Rhode Island Feeds

I don’t know of too many 6-year olds who could run a mile faster than a 16-year old, but does that mean all 6-year olds are out of shape?  These days, alas, a disconcerting number of them are, but the point is we don’t hold them to the same athletic standards as older kids.  In thinks like the presidential fitness test or whatever it was we did in school, the passing standards are lower for younger kids than they are for older kids.

So how about the idea of being green?  Can SUVs or McMansions be green even though they consume huge amounts of resources?  How about if a house is planned to be 10,000 square feet with a 10 car garage?  Well in Berkeley, shockingly, such a house qualifies as green because it has energy-saving features like low-flow showerheads (NY Times).

As the article says, the label’s drawn a lot of criticism, but it’s clearly not a cut-and-dried issue.  Should the owner be rewarded for having a house that’s more energy efficient than similarly-sized houses, or does the fact that it’s so big automatically disqualify it from any green consideration?  Pragmatically, maybe you have to take it as a given that people are going to want these large houses, and the best that can be done is to encourage them to use green building practices.  To do otherwise could be like asking a 6-year old to outrun a 16-year old.

But then it would be better to not build such big houses period.  So I don’t know.  Plus, as someone in the article points out, it’s the wealthy who are able to more easily afford some of these green technologies, and maybe that will help boost the demand for them.  And if Berkeley can say a house like that is green, then there you go.

For most of the past year, environmentalists have had the same lament. Politicians are hyper-focused on health care to the point that any progress on climate-change legislation has been slowed to a halt.

I have been one to agree. Sure, the House passed a cap-and-trade bill last year and there were some rumblings in the Senate of a bipartisan deal at the time of Copenhagen, but the buzz quickly faded. On the heels of a watered-down deal from Copenhagen, the climate change effort was all but flat-lined as scientific research was attacked as false.

But with spring comes new hope and it has arrived again with climate change legislation. As health care nears toward an endgame, President Obama added some life into the climate change effort by inviting 14 senators to the White House for a meeting on a  possible bipartisan deal. This runs contrary to the approach in health-care, when the president let Congress take the reins for awhile before he eventually stepped in to try to control the debate.

The bipartisan effort also came with Obama putting forth Republican ideas such as nuclear power and off-shore drilling (which aren’t great for the environment). It seems likely that those ideas will be included in the bill. It took far longer in the health-care debate for the president to give in on some GOP demands.

Other ideas that were bandied about include capping emissions and auctioning off “emission” credits, of which the proceeds may be returned to taxpayers. It will not be easy and any regulations might not go into effect for 5 years (which could be too late for the environment). Also, senators with states that rely on coal or oil will try to obstruct this bill, but there is talk and hopefully there will be movement.

The UK Met Office says the case for climate change is stronger now than it was 3 years ago (BBC).  Meanwhile, the scientist at the center of Climategate faced questioning in Britain last week (BBC), and this L.A. Times article argues that the media has played a role in driving climate change skepticism.  The New York Times says climate scientists are defending their work.

Congress continues to be wary of EPA regulation of greenhouse gases (Washington Post), while two Texas-based refineries are helping bankroll an effort to suspend a California emissions law (L.A. Times).

Four Democratic senators argue that too much wind project stimulus money is going overseas (Washington Post).  Under the sea, methane release is increasing (NY Times).

Climate change has become intermingled with evolution in some state education policy debates (NY Times).

Economic recovery and environmental issues clash in Thailand (BBC).

The L.A. Unified School District strives to be the greenest in the country (LA Times).

Venture capitalists are investing in green projects (Boston Globe).

Rhode Island looks at revamping the Coastal Resources Management Council (Providence Journal).

Studies are showing that range anxiety for electric cars may not be as big a problem as feared (MSNBC).

Reusable “carebags” are a great alternative to disposable produce or bulk food bags.

Regulation is a 4-letter word in many circles, and a number of people are calling for the EPA in particular to keep its nose out of the regulation business.  Only problem with that is the EPA is already significantly hamstrung, at least with regulating waterways.  This New York Times article from Monday explains that possibly 45 percent of major polluters are out of the EPA’s reach, and possibly 117 million Americans get drinking water from vulnerable waterways.

The uncertainty is because of how courts have construed the Clean Water Act, which gives the EPA authority over “navigable waterways.”  Alas, navigable is very much subject to interpretation, and to date that interpretation has been pretty narrow.  In some instances, tributaries and the like may be exluded even if they feed into a major waterway.

And the other key point in the article is that companies and others are deciding it makes more sense for them to just pollute.  And they fight hard for that right.  Regulation may be a dirty word, but take it away and you just might get a dirtier world.

