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Press Clips: airline fuel economy, a conservation deal, integrated pest management, more

2008-05-10T02:24:33Z

NRDC in the News (May 9, 2008)

NRDC’s Deron Lovaas scored some valuable real estate on the front page of the USA Today business section discussing attempts by airlines to reduce fuel use. Lovaas, director of NRDC's Vehicles Campaign, told the paper, "The airlines have historically done a much better job than the auto companies at increasing efficiency."

"They feel fuel prices,” Lovaas explained, “much more than your average consumer feels changes in fuel costs at the pump."

More on airlines and fuel economy

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Speaking of valuable real estate, quotes from NRDC's Joel Reynolds book-ended a New York Times piece detailing the conservation efforts of the Tejon Ranch development deal in California that secured easements on 240,000 acres of uniquely biodiverse land.

''This is the Holy Grail of conservation in California,'' Reynolds said.

The paper concludes by saying that Reynolds “also noted that public access to the ranch, from the grasslands to the gnarled Joshua trees, would be guaranteed, and that a 49,000-acre park would most likely be created."

More on Tejon Ranch deal

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In Women's Health, NRDC's Kim Knowlton plugged NRDC.org while drawing reader’s attention to the connection between global warming, smog, allergies and asthma.

More on allergies, asthma, and climate change

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In another health magazine – surprisingly titled Health – NRDC’s Jen Sass told readers about integrated pest management and advised caution when dealing with toxic pesticides, which, she warns, "aren't selective killers" and may increase cancer risk or neurological maladies such as Parkinson's disease.

More on alternatives to toxic pesticides

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NRDC also maintains a strong presence in Canadian media with analyst Susan Casey-Lefkowitz telling the Vancouver Sun about the Alberta tar sands' dubious future in US energy policy. “We want our energy,” she said, “but not at all costs.” To this end, the Sun reports, "The Natural Resources Defense Council and 26 other US and Canadian environmental groups sent a letter to members of the US Congress" to maintain a section of our energy bill that prohibits use of tainted energy sources like Canada's oil sands.

More on Alberta’s tar sands

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Press Clips is a new feature on Switchboard that will provide a highly selective view of the world as seen through the eyes of NRDC staff quoted by mainstream media outlets. Roundups will appear daily, Monday through Friday.

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Press Clips: spin from Detroit, restoring the San Joaquin, stopping sewage overflows, more

2008-05-09T02:12:37Z

NRDC in the News (May 8, 2008)

NRDC's Roland Hwang shares an irritating tale with NPR's Marketplace [listen] about how -- despite spending millions to fight higher CAFE standards in Congress -- Ford has had fuel-efficient technology all along. A bit of the transcript:

The auto industry's main argument against higher fuel economy standards was that meeting them would be too costly and would harm the already struggling US auto industry. Roland Hwang, with the Natural Resources Defense Council, says Ford's actions prove they've been crying wolf.
“They know how to do this,” Hwang says, “but of course a lot of these technologies have been used for higher performance, higher acceleration and making the vehicle fleet bigger.”
Hwang says with the era of the gas-guzzling SUV coming to an end, automakers can now apply these technologies to lighter and smaller cars, adding up to more savings at the pump.

More on fuel economy

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Whatever the questionable behavior of corporate America, we should all be able to agree that government should make our lives less stinky. NRDC's Nancy Stoner tells USA Today how the government needs to better police and prevent sewage overflows. As the paper reports, her analysis of EPA data found "since 2003, hundreds of municipal sewer authorities have been fined for violations, including spills that make people sick, threaten local drinking water and kill aquatic animals and plants.

Local governments will be making improvements over the next 10 to 20 years, Stoner said, but the 1.2 million miles of underground sewers across the country present quite a challenge. Still, Stoner says, "When people flush their toilets, they think the sewage is going to the treatment plant, and that's where they deserve to have it go."

More on sewage overflows

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That sort of common sense so often reflects the environmental point-of-view so it’s fair to ask why we always seem to be fighting against the political current? Imagine that quintessentially western tableau of salmon conquering bear-bordered waterfalls. Sometimes environmental advocacy can feel equally challenging.

Thankfully, as the Associated Press writes, both salmon and environmentalists breached the allegorical falls Wednesday with a US Senate settlement to restore salmon populations in the San Joaquin Delta, California. This case has raged since NRDC and other groups sued the Department of the Interior over the Friant Dam in 1988, which had dried up California's second-longest river (and a major salmon habitat) since the 50s. Hal Candee, lead negotiator for the NRDC, explains, "Today's vote is about reversing that trend [against salmon and salmon fishermen]."

