Mooning Cheney and Big Oil

James Hansen: Obama’s Canada trip defines our critical carbon moment | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The tar sands of Canada constitute one of our planet’s greatest threats. They are a double-barrelled threat. First, producing oil from tar sands emits two-to-three times the global warming pollution of conventional oil. But the process also diminishes one of the best carbon-reduction tools on the planet: Canada’s Boreal Forest.

This forest plays a key role in the global carbon equation by serving as a major storehouse for terrestrial carbon – indeed, it is believed to store more carbon per hectare than any other ecosystem on Earth. When this pristine forest is strip mined for tar sands development, much of its stored carbon is lost. Canada’s Boreal Forest is also the reservoir for a large fraction of North America’s clean, fresh water, home to some five billion migratory birds, and some of largest remaining populations of caribou, moose, bear and wolves on the planet.

Nothing more to say, except that he does a good job of connecting both the inefficiency of the extraction process, a carbon source, and the destruction of the boreal forest, the removal of a carbon sink. If carbon accounting was in place, the economics would not work. Harper knows this, hence all the aggressive PR to get ahead of the game.

Could not get any clearer than this.

ScienceDaily: Study Verifies More Hazardous Waste Facilities Located In Minority Areas

The other side of that argument is that the hazardous waste facilities came first, which causes the neighborhood demographics to change. As that argument goes, the more affluent white people move out, and poorer minority people are forced to stay or move in, said Paul Mohai, a professor in the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment. However, done in collaboration with Robin Saha, a former U-M PhD student and post-doctoral scholar, now an assistant professor at University of Montana, shows that minorities were living in the areas where hazardous waste facilities decided to locate before the facilities arrived. Their study also shows that the demographics in the neighborhoods were already changing and that white residents had already started to move out when the facility was sited. “What we discovered is that there are demographic changes after the siting but they started before the siting,” Mohai said. “Our argument is that what’s likely happening is the area is going through a demographic shift, and it lowers the social capital and political clout of the neighborhood so it becomes the path of least resistance.”

This is not just about the money. Over and above social capital and political clout, it seems that race trumps all.

Using the new method, researchers have found that racial disparities in the location of hazardous waste facilities are much greater than previous studies have shown. Furthermore, the disparities persist even when controlling for economic and sociopolitical variables, suggesting that racial targeting, housing discrimination and other factors uniquely associated with race influence the location of the nations’ hazardous waste facilities.

Depressing.

Judith Lewis of the LA Weekly summarizes the issues before the Supreme Court currently debating the Clean Water Act. Among the things she says:

One state’s boon is another state’s disaster, and it doesn’t much matter whether that state is red or blue: If you’ve seen what happens when your swamps disappear, as they have in Florida, you know why it’s important to protect them.

In other words, each state is free to screw up its water and then realize too late that they need to protect their wetlands? This points to the insanity that underlies all Federal Environmental Regulation, they are based on the Federal Government’s authority to “Regulate Interstate Commerce” under the Commerce clause of the Constitution. Since Environmental Protection is not mentioned in the Constitution (did they even have indoor plumbing of the non chamber pot variety?), it is considered a state subject unless it affects “commerce”. This can be interpreted either expansively to protect the environment, or Scalialisciously (thank you, the very wonderful Dahlia Lithwick, the only Supreme Court columnist to have her own fan page) to let any one build/dump wherever they please as long as they are not on the banks of the Mississippi! The CWA specifically empowers states to issue permits and it would seem that an successful challenge would really muddy the waters  🙁

Reading Lithwick’s dispatch leaves me to believe that it’s going to be a close call. Justices Scalia and Roberts seem to be finely parsing language and displaying a contemptuous and obviously fake ignorance of watershed hydrology. Hopefully, the center (Kennedy) will hold, He is a “States Rights” kinda guy, though, which is scary. On the other hand, he likes European Law and Europe is the Queen of classic command and control environmental regulation. Help, I can’t stand the suspense, what do the Vegas lines say???! Here are some of the possible consequences of an unfavorable ruling –

Under that topsy-turvy interpretation of the landmark 1972 law, more than half of all streams in the United States, as well as one-fifth of all wetlands, would no longer be protected, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. And waterways that provide drinking water for more than one in three Americans would be at risk. Nearly 150,000 miles of protected streams in California could be threatened.

The federal government is arguing for the continuation of the CWA, which I guess is some relief, hope they want to win this one.

