Do Flatscreen TVs cause climate change?

An article in the British newspaper The Guardian warns about this new danger to the environment (see excerpt below):

The rising demand for flat-screen televisions could have a greater impact on global warming than the world's largest coal-fired power stations, a leading environmental scientist warned yesterday.
Manufacturers use a greenhouse gas called nitrogen trifluoride to make the televisions, and as the sets have become more popular, annual production of the gas has risen to about 4,000 tonnes.
As a driver of global warming, nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, yet no one knows how much of it is being released into the atmosphere by the industry, said Michael Prather, director of the environment institute at the University of California, Irvine.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.

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Polar Bears "Threatened" Species

In a victory for environmentalists, Polar Bears were named a "threatened" species by the U.S. Dept. of the Interior, according to the Washington Post.

Under the law, the federal government is now required to draft a recovery plan for the species, which entails assessing the population and its habitat. The ruling also compels federal agencies to consult with the Interior Department when considering decisions that could further imperil the polar bears.
Administration officials, however, sought to minimize the policy consequences of the decision -- the first time the Endangered Species Act has been invoked to protect an animal principally threatened by global warming. Kempthorne made clear that the decision would not justify regulating emissions from power plants, vehicles or other human activities.
Dale Hall, who directs the Fish and Wildlife Service, which decides how to protect listed species, said such regulations would be justified only if the administration could prove a direct connection between the emissions and the polar bears' predicament.
"We have to be able to connect the dots," Hall said. "We don't have the science today to be able to do that."
But environmentalists, who by and large praised the decision, said the administration would have no choice but to curb greenhouse gases.
"The law says what it says, not what the administration wishes it says," said Kassie Siegel, climate program director at the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity. "This is great news for polar bears. . . . It's also a watershed moment, the strongest statement we've had to date from this administration about global warming."
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
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The End of Fossil Fuels?

According to an article in the Washington Post, fossil fuel emissions must drop near zero by mid-century to prevent catastrophic consequences from global warming (see excerpt below):
The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.
Their findings, published in separate journals over the past few weeks, suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide.
Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.
"The question is, what if we don't want the Earth to warm anymore?" asked Carnegie Institution senior scientist Ken Caldeira, co-author of a paper published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "The answer implies a much more radical change to our energy system than people are thinking about."
Although many nations have been pledging steps to curb emissions for nearly a decade, the world's output of carbon from human activities totals about 10 billion tons a year and has been steadily rising.
For now, at least, a goal of zero emissions appears well beyond the reach of politicians here and abroad. U.S. leaders are just beginning to grapple with setting any mandatory limit on greenhouse gases. The Senate is poised to vote in June on legislation that would reduce U.S. emissions by 70 percent by 2050; the two Democratic senators running for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), back an 80 percent cut. The Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), supports a 60 percent reduction by mid-century.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is shepherding climate legislation through the Senate as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the new findings "make it clear we must act now to address global warming."
"It won't be easy, given the makeup of the Senate, but the science is compelling," she said. "It is hard for me to see how my colleagues can duck this issue and live with themselves."
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Gas from Gas?

Will the environmental and energy crises be solved by turning greenhouse gases into fuel? That's what two scientists at Los Alamos National Lab are claiming, according to this article in the New York Times. (See excerpt below):

The scientists, F. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic Jr., are proposing a concept, which they have patriotically named Green Freedom, for removing carbon dioxide from the air and turning it back into gasoline.
The idea is simple. Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel.
This process could transform carbon dioxide from an unwanted, climate-changing pollutant into a vast resource for renewable fuels. The closed cycle — equal amounts of carbon dioxide emitted and removed — would mean that cars, trucks and airplanes using the synthetic fuels would no longer be contributing to global warming.
Although they have not yet built a synthetic fuel factory, or even a small prototype, the scientists say it is all based on existing technology.
“Everything in the concept has been built, is operating or has a close cousin that is operating,” Dr. Martin said.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Pop Wars: Cans vs. Bottles

What is better for the environment, soft drinks in bottles or cans? Salon has the facts in this article (excerpt below):

