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.

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Pothole power for cars

Byoliveridley

Via the TNR E&E blog comes this story of capturing some of the energy wasted when a vehicle moves over bumps and potholes on the road. Indian drivers are waiting with bated breath for this prototype to become a reality! The takeaway messages are that most of the mechanical devices we use today have many points where waste energy can be captured and put to use.

A team of MIT undergraduate students has invented a shock absorber that harnesses energy from small bumps in the road, generating electricity while it smoothes the ride more effectively than conventional shocks. The students hope to initially find customers among companies that operate large fleets of heavy vehicles. They have already drawn interest from the U.S. military and several truck manufacturers.

Canada's Budget – FAIL on Renewables

Byoliveridley

Canada's Conservative government released a federal budget last week that would kill off the country's main program for developing renewables and channel most of the money from a new “Green Infrastructure Fund” into carbon capture and storage CCS technology, or so-called “clean” coal.

Of course, the carbon capture is not aimed at coal here specifically, but at the oil sands. More bad news –

The new pro-coal budget effectively killed all support for the nation’s ecoENERGY Program for Renewable Energy (equivalent to America’s Production Tax Credit for renewables). The program was the nation’s main support mechanism for developing renewable energy. The Pembina Institute, a Canada-based sustainable energy think tank, reacts to the budget defeat:

“The federal government’s failure to renew and expand this program has jeopardized at least 1,500 megawatts of “shovel read” wind energy projects across the country, while putting the brakes on billions of dollars of potential future investment.”

The renewable energy industry had hoped for a five-year extension of the program in the budget, which would have spurred over $6 billion of private investment in the Canadian economy and created 8,000 jobs, according to the Institute.

Note that this is not just the Conservatives. The Liberals are supporting this budget, and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has spoken glowingly about the oil sands industry.

At this point, we do not control our own environmental future. The Conservatives are an Alberta centred party and their motivation is not surprising. The Liberals clearly want back in power and do not have the money to fight another election next month. Canadians seem to not favour the most logical option, a coalition government of the left leaning parties which make up a majority of seats and voting percentages in parliament, so the Liberals have to support the Conservative budget or face an election soon.

With Ignatieff leading the Liberals, they know that all they need a little time to get money and reverse their losses from the previous election. His personal popularity advantage over previous Liberal leader Stephane Dion will most probably lead to better election results, especially if the Canadian economy continues to tank. A Liberal budget would have not killed the renewables, but would have not done anything to make the oil sands projects pay for all their externalities either.

With the two main parties objectively in favour of unproven boondoggles and greenwashing, only firm decisive action by the US administration to institute some kind of carbon controls will change the game in Canada. My fear is that by killing money support at a critical time, you kill the renewables industry and disperse its people elsewhere, and no reversing course in 3 years will get those people and companies back.

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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.

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.

Gulf States spending more on Clean Energy than Canada

Byoliveridley

Gasoline sells for 45 cents a gallon. There is little public transportation and no recycling. Residents drive between air-conditioned apartments and air-conditioned malls, which are lighted 24/7

Still, the region’s leaders know energy and money, having built their wealth on oil. They understand that oil is a finite resource, vulnerable to competition from new energy sources.

So even as President-elect Barack Obama talks about promoting green jobs as America’s route out of recession, gulf states, including the emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are making a concerted push to become the Silicon Valley of alternative energy.

They are aggressively pouring billions of dollars made in the oil fields into new green technologies. They are establishing billion-dollar clean-technology investment funds. And they are putting millions of dollars behind research projects at universities from California to Boston to London, and setting up green research parks at home.

Meanwhile, we in Canada are pushing hard to completely ignore environmental concerns as we push to expand the incredibly dirty tar sands. I read an interesting New York Times article recently, summarizing the issues with this dirty oil. Of course, the CO2 emissions, and the incredibly nasty effects of mining, water pollution, etc. are well documented. One fact stuck in my head – The cost to replace one tire in one of the earth moving vehicles is $60,000. What a wasteful enterprise on such a grand scale, whose only purpose is to carry on business as usual when business as usual is going to result in catastrophic climate change in the not so distant future.