If you read this space regularly, you know the case for wind power: Companies are for it and the technology is already at a point where turbines just need to be installed for us to harvest energy from them. But a pair of Wall Street Journal articles that popped up this week make the case that the industry might have more troubles than just finding places to erect the turbines.

The first talks about the noise these turbines produce:

Complaints about sleep disruption—as well as the deleterious health effects caused by the pulsing, low-frequency noise emitted by the giant turbines—are a central element of an emerging citizen backlash against the booming global wind industry.

The article goes on to describe how groups of people are being kept up by the turbine noise and there are already lawsuits filed in a bevy of states against wind-energy companies. These turbines are being built in rural areas, but it makes you wonder if they might be better off being erected in uber-urban areas. While this seems like a crazy idea, if there is a constant noise, it would likely just blend in to the rest of the constant noises in the city. For example the pin dropped in a rural area is more likely to be heard from someone 100 yards away than the pin dropped in an urban area will be heard from someone 10 yards away. I’m unsure if the power generated would constitute as much as it currently does, but if you’ve ever visited Chicago or Boston you know there is a generous amount of wind there.

The second article details the war wind energy is having with natural gas companies in Texas - once seemingly friendly companies, they’re now fighting for a share of the energy company.

The Texas wind figure is expected to double by 2013 as more transmission lines are built. In the past three years, wind has come to provide 6% of the Lone Star State’s power, up from 2%. Gas’s share has dropped to 42% from 46%.

This is hardly surprising, but it means the time of treating wind energy like the crazy uncle nobody pays attention to is over. And perhaps that’s a good thing. Renewable energy is no longer a niche product - we’ll be better off because of it.

Al Gore’s been a punching bag for climate change skeptics, but he hits back in this New York Times op-ed.  The Times also has this Thomas Friedman column about Lindsey Graham’s efforts on the climate bill, the latest version of which may see the elimination of cap-and-trade (Washington Post).  Meanwhile, the EPA plans to move forward with regulating emissions (Washington Post), while smog testing in California is rife with fraud (LA Times).

A new independent board will review the work of the UN climate panel (NY Times).

A new report says that whaling releases large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere (BBC).  The BBC also has this story about a large iceberg that broke off from Antarctica and may threaten marine life, and this one about a patch of plastic debris in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Vancouver Olympics have been green (LA Times), but as they come to a close, environmentalists are raising the alarm about Russia’s preparation for 2014 (MSNBC).

Wal-Mart wants its suppliers to cut their emissions (MSNBC).  Meanwhile, Massachusetts thinks Wal-Mart and Lowe’s should be incorporating more energy-savings features into new stores planned in Salem (Boston Globe).

Utah doesn’t want the federal government designating any more land as a national monument (MSNBC).

Green ways of keeping your home cool involve insulating, reflecting and shading.

President Obama has recently touted nuclear power as a way boosting our energy supply and reducing dependence on foreign sources.  So it will be interesting to see what effect, if any, there is from the Vermont’s Senate’s vote to close the Vermont Yankee plant.  Vermont Yankee’s been plagued recently by tritium leaks, the collapse of a cooling tower, and misleading testimony by the plant’s owner.  And unless the House votes to keep it open and the Senate reverses itself, the plant will have to close by 2012.

What’s also interesting is the article mentions how the Nuclear Regulatory Council has favored extending the plant’s license for another 20 years, highlighting federal-state disagreement on energy issues, disagreements which go beyond nuclear power.  It’s happening now in West Virginia with mountaintop mining, and in other places with coal and petroleum interests.  And as I mentioned in the links recently, Virgina has sued to keep the EPA from regulating emissions limits.  Other states may follow.  Add in a burgeoning anti-federal government movement, and it’s clear that developing a coherent national energy policy is extremely challenging.

Standing up to the feds is sure to score points at the state level.  But emissions regulation and renewable energy just might be stood up too.

Following a “60 Minutes” piece last week, promoters of new technology called the Bloom Box, will unveil their latest technology today. It’s basically a box that can be placed in your front yard to power your house. Sounds great and revolutionary, but will it help the environment?

A San Francisco Chronicle blog looks at that question with skepticism:

It’s not the Holy Grail of clean energy: It eliminates combustion, which is great, but it will only be as clean as the fuel it runs on. And if use becomes as widespread as its inventors hope, the boom in deforestation to produce biofuels for the boxes could be catastrophic. And, if the boxes don’t last for a long time, they will wind up as that much more toxic material into landfills.