The amount of petroleum used in making the 50-gram (g) and 2-liter bottle is around 325 g, and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions from its manufacture are around 825 g. An aluminum can made from virgin materials results in the emissions of 280 g of carbon dioxide. Does this mean that the can is better? Well, keep in mind that the bottle holds more beverage, so we need to take that into account. You would need to buy 5.6 cans, almost a full six-pack, to equal the volume of the bottle. The 5.6 cans would be responsible for 1,568 g of carbon dioxide emissions. So it looks like the 2-liter bottle results in about half of the greenhouse gas emissions of the equivalent amount of cans. Is this the end of the story? What about transportation emissions?
Let's assume that both beverage containers are filled in the same facility and shipped to the store with the same truck. The bottle weighs 2.05 kg when full (2 liters plus 50 g) and the 5.6 cans weigh 2.084 kg (2 liters plus 84 g). This means that the cans require slightly more fuel to transport than the bottles. That's two strikes against cans. How about a third strike? Soda bottles often find a second life in my favorite winter garments, as some clothing brands manufacture fleece in part from recycled plastic, which is melted into pellets and extruded into fine fibers. Try doing that with aluminum.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

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Westport Connecticut's Quest to Go Green

This New York Times article concerns the efforts of the Connecticut town to shrink it's greenhouse gas footprint. (See excerpt below):

Westport, with its beachfront parks and leafy neighborhoods where the populace naturally tilts green, is ahead of the game but hardly unique in trying, in its own small way, to address climate change through public and private action.
“Our big job is to tell people they can do something,” said Carl Leaman, a former selectman who is chairman of the group, formed a year ago. “Many people acknowledge there’s a problem and they don’t know what to do. So the first thing we did was come up with the carbon footprint and then came up with ways to reduce it.”
The carbon footprint, the measure of human impact on the environment in terms of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, was 18 tons per person per year — relatively high because Interstate 95 passes through town. The goal was to find ways to reduce it by a ton a year for the next three years.
That’s doable if enough people do relatively painless things like replace three light bulbs with compact fluorescents (300 pounds), drop thermostats to 68 from 70 (2,000 pounds), take shorter showers (350 pounds) and turn off electronic devices they’re not using (1,000 pounds). You get 6,000 pounds by trading in a standard car for a hybrid, but even in Westport, not everyone is ready to ante up for a Prius.
That’s added to various public initiatives, like solar panels at fire headquarters, no-idling policies for most city vehicles. The agenda item Thursday night was the showing of “Everything’s Cool,” a documentary about the long, slow trudge toward an understanding of the enormous stakes of addressing climate change.
It’s both breezy and sobering, whistling its way past the edge of despair, arguing that the Bush administration and shills for the oil industry have kept a fake debate going about whether global warming is real as a way to suck the passion and urgency out of doing anything about it.
So when the author and environmentalist Bill McKibben laments in the film that the financial world, with its thrilling booms and crushing busts, its plucky efforts to ward off recessions, its fevers and chills, seems more real to us than the natural world where we live, you could see people nodding throughout the room.
CLIMATE change, after all, was cited as an issue in the 1950s. Its dangers were noted in a report to President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. It was a Time magazine cover story in 1987.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
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The Case Against Bottled Water

An article in Salon (excerpted here) does a great job of explaining what's so bad about bottled water.

