they could not pinpoint the chemical itself.

The research, conducted by German researchers from the Goethe University Frankfurt, also noted that bottled water samples from six different countries were found to contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals (chemicals that affect the hormones, called EDCs), including estrogenic, antiestrogenic, androgenic, antiandrogenic, progestagenic, and glucocorticoid-like chemicals.

“This demonstrates that a popular beverage is contaminated with diverse-acting EDCs,” they wrote.

For comparison sake, the researchers also tested tap water, and found none of the hormone-affected chemicals that bottled water had.

“People have this misconception that if you can buy something in the store that means someone has looked at it and said its safe, and that’s just not the case with bottled water,” Mae Wu, health attorney at the National Resources Defense Council said. While tap water is tested a dozen times a day, bottled water is usually only tested once a week, she said.

This is one of the first studies to investigate these hormone-disrupting chemicals’ presence in bottled water, so it’s still unclear how harmful they are, Wu said. However, Wu emphasized that the hormonal system is delicate. “You don’t really want to mess around with it,” she said.

It might be harder to suggest a recommendation of how much bottled water is too much, Wu said. “When you’ve messed with the endocrine system, it could manifest in so many ways,” she said.

How the chemicals could affect people is dependent on their developmental life stage, Susan Nagel, PhD, a spokeswoman for the Endocrine Society and professor of obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health at the University of Missouri, said. “If you’re talking about a grown woman who is trying to get pregnant,” inhibiting estrogen production might have an effect, she said.

Consumer advocacy about Bisphenol A (BPA) in reusable water bottles and containers, caused the Food and Drug Administration to ban the chemical in some products and alert consumers to its presence. But Wu said that it’s harder to create regulations like that for bottled water, which is hotly contested due to the burden it places on the environment.

Of course, in circumstances like the West Virginia situation, it may be necessary. It’s still unclear which part of the bottling process causes the chemicals to end up in the water, Wu said, but she offered tips to make drinking bottled water safer.

Don’t let it sit in the car all day, she said, because when water is hot, it’s more likely chemicals in the plastic will leach out into the water. The same goes for using a bottle multiple times — you may think you’re helping the Earth by reusing, but you’re likely just making it easier for the chemicals to leach.

In most cases, you’re better off drinking from the tap.

8. Intelligent Utility Magazine, “Capturing the Benefits of Green Infrastructure”

January 22, 2014

By Alisa Valderrama and Paula Connolly

The past few decades have presented numerous challenges for municipal stormwater utilities. Utilities must safeguard water quality and service despite constrained municipal budgets, sharply declining federal funding, more extreme and frequent weather events, and astronomical costs of addressing and maintaining antiquated water infrastructure.

In the face of these challenges, many localities are harnessing untapped opportunities to leverage “green” solutions to stormwater and wastewater management. Each year, more municipalities are integrating large-scale green infrastructure (GI) practices—such as tree planting, bio-swales, rain gardens, and porous pavement—into their water quality strategies. They are discovering that green practices are not only cost-effective relative to their “gray” cement cousins, but also that the green practices provide public benefits such as cleaning the air, creating green jobs, providing shade and recreation, restoring urban biodiversity and reducing municipal energy costs. Most existing green infrastructure projects have focused on improvements to public land, which has proven beneficial in many contexts.

But as helpful as greening public land can be, most municipalities seeking to leverage large-scale green infrastructure will also need to look beyond public dollars and projects on public owned land in order to meet their green infrastructure goals. Research and analysis by the Natural Infrastructure Finance Laboratory, in which the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a partner, illustrates that cities have good reason to encourage private parcel owners to green on their own property. While cost data can range widely across cities, there may be substantial low-cost green infrastructure opportunities on private parcels.

Indeed, cities such as Philadelphia, Seattle, Milwaukee, and many others have generated creative public policies that reward, subsidize, and otherwise facilitate installation of green infrastructure on private property.

A new report released by the Natural Resources Defense Council this month provides another tool for stormwater utilities looking to leverage the potential for green infrastructure on private parcels. The Green Edge: How Commercial Property Investment in Green Infrastructure Creates Value, draws from nearly all existing research on the topic to detail the benefits that green infrastructure can bring to commercial real estate owners:

Increased rents and property values

Increased retail sales

Energy savings

Local financial incentives (such as tax credits, rebates, and stormwater fee credits)

Reduced infrastructure costs

Reduced flood damage

Reduced water bills

Increased health and job satisfaction for office employees

Reduced crime

Having a command of these benefits and which ones are most pertinent to a local community can help a stormwater utility mobilize the private sector and leverage the massive potential that exists to create lower-cost green stormwater practices on private parcels.

In Philadelphia for example, being able to cite green infrastructure benefits to private property owners has sparked efforts by major shopping malls, professional sports facilities and other commercial property owners to green hard surfaces, such as under-used parking areas. Efforts like these help the City to meet water infrastructure needs, transform unappealing spaces into attractive amenities, and help private property owners to enhance their financial bottom line.

Despite its growing use and acceptance in many parts of the country, green infrastructure is still relatively new to many people. In the absence of knowing the benefits that green infrastructure can bring to their property, the real estate community will be indifferent or, at worst, opposed to new policies and regulations that promote green infrastructure on private parcels.

With the well-documented data in the new NRDC report, utilities can help build capacity for the commercial real estate sector to support new green infrastructure plans. This is not only a helpful constituency, but a necessary constituency in helping support green infrastructure policies nationwide.

1. MSNBC, Melissa Harris-Perry Show, “Is W. Va. ‘On Sale To The Highest Bidder’?”

January 19, 2014

Watch the Interview: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/mhp/54118228#54118228

Josh Fox, Frances Beinecke and Bob Kincaid join the MHP panel to talk about the chemical spill in West Virginia and if corporate interests are affecting the water supply in the state.

2. Bloomberg News, “Water Utilities Review Plans After West Virginia Spill”
January 18, 2014

By Mark Drajem

Water utilities are reviewing safety plans after a chemical spill tainted a West Virginia treatment plant that hadn’t updated its assessment in 12 years, before a company began storing coal-cleansing chemicals nearby.

The 2002 Source Water Assessment Report for the West Virginia American Water Co. plant in Charleston listed the risk as high from industrial sites along the Elk River. There’s no sign it was updated to account for Freedom Industries Inc., which bought and converted a facility that had stored gasoline into a site for storing the coal-cleaning chemical that leaked Jan. 9, forcing 300,000 people to stop using their water.

Critics said the document shows the limits of laws meant to keep U.S. drinking water safe. The American Water Works Association, which represents the industry, said utilities will take a new look at their plans after the spill in West Virginia.

“Utilities across the country are looking again at their water assessment,” Tom Curtis, head of government affairs at the Denver-based association, said in an interview. They’re asking, “What’s in the watershed and what do I need to be aware of?”

In addition, regulators and lawmakers may learn more about the regulation for factories, storage facilities or farmers, said Curtis, whose group represents water utilities and manufacturers.

Senate Bill

West Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Joe Manchin and Jay Rockefeller, yesterday proposed legislation to boost inspections of above-ground chemical storage facilities and require companies to develop state-approved emergency-response plans. Their bill won backing from Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat and chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin also said that he will push for a state measure to require that public water systems have “proper contingency plans in place.” His office will propose that in a bill to the legislature next week, he said in a statement yesterday.

Environmental groups cite the leak of 7,500 gallons of a coal-processing chemical from a Freedom Industries tank on the banks of the Elk River, less than 2 miles miles upstream from a water intake serving the state capital, to show that protections are lacking for drinking water.