Right now these boxes are huge (they power 100 houses) and expensive (they cost $700,000) but they eventually will cost $3,000 and just power your house. It’s a leap forward in technology that has been tinkered with for at least a century. And it’s the start of something that could eventually be developed into eco-friendly electricity.

It comes on the heels of last week’s proposed step ahead in nuclear waste recycling, which also came from the private sector. This means that despite the world’s governments dropping the ball in last year’s Copenhagen conference - and despite climate change naysayers pointing to weather to prove they’re correct - we still have smart, motivated people actively working to help stop climate change and solve the energy problem.

The EPA announced a $475 million plan to clean up the Great Lakes (LA Times).  Also in the Times, this article says saving the Amazon rain forest may be a cost-effecitve way of reducing emissions.

This BBC blog posting looks at the resignation of the UN’s top climate official (also see this MSNBC article and this New York Times article).  This Washington Post article says the Copenhagen agreement is already at risk of collapsing.

Last Monday, this Washington Post article said action on climate change has been hindered by UN scientists’ missteps.  This L.A. Times article says clean energy investments are being hindered by political uncertainty.

Military bases have become more proactive in protecting endangered species (NY Times).

A new study says, because of warming, hurricanes are expected to be fewer but stronger in the coming years (MSNBC).

Virginia has challenged the EPA’s finding about the dangers of greenhouse emissions (Washington Post).

The feds are looking to streamline offshore wind power development in the Northeast (Providence Journal).  Meanwhile, Wyoming continues to debate taxing wind energy (NY Times).

And finally, U2’s The Edge has run into some controversy over a proposed house on the California coast (NY Times).

Foam pipe insulation around water pipes keeps water hot longer and reduces water waste.

Global warming…climate change…global weirding?

In his column this Wednesday, Thomas Friedman offered that last term as the latest attempt to describe what’s going on climate-wise.  I’m not sure if it’ll catch on as a mainstream term, but it brings up an important point.  Besides change (or weirding) not meaning simply warming, it also entails the entire globe. DC getting record-breaking snowfall gets a lot of attention, but you heard far less about how there was hardly any snow around Vancouver leading up to the Olympics.  And even less about what might be happening in Africa or other places.

If it’s a global issue, you have to consider what’s happening around the globe, weird as that may seem.

There are a few inventions that might rival the personal computer for the biggest technological advancement of the 20th century, but the PC is at least in the conversation. That’s why whenever one of the men most crucial to the advances of that technology speaks, we should listen. And Bill Gates certainly made a lot of people’s ears perk up last week.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates called on the tech world last week to help create a global ‘energy miracle.’ He proposed reusing waste from nuclear power as the greatest possibility.

Gates called climate change the world’s most vexing problem, and added that finding a cheap and clean energy source is more important than creating new vaccines and improving farming techniques, causes into which he has invested billion of dollars. … The world must eliminate all of its carbon emissions and cut energy costs in half in order to prevent a climate catastrophe, which will hit the world’s poor hardest, he said.
“We have to drive full speed and get a miracle in a pretty tight timeline,” he said.
Gates said the deadline for the world to cut all of its carbon emissions is 2050. He suggested that researchers spend the next 20 years inventing and perfecting clean-energy technologies, and then the next 20 years implementing them.

The main problem with nuclear power is the waste uranium that it creates, but Gates has invested in a company that has found a way to use this waste to create more power. According to this article, the technology has more than a few benefits:

• The Uranium isotope that’s food for the new nuclear reactors doesn’t have to be enriched, which means it’s less likely to be used in atomic weapons.
• The fission reaction in the new process burns through the nuclear waste slowly, which makes the process safer. One supply of spent uranium could burn for 60 years.
• The process creates a large amount of energy from relatively small amounts of uranium, which is important as global supplies run short.
• The process generates uranium that can be burned again to create “effectively an infinite fuel supply.”

And it looks like President Obama was also paying attention to Bill Gates’ speech as yesterday he announced the creation of the first nuclear power plant in the U.S. in more than 3 decades. Can nuclear power be the answer? If it’s safe? If it’s not wasteful? Would this be the “silver bullet.” Only time will tell.

Paper towels create 3,000 tons of waste a year in the U.S. alone. Switch to reusable cloths.

Recent errors have led to calls for reforming U.N. climate reports (MSNBC, also see this BBC blog post and this Washington Post article).  Meanwhile, the BBC notes that an inquiry into Climategate is underway, while the professor at the center says his data were not well-organized, but stands behind his conclusions.

A foundation in Massachusetts plans to distribute $50 million in grants to fight climate change (Boston Globe).

