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Don't Mess with My Commute: Transportation Bill Could Rile Up Riders

2012-02-13T03:09:47Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

I take the CTA’s Green Line trains to work most days. Yeah, that is the line dissed by “Stuff Chicagoans Say” recently… It is the oldest line in the system, including some sections that were built in 1892 during the runup to the Columbian Exposition. Unlike some other lines, all the Green Line train cars were produced in the 1970s. Back in ’94, so much work on the system was needed that it closed for two years. So, you can imagine that my South Side brethren and I are concerned about maintenance and modernization issues.

The easiest way to mess with the “City That Works” is to monkey with transit. I sometimes have to drive during rush hour, it isn’t pleasant. That fact is not lost on area politicians, even those who represent Chicagoland’s far-flung suburbs. And it is making things very interesting as transportation advocates look at the ugly battle brewing in DC right now.

As you may have seen elsewhere this week, trains and buses in Chicago and throughout the country are facing a new threat. Congress is currently debating our federal transportation programs, and the House of Representatives has proposed what many are calling the worst transportation bill ever. The impacts to transit riders throughout the Midwest could be disastrous. The centerpiece of the bill is a hair-brained proposal to open new areas of the country up for drilling to pay for desperately needed transportation infrastructure (highways, bridges, etc.). Since that actually wouldn’t raise enough funding, the bill would also raid dedicated mass transit accounts to pay for more highways…

Let’s be clear, mass transit isn’t a partisan issue. Those mass transit accounts were established by President Reagan thirty years ago. But the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives are choosing to leave the nation’s transit systems out in the cold with this move, creating a $5 billion hole that scrapped transit authorities will have to fill. In Chicago and its suburbs, that translates into $450 million loss to Metra, CTA, and Pace capital projects annually. Metra’s Executive Director said that without the reliable funding stream, “we will become less dependable,” with service and trains “will run less reliably.” CTA uses this money for things like station rehab, track improvement, and new cleaner buses and trains, and has said it “relies on and needs these funds to fully support the services we provide.”

In other words, loss of this funding could put the brakes on all sorts of maintenance and expansion transit projects throughout the region, and in another year or so could translate into significant service cuts, fare increases, or both---just as the economy is rebounding and people need more access to transit to go back to work. You can’t create jobs for folks who cannot get to them…

And worse yet, my colleague Rob Perks warns that the bill could slow down morning commutes for everyone. If you really, really want to piss people off, that is a great way to do it.

This is a fact not lost on local politicians. Crain’s Chicago business blogger Greg Hinz noted that it could affect elections in some districts on Thursday. And some Representatives are peeled away from House leadership over the issue Friday making clear the stakes for big urban centers like Chicagoland. Still, despite nationwide opposition from hundreds of organizations, business groups, local governments, and agencies, the House continues to push it forward. Here in Chicago, to help stop this sort of terrible policy from moving forward, NRDC has partnered with the Active Transportation Alliance to help give transit riders and transit supporters a stronger voice, through the Riders for Better Transit campaign.

Look folks, I need to get to work on time. And so do most of my neighbors on the South Side. That will require reasonable funding for now. (And maybe some new train cars down the line…) But this isn’t a Chicago thing. This is an American thing. Transit is key for all of this country’s cities and the economy they help drive. You can also make your voice heard by dailing 1-877-573-7693 and urging your representative to vote NO on HR.7.

The L Train, Chicago image by pbeens via Flickr

Keystone XL: You Aren't Getting the Real Story If You Aren't Reading in Canada

2012-01-13T21:58:07Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

Over the long Keystone XL campaign, I have continued to be astounded at how differently the pipeline---and tar sands infrastructure projects in general---are seen in the U.S. and Canada. The narratives from binational pipeline supporters couldn’t be further apart from one side of the border to the other.

Here, the media has been captured in the construct cynically put out by the oil industry and their pipeline pushing pals in Congress: that the pipeline is a wondrous job creator that will fill our gas tanks with friendlier fuels from our friends to the north, freeing us from the dastardly sheiks in the Middle East. If you are paying attention, you know that is bogus---and in fact, quite the opposite of reality:

The 1700 mile pipeline is good for “hundreds, certainly not thousands” of permanent jobs, which is far from the tens and hundreds of thousands offered up by supporters. Given the size of the project, there are shockingly few jobs, but that hasn’t stopped its backers from circulating numbers that are nothing short of fiction. Of course, the loudest of those backers have rejected numerous jobs bills in Congress and directly eliminated tens of thousands of jobs, which begs the question of how much they really care about jobs at all…
Instead of jobs, this pipeline is about getting Canada’s carbon-heavy tar sands oil to foreign markets---not Americans. We are using less and less oil, while they are desperately trying to ramp up production at geometric rates, leaving them no choice but to find a way to reach new markets.
It is also about getting us to pay more for a big chunk the million barrels of oil that Americans buy from Canada every day. A bottleneck in the pipeline system and the difficult nature of the work refining tar sands (you need specially outfitted facilities to deal with all that sulfur and silica) force the Canadians to sell at a discount in the middle of the country. Keystone XL will raise the price of gas in much of the U.S. as soon as it starts flowing by evaporating that discount. Make no mistake; this is about increasing Big Oil profits. We will continue to get lots and lots of oil from the north, we will just be paying a lot more for it.

This is why Keystone XL is Big Oil’s pet project, worthy of calling in all their chits in Washington, DC to get boutique laws passed to force the project through.