The leak of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol caused the largest do-not-use order ever by the West Virginia water utility, covering 300,000 people in the capital and nine nearby counties.

System Flushed

After days of flushing the system, the entire area was cleared yesterday to resume use of the water, with an exemption for a few towns and an advisory that pregnant women avoid drinking it.

Rockefeller yesterday asked West Virginia American Water for information on tests that led to the lifting of the ban.

“While there are a number of questions I have about the spill and your company’s response to it, many of my constituents have expressed concern that the levels of” the chemical “have spiked in certain areas despite the ‘do not use’ order being lifted,” Rockefeller said in a letter to the company’s president, Jeffrey McIntyre.

The senator asked McIntyre whether the company’s tests show levels of the chemical are rising, what steps are being taken to protect the public and the actions to further eliminate the chemical.

Freedom Industries separately filed for bankruptcy protection, after more than two dozen lawsuits were filed against the company. Lawyers have also been filed against West Virginia American Water, part of American Water Works Co. (AWK), the nation’s biggest publicly traded water utility.

Assess Risks

American Water, based in Voorhees, New Jersey, works with local, state and federal agencies to assess risks to water quality, said Denise Free, a company spokeswoman.

“American Water continuously coordinates with responsible state and federal agencies and participates or leads many joint industry and government research projects and working groups to review and recommend ongoing improvements to the water sector,” she said in an e-mail when asked about the West Virginia report.

The assessment for the Elk River, required by a 1996 drinking water law, was prepared by the West Virginia health department. It says the risk of contamination in the river is high, and recommends that efforts be made to collect information about possible pollution risks.

“Source water protection efforts should be directed toward the establishment of an effective and efficient emergency response plan if one does not currently exist,” according to the assessment.

Current Rules

The West Virginia case shows limits of current rules, which mandate that utilities or localities assess their risks without giving them the power or requiring the deficiencies be remedied, said Erik Olson, a lawyer focusing on drinking water at the Natural Resources Defense Council, the New York-based environmental advocacy group.

“It’s pretty clear that a lot of problems were identified, but it’s not clear that anything was done about it,” he said in an interview. “We’re hoping this is a wake-up call to regulators and Congress.”

3. Bloomberg Businessweek, “Beijing, Shanghai Step Up Rules Battle Against Pollution”

January 19, 2014

China’s capital city and the nation’s financial hub are stepping up measures to curb pollution as the meteorological agency warned of hazardous smog levels for a fourth day.

In Beijing, companies, construction sites, street vendors and vehicle owners who exceed stipulated emission limits will face fines and other penalties, according to a draft plan released by the city government on Jan. 18. Shanghai will phase out 500 polluting, hazardous and energy-intensive facilities, the city’s Mayor Yang Xiong said yesterday.

President Xi Jinping has pledged to tackle pollution amid rising public concern that smog and environmental degradation are affecting the nation’s health and the economy. The Ministry of Environmental Protection this month told all provinces and municipalities to cut air pollutants by as much as one quarter.

“This pollution is leading to much public worry,” Liu Jigang, deputy director of the standing committee of the Beijing People’s Congress, said in comments posted on the city government’s website. Beijing’s average reading of PM2.5, fine airborne particulates that pose the largest health risks, were more than 1.5 times higher than the national target of 35 last year, he said.

The city published a draft of a pollution prevention plan on Jan. 18 with new penalties, according to a Beijing Morning Post report yesterday. They include fines of 10,000 yuan ($1,653) to 100,000 yuan and possible closures for companies exceeding national or city emission limits. Owners of vehicles who exceed emission rules will face penalties of as much as 3,000 yuan, the newspaper said.

The National Meteorological Center issued a yellow alert for smog yesterday, the fourth straight day, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The warning covered areas in 10 provinces and municipalities including Shanghai and Tianjin, a coastal city neighboring Beijing.

Shanghai Warning

At a meeting of the municipal people’s congress yesterday, Shanghai’s mayor said the city will retrofit power plants with anti-dust and denitration equipment, and accelerate the replacement of coal-fired boilers and furnaces.

The city will also implement its clean air action plan, and pay more attention to the treatment of PM2.5 particulate matter, Yang said.

Shanghai’s government yesterday warned children and the elderly to avoid prolonged or heavy outdoor activities as PM2.5 readings hit six times the World Health Organization’s recommended level of daily exposure.

The order was made as the city’s environmental monitoring center said air quality readings signaled “heavy pollution.” The level of PM2.5 pollutants was 157.2 micrograms per cubic meter, compared with WHO guidelines of exposure of no more than 25 over a 24-hour period.

Exceeding Standards

Beijing and Shanghai have been told by the environmental protection ministry to cut PM2.5 average readings by 25 percent and 15 percent respectively by 2017.

Steel factories and thermal power plants in eastern China that provide real-time emissions data frequently exceed national standards, according to a study led by Beijing-based environmental group Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs released on Jan. 14.

China’s smog will be tough to eradicate without addressing industrial coal pollution, according to Barbara Finamore, Asia director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington-based environmental organization.

“In the past year China has announced significant plans to cut pollution and increase transparency,” Finamore said in e-mailed comments on Jan. 16. “Their challenge now is to put those plans into action fast because the public’s patience is running out.”

Xi said solving China’s environmental issues needs “bigger steps and patience,” Xinhua reported on Dec. 28, citing comments the president made during a visit to a power plant in Beijing. PM2.5 has generated heated discussion, Xinhua cited him as saying.

4. China Daily USA, “Pollution-Reporting Measures Seen Aiding Battle Against Smog”

January 21, 2014

By Jack Freifelder

China’s air pollution data- reporting initiatives mark a “turning point” in the country’s battle against choking smog and other environmental challenges, an official with the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) said.

Linda Greer, the director of the NRDC’s health program, said the initiatives which took effect at the start of this year “have more potential than anything else the government has done because it will really enable local officials and concerned citizens to target their concerns and focus attention on the big problems”.

Although it’s early, “it could be a watershed moment,” Greer told China Daily in an interview.

To be more transparent about the pollutants in the nation’s environment, the Chinese government has begun requiring some major cities to release hourly statistical updates on air quality and wastewater discharge. By 2015, the aim is to have every major city in China release pollution data to the public.

Seven of the 10 Chinese cities with the worst air pollution in the third quarter of 2013 were located in Hebei province, which surrounds the Chinese capital of Beijing.

Liu Jigang, deputy director of the standing committee of the Beijing People’s Congress, said public discontent with the pollution issue is on the rise. “This pollution is leading to much public worry,” Liu said in comments posted on the city government’s website.

President Xi Jinping has pledged to tackle pollution amid increasing public concern that environmental issues threaten the health of both citizens and the national economy.

Xi has said solving China’s environmental issues calls for “bigger steps and patience,” drawing on comments he made during a trip to a power plant in Beijing, Bloomberg News reported.

Barbara Finamore, Asia director of the NRDC, a New York-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group, said air pollution problems are tough to eradicate without tackling these issues head-on.

“China’s toxic air is not going to go away until the root cause is addressed – uncontrolled industrial coal pollution,” Finamore said in an e-mail to China Daily. “There are signals that the country is recognizing this. In the past year China has announced significant plans to cut pollution and increase transparency. Their challenge now is to put those plans into action fast because the public’s patience is running out,” she said.

In another initiative targeting air pollution, China recently began requiring 15,000 of the nation’s biggest factories to monitor air emissions and wastewater discharge continuously. More than 150 cities have been called on to report emissions data to the public, according to the NRDC.

