Canadian Federal Government GHG Mitigation – FAIL

Byoliveridley

Two central programs that the Conservative government has claimed will result in significant reductions in Canada's greenhouse gas emissions are nearly impossible to verify, the federal environment commissioner says.

A tax credit intended to encourage public transit use, part of the maiden Tory budget in 2006, will “lead to negligible reductions” in Canada's greenhouse gas emissions and the tools to measure its impact don't yet exist, Scott Vaughn's audit of the government's tools for cutting air emissions found.

And impressive claims that a $1.5-billion climate change trust fund would lead to an 80-megatonne cut in emissions by giving provinces money to go green appears to be based more on a best-case scenario that may be flawed, the audit found.

Not that the Conservative government is serious about its climate change mitigation strategies. Their programs were easily tagged as worse than useless. A transit tax credit is useless without increasing transit options, discouraging urban sprawl and increasing automobile fuel efficiency. I like the fact that I can get $10 off a monthly bus pass with this program, but in the end, most people will pay 10 bucks a month if it means getting to work in half an hour, instead of an hour and 15 minutes. When you use exclusively tax based solutions, everyone optimizes their short term gains and nothing happens in the long term.

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    Glass baby bottles making comeback

    Byoliveridley

    More Bisphenol A blowback, apparently, SF parents are switching to glass.

    Glass baby bottles making comeback / Stores selling out after health alarms raised about plastics

    Glass baby bottles, replaced decades ago by unbreakable plastic, are making such a comeback that parents can’t get their hands on them.

    Online and brick-and-mortar retailers report a run on glass baby bottles in recent weeks that they say was spurred by reports that the most common type of plastic in baby bottles may leach a toxic chemical.

    San Francisco resident Sean Mullins said he decided to switch his 6-month-old son, Mickey, from plastic to glass bottles last month despite manufacturers’ insistence that plastic bottles are safe.

    Independent tests done for The Chronicle and reported in November found bisphenol A, a chemical that mimics estrogen, in a baby bottle and several toys. Bisphenol A is also found in the lining of food cans, some anti-cavity sealants for teeth, and electronics.

    Watch for plastics manufacturers to fight back, this study ought to provide some ammo.

    Comparison of six samples of each of three brands of water available in both glass and polyethyelene terephthalate (PET(E)) showed that the waters bottled in glass contained approximately 57, 30, and 26 times more Pb due to leaching from the containers. Our study includes 25 brands of bottled water from Canada, and the median Pb concentration in these samples was 15.9 ng/L (n = 25), with a range from 2.1 to 268 ng/L. For comparison with the bottled waters, pristine groundwater from six artesian flows in southern Ontario, Canada, where some of the bottled waters originate, yielded a median concentration of 5.1 ng/L Pb (n = 18). In fact, all of the waters tested were well below the maximum allowable concentration established by the EU, Health Canada, and the WHO for Pb in drinking water (10000 ng/L).

    It all depends on which bolded sentence you chose to emphasize! So, glass bottles do leach some lead out, but nowhere near the amount needed to cause any effects whatsoever. I guess this is all the American Chemistry Council can come up with as a problem with glass.

    It’s irrefutable that glass can shatter, Hentges said. But there is “no scientific basis to conclude that BPA is something to be concerned about … at the extremely low levels that people might be exposed to from use of consumer products.”

    There is plenty of scientific basis to conclude that Bisphenol A has some very subtle effects at ambient doses. But science has never stopped the American Chemistry Council!

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    Green Scolding and Media Victim Blaming

    Byoliveridley


    Dracula Lurks in Your Set-Top Box – NYTimes.com

    Most Americans are guilty of a similar if less costly squandering of
    energy when it comes to their cable or satellite TV boxes. A new study
    released on Tuesday by the National Resources Defense Council shows that
    set-top boxes in the United States consume nearly as much energy when
    not in use as when they are on, costing a cumulative $2 billion a year.

    Dear media, let’s break down the choices consumers have with regards to set top boxes:

    1. Not get one, and hence lose access to encrypted channels, digital cable, etc, which are now de rigueur
    2. Get one, and unplug it every time, which means reaching behind (as you kindly mention), unplugging, and waiting for restart, etc. My Telus box usually takes a couple of minutes at least to reinitialize, and behaves a bit weirdly for another minute afterwards. So how many people will do this?
    3. Be scolded by you for not being environmentally friendly.

    Now, let’s see what would happen in a real, and properly regulated market.

    1. There would be little connection between the set top box and the content. You would get a box, or use your computer, and just put in a card from your cable company for decryption. While cablecards kinda exist, the reason you haven’t heard of them is because cable companies want you captured by their expensive hardware. separate the two, box manufacturers are free to sell you fancy boxes like this one that can manage all your media, have a friendly interface, cost less, look cool, and consume less energy, and can use all these as marketing points.
    2. There would be sensible regulation on ALL electric devices to include standby mode, with automatic sleep mode. So, if something is not in use, it shuts off in 15 minutes. Seems difficult? Computers do this all the time, routinely. A set top box is just an underpowered computer.

    So, let’s not blame the consumer here, shall we? If anyone is guilty, it is media and telecommunication oligopolies that don’t let us actually have free choice, while simultaneously claiming that any regulation is anti-  free market.