Don’t believe me? Fair enough. Try reading Canadian newspapers. There is nothing secret about this stuff. Take this article that ran earlier in the week on Canada’s Postmedia Newswire which looks at a new pipe scheme to ship the gunk east inside Canada (they don’t like Alberta’s muck in Ontario or Quebec either, and the nation’s largest refinery isn’t set up to deal with the demands of the “dirtiest oil in the world”). Without talking about Keystone XL, all of the reasons for the pipeline are laid out by former Premiers and industry folk (here’s a chunk of the article, emphasis is mine):

With production slated to increase over the next three years to three million barrels a day from about 1.7 million, everyone agrees that Alberta needs to diversify its market for bitumen beyond its sole export customer, the U.S. Midwest.

"Obviously, the most economic route to Asia is via the West Coast [via the now-stalled Northern Gateway pipeline], but what if that gets delayed so long that customers look elsewhere?" asks Eddie Goldenberg, who noted that the on-again-off-again Mackenzie Valley proposed pipeline in the North took 10 years to review.

India and China, the two largest emerging economies, have massive demand for oil. They aren't sitting around waiting for public hearings on new pipelines to be completed but are looking for sources of oil now, says Goldenberg, a former adviser to Jean Chretien. Canada got a wake-up call this fall when the Obama administration delayed approval to the Keystone pipeline that would take another 800,000 barrels a day from the oilsands in Alberta to U.S. refineries.

"Everyone agrees we should not put all our eggs in the basket of one customer," says Goldenberg, now a lawyer at Bennett Jones, a Calgary-based law firm.

It's not just about market access, but also about price. Right now, Alberta bitumen sells into the U.S. Midwest at $10 to $20 a barrel less than the world price for oil, partly because a glut of oil there is pushing the price down.

That price disparity is costing Canada's economy billions, and government's huge amounts in lost royalties. A new study from the University of Calgary says Canada would gain $131 billion in gross domestic product from 2016 to 2030 if Alberta crude gets sold to new markets at the world price. That underscores the importance of pipeline expansion.

The only way to get that world price is to give Alberta oilsands products easy access to overseas markets, says Frank McKenna, former ambassador to the U.S. and former premier of New Brunswick.

Amazingly, this looks a lot like the points we have been making over and over again in this fight. Big Oil doesn’t deny these concerns; they just pump up the volume on the Orwellian public messaging. Here in the U.S., we are told that rather than fueling those coveted emerging markets, the oil will offset imports from unfriendly regimes. Poppycock. Americans will not get this oil in their gas tanks. We are already net exporters of finished petroleum goods and the pipeline is meant to increase that by selling diesel to markets willing to pay more for it. Over two thirds of that petroleum is being exported from the U.S. by Gulf refineries - and that's where Keystone XL is going.

Yet the debunked job numbers and BS about getting us off of foreign oil goes largely unchallenged in favor of imagined political intrigue. Come on folks. We can do better.

Just crack a newspaper---but make sure it’s Canadian if you want the real story.

Pipes5 image of Keystone pipes by andrewottoson via Flickr

Channukah: The Energy Efficiency Holiday?

2011-12-23T18:14:39Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

Channukah. Hannukah. However you spell it, we are now half-way through a holiday commemorating one day's worth of oil lasting for eight days. It is a pretty minor holiday in the Jewish calendar, but perhaps we should be making a bigger deal about it; afterall with announcements like this one coming from Kansas City Public Power & Light today as well as the successful GO60 campaign, it seems pretty contemporary, right?

Like Christmas, this is a holiday that, for some, has boiled down to gifts these days. So, as the Festival of Lights kicks off, I figured a quick wish list of efficiency-related stuff was in order:

Smooth rollout of the tighter fuel standards for autos rolled out this year by the Obama administration.
An end to the pipeline pushing debacle in DC around Keystone XL which seems like the opposite spirit of Channukah---there’s little efficiency to tar sands oil or this project, unless you are looking from the perspective of Big Oil profits.
An end to the efforts to rollback common sense and economically important energy efficiency standards in states throughout the Midwest and especially the “dumb bulb bills” in Michigan and Texas which would promote decidedly inefficient incandescent bulbs which are the 8-track tape players of lighting…and really, who wants one of those at holiday time?

Jewish or not, it seems like Hannukah would be a great holiday for Greens to embrace, so I ask you, dear Switchboard readers, what efficiency gifts would you like for the holiday? (Oh, and I know I have now opened myself up to "dim bulb" and candle comments from the trolls out there, this is my gift to them---I am feeling the holiday spirit this week.)

Second Night image by Heather via Flickr

Where Are the Myth Busters? Keystone XL Job Number Wildly Inflated In Quest for Dangerous Pipeline

2011-11-10T18:48:20Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

Maddeningly, like a ton of issues that we work on, the Keystone XL pipeline debate has been boiled down to jobs vs. the environment in the media repeatedly. The pipelines proponents have told a shovel-ready story that has been picked up all over the place. And that is a shame, because if the commentators, Presidential candidates, and others bloviating about Keystone XL jobs bothered to look into the issue, they would see some very telling, ugly stuff. At best, the numbers have been overblown. And at worst, they point to an ugly, cynical effort to take advantage of our current economic state…

First off, I say numbers because the estimates have changed. It wasn’t that long ago that pipeline backers claimed 200,000 new American jobs would be created by the pipeline. The number has been scaled back to the oft-repeated 20,000 still being used in talking points now. Guess what. It is bunk.

But don’t take my word for it. Try some of these folks:

Washington Post. Last weekend, while 10,000 Americans voiced their displeasure over the project on the President’s lawn, the Post exposed the messy math and debunked 20,000 jobs.
Cornell University. The Cornell University Global Labor Institute put out a report highly critical of the pipeline’s potential job impact, noting that it could actually cost rather than create jobs in totality. They tab the direct impact at no more than 4,650 direct construction jobs---and lashes out at TransCanada’s Perryman report which says 119,000 jobs…
Council on Foreign Relations' Michael Levi. We don’t see eye-to-eye with Levi on Keystone XL overall, but we certainly agree that the pipeline boosters’ original estimates (and a continued API and US Chamber of Commerce talking point) that the project will create 250,000 jobs is a myth.
Canadian economist Andrew Leach. Leach has been active in the discussion over the Keystone XL pipeline. I respect him immensely, though we do not see eye-to-eye on this project either---or the framing of this blog post, but it eviscerates the overly inflated job estimates.

