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Sea levels to surge at least a metre by 2100, scientists warn at Copenhagen meeting

COPENHAGEN — Months before make-or-break climate negotiations, a conclave of scientists warned Tuesday that the impact of global warming was accelerating beyond a forecast made by U.N. experts two years ago. Sea levels this century may rise several times higher than predictions made in 2007 that form the scientific foundation for policymakers today, the meeting […]

A mileage tax may be the best idea that everyone loves to hate

This sort of flew under the radar, but a few weeks ago a federal commission floated the idea of eventually replacing the gas tax with a tax based on the number of miles driven each year. What happened next was odd: progressives, conservatives, and wonks banded together to proclaim a mileage tax to be a stupid idea.

A mileage tax is not a stupid idea. It may prove to be unworkable for technical, political, or even cultural reasons, but at root a mileage tax is both a very good idea and also possibly a necessary one as we undertake a shift away from the internal combustion engine. It's no surprise to see politicians (like Obama) run screaming from this proposal, but why are the pundits piling on?

Before delving into the specific arguments for and against a mileage tax, it's worth noting that the entire country of Holland is doing exactly what commentators have deemed stupid or impossible: starting in 2011, the Netherlands will phase in a vehicle-tracking scheme that applies dynamic pricing to every mile driven. Pricing will vary by vehicle type, time of day, and location, in order to curb both congestion and carbon emissions. The program is designed to be revenue-neutral, and because the government is simultaneously phasing out a steep motor vehicle tax, the plan should end up reducing the burden on low-income drivers. I mention this not to suggest that the U.S. can or should do exactly as Holland does, but just to point out that the concept isn't quite as crazily unworkable as some seem to think.

Thomas Friedman's rock-star status

"If rock stars get room keys, I get business cards. I hear the craziest stuff. But it is a sign of a country that is actually exploding with innovation from the ground up."

-- The Mustache on collecting cards from clean-energy entrepreneurs

RFK Jr. addresses green building conference in Seattle

“[Americans are] probably the best entertained and least informed people in the world,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said Friday at the BuiltGreen Conference in Seattle, noting that we know more about the decline of Britney Spears than we do about global warming. It was one grim truth among many that he shared with the audience […]

Can the problems of the developing world be solved by ignoring global warming?

Salon has published my article on the biggest flaw in the strategy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I'm going to expand on that article in a two-parter here.

The timing could not be better with the Tom Friedman "Ponzi scheme" discussion. For while the the richest foundation in the world certainly has taken on the noblest and greatest of challenges -- to help billions of people who "never even have the chance to live a healthy, productive life" (see here) reach that opportunity themselves -- its efforts are ultimately doomed to fail if we don't stop catastrophic warming.

Also, the two men who have donated much of their vast wealth to make it possible, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, are Exhibits One and Two of the "very serious people who are perceived as essentially nonpartisan opinion leaders" who must speak out on climate change if we are to avert the worst (see here).

Yet when we saw them together last summer, they were touring the Ponzi Canadian tar sands, as The Calgary Herald reported (see here):

A source said Gates and Buffett, who in recent months said he favors investing in the Canadian oil sands because it offers a secure supply of oil for the United States, visited the booming hub to satisfy "their own curiosity" but also "with investment in mind."

The tar sands are an environmental abomination that require huge amounts of natural gas to produce fuel with far higher life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions than oil. They have rightly been called by Greenpeace the "biggest global warming crime ever seen." The Catholic bishop whose diocese extends over the tar sands posted a scathing pastoral letter in January that challenges the "moral legitimacy" of tar sands production.

Let's look at the Gates Foundation's strategy, and why, despite the noblest of intentions, it is not sustainable (even though, if you search "sustainable" on the Foundation website, you get 96 hits). In the face of the daunting task of helping the world's poor, which has proven such an intractable challenge for national governments and international aid agencies, Bill Gates retains the techno-optimism that drove his unbridled success at Microsoft. In July 2008, Gates went from being full-time at Microsoft to working full-time at the foundation with his wife, Melinda. With about $30 billion in assets as of January, the Gates are targeting U.S. education, childhood deaths, malaria, polio, AIDS and agriculture in poor countries.

