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Industry attack campaign way off base on tar sands and low carbon policies: Part 2

2010-03-08T19:29:21Z

With input from my NRDC colleague, Simon Mui.

In my blog last week on the attack campaigns against the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), an innovative policy tool for reducing the global warming pollution in our fuels, I wrote about the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) and its affiliated “organizations.” While it portrays itself as a consumer organization, it is in reality a front group run by a lobby group and backed by the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and other titans of the status quo, bent on keeping America addicted to oil. And not just any oil but the dirtiest oil on the planet.

Big Oil backed CEA would move America in the wrong direction by locking us into decades of dependency on high-carbon and environmentally destructive tar sands and shale oil. Both require huge amounts of energy and water to produce. Both will make a wasteland of some of the last wildlands on our Continent. Both put endangered wildlife at risk. But one policy stands in the way of this backwards plan – the low carbon fuel standard – which would provide incentives for the development of cleaner, non-oil sources of fuel.

So what is the low carbon fuel standard?

California adopted the first low carbon fuel standard in the country as part of its implementation of its path-breaking global warming legislation. It would require petroleum producers and importers over time to lower the carbon content of their fuels (the amount of carbon per unit of energy in the fuel). By 2020, they are to reduce the carbon content of fuels sold in California by 10%. This can be accomplished by either providing or producing low-carbon fuels such as electricity, natural gas, hydrogen and sustainably produced biofuels themselves, or purchasing credits from low-carbon fuel producers.

It is effectively a performance standard – no fuel is barred and no technology is prescribed. In the event that a refiner or blender falls short, the policy allows credits to be purchased from other low-carbon fuel providers to get over the top. Contrary to assertions by CEA that it was “cooked up on California campuses over the past decade,” the California low carbon fuel standard was in fact issued as an Executive Order by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Many other states and some Canadian provinces are in the process of adopting policies similar to California’s.

This is truly 21st Century policy. It is not the command and control regulation so often criticized by industry. It allows for innovation and continuous improvement to be rewarded.

Okay, so that is how it is described by scholars, government officials and environmentalists. How does Big Oil backed CEA describe it?

According to scrolling assertions on CEA’s “Secure Our Fuels” webpage, the LCFS is variously described as:

- A plan to expand America’s dangerous foreign energy dependence

- A mandate for higher fuel costs

- A sure-fire way to ship millions of American jobs overseas

- A massive transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street.

What follows is our response to these unfounded and fear-mongering assertions. We believe that – in vast contrast to CEA’s arguments – the low carbon fuel standard will:

Reduce America’s dangerous foreign energy dependence

According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, the five biggest oil companies recorded a combined profit of $100 billion in 2008 alone yet invested less than 4 percent in renewable and alternative energy. The low carbon fuel standard will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil by putting Big Oil on the hook to put their money where their “mouth” is and invest in alternative, low-carbon fuels. Currently, the global warming pollution imbedded in fuels is not accounted for, making it more difficult for cleaner fuels to compete. By diversifying our fuels, including those grown in America, America will be more self-sustaining. This will make us more – not less – secure.

While CEA argues that the low carbon fuel standard would block some of the dirtiest fuels in North America from being developed (tar sands, liquid coal and oil shale), thereby making us more dependent on oil from other, less savory regions of the world, the reality is that the LCFS starts to wean us from the choke-hold that oil has on today’s transportation and will help us gradually transition to more diverse, cleaner choices for fueling our mobility.

NRDC’s analysis shows that with policies such as the low carbon fuel standard and vehicle emission standards, the U.S. is on the path to save over 4 million barrels a day (mbd) – one fifth of our daily usage – by 2020 and 10 mbd – fully one half – by 2030 compared to scenario in which vehicle efficiency and biofuels penetration stays at today’s levels. To put this in perspective, we import approximately 4 mbd from the Middle East, Venezuela, and the Canadian tar sands combined. Low carbon policies, like California’s, can help us achieve this goal so that we don’t need to deepen our dependency on Canada’s dirty and destructive tar sands oil.

The low carbon fuel standard will provide the necessary framework to transition our transportation sector from dirty oil to electricity and new, cleaner, homegrown fuels. For these reasons, this complementary policy approach has been endorsed by the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a consortium of leading companies and environmental groups.

Reduce costs by diversifying fuel sources and improving innovation

The low carbon fuel standard is expected to reduce our fuel costs by making America more fuel efficient and by providing alternatives to our oil dependency. Our economy has become vulnerable to oil price volatility. With China and the rest of the developing economies growing rapidly, demand for oil and prices have nowhere to go but up. This policy will create competition in the fuels market, helping break a near 100% monopoly in the transportation sector by a single product: oil. The dirty fuels that the Big Oil- backed CEA would have us increase our reliance on are actually some of the most expensive fuels in the world to produce. That is why, during this recession, 85% of the slow down in global oil extraction has occurred in the tar sands. They also argue that a low carbon fuel standard is an energy tax in disguise. There is no basis for this claim and seems to be simply an extension of their attacks on pricing carbon under cap-and-trade policy.

Create American jobs as we shift to using energy made in our own country

By encouraging investments in alternative fuels and development of home-grown fuels like advanced cellulosic biofuels and natural gas generated from waste, we will create more jobs in North America. Clean transportation policies such as the low carbon fuels standard can accelerate economic growth and job creation in the cleantech sector. If California’s experience is a guide, these promising new fuels could help provide jobs in biofuels, wind energy and other renewables in the Midwest where tar sands expansion is at a fever pitch. An analysis by the University of Amherst at Massachusetts shows that three times more jobs are created in a clean energy economy than by staying the course of our reliance on fossil fuels. In terms of global competition, reducing – not increasing – carbon is the path to success and innovation. That’s why companies like Wal-Mart are making major voluntary commitments to reduce their carbon footprint in the U.S. and globally. Policies like the LCFS will help make the U.S. more competitive by encouraging the use of more sustainable resources and complement the creation of millions of clean energy jobs under new climate policies.

Create flexible implementation measures that will help companies comply and reduce costs

Under California’s low carbon fuel standard, a credit system is created, which works as follows: Low carbon fuel producers will generate credits (each credit represents a ton of carbon reduction). Oil companies need to hold a certain amount of credits (or reductions) to comply with the 10% reduction by 2020. They can generate their own credits by producing their own low-carbon fuels (as some oil companies plan to do like BP’s biofuels program) or purchase credits from low-carbon fuel producers. This system will save consumers money and make it easier for companies to comply.

For nearly twenty years, companies have been able to “trade” emission reductions under the Clean Air Act’s acid rain program, which has made compliance with the requirements to cut sulfur dioxide emissions in half much less expensive than they would otherwise have been, saving Americans billions of dollars.

While CEA claims that Wall Street will be enriched at the expense of Main Street, we don’t expect Wall Street to be involved in this credit market. This policy will benefit Main Street by providing consumers with more choice.

********************************************************************

The CEA is distorting the debate with its unfounded assertions in order to derail policies that would help level the playing field for alternative fuel providers. CEA needs to be seen for what it is – a Big Oil backed front group with a mission to keep America addicted to oil. The need to reduce our addition to oil has never been greater, yet CEA’s Big Oil backers are bent on opening a new industry of dirty, high carbon fuels. The American people should reject this backwards plan – found here in its letters .

The reality is that the U.S is already on track to reduce its use of oil, thanks to policies that were put in place by the last two Administrations. The low carbon fuel standard will accelerate this trend and help us protect our precious North American environment, improve the health of communities already living with too much pollution, and reduce the need to commit U.S. troops in unstable, oil rich areas of the world.

That sounds like a far better path to me than the status quo so fiercely defended by Big Oil and its front groups. If you agree, please visit the tar sands network’s website, www.dirtyoilsands.org, and send a letter to the President through www.lovewinter.org.

1600 ducks died in one incident at Syncrude's tar sands tailing ponds – this photo released by Canadian court last week. See's this blog on the trial.