Let’s be clear, this country needs jobs. I don’t want to imply that adding 5,000 temporary jobs is not a good thing---but this has been one of the major selling points of the project. If its backers were serious about creating jobs in this country, why not push on TransCanada (the pipeline builder) to buy American steel? Orders for 1700 miles of pipe would probably be a pretty big economic impact in some of the country’s hurting steel towns and might help to assuage fears up and down the pipeline route about spills. But alas, the sourcing for this pipeline and the previous Keystone 1 line seems to have come entirely from foreign sources.

So it is clear that those job numbers are puffed up. But that hasn’t stopped folks from repeating them. It seems depressingly cynical to be playing this game with America’s job-hungry public to me. But short of getting the MYTHBUSTERS on the job, I don’t think it will stop. Adam and Jaime, your nation needs you!

Update: CNN posted this doozy interview with a TransCanada exec who admits that permanent jobs would only number "in the hundreds, certainly not in the thousands" from Montana down to Houston. Not quite the massive meal ticket that was advertised, eh? [Hat tip to Media Matters.]

Keystone XL: Give 'em the CornFinger!

2011-10-25T23:10:34Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

As sports paraphernalia goes these days, it pains me to say that Green Bay Packers fans are tops with the foam cheeshead hat. Yeah, it is played out. Still, you have to admire the statement that fans are making in embracing and celebrating outsiders’ Wisconsin stereotypes. But there is a newcomer on the horizon challenging Packer-fan foam superiority. And it comes from Nebraska, where the football program is already scoring points with me despite my own sports affiliation (though, it’s a lot easier for a Mizzou fan to celebrate Husker football, than a Bears fan to say anything positive about Green Bay).

So, mover over “We’re #1,” the CornFinger is here.

Corn + Foam Finger = The CornFinger

Why am I writing about this on NRDC’s Switchboard blog? Well, of late, the CornFinger has become about more than Husker Football boosterism, it has become a symbol of the growing concern in Nebraska about the KeystoneXL tar sands oil pipeline. Look at photos from the state and read news reports and sooner or later you run into all sorts of CornFinger references because the newest version reads, “No Oil in Our Soil,” and “Stop TransCanada Pipeline.”

With the announcement that the Nebraska legislature will be taking up a special session to look at the pipeline, I think we can expect to see a lot more CornFingers in the coming weeks! So I reached out to CornFinger’s entrepreneurial inventor Cody Butler for a little Q&A:

JM: What was the inspiration for the CornFinger?

CB: On July 26, 2008, brothers, dad and I were having a conversation about the upcoming college football season. We talked about how much we despised the Texas Longhorns and their “Hook ‘em Horns” hand gesture; We competed to see who could come up with the most interesting hand gestures in college football (Click here to view March 2009 news clip). So we dared to ask the question, “Do the Nebraska Cornhuskers have a hand gesture to call their own…Something that no one else could touch?” After fiddling around with our hands for a few minutes…we ‘accidentally’ came up with a hand gesture that we thought looked like an ear of corn. From there, the idea of a foam finger came quick. We gave away 2,000 of them in 2 hours before the Huskers’ 2009 Spring Game with the DeKalb seed logo. From there, it took off as a great promotional item.

JM: And what has gotten you engaged in the Keystone XL fight?

CB: Less than a month ago, Jane Kleeb of BoldNebraska.org had sent me an inquiry asking if we were willing to make custom designed CornFingers. At that time I just thought it was another “Dekalb” type of opportunity. But after further research, we saw it as a huge opportunity to pivot away from being just another peddler to something considerably more important. Within a week, we re-launched CornFinger.com and jumped head first into the fight against the TransCanada Pipeline. It was an easy decision.

JM: Have you gotten any pushback from TransCanada or pipeline supporters?

CB: The only push back that I have observed was at the State Department hearing in Lincoln (Neb.). One chant that came out of the Pipeline Supporters was “FOAM HANDS! WHAT ARE THEY MADE OF? OIL!”. Of course the CornFinger is petroleum based, we know that. But to be very clear…CornFinger is not necessarily “anti-oil” We simply do not want a pressurized pipeline carrying an extremely toxic form of oil going through the Sandhills and through (not over) the Ogallala Aquifer.

With that being said, the CornFinger seems to cause a reaction in folks that is universal. When people are first introduced to the idea they smile and laugh…literally every single time. Even Pipeline Supporters at the State Department hearing in Lincoln smiled and laughed when they first saw our 6’ tall “Give TransCanada The CornFinger” signs.

JM: The CornFinger is getting some pretty high profile attention lately: are they selling like hotcakes? Where are they selling?

CB: Since our first order in April 2009 to today we have sold over 7,000 foam CornFingers…and handfuls of t-shirts, stickers, temporary tattoos, trucker hats, etc. In that time, we’ve learned that the foam finger business is a tough racket. We are now in the business of helping causes for the purpose of influencing public opinion.

It is visibly unique and represents Nebraskans culture, way of life and economic activity (See comments from Jane regarding why she loves the CornFinger in the Hastings Tribune by clicking here). My phone blew up with text messages the moment CornFinger made an appearance on FOX NEWS recently. And having a two page full color image of the CornFinger in the Canadian the Globe & Mail was pretty cool too.

JM: Where have you seen the fingers and stickers popping up? Anywhere suprising/fun?

