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Get your (hybrid) motor runnin’

The New York Times reports this morning on the 2005 Honda Accord Hybrid. Two points of note:

• The Times cites Consumer Reports, which found actual on-the-road efficiency to be just 25 mpg for the Accord hybrid.

  The E.P.A. figures show a larger benefit for the hybrid, but the agency's fuel economy figures are considered by many to be inaccurate because they do not reflect the way cars are actually driven.

  The EPA figures are 29/37 mpg city/highway for an automatic transmission Accord hybrid. That's about a 15 percent jump in fuel efficiency if you drive like the EPA thinks you should. There are a number of habits many people have that needlessly hamper fuel efficiency (flooring it from light to light is an egregious example). Installing an mpg meter in your car lets you know when you are getting the best mileage and what behaviors detract from optimal fuel efficiency, rewarding the driver with flashing lights and colors, to which the human brain seems to respond.
• One hybrid owner was quoted as saying:

  I wasn't prepared to give up anything to 'go green' - not performance, amenities, or space.

  Maybe it's because I just read Suburban Nation, but this sounds similar to the concept of "induced traffic." The idea there is that building more roads or lanes on a highway, rather than easing and speeding traffic flow, leads to more traffic: Drivers will flock to the faster-moving roads until they become just as congested as before.

  In the same way, making cars more efficient, rather than leading people to buy new cars with similar performance but higher gas mileage, could lead people to buy new cars with higher performance but similar gas mileage. So the end result will be the same overall level of fuel use, but roads packed with high performance cars. If the quoted driver is indicative of public sentiment, new hybrids could have a neutral environmental impact at best.

Farming in an age of global labor and developing world poverty.

I ran into Andy Brett scavenging for material over on Biopolitical's blog not too long ago. I had beaten him to the punch on this one and he generously conceded the topic to me. I then went on vacation and am just now getting around to finishing it.

Nature (which I subscribe to but have not read yet) published essays from a number of African leaders on the topic of the now-completed G8 summit. One of the contributors, Anthony Nyong from Nigeria, had this to say:

Poverty is a major cause of environmental degradation and causes people to live unsustainably. Take deforestation: people who cut down trees don't do it for fun: it is a bid to survive. Much of the rural population depends on wood as fuel for domestic energy and cooking. Faced with the need to survive, people even have to encroach on protected forests and game reserves. It is unfair and impractical to think that force can prevent this.

NYC takes to hybrids for (some of ) its taxi fleet

Just in case you missed it, New York City is going to start using hybrids as taxis.

NYC also has a plethora of hybrid buses. I caught one of these last winter and didn't even notice a difference until it pulled away and I saw the hybrid label on the side.

Court rules that EPA is not obligated to regulate CO2 as air pollutant.

As many of you probably know, today a three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. EPA is not obligated to regulate CO2 as an air pollutant. In doing so it ruled against a coalition of states and cities that had filed a petition trying to force the EPA to mandate reductions.

This is bad, if not entirely unexpected, news. I suspect we'll publish something more about it on Monday.

For now, Chris Mooney has read the majority opinion by Judge A. Raymond Randolph, the concurrence by Judge David Sentelle, and the dissent by Judge David Tatel. In Mooney's judgment, on both scientific and legal grounds, "Tatel rocks."

Update [2005-7-15 16:0:55 by Dave Roberts]: Not surprisingly, over at NRO Jonathan Adler has a different take on the case:

A decision to regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants would vastly increase the EPA's regulatory authority over private economic activity. Carbon dioxide is a ubiquitous byproduct of fossil-fuel energy combustion. Controlling carbon dioxide emissions would require regulating every industrial facility that burns oil, coal, or natural gas, along with all manner of agricultural practices and land-use decisions. It would further require yet another round of federal controls on automobile tailpipe emissions. If the federal government is to assume such awesome regulatory authority, the decision should be made in the halls of Congress, not a federal courthouse.

The Canadian press

Carl Pope sends some interesting ruminations from Canada:

It's not that Canada (or Europe) necessarily does a better job of environmental stewardship. Canada's greenhouse emissions -- driven by production of oil for the U.S. market -- have actually increased faster than those in the United States.

...

What's different here is that the dialogue feels more honest. The media actually try to describe reality rather than falling back on critiquing spin. Although the reporting may be opinionated, biased, or even wrong, it remains (at least modestly) connected to the real world. Consider global warming. Canada is a country that cynics in the U.S. like to offer as a proof that "a little warming wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing." Canadians suffer no such illusions. ... Little wonder that eighty percent of Canadians are proud that their nation has ratified Kyoto.

Canadians are desperate to find a way to get the U.S. back in the game. They struggled to get their government to agree to host the United Nations global warming conference in Montreal this fall. Their leaders were told that this was a foolish idea -- that the Bush administration would make them regret it -- but the public insisted, and its voice was heeded. The signers of the Kyoto agreement will meet in Montreal in November. Canada wants to use that meeting to enlist Americans -- on both side of the U.S./Canada border -- to join the struggle for a viable climactic future. The passion, the fury, the fear, and the hope are tangible and exciting.

Sustainable, yes. Possible, not so sure.

So you want to make sure your eating habits are not contributing to global warming, but aren't ready to go veg. You like the idea of eating only organic food, but worry about the long trek much of it makes to get from producer to grocer. So you're thinking about consuming only locally produced fare. But is it possible? Well, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon are giving it a go and sharing their experience with our friends to the north, The Tyee.

In part one, we get the background:

For the average American meal (and we assume the average Canadian meal is similar), World Watch reports that the ingredients typically travel between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometres, a 25 percent increase from 1980 alone. This average meal uses up to 17 times more petroleum products, and increases carbon dioxide emissions by the same amount, compared to an entirely local meal.

Let's translate that into the ecological footprint model devised by Dr. William Rees of UBC which measures how many planets'-worth of resources would be needed if everyone did the same. If you had an average North American lifestyle in every other way, from driving habits to the size of your house, by switching to a local diet you would save almost an entire planet's worth of resources (though you'd still be gobbling up seven earths).

Toxic babies

You know, nothing warms the cockles of a father-to-be's heart like a study showing that babies in the womb are awash in toxic chemicals.

We are abusing our children, all of us, before they are even born. Lovely.

Julian Brookes has more.

SCOTUS update

Looks like, Beltway scuttlebutt notwithstanding, Rehnquist isn't retiring.

Slitherin’ Scholastic

Greens urge boycott of Harry Potter’s U.S. publisher J. K. Rowling and a coalition of eco-Muggles are giving props to Canadian publisher Raincoast Books for printing Rowling’s hotly anticipated sixth novel — Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, being released tonight — entirely on recycled paper. Canadian conservation group Markets Initiative estimates that Raincoast’s good […]

The Axis of Oil

China gets pushy about finding oil and gas supplies outside Mideast Historians cataloguing the unintended consequences of the Iraq war can add another to their list. Until 2003, China had been wooing Saddam Hussein, hoping to lay claim to some of Iraq’s undeveloped oil reserves. But the U.S.-led war, perceived by China’s leaders as a […]