Interior Secretary journeyed to Nantucket Sound and waded into the Cape Wind controversy (Washington Post).  The Post also reports that Wyoming is considering a tax on wind energy production.

Does the record DC snowfall mean global warming is no more?  This New York Times article looks at the issue.  This column says not so fast (Washington Post).

Arizona backs out of a western cap-and-trade program (NY Times).

For Valentine’s Day, some flowers are greener than others.

One of this year’s noteworthy Super Bowl commercials was Audi’s with the green police, a spot that hit too close to home for some environmental foes, terrified that a green police state is only a matter of time, the next logical step in the vast  eco-conspiracy.

But their fears are unfounded.  If we subject this idea to rigorous analysis, we see the steep challenges that come with trying to start a green police force.  Like paying for it.  I suppose you could deputize a bunch of environmentalists and have them serve on a volunteer basis, but I’m not sure it’s go over well.  We could make the green police ticket-writing machines, sort of like how speed traps fund small town police departments.

But, writing tickets is inherently problematic.  The problem with a green police force is it has to worry about its own carbon footprint.  And ticket writing is a major red flag.  They’d either have to collect payment on the spot or else haul the scofflaws off to jail.  But prisons are already bursting at the seams; with no room to absorb an influx of green criminals.  They’d have to do something like pack these people into a strip mall parking lot and keep watch over them.  Or ship ‘em off to a landfill.  And when you bring them to trial, that’s another avalanche of paperwork.  Depositions, briefs, motions, transcripts.  A need for more lawyers.

Plus if they’re really serious about green crime, they’ll need better tools to fight it.  How are they supposed to crack down on SUVs if all they‘ve got are those segways?  Now that they have to put the brakes on using the Prius, where will they turn for vehicles?

Plus it will raise the cost of doing business to an unacceptable level.  Think about all the roadwork projects that have police details.  You’d have to add green police to those details too.  They’d have to patrol airports and stadiums and other spots, all in the name of national security.

The idea’s just too green.

If you’ve been living anywhere on the East Coast for the past week, it’s hard to imagine there are still signs of climate change and global warming occurring, but there are. And within days, you’ll see it on just about any one of NBC’s channels.

That’s right, the Olympic committee can pass a truce to get all the world’s countries to stop fighting during the period of the Winter Games, but the committee can’t get climate change to stop. The result is Vancouver has been in a little bit of a lurch.

The 3,000-foot mountain that will be the centerpiece of the skiing competition has been without snow for much of the winter. Officials resorted to flying and trucking in snow this week in order to fill the slopes. And I’m sure snow machines will be working overtime the rest of this month to help keep the mountain snow fresh.

Sadly, skiers who fly across the world to ski in competitions have seen these problems sprouting up more and more, according to this San Jose Mercury News story:

“In Italy we skied on a pile of dirt,” U.S. mogul skier Hannah Kearney said Monday. “This is already an improvement over that. We’ve skied in rain, we’ve skied in snow. Hot weather, cold weather. So, we’re ready for it.”

Perhaps, that’s why this list of environmentally conscious and active Olympic athletes includes skiers. There’s no denying long-term prospects for ski resorts are bleak because of climate change. Current resorts might have to be turned into spas and golf courses in just a few decades. Others might be ghost towns. In New England, we’re likely only going to be able to ski in northern Maine. Our LOGI board member Chris Carlson wrote a national-award-winning story on this very topic a few years ago, which detailed how ski area owners are now looking to ways other than skiing to make money at their resorts.

Of course, this all seems hard to fathom on the East Coast since the weather shows so many signs of winter and our thoughts are local-centric. But that’s why it’s important to remember it’s “climate” change and “global” warming.

California’s global warming law could be challenged by a ballot initiative, writes the L.A. Times, which also has an editorial arguing that Washington is losing heart on fighting climate change.

The Hawaii Senate has saved $1.2 million by cutting back on printing (NY Times).

A leading scientist tells the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council that there is consensus on climate change (Providence Journal), but a poll in the UK found that skepticism has increased just in the last 3 months (BBC, with commentary here).  Meanwhile, the Penn State scientist at the center of “Climategate” has been largely cleared of scientific misconduct (NY Times).

Whalers and activists again collide off of Antarctica (MSNBC), while environmental advocates want to know what ingredients are in household cleaners (MSNBC).

Massachusetts is on track to meet emissions reduction targets (Boston Globe), while the state’s utilities are seeking green energy (Boston Globe).

The Postal Service wants to make deliveries greener (LA Times).

More than 100-million cell phones go to U.S. landfills each year. Recycle yours instead.