Who’s behind the attack campaigns against cleaner transportation fuels? Part 1

2010-03-02T22:49:47Z

There are two major assaults against the shift to cleaner fuels that are rooted to Canada’s dirty tar sands. The first is a campaign to undermine this shift by the Canadian government itself. These efforts were reported in some detail in a New York Times online Climate Wire piece yesterday and blogged on by my colleague, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz. The second, and the focus of this blog, is an attack campaign by a string of seemingly unrelated groups with names that evoke citizens’ energy and national security concerns. Today, I explore what is behind this campaign and why it matters. In future blogs, I will explore their arguments.

The group behind the attack campaign calls itself the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA). It is running commercials and appearing on earned media talking against proposals to clean up America’s fuels and move to alternatives. It shares some similarities and many members* with EnergyCitizens, the API astroturf campaign that organized town halls last summer against climate legislation pending in Congress.

We know that EnergyCitizens was organized by the American Petroleum Institute to de-rail the climate legislation in Congress (see this leaked memo) - what about the Consumer Energy Alliance? API is there again – listed as a CEA affiliate – as well as all the major oil companies with strip-mining interests in Canada’s tar sands – BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell – and many of the trade associations, such as commercial aviation’s Air Transport Association, that buy their fuels from these companies. The listing – which is strangely hard to find on their “Secure Our Fuels” website – makes it clear it is a corporate group, not the down home consumer group is purports to be.

What are the targets of their attacks? The main targets are a policy called the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS for short) and efforts to stem the import of tar sands oil. Last year, California put into force the first state LCFS. That policy requires that the state’s fuels get cleaner over time (e.g. make less carbon pollution per unit of fuel used). The standard would likely be met by moving some transportation to electricity, improving efficiency, and using more homegrown biofuels. California’s mandate is for fuels to get 10% cleaner over the next decade.

This policy makes a lot of sense. Even our last President, Texas oil cheerleader that he was, famously said “America is addicted to oil.” We know that the extraction and combustion of oil causes lots of environmental degradation and human health problems. We know that it keeps us tied to unappealing regimes. We know it puts our economy in deeper debt. But to read CEA’s “Secure Our Fuels” webpage and listen to their commercials, a shift to low carbon fuels will undermine the very security of our country and make us more, not less, reliant on the petro-dictatorships of the world – a completely unsubstantiated and counterintuitive claim.

So who is against shifting to cleaner fuels? CEA trumpets its Alliance chapters. Yet, in searching for these chapters, I came up empty handed. Take, for example, its members, the Consumer Energy Alliance of Florida, the Consumer Energy Alliance of Alaska and the Southeast Energy Alliance. Other than a brief description of these alliances on the CEA webpage, there is no separate web page for CEA Florida or CEA Alaska, and, when you click on Southeast Energy Alliance, there is no more than one page, that says “Welcome to Southeast Energy Alliance”. If I wanted to engage with these affiliate groups, it would be impossible. And, yet, there is a Michael Whatley speaking on behalf of SEA on this Lou Dobbs show

So who is Michael Whatley, the Vice President of CEA and Executive Director of SEA? I started googling again and turned up the Houston-based lobby firm HBW, which seems to be home to the staff who have been using a variety of organizations – not just CEA – to influence General Jim Jones, the head of the White House National Security Council, Governors and key members of Congress.

Here is what the HBW website has to say about the formation of HBW:

To help meet its mission, HBW Resources will work closely with the Consumer Energy Alliance, the Southeast Energy Alliance and the Center for Unconventional Fuels, all of which have established grassroots and grasstops networks that can effectively communicate to diverse influentials.

Yet, when I surfed around to find these groups that have “established grassroots and grasstops networks”, it seems that HBW’s Managing Partner, David Holt, and Partner, Michael Whatley, and their staff may in fact be these other groups as well. It is hard to know because there are - like the state and regional Energy Alliance affiliates – no active websites for Center for North American Energy Security or the Center for Unconventional Fuels. And even though it’s impossible to find the Center for North American Security, it has “retained” Whatley and HBW to do its lobbying for "development of unconventional resources".

One can only surmise that these groups are creations of these principals. If one day you need to organize a conference to write a report on unconventional fuels, do you use the Center for Unconventional Fuels letterhead? If the next day you need a letter from “outraged energy users in South Carolina” – do you use the SEA letterhead? If the next day you need a letter from a Hawkish sounding organization – do you use the Center for North American Energy Security? You just have to hope that whoever receives your letter doesn’t try to go to your website, find an office, or review an annual report.

It’s one thing to be sparring mano-a-mano with the oil industry on these issues. But these groups – EnergyCitizens and Consumer Energy Alliance – are trying to pass themselves off as something they are not, consumer organizations, institutions with stature on energy security issues, etc. In all this deception, one thing is clear. What seems like apple pie to you and me – clean fuels – must be mighty threatening to those defending our “addiction to oil” and hoping to open up a whole new dirty fuels industry, starting with Canada’s destructive tar sands oil.

* Members shared by EnergyCitizens and the Consumer Energy Alliance: American Petroleum Institute, American Trucking Associations, Associated Industries of Florida, Colorado Farm Bureau, Florida Minerals and Chemistry Council, National Ocean Industries Association, National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, Resource Development Council for Alaska, Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, 60-Plus Association, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce

1600 ducks died in one incident at Syncrude's tar sands tailing ponds - this photo released by Canadian court today. See's this blog on the trial.

The Oil-ympics - Canada’s darker side

2010-02-24T15:49:26Z

Those of us living in the Washington D.C. area have been bombarded by an ad from the Canadian American Business Council during the Olympic’s coverage on NBC. While the ad features mainly pictures of daisy fields, blue skies, and happy children, and a narrator extolling the special relationship enjoyed by the U.S. and Canada, there is also a fleeting reference to “supplying oil from its vast oil sands and other reserves” with an image of a beaker with a clear, clean looking liquid. The reference is so fleeting that most people listening don’t hear it at first. But the thinking by the ad’s proponents must be that by hearing it over and over between figure skating twizzles and downhill carving, we’ll associate the tar sands with those pretty flowers, clean air, happy children and a clean beaker of something that looks more like maple syrup than oil.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The happy daisy fields are in fact strip-mined chasms, extending hundreds of feet into earth that was once the anchor for a beautiful forest full of rivers, birds and fish. The air is polluted with sulfur, acid rain, and heavy metals at the nearby “up-graders”. The people of the downstream Fort Chipewyan are worried about rare cancers in their community. And that brown liquid can’t possibly be bitumen, the gooey, dirty main product from excavating oil from the tar sands.

And while Alberta has been promoting the Province through its “Alberta House” in Vancouver and on its luxury train trip between Vancouver and Whistler, Alberta’s native people downstream from the tar sands and their native and environmental allies have been protesting – decrying the impact of the tar sands. Thousands marched to the Alberta House just as the Premier from Alberta was set to make his opening remarks. The Dogwood Alliance, a local British Columbia group fighting a tar sands pipeline through the Province, introduced protesters dressed as a giant polar bear named Aurora to the Olympic press scrum.

Sierra Club launched a “Love Winter – Hate the Oil Sands” campaign. Athletes, like Mike Richter, the Silver medalist hockey goalie and NHL hockey star, also weighed in – here is Richter on the tar sands from a Sierra Club press release: “We can’t seriously combat global warming while getting fuel from the world’s dirtiest source.” His full interview is here in a Sierra Club radio interview. Alison Gannett, the champion free-skier who also has aligned herself with the Sierra Club campaign, posted a blog on the website of her Save Our Snow Foundation, stating: “Even as Vancouver is gearing up for the excitement of the winter games, next door, the province of Alberta is pursuing a dirty energy policy that is speeding global warming and could ultimately ruin skiing as we know it.” The Dirty Oil Sands website has an excellent graphic of a downhill skiier getting mired in the stuff. And finally, when you go onto the Canadian American Business Council website from Google, you’ll see a Friends of the Earth sponsored ad entitled “No more Dirty Tar Sands” sitting right across from their site.