First, the manufacturing of plastic bottles, which are often made from nonrecycled virgin material, requires vast quantities of petroleum, and only 12 percent of this material is recovered for recycling. The total mass of an empty 1-liter bottle is around 25 grams (this varies from brand to brand) and it is made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate). One kilogram (1 kg = 2.2046 lbs.) of this type of plastic requires around 6.5 kilograms of oil, uses 294 kilograms of water (this includes power plant cooling water), and results in 3.7 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions. Based on my calculations, an empty 1-liter bottle requires over 7 liters of water in its manufacturing process, uses 162 grams of oil, and results in over 100 grams of greenhouse gas emissions. (That's about 10 balloons full of carbon dioxide, or how much an average car emits over half a kilometer or one-third of a mile.)
Next, the distribution of bottled water, often by container ship from the other side of the planet (Fiji, Evian, San Pellegrino), is fuel intensive and results in greenhouse gas and sulfur dioxide emissions. Transportation emissions are measured in grams of greenhouse gases (in carbon-dioxide-equivalent units) per metric ton per kilometer. Shipping by container ship emits about 17 grams of carbon dioxide per ton km, while trains release 56 grams per ton km, trucks spew 102 grams per ton km, and jet aircraft belch 570 grams per ton km. So the important factors in transportation emissions are weight, distance and transportation mode. Since we can't alter the weight of bottled water and companies will automatically select the most efficient and cost-effective means of transport, we are left to control the distance component through our consumer choices.
Sales of bottled waters are driven by marketing that creates a perception of luxury, quality and novelty. After all, every brand tastes like, well, water. But you are paying a huge premium to be seen around town with that cool square Fiji bottle or distinctly green Perrier bottle. When you add the cost of packaging and marketing to transportation, not to mention the water makers' huge profits, you are paying two to five times more for a bottle of water than you do for the equivalent amount of gasoline. When compared with the price of tap water, bottled water costs up to 50,000 percent more (and many brands get their water from municipal water supplies).
Bottled water also represents a major ethical dilemma, given that millions of people around the world lack access to clean and safe drinking water.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

What Saves the Earth and Sticks to the Roof of Your Mouth?

The answer is, of course, peanut butter, according to this post on the New York Times health website Well (excerpt below):
Can peanut butter save the world and boost your health?
Some people think it’s a start. The Sierra Club magazine this month highlights the Web site www.pbjcampaign.org, which claims eating peanut butter is a good way to go green. The site, which vows it’s not connected to the peanut industry, notes that livestock account for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Compared with a burger, a PB&J sandwich saves as much as 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide, 280 gallons of water and 50 square feet of land, according to the magazine.
Disclaimer: The Eco-Justice Blogger eats a p.b. and j. every morning for breakfast: Trader Joe's Crunchy unsalted peanut butter, Organic Morello Cherry fruit spread, and sprouted multi-grain toast.

What's your fave planetary-saving pb and j combo?

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
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Stop Junk Mail

Follow this link to a very informative Salon article about how to stop junk mail with links to junk-mail-busting websites, including free ones. Why am I blogging this on an environmental site? According to Salon, junk mail is a significant source of pollution:

In fact, the annual greenhouse-gas emissions from the production of junk mail are equal to those of 3.5 million cars. (That figure doesn't include emissions from transporting and disposing of the stuff.) Beyond that, each year junk mail production in the U.S. consumes more than 96.7 billion gallons of water and more than 100 million trees, ForestEthics estimates. Most of those, says Chester Vance, come from carbon-dioxide-sequestering, biologically diverse old-growth forests, rather than from sustainably managed tree farms. And according to the Environmental Protection Agency, only about a third of all junk mail is recycled. "All that for a response rate of less than 3 percent," Chester Vance notes, referring to the fact that fewer than 3 percent of people -- often even fewer -- respond to the solicitations.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Does Fresh+Local=Green?

That's the question explored in the New York Times article excerpted below, and the short answer is, it's more complicated than that. A lot more complicated.