CB: As a Realtor, I have seen CornFingers inside homes that I have walked through…typically a child’s bedroom or a “Husker Man Cave.” I have shipped CornFingers coast to coast: from Seattle, WA to Portland, ME thanks to the online store. I hear from facebook fans and Twitter followers every time they see CornFinger in the media and mention it online or elsewhere. And every once in a while, I get stopped in public by folks asking, “Hey, are you the CornFinger Guy?” That is pretty fun.

JM: So how does CornFinger joining the fight against the TransCanada Pipeline help Nebraskans?

CB: I believe CornFinger helps Nebraskans because it enables anti-pipeline supporters (the vast majority of Nebraskans & Husker fans) to compete on TransCanada’s level for a fraction of the cost but with even more reach. It garners press. It enhances unity among Husker fans, instead of dividing people.

Riders for Better Transit: A new voice for Chicagoans

2011-09-27T15:59:28Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

I take the L to work most days. And for the most part, I love it. (There is still something fun about hopping a train...) But on my travels, I hear plenty of riders complaining about the Chicago Transit Authority. Usually, it is superficial stuff---but often it relates more to frustration about how powerless riders feel in regards to this town's transit system. With the ongoing fights over funding and service, I totally understand and hope a new NRDC partnership with the Active Transportation Alliance will help address the issue.

Riders for Better Transit will inform and engage transit riders—but more importantly it will give us a voice.

The program is intended to channel transit messages to legislators, transit agencies and other officials—messages about the critical importance of and need for convenient, reliable transit service. Riders for Better Transit is also for people who don’t use transit regularly but know that transit helps reduce congestion pressures on roads and parking, or those who might take it if it came a little more frequently, moved a little faster, etc.

And it all starts with a survey so that we can get a baseline of what Chicagoans are thinking and feeling about transit. The survey closes October 5, so if you have opinions, please visit the Riders for Better Transit site pronto to participate.

We’re hoping the program will help to fill a void in the local advocacy landscape. Chicago has seen a number of short-lived efforts to fight doomsday service cuts, but unlike New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and many other cities, it has not had a sustained advocacy effort to help win funding and reforms for transit riders. A while back, urban affairs analyst Aaron Renn produced a series of essays on how to bring Chicago’s transit system from “Good to Great,” in which he made a provocative opening statement:

“I think Chicago doesn’t have a great system because its citizens don’t want one. If there were greater citizen demand for a better system, that’s what we would have. Absent that demand, we get at best a good system.”

There are certainly other factors that come into play, and Renn expands on some of them. But this first point is well taken. Politicians find political will to fix something when their constituents make them, and when it comes to transit they won’t do it for environmentalists’ reasons alone.

This is why we’re excited to partner with Active Transportation Alliance, an organization that has a long track record of grassroots organizing of transportation users in the Chicago region. Until recently this work was focused on cyclists, but several years ago their mission expanded to pedestrians and transit users—a natural expansion given the overlap in environmental, economic, and public health benefits, and the fact that so many of the land use patterns, neighborhood design features, and policies that benefit one group benefit the other two. In addition to a great staff and volunteer base, Active Trans brings relationships with localities throughout the region, community and neighborhood organizations, and a history of working on state and local transportation legislation. Meanwhile, NRDC brings a longstanding institutional commitment to the issue of transit and staff with wide and deep policy expertise; we have worked on federal transportation legislation for decades, and we can leverage our experience in state-level policy development and implementation in California and New York.

So if you live in Chicagoland, we hope you will visit the Riders for Better Transit webpage, take a look at the policy agenda, sign up for future updates, and take the survey to tell us what transit-related issues matter most to you.

Chicago is a world-class city. We deserve and should demand a world-class transit system. This is your chance to speak up and help to create one.

CTA image by -Tripp- via Flickr

Nebraska Cornhuskers Banish Keystone XL Pipeline Ads from Hallowed Memorial Stadium

2011-09-15T19:44:43Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

I’ve never liked the University of Nebraska football program. Years of watching them run up scores against my beloved Missouri Tigers in the Big 12 filled me with jealous disdain. And the sea of red in Faurot Field created by their masses of traveling fans was daunting. But something has happened to roll back some of that ill will. It migh just have me cheering for the Cornhuskers. And it started with a boo.

To most Husker fans, football is something akin to religion. And Memorial Stadium in Lincoln is their church. It is a place to go with single-minded fervor. A place to focus on football. And to many, it was a place defiled at a game earlier this month. Here is how the Lincoln Journal Star describes it:

“A highlights video for the Huskers' 1978 conference championship football team appeared on the giant HuskerVision screen inside the stadium. When the logo for the video's sponsor appeared at the beginning and end, people in the stands began booing.

"To me, that was just a real strong gut punch as a Nebraskan," [Nebraska fan Allen] Schreiber said.

To him and others who saw the video titled the "Husker Pipeline," it appeared to be an advertisement for sponsor TransCanada.”

Schreiber, who had earlier protested the controversial Keystone XL pipeline being promoted by the video, wasn’t alone in his disdain for the advertisement. University of Nebraska Athletic Director Tom Osborne---himself one of the most revered figures in Cornhusker football history---had this to say:

"We have certain principles regarding advertising in the stadium such as no alcohol, tobacco or gambling advertisements. We also avoid ads of a political nature," he said. "Over the last two or three months, the pipeline issue has been increasingly politicized. Our athletic events are intended to entertain and unify our fan base by providing an experience that is not divisive."

Ouch. Well, the pipeline is indeed controversial in Nebraska (and everywhere else) due to very real concerns about the impact it could have on the state.

The Huskers shifted into the Big 10 conference this year, where they will play against schools like Illinois and Michigan which represent states that have been dirtied up by tar sands pipeline spills in recent years (heck, a pretty big chunk of the conference has suffered some ugly spill history when you toss Wisconsin and Minnesota in too). Given the strong statement made about TransCanada’s oily Keystone XL ads, I think I might have to start rooting for Nebraska…

...Well, OK, that is a stretch. But I certainly see their football progam in a much more positive light now.