More on restoring the San Joaquin River

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Also in California, another negotiated success hit this morning’s front page of the LA Times in a report on a historic conservation land deal that will preserve a huge parcel “eight times the size of San Francisco... [at] the juncture of four ecosystems: Mojave Desert grasslands, San Joaquin Valley oak woodlands, Tehachapi pine forests and coastal mountain ranges."

"We've come a long way from where we started," Joel Reynolds, senior attorney and director of the NRDC’s Southern California Program, told the Times. "This was an extremely complicated deal, but also a once-in-a-lifetime conservation opportunity."

In the negotiated settlement, NRDC and others won the conservation of 240,000 acres while agreeing to not oppose development plans on another 30,000 acres nearby; this development must proceed under environmental guidelines, including the capability to be retrofitted as future green opportunities emerge.

More on the Tejon Ranch deal

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Other conservation efforts have not yet come to fruition. As the Jackson Hole Star Tribune reports, NRDC and others have petitioned the federal government for more aggressive gray wolf conservation goals in Yellowstone. As NRDC geneticist Sylvia Fallon explains, current conservation levels leave a population too small to produce long-term genetic viability.

"[Original] recovery goals of 300 wolves across these three states were established over 20 years ago, and there's been a lot of developing science since that time,” Fallon told the Star Tribune. “The Fish and Wildlife Service has not incorporated any of this evolving science into its decision [to list the wolves as 'recovered']."

Fallon challenges, "Fish and Wildlife has not achieved a self-sustaining, recovered population of wolves." She offers a better solution: "Getting the wolves in Yellowstone connected naturally to large numbers of other wolves, so that they can naturally exchange genetic materials."

More on protecting Yellowstone’s wolves

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For another trip to the bottom of the allegorical falls, we return to San Joaquin Delta. Though we may have helped the salmon upstream, the Contra Costa Times reports that a planned diversion of 20 percent more water from the Delta might cause problems for declining salmon runs while also threatening the overall balance of the Delta as a whole.

Though a state paper touts fish that have been saved in other areas, NRDC water policy analyst Barry Nelson rebuts the state report, "The [study] is biased in a way that disguises the potential impacts of the scenarios they analyze." Nelson continues, "There's absolutely no discussion here of what the Delta can accommodate and remain healthy."

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Further north, Canada's Globe and Mail reports how NRDC senior attorney Susan Casey-Lefkowitz has opposed Canada's high-carbon-emitting tar sands, urging the US Senate to maintain a ban keeping the "tainted" fuel out of our energy portfolio.

The Mail reports that, in anticipation of attempts this week to rescind the fuel ban, a "letter [to Congress] was written by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an influential New-York-based environmental group, and endorsed by 26 other organizations."

The NRDC letter told the government it "will make the job of reducing global warming emissions even more difficult if it chooses to subsidize the development of high-carbon fuels through long term contracts."

Casey-Lefkowitz told the Mail, "The tar sands oil is very dirty." Beyond its dirty emissions, the paper explains that she notes "both the large amount of energy needed to process sticky bitumen from which petroleum is extracted and the dangers these massive mining projects pose to wildlife.”

More on Alberta’s tar sands

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Press Clips: corporate green, safe sushi, energy diet, more

2008-05-08T02:40:38Z

NRDC in the News (May 7, 2008)

Going green may be all the rage in corporate America, but some are starting to question what it all means. Linda Greer, Director of NRDC’s Health and Toxics Program, tells the Christian Science Monitor that "true sustainability requires independent certification, extensive consumer-education campaigns, and a desire and ability to review entire supply chains."

Sometimes this supply-chain analysis is beyond consumers' capacity.

"How do I know if a garment is 'green'?,” Greer explains. “The answer is: there's no way to know that. Even if you buy a T-shirt that's organic, you don't know the factories and the chemicals that went into dyeing it, or how much carbon they emitted into the air."

More on green business

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Similarly, Fox Business News.com carries a piece on oil juggernauts’ “green” PR programs and turns to NRDC advocate Deron Lovaas for analysis of campaigns by the likes of Exxon Mobil. "Presumably, these companies are following up on their promises to invest a part of these profits in alternative energy, but the amount they are investing at this point is unclear at best,” Lovaas said. “Exxon does some work with lithium ion batteries and BP some work with biofuels. But we need a clearer plan for the future."