The local food, or locavore, movement has so much momentum that some of the food glitterati have declared that such food is better than organic.
But now comes a team of researchers from the University of California, Davis, who have started asking provocative questions about the carbon footprint of food. Those questions threaten to undermine some of the feel-good locavore story line, not to mention my weekend forays for produce. (A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact of human activities on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced.)
While the research is not yet complete, Tom Tomich, director of the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, said the fact that something is local doesn’t necessarily mean that it is better, environmentally speaking.
The distance that food travels from farm to plate is certainly important, he says, but so is how food is packaged, how it is grown, how it is processed and how it is transported to market.
Consider strawberries. If mass producers of strawberries ship their product to Chicago by truck, the fuel cost of transporting each carton of strawberries is relatively small, since it is tucked into the back along with thousands of others.
But if a farmer sells his strawberries at local farmers’ markets in California, he ferries a much smaller amount by pickup truck to each individual market. Which one is better for the environment?
Mr. Tomich said a strawberry distributor did the math on the back of an envelope and concluded that the Chicago-bound berries used less energy for transport. Maybe. Regardless, the story raises valid questions.
An Iowa State University study in 2003 found that most produce travels about 1,500 miles before it arrives in Iowa homes. But as the strawberry story suggests, some of it creates higher amounts of greenhouse gases than others. Transporting food by container ship or rail is relatively energy efficient. Shipping it by air or a 25-year-old pickup is not.
It gets stickier. If a low-carbon diet is your goal, Mr. Tomich suggests, it may be more effective to change your diet than to focus on eating local. After all, a plant-based diet tends to have a much smaller carbon footprint than a diet that includes meat. That is because a pound of steak requires many more pounds of grain as feed — and all the carbon emissions associated with that, from fertilizers that are derived from fossil fuels to the fuel for the combines used for the harvest, he said.
And if you insist on eating meat, as I do, then perhaps it’s better for the environment to eat poultry rather than red meat and grass-fed rather than grain-fed. Mr. Tomich’s team is trying to sort that out.
Here are a couple of other puzzlers: Are canned tomatoes a better environmental choice in the winter than fresh tomatoes from abroad? If a product that contains heavy packaging reduces the amount of food waste, is that a better choice than one that is lightly packed and spoils quicker?
Gail Feenstra, a food system analyst at the Davis campus, says her group hopes the research will help consumers decide if buying local is better than buying organic food that has traveled hundreds of miles. “Maybe you can buy organic within a certain geographic range, and outside of that the trade-offs won’t work anymore,” Ms. Feenstra said.
At some point, the ethical maze can make you dizzy. But there was one line of inquiry from the California researchers that hit particularly close to home: the carbon impact of shoppers themselves.
Some people walk or take the subway to buy their groceries and then compost what they don’t use. But, let’s face it, most of us drive and toss the leftovers into the garbage disposal or the garbage can. In doing so, we may be contributing nearly a quarter of the greenhouse gases associated with our food, research has shown.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

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Global Warming Bill Heads to Full Senate

A US Senate committee approved a version of a bill designed to slash greenhouse gas emissions and sent it to the full Senate, according to an article in the San Jose Mercury News (see excerpt below.)

In a landmark effort to tackle global warming, a Senate committee Wednesday approved a sweeping program to slash greenhouse gas emissions through the first half of this century and mandate a low-carbon future for the U.S. economy.
"This is the most far-reaching global warming bill in the world," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment Committee, who was jubilant and tearful after the 11-8 vote that sends the bill to the Senate floor next year.
The measure still faces significant obstacles in the Senate and the House, and the Bush administration disagrees with some of the bill's mandates. But the bill's backers say political and moral momentum are on their side.
"This is historic, and it sends a message to the Senate, White House and the world that the United States is ready to get into this fight and lead," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., one of the co-sponsors of the 300-page measure.
The 10 Democrats and independents on the committee were joined by one Republican, John Warner of Virginia - the other co-sponsor - who predicted the bill would force members of Congress and presidential candidates "to do their homework and take a stand."
The measure would establish a cap-and-trade program, administered by two new federal boards, and set emissions limits that get tougher every year after 2012.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

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Bush Mum on Climate Goals

At a meeting of 16 major greenhouse-gas emitting nations, President Bush said that nations that contribute most of the gases that lead to global warming should set goals to reduce those emissions, but did not specify what those goals should be, according to a report in the New York Times excerpted below.

President Bush said Friday that the nations that contribute most to global warming should all set goals for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. But he did not specify what those goals should be and repeated his stand that nations should not be held to mandatory targets for capping carbon dioxide emissions.
President Bush said Friday that nations should not be held to mandatory targets for capping carbon dioxide emissions.
At the close of a two-day meeting here of 16 major carbon-emitting nations, Mr. Bush also proposed an international fund to help developing nations benefit from clean energy technology. He instructed the Treasury Department to begin work on the proposal, but the administration offered no details.
“We will set a long-term goal for reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions,” the president said in a morning speech at the State Department. “Each nation must decide for itself the right mix of tools and technologies to achieve results that are measurable and environmentally effective.”
He added, “No one country has all the answers, including mine.”
The delegates to the conference listened impassively to Mr. Bush’s 20-minute address, interrupting him with applause only once, when he pledged that the United States would participate in global warming negotiations overseen by the United Nations. The Bush administration has been a less-than-enthusiastic partner in United Nations-sponsored climate change talks and has not joined the Kyoto Protocol, intended to halt and then reverse the spread of climate-altering carbon emissions.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 22 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htm
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UN Chief To USA: Do Something About Climate Change

According to an AP article in Salon (excerpt below), the UN Climate Chief is calling for the US to act on President Bush's newfound concern for climate change.