Priority and Toxic Chemical Reduction | Resource Conservation Challenge | US EPA

Priority and toxic chemicals make up a fairly limited volume, yet potentially hazardous portion of the nation’s waste stream. We are working to eliminate or reduce priority chemicals and other chemicals of national concern from commercial products, waste streams, and industrial releases through pollution prevention, waste minimization, and recycling/reuse.The 31 priority chemicals are federal priorities because they are persistent, bioaccumulative, and highly toxic. We’re focusing on reducing priority and toxic chemicals to better protect human health and the environment.

By substituting or eliminating certain chemicals in their manufacturing processes, companies produce less waste and thus lower their waste disposal costs. Our goal is to substantially reduce the volume and toxicity of priority chemicals in waste by asking companies to voluntarily:

• Substitute safer alternatives when they can;
• Minimize the amount of priority chemicals they use, if they can’t substitute for them;
• Maximize their recycling efforts;
• Practice cradle-to-cradle chemical management; and
• Design products to minimize exposure to, and release of, priority chemicals during manufacturing and use.

Sounds good, and Worldchanging has more:

But nowhere near the progress some companies are making on their own in cleaning up toxic emissions — not simply to be good guys, but to reduce their costs, liabilities, and exposure to activist and shareholder pressures. And, in some cases, to meet their customers’ growing demands for less-toxic or nontoxic alternatives to business as usual.

Read the whole post, which sounds ambivalent about the scheme. The idea is Environmental Good Sense 101, use less, or none at all, practice cradle to grave economics and minimize exposure. Simple stuff, huh. The biggest problem, however, is that by setting limits on a voluntary basis, you always run the risk of setting the bar too low, and then indulging in relentless and pointless self congratulation about how the “market” solved everything, and how rules are so, well, 1970s?

you need a good mix of

1. Regulation, which sets a minimum, health based bar
2. Flexibility to the business on how to achieve their targets
3. Market systems to trade emission credits, etc
4. Voluntary industry-government initiatives like the one above
5. Relentless citizen activism that forces governments/business to act
6. Community outreach and education so consumers can make informed choices
7. Costing mechanisms that actually reflect free market efficiencies (no stupid subsidies, accurate costing of “externalities”, etc. )

Yeah, this does not fit neatly into the Mano a Mano, you’re with us/you’re against us false dichotomy of choice that seems to beset almost every policy debate (environmental or otherwise). It seems that you never have to do one or the other, but a bit of both, or all of them at the same time.

In the meanwhile, the voluntary program will work, but only in areas in specific instances where it is to a company’s advantage.

BTW, I think that good old fashioned regulation in Europe – See Reach and many many more existing regulations, such as this one for PCBs and Dioxins which I know a little too much about, have a little more to do with American companies reducing POP levels that they care to admit!

You may remember from a few weeks back when the supremes in a very rare unanimous decision ruled that the Duke Energy would have to install new pollution controls if it made modifications to its power plants that increased annual emissions without increasing hourly emissions. Well, never mind that, the EPA released a “rule” that “clarifies” this issue.

EPA Accused of Flouting Supreme Court – washingtonpost.com

The government proposed a pollution standard for power plants Wednesday that critics said flouts the spirit of a Supreme Court ruling on clean air enforcement.

The proposal would make it easier for utilities to expand plant operations or make other changes to produce more electricity without installing new pollution controls.

The proposal would allow the use of average hourly smokestack emissions when determining whether a plant’s expansion or efficiency improvements require additional pollution controls. The EPA hopes to make the proposal final before year’s end.

Opponents of the hourly standard recently argued before the Supreme Court that this standard lets a plant put more smog-causing chemicals and other pollution into the air, even if hourly releases do not increase.

Environmentalists long have contended the EPA should continue using annual emissions to determine whether new pollution controls are needed under the Clean Air Act.

Let’s get this straight, “environmentalists contend”? There is nothing to contend here, it’s simple math. If you keep hourly rates the same and run your plant for longer, you will emit more pollution, which is not good. Less pollution good, more pollution bad, there is no point of contention here. Hourly standards and annual standards are used for two different things. The hourly standard sets a lower limit on the efficiency of the pollution control operation for the plant. The annual standard measures the plant’s overall impact. Both of them need to be regulated. It is only common sense that if you put out twice the amount of pollution in a year because you run 20 hours per day instead of 10, you need to control it. The Supremes rightly tagged this argument as dishonest, only to see the EPA very happily turn around and reissue it as an official rule.