More on moving beyond oil

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So you bike to work and shop at the Salvation Army? Well, you're still not off the hook – pun intended – when it comes to your choice of fish. O, The Oprah Magazine recommends NRDC's guide to sushi for the safest scales for your body and world.

More on mercury contamination in fish

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Even if you squirm at the sight of sushi, we all eat electricity in hefty helpings. Putting New Yorkers on a more responsible energy diet, the energy utility National Grid has proposed a sweeping efficiency initiative. In an article in the Syracuse Post Standard, NRDC's air and energy policy director Ashok Gupta applauded National Grid's “leadership in advancing this cost-effective energy efficiency program."

"The proposal presents a model for aligning company and customer interests in reducing New York's energy consumption,” Gupta told the newspaper.

More on reducing your energy consumption

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One questionable use of national energy devotes our tax dollars to predator eradication programs across the country. In a recent article in High Country News by NRDC wildlife advocate Lisa Upson, we learn that "the federal agency euphemistically known as Wildlife Services" provides "a taxpayer handout to the livestock industry" by spending over "80 percent of its mostly public funding as a political favor to agribusiness."

According to Upson, Wildlife Services often uses unsafe and inhumane tactics, including "gas cartridges to asphyxiate pups in dens" and "Compound 1080, a poison so lethal it's been banned in several states and countries." Upson identifies Wildlife Services as "a major force in eliminating wolf and grizzly bear populations in the early 20th century, [which] today spends over $100 million each year...to kill more than a million animals." Upson also reports, "Wildlife Services has killed an increasing number of endangered species... between 1996 and 2006."

More on wildlife conservation

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Finally, NRDC senior lawyer Ann Alexander has won recognition on a Crain's Chicago Business list of the city's "Women to Watch," rubbing shoulders with Michelle Obama and, in the process, offering a nice plug for NRDC. Crain's writes, "[A] love of nature and concern over humans' impact on it are at the core of her work as an environmental lawyer in the Chicago office of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group with 350 lawyers, scientists and policy experts in five national offices plus a new outpost in Beijing."

The article describes how Alexander worked with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley last summer to fight a BP's proposal to increase it's pollution of Lake Michigan and Chicago's drinking source. The mayor's director of external affairs, Joe Deal, praises, "She's the kind of person you want in the room when you tackle a complicated issue."

Alexander graciously shares the credit. "I am working for an organization that could actually turn this country around on climate change," she says.

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Press Clips is a new feature on Switchboard that will provide a highly selective view of the world as seen through the eyes of NRDC staff quoted by mainstream media outlets. Roundups will appear daily, Monday through Friday.

RSS / subscribe to Switchboard's Press Clips

Press Clips: Energy, Climate and Drought

2008-05-07T03:50:56Z

NRDC in the News (May 6, 2008)

An influential insider website, Environment and Energy Daily, talks with Dan Lashof, Director of the NRDC Climate Center, [transcript, video] about a joint NRDC/Ceres benchmarking report on greenhouse gas emissions of American power companies and the economic impact of emissions limits – such as those in the Lieberman-Warner bill currently before congress – on them and on energy consumers.

"The average customer's bill could actually go down under the Lieberman-Warner bill rather than up,” Lashof predicts. “If people are investing in more efficient lighting, appliances, building shells, air conditioning, their bills could go down and that really ought to be our goal."

Lashof also addressed how the variety of reports on the bill might offer conflicting economic data: "Different interests may cherry pick the analyses," he said, "[But] it's clear that the overall impact on the economy from the Lieberman-Warner bill is quite modest....the economy grows robustly with or without the bill." Lashof’s bottom line: "This is affordable."

Also in energy news, the Associated Press reports that NRDC is suing to stop seismic oil exploration in Arctic waters this summer. The article reports that NRDC, alongside other environmental and indigenous lands groups, has asked US District Court Judge John Sedwick for "a preliminary injunction, which would stop all seismic work until the court makes a final decision" about the seismic strategy's negative impact upon surrounding marine species such as whales and seals.

Another energy battle is playing out in New York City where Mayor Michael Bloomberg is engaged in what The Daily News called a "testy" battle with Astoria Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. over plans for a new power plant in Queens.

Despite complaints from Vallone about the new power plant being “another dagger aimed at our lungs,” NRDC’s Ashok Gupta tells the News that the new plant will “improve New York City’s air quality by displacing electricity from older, dirtier and less efficient generating capacity.”

Gupta explained that advancements in technology will allow the new plant to function on 30 percent less fuel per unit of electricity.

