Other stories below: Ranchers fight Keystone XL; Why cities can’t tackle global warming on their own
Senate rejects expediting Keystone pipeline
In the wake of lobbying by President Obama and Senate Democratic leaders, the Senate Thursday defeated legislation to speed up construction of a U-S.-Canadian oil pipeline.
The White House victory came after the president started personally calling Democratic senators Wednesday night. The vote underscored the extent to which rising gas prices and energy supply have become a central political issue.
Republicans–along with the oil industry, which is running a nationwide advertising campaign about energy supplies — have been attacking Obama on the campaign trail for failing to fully exploit traditional oil and gas resources while Americans are financially stretched. Democrats and their environmental supporters counter that the president must weigh the benefits of fossil fuels against their environmental impact and the importance of promoting renewable energy.
Ranchers Tell Keystone: Not Under My Backyard
Oil has put bread on Eleanor Fairchild’s table in Wood County, Tex., for more than 50 years. Her late husband was a geologist who worked on exploration for different energy companies, and was part of a team that discovered oil in Yemen in the 1980s. That doesn’t mean she welcomed a TransCanada (TRP) worker who appeared on her doorstep in March 2009.
The company wanted to run nearly a mile of its 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline across Fairchild’s 350-acre farm 90 miles east of Dallas, the representative explained, and was willing to pay her $43,000 for an easement on five acres. Fairchild pondered the offer for several weeks. She says the company upped it to $60,000, but “they were really pushy, and that doesn’t go over well with me,” Fairchild says. “It’s my land.”
Why cities can’t tackle global warming on their own
Whenever global warming drops off Congress’s radar, some environmentalists point out the real action is occurring locally, anyway. Some 500 U.S. mayors have signed pledges to reduce carbon emissions. Berkeley, for one, promises an 80 percent cut by 2050. But do these plans actually do anything?
Not really, it turns out. Nate Berg points to an intriguing new paper in the Journal of Urban Economics by McGill’s Adam Millard-Ball that finds two things. First, from analyzing a large sample of localities in California, Millard-Ball found cities that sign climate pledges really do take more steps to reduce their emissions. They have more green buildings. They spend more on biking and walking infrastructure. They capture more methane from landfills. But here’s the hitch: Those cities also tend to have eco-conscious residents and would’ve adopted these measures anyway, even without the plans.
2 Manmade Marshes: One Planted, One Left to Nature
Wetlands development has always been a bit of an oxymoron. So perhaps it comes as little surprise that when Ohio State University studied two manmade wetlands — planting marsh varietals in one and letting nature take its course in the other — it found that over a 15-year period, both produced nearly identical plant life. Still, the natural one managed to sequester more carbon.
The analysis appears in the March issue of the journal BioScience.
Spring Weather: Winter Ending Early For Many Plants And Animals
A tiny, cloverlike plant with heart-shaped leaflets caught Steve Brill’s attention as he scanned the ground of a Brooklyn park.
“We have really messed up our climate if this plant, which dies in November, is alive now,” Brill announced as he introduced the plant, yellow wood sorrel, to the group following him.
Brill leads foraging tours for edible plants in the New York area, and his first tour of the 2012 season, in Prospect Park, yielded some surprises brought by the unusually mild winter. The lemony-flavored sorrel, for instance, had shown up at least a month earlier than normal.
Get ready for chaos if Congress can’t agree on a highway bill
In the beginning, House Republicans wanted a six-year transportation bill for highways, bridges and transit. Something long-term. Something to end Congress’s addiction to short-term spending bills that leave states unable to plan. (Congress has passed eight such stopgaps since 2009.)
But that didn’t work out so well. The House GOP’s original six-year highway bill would have cut overall spending levels on roads — in part because it relied solely on shrinking gas-tax revenue. That caused much unhappiness. So the GOP went back and expanded the bill using money from hypothetical future drilling exploits. That also caused much unhappiness. So now John Boehner is suggesting that the House may throw up its hands and vote on the two-year extension the Senate’s now considering. And if that doesn’t work, then Congress can always just pass yet another two-month extension before all highway funding runs out March 31. So how much chaos are these stopgap bills causing?
US Senator proposal could revive Production Tax Credit
US Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) has introduced a measure to prevent a tax increase on American entrepreneurs and innovators in clean and renewable energy, and in effect reviving the Production Tax Credit, which expired in 2010.
“We cannot allow a tax increase on American businesses that are creating clean energy jobs in America,” Stabenow says.
Washington state plan expands renewable energy law
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed a bill that for the first time broadens the definition of renewable energy.
The measure makes electricity produced from older biomass facilities, such as pulp mills, eligible for the state’s renewable energy mandate. Supporters say it will benefit rural communities and a struggling timber industry.
Since voters approved Initiative 937 in 2006, there have been numerous attempts by lawmakers, utilities and industry to expand what qualifies as a renewable energy source.
The law requires nearly a third of the state’s utilities, those with at least 25,000 customers, to build toward getting 15 percent of their power from wind, solar, geothermal and certain woody biomass by 2020.
“Chasing Ice” Catches Up to Earth’s Changing Climate
It’s probably hard to imagine all of Manhattan tumbling into the Hudson River and washing away in less than five minutes, but that’s the equivalent of what you’ll see in the film “Chasing Ice,” as a city’s worth of towering icebergs collapse violently into the ocean — and that’s just one of countless spectacular images that flash across the screen in this astonishing documentary by director and cinematographer Jeff Orlowski, which premiered at Sundance in January and is opening at SXSW this week.