This string of events comes on the heels of two trend-setting companies, Bed Bath and Beyond and Whole Foods, announcing their decision to move away from tar sands oil in the transportation of their goods. Having worked on corporate campaigns for many years, I know firsthand how difficult it is to get companies to wade into a controversial issue. It is much easier to move to solutions, like improving efficiency or literally changing light bulbs, but much more difficult to take on the status quo fossil fuels, especially this one where reaction is swift and biting. But, as the Globe and Mail editorial said that followed, a week after the announcement and the inevitable backlash, “…Canada can ill afford to be caught wrongly assuming that the world will pay willingly, and dearly, for its oil. A more responsive approach would mean accelerating research into cleaner oil extraction – especially carbon capture and storage – and investing more in renewable energy….the Shells, Wal-Marts, and Whole Foods of the World are not waiting for cleaner energy. Neither should Canada.”

Those of us watching the “Oil-ympics” know that there is much to do to clean up this darker side of the Canada-U.S.energy relationship so ballyhooed by the Canadian American Business Council.

Spirit Bear is next “trophy” sought in British Columbia

2010-02-23T16:55:33Z

As soon as the Olympics are over and the crowds that have come from all over the world for the array of winter sports have dispersed, a new visitor will come for a different “sport” – the bear hunter seeking to kill bears for trophies in British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest. How can British Columbia’s government put itself forward as a leader – as host of the Olympics – in Canada one week and the next week allow the backwards and heart wrenching killing of bears as they stumble out of their dens after a long winter’s hibernation?

The government must stop the hunt and stop it now. This is the message that 20 million people from around the world will send to the British Columbia government tomorrow in a full page ad that will run in the B.C. Vancouver Sun (see below). Ian McAllister, one of the most prominent bear advocates in North America and Executive Director of Pacific Wild, shares the sentiment behind the ad in his guest blog on NRDC's Greenlight page today.

NRDC has worked closely with first nations, environmentalists, industry and government to protect the temperate rainforest of British Columbia for nearly two decades. We were integrally involved in the creation of millions of acres of protected forests in Vancouver Island’s Clayoquot Sound and on B.C.’s western coast, the Great Bear Rainforest. NRDC’s very logo is of the spirit bear, one of the most beautiful bears on the planet that appears as a white, cinnamon colored, or black bear. Black bears can have white cubs and vice-versa. The forests have the richest variety of bears on the planet. The bear is the icon of the forest, a point not lost on B.C. when it paraded a giant spirit bear in the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

The rapid logging and hunting on the coast spurred a massive campaign that started with the indigenous peoples that had lived there for millennia and spread to millions of people around the world, including NRDC’s 1.2 members and activists. Nearly 500 major corporations also joined the call to protect these forests. Since the British Columbia government moved to protect the Great Bear Rainforest in 2001, ending the trophy hunt has been one of the most deadly unfulfilled promises – over 2,000 bears have been killed. It is time to fulfill this promise and not let another year go by in which black bears, some carrying the recessive gene of the spirit bear, and grizzlies can be senselessly killed.

Anyone who knows these forests can’t help but be awed by them. They are replete with giant cedars and firs, stretching up into mist of the rainforest and over pristine salmon streams. The bear has a close relationship with these trees and salmon. It carries the salmon from the stream to eat the fish in the trees. The carcass of the fish are often seen strewn across branches, soon to fertilize the tree and the forest soils. The trees then provide dens for the bears and protection from the sun for the streams, making it possible for the salmon to survive. The bear, salmon and trees are intricately interwoven with one another in a perfect cycle of life.

The people who know this best are the first nations. They have revered the bear – many have bear clans. One of the first nation leaders we have worked closely with on the coast, Art Sterritt, had this to say of the hunt – “"This is not a sport, it is a senseless slaughter, the trophy hunt goes against every moral teaching that we carry and is disrespectful to our culture and values."

The first nations in the Great Bear Rainforest say that the white bear was put there – in their rainforest home – to remind them that their home was once all ice and snow. The bear is there to remind them to protect the magnificent forest that arose when the glaciers retreated. Now it’s the bear that needs our protection. The clock is ticking.

[Click the image below to see the full ad]

Protecting the Boreal: A scientific call to focus on the “other” forest carbon

2009-12-15T22:21:22Z

Today, a group of scientists called on the leadership of countries with Boreal forest within their borders to do more to conserve the carbon sequestered in this forest. The Boreal is our northernmost forest and is the largest terrestrial carbon reservoir on the planet. Their letter comes on the heels of a report released last month entitled The Carbon the World Forgot.

As countries debate in Copenhagen how to address forest conservation in a global climate pact, the scientists, including Peter Raven who heads the prestigious Missouri Botanical Garden, encourage government leaders not to focus only on tropical forests but to also focus on conservation opportunities in the Boreal forest.

Here are some important statistics from the report:

Globally, boreal forests store 703 billion tons of carbon in their trees, wetlands, and soils. This amounts to 22% of all carbon stored in the earth’s land surface. Logging, mining, and oil and gas extraction have become more prevalent in the boreal forest, all of which readily release carbon built up over millennia upon development.
The global boreal forest is the world’s largest and most intact forest ecosystem left on earth, and holds some of the world’s largest expanses of carbon-dense peatlands. Seven of the ten largest untouched forests globally are located in North America’s Boreal Forest.
Boreal forests, if left intact, may provide the space necessary for species to adapt to climate change. Some species will be pushed north due to rising temperatures, as has already been documented in many bird species, and will increasingly depend on northern or boreal forests for successful adaptation.
The majority of international forest protection schemes have been focused on tropical forests and providing financial incentives for protection. International mechanisms to protect boreal forests are unlikely to result out of the talks in Copenhagen, however momentum is building to account for emissions from peat extraction and degradation. It is imperative that boreal forest countries create domestic protection mechanisms to protect these vital carbon stores, and account for all emissions related to development and land use change.

You can go to the site of the International Boreal Conservation Campaign to see a map that shows how large the Boreal forest is and where the greatest conservation opportunities are.

Hopefully, our President and others will take note of this important reminder: Don't forget the Boreal!

New Group of Airlines Deserves Coal in its Stocking

2009-12-15T19:41:23Z

The Air Transport Association (ATA) announced today that a group of mainly U.S. airlines have signed an MOU to purchase fuels derived from coal – so called “coal to liquids”, liquid coal, or CTL for short. This comes during the Copenhagen negotiations where governments are debating how to reduce our dependence on dirty fossil fuels, such as coal.

Liquid fuel from coal has yet to be commercialized in the U.S. and would open up a vast new market for the extraction and combustion of coal, setting the U.S. back in its efforts to meet significant reductions in greenhouse gas pollution and to forge agreements on pollution reduction with other countries. Rentech’s accompanying announcement that a CTL plant will be built in Mississippi comes on the heels of an Air Force decision to withdraw support for domestic CTL plants and after Rentech pulled up stakes in Illinois, when according to its chairman in a New York Times piece today, banks got skittish about financing because of carbon emission liabilities.

Liquid coal development is inconsistent with the clean energy economy that will help us avoid the worst impacts of global warming. The lifecycle emissions of liquid coal are nearly twice that of conventional fuels and could dramatically increase the emissions from the transportation sector, which accounts for thirty percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. While the announcement suggests that biomass may be used to lower the emissions profile of the liquid coal fuel, this is not a clear environmental win-win. There are many concerns about where biomass is coming from and what the real carbon impacts are. And lowering the emissions profiles of conventional fuels, never mind high carbon fuels, is critical to meeting our climate goals. Sustainably produced biomass and other biofuels will be critical in doing this but are in limited supplies.