Nebraska Football image by echobase_2000 via Flickr

For Labor Day, Celebrating the American Clean Energy Industry

2011-09-02T17:55:17Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

I am ready for the Labor Day weekend because, frankly, it’s been a disappointing couple of weeks with some hugely disappointing messages coming from the administration on Keystone XL pipeline and ozone. Can someone please show me the research that says pollution creates jobs? Despite the tiresome rhetoric out of DC, I just haven’t seen the proof---though it is clear that cutting pollution is an employment winner (creating jobs and stimulating innovation). You know what else creates jobs? Clean energy and energy efficiency.

Not only that---as I blogged last week---the stuff looks super-cool. I’ll take sleek wind farms on the horizon as scenery over the two ancient coal plants that loom over Chicago’s South Side any day of the week. And I’d bet you, dear Switchboard reader, would agree. So, send in your clean energy photos. Let’s celebrate a job creator we can all get behind for the Labor Day weekend. We want to see your photos of solar panels, wind turbines and efficiency projects. It’s almost Labor Day, shouldn't the US invest in building a clean energy industry in the United States rather than a pipeline for Canadian tar sands to be sent to foreign markets?

Submit photos by posting them to our Facebook wall, tagging them ‘nrdccleanenergy’ on Flickr or by emailing them to our87result@photos.flickr.com Be sure to include your name and the location!

Mark Bittman: A Delicious Voice Denouncing the Keystone XL Pipeline

2011-09-01T03:30:03Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

In the last 48 hours, two spectacular New York Times pieces on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline hit the Web. The fact that the Times has been on the right side of the pipeline debate (in the opinion of a growing chorus of diverse voices) is no surprise---the paper has editorialized forcefully on many occasions already. No, the surprise was who was writing for them:

Mark Bittman.

The Times’ food columnist. The Minimalist. Author of How to Cook Everything. And the guy on every third cooking show on PBS.

Yeah, that Mark Bittman.

I am admittedly a fan and blogged gushingly on his recent book Food Matters a while back. So it is supremely gratifying to see him writing not once, but twice, in the last two days about the pipeline fight which has occupied so much of my time and energy. Seeing a writer I respect step out from his normal area of expertise to take a stand on this important issue is exciting. And the fact that the writing is spectacular makes it all the better.

If you haven’t seen the pieces in question, the first one, “Profits Before the Environment” ran Tuesday in the Times’ Opinionator blog expressing disappointment at two recent Obama administration decisions. The first, firmly in his food field, an unwillingness to fight over genetically modified crops segues into the second, an impassioned look at the safety and climate issues at the heart of the Keystone XL fight. The column ends noting, “When government defends corporate interests, citizens must fight,” in the hope that energy from pipeline protests in DC could light a fire to heat up GM food marches planned for New York.

The nearly 200 comments on the post must have lit a fire, because Bittman turned around one day later to post an even stronger opinion piece in the Times on Wednesday. The title says it all: “Keystone XL Is Self-Destructive. Does the Obama Administration Need to Be Also?” It’s brilliant stuff and I especially like this section:

...Proponents cite job creation and “oil security.”

Oil security suggests that by getting more oil from our peaceful upstairs neighbors and less from our suppliers in the Middle East — sometimes seen as volatile or even hostile, though the supply has been steady — our national security is enhanced. We’re only “safe” if we can reliably obtain all of the oil we “need.”

This is an infuriatingly shortsighted and self-destructive position. This is the behavior of addiction, and the only people who can justifiably — though still incorrectly — argue otherwise are those who truly believe that the oil that gives us such comfort now won’t be causing catastrophic harm later. As far as I know, President Obama isn’t one of those people, but if he doesn’t block the pipeline he will be acting just as ignorantly as if he were. (He thinks this is what voters want?)

So, a hearty thanks to Mark Bittman. While How to Cook Everything truly is on my kitchen counter, I could not disagree more strongly with the inevitable cavalcade of angry, cheeky, ignorant, “he should stay in the kitchen” letters and comments in response to his anti-pipeline pen. Please, Mr. Bittman, we need your voice. Your eloquent, thoughtful, pissed off voice.

Wind Turbines a Welcome Sight on I-55

2011-08-25T20:09:58Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

Over the weekend I drove from Chicago to Springfield, IL. I’ve always dreaded the brutally boring three and a half hour trip and the inevitable battle with highway hypnosis brought on by scenery dominated by mile after mile of corn and soybean fields. It has been months since I have made the trek to my old hometown, so I was pleasantly surprised to see something new on the route I've been driving for years. Wind turbines. Lots and lots of wind turbines.

Two new wind farms have popped up right off of I-55 this year (if you are making the drive they are hard to miss, but keep your eyes open near the I-72 turnoff to Peoria and on the outskirts of Bloomington-Normal, home of Illinois State University). And an existing Horizon Energy wind farm a bit more than an hour south of Chicago (between Odell and Morris, IL) has swelled to an enormous scale, living up to the company name with turbines running as far as the eye can see on both sides of the road. That is a tiny portion of it at the top of the post; photographed through my windshield, on a cellphone, going…ummm…let’s say 65 mph (so, no complaints about the image quality).

It used to be that the last interesting sight on the drive south was an Exxon refinery in Joliet. So rather than the image of filth-belching skyward lingering in my mind for hours, the drive is now punctuated by the gorgeous sight of spinning turbines generating clean energy. I simply find them fascinating (prompting my wife to snap at me repeatedly to keep my eyes on the road). Of course, this is also kinda symbolic of our transportation future too: moving away from the refinery and towards electric vehicles powered by renewable energy sources.

