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• EPA details health risks posed by climate change. • Climate change linked to kidney stones. • Coal linked to developmental problems. • General Motors and governors aim to boost biofuel infrastructure. • Canada partially bans flame retardant. • More fuel-efficient jet announced.

Increased offshore drilling does not substitute for national energy policy

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

When it comes to energy policy, Amory Lovins has proven again and again that he's a pretty smart guy. At the moment, nothing seems more insightful than one of Amory's comments in the May/June issue of Mother Jones.

Asked what energy policies the next president should champion, Lovins was skeptical. He believes energy policy will continue to be made not at the national level, but by communities and states. "With modest exceptions," Amory said, "our federal energy policy is really a large trough arranged by the hogs for their convenience."

Right now, the hogs are eating very, very well.

With voters struggling from record prices for gasoline and all of the products made from petroleum and with no end in sight, the oil companies are pushing for more leases to drill for more oil on more public lands. President Bush, Big Oil's special friend in the White House, is pushing for more drilling, too, as are a number of people in Congress. At the moment, most Democrats on the Hill seem to be holding fast against this strategy -- but there's an election coming up.

Rental-car companies struggling to meet demand for smaller cars

Consumer demand for smaller cars is putting car-rental companies in a bit of a bind. Until recently, American automakers were glad to unload overstock to Hertz, Avis, and Thrifty at a discount, then guarantee a price to buy the cars back used. But with demand for hulking American cars dropping, Detroit has cut back production […]

Clean Air Interstate rule struck down because it devalues sulfur trading permits

The court decision striking down the Clean Air Interstate Rule, a major loss for clean environmentalists, can be traced directly to the sulfur trading program often (mistakenly) considered an example of the success of trading over other forms of regulation. Because the new permitting process would have overwritten existing permits, the electric utility industry was able to successfully argue that these regulations would have resulted in economic damage.

You won't find this in the New York Times article itself but in the mp3 of a background interview in a sidebar of the NYT online story. Although the court was careful not to say so directly, in essence this was a "takings" argument. [Update] (In response to comments, I don't think I successfully make a case that this is a movement towards takings. I'll return to the subject of at a later date. But the main point of this post is that undermining the value of permits is one basis for this ruling - and they do say that right in the ruling (linked in a an early comment.)) The court ruled that that the EPA was not allowed to devalue certain acid rain permits. This is a damn good reason not to turn pollution into property rights (or pseudo property rights in the first place.

And thanks to Brian Tokar for his email -- sent to a list I'm on -- that pointed this out.

Ontario protects gigantic forest area

The Canadian province of Ontario will permanently protect a gigantic swath of boreal forest in what green group ForestEthics says is the largest conservation deal in Canada’s history and one of the top three forest protection initiatives anywhere, evah. Some 225,000 square kilometers of trees — that’s more than 86,800 square miles in American — […]

Coolio to educate students about global warming

Grammy-award-winning rapper Coolio is on a fantastic voyage … to spread the word about climate change to historically black colleges and universities across the country. As an official spokesdude for the Environmental Justice and Climate Change campaign (a partnership with Gore’s “we” campaign), he’ll aim to engage students in the climate justice debate and educate […]

For some farmers, distant markets offer the best prices

In "Dispatches From the Fields," Ariane Lotti and Stephanie Ogburn, who are working on small farms in Iowa and Colorado this season, share their thoughts on producing real food in the midst of America's agro-industrial landscape.

I don't know how many different farmers markets readers have the opportunity to attend within one area. As a consumer, it seems reasonable to pick one and stick with it. But as a farmer, it's a good idea to sell at multiple markets; it offers the opportunity to sell products at different times during the week as produce becomes available and also increases sales, since the farmer can reach that many more customers at each market.

Here in southwest Colorado, the farmer for whom I work attends no fewer than four markets per week. Two of them are fewer than 10 miles from the farm, and the other two are much further afield, requiring drives of 45 and 75 miles to reach. Interestingly, the market that is farthest away is also the most lucrative, and this got me thinking about farm location versus consumer location, a dynamic that makes the buy-local trend a little challenging.

Renewables and efficiency would provide more GDP than fossil fuels

The attached Excel spreadsheet takes specific technologies, the known cost of implementing them, and various scenarios for responses to such implementation and technical improvements (including no technical improvement!) and calculates costs and benefits. This is intended to be an open source model. The comment section will be used to revise the spreadsheet with links to the old versions added to the bottom of this post as revisions are made (for the sake of transparency.) There is also a Word document with a narration of assumptions.

The conclusion in this 1.0 version: Unsurprisingly, the key to eliminating emissions profitably is large efficiency increases. With maximum efficiency improvements even a scenario with (completely unrealistic) zero technical progress in efficiency or renewables would make our economy as a whole richer than if we stuck to fossil fuels. If we combine aggressive efficiency improvements with aggressive (but reasonable) improvements in technology we would end up richer by more than a trillion dollars a year. Aggressive efficiency spending which yields small reductions, unsurprisingly has poor financial payback.

Warning: There is an easy misinterpretation the data does not support -- that we can do nothing. The fact that eliminating most fossil fuel use is more profitable than continuing to use fossil fuels to society as a whole does not mean that elimination will happen without policy changes. Nor does it mean that is currently profitable to those who could make the technical changes. For example, transforming commercial office space into a green building raises worker productivity by a minimum of 4 percent. If a landlord makes that transformation, and somehow gets hold of the confidential data needed to document that productivity gain, how much can she increase rents based on those productivity improvements? If you guessed zero, you are right and win the no-prize. Incidentally, even if the building is 100 percent owner occupied, what do you think the odds are they will invest in improved lighting and ventilation for the sake of productivity improvements?

Bush to lift executive ban on offshore drilling signed by his father

President George Bush will announce this afternoon that he is lifting the executive ban on offshore drilling that has been in place since his father, George H.W. Bush, signed an executive order as president in 1990. The move is mostly symbolic, however. Unless Congress repeals its long-standing ban on offshore drilling, nothing will change. The […]

Greenpeacers climb Eiffel Tower in anti-nuclear protest

About 15 Greenpeace activists scaled the Eiffel Tower Sunday and unveiled a banner to protest France’s nuclear-energy policies. France uses more nuclear power than any other E.U. nation. “Since he was elected, President Nicolas Sarkozy has done everything he could to sell nuclear energy,” Greenpeace said in a statement. “At the U.N., as head of […]