The announcement also claims that carbon emissions would be injected back into the ground to enhance oil recovery at another project in Mississippi, and while NRDC supports this creative use of carbon dioxide in order to remove it from the atmosphere, the challenge of instituting such a practice in a portion of the hundreds of coal-fired plants is daunting enough without creating competition from a brand-new coal-based industry. While carbon capture and disposal may be necessary for coal fired electricity, we do not need to adopt new technologies with equally high environmental liabilities.

Use of coal for fuels will also cause unacceptable levels of environmental damage due to resource extraction processes. Already about 5% or more of our coal use comes from a practice called mountain top removal, where mountain tops are literally blown off to expose seams of coal. While it is not clear where the coal would come from for the Rentech facility, its construction could catalayze an industry would likely expand a practice that has left many Appalachian hollows filled with rubble and communities impacted by noise, dirt, and toxic runoff.

Fortunately, this new group committed to liquid coal faces competition from airlines and aviation companies that are working to produce low-carbon substitute fuels. Today's announcements contrast with efforts of an international consortium of airlines, the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group (SAFUG). SAFUG was launched more than a year ago to develop sustainably produced and certified alternative aviation fuels from feedstocks such as jatropha and algae and is working with a multi-stakeholder venture called the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels that has environmentalists' support. None of SAFUG's work entails the use of coal to liquids fuels or other fossil fuel-based alternative fuels. It now is made up of international carriers that control roughly 25% of the global fuel purchasing. Membership is growing, and NRDC urges domestic carriers to break from the pack and become part of this group of industry leaders.

As Santa makes his list for gifts this year, it’s fitting that he deliver a lump of coal to the unlucky 13 companies signing onto the Rentech MOU, according to the ATA release: Air Canada, American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines, FedEx Express, JetBlue Airways, Lufthansa German Airlines, Mexicana Airlines, Polar Air Cargo, United Airlines, UPS Airlines, US Airways, and Air-Tran Airways.

Tar sands: Too risky say investors

2009-12-08T20:03:17Z

As the thousands of journalists, government officials and so-called “non-governmental organizations” descend on Copenhagen, the temperature is rising around the tar sands issue. But perhaps the most interesting tar sands development this week happened right here in Washington D.C.

Today, a group of investor organizations representing approximately $127 billion in assets under management formally stepped into the fray on the tar sands issue, calling them risky investments in a letter to the Senate. This letter follows on the tail of another report last week by a Canadian investment company stating that companies extracting tar sands were not disclosing the risks adequately.

In today's letter, the investor groups point to the fact that 85% of the deferred or cancelled non-OPEC oil production supply during the recession has been in the tar sands. They also cited the numerous liabilities associated with damage to the land, air and water and disregard for the rights of the native communities bordering the areas of extraction, pipeline pathways and refineries. But top on their list is the unmanaged climate liability, as public concern about global warming grows, regulations are adopted to rein in carbon pollution, and oil prices swing up and down.

Taking direct aim at those that would argue for expansion of the tar sands and development of other high carbon fuels as secure sources to meet our future fuel needs, the investor letter says, “Legislation that makes the United States more dependent on these energy sources could worsen the impact of future volatility”.

Instead the group urges that the federal fuel procurement provision of the 2007 energy bill be preserved and that a Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) be adopted by Congress, similar to the one adopted in California saying, “It is clear that such reductions will eventually be obligatory, and we must ensure that our economy is prepared for a carbon constrained future. Accordingly, we must send a consistent signal through avenues such as Section 526 and an LCFS that encourages the growth of a robust clean fuels market.”

For those that might not be obsessive observers’ of all things tar sands (I do not count myself in this group), you might miss the significance of their endorsement of these two “crucibles” in the effort to stem the growth in tar sands and other dirty fuels. Over the past few years, the Canadians have hired legions of lobbyists and sent in their ambassador and tar sands Premiers – Alberta and Saskachewan - to fight back these provisions in Congress and at the state level. The American Petroleum Institute has waged an “astroturf” campaign against the LCFS (astroturf as opposed to real grassroots) and the major oil companies have spent millions to defeat the pending climate legislation in the U.S. and Canada. But, as one of these lobbyists is quoted saying today, "The Low-Carbon Fuel Standard just keeps popping up…It's a bit like whack-a-mole. It gets hammered down, but it doesn't go away."

This letter swipes that hammer away and takes us one important step closer to gaining passage of a LCFS that will enable the U.S. to start to reduce the whopping 30% of the carbon emissions that come from our transportation sector.

That's great news. Tar sands expansion is indeed looking riskier and riskier.

To see the Green Century press release, go to:

http://www.greencentury.com/news/news/Investors_Voice_Opposition_to_High-Carbon_Fuel_Policy

Lead climate treaty scientist calls on Canada to put tar sands development on hold

2009-09-21T20:50:54Z

Today the Montreal Gazette reported that the lead climate scientist and recipient of the 2007 Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, said that until technologies are more advanced to address the carbon emissions from the tar sands, the operations there should be put on hold. He also pointed to the fact that Canada's targets for reducing greenhouse gases are much weaker than the European Union's targets.

"It's something that perhaps could lead to regrets later on, so you might as well make sure that all the requirements that are to be met to ensure environmental protection are taken in hand right at the beginning rather than being forced to take actions later," Pachauri was quoted as saying.

This interview comes on the eve of an U.N. Special Assembly meeting in New York on climate change. All eyes are on the U.S. and Canada in preparation for Copenhagen's major climate meeting at the end of December. The Canadian government has yet to endorse a cap-and-trade program similar to the one endorsed by the President and currently wending its way through Congress.

The controversial tar sands oil development has been at the center of this debate. Fears are that Canada's Harper government will adopt a climate policy that let the tar sands sector off the hook - first, by imposing intensity based targets that do not cap growth in this controversial source of oil; second, by allowing unlimited reductions to be achieved with offsets; and, third, allowing the use of a technology fund as a substitution for emission reduction requirements. The Harper government's first two climate proposals both relied on intensity targets for large polluters, rather than hard caps.

While the U.S. and Canadian targets for 2020 are similar, the U.S. proposes to accelerate its emissions cuts to what science says is needed by 2050. The Administration is also putting measures in place that could more deeply reduce U.S. emissions by 2020. Additionally, according to the Pembina Institute, the U.S. stimulus plan, pledging over US$76 billion for renewable energy and energy efficiency over the next two years, is six times per capita what the Harper government has pledged.

Because of its tar-sands-at-any-cost policies, Canada has also worked to undermine the international negotiations leading up to Copenhagen. Less than 24 hours after the G8 summit in Italy, Canada reneged on its commitment to keep global temperature increases below the critical two degree mark. Canada's Environment Minister said the commitment was "aspirational" and that Canada would not change its policies to meet it.

Canadian Foreign Affairs briefing notes obtained through an access-to-information request set out Canada's "strategic negotiating vision". The notes describe a strategy to undermine agreement in Copenhagen by insisting on binding emissions reductions from developing countries. Canada has also sought to weaken EU member commitments. This is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog.

So back to Pachauri's suggestion. It is rooted in simple math. If we allow unbridled growth in the tar sands as a supply of oil for the next 30-50 years, we will lock into oil that will significantly increase the carbon content of our fuels. Growth in emissions from tar sands has been cited as one of the most important reasons Canada will miss its Kyoto targets by over 30% and, according to NRDC's analysis, it will wipe out a substantial portion of the oil savings and emissions reductions from improved fuel efficiency of our vehicles.

In other words, tar sands oil will make it much more difficult for both Canada and the U.S. to meet significant emissions reductions in the transportation sector in the long term. But it is also making it more difficult for all countries to reach agreement on tackling climate change in Copenhagen. That is no doubt what was behind Pachauri's statements today.

This morning the city was blanketed with copies of the New York Post that blared "We're Screwed". The paper was in fact a project of the Yes Men who stage events to raise awareness about the risks of climate change. Unless Canada decides to act to constrain the growth of the tar sands, the New York Post Yes Men headline is sadly likely to be more truth than fiction.

