Gristmill

2004 climate change and energy wrap-up

An interesting summary of climate change and energy news from 2004 over on EDIE. (See also their contaminated land news round-up.)

UPDATE: A similar round-up of clean energy news from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Happy Monday!

A Somalian mother has to choose which of her children to save. Meanwhile, Americans knowingly and deliberately poison their children.

How toxic is your breast milk?

A nice treatment of this topic in today's New York Times Magazine, from Florence Williams.

When we nurse our babies, we feed them not only the fats, sugars and proteins that fire their immune systems, metabolisms and cerebral synapses. We also feed them, albeit in minuscule amounts, paint thinners, dry-cleaning fluids, wood preservatives, toilet deodorizers, cosmetic additives, gasoline byproducts, rocket fuel, termite poisons, fungicides and flame retardants.

If, as Cicero said, your face tells the story of your mind, your breast milk tells the decades-old story of your diet, your neighborhood and, increasingly, your household decor. Your old shag-carpet padding? It's there. That cool blue paint in your pantry? There. The chemical cloud your landlord used to kill cockroaches? There. Ditto, the mercury in last week's sushi, the benzene from your gas station, the preservative parabens from your face cream, the chromium from your neighborhood smokestack.

Williams very effectively uses the personal angle of breastfeeding her daughter to approach the larger topic of toxic substances in our environment, brominated flame retardants (PBDEs) in particular. Yes, it's a highly approachable article on flame retardants -- imagine that.

The North knows best?

DDT is very effective at killing the mosquitoes that carry malaria.  Malaria kills 2 to 3 million people a year.  These people, the bulk of whom are children and the elderly, live in the global South, the tropics of the developing world.

DDT doesn't just hurt mosquitoes. The United States and most Northern countries have banned its usage because of its threat to animal and human health.  These bans are extended to the foreign assistance that flows North to South.

Is the ban the "best" thing for those facing the imminent threat of malaria in developing countries?

More shadowboxing

Oh lordy, here's another one. Writing in the Seattle Times today, Collin Levey lobs the by-now-familiar accusation that enviros are pinning the tsunamis on climate change.

Similar talk has been heard from other eco groups, though they always clarify that they don't mean the earthquake in the Indian Ocean was caused by global warming, er, exactly.

Note that all the rhetorical work here is done by the "er, exactly," which is packed with insinuation that Levey does not unpack, because she can't, because of course "eco groups" really don't mean that the earthquake was cause by global warming.

After the usual round of accusation by way of dark innuendo, Levey gets to her point: Environmentalists, she says, oppose economic development, especially for poor nations. Their message:

Poor countries are unwise to aspire to join the industrialized world, and their "natural" disasters are a comeuppance for buying into the desirability of economic progress.

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, horseshit. While there are greenies who oppose development as such, they are on the fringe. (There are fewer of them than there are of, say, right wingers planning to visit the Museum of Creation.)

It is retrograde types like Levey who see environmental protection and development as opposing forces. Mainstream environmentalism -- and even moreso cutting edge green thinking -- supports ecologically responsible development. They support leapfrogging, whereby developing countries use emerging technologies to bypass the grinding, earth-screwing, wealth-concentrating stages of industrialization whereby the developed world reached its current state of prosperity.

Thinking greens recognize that economic development is crucial to protecting the earth, but they realize that there's development and then there's development. We like the kind that benefits the poor and the earth, not just elites and industry oligarchs.

That Levey can play on this outmoded opposition in a major newspaper is not only her failing -- it is a failure of environmentalists to be more consistent and vocal in their message of hope and progress.

New metrics

I meant to link to this a few days ago: Over on Renewable Energy Access, Scott Sklar argues for the development of new economic metrics by which to assess the viability of renewable energy.

By accepting the traditional measures of viability (cents per kWh, for instance) PV and other renewables always come out poorly.

Another economic "metric" needs to be crafted and effort initiated to build support for it (such as dollars per immediate used, levelized cost, non-interruptable energy). When you take these modifiers in account, biomass, free-flow hydropower, geothermal, photovoltaics, solar thermal, wind, and waste heat/cogeneration along with other clean distributed generation and energy efficiency come out quite well.

Deck chairs on the Titanic

While it's noble that people the world over are horrified by the human toll of the tsunami (Mozambique just donated $100,000 for tsunami relief), this outpouring of sympathy is not altogether logical. As Nicholas Kristof pointed out in the New York Times, malaria, AIDS, and diarrhea each cause as many deaths each month as the tsunami did in December. If it was the actual toll of human suffering that got to us (and not just the theatrics of destruction), maybe we as a species would be more concerned about climate change. But for now, we can at least read about why investing in infrastructure in low-lying coastal areas may not be such a smart idea. Here's an interesting analysis by The Australia Institute.

A modest proposal

According to a study by the National Wind Coordinating Committee, "Based on current projections of 3,500 operational wind turbines in the US by the end of 2001, excluding California, the total annual mortality was estimated at approximately 6,400 bird fatalities per year for all species combined." Let's say they lowballed things, they underestimated the number of turbines, underestimated the number of birds per turbine, and are sops to the wind industry. Let's double their number ... no, triple it.  No, quadruple! Let's say turbines kill 25,000 birds a year.

According to the National Audubon Society, house cats kill 100,000,000 birds a year.

So, much like one can offset one's carbon use by paying to plant trees, one can offset the impact of a wind turbine by tossing one's cat into its blades.

It's the least you can do to avert global warming!

Global warming and natural disasters

What is the relationship between global warming and the recent tsunami in the Indian Ocean (and natural disasters more generally)? Who is and is not drawing such a connection? Who is and is not trying to score political points around it? There's been a flurry of writing on the subject recently.

We begin with today's Muckraker ...