The Bush administration has made a "significant" shift on global warming, but still falls short on the "much more aggressive" policies needed to head off its damaging impact, the U.N. climate chief said Saturday.
"It's very clear that we're not on track," Yvo de Boer told The Associated Press.
More than 70 presidents and prime ministers and 80 other national representatives are gathering here for Monday's U.N. "climate summit."
The unprecedented meeting comes in a year when a series of authoritative scientific reports warned of a drastically changed planet by 2100, from rising seas, drought and other factors, unless nations rein in their emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.
Monday's one-day session is designed to build political momentum toward progress at December's annual U.N. climate treaty conference, in Bali, Indonesia, which many hope will launch negotiations for an emissions-reduction agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. Kyoto, which the U.S. rejects, set first-phase reduction quotas for 36 industrial nations.
On Thursday, the Bush administration convenes its own two-day meeting, with 15 other major "greenhouse" gas-emitting nations, to discuss ways to limit emissions.
De Boer, head of the U.N. climate treaty secretariat, cited the Washington meeting as another example of what he called "significant political change over the past year" in the Bush administration's position.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 22 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htmShop for energy Saving Products at www.shopipl.org.

A Blow for Environmental Groups

A California judge delivered a victory to automakers in a lawsuit brought by the State of California, according to an article in the New York Times (see below for excerpt.)

Suit Blaming Automakers Over Gases Is Dismissed
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: September 18, 2007
The courts do not have the authority or the expertise to decide injury lawsuits concerning global warming, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled yesterday in dismissing a suit brought by the State of California against six car companies.
The decision, by Judge Martin J. Jenkins, was welcome news for automakers, which had suffered a defeat last week in federal court in Vermont.
In last week’s decision, Judge William K. Sessions III endorsed Vermont’s regulations meant to reduce greenhouse gases emitted by cars and light trucks. More than a dozen states have similar regulations, and a lawsuit challenging such regulations in California is pending.
In the case decided yesterday, California claimed that the six car companies produced vehicles that accounted for more than 20 percent of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions in the United States and more than 30 percent of those in California.
The suit claimed that the emissions were a public nuisance and sought billions of dollars in damages.
Judge Jenkins wrote that a resolving of the questions presented in the suit was not a proper task for the courts.
“The adjudication of plaintiff’s claim would require the court to balance the competing interests of reducing global warming emissions and the interests of advancing and preserving economic and industrial development,” Judge Jenkins wrote.
The two decisions are not necessarily at odds. They collectively suggest that states may address climate change through their legislatures and executive branches but not through the courts.
Given national and international debate on the issues, Judge Jenkins wrote, “the court finds that injecting itself into the global warming thicket at this juncture would require an initial policy determination of the type reserved for the political branches of government.”
Indeed, he continued, a decision from the court on awarding damages for increasing global warming could potentially undermine the choices of the political branches.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 22 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htmShop for energy Saving Products at www.shopipl.org.

China Breaks Pollution Records

The New York Times posts yet another extensive and disturbing article about China's out of control pollution problem. Read an excerpt below:

BEIJING, Aug. 25 — No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.
But just as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.
Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.
Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.
Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.
China is choking on its own success. The economy is on a historic run, posting a succession of double-digit growth rates. But the growth derives, now more than at any time in the recent past, from a staggering expansion of heavy industry and urbanization that requires colossal inputs of energy, almost all from coal, the most readily available, and dirtiest, source.
“It is a very awkward situation for the country because our greatest achievement is also our biggest burden,” says Wang Jinnan, one of China’s leading environmental researchers. “There is pressure for change, but many people refuse to accept that we need a new approach so soon.”
China’s problem has become the world’s problem. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China’s coal-fired power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo. Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research.
More pressing still, China has entered the most robust stage of its industrial revolution, even as much of the outside world has become preoccupied with global warming.
Experts once thought China might overtake the United States as the world’s leading producer of greenhouse gases by 2010, possibly later. Now, the International Energy Agency has said China could become the emissions leader by the end of this year, and the Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency said China had already passed the milestone.
For the Communist Party, the political calculus is daunting. Reining in economic growth to alleviate pollution may seem logical, but the country’s authoritarian system is addicted to fast growth. Delivering prosperity placates the public, provides spoils for well-connected officials and forestalls demands for political change. A major slowdown could incite social unrest, alienate business interests and threaten the party’s rule.
But pollution poses its own threat. Officials blame fetid air and water for thousands of episodes of social unrest. Health care costs have climbed sharply. Severe water shortages could turn more farmland into desert. And the unconstrained expansion of energy-intensive industries creates greater dependence on imported oil and dirty coal, meaning that environmental problems get harder and more expensive to address the longer they are unresolved.
China’s leaders recognize that they must change course. They are vowing to overhaul the growth-first philosophy of the Deng Xiaoping era and embrace a new model that allows for steady growth while protecting the environment. In his equivalent of a State of the Union address this year, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao made 48 references to “environment,” “pollution” or “environmental protection.”
The government has numerical targets for reducing emissions and conserving energy. Export subsidies for polluting industries have been phased out. Different campaigns have been started to close illegal coal mines and shutter some heavily polluting factories. Major initiatives are under way to develop clean energy sources like solar and wind power. And environmental regulation in Beijing, Shanghai and other leading cities has been tightened ahead of the 2008 Olympics.

Who Emits the Most Greenhouse Gases

Nell Boyce of NPR sets out to find out the single biggest source for greenhouse gas emissions in the US, and learns a lot about how information about emissions is collected (or not.) Here is an excerpt of the written version:

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) met with me in her office on Capitol Hill. She says, if we're ever going to limit greenhouse gas emissions, we need to know exactly who is emitting what. And right now, she says, that's not happening. But Klobuchar says 31 states are now calling for a national carbon registry.
She and Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Republican from Maine, have introduced a new bill to create that kind of national registry. It would require facilities to report their emissions, using the same system that is already in place for many pollutants.
If that proposal becomes law, the United States will become a lot more like its northern neighbor. Canada requires all of its biggest emitters to report.
Charles Elliott works near Ottawa for Environment Canada, a government agency. He says all the information is publicly available on a handy Web site. So, let's say you wanted to know which cement factory in Canada spews the most greenhouse gases.
That would be St Mary's Cement in Bowmanville, Elliott says after the tapping of a few keys. The company reported close to 1.5 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions.
And if you want to know the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in Canada, Elliott can say for sure: "That would be the Nanticoke Power Generation Facility, which is an electricity plant that's here in the province of Ontario."
I drove down to see it. When you're standing right next to it, it doesn't look all that impressive. There are some big power lines, but otherwise it looks just like any factory by a lake. The smokestacks don't seem to be emitting anything. But in reality, the equivalent of around 17 million tons of greenhouse gases comes out of them every year.
"It certainly is educational for people, I think, to have this data available to them. Otherwise you'd just drive by it and just say, 'Oh, that's a coal power plant,'" Elliott says.
He adds that Canada isn't collecting all this information just for kicks. It's the first step toward restricting emissions; Canada announced this spring that it plans to set tough new limits for industrial emitters. But Elliott says the public also is just interested in knowing what's what.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

G8 Breakthrough

According to the Earth Times, the G-8 has moved past an impasse to reach an agreement on greenhouse gas reductions.

Leaders of the world's key industrialized nations agreed a breakthrough deal on combating climate change, including a pledge to slash global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent by 2050. "We have a great success ... a major step forward," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after leaders at a Group of Eight (G8) summit in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm gave their go-ahead to the climate change deal. "I can very well live with this compromise," said Merkel. But she added that "none of these documents are binding."The German leader, who is hosting the G8 meeting, said negotiations among G8 participants had been especially difficult on setting a precise 50-per-cent target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. She said it was significant that future climate change discussions would continue within the United Nations. The G8 statement on climate change referred to the need for a UN "agreement" on climate change - rather than a "framework" - following the 2012 expiry of the current Kyoto Protocol on global warming, said Merkel.