Much of NRDC’s energy policy work can be deep in the weeds stuff that isn’t tangible in my day-to-day life. And yet, here the landscape has been improved in significant and impossible-to-miss fashion by, at least in part, policy that the enviro community helped advance. Illinois, like many states in the Midwest and across the country, has a renewable energy portfolio goal. The state is pushing to get 25% of its energy from wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable sources by 2025.

Since the RPS was passed, Illinois has seen 1700 MW of wind power built and will enjoy the billions of dollars in economic impact that come will continue to come over the lifetime of the turbines---including significant job creation. And, since I am a tad self-absorbed, I am pretty psyched to see that it has hugely improved the drive home!

Tar Sands and My Itsy-Bitsy Bison Blunder...

2011-08-17T21:12:21Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

I was recently quoted in a Greenwire piece that was picked up by the New York Times online related to some tar sands oil industry practices in Canada. The quote came out of a very long conversation, largely focused on my concerns about the "dirtiest oil" in the world's impacts on this side of the border in the U.S. I live about 10 miles away from one of the largest tar sands refineries in the world and NRDC is in the midst of a long-term battle over the air pollution that would be spewed into my airshed once an expansion project is complete. And last year a pipeline burst in the Kalamazoo River which dumps into Lake Michigan where my drinking water comes from---happily that spill did not reach the Lake, though there has been a massive public uproar over the increased mercury and ammonia that the refinery will be dumping even closer to home. In the course of our conversation, the journalist and I talked a lot about my frustration over language used by the tar sands industry, which I think is at times used to obscure the public's understanding of issues around this fundamentally different carbon-intensive petroleum source that is becoming more and more prevalent in our energy economy---even as we try to limit our global warming impacts in other areas (the same is happening in Canada, but recent government reports show that the tar sands industry will wipe away all the other Canadian gains made in other sectors of their economy to fight climate change).

Here is my quote from the article, which talks about the reclamation of areas in Canada that have been strip mined to get to the dirty, gooey tar sands:

And much of that work is now taking place in a politically charged hothouse. The clamor over the Keystone XL pipeline proposal, which would dramatically expand U.S. imports of oil sands crude, is aising American awareness of the fuel while driving a national battle this summer over how to brand it -- as a valuable antidote to Middle Eastern imports or an incurably dirty ecological threat.

In that context, Wapisiw [a "reclaimed" former tar sands oil strip mine] can look like a greening or a greenwashing operation.

To environmentalists such as Josh Mogerman of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the industry's efforts are "superficial" bids to scrub up an inherently filthy enterprise.

"What they're not saying is, they reclaimed it by pumping the liquid tailings into other tailings ponds, dumping soil on it, dumping grass seed on it, and tugging a bison there," Mogerman said of Wapisiw. "It's all superficial. It's not about doing what's right, it's about doing what looks best."

As Mogerman noted, Suncor removed the tailings that sat on its former "Pond 1" before rechristening it Wapisiw, a Cree word meaning swan. The reclamation must go through further monitoring before certification by the Alberta government. Stopping by on a humid day at the company's Millennium mine -- where 1.4 million tons of oil sand materials are moved each day through excavation, heating and processing – Wapisiw appears at once natural and artificial, both blending into and clashing against the surrounding boreal forest.

While it is kinda cool to see myself quoted in the Times, I am not posting this to show off. Nope, I want to admit that I got one teeny-tiny detail wrong: there are no bison at Suncor’s Wapisiw site. (Another tar sands oil company, Syncrude, loves to take reporters to see a reclamation site where they have plopped some cute, fuzzy bison.)

Why bother noting my buffalo blunder? Because words matter. We are making massively important energy choices that will live on in the form of dangerous infrastructure like the proposed Keystone XL pipeline for decades (a half century!) and potentially climate impacts that will last for generations. We need to make smart choices. Honest choices. Unlike others, I believe NRDC has been an honest participant in this debate. We are engaged because we see issues that must be explored and have been aggressive in asking the questions that need to be answered. I've heard from folks in Canada who think we have it all wrong. I don't think we do---but if we know we are wrong, we need to make it clear. I am clearing the air about the bison…

...now back to fighting that pipeline!

Syncrude Bison 2010 image by Gord McKenna via Flickr

Chicago Transit Authority Makes Massive Mind-Meld Technological Leap!

2011-08-13T03:03:30Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

Transit is critical to the Chicago region’s environment, economy, and quality of life. Blah, blah, really, I care most about this because I take the Chicago Transit Authority’s Green Line L to work every day. And I pop onto the CTA’s buses to get around town. The agency is pretty central to getting around and the thought of a city with even more congestion minus CTA is just unthinkable.

That said, transit could be better though, in lots of ways – repairs, higher frequencies, higher speeds, longer service hours, extending lines into underserved areas…the list goes on. But to be honest, what I really want is a mind-meld. Don’t give me those stupid schedules. I just want to KNOW when my bus is coming. When do I need to step out of my office to spend the minimum amount of time battling heat indexes of 110 or 40 mph winds whipping ice into my face. Is that an unreasonable thing to ask?

Actually, apparently, its not. They’ve done it.

And cheaply too!

Meet Bus Tracker and Train Tracker. Well, let’s be honest, if you’re a blog-reader, you probably met them a while ago. But there is actually still much more that can be done with it thanks to the fact that CTA has always made the data available but there is actually still much more that can be done with it thanks to the fact that CTA has always made the data available for free (I can give you link to more info on that), for software developers and app creators to play with There is also an easy way for anyone, no tech experience necessary, to make a Bus Tracker display specific to a particular location. NRDC has been helping to get the word out about this, because it means any business or building with a screen—or just your own personal computer for that matter—can serve as a free transit information kiosk, making transit easier to use for no additional cost.

