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New York governor goes in the tank for industry, backs away from climate plan

It's a shocking reversal from one of the states that pioneered efforts to deal with global warming from electric power plants.

The New York Times reveals that New York state's accidental Gov. David A. Paterson has caved in to energy industry demands and now appears ready to run roughshod over his own experts to give industry free carbon emission permits.

CMU study suggests GM has wildly oversized the batteries in the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid

Plug-in hybrid vehicles are certainly the car of the very near future and a core climate solution. And electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence (see here). But I have a long been concerned that General Motors has overdesigned its showcase plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, the Chevy Volt (see here).

Now a major new study by a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, "Impact of battery weight and charging patterns on the economic and environmental benefits of plug-in hybrid vehicles" (see here [PDF]) confirms my basic analysis that plug-ins make sense, but a 40-mile all electric range does not:

We find that when charged frequently, every 20 miles or less, using average U.S. electricity, small-capacity PHEVs are less expensive and release fewer GHGs than hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs) or conventional vehicles ...

Large-capacity PHEVs sized for 40 or more miles of electric-only travel are not cost effective in any scenario, although they could minimize GHG emissions for some drivers.

Bloomberg quotes Jeremy Michalek, an engineering professor who led the study: "Forty miles might be a sweet spot for making sure a lot of people get to work without using gasoline, but you're doing it at a cost that will never be repaid in fuel savings."

Note that CMU considered a "high gas price" of $6.0 a gallon, which is the equivalent about $200 a barrel, a reasonable high price case for the next decade.

Perhaps the most significant finding for car companies who want to enter the plug-in hybrid business, minimize costs, and frankly crush GM, is something I have thought for a long time -- a very short AER can make sense for a large fraction of drivers:

Paul Roberts' MoJo article on farming gets big idea right and details wrong

I like Paul Roberts. I liked his book The End of Food. But I must admit that I was a bit underwhelmed by his recent article on sustainable farming in Mother Jones, "Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008." That's not to say there's nothing to recommend it. His central premise -- that we way we're farming today isn't sustainable and that no large-scale model of what sustainable agriculture would look like currently exists -- is valid and important (as anyone who hangs out around here is well aware).

And any article that gets its money quote from sustainable ag guru Fred Kirschenmann is certainly on the right track. Said Kirschenmann, "We've come to see sustainability as some kind of fixed prescription -- if you just do these 10 things, you will be sustainable, and you won't need to worry about it anymore." Which isn't true, of course.

But that title! Shouldn't it be "conventional agriculture" that's so 2008? Meanwhile, there were far too many straw men in the article for my tastes (ever eaten a straw man? Blech!) Take, for example, the thought experiment supplied by environmental scientist Vaclav Smil on the effect of totally eliminating the use of synthetic fertilizer:

Such an expansion, Smil notes, "would require complete elimination of all tropical rainforests, conversion of a large part of tropical and subtropical grasslands to cropland, and the return of a substantial share of the labor force to field farming -- making this clearly only a theoretical notion."

That's probably accurate as far as it goes. But it's unclear how he modeled this version of organic agriculture - at a minimum it appears to be a vast oversimplification. And his conclusion then becomes the basis upon which to reject the whole organic concept. Meanwhile, look at one of Smil's central assumptions -- that "dietary habits remain constant," i.e. in his experiment we're all eating as much meat, high-fructose corn syrup, and processed foods as we are now. Well, to take one example, you don't have to look far to find folks who will tell you that current meat consumption, especially red meat consumption, is the sine qua non of unsustainability -- Roberts himself held forth at length on that very point in his book. By holding that constant, you've just pre-determined the outcome of your thought experiment. And look at a crucial element in Smil's calculation -- that he's trying to determine "the extra land we'd need for cover crops or forage (to feed the animals to make the manure)." Now I don't know for sure if he presumes the forage will be pasture or cereal (aka corn), but either way that's a pretty high bar he's set.