  • The Waxman cometh for Alberta Oil Sands

    Byoliveridley

    Representative Henry A. Waxman of California ousted Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan from his post as chairman of the influential Committee on Energy and Commerce on Thursday, giving President-elect Barack Obama an advantage in his plans to promote efforts to combat global warming.

    via Longtime Head of House Energy Panel Is Ousted – NYTimes.com

    Why is this big news for Canada? Because Waxman would like to ensure that the US not allow any alternative fuel that has a bigger CO2 lifecycle impact than the conventional fuel it replaces to be used by the US government, as enshrined in US law.

    I don’t foresee a bright future for this dirty Oil Sands, with oil now dipping below $50 a barrel, and money short, even the economics (without any carbon pricing) do not make sense. We are probably 4-5 years away from commercial plugin hybrids. In the medium term, gasoline consumption is going to decline, and there’s nowhere we can sell this oil to if the US drops out as a buyer.

  • Deep Sixing California’s Prop 65

    Byoliveridley

    House mulls bill on food label removal – Boston.com:

    “This bill would strip state governments of the ability to protect their residents through state laws and regulations relating to the safety of food and food packaging,” the attorneys general wrote.

    The obvious target, they said, is California’s Proposition 65, a law passed by voters requiring companies to warn the public of potentially dangerous toxins in food. The law has prompted California to file lawsuits seeking an array of warnings, including the mercury content in canned tuna and the presence of lead in Mexican candy.

    Prop 65 is a California Law that requires the state of California to “publish, at least annually, a list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity” and for businesses to post warning labels. Well naturally, it kinda depresses sales of canned tuna if you have mercury warnings on the labels, mmm, lead in my candy, so delicious…

    This is obviously not good for the consumer, I undestand that businesses feel the burden of extra labeling, depressed sales, etc, but why should the onus always be on the consumer? If the assumption that it is the consumer’s responsibility to find out that there is mercury in his/her tuna and that the informed consumer will make informed choices, why not make it easier on the consumer to find out and then rely on him/her to make that choice? What are the companies afraid of, exactly?

    Update 4:24 PM 3-3-2006

    More here,  here and here

  • Pot Farms Damaging National Parks

    Byoliveridley

    Horrible story coming out of California.
    Pot farms ravaging park land / Big raid in Marin County only hints at the extent of erosive techniques by growers

    The discovery of 22,740 marijuana plants growing in and around Point Reyes National Seashore last week wasn’t only the biggest pot seizure ever made in Marin County. It was an environmental mess that will take several months and tens of thousands of dollars to clean up. The crops seized on the steep hillsides overlooking Highway 1 were planted by sophisticated growers who cleared vegetation, terraced land, drew water from streams through miles of irrigation hoses and doused acres of land with hundreds of pounds of fertilizer and pesticides.

    To avoid the obvious “Pot Legalization” questions and flip it, consider a world where cigarettes have been banned/regulated to the extent that black market growing became viable, would this happen with tobacco? Obviously, the nature of the growing (Tobacco – plains, easy plant to spot, Cannabis – Hill sides, easy to hide), make it an operation question in addition to an economics question. But as the above report states, the operation was obviously not hard to spot, nor was it low impact.

    Something to consider as actions widely prevalent in populations are made illegal, how well does prohibition ever work?

  • Duke Energy wants your money to pollute you

    Byoliveridley

    Charlotte Observer | 06/06/2007 | Green groups lose effort to block Duke plant

    AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!! STOP BUILDING COAL POWER PLANTS NOW!!! – NO MORE COAL WITHOUT SEQUESTRATION!!

    How’s that for a bumper sticker?

    The N.C. Utilities Commission upheld its March decision to allow Duke to build one 800-megawatt unit. The commission in March had rejected Duke’s request to build two units. Environmentalists subsequently asked the regulators to reconsider their decision allowing one unit.

    The commission’s ruling shifts the battle over Duke’s proposed Cliffside project to the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the agency that is considering an air quality permit for the proposed power plant. When the draft permit is issued later this year, the organizations will likely contend that the Cliffside project is not using the cleanest technology available and is falling short of federal air quality standards.

    “We’re using all available legal tools to stop a dirty power plant from being built,” said Michael Shore, a senior air policy analyst at N.C. Environmental Defense. “Everything is an attempt to delay and hopefully prevent construction.”

    In their appeal to the utilities commission, the environmentalists contended that the Cliffside project is not the most economical choice, but rather the “worst-cost” option. Last year, the capital cost of two Cliffside units was estimated at $2 billion, but this year Duke revised the costs, saying that building one unit would cost $1.8 billion.

    The cost of building, financing, maintaining and operating power plants is paid by utility customers through electric rates.

    Note that this project at the enormous cost of 2 billion dollars is funded entirely by increases in NC utility bills. So, not only are they shafting us thoroughly, they’re using our money to do it, the temerity. I am pissed off, and I have no choice to buy power from anyone other than the morons at Duke Energy where I live. it’s Duke, or candlelight for me!

    The battle shifts to the NC-DENR, which will need to issue an air quality permit. It’s time for all groups involved to delay this project until NC comes up with a viable climate change mitigation policy that wil make plants like these completely unviable. It’s a good thing that this is the exact strategy they’re going for! Maybe our legislators and regulators should take the time to read their local paper.

    On some days, stretches of Nags Head have no dry beach, and visitors have to sit under the front-row houses at high tide. The resort that once thrived by the sea is being swallowed by it.

    “We are losing the town,” Cahoon said. “As sea level rises, our tax base goes away.”

    Other, more subtle changes are under way along the coast, not just on the fragile barrier islands. As salt water pushes farther upriver, some rivers are widening into estuaries, tidal bodies of water where fresh and salt water mix. Freshwater swamps are changing to salt marsh.