As you saw in the video residential buildings have turned it into a TV channel for all of their residents, Wicker Park retail businesses display it for their customers, and one company has it visible for all their employees all the time to help make their transit commutes easier. So you know all those businesses that put LCD screens in their windows with ads for themselves? Imagine if they alternated between that and a sign that told you when the next bus or train was coming—it would help demystify transit for tourists, new residents, and those who don’t have phones to access Bus and Train Tracker…AND you might be more likely to read their ads. THAT would be a mind-meld. Everywhere I look, my train time is there. Come on Mayor Emanuel, Chicago business community, let’s make these things ubiquitous so my dream can be fulfilled.

(Actually, if you are tech-savvy and want to help make this ubiquitous, check out the Apps for Metro Chicago contest.)

One of America's great rivers TPed...again!

2011-08-11T03:07:28Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

A five-mile stretch of the Lochsa River in Idaho has been toilet papered. It sounds like a High School prank until you realize that these are really, really big rolls of toilet paper that were dumped into the wild and scenic waterway after a truck lost control on the winding roadway last week. How big? 8,000 pounds dry. And Idaho officials guess that they are closer to 30,000 pounds now that the rolls are water logged. Oddly enough, this is not the first time the Lochsa has been TPed---it is the fourth time in as many years!

So, why blog about it? (Aside from the opportunity to highlight some great headlines like the Idaho Statesman’s, “Experts: Lochsa River is too high to flush toilet paper”)

The accident occurred on a pretty notable stretch of road: US-12. It is a scenic highway where battle lines have been drawn over massively oversized loads set to deliver equipment from Idaho to Alberta’s tar sands operations over serious objections from communities along the route concerned about safety and ruinous impacts on the landscapes they love.

Even though US-12 sees an industrial shipping accident every week, Exxon is planning to move 200 giant modules on the highway with little clearance and steep drop-offs through mountain passes in Idaho and Montana on the way to Canada. By giant, I mean that the biggest is 500,000 pounds, thirty feet tall, nearly 200 feet long and nearly 30 feet wide (almost as wide as the entire road they will travel on in places). Comparitively, the quicker pickerupper blocking the Lochsa is nothing.

We’ve covered the insanity of the proposed megaload transports on Switchboard in the past (especially Bobby McEnaney), but the toilet paper to-do makes absolutely clear how treacherous this highway can be as it moves through picturesque mountain passes. While Idaho authorities wait for the mega-rolls to dry out (the first two fell apart in the river when someone tried to fish them out) a further reminder sits just a couple miles upstream where the van involved in a fatal accident sits in the raging river until it is safe for crews to remove it.

If a truck loaded with toilet paper cannot navigate this route, how about a 100-ton mega-truck with only 6 inches of clearance? If one of those suckers takes a spill, we will need more than Charmin to clean up the mess…

Megaloads image by Nicholas.Senn via Flickr

The Message On Mercury: EPA hears public concerns in Chicago

2011-05-26T16:52:19Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

The Environmental Protection Agency held public hearings in Chicago Tuesday on proposed new standards to protect the public from hazardous power plant pollution. It was one of three opportunities for the public to weigh in on the prospect for more stringent standards that would reduce emissions mercury and air toxic pollution coming from coal and oil plants.

And judging from the turnout, people all over the Midwest are concerned with the issue. Buses parked outside the hearing center had license plates from states throughout the region.

The testimony started promptly at 9 a.m. and continued well into the night. In the short time I was in the hearing room, I heard a broad array of citizens and organizations expressing concern about the damage inflicted by power plants pollution, as well as deep rejection of the special interests that seem hell bent on continuing to burden the public with pollution. And in one case, that testimony came from a local folk singer who expressed her concern in song (the EPA officials expressed regret that the transcripts could only show lyrics).

My colleague Shannon Fisk is leading the charge in a bunch of high profile coal cases around the Midwest. Given his experience and extensive work on the issue of power plant pollution, he had a lot to say when he testified about the dangers emanating from the stacks of the region’s aging plants. The hearing took place just a couple miles from the infamous Fisk Generating Station. So it was no surprise to hear Shannon (who has no connection to the plant that shares his name, aside from the fact that he is suing its owners) bring a local focus to his statements as we were in the shadow of one of the oldest coal plants in the nation:

“The good news is that some in the utility industry have acknowledged that they can and will comply with the standards being proposed today within the three year deadline set forth in the Clean Air Act. Here in Chicago, Midwest Generation LLC, the owner and operator of the Fisk coal plant just a couple of miles down Halsted from where we stand today, has publicly stated support for the goals of the new standards. Such support is due to the fact that the State of Illinois and environmental groups have required Midwest Generation to already make reductions in mercury emissions, and it would be helpful if Midwest Generation would comply with its legal duty to install modern pollution controls for other pollutants. However, it is instructive that Midwest Generation believes it is able to make this work on a fleet that includes some of the oldest plants in the country that have not had pollution control updates in decades. Surely, if this can work on the more than 50 year old boiler at the Fisk coal plant, it can work across the country to protect all Americans.

Unfortunately, others in industry are pushing EPA to delay even further. And my question to these agents of delay is how much is enough. How many lives are they willing to sacrifice in order to have even more time to install pollution controls that have been available for decades?”

Midwest Generation’s hearty self-congratulating has been notable in Chicago media this week around the hearings. They recognize what a huge problem mercury is for public health. So does the State of Illinois, which took steps to curtail emissions of the brain-damaging heavy metal, forcing Midwest Gen to take action, along with every other coal plant in the state. Unfortunately, not everyone will acquiesce to the science---like the shills who wrote the Op Ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal claiming that the mounds of research on health impacts of mercury are myth-making and scare tactics. Great Lakes fishermen, who came to the hearings in droves, thankfully do not agree and have expressed their concern loudly and forcefully.

