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Canadian bishop challenges the 'moral legitimacy' of tar sands production

The Catholic bishop whose diocese extends over the tar sands has posted a scathing pastoral letter, "The Integrity of Creation and the Athabasca Oil Sands."

The letter by Bishop Luc Bouchard concludes, "even great financial gain does not justify serious harm to the environment," and "the present pace and scale of development in the Athabasca oil sands cannot be morally justified." Equally powerful is who the letter is addressed to:

The critical points made in this letter are not directed to the working people of Fort McMurray but to oil company executives in Calgary and Houston, to government leaders in Edmonton and Ottawa, and to the general public whose excessive consumerist lifestyle drives the demand for oil.

We have met the enemy and he is us!

Other than sticking with the euphemism "oil sands" (see "Canada tries to tar-sandbag Obama on climate" the remarkably detailed and heavily footnoted letter is a brilliant piece of work dissecting what has been called the "biggest global warming crime ever seen."

Bishop Bouchard notes that "The environmental liabilities that result from the various steps in this process are significant and include":

• Destruction of the boreal forest eco-system
• Potential damage to the Athabasca water shed
• The release of greenhouse gases
• Heavy consumption of natural gas
• The creation of toxic tailings ponds

He writes at length on all five, and concludes

Any one of the above destructive effects provokes moral concern, but it is when the damaging effects are all added together that the moral legitimacy of oil sands production is challenged.

Here is what he says specifically about greenhouse gases:

Environmentalists go at it in Santa Barbara

Know what makes big, evil corporations happy? Watching environmentalists scratch each other's eyes out. Exhibit A: The coastal-drilling flap in Santa Barbara.

The basic story is this: California's State Lands Commission has just nixed a deal that would have allowed a Texas oil company to drill off the Santa Barbara coast. It would have been the first such drilling approved in the state since the late 1960s. The twist? Anti-oil activists had convinced the oil company to agree to shut down its four offshore drilling platforms by 2022, close a couple of processing plants, and give the county $1.5 million for low-emission buses (the hell?) -- all in exchange for fresh, juicy oil.

Gentlemen, start your pissing match!

Turkey's only bidder for first nuclear plant offers a price of 21 cents per kilowatt-hour

New nuclear power is going to be very expensive -- no matter where the plants are built. The most detailed and transparent recent cost study on the new generation of plants put the cost of power at 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour -- triple current U.S. electricity rates (see "Exclusive analysis, Part 1: The staggering cost of new nuclear power").

Some have suggested that other countries will fare better -- in spite of Finland's nightmarish nuclear troubles (see "Satanic nukes? Finnish plant's cost overruns to $6.66 billion" and below). They should read the story in today's Today's Zaman, Turkey's largest English-language newspaper:

The only company bidding, the Russian-Turkish JSC Atomstroyexport-JSC Inter Rao Ues-Park Teknik joint venture, offered a price of 21.16 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). Current electricity prices in the country vary between 4 cents and 14 cents per kWh.

[Wholesale prices in Turkey are 7.9 cents per kWh.]

That gives new meaning to the word "turkey."

The company apparently offered a revised price "Immediately after the envelope was opened ... that better reflected current market prices" (i.e. the global recession and collapse in commodity prices). But another English language news source, Hurriyet Daily News, reports today:

Email of the day

This just hit my inbox, from Gary T. Strasburg, DAF Civ, Chief, Environmental Public Affairs, US Air Force:

After a thorough review of project requirements and information submitted by a team of functional experts, the Air Force has determined proposals received for a coal-to-liquid synthetic fuel plant on Malmstrom AFB, Mont., are not viable and will no longer pursue possible development of a plant at the installation.

Mail delivery cutbacks could trim vehicle emissions

Apparently, the U.S. Postal Service is considering cutting back on one day of mail delivery per week.

Personally, I suppose I'm fine with this, since I get very little time-sensitive mail. But I imagine that there are some folks who'd see this as a real hardship -- yet another little blow, at a time when there are plenty of big ones to absorb.

Regardless, someone just emailed me to ask how the service cutbacks might affect global warming.

Sadly, I've got no time for a real answer. But Google gives me just enough information for a ballpark answer: as an upper-bound estimate, I think that a one-day-per-week cutback in mail delivery could reduce vehicle CO2 emissions nationwide by as much as 700,000 tons per year.

Revealing skeptics as sock puppets in a few quick clicks

Want to play a fun Friday game? It's called Six Degrees of ExxonMobil. The object: To see how quickly you can get from a denier to ExxonMobil's coffers.

All you need to start is an opinion piece by a global warming denier. Let's take this column by Deroy Murdock for Scripps Howard News Service (he's also a contributing editor for the National Review Online).

OK, let's start. Deroy Murdock is a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. The Hoover Institution has received at least $295,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

Wow, wasn't that easy and fun? OK, so it's not quite "Bruce Campbell was in The Majestic with Susan Willis, who was in Mystic River with Kevin Bacon," but the connection is just as reliable.