Better efficiency is critical, particularly as the consequences of fossil-fuels-produced energy usage become clearer and clearer.

One of these consequences has hit Florida where the increasing desiccation of the Everglades has forced the state to begin construction of a re-hydrating reservoir more massive than the area of Manhattan.

Though the project has promise, the Associated Press reports that NRDC has sued for a more toothy agreement to govern the reservoir's use. According to Brad Sewell, NRDC council attorney in water and oceans, without legally committing the water to re-hydrating the "river of grass," agricultural and development interests could hijack the benefits. Sewell told the news service, "The Everglades and everyone deserves better than that."

The world does deserve better. Still, as we race to do better for our world, it sometimes seems that logistical speed bumps conspire against us. NRDC's Darby Hoover, senior resource manager in the Urban Program, explains to Plenty Magazine how to sidestep one of these obstacles by taking charge of our own recycling.

According to Hoover, if you are struggling to find a place to recycle your newspaper bags, don't fret – it's actually better to reuse the skinny sheaths instead. "Think about it: preventing a new item from being manufactured in the first place saves more energy and resources than recycling one," Hoover says.

So, what to do with these daily deliveries to our personal waste stream? The article lists creative reuses for newspaper bags – braiding them into jump rope, wearing them while doing dishes, waterproofing your boots for rainy days, packing snacks for the road – and offers the crowd favorite in appropriately bold type: POOPER SCOOPER.

NRDC's Hoover explains, "I don't even have a dog, but I save them up for friends who do."

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Press Clips: Food vs Fuel, Port Emissions, Patagonia and Water Quality in Miami

2008-05-06T04:15:50Z

In “Is Ethanol Getting a Bum Rap?,” Business Week’s John Cary considers biofuels’ connection to soaring global food prices. He writes, “Certainly a rapid rise in food prices brings misery to poor countries.”

Cary looked to NRDC Senior Policy Analyst Nathanael Greene, who offered one silver lining of increased food prices: after this initial shock, he says, higher prices will level the playing field for farmers in the developing world who have long competed in futility against heavily subsidized grain from Europe and the United States.

Cary concludes his article by saying that energy costs – not ethanol – should be blamed for high grocery bills. He cites a group of a group of agricultural economists at Texas A&M university who wrote, "The underlying force driving changes in the agricultural industry, along with the economy as a whole, is overall higher energy costs."

Greene also gets a nice plug from The New York Times' City Room blog and writer Carol Murphy who directs her readers to Nathanael’s blog on Switchboard as "an excellent place to get more information and details” on alternative energy.

On the other coast, NRDC appears in a Long Beach Telegram article regarding rising cancer rates around the expansion of the Port of LA. NRDC Senior Attorney David Pettit notes that, while the port trumpets the emissions reductions in its plan, their admission of an increase in cancer risk “[seems to be] saying ‘We’re already killing a lot of people, so what’s one more?’" Pettit adds, "That’s just not acceptable.”

Also not acceptable, says Jacob Scherr of NRDC’s International Program, are retirement funds that often invest against the ideals of their beneficiaries.

In talking with the Canadian paper The Globe and Mail, Scherr laments a planned hydroelectric project -- partly-funded through two Canadian public-sector retirement funds -- that would dissect a practically untouched portion of Andean Patagonia.

“I think a lot of Canadian pensioners would be very upset to realize that part of their legacy was destroying one of the most beautiful and pristine places left on the planet,” Scherr said. Moreover, the article reports Scherr’s assertion that such an “eco-gem” would bring “more value to Chileans over the longer term if it were left unspoiled.”

Albeit less pristine than Patagonia, Miami’s marine ecosystem also finds itself under anthropogenic attack. While many know South Beach for the diverse dating preferences of its inhabitants, the city’s pollution has created a less positive array of sexual diversity in the fish of its surrounding waters.

In a Reuters article carried by MSNBC.com, NRDC Clean Water Project director Nancy Stoner explains that the city’s dumping of "at least 300 million gallons of partially treated urban waste water...has been linked to abnormally developed fish that have both male and female characteristics."

Stoner says that pharmaceutical waste and pollutants such as endocrine disrupters "can drive hormone systems haywire.”

"The thing with pharmaceuticals and endocrine disrupters and so forth is that people don't really know what the long-term effects are," she added. "I find that scary."

The article echoes her concern, pointing out that there are no effective programs in place in the United States to remove these types of pollutants from waste water. Although forced by environmental organizations and other activists to fix the problem, Miami authorities may take over fifteen years and $3 billion to re-route the ocean-bound waste stream.

