FAQ: Green Civil War: Projects vs. Preservation

Byoliveridley

Environmentalists are more openly at odds over two goals: the preservation of wide open spaces vs. the use of public lands for renewable energy projects.

via Green Civil War: Projects vs. Preservation – Room for Debate Blog – NYTimes.com.

This is a question that gets asked a lot, so it is refreshing to see different perspectives on how to manage needs for more clean energy with the desire to preserve pristine land. Of course, given the diversity of opinions offered, some are better than others. I, for one, don’t see this as a dichotomy, so I prefer ideas that avoid the binary choice frame of the question and suggest real solutions that will try to optimize both “choices”.

I liked David Roberts’ and Ileene Anderson’s opinions quite a bit, plugging for getting away from the large scale, utility centric model to a distributed paradigm. Daniel Kammen pitches for aggressive efficiency measures. Vaclav Smil says “Use less”, amen! Randy Udall deals mostly in cliches and says nothing very meaningful other than “we should optimize” and “some people will always complain”. Winona LaDuke makes a very important point that this is a good opportunity for Native Americans shut out of the conventional energy process to be involved in the wise stewardship of wind and solar energy. She does not provide any policy suggestions to make it happen.

Anyway, it looks like most of the panelists chosen avoided the binarification of the problem, good job! Will preserve this for a link every time someone asks me about this.

Similar Posts

  • |

    India's Environmental Portal

    Byoliveridley

    Home | India Environment Portal

    This is a very useful undertaking by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) to gather up a lot of technical information about India’s environmental research and activism.

    They have a small multimedia section as well and I found this movie, appropriately titled Faecal Attraction to be an informative watch…

    [youtube=’http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=bUlkOLLa31s’]

  • Energy efficiency, electricity, power plants

    Byoliveridley

    Suppose I paid you for every pound of pollution you generated and punished you for every pound you reduced. You would probably spend most of your time trying to figure out how to generate more pollution. And suppose that if you generated enough pollution, I had to pay you to build a new plant, no matter what the cost, and no matter how much cheaper it might be to not pollute in the first place.

    Well, that’s pretty much how we have run the U.S. electric grid for nearly a century. The more electricity a utility sells, the more money it makes. If it’s able to boost electricity demand enough, the utility is allowed to build a new power plant with a guaranteed profit. The only way a typical utility can lose money is if demand drops. So the last thing most utilities want to do is seriously push strategies that save energy, strategies that do not pollute in the first place.

    Energy efficiency, electricity, power plants | Salon News

    There are some things you wish you could have written, and the first paragraph is one of those. Romm nails it. Clearly, the most efficient MW of electricity is the one that was never used. But unless utilities are paid to conserve, not paid to produce, they will always build, build build.

    Excellent summary of arguments he makes all the time over at the gristmill. Now to find out what BC does. Canada is one of the worst in terms of energy use per capita. Some of it can be linked to the cold climate, but Germany is plenty cold too, and uses a third less per person.

    This article compares BC and California and finds BCHydro lacking in its incentives to save. The key is “decoupling”

    Significantly, California adopted regulations so that utility company profits are not tied to how much electricity they sell. This is called “decoupling.”

    BC’s per capita energy consumption is 0.26, well below the Canadian average and on the decline as Canada as a whole is getting worse. But more can be done.

    The key value judgment to be made here is that reducing energy use benefits all of us. The system should be set up in such a way that it benefits the utility as well. This way, they’re on the same side.

    Also, while a carbon tax is all well and good, it is not sufficient. Energy efficiency requires investment up front and people would rather pay 50 bucks a year in carbon tax than pay 300 bucks up front to insulate their homes better and save a 100 bucks a year in energy costs. Rebates only work if you have money up front. Giving people a $100 check is nice, but only if they spend it on improving energy efficiency. But, it’sjust money and we all know that money gets spent (beer, beer beer!) Subsidies work better as they reduce the cost of things. I would rather buy 10 compact fluorescent lamps for a buck each with the government chipping in the extra 10 bucks than get it back at the end of the year as a rebate, or pay 20c extra per incandescent lamp as a carbon tax.

    All rambling aside, a really good article on the value of energy efficiency.

  • BC's Election

    Byoliveridley

    Is over and the centre-right Liberals won. Many in the traditional environmental movement are trumpeting it as a referendum on the BC Carbon Tax. I am not so sure. The so called people who were supposed to vote for the opposition left leaning NDP, but did not because of their (admittedly stupid) opposition to the “gas tax” also gave the Green Party their lowest share of the vote in the last few years. I am finding it hard to imagine a left leaning voter voting for the Liberals instead of the NDP, rather than throwing her vote on the Green Party.

    The truth is probably a lot simpler. Carole James of the NDP did not resonate with voters as an alternative for many reasons, poor campaign positioning, lack of vision, poor media coverage, etc. and in tough economic times, BC just made what it considered a safe choice.

