Gristmill

Obama says tar-sands oil has ‘big carbon footprint,’ but doesn’t rule out its use

President Barack Obama is heading up to Canada on Wednesday Thursday to chat with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as David mentioned earlier. The two are slated to discuss, among other things, trade, climate change, and tar sands. Harper is expected to encourage Obama to support a partnership between the neighboring nations that protects Alberta’s tar […]

An interview with Mia MacDonald on China's growing appetite for U.S.-style meat production

Old MacDonald had a farm -- one resounding with oinks and moos and squawks. By today's standards, the old man's farm would count as a model of biodiversity. Researcher Mia MacDonald points out that across the planet, old ways of farming are giving way to the environmentally devastating factory farms we've pioneered in the West -- typically housing a single species of animal, confined by the thousands in conditions that would be alien to Old MacDonald's pigs and cows and chickens. For modern industrial-scale animal farms, the proper literary form is the scathing environmental report, not the children's ditty.

At Brighter Green, an action think tank that helps advocacy groups take informed action through research and analysis, MacDonald is currently at work on a series of case studies on the spread of factory-style farming across the globe. She's cutting straight to the chase: China, the world's biggest nation, is the subject of the first case study.

I caught up with Mia to discuss Brighter Green's new report, "Skillful Means: The Challenges of China's Encounter with Factory Farming" [PDF], which delves into China, meat, and the connection with our climate.

Big Coal's new campaign: choose us, not jobs and health

It was not so long ago that the coal industry could just issue propaganda without reference to coal's problems. Coal was "reliable, affordable, and increasingly clean" and it powered green, useful things like Washington, D.C.'s Metro system.

So imagine my glee when I woke up this morning and pulled the latest Southern Company insert from my morning newspaper. Here it is:

I think the androgynous yuppie happily contemplating the radioactive turd is supposed to convince us that said turd is actually a piece of coal that has been magically "greened."

I was smiling, of course, not because this insert represented a new, revolting low in graphic arts, but because Southern Company now feels compelled to fight not so much for the ability to build new coal-fired power plants, but for survival.

Canadian PM and business groups use Obama's visit to shill for dirty tar sands oil

On Wednesday Thursday, Barack Obama is heading up to Canada, where they're getting nervous about growing protectionist and environmentalist sentiment in the U.S. Canadian PM Stephen Harper is widely expected to hype the special trade relationship between the two countries and push Obama for a climate partnership that spares tar sands oil -- one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in North America -- from any carbon restrictions. (Hey, if the U.S. is going easy on coal, why shouldn't Canada go easy on tar sands?)

To that end, during Obama's visit, a group called the Canadian American Business Council (boasting such luminaries as Exxon Mobil and Shell Oil) will be running full-page ads in major U.S. publications, which say:

The countries share the largest energy trade relationship in the world, with Canada supplying more oil and natural gas to the U.S. than any other foreign supplier. Second only to Saudi Arabia in proven petroleum reserves, Canada is poised to securely supply even more oil and natural gas to the U.S., while industries on both sides of the border innovate and invest in technologies to enhance environmental responsibility.

"Enhance environmental responsibility," you say? Let's take a look at a recent dispatch from Canada's Pembina Institute:

Today the Pembina Institute submitted comments on a draft Alberta Government policy that would allow in situ oil sands operations to burn dirtier fuels, which would significantly increase the intensity and total amount of greenhouse gas pollution and air emissions from the sector. ...

The policy would allow oil sands companies operating in situ projects to switch from burning natural gas to much dirtier, more carbon intensive fossil fuels such as raw bitumen or the waste from oil sands upgrading (petroleum coke and asphaltenes). Compared to conventional oil production, in situ oil sands production produces four times the greenhouse gas pollution per barrel when burning relatively cleaner natural gas. According to the Pembina Institute's analysis, in situ oil sands operations burning petroleum coke without any mitigation would produce 66 per cent more greenhouse gas pollution than if the same operation were to burn natural gas. The Alberta Government document states that the policy may be expanded to include other industrial activities in the future.

Depends on what the meaning of "enhance" is, I guess.

U.S. group Forest Ethics is running the following full-page ad in response:

Obama says nice things about clean energy as he signs the $787 billion stimulus package

President Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus package into law Tuesday during a ceremony at the Museum of Nature and Science in Denver. The package includes $62.2 billion in direct spending on green initiatives and $20 billion in green tax incentives. The Obama team apparently picked the signing location to promote the stimulus law’s initiatives […]

Marc Morano's secret list of climate deniers

Originally posted at the Wonk Room.