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Press Clips: We’ve Got It Covered -- Global Warming, Energy Efficiency, Plastic Bags, More

2008-04-19T04:40:01Z

With Earth Day only a few hours away, the coverage of all things green is started to explode. Time Magazine’s green coverage leads with a story about how to win the war against global warming and visits with NRDC President Frances Beinecke.

Though a federal cap-and-trade system for carbon would largely be a foray into the unknown, we can examine how the idea is working in the states, many of which are far ahead of Washington. At the New York City headquarters of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), organization president Frances Beinecke shows a map that identifies in green those states that have committed to or are considering mandatory carbon caps. A year ago, the map was mostly white, but now it's less than half. Not only are states coming aboard one at a time, but some are joining in groups, as in the West and Northeast, where regional greenhouse-gas trading blocs are being launched. "The momentum that has built up in the states is unbelievable," says Beinecke.

Further into the article, another NRDC expert talks about an "efficiency surge," or, as Time writes, a "crash improvement that can help offset increase in energy prices and so buy time for the development of carbon free alternatives."

"We need to create breathing room," says Rick Duke, director of NRDC's Center for Market Innovation. "But an unguided market won't take care of that alone."

In U.S. News and World Report, NRDC energy expert Ralph Cavanagh addresses the largely unknown but critical idea of utility decoupling.

But states are changing the way that utilities get paid—decoupling profits from energy consumption—to promote efficiency and curb the need for new power plants. Both Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's campaigns tout the concept. Last year, Connecticut, Idaho, New York, and Vermont chose decoupling, and a dozen other states now are considering jumping on the bandwagon. "It's an idea whose time has come," says Roger Cooper of the American Gas Association, which represents gas utilities. Some states even want to supercharge decoupling, offering rewards to, in the words of Ralph Cavanagh, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, "make utilities motivated partners in energy efficiency."

And in People Magazine's April 21 issue, NRDC’s Darby Hoover illustrates some of the unfortunate life-cycle pitfalls of plastic bags.

Each year Americans consume between 30 and 100 billion plastic bags enough to encircle the planet at least 31 times. They are manufactured using over 12 million barrels of oil, and only a fraction of them make it to the recycling bin. The remainder, according to Darby Hoover of the Natural Resources Defense Council, can take a thousand years to decompose and can clog landfills and litter the oceans killing untold thousands of sea turtles and other animals every year. Even whales have died after ingesting plastic bags that resemble jellyfish. "They create pollution to produce and cause environmental difficulties to dispose of," says Hoover. The plastic plague is so widespread that scientists routinely report seeing bags littering remote Antarctica, carried there by ocean currents.

Finally, Time.com’s green coverage includes a round up of websites well worth visiting, including, happily, our very own Switchboard!

Switchboard's team of more than three dozen writers makes it one-stop shopping for commentary on far-flung topics: what parks add to cities; why greens and business make good bedfellows; why there is a black market for bees. Switchboard is a bullpen of Natural Resources Defense Council specialists monitoring the changes we face within the shadow of a changing climate. Here, the issues that traditionally fall under the increasingly anachronistic category "environment" come to life with level-headed writing, intriguing items and commentary that fall below media radar.
Sample Switchboard post: In a swirl of Rose Garden ceremony, President Bush announced today an eleventh-hour plan for curbing global warming emissions. Unfortunately, it is as feeble as it is late. Now, in his eighth year, the president has proposed a path on global warming weaker than the campaign pledge he made in September of 2000 — the pledge he broke three months into office.

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Press Clips: President Bush, "Totally Irrelevant"

2008-04-18T04:10:14Z

President Bush made headlines today when he offered new policy guidelines on climate change.

In Newsday, NRDC President Frances Beinecke observed that "the president has just proposed a path on global warming weaker than the campaign pledge he made in September 2000 and broke three months into office." In an article distributed by the Knight Ridder News Service, Beinecke points out that "not content with blocking action over the last eight years, this president is trying to lock in pollution growth for the next 15." David Hawkins of the NRDC Climate Center quips with the Washington Times, saying that "the only good news" about the President’s speech "is that no one will pay attention to it. It's totally irrelevant."

On the west coast, Karen Garrison of the NRDC Oceans program called for public support for California marine reserves in the lead editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle while Dr. Gina Solomon of the NRDC health and toxics program sought to calm fears by telling the Chicago Tribune that there’s nothing overly scary coming out of our taps. Solomon quickly noted, however, that we do need increased research into the effects of pharmaceuticals in drinking water.

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