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Flood 2008: The Sponge That Saved Gurnee

2008-07-03T16:16:39Z

While reading coverage of the current Midwestern flood disaster, I was floored by this headline: 'Giant sponge' saved Gurnee from flooding.

Had the wise residents of this northern Illinois town erected a loofah levee?

Or rigged a mound of porous kitchen cleaners to fight off the rising Des Plaines River?

What was this amazingly absorbent technology that saved the town from the watery fate that has doomed so many other towns in Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri of late?

The answer, it turned out, was much simpler.

While severe flooding plagued communities on nearby waterways, the Lake County News-Sun reported that Gurnee’s Mayor Kristina Kovarik credited her town’s dry streets to the natural protections afforded by nearby wetlands:

She attributed this to preventive flood mitigation measures that were initiated by county officials and municipalities more than a decade ago. She particularly praised the effectiveness of the Des Plaines Wetlands Demonstration Project upriver in the Wadsworth area.
"These wetlands serve as a giant sponge for us in controlling the flow of the Des Plaines River. They are an excellent shock absorber," Kovarik said.
The wetlands project dates back to the 1970s when the state commissioned a feasibility study to determine how wetland and river restoration can increase flood control, improve water quality, expand wildlife habitat and encourage recreational use, instead of just building more concrete dams. The 550-acre site along the Des Plaines River is owned by the Lake County Forest Preserve District and managed by Wetland Research Inc. The project has achieved many of its objectives and has saved millions of dollars by preventing flood damage.

As the mayor noted, streams and wetlands are natural flood protections. They act as a sponge to clean and hold water in heavy rain events. Unfortunately, we have ripped out roughly half of our wetlands in the lower 48 states.

Yesterday, I took part in a news conference to make the public aware of the fight over legislation that could make a difference in this area. The Clean Water Restoration act is an effort to clarify and reaffirm the original intentions of the Clean Water Act. In the light of Midwestern floods, the legislation is necessary to reinforce protections for our natural flood buffers---particularly since so few remain.

The federal government has recently released studies that show a likely increase in violent weather patterns, such as flooding. Instead of developing in oft-drenched flood plains, perhaps it is time to heed the lessons learned in Gurnee. A return of some land to the original flood-absorbing wetlands might make sense in many places. But let’s make sure that the few that remain are afforded the maximum legal protections.

After all, Gurnee is not the only sponge-worthy town around!

Coal Plant Developers Confront The Future of CO2 Controls -- And Freak.

2008-07-02T16:55:41Z

This week a state court judge in Georgia issued the first court ruling in the country concluding that power plant developers and state regulators must establish permit limits for CO2 pollution from new coal-fired power plants, based upon "best available control technology" under the Clean Air Act.

The judge further ruled that coal plant developers and regulators must fully evaluate alternative energy production processes, like integrated gasification combined cycle ("IGCC").

The proposed Longleaf Energy Plant in Early County, Georgia, a joint venture of Dynegy and LS Power Group, would be a 1,200 MW pulverized coal-fired power plant expected to cause as much as 9 million tons of harmful CO2 pollution each year.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) issued a statement decrying the court ruling and calling for a "prudent Federal climate policy" to prevent similar rulings.

It was entirely predictable that ACCCE would rebuke a judge for being so rude as to apply the law correctly against a coal plant developer's economic preferences. What was more remarkable was the alacrity with which ACCCE called for effective national climate change legislation to control global warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Don't bet on the word "effective" in that last sentence. "Prudent Federal climate policy" is just as likely utility industry code for Congressional or EPA intervention to save power plant developers from application of the existing Clean Air Act; code for federal preemption of state global warming action; or even national legislation but founded on windfalls for utility companies by giving away the right to spew global warming pollution into the atmosphere for free.

ACCCE for its part has 12 lengthy and demanding conditions that must be satisfied before its members will support federal legislation, and those conditions echo some of the explanations for the code above.

ACCCE's press statement reacts with thinly veiled alarm to the court ruling for good reason: this judge's opinion is the first to really engage and consider some basic legal disputes at issue in almost all of the pending controversies over conventional coal-fired power plant permits.