We can't let the 800 (,000) pound gorilla set the standard

2009-09-16T23:26:52Z

You remember that old expression, the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Mirriam-Webster defines its meaning as: "one that is dominating or uncontrollable because of great size or power, e.g. like it or not, the 800-pound gorilla usually sets the standard". Tar sands oil extraction is the largest industrial project on earth. Its open pit mining covers 200 square miles. Ultimately, the mining and drilling could effect an area the size of Florida. It is dominating and seemingly uncontrollable and the battle is on to see whether it will set the standard or whether lower carbon, less destructive alternatives will prevail.

The U.S. is the largest market for tar sands oil, consuming 800,000 barrels a day. A new pipeline, the Alberta Clipper, could ultimately carry 800,000 more. A spider web of pipelines are planned that will lock the U.S. into this high carbon and environmentally destructive source of oil for the next 30-50 years. These advancements in infrastructure are as real as the Prime Minister's allusions to the tar sands are surreal.

In another era, the Prime Minister would have come to Washington and directly sung the praises of Alberta's oil, but - at this time of heightened concern about climate change and an expanding definition of energy security - the Prime Minister now has to be more circumspect. But the reality is that his failure to address the tar sands is fueling growing international disenchantment over this source of oil. Two days ago, Norway had its elections and its government investment in Statoil's tar sands projects became a very real election issue.

But the other reason is that President Obama has made it clear that he favors clean energy over continued reliance on dirty fossil fuels. What that has done is force the Harper Government to try to squeeze the tar sands into a clean energy frame. It will not surprise us if we see him alluding to the inclusion of the tar sands in the "Clean Energy Dialogue" even though the Action Plan released today makes no reference to their inclusion.

This attempt to push the tar sands onto the stage with smart grid technology, energy technology R&D, and even power plant carbon capture and storage is preposterous. As more and more people, through widely read publications like National Geographic, see the images of the tar sands...the huge gaping mine sites where the largest trucks on earth scrape the earth for oil...the toxic waste lagoons that can be seen from space, it becomes impossible to argue this could ever be a clean energy source.

Right now the U.S. and Canadian climate policies are oceans apart despite our shared border. Canada has yet to agree to a policy that would cap pollution from the tar sands, a posture that increasingly angers other provinces like Ontario and Quebec that are starting to see that Alberta's interests are not their own.

The good news is that The President and Congress are working daily to craft a bill and states like California keep setting the bar high with innovative policies to control greenhouse gases and move us to a low carbon economy.

Undoubtedly the rhetoric will be flying at tomorrow's dinner of the Canadian American Business Council in New York and the Prime Minister will feel at home again, but then he will go back to Canada with little more from Washington than the photos.

Maybe the people of Canada will demand more. And maybe at the next meeting between the Prime Minister and the President, there will actually be a discussion about how to harmonize two aggressive climate plans on the agenda.

And one can only hope that maybe ...just maybe... that 800 (,000) pound gorilla will change its appetite and eat plants instead of oil.

Beware Tarry Coattails: The Prime Minister of Canada is in town

2009-09-15T22:08:08Z

Prime Minister Harper is coming to Washington at a time of heightened concern about how tar sands oil is undermining U.S., Canadian and international efforts to curb global warming pollution. He is also coming at a time when all eyes are on the President and what the U.S. can take to Copenhagen to show its sincerity in moving from laggard to actor on the international stage.

The last thing the President needs right now is the tarry, energy intensive oil from Alberta sticking fast to his coattails in the run-up to Copenhagen. The President should distance himself from the Prime Minister's tar sands-at-any-cost policies and should make it clear that neither the U.S. nor the world will countenance expansion of this dirty source of oil. We hope that the President will re-iterate his vision that the U.S. become a clean energy leader, and secure its place in a 21st century world that requires new thinking and innovation.

That vision was on display today when the U.S. EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced its proposed standards for reducing oil use and greenhouse gas pollution from cars and trucks. Our analysis shows that these new vehicle standards will save roughly the same amount that we expect the tar sands to expand over the next ten years, roughly 1.3 million barrels of oil a day. In other words, measures such as these eliminate the need for tar sands oil. Other measures, such as moving more aggressively on plug-in hybrids and developing low carbon fuels - ideally under a Low Carbon Fuel Standard - would also save millions of barrels of oil use a day and save drivers and the American economy trillions of dollars in the process.

But that vision - of reduced demand for oil - is not what the Harper government or oil companies have in mind. Like the National Riffle Association, which continues to oppose even the most sensible controls on gun purchases and use, they see any effort to reduce our massive consumption of oil as a threat to their enterprise. This worldview is evident in the "EnergyCitizens" town-hall style campaign that the American Petroleum Institute has launched against the climate legislation on the Hill. Any provision that would require a full lifecycle accounting for carbon - like the federal fuels procurement provision of the 2007 energy bill and California's path breaking Low Carbon Fuel Standard - has been under attack. The national Low Carbon Fuel Standard - originally sponsored by Senator Obama - was stripped out of the House climate bill over the objections of the oil industry due to its expected impact on tar sands expansion.

Meanwhile, the march towards expanded tar sands continues. The U.S. has recently approved two pipelines for construction and another one, Keystone XL, is in the permitting process. Half a dozen major refineries are being expanded to take the oil from these pipelines, including the first new refinery to be built in thirty years. Once the industry is finished spending what must nearly top $200 billion, are the ExxonMobils, BPs, and ConocoPhilips really going to walk away? As ConocoPhilips told us - this is a 30-50 year play and it is coming right at the time when we need to be moving to reduce the carbon in our fuels.

The President should encourage the Prime Minister to stop throwing his tarry wrench into U.S. climate policy and to start getting his own house in order. The Federal government has yet to adopt a policy on climate change and its "Turning the Corner" plan has been put on hold. Meanwhile provinces like Ontario and Quebec, which are moving forward with their own greenhouse gas policies, are fearful that Alberta - already responsible for one third of all Canada's emissions - will be given exemptions and that they'll have to make up for Alberta's profligate pollution.

The Prime Minister is coming to sell continued U.S. dependence on tar sands oil, albeit clothed in the rhetoric of a false "energy security" - one that does not take into account the national security risks inherent in rising seas, melting poles, and species extinction. The President should say "no thanks" to the tar sands and continue the hard work he has started in confronting climate change and making true energy security a reality.

Photo credit: RAN action at Niagara Falls on eve of Harper's visit, Rainforest Action Network, September 15, 2009 -- More including video posted at http://ran.org/tarsands

Waxman-Markey bill ups the ante on tar sands and other dirty energy

2009-05-15T22:08:00Z

The huge Congressional climate bill has been formally introduced, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454). Over a month of discussion and heavy dealmaking has finally come to an end, recalling the famous Otto Von Bismarck quote "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made").

The means the path has been cleared for the House Energy and Commerce Committee to take up the bill on Monday and likely to vote it out, as Chairman Waxman promised, by Memorial Day weekend.

This is a critical step in getting a bill to the President. Just a week ago, the President met with the Congressional Democrats and said 'work it out and send me a bill to sign'. This would have been an inconceivable scenario during the last eight years in spite of the growing urgency to tackle global warming pollution. The President has made energy and climate change a top policy priority (an apparently disasterous decision today on mountaintop removal aside) and there is no more important time for Congress to advance this issue.

The bill is 936 pages long, following a discussion draft of nearly 700 pages. It deals with just about every energy issue - from building energy codes and labeling, energy efficient appliance deployment, developing a smart grid, etc... But the biggest proposal is to put a cap- an absolute limit - on global warming pollution and start ratcheting that pollution down. It aims to reduce pollution by 20% by 2020, 40% by 2030, and 80% by 2050 (from 2005 levels), making progress towards what scientists say we need to do to avert the worst impacts of global warming.

