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Turtles, Arribadas, Science, Policy and Implementation

Byoliveridley

turtle Read stuff like this (hat tip to my mom for telling me about this report she’d seen on TV in Madras), and you begin to doubt your utility as a scientist.
IBNLive : Orissa turtles neck-deep in danger

Nearly 3,000 Olive Ridley turtles have died off the Orissa coast this season. Beaches have become turtle graveyards.

Orissa is one of the three places in the world where the Olive Ridleys come for their annual mass nesting.

Mechanised trawlers are the biggest culprits for this slaughter. When the trawlers go to the sea, turtles are trapped in their fishing nets. The turtles are unable to disentangle themselves and suffocate to death.

See the video report too. In her own breathlessly indignant style, the reporter explains the science behind turtle excluder devices (well known and established), the regulation expressely forbidding shrimp trawling close to the coast, especially during the arribada, the money set aside in the budget to purchase a few speed boats for the coast guard, who are well aware of the problem, so wot’s, uh, the deal?

The investigative reports contradict each other, the first one linked said there was no patrolling, the second one gushingly praises the coast guard for vigorous enforcement and patrolling, so which is it? I need to find out, call on some old friends… But clearly, there are issues if net catch mortality is on the rise.

The three pillars of any regulatory action are the science, the policy, and the implementation. The science here is very clear (though the US administration seems to not think so any more?), shrimp nets with turtle excluder devices cause decrease in mortality. The policy is clear, use these nets when shrimp fishing, and completely ban fishing activity during the arribada (the number of turtles in an arribada, 50000 in a night and perhaps 300000-400000 over the course of a week is staggeringly large, so, shrimp net or not, you’ll kill a lot of turtles just by being there).

So, like anything else in India, where is the implementation? The people running the trawlers know they are illegal anyway, so they don’t bother with the TEDs. The owners of the trawling boats never face the consequences, only the poor hapless fishermen running the boats. No attempt is made to coopt the people being regulated, it is a top down “we tell you what to do” kind of situation where the law is selectively enforced, no explanations are given, the regulation may just be an excuse to get some kickbacks. The fishermen see the excluder device as an inconvenience as they are not shown how to use it. Some low level bureaucrat in charge of buying high speed boats for the state’s forest service either does not realize the importance of getting this policy on the road, or is on the take. You can pick any, or all of these reasons and you’ll see why just like most other things in India, the road to hell is paved with good intentions 🙁

Why be a scientist and come up with cool new techniques to do things when you don’t pay equal attention to the implementation of techniques invented 20 years back? As a responsible scientist, I must look at policy and implentation with as much interest and passion as I look at the science – New career paths?

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    Senate 1, Plutocrats 2

    Byoliveridley

    It was a close game. But in the end, the plutocrats prevailed on energy legislation. Yes, fuel economy will go up some, but the push towards renewable energy will have to wait. Even on fuel economy standards, the requirement to incrementally increase standards every year after  getting to 35 mpg by 2020 was dropped.

    Well, given the notoriously undemocratic nature of the US senate, progress will be slow.
    Senate Adopts an Energy Bill Raising Mileage for Cars – New York Times

    The Senate passed a broad energy bill late Thursday that would, among other things, require the first big increase in fuel mileage requirements for passenger cars in more than two decades. The vote, 65 to 27, was a major defeat for car manufacturers, which had fought for a much smaller increase in fuel economy standards and is expected to keep fighting as the House takes up the issue. But Senate Democrats also fell short of their own goals. In a victory for the oil industry, Republican lawmakers successfully blocked a crucial component of the Democratic plan that would have raised taxes on oil companies by about $32 billion and used the money on tax breaks for wind power, solar power, ethanol and other renewable fuels. Republicans also blocked a provision of the legislation that would have required electric utilities to greatly increase the share of power they get from renewable sources of energy. As a result, Senate Democrats had to settle for a bill that calls for a vast expansion of renewable fuels over the next decade — to 36 billion gallons a year of alternatives to gasoline — but does little to actually promote those fuels through tax breaks or other subsidies. The combination of breakthroughs and setbacks highlighted the blocking power of the entrenched industry groups, from oil companies and electric utilities to car manufacturers, that had blanketed Congress in recent days to defend their interests.

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  • E.P.A. Says 17 States Can’t Set Emission Rules for Cars

    Byoliveridley

    Shameful. I did not blog much, or anything about the recently passed energy bill because I thought it was a watered down compromise that subsidized coal, oil and ethanol industries at the expense of renewable energy, public transportation and public health. But these are the consequences of passing such a bill, it allows the EPA to claim that something major has already been done, so noting needs to be done any more .

    The E.P.A. administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, said the proposed California rules were pre-empted by federal authority and made moot by the energy bill signed into law by President Bush on Wednesday. Mr. Johnson said California had failed to make a compelling case that it needed authority to write its own standards for greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks to help curb global warming.

    E.P.A. Says 17 States Can’t Set Emission Rules for Cars – New York Times

    This is truly absurd. The energy bill does not address CO2 emissions. California has used its right to set stronger standards many times in the past, and nothing in this bill preempts this right.

    I guess this is Supreme Court bound, where that one man decision making machine Justice Kennedy will no doubt set the standards for this country.