And you know what? The judge reached the most sensible conclusions based upon the most obvious reading of the relevant Clean Air Act language. There is nothing in her ruling that is a stretch.

Coal power plant developers have taken comfort thus far in the fact that political agencies at the state and federal level have gone to whatever lengths are necessary in order to avoid being the first jurisdiction -- or a jurisdiction -- willing to regulate global warming pollution from power plants under rather obvious Clean Air Act authorities.

So this court decision terrifies coal plant developers not just because it is the first adverse ruling, but because it truly is rooted in the most obvious reading of the law and heralds more judges reaching the same conclusion.

You can bet on that.

When Shops Keep Doors Agape, Think of Cold Air at $140 a Barrel

2008-07-02T13:54:41Z

Greedy shop owners are, sadly, not the only ones who both needlessly and thoughtlessly waste energy by keeping the doors to their air-conditioned shops open.

A few Saturdays ago, I had to fly to Atlanta. Because of construction at La Guardia, we were told we had to use the shorter runway. We were a full flight and, because of that, a bit too heavy. And so the pilot said we’d have to sit on the taxiway for a while and burn off fuel to lighten up the load.

When airlines are complaining of higher fuel costs, and curbing global warming demands immediate action, it is hard to imagine something more wasteful than this.

Farmer Wants a Wife? Farmer Wants a Crop!

2008-06-30T23:11:09Z

It is rare to find TV reality shows bumping heads with cutting edge science. But it happened last week with two unrelated releases…

The CW network played the finale of its dating reality show, “Farmer Wants a Wife.”

And The Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) released “Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate.”

What do they have in common? Well, the CCSP report showed that we will be seeing more and more violent weather events as a result of global warming. And the farmer? Well, he seems to be suffering from the sort of violent weather that the report focuses on---a dose of reality for reality TV…

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Matt Neustadt---the farmer who wants a wife---did not get a chance to watch his show’s finale because he was desperately trying to save his crops from impending flood waters:

"We were trying to cut wheat late that night because of the high water they were predicting," Neustadt said.

Forty percent of his family farm is under water right now and he will lose most of this year’s crops. His farm sits near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, so occasional floods are not a surprise:

"I'm not going to complain too much; that's just part of living in a flood plain," he said.

That’s a healthy response, but shouldn’t the CCSP report be setting off alarm bells here? More violent weather. More tornadoes. More hurricanes. More floods.

While the mantra remains that no specific weather event can be attributed to global warming, Newsweek reports on an Iowa State professor who claims that the floods in his area are directly tied to global warming.

So we are likely to hear the terms “500-year floods” and “storms of the century” bandied about more often.

We already use floodplain maps to determine limitations on where to build, flood insurance, and added environmental regulations. The impact of flooding is also noted in broader 100- and 500-year flood plains. (Contrary to the straight-forward naming, a 100-year flood is not the biggest storm in a century; it relates to the percent chance that waters will inundate an area in a 100 year time span.)

Given the potential for more frequent flooding, it might be time to re-map those flood plains. FEMA had already started the process---but they were focused on crumbling infrastructure. But the climate change news makes these discussions all the more important as those lines are redrawn and billions in flood relief dollars are dolled out after the waters recede.

Otherwise, down the line farmers like Matt might be looking for more than just a wife… They might be looking for new farms, farm houses, and farm land…

The Best vs the Good

2008-06-30T22:37:04Z

I recently wrote about NRDC's public opinion research program and promised to tell additional tales from the often-humbling land of surveys and focus groups.

In the category of humbling, we were recently told that the American public is deeply skeptical about the environmental movement; folks believe environmentalists, writ large, to be deeply impractical beings.

This finding came from the same researchers who worked on the global warming project I detailed in Pascal's Wager.

In a slide titled "The Best is the Enemy of the Good," the researchers told us that theoretical debate "turns off" large numbers of Americans and that scientific back and forth is inherently considered theoretical and thus impractical.

That opinion is even held by many of what are considered to be "thought leaders," the people who tend to be the most engaged in current affairs and those whose opinions tend help shape public perceptions.

So how do we fix our bad reputation? The researchers told us that environmentalists must talk about concrete solutions that can be quantified and measured. We need to talk about jobs created, dollars saved and lives improved.

