Articles by Gar Lipow

Report from India

Daphne Wysham, co-director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network sends the following from Angul, Orissa, the heart of India's Coal Belt, on March 15, 2007:

The smell of burning coal in household fires hangs in the air. Bicyclists carry heavy bags of coal from the mines to sell for a few rupees. They are overtaken by huge lorries carrying more than the tonnage they are supposed to carry -- all part of the black market in coal -- down busy streets, with cattle lying nonchalantly on the road.

We visited communities that were literally on the edge of the coal mines, who had nowhere else to go, having received no compensation for their land, taken by the coal companies and the World Bank. In the heat of the summer they tell us, the temperature in these communities can reach over 130 degrees F. Spontaneous combustion of coal in the open-pit mines cannot be extinguished. Water is polluted and far away. Health care and education is non-existent. Heavy energy-intensive industry is everywhere in Angul: aluminum smelters, steel mills, sponge iron factories.

As we drove to a village on the outskirts of the dirtiest aluminum smelter in the country, Nalco, we were forced to stop as a parade of men dressed in bright orange dress, paint on their faces, were banging drums and cymbals, celebrating the festival of holi, the arrival of spring. They celebrate in colorful garb in their villages as they do every spring although just down the road, on the outskirts of the state-owned Nalco smelter, their cattle are dying in droves from bone-crippling fluorosis -- caused by the excessive fluoride produced from smelting aluminum -- and other undiagnosed diseases.

The people and animals have small tumors on their bodies; the women complain of arthritis-like symptoms and swollen joints that make it hard to do their daily work; the children show signs of genetic malformations. One boy we saw had seven fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot. Another boy was deaf and retarded, his teeth also weakened, possibly by the fluoride. All the malformed children were born after the aluminum smelter was established here. Many of the women cannot be married if the men learn where they are from; similarly, cattle cannot be sold from this community. it is well-known that here a severe poisoning has taken place at the hands of Nalco.

A step closer to trains replacing plane journeys

A Morocco-Spain Chunnel will provide a land rail link between Africa and Europe.

John McGrath asks if a China-Africa link will follow, and then a railway across the Bering Strait.

Maybe in the long run we can link most of the world by rail, and save plane journeys for Australia, New Zealand, other islands, and major emergencies. That would be a nice end run around the difficult problem of air travel emissions.

We don’t need to keep burning coal, oil , and gas for electricity

In "A simple choice," David points out the absurdity of framing the greenhouse debate as "we have no alternatives." He points out how foolish it is to assume that reducing emissions has no value, that paying even slightly more for electricity is out of the question, that increasing efficiency even slightly is out of the question.

Even under those assumptions, we have alternatives. Suppose we stupidly decided we are not going to replace one incandescent light bulb with compact fluorescent lamps. Suppose we stupidly decided not to take advantage of all the ways we have to increase the efficiency of motors, especially the motor-driven pumps that account for much of our electricity use. Suppose we stupidly decided to phase out electricity emissions solely by replacing our existing electrical infrastructure with low-carbon infrastructure.

It turns out that even this is less stupid than what we are doing now. We could replace every non-hydro power plant in the U.S. with wind generators and electricity storage and lower our electricity bill.

Those people are smart

Robert J. Shapiro of the The American Consumer Institute favors a carbon tax (PDF) over emission trading:

Based on recent economic analyses and evidence, it is clear that carbon taxes are the more effective and efficient strategy for addressing climate change, and provide stronger incentives to develop alternative fuels and more energy-efficient technologies.