While stemming global warming pollution is a key goal of this bill, it lays out the first steps in a much longer path that should bring about fundamental changes in the way we produce and use energy. It moves us towards more clean energy and energy efficiency, both through standards and through a first-time carbon cap. And although a key provision addressing carbon in fuels was removed under intense pressure from dirty oil interests, the cap will start to make winners out of companies producing clean fuels and losers out of companies producing dirty fuels, like tar sands oil strip mined and drilled from the heart of Canada's Boreal forest.

This is an opening salvo - and a critical one - in the run up to Copenhagen, where the world's leaders will meet in December to hammer out a new global warming pact.

But it is also an opening salvo closer to home. Canada has been watching the development of this legislation closely, on one hand saying that they want to adopt parallel requirements and, at the same time, saying that they are opposed to the legislation because of the burden it would place on their global warming intensive tar sands. Canada would not be covered by our cap - only Canada can adopt a cap that covers its global warming pollution - but provisions of the bill would likely affect the oil produced in the tar sands because its ultimate market is mainly in the U.S.

How would that work?

The bill puts the writing on the wall for dirty oil. The bill gives investors and others fair warning on directionality. What a cap with an 80% reduction means by 2050 is that we'll be largely off oil in our transportation sector. We'll need to be fueled by renewable sources - whether fuels or electricity. A lot more of our transportation will be connected to a greened grid.

Here's where Canada comes in. Canada has said (as per above) that it wants to move alongside the U.S. but it has yet to propose a cap or a low carbon fuel standard that would control the growth of pollution from the tar sands.

Under the U.S. cap, absence of a Canadian cap means Canada might have to buy allowances to make up for the higher carbon in producing its products. (This was included in the discussion draft and we are analyzing the latest language in the bill.) Under a LCFS - either at the state or federal level - absence of a Canadian low carbon fuel standard means that tar sands producers will have to reduce the carbon intensity of the tar sands oil anyway so that refiners, blenders and importers can comply with the fuel lifecycle reductions sprouting throughout the U.S.

California just adopted a LCFS that requires a 10% reduction by 2020 in carbon intensity from a 2006 baseline and over a dozen other states are perched to adopt similar measures. While the proposal for a federal LCFS did not survive this round, there is still much debate ahead in Congress and we're confident that states will continue to adopt them and that the EPA will act using it authority under the Clean Air Act. There is a huge amount of forward momentum on this new policy mechanism.

I'd like to say it is not clear what Canada wants - and perhaps that is true if one includes a look at the strong climate measures some of the provinces are taking - but the Federal government and Province of Alberta have made it clear. They have said protecting tar sands growth is more important than stemming global warming pollution. It's so important that Canada has repeatedly meddled in U.S. efforts to reduce our global warming pollution. Harsh criticism you might say but a review of the last year or so reveals a pattern.

Canada opposed our first federal purchasing requirement - Section 526 of the EISA - because it required federal agencies not to sign contracts for fuels that had higher greenhouse gases than conventional petroleum (starting the process of analyzing the pollution "lifecycle" of fuels). Throughout 2008, it actively lobbied our government and dispatched its Ambassador to ask key members of Congress to repeal the brand new section.
Canada opposed the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard regulations, adopted last month, arguing that tar sands oil's higher emissions should not be taken into account in the "lifecycle" assessment. It sent teams of government and industry officials to change the terms of the regulations. And again the Ambassador weighed in.
Canada opposed the Waxman-Markey discussion draft - what just preceded the introduction of HR 2454 - because it says it sets up unfair trade barriers when in fact they are asking to be allowed to pollute more while U.S. industry brings down its emissions. It opposed the federal LCFS in the draft as well, vocally siding with the many oil companies involved in the tar sands that also targeted the LCFS.
Canada has hired well-heeled lobbyists to do its bidding before the Administration and Congress on the tar sands. It just recently hired both President Bush and President Clinton's Press Secretaries to help "spin" tar sands oil as vital to U.S. energy security. Every briefing on the Hill is attended by a phalanx of officials from the Embassy.
And perhaps insignificant in and of itself, but a telling example nonetheless, an Alberta government communications official specifically attended a Washington D.C. panel to challenge three PhD scientists presenting on the impact of tar sands drilling on Boreal birds.

The list goes on.

So the question is, does Canada plan to get serious about its global warming commitments, addressing the many woes of tar sands extraction, and evaluating whether the tar sands is the right economic engine to wage its bets on for the 21st Century?

Those questions just got a whole lot more pointed with the introduction of H.R. 2454.

California leads the nation in adopting the first low carbon fuel standard

2009-04-24T07:22:51Z

In a historic vote last night, California's Air Resources Board passed the implementing regulations for the nation's first low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) by an overwhelming 9-1. This vote will put into action the LCFS first proposed by Governor Schwarzenegger as a key policy for meeting California's global warming goals. As has been the case for decades, California has again led the way in putting in place precedent setting environmental policy and put an important marker down that will favor cleaner fuels over high carbon fuels such as Canadian tar sands, liquid coal and oil shale.

The approval of the California LCFS regulations gives a huge boost to efforts to pass a similar measure nationally. Today all eyes will turn to Washington D.C. where the House Energy and Commerce Committee will debate a national LCFS in a lead up hearing before "mark up" next week on the Waxman-Markey global warming legislation.

Low carbon fuel standards are a critical complementary measure to a cap on global warming pollution. The LCFS requires that the carbon content of fuels decline over the next decade, paving the way for lower carbon fuels, such as next generation biofuels, and other measures to reduce global warming pollution from our transportation sector. Transportation accounts for about one third of U.S. global warming pollution and cleaning up fuels is seen as one of the critical components to meeting our climate protection goals and reforming our energy use.

The beauty of the LCFS is that it is performance based. It does not pick favorites. Instead it provides a more level playing field for lower carbon fuels to compete against dirtier fuels. It does this by relying on a straight forward concept - determining how much carbon is embedded in the fuel through lifecycle assessment, an accounting measure that evaluates emissions from the production through to the combustion of a fuel.

The Canadian federal government and government of Alberta, where the tar sands are produced, lobbied strenuously against the adoption of California's LCFS, arguing that the tar sands should not be subject to lifecycle assessment that would take into account its high production emissions (tar sands production requires huge amounts of energy to clear the Boreal forest and to strip mine and drill for oil that is embedded in its soils, releasing three times the global warming pollution per barrel compared to the production of conventional oil). While Canada has argued that this is discriminatory, the opposite is true. Under California's LCFS, all fuels with a high carbon content (defined as fuels with carbon intensity of 15 grams of CO2 per megajoule of energy) will be subject to this lifecycle assessment whether they are produced in California, Venezuela, or Canada. Not to require this accounting would be giving an unfair disadvantage to lower carbon fuels and could easily wipe out the gains that California is seeking in reducing its global warming pollution.

To put this in context, NRDC analysis shows that just the incremental emissions from the tar sands production (above conventional oil) between now and 2020 could offset fully one third of the gains in national fuel economy requirements put in place in late 2007. While these fuel economy standards - mainly improving our fleet mileage for new vehicles to 35 miles per gallon - should hold our emissions on a flat line going forward, the LCFS is a critical tool in helping bring those transportation emissions down.

The main argument put forward by proponents of expanded tar sands production is that is necessary to meet our oil supply needs. But can we really afford to scrape the bottom of the barrel for the dirtiest oil on the planet? President Obama has made reducing our oil use a key policy goal. Today we borrow over $700 billion a year to buy oil. And oil saved is the best energy security policy. Our analysis shows that instead of increasing our reliance on tar sands oil, we can hold our oil use steady with fuel economy measures already in law and that we can start bringing our oil use down through measures like the LCFS, putting more plug in hybrids on the road, moving more of our transportation to the electric grid and implementing policies like "smart growth" that will reduce the miles people have to travel.

