Latest Articles
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A roundup of news snippets
• New York’s congestion-pricing plan moves forward. • Washington’s governor signs into law the nation’s strictest toy-safety standards. • Delaware is given the authority to veto an LNG plant off the New Jersey shore. • Two U.S. utilities file applications to build nuclear reactors. • Proposed rules would make drilling in Colorado easier.
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Subsidies contribute to muddying of biodiesel instead of boosting the industry
The WSJ reports today:
The U.S. taxpayer forks over a $1 subsidy for every gallon of biodiesel that is blended in the U.S. for export later. The idea was to give a nudge to the U.S. biofuel industry. But it is boomeranging, as the Guardian reports today in the latest installment on biodiesel "splash-and-dash."
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Increasingly, traders ship biodiesel from Asia or Europe to U.S. ports, where it is blended with a "splash" of regular diesel, the paper reports. That qualifies the shipment for U.S. export subsidies. Then it is shipped back to Europe where it is also subsidized. European biofuels organizations talk about between $30 million and $300 million in U.S. subsidies being exported that way to Europe.
The result? Biofuel's already-tarnished environmental reputation comes under more fire, because round trips across the Atlantic add unnecessary transport emissions to the mix. And Europe's own biodiesel industry has been shutting plants, despite its own efforts to ramp up production to meet political mandates. Imports are undercutting local producers on price.The Christian Science Monitor has more details:
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When additionality always matters
Sean Casten and Adam Stein have been discussing when it is important that a carbon savings be additional -- that is, when it is important that we not pay for a saving that would have happened anyway. You guys are making this way more complicated than it needs to be.
Iron-clad additionality is critical when you're selling a permission for someone else to pollute. If you are reducing emissions, generating a financial instrument from that fact, and then selling it to someone else to use as a substitute for reducing their own emissions, your reduction had damn well better be additional. Otherwise, you are almost certainly increasing pollution.
You're welcome.
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E.O. Wilson calls for kids to be set free outside, scripted activities be damned
Renowned biologist and naturalist E.O. Wilson regaled the crowd at last week’s Aspen Environment Forum with his wit and wisdom during an on-stage interview. A choice segment: The worst thing you can do to a child, in my opinion, is take them on a hike through a botanical garden where there are the names of […]
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Eco-laws pushed aside for faster building of border fence
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that it will waive environmental laws in order to finish its 670-mile-long fence along the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of 2008. The waivers will apply to land stretching from California to Texas and will facilitate construction of fencing, towers, sensors, cameras, and roads. Homeland Security has […]
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How to green your underwear drawer
Go on, green your drawers. Photo: jamelah e. Change your undies, change the world! OK, maybe that’s stretching things a bit — which can’t be good for those elastic waistbands. But think about all the times in recent history that underwear has shaped the culture: the 1960s bra-trashing by women’s libbers, the infamous 1994 “boxers […]
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We’ll need a lot of Socolow and Pacala’s wedges
The short answer is: "Not today -- not even close."
The long answer is the subject of this post.
Regular readers know that the nation and the world currently lack the political will to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at 450 ppm or even 550 ppm.
The political impossibility is also obvious from anyone familiar with Princeton's "stabilization wedges" [PDF] -- and if you aren't, you should be (technical paper here [PDF], less technical one here [PDF]). The wedges are a valuable conceptual tool for showing the immense scale needed for the solution (although they have analytical flaws).
Of course, if solving the climate problem were politically possible today, I would have found something more useful to do with my time (as, I expect, would you). But 450 ppm or lower is certainly achievable from an economic and technological perspective. Indeed, that is the point of the wedges discussion, since they rely on existing technology, and the conclusion to Hell and High Water.
The purpose of my last post on the adaptation trap was to make clear that 800 to 1,000 ppm, which is where we are headed, is a catastrophe ar beyond human imagining, one that makes a mockery of the word "adaptation," that has a "cost" far beyond that considered by any traditional economic cost-benefit analysis. It is a rationally and morally impossible choice. So too, I think, is 550 ppm, assuming we could stop there -- which as I argued, we probably can't, thanks to the carbon cycle feedbacks like the melting tundra.
What needs to be done?
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Gore-y climate ads are coming soon to a TV near you
While it is not true that Al Gore is running for president (honestly, how do these rumors get started?), it is true that his Alliance for Climate Protection has officially launched a new “we” campaign. The ad campaign aims to spend $300 million over three years to create a sense of both urgency and solvability […]