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  • Today is World Water Day

    Byoliveridley

    World Water Day – World Water Day

    As opposed to every other day when water’s not all that important! But seriously, the site is a good compendium of resources. This year’s theme is coping with scarcity. I remember when Madras had severe water shortages in the late ’80s until a couple of years back. You had to be either very lucky to live in the right neighborhood/rich enough to buy water from private tankers to fill up your water tank. Running water was off and on, we had giant buckets of stored water, it was quite an adventure for me (and a great deal of stress for my parents, of course). Those days still leave a big impression on me. Everytime I leave the tap running for more than 30 seconds, or stand in the shower for longer than necessary, I can hear my mom yelling!

  • James Hansen today at the Friday Center, 3:00 PM

    Byoliveridley

    Environment North Carolina is co-sponsoring 2 events featuring Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute and the nation’s foremost climate expert. In the past year, Dr. Hansen has lead the charge in calling for action on global warming, stating, “We have at most ten years-not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse gas emissions.”

    RSVP-NASA’s Dr. James Hansen coming to North Carolina – Environment North Carolina

    Well, if I’d been keeping normal bogging hours, this would have been up last week, anyway… Full report on the talk later tonight/tomorrow. It figures to be exciting, always great to see visionary scientists in person.

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  • Dear American Public Media, Coal is not clean!

    Byoliveridley

    Overheard this morning on The Marketplace morning report…

    “The use of scrubbers have made coal fired power plants much cleaner”

    Umm, this only refers to the scrubbing of particulate matter and sulfur dioxide. Unless some marvelous scrubber has been invented and perfected (top secret, the coal fired power plants don’t want you to know about all the good things they do!) that picks up all the CO2 belching out of those smokestacks, no claim can be made that coal is cleaner.

    Dear Marketplace, your own website says the following:

    KAI RYSSDAL: And it’s official. Carbon dioxide is a pollutant. The Supreme Court says so. The Bush Administration had been arguing the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases

    To argue this from a strictly legalistic standpoint, coal is dirtier now than it has ever been because we finally count CO2 as a pollutant (Yes, I know, Supreme Court only ruled on automobile emissions because that was the case in front of it, but gas is gas!).

    Dear Marketplace, please stop using the words clean and coal in the same sentence unless and until CO2 emissions from coal are scrubbed!

    Update 30Aug07: Apparently (see comments!), NPR does not like the use of the word NPR in the blog title because (and I quote)

    “Marketplace” is not an NPR show. It is produced by American Public Media, a separate company, and has its own news operation”

    True, so it’s not dear NPR anymore, it’s “dear American Public Media”. There, that takes care of that. My point obviously stands, coal is not clean!!

  • Movement on Texas Coal Fired Power Plants.

    Byoliveridley

    There’s been some progress on the coal fired power plants I had railed on about recently.
    In Big Buyout, Utility to Limit New Coal Plants – New York Times

    Under a proposed $45 billion buyout by a team of private equity firms, the TXU Corporation, a Texas utility that has long been the bane of environmental groups, will abandon plans to build 8 of 11 coal plants and commit to a broad menu of environmental measures, according to people involved in the negotiations. The roster of commitments came through an unusual process in which the equity firms asked two prominent environmental groups what measures could be taken to win their support. The result is an about-face from the company’s earlier approach to climate-change issues, and includes a goal of returning the carbon-dioxide emissions by TXU to 1990 levels by 2020. Environmental groups said yesterday that they had never known of a financial deal with such an ambitious built-in environmental component.

    Better than nothing. This is good news for sure. But as I mentioned previously, the Sanders (Good ol’ socialist!) Bill calls for an 80% reduction from 1990 levels by 2050. This is required to cap CO2 levels at 450 ppm and avoid the worst effects of global warming. So, while reducing CO2 to 1990 levels sounds impressive in a breathlessly written NY Times article. It is not nearly enough. This is exactly what I was afraid of when I mentioned the moratorium word! In the absence of regulation, or a clear policy, private equity companies, power plants, and other plutocrats are setting the US global warming agenda. They are establishing the floor plan, meaning, we’ll set the bar near the floor and not budge. Yes, I know, the NRDC and Environmental Defense were involved, and this part is definitely good…

    TXU will discard plans to build eight of 11 proposed new coal plants, which would have been major new sources of emissions. Those plants — which would have added more than 9,000 megawatts of new capacity, the equivalent of 3.5 percent of the nation’s current coal-fired power — had been part of a planned $10 billion expansion of coal-fired electricity.

    TXU, which is based in Dallas, also intends to expand the renewable energy portion of its portfolio and reduce or offset its emissions significantly, said people who were familiar with the plans.

    All very good, but as I talked about previously (man, way too much self reference, not a good thing!), a book called Reality Check just out assesses voluntary actions by various companies in the US, Europe and Japan and comes to the following conclusion:

    Most of the programs it studies have positive results, but they are
    small compared with business-as-usual trends and the impact of other
    forces–such as higher energy prices. Importantly, potential gains may
    be quickly exhausted as the “low-hanging fruit” is picked up by
    voluntary programs.

    Now tell me that this agreement does not fit this frame!