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Shanghai Hopes

China plans even bigger expansion of its clean-energy capacity China yesterday announced plans to more than double its clean-energy capacity — from 7 percent of electricity production today to about 15 percent by 2020, up from a previous goal of 10 percent. While this could make the country a leading global player in the hydropower, […]

You Taint Seen Nothing Yet

Fans and foes of gene-modified crops square off over biotech pollution Folks who want their vittles straight up with no freaky-gene twist may find it increasingly tough to get the good stuff. Genetically modified (GM) crops are gaining popularity worldwide, leading to more accidental biotech pollution, wherein ordinary crops are tainted by their GM cousins. […]

Placing monetary value on eco-resources helps more than it hurts

This is the second part of a two-part essay by Jason Scorse, Assistant Professor of International Policy Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Go here to read an introduction and part one.

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Does this mean private property rights solve everything? Of course not; however, the worst forms of environmental abuse generally occur in areas where property rights and markets are non-existent, or where the market is distorted by perverse subsidies that encourage over-exploitation. Even with enforceable property rights and a solid system of environmental accounting, markets are not perfect and are subject to unintended consequences.

Global warming presents a particularly difficult challenge. The atmosphere is the world's preeminent open access resource, and exclusion is impossible. Some of the solutions currently being discussed for long-term climate management are enforceable limits on greenhouse gas emissions through a system of tradable atmospheric pollution permits. While some environmentalists oppose pollution permits on the grounds that they establish a "right to pollute," all industrial activities require some level of greenhouse-gas pollution and tradable permits may provide both the cheapest and most equitable way of achieving targeted reductions (big greenhouse polluters like the U.S. would likely end up buying credits from less-polluting nations).

One concern many people express regarding private property is that resources that typically were free or available at little cost to almost everyone are now being "commodified." Common examples include water and botanical genetic resources. While we can all agree that everyone should have access to clean drinking water, the fact is that billions of people, for a variety of reasons, do not. Sometimes the water has been contaminated, the aquifers have been depleted, regions have suffered droughts, or the public agency in charge is corrupt. In addition, water purification and delivery are extremely expensive and entail complex systems of infrastructure and maintenance. Privatization of water systems in many instances can bring much needed capital into areas that lack infrastructure and actually improve people's access to clean water, including the poor. There are other instances where privatization has led to large rate increases and lower levels of access. The appropriate response is to ask why privatization has worked well in some areas and not in others, not to condemn it across the board. (Consider: food is also necessary for life, but no one is waging a battle against farmers who happen to be in the private business of bringing food to your table.)

How a plan to return big beasts to North America raised hackles and hopes

Every damn kid in the U.S., son of cabbie or Catholic, knows and cares about dinosaurs. But few have heard of gomphotheres, which lived here much more recently. Cheetahs never win. In the late summer, this North American elephant — along with some of its contemporaries, like American camels, cheetahs, lions, and giant tortoises — […]

Biodiversivist

Word has it that the city of Seattle is planning to expand its north-end transfer station (garbage relay pit) to include a recycling center. They intend to invoke imminent domain on the old bakery just to the east of the existing facility. I surely hope their plans include a better way to collect hazardous waste.

Tonight on Wife Swap

Oh dear ...

Monday, November 7, 8/7c, "Heiss/Kestrel"
A woman who does everything and more for her three super-indulged children and her "man-of-the-house" husband swaps lives with an energy-conserving, hippie mom whose family does all housework together and whose husband likes to wear a skirt.

Via TH.

Unlikely allies send a dispatch from an enviro-justice tour in MichiganLynn:

Lynn Henning (left) is a farmer whose family grows corn and soy on 300 acres in Hudson, Mich. She is an organizer with the Sierra Club’s Water Sentinels program, testing local rivers and creeks for contamination from factory farms. Rhonda Anderson (right) is a single mother and longtime community activist in Detroit. She is an […]

A southern Idaho reservoir is contaminated with mercury

Yoiks: A southern Idaho reservoir is contaminated with mercury at levels up to 180 times higher than those found in lakes in the Northeast U.S. From the Idaho Statesman:

"Nobody's ever seen a hot spot like this before," said Mike DuBois, an air quality analyst at the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality.

The likely culprit: four gold mines across the border in northern Nevada, which emitted 15,000 pounds of mercury in 2002 alone. Of course, the mines are patting themselves on the back for reducing their mercury releases to just a couple of tons per year as of 2004. But that's still a huge amount of mercury for just a handful of mines. The 1,000-odd coal-fired electricity industry generators in the U.S. emit a total of 48 tons of mercury each year; so those few Nevada mines make up a disproportionately large share of the nation's total mercury output.

And just in case you need a reason to care about this: mercury contamination early in life can knock a few points off a kid's IQ, which, in addition to being grossly unfair, costs nearly $9 billion a year in lost earnings.

Sunday night television

There was some interesting television on last night.

First, there was the live (fictional) presidential debate on The West Wing, wherein the two candidates tossed out the rules in an effort to give viewers the type of debate that they've yearning for since the last round of real presidential debates. And according to a MSNBC/Zogby poll (!), Rep. Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits), D-Texas, edged out Sen. Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda), R-Calif.

I'm not sure how viewer submitted questions worked into the show, but they did manage to field a few energy questions, which prompted a brief exchange on global warming. And speaking of global warming ...

Afterwards, on CBS, Category 7: The End of the World was airing. Now I know I'm advocating for more enviro themes in television and film, but I expect such attempts to be well-produced. Sadly, I had to force myself to watch.

Junk food: The Senate trashes organic standards

The Senate succumbed last week to food-industry pressure and approved a rider that would water down organic standards. (Grist's Amanda Griscom Little a few weeks ago ably laid out the context behind the Senate's surrender.)

This AP article states that a Senate vote last Thursday ...

... unravels a court ruling on whether products labeled "USDA Organic" can contain small amounts of nonorganic substances. Earlier this year, an appeals court ruled that nonorganic substances such as vitamins or baking powder can't be in food bearing the round, green seal.

As I understand it, the real issue isn't that baking powder and vitamins will be allowed in food labeled "USDA organic." Ominously, the Senate's act would strip power to decide which synthetic substances can and cannot be used from the National Organic Standards Board, a 15-member panel made up of  a mix of farmers, processors, retailers, scientists, consumer advocates, environmentalists, and certifying agents. Although the board is appointed by the USDA chief, it has acted independently -- and by most accounts, responsibly -- in its ten-year history, approving only 38 synthetic ingredients.

If the Senate bill becomes law, the power to decide what synthetics can go into "organic" food would be shifted directly to the USDA -- that bastion of food-industry flackery.