Canada is our largest oil supplier and tar sands is rapidly increasing as a percentage of this oil, but our reliance on tar sands oil is still under 1 million barrels a day out of twenty million. Surely we can work to reduce our overall oil demand so that we don't have to rely on an oil source that will make cleaning up our transportation sector so much more difficult. Instead of locking into an expansion of tar sands oil (there are several major pipelines in the permitting stage - Keystone, Keystone Xcel, and the Alberta Clipper - and a half dozen U.S. refineries expanding to take tar sands oil), we must make every effort to reduce our oil use. Already California has proven that smart conservation measures can save energy. The per capita use of electricity in California is half that of the rest of the nation. Now California is posed to show us that this can be done with transportation.

Canada has also argued that if the US doesn't buy its tar sands oil, it will send it to Asia. The reality is that getting a pipeline built from the tar sands in Alberta to the West coast of British Columbia will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. There are over 20 native tribes that are opposed to the Enbridge Gateway pipeline and it would require lifting a 15 year moratorium on tankers on the BC coast. Instead, Canada should work to clean up the hige carbon footprint of its current level of tar sands production and start addressing the many other enormous environmental problems associated with its production.

Environment Canada reported last week that Canada will miss its Kyoto targets by over 30%. The tar sands are the largest growing source of CO2 in Canada and make up more than half of the projected growth in Canada's emissions. In contrast with the 80% reduction set out in the Waxman-Markey legislation, Alberta's climate plan seeks to reduce its emissions by only 14% from 2005 levels by 2050. Canada's federal plan also allow emissions to grow rapidly from this sector. In spite of the requirements proposed, the tar sands emissions are projected to increase from 29 MMtonnes per year (current) to 80 MM and then only drop to 49 MM after 2020 - if and only if actual emissions are accomplished through controversial measures such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Already the tar sands industry has shied away from committing to CCS in the tar sands, acknowledging that it is expensive and technically challenging.

California has sent an irrefutable message to all the major oil companies engaged in the high carbon fuels business. Do it at your peril. The billions of dollars slated to be spent to produce dirty fuels like the tar sands should instead be invested in clean energy and developing cleaner fuels. That is not only an environmental priority, but now a much smarter investment choice. Ask leaders in the global aviation sector. Led by Boeing Commercial Aircraft and Virgin Atlantic Airways, the Sustainable Aviation Fuels Users Group is already betting on low carbon fuels. They can see the writing in the contrails.

"Earth Hour" gains momentum

2009-03-29T02:23:40Z

On Saturday, March 28, millions of people and thousands of cities and municipalities participated in "Earth Hour" - a World Wildlife Fund organized event aimed at building awareness and action to stem climate change by turning lights off for the hour from 8:30-9:30 PM. First lights were dimmed in Australia and Asia. Then Europe and Africa followed. And finally North America and Latin America.

There's been lots of back and forth about Earth Hour - shouldn't we really just focus on changing our lightbulbs for greater impact than turning off our lights for an hour? I, for one, don't buy the sceptics' arguments and think it is a heartening thing to have millions of people participate in a worldwide event focused on global warming.

Sitting here in darkness, save my few candles, I observe two things - first that my computer is on and most of the lights in my neighborhood appear to be on. Too bad. That said, I have scrolled through the photos of lights going out at the pyramids in Cairo, at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, at Big Ben and the Parliament buildings in London and - maybe most remarkably - across many cities that I wouldn't have guessed would participate - Dubai, Jakarta, Bejing, Istanbul, Hong Kong, etc... According to WWF's web page on the event, in 2007, only Sydney, Australia - where the idea was hatched - participated. In 2008, 400 cities participated. This year, over 4,000 cities and municipalities are participating, including Las Vegas. That one I have to see.

I didn't join the others from my city who gathered in Freedom Plaza to watch Washington D.C.'s largest municipal building darken or before the National Cathedral. I have been spending the hour reading about the event and following some pretty interesting links. I clicked on a Yale link because I went to school there and I was interested to learn that Yale has a forum on climate change and the media. There was a news clips about Greg Craven, the Oregon High School teacher who posted a YouTube video on climate change to reach young people where they live - e.g. on the Internet. The video had a pretty eye-catching title - "The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See" and it had been viewed, according to the short clip, almost 2 million times. I had to check it out to see if it lived up to its name and what young folks had watched that many times. What I found was a video that in a few minutes lays out a rationale for why we have to pick column A to save the world.

I want you to go and watch the video so I am not going to tell you much more about Column A - but what struck me in watching this video is how the worst case for acting and being wrong about global warming (e.g. it doesn't happen) is that the world spirals into a global economic depression. Well, we've already got that (the video was apparently made before the events of the last half a year). The worst case for not acting and being right (e.g. global warming happens) is economic, social, political, health, and environmental collapse - or as Greg explains - the end of the world as we know it. He continues that under the worst case, it is all coming soon and won't be delegated to some distant grandchild. He does all this in a dispassionate way which is probably why this video is so terrifying. So please take a few minutes to watch it.

My hour would have gone by washing dinner dishes, putting laundry in the dryer, finishing cleaning up my desk and maybe picking up "The Omnivore's Dilemma" (a great read by the way). It would have been an hour that would have passed like any other, powered by coal from Appalachia (probably from the horrible practice of mountain top removal that NRDC is profiling right now on Switchboard).

Thankfully, there are millions who did much more than me to mark Earth Hour and who will get politically active as a result. That is a great and necessary thing. As for me, I am grateful for my hour steeped in candle light and spent scrolling through the photos from around the world. I enjoyed feeling the human collective, rather than fossil, energy in the moment. And I am grateful for learning about Greg Craven and his YouTube video that is reaching so many young people.

Let's hope that Earth Hour helps lead us closer towards making the momentous changes needed (e.g. to choose Column A). We must move from Earth Hour to Earth Year, Decade, Century - because we need to figure out - and fast - how to let the planet do what it has for the term of our time here - give us a liveable climate.

No substitute for optimism

2009-03-11T20:31:05Z

George Woodwell, a long-time scientist on NRDC’s board, has battled for action on global warming for years. Recently, I asked him how he stays so cheerful. Not missing a beat, he said “there is no substitute for optimism. If you can see a way forward, you can be optimistic”.

I’ve worked in the environmental field for almost thirty years and it is sometimes hard to feel optimistic. Changes to our planet have accelerated rapidly during this short period of time: global warming, fisheries collapse, water scarcity, the list goes on, but I have never failed to see a way forward. Sometimes it is a state or nation with an innovative policy. Sometimes it is incremental progress at the global level. Often times, it is inspired by the campaign of one or two intrepid souls. But now we are running out of time and we urgently need to see action at all levels, simultaneously working to better protect the planet.

This imperative doesn’t seem to be lost on our new president. In his acceptance speech and inaugural address, the President referred to our “planet in peril” as one of his top concerns and has consistently listed addressing global warming and energy reform at the top of his policy objectives. But he also clearly believes that doing right by the planet and generations to come will reap immediate benefits as well. The stimulus bill and his budget invest in a nascent energy “revolution” to get us out of the economic – as well as planetary - mess we are in. No longer are environmental and energy policies sidebar issues, but have moved into a center role where initiatives on clean energy, technological innovation, and job creation are meshed into one to meet multiple policy goals.

A good example is the stimulus bill, passed in mid-February. The bill has nearly $80 billion in renewable energy and efficiency spending, a full 10th of the overall package, which represents the biggest injection of federal support for transforming the production and use of energy in our history. It will help grow this sector, cut our reliance on foreign oil (which, by the way, costs us $700 billion in borrowed money every year) and cut the pollution that causes global warming. A huge chunk of this funding will go to weatherize millions of American homes and green Federal buildings, employing people in “green collar” jobs who have lost their job in the traditional construction industry. Another example is the President’s federal budget which contains, for the first time, estimates for proceeds from a “carbon cap” – a cap on absolute levels of pollution that puts a price on the remaining carbon dioxide emissions. The proceeds will fund renewable energy, health care, tax breaks, and other items (which we want more of) and help discourage pollution (which we want less of).