Greer, who has a doctorate in environmental toxicology, said the increased availability of information is a pragmatic step toward further traction on this key environmental issue in China.

“Making information available on the sources of the pollution is the next logical step in this campaign,” Greer said. “It’s that kind of public pressure that in other countries around the world really inspires the sources to do a much better job of controlling their pollution.”

China “is doing this environmental reporting in 2013, so they really have all the electronic communication technology at their fingertips,” Greer said. “It’s a different ballgame now than when we were first doing our reporting. We hope that the NRDC’s experience could be useful to the Chinese government and other NGOs who are staffed there to help them fast-track activity, learn from our mistakes and make faster progress on this than they would make otherwise.”

5. National Public Radio, “Jerry Brown Declares A Drought Emergency In California”

January 17, 2014

By Richard Gonzales

Listen to the Interview: http://www.npr.org/2014/01/17/263494972/jerry-brown-declares-a-drought-emergency-in-california

California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency on Friday, amid growing concerns about future water supplies for residents and for farmers. Brown called for a 20 percent voluntary reduction in water use and eased water transfer rights between farmers. However, mandatory measures will still be left to local communities to impose, for now.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

In California, Governor Jerry Brown has signed an emergency drought declaration, saying his state is seeing the driest weather in about a century. This is California’s third consecutive dry year with no appreciable rain in sight. As NPR’s Richard Gonzales reports, cities and counties across the state are taking drastic measures.

RICHARD GONZALES, BYLINE: January is usually a wet month in California but there’s hardly been a hint of rain. Throughout the state, from the coast to the inland valleys to the mountains, residents are beginning to see what those parched conditions really mean.

GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN: Today, I’m declaring a drought emergency in the state of California because we’re facing perhaps the worst drought that California has ever seen since records began being kept about a hundred years ago.

GONZALES: With that declaration, Brown urged state residents to voluntarily reduce their water consumption by 20 percent.

BROWN: This takes a coming together of all the people of California to deal with this serious and prolonged event of nature.

GONZALES: Brown has been under growing pressure to respond to reports of bone-dry reservoirs and an alarmingly low snow pack. Today’s announcement stopped short of imposing any mandatory conservation measures. For now, mandatory water restrictions are being left to individual cities. The Sacramento City Council, this week, voted to require residents to reduce consumption by between 20 to 30 percent. The city plans to dispatch a team of monitors to enforce rules restricting outdoor irrigation and car washing. Repeat offenders could face fines of up to $1,000.

In the Central Valley, the state’s ag industry praised the governor’s declaration. Gayle Holman is a spokeswoman for the Westlands Water District, the largest agricultural water district in the country. She says, the declaration will ease some environmental rules governing water allocations.

GAYLE HOLMAN: With this drought declaration, it provides flexibility and easing of some of the regulations that prohibit water flowing south of the delta to ag districts like Westlands.

GONZALES: Environmentalists are also hailing the governor’s action. Kate Poole is an attorney with the Natural Resource Defense Council’s water program. She says today’s declaration could be a boost for long-term conservation and water storage efforts.

KATE POOLE: The governor, for one, has a big bully pulpit. And so making sure that everybody in the state is aware that we’re in tough situation in terms of our water supplies and does what they can to cut back on water use is very important.

GONZALES: California isn’t the only state grappling with drought. Federal officials are designating portions of 11 western and central states as primary natural disaster areas due to the lack of rain. The move means that farmers in those areas can qualify for low-interest emergency loans.

6. Reuters, “Nuclear Power Is Set To Disappoint, Again”

January 21, 2014

By John Kemp

Nuclear power is the energy dream that refuses to die, despite serious accidents at Windscale (1957), Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011).

Many of the arguments that were employed in favour of nuclear in the 1950s and 1960s as a solution to oil supplies running out are now being resurrected in favour of nuclear as a solution to climate change.

But the promise of safe, clean and reasonably priced nuclear power seems as far away now as it was 60 years ago. We are still waiting for the safe, cheap and reliable reactor designs that were promised in 1956.

PEAKING OIL

Back in the 1950s, plentiful and cheap energy from fissioning uranium and thorium was seen as the only alternative to fast-depleting fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal.

Shell geologist M. King Hubbert is best known as the grandfather of “peak oil” for his theories about the imminent exhaustion of oil resources in the United States and around the world.

But he was also a strong advocate for nuclear power. The 1956 paper that made him famous explicitly linked it to peaking oil production (“Nuclear energy and the fossil fuels”).

“It appears that there exist within minable depths in the United States rocks with uranium contents equivalent to 1,000 barrels of oil or more per metric tonne, whose total energy content is probably several hundred times that of all the fossil fuels combined,” Hubbert wrote.

“The world appears to be on the threshold of an era which in terms of energy consumption will be at least an order of magnitude greater than that made possible by fossil fuels.”

On a time-scale spanning millennia, “the discovery, exploitation and exhaustion of the fossil fuels will be seen to be but an ephemeral event”.

By contrast, nuclear offered an energy supply adequate to meet the planet’s needs for thousands of years.

Writing in the 1950s, when the United States and the Soviet Union were racing to build ever-bigger nuclear weapons, Hubbert could not be unaware of the perils associated with splitting the atom.

Nuclear scientists were still learning to master the peaceful uses of atomic energy to build utility-scale civilian power reactors.

However, provided the superpowers did not wipe each other out in the meantime with a devastating exchange of nuclear weapons, Hubbert thought civilian nuclear power would become a viable alternative to oil and gas by the 1970s.

“It will probably require the better part of another 10 or 15 years of research and development before stabilized designs of reactors … are achieved,” Hubbert predicted, but after that “we may expect the usual exponential rate of growth”.

Hubbert would probably have been surprised and disappointed about how little progress has been made in the intervening years.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate scientists are now revisiting many of the same arguments in favour of nuclear as a way to avert global warming.

In November 2013, James Hansen, formerly head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the doyen of the climate science movement, published an open letter, with three colleagues, addressed “to those influencing environmental policy but opposed to nuclear power”.

“As climate and energy scientists concerned with global climate change, we are writing to urge you to advocate the development and deployment of safer nuclear energy systems,” Hansen and his colleagues said in the letter.

“In the real world there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power,” they wrote.

“Continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity’s ability to avoid dangerous climate change.”

While acknowledging the risks associated with nuclear power, including accidents and the possibility of weapons proliferation, the scientists said these are dwarfed by the risks associated with pumping vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels.

Echoing Hubbert, they insisted: “We understand that today’s nuclear plants are far from perfect. Fortunately, passive safety systems and other advances can make new plants much safer. And modern nuclear technology can reduce proliferation risks and solve the waste disposal problem.”

Hansen and his colleagues argued that wind, solar and biomass simply cannot scale up fast enough to provide cheap and reliable energy on the scale required, so anyone concerned about global warming cannot afford to rule out nuclear as a way to displace substantial amounts of fossil fuel combustion.

HOSTILE REACTION

Nuclear power arouses strong emotions. Hansen’s letter was immediately blasted by climate specialists at the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and other environmental groups, many of which have campaigned against nuclear power for more than three decades on safety grounds.

“The authors of this letter (and other nuclear energy proponents) are on the wrong track,” the NRDC wrote in a withering response.

“Given its massive capital costs, technical complexity, and international security concerns, nuclear power is clearly not a practical alternative,” they added (“Response to an Open Letter on the Future of Nuclear Power”, Nov. 5, 2013).