President Bush Proposes Greenhouse Gas Limits

According to the Chicago Tribune,

President Bush, who has long refused to commit the United States to specific limits on pollutants contributing to global warming, took a new turn Thursday in proposing that the U.S. and other leading nations by the end of next year set "a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases."

That is what the president will recommend to a summit of the Group of Eight major industrial nations in Germany next week, along with appeals to match the U.S. in dramatically increasing funding to fight AIDS in Africa and promoting freer international trade.
But with its lack of specifics, the president's plan for addressing climate change falls far short of what the other world leaders hope to deliver at the G-8 summit, set in a serene Baltic Sea resort in Heiligendamm, especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel, an ardent advocate for averting global warming.

At the same time, European wariness of U.S. military involvement in Iraq-along with Russian concerns about a U.S. buildup of missile defenses in Eastern Europe-could contribute to an environment in which the American president, nearing the end of his second term, will have difficulty mustering support for his initiatives, U.S. and European analysts say.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

An "Evangelist' for Sustainability

The New York Times has published a profile of green businessman Ray Anderson, excerpted below:

What Ray Anderson calls his “conversion experience” occurred in the summer of 1994, when he was asked to give the sales force at Interface, the carpet tile company he founded, some talking points about the company’s approach to the environment.
At a plant in LaGrange, carpet scraps are collected for reuse.
“That’s simple,” Mr. Anderson recalls thinking. “We comply with the law.”
But as a sales tool, “compliance” lacked inspirational verve. So he started reading about environmental issues, and thinking about them, until pretty soon it hit him: “I was running a company that was plundering the earth,” he realized. “I thought, ‘Damn, some day people like me will be put in jail!’ ”
“It was a spear in the chest.”
So instead of environmental regulation, he devoted his speech to his newfound vision of polluted air, overflowing landfills, depleted aquifers and used-up resources. Only one institution was powerful enough and pervasive enough to turn these problems around, he told his colleagues, and it was the institution that was causing them in the first place: “Business. Industry. People like us. Us!”
He challenged his colleagues to set a deadline for Interface to become a “restorative enterprise,” a sustainable operation that takes nothing out of the earth that cannot be recycled or quickly regenerated, and that does no harm to the biosphere.
The deadline they ultimately set is 2020, and the idea has taken hold throughout the company. In a recent interview in his office here overlooking downtown Atlanta, Mr. Anderson said that through waste reduction, recycling, energy efficiency and other steps, Interface was “about 45 percent from where we were to where we want to be.”
Use of fossil fuels is down 45 percent (and net greenhouse gas production, by weight, is down 60 percent), he said, while sales are up 49 percent. Globally, the company’s carpet-making uses one-third the water it used to. The company’s worldwide contribution to landfills has been cut by 80 percent.
“He bet his entire company,” said Bob Fox, an architect who specializes in “green” buildings and who, like Mr. Anderson, is a member of the advisory board of the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment. “It worked out probably better even than he hoped. He has set the mark for every other corporation in this country.”
And in the process, Mr. Anderson has turned into perhaps the leading corporate evangelist for sustainability. He had a head start, he acknowledges, because he ran his company and controlled its voting stock. But he can make the case effectively, he said, because his Interface experience teaches that sustainability “doesn’t cost, it pays” — in customer loyalty, employee spirit and hard cash. He says Interface sustainability efforts have saved the company more than $336 million since 1995.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

US Seeks to Water Down G8 Doc

According to a Washington Post syndicated story,

Negotiators from the United States are trying to weaken the language of a climate change declaration set to be unveiled at next month's G-8 summit of the world's leading industrial powers, according to documents.
A draft proposal dated April 2007 that is being debated in Bonn by senior officials of the Group of Eight includes a pledge to limit the global temperature rise this century to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as an agreement to reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
The United States is seeking to strike that section, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.