'Monaco Declaration' sounds alarm about ocean acidification

If the idea of acidic oceans sounds problematic, it should. The carbon emissions that trap heat in the atmosphere also wind up in the ocean, where they dissolve and turn the water acidic. This lowering of the pH of seawater -- already underway -- threatens coral reefs, shellfish, and the vast food chains to which they belong.

Today 155 scientists issued a report on the rising danger of ocean acidification, saying swift and drastic emissions cuts are needed to curb the problem. The Monaco Declaration [PDF] is based on the work of the Second International Symposium on the Ocean in a High-CO2 World, held in Monaco last October. It's not the first warning scientists have issued about ocean acidification, though the call to action from scientists from 26 countries is unusually strongly worded:

Ocean acidification could affect marine food webs and lead to substantial changes in commercial fish stocks, threatening protein supply and food security for millions of people as well as the multi-billion dollar fishing industry by mid-century, ocean acidification may render most regions chemically inhospitable to coral reefs. These and other acidification-related changes could affect a wealth of marine goods and services, such as our ability to use the ocean to manage waste, to provide chemicals to make new medicines, and to benefit from its natural capacity to regulate climate.

The report aims to reposition ocean acidification from a peripheral environmental issue to "the other CO2 problem that must be grappled with alongside climate change." Additionally, as the pH of seawater falls, the process reduces the ocean's ability to absorb more carbon. Oceans currently absorb one quarter of the CO2 emitted by human activities, the report says.

The solution to acidification is essentially the same as that for climate change -- reduce carbon emissions. The declaration's action points are quite predictable: More research, bring policymakers and economists on board, and enact a global carbon emissions plan. Acidification doesn't require a separate plan as much as it provides another reason for an aggressive global climate treaty. From the declaration:

Solving this problem will require a monumental worldwide effort. All countries must contribute, and developed countries must lead by example and by engineering new technologies to help solve the problem. Promoting these technologies will be rewarded economically, and prevention of severe environmental degradation will be far less costly for all nations than would be trying to live with the consequences of the present approach where CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to increase, year after year.

The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, which helped organize the October summit, didn't explain its timing on the declaration, though it's a safe bet the release is designed to build on the momentum of new U.S. leadership. Not only has President Obama declared a return of science to the executive branch, he's also a bodysurfer from Hawaii who may be inclined to pay attention to oceanic issues. He's nominated ocean-protection superstar (at least in marine biology circles) Jane Lubchenco to lead the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, though she won't be confirmed until a commerce secretary is first nominated and confirmed (thank you very much, Bill Richardson).

It's not clear how scientists involved in acidification research intend to make a broader public-message push this year, though the declaration acknowledges the issue has a lot riding on the COP-15 climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

Grist hearts a certain congressman from Brooklyn

Big green shout outs this week to some folks who’ve tried to do something about the damage America’s cars are doing to the atmosphere, our foreign policy, oceans, urban air quality, open space, pedestrian and bike safety, settlement patterns, commutes … wait, where were we? Oh, right, green shouts outs! The first goes to Rep. […]

Significant turning points in the rise of the domestic wind industry

"The wind industry now employs more people than coal mining in the United States," reports Todd Woody.

Jerome a Paris notes another portentous development:

For the fourth consecutive year, the US set records in 2008 for the construction of new wind farms, with more than 8,300MW installed in the year, making the country the leader for both yearly installations and, for the first time in many years, overall installed capacity (nudging out Germany which has long been the world leader).

(Despite that, he thinks 2009 will be a rough year for wind, thanks to the late renewal of the PTC and the credit crisis. He recommends a few ways the feds could support wind over the speed bump and help its long-term growth, namely stable, predictable federal rules, preferably a feed-in tariff.)

And finally, in Salon, Jeff Biggers writes about the battle over Coal River Mountain -- the cosmically evil Massey mining subsidiary that wants to blow the mountain up to get at coal vs. the scrappy grassroots coalition that wants to build a wind farm instead. Could this be another turning point in the making?

Report shows that feds have failed to protect marine mammals, even though it's required by law

Pity the poor false killer whale.

Fishermen in Hawaii who set longlines studded with thousands of hooks over dozens of miles often snag the whales -- actually large dolphins -- instead of their desired tuna or swordfish. Even the federal government, in the form of the National Marine Fisheries Service, acknowledges that the false killer whale is seriously threatened by longline fishing. NMFS has named the whale a top priority for protection under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

In 2004, NMFS determined the fishery was killing false killer whales at a level that mandated action under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, yet the agency has yet to attempt to solve the problem. The Hawaiian longline fishery continues killing false killer whales, unabatedly.

And this isn't an isolated scenario. In a scathing new report [PDF], the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that NMFS has failed to follow through on the directives of the Marine Mammal Protection Act on numerous levels, primarily thanks to a lack of funding and inadequate data.