They told us that we must make the idea of "practical" our benchmark for success. Its a message that we at NRDC are taking to heart and that is increasingly being reflected in our work.

Take the ads we developed and placed in Washington on behalf of many environmental groups during the recent debate on the Climate Solutions Act proposed by Senators Lieberman and Warner.

As you can see from the sample above, the ads featured the faces of American workers and spoke of jobs that can be created by global warming solutions. And we supported our advertisements with practical analysis such as that presented in a report -- Job Opportunities for the Green Economy -- published by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and in a series of fact sheets by NRDC.

Furthermore, we will work to bring our message of practical solutions to ever broader swaths of the American public. Solutions like those presented by a group formed to give unemployed vets of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the training they need to get so-called green jobs.

NRDC excels in science, law and policy. And our advocacy for the last 40 years has also been deeply rooted in practicality. It's one of the things that most drew me to the organization three years ago and it's what our members constantly tell us they admire most about NRDC.

Our challenge then is to persuade those who are not NRDC members. I shudder to ask, but anyone out there have any ideas how we at NRDC and in the broader environmental movement can shake our bad rep when it comes to practicality?

Coal: Not Just a Climate Killer

2008-06-30T19:49:18Z

In a single year, less than one in 100,000 Americans contract a rare form of bone marrow cancer. In Pennsylvania coal country, the rate is 15 times higher.

This chilling stat opens an eye-opening, heart-rending short documentary produced by the American News Project. The video portrays the story of local residents suffering from coal ash that is poisoning their water and, many contend, making them ill. (Yes, it’s not just the smokestack air pollution that threatens our health.)

Make no mistake: No matter how many millions of dollars Big Coal spends on PR to spew its propaganda, there is no such thing as “clean” coal.

The same goes for the dubious process of converting coal into liquid as a alternative to oil for transportation. This “dirty fuel” has all the negatives of solid coal – from mining to toxic emissions – with the added touch that the process to create liquid coal doubles global warming pollution. NRDC’s movie on this – Crude Substitute– profiles yet another eastern Pennsylvania community suffering the consequences of dirty coal.

Think globally, eat locally? Maybe, maybe not . . .

2008-06-27T13:48:12Z

I’m not sure I quite understand the fervent passion of what seems to be a full-fledged movement to get consumers to buy and eat local, but I can think of some very good reasons to do just that. For instance, maybe you want to support local businesses of all kinds, including farms (I do). Or maybe you want to keep farming competitive to help save the local countryside from sprawl (I do, again). Or maybe you like the sense of community that comes with patronizing a community farmers’ market or co-op (my favorite reason), or like the nutritional value of eating the freshest produce.

Count me in. But I don’t necessarily buy that becoming a “locavore” is inherently better for the environment. The emissions-reduction argument in favor is well-stated on the web site Sustainable Table:

“A tremendous amount of fossil fuel is used to transport foods such long distances. Combustion of these fuels releases carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and other pollutants into the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change, acid rain, smog and air pollution. Even the refrigeration required to keep your fruits, vegetables, dairy products and meats from spoiling burns up energy.”

But the real answer may be sometimes yes, sometimes no. As Roberta Kwok writes in Salon,

“But what if conventional distributors make up for the long journeys by driving big trucks packed with produce? Let's say a distributor travels 1,000 miles and carries 1,000 apples to market, while 10 local farmers each drive a pickup 100 miles and carry 100 apples each. The local farmers log fewer food miles but cover the same total distance -- and use a comparable amount of fossil fuels -- for the same amount of food.”

Kwok did some back-of-the-envelope analysis on five categories of produce on sale in supermarkets and farmers’ markets in California. She found that locally grown squash was indeed more carbon-efficient in its transportation. But, for apples,

“While the two local apple farmers traveled one-tenth the distance, their loads averaged less than 700 pounds -- and generated six times more carbon dioxide per pound of apples than the semi-trailer trucks.”

The plot thickens. Kwok cites a bunch of reasons why the calculations aren’t at all simple, especially when you dig into such issues as intermediary distributors, the per-pound fuel efficiency of trucks typically driven by farmers and those driven by supermarket wholesalers, and the miles driven by consumers to the store or market. A number of studies from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and researchers in the United Kingdom and New Zealand suggest, though, that in many instances the big supermarkets probably beat the local farmers on limiting carbon emissions.