The NRDC wants policymakers to focus on energy efficiency and renewables such as wind and solar, and not become distracted by dreams of cheap, plentiful and clean nuclear energy.

“The open letter suggests that it is the environmental community that is somehow holding back a nuclear power surge. Nothing could be further from the truth,” the NRDC complained.

“No one can or should close the door to the prospect of improved nuclear power technology. But in a world with constrained capital resources and an urgent need to find the lowest-cost ways to cut carbon pollution, nuclear power ranks far down the list of promising or likely solutions,” according to the council.

“A U.S. nuclear renaissance has failed to materialize, despite targeted federal subsidies, because of nuclear power’s high capital cost, long construction times, the lower demand for electricity due largely to improvements in energy efficiency, and competition from renewables,” the NRDC said.

TROUBLED TECHNOLOGY

The NRDC’s critique is not the whole story, however. The industry’s hoped-for “nuclear renaissance” has been thwarted by three developments: cheap natural gas from the shale revolution; regulatory delays due to environmental activism; and the disaster at Fukushima.

Like renewables such as solar and wind, nuclear power plants have very high capital costs but low fuel and other operating costs. In contrast, gas and coal-fired power plants are cheap to build but relatively expensive to run.

In the United States, the economics of nuclear power have been fatally disrupted by cheap gas, and in Western Europe as a result of cheap coal.

The shale revolution also imperils renewables. But unlike wind and solar, nuclear has not benefited from the same level of subsidies and renewable portfolio standards to help it compete (except in Britain, where the government has guaranteed special high electricity prices for nuclear power producers, as it has for wind power).

A big part of nuclear’s high capital costs has been caused by regulatory and construction delays, most of which stem from a dogged campaign waged by environmentalists to tie up projects in administrative and legal delays to make them uneconomic and force their sponsors to abandon them.

So, it is not entirely true to say the environmental community has failed to hold back nuclear power.

However, the industry is not blameless. For 60 years, nuclear engineers and operators have been promising safer and cheaper designs. By the early 2000s, the industry had recovered from memories of Chernobyl and was promising a fourth generation of standardised reactor designs with more passive safety features. Then Fukushima revealed a host of design flaws and unsafe operating practices, damaging public confidence.

It is possible that large-scale nuclear power could offer part of the solution to global warming, just as it promised to avert Hubbert’s fears about peak oil. But the industry appears no nearer than it was then to building a favourable consensus or solving its cost and safety problems.

Hansen, like Hubbert, looks set to be disappointed.

7. USA Today, “Light Bulb Attack Sheds More Heat Than Light: Our View”

January 20, 2014

By The Editorial Board, USA Today

There are two ways to look at the great debate over light bulbs.

One is that government regulations meant to save energy by filling the nation’s roughly 4 billion light sockets with vastly more efficient light bulbs are an outrageous offense to personal freedom.

The other is summed up by a funny Internet spot last year for Cree’s superefficient light emitting diode (LED) bulbs: “The light bulbs in your house were invented by Thomas Edison in 1879. Now think about that with your 2013 brain. Do you still do your wash down at the creek while your eldest son stands lookout for wolves?”

REP. BURGESS: Let consumers decide watt’s up

The trillion dollar spending bill enacted into law last week makes a nod toward the first viewpoint. It bans the federal government from spending money to enforce the phaseout of the familiar incandescent bulb.

This makes Tea Party activists happy. Getting the government out of Americans’ lighting fixtures has been one of their persistent demands. But it might have come too late to make much difference. A bipartisan 2007 law, signed by President George W. Bush, has been pushing up energy efficiency standards and pushing out the old-style light bulbs for the past two years.

Traditional bulbs convert only one-tenth of the electricity they use into light; the rest is wasted. Energy-saving rules made the old 100-watt bulb obsolete in January 2012, followed by the 75-watt last year and the 40-watt and 60-watt bulbs this month.

You can still find the old-style bulbs, but inventory is dwindling. Bulb makers and retailers have largely moved on. So have most consumers, according to polls.

True, affection for traditional bulbs is strong, and the first replacements were hard to love. They were expensive and slow to warm up. Some produced light that people found unpleasant. Competition and innovation have fixed most problems, including the price. Squiggly compact fluorescents, or CFLs, that once cost as much as $35 a bulb now commonly sell for about $2 or less.

LEDs are still more expensive but even more efficient, and those who want their old-style bulbs can buy modified incandescents virtually indistinguishable — except that they use about a quarter less electricity.

And that’s the point. The new bulbs may cost more, but they use so much less power and last so much longer that they pay for themselves. Over all, switching to new bulbs could save the electricity produced by 30 power plants — enough to power every home in Texas, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Critics complain that the government is “picking winners,” but the bill Bush signed did this the right way: It set efficiency standards that manufacturers could meet any way they liked, and the result is visible at any hardware store — a huge selection of competing bulbs.

Not every government-mandated standard works well or justifies its existence, but the light bulb rule has spurred remarkable innovation and is already saving significant amounts of electricity. A time when a boom in oil and natural gas production has brought the nation tantalizingly close to energy independence is no time to backtrack on bulbs.

USA TODAY’s editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

8. National Geographic, “4 Ways Green Groups Say Trans-Pacific Partnership Will Hurt Environment”

January 17, 2014

By Brian Clark Howard

A leaked draft of a major free trade agreement among the United States, Canada, Mexico, and nations on the Pacific Rim raises alarming questions about environmental protections, several leading green groups say.

“If the environment chapter is finalized as written in this leaked document, President Obama’s environmental trade record would be worse than George W. Bush’s,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement after a draft of the agreement was published Wednesday on WikiLeaks.

“This draft chapter falls flat on every single one of our issues—oceans, fish, wildlife, and forest protections—and in fact, rolls back on the progress made in past free trade pacts,” he said.

The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership is a huge pact that would govern about 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product and one-third of world trade, said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

The agreement involves a sprawling cast of countries: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.

The NRDC joined with the Sierra Club and WWF in criticizing the leaked draft of the environment chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange said proved the chapter was “a toothless public relations exercise with no enforcement mechanism.”

The White House has pushed back against such criticisms. In a blog post responding to the leak this week, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) wrote that “stewardship is a core American value, and we will insist on a robust, fully enforceable environment chapter in the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) or we will not come to agreement.”

Here are four grievances voiced by environmental groups over the leaked chapter:

1. They say the pact lacks basic environmental provisions.

This is all about what’s not in the proposed pact.

The NRDC’s Schmidt says that environmental groups are asking for “some pretty basic environmental provisions.

“We’re saying don’t subsidize unsustainable fisheries and don’t do illegal things,” he said.

Environmentalists say that the Obama White House has hinted that it will not support an agreement without enforceable environmental provisions, in recent remarks by some of the administration’s key environmental players.

But the “overarching” problem with the leaked draft, Schmidt says, is that “there’s no enforcement.”

The leaked document mentions that trade partners should take steps to protect the environment, but Schmidt says that “there are many caveats that effectively allow countries to not make these enforceable.

“References to the word ‘shall’ are very rarely used,” he says, “and are often paired with ‘seek to’ or ‘attempt,’ which are not legally enforceable.”

2. Green groups say the draft agreement does not discourage overfishing.

The nations considering the Trans-Pacific Partnership have a “responsibility” to provide adequate protection against overfishing, but the draft agreement fails to provide that, said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF.

The countries negotiating the agreement account for about a third of global fisheries production, Roberts notes, so the stakes are high.

Those countries have a range of direct and indirect subsidies for their fishing fleets, including payments, discounted loans, reduced prices on fuel, and so on.