Friday music blogging: Wild Light

Wild Light is a indie pop band out of New Hampshire. One of the band's two key members, Timothy Kyle, was briefly a part of Arcade Fire, is a good friend of AF lead singer Win Butler, and opened for the band on a couple of tours. That partially explains the mega-buzz around the band in music circles, but much of it also traces to their exuberant, ambitious sound -- a welcome antidote to the kind of grim artiness of so much independent music. These guys are not afraid of a hook!

Their debut album, Adult Nights, is a joyful listen from top to bottom, but for obvious reasons, this song captures my current mood. Thankfully, I'm back in Seattle.

Mixing climate and energy legislation in the same bill is not a good idea

Apparently Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has sold both Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and the White House on the strategy of having a mega-bill that combines climate and energy legislation. This post explains why I believe that is both a tactical and strategic mistake.

E&E News PM ($ub. req'd) reports:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) confirmed today that he will package energy and global warming measures together into one large bill for consideration later this year, a decision that should put to rest questions about whether Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have different strategies for one of President Obama's top agenda items.

Reid gave only a one-word answer -- "yes" -- when asked whether he planned to wrap a cap-and-trade bill together with separate bills establishing a nationwide renewable electricity standard (RES) and promotion of a modernized grid that can improve energy efficiency, reliability and renewable energy management.

There are three reasons this is a bad idea -- two that are obvious to all, one that is apparently not. First, the climate bill is huge and complicated and uber-controversial and will be exceedingly difficult to get to Obama's desk this year according to everybody I talk to (see here). So that means we are delaying important clean energy and smart-green grid bills that could otherwise probably get passed by the end of the summer (and quickly start help Obama meet his crucial promise of doubling renewable power in his first term):

But not everyone is on the same page.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said earlier today that he wants to mark up the energy and "smart grid" legislation next month and he still has doubts whether a cap-and-trade bill can move within the same timeframe. "I hate to see all of that sort of held hostage until we can get agreement on a cap-and-trade bill," he told reporters today.

Second, and more importantly, the climate bill is one of the most important pieces of legislation that any Congress will ever consider. You don't want to add stuff to it that will lose votes or give people an excuse to vote against it. The RES in particular may prove unpopular with people who might otherwise be inclined to vote for the climate bill -- since the whole point of a cap and trade is that you don't force everybody to do exactly the same thing, whereas the point of the RES is that every state is being mandated to adopt the same percentage of renewable power.

Inhofe’s resident media agitator leaving to start a new climate-skeptic website

The barons of Big Oil and Big Coal will undoubtedly chink glasses with their paid mouthpieces this weekend over news that fellow cynic Marc Morano is leaving his taxpayer-funded propaganda job to establish a climate change “news” website. Morano, if you don’t already know, has been the Roscoe P. Coltrane to one of the Senate’s […]

50 green and civic groups roll out tough climate principles

Fifty environmental and public-interest groups threw their weight behind a set of tough principles for climate legislation on Thursday. The principles are broad, but they set the stage for tension among the country’s major green groups on climate policy. Endorsers of the National Call to Action on Global Warming [PDF] include a wide range of […]

The human cost of industrial tomatoes

Do you know who picks your tomatoes? As Tom Philpott discovers during a trip to Florida tomato country, farmworkers suffer low wages, squalid living conditions, and even slavery.

Does daylight savings cut energy use? Don’t lose sleep over the question

Daylight savings goes into effect this weekend, and with it comes the semiannual arguments over whether the program actually saves time and energy. Those of us who can change our clocks correctly can spend our extra hour parsing new claims that extending daylight savings saves energy and money. What’s that? We lose an hour? Then […]

The specs and the dish on the 2010 third generation Prius

UPDATE: This story was changed to reflect updated EPA mileage estimates. Photo courtesy of Toyota. Toyota’s newest hybrid is almost here. Last week, the car company invited a group of journalists and bloggers to the third generation Prius preview in Napa, Calif. The deal was we could road test the 2010 model to our heart’s […]