Michael Specter, writing in the New Yorker, makes many of the same points:

“Last year, a study of the carbon cost of the global wine trade found that it is actually more “green” for New Yorkers to drink wine from Bordeaux, which is shipped by sea, than wine from California, sent by truck. That is largely because shipping wine is mostly shipping glass. The study found that ‘the efficiencies of shipping drive a ‘green line’ all the way to Columbus, Ohio, the point where a wine from Bordeaux and Napa has the same carbon intensity.’
“The environmental burden imposed by importing apples from New Zealand to Northern Europe or New York can be lower than if the apples were raised fifty miles away. ‘In New Zealand, they have more sunshine than in the U.K., which helps productivity,’ [researcher Adrian] Williams explained. That means the yield of New Zealand apples far exceeds the yield of those grown in northern climates, so the energy required for farmers to grow the crop is correspondingly lower . . .
“Williams and his colleagues recently completed a study that examined the environmental costs of buying roses shipped to England from Holland and of those exported (and sent by air) from Kenya. In each case, the team made a complete life-cycle analysis of twelve thousand rose stems for sale in February . . . the carbon footprint of the roses from Holland—which are almost always grown in a heated greenhouse—was six times the footprint of those shipped from Kenya. Even Williams was surprised by the magnitude of the difference. ‘Everyone always wants to make ethical choices about the food they eat and the things they buy,’ he told me. ‘And they should. It’s just that what seems obvious often is not. And we need to make sure people understand that before they make decisions on how they ought to live.’”

I recommend both articles, as well as the analysis and links on the Sustainable Table site, which collectively are rich with information if not consistency. As I said, there are lots of reasons other than the carbon consequences of “food miles” to buy and eat local. But we cannot say unequivocally that carbon emissions reduction is always among them. Another glass of Bordeaux, please.

The light bulb, the cocktail party, and you

2008-06-26T23:12:43Z

Years ago, when I was young, I spent most of my time working on energy efficiency technology policy. Now I spend most of my time working of renewables, but from time to time, my colleagues forget and ask me questions that are way over my head. And so it was that I was recently pressed to provide our board with simple answers to all the questions they might possible get asked at a cocktail party.

One of the issues that everyone asks about is mercury in compact fluorescent. I wrote one of my early blogs about it, and spent a good chunk of my talk for the board focusing on it. My main message on CFLs and mercury is that if you care about mercury pollution, one of the best things you can do is use more CFLs. But if after using a CFL, we can recycle it, that's even better. So I was happy to see this story that Home Depot is going to start to take CFLs back for recycling.

NRDC's real expert on bulbs and all energy efficient appliances is Noah Horowitz and I encourage you to read more about him and his great work here and here. Now Noah is one of those incredibly smart people that have the ability to make very complicated topics comprehensible. And he helped me do that with bulbs for the board. So without further ado, here's the presentation I gave at NRDC's most recent board meeting.

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Whose national security?

2008-06-26T16:41:33Z

We've been through a kind of cultural revolution in the last two years over global warming. Hardly anyone seriously disputes the science any more (though I'm sure I'll hear from some who do), and whatever the outcome of the November election we may even get significant U.S. legislation next year for the first time. It took us 20 years to get to this point, and now we have to figure out what our priorities are going to be for the next 20 years. One of those is to start planning for the humanitarian emergencies and political instability that will hit the countries most at risk from sea-level rise, drought, and rising temperatures. Bangladesh, for instance, is going to lose 12-15% of its national territory, and 10 million people or more will be driven from their homes. Rice and other crop production in Asia is likely to decline by 10 percent or so, in part because of glacial melt in the Himalayas. The impact on agriculture from drought in Africa will be even worse.

Now the national security establishment has begun to sit up, take notice, and issue some ominous warnings. It started last year with two widely publicized reports, the first a Pentagon-commissioned study of the future impact of climate change by consultants from the Global Business Network, and then, a few weeks later, a report from the Center for Naval Analyses signed by a group of 11 retired generals and admirals. Now it's the turn of the intelligence community, with a June 24 report outlining some of the dire political and social consequences of climate change.