Photo of shark fins drying in the sun cover the roof of a factory building in Hong Kong.

Shark fins, which are overharvested for soup, dry on the roof of a factory in Hong Kong.

“What we have been pushing for is for countries to phase out harmful subsidies … that lead to greater harvest of fishing stocks than can be sustained,” said Schmidt. “We’re not saying end all fishing programs and support, but you need to make sure that any support is targeted at programs that don’t lead to overconsumption of fish stocks.”

For its part, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office responded that the U.S. is “proposing that the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] include, for the first time in any trade or environment agreement, groundbreaking prohibitions on fish subsidies that set a new and higher baseline for fisheries protections.”

3. The pact does not take a strong enough stance against illegal wildlife products, activists say.

Green groups would like to see stronger enforcement of international laws on products made from endangered species, such as elephant ivory or tiger pelts, as part of a new trade agreement.

“The lack of fully-enforceable environmental safeguards means negotiators are allowing a unique opportunity to protect wildlife and support legal sustainable trade of renewable resources to slip through their fingers,” WWF’s Roberts said in a statement.

The negotiating countries are already party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which prohibits overseas trade of endangered species, “but we know that enforcement is not 100 percent,” Schmidt said.

4. Green groups say the agreement doesn’t go far enough in preventing illegal logging.

Many endangered trees are cut down around the world, often through logging in restricted areas such as parks, sometimes under the cover of darkness. The U.S. has a law, known as the amended Lacey Act, that prohibits import of illegally logged timber products. Australia has a similar law, and Japan is considering one.

The NRDC and allied groups want each country that signs onto the Trans-Pacific Partnership to enact an equivalent law.

1. National Journal, “EPA Versus Greens, Fracking Edition”

January 15, 2014

By Amy Harder, Clare Foran and Ben Geman

The brewing battle between environmentalists and President Obama over fracking is ramping up.

In a letter to Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy is seeking to address concerns about the agency’s policies and actions around the controversial drilling technology called fracking. Beinecke wasn’t happy with that letter, according to EnergyWire.

Grassroots environmentalists first launched the war against fracking a few years ago, and it’s taken hold in many parts of the country. Now, major environmental groups with big Washington footprints are getting more critical of the process.

This is a troubling trend for the natural-gas industry, which once considered many of these groups its allies.

It may not bode well for the Democratic Party either, whose policymakers risk alienating a key constituent group and triggering divisions within the party if they mishandle—politically and policy-wise—this issue of fracking.

Meanwhile, it is a testament to the power of grassroots environmentalism.

2. Washington Post, “EPA: Mining would destroy fishery, villages, part of watershed in Alaska’s Bristol Bay”

January 15, 2013

By Darryl Fears

A large-scale mining operation in Alaska’s Bristol Bay would destroy a significant portion of the watershed, a pristine fishery that supports nearly half the world’s sockeye salmon and dozens of Native villages that have relied on fishing for thousands of years, according to a report released Wednesday by the Obama administration.

The long-awaited final assessment on potential impacts of mining in the western Alaska region, compiled over three years by the Environmental Protection Agency at the request of area tribes, dealt a serious blow to a Canadian company’s ambitions to dig one of the world’s largest pit mines to extract resources from the mineral-rich land.

The company, Northern Dynasty Mining, has yet to file a permit for its Pebble Mine, but the EPA estimated that up to 94 miles “of salmon-supporting streams and 1,300 to 5,350 acres of wetlands, ponds, and lakes” would be erased by the footprint of a mining pit, depending on its size.

Based on the recent records of similar mines in the United States, the EPA projected that polluted water from the site could enter streams from dredged solid waste and wastewater runoff. “Under routine operations, EPA estimates adverse direct and indirect effects on fish in 13 to 51 miles of streams,” the agency said in a statement released in combination with the report.

Northern Dynasty and its Republican supporters criticized the report as biased, premature and bad for business. Environmental groups and Democrats hailed the assessment as a first step to protecting fish, wildlife and Alaska Natives whose way of life rely on them.

“Publication of the final watershed assessment is really the final chapter in a very sad story,” said Ron Thiessen, Northern Dynasty’s president and chief executive, who hadn’t read the document. “We believe EPA set out to do a flawed analysis of the Pebble Project, and they certainly succeeded with both their first and second drafts” of the Bristol Bay watershed assessment. “We have every expectation that the final report released today is more of the same.”

The EPA began the assessment in 2010, when tribes asked the agency to intervene after Northern Dynasty expressed interest in a major dig for copper and gold worth an estimated $500 billion.

EPA officials said granting such a request is unusual, but scientists thought a peer­reviewed study was crucial, given Bristol Bay’s historical importance to the tribes, which have fished there for thousands of years, and its distinction as one of the world’s last great, undisturbed salmon fisheries.

Thiessen noted that the assessment does not include recommendations or regulations that might affect the future development of the Pebble Project. He said Northern Dynasty would submit a proposal that can be reviewed by federal and state officials in the coming months.

“We have every expectation that the Environmental Impact Statement process . . . to be administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will ultimately provide a much more rigorous, fair and transparent review of the science surrounding this important project,” he said.

A coalition of opponents made up of Alaska Native leaders, commercial fishermen, jewelers and environmental groups had a different view. They called on the EPA to end any chance that the project can move forward.

“It’s time for the EPA to take immediate steps to protect the fishery, the Alaska Native communities who rely on it as their primary source of food and the 14,000 jobs that depend on it,” said Luki Akelkok, a sport-fishing lodge owner who is chairman of Nunamta Aulukestai, an association of 10 Bristol Bay Native tribes and Native village corporations.

“EPA’s assessment is objective, clear and grounded in sound science,” said Taryn Kiekow, senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Now . . . it is time for the agency to take regulatory action to stop the Pebble Mine.”

Dennis McLerran, administrator for the regional EPA office that oversees the watershed, said the agency is unwilling to take that step.

“We have not yet made any decisions with respect to regulatory actions,” he said in a conference call with reporters.

Still, in its analysis, based on documents submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission by Northern Dynasty, the EPA painted a picture of potential devastation.

An 86-mile transportation corridor with the site would cross 54 streams and rivers where about 35 million adult salmon return from the ocean to spawn and young salmon migrate to the ocean to swim.

If a storage dam were to fail, it “would have a catastrophic impact on fish for decades,” said Jeff Frithsen, a senior scientist at the EPA.

3. The Cordova Times, “EPA says impact of Bristol Bay mine could be devastating”

January 15, 2014

By Margaret Bauman

A long-waiting final federal report on the Bristol Bay watershed says large-scale mining there could have potentially catastrophic effects on fishery resources.

The report, online at http://www.epa.gov/bristolbay, outlines a number of potential adverse results that could occur if the mine was developed and operated, including catastrophic damage to fishery habitat due to development, operation and accidents at such a large scale mine.

The report does not specifically mention the Pebble mine, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes that the assessment does not recommend policy or regulatory decisions.

“Thousands of hardworking commercial fishermen rely on the Bristol Bay fishery, and we’re proud to provide a sustainable and healthy source of food for the nation,” said Bob Waldrop, executive director of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association. “Our industry is the economic engine for the region, and we’re calling on the Obama Administration to take immediate steps to protect it from all large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay drainages.”

The report was praised as objective, clear and grounded in sound science by environmental organizations including Trout Unlimited and the Natural Resources Defense Council, who called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to protect fisheries habitat from adverse impacts.