On their Web site, Bill and Melinda state that if "scientific and technological advances" are focused on the problems of developing nations, "then within this century billions of people will grow up healthier, get a better education, and gain the power to lift themselves out of poverty." Bill and Melinda go on to make Pollyanna, Pangloss and Paula Abdul seem like realists:

Umbra on catchy Earth Day slogans

Dear Umbra, My work colleagues are trying to think of a catchy slogan to celebrate Earth Day this year. We typically plan a week of activities to educate and increase awareness of the benefits of being green. However, we are having a hard time agreeing on a slogan. Here are some ideas to date: Lean […]

Graphic novel adaptation amps up energy message

I hardly dare to write this post, to even edge my pinky toe toward the waters of Watchmen analysis, but I will say this: as a newcomer to the story, I was intrigued by the emphasis on energy. At one point, a major character blasts a bunch of smarmy oil execs, telling them humanity "deserves better than what you've given them." (I committed the entire line to memory at the time, but the movie was so damn long good that I forgot it.)

I brought this up in our news meeting today, only to be met with the response of two staffers far more Watchmen-ucated than I, who pointed out that the energy chatter in the movie does not stem from the original book. That makes sense, considering the, er, altered denouement. Which is interesting itself, since the film was otherwise slavishly loyal to the book.

Alternative energy in The Watchmen: a nod to the current national dialogue, or a convenient replacement for a giant squid? I shall leave it to others to discuss the finer points.

Wind turbines at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base — thanks to the DOE office I once ran

My recent blog post -- Jack Bauer becomes first-ever carbon-neutral torturer as Murdoch says "Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats" -- led one reader to email me that Gitmo has wind turbines. I googled, and indeed they do.

What is doubly interesting is that this project is the direct result of the Federal Energy Management Program, part of DOE's office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy that I helped run in the mid-1990s. Since the Gingrich Congress blocked all efforts to ramp up funding for this "no brainer" program that helps reduce the deficit -- by lowering the energy bill of federal agencies -- while saving energy and reducing pollution, we launched a huge effort to leverage private money to pay for the retrofits.

That effort had a classic bureaucratic name -- Indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity Super Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs) -- you can read about here. The ESPCs avoid the need for any upfront capital by the federal government. Even though Bush has grossly underfunded all such EERE deployment programs, the program continued and Gitmo made use of it (see here [PDF]):

The Department of the Navy partnered with NORESCO to construct a $12 million wind turbine project at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using an energy savings performance contract. Four wind turbines will generate 3,800 kilowatts of electricity -- enough to supply about a quarter of the peak power needed for base operations. The project will not only save taxpayers $1.2 million in annual energy costs, but will also save 650,000 gallons of diesel fuel and reduce air pollution by 26 tons of SO2 and 15 tons of NOX, demonstrating the Navy's commitment to energy conservation and environmental stewardship.

So, no, Gitmo is not carbon neutral.

The Pentagon's news story on this back in 2005 explains how the ESPC made this possible:

EPA announces plans to regulate coal ash

In response to December’s giant coal ash spill in Kingston, Tenn., the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced that it is beginning the process of regulating the waste ponds around the country. The December spill spurred increased attention to coal-waste issues around the country. The 1.1 billion gallons of slurry flooded more than 300 acres […]

With water supplies at risk, hydrologists are in high demand

From a NYT weekly jobs column, we learn of one employment area experiencing high growth:

[D]emand for hydrologists has been predicted to grow 24 percent from 2006 to 2016, much faster than the average for all occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Hydrologists study the distribution, circulation and physical properties of water, with hydrogeologists focusing specifically on groundwater.

After creation of the Environmental Protection Agency..., hydrologists' work was largely focused on water quality. Today, however, "an increasing percentage of hydrologists are interested in water quantity and supply, which is an emerging issue and where global climate change plays a big role," said Dork Sahagian, professor of earth and environmental science at Lehigh University and director of its Environmental Initiative in Bethlehem, Pa.

"But concern with water quality -- which involves local, site-based issues -- still drives the job market," he said. "Most hydrologists in this part of the world are still hired to cope with the availability of clean water for drinking and municipal supplies."

With industrial chemicals like BPA contaminating our drinking water supplies which are then being squeezed both by agricultural needs and by climate change-induced droughts, the future hydrologists of the world will never lack for stuff to do.