    Of course, BC also made a “safe” choice and rejected a proportional representation system for the province. More will be known once any exit poll data is released, but a proposal which came within a couple of percentage points of passing in the last election failed roundly this time. There is early speculation that it was how the question was asked. I would have preferred a multi-party proportional system to reduce the stranglehold of the two major parties and get some Green Party representation in the legislature.

    Anyway, full speed ahead for BC’s puny Carbon Tax, which will go all the way to $30 a ton in a couple of years, let’s see what that does to compensate for The Liberal’s penchant for massive road building, offshore drilling ideas and “business friendly” privatization of the commons approach to governance.

  • Do compact fluorescent bulbs reduce mercury pollution?

    Byoliveridley

    In places that rely heavily on coal for electricity, such as West Virginia or China, the researchers say switching to CFLs can reduce mercury emissions significantly. But cleaner-powered places like California and Norway would do better to stick to incandescent bulbs when it comes to reducing mercury. “The places known for sustainability are the places that have the potential to do the most harm by bringing this technology in,” says environmental engineer Julie Zimmerman of Yale, a coauthor of the study.

    Do compact fluorescent bulbs reduce mercury pollution?.

    The good news is that in general, CFLS reduce mercury emissions significantly compared to using regular bulbs in most cases. Very unfair on CFL mercury! This works if you assume that every mg of mercury in a CFL is going to be released into the air, which is bogus. They can be, and are recycled, or they end up being landfilled, where they will not escape for a while. I’ve never broken one in many years of use. This is not a fair comparison at all, and if you have to reach to California and Norway to make a point, you’ve lost it. The reason California and Norway (more about Norway in a later blog post) are more energy efficient is because they use more energy efficient systems (like CFLs) in the first place. Therefore, they do not have to rely on coal for energy requirements. Of course, they are also lucky to have hydroelectric/geothermal sources, but they avoid coal for good reason.

    If you reduce power usage by increasing efficiency, you don’t have to build more power plants (clean or otherwise) and that is good for everyone concerned.

    Yes, the take home message is that due to the presence of a hazardous ingredient, CFLs need to be viewed as a bridge technology to LEDs. Point taken, but given that they have all those advantages over regular light bulbs, this is no bridge to nowhere!

  • |

    Clothianidin and the Colony Collapse Disorder

    Byoliveridley

    Clothianidin is the pesticide at the center of controversy. It is used to coat corn, sugar beet and sorghum seeds and is part of a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. The pesticide was blamed for bee deaths in France and Germany, which also is dealing with a colony collapse. Those two countries have suspended its use until further study. An EPA fact sheet from 2003 says clothianidin has the potential for toxic chronic exposure to honey bees, as well as other pollinators, through residues in nectar and pollen.

    Lawsuit seeks EPA pesticide data

    Interesting story. For more on the Colony Collapse Disorder...

  • Canada's Environmental Corpus Callosum malfunction

    Byoliveridley

    One of my first impressions on moving to Victoria was the high environmental consciousness of the people here. The obvious markers of environmental consciousness such as recycling, composting, organic food consumption, local food consumption, small car driving, and most importantly, pride at being environmentally conscious are off the charts here  (and I am  most definitely  one of those people as well!).

    My second impression was that a country with such a resource driven economy can’t possibly live up to what its citizens think it is doing. And I was right. The country as a whole performs abysmally. Canada vs. the OECD (a report produced by my very hometown University of Victoria) compares Canada’s performance vs. the OECD on a number of environmental parameters. It is shocking. The picture is painted of an inefficient economy whose consumption of major resources and pollution indicators are growing at a time they should be dropping. For example:

    Canada is among the three worst countries on nine indicators (per capita greenhouse gas emissions, sulphur dioxide emissions, carbon monoxide emissions, volatile organic compound emissions, water consumption, energy consumption, energy efficiency, volume of timber logged and generation of nuclear waste);

    Canada’s economy is inefficient, in that we use much more energy and generate much more pollution to produce a given amount of goods and services relative to our industrial competitors, including 33% more energy than the United States per unit of GDP; and

    Canada’s performance on most environmental indicators continues to worsen

    So, not only are things bad, they’re getting worse, but the people don’t seem to notice. Massive corpus callosum1 malfuction?

    BTW, this is what happens to people when their corpus callosum is removed.

    [youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANo’]

    Once this theme crystallized in my head, I went searching for earlier work that would reinforce my conclusion and came upon this book Unnatural Law – Rethinking Canadian Environmental Law and Policy. From the First chapter:

    Is Canada an environmental leader or an environmental laggard? Is Canada contributing to solving environmental challenges or are we exacerbating these problems?

    Great, a book that reinforces my frame in the very first paragraph! I’ll let you know after I finish reading the book (helpfully available from my local library and written by a former ED for the SIerra Legal Defence Fund (now known as Ecojustice) and who lives on Pender Island, a few islands away from where I live! Promises to be an interesting and illuminating read.

    1Corpus Callosum = Part of brain that connects the two hemispheres.