The new EPA rules can help protect the public health and move us into a new clean energy economy by allowing clean energy to compete on a level playing field against dirty facilities that are subsidized by people’s lungs and well-being. It is time to improve our standards so they reflect the real science and the public interest. Thankfully, I heard that message being delivered loudly and clearly in Chicago this week in so many different ways, by so many different voices, that it was impossible to miss. If you want to add your voice to the chorus, take action now!

Fisk Generating Station image by istorija via Flickr

Uhhh, About Those Pipeline Safety Claims: Bad week for Canadian Oilies

2011-05-09T22:50:20Z

Josh Mogerman, Deputy Director, National Media, Chicago

It has been a very bad couple of weeks for the Canadian oil and pipeline industries.

This weekend, the Keystone pipeline popped, spilling more than 20,000 gallons of tar sands oil and sending a 60’ spout into the air from a pumping station in the Dakotas. The line remains closed. It is the 10th spill on the line, which has not been in operation for a full year yet despite being advertised as a safe, modern pipeline that would “only” have 1.4 spills per decade. Ooops. This spill comes on the heels of a much bigger pipeline failure in Alberta where 1.2 million gallons of oil were spewed in the Peace River region last week. It is the worst spill in Canada since 1975 and it illustrates a lot of the oil infrastructure issues that we have been hammering on for some time.

Regarding last week’s spill, the Globe and Mail noted, “The spill raises new questions about the health of Alberta’s aging pipeline system.” Us too. Though Alberta’s regulators panned our report Tar Sands Pipeline Safety Risks when it came out earlier this year (only to later admit they hadn’t read it before responding), the event eerily echoed many of the concerns we raised. While we do not know what was spilled near Peace River (initial indications are that it was not tar sands oil), we do know a bit about the pipeline that failed. Again, from the Globe and Mail:

“It’s the second major spill from the Rainbow line, whose owner is a subsidiary of publicly traded Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. (PAA-N61.98-1.00-1.59%) In late 2006, 7,500 barrels leaked from the pipe, which travels 770 km from Zama, Alta. to Edmonton. At the time, an investigation determined that “stress corrosion cracking, fatigue cracking and external coating failure caused the release.” These issues are often related to age; the Rainbow line was built in 1966. It is designed to carry 220,000 barrels per day; last year, it averaged 187,000 barrels per day.”

We also know that the line carried an array of oil products: from the light sweet crude that most of us picture when we think of oil, to the heavy DilBit that is the subject of the report.

And that is interesting.

The “stress corrosion cracking” noted in the previous Rainbow spill is a hallmark of lines moving high sulphur fuels like DilBit, according to NRDC pipeline expert Anthony Swift. We will be watching to see if that comes into play when the CSI work is done to figure out the source of this failure, but our report makes clear that the unique chemical composition of DilBit makes corrosion-related breakdowns in pipelines carrying the nasty stuff much more likely.

What is clear from this event and last summer's Kalamazoo River spill is that the Canadian oil industry doesn’t do itself a lot of favors. The Keystone and Rainbow pipeline incidents are likely to give a lot of people pause---many of whom have been assured repeatedly of the safe status of North America’s oil pipelines to quell concerns over some projects that the industry desperately wants: Keystone XL (a pipeline from Alberta to Houston) and the Enbridge Gateway pipeline (from Alberta to the British Columbia coast). Both are designed to open up foreign markets for the tar sands oil that currently can only go to Canadian and US markets. In both cases, there is fierce pushback along the pipeline routes from folks reasonably concerned about spills and especially impact on water resources.

The Keystone spill is particularly damning in that it makes clear rosy safety predictions made by TransCanada (who would also build the Keystone XL line) simply cannot be substantiated. The spill really was the perfect opportunity for the pipeline company to prove its claim that a spill on their system could be stopped in 12 minutes. Instead, despite the fact that this occurred at one of their pumping stations instead of a far-flung field where detection or access would be harder, it reportedly took 30 minutes to turn off the flow, 2.5 times the company’s claims. It would not surprise me if landowners along the proposed pipeline path were wondering if other safety claims were off by a factor of 250%.

And anyone watching the Alberta or Michigan spill has also been given real reasons for pause. The lack of transparency and slow response have been surprising (heck, even Alberta’s Premiere Ed Stelmach, oil industry apologist in-chief, has been criticizing the Rainbow pipeline response) where no public announcement about what kind of oil had been spilled was made for over a week. The initial size of the spill and proximity to wetlands were discounted. This followed the spill in Michigan, where the mere fact that tar sands oil was even involved was vehemently denied until OnEarth magazine and Michigan Messenger exposed the truth. Come on guys---fess up. Instead of investigation, there is denial and defensiveness pretty consistently which doesn’t do anyone any good. It hinders a quality cleanup, endangers public and first responder health, as well as undercutting the public trust.

Blaming the victims doesn’t help much either. The brusque, uncivil response to legitimate concern from folks near the Peace River spill is also counterproductive. Check this out from Greenwire (subscription required):

"Just because there is an odor doesn't necessarily imply there are health-related issues," said Environment Minister Rob Renner, who sent a mobile air monitoring unit to the area.

...

"Whoever is saying that really doesn't care what is going on," [Brian] Alexander [principal of Little Buffalo School on Lubicon Cree First Nation, which is at the spill site] said. "They don't care about people's well-being."

Tsk, tsk.

Pipeline industry spokespeople like to say, “Oil is oil.” They repeat it constantly. But that is simply not true. These spills make clear that the industry needs to do more work to figure out how to move DilBit safely. We cannot afford to add nearly 2,000 more miles of liability for oil that a study commissioned by DOE shows we don’t need. With a decision looming from the Obama administration on Keystone XL, it seems pretty clear with the events of the last couple weeks that the new pipeline should wait.