Northern Dynasty Minerals, the Vancouver, British Columbia junior mining company that has spent millions of dollars already gathering data on the project, issued a statement saying the EPA’ final Bristol Bay watershed report “does not include any recommendations or regulatory actions that will affect future development of the Pebble project.

“Publication of the final watershed assessment is really the final chapter in a very sad story,” said Ron Thiessen, president of Northern Dynasty, a subsidiary of Hunter Dickinson Inc. “We believe EPA set out to do a flawed analysis of the Pebble project, and they certainly succeeded with both their first and second drafts of the BBWA. We have every expectation that the final report released today is more of the same.”

Thiessen’s commentary was echoed by John Shively, chief executive officer of the Pebble Partnership in Anchorage, who called the draft and final documents flawed.

Shively said the report does not assess effects of the Pebble project, for which the Pebble Partnership has not yet submitted a project for regulatory evaluation.

“Clearly”, said Shively, “this report should not be used as the basis for any type of agency decision regarding Pebble.”

Joel Reynolds, western director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the document objective, clear and grounded in sound science, and said it’s time for the EPA to take regulatory action to stop the Pebble mine.

The document makes it clear that the mine would deal a huge blow to the sportsmen’s paradise we have in Bristol Bay,” said Tim Bristol, director of Trout Unlimited’s Alaska program. “Bristol Bay is the last place you should put a mike like this,” he said.

A group of commercial fishermen, investors, jewelers, conservation organizations and Alaska Native leaders meanwhile applauded the EPA’s final assessment.

“The study documents the global significance of the Bristol Bay wild salmon fishery – the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world – and highlights the severe impact and risks of large-scale mining, including the proposed Pebble mine, in the Bristol Bay watershed,” the group said, in a statement issued by Earthworks, a national conservation group.

Jennifer Krill, executive director of Earthworks, said the fate of the nation’s greatest salmon fishery and jobs that depend on it now rests with the EPA.

“There are some places where mining cannot be done without forever damaging landscapes, wildlife, businesses, and communities,” said Michael J. Kowalski, chairman and chief executive officer of Tifffany & Co., the New York based jewelry firm. “Bristol Bay is one such place. We, along with many of our fellow jewelers, urge the EPA to use its authority under the Clean Water Act to safeguard Bristol Bay and the communities and fishery it supports.”

Trillium Assets Management, also supported the EPA report. “Anglo American’s withdrawal from the project highlights significant business and investment risks,” said Jonas Kron, senior vice president of Trillium.”We urge the EPA to take immediate steps to initiate the 404 © process to protect he fishery and provide regulatory clarity.”

Section 404 © of the Clean Water Act established a program to regulate the discharge of dredged or fill material into the waters of the United States.

It authorizes the EPA administrator to deny or restrict the use of defined areas as disposal sites, after determining that the discharge of such materials into that area would have an unacceptable adverse effect on fisheries, wildlife, municipal water supplies or recreational use.

Jason Metrokin, president and chief executive officer of the Bristol Bay Native Corp., also applauded the EPA’s assessment.

“From the very beginning, EPA was in Bristol Bay because our federally recognized tribes and Native organizations, including BBNC, asked them to be,” Metrokin said.

“With today’s release, science has weighted in. Bristol Bay, its existing jobs and way of life could be irreparably damaged by a large-scale mine that is the size and scope of the Pebble project- and therefore, our fish, our people and our cultures must be protected.”

Metrokin said BBNC reports responsible development where it can be done without causing unacceptable risks to the people, cultures and fishing economy of the region.

The proposed Pebble mine is not such a project,” he said. “It’s time for the agency to initiate a 404 © action to protect Bristol Bay.”

4. Bloomberg, “Canada Ambassador and Former Allies at Odds on Keystone XL”

January 16, 2014

By Jim Snyder

With his country’s foreign minister in tow, Canadian Ambassador Gary Doer walked the marble corridors of the U.S. Capitol yesterday pitching the prize his nation is seeking: the Keystone XL pipeline.

“It always makes more sense in our view to get energy from middle North American than the Middle East,” Doer said after a session with Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, a Keystone supporter.

Backing a project bitterly opposed by environmentalists is something of a shift for Doer. During his three terms as premier of Manitoba, he built a reputation as a champion of combating global warming. He backed the Kyoto Protocol to cut global carbon emissions, pushed to shut coal-fired power plants and promoted renewable energy such as wind and hydropower. He was named by Businessweek in 2005 as one of 20 people leading the fight against climate change.

Now Doer is on the other side of an issue that has inflamed his one-time climate allies.

“I’m just trying to put the puck in the net,” Doer said in an interview last month at the expansive Canadian embassy in Washington, a little more than a slapshot from the Capitol and decorated with drawings of Niagara Falls, a walrus and a polar bear.

Double Production

While environmentalists consider Keystone an assault on the climate, Canada is counting on TransCanada Corp.’s $5.4 billion project to connect its vast reserves of crude oil to the world’s largest refining center along the U.S. coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The pipeline would help oil-sands developers reach their goal of doubling production by 2025, and raise the prices they are paid for the fossil fuel — putting pressure on Doer and his colleagues to make a case in Washington.

Visitor logs show Doer has been a frequent visitor to the White House. He also meets regularly with U.S. and Canadian media outlets as well as labor groups and government agencies, highlighting the benefits of Keystone to both countries.

In October, the embassy co-hosted an event with an oil- industry group whose members include Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Dow Chemical Co. Yesterday, Doer took Foreign Minister John Baird to Capitol Hill where he met with both Democrats and Republicans. Baird is scheduled to meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tomorrow.

“He is an immensely pragmatic politician,” Keith Stewart, a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Canada, which opposes the pipeline, said of Doer. “As premier of Manitoba, being good on climate is good politics. It’s not part of the job description to be Canada’s ambassador to Washington.”

‘Environmental Industry’

In the interview at the embassy, Doer dismissed opposition to Keystone as uninformed and driven by an “environmental industry” in Washington that has turned the controversy into a tool for fundraising. He said he promoted oil and gas development when he was premier, too.

“My view is the oil is coming from Canada now,” he said. “It’s just a question of how it gets there.”

Trains that fill a gap in transport capacity release more greenhouse gases and aren’t as safe as pipelines, Doer said. Canada is a reliable U.S. ally, and its oil will displace imports from Venezuela, which isn’t, Doer said.

With graying hair and a slightly grizzled voice, Doer, 65, has built his career, from president of the Manitoba Government Employees’ Association to chief of his nation’s most important embassy, by nurturing relationships. He employs humor, energy and a deft personal touch.

Hockey Match

He’s already planning a celebration of the U.S.-Canada gold medal hockey match he is betting will take place at the Winter Olympics in Sochi next month. If it does, it will be a replay of the game in Vancouver in 2010, which Canada won 3-2.

“Ovechkin won’t be happy,” he said. The Washington Capitals’s National Hockey League star, Alexander Ovechkin, is playing for Russia.

Paul Thomas, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, said Doer’s political skill gave Manitoba, with less than 4 percent of Canada’s total population, a national profile befitting a larger province for the 10 years he represented the liberal New Democratic Party.

“He has contextual intelligence,” Thomas said in a phone interview. “He can read situations in a very insightful way.”

When he held office, he was a member of a liberal party. Doer is now the face of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s conservative government in Washington.

“I like to think that I tried to focus on results rather than process,” Doer said.

Built Schools

As premier, he balanced budgets as he also expanded educational opportunities by building new schools in the north and inner city of Winnipeg, Doer’s hometown, said Paul Vogt, a former top aide who is now a visiting scholar at the University of Manitoba.

