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Locking in global warming

What do you call it when a society knowingly cripples itself? I'm not sure. But historians studying our strange slow-motion self-immolation will find much to ponder in articles like this:

Top executives at many utility companies have reluctantly accepted that coal-fired power plants contribute to global warming, and they have begun planning for a more restrictive future.

Then there is C. John Wilder, chief executive of TXU Corp. The Dallas-based utility company is racing to build 11 big power plants in Texas that will burn pulverized coal. That process releases substantial amounts of carbon dioxide, the most worrisome of several heat-trapping gases widely blamed for global warming.

TXU contends Texas needs a lot more power, and it wants to be the company to provide it. Critics of its $11 billion construction program see another motivation: The federal government may slap limits on carbon-dioxide emissions. If it does, plants completed sooner may have a distinct advantage. That's because the government may dole out "allowances" to release carbon dioxide, and plants up and running when regulations go into effect may qualify for more of them than those built at a later date.

Obscene enough. But then, get this:

Nuclear security

Speaking of nuclear power, I meant to mention this a couple weeks ago:

Four years after the leaders of the world's eight largest economies vowed to raise $20 billion over 10 years to prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear materials, only $3.5 billion has been donated -- and far less has been used to secure enriched uranium, the key ingredient of a nuclear weapon.

Hundreds of tons of uranium remain at loosely guarded facilities across Russia and the former Soviet Union, and in nearly 40 other countries, according to specialists. And the need to secure the material has grown: In April, Russian police arrested a foreman in a nuclear plant for attempting to sell 22 kilograms of uranium.

Sounds like a great time to build hundreds and hundreds of new nuclear plants all over the world!

Nuclear reading

A couple weekends ago, The New York Times Magazine ran an epic cover story on the resurgence of nuclear power: "Atomic Balm?" (And when I say epic I mean it: I printed the sucker out and it came to 17 single-spaced pages.) It's invaluable if you want a broad overview of the current state of the nuclear industry, which is (boosters allege) on the verge of a resurgence.

Here's the basic lay of the land: power companies care about one thing and one thing only: cost. Right now, coal is cheap, so power companies burn coal. They will create power some other way when the money looks right. The rising cost of natural gas, the prospect of CO2 caps, and massive Energy Department subsidies are nudging them toward nuclear. What holds them back is the astronomical price of constructing and decommissioning plants -- well over $2 billion to get a plant up and running, and that's without mistakes and cost overruns, which have been ubiquitous throughout the industry's history.

Though the author, John Gertner, is scrupulously balanced, one comes away with the distinct impression that nuclear power just doesn't make sense to investors or power companies, but that the government is determined to ply them with money until they submit.

Poof …

... 4,000 square miles of carbon sink gone, and all of the associated biodiversity with it.

The timeline:

Cargill builds a port in the Brazilian State of Mato Grosso. A soy version of a gold rush ensues, destroying thousands upon thousands of square miles of the Amazon. From Agriculture Online:

[The farmers] bought land in three- or four-year payments (of soybeans). Then, with the expansion of land, they needed to buy more machinery, so they did.

An unfavorable exchange rate plunges these farmers into debt:

Ocean victories underreported

Last week, USA Today's Nick Jans reported on the triple ocean victory in the last four months -- three closures of federal waters totaling an area twice the size of Texas. Nick wonders how the largest act of conservation in our nation's history could have slipped below our collective radar screens. Don't blame us, Nick. We issued press releases, emailed our supporters, and I even blogged about it. Twice.

Since other news agencies treated the victories as "snoozers," Nick took it upon himself to emphasize the importance of these closures, and the threats still facing our oceans in this succinct yet informative article. Thanks, Nick.

The real meat and potatoes in California

Like Lisa said, yesterday's schmoozing between Schwarzenegger and Blair was touching but symbolic. The real meat of environmental legislation right now is pending in Sacramento, where Fran Pavley and Fabian Nunez have introduced the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) (PDF). According to the the Environmental Defense fund:

AB 32 is the first statewide effort to cap greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of California's economy. It would set a firm cap that would ensure that California's greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 25% by the year 2020, putting teeth in Governor Schwarzenegger's goal to reduce California's emissions.

According to a summary Q&A (PDF) about the bill, a market based cap-and-trade system is one several "flexible compliance mechanisms" that could be considered by California Air Resource Board (CARB). A specific regimen for carbon trading is not actually included in the bill, a fact which even the LA Times seems to have tweaked.

Rod Beckstrom, CEO of Carbon Investments in Palo Alto, and Ray Lane, of Kleiner Perkins, had an interesting if optimistic take on AB 32:

Gator Aid

Florida’s biggest conservation land buy also opens way for new development Florida’s biggest-ever land purchase, 74,000 acres of wild land bought by the state for over $350 million, comes with a catch — 17,000 acres of adjoining property will belong to developer Syd Kitson, who plans to build a new city. Some environmental groups applaud […]

“What if I just start snorting baking powder instead?”

Speaking of sequestration: The journal Science points out today that even if we can sequester carbon dioxide, it may have bad side effects -- like, say, poisoning our drinking water. Brilliant.

So the engineering problems for CO2 sequestration are immense, it won't work with existing plants, and even if it works some time in the indefinite future, it might still kill us all. So of course, this is a serious option being discussed by many in Canadian politics and punditry.

Just plane frustrating

In a typical year, my family's biggest source of CO2 emissions is -- by quite a wide margin -- air travel. We use less gasoline than a typical American family, but we more than make up for it by traveling long distances to visit our family, scattered around the east and west coasts.

A few years back, I started strategizing about how to reduce our air travel. And I settled on a two-step plan.

• Step one: convince my sister to move from San Jose, CA to Seattle -- which would not only mean that we could see much more of each other, but also save our families at least 8 round trips per year (4 for her family, 4 for mine).
• Step two: give up traveling to see our east coast family for a year, and vacation close to home -- saving at least one cross-country round trip flight for our family of 4.

So this year, we put both steps into action. My sister and her family will be moving into our neighborhood (yay!) and we decided to go car camping rather than traveling to the east coast. We'll be flying a lot less as a result.

But as things have turned out, I'm not sure our plans have saved a single drop of fuel.

Auto X-Prize

The same folks that put up $10 million for the first private vehicle to enter suborbital space are at it again, this time for something less pie-in-the-sky: a prize for a super-efficient, low-emission vehicle.

Let's hope they are just as successful this time.

Check out the details, in development, here.