Marc Morano, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK)'s environmental aide, sits at the center of the right-wing global warming denier propaganda machine -- of fifty-two people. Conservative columnist Fred Barnes recently refused to tell TPM Muckraker who's informed him "the case for global warming" is falling apart, but all signs point to Marc Morano. Morano's "entire job," David Roberts explains, "is to aggregate every misleading factoid, every attack on climate science or scientists, every crank skeptical statement from anyone in the world and send it all out periodically in email blasts" to the right-wing echo chamber. The Wonk Room has acquired Morano's email list, and we can now reveal the pack of climate skeptics, conservative bloggers, and corporate hacks who feed the misinformation machine.

Promoted on the Drudge Report and Fox News, Morano's moronic misinformation enters mainstream discourse through columns by Barnes, George Will, Robert Samuelson, and others. Many in the Morano gang are funded by right-wing think tanks, though a few are committed activists, conspiracy theorists who believe their home-brew interpretations of climate data. Others are aging scientists with strong conservative beliefs, motivating them to challenge action on global warming not because they disbelieve its existence, but because they are ideologically opposed to regulation of pollution:

Investors will figure out that coal is growing scarce and too expensive

The following is a guest essay by Tom Konrad, a financial analyst specializing in renewable energy and energy efficiency companies, a freelance writer, and a contributor to AltEnergyStocks.com.

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A couple years ago, I began to see reports that coal supplies might not last the 200-plus years we've all been lead to believe, so I wrote an article about what you could do to prepare your portfolio for Peak Coal.

Now two years have passed, and peak coal is undeniably two years closer. (Ever wonder why people who have been saying that we have 200 years of coal for 20 years aren't now talking about 180 years of coal?) But more than being two years closer, the evidence continues to mount. Caltech Professor David Rutledge has been spreading the peak coal word for most of the time since. I recommend the video of his 2007 lecture on the subject.

It's great that the New York Times is asking "Is America Ready to Quit Coal?" but the real question may be "Will we have any choice?"

On February 12, Clean Energy Action released a report on Powder River Basin coal supplies, based in part on a 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report. The Powder River Basin matters because Western coal has been the only source of new coal production in the U.S. for the last two decades. Appalachian and interior coal production has been declining, despite mostly increasing prices and uniformly increasing prices since 2003. Northern Appalachian coal production peaked in the middle of the last century, while interior coal production peaked at the start of this decade. When production declines in the face of rising prices, constraints other than economics must be coming into play. Future increases in production in these regions seems unlikely.

The stimulus bill provides serious money for high-speed rail

There are those who have expressed dismay at reports the high-speed rail provision of the stimulus bill was destined to build supertrains to carry gamblers back and forth between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Thankfully, they were woefully misinformed. Matt Yglesias cleared things up when he uncovered a legal analysis of the actual language from the bill:

The Stimulus Plan includes two provisions modeled after the [High Speed Rail] Act that finance high-speed rail development. First, the Stimulus Plan provides a $2 billion grant for high-speed rail projects that will remain available until September 30, 2011. The grant will be distributed among applicant states, interstate compacts, public agencies having responsibility for providing high-speed rail service and Amtrak for capital projects associated with inter-city passenger rail services reasonably expected to reach speeds of at least 110 miles per hour. The Secretary of Transportation will have discretion to award grants based on an extensive set of criteria, including the legal, financial and technical capacity of the applicant to carry out the project; compatibility with relevant national plans; and anticipated economic, environmental and transportation effects.

Sorry, Vegas. No earmark for you. Looks like Reid's statement that a Los Angeles-Vegas route "could get a big chunk of the money" was more wishful thinking than act of Congress. This statement is no doubt causing further heartburn in Sen. Reid's office now that it's been embraced by the right as a supposed example of the pork that lards the stimulus package. In fact, according to the Sierra Club, Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood has set up a new entity called TIGER (an acronym that just oozes efficiency, no?) to prioritize stimulus projects based on merit, rather than whim. Really.

Yglesias also uncovered this fantastic map of officially designated HSR rail corridors, some of which would presumably get first dibs on the money. Note the absence of a little green line between L.A. and Vegas:

The game plan: regulating CO2 under the Clean Air Act

This element of Obama’s impending energy policy hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves. If he does it right, it could be the secret weapon that kills new coal plants for good — with far greater certainty than a middling cap-and-trade program. Obama has always said, to those who were listening closely, that he plans […]