Education was a priority for Doer, who left college to work as a counselor at a youth corrections facility, Vogt said. Post- secondary enrollment increased by a third during his three terms in office, he said.

“He’s a person of principle,” Vogt said. “He had a very strong sense of what brought him into politics and what he’s there to achieve.”

Doer also racked up victories on energy and environment policy. He pushed for the first wind farms and the construction of a transmission lines to sell electricity to U.S. states in the northern plains, and promoted ethanol and stricter emissions standards for automobiles.

Keystone Test

Keystone is testing his salesmanship skills.

Critics — including supporters of President Barack Obama – – say it would deepen climate risks by promoting development of Alberta’s carbon-heavy oil sands. Obama said in a June speech on climate change that he wouldn’t back the project if it would significantly increase carbon-dioxide emissions.

A draft environmental analysis prepared for the State Department said it wouldn’t, because Alberta’s oil sands would be developed even if the pipeline didn’t go forward. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency called for a fuller review. Environmental groups also challenged the finding.

The fact that it has become a symbol by which to measure Obama’s commitment to climate change may not bode well for the project.

Oil sands development is Canada’s fastest-growing source of greenhouse-gas emissions.

“You have to be an incredibly good advocate to make the case that Canada is doing the right thing on climate,” said Clare Demerse, director of federal policy at the Pembina Institute, a nonprofit environmental research and advocacy group. “Clearly, Canada is not.”

Canada’s Carbon

Canada has “some work to do to get to our target,” Doer acknowledged, as he defended his country’s policies, noting that it had put in place rules that would lead to the end of coal- fired power generation.

Danielle Droitsch, director of Natural Resources Defense Council’s Canada Project, said the regulations will allow coal plants to operate for decades. Canada is also much less reliant on coal than the U.S., where it generates about 40 percent of electricity. In Canada, coal’s total is around 15 percent.

“Coal is the U.S.’s problem,” Droitsch said. “Tar sands is Canada’s problem.”

In his push for Keystone, Doer has counted on relationships he developed as premier. The embassy held a reception on Feb. 23 for governors attending a National Governors Association meeting in Washington. Pointing to Alberta Premier Alison Redford, personable and unassuming, Vogt said Doer asked the group whether they wanted to get their fuel from her or Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s president at the time who once called the U.S. an assassin. Chavez died in May.

“The Harper government has staked a lot of its reputation on getting the pipeline through,” Thomas, at the University of Manitoba, said. “I can’t think of anybody among our recent ambassadors who would be better equipped to make this happen, if it’s possible.”

5. Forbes, “More Professional Sports Teams are Thinking Green, to Please Fans and Make Money”

January 15, 2014

By Heather Clancy

The requisite press releases have been issued proclaiming the uber green-ness of the upcoming Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium in my home state of New Jersey.

Indeed, back in 2009, the venue was dubbed the “Greenest Stadium in the NFL” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It even uses solar power (about 1,350 panels) to generate the electricity for the programmable LED light display across the top of the stadium.

For the big game in early February, the big focus has been on the green business practices embraced by the concession organization, which is converting all kitchen waste oil to biodiesel fuel, composting the kitchen scraps, donating leftover food and recycling the mounds of cardboard, plastic, glass and other materials that remain after fans leave the stands.

But if you really interested in innovative green technology applications in the professional sports world, you’ll need to look a bit farther west to Cleveland, where the Browns football team is testing an anaerobic digester from InSinkErator (yes, the garbage disposal company) as a means of diverting food waste at FirstEnergy Stadium.

It’s the first professional sports installation for the new technology, called Grind2Energy, although it isn’t actually on site. The system uses food scraps from the concessions – an estimated 35 tons per season — which is ground into a slurry and transported to the quasar energy group at Ohio State University. (It’s part of the school’s research and development organization for the agricultural department). There, the material is used as a feedstock. The end result is biogas and other fuels, along with nutrients that can be used for fertilizer (enough for three football fields full of crops).

This particular installation is a collaboration between the Browns, FirstEnergy Stadium, and the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. That’s because an important ingredient in the process is cow manure, which produces methane.

Anaerobic digesters aren’t exactly new. They are traditionally used by forward-thinking dairy farms (like Stonyfield Farms) to offset electricity needs and reuse waste rather than carting it away and dumping it other places.

“Digester systems are something this country’s dairy farmers have used for years,” said Tom Gallagher, CEO of the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, said in a statement about the deal. “But we have just begun to tap what is possible. Through new partnerships – whether it’s with a stadium, or a hospital or a chain of supermarkets – dairy farms in all 50 states are able to house this type of system and turn food waste into value for local communities.”

The system hosted by the Browns will produce enough electricity to power one home for about 1.5 years, and enough natural gas for 32 homes. So, it’s not huge, but it represents an example of projects that might matter at a local level.

Consider how many homes have built-in garbage disposals for grinding up food waste. Now, imagine if municipal governments got involved to put that substance to a revenue-producing use.

From a business perspective, the interest in finding better ways to handle food waste is become more pronounced: driven in large part by the United Nations revelation in 2011 that up to 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted annually, about one-third of everything produced for human consumption.

From a marketing standpoint, professional sports teams could play an important role in making technologies for dealing with this problem – as well as other nagging natural resource concerns such as wasted water — more visible. There’s even a four-year-old organization dedicated to this, the Green Sports Alliance (GSA), which now has 212 members. (The group was founded by Paul Allen’s Vulcan and the Natural Resources Defense Council.)

“Cities and local communities really identify with their professional teams, so when we see franchises make these partnerships and these commitments, we think there’s a potential multiplier effect for every fan that’s going to walk through those turnstiles,” said Allen Hershkowitz, director of the Sports Greening Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

There’s even brand-new money to be made in thinking green, at least in the minds of the auto-racing world. The FIA Formula E organization (not a GSA member) is planning a Grand Prix series starting in September in Beijing specifically for all-electric vehicles. Pictured below is the Spark-Renault SRT_01E, which is capable of speeds in excess of 150 miles per hour. The car got its first public debut in early January during the International CES show in Las Vegas.

“We expect this Championship to become the framework for research and development around the electric car, a key element for the future of our cities,” said Alejandro Agag, CEO of Formula E Holdings

At the very least, it’s clearly a great way to break down many of the performance myths associated with electric vehicles.

6. KALW- San Francisco Public Radio, “Today on Your Call: How should we adapt to a drier California?”

January 15, 2014

By Ali Budner

Listen Here

7. Washington Examiner, “Light bulb provision will do little to bring back popular, inexpensive incandescents”

January 15, 2014

By Susan Ferrechio and Sean Lengell

Tucked into a 1,500-page budget bill now moving through Congress is a Republican provision that would restore the incandescent light bulbs that were phased out in favor of greener lighting technology.

But the legislation is likely to disappoint hopeful light-bulb hoarders and other haters of the new energy-efficient, squiggly tailed compact fluorescent and LED lights that replaced the iconic bulbs.

“The light bulb [provision] is mainly political theater at this point,” said Kit Kennedy, a lawyer for the energy and transportation program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

“The efficiency standards for lighting are in effect,” Kennedy said. “The majority of U.S. manufacturers are committed to these standards, which they support, and are going to be complying with them, rider or no rider.”

Since Jan. 1, it has been illegal to produce 40- or 60-watt incandescent light bulbs in the United States. The 75-watt and 100-watt bulbs were banned earlier.

Incandescent bulbs that have been in use in America since the 1800s were banned in 2007 by green-energy legislation approved by Democratic lawmakers and signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush.