You can see all this as positive in one sense: they do heighten the sense of urgency and sharpen the focus on that 20-year perspective I mentioned. And there may well be some new allies and new arguments here for the environmental community. But we'll need to proceed with extreme caution, because the impulse behind many of these developments may have less to do with reducing the impact of global warming than with finding new ways of fighting the next round of the so-called War on Terror. Listen to Tom Fingar, deputy director of intelligence, presenting the June 24 report. Climate change is likely to "increase the pool of potential recruits for terrorism." And worse, changing energy policies "may affect U.S. national security interests even more than the physical impacts of climate change itself."

Yes, national security is at stake here. But first and foremost it's the national security of Bangladeshis and Indians, of Malians and Sudanese. Figure out the response to their predicament - which starts with the transformation of our energy policies - and our national security is likely to follow.

Well Designed Cities Are Global Warming Solutions

2008-06-26T16:30:34Z

In response to a recent post of mine, a commenter said, “American's can go back to the ‘stone age’ and walk to work and it wouldn't make any difference to the WORLD oil market.” I appreciate your comment, Dan, but I disagree.

Americans should have the opportunity to walk to work more, to take more forms of mass transportation and to carpool more often. This would mean reduced demand on the world oil market, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. They may even find they prefer it.

A part of what we’re talking about is the geography of America’s carbon footprint – something that’s still not very well understood. But a report released recently by The Brookings Institution helps us understand a simple point: well-designed cities with easily accessible public transportation are, in fact, a critical global warming solution.

Take our New York City office, for instance. From my apartment, I walk to the subway, which I ride to work. So do millions of others. When I arrive in the morning, there is always a row of bikes hanging downstairs, left by colleagues of mine who have ridden to work. People can do this because of the way the city is designed; it’s compact, and easy to navigate on foot or bike.

This means that, per capita, New Yorker’s carbon footprint is much smaller than the national average. According to the Brookings report, the average New York resident emitted 1.495 tons of carbon from highway transportation and residential energy in 2005, while the average American emitted 2.60 tons of carbon. That’s a big difference.

This is generally true across the country. The Brookings report also found that, “despite housing two-thirds of the nation’s population and three-quarters of its economic activity, the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas emitted just 56 percent of U.S. carbon emissions from highway transportation and residential buildings in 2005.” The difference, the study suggests, “stems primarily from less car travel and electricity
use.”

Despite these potential savings, America’s carbon footprint is expanding because its settlement pattern is expanding. This is forcing Americans to drive more, consume more, and emit more greenhouse gasses along the way.

Consider that Vehicle Miles of Travel (VMT) – a measurement of distances traveled by all motor vehicles in a given areas – has grown three times faster than population growth since 1980. (This year VMT did, for the first time, decline.) Now, about one of every six American workers commutes more than forty-five minutes each way. Moreover, the number of people the Census Bureau counts as “extreme commuters” – meaning they travel in excess of ninety minutes each way – is, at 3.5 million, the fastest-growing commuter bracket.

These facts suggest a solution. The best cure for destructive sprawl is to build attractive, healthy, sustainable cities that people want to live and work in. In this solution, transportation plays an essential role.

And so what should we do?

If you’ll forgive three bits of completely unsolicited advice, I would say that

We can choose to live in cities, or we can choose to live close to work
We can walk or bike to work
And we can take public transportation, like subways, buses and commuter rails.

For more on this issue, I would suggest you read more from NRDC’s great Smart Growth team. Kaid Benfield, Deron Lovaas and Rich Kassel have all written extensively about these issues here on Switchboard.

I should also say that I do understand that not everyone lives in a place like New York. For years, our communities have been built to support cars and highways, and not integrated communities. Individual choice will go only so far in solving this problem.

And so we also need a federal policy that

Promotes expanded, easily accessible public transportation choices
And that changes our development patterns to favor compact, mixed-use communities.

We think of them simply as our neighborhoods, but where we live and work can have a huge impact on our personal health, and on our global environment. We need start building more efficient, and more attractive, communities.