The film is a documentary about a documentarian — a scientist-turned photographer named James Balog, whose obsession with images of ice has gotten him into the pages of The New Yorker and National Geographic. Despite his training as a geographer and geomorphologist, Balog was stunned to see how fast some of the glaciers that he shot were receding in the face of global warming. So he decided to create a long-term photography project he called the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), which he hoped would merge art and science into a compelling story in pictures about what humans are doing to the climate.
Airbus says China blocking jet orders to protest EU emissions trading fees
China is blocking orders for at least $12 billion worth of Airbus jets to protest the European Union’s emissions trading fees, in a new challenge to the program aimed at fighting global warming, the planemaker said Thursday.
With some analysts warning of a brewing trade war, Airbus spokesman Stefan Schaffrath said his company is seeing “retaliation threats” from 26 countries, “in particular from China.”
Speaking to The Associated Press, he said 35 orders by Chinese airlines for A330 planes are on hold because China’s government is refusing to approve them. He said orders for another 10 A380 superjumbos are also under threat, and that the combined list prices of the aircraft is $12 billion.
A new international accord on the management and safety of nuclear power plants should be a priority for governments, an influential global energy organisation has said.
A year after Japan’s Fukushima reactor was shut down, the World Energy Council – whose members include many of the biggest energy companies from around the world – said an agreement was possible and should be a matter of urgency. “Global nuclear power is one of the rare issues on which an international accord could be achieved with a reasonable level of efforts— the need to act is urgent, and the time is right,” its report found.
“Very little has changed in respect of improving global governance of the nuclear sector, highlighting the need for action. There is critical need to inform the public about issues relating to nuclear generation technologies, safety, costs, benefits and risks.”
The WEC also found that nuclear energy continues to be a popular choice when governments around the world are setting their future priorities, despite concerns over the safety of reactors following the Fukushima disaster last March.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Yes, Keystone XL Tar Sands as the zombie pipeline that would not die.
In the wake of lobbying by President Obama and Senate Democratic leaders, the Senate Thursday defeated legislation to speed up construction of a U-S.-Canadian oil pipeline.
Are we going to turn our fickle knobs down a notch, now?
Take Shelter
Plagued by a series of apocalyptic visions, a young husband and father questions whether to shelter his family from a coming storm, or from himself. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1675192/
Did not watched it, but the rating is good and thought i share this..
Oh, and the Daily Mail review
No disaster movie can be as depressing as this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-2065977/Take-Shelter-review-No-disaster-movie-depressing-this.html
A hysterical over-reaction to climate change or possibly a despairing response to the current economic crisis, Take Shelter is the story of a latterday Noah trying to warn mankind of imminent catastrophe.
Daily Mail comments..
Saw this yesterday, thought it was actually one of the best films of the year, beautiful to look at and with a real powerhouse performance from Shannon. Yes it’s slow, but it’s also gripping and well worth seeing.
- niles winter, london, 27/11/2011 16:35
Click to rate Rating 23
This film had a big impact on me. There’s few that leave me thinking long after about the issues raised. Is this movie about a visionary or a guy going nuts? A metaphor about our economic or environmental futures or indeed about how all of our lives sit on a knife edge – even if we don’t realise it at the time. Or about how fear can ruin our lives? Even though perhaps a bit long and slowly paced, it did shake me up more than a real storm. Worth watching.
- Wayne, Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, 27/11/2011 11:40
Click to rate Rating 24
jessica chastain is the only reason to see this movie…she is a once in a generation performer..
- johnny o hooligan, wembley, brent ,
A few years ago if any of you remember they were using high gas prices to push new refinery construction and capacity and blaming environmentalists for the high prices for it to happen. Look at where that took us:
U.S. petroleum product exports exceeded imports in 2011 for first time in over six decades
The United States in 2011 exported more petroleum products, on an annual basis, than it imported for the first time since 1949, but American refiners still imported large, although declining, amounts of crude oil, according to full-year trade data from EIA’s Petroleum Supply Monthly February report. The increase in foreign purchases of distillate fuel contributed the most to the United States becoming a net exporter of petroleum products.
( http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=5290# )
You can see why they really want that dirty tar sands pipeline so bad.
Crawford Farms Takes On Tar Sands Pipeline
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmcTzht2XH8
Two thoughts on the Pipeline That Wouldn’t Die:
1. We need to take the “addicted to oil” metaphor one step further and recognize that a critical moment in kicking any addiction is reaching that point when your desire to change is great enough to overcome not just your long-term behavior pattern, but your short term desire for just a little bit more. That’s the challenge: Saying no to that next pill or needle or glass or, in this case, barrel. The emissions from KXL-delivered oil would be a pittance compared to what we’re dumping into the atmosphere from existing coal plants and motor vehicles. But if we’re going to transition away from filthy and destructive energy sources then some tempting increment of fossil fuels has to be the first one we turn down, the first to succumb to our strength and enlightened self-interest.
Looking at the US’ behavior regarding all fossil fuels plus China and India’s stunning plans for new coal plants, it’s clear to me that the three biggest junkies aren’t yet ready to quit.
2. My guess is that eventually KXL will be approved and built. Not this year, obviously, and perhaps not for several more. But once peak oil starts to take a serious bite out of voters’ budgets, the idiotic and just plain wrong arguments about energy independence and $2.50 gasoline will create enough political pressure to carry the day, and some administration and Congress will approve it.