Supporters of the ban say the incandescent bulbs wasted energy and that a more environmentally friendly alternative was needed.

Defenders of the traditional bulb say the government is again overreaching, that the marketplace should decide what kind of bulbs are manufactured here.

While compact fluorescent bulbs have largely replaced the traditional bulbs, consumers also can opt for LED lights, which last longer than incandescent or fluorescent but cost much more — up to 20 times more than the bulbs they replace.

The iconic incandescent bulb has become a rallying point for Republicans and when the GOP recaptured control of the House in a 2010 wave election, lawmakers made several attempts to revive it.

Led in the House by Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, Republicans tried unsuccessfully to repeal the 2007 ban and, failing that, to cut off funding for Department of Energy enforcement of the bulb ban. Burgess finally got the funding cutoff provision inserted into an energy and water spending bill that President Obama signed into law.

The provision lawmakers inserted into the 2014 bill would extend that funding cutoff for enforcement, but would do nothing to revive the production of incandescent bulbs. Burgess acknowledged the provision’s limitations in an interview with the Washington Examiner, but said he’s hopes the measure revives interest in the traditional bulb.

Democrats dismissed the Republican effort to revive the bulb as political grandstanding that did nothing to alter the 2007 law.

“This is just a messaging amendment for [Republicans in the] House to say they made the Senate take this thing,” said a senior Democratic congressional aide. “It practically, at least in the short term, really doesn’t make any difference, because everyone’s following these rules anyway.”

8. Merced Sun-Star, “Citing health risks, California lawmakers push to limit antibiotic use on livestock”

January 16, 2014

By Jeremy B. White

The salmonella outbreak that rippled out from California chicken processing facilities last year, sickening more than 400 and hospitalizing at least 134, came with a troubling footnote: Several bacteria samples taken from victims resisted multiple types of antibiotics.

They weren’t impervious to salmonella drugs, officials from Foster Farms are quick to point out, and no one has died. Officials conducting an investigation have yet to discern the precise causes of the outbreak.

But the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria underscored concerns about new mutations of bacteria arising and afflicting humans. One of the medical breakthroughs of the 20th century, antibiotics have been victims of their own success, losing effectiveness as they have become ubiquitous medical tools.

“Any time you use an antibiotic, either in an animal or in a human, you are going to put pressure on those bacteria and you are going to create a resistance,” said Dr. Tom Chiller, a medical epidemiologist for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We know resistance is occurring across the food chain, really from farm to fork, and we know humans can become sick from those bacteria.”

Now California legislators are invoking public health as they seek limits on feeding antibiotics to livestock. They cite science that links overuse of antimicrobial drugs on farm animals to the prevalence of hardier bacteria.

“It’s a problem that I think we’re seeing more effects of,” said Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo.

Hill and Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, have introduced bills that would restrict the use of antibiotics on livestock. Both lawmakers point to a growing body of evidence indicating that overuse of livestock antibiotics – often to help animals gain weight – has allowed drug-resistant bacteria to prosper and spread.

“There’s clearly a public health concern with the overuse of antibiotics,” Mullin said in an interview, and “we need to take a bold step now.”

Food producers have access to a range of different antibiotics, but the drugs can be divided into three broad categories: antibiotics used to treat an existing health issue; antibiotics used to guard against outbreaks, introduced before animals have fallen sick; and antibiotics used for “production purposes,” to help animals bulk up more quickly or with less food.

Representatives for California’s agriculture sector and its $2.8 billion cattle industry question the charge that farmers and ranchers habitually use antibiotics to fatten up their animals. While they support using antibiotics judiciously, they say food producers need the ability to swiftly treat ill animals.

“We really don’t want to use antibiotics, because that means we’ve got sick animals,” said Dave Daley, second vice president of the California Cattlemen’s Association. But “we want to make sure antibiotics, as needed, can be used by small farmers and ranchers to care for cattle that are truly sick.”

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria represent a serious issue: the Centers for Disease Control estimates they infect more than 2 million Americans a year, killing at least 23,000 of them. A recent CDC report warning of the perils of overuse noted that the amount of antibiotics given to livestock “contributes to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in food-producing animals.”

Consequences of the drug-defying bacteria can include lengthened hospital stays and treatment methods that carry higher costs and more potential side effects, according to Avinash Kar, a staff attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“The antibiotic-resistant bacteria, once they’re generated and thrive on these facilities, can get out in a variety of ways,” including by permeating soil and water or migrating to workers, said Kar, whose organization is actively backing Mullin’s bill.

The federal Food and Drug Administration has spotlighted antibiotic resistance as a significant public health risk. In December, the agency released voluntary guidelines that would have pharmaceutical companies change how they label drugs, effectively prohibiting farmers from using antibiotics to promote growth.

Both bills before the Legislature would go further. Hill’s approach would build on the FDA advisory but make its recommendations mandatory, taking a tougher approach to banning over-the-counter weight-gain antibiotics.

“I think the FDA did not go far enough in their voluntary requirements,” Hill said. “You make them voluntary, there’s not a real incentive to focus on curtailing the use of antibiotics.”

Drug companies have said they will comply with the FDA’s framework, and the new guidelines are subject to a public comment period that ends in mid-March.

Assemblyman Frank Bigelow, R-O’Neals, said his colleagues should wait for the FDA process to play out before advancing additional regulations.

“There’s a hysteria that starts to occur, and people jump on bandwagons without knowing all the facts or looking at all the facts,” said Bigelow, a cattleman identifiable on the Assembly floor by his distinctive white rancher’s hat. “We already have an agency, the FDA, who has the oversight powers,” he added, “and we need to let them use those powers.”

Even more stringent than Hill’s proposal is Mullin’s bill, which would ban weight-gain antibiotics and sharply restrict access to the preventive kind.

Under the current system farmers and ranchers can obtain preventive antibiotics, intended to pre-emptively stem the spread of diseases like pneumonia, over the counter. The FDA has proposed having veterinarians sign off.

But making that oversight optional, as the FDA framework does, is not enough, according to Mullin. His bill would bar preventive use of antibiotics except in limited cases where there is documented risk of a sick animal infecting other animals.

To Mullin and allies, keeping those preventive antibiotics widely available would preserve a loophole.

“I’m concerned that, essentially, we’re not getting at the core problem and would still have a high volume of antibiotics in the food supply” if preventive use isn’t scaled back, Mullin said.

Beyond that, Kar said, some large producers use preventive drugs to compensate for cramped or unclean conditions that help incubate disease.

“It would really limit the circumstances when antibiotics are used to what we think are the appropriate uses: when the animal is sick or when there’s an outbreak on the premises that needs to be contained,” Kar said of Mullin’s bill. “It shouldn’t be because you’re raising the animals in crowded, unsanitary conditions.”

Building a barrier to obtaining preventive medicine is short-sighted, according to Noelle Cremers of the California Farm Bureau Federation. Cremers said the tightened standards Mullin proposes will delay treatment, comparing it to forcing a family to wait for a doctor to make house calls.

“Farmers and ranchers want to make sure that antibiotics remain effective for human health and animal health,” Cremers said, but “there’s a recognition that we need to prevent disease, and antibiotics applied through feed can do a really good job of preventing disease.”

California is in the midst of another withering drought, with dry grass leaving cattle more susceptible to respiratory issues and other problems, according to Daley of the California Cattlemen’s Association. Policymakers must give food producers the autonomy they need to keep their animals healthy, Daley said.

“Frankly, most cattlemen don’t want to see indiscriminate use of antibiotics, either,” Daley said, but “we need the flexibility to be able to use them when we need them.”