Next, the President and Congress will focus on legislation that will set up this “cap and invest” system. The U.S. faces twin imperatives – getting domestic legislation passed and moving a global agreement forward that bring about steep reductions. The good news is that already 1,000 U.S. mayors and half the states have put in place their own global warming plans. It will still be a huge fight but it feels like the ground is shifting in our favor – even in these difficult economic times. Globally it will also take unprecedented leadership. Over 15 years ago, the U.S. ratified the world’s first treaty on climate change after the Rio Earth Summit. Over ten years ago, a “protocol” was added to this treaty calling on developed countries to take the first steps in reducing greenhouse gas pollution. Sadly, there has been little real progress towards reducing pollution to below 1990 levels – the stated goal of the protocol – partly because the U.S., the emitter of 25% of the world’s global warming pollution, refused to act. Now the U.S. must show that we are prepared to do our part (and that we believe it is an economic plus to act) and bring along critical countries such as China and India.

What’s required is nothing short of changing the very way we have powered our society over the last couple of centuries. We don’t have much time to mull it all over either. Scientists are warning that we have less than a decade to start reducing the pollution that causes global warming if we are to stave off the worst impacts. Certainly a world perched on the edge of catastrophic melting of our poles makes the bank bailout look like small potatoes.

But then I think of George’s comment and reflect a little on where we have come from and what I have seen work. I started my career advocating for acid rain legislation. Acid rain is mainly a side effect of burning coal and it was poisoning the lakes and streams as well as causing other damage to huge portions of the eastern United States and Canada. In 1990, the U.S. adopted legislation that cut acid rain pollution in half by requiring that “scrubbers” be installed on coal burning furnaces and put in place the first “trading system” for pollution reductions.

On the global scale, chemicals used mainly in refrigeration were literally eating away at the world’s protective ozone layer, critical for shielding the planet from cancer causing UV radiation. In the late 1980s, the United Nations shepherded through a global agreement known as “The Montreal Protocol” that phased out the use of chemicals responsible for the damage. Less harmful chemicals were developed and the hole has been gradually closing ever since.

The backdrop to these two success stories was a period of intense national and global law making in the 1970s. After the first Earth Day, our major environmental statutes were passed in rapid succession – the Clean Air Act in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972, the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in 1976, and the Superfund in 1980. In 1972, the first Earth Summit was held in Stockholm, Sweden. Many of our environmental treaties were adopted shortly thereafter. NRDC and other national groups were formed during this period – NRDC in the dining hall of Yale Law School – and now employ thousands of advocates working on behalf of people and the environment. Thousands more form a vibrant “grassroots” movement that continually challenges the status quo.

It is hard to imagine what our country would be like if we had not passed these statutes or invested in building this cadre of environmental activists in their support. I’ve travelled to many developing countries where the air is unbreathable and the water undrinkable. I’ve ridden in “tuk tuks” - taxis in Bangkok – whose gas tanks could explode at any moment. And, tragically, many environmental activists have lost their lives for lack of the civil liberties and democratic protections. We can’t protect ourselves against these harms without the power of the law and rules.

That system of laws and rules, and fundamentally behavior at all levels, is broadening out dramatically and will be tested like never before. The statutes of the 1970s seem almost quaint in their focus on solving problems by using technology to reduce pollution at the end of a pipe. As Tom Friedman said in his New York Times column on March 7, we are facing the point of inflection where both the Wall Street economy and the earth's natural systems are hitting the wall at the same time. Given that stark reality, the spotlight must now be on changing the very way we produce energy and food, and how much we consume.

Instead of making a better Cadillac, we have to throw it out for the Prius – or better yet, for high-speed rail and walkable communities. We need to have more “smart growth” and greener buildings. Companies should add photovoltaic panels and earthen roofs to reduce stormwater runoff and better insulate their miles of flat roofs. We’ll need to enact new treaties to control mercury and to protect the arctic as the melting ice opens it up for shipping and resource extraction. There is much to be done but there is already a beehive of activity that the President, Congress, and other nations can magnify with leadership and the right policies.

And while there is a dire imperative to these issues, there is also a huge opportunity to do things better and more fairly. Perhaps we’ll even be inspired to think more deeply about what matters most to us and what we plan to leave for the next generation and for other co-inhabitants on this miraculous planet. As George said, there is no alternative to optimism. That is a refreshing idea here in Washington, D.C. at the start of 2009.

President Obama puts clean, renewable power in stark contrast to dirty fuels

2009-02-25T04:09:18Z

In a forceful speech tonight, President Barack Obama asked America to join him in bringing about a revolution in how we produce and use energy. Already in his young presidency, he has signaled his desire to regulate greenhouse gases from cars and trucks, increase their fuel efficiency, and put in place high speed rail and other farsighted transportation policies. Last week, he signed into law a stimulus package with $80 billion dollars - nearly a tenth of the overall package - in renewable energy, energy efficiency and cleaner forms of transportation. Tonight, he called on Congress to enact a market based cap on global warming pollution to help make clean energy the most profitable and help our nation tackle two huge issues - our dependence on oil and global climate change.

One of the President's first lines tonight was "we import more oil today than ever before". He went on to say that this dependence is "our responsibility" and that this is a time for bold action. He continued that "it is time for America to lead again" dedicating his administration to change the way we produce energy as one of his three top priorities. He committed to doubling the nation's supply of renewable energy in three years and making our homes and buildings more energy efficient. Framing this was his statement that "we know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century".

Last week, the President made his first foreign trip of his presidency to Canada. His words there were gentle but he gave the same message. As he said tonight, "to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. " It's hard to miss the underlying message that the days of producing energy and oil at any cost are over. Dirty fuels - like coal in the U.S. and Canada and oil from the Canadian tar sands - now stand in stark contrast to his commitment to build our infrastructure around renewable energy rather than new pipelines and expanded refineries to process more dirty tar sands oil.

The President also made it clear last week in Canada that these measures that will make us more energy secure. Payments for foreign oil drain nearly a trillion dollars every year from our economy in the form of debt. Our addiction to oil has put Americans and innocent civilians in harms way in the Middle East, lined the pockets of dictators, and despoiled some of our last wilderness areas in North America and around the world. And most fundamentally, our energy use is driving our planet inexorably towards catastrophic global warming. In recognition of this challenge, he said in Ottawa:

"We are very grateful for the relationship that we have with Canada, and Canada being our largest energy supplier, but I think that increasingly we have to take into account that the issue of climate change and greenhouse gases is something that's going to have an impact on all of us and as two relatively wealthy countries, it's important for us to show leadership"

How will Canada respond?

This week, Ontario will introduce a path breaking clean energy act. British Columbia has long led in producing advanced batteries and fuel cells. Alberta and the plains provinces have some of the world's best wind power. Ontario, British Columbia, and Manitoba are expected to introduce low carbon fuel standards modeled on California's vanguard effort to reduce carbon in our fuels. And many provinces are now moving to protect the Boreal forest, our largest land-based terrestrial storehouse of carbon. There is much opportunity to work together.

But like the U.S. dependency on coal (and on tar sands oil as Canada's largest customer), we have the challenge of making sure that these opportunities become the mainstream and that the old and perilous sources of energy rapidly become relegated to the past.

The production of tar sands oil is a challenge for both the U.S. and for Canada. But what is heartening is that our President is saying we need to move on. By putting in place a cap on pollution and transportation policies like more stringent fuel economy and low carbon fuel standards, we can reduce our dependence on tar sands oil. What remains to be seen is whether Canada will join in this effort and start to shift its economic engine from the tar sands to greener forms of energy production and let the Boreal forest do what it does so well on its own - regulate our climate.

As the President said, "It is time for America to lead again." Indeed. It is time for all of North America to lead again.