The England Environment Minister Blogs

Smell manure?

FEED – May 2006

Congress may exempt factory farms from pollution laws Large agribusiness companies are pushing their friends in Congress to exempt factory farms from the pollution reporting and cleanup provisions in key pollution laws. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA, also known as Superfund) and the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) provide an essential safety net for protecting water supplies from livestock pollution and for providing warnings of toxic air emissions from factory farms. Over 140 representatives are supporting a bill, H.R. 4341, that would give this sweetheart deal to factory farms. The bill may soon be attached to a “must-pass” spending bill in an effort to speed this ill-conceived measure through Congress. Please call your representative and urge him or her to oppose this dangerous legislation. To learn more, read the Sierra Club’s fact sheet (pdf) on this issue.

Factory farms tend to be located in rural areas next to communities that do not have the power to stop them/mobilize against them. This provision will further stack the deck against these communities. Anyone who thinks manure, pesticide runoff, ammonia, etc are not hazardous to the ecosystem and to human health needs to live next to one of these “farms”. I am hazarding a really wild guess that Congressman Hall (the sponsor) does not have to deal with issues such as these.

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

One more from the makers of the Meatrix (h/t the grist).

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the chief of NASA, Michael Griffin

NASA chief not worried about climate – Yahoo! News

I guess I would ask which human beings, where and when, are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take,” Griffin said.

Nothing more to say other than if I were American, I would first be a little ashamed, I would then start demanding his resignation. This is the chief of one of this country’s premier scientific institutions, one that does a lot of weather and climate research, one that employs the world’s foremost scientific voice on global warming. Here’s what Hansen had to say…

James Hansen, a top NASA climate scientist, said Griffin’s comments showed “arrogance and ignorance,” because millions of people will likely be harmed by global warming in the future.

Wow, he was being kind.

Leftovers may explain perfluorinated compound puzzle:

See my earlier post about this. Looks like the EPA did want the companies to phaseout not just the PFOA, but the precursor compouds as well, and according to this article, quite a bit of progress has been made.

Eight companies have pledged to slash releases of several perfluorochemicals at their operations around the world, EPA announced on March 2.

Arkema, Asahi, Ciba, Clariant, Daikin, DuPont, 3M/Dyneon, and Solvay Solexis have agreed to reduce emissions of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), its longer chain homologs, and compounds that can degrade into PFOA, EPA said. The companies will also reduce levels of these compounds in their products. Responding to a challenge EPA made in January, the eight firms volunteered to cut industrial releases of PFOA as well as amounts of the chemical in products 95% from 2000 levels by 2010 or earlier. The companies also pledged to work on eliminating releases and content of PFOA in products by 2015.

Here are the individual companies’ commitment letters. They all loudly proclaim their commitment to reduce PFOA levels in their products, not quite so universally unequivocal on the precursors… I need a lawyer to parse some of the language. 3M, for instance, says that they do not “manufacture” the telomers’, which is not the same as saying they do not use them. Solvay Solexis, is extremely straigtforward and agrees to the EPA conditions in a letter actually written in plain English! Dupont, good letter too. Let’s see how this situation plays out, outright elimination in 10 years seems nice, which leads me to believe that the companies are already moving in this direction. The journal article suggests that the residuals are mainly due to inefficiencies in the manufacturing process. The reaction yield is 70%, meaning the 30% left behind from the monomer formation reaction will need to be removed from the product.

I happened to watch an interesting short film called After the Peak about peak oil, the concept (not that revolutionary unless you ask Messrs  Exxon-Mobil, Shell and Dick Cheney!) that oil production will start declining after a certain peak production event. The docudrama made by local film maker James McQuaid was part of a public meeting on the local (Orange County, NC) responses to the coming energy crisis. Interesting conceptually, it was shown as a 30 minute local newscast, with the usual cast of characters, the too handsome eye candy anchor and his female sidekick, the young and breathless “street reporter”, the gray haired expert, and the uber-energetic sports guy! The newscast is set a year into the future when the price of gas is $10/gallon. The documentary of interviews with various community members about the effects of the price of gas on their business/life. In the 30 minutes, he touched upon food, school buses, sports, NASCAR, the poor, commutes, etc. It was an interesting effort, if a little over the top! The fake interviews with the racing track owner who’s closing his track down, the UNC athletic director who has to cancel all his long distance events, the manager of the local food store who threatens food scarcity.

But is $10 a gallon really a big deal?

This simple chart shows income adjusted dollar per gallon gas prices (gas prices from 2006, income from 2004, but it should not change too much.)

Let’s avoid the low income outliers and just compare the U.S and Germany. In April 2006, the U.S was paying $2.95 a gallon and Germany, $8.06 per gallon (ref). If you further adjust that with the per capita income of the two countries, $41,300 for the U.S versus $30,500 for Germany (ref), you will find that the price of gas in Germany is well above $10 a gallon already, they seem to be doing just fine! Maybe they just drive less. The US uses 381 million gallons of gas per day (that’s about 1.2 gallons per day per person). I agree that this comparison is a little flawed because the bulk of the German price is due to taxes, which go back to the government and are presumably used for various good deeds. Also, if the price of gas went up due to shortages, the price differential between Germany and the US would presumably stay constant (unless the Germans lowered taxes). My point is that many countries cope with high gas prices quite well, they just don’t make the same choices the Americans make, 1 acre lots, large SUVs, super long commutes, etc. There are a lot of efficiencies to be had here. The graph below shows the income adjusted gasoline price for a few countries (easy data was available!)

My take: we need to swiftly move away from gasoline by a) Disincentivizing the use of gasoline in transportation b) Incentivizing the use of electricity for transportation. Electricity can be produced more efficiently, and pollution at the source can be controlled more effectively. A combination of a drastic increase in solar and wind power, coupled with aggressive development in battery technology should more than solve our problem without much recourse to biofuels (that great boondongle).

Data courtesy World Resources Institute. As you can see, the people of up and coming powers India and China use barely use 10% the energy per person compared to the US/Canada and will be thirsting for more in the coming years. Of course, they will never get to the same per capita use because population density and crowded housing makes for a lot of energy efficiency.

China is going coal in a big way. A NY Times article last week spent 5+ pages on this subject. Coal is dirty, dirty, dirty. Coal puts out copious amounts of CO2. Of course, conventional coal fired power plants also pollute in ways that temporarily mask greenhouse effects, both from direct particle emissions and sulfate formation from sulfur in the coal. These effects are localized and temporary, and have pretty serious short term health consequences.

India is going coal too, being the third largest producer in the world. At least, there is lip service being paid to clean coal/gasification, and increased use of natural gas.

The world is going to get worse before it gets better…