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EU carbon-trading market hullabaloo

You may be vaguely aware that an enormous hullabaloo has broken out in Europe over the one-year-old carbon-trading market -- the primary mechanism by which the EU plans to meet Kyoto targets. Because you are not paid to read boring stories, and I am, let me summarize it for you.

The carbon-trading market covers some 9,000 industrial facilities across Europe. Each participating government allocates a certain amount of CO2 emissions to each of its facilities. If those facilities emit less, they can sell their emissions credits. If they emit more, they have to buy credits. (The initial allocations cover 2005-2007.)

So, two things recently happened that sparked the hubbub:

Can you work as an environmental consultant without losing your soul?

As director of program development at The Environmental Careers Organization, Kevin Doyle knows a thing or two about job searching. In this recurring column for Grist, he explores the green job market and offers advice to eco-job-seekers looking to jumpstart their careers.

I have been working in the environmental consulting field for several years now. I must admit, I'm quite disillusioned due to clients who simply don't care about the environment. I turn away projects when I realize the goal is to use me to produce an assessment that removes their responsibility. When I explain that the data cannot be altered, many attempt to offer more money, but end up choosing to find another consultant. I want to return to why I entered this field in the beginning. I'm 40 years old now, and I need to make a change. Where does this idealist go from here?    -- Jacqueline M.

Is there something in the water, Gristers? Recent calls and emails are bringing plaintive cries from 40-something environmental professionals all over the country.

It's not only people like Jacqueline in the so-called "environmental industry." I'm hearing from federal, state, and local government employees, environmental officers at corporations, academics, and even a few activist types. Just this week at a pollution-prevention conference in Atlanta, I listened to a state government environmental leader declare flatly that the permitting work her team spent "thousands of hours on" was producing little or no additional benefit for people or the natural world. No one seemed shocked and appalled. No one suggested she was being too negative. Most everyone nodded and shrugged as if to say "tell me something I don't already know."

The message I'm getting is that many of the people who have been toiling in the greener part of the vineyard for years have begun to suspect that they may be part of a game -- one that's better at keeping expensive professionals gainfully employed than it is at creating a sustainable world.

Let Him Without Synfuel Cast the First Stone

Air Force tests synfuel in jets The Air Force consumes more than half the fuel used by the entire U.S. government; in fiscal year 2005, it guzzled 3.2 billion gallons of jet fuel at a cost of $4.7 billion. Under a directive from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the military is conducting tests to determine whether […]

Consulting With the Devil

Can you work as an environmental consultant without losing your soul? Jacqueline is a 40-year-old environmental consultant who’s disillusioned by all the pollutocrats asking her to fudge data. She wants to make a career change — just one among many who are frustrated by their seemingly ineffectual eco-related jobs, says green-careers guru Kevin Doyle. In […]

Honorably Discharged

Supreme Court sides with enviros on licenses for hydroelectric dams Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in the first environmental case considered under new Chief Justice John Roberts … and sided with enviros (supported, this time, by the Bush administration). At issue was a Maine case hinging on wording in the Clean Water […]

Michael Hayden Is Taking Notes

Chinese environmentalist faces trial on questionable charges Chinese environmental activist Tan Kai went on trial yesterday, facing charges widely considered dubious. Inspired by protests in the province of Zhejiang, where residents say chemical plants are destroying crops and causing birth defects, Tan and five others informally launched a group called Green Watch last summer. In […]

Americans and Climate Change: Representative recommendations

"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.

Below the fold is short list of the most prominent recommendations yielded by the conference's working groups. I tend to think too many of the recommendations pinned their hopes on the creation of new institutions, but I'd love to hear what y'all think.

Big Ethanol …

... wins again.

House Majority Leader John Boehner's attempt to lower the ethanol tariff (and thus allow ethanol-hungry oil refineries to purchase ethanol from overseas) has gone down in flames:

Sweden …

... is cool.

The built environment

It seems to me there's a bipartisan consensus forming -- at least among the pundit class -- that the sensible answer to our energy problems is a stiff gas tax (typically combined with reductions in other taxes, to cushion the blow to the poor). The idea is that such a tax will force people and businesses to start making the necessary changes.

But what are the necessary changes? Anthony Flint has a problem:

... the discussion always comes right up to the ultimate reason we use so much energy -- our physical environment and how we live -- and then backs away.

This is true. No politician has the stones to question sprawl -- where their most coveted voters live -- and most mainstream pundits fear the dread tag of "elitism." But Flint's right: